Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009)

I am SO tired of shark movies (and they're half of what's left to cover). This stars Lorenzo Lamas and Debbie Gibson. The title monsters were in a glacier, but it gets melted and they're released. After some bad ideas for killing them, from atomic bombs to pheromones, they decide the best thing to do is make them fight each other... in other words, the plot of every Kaiju film. The monsters don't even show up until the end. This somehow has spawned three sequels so far: Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus (2010), Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark (2014) and Mega Shark vs. Kolossus (2015).

Mari-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula (1998)

aka Mar-Cookie, aka Eight Legs to Love You, aka Mari-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula in 8 Legs to Love You

This was mentioned by Sean Frost as the Jess Franco film that broke him and he's seen a big spider movie or 200. I hate Jess Franco films, including the ones most people like, but this one not only has Lina Romay, but Michelle Bauer and Linnea Quigley (the latter only briefly), so I gave it a shot. I did not expect the papier-mache spider with the xeroxed face that graces the cover to actually be in the film, but there it is. The plot involves people going missing, so they investigate a strip club, because it's a Franco film. In one of the odder moments, a flashback reveals that after Romay was being raped by a soldier, a tarantula crawled into her vagina and laid eggs. Why that makes her a part-time giant killer spider is not really explained. There's a lot of nudity, none of it appealing (Quigley is naked only in the commentary!) and there's not much else to recommend it, including a throwaway joke about Franco (who died 23 years earlier).

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2018)

This is an "A" film, not even a "B" film, much less a "Z" film - it stars Sam Elliott - and it's quite good, but it's going to get mixed reviews because it is in no way the film you expect from the title. Elliott spends the film in a schmaltzy love-and-loss reverie, full of string symphony music and lush visuals. He did kill Hitler, didn't get credit for it and is okay with that; he's not sure all the repercussions of his act made it personally worthwhile (though it's assumed it was worthwhile to the world as a whole). Now they want him to kill the Bigfoot [that damned 'the' article keeps catching me] because it might be carrying a disease that could wipe out mankind and he's not sure where he stands in all of this. As the title says, he does it. It's an odd film and well-made, but it's going to irritate fans of cheap silly action films.

Howling: New Moon Rising (1995)

aka Howling VII, aka Howling 7: New Moon Rising

The Howling series of films are, excepting the first and maybe the marsupial one, pretty lame. I've covered the Sybil Danning one and this one is undoubtedly the worst. The director of at least parts of #4,5 and 6 directed this and wrote it, produced it, edited it and starred in it as well, incorporating as much footage from the earlier films as possible to pad out the run time and make things confusing; sometimes the new footage seems to be people saying "and then this happened" with a cut to another film. A western town has a bunch of murders; there's a new guy in town and he rides a motorcycle and has long hair, so he's a suspect, but there's rumors of a werewolf. The transformations and makeup are exceptionally bad for the budget and only happen in the last minute of the film! There's a ton of very bad jokes and a lot of musical interludes.

Hardcase and Fist (1984)

I, for one, cannot pass up an action film with a title that sounds like it was made up by the writers of "Family Guy." Ted Prior stars and shows that his acting talents include growing a beard to go with his mullet. This was directed by Tony Zarindast and I've considered a few of his films for inclusion, but this one is the pick... it even has billboard starlet Angelyne in the cast (whose look has changed so dramatically that I had to re-watch the stripper dance scenes to spot her). A cop is framed and sent to jail, but gets out with his martial arts-expert cellmate to get revenge on the mafia types that put him there. The film is hopelessly padded. Many of the stunts look like they didn't work; one car jumps too far and barely manages to move afterward, a guy on fire walks far too long, and - watch for this - the drivers of the cars in a chase scene actually switch vehicles between shots! There's a fire-eating stripper and an aerobics scene and one long topless scene of a woman getting out of a pool.

Halloween Pussy Trap Kill! Kill! (2017)

With the title, you expect some connection to Russ Meyer's "Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!" but this is merely a retread of "Saw" with Dave Mustaine doing the creepy voice. Unappealing people find themselves trapped in a series of rooms from which they must escape; the rooms are filled with tools and weapons. Someone must die before they can get to each new room. I hoped it would be me.

The Geek (1971)

After my review of Sweet Prudence and the Erotic Adventures of Bigfoot, there was a comment by Ira Brooker asking what I thought of this film. Most who have seen it have only seen the few minutes tacked onto the DVD of Godmonster of Indian Flats, but there's a 50 minute version available that's missing only a few minutes of hardcore sex or maybe one scene. The film starts out as a 16mm documentary following three couples who go in search of Bigfoot, also known as The Geek (though, only in this film, I think). It's endless footage of people walking for 10 minutes. Then the couples split apart and start doing couple stuff, like admitting to almost having sex with one's sister and then having poorly filmed uninteresting hardcore sex. Then, all of a sudden, Bigfoot shows up and he's wearing a terrible outfit that makes one long for the gorilla suit in the softcore The Beast that Killed Women.


Wow, that's a lot of links for one of my posts.


Bigfoot rapes the women. Graphically. The guys go from being ineffectual in stopping him to being kind of voyeuristic. Then it ends.


Do I have to cover "Monster of Camp Sunshine" now? Is this becoming a Bigfoot porn review site?