NEW: 300 (Warner) blah blah blah ancient Greece wah wah wah based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller yeah yeah yeah directed by Zac (Dawn of the Dead remake) Snyder flap flap flap 300 Spartans vs. a million CGI soldiers yip yip yip lotsa pecs and heads cut off yap yap yap two-disc special edition with deleted scenes, commentary featurettes.

Hot Fuzz (Universal) woo woo woo comedy by Shaun of the Dead guys yadda yadda yadda parody of crappy American cop movies like Bad Boys zooma zooma zooma funnier than most U.S. comedies woogie woogie woo yeah, that’s Peter Jackson as Santa deedle deedle dee outtakes commentary funny featurettes woop woop woop two-disc set at Wal-Mart.

(What? There are a million other magazines, newspapers and web sites spilling ink by the gallons on these titles. I don’t need to add to the overflow.)

Pathfinder (Fox) made a lot of noise prior to its release but arrived DOA when it hit theaters earlier this year, which is too bad, as it’s a fun mix of violent historical adventure and fantasy. Karl Urban from The Lord of the Rings is a Viking boy who’s abandoned by his father in America circa the 1100s; the kid grows up to be a sword-swinging warrior/outcast who goes to bat for his adopted people when the Vikings (led by Clancy Brown) return to pick up some prime real estate in the New World. The direction by Marcus (the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) Nispel is typically overblown, but the action and violence comes at a fast and furious clip, and Brown is a solid villain, as always. Extras include commentary by Nispel and a ton of behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Also: Night Junkies (Allumination Film Works) is a vampire movie about a stripper who gets turned out by a brooding, hipster-styled bloodsucker; there’s plenty of style but you’ve seen it before. Dead Clowns (Lionsgate) pits Debbie Rochon and Brinke Stevens against a gaggle of zombie clowns who seek revenge on a small town after the derailment of their circus train. Honest, that’s what it’s about. Plenty of gore and clown-related trauma await viewers. Pulp Fiction Art: Cheap Thrills and Painted Nightmares (Kultur) is a solid 60-minute documentary about the garish and sexy cover art of the pulp novels and magazines of the ‘40s and ‘50s and the men who drew them. And Playboy: Playmate of the Year 2007 (Playboy) allows you to ponder which of the year’s naked gals will attain the crowning achievement in Playmate-dom (hint: it’s Sara Jean Underwood).

RETRO: 20 Million Miles to Earth (Sony) is a 1958 monster-from-outer-space-runs-amok pic that’s enlivened by Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion special effects. The movie isn’t the best Harryhausen sci-fi movie, but old-school creature feature fans will want this two-disc set for the heavy nostalgia factor, and for the extras, which include Harryhausen’s commentary; he’s also interviewed by Tim (yawn) Burton, and there are featurettes on co-star Joan Taylor, composer Mischa Bakaleinikoff, as well as photo galleries and a comic book. Oh, and you also get a colorized version of the movie as well – it looks okay (and Harryhausen supervised it), but it doesn’t really improve on the movie.

Meanwhile, MGM has Blue Water, White Death, a largely forgotten 1971 documentary by Ron and Valerie Taylor (the folks who shot the shark footage for Jaws) about their attempts to film and study the Great White shark in 1969.  The underwater scenes they capture (which show the Taylors and their crew swimming freely among Buick-sized Great Whites, among other jaw-dropping images) are nothing short of amazing; if you’re a Shark Week fan, you’ll want this DVD. The disc comes with commentary by the Taylors and their underwater photographers, as well as a featurette on the movie.

I wish I could tell you more about VCI Entertainment's Death and Doom Double Feature, but they haven’t updated their web site since February, so I can only go on what I know about the movies themselves. Death: The Ultimate Mystery is a looney ‘70s-era pseudo-documentary about funeral customs around the world (mummies in Egypt and Mexico, etc.) that features some hilarious attempts to convince the viewer that narrator Cameron Mitchell is actually visiting all the locations in the film via a poorly conceived body double, while The Doomsday Chronicle is a 1979 documentary narrated by William Schallert (the voice of Milton the Toaster and supporting player in a million movies) about theories on the end of the world. If you grew up burning countless candle hours over Sunn Classics documentaries or cheapjack mondos like Faces of Death, you’ve clearly got a date with this double bill.

