Tag: mutant

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles
Mutant Mayhem

Directors – Jeff Rowe, Kyler Spears – 2022 – US – Cert. PG – 99m

*****

The much loved comic-generated franchise gets a remakable reboot in animation that breaks the filmmaking mould to really get under the skin of the teenage experience – out in UK cinemas on Monday, July 31st

Hollywood animated children’s films since the advent of computer animation. They all look the same. Okay, that’s not entirely fair, but with notable exceptions like the Laika films and the recent Spider-Verse films there’s a definite homogeneity to this output overall, industry wisdom dictating the production parameters and the overall look and feel. There’s a mould there, the films make money and producers are terrified to break that mould. Not so here.

The irony is that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property, born out of a late night joke between two comic book artists who never expected to sell more than a one-off issue, has spawned numerous spin-offs in comics, animated TV series, video games and movies. Somehow, the previous six movies – three in the 1990s (including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Steve Barron, 1990; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret Of The Ooze, Michael Pressman, 1991), one in 2007, and two more in the last decade following a reboot in 2014 – never quite delivered on the promise of the franchise, as if everyone concerned was too focused on the moneymaking potential and trying to play everything safe, an approach completely at odds with that of the two artists who originated the property and simply thought of it as a fun idea worth developing.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles II
The Secret
Of The Ooze

Director – Michael Pressman – 1991 – US – Cert. PG – 88m

***

With the criminal youth cult The Foot in disarray, its leader The Shredder (Francois Chau) emerges from a pile of garbage in a rubbish dump to lead the organisation’s remnant against their hated enemies, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Elsewhere in the city, TV reporter April (Paige Turco) is investigating the activities of the Techno Cosmic Research Institute (TCRI) through an interview with Professor Jordon Perry (David Warner), who is concerned with burying canisters containing the toxic waste product.

Off camera, and unbeknown to April, giant flowers are sprouting from a leak of the chemical (which also caused the original mutation of the Turtles and their giant rat master, Splinter, played by Kevin Clash). The Shredder captures Professor Perry and mutates some more creatures for the express purpose of pitting them against the Turtles.

Like its predecessor, this sequel is a film designed primarily to cash in on a children’s craze. Here, at least two of the actors playing the Turtles have changed, as has the actress playing their reporter friend April. The animatronics work once again reaches the high standard one would have expected from the late Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles
(UK: Teenage Mutant
Hero Turtles)

Director – Steve Barron – 1990 – US, UK – Cert. PG – 91m 38s (cut) – 93m 25s (cuts waived for 2003 reclassification) BBFC info here

** 1/2

What can you say about four turtles who accidentally wandered into radioactive material, which caused them to grow unnaturally large and speak strange words? Like “pizza!” Or who serve a ninja master in the form of a giant, talking, four foot rat named Splinter (voice and performer: Kevin Clash)?

Whatever else they might be, the turtles are certainly different. While they might well fight for Truth, Justice and the American Way, they certainly know where their priorities lie, and never give up their other, equally important aims – to party and to seek out that essential slice of pizza.

This is the final film on which the late, great puppet master Jim Henson (The Muppets TV series, 1976-81; The Dark Crystal, 1982) worked. Here, his directorial protégé Steve Barron brings to life not only Leonardo (voice: Brian Tochi, performer: David Foreman), Michelangelo (voice: Robbie Rist, performer: Michelan Sisti), Raphael (voice and performer: Josh Pais) and Donatello (voice: Corey Feldman, performer: Leif Tilden), but also the crazy, teen crime-ridden city under which they live.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The H Man
(Bijo
To Ekitai-ningen,
美女と液体人間)

*****

Director – Ishiro Honda – 1958 – Japan – Cert. X – 86m

The H Man (lit. Beauty And The Liquid People) was scripted by Takashi Kimura, who, as Jasper Sharp notes in the accompanying booklet, wrote monster movies for Honda where the monsters were liquid, gas (The Human Vapor, 1960) and mutant man-mushrooms (Matango, 1963). All these can be read as the elements constituting the clouds – or mushroom clouds – of nuclear bombs dropped on Japan or tested near it.

Yet after opening with nuclear explosion stock footage, the film swiftly morphs into a police procedural in which various characters mysteriously disappear… [read more]

Over at All The Anime, I review Eureka!’s Ishiro Honda Blu-ray double bill of The H Man and Battle In Outer Space.

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Ishiro Honda
Double Feature
The H Man
(Bijo
To Ekitai-ningen,
美女と液体人間)
and
Battle
In Outer Space
(Uchu Daisenso,
宇宙大戦争)

The H Man

*****

Director – Ishiro Honda – 1958 – Japan – Cert. X – 86m

Battle in Outer Space

*****

Director – Ishiro Honda – 1959 – Japan – Cert. U – 90m

Alongside the standalone release of Mothra (1961) comes a double bill of two more Toho science fiction movies directed by Ishiro Honda with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya: , The H Man (1958) and Battle In Outer Space (1959). The Toho studio is associated more with monster movies than any other genre, notably Godzilla (1954) and Mothra. The superior entries in this cycle tend to be the ones they directed, including the initial 1954 film which ticked all the right boxes to prove a massive success.

When no-one at Toho was quite sure what had made Godzilla work, the pair collaborated on a number of different SF films before everything came together on Mothra. The H Man is a monster film dressed up in gangster trappings while Battle in Outer Space is an epic with space stations, flying saucers, rocket ships, an alien moon base and alien mind control… [read more]

Over at All The Anime, I review Eureka!’s Ishiro Honda double bill Blu-ray.