Ape vs. Monster (2021)

A long-thought lost joint Russian and American space probe crashes back to Earth after 30 years, releasing its simian test pilot, Abraham, into the New Mexico desert.

The chimpanzee, and his craft, are coated with a green, alien goo that causes him to grow at an incredible rate... and unfortunately a passing gila monster lizard sups from the liquid and transforms into a kaiju beast of its own.

Abraham is captured by the American authorities, led by Dr Linda Murphy (Arianna Scott), who has a childhood connection with the ape through the controversial work of her scientist father, Noah Murphy (Rudy Bentz).

Assisted by an old Russian friend, Eva Kuleshov (Katie Sereika), with whom there is obvious sexual tension and an unspoken past, Linda tries to study Abraham while tracking the escaped gila monster, which is tunnelling underground and has some kind of power-dampening field.

Abraham escapes while Linda is away, and it becomes a race against time as both giant creatures appear to be converging on Washington D.C. 

The military, under the gung-ho and patronising General Delaney (R.J. Wagner) wants to blast both creatures off the face of the planet, but Linda believes that Abraham is still the ape she knew as a child and is really on the side of humanity.

Oh, and there's an alien ship coming round the dark side of the Moon that seems to be beaming some kind of mind control ray at the giant monsters.

Just another day at the office.

Originally crafted by the crew at The Asylum as a Godzilla vs Kong mockbuster, Ape vs Monster is an unsurprisingly awful - yet hilarious - flick that just manages to scrape into the "so bad it's good" category, as long as you're willing to cut it a lot of slack.

If you watch the film closely enough, you realise how little the two giant CGI beasties actually appear on screen, but also you gain an appreciation of The Asylum's masterful melding of stock footage with their own material to fill out the 88-minute flick.

It should also be noted that while the giant ape certainly resembles an oversized chimpanzee more than a direct rip-off of King Kong, the mutated gila monster bears more than a passing resemblance to Godzilla.

Dramatic action scenes are broken up by protracted, earnest, exchanges of waffle and technobabble in an attempt to stitch together a nonsensical story into something an easy-going (possibly drunk) audience might be willing to swallow.

And while it starts off far-fetched, the plot of Ape vs Monster rapidly goes so far off the rails that credibility is stretched beyond breaking point and the moment they start talking about "aliens" you can't help but wonder if you're somehow watching an entirely different movie.

However, I certainly don't regret the £2.35 I spent on Amazon to buy the DVD of this movie, and I can't wait to see what Abraham gets up to next.

Journey To The West - Conquering The Demons (2013)

How many movies can you think of that climax with a fight between King Kong and God*? I can name one: Journey To The West - Conquering The Demons.

With Conquering The Demons writer/director Stephen Chow gives us a prequel to the well-known tale of The Monkey King as portrayed in various media, including the '70s TV show Monkey!

Conquering The Demons is the origin story of the famous quartet at the heart of the latter tale - Monkey, Pigsy, Sandy and Tripitaka - although this isn't entirely obvious until the final moments of the movie, as the film stands well enough on its own without any prior knowledge.

The story grows gradually out of a number of vignettes with characters that seem rather familiar from other iterations of Journey To The West (one of the  Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature) but cast as villains where we have only really known them as reluctant heroes before. You'll also spot items that eventually become iconic artefacts in the story of Monkey and Tripitaka's travels.

Zhang Wen plays scruffy demon-hunter Xuan Zang who doesn't want to slay demons but simply remind them they were once innocent children, though the songs in his book of 300 Nursery Rhymes.

While battling a giant fish-shaped water demon, Xuan crosses paths with the pretty and resourceful Miss Duan (Qi Shu), who is attracted to Xuan's innocence - despite his outward expressions of chaste disinterest.

After a run-in with an unstoppable pig demon, Xuan's master sends him on a quest to seek help from The Monkey King, imprisoned under Five Finger Mountain.

Luckily, he is not alone when he comes up against the ultimate trickster - he has fellow demon-hunters, Miss Duan, Prince Important (Show Luo), Almighty Foot (Chaoli Zhang) and Fist of the North Star (Xing Yu) to watch his back.

Blending comedy (both physical and verbal), with horror, martial arts, wire-work, magic, romance, song, tragedy and pathos in a cocktail rarely seen in Western cinema, Conquering The Demons is a genuinely captivating action movie.

Chow's take on The Monkey King is a lot darker than any I've been used to before. He's still playful, selfish, manipulative and arrogant, but he's also really very evil here - having clearly not learned his lesson from when Buddha trapped him under the mountain 500 years earlier.