Oh, and Discotek Media is finally releasing its Ebola Syndrome special edition DVD – that’s the movie with Anthony (The Untold Story) as a Japanese pervert who contracts the Ebola virus in Africa spreads it across Tokyo, and Wong is featured on the commentary with director Herman Yau. Over at Shriek Show, they’ve got a new reissue set they’re called Mutant Monsters Triple Bill, and it has John “Bud” Cardos’ The Dark, Jackie Kong’s super-stupid The Being, and Creatures from the Abyss, an Italian chiller about monster seaweed. And in the Magic Land of Budget and Grey Market DVDs, Alpha Video has White Comanche, an Italian Western with William Shatner in rare form with double roles as an Anglo cowboy and his half-breed twin. Televista also has a spaghetti Western on deck this week  -- it’s Buddy Goes West, a 1981 movie with big Bud Spencer as a drifter who’s mistaken for a doctor after the residents of a small town discover his stolen bag of medical tools. It’s joined by Angel of Death (1987), a ridiculous action-thriller (with a script by Jess Franco) about Nazi hunters searching for Dr. Josef Mengele (played by Franco vet Howard Vernon) in the South American jungle, as well as Larry (Zontar, the Thing From Venus) Buchanan’s Free, White and 21, a courtroom drama (with a heavy side of exploitation) about a rape case involving a black motel owner and a white civil rights worker, and Frenchman’s Farm, a 1987 Australian thriller about a woman who discovers she’s traveled back in time to witness a murder at a remote farm.

Lastly, there’s Boris Karloff: The Gentle Monster (A&E), a likable bio on the horror movie legend from A&E’s Biography series, and featuring interviews with Joe Dante, Kim Newman, and Ramsey Campbell. And Rhino has Ratt: Videos from The Cellar – The Atlantic Years, which compiles two previously released VHS video comps from the band (1985’s The Video and 1991’s Detonator), tosses in a few unreleased videos (for “You’re in Love,” “Body Talk” and “Slip of the Lip”), and wraps the whole package up with footage from a tour of Japan and commentary by Stephen Pearcy, Warren DeMartini, and Bobby Blotzer.  Oh, come on, you know you want it.

 - Paul Gaita

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NEW: The real-life serial killer/cipher known as the Zodiac was famously a critic of The Zodiac Killer (1971), the thoroughly insane exploitation cheapie based on his misadventures in San Francisco during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. “I am waiting for a good movie to be made about me,” he sniffed in a letter to the local papers. One wonders what ole Zody would make of David Fincher’s Zodiac (Paramount), a tense and atmospheric thriller about the effect his crimes had on the people who pursued him, from newspapermen Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. to cop Mark Ruffalo. Zodiac probably won’t generate a Fight Club-style cult, but for pure creep factor (not to mention directorial bravura), it’s hard to beat.

The South Korean monster movie The Host (.Magnolia) is the highest-grossing film in that country’s history, and for good reason; it’s a supremely entertaining movie that also manages to be very smart, and a little poignant at times, and even lands a few jabs at world politics during its running time. The basic premise is deceptively simple; toxic chemicals dumped from a U.S. Army facility cause an organism in the Han River to mutate into a huge – and hungry – fish-amphibian thing that tears up a park full of people before returning to its watery lair with a prize – the youngest member of a highly dysfunctional family. Her relatives – crotchety grandpa, thick-skulled dad, failure-prone aunt and alcoholic uncle – stop yelling at each other long enough to mount a search for the girl, and along the way, uncover government deception and stupidity that lead to even greater disasters and death. Not everything works in The Host, but director Joon-ho Bong handles both the monster mayhem and the drama with equal skill, and the creature itself – a joint effort between New Zealand’s Weta Workshop and an American CG company – is nothing short of memorable. There are two DVD versions of The Host on deck; I’d pony up for the two-disc set, which includes four exhaustive hours of behind-the-scenes footage and commentary. It’s worth it.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Paramount) might seem a little highbrow at first blush – it’s a historical drama about a killer in 18^th century France – but don’t let the powdered wigs scare you off. This is a perverse little thriller about a disturbed young man (Ben Whishaw) whose heightened sense of smell and obsessive desire to capture the essence of human nature leads him to murder and boil down the bodies of women in order to create the perfect perfume. Sick? To be sure, but classy too (Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman are in the cast), so here’s a killer movie you can show to the significant other and come off like you’re hip and erudite instead of the caveman you really are.

