THE WAR OF THE NINJA MONSTERS: JARON VS. GOURA (2024)

 

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

At the end of my review for GOD REIGA VS KING OHGA, I wrote:

Happily, there have been no sequels to this embarrassment, and IMDB claims that writer-director Hayashiya is now working on a project with two new monsters. I'd like to think it could only be an improvement, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

Well, this 2024 movie must be the one alluded to, and it is a small improvement, though one has to parse out what screenwriter Shinpei Hayashiya had in mind. It helped me that I think he borrowed, in a roundabout way, from the 2016 film COLOSSAL, about a young American woman who finds that she has the ability to control a giant kaiju-like creature.

First, in the Japanese town of Chichibu, we meet two young guys who work for a gym, though they're only at the gym for a few minutes. At the same time they're listening to their manager complain, a Shinto priestess goes on a local TV show and proclaims that Chichibu is in danger from an archaic ninja cult, the Jirai.

The two guys-- unnamed according to the subtitles-- wander out into the nearby forest. They enter a cave and faint-- and the next thing they know, both of them are gigantic versions of themselves, looming over Chichibu. However, the locals don't see two giant humans: they see two reptilian monsters, one looking like Godzilla and the other a four-footed critter loosely like Gamera. An additional curiosity: when newspeople try to take video or photographs of the creatures, they don't appear visible in any form. Yet the two "monsters" have tangible effects on the buildings they hit, though there's very little building-bashing, since that would have been overly expensive.

There are some comic scenes of receptionists at the Self-Defense Public Relations office, who don't know what to make of calls about monsters. However, one female supervisor seems to know what's going on, for she references the Jirai, just as the priestess did.

Soon, it's evident that a Jirai ninja, a bald guy with an eyepatch, is controlling the monsters, hoping to unleash chaos for some vague purpose. His control may be lacking, because a couple of times "Jaron" and "Goura" attack each other, which would seem to be counter-intuitive. But Supervisor Girl turns into Ninja Girl and goes into the forest, where she finds Bald Guy and a few other ninjas. She defeats all of them, and around the same time, some citizens come across the same cave the two guys entered. They find the two guys comatose, but they become conscious when the evil ninjas are beaten. The huge monsters disappear, and all's right with the world.

There are many comic bits that probably play much better in Japanese, but they're not overly painful, as they were in GOD RAIGA. This is a curiosity among monster mashup because this time the giant monsters are not the focal icons, and though all the characters are flimsy, I suppose the main menace here is really "the Jirai" as a whole, since they unleash the kaiju, and the good ninja is too routine to be the star.

  

     

    

HOUSE OF THE WOLF MAN (2009)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

**SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS**

HOUSE, as many others have observed before me, must have been a labor of love for writer-director Eben McGarr. Clearly no one would seek to duplicate the look of the 1940s Universal monster-mashes without having an abiding affection for the material. At the same time, McGarr-- who to date only has a smattering of credits on IMDB-- wasn't doing a "straight" version of a Universal monster-mash, nor was he doing a spoof-horror, like ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN and at least three different films titled MONSTER MASH. I'd guess that he hoped to appeal to the enthusiasts of "so bad they're good" films, but with a calculated irony that would have been foreign to guys like Ed Wood and Jerry Warren.

The setup: five individuals are summoned to a mysterious castle for an inheritance. None of the five-- athletic Reed, his scientist-sister Mary, antiquarian Sully, "loose woman" Elamira, and big game hunter Whitlock-- think that they're all related to their summoner, Bela Reinhardt (Ron Chaney, grandson of Lon Chaney Jr). But they're all willing to check things out in case there's a big payoff. 

All five are meant to be sendups of familiar Hollywood "types," and though the first four recall similar POV characters from "old dark house" mysteries, the big game hunter Archibald Whitlock seems to have been imported from an imitation MOST DANGEROUS GAME. McGarr's script doesn't expand the other four beyond the stereotypes they represent, but the writer lavishes more attention on Whitlock. He shares the Nietzschean worldview of GAME's Count Zaroff, and travels with three African bearers just in case he decides he wants to hunt something. In a mild shot at 20th-century racism, Whitlock knows the lead African's real name but calls him "Leopold" for his amusement, while he's never learned the names of the other two. That said, he's equally arrogant toward White people, since in the film's best line, he says to Reed, "I shall call you Azrael because the name Reed displeases me." I'm probably in the minority, but I think all five actors did well with their deliberately artificial dialogue, whether the dialogue hits or misses-- and there are possibly more misses than hits. All five performers make Ron Chaney look worse, because there can be little doubt that he was hired just for the value of his familial connections.

