Attack of the Super Monsters

Part of being a semi-professional film critic involves having to watch close to everything I can lay my grubby, Cheetos stained fingers on. Walking into a movie theater, popcorn and Milkduds in- hand, naively waiting for the most recent helping of Uwe Boll to not be that bad, is a grueling torture in the ball park of getting your teeth cleaned. So what does one do to get prepared? What can one do to inoculate against the demons of terrible contemporary films.

Let me tell you right now if Uwe Boll/Michael Bay/Brett Ratner are the directors you think of as the cinematic whipping boys of a generation, you clearly need to see worse movies. Take for instance Attack of the Super Monsters, a 1982 direct-to-video steamer that brings new meaning to the word cheap. Set in the tokusatsu tinged world of 1980's Japan, the film pits humans against the fire- breathing, mind controlling dinosaurs who have mushroomed out of the world's crust. The leader of the dinosaurs; Emperor Tyrannos (Reynolds) uses a broad array of tactics to defeat the human armies but always seems to be stopped in the nick-of-time by Jim (Woren), Gem (Levenson) and the rest of the Gemini Force.

Here's the kicker, the film mixes cheap Manga inspired animation, photo real backgrounds and the patented chestnut of guys wearing monsters suits stomping on miniatures. The result is something that almost works in gleefully recapturing the childhood glory days of taking Hot Wheels and action figures and crashing them into one another. The plot further enforces that notion when twins Jim and Gem, in a show of maximum effort, form into a half-human, half- cyborg hermaphrodite called Gemini. The purpose of them combining is to make their flying tank vehicle Izen I into a drilling machine, the subtext of which is enough to make a midnight TV watcher squirt Dr. Pepper through his nostrils.

The film is composed of the first four episodes of the Japanese kids TV show Kyoryu Senso Aizenbogu (197-Present) and boy does it show. Emperor Tyrannos, who seemingly has unlimited psychic abilities, uses the "monster of the week" formula, fighting wars by proxy like a dime- store Repulsa. He uses dogs, then rats, then bats (oh my) to destroy all humans but is always foiled and forced to flee. To complete the Super Sentai clichés, Attack of the Super Monsters manages to add two lovably doofy sidekicks, the short and chubby Jerry (Perry) and the elderly Eddie (Perry again) who, you guessed it, pilot the Gemini crew's auxiliary vehicle.

I'm not sure what's scarier, the fact that a movie can be made squishing a few episodes of an old TV series together or that there's an audience for this kind of graft. There's certainly a campy appeal to this but that kind of sensibility is only rewarded in a handful of images. Otherwise you're getting the absolute worst the monsters v giant robot sub-genre has to offer; avoid with prejudice.

I will give it this much, this film is definitely something different. It's live action guy-in-a-suit monster action with anime humans. It's obvious that whoever produced this film had a limited budget, but how many movies are there in which dinosaurs can not only talk, but work together to kill humans? Not only that, but I thought it was only cartoons where the monsters literally yell "ATTACK! DESTROY! KILL!" as they are attacking the city but, once again, this movie proved me wrong. The concept is hilarious, which in itself makes the movie worth watching, but its hard to follow sometimes and even gets a little typical. Overall its a decent addition to a monster movie collection.

Imagine an anime where you get live action models and such being destroyed by dinosaurs! Cool, eh? Well this one had its moments, but they kind of failed on the anime portion of this thing. This is one of those films that is actual episodes from a television show pieced together to make a film featuring monsters attacking every episode like a lot of those Japanese shows in the 70's like Ultraman, only here we get anime heroes who ride what looks like a giant bus into action which is also live action. The whole thing is messed up to the extreme!

The story, some Tyrannosaurus is introduced telling all these weird monsters to destroy, but this part seems to go unexplained and may have just been the initial introduction to the television show. Seems like if these three monsters and the main one went on a super attack they could have easily been victorious, but instead they generally like to attack one at a time and incorporate other, smaller animals to do their dirty work like dogs, bats and rats in that order. I wonder if in future episodes if they continued to get smaller animals to assist. Well fear not as Gemini force is going to help as their team consists of a brother sister combo and two idiots who fly the back half of the bus. For reasons unknown to me, the sister and brother combine to form one being and this for some reason makes their ship stronger. Why they need this odd and disturbing transformation is beyond me as you could just make a more powerful weapon, but hey, Gemini Force!

The monsters attacking is pretty out there, but cool in a way as we have yelling dinosaurs. The first scene had one jumping out of the ground and it reminded me of Godzilla the way it did that. Too bad the anime portion is so weak and poorly animated and I would have much rather they become a giant robot to fight the beasts rather than just a plane with a drill and buzz saws. I also got a bit confused as there are two of the super monsters that looked just like the leader and i was like, "What, they killed him already?"

So this thing is wild and definitely worth a look see. I mean, you have dinosaurs wrecking havoc and brother and sister arguing over the sister's refusal to ask for a refund when her blouse got chewed up by rights. We have dogs overrunning the city and then we watch as the two idiot members bulldoze through the dogs! This thing is just crazy and an insane mixture of various formats to make it even more odd. I will warn you, you will get tired of watching them explain the incredible transformation the brother and sister undergo...

4 episodes of a TV show put together to form a movie much like forming Voltron, but this isn't nearly as good as that show. From what I've read the show got better, but that still doesn't change the fact that this was tough watch and I would not recommend unless it's the rifftrax version or you and your buddies want to hang out and riff on it yourselves.

Merging cheap rubber-suit monsters (They talk!) with low-budget, limited animation is a recipe for disaster. And just like the plot of the Producers, somehow it turns into a hilariously entertaining bit of fluff. It's literally four episodes of a terrible TV series strung together and in the end, there is no finality to any of it. But what more do you want from a talking rubber suited monster vs. anime movie? Shakespeare? You might want to imbibe while you watch it. Invite friends over and riff on it yourself. It's kind of awesome!