Meanwhile, there’s also Crazy Legs Conti: Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating (Blue Underground), an ingratiating documentary about Massachusetts transplant/nude model/sperm donor/ professional eater Crazy Legs Conti, who undertakes the Herculean task of unseating eating champ Takeru Kobayashi at consuming the most hot dogs at one sitting. Conti, like all nuts with a dream, is both charming and bewildering, but the documentary is nothing short of fascinating (if it doesn’t gross you out), and Blue Underground provides commentary by Conti himself, as well as a bunch of deleted scenes (featuring more eating) and a tour of his favorite places to chow down in New York.

And on the sleazy side, there’s The Chambermaid (MTI) starring Sleazegrinder fave Fiona Horsey as a maid whose deadbeat boyfriend’s problems with drug dealers lead her to start tricking with VIPs at the hotel where she works. This naturally leads to more trouble for our girl Fiona, who launches into a spectacularly ill-advised scheme to blackmail her unhinged manager. Expect plenty of Bad Behavior, broken up by the glorious sight of Ms. Horsey in her birthday suit. Oh, and speaking of which, you can check out lots of Gallic gals putting the hurt on each other while wearing nothing but g-strings in French Wrestling (Amazons Product). Aside from lighting your apartment or house on fire, I can’t imagine a more direct way to turn your boring Friday night into total pandemonium.

RETRO: I’m not sure why people love Fred Dekker’s The Monster Squad (Lionsgate) so much; yeah, this story of kids vs. classic movie creatures is a lot better than it could have been (translation: it doesn’t make you want to kick in your picture tube), but have people really been waiting for this two-disc 20^th anniversary edition? I guess they have. The DVD includes interviews with the cast and crew, and most curiously, an interview with Tom Noonan in character as his kind-hearted Frankenstein.

More worth the two-disc treatment (in my opinion, at least) is John Woo’s Hard Boiled (Dragon Dynasty). Still one of the most intense and well-directed action movies of the ‘90s, this Hong Kong bulletfest with Chow-Yun Fat as a Tough Cop bent on bringing down the gangsters who killed his partner. Woo is interviewed as part of the new supplemental features, which also include a tour of the movie’s locations, and interviews with the supporting cast. Dragon Dynasty’s also releasing Last Hurrah for Chivalry, one of Woo’s rare excursions into period action movies from 1979.

Haven’t felt as grimy as you’d like lately? Take a dip into the murk via Forced Entry (After Hours), a brain-boiling XXX roughie about a psycho Vietnam vet (Harry Reems, sans his Beefsteak Charlie mustache) whose hellish flashbacks force him to take out his anger on random women. Directed by ‘70s porn vet Shaun Costello (who also provides liner notes), Forced Entry is about as savage a viewing experience as you’re likely to endure in the comfort of your own home, so be warned. And if that’s not enough filth for you, there’s also Impulse Pictures’ Anita: The Shocking Account of a Young Nymphomaniac, with the H-A-W-T Christina Lindberg of Thriller: A Cruel Picture as the titular teen heroine, whose neglect at home leads her to an endless string of cheap sex bouts. Enter Stellan Skarsgaard as a curious student who attempts to cure her nymphomania with science! And from the much-maligned Videoasia comes The Grindhouse Experience 20 Film Feature Collection, a five-disc set that’s chock full of putrid cinema, ranging from the incredible cannibal/action title Raw Force and Demon Witch Child to High School Hitch Hikers and the horrifying mondo Savage Man, Savage Beast. Videoasia gets a lot of flack from cult movie nerds due to the quality of their transfers (which range from decent to horrible), but look, you don’t buy something labeled as “grindhouse” for the spectacular quality. You buy it for the sleaze, and this set has it in spades, Jackson.

