This trailer is a lot wackier than one we saw earlier this year (also in Korean):

And here's an inexplicably long English-language explanation of the film.

Yes, it's your classic researcher-vs-giant-pig movie.

Pretty cool, but but this pig will never be as scary as the wormy megapig spirit from Princess Mononoke!

via Undead Backbrain (Thanks, Avery "Mondo Kaiju" Guerra!)

Over at Undead Backbrain, Robert Hood and Avery Guerra have the full story. But in a nutshell, it's a giant crocodile. Fighting a spiny supergator. Gnashing of teeth!

Meet Dinocroc.

Rrrooowrrrr! I am Dinocroc! I rule the jungle!

I am Supergator! I am on my way to major man noms!

Nom nom nom! RRRrrrowowworrrr!

Just to remind us that the Old Testament is scary too, Jewish culture magazine Tablet commissioned this series of Jewish giant monsters from Dubisch. Enjoy their frightful visages, and learn about their Yid cred via Tablet.

You can see more of Dubisch's amazing creatures on his blog.

Leviathan
All the monsters hanging out together in a kaijew "Destroy All Monsters" moment.
Melchiresa
Nephilim, apparently designed to look a little like Bernie Madoff.
A Rahab gives us the full Cthulhu.
Samael, the badass angel who fought a bunch of good guys and scared the crap out of everybody.

James Turner, an editor for O'Reilly Media, claims that zombies share a kinship with Godzilla. His theory is that, just as Godzilla was inspired by the dropping of the atomic bomb, Western filmmakers (Romero aside) latched onto zombies in the wake of Three Mile Island, the recognition of AIDS, the Ebola outbreak, and similar medical and technological disasters. He goes on to posit that the increasing popularity of zombie movies involving a biological outbreak suggests a Western ambivalence toward biotechnology.

It's an interesting thought, though perhaps a bit reductive. Certainly zombies have been used to comment on biotechnology, but they've also been used to comment on a number of social issues, including consumerism, corporate greed, and the objectification of women. And what causes the zombie outbreak is often less important than what comes afterward. Still, Turner makes an interesting case that biotechnology-based zombies could evolve to more acutely reflect our biological and technological fears:

Blackberry-spawned abominations, anyone? Dawn of the Single-Payer Healthcare Undead? What about, They Came From H1N1?

He's far more convincing when he talks about the important differences between giant monsters and zombies, namely that it's the military and scientists who fight Godzilla, where zombies fall to resourceful and self-reliant survivors.

Americans must like the idea that, as out of control as our hubristic science might become, a good machete and a 12 gauge in the hands of a competent man or woman can always save the day. The 2003 bestselling title, The Zombie Survival Guide, offers the same message of self-reliance. (I'm not sure what lesson we can take from the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.)

A Brief History Of Zombies [Forbes]

Though there are probably precedents for the dragon sex fetish in the pages of kinky horror pulp Weird Tales, I think it's safe to say the phenomenon was popularized by McCaffrey and her Pern novels. These books, published starting in the late 1960s and continuing into the present, focus on a civilization of humans who evolved from the crew of a spaceship of colonists who landed on planet Pern. Using biotechnology, the humans genetically modify the local firelizards to be giant, flying steeds that the "renewable air force" rides. The genemodded dragons also have psychic links with their riders, which forms when the dragons are hatched and select humans "impress" themselves onto the creatures.

Dragonriders aren't warriors; they are protectors. Pern experiences a seasonal weather pattern called "threadfall," where deadly spores from a neighboring star fall to the planet, destroying everything in their paths. Unless, of course, the dragons can zoom around and burn the threads before they hit the ground. Guided by their trusty humans, the dragons protect all the people of Pern from the terrible thread.

They also have sex. And when dragons have sex, their riders - in constant psychic connection with their mounts - have sex too. This means a lot of "whoa I didn't want to have sex with you but now that our dragons are having sex damn let's do it" kinds of stuff. In addition, the most common types of dragons, the blues and greens, only get impressed by gay boys (and occasionally straight girls). So: Lots of gay psychic dragon sex. This strange scenario has meant that Pern's large and talkative fandom has spent many years debating the sexuality of dragons in discussion forums and at conventions like the Weyrfest at Dragon*Con.

In her infamous essay on Pern's renewable airforce, McCaffrey responded to fan speculation by talking a little about how dragon/human sexuality works:

In the Beginning of Dragonriders of Pern™, females rode green or gold. Males rode blue, brown or bronze. (I made it easier for myself in the beginning by remembering that Boys impressed Brown, Bronze or Blue, and Girls impressed Gold and Green.)

