Spectreman

After all of these years of covering lesser-known tokusatsu series, we’ve finally come to Spectreman, which I’ve mentioned multiple times while discussing other topics—and in its way, it is rather important. This is another series by P Productions, the studio formed by former cartoonist Tomio Sagisu that brought us both The Space Giants/Ambassador Magma and Monster Prince, and managed the feat of sparking a second Japanese “Monster Boom” in 1971, a few years after the mid-to-late-sixties boom petered out. As pointed out in previous posts, it managed to beat both Return of Ultraman and Kamen Rider to the punch by only three months—P Productions was a smaller outfit than Tsuburaya Productions or Toei, but they showed themselves to be pretty on the ball when it came to televised kaiju delivery systems. Crucially for this series’ unexpected legacy, they also had something their bigger rivals did not: distribution outside of Japan.

It Lives Again/It’s Alive II (1978)

This month, I’ll be focusing on sequels to movies I’ve written about previously—and while there’s a really tendency in horror movies especially to push out a series of cheap follow-ups made by workman creatives to capitalize on even mild amounts of brand recognition (which was accelerated during the heyday of the VHS market), sometimes you’ll find sequels that have more going for them. Larry Cohen’s 1974 killer baby classic It’s Alive is the kind of simple shock concept that an exploitative producer may want to turn into cheap grindhouse fodder, but both sequels were written and directed by Cohen himself, which indicates to me that the B-movie auteur still had ideas worth exploring. Larry hasn’t led me astray yet!

Even so, the surprisingly human-focused and emotional story of the original It’s Alive seems like a trick that you can only pull once—and I can say that It Lives Again/It’s Alive II does not equal its predecessor on that front. Despite that, Cohen is doggedly intent on actually following up on the implications of the original’s ending, where we learn that murderous mutant babies are being born across America. As one would expect from Cohen, this new story goes in some weird directions, sometimes logically considered and sometimes pure nightmarish grotesque, and the ways it parallels the beats of the first one continue many of its themes while presenting them in a slightly different light. Although escalation is certainly at play here, it’s not as simple as just multiplying the number of monster babies and car chases.

Creature Classic Companion: Piranha (1978)

The career of director Joe Dante represents the ascent of the Monster Kid from fan to filmmaker—people who grew up during the creature feature boom of the fifties and sixties were suddenly given reign of the genre, which they knew inside and out. Having that kind of understanding of the formulas made it all the more easy to subvert and reinvent them, making a smarter and more self-aware range of monster movies in the late seventies and eighties, which Dante heavily contributed to with The Howling and Gremlins. Before those, though, he worked his way up in the B-movie system, cutting trailers for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures (and co-directing a movie made mostly of stock footage) before being assigned to direct Piranha, New World’s blatant attempt to cash in on Jaws‘ success. Following the general Corman ethos, however, meant that as long as you check off all the exploitation movie requirements—low budget, surface similarity to something popular, blood, and female nudity—you are free to do whatever you want (although that didn’t go quite so well for the director of Piranha II, some guy named James Cameron.) So, Dante got together with writer John Sayles to build a Jaws knock-off full of comedic touches and creature feature homages, something that wasn’t just another killer fish movie. As the story goes, Universal was fully prepared to sue this movie out of existence before it reached theatres…until it received the full approval of Steven Spielberg, who considered it by far the best imitation of his movie.

The Bermuda Depths (1978)

We’ve had a bit of a nautical theme for the last few entries, and I’d call it a maritime monster month, but it actually took place over two months, so that would be a lie. Next up is October, and let’s say that I already have plans for then that will be…seasonally appropriate. Yes, that is an accurate, straight-to-the-point description of it.

The Bermuda Depths represents the third of three collaborations between Rankin/Bass and Tsuburaya Productions—yes, the people behind Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the creators of Ultraman, together at last! R/B frequently employed the talents of Japanese studios to make their television specials, so it’s not that much of a surprise—what was surprising was just how prominent Rankin and Bass’ names were in the opening credits, even compared to their other productions. Rankin is credited as co-writer, and Bass penned the lyrics for this thing’s very on-the-nose theme song. It almost feels like all those beloved holiday specials were what they made to pay the bills, but this represents what they really wanted to make.

Monster Multimedia: “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner”

Of course, anyone who has ever listened to rock radio for the past forty years knows Warren Zevon mainly from a horror-themed song, “Werewolves of London”, as ubiquitous as he ever got from five decades of output in the music industry. One could easily mistake it for a novelty song, except I think the cleverness and dark humour that permeates much of Zevon’s music is still very present, even after hearing it for the millionth time. Still, it’s difficult to heap that much praise on “Werewolves,” because not only is it far from the best song on 1978’s Excitable Boy, it’s not even the best Halloween-friendly song on the album. That designation is hard-earned by “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner”, one of Zevon’s trademark ballads and an interesting case of some of his recurring themes coming together to create a modern ghost story.