Retro Monster B-Movie Reviews

In Gargoyles' Revenge, 16th century Romanian villagers go after the last gargoyle. A priest shoots it with a crossbow arrow anointed with the blood of Christ (from the priest), and it's sealed beneath the ground with a huge boulder and an incantation. We then jump forward to the present as two American FBI agents (Ty "Griff" Griffin and Christina Durant) are making a kidnap exchange. A gunman is chased to a rooftop where he simply disappears leaving only blood and money. Meanwhile a church is undergoing study and modernisation. An ancient painting depicting the gargoyle hunt is discovered hidden behind another. A recent earthquake has revealed a giant cavern beneath the graveyard. Inside are dozens of eggs waiting to hatch. The gargoyle is free and it wants the crossbow...
 

I must say, I expected the worst here... and didn't get it. It's not exactly Shakespeare, and it is leagues below the likes of The Exorcist and Halloween in terms of style and content, but it is a fun fantasy-horror (very much in the vein of Hammer) which rattles along at a fair pace. Just don't expect too much from it.
 

The cavern of eggs is straight out of Alien (even the same design), and the expression on the faces of those using machine guns against the newly hatched gargoyles is completely blank (no determination, no fear, nothing) making it all too plain to the viewer that the special effects were added later.
 

The male FBI agent is somewhat smarmy and self-assured (what do you mean, no wonder he's got my name!?), but maybe that's just how the character is written. One other point of interest: I wonder how many people have noticed that most of the character names are connected with horror or fantasy - Griffin, Soren, Durant, Lex, Aslan, Gogol, Gregor, Boris and Yuri.
 

In Deadly Swarm, Jacob Schroeder, a bio-prospector working for an American pharmaceutical company, tracks a medical breakthrough to a small Indian village deep in the Mexican jungle. Forcing the locals to reveal its location, he comes away with a huge nest of deadly wasps known as "black fire". He pays a truck driver to smuggle the cargo over the border, but when the vehicle turns over the massive cloud of killers is freed. In a nearby Mexican town entomologist Daniel Lang is working to reduce an outbreak of malaria. The mayor tells him his work is done, but he is recruited by the sheriff to examine the body of the truck driver. A series of deaths and the knowledge that human hosts can be used to lay eggs, means the race is on to track the swarm and kill the queen. But Lang and the sheriff haven't reckoned on the ruthless determination of Schroeder...
 

Before watching this film I was immediately reminded of my review of The Swarm (people still occasionally mention it to me now). So, I was expecting a lot of running around, screaming and windmilling of arms. Thankfully it didn't happen. Yes, it was mainly cheap effects-driven, with lots of black dots whizzing around in the air, but at least they tried to build a believable story around the b-movie scenario.
 

I would say that the character of the female reporter is completely superfluous to events, and seems to exist only to look good; and like many horror stories this one reduces its effectiveness by eluding to the past, in this case with the ancient journal kept by the priest which is a centuries old hand-written account of the swarm.
 

In Snakehead Terror, we are told over the opening credits about a new species of fish discovered called Snakehead. It is viscous and has no predator. Eventually the authorities were forced to poison Cultus Lake and kill them all to prevent the possibility of any spreading elsewhere. Now, when a few mutilated bodies turn up (including his daughter's boyfriend) the sheriff tries to get the lake closed to tourists. But local business is bad, culminating in human growth hormones being dumped in the lake to increase the size of the fish. The surviving Snakeheads are multiplying at a phenomenal rate and are mutating into monsters which leave the lake to look for prey...
 

Fans of Babylon 5 and The X-Files might recognise Bruce Boxleitner and William B. Davis, and there's no prizes for guessing who plays the hero and who the villain. Judging by the synopsis above (pretty much Piranha/Alligator/Lake Placid) this one has got to be cringeworthy, yes. You might think so but it's rather fun in its own way.
 

