BIGFOOT VS. MEGALODON 2 (2023)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

I don't plan to visit any more BC Fourteen projects after I finish all those relevant to my "monster mashup" project. Yet BIGFOOT VS. MEGALODON 2 provides a small ray of hope, for after three of his animated crapfests in which the director just screwed around, BVM2 actually delivered something it promised. 

First, we get an assemblage of monsters attacking the Allies, which seems to be a callback to a subplot about a "beast world." Two of the monsters have already received ample screen-time in the series: the shark-humanoid Megalodon and Tickles the Clown. The other two appeared in very brief scenes before: a werewolf named Crosscoe and a big bulky monster named Bartholomew. The latter will later be revealed to be the Frankenstein Monster, and this revelation sets up another subplot in which his creator Doctor Frankenstein is also somehow wandering around the Fourteen-verse.

After the monsters attack the Allies (in spaceships), the Allies' new commander Grace Sherwood (also seen only in space-armor) asks Bigfoot, monster that he is, to infiltrate the ranks of the beast-people. It doesn't work, since the evil monsters don't buy the defection for a moment. But the plot works to bring about what the title promises: a climactic throwdown between Bigfoot (now looking more like a sasquatch than a big fanged monkey) and Megalodon. The fight lasts less than five minutes, and it's nothing special, but at least one promise finally was lived up to.

Van Helsing and Kali are gone without explanation, though possibly they're on maternity leave. I didn't miss them, though Sherwood and her boyfriend Holmes are no better.        

BIGFOOT VS KRAMPUS (2021)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

In this flick it's Christmastime, which might mean that the creator conceived or issued his effort around that time in the real world. But if KRAMPUS is BC Fourteen's idea of a gift, I'm glad not to be on his Xmas list.

This one, like TICKLES, is just a lot of witless talking-heads scenes with no real action. I hoped in an earlier review that maybe this version of Krampus wouldn't have any dialogue, but he did, as do two other monsters. the Cucuy (also called the Boogieman) and some pumpkin-headed fellow called "Jack Pumpkinhead" and thus probably ripped off from one of L. Frank Baum's OZ books. Hey, what's more Christmassy than petty theft?

Bigfoot jabbers a little about finding the missing Jack Van Helsing clone, though everyone else seems to think he's dead-- including his lady friend Kali, who's apparently become pregnant by the lookalike clone of the original clone. Krampus, despite being summoned into being by Lucifer, doesn't do much of anything, much less fight Bigfoot. Fourteen didn't come back to his crap-universe again until 2023, when he released two films I've already reviewed-- VAN HELSING and XTERMINATOR-- and then finally condescended to deliver the second part of BIGFOOT VS. MEGALODON.          

TICKLES THE CLOWN (2021)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

Had it not been for one IMDB reviewer, I would not have guessed that this flick, with a title suggesting a routine "evil clown" horror flick, was an installment in BC Fourteen's nutty space-opus. I'm not sure whether or not this was a good thing, though. 

TICKLES plays like its author had binge-watched all of the "Hannibal Lecter" films, for half of the film is wasted as Princess Kali makes three trips to a futuristic prison to converse with an inmate dressed like a grotesque clown, Tickles. He appears to be purely mortal, though the script says nothing about what crimes he committed or why the guards allow him to remain dressed as a clown. Kali's mission: Doctor Jekyll thinks that Tickles is the only living being possessed of a "sociopath gene." Jekyll thinks that if the Allies can harvest this genetic material from Tickles, they can weaponize it against the Illuminati and end the Allies' long war with the evil aliens. But the good guys can't just beat up Tickles and take his genes, because supposedly anesthetizing the subject will mess up the experiment. So for half the film Fourteen gives viewers stupid talking-heads scenes in which Kali talks with Tickles, who keeps sexualizing her even though she's in a heavy space suit.

Other parts of the film consist of romantic drivelings between Kali and her lover Van Helsing, or of unimaginative cussing by Bigfoot. Toward the last half-hour of the flick, Fourteen somehow breaks out of prison and pilots his way into deep space. There he crosses paths with Van Helsing and blasts him to smithereens. Oh, no, will the poor princess be deprived of her lover? Ah, it's ok: Jekyll knows how to clone the deceased clone, and in no time it's back to status quo, except that Tickles makes contact with the Illuminati through their agent Crowley.