Also on deck from the vaults: Tales from the Crypt: The Complete Sixth Season (Warner) is the final batch of the HBO adaptation of the E.C. Comics chillers; James Ellroy: American Dog (ARTE) is a mostly solid German-made documentary on the fierce L.A.-based crime writer and his obsessions; Malpertius (Barrel), by Daughters of Darkness director Harry Kumel, concerns a French sailor who is shanghai’d into a bizarre house overseen by Orson Welles and populated by the gods of ancient Greece in human form; Suspense: The Lost Episodes Collection Volume One (Infinity) is a four-disc set that compiles episodes from the long-thought-lost TV version of the long-running Suspense radio drama, with Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Charlton Heston, and Jack Palance among the guest stars; After Dark Thrillers (BCI) is an eight-disc set of obscure ‘70s and ‘80s shock shows, including French Quarter (1977), with the sexy Lindsay Bloom, Double Exposure (1983) with Michael Callan as a murderous fashion photographer, and Blue Money (1972), with hardcore/softcore starlets Sandy Dempsey and Suzanne Fields; and for those who prefer their movies in bulk, Mill Creek Entertainment has Night Screams, a 50-picture pack featuring lots of great public domain creature features like Bloody Pit of Horror, Night Tide, The Embalmer, and Frankenstein ’80. They’ve also got Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares on deck, but that’s full of newer stuff like Suburban Sasquatch and Prehistoric Bimbos in Armageddon City. That might be your thing, tho. I can’t say.

Oh, and for the kids (or kid-minded), there’s The Secrets of Isis (BCI), the ‘70s live-action superhero series starring the very sexy Joanna Cameron (from Pretty Maids All in a Row) as the Egyptian goddess turned crime fighter; Harvey Birdman: Attorney-At-Law (Turner), Adult Swim’s frequently hilarious reworking of the ‘60s Alex Toth cartoon, which imagines the winged crusader as a sadsack lawyer defending cartoon characters with grievances; and lastly, from Classic Media, there’s three volumes of The Ultimate Underdog Collection, which should go far to dispel the unpleasant taste that’s already being left in mouths over that big screen adaptation. Oh, shoeshine boy…

REISSUES: Back on the shelves for another shot at joining your collection: Universal has its entire Classic Monster Collection – that’s Dracula (with Bela Lugosi), Frankenstein (Boris Karloff), The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.), The Invisible Man, The Mummy (Karloff) and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, as well as many of their sequels, which have been partnered in double-feature format (Dracula’s Daughter/Son of Dracula, Son of Frankenstein/Ghost of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London/She-Wolf of London, and Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman/House of Frankenstein, The Mummy’s Ghost/The Mummy’s Curse, The Mummy’s Tomb/The Mummy’s Hand). Meanwhile, Blue Underground puts three great spaghetti Westerns back on the trail. Sergio Corbucci’s legendary Django, starring Franco Nero, a coffin, and a Gatling gun, leads the pack, but there’s also Corbucci’s Companeros (with Nero, Tomas Milian and Jack Palance), and the blood-soaked Four of the Apocalypse, from Lucio Fulci. That’s enough for ya, ain’t it?