Unfortunately, these people will always step over the line. There's the Jaws-like music, and then one depiction of a Snakehead. I have to tell you first that the fish creatures are very well realised... all except one. A glove puppet fish has hold of the daughter's arm and instead of chewing it off like you might expect, simply hangs on long enough for the girl to dangle it in front of a boat's propeller. There are no ill after-affects, not even a bite mark.
 

Anchor Bay, who always seem to care about their releases, have made a shrewd move here. What do you do when you have three average creature flicks to put out? Why, you simply package them together as a box set to make it a more attractive purchase. None of these films will rock the genre, but together they're worth twenty quid of anyone's money.

(Review originally written by Ty Power for sci-fi-online 2006)

Captain Nolan is an Irishman living in Canada. He has inherited his father’s old fishing boat, and is attempting to catch various marine life in a bid to pay off the  mortgage on the boat, so that he can return home. Whilst striving to  catch a Great White shark, the shark is attacked and killed by a killer whale. Nolan immediately has the notion that an Orca will net him a lot more money. However, he misses the male, instead spearing a female. It is winched on board, badly injured, only for Nolan to discover it is pregnant. The baby is lost, enraging the male so that it attacks the vessel. Nolan orders the female cut loose, but it is fatally hurt. The male sees Nolan on board, and the captain is told by an expert that killer whales are highly vengeful creatures, as they are intelligent and very family-oriented. He learns this first-hand when the whale follows his boat back, and terrorises the fishing port – destroying other boats, and even causing fires. The townsfolk know the only way the attacks will cease is if Nolan leaves. And the bitterly sorry Nolan realises the only way he will get any peace is to put to sea and face the beast in its own territory...

To  all intents and purposes this is Moby Dick for the 1970s. Not a lot has changed in the telling of this story except, perhaps, less allusions to religion and much more to morality. To be really pedantic here, a killer whale isn’t a whale. It’s basically a dolphin, by which I mean it belongs to the same family group. However, it is the perfect choice for the purposes of this story, because it is the ocean’s biggest killer, thinking nothing of attacking a shark – even a Great White. It is also highly intelligent, and carries certain human traits such as vengeance, and is scheming or calculating in its methods. It has been known to drive prospective prey hundreds of miles away from their comfort zones, and so it’s not too much of a stretch to accept the male in this film luring our more contemporary Captain Ahab into the ice fields for the final  confrontation. I did wonder, however, how it managed to blow-up virtually the whole town just by breaking a water pipe in the harbour. The attack might have achieved very little at all, but instead has a domino effect which explodes a refinery.

Producer Dino De Laurentis was known for his prolific output of films, rather than their quality, which tended to  range between the perfectly sound and the cringe-worthy low budget affair. Perhaps this explains why Orca: The Killer Whale seems like an amalgamation of the two. Without the stellar cast of the time, I rather think this movie would have unfairly been dismissed as below consideration. Shakespearean actor Richard Harris plays Captain Nolan with a briefly selfish but then repenting air. He spends the majority of the film regretting his actions, and it seems pretty early on that he has decided to meet the beast and die.

Charlotte Rampling is an unusual actress to watch. She’s like the female version of Roger Moore; whether she’s supposed to be sad, angry, determined or upset, she wears the same expression. Bo Derek, sporting a plaster-cast leg, and then no leg at all (!), works well as the required eye candy. And music from established spaghetti western maestro Ennio Morricone lifts this film into the major release bracket.

Nevertheless, it’s one of those films which, even from the start, you watch thinking it’s sort of okay, but nothing special.