The humour subsides in the totally gonzo climax as The Monkey King demonstrates his true nature, making short work of the demon-hunters before Xuan calls on Buddha to intercede and matters come to a head on a cosmic scale.

It's no surprise this film raked in the yuan in China, Journey To The West - Conquering The Demons is not only magnificent storytelling but a visual feast as well, packed as it is with magical martial artists and monsters.

* Technically it's The Monkey King and Buddha... and it's not really even a fight... ignore me, you just have to watch it... seriously... watch this film!

REVIEW: The Rocketeer - The Island #1 (IDW)

I'm not going to bury the lede here: this latest comic book adventure for The Rocketeer features a young Tintin and a surly Popeye. The former revelation sold me on the comic without knowing anything more, while the latter was just the cherry on the cake.

Set in 1938, The Rocketeer: The Island #1 sees Cliff Secord hired by a shady government operative to lead a hunt for the lost aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who may - or may not - have been spying on the pre-war Japanese military build-up.

Tintin & Snowy

Cliff, his buddy Goose and mechanic Peevy, end up on a boat heading towards the Caroline Islands in The Pacific, under the stewardship of Captain "Popeye" Segar, along with the team's researcher Justin 'Tintin' Martin, his pet dog Snowy, archaeologist Alexandra Payne, Cliff's estranged former girlfriend Betty and her new beau Marco.

I'll admit, at this stage, I'm not 100 per cent sure how Betty and Marco ended up on Popeye's ship as well, but I'm also not that bothered as the pulp adventure is already in full swing. 

After the set-up and cast introductions, the balance of the comic is the nautical journey.

This eventually guides the ship into a tropical storm that takes out the communications and damages the attached seaplane meant to transport those in the party without ready access to a rocketpack.

Tintin has already confided in Secord a story he's heard of an "uncharted island untouched by time... filled with prehistoric wonders and beasts so bizarre they boggle the imagination." But Cliff isn't buying any of it.

As they approach the area where Earhart is thought to have vanished, Secord dons his iconic flying gear and jets off to scope out what's ahead.

Maybe Tintin's story wasn't that fanciful after all?

"I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam,"

Based on an unused story idea from The Rocketeer's late creator Dave Stevens, The Rocketeer: The Island just oozes pulp sensibilities from every page, with its comic character cameos and very strong suggestion that they're heading to The Skull Island, just ramping up the nostalgic excitement.

Kudos to writer John Layman for his intelligent handling of these characters that he clearly has a lot of affection for, while Jacob Edgars' delightful, cartoonish art style also accentuates the devil-may-care ambience that pervades this comic book.

I don't think we'll be getting anything particularly deep here, instead The Island miniseries looks like it's going to be old school fun, fun, fun for its entire three-issue run.

There's also a strong suggestion that King Kong himself will also appear!

It's almost as though this comic book was being written just for me.

The Adventures Of Hercules II (1985)

Lou Ferrigno (aka The Incredible Hulk) returns as Hercules in this kinda-sequel to 1983's Hercules.

In this rather Xena: Warrior Princess-meets-2001: A Space Odyssey rambling affair, the Earth and Universe is given a fresh origin story for no readily apparent reason, then we learn that a quartet of rebellious gods have stolen the Seven Thunderbolts of Zeus, which give the top god dominion over all.

This disruption in the eternal balance causes the Moon to - very slowly - fall out of its orbit and threaten the existence of Earth.

Sonia Viviani

To recover his thunderbolts, Zeus calls Hercules back from the stars, however, to thwart this plan, the rebel gods resurrect mad scientist King Minos (William Berger)... who promptly rushes off to do his own thing.

The thunderbolts, it turns out, have been hidden inside monsters, which Hercules must track down and defeat (or simply bump into as random encounters).

It just so happens that he is also drawn into a side-adventure by the lovely Gabrielle-like Urania (Milly Carlucci) to save her sister, Glaucia (Sonia Viviani), and village from the fire demon Antaeus (which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Id monster from Forbidden Planet).

This entails finding a balm that will protect Hercules from "the fire monster's radiant heat", that's another side-quest, but all, eventually, somehow, ties back into the main plot.

Urania has some kind of prophetic ability, which involves communing "with the Little People" (a pair of identical spirits) at random shrines around the country, who put her in touch with the gods and warn of her fate.

Meanwhile, Minos teams up with his old pal, Dedalos (Eva Robin), who gives him a very unscientific magic sword of ice, with the power to slay gods, before granting him superpowers.

