Attack of the 50-Foot Santa!

 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM VITAMIN B-MOVIE!

Thank you for reading the blog! There will be more twisted goodness to come in 2011, assuming that reading this blog hasn't driven you mad already. (Though we're arguably all kind of nuts to begin with.)

A special thanks to Bob, Anita and Stephen for giving me the awesome figurines in the picture above. These figurines are not just plain old B-Movie Victims--they're HORRIFIED B-Movie Victims!

Note that they included the scantily clad bimbo (third from left). WIN!

Back of the package. Clearly this company is staffed by brilliant people.

Thor, Hammer of the Gods

 

Longhouse Improvement Season 3, Episode 11

15-year-old Thor (Zachary Ty Bryan) wants to impress a shieldmaiden who won't give him the time of day. He enlists the help of younger brothers Loki (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) and Baldur (Taran Noah Smith) in forging a larger hammer with more bling. But parents Odin (Tim Allen) and Freya (Patricia Richardson) disapprove of Thor's love interest. Can the boys forge the hammer without the parents finding out, or burning the longhouse to the ground? 

Sadly, the real Thor, Hammer of the Gods is not nearly as interesting as the fake synopsis above. The movie's major claim to fame consists of featuring the baby-faced Zachary Ty Bryan in the title role. Yes, seriously, Brad from "Home Improvement" plays Thor.

The Real Plot Summary

Baldur and Thor (mortal men, not the gods) lead their band to a mysterious land at the ends of the earth. The two brothers claim the land as their new kingdom, but it quickly becomes clear that something is very wrong. Wolfmen start hunting the Vikings. At the same time, Thor begins to see cheesy CGI visions of his namesake. Thor discovers that Loki is behind the nefarious happenings, and that only by finding the Hammer of the Gods (HOG) can he defeat Loki.

Nutrition Facts

Vitamin B-Acting: 70%

Zachary Ty Bryan's Thor comes off as a Southern California dude who got very lost while paddling on his surfboard. The baby face doesn't exactly lend credence to Thor's toughness, either.
 

The Vikings were known for their liberal use of hair gel, too.

Most of the B-acting credit has to go to Daz Crawford, who plays Ulfrich, the movie's baddie. He's the kind of villain you identify instantly, due to the following characteristics:

1) He has a huge scar, and it's not a "cosmetic cute" scar.
2) He's bald. In an evil way.
3) He always scowls and sneers and never smiles, unless it's an evil smile. 

 

Crawford easily shows the most life in an otherwise listless cast. I almost wanted to root for him because the others were so deathly boring.

Vitamin B-SFX: 70%

The opening credits are set against drawings of Thor and other Norse-ish scenes. You can judge the art quality for yourself here:

The Thor vision scenes contain painfully obvious CGI, often to hilarious effect. If you ever watch this movie for some nutty reason, look out for the sea beast scene. That's the best example of cheesy CGI.

The camera never lingers long on the wolfmen, for an obvious reason--to hide the fakeness of the costumes. The wolfmen basically consist of regular guys wearing wolf heads.

By contrast, we get a good chunk of time to admire the Fenris wolf (Loki in disguise). This allows us to see the obvious puppetry, and how badly synchronized its speech and mouth movements are.

Vitamin Fun: 20%

This is a boring, boring movie. At least 75% of the "action" onscreen consists of marching, waiting for an attack, or introspective moments.

Sugar: 5%

Ulfrich's girlfriend really loves Zach--I mean, Thor. I actually felt kind of sorry for Ulfrich at this point. His gal leaves him for Brad from Home Improvement. How sad is that?

Plot Fiber: 40%

The basic plot is fine by mythology standards, though the pacing severely cripples the story. But the casting of Zachary Ty Bryan as Thor is what really destroyed whatever credibility this movie had.

"I have a big, shiny hammer..."

Triassic Attack

 
What better than to start the month of December with a movie featuring skeletal dinos running amok? Nothing more Christmassy than that! 

Plot Summary 

In Mill City, Stayton University is about to open a huge new research compound. Unfortunately for the locals, building the compound means tearing down things like the Cowichan Indian Museum, run by Dakota (Raul Trujillo). Dakota calls upon the Great Spirit to teach the university a thing or two, but the Spirit takes up residence in the skeletons of a T-Rex, a raptor (the movie-sized kind), and a pteranodon. The dinos escape and start preying on the citizens of Mill Lake. The town sheriff, Jake (Steven Brand), must team up with his estranged wife Emma (Kirsty Mitchell) to save his daughter and the town from the rampaging skeletons.

Vitamin B-Acting: 30%

Everybody puts in average acting--nothing special in the way of hamminess or a spectacular lack of acting. Except for Lincoln Frager, who plays up all the negative frat stereotypes as much as he can.

