DVD Review: Starcrash (1978)

Beautiful Caroline Munro as space-bikini babe, Stella Star!  Gold-clad Christopher Plummer using mystical powers to "halt the flow of time"!  Kung fu fighting Amazons, acrobatic Troglodytes, and lightsaber battles with stop-motion robots!  The Hoff firing frickin' laser beams from his eyes!  Is Starcrash the greatest movie ever made?  Probably not, but it's awfully good fun.  Second best of the late seventies Star Wars rip-offs, behind Kinji Fukasaku's mind-blowing Message from Space (1978). 

Italian writer-director and sci-fi buff Luigi Cozzi weaves a wild yarn full of in-jokes and genre references.  The magnificent super-spaceship "Murray Leinster" (named after the s-f writer/magazine editor) goes missing and is sought by the Emperor of the Stars (Christopher Plummer) and his cape-swishing arch-enemy, Count Zarth Arn (erstwhile Maniac (1980) Joe Spinell).  Fleeing the Galactic Police, interstellar rogue Stella Star and her bubble-permed, mystical sidekick Akton (faith healer-turned-trash film star (yes, really) Marjoe Gortner) stumble on some survivors who babble about "red monsters."

Cult Clip: Aatank (1996)

A lot of popular Hollywood films have been remade in Bollywood and one of the most unusual Bollywood remakes has to be this knock-off of Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) called Aatank, which was released in 1996. I don't know much about Aatank since I've only managed to see clips of it on YouTube and it doesn't seem to be easily available on DVD or VHS at the moment. I do know that the movie was directed by Prem Lalwani and stars Nafisa Ali, Dharmendra and Vinod Mehra. You can see a clip from Aatank below, but unfortunately it doesn't feature any of the film's entertaining musical numbers. It does feature a giant shark though!

Coming to DVD: Warner Cult Camp Classics

Warner Home Video is releasing a huge batch of campy cult classics on NTSC Region-1 DVD next week that are sure to entertain B-movie fans. The films are available in four different collections and each collection contains 3 different movies.

Cult Camp Classics 1 - Sci-Fi Thrillers: Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958), Giant Behemoth (1958), Queen of Outer Space (1958).
Cult Camp Classics 2 - Women in Peril: The Big Cube (1968), Caged (1950), Trog (1969).
Cult Camp Classics 3 - Terrorized Travelers: Hot Rods to Hell (1966), Skyjacked (1972), Zero Hour! (1957)
Cult Camp Classics 4 - Historical Epics: The Colossus of Rhodes (1961), Land of the Pharaohs (1955), The Prodigal (1955)

Many of the films have never been released on DVD before and most of them will be presented in Anamorphic Widescreen for the first time. Some titles will also include Audio Commentaries and Original Theatrical Trailers. Each volume retails for $29.98, but they are currently available from Amazon for a low pre-order price of $20.99.

For more information please see Amazon.

Godzilla Love T-Shirt

If you're a regular reader of Cinedelica you may know that two Godzilla movies were recently released on DVD. What better way to celebrate the event and express your affection for the big green monster than with a great new Godzilla T-shirt?

Random Shirts has created the perfect shirt for Godzilla fans called Godzilla Love. This green unisex tee is available in multiple sizes and sells for $16.95.

Currently Random Shirts only ships to US and Canadian customers, but according to their website they are considering shipping to International customers so if you live outside the US and like their designs send them an email and ask them to reconsider their current shipping restrictions. And don't forget to tell them that Cinedelica sent you!

For more information about Random Shirts and their t-shirt designs visit their website Randomshirts.com

Godzilla Movies Coming to DVD June 5th!

On June 5th Classic Media will be releasing two Godzilla films on DVD that fans of Japanese giant monster movies won't want to miss! These NTSC Region-1 DVDs will feature the fifth and sixth Godzilla films known as Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster (1964) and Invasion of Astro-Monster (a.k.a. Monster Zero, 1965).

This is the first time that Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster has been made available on DVD in North America. The new DVD will include a subtitled copy of the 1964 Japanese version of the film called San daikaijû: Chikyu Saidai No Kessen as well as the 1965 American edited version, Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster. Both versions of the film will be presented uncut in their original Toho Scope/CinemaScope widescreen theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Extras include informative audio commentary by David Kalat (author of A Critical History and Filmography of Toho’s Godzilla Series), the original Japanese theatrical trailer, a poster gallery and image gallery with photos and trivia about the movie and an important new featurette called The Father of Godzilla - Eiji Tsuburaya: 1901-1970.

