ferbs54 My fellow Trekkers who rent Ishiro Honda's 1970 offering, "Space Amoeba," expecting to see an 11,000-mile-long, single-celled organism on the order of the one shown in the classic "Immunity Syndrome" episode may be a bit disappointed here. Rather, the sparkling hive colony in this film that attaches itself to Earth's unmanned Helios 7 rocket, en route to Jupiter, is comparatively teeny, but still capable of causing major-league mishegas nonetheless. This space hive causes the Earth rocket to crashland in the Pacific and proceeds to transform a squid, a crab and a turtle into some giant monsters, respectively Gezora, Ganime and Kamoeba. Good thing that a Japanese biologist, a photographer, an industrial spy AND the obligatory pretty girl all happen to be convening on nearby Selgio Island to explore a future resort area.... Anyway, this Honda monster bash is a mixed blessing at best. While Gezora looks pretty cool lumbering about on his tentacles, his fellow monstrosities are fairly lame, and the seemingly inevitable dukeout between two of them may be the dullest in the history of the kaiju eiga. The film grows increasingly loopy as it proceeds, and the final 1/3, conflating bats, a native marriage ceremony and a deus-ex-machina volcano, is quite bizarre. Fortunately, the photography of the island looks great, longtime Honda collaborator Akira Ifukube provides another rousing score, and FX man Sadamasa Arikawa dishes out some interesting visuals, especially his outer space shots and the "amoeba" itself. (Sadly, his giant monsters are not equal to those of an earlier Honda colleague, Eiji Tsuburaya.) All in all, the film is an undeniably fun mixed bag that should just manage to please fans of the genre. Oh...a great-looking DVD here, thanks to the fine folks at Media Blasters' Tokyo Shock unit.

Tarquineshetta The theme ingredients are octopus and kitsch.This is a great movie for an evening of friends, microwave popcorn, fizzy drinks (your choice), and a kitschy romp that'll make you laugh 'til you cry. If the "Iron Chef" voice-overs make you laugh, these will make you scream for mercy.Make it a double-feature: complete your evening of low-budget deadpan kitsch with a screening of "Avenging Disco Godfather."Allez Cuisine!PS: IMDb says, "Sorry, you must provide at least 10 lines in your comment. Please return to the edit window (or use the BACK option if this isn't a new window)." There! I've made my quota!

Akiosan "Kessen! Nankai no Dakaiju" (or on Brazilian TV, "Monstruos nos consoles pacíficos". I have seen both Portuguese dub and original Japanese version) has to be one crazy Kaiju eiga opis! It starts with a Space blob from Jupeter coming down to earth and crashing on Guam, mutating anything it gets near to, including A Cuttelfish, Crabs and a Turtles. These creatures go ape $#^#^ and start damaging the vacation resorts (Oh no!)One scene I remember is where Gezora (the Cuttelfish monster) starts braking into some huts, tossing some hapless vacationers around like, well, action figurines! A must see indeed *laughs*

mainstay "Yog: Monster from Space" (the English title) is sort of like "Plan Nine from Outer Space" in the respect that it is a pretty bad film that is wonderfully entertaining to watch. One great example is found in the beginning. The main character is sitting in a jet reading a newspaper. We can see the headline -- 'Jupiter probe fails' (or something to that effect). At that >exact< moment, the guy looks out the window and happens to see the Jupiter probe parachuting back to earth (and he's in a jet going 200-300 miles per hour). Later, at his destination, he's assigned a photography job on this tropical island (apparently a Japanese tourist company is going to build a resort there). When he sees the location of this island marked with an "x" on the map, he says "gee, thats the EXACT SPOT where I saw the jupiter probe go down". Then there are the rubbery-looking monsters complete with Godzillaesque screeching noises, really bad special effects shots where people look like action figures, big halos around the tentacles that grab people, etc. Essentially, the movie is pretty much the same Godzilla formula: characters discover monster(s), characters meet incompetent tribal villagers, characters try to defeat monster(s). For anyone who likes Godzilla et al., or anyone who wants to laugh hysterically at rubbery stop motion monsters in a bad film, this is a must-see.