Monster #6—Giant Spiders

I'm not an arachnophobe, but I can certainly understand why so many people are. Spiders are scary. I don't freak out if I see one in my house, but having one show up unexpectedly can still be startling. Especially if it's a black widow or something equally instantly recognizable as something that can put me in the hospital. But for the most part, I quite like spiders; they eat ants and flies and other pests that I'm much more frustrated with, and actually most of them are quite graceful and beautiful in their lovely alien ways.

But certainly, the bigger a spider gets, the more intimidating they become. Like the one we found at Paizo one day a few years ago, crawling around on the floor in front of Jason Bulmahn's office—that one was a beast! See the video for proof—that's Sean K Reynolds holding the spider up for me to catch all its glory with my iPhone. We let the big guy loose in the grass out behind the building once his 15 minutes of fame were up... and since we couldn't be sure it wasn't a hobo spider, we made damn sure not to let him bite us. Of course, when a spider gets to be big enough, it doesn't matter if it's poisonous. It hurts to be bitten by something with visible fangs.

There's a fair number of movies about spiders out there, small and large. Most of them aren't all that good, but fortunately for spider fans like me, there's lots of them, and that means the total number of giant spider movies that are good increase. My absolute FAVORITE giant spider movie of all time, and indeed one of my favorite movies of all time, is Tarantula, a movie from the mid-50s about a mad scientist who is trying to build a new type of radioactive chemical that causes animals to grow to enormous sizes. He hopes to solve the world hunger problem by, essentially, increasing rabbits and guinea pigs and other smaller creatures up to cow size, giving us all an unlimited amount of food to eat. In typical charming 50s style, the repercussions of eating meat grown via the introduction of radioactive super-science are more or less completely glossed over.

The repercussions of what happens if a lab tarantula gets dosed with the stuff, on the other hand, are NOT glossed over. The movie uses a real tarantula for the bulk of the scenes, superimposed into barren southwestern deserts or set free on well-built models with double-exposed victims running in fear or attempting in vain to explode the spider with dynamite. They used tiny blasts of compressed air to guide the spider along the route through these sets, and the result looks really good, even today. Now and then, for the tarantula's close-ups, they use a puppet that's really pretty frightening and effective looking. In the end, they have to essentially call in Clint Eastwood to save the day. No joke! This movie's one of his first roles, with a cameo as a jet fighter pilot—you can only see his eyes and hear his voice, but since it's Clint, that's all that you need!

Recommended Reading

• It, by Stephen King
• The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Two Towers, by J. R. R. Tolkien
• "The Seven Geases," by Clark Ashton Smith

Recommended Viewing

• Tarantula, dir. Jack Arnold
• The Incredible Shrinking Man, dir. Jack Arnold
• The Return of the King, dir. Peter Jackson
• The Mist, dir. Frank Darabont

Movie Review—Creature from Black Lake

So, as if to celebrate that last Sunday's monster day entry was on the Fouke Monster, today I sat down to watch "Creature from Black Lake," which more or less exists due to the popularity of "Legend of Boggy Creek." Unfortunately, this movie is nowhere near as spooky and charming and interesting as the former.

"Creature from Black Lake" opens with an attack on a pair of trappers floating in a boat on the eponymous Black Lake (which looks more muddy than black, but whatever) by a big hairy hominid who comes at them from under the water. That's right! Bigfoot can swim, apparently!

Anyway, that scene dealt with, the movie shifts gears to a pair of "yankees" (as the movie is so fond of reminding us) from college in Chicago who've come down to the Black Lake region to try to find the creature. Maybe to catch it and bring it back alive. A large portion of the movie chronicles these two gadabouts as they run into trouble with the locals, be it a faux pas at a hillbilly dinner or flirting with the sheriff's pretty young daughter or trying their damndest to track down the surviving trapper from that first scene so they can interview him and find out where to get their own look at the Creature from Black Lake.

There might not be any hamburgers in your future, but I bet getting mauled by Bigfoot will make up for it!

I'm not sure WHY the monster's called the Creature from Black Lake... since the lake only appears in that one pre-credit sequence. The rest of the movie takes place in a small town and in the woods, more or less.

Anyway... no real suspense. Some goofy music. A pretty mediocre ape suit. And a big dose of pan-n-scan coupled with at times barely-understandable dialogue from a pretty sub-par transfer to DVD equates to what can be charitably called "Not one of my top ten Bigfoot-related movies."

Creature From Black Lake...

