Galaxy of Terror

A lurid restaging of Alien (and a fair chunk of Solaris, come to think of it) that substitutes the biomechanical rapists of Ridley Scott's film with scenes that strive for titillation as well as repulsion. Bruce D. Clark's Galaxy of Terror isn't one for subtlety, you see. Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett's idea of an extraterrestrial hybrid who cannot properly communicate its desire for human contact into anything other body-shredding violence is translated here into a sequence in which an enormous, oozing worm is seen rutting and ejaculating all over Taaffe O'Connell's shrieking, centrefold-posed technical officer. Clark's film, produced by Roger Corman's New World Pictures, isn't at all interested in the anxiety generated by the invasive, penetrative horror swirling in Scott's forebear. So, in the interest of drumming up foreign distribution deals, we are all subjected to a torn blouse rape in which the slimed-up woman being sexually assaulted seems to be on the verge of cumming just as she expires. To Clark's credit this callousness, when considering the film's cast, is maintained throughout the rest of Galaxy of Terror. 

After landing on a hostile plane at the behest of glowing, New Age fascist, the crew of the spaceship Quest slowly start to disappear. In deference to the infernal mood of the piece, no-one particularly cares that their shipmates are being consumed, in turn, by literal manifestations of their deepest anxieties. Disappearances aren't ever investigated and when mutilated bodies are actually happened upon the revolted crew instantly incinerate them. One-by-one these spacefarers meet sticky ends: Happy Days actress Erin Moran has her head squelched in close-up, while Robert Englund's maintenance technician comes across an impervious doppelgänger who soaks up his laser fire. Given that James Cameron worked as a production designer and a second unit director on this film, much has been made of the ways in which this cash-in prefigures Alien's actual sequel. From the thinning cast of experts sent to inspect a distress signal premise to more granular similarities like each explorer having their own personal light rig. Galaxy of Terror's relationship to Cameron's career seems to stretch beyond simply Aliens though. The endless, matte painted interiors of a booby-trapped pyramid recall Cameron's work on his calling card 1978 short Xenogenesis while Englund uselessly firing away at an advancing reproduction of himself would seem to anticipate certain aspects of The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. 

Super Tight Woody - BTFU

2024/5/19 by Gobli_Prin

hello meteor - Ballistic Terra

System96 - Juno

City Hunter

In director Yuichi Satoh's City Hunter - Netflix's recent feature-length adaptation of Tsukasa Hojo's Weekly Shonen Jump manga - actor Ryohei Suzuki is given the opportunity to slowly piece together a performance that portrays a delightful kind of elasticity. Suzuki's take on Ryo Saeba is built iteratively. At first we see a cartoon charisma at work, one that has been lifted straight off the cheap, dyed pages of its phonebook-sized source material. Reflective of a strip designed to appeal to teens during Japan's 80s bubble era, City Hunter is, as ever, a man about town. He knows all the hoodlums and hang outs in a Tokyo filled beyond capacity with life and light. When perils are afoot though, Saeba's rubbery ability to respond to incoming danger is, often, played for laughs. 

At one point the slinky private eye places himself, and the inflatable horse costume he finds himself wearing, in the path of tranquiliser darts to protect a dusted-up social media influencer. Suzuki's Ryo is continuously presented as an off-kilter or even absurd proposition then: a handsome forty something with a chiselled body (which he happily shows off) and supernatural combat abilities whose sexual development has stalled somewhere in early adolescence. The deftness with which he snakes around his opponents is not a fluency that he carries over into his personal life either. His apartment is spotted with boutique porn stashes and no woman he meets goes un-ogled. Come City Hunter's finale though, these restless, erratic energies are channelled into gunfights that are more twirling dances than opportunities for grimacing tactical reloads. Saeba's expertise and complete invincibility reminiscent of Bugs Bunny, as he cheerfully detonates the dim-witted goons sent to swarm him. 

Bloodborne - Frenzy by Shimhaq

Hannah Frances - Vacant Intimacies

Adieu Aru & MALO - Ephemer

Nicky Larson and Cupid's Perfume

Philippe Lacheau's Nicky Larson and Cupid's Perfume has a few metatextual layers to it that makes its creation a little more complicated than a simple adaptation of Tsukasa Hojo's City Hunter manga. Lacheau, the film's co-writer (with Julien Arruti and Pierre Lacheau), director and star is refashioning a specific exposure to an imported property: his childhood glimpse of a re-edited, French language dubbed version of Sunrise's 80s animated series, then rechristened as Nicky Larson. The show ran on French television as part of Club Dorothée, a magazine show that combined variety show skits and music videos with localised anime, such as Dragon Ball, Fist of the North Star, Saint Seiya, and, of course, City Hunter. From a UK perspective, presumably the equivalent would be if someone like Dev Patel was creatively fixated on Channel 4's Late License screenings of the Manga Video library and had cashed in all of his box office goodwill to get a live-action Cyber City Oedo 808 project going. 

That this somewhat applicable situation seems completely impossible is really only further evidence that the British film industry can trend subordinate, mainly offering up studio space or technical proficiency for American money rather than the strange, cultural feedback loops enjoyed by our French cousins. Anyway, Lacheau's film, although spotted with surprisingly fluid acts of violence, foregrounds the more puerile elements of its source material. Women (of all ages) are to be appraised or leered at but, crucially, never actually touched. It's not just Nicky who fails to act on his horndog desires either. Upon meeting the pin-up model of his dreams, played by Pamela Anderson, Julien Arruti's Gilbert - a balding middle-aged man in possession of an eau de toilette that ensnares anyone who sniffs it - has no idea what to do, quickly abandoning himself to whatever handcuffed sex games his beloved has in mind. So, as well as bringing his beloved cartoon serial to the big screen, Lacheau has also preserved the distance between overstimulated, adolescent pangs and the three-dimensional women who exist beyond their coveted image. 

Cable by Gobli_Prin

Isaac Hayes - Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic

Paladin - Ascending

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Two

How many times have we seen a batarang strike the shoulder of a brawny supervillain? How often do these branded shurikens find their way into the unguarded rear of some advancing threat - who barely even acknowledges they've been pinned - before the device beeps then explodes, stunning the creature in question? Cartoon Network's Justice League and Justice League Unlimited were pulling this stunt (equalising the earthbound heroics of the caped crusader when considering the character on a cosmic level) over twenty years ago; delivering the detonations with far more aplomb too, it has to be said. Significantly less animated than your average motion comic, Jeff Wamester's Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Two grinds through a middle act for this multiverse-spanning saga, offering up excruciatingly static sequences in which characters sit across from each other and broadcast, monotonously. This straight-to-streaming adventure begins with two such conversations curling around each other from opposite ends of the galaxy. In one corner there's an omniscient being experiencing a glacial emotional awakening; the other a Golden Age master criminal delivers an extended, forensic monologue to a captive audience. The latter, obviously the stronger of the two, reaches for the insistent rhythms of an Alan Moore subject but the staccato situations used to illustrate these ramblings never rise above perfunctory. The real worry throughout Infinite Earths Part Two though is that these desultory chats are leaps and bounds more engaging than the battles with massing shadow monsters that succeed the chinwags. 

MF DOOM - Rapp Snitch Knishes (feat. Mr. Fantastik)

Knifeplay - Tears