With the release of Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D we thought we might as well jump on the band wagon and give our two cents on the original and some say them best fishy feature out there, Piranha by Joe Dante.
Riding on the coattails of what is the best fishy feature, Jaws; many film-makers tried to capitalize on the fear of the water. However, with Universal‘s army of lawyers ready to smack down any type of copy that pocked it’s head out the water many were caught and gutted like the sprats they were. Though one lucky fish managed to escape the net of the lawyers, with a bit of help from Spielberg himself and went on to become a cult classic, Piranha.
The dawn of the atomic age has arrived and anything is possible. With the testing of nuclear weapons in the deserts of North America, the fear of radiation and mutation was ever present in the minds of the general public during the 1950s.
Here in the landmark film from Warner Brothers, ‘Them’ builds on the paranoia of the populous to magnificent effect and spawned a whole new era of monster features. When people start disappearing in the deserts of New Mexico and a young girl is found in a catatonic state the local law enforcement turn to science and the government for help. What is out there and are we witnesses to a biblical prophecy come true? Find out in ‘THEM’.
An amateur astronomer witness, what he seems to believe at first as a meteor stick out in the desert one night. On closer inspection he sees what he thinks is an alien spacecraft along with its terrifying crew, but will anyone believe him?
What did he see? Was it aliens or just a trick of the light? If it were aliens, why are they here and what do the want? Do they mean us harm and if so can anybody stop them? All these questions will be answered and more in this great piece of science fiction by Jack Arnold in ‘It Came from Outer Space’.
A mad man running into a police station, screaming that the world is being taken over and that “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next!”, is not your everyday occurrence. Dr Miles Bennell is that ‘mad man’ and has seen things that people would not believe, recounts his story to the police.
In this landmark film from 1956, director Don Siegel gives us one of the most well known and best loved sci-fi’s of its time, often copied but never bettered, we bring you Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
The head warden of Kim Newman’s Video Dungeon has yet again let some of the depraved and deranged of the ‘straight to DVD’ world to escape into the general populous.
We have offerings from the east, with the Japanese again supplying some top class dungeon fodder. From the states we have intergalactic shenanigans and buxom slave girls and from Europe we have Kim’s Dungeon Breakout release to make it a truly international affair.
There are many other films that have been reviewed by Kim, which can be found in the August issue of Empire Magazine (uk).
As a young boy, there were many things that could occupy a lads time, playing cars, climbing trees, but two things that would have been at the top of many boys list would have to be playing cowboys and indians and playing with dinosaurs. Oh if there was a way of combining two childhood loves together in a cinematic mash-up?
Fear not, back in 1969 such joys existed for the cinema going public, and every young boy’s playground fantasies had been brought to life by the great Ray Harryhausen.
So sit back and enjoy the spectacle of cowboys and dinosaurs fighting it out in the Mexican plains in our review of ‘The Valley of Gwangi’