 - Paul Gaita

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Wow, what a mixed bag of weirdness on deck this week. How weird, you ask? Well, among the titles fighting for space on the New Release shelf this week are: Space Ghost and Dino Boy: The Complete Series (Turner) – yes, all 20 episodes of the incredible Alex Toth ‘60s sci-fi cartoons – and The Happy Hooker Trilogy (MGM), which offers up all three Happy Hooker pics (the original with Lynn Redgrave as Xaveria Hollander, Joey Heatherton in The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, and Martine (rowr) Beswicke in The Happy Hooker Goes to Hollywood). Not enough culture clash for you? Okay, then pop the Showgirls: Fully Exposed Edition (MGM) into your DVD machine – it’s the same presentation as the VIP disc, with commentary by strippers from Scores, a behind-the-scenes doc, and other garish goodies – and then follow it up with Five Bloody Graves/Nurse Sherri (Shock-o-rama), a double bill of bargain basement bloodshed from the late, kinda-great Al Adamson, and featuring commentary by his producer, Sam (The Man) Sherman, as well as interviews with the cast, an alternate cut of Sherri, and trailers.

Head spinning yet? No? Okay, try this out – put on Grindhouse Trash (Secret Key) – it’s a two-disc set featuring three softcore smut flicks from Nick (Criminally Insane) Phillips, and starring John Holmes and Uschi (double rowr) Digard – and then sync it up with Okie Noodling (Echo Bridge), the amazing documentary about Southern fishermen who catch mutant-sized catfish with their bare hands (check out my review of the original release here), and let Okie’s freaky freeform soundtrack by the Flaming Lips and images of bare-chested gents with Fu Manchu mustaches wrestling with cow-sized fish mingle with the monster mammaries of Uschi Digard. I’m pretty sure you’ll see the face of God by the end of the night. Or you’ll puke. One or the other.

Like I said, it’s a weird week for sleazy DVD. Also on deck for mid-July: Masters of Horror: The Black Cat (Anchor Bay) is a decent episode from the Showtime anthology series’ second season, with Stuart Gordon back behind the camera and his ole Re-Animator pal, Jeffrey Combs, who gives a great performance as Edgar Allen Poe, who experiences (or hallucinates) the events in his story “The Black Cat.” On the flip side of the animal horror front, there’s Baxter (Lionsgate), a terrific black comedy from France about a sociopathic bulldog who, after eliminating any owner who doesn’t see eye to eye with him, meets his match in a young boy obsessed with Hitler.  Other evil fauna abound in Image Entertainment’s triple bill of Skeeter (with Charles Napier, Buck Flower, William Sanderson, and Don “Ilsa” Edmonds tangling with mutant mosquitos), Xtro (British sci-fi about aliens impregnating Earth women) and Xtro 2: The Second Encounter (in-name-only sequel, with Jan-Michael Vincent staggering through a fight with interdimensional monsters).

On the highbrow front, there’s 47 Ronin (Animeigo), Kon Ichikawa’s 1994 beautiful and occasionally ultra-violent historical drama/adventure about a band of loyal soldiers who seek revenge on the official who caused the death of their chief.  And Fetish Films – Vol. 2 (Bleu Productions) compiles Les Vampyres and Let the Punishment Fit the Child, two sleek and sinister S&M features from director Maria Beatty’s critically acclaimed roster of smut for the smart set.

And lastly, there’s Birdman and the Galaxy Trio (Turner), another classic Alex Toth cartoon from the late ‘60s (and yes, the inspiration for Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law); Yo-Yo Girl Cop (Magnolia), an eye-popping Japanese freakout from Kenta (son of Kinji) Fukasaku) about a cop and a delinquent (whose favorite weapon is a razor sharp yo-yo) who infiltrate a private school that harbors a growing cell of lesbian suicide bombers (and yes, you read that right); Forest of the Dead (Elite) is a low-budget cannibal mess-fest from Ontario, Canada; and while MGM is releasing several DVDs of their ’80 teen comedies and exploitation titles (all in double bill format), the only one you need to know about is Losin’ It/The Last American Virgin. The former is pretty lame stuff – it’s notable for being one of Tom Cruise’s first movies, and one of the last Jackie Earle Haley made before his comeback with Little Children – but Virgin, produced by Cannon Films and directed by Israeli filmmaker Boaz Davidson, holds up very well, thanks to its offbeat mix of slaphappy comedy and serious – even stark – drama, which comes to a head in its jaw-dropper of a finale. It’s one of the few ‘80s teen titles that’s worth a second viewing, even if MGM’s DVD is bare bones.