Other points of (meager) interest: so far it's the first film in the series that contains so little action that it's subcombative. Fourteen tosses in a Nietzsche quote at the movie's opening, which might be a little impressive if it wasn't the SAME EFFING QUOTE that EVERYTHING ELSE USES. There's a brief convo between Bigfoot and a werewolf that suggests a possible uprising of a "beast world," and that sounds more interesting than anything in this total dud. 

                  

BIGFOOT VS. MEGALODON (2021)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

The "Bigfoot in Space" series was only two installments old when the writer-director managed to produce what might be the worst in the series.

True, BVM is just more plotless blather with explicit sexual language added. But this time, BC Fourteen introduces the mutated shark Megalodon, and even troubles to give him an origin of sorts-- but does not actually trouble to produce a face-off, much less a battle, between the two monsters. Possibly I'll see one in BVM 2, though that didn't get foisted upon the streaming public until 2023. Once again, only some vague space-battles make this a combative movie.

The next installment for 2021 took Bigfoot down a Yuletide pathway, BIGFOOT VS. KRAMPUS. If I'm lucky, maybe Krampus will not be capable of speech, and I'll be spared more of Fourteen's rotten dialogue.    

BIGFOOT VS. THE ILLUMINATI (2020)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

Given that this film shares the same date as TRUMP VS THE ILLUMINATI, the creator probably never meant to follow up his lame "satire" directly. Thus BIGFOOT VS THE ILLUMINATI stands as a soft reboot of the other film, with no references to the Trump-Clone or his climactic confrontation with Lucifer. All of the other regular characters are in place: Van Helsing (now said to be the clone of a Jack Van Helsing, who as far as I know never appeared anywhere), his suit-clad paramour Kali, the Allies, the Illuminati (whose foot soldiers are now called "Archons"), and the occultist Aleister Crowley, who's been incarnated in the body of a Bad Grey alien. Bigfoot appeared briefly in TRUMP but did almost nothing, so that may have been the director monetizing the animation-work he did in advance of this flick. BVTI may also be the first appearance of "Xterminator," who gets his own feature in 2023, and his appearance in the same film as Bigfoot makes the movie a very minor monster mashup.

This time, Van Helsing goes looking for Bigfoot to help out against the Illuminati, going on the memory that the real VH was acquainted with the hairy monster as a buddy. Their meeting is complicated by the fact that VH is a clone, but Bigfoot eventually gets over his reluctance and joins the space-war effort. Fourteen's sloppy script more or less implies that Bigfoot is a thousands-years-old survivor of the devastated Earth, but how he came to live in the galactic empire is never related. Bigfoot talks tough and uses lots of foul language, but he does very little and most of the combative action here is just spaceships, fighting with the most minor CGI-FX.

Once again, it's a lot of plotless jibber-jabber with a few esoteric references to Crowley's occultism thrown in for no good reason. Oh, and there's also no explanation as to whether Kali's ship-physician "Doctor Jekyll" has anything to do with the original Victorian experimenter. As I work my way through this sludge, I think an explanation is unlikely to appear, so if anyone's a crossover-icon here. Jekyll's probably not one.  

  

TRUMP VS. THE ILLUMINATI (2020)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

I've reviewed a couple of the low-budget, made-for-streaming cartoon movies made by writer/director BC Fourteen, and both were pretty dull. I have to assume that Fourteen, whose career is dominantly in CGI animation, keeps getting work because streaming services are willing to buy kilotons of animated flicks. This would make sense if all of Fourteen's movies were designed to keep the kiddies entertained. Instead, the guy has a whole science-fiction series which uses foul language, meaning that someone thinks there are consumers, adolescent or older, who might be beguiled by such films. I doubt that most streaming-consumers are even aware of Fourteen's efforts, and the only reason I decided to explore them further is because I'm deeply into both (a) crossovers and (b) monster-mashes.