Milly Carlucci

After a series of monster battles, bizarre set-pieces full of psychedelic light shows, gorgeous stage sets and cheesy costumes, events culminate in an astral battle between Hercules and Minos (that doesn't actually feature the actors... but does feature an appearance by Space Kong and Space T Rex!), before moving on to Hercules' mythological method of preventing the Moon destroying the Earth.

On a positive note, at least the rubbish bargain-basement robot monsters from the first film have been replaced by "men in rubber suits" and slightly more mythologically accurate models (although neither are exactly top quality).

The story rambles all over the place, managing to add an intriguing level of surreality and deviousness to events that this low-budget swords-and-sandals fantasy/sci-fi mash-up probably doesn't truly deserve.

Ferrigno is great as Hercules (when he's actually onscreen), but I've read that he didn't even know he was filming this sequel.

Writer/director Luigi Cozzi had actually been tasked by producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to film extra scenes for Ferrigno's The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, but then they decided to use this material as the basis of a new film (Hercules II) instead... without telling their lead actor!

Which would explain his physical absence from so much of the movie.

And the patchy nature of the bonkers plot.

You Come At The King (Kong), You Best Not Miss

Kong. Godzilla. Titan X.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters returns February 27 on Apple TV.

Based on the Monsterverse from Legendary, this dramatic saga — spanning three generations — reveals buried secrets and the ways that epic, earth-shattering events can reverberate through our lives.

The Last Voyage of The Demeter (2023)

If you know Bram Stoker's Dracula, then you know The Last Voyage of The Demeter.

Inspired by the book's single chapter that details the captain's log of the doomed voyage from Bulgaria to England, Bragi Schut Jr. and Zak Olkewicz's script, directed by Trollhunter's André Øvredal, extrapolates those few pages into a near-perfect 119-minute 'spam in a cabin' horror flick.

It's July 1897 and the merchant ship Demeter is carrying cargo bound for London, including - unknowingly - a number of boxes of Transylvanian soil and one holding the sleeping body of the vampire lord, Count Dracula (Javier Botet).

Once the ship is at sea, with the crew eager to get to England quickly to earn some bonus pay, the deaths begin.

First the livestock, which was to be the crew's food for their journey, is mysteriously butchered.

Then the crew start being killed off.

The Last Voyage of The Demeter is Alien on a nautical vessel rather than a space vessel, the ship's small crew trapped at sea, being hunted by a supernatural killing machine that dines on them as they bring him closer to his desired destination: the fresh feeding grounds of Victorian England.

Kong: Skull Island's Corey Hawkins is the new ships doctor, Clemens, a man of science to counter the superstitious crew, headed by the ever-excellent Liam Cunningham (aka Game of Thrones' Davos Seaworth, another sailor of note) as Captain Eliot: an almost unrecognisable David Dastmalchian as Wojchek, the quartermaster; and Jon Jon Briones (the genie from Sinbad; The Fifth Voyage) as Joseph, the highly religious ship's cook.

A young Romani stowaway, Anna (Aisling Franciosi) is found when one of the boxes of soil is accidentally opened by rough seas, and we later realise that she was Dracula's packed lunch for the voyage.

Captain "this is my last voyage, I'm going to retire" Eliot even has his eight-year-old grandson, Toby (Woody Norman), along with him and if you think "oh, they wouldn't hurt a child" you clearly haven't been paying attention.

The fate of the Demeter and its crew is inevitable, a foregone conclusion set down in the text of Stoker's game-changing vampire opus.

But that doesn't stop The Last Voyage of The Demeter being nail-bitingly tense and claustrophobic, with several good jump scares, oozing atmosphere from every frame, and featuring a genuinely monstrous depiction of Dracula.

The vampire is no suave British character actor, instead starting a gaunt, grey ghoul and evolving through the film into a giant, Nosferatuesque bat-creature, unsentimental in its brutal slayings.

What adds to the terror is the realisation - to a modern audience - that these people have no idea what a vampire is or how to kill it, they don't know its powers and weaknesses and there is no spoonfeeding of exposition to give them a clue.

All Clemens learns from Anna is that the beast is Dracula, it drinks blood and has kept her people in servitude through fear of its wrath.

Unfortunately, The Last Voyage of The Demeter falls down in its denouement, at the very last moments when it suddenly decides to try and give the tale a pointless "feel good/Hollywood" ending, when the source material's nihilistic resolution would have had a more lasting impact.