8-ka de shinda kaijû no 12-nichi no monogatari [The 12 Day Tale of the Monster that Died in 8] (2020)

Wikizilla described this one as the first black and white Kaiju film since the original Gamera in 1965. Well…I guess. Maybe. You might call it that. If you absolutely had to. Now the reality is that this is instead a strange found footage film made during the height of the pandemic which just happens to […]

Flight to Hell (2003)

This is the fourth of Alvaro Passeri’s films I have seen. And so far it is the only one which disappointed me. Passeri was a veteran special effects expert from the Italian film industry who decided in the mid-Nineties to make his own movies. The five he created were all made on ridiculously small budgets, […]

Shin Ultraman (2022)

This one wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Or maybe it was. I’m not sure. After all, I’ve been waiting for it a long time. It was announced, supposedly due to be released, delayed, delayed again, and finally came out — in Japan. More waiting. What I expected, when it was first announced, was a […]

The Lair (2022)

It’s good to see Neil Marshall back. Not that he exactly went away. But he’s had a hard time lately making the sorts of films which he loves to make. He vanished from the silver screen after his 2010 film Centurion into the world of television, and finally is making a comeback of sorts. His Hellboy […]

Hyperspace [Gremloids] (1984)

I’m not sure why this film is so hard to find. Yeah, it’s true that it is one of the long, long succession of low budget films Earl Owensby turned out at his North Carolina studios. You probably aren’t familiar with any of them as they never got much play and most of them sank […]

Gamera 2: Region shurai [Gamera 2: Attack of the Legion] (1996)

It must have been a shock when audiences got their first look at the new Gamera movie that debuted in 1995. After all, it was far more serious than any of the films which came before it — even the first film, which presented the Towering Terrapin as a nearly unstoppable force causing terrible destruction […]

The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow [The Invasion of the Girl Snatchers] (1973)

“If you can’t say it, go see it!” Let’s face it: the idea of watching a film with a title like The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow is somewhat daunting. Even if it did get retitled The Invasion of the Girl Snatchers. So daunting, in fact, that they had to address it in the original trailer: In […]

The Shadow Out of Time (2012)

As I continue my searches through the world of science fiction film, I find myself more and more impressed by the work of people with minimal resources who used their creativity, skill and sheer determination to put their vision on the screen. These days, our technology put almost anything on the screen, and yet we […]

The Elp; A Creature of Legend (2022)

What is an Elp, you ask? Apparently, it’s some sort of local variant on the bigfoot, notable for its long claws, ferocious disposition and big feet. What’s worse, a recent series of murders in Farcical County looks suspiciously like the work of their local cryptid, and the new mayor calls in a small team of […]

Tretí sarkan [The Third Dragon] (1985)

Parallel Evolution. That’s the only explanation I can find. Here we have two movies with a remarkably similar story, which came out the same year and only three months apart: the first, Joe Dante’s shaggy dog of a science fiction epic, Explorers, and the other a little-seen Czech children’s film. There’s no way they saw Joe […]

rivets on the poster

“The difference between science fiction and fantasy … is simply this: science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees.” — Orson Scott Card

alien