Monster Island - Lacking in Monster Fights and Eric Robers Screentime

I was looking for Kaiju movies when I came across "Monster Island" on Prime.
The title conjured up visions of the old Godzilla movies and a tropical island that was sort of a retirement resort for Kaiju.  This is not one of those movies.  Like many a SyFy movie, it makes use of a well known screen name for some star power. In this case, Eric Roberts gets the privilege of being the draw alongside the monsters.  His character, General Horne, however, is criminally underused.  Relegated, as the name stars in small productions often are, to a single set and phone call interaction with the main cast.  I honestly did the same thing with Debbie Rochon in "Alien Vengeance" 1 & 2,  so that I could get her into both movies with just one visit to Florida, where they were shot back in 2010.

Aside from only letting Horne shout into the phone most of the time, I thought it was odd that he was a GENERAL in the Navy. (Or Coast Guard, but it looked like a naval uniform to me. Military experts feel free to clear this up in the comments.

Alright, enough about the wasted talents of Eric Roberts in the movie, Let's get to what the movieis really about. The monsters!

The word "Kaiju" is thrown around plenty and it applies in the broadest sense of "giant monsters", but fans of the traditional Kaiju movies will likely be disappointed.  The creature designs are cool enough and they have some neat powers, even some backstory, but no personality.  There is plenty of build up about the main monster before we even hear about the second, which she will fight.  This kind of tension building is common in giant monster movies, but I would have preferred a parallel development of the two creatures.  As it stands you feel like you're watching a serial more than a feature.  Each segment playing out as a story and leading to the next rather than developing as one cohesive story.

The "Pacific Rim" movies have likely made the CG type creations seen here more acceptable as Kaiju and the first creature's design is simple, but effective as a sea monster.  Her adversary, however, is a stiff looking lump of a hero.  He barely seems to move during a particularly anticlimactic engagement with his nemesis. Considering this a fight for the fate of humanity, you'd think they would dedicate some time to it, but don't go to the bathroom or you'll miss it.  And it's paced like a stop motion fight I did. I get it. Animating monster fights is hard work, but this a movie with "Monster" in the title.  We need some monster action.

There is a great portion of the movie where the main cast is stranded on the gigantic monster in a small submersible, and honestly, with a low budget, I would have made the entire movie about them trying to stop it from there while an unsuspecting world was waiting for the thing to hit land.  But, just as I was beginning to enjoy the suspense and possibilities of this concept, the story moves past it.

Really what "Monster Island" is in the end is a not bad adventure film with monsters in it.  Somewhere between the fun of "Tremors" and the epic monster on monster action of the Godzilla series sits the not as good as either, "Monster Island".

Would I recommend it?  Well, if you're like me, can't get enough of monster movies, have seen most of the classics and old not so classics and can catch this one for free, then sure, give it a look to pass the time.  It's not bad.  It's also not a "must see" monster flick.

"Queen Crab" - More Joe Young than Kong, but Super Fun!

"Queen Crab" kept popping up in my suggested movie list on Amazon Prime.  So did a much older giant crab creature feature, "Claws".  I have seen most of "Claws" (keep falling asleep on it), and was confusing it with "Queen Crab" for a long time.  So, I skipped the newer film.  Finally, I saw the art for both on my T.V. screen at the same time.  This was my big clue that they were different movies.  Still, I had little interest in seeing a giant CG crab eat up a small town.  Finally, reading the IMDB page, I found out the F/X were done with stop motion.  I decided to give it a watch and I'm so glad I did.

Let me get this out of the way right here.  If you are looking for cutting edge special F/X, Oscar worthy performances or a deeply emotional and heart wrenching story, keep scrolling your movie list.  This is a creature feature throwback with all of the flaws and fun that entails.

"Queen Crab" is one of those movies with a very uneven tone.  It opens like a kids' movie.  The music, the cute little crab, the dancing child, but this is all set-up for what's to come later.  Make it through that first act, much like sitting through the bartering session at the beginning of "Mighty Joe Young", and you'll be rewarded with a monster movie for the rest of the film.

Once Melissa Webber (played as an adult by Michelle Simone Miller) becomes orphaned, the movie's tone becomes the one we expect.  Strange deaths, a mysterious young hermit of a girl, bumbling local police and some monster fodder characters who are just there to be torn to pieces.

Director, Brett Piper, actually does an excellent job of creating sympathy for our rampaging titular creature.  And she does rampage.  There is some nicely done gore for fans of that sort thing, a tank, fighter jets and farmers with shotguns and other assorted weapons.  In fact, the poster above is pretty accurate in portraying what happens on screen.  It may be a bit more spectacular on the poster, but it's far less exaggerated than some monster movie posters, such as the Poster for 1958's "The Blob" when it was released in France a couple of years later.