TRUMP VS. THE ILLUMINATI seems to be the first of Fourteen's SF-series, also involving such featured characters as Bigfoot, Xterminator, and Jack Van Helsing, a clone of the descendant of the DRACULA slayer, appearing here three years before he gets his own film. In the time of the historical Donald Trump, Earth is wiped by aliens called "Illuminati," who look like the popular image of alien abductors, "The Greys." However, the Chinese clone Trump, and Clone-Trump escapes Earth before it's destroyed. He lands on Mars and lives there, with another lost astronaut, for a thousand years.

At the end of that millennium, the Illuminati face opposition from another band of aliens, called the Allies, who somehow form the idea that only Clone-Trump can destroy the Illuminati, and their devilish master Lucifer. To that end, the Allies' queen Varuna (named for a male Hindu god and claiming to be an "Atlantean") journeys to Mars. Clone-Trump refuses her invitation to battle her enemies, but then Illuminati foot-soldiers, aware of a prediction that the reborn 45th President can destroy them, also show up on Clone-Trump's doorstep. Surprisingly he beats them up, and when reinforcements arrive, Varuna teleports the clone into her ship, where he reluctantly agrees to join them.

Varuna's subordinate Princess Kali may be the one who gathered at least two other clones of Earth-entities: Doctor Jekyll and Bigfoot. Fourteen devotes no time to explaining either one, though he would later use Bigfoot in half a dozen other similar productions. Van Helsing, though, is the only clone with whom Kali is sleeping. Kali may not be a Grey, since she and Van Helsing, like Clone-Trump, are never seen outside of a heavy spacesuit-- which suggests that the director knew his CGI couldn't make credible human beings. Yet another historical figure is apparently reincarnated as a Grey: the 20th-century occultist Aleister Crowley, who communes with the Egyptian god Anubis but serves the unseen Illuminati lord Lucifer.

All of this folderol does align BC Fourteen with other bad-movie makers, such as Ed Wood and Jerry Warren with respect to erratically raiding history and pop culture to buttress their grab-bag universes. Fourteen's version of Donald Trump is as stupidly executed as all his other borrowings, with all the usual Liberal triggers included, so it seems a given that he only used Trump's name as a means of getting attention. From what I can tell, this was Clone-Trump's only appearance in the Fourteen-verse, and most of the installments that followed would focus upon his not-much-less-stupid iteration of Bigfoot. FWIW, I judge Clone-Trump to fit the persona of "monster," since in his confrontation with Lucifer, he's more of an unleashed force of nature than a hero.              

SWAMP THING (1991)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

By 1991, both Alan Moore and Rick Veitch (and artist collaborators) had turned the SWAMP THING into an opus dedicated to metaphysical and psychological speculations. But as far as other media were concerned, there'd never been any Swamp Thing but the two live-action movies, loosely based upon the original 1970s comic series. 

The 1990 live-action teleseries, budget-restricted though it was, at least stayed in tune with the dramatic feel of the first movie. This cartoon series-- consisting of just five "tryout" episodes-- sometimes resembles the overtly comedic RETURN OF SWAMP THING, but without enough jokes for the cartoon to register as a comedy. So I have to deem the 1991 show an "adventure" series, since the emphasis is on turning plant-mutated scientist Alec Holland into a swamp-dwelling crusader, complete with a bunch of crime-fighting gadgets (some of which certainly must have made it into the SWAMP THING toy line).

This swamp-hero also has a small coterie of friends: a couple of kids, a young woman named Abigail (with no romantic angle attached), and two diverse but still bland adult action-guys, Tomahawk (Native American) and Bayou Jack (Black). I think the animators could have switched the dialogue-tracks for the two guys and no one would have noticed any difference. Since the two movies featured mad scientist Arcane as the Thing's only opponent, he appears in all five episodes as Swampy's regular enemy, complete with a gang of mutated henchmen, one of whom is named "Weedkiller." The voice-actor for Arcane gets the short serial's one good line: observing the fall of a radioactive satellite into the swamp, Arcane says, "I love radiation-- it's so INTENSE."