Since greens are females and tend to be 'loving', they mated with any dragon they fancied. When not enough girls elected to stand on the Hatching Grounds after the first disastrous Plague, males with feminine personalities Impressed green dragons. Blue riders, not to mince words, tended to be gay with masculine temperaments. Browns, who were not so inclined to mate with a green's rider, made an arrangement so that two pairs of riders were involved in a green's mating.

The dragons act in the way they were bio-genetically designed . . . While the main and most important application of the [telepathy-enhancing substance] Mentasynth was to increase mental function and innate empathy in the 'dragons,' a secondary use was to allow the newly hatched young dragon recognize the most suitable symbiotic partner. At hatching, the dragon recognizes by the sweat pheromones the appropriate sexual partner. Therefore the dragonet, just out of its shell, would approach only the male or female candidates exuding the proper pheromones for its basic sex type.

The green dragons are particularly sensitive not only to the mental empathy of possible candidates but also to pheromones.

McCaffrey's dragon sex scenario is probably the most highly developed in the world of science fiction, but it's not an aberration. Jane Yolen's young adult Dragon Pit series explores the dragon reproductive cycle in great detail, and the psychic human-dragon bond does involve romance. Similarly, Christopher Paolini's Inheritance series explores dragon sexuality and romance. Main character Eragon's dragon Saphira is the last female dragon alive, so the issue of mating and reproduction is unavoidable for her. There is even a psychic dragon sex subplot in the recent Captain Marvel Annihilation series.

Several years ago, dragon sex became one of the most hotly-debated topics at the book-oriented World Fantasy Convention when a publisher handed out excerpts of Janine Cross' Touched by Venom, the first book in her intense, harrowing Dragon Temple Saga. The excerpt, which describes a dragon-keepers' ritual on an alien planet, includes a scene where young adepts are beaten with dragon-venom laced whips. Because the venom has aphrodisiac properties, the result is a bizarre parade where young dragon-keepers are marched through the streets covered in blood and brandishing giant erections. Unfortunately, it wasn't the greatest excerpt to hand out: Con-goers found it laughable when they read it outside the context of the rest of the series, which is about a peasant revolt in an oppressive monarchy.

So why does dragon sex inspire such passionate debate? Why, indeed, does dragon sex even happen at all in science fiction?

There is one obvious answer, which is that dragons represent sex because they are enormous, fiery, beautiful, uncontrollable creatures of fantasy. The urge to have sex is one of those giant, burning desires that is particularly difficult to slay. It's also an urge that is fueled by our fantasies. So there's a kind of no-duh analysis of dragon sex, which is nevertheless true, that says simply that dragons are metaphors for sexual desire. This certainly explains the zillions of pages of Otherkin slashfic on the internet.

But of course everything is always more complicated than that.

Let's consider the role that dragon sex plays in books like Yolen's series or Pern - both of which have large young adult audiences. In his book Killing Monsters, comic book writer Gerard Jones talks about why kids are drawn to stories about monsters. He says it's because kids identify with what it's like to exist in a world ruled by the whims of giant creatures and megapowerful humanoids. Though Jones focuses on why kids like to watch monsters engage in violence, I think a similar thing might be said for why young adults might also be fascinated by giant creatures having sex. Sex belongs to the exotic world of adults. It's something that young adults are aware of, possibly in internet-enhanced detail, but it's also not something most of them are experiencing firsthand. So it makes a certain amount of sense that young people might identify with characters for whom sex is something they're connected to mentally, via the acts of creatures more powerful than themselves.

Philip Pullman explores this idea in young adult trilogy His Dark Materials too. When his young adult characters finally have sex at the end of the series, they begin by petting each other's animal daemons. These daemons follow every person around, acting as external representations of their feelings and desires. The same way McCaffrey's characters sometimes express the sexual feelings of their dragons. In both cases, the smaller creatures act out the desires of larger ones.

Dragons are a simple metaphor for sexual desire, and they may also evoke the way young adults feel about sex. But those assertions still don't entirely explain way dragons function in the venom cock scenario from Janine Cross' Dragon Temple Saga.