The F/X are an old movie fan's dream.  There are, of course, some digital moments that are easy to spot, like a hole in the side of a barn that clearly wasn't actually destroyed, but the stop motion is very high quality for a film of this nature.  If you like the monster work in "The Black Scorpion", you'll like this.

Stop motion is a painstaking process.  I only use a few moments in films like, "Lumber vs Jack" and "Jack vs Lanterns" , but even I know it can take hours to get a few seconds of decent looking animation onto the screen.  Season 2 of "The Simplest Things" only has a couple of dinosaurs and I had to loop some shots as a time saving device.  For that reason, a lot of independent movies avoid stop motion, or when they do use it,  you don't get to see a lot of the creature.  I never felt cheated out of monster time while watching "Queen Crab" and every time she made an appearance I would giggle with delight. (Seriously, Chaya, my dog, was looking at me like I was nuts.  She watches all of these movies with me.) It was magical.

I mentioned the acting earlier.  It's the typical B movie standard.  Performances range from, "Hey, Bob wanted to be in the movie so we gave him some lines" to professional grade performances.  One farmer can barely hold back a smile as he describes his cow being eaten.  Overall though, the best performances were by the leading characters and so the story holds together and moves along.  There are human interactions to develop characters and keep the pace moving, including a very awkward fight scene or two.  A hint to low budget filmmaker from one indie to another, keep a really junky car around so you can have it parking lot scenes when there's a fight.  Talent holding back so they don't scratch another actor's car is kind, but with GRIM, the Jeep from the "Jack" movies, I never have to worry about that.  I have covered that thing with slime, hit it with branches and driven it over a pile of crusher run.  It's mine and I keep around to do all of the thankless work my life requires.

The relationship between Melissa and Goliath (as the crab becomes known) is a sweet one.  It's the not the romance from "King Kong", but closely resembles the friendship from "Mighty Joe Young".  If you're a fan of monster movies with sympathetic, nearly heroic monsters, give this one a watch.

"Outerman" - Kajui "Comedy"

I saw "Outerman" on Midnight Pulp, so it was free to watch, with ads.  For me, that was the right price for this film.  I would watch it on TV, but I doubt I would spend money to rent or buy it.  It may be worth it for big fans of "Ultraman" and shows like that because those are the series it purports to parody.

That claim of being a parody, an "action-comedy", is part of what bothered me.  I get it, a movie that takes a known entity and basically copies it is best protected when it's then called a "parody", but unless I was missing something, this isn't much of a comedy.  There is a group of self-proclaimed nerds, who are obviously meant to be funny and some jokes here and there, but not may big laughs and the situation itself, the main plot line, is actually pretty decent science fiction with a major bit of social commentary.  To me, the comedy elements were no more present than most Marvel movies.  So, it's more a modern day super hero movie than a "comedy".

The movie is subtitled, so I will admit that I may have missed nuances and I am shamefully unaware of Japanese culture outside of movies, so I may have missed some humor there.  Aficionados might find the movie funnier than I.  

On the action side, it's a bit light too.  There are giant alien fights, but not many and we only really get to experience two designs.  Siblee and the titular Outer Man.  Other monsters are briefly shown as part of clips from the show within the movie.  I'll admit, as much as I love Midnight Pulp for carrying my movies like "Lumber vs Jack" and the "Alien Vengeance" movies, their commercial placement leaves a lot to be desired.  It seems automated at minute intervals and can really break up the pace of an otherwise well put together movie. Scenes may be interrupted mid conversation or fight sequence.   Broken pace aside, I would have preferred more and/or longer monster fights, but the ones we do get are at least well done within the F/X style of the movie.

The cast is fairly strong.  The "nerds" and Ministry of Defense characters give appropriately over the top performances as serious characters in an absurd situation.  The heroes are a group of past actors from the "Outerman" show and a "homeless alien".  They all play it pretty straight and do a good job.  Miki and her nephew, Hiroshi, are what make the whole thing work.  Having a kid to watch the story unfold through and give the characters nuggets of wisdom is what made it all "ring true" for me.  This isn't so much a comedy as a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously.  Having a child as a main character reminds us to watch it as we would have on a rainy afternoon during "Monster Week" on our local TV channel.  Watched through a child's eyes the movie is really entertaining and fun.

If you long for "Power Rangers" type action, but with a bit more plot and character development, and don't mind reading subtitles (Or understand Japanese), give "Outerman" (or as IMDB has it listed "Outer Man") a spin.