(Review originally written by Ty Power for sci-fi-online 2014)

Alex is a professional pest exterminator who, through a client’s carelessness, gets bitten by a poisonous spider. Whilst being treated at hospital, he becomes embroiled in a sudden panic of staff. A cadaver in the morgue has split open and a huge predatory spider has emerged. The Black Ops – National Security team arrives, led by a sour-faced Major (Ray Wise), and seals-off the hospital. Alex convinces one of them to have a hospital security guard show him to the morgue to study the arachnid, but they have to track it, via the blood and devastation, to the furnace room. Here they discover the creature is quadrupling in size every few hours. It turns out this was a military experiment to cross microscopic DNA discovered in Martian rocks with Earth insect DNA (I know, spiders aren’t insects, but someone should have informed the writer of  this). When the by now gigantic spider gets out into the city of Los Angeles, there is a very real danger of not only potentially many deaths, but the spider laying its eggs. When it climbs a skyscraper and begins to lay its eggs on the top floor, the Major calls an air  strike. But there is a female military officer that Alex has taken a shine to, and she is cocooned in the building as ready food for the  hatching spiders. He and the security guard have twenty-five minutes  to rescue her and exit the building again. Can his professional knowledge help him win the day...?

The film starts just before the final scene. Everything is in slow motion. Alex comes round after being knocked unconscious and walks determinedly towards the skyscraper, whilst all around people are fleeing the other way in terror, masonry falling constantly from the huge spider’s movements. This effect has been done in movies before and can be quite tedious. However, there’s something quite compelling about the sequence. Before we know it, we have jumped back twelve hours to when Alex is making a house call on a dotty old lady. Big Ass Spider! has the structure of a B-movie, but a good one. The monster, the military, the hero, the victims and the damsel in distress are all in place; the difference is this film is both made and acted with conviction and warmth. Real heart comes through in the viewing.

There is great humour present but, unlike many movies, it doesn’t feel forced. It’s not a comedy, but the humour is allowed to evolve through the situations. The pairing of Alex (Greg Grunberg) and Jose (Lombardo  Boyar) is excellent. Hospital security guard Jose attaches himself to the exterminator, scared but not wanting to miss out on the action. He calls himself the Mexican Robin to Alex’s Batman. The character of Alex is friendly to everyone but also very determined in his work. Jose cleverly deadpans reactionary comments, and the two seem like they’ve been together forever, to the extent that you’d like to see their characters progress in other stories. One of the best partnership pairings in a film since the first Tremors.

Of course, this isn’t going to win any major awards, but I think most people will enjoy Big Ass Spider! significantly more than the Hollywood nonsense that was the Hollywood Godzilla film of a few years back. It’s probably the best of the spider movies to arrive so far (Arachnophobia, Eight-Legged Freaks, Spiders, Tarantula, etc.) Characterisation and plot should come first in any story, and this one has it just right. A feel good popcorn movie.  

(Review originally written by Ty Power for sci-fi-online 2013)

Jason Crockett is an old man who invites his whole family to his island estate to celebrate both his birthday and 4th July. A nature photographer and journalist is also present, as the family's speedboat has caused damage and left him stranded. However, Crockett is disrespectful of nature, spawning nature's revenge which turns every local creature of land, air or water against the family. It is left to the only innocent party to attempt an escape. But when nature conspires together is there any hope of rescue?

I’ve never had the opportunity to see this film from 1972 before, so judging by the DVD cover I was fully expecting huge man-eating frogs to appear at some stage. It seemed logical considering the opening scenes of pollutants being dumped into the waters in and around the island, and also the early montage of camera snaps of human rubbish. Instead the inference is that the resultant process has made frogs not only slightly larger and much more widespread than is normal, but also somehow self-aware. This cognizance takes the form of, presumably, telepathic abilities, as they not only organise themselves in numbers but possibly other animals and insects that world, in most cases, stay well clear of mankind. Other than that, the only explanation is that nature itself has rallied its troops.

It’s nice that each representation of the animal kingdom we see is real. We view whichever creature is relevant, moving purposefully forward and massing, but the attacks are more inferred than seen. We do experience a character wrestling with a crocodile, and the approach of what resembles a huge false turtle, and every now and then a frog is thrown into frame if the others are looking a little laid back.

