Coming Attractions

Behemoth, The Sea Monster (1959)

While in England, a marine biologist is compelled to investigate large amounts of dead fish washing up on the coast of Cornwall. His investigations lead him to a radioactive dinosaur that was awakened from a long dormant sleep.

England’s first kaiju movie, it was to be originally an invisible monster that gave off radioactive vibes. When director Eugene Lourie couldn’t get a buyer, he gave in to an English production house demands for a tangible monster and told the scriptwriters to combine the inviso-monster with the script of a previous movie he did, The Beast of 20,000 Fathoms. Lourie also hired the talents of Will O’Brien who was well known to everyone as the man who made the King Kong model, but also the father of Stop Motion. This was O’Brien’s last film as he was struck with sickness and most of the stop motion work was done by assistants.

With that being said, this movie takes too long in building the monster up. While I don’t mind watching scientists go up the military food chain, they could have condensed it and get to the creature. The reason for this is that the effects budget was gypped and they really had to rush to make fifteen minutes of film. While the Behemoth look good at first, the editing and camera angles hid a rush job. They only had one model, so they had to be real gentle about it. In short, this was a drawn out movie because the animated footage was too short.

This DVD is part of the WB’s Cult Camp Collection: Sci-fi Thrillers collection. The audio is nice. The video is a bit natural but isn’t too bad. The extras include a trailer and commentary by Denis Muren and Phil Tippet of Equinox fame and special effects creators. While I think they would have been a great help talking about as stop motion and the work of Will O’Brien, I do think they should have gotten a third person in the fold to do commentary about the film end. Tim Lucas or someone could’ve been a good balance to Tippet and Muren. This was one of the weaker commentaries to sit through. Informative none to less.

two and a half stars.

Dog Soldiers (2002)

A British squadron finds themselves in a bit of trouble when an exercise goes wrong thanks to the appearance of werewolves.

This is a very solid movie. Lot’s of action. Lot’s of characterization. Keeps you riveted every minute and on the edge of your seat. Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd & Liam Cunningham really make the characters work. They have a nice supporting cast as well.

It’s basically like Evil Dead. A great evil in the wilderness taking out people stranded in the middle one by one. One of the major points that makes it work is that the production crew opted to make the werewolves out of men in suits instead of CGI. A bold move seen by the movie community. But really, how is this a bold move? When you see a CG werewolf, are you going to say “That’s a Fuckin Werewolf!! Get Me The Fuck Away!!”? No. You’re going to say “My god. That’s some nice computer animation.” By opting for MiS tactics, not only does it give the movie a level of believability, but it saves them a lot of money so they can buy blood and guts. Something the film community fails to understand.

All in all, this a great movie that will find itself in the classics pile as well as considered one of the best Werewolf movies ever. See this with friends or at a party. It’s also great to watch home…alone.

Three stars.