Come to think of it, Wyatt (Gabriel Womack) injected a nice big dose of idiosyncrasy into the story. It also doesn't hurt that Wyatt is the owner of the movie's token dog, an adorable pug. (Of course the pug lives.) Anyway, Wyatt gives other characters helpful advice, like telling them to roll in cow poop because the dinos hate the smell.

But women LOVE L'Eau de Merde.

 
Vitamin B-SFX: 100% 

GLOWING RED EYES!!!

 

They snarl and roar despite a distinct lack of vocal chords, lungs or anything else besides bone. Whenever the skeletons get blown apart, they magically reform. The crowning moment occurs when the T-Rex and pteranodon skeletons recombine to form a Ptyrannodon Rex. A flying T-Rex--most awesome, Syfy!

Hey, they have bad breath too!

Vitamin Fun: 70%

The dinos are great fun, but as usual for Syfy movies, the dino-less scenes tend to drag. I found Frat Boy's death quite gratifying, but sadly the movie's version of the Evil Businessman (a university president) gets redeemed instead of eaten. Ptyrannodon Rex must not have gotten the memo from the Great Spirit to kill ALL the sexist jerks. Bad P-Rex! Bad!

Sugar: 40%

Will Jake and Emma rediscover their love for each other? Will Jake make peace with his brother Dakota? Can the quirky locals of Mill City and the university learn to coexist in a mutually beneficial way? In other words, will Mill City's tourist traps survive?

Plot Fiber: 0%

Really, what other rating can I give this movie's Plot Fiber? I did have fun remembering how I used to imagine the skeletons at the Field Museum coming to life when I was a kid, though. Unfortunately, it just doesn't happen even if a bunch of Indian artifacts and 100,000 volts of electricity are at hand.

 
Pseudoscience Pill--NA

Political Pill: 70%

Dakota sums up this movie's political tensions perfectly in this line:

"If you side with the elite, you side with EVIL!"

"Elite" covers all the various, stereotyped political and social threads that make an appearance--Indians vs. whites, old ways vs. new ways and locals vs. big business. I know it's a university and not a big business like Wal-Mart, but honestly, the movie treats it exactly the same as it would an evil oil company or a greedy biotech company.

Village of the Giants

 

I was in the mood for an anti-establishment movie, and I didn't feel like sitting through an endless movie like Billy Jack (though it holds a dear place in my B-movie heart).  So I decided to try a movie I'd never seen before. Let's just say that the image of a tiny man clinging to a woman's bikini top really tells you everything you need to know about this film's sophistication and grooviness.

Plot Summary

Genius (Ron Howard), a science wunderkind, accidentally invents “goo,” which turns anything that eats it into a giant. Fred (Beau Bridges) and his Groovy Crew of teenagers hear of the goo. They steal it and eat it, turn into giants, and proceed to take over tiny Hainesville. The Groovy Crew punishes the adults for their establishment, anti-hip ways. In the end, Genius discovers the antidote, the Groovy Crew flees, and Hainesville is happy and establishment once again.

Vitamin B-Acting: 70%

The actors don’t take this movie seriously--like that would even be possible. Even the little Ron Howard is in on the joke. This adds a nice easy feeling to the movie. I’ll freely admit that Genius was my favorite character—nerdy redheads with glasses rule! If only I could spout random chemical formulas as easily as Genius does...

"Aw, it was nothing! You just need some H2ONaClAuHeNAlCW."

The other highlight of the movie is watching a 24-year-old Beau Bridges strut around in a bright red toga and diaper. That alone makes the movie totally worth an hour and 20 minutes of anybody’s time. 

 

Of course they had giant sewing kits on hand. (Beau Bridges is at the left)

Vitamin B-SFX: 100%

A giant orange cat.

Giant ducks grooving to the Beau Brummels' "Woman."

Need I say any more?

Okay, okay, there is more. It goes without saying that nowadays the SFX in this movie is extremely dated--the movie came out in 1965. The moviemakers obviously superimposed “giant” beings onto the movie, and the effect is hilarious every single time.

The “capture” of Fred by the townspeople epitomizes the cheesiness of the special effects. The townspeople lure Fred out onto the streets. Then they zip around him in hot rods and muscle cars—my favorite was a neon yellow banana-shaped car with a surfboard. Meanwhile, someone offset feebly lobs ropes at Fred, who obliges by wrapping a few ropes around his body. The camera switches back and forth between a shot of Fred’s upper body and the cars zipping around, probably so they could avoid trying to edit the giant Fred into the overall scene. The best of all is that Fred could easily just stomp on the cars and people, but he doesn’t—he literally lies down and lets them “rope” him.

Vitamin Fun: 90%

It’s SO GROOVY, man! Between the far-out SFX and the corny 60s music, you’ll have a ball. (Though I could have done without listening to all of “Woman” two times.)

Groovy Near Eastern-type statues included.

