Earth VS the Flying Saucers (1956) directed by Fred F. Sears

 

One of the lesser know Ray Harryhaussen films, mostly because of the lack of giant monsters I think. Its interesting to see stop motion used for spaceships, robot aliens and scenes of destruction, though. It's very typical of film of this type... aliens arrive and humans attack them so they assume (rightly) humans are hostile. Things escalate and there is an all out war between the saucers and the military. 

It's really hard to think of the aliens are the bad guys, though the story keeps trying to show them as cold killers, they only kill when attacked, at least at first. The film is hardly a Star trek episode, the earth people never really try to makes things work and the saucer people who have kidnapped the main female character's dad and a police to suck information out of their brains (promising to put it all back later) throw the bodies out of the ship from the air in a horrifying scene after the military shows it can makes their spaceships lose control. As shocking as this is it's still not more horrible than the humans having already murdered several of the visitors right from the start. The whole thing ends in a spectacular fight over Washington DC which destroys several well known buildings and monuments until the "invaders" are destroyed and things go back to normal. 

The looks of the spaceships and aliens are cool, the flying saucers are exactly what you think they would look like and the robot suits that contain the aliens are unique... sort of goofy and stiff but original in design. The stop motion destruction is well done and pacing is quick enough between effects shots to keep you interested. 

Wallace and Gromit " Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) directed by Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham

 

I was about to write about the new Wallace and Gromit short I saw last night but then saw the runtime... 80 minutes! I might have sworn it was 20! The passed so quickly and there was no part that dragged. I think the last film they were was Curse of the Were-rabbit in 2005, 20 years ago and there no sign that the time between projects had any effect at all. Like old friends you can not see them for decades and and when you do its like no time has passed at all, 

I don't think its a spoiler to state that Feather McGraw is the villain as they are in the a lot of preview materials. The farmer from Shaun the sheep makes a brief cameo as well. The basic plot is Wallace has spent too much money on inventions and is behind on paying the bills. His solution is to rent the garden Gnome he made to help  Gromit to neighbours but Feathers McGraw is able to find a way to control the robot and turn their lives upside down while he tries to steal the gemstone out duo got him arrested over in his short film from 1998. 

That bit might have been a little much, introducing an old bad guy from long ago, but it works and they explain the backstory with humour and doesn't let it bog down the new story. 

REALLY GOOD!

Laserblast (1978) directed by Michael Rae

 

The is by no means a good movie, even at only 80 minutes it drags but it' isn't completely unwatchable for me. for one thing as. a stop motion animation fan it's has surprising competent stop motion aliens that are in the film much loner than one would think for such a low budget endeavour.  The acting is very wooden but the there might be a serviceable story in there somewhere, we just never see it. 

Billy is skinny bullied kid in a town of REALLY underfed locals. MST3K makes not of this in their version of the film which is maybe the best way to see it. Roddy McDowell picks up a quick paycheque in a roll that really goes nowhere but he doesn't phone it in completely. Billy finds and alien weapon left by some other kid who found it first or an alien race that looks much more human than the other aliens that  come looking for the weapon a points throughout the film. The weapon and the amulet that lets you use it begins to transform Billy and he get revenge on those who bully him mostly by blowing up their cars. Oh and a billboard on the highway for "Star Wars"  as well for good measure. 

Eddie Deezon gets his cinematic debut as the nerd character he played throughout his career. he seems to have a good sense of humour of about it. This is a B Movie that meanders its way along and while not exciting, I did find I could sit through it. I won't say everyone will, I have seen alot of bad movies in my time! 

7th Voyage of Sinbad. (1958) Directed by Nathan H. Juran

 Ray Harryhaussen and Charles Schneer were had made several films together before making this fantasy/adventure but this film was in colour and had a higher budget. The studio seemed to think "period films" were a risk at the time and didn’t notice the fantasy elements for some reason. Their fears were unfounded, the 650 000$ budget made them 8 million dollars on release worldwide. 

