"The Banana Splits" (2019) - Why all the Hate?

I'll admit that even growing up in the 70s, when "The Banana Splits" were on WPIX in NY and having "met" them in King's Dominion on one summer vacation, I was never really a huge fan of the show.  I just didn't get the "boingo" sound F/X and characters talking without their mouths moving.  So, when it was announced that there was going to be a horror movie made about the Splits, I was confused, but not offended.  I guess if I had been a big fan as a kid I might have found the concept alone insulting to my childhood heroes, but since I was never into them, I just thought the idea was idiotic.  Well, it turns out, it's strange, but not as far fetched as I had thought.  There are many things silly about it and a few things that were handled very well.

If I had to pitch the movie in Hollywood I would say it's Willy Wonka's Westworld with a Tromaesque touch of gore and dark comedy.

Things the movie handles well:

1. Making the Banana Splits "entities" rather than just guys in suits who go nutzo.  It's revealed very early on that they're "Puppets".  Super high-tech animatronics, with a bit too much of the "show must go on" programming.

2. A bit of 2 dimensional character development.  Most of the characters who are going to "buy it" through the movie are super predictable right from the start.  You're immediately given a reason not to like them and so when they suffer an over the top kill you don't feel as bad laughing about it.  There's even a character somewhat like "Jack vs Lanterns" own Ralph, who I a cheating asshole and manages to pop up more times than you might expect.  He doesn't get kicked in the nuts nearly as often as Ralph does though.   Don't read this as a spoiler though, because there are some red herrings in there as well and just because a character is "likeable" doesn't make them safe.

3. There's a bit more plot than the description suggests.  The puppet bots do indeed start slaughtering their way through the studio, but it's more subtle than a "rampage" as the SyFy Channel's info section on my cable suggested.  The tension builds,  the puppets have a plan and things develop throughout the movie.

4. The kills are creative, show inspired and gory.   Most of the kills are set-up earlier in the film before the bots go bad.  They mimic the show we see at the beginning in twisted, bloody ways.  The gore is not subtle, but it's usually not so realistic as to be too disturbing.  That's where the Troma influence comes in.

The Westworld influence ( 1973) is obviously the robots run amok angle.
Willy Wonka's influence is from the idea that the group is mostly comprised of parents and kids and wandering off and breaking the rules is a BAD idea.

Overall, this was an enjoyable bit of horror fun for October viewing.  I doubt I would buy it or seek it out again, but if it's on a channel I already have again I might even give it a second watch.  If they make a sequel, I'd watch it.

All the technical stuff, lighting, F/X, audio and direction were solid.  The acting was mostly good, with a few "off" moments for some of the characters, but those seemed to be more from unnatural dialogue than actual bad acting.

And, for more goofball good times check out one my movies:

"Don't Kill It", but do watch it!

"Don't Kill It" is a 2016 indie feature from Director, Mike Mendez.  Full disclosure, I have some Facebook friends in common with him and once photoshopped his face onto a Spiderman image at their request.  I don't think this affected my opinion of the movie in any way. It might have affected my opinion of his friends, however.  Also, I am acquainted with Tara Cardinal, who portrayed the "kitchen demon".  While her acting was excellent in the role, she didn't have enough screen time to sway my opinion one or the other either.

Now, onto the movie.  It's October, and I nearly didn't give this one a watch because I like my monster movies with at least a bit of horror this time of  year and the fact that Dolph Lundgren was starring led me to think this would be a soft sided SyFy channel action monster flick with nothing buy CG blood and watered down violence.  The opening sequence of the movie put those worries to rest, however.  In fact, there was so much rampant, bizarre, sudden violence in the opening it very nearly disturbed me.  The heavy soundtrack and insane screech of the "demon" was all that removed the brutality enough from reality to make it watchable without causing me permanent mental scarring.  And this is ME.  Some of you may want to avoid this movie.  Especially if you have a soft spot for animals.

The title pretty much says it all.  A body jumping demon (not uncommon), is released, and possesses anyone unlucky enough to manage to kill its host.  The demon's unbridled violence towards humans and invulnerability make you wonder why the killing sprees ever stop long enough for the lead characters to have any dialogue about what's going on.  I can  not stress enough just how fast paced and violent some of the killing sprees are.  Fortunately, by the middle of the movie they become so over the top and cartoonish at moments that you're wrenched out of the movie long enough to regain your sanity.

Trying not to give too many spoilers, but give viewers fair warning, this movie is not for everyone.  There are no victims off limits here.  If the 1980s "The Blob" sewer scene seemed to cross a line to you, there are scenes in this movie that race through iron fences.