I would suggest that the dragons in Cross' novels are something like the worms in Dune. Cross' dragons don't have much of a psychic connection to their riders - they are more like animals, and so to the extent that they communicate telepathically it's not much of a conversation. Not only do these dragons provide a drug that fuels a thriving black market economy (like Spice but less useful), but their eggs are a major source of nourishment to the people of the kingdom. And the fastest way to get around is by riding a flying dragon. So dragons are a cornerstone of the kingdom's economy, crucial for food and transport. That's why Cross depicts dragons as being hoarded by the ultra-rich. A major part of the peasant revolt involves redistributing access to the dragons.

Cross is doing something tricky with her dragon sex. She's talking about those uncontrollable, giant forces that I mentioned earlier in connection with Jones' book. But instead of her dragons standing in for adult sexual relationships, they stand in for the often-abusive relationships between aristocrats and peasants. She uses weird scenes of these dragons jabbing their venom-laced tongues deep inside our heroine's special spot to show us how peasants are debased by their aristocratic overlords. At the same time, the peasants are made complicit in their degradation because they crave the high they get from the dragon venom. So Cross' dragons stand in for the overwhelming desire people have for power over each other. Power that gives them the right to enslave, rape, and rule over other people.

Of course, sometimes a dragon is just a dragon. But dragons and sex often go together in science fiction because it's an inherently metaphorical genre. SF stories about fantastical monsters are often fables that contain messages about our own world. A perfect alloy of beauty and violence, the dragon is an enduring figure for the power of sexual desire - and for the way power often finds its most brutal expression in sexual acts.

Top image by Boris Vallejo. Fan art from Dragonchoice.

It looks like we've got the Science Patrol here, and possibly a journey to Ultraman's home planet. Plus, get a load of all those monsters. Screw Avatar - this is going to be the best alien movie in December hands-down. I am so excited that I'm doing Godzilla's version of the Highland Fling.

Mega Monster Battle via IMDB

Thanks, Avery Battles!

The disappointing thing for everybody who was hoping for a battle with this giant egg is that this is just a test trailer. No full-length movie is planned! WTF, right?

As trailer-maker Geir Are Mo explains:

I'm actually a musician and me and a friend [Jan R. Bakken] have a band to make silly and weird music just for the fun of it. At one point it all evolved into a [pseudo] religion, made up out of dumb lyrics and themes, where we were supposed to pray to forks (yeah, the thing you eat with. In Norway, it's called Gaffel). Later I recorded a song called "The Mortal Egg That Eats Me" . . .

Anyway, as a joke we decided to make the Eggs a mythical gigantic creature in the "gaffismic religion" we created - so that's where it all started. We later thought about how cool it would've been if it was in a giant monster movie. So last summer [Jan] came over to my house. We filmed a few shots around the farm where I live and later that night I finished the trailer.

Our pals over at monster blog Undead Backbrain are just as sad as you are that this isn't a feature yet, given the paucity of Scandinavian giant monsters. Luckily, you can listen to Geir Are Mo's band for more egg madness.

via Undead Backbrain, via Avery Battles!

Bradley writes:

Just as much of the power of 28 Days Later comes from its often eerily beautiful images of an abandoned London, many of The Day of the Triffids' most enduring images are of the empty cities and towns of southern England, and, as time passes, of their gradual reclamation by the wild.

What's interesting, to my mind, is the manner in which these images are identifiably part of an English – or perhaps British – tradition. Since Wells at least, British speculative fiction has tended to imagine our end in similarly muted terms . . . This vision stands in stark contrast to American visions of world's end, and their apocalyptic fervour . . . Perhaps not surprisingly for a country in which religion looms so large, America is haunted by the apocalyptic imagination of fundamental Christianity, a cultural belief that has not been supplanted by science, but simply mutated into the sort of apocalyptic fantasies which are given shape in The Road or even Battlestar Galactica (if you're interested in this question I've posted an article I wrote for The Age back in 2007 here).

By contrast, novels such as [John] Wyndham's can be seen as part of a larger anxiety about the waning of British power from the beginning of the 20th century on. The end of the world, for Wyndham and his countrymen is more about a larger historical process than the more fervid, religious fantasies of the Americans. Like Ozymandias' statue in Shelley's antique land, the silent streets and cities of England speak to the folly of human ambition, and to the British sense of Imperial decline.

This is just one part of a really interesting essay about a book that deserves to be remembered as one of the great, disturbing science fiction works of the twentieth century. (And it's prescient too: If you'll recall, the human-eating triffids are being bred as biofuel.)