  

But if anything's weaker than Chaney's performance, is McGarr's conception of Reinhardt, who occupies the position of the "main menace," but who is more poorly conceived than the most threadbare Monogram mad scientist. Here are the big reveals: Reinhardt is the offspring of Peter Frankenstein, son of Wolf in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, and the never-mentioned sister of Bela the Gypsy from WOLF MAN. Therefore, even though his real surname is Frankenstein, his "house" has inherited the werewolf curse-- though maybe it doesn't pass through paternal genes, since none of his offspring have lycanthropic qualities. And who are his offspring? All of the supposed heirs (though one may be adopted, that part was hard to follow) are half-siblings because Reinhardt had sex with at least four mothers. This leads to a little recrimination when Mary realizes she's been vamping half-bro Whitlock, though like most Universal horror-flicks, no inappropriate genes were mixed in the scripting of this movie.

And what is Reinhardt's endgame, given that he's due to "wolf out" soon? Well, he has some hazy "survival of the fittest" notion, in that he wants to test his children in bloody battle. Somehow this will help him suss out whether his lycanthropy is some biological mutation, rather than a magical curse. It makes no sense, and most if not all the "heirs" get killed by Reinhardt's rampage. Whitlock and the bearers at least put up a fight, but they're slaughtered too. However, a certain "abandoned experiment" escapes confinement, and once again, the Frankenstein Monster Meets (a) Wolf Man. The fight's one of the better things about HOUSE, being livelier (though no longer) than the one from the 1943 movie. 

One more visitor arrives during the fight, and yes, it's Dracula, decked out in full Lugosi regalia, and he either finishes off the last victim or makes her a vampire. Oddly, though Dracula and the Monster are the only characters who make this a crossover, both of them are irrelevant to the movie-- which would have been improved if there had been SOME reason for Reinhardt's family-killing madness.

       

              

BIGFOOT VS. MEGALODON RESURRECTION (2025)

 

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

"Mother of mercy-- can this be the end of Bigfoot?"

Probably not; there's some other BCF opus called MEGA TRUMP not currently on streaming, which spares me from yet more exposure to the director's lame "satire."

For some goddamn reason the god Ra, who's popped up a few times, resurrects Megalodon, and sends the shark-man to Earth to dominate the humans. This seems unnecessary, since humans are already under the thrall of mechanical overlords, but whatever.

Bigfoot-- back to looking like a Sasquatch again-- hears of his enemy's rebirth and goes to fight him. He has a new female commander, a robot named Coila, though previous installments didn't mention intelligent robots at all. There's also a small robot, X-Max, who somehow knows that his name sounds like a stool-softening Earth-product from thousands of years ago.

Bigfoot makes sex overtures to Coila even though she has no imitation genitalia, curses a lot, and finally ends up on Earth to fight Megalodon. I guess Ra causes them both to grow to kaiju-size, because they throw down amidst skyscrapers. The fight's a little longer than the last one, but only adequate. Megalodon is defeated but nothing is said about the fate of the humans under robot dominion. I can't say that there's anything resembling a "high point" in this dopey series, but RESURRECTION would be a good place to stop anyway.      

 

BIGFOOT GOES TO HELL (2023)

 

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

In my review of BIGFOOT VS MEGALODON 2, I said it gave a slight "ray of hope" in that the movie delivered at least on a couple of its tenuous subplots. But I didn't really believe BC Fourteen would get even as good at storytelling as Ed Wood. Sure enough, BIGFOOT GOES TO HELL, the next flick in this hypothetical "series," defaults back to jibber-jabber.

In his wheelchair at the end of time, Lucifer gets all wrong up at the pestilence of humanity, whom he considers sycophantic (the soundtrack saus "psycho-phantic") to the will of a non-existent Heaven and its non-existent God. So he sends another demon, Baphomet, to rain nuclear death on Earth-- which I thought was already devastated. Either before or after Baphomet does this, he runs into Bigfoot (back to looking like a fanged monkey) in another spaceship. The two ships exchange fire, and Bigfoot is killed. His spirit shows up in Lucifer's hell, where he exchanges witless dialogue with the Devil. Then when Lucifer has had enough, an angel, looking like a standard Cupid, pops in, and apparently everything Lucifer did is unwritten. A living Bigfoot shows up at the Allies' base and thinks he's had a weird dream.

Toward the beginning someone claims Princess Kali died in a previous installment. I'm not going back to check though. It's not a combative adventure but it is a monster-mash. If I didn't consider Baphomet and Lucifer monsters, there's also a crocodile-man who's the reincarnation of Anton Sandor LaVey.     

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.