The acting is mostly solid throughout.  Lundgren, as expected, makes a good anti-hero.  He's saddled with a task no sane man would want, but anyone with a sense of duty would know he has to perform.  Krista Klebe does well playing a bit more than a sidekick (it takes awhile for her character to become an all out partner).

The gore F/X are a mix of CG and practical and some of the practical F/X are so off the wall that they're nearly comical, but again, that relief from the violent outbursts is needed to keep the viewer grounded.

With not a lot of "scares", but a difficult to stop monster and a body count any horror movie can be "proud" of, I think "Don't Kill It" makes for entertaining Halloween season viewing.  I wish I had discovered it  3 years ago, but I think I was shooting a monster movie of my own back then.  Maybe I had just come off of "Lumber vs Jack" or was starting "Jack vs Lanterns".

Silly Bonus Movie: 

"Strange Nature" - It has been Prophesied

In the very early 80s a young me saw the movie "Prophecy" on late night television and it shaped my idea of monster movies forever.  That big mutant monster, which had a real motivation and a terrifying backstory left an impression on me that may explain why lately I've been making (albeit goofier) monster movies that are environmentally driven, like "Jack vs Lanterns".

So, when "Strange Nature" showed  up in my suggested movie list I figured an environmental thriller monster movie was worth the watch.  And it was, eventually.

The film opens by introducing us to the lead characters, Kim Sweet (Lisa Sheridan) and her son, Brody (Jonah Beres) who are on their way to her old home town to spend time with Kim's father, Chuck (Bruce Bohne) to help him while he fights cancer.  The acting for this set-up was top notch and most of the cinematography made good use of the location to set the town up as a "character", but the chroma-key work in the car was 1990s sitcom quality and a bit distracting.  The opening music also annoyed me to the point of taking me out of the film. (A song with lyrics during a conversation has never seemed like a good idea to me.)

Once we're in town and the characters establish their backstories a bit, we find the deformed frogs.  News stories mention disappearances and we do get to sort of witness a monster attack when hiker and photographer Tina Stevens (Tiffany Shepis-Tretta) wanders into the woods alone.  I won't describe what happens in detail, but I will say that I wish Tina Stevens had a bit more set-up.  If she had not been played by a recognizable actress I wouldn't have had any reason to connect with the character before the action started.

Instead of becoming a full blown monster fest, the movie tries to work at some scientific exploration, with the local biology teacher explaining mutations in frogs and snails as things progress and with Kim trying to find out why this all going on near her sick Dad's property.  Is it the water, the local pesticide company (it's always those dang corporations like "Genbetter")and does the Mayor know or is he really concerned and trying to help solve the puzzle?  These mysteries seem to unfold, but not much comes of them.  The sad thing is, that's a pretty realistic reflection of how things like this pan out.  We don't get answers to questions like this in a few months.


At this point, not a lot of monster action happening.  Instead our conflict comes from roadblocks to Kim's investigation and a deformed father and daughter who live on the lake being accused of somehow poisoning the town's water supply.  I felt like I was watching "Erin Brockovich".  But, it kept my interest.  Also, the most awkward of romances tries to develop between Kim and the Biology teacher.

Then the disturbing scenes start happening. SPOILER: Highlight to read. Dog Lovers beware.  Things do not go well for the family pooch.  I had to fast forward a bit here.

Mutations move past forest life and start showing up in people and pets.  At this point we're still dealing with a psychological and environmental thriller, but by the end of the third act a full blown monster movie runs out of the woods and grabs you by the throat.  (Well, it grabs someone.) More blood, guts, screams and carnage happen in the following ten minutes than you can fire an untold number of bullets at.  If you're a practical F/X monster fan, this sequence makes the preceding movie worth watching.  It's a slow, methodical build to a lightning fast finale (before a 1970s style epilogue).  Would I have preferred more of this sort of monster action spread throughout?  Of course!  I love monsters.  But the slow, building pace makes the final confrontation all the more gripping (pun intended).

If you pay attention to the quiet times in the movie, you'll find that when the action comes, very little was wasted.  It's all leading to something and the payoff, in my eyes, is worth it.  "Strange Nature" does walk a lot of the same ground as movies that came before it, like "Prophecy", but it's different enough that fans of that movie can enjoy it as an addition to the environmental monster genre instead of just a remake.  And the "Erin Brockovick" moments aren't all that bad.

"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.

"Final Girl Vengeance" a.k.a. "Survival Knife"

I caught "Final Girl Vengeance" (previously titled "Survival Knife") on Amazon Prime.  And I'll be honest, the main reason this one was on my radar is because of actress Danielle Donahue. I had seen her in other films, such as "Jurassic Prey" and "Bigfoot vs Zombies", and while I enjoy the campy nuttiness of monster movies like that, I was curious about how she would do in a more serious role.  Something told me she could pull it off and I was happy to find out that I was correct in that assessment.