This is, in my opinion of course, the best of the 3 Sinbad films they made together and one of the best they made throughout their careers. The story isn’t complicated or particularly consistent but it is tons of fun and made to show off Harryhaussen’s stop motion monsters in a way that still looks amazing. It took him 11 months to do the animations by himself and showed the world that fantasy films were bankable and could be done in a way that drew you in and didn’t look cheap or unintentionally funny. The creatures in this movie are cool they still are decades and new special effects techniques later. 

There are some clunky bits. The villain is so obviously the bad guy but no one notices for a good part of the film. The heroes also have use of a Genie that could have cut this film in ½ if they just asked him to help a little more. None of this really matters because these plot holes lead to Sinbad fighting a skeleton! A fight between a cyclops and one of the best dragons on film! The plot is just a medium to show off the monsters and that is more than fine. The Bernard Herman score helped bring the action to life and will stick in your head.

This film is rightly credited for inspiring a whole film genre that was done well almost exclusively by Harryhausen and Schneer for the next few decades.  Kerwin Mathews worked with them again, but not on the following Sinbad films, he might have been considered too old as they were made over a decade later but he is a treat to watch and sells the effects scenes like no one who followed him. 

Note: The Sinbad movies were without a doubt a product of their time and I am well aware of that. Women’s roles weren’t very much more than damsels in distress, though all of the main women showed streaks of independence and were crucial to the story. The cast in all the films is almost completely white with rare exception despite being set, in effect, in the Middle East and no one looks like they are Middle Eastern in any way. It’s pretty obvious none of these problems are malicious in any way, just things not thought about in movie making of the time and I could see this trilogy being remade as a streaming series with better plotting in the same storylines with actors that match the locals better and maybe all three strung into one three season storyline with the same Sinbad and  and princess/love interest having more equal roles with modern effects that pay homage to Harryhaussen’s aesthetics. Netflix, Apple TV, whatever I am waiting for your call to develop this idea and bring this character back to modern day thrill seekers! 

Mad God (2022) Phil Tippet

 Renowned animator Phil Tippet worked on this film over a period of thirty years. People familiar with his work on the Star Wars films , Jurassic Park or Robocop will likely be shocked at the Bosch/Giger/Blade Runner nightmare that is this film. What is it about? Fuck me if I know, but it's fascinating nevertheless with its combination of stop motion, puppetry and live action all smooshed together in a gory, slimy mess that pays homage to everything from Forbidden Planet to 2001 A Space Oddest and every torture film you ever imagined. 

The animation is top notch and complicated. The sets are amazing and detailed and the music gives you more clues as to what is happening than the visuals will as they show you a world of violence and mysterious mysticism filled with pain and terror. 

The House (2022) directed by: Emma de Swaef, Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, and Paloma Baeza

 

The House is a stop motion film presented on Netflix which tells three separate, non-related stories. The unifying element is that all take place in the same house, but in wildly different locals and situations. 

And heard within, a lie is spun

This first story is about a family on hard times offered a newly built home by a mysterious benefactor. It quickly turns to gothic horror and can be interpreted in a number of ways. The characters are sort of fuzzy humans that seem to be made from lint.

The Lost is Truth that can't be Won

This one did not resonate with me much a t all. The characters are anthropogenic mice, the main one being some sort of real estate developer renovating a large house and trying to sell it. There is a bug problem and an open house where an interested couple just doesn't leave and an odd subplot of him making calls to a love interest that goes off in a direction I didn't expect. Grotesque imagery abounds and there is even a really weird dance number... 

Listen again and seek the sun

This was the lightest offering of the three and again the main character is renovating the house but this time the actors are all cats and the house is sinking into a flooded landscape. The two renters don't actually pay rent and the owner simply can't see that the house is almost cause. A new age guru type arrives and turns everything on it's head. overall it's a positive and funny story but the hippy dippy characters are more annoying to me by the end. 

Worth seeing? Sure, the animation is mazing and the voice work well done. The stories were super weird, something normally like, but rambled a little much for me to get too involved. So maybe a B or B- for this one. 

Mary and Max (2009) directed by Adam Elliot

 This stop motion animated film by Adam Elliot and based on his correspondence with a friend in New York for over 20 years. Voice talents include Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette, Eric Bana and Bethany Whitmore. 