I also think that Bradley has hit on something here with his notion of how British SF handles apocalypse. It's something I've heard Charles Stross say too: That their history of imperialism gives the Brits a longer view, both of the future and of the decline of the human species.

via City of Tongues

So Debbie goes to bed after hearing from the incongruously polytailed military guy that nukes are the next step in stopping the airplane-chomping shark and helicopter-smashing 'pus. She must save the ocean from nukes! And get another roll in the sack with her hot scientist boyfriend in Japan! How can she solve these pressing problems?

By taking a nap, of course. And dreaming of sunsets, and kissyface, and long long sharks, and giant tentacles in the sea, and bloody teeth penetrating soft wet sea creatures, and . . . um . . . yeah. Luckily she wakes up and conveys her brilliant idea to her old professor in this burst of amazing dialogue:

Professor guy: Wha?!
Debbie: Thrilla in Manilla!
Professor Guy: Come again?!
Debbie: We'll get them to kill each other!

This is a great movie, which will air like every weekend on SyFy for the next millennium. Catch it while it's still hot!

Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus via IMDB

Twitch posted this image yesterday, of Hostie running through the streets outside Seoul. Looks like he'll be straying away from the water, at least for a little while, though the giant mutant carp originally emerged from toxin-laced water near Seoul. None of the original team who made The Host will be back for this sequel, sadly - even the special effects company The Orphanage who made such great effects in the first flick have been dumped for a local Korean CG house.

This doesn't mean The Host 2 will be bad, however: This CG shot looks great, and sometimes a new director can inject extra life into a monster flick (just look at what Guillermo Del Toro did with Blade II).

via Twitch

The concept art is very, um, evocative, and of course the movie tagline is pretty much flawless: "They're not just ankle biters anymore."

There is also something weirdly mesmerizing about watching this CG rendering of the Chihuanha slowly spinning, its pointy tail floating past you, then its scary mouth swerving into view, framed by those adorable fish fin ears.

According to Undead Backbrain:

The film was written by director Jim L. Clark, who among other SFX positions was a rotoscope artist on Hellboy in 2004 and, going back further, a creature animator on An American Werewolf in Paris (1997).

The effects are by relative newcomers Hive FX, and they look wonderfully demented - as they should.

via Undead Backbrain (with thanks to Avery Guerra!)

My biggest beef with these shirts (aside from the giant crane in lieu of one of Tokyo's already gigantic movie monsters), is that more cities need to be represented. Where is the San Juan Chupacabra? The Vancouver Sasquatch? I'd even settle for a Montauk Monster.

T-shirts are available for $17 from Stussy.

[via Hide Your Arms]

This is just a sampling of the great collection of screenshots over at SciFi Japan, where there's also a lengthy and interesting review of the collection. It brings together The H-Man, Battle In Outer Space (never available in the US before), and Mothra.

You'll probably recognize Mothra the mega-caterpillar (later, mega-moth) and the two teensie twins who can control him with their tiny songs. But H-Man, a glowing guy who can melt people and cause go-go dancers to pose in sultry ways, may be less familiar. What's particularly interesting about this collection is that it has both the US and Japanese version of H-Man, which (like Godzilla) had a significantly different US version. There are also a lot of commentary tracks from experts on the movies, as well as the people who worked on restoring these prints and adding lost footage to them.

via SciFi Japan

We're here to save the day in "Battle In Outer Space"!




On the left are subtitles for the Japanese version of the movie, and on the right are the subtitles for the American version. As you can see, there are a few, um, differences in the translation.

Salarymen will always save you in "The H-Man"!


Oh no, Mothra! Don't burn up!

From the official website of the film, now out on DVD:

Every 30 years, in the summer there is a mysterious unidentified creature claimed to inhabit Astaire's freshwater lake in Minnesota.

Along with Loch Ness monster Nessie and Lake Champlain's Champ, this monster is one of the best-known mysteries of crypto zoology. Most scientists and other experts find current evidence supporting the creature's existence unpersuasive and regard the occasional sightings as hoaxes or misidentification of known creatures or natural phenomena. Minnesotans believe in this legend, even though their theories may vary. The creature thought to be a plesiosaur being the most popular of these theories. But unlike Loch Ness or Lake Champlain, there is no canal linking Serpent Lake to the sea raising the question," Where does this creature come from? And during this time some people in or around the lake come up missing.

Who doesn't love a monster that haunts Minnesota? I hope it likes mashed potato pizza and pickled herring, because that's what it's going to taste when it chomps on our heroes.

I utterly adore the unapologetic Z-grade production values here. Such brio! And the characters are hilarious. The whole thing gives me a warm, Godmonster of Indian Flats kind of feeling.