– Paul Gaita

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Picks to Click: Celebrate our nation’s true legacy – exploitation, vice, lechery and weirdness – with the new Welcome to the Grindhouse series of double bills from Deimos.  Yeah, okay, so Grindhouse didn’t knock it out of the park like some had hoped, but that’s no reason to turn your nose up at this series – especially when they’ve slated some superior sleaze for their maiden releases.  First up is a two-fer of Howard (Scorchy, Dr. Minx) Avedis’ The Teacher, with Angel Tompkins putting the moves on Jay “Dennis the Menace” North, and the mind-bending Pick-Up, which starts out as hitchhiker exploitation, with two girls thumbing through Florida, but becomes something much… weirder. Double Feature # 2 is Black Candles, a Satanic sex cult chiller from Jose (Vampyres) Larraz, and it’s paired with the giallo Evil Eye, with Mexican action star Jorge Rivero as a playboy whose dreams of brutal murder come true in real life.  And if that’s not enough sex and violence for ya, both discs come with plenty of trash trailers in between the features so you can enjoy the grindhouse experience in the comfort of your home. You’ll have to supply the hookers and vomit yourself, tho.

Retro Sleaze: You kids today – you’re spoiled. Time was, you couldn’t see a lesbian in a movie or a TV show unless you went behind that musty curtain at the back of your local video store, or you snuck into the nearest smut theater and prayed that no one gave you the Bad Touch. Nowadays, you can catch girl-on-girl action on your cable TV, and see mainstream actresses kissing on network shows. I tell ya – it’s Easy Street for you little creeps.

But you can enjoy the forbidden thrill of watching lesbian sexploitation like they did in the sick, sick Sixties with two new titles from Wolfe Video, which specializes in gay and lesbian movies and TV programs. First from their Vintage Collection is the major league downer That Tender Touch (1969), with Susan Bernard from Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill! making life miserable (and hot, very hot) for her former lover Bea Tompkins, who’s now married to a man and settled down in suburbia. Also on deck is 1975’s Just the Two of Us, about a lesbian couple whose happy romance is shattered by the intrusion of a swarthy breeder. Yick! Both DVDs feature uncut (if somewhat battered) prints, as well as reproductions of the original pressbooks. For lovers of lavender sexploitation (and, let’s face it, movies about girls getting it on), you can’t miss with this Sapphic set.

Meanwhile, for the heterosexual in your life, Image Entertainment Image Entertainment  and Something Weird has an incredible double bill of ‘60s sexploitation from Barry Mahon, the man who gave the world both The Beast Who Killed Women and Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (versatile guy, Mr. Mahon). Run, Swinger, Run and Sex Club International are classic Barry badness – sleazy, downbeat black-and-whiters about people who Fuck Around with Love and pay dearly for it. In Swinger, a young girl flees an abusive situation at home, only to fall in with dope dealers, pimps and arms dealers to the Viet Cong (!), while International pits swinging super spy Lucky Bang Bang (really) against gangsters and a sex club operator. The usual barrage of trailers and salacious shorts round out this essential slab of sleaze for retro-minded perverts.

Also: Tokyo Shock has Sodom the Killer, a thoroughly insane gorefest from Hiroshi Takahashi, who wrote the Japanese version of The Ring, as well as some of its many sequels, prequels and spin-offs. Like the Ring pics, Sodom concerns a curse that destroys others, but here the whammy is placed on the family of a feudal lord who murders two girls suspected of killing his wife. Flash-forward 1300 years and his descendants are reaping the rewards of his actions in a bloodbath of murder and insanity. Wanna see more? Check out the trailer here.