The basic story is the long distance friendship between a  lonely young girl who lives in Australia who randomly sends a letter to New York after finding max's name in a phone book and asks him where babies come from the United States. Max is has Aspergers syndrome and, after panicking about receiving the letter, responds and the two begin a back and forth that goes on for decades. 

The film follows the two and their relationships changes over the years was Mary grows up and Max has his own changes over the years. They lose contact for a time but they continue to inspire each other .

This film is without a doubt a black comedy... some of it is pretty bleak and depressing even with a layer of comedy painted over it. The characters are very endearing nevertheless less and the animation is stylized and original. Mary's world is sepia-tones while Max's new York is in black and white. Both have splashes of red here and there. There is a lot of child abuse in this movie, in Max's history and Mary's [present and it sort doesn't get better as time goes on but the bond between them helps them cope and survive. 

I want to avoid spoilers in case anyone decides to see this, but I will say it ends in a touching but heartbreaking way and it made me cry. Partly from sadness and partly from Mary realizing how important she was to Max.

Not exactly a fit for the whole family and it is a challenge to deal with the subject matter. It is well worth watching and VERY far out from most films I've seen and can be harrowing but well worth travelling the journey it takes you on. 

Jack the Giant Killer (1962) Directed by Nathan H. Huran

 At first glance you might think you were about the see "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" as this film uses the talents of Kerwin Mathews and Torin Thatcher in the main roles. It also extensively uses stop motion animation for the special effects. Because of these similarities, as a kid I was DYING to see this movie and always seemed to miss it as the local theatre where it played at least once a year, we didn't have TV back then so if it was on TV a lot I would not have known. 

The reusing of cast and techniques is where the similarities end for the most part... at least terms of quality. The story is a mess, but a fun mess with Mathews as the handsome farmer saving the process from the evil over the top Thatcher from second rate stop motion monsters, bad matte paintings and sub-par animations. Mathews has a lot of charisma and does his best to sell it all but it's not enough to get thorough some of the slow parts of the story. The time and place is some fairytale old England but it might as well be the Arabian nights worlds of Sinbad, so much so they turned this film into a musical(!) on release to avoid being sued. Luckily the version I saw on Tubi was a later release with no music. 

Jim Danforth is credited with he stop motion animations and this is pretty obviously one of his first attempts at the process - he did get much better later on. The first effects scene with the princess dancing with a tiny figure from a dollhouse is well done and choreographed but after that... well each following monster looks more and more like a stuff dog's toy.

Was it worth the 46 year wait to see it? Sure. Why Not. It's not good but it is amusing in points with the weird-ass rhyming leprechaun character in a bottle and the villain over acting and chewing all the scenery. There is a certain lost charm to the animated puppets, at least for me that kept me watching until the very end. 

* a side note* Torin Thatcher seemed to be limping throughout the entire filming of this movie - what was up with that? 

Isle of Dogs 2018 directed by Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson's animated film is more than a little odd. It is also more than a little amusing, intriguing and daring in its presentation.  It is visually stunning as one might expect from any of his films at this point but it also takes some risks by having some of the dialog in Japanese and remain untranslated, letting non-speakers having the figure out what is going on visually.  While some people seemed to think this was "cultural appropriation" a term with no specific meaning anyone can seem to define these days, I would argue it might be the opposite as it puts the target audience (English speakers) in the position of the foreigner having to parse out what is being in said in a place they do not understand the language.

The story is simple enough. A mean dictator type mayor is holding on to power by making dogs the enemy of the people, sending them to a trash island and demonizing them at every turn. His young ward, however, has flown himself to the island to search for the dog who was charged with protecting him and much of the film is concerned with the search for the dog by the boy and the search for the boy by the government. Little plot details liekthe young girl who is trying to prove the dogs are not dangerous and in the process falls in love with the young boy and the lives of the dogs move the film along at a good pace and keep it lively. The animation is great and unique in its application. The voice actors are pretty good, including Yoko Ono! There are many twists and turns and revelations along the way.

One thing to note: this is not a children's film by any means. There is violence they might find a little shocking and the plot gets pretty dense in parts, not to mention people and dogs get killed and die, throughout.

So while not for everyone, I highly recommend at least giving this movie a try.