You can gobble up the DVD via the Serpent Lake site and (dum dum dum!) thanks to Avery Guerra!

Twitch has this teaser, including some commentary from director Tomoo Haraguchi, who has previously worked on effects for Gamera flicks and created the fine 2004 movie, Werewolf Warrior. I like that he has a healthy respect for the idea of putting on a monster suit and crushing miniature cities. That kind of film craft should never die.

I will never look at kappa maki the same way again.

via Undead Backbrain (and Avery Guerra of course)

This copy of Godzilla versus the Cosmic Monster, taped off television probably 25 years ago, turned up on one of those popular video-sharing site thingies. The Godzilla film is pretty terrific in itself, especially with some truly hideous dubbing. But the intro and outro from Dr. Paul Bearer are sources of endless fascination. He's like an old Vaudeville comic doing a monster schtick, cackling as much from nervousness as to keep up the "ghoul" act. I wonder what Dr. Paul Bearer is doing now? Here's his outro:

There's some kind of back story, blah blah blah bad guys associated with the military or hunting go to an island to catch the hydra. A good guy who is still a military bad ass wants to stop them from getting the hydra because it's a dangerous monster, and he somehow hooks up with a couple of girls and the disposable black guy. Whom the bad guy refers to wonderfully as "your newfound friends."

To defeat the hydra, bad ass guy has to cauterized its necks as he cuts the heads off – otherwise it will sprout another head when one is cut off. In this amazing climactic moment, we get to hear the bad guy's awesome final speech right after he shoots the black guy and right before hydra head-chomping. Plus, there's head-chomping. And a sword yanked out of a lava pit, with much grimacing. I guess a lava-warmed sword takes care of that cauterizing.

The best part about this movie is that it's billed as "unrated." Unrated why? Extreme CGI cheesiness? Full-frontal hydra head? Seriously, there are no naked boobies in this movie. No bare ass peekaboo with our hunky good guy. It's not even that gross or violent. I am confused by this lack of a rating, and can only attribute it to laziness rather than content. Basically, the filmmakers were too stoned to bother to submit it to the ratings board.

Which doesn't mean you shouldn't revel in its monstery goodness.

Hydra via IMDB

First we see this dude driving his car all around in the desert, listening to bad rock and whooping it up. We know he's doomed when one of the smaller super-powered mosquitoes slams into his windshield, and all he can do is kind of poke at it and make more woo woo noises. But then things take a turn for the seriously demented when we find out that he's been driving around with his girlfriend in the trunk of his car. Not only that, but she doesn't really seem to mind. In fact the only thing she's really bummed about is that he isn't having sex with her. So she starts making out with him, and trying to get him to "finish what he starts" when things start heating up.

So what does this dumb ass do? He dumps her back in the trunk! WTF, people? This guy is serious mosquito meat. Leaving his horny girlfriend in the trunk, he goes off to "clean the worm" or something like that. Cue mosquito cam! Which for some reason is yellow. I love the scene where the mosquitoes dive bomb the asswipe.

As you may have guessed, neither of these people is a main character in this fine movie about how an impossibly evil corporate bad guy is dumping toxic waste in an all old mine. For some reason the bad guy wants to build a housing development in the middle of the desert, and this means clearing away a bunch of toxic muck. Which in turn leads to a bunch of mega-sized mosquitoes, and, well, you know the drill…

Skeeter via B-Movie Review

I don't speak Japanese, so I had some questions about whether this was intentionally or non-intentionally silly. Cross-cultural expert Lisa Katayama came to my aid. After checking out the preview, she emailed me to say that it is definitely a parody:

The intro text says, roughly: if there are only two kinds of movies in the world, monster movies and non-monster movies, then director Hayashi likes monster movies much much better. And then each character is introduced by their stereotype: the heroine who wants to become a teen idol, the reliable mom-like older sister, the naughty little sister... and so on.

Good to know that Hayashi realizes that there are only two kinds of movies in the world. And that he understands giant monsters always beat non-giant monsters in any cinematic smackdown.

Quiet Earth, the post-apocalyptic funhouse that first brought this movie to my attention, gives a more straightforward summary:

Set 60 years after the original (Deep Sea Monster Reigo), in modern-day Tokyo. Global warming causes the southern polar ice cap to gradually melt, disrupting the ecosystem and luring ancient sea monsters to Japan. Eventually an enormous sea beast called Raiga enters Asakusa via the Sumida River and begins wreaking havoc on the buildings there.

via Quiet Earth and Avery Guerra