It was sort of like when I had the luck to work with Debbie Rochon on "The Lunar Pack", "Death Plots" and "All Wrapped Up".  She was spectacularly fun as the hostess Mistress Misty, but I knew I was wasting her true talent, so I wrote "Savaged", a movie that squarely put all of the emotion and tension on her capable shoulders.  Her co-star was my dog, Valkrie Liquori and they actually worked amazingly well together over a four day shoot.  (Yep, four days of principal photography for a feature film).

Cover Art with the original title, "Survival Knife"

One thing I think that may disappoint some viewers is that "Final Girl Vengeance" isn't a straight horror film.  It opens with a horror sequence, involves a serial killer called "The Survivalist" and has flash backs to some truly horrific situations, but the movie as a whole is a psychological thriller and character study.  Fortunately, the character we are focused on is Penny Warren, played by Donahue.  I say "fortunately", because out of the whole cast, Donahue is the only one who really shines.  The rest of the performances range from pretty good down to "in the wrong movie".  There are a few cast members who clearly didn't have the time or take the effort to prepare for their shoot days and it takes the viewer out of the moment.  While I usually forgive this in a campy creature feature, because I'm watching for the monster, in a character driven movie like this, it can really break the pace.

Try to press through those moments though.  Penny Warren has a lot of screen time to herself and a few scenes dealing with her own Lois Lane type reporter, who just won't let things go, played by Kaitlyn Shoeb.  These moments and an interaction with a police detective are when the best acting happens.  If you can concentrate on those you'll be able to appreciate the plot of the movie.

There are also those moments of horror I spoke of earlier.  They can be brutal at times.  The blood and gore is mostly average, but there is some  excellent make-up for Penny as she heals as well as a kill toward the final act of the film that is truly inspired.

The movie does suffer from the usual pitfalls of  low budget films.  The sound is uneven and at times just plain bad. Keep an eye out for a scene in a "gentleman's club" that is completely subtitled, but nobody actually seems to be speaking the lines you're reading.  It's an interesting way to handle not having control over the audio for the day.

The location work is amazing at times.  An "abandoned steel mill", the aforementioned club, the doctor's office, police station, and even characters' apartments are all on point.  The steel mill location is perfect for this type of movie.  Very "Robo Cop" meets "Nightmare on Elm Street".

In the end, enjoying "Final Girl Vengeance" comes down to accepting that it may not be the horror film  you expected, while still being horrific at times and getting past its obvious shortcomings in order to enjoy its strengths.

Oh, one of those shortcomings, for me, was the score.  It was super repetitive.  I know, for the director of "Shelter" to say that is pretty bold, but it got annoying right from the opening scene.  I had nearly forgotten how much it annoyed me it until I searched for the trailer.

"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.

GALAXY LORDS -WTF Did I Watch?

I saw "Galaxy Lords" a few weeks ago on Prime Video.  It is, in one word, insane.  The F/X are amazing for a low budget movie and except for an extensive use of CG, fit in well with the rest of the retro feel of the movie.  The movie's biggest downfall is the lumbering set-up after the initial opening action sequence.  It gets very talkative and slow for a good few minutes with the only action being our hero chopping wood, terribly.  Anyone who has seen "Lumber vs Jack" or "Jack vs Lanterns" knows that I take my wood chopping super seriously.  My axe throwing is another story.

As suggested viewing, to get you into the right mind set, and to understand what is being spoofed here, I suggest my younger readers check out "Flash Gordon" (1980), and the "Buck Rogers" T.V. show from the same time period.  Other things, like the countless knock-offs of "Star Wars" undoubtedly played a hand in inspiring the filmmakers, but production value-wise, those two should suffice.  Maybe a bit of the original "Battlestar Galactica".  


Now that you have some context, watch the trailer to get a true feel for what "Galaxy Lords" is like.

Do  you see what I mean?  The little robot buddy?  The "rocket cycle" like flying treadmill with a laser cannon in it?  Those red baddies really resemble Ming's troops, right?

None of this is necessarily bad.  It really all depends on whether or not you can accept the tone of the movie.  The beards are fake, the costumes are foam, the F/X are a mix of practical and CG and the acting is usually so far over the top it falls back down to the bottom, but this all part of the fun.

One reviewer on Amazon (where this movie is pretty well liked judging by the star rating) suggested that the movie would play better if it was transferred to VHS first. I think that observation is spot on.  It would give the movie the look of its intended contemporaries. 

If you like some humor with your lasers, give this one a try.  You may be left confused, but you'll at least be entertained.  (You may just want to fast forward past that whole wood chopping scene.  I honestly nearly gave up before watching the rest of the movie.  It's a painful few minutes.)