THE MONOLITH MONSTERS (1957)

[Update 06/14/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

This was on the same DVD as THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN and I actually liked it better. It's definitely an original idea: a meteor crashes in the desert and explodes into a million pieces. When the pieces get wet they start growing and growing until they turn into giant towers and fall over exploding into a thousand pieces and all of those pieces do the same thing. Also, if you happen to touch one of the rocks that's gotten wet it'll suck all of the moisture out of your body and turn you into rock! Yikes!

For a B-level sci-fi thriller this was a pretty fun movie. The acting is over the top and the music is way too dramatic, but that's what makes it so much fun. If you like 50's sci-fi then you definitely need to check out THE MONOLITH MONSTERS. My biggest complaint is not enough people turned into stone.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957)

[Update 05/10/2022: Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

A man, while out on his boat, passes through a strange mist. A few months later he notices that his clothes are too big and he's lost weight. He goes to the doctor and yep: he's shrinking!!!  Happens all the time.  At first it's not too bad, but soon he's only a few inches tall, so he moves into a doll house. He stupid wife accidentally lets a cat in and it attacks him. He manages to escape, by falling off the basement stairs into a pile of clothes, but when his wife sees his bloody shirt and the cat licking it's paws she automatically assumes that he's dead.  He wakes up in the basement and since he's only a few inches tall it's like he's on a alien planet. Soon he starts to get hungry, so he starts searching for food and hopefully a way out.

This is a very interesting premise for a movie, but it's just too slow. I'm sure back in 1957 this movie was thrilling the shit out of audiences, but watching it now I found it to be a little boring. The spider scene was great though!

Worth watching, but don't expect too much.

Buttsecked by a giant spider?

CORPSE FUCKING ART (1987)

Very interesting documentary about the making of NEKROMANTIK, NEKROMANTIK 2 and DER TODESKING. I'm using the term documentary very loosely since all this film actually is is an hour worth of outtakes and footage shot of the sets with audio commentary by Jorg Buttgereit.

My favorite part was the stuff about the original NEKROMANTIK cause that film really did change my life when I saw it for the first time as a teenager. Did you know the cat intestines were actually scrambled eggs painted red?! That's pretty wild. They also used honey in the corpse fucking scene.

Then you got some stuff about DER TODESKING which was just alright. They also showed how they made the time lapse rotting corpse and the dick chopping scene. But the most interesting part, to me, was they actually had even more stories they were going to include in the film, but just didn't, including one about a sad guy who fantasizes about how beautiful and perfect his funeral will be, so he kills himself and only two people show up at his funeral then the gravediggers piss on his coffin. Haha.

Next up was some stuff about NEKROMANTIK 2 and it wasn't very interesting cause I didn't care for the movie much, plus the shitty old VHS tape started fucking up so I couldn't really see what was happening too well.

If you're a fan of Buttgereit or NEKROMANTIK I say it's definitely worth a watch if you can find a copy. I damn sure wouldn't spend much money on it though.

IN THE LAND OF THE OWL TURDS (1987)

[Review has spoilers, but since I doubt many people will ever get a chance to actually watch I went a little further with the plot description than I normally do.]

The beginning is a little weird with the dude laying naked in a bathtub playing with his own jizz, but once the story started it was better than I expected.

The main dude (I can't remember if he has a name or not) is lonely and longing for a girlfriend. He's a normal looking fellow, but he's awkward and whenever a woman tries to talk to him he starts talking about chickens and doing weird stuff, like acting like a chicken. If they get over his strange behavior their pussy's gonna dry up quick when they get a gander at his art car Volkswagen Beetle that's covered with all kinds of bizarre crap including a mail box, a broken tube television, a globe and paintings of chickens.

One day he's had enough of not getting laid, so it paints his entire body green and drives out to the woods. He attacks a tree stump and then he hears a rooster crowing! Oh boy! He runs off to find the rooster and when he does he also finds a strange looking hippie/wilderness woman. They talk and climb a tree. Then he takes a bath to remove the green paint. He kisses the woman and they hear a gunshot and a bird screeching. The woman runs off and throws pine cones at the guy when he tries to approach her.

Saddened, he returns to the city and while out in the street working on his strange car something special happens. The End.

That might sound kinda lame, but for only being 30 minutes long it never outstayed it's welcome. I doubt I'll watch it again, but it's worth watching at least once for those curious enough.  Might make an interesting low-budget double feature with EVEN HITLER HAD A GIRLFRIEND.

ANOTHER PUBLIC ENEMY (2005)

What...the...f?  When they named this movie Another Public Enemy, they literally meant another Public Enemy!  As in another movie called Public Enemy with some of the same character names and same actors, but all playing their roles completely different!  What in the hell is going on here?