The acting is fine and thankfully payed straight. There is a little more money spent on this one than most retro monster movies. In fact, the premise is a little like Long Weekend, only nowhere near as tedious. Ray Milland is the star here, and he’s just as grumpy as he is in many of his other roles. He’s the head of the family (and presumably the island); his purpose primarily to boss everyone else around. What we wait for on these occasions is for the villain to get his comeuppance and, like the captain of a sinking ship, he is determined to hold-out until the end. It’s no surprise that he doesn’t last very long once the survivors make themselves scarce.

This genre of film is known as a eco-horror. The 88 Films new HD transfer is very nice and sharp. A fitting tribute to an unusual celluloid contribution. Extras include Today the Pond, Tomorrow the World: An Interview with David Gilliam; Stills Gallery, Original Trailer, and Reversible Cover.

(Original review Ty Power 2021)

Cooper Flynn is an immature joker who shirks his professional responsibilities. He is in the process of being dismissed by his unimpressed boss when everything changes. The next thing he knows he is waking up wrapped tightly in a cobweb-like substance. All of his office colleagues are similarly cocooned. An astonished Cooper is attacked by a giant black bug, and soon discovers that everyone in the streets has been stored for future food. After waking a few individuals, including Sara, his former employer’s attractive daughter, Cooper ventures outside with the group. The plan is to track down their loved ones and find a safe haven, but the huge and violent bugs are everywhere, and when a crowd of angry flying beetle-like bugs swoops down and grabs Sara, Cooper determines to recover her safely - his normally non-existent courage and chivalry coming to the fore. But to tackle the queen bug he requires the help of his ex-military father. The father he hates. The father who is slowly turning into a human-bug hybrid...

Although the frequency with which Cooper makes silly and inappropriate remarks does reach a point where it begins to grate, Infestation as a whole is immense fun. The idea of the carefree protagonist wanting only to run away and find a safe place to hide up until his potential girlfriend is taken, rings naturally true to character. At which point his testosterone rises to the surface and the reluctant hero leads a rag-tag group towards the main nest for a confrontation with the queen.

Writer/director Kyle Rankin sensibly goes for the humorous element, with the monster horror, whilst initially looking somewhat over-the-top, being played down in favour of comic situations. In short, it’s not frightening, but you do find yourself laughing frequently at the absurdity of it all. The special effects are much better than you might expect (particularly the inter-species hybrids and flying bugs) without seeming to be in your face, and you even get a sense of the gravity of a wide-spread disaster, even though only a few streets and surrounding areas are actually seen.

Essentially, the name of the game here is fun, and that works admirably. After all, in the real world if somebody is pestered by a wasp or has a spider drop down on their head, our first thought is to  laugh at their reaction. The format is very much in the vein of a 1950s B-movie such as Them, or a more contemporary variation like Eight-Legged Freaks and Slither. A very enjoyable popcorn movie. The only disappointment is a severe lack of extras, with only a Making of… documentary present. 

(Review originally written by Ty Power for sci-fi-online 2009)

Bart, a high-flying businessman, is offered a lucrative contract to work on. He has everything a family man could wish for: a beautiful wife, a young son, and a personally designed modern apartment in a Brownstone building. Things start to go awry when the dishwasher floods the kitchen. The maintenance man informs Bart that a pipe has been chewed through, probably by a rat. The businessman sets traps, but he soon realises that it's not going to be that straightforward. The rat is intelligent, watching and scheming from concealment. The struggle soon turns into a battle of wits with no guaranteed outcome...

When viewing the beginning of this film it's easy to immediately label it tired and predictable. The assumption is you're going to have to endure the celluloid version of a Guy N. Smith-type conveyor belt mediocrity. This is not the case at all; you just have to realise what sort of film you're watching. Having read James Herbert's The Rats and its successors at a young age, I'll have to admit to expecting something similar. However, this obviously low-budget production portrays a one-on-one struggle of ingenuity. Initial sighs or derision at the silliness of the plot soon turns to smiles and even chuckles as the element of fun sucks you in.