Cult Clip: Village of the Giants (1965)

In the campy science fiction film Attack of the Giants (1965) a group of party loving and rebellious American teens ingest a strange substance called “Goo” that makes them turn into giants. Afterward they use their giant size to terrorize the locals of a small town. It’s based on a story by H.G. Wells, but thankfully for us the movie doesn't have that much in common with Wells’ original story.

A very young Beau Bridges stars as the the gang leader of the “Giants” and the British influenced American rock band The Beau Brummels makes an appearance. Also look for a young Toni Basil in one of her earliest film roles as “Red.”

This fun movie is available on DVD from MGM as part of their great “Midnight Movie” series and also includes the 1958 film Attack of the Puppet People which isn’t exactly as entertaining as the Village of the Giants.

Visit Amazon for more information about the Village of the Giants DVD and enjoy this great trailer for the film which features lots of dancing giants!

- Kimberly Lindbergs

Cult Clip: Invasion Of The Astro Monsters (1965)

I've just discovered some old tapes of 60s Godzilla flicks in a long-forgotten box - getting busy re-acquainting myself with Toho's monsters.

I'll be reviewing the pick in the coming weeks, but for a bit of an introduction, check out this original trailer for Invasion Of The Astro Monsters, with alien invaders from Planet X up to no good, asking to borrow a couple of our monsters to kill off their own - but using them in an attempt to take over Earth.

Cult Clip: Zone Fighter and Godzilla (1973)

Broadcast in the early 70s, Zone Fighter was yet another of Toho Studios attempts to spin off their success in the field of kaiju eiga movies onto the small screen. The Zone Fighters in question were a family of humanoid aliens stranded on Earth. In true Japanese sci-fi style, they were able to grow to enormous size, an ability that proved quite handy as each episode found them battling a new gigantic monstrous threat.

Clearly owing more than a little to Toho's previous hit show Ultraman (the design of the costumes is almost identical) Zone Fighter did have one advantage over its more famous predecessor - frequent cameos from Godzilla and other popular Toho monsters.

Godzilla fought alongside the Zone Fighter family in five episodes, while villainous creatures such as Gigan and King Ghidorah also guest starred.

Here's a fantastic clip from one such episode, with Godzilla racing to rescue Zone Fighter from some sort of hairy octopus.

You can find more clips, including the funky opening titles, over at TokyoMonsters.com

The Birds and the Deadly Bees

Before Ronnie Wood made his name with the Rolling Stones, he was with The Faces. And before that, he was with little-known cult British beat outfit The Birds (not to be confused with American country rockers The Byrds), whose few releases now command a hefty price on the collectors' market.

They made one screen appearance in their career - oddly in this British shocker (in more ways than one) - The Deadly Bees, from 1966. Enjoy the clip, enjoy the music and enjoy the fact that Ron's hair hasn't changed in 40 years. If the clip makes you want to seek out the movie, then you're out of luck, it's not available on DVD. But worry not for two reasons. Firstly, it's regularly on TV and secondly, it's a pretty poor flick, a tale of an exhausted pop singer taking time out - but running into a swarm of "deadly bees". Once you've seen the following clip, you've seen the movie's only redeeming factor...

Cult Clip: Night of the Lepus (1972)

Here's a heartwarming snippet from the groovy Seventies, when the "nature bites back" sub genre briefly tried to reassert itself through such films as Prophecy (mutant killer bear), Grizzly (normal killer bear) and Frogs (go on, take a wild guess).

While the idea of killer frogs may be laughable (just ask Sam Elliott, he starred in the damn thing) there's one crappy monster movie that has yet to be topped in the ludicrous premise stakes.

Night of the Lepus.

Watch in astonishment as Rory Calhoun, Bones from Star Trek and a visibly depressed Janet Leigh unite to save the American Midwest from a plague of giant bloodthirsty...bunny rabbits.

Warning: this clip contains scenes of slow-motion rabbits with stage blood painted on their adorable whiskers.

Beware of Burt's Blob

Catching the arse end of the 1958 creature feature classic The Blob on TV the other night, I was once again struck by the sheer hilarity of a 28-year-old Steve McQueen trying to look like a fresh faced teenager, but mostly by the utterly incongruous - yet marvellously groovy - Blob theme song, written by Burt Bacharach and Mack David.

Full of jazzy brass sounds, funky handclaps and some of the finest lyrics ever penned about a perambulating mass of monstrous jelly, it's possibly the jauntiest horror theme in history, and neatly encapsulates everything that's great about the atomic age.

"Why, if only I could download this musical masterpiece and enjoy it in crisp MP3 format", I sighed to myself. One quick Google search later, and my appetite was satiated.

Click here to listen to Burt's ode to wobbly pink evil, and here are those unforgettable lyrics in full, so you can sing along...

Beware of The Blob, it creeps
And leaps and glides and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, a blotch
Be careful of The Blob