Giant Robot rocks: Voyage Into Space

By Doug Gibson

Voyage Into Space is an absolutely bizarre 1970 or so Japanese monster-rama that involves a young boy, Johnny Sokko, having control over a crime-fighting, flying Giant Robot. Sokko and Giant Robot work for the Unicorns, a UN-type spy ring trying to save the world from the extraterrestrial evil, Guillotine, his various sidekicks, including "Spider" and Dr. Botanus. The "army" of Guillotine is "the Gargoyle Gang," a group of military types who resemble Nazis.

This is a weird movie but unbelievably entertaining for young kids and nostalgic adults who recall seeing it when they were young kids. I saw this film when I was 7, 8 or 9 and we used to talk about it on the playground in school. It stars no one you ever heard of, the special effects are pretty bad, the acting terrible, the dubbing weak, but it's strangely cool. There's a 1960s' counterculture aura to this film. Several of the baddies dress like they stepped out of a Roger Vadim film. Guillotine raises a whole host of monsters and some are pretty interesting. One is a giant plant; another is a giant eyeball (I kid you not).

But still, this film, released by American Independent Films to TV only, is woefully cheap. The battling monsters don't match up to the same size in close ups and far-away shots. In one scene, Johnny Sokko and a Unicorn agent wash up on the beach with their clothes fully dry and pressed and their hair neat. Johnny Sokko's dubbed voice sounds a little like Bea Arthur of The Golden Girls. The Giant Robot hero is very cool, though, and the film's theme song is catchy. My four year old son, who like his dad loves the film, hums the theme song daily.

Here's the big secret to Voyage Into Space. It's actually about four episodes, including the first and last, culled from a 30 or so-episode series from the late 60s called Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot. That show also aired on TV, including on long-forgotten Channel 52 in Southern California when I was a kid. You can catch Johnny Sokko episodes today on http://www.hulu.com/ For more than a generation, you couldn't find Voyage Into Space on VHS or DVD. I spent decades wondering what had happened to my favorite Japanese color monster film. Finally, last year Sinister Cinema http://www.sinistercinema.com/ started selling the film. Since that occurred the floodgates have opened and Voyage Into Space, a public domain film, has many sellers.

It's a great film, particularly if you have a fondness for the Japanese monster genre, and your kids will love it.

Plan9Crunch welcomes all a 'happy' MOTHER'S DAY!!!

By Steve D. Stones

"The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world."

-William Ross Wallace

Movies don’t get much more graphic in violent content than Mother’s Day, unless you’re watching Henry-Portrait of A Serial Killer or the original Last House On The Left. The title of the film might suggest that this is some fluffy, sentimental chick flick dedicated to all mothers on Mother’s Day. It isn’t. The film is a full-blown exploitation, horror story. I would not recommend that any self-respecting mother watch this film because of the extreme violence, particularly against women.

Mother’s Day was directed, produced and written by Charles Kaufman, brother of Lloyd Kaufman of Troma films. Only the sick minds at Troma could come up with a film like Mother’s Day, which would be a compliment to the folks at Troma. Troma is responsible for such cult classic(k)s as: The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke ‘Em High, Surf Nazis Must Die and Redneck Zombies. The Kaufman brothers cast their mother in the roll of mama. Their sister, Susan Kaufman, served as production designer. It appears that Mother’s Day is indeed a family affair, no pun intended.

Three women named Abbey, Jackie and Trina get together for a reunion. The three were college roommates at Wolfbreath College in the 1970s. They travel to the Deep Barrens camp area in New Jersey and camp next to a beautiful lake.

The next morning, two hillbilly brothers named Ike and Addley witness the girls skinny-dipping in the lake. Apparently their mother named them after two 1950s politicians – Eisenhower and Stevenson. That night the boys attack the girls, tie them inside their sleeping bags and drag them back to their backwoods home. The girls are tied to some exercise equipment in an upstairs room.

Jackie is later dragged out of the room and forced to act out scenes from movies with the two brothers as their mother watches. Jackie refuses to participate, so she is raped and beaten by one of the boys, then stuffed in a dresser drawer.

Abby and Trina are able to escape and find Jackie in the dresser. Jackie is unable to walk, so the two girls quietly carry her out of the house and back into the woods. Abbey decides to stay and watch over Jackie while Trina goes for help. While Trina is gone, Jackie dies. Trina returns after finding their car inoperative. The two girls decide to avenge Jackie’s death by returning to the house to kill the mother and her two boys.