Peter Weller (of Robocop fame) turns in a strangely introverted performance. As all attempts to trap or poison the rodent bring resourceful retaliation, the Bart character becomes physically and mentally exhausted, resulting in unhinged delusions. At a couple of points its difficult to know what is real and what is simply a figment of his fevered imagination. In fact, the more unbalanced he becomes, the more enjoyable the watching experience is. For example, on one occasion Bart arrives back from work and greets the hiding rat with a "Hi darling, I'm home." This is quite a feat because for the greater part of the movie Weller is acting alone.

You won't scream, you won't jump (Well, maybe when the rat surges from the toilet), and your blood won't freeze in your veins. This is much more of a tongue-in-cheek thriller than the horror it alludes to. Okay, so it's not Shakespeare, but it is cheap and cheerful fun. Watch out for the end sequence when Bart devises a cruel weapon and effectively becomes the ex-Terminator.

(Review originally written by Ty Power for sci-fi-online 2003)

 Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty) is a small-time crook who gets mixed-up with two unsavoury characters. They threaten him into taking part in an armed robbery. Whilst the others are caught Jimmy escapes with the cash, only to lose it under a truck after an accident. Guessing that the gang will give his name to the police, he flees and finally takes refuge in the uppermost roof pinnacle of the Chrysler Building (like you do). Here he finds a dead body, but instead of screaming and getting the hell out (as his cowardly portrayal would surely do) he climbs the ladder into the cone itself. Inside, he discovers a nest with what looks like a large egg. Meanwhile, Detective Shepard (David Carradine) is investigating a series of mutilated bodies. When too many witnesses to ignore report having seen a giant bird, Jimmy soon realises he has bargaining power with the police. His long-suffering girlfriend and Shepard try to persuade him to do the right thing, but Jimmy has to learn the hard way that not everything is about him...

Q The Winged Serpent is a monster movie from the '80s which is still fondly remembered by some people. It comes from writer, producer and director Larry Cohen, who was also responsible (yes, that is the right word) for the It's Alive Trilogy. Just like those films this seems to be based in some strange unreality. Yes, it's about a giant man-eating bird that might be an Aztec god, but any supernatural subject should be set in a solid natural environment to work properly, and sadly this falls short in that respect.

I suppose the makers should be commended for attempting a giant bird on the big screen, but when seen in full the creation just made me cringe and pretend I hadn't noticed. Much more effective were the aerial shots, the shadows on passing skyscrapers and the super-fast glimpses as the bird attacked. Clash of the Titans, released around this time, was much more successful with its fantasy creations. Possibly it was due to the increased number of Ray Harryhausen stop-motion and special effects dropped into a Greece of myths and legends.

Typecasting is alive and well, too. Even now, I can't watch David Carradine without thinking of his Grasshopper character from the excellent seventies series Kung Fu. The Kill Bill films has made that situation worse rather than better, because in them he uses a multitude of martial arts!

The extras on the DVD at first glance seem better than they are. A commentary is only joined by two trailers, biographies & film notes, a gallery and Q Memorabilia via DVD ROM content.

In short, Q The Winged Serpent isn't quite good enough that I would recommend you get out of bed to buy it, and it isn't quite bad enough that you can enjoy it as a B-Movie. It floats somewhere in between. A sort of flying turkey. 

(Review originally written by Ty Power for sci-fi-online 2005)

A  fire is raging through a section of Bear Valley National Park, but the mayor and the new sheriff are reluctant  to close the park because, providing the wind doesn’t drastically change direction, the tourists will be safe. Besides, many of the holidaymakers are leaving of their own accord and demanding their money back. However, the blaze is driving the wildlife out of its natural habitat, making it easy for illicit poachers. A dominating man brings his wife to the area hoping to make money by shooting something; he has no idea that he will soon become the prey. A young scientist has paid a local hunter to accompany him in tracking down and studying the legend that is Bigfoot, after years of attempting to prove its existence. When some bodies are discovered, the indication is a bear attack. The only one who knows for a fact what they are facing is the hunter, because he has seen it before...