• ... features a Vietnam Vet who's defining characteristic is that he likes hamburgers. Why? Because he grew up in town with a chicken processing plant and his dad worked there so they had chicken every day. Chicken for breakfast. Chicken for lunch. Chicken for dinner. One day his dad tried to make chicken jello. What does this have to do with Vietnam or, more on-topic, the Creature From Black Lake? Not sure... but there's a lot of film time spent on the topic so it must have been important to someone.
• ... isn't interested in showing us the fate of the creature. Did it die when it got shot? Did the van explosion kill it? What happened? Doesn't mater, because with about 5 minutes to go, the movie loses interest in the Bigfoot and wallows in a long coda where we get to worry about Mr. Hamburgers after he gets mauled by the Bigfoot earlier on.
• ... reminded me why I don't like pan-n-scan.
• ... doesn't have a cat trick, but it does have an unexplained bearded man in the woods trick.
• ... spends roughly 2% of its running time at the actual Black Lake. I guess that's okay, since it's about the creature FROM Black Lake, not the creature AT Black Lake.
• ... has a much better poster than it deserves.

Grade: D

Movie Review—Wrath of the Titans

Those of you who have seen the remake of "Clash of the Titans" know that when I say its sequel, "Wrath of the Titans," is a better movie than its predecessor know that I'm not necessarily saying "Wrath" is a good movie. Whatever it is, though, it's certainly never quiet.

Ray Harryhausen is one of my cinematic heroes. The last movie he did special effects work for was the 1981 version of "Clash of the Titans," so when the remake came around a few years ago, I was wary but hopeful. The trailers certainly made it look exciting. But no... no. It ended up being one of the worst movies of 2010.

"Wrath of the Titans" has an advantage then. It's an entirely new story... well, sort of, unless you count mythology... and so I wasn't spending every single second of the movie mentally comparing it unfavorably to an original. This time out we get more neat mythological monsters, but each time they show up... they end up kind of being wasted. Chimeras make a big opening scene, but even though they're supposedly rampaging across the countryside for the duration of the movie, once Perseus kills one at the start of the movie (in what's easily the most interesting scene in the entire movie), they're never seen again. Perseus and crew head out to Hephaestus's island, and once there they get in a fight with a bunch of cyclopes, but it turns out they're kinda nice if dumpy guys who end up strolling up the mountainside with the heroes to visit Hephaestus. And they end up having to go through THE labyrinth to enter Tarterus to save Zeus, and wouldn't you know it the minotaur does indeed attack Perseus, but he's just a big dude with growths on his head who, after a series of quick-cut fight edits, ends up not leaving much of a mark on the memory.

"WHYYYYY? WHY DIDN'T THEY MAKE ME LOOK LIKE A NORMAL MINOTAUR?"

I suppose that all the lava effects splattering off Kronos's enormous mitts at the end were pretty nifty, as were his double-sided lava warrior thingys... But by then, I was pretty well bored with the absolutely uninspired dialogue and frustrated by the obviously well-done special effects that you couldn't really stop to admire because they were too busy doing fast edits. Fast edits are hard to do well, but easy to do when you're covering the fact that you don't know how to choreograph an action scene, whether or not it has CGI in it or not, I guess...

Oh. Wait. Just remembered... like "Clash" did a few years ago, "Wrath" manages to get a somewhat goofy and nonsensical cameo in for Bubo, so now I hate the movie just a little bit more.

Wrath of the Titans...

• ... thankfully doesn't have any suicide bombing djinn or comedy-relief adventurer duos. It does have a comedy-relief single adventurer, so it's not a total improvement.
• ... makes the mistake that the viewer would rather watch Perseus and Ares have a fistfight rather than see some more special effects in the form of just one more mythological monster encounter.
• ... somehow manages to have less memorable characters than the first movie. Which is, in a way, a blessing, since the traits that made the previous characters memorable were insulting or frustrating or annoying.
• ... spends way too much time trying to make us interested in the human armies that don't have a chance in the fight anyway and end up kinda just standing around and getting dirty.
• ... makes me wonder why, if you steal Zeus's lightning bolt, you don't bother using it in a fight, even if you ARE Ares.
• ... really does want to be God of War, but it doesn't have the courage to even get close to it. Maybe if it had been R-rated and was loaded with gore and profanity and nudity it would have been more interesting.

 Grade: C–

Monster #5—The Fouke Monster

Not all Bigfoots are built the same.

For example, the Fouke Monster, known perhaps more widely as the Boggy Creek Monster, has only three toes. That's pretty unusual, especially considering pretty much no other big hairy hominid prints have three toes. Could this mean the Fouke Monster is a mutant? Or is the one that terrorized the people of Fouke, Arkansaas back in the early 70s merely deformed? Or, perish the thought, are the Fouke Monster tracks the work of a hoaxer who didn't do his homework on basic Bigfoot (and basic primate) zoology?

In the end, it doesn't matter, because the Fouke Monster is the scariest of the Bigfoots. Partially because it lives in a swamp, arguably the scariest of all terrains. Partially because stories about encounters with the Fouke Monster tend to be a lot more agressive that most Bigfoot encounters are. But when you get right down to it, the reason it's scary is because of "The Legend of Boggy Creek."