In the original film, the character Chul-jung Kang (played brilliantly by Kyung-gu Sol) was this insane homicide detective who was so wild that he was damn near a gangster himself. Constantly beating people up, pissing off his supervisor, taking bribes and even at one point, taking a shit on a public sidewalk then getting his fecal matter (a.k.a. poo-poo) all over the murder weapon!  (And they called Harry Callahan "Dirty"!)  In this bizarre second film, there's still a character named Chul-jung Kang, once again played by Kyung-gu Sol, but this time he's a by-the-book public prosecutor! And the story has nothing at all to do with this first movie!

I went into this movie hoping to see a bigger and even crazier story about Det. Kang kicking even more ass than before, but nope.  Now he's a prosecutor who spends the majority of his time either super happy or crying.  And never once shitting on a single sidewalk!!!  The best way I can describe APE, is imagine if when they released LETHAL WEAPON 2, Mel Gibson was no longer a crazy, loose cannon cop, but instead, Perry Mason! That's what happened here.

What's even weirder is the guy who directed Part 1 is the same guy who directed this head scratching installment. Very strange. I didn’t hate the movie, but the story is just so...boring and lame that it’s hard to care what happens.  Plus, the film is 148 minutes long!!! What the fuck? Even as a stand alone movie, it starts out okay, but wears out it's welcome by at least 40 minutes.  Also, what's up with this series having a nearly 100% all-male cast?  That's not cool.

 

Part 1 - Public Enemy (2002)
Part 3 - Public Enemy Returns (2008)

DER TODESKING (1989)

I really dug NEKROMANTIK, but this film made me sleepy. The movie tells the separate stories of a number of people either killing themselves or killing others. Between the stories is a long boring shot of a corpse rotting. That sounds exciting, but it's not.

First off you got a lonely guy doing shit around his apartment for a long time. Then he gets in the bathtub, takes a bunch of stuff and dies. Exciting!

Then (in the highlight of the movie) there's a dude who goes to the video store and rents ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS, except it's not ILSA instead it's a really low budget film about some Nazi's who cut a dude's penis off (on screen!!!) and then smear a swastika on his chest in his own blood. The guy's girlfriend comes home while he's watching the movie and he immediately shoots her in the head splattering her brains all over the wall. He puts a empty picture frame on the wall around her brain particles then hangs himself. OK?

Next there's a lonely guy sitting on a bench. A woman sits down and the dude starts whining like a bitch about his life. The woman pulls out a gun, the dude takes it and shoots himself in the head. Yawn.

Long slow shot of a bridge with subtitles of people's names. WTF?

Woman looking out the window of her apartment sees two lovers below. She stops watching and eats some candy instead then falls asleep and dreams of a child (her?) watching people hump. We then see the two lovers from earlier in bed covered in blood. Uhh?

Woman with gun kills people at a concert. Somebody kills her. I don't give a shit.

Man bangs his head into a wall a bunch. I know the feeling.

Other than curiosity, there is absolutely no reason to watch this film. I like Buttgereit's style of film making, but you must have a story. I know he was going for something, but instead of having seven unfocused stories it would have been better off if he'd concentrated on say like three strong stories instead. That's my two cents.

Watch it if you want, I don't give a shit if you want to waste your time, but don't come bitching at me when you get bored. Skip it.

HAEUNDAE (2009)

If you're standing on top of a skyscraper looking up at a tidal wave, you're fucked.

The citizens of Haeundae are living their normal lives: working, sunbathing, eating, shopping, getting drunk at baseball games, hooking up with hot chicks. But little do they know a mega-tsunami could happen at any moment! Earthquake expert, Dr. Kim, keeps warning the government about the risk of a mega-tsunami, but nobody listens until it's too late. When will they ever learn?!!!

It's over an hour into the film before the disaster strikes. The special effects are a little cheesy and the sad scenes are so predictable that you'll end up laughing instead of crying, but I still enjoyed it. Mainly because it was so over the top. Sadly though the disaster stuff only lasts for probably 30 minutes. The rest of the time is wasted on boring, unlikable characters that I really didn't care if they lived or died. I was especially disappointed in Kyung-gu Sol's character. I just recently discovered him in PUBLIC ENEMY and was excited to see what he would do in a more mainstream film, but I got excited for nothing cause he sucked.

My favorite scene was when the giant cargo ship exploded and shot out a bunch of cargo containers into the sides of buildings like they were cannonballs in a videogame!

Good for a rent and more enjoyable than 2012, but just barely.