creature feature

[4] Just six years after directing The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, director Eugene Lourie goes back to the well for another giant lizard movie, only this time the monster is radioactive. While production values are high for a low-budget British production (British B-movies put American B-movies to shame, really), the resulting film is a far less successful one. Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion animation in the last …

[6] The sequel to Predator drops Arnold Schwarzenegger and transplants the action to Los Angeles. Danny Glover stars as a cop trying to break up warring drug gangs when the Predator drops into the action and leads him on a mysterious hunt for clues. Gary Busey shows up as a secret government military man, and Glover’s got police support from the likes of Maria Conchita …

[8] Every spring, I feel jaded when it comes to Hollywood tent pole flicks, and every summer I end up being surprised at how much I enjoy a few of them. Maybe it’s a result of low expectations, or maybe I love monster movies and disaster movies so much, they just have to be pretty shitty before I’ll give ’em the thumbs down. Anyway, I’ll …

[5] Bobcat Goldthwait takes us to Bigfoot country in this found-footage film about a Sasquatch enthusiast who drags his girlfriend into the woods to help him shoot a documentary at the site where the famed Roger Patterson footage of the creature was recorded back in 1967. On one hand, this is easily one of the best Bigfoot movies ever made, but that really isn’t saying …

[7] Predator is a tongue-in-cheek matinee mash-up of a combat movie and a sci-fi monster flick. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as the leader of a commando squad who leads his men into the thick of a jungle where an alien bounty hunter starts picking them off one by one. It’s really Alien in the jungle, with Arnold taking Sigourney Weaver’s place. But the paint-by-numbers screenplay doesn’t …

[8] See review of the Nightbreed theatrical cut here. Clive Barker’s Nightbreed was originally released in 1990, dumped onto a handful of screens by the studio and barely marketed. It was a financial failure, and for the director it was also a creative one. Barker was forced by the studio to compromise his original vision, dropping key plot elements, shooting new scenes and an alternate …

[8] Nightbreed, directed by Clive Barker and based on his book Cabal, wants to be a sprawling horror-fantasy epic for the ages. But the multifaceted story is told so quickly and haphazardly in the studio’s cut of the film, the end result is something between whiplash and total discombobulation. As messy as the end result is, I still really admire the sheer ambition behind the …

[3] While trying to lose their virginity, two college guys discover some of the girls on campus are actually terrifying creatures from outer space. You’re either going to like that summary or you’re not. Decoys is a low-budget flick with respectable ambitions, but its thin story needs to rest on stronger characters and more charismatic actors. The lead boy (Corey Sevier) is easy on the …

[7] I’m always on the lookout for a good monster movie, and Godzilla is one of the most legendary monsters in movie history, right? But he’s still not a sure thing. We all remember the Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich crap-fest from 1998, right? Well, thank goodness Monsters director Gareth Edwards takes the big lizard more seriously than they did. And thank goodness Edwards knows …

[7] The Irwin Allen disaster epic is alive and well in this 1996 summer blockbuster in which evil aliens threaten to destroy Earth, leaving it up to a rag-tag team of politicians, soldiers, and scientists (plus a drunken crop-duster and a pole dancer!), to save humanity. The writing and directing team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (Stargate, Godzilla) almost strike the perfect tone for …

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