This movie was more than just a drive-in feature that achieved unexpected popularity and success (7th most successful movie of 1972 in fact... also the year I was born!). It seems like it spawned an entire generation of cryptozoologists. It certainly did a number on myself and my sister, back in the late 70s when it showed up on TV now and then. I once convinced my younger sister to stay up until midnight to watch the movie, and she made it barely through the credits. The combination of the forlorn cries of a loon, the raspy croaking of bullfrogs, the swampy visuals, and then the eerie sound of a monster howling somewhere in that swamp as a young child appears to run for his life from an unseen terror were too much. She went to bed before the credits rolled.

If you name a place like this "Boggy Creek," why NOT have a monster in it?

I did not. I watched the whole movie. I've been having nightmares about Bigfoot peering through a bedroom window (one that's at least 7 feet of the ground, mind you) ever since.

Recommended Reading

• The Beast of Boggy Creek, by Lyle Blackburn

Recommended Viewing

• The Legend of Boggy Creek, dir. Charles B. Pierce

Movie Review—Amber Alert

I've got a fair number of movies languishing in my Netflix queue. At current count, I've got 170 lined up in my DVD/Blu-Ray queue, and a mere 107 in my instant queue. Yesterday, I saw "Dredd," and it was REALLY good. Much better than I'd anticipated it being. And that's more or less what got me thinking about doing movie reviews on my blog.

So here I am. I'm starting with movies I've seen today, so as good as it was, "Dredd" won't be the first review of the year. But do yourself a favor; if you like action-packed violent movies, check it out!

Now, on to THIS review.

"Amber Alert" is about a group of three college students who are out on the road, filming themselves having fun for an audition for a reality TV show. Which show doesn't really matter, because not long after the movie starts, they spot a car that's been tagged by an amber alert, and decide to follow it. And since it's a movie... things pretty quickly get intense and out of control.

"Amber Alert" is a found footage movie, which is perhaps my favorite type of movie these days. I don't care if the movie's great (like "Paranormal Activity") or terrible (like "Paranormal Activity 4')... I'll eventually see the movie. Mockumentaries are a close second here, but the full-on found footage format just, for whatever reason, quite pleases me.

Pardon me... are you making a mediocre found footage movie about me in there?

Even when the movie doesn't.

"Amber Alert" is far from the worst found footage movie I've seen, but it's also not even close to being the best. The majority of the movies in this type I've seen have been horror movies, and while there's some horror in this one, it's more accurately categorized as a thriller. Nothing supernatural going on here, no gore to speak of, but the central conceit of three young people chasing after a car that may or may not belong to a child molester is pretty horrific and spooky.

Unfortunately, the acting was a bit uneven. Found footage movies really need a naturalistic and believable style of acting to work right, and when it's off... even just a little, as in this case... it can undo the movie. A lot of found footage movies also feature a lot of arguing and screaming and the like, it seems, and "Amber Alert" certainly delivers there. The ending was satisfying, but the drive felt a bit long getting there.

Amber Alert...

• ... features a car that apparently gets hundreds of miles to the gallon. Sure, the characters in the movie could have stopped to get gas at some point between cuts in the filming, but the move's pretty insistent that they're on a tight time schedule.
• ... has a reason for why the characters are filming everything—they're hoping to be able to turn the tape over to the police as evidence once they find proof that the amber alert was for real.
• ... has a surprisingly small amount of profanity, considering how much of the movie is footage of stressed out people arguing.
• ... makes driving 100 miles per hour look like a stately 40 miles per hour.
• ... like many movies, has a trailer that makes it look far more exciting and action packed than it actually is.

Grade: C

The Resurrection of Bigfoot Country, Part II 

Okay then!

It's a new year, and that means it's time to give this blog another go. This time around, I'm gonna be a bit less methodical about what gets posted on what day, but I'm going to be posting here more regularly. The majority of the posts will be in one of three categories:

Reviews: When I finish watching a movie, reading a book, playing a video game, or watching an entire season of a TV show, I'll post a review. Partially so I can keep track of stuff, but also to let folks know what's good and what's not. My intent is to do reviews of every movie I see and every book I finish reading... but beyond that I'll pick and choose what goes up as a review.

Monster Day: Of the various themes I had for the previous attempt at this blog, I personally enjoyed Monster Day the best. So I'll be publishing more installments of this feature every Sunday.

Miscellaneous Posts: Whenever I've got something else to say, I'll make a miscellaneous post. This could be anything, so I won't even try to predict when they'll happen!

Let's see how far I get this year before I get distracted!

Not Dead Yet!

Oof... had a super busy month or so there in April. Gen Con & Paizocon prep'll do that. As a result, I kinda stopped posting here. But I'm gonna try to get back on the blogging bandwagon... I suspect that the majority of my posts will be movie reviews and short story reviews. I'd LOVE to do some sort of regular gaming feature... maybe a dungeon map or something that I'd stock with encounters over the course of several posts... we'll see. (I'll need to get me a scanner first, though!)

Anyway... still here! Sorry about the silence!