Varan The Unbelievable

What if Ishiro Honda made a cheap Godzilla ripoff for Japanese television that was quickly recut into a feature length motion picture? Would you believe me if I told you the result was not very good? That it does nothing to set itself apart from the movie it's copying? Well, as can be said for…

Half Human

Ishiro Honda, fresh off of making Lovetide instead of the first Godzilla sequel (Godzilla Raids Again), was given a similar task by Toho: another monster film. Instead of a giant reptile tearing up major Japanese cities, Honda directs the story of a slightly larger ape-like monster in the Japanese mountains. This isn't exactly a huge…

Godzilla

Just for the record, yes, this is the original Japanese version, and no, I still don't like it. From a filmmaking perspective, I see a lot to like in Ishiro Honda's importantly formative kaiju movie, but from a storytelling perspective, I just cannot get involved. It seems to be built like a procedural in the…

Blue Beetle

This is one of those films that really does feel like it was made by committee, like the director, Angel Manuel Soto, was constantly being pushed aside by executive demands. There's no real star in here, so it was probably just a tussle behind the cameras as this effort to combine the desire to make…

There’s Always Vanilla

#13 in my ranking of George A. Romero's filmography. Well, it's obvious that Romero has talent outside of the limited confines of a single farmhouse in the remote inner country of Pennsylvania, but he's also entirely reliant on a script being written for him to apply that skills effectively. The script by Rudolph Ricci is…