Sugar: 0%

There is no sugar—only GOO, magnificent GOO!

Plot Fiber: 0%

There are so many ways to rip apart the plot holes in this movie, but I’m not going to bother this time. The movie doesn’t give a fig about science or logic. It just wants to make a “statement” about how dictatorial The Man is…in theory. I’m positive, though, that its primary reasons for existence were to provide a cheap vehicle (or hot rod, as the case may be) for sexual entendres, and to give teens a chance to make out at the drive-in.

"The Lord of the Rings"

Relax, it's the 1978 Ralph Bakshi version, not the Peter Jackson trilogy. (And in case you're wondering, the DVD cover for the Bakshi version really did put quotation marks around the title. I think it's quite fitting, personally.) 

Overcompensating much, Gandalf?

Since the last Harry Potter movie is coming out next weekend (well, the first part anyway), I thought I'd mark the occasion by reviewing an "epic" movie for this post.   

Since this is an animated film, I've substituted the "Vitamin B-SFX" category with "Strangimation."

Plot Summary

Have you really not heard of Lord of the Rings by now? 

Okay, here's the plot: Frodo the Hobbit comes into possession of an all-powerful, evil Ring. The Dark Lord Sauron wants the Ring back so he can take over Middle Earth. Frodo must travel to Sauron's land, Mordor, and destroy the Ring by throwing it into the fires of Mount Doom. Frodo has only a small company of Hobbits, Elves and Men to help him through the journey. 

Nutrition Facts

Strangimation: 100%

Bakshi relied on Rotoscoping, a method of drawing animation over live-action film. The combination of light and heavy Rotoscoping was an intriguing premise, but it did not serve Lord of the Rings well. It’s not just that the animation method LOOKS strange, but Bakshi made a lot of stylistic decisions that were just plain odd.

For instance, the animation of the main characters switches back and forth between light and heavy Rotoscoping. There’s no good reason for the switcheroos. It’s also more confusing, because when the characters are in heavy Rotoscope form, it’s much harder to tell them apart and they melt into the background. 

Gandalf--light Rotoscoping on left, heavy Rotoscoping on the right

 

Another example of heavy Rotoscoping--from left to right: Gimli, Legolas, and one of the Hobbits

The Rotoscoped characters in this film often don’t look like they’re part of the environment. There are several moments when lightly Rotoscoped characters appear to be floating in midair, as though someone just Photoshopped them onto the background.

The Ringwraiths caught in a Photoshop moment

Enough of generalities—let’s look at specific instances of heavy Rotoscoping problems.

The Orcs always appear in heavy Rotoscoped form, and always with hilarious effect. They usually have bright red eyes and fake fangs drawn on top of the Rotoscoping: 

Because the heavy Rotoscoping is so faithful to the live-action contours, you can clearly see that the actors are wearing pig and gorilla masks.

But the most priceless heavy Rotoscoping moment of all is the Balrog. It consists of a half-naked man wearing a lion’s head, flimsy Halloween bat wings, and bedroom slippers:

"WHO TOOK MY BUNNY SLIPPERS?!?" (Whip cracks)

The heavy Rotoscoping is not to blame for all the bizarre aspects of the animation in this movie, though. The light Rotoscoping characters give us plenty to mock, as well.

Give me Viggo Mortensen any day.

In general, the characters are always moving, and their contours seem to shift constantly. I found their eyes particularly distracting--in the beginning of the film, their pupils seem to shrink and grow. The constant movement makes it feel as if you're watching a quivering mass of Jell-O blobs at times.

The Ringwraiths look like Jawas, with their brown robes and glowing red eyes. Interestingly, they also appear to be wearing slacks and leather shoes under their robes, as if they took off five minutes from work to film.

A really, really lost Jawa.

My personal favorite: Boromir the Viking, in a MINISKIRT!

"But I NEED the Ring to complete my look!"

Finally, we get treated to several light shows from the wizards and elves, including one that was apparently created by a disco ball. The wizards and elves also enjoy shooting lame sparks of colorful lightning from their hands for no reason.   

Drugs had to be involved somehow.

Vitamin Fun: 80%

Plenty of WTF to keep snarkers occupied! Good thing, too, since this movie goes on for almost 2 ½ hours.

Sugar: 0%

Plot Fiber: 20%

Bakshi tried to do the impossible—cram in material from two long, dense books (Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers). As a result, this version has a very choppy, episodic feel, especially during the last half. Character development is nonexistent. If you’ve never read the books or watched the Peter Jackson movies, you’re likely to have trouble figuring out why certain things happen or characters behave the way they do. 

I only know the story from the Peter Jackson movies--I never got beyond Fellowship of the Ring in the book series. For extensive details on the adaptation problems and the soundtrack issues, check out this review.

A Ringwraith in one of the more LSD-inspired scenes.