The opening scene contains some of the worst acting I have ever seen. In the foreground of the shot the fire chief  is exclaiming, “Oh!” and “Ah!”, bending over and mopping his brow unconvincingly with a soot-stained handkerchief. In the background, a line of fire fighters are using axes to dig a trench. They appear choreographed, all moving in unison like a dance, and hitting the same point at their feet with little force or effort. This doesn’t bode well for the film but, thankfully, it does improve. The characters are somewhat stereotypical: we have the town newcomer, who is the sheriff; there is the rugged, no-nonsense hunter; the naive but determined young scientist; and the weak female who learns to fend for herself.

I must say that all sightings of the beast are mere glimpses, with only one full-on face shot which I’m pleased to say doesn’t disappoint. The director even has enough sense not to linger on its features. I particularly enjoyed the chase sequence where you see the creature running sporadically on two legs and four. The interaction between the players is predictable but nevertheless engaging, although it’s inevitable in this film, as many other creature features, that practically the entire cast is cannon fodder, so to speak. The attacks are well-handled for the most part, edited in cutaways so that your mind fills in the gaps as per your requirements.

I couldn’t help feeling I was watching Jurassic Park, without the children and with the dinosaurs replaced by a Bigfoot. So, aside from the points I’ve mentioned, and the annoying periodic warning message scrolling across the screen on my review copy, Savage proves an enjoyable 87 minutes of nonsense.

(Review originally written by Ty Power for sci-fi-online 2011)

When a military establishment is attacked by a huge swarm of African killer bees, scientist Crane leads the fight to combat the threat before it reaches Houston. However, that's easier said than done when the bees act with an intelligent hive mind, and thwart each attempt to stop them. Meanwhile the swarm is growing in size...

With more big names than you can shake a script at, you would expect a good film with strong performances. Wouldn't you? The first third is instantly forgettable; the plot crawls along on its hands and knees, pleading for some life to be pumped into it, and the dialogue is stilted as if nobody quite knows what to do with themselves.

 Just when you begin to despair, the pace picks up. Richard Widmark stomps up and down trying to look important, and Michael Caine, sounding exactly as he does in every other film, finally gains a purpose. You just long for him to say, "You're only supposed to blow up the bloody bees!"

The slow motion swimming impressions seen when the bees attack the first small town is hilarious. Richard Chamberlain goes one step further with his Saturday Night Fever disco dance when the bees find their way into a nuclear power station. Although comical, it's also sad; Chamberlain is a marvellous actor woefully under-utilised here.

This is the second movie in succession I have reviewed where flame-throwers have come into play. In this one, it is decided by officialdom to set Houston ablaze after it has been evacuated and the bees have arrived. Budgetary restraints means this consists of a dozen men torching a single car and waving the flame-throwers aimlessly in the air. When the bees infiltrate the Houston building in which our heroes lie, the flame-throwers are again brought into action, this time inside, causing pandemonium as people are accidentally set ablaze and, in their panic, bump into others, so spreading the conflagration. I didn't know whether to laugh at this scene or be horrified.

There's a nice little scene between Caine and Fonda about beer and pizza, but most of the film's dialogue is cringe-worthy and inspires laughter for the wrong reasons. "Can we really count on a scientist who prays?" a character enquires of Widmark. "I wouldn't count on one who doesn't," is the reply. Apparently the movie had a dialogue coach; I'll bet it was a 32-seater.

I seem to be giving the impression The Swarm is unworthy of consideration, when that's really not the case. It's just that with director Irwin Allen's pedigree of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, you can't help wondering how much better it might have been.

The piece de resistance comes when the final credits roll. A disclaimer in case the honey bee wants to take the film makers to court for defamation of character: "The African killer bee portrayed in this film bears absolutely no relationship to the industrious, hardworking American honey bee to which we are indebted for pollinating vital crops that feed our nation." How about that for political correctness before its time! 

(Review originally written by Ty Power for reviewgraveyard 2003)