PAWS FOR REFLECTION

Check out my review of the sublime Latvian animated feature Flow, now a Golden Globe winner, online at Phoenix Magazine...

It's one of the best movies of the year.

From the sublime to the, well, not so sublime; now on VOD...

The Invisible Raptor--In this horror comedy, an invisible predatory dinosaur escapes from a laboratory manned by Sean Astin, makes its way to a dinosaur theme park and raises bloody mayhem in the neighborhood. A down-on-his-luck paleontologist (Mike Capes) reluctantly teams up with an imbecilic security guard (David Shackelford) to battle the creature; eventually the paleontologist's gorgeous ex (Caitlin McHugh) and a local chicken farmer (Sandy Martin) join the fight.

This very crass, deliberately lowbrow but occasionally funny film is not only gory but scatological; the raptor may be invisible, but its poop, once excreted, certainly isn't. It's a polished production, directed by Mike Hermosa from a script by Capes and Johnny Wickham. The special effects are good, and the object of its spoof/homage is unmistakable: Steven Spielberg. From the look and sound of the movie to the names of the characters, not just the obvious references to Jurassic Park but also to Jaws and E.T., it's a striking testament to the master's influence.

I wonder if anyone connected to this film is old enough to remember Sound of Horror (El Sonido de la Muerte)...

...a riotous Spanish shocker from 1966, also, believe it or not, about an invisible dinosaur who makes the truly awful, squalling sound of the title. It has several elements in common with The Invisible Raptor, but I think I prefer the earlier film, if only because the cast includes the glorious Ingrid Pitt.

JUDY AND JAMES; YETI AND INGRID

Happy Friday everybody!

Check out my "Friday Flicks" column online at Phoenix Magazine, this week reviewing Judy...

...and the caper comedy Raising Buchanan...

...about a scheme to steal the body of President James Buchanan and hold it for ransom. That tired old plot device again.

Also opening this week:

  
Abominable--Following last year's peculiar Smallfoot, here's another CGI animated feature about Yetis. This one is peculiar, too.

In this Chinese-American co-production, a teenage Chinese city girl finds a fuzzy, sweet-natured Yeti hiding on the roof of her apartment building; he's escaped from a cruel scientific facility. She feeds him steamed pork buns and plays her violin for him, and then, with the help of two friends from the building, tries to smuggle him back to his home in the mountains, with the forces of the nasty collector hot in pursuit. The movie is of a New-Agey-bent; in the course of the odyssey we learn that the creature is tune with the forces of nature, and when he hums the sound causes flowers to blossom and blueberries to grow enormous.

As is almost invariably the case with wide-release animated features of the last few decades, the obligatory elements in Abominable, the stock villains and the stock character motivations, are highly tedious. This template for has been so successful for so long that it's hard to see it going away anytime soon, but it sure makes these films wearisomely repetitive.

That said, the characterizations of the Yeti and the kids are winning, and the Chinese setting is different and colorful. And this is almost certainly the only film to contain the line "Don't body-shame my yak!"

Finally, if you happen to be here in the Phoenix area, you could check out The House That Dripped Blood at 10 p.m. this evening, September 27, at FilmBar. This 1971 British horror anthology, scripted by Robert Bloch and featuring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Jon Pertwee and Denholm Elliot, has long been a fave of mine, largely on the basis of the scene near the end in which supremely sultry and statuesque vampiress Ingrid Pitt levitates and...her high-heeled shoes drop off her feet to the floor. I don't know why, but for some reason that detail remains one of the most deliriously sexy moments in movies for me.

LIMITED VISIBILITY

Once again in honor of the glorious & lamented Ingrid Pitt...

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s acknowledge the horror that makes the sound in 1964’s Sound of Horror (El Sonido de la Muerte). This early Pitt’s credit, a Spanish production shot in Greece, concerns an encounter between a party of treasure hunters—the lovely young Ms. Pitt is one of them—& a ferocious dinosaur, accidentally loosed by an explosion in a cave.

But this is not just any dinosaur. No, this is an invisible dinosaur.

Which is why, one presumes, the title isn’t Sight of Horror.

What the phantom fossil lacks visually, it overcompensates for vocally. Turns out the sound of horror is a slightly louder & more drawn-out version of the sound that a cat makes while having sex outside your house at 4 a.m.

You can hear it for yourself—here is a clip of perhaps the funniest scene in the film, & here is a trailer, narrated by another distinctive sound, that of the great Paul Frees, who provided the voices of characters ranging from Boris Badenov to the Pillsbury Doughboy.

THE SORROW & THE PITT

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Among the many, many people for which I am thankful today is one, alas, I must thank posthumously: Deep gratitude (especially on behalf of my adolescent self) to the supremely sultry & statuesque Ingrid Pitt, passed on at 73.

Born Ingoushka Petrov in Poland, the iconic vamp of British horror flicks is most remembered for The Vampire Lovers, Countess Dracula & The House That Dripped Blood. Her career, though not prolific, included Shakespeare, Dr. Who, Where Eagles Dare & the original, unforgettable version of The Wicker Man.

So…

Monster-of-the-Week: …she certainly gets the nod this week, but for which movie? The Vampire Lovers is probably her most memorable outing...

...but I’ve always had a soft spot for her vampiress in The House That Dripped Blood, on the basis of the scene at the end when she levitates &…her high-heeled shoes drop off her feet to the floor. I don’t know why, but that detail remains one of the most deliriously sexy moments in movies for me.

RIP, Creature of the Night…