One of the boys is stabbed in the neck with a TV antenna and clawed in his groin with a hammer. The other boy has drain cleaner poured down his throat and a TV set bashed over his head. Mama is smothered to death with a plastic pillow in the shape of large breasts.

Despite the extreme graphic violence and low budget, there is not much to fault with in Mother’s Day. The acting is well above average and the plot is direct and easy to follow. Even to this day, Mother’s Day remains in the top 100 highest grossing independent films of all time. That says something about the film, good or bad.

This Mother’s Day, keep your mother away from a film like Mother’s Day. She deserves a nice bouquet of flowers, a bottle of perfume and a nice greeting card. After all, she’s earned it. She’s your mother. Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there!!

House of Wax

House of Wax, 1953, 90 minutes, Warner Brothers, Color. Directed by Andre De Toth. Starring Vincent Price as Professor Henry Jarrod, Frank Lovejoy as Lt. Tom Brennan, Phyllis Kirk as Sue Allen, and Charles Bronson as Igor. Schlock-Meter rating: 5 stars out of 10.

The real problem with House of Wax is that it's dull. Vincent Price does a fine job as the mad, scarred professor who wants to wax over many humans in his new museum of horrors, but the film is stagey, with lots of talk and few shocks.

House of Wax also fails to achieve any real cult status for another reason, which is a left-handed compliment. It's too competent a film technically to be corny. The sets are nice. The direction OK. The special effects adequate, and the color nice and unfaded.

The ending bumps House of Wax's Schlock-meter rating a tad. It's quite suspenseful to watch Price casually preparing to murder before being stopped and falling to his death into his own vat of wax. Movie fans will enjoy seeing a very young Charles Bronson in the role of Igor, a mute confederate of Price's.

Still, House of Wax is just too talky and dull in stretches to recommend as a rental. Catch it when it airs on Turner Classic Movies, and enjoy a master of the genre, Vincent Price, perform in his usual above-average manner.

-- Doug Gibson

Curse of the Mummy's Tomb - Bland Hammer

Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, 1964, Hammer, 81 minutes, color. Directed by Michael Carreras. Starring Terance Morgan as Adam Beauchamp/Be, son of Rameses VIII, Ronald Howard as John Bray, Fred Clark as Alexander King, Jeanne Roland as Annette Dubois, George Pastell as Hashmi Bey, Jack Gwylliam as Sir Giles Dalrymple, and Dickie Morgan as the Mummy (Ra-Antef). Schlock-Meter rating: 4 stars out of 10.

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb is a very poor sequel to Hammer's much better The Mummy, starring Christopher Lee. The film suffers from a dull plot, too much talk, a boring shambling mummy and a really annoying female lead (Roland), who spends much of film practicing a really bogus Parisian accent.

The plot: An expedition travels to Egypt and digs up the remains of a slain prince. The leader of the expedition is murdered. His daughter, her fiance (Howard), and the others in the party decide to return to London and feature the mummy as a sideshow act, charging 10 cents a look (it's 1900, by the way.) Of course the mummy follows them and starts to exact its revenge on those who desecrated his grave.

The film boasts a couple of shocks, including hands being chopped off and a man's head squashed (implied, not seen). But the film is just so talky, with heavy-handed direction by Carreras. Nothing happens for long periods of time and we are treated to long stretches of dialogue, which as any film fan knows, is often used as a crutch to pad out a weak film. In this film's case, it's already a brief 81 minutes, but seems longer.

Even when the mummy appears, it's a disappointment. No attempt is made to humanize the monster. He just kills. Roland as the female lead is horrible. She's one of the most faithless characters in a movie and quickly goes from mourning her father's death to constant giggling.

Veteran actor Morgan is fairly decent as the villain who steals Roland from her fiance and hides a terrible secret. The most lively actor in the film may be the Carnival-like business huckster Alexander King (Clark), who outrages many by turning the mummy into a sideshow. Clark carries the roll with pizzaz, but he's killed off too early by the mummy. If this movie's on TV and you can't find anything else to watch, it will pass the time. Otherwise, go find a better mummy movie at the video store.

-- Doug Gibson