Meanwhile, Image has the 1968 Shaw Bros. actioner The Bells of Death, with actor/director Wu Ma as a young man seeking the three bandits who kidnapped his sister. Expect plenty of blood and swords (and blood on swords) from this classic kung fu title. And in the cheap seats, Televista has UFO: Target Earth, a poverty-stricken sci-fi story about scientists who discover a saucer at the bottom of a nearby lake; Raid on Entebbe, the 1977 TV-movie account of the Israeli army’s assault on a Palestinian terrorist organization which hijacked a French plane and brought it to Idi Amin (played by Yaphet Kotto) in Uganda, and starring an amazing all-exploitation cast, including Charles Bronson, John Saxon, Eddie Constantine, Horst Buchholz,  Harvey (Eric Von Zipper!) Lembeck, and a smooth-faced James Woods; and What  the Peeper Saw, with spooky little Mark Lester threatening to do away with his dad’s hot new wife (Britt Ekland). Superior ‘70s sleaze, all the way.

– Paul Gaita

Bonus review!

Space Amoeba (a.k.a. Yog, Monster from Space, 1970) DVD
Starring Akira Kubo, Kenji Sahara, Yoshio Tsuchiya
Directed by Ishiro Honda
Tokyo Shock

“Die, friends of the Devil!”

Minor but likable Japanese rubber monster rally that Stateside viewers probably know best from Saturday afternoon TV, where it was shown under the title Yog, Monster from Space. As usual, giant creatures are amuck in the South Pacific, but this time, they’re normal island fauna (cuttlefish, crab, and turtle) made enormous by an insidious ball of blue glitter from space with world conquest on its mind. The monsters (not built by Toho special effects whiz Eiji Tsuburya, and it shows) threaten a passel of stock movie characters until a weakness is discovered – ultrasonic waves, specifically those produced by bats and dolphins – and wrap up the picture battling amongst themselves until they fall into a conveniently located volcano. Exit the Space Amoeba, with interstellar egg on its multi-celled face.

The last Toho creature rally directed by the veteran Honda to not feature his biggest star, Godzilla, Space Amoeba is aimed squarely at kids (as evidenced by the original teaser trailer on the disc, which pronounces the monster action as “totally cool!”), and as is often the case with movies of that caliber, makes little to no effort to let any logic get in the way of the kaiju-on-kaiju action. That’s really not a bad thing – for the most part, all I want to see in a Godzilla picture is how many buildings he can destroy – but hardcore Japanese monster fans might get a little frowny over how glibly things unspool here. On the other hand, if you’ve just come to see the fisticuffs, there’s action going down every fifteen minutes or so, and the monsters themselves look like crap but fight and knock shit over like Bowery bums on a Saturday night. The giant cuttlefish, Gezora, is a particularly mean cuss, tossing about the natives who worship it like a craven idol, and tearing a swath through their village of grass huts simply because it can. Godzilla was tough, but Gezora, he’s just a jerk.

Tokyo Shock’s DVD presents Space Amoeba in a pretty spectacular widescreen print, and offers the original Japanese language track, as well as the English dub for those who prefer their Japanese monster movies that way. I suppose it’s worth mentioning that said dub is a newer recording (and featuring the same bored-sounding Australians who voiced just about every bottom-rung kung fu movie in the early ‘70s), and not the one that ran with the AIP television version; in that particular dub, the aliens announced themselves as Yog, thereby providing AIP with a slightly splashier title than Space Amoeba. I would have liked to hear that old recording again, if only for pure nostalgic reasons, but I’m not gonna pull a nerd frenzy and issue a fatwa on Tokyo Shock over it. The disc also includes a commentary track by producer Fumio Tanaka, who seems bemused about seeing this film some thirty-odd years later (he gushes effusively over how cute the female lead is, and pronounces Gezora’s swaggering walks on land as “sexy”). Trailers for other Toho titles from Tokyo Shock, like Atragon and Dogora, round out the disc

– Paul Gaita
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