bkoganbing Poor James Craig, I hope that his salary check cleared and he thought that the trip to Japan was worth appearing in this god awful science fiction clunker. After nearly having a nervous breakdown NASA scientist James Craig is recommended a leave of absence and a nice trip to Japan. Craig thinks that he'd like to do some experiments in botany which was his first love as a scientist.After this he goes to Japan where the daughter of one of his colleagues sets him up in a nice abandoned resort near an active volcano, the better to do his experiments. So what does Craig do, something useful like developing kernels of corn the size of basketballs to feed people? Nah, what he does is develop a giant size Venus Fly Trap that eventually has the mobility of a Triffid and the appetite of one. Poor Craig, for a guy who needs peace and quiet the better to cope with a nervous breakdown he spends a lot of time shouting at Atsuko Rome the girl who is assisting him. Possibly because of her bad acting or dubbing, you can't really tell.Venus Fly Trap has a Frankenstein quality to it down to the deformed Igor-San like hunchback who helps out. Would it were as good as those Universal Frankenstein films.

Red-Barracuda This obscure little sci-fi horror is in all honestly atrocious. Good old Ed Wood wrote the screenplay for it and it's certainly down to his usual standards. Although I think if Wood had directed the film then it would have been a lot more fun, as his films generally have a delirious energy that makes them for the most part entertaining and memorable. The Revenge of Dr. X sadly is neither entertaining nor especially memorable. It's pacing is way off, as the film drags on uneventfully. And, even though the central plant monster is severely stupid in an agreeable way, whenever it attacks anyone in the film the screen just goes red in an effort to avoid any further special effects (i.e. blood and gore). Clearly this is a mistake as this dreary little movie could have done with something to enliven the proceedings. Instead, for the most part, we have a plot that basically consists of a scientist who looks like Russ Meyer developing a Venus flytrap monster. Sexploitation king Meyer himself would have approved of the scene where our scientist hero meets some topless Japanese girls on the beach; but wacky scenes like this just don't make up for the endless tedium that constitutes the majority of this movie's running time. Maybe the only truly memorable aspect of this film is the fact that the title is misleading and meaningless beyond comprehension.

lemon_magic The version of this movie which I saw (from the "Nightmare Worlds" 50 pack) was a terrible print - watching it was like watching the movie underwater and also through several layers of gauze. That may not have been the movie makers' fault, so I added an extra star out of sheer pity. This one really takes the cake. A Rent-A-Center version of Clark Gable stars as a mad scientist who relaxes from his regular job as an astrophysicist/mathematician by going on vacation in Japan and trying to build a new form of humanoid life out of a Venus Flytrap and thereby proving that "man descended from the sea". I think. Along the way he picks up an (uncredited) Japanese woman assistant and a hunch backed assistant whom he alternately patronizes and berates and makes a whole bunch of speeches that were obviously written by someone (Ed Wood, Jr?) who may have had the worst tin ear for dialog in the history of screen-plays. The monster he creates gets loose (of course) and a mob of torch wielding Japanese villagers seem to spontaneously generate out of thin air within 30 seconds after he goes for his little walk.Events happen, people say "things" to each other, and the doctor and his plant man perish together for no apparent reason other than the screen play is trying to mimic the Frankenstein monster story. The end.I can't imagine what the director and the editor thought they were doing when they finally pieced this thing together and released it. They were lucky that they didn't get their own torch wielding mob of movie goers demanding payback and destruction of every copy of the film ever made.

hengir Now here is a wonderful premise for a film. A scientist from NASA goes on holiday to Japan and while there takes up his old interest in botany. Going on the theory that because life started in the sea thus all humanity is descended from plant life (come again?) the scientist cross breeds a venus fly trap with a Japanese equivalent and creates an artificial man-plant thing.To make it like a Frankenstein film the thing is hauled up to the roof while lightning is conducted down.("The earth is its mother, the sky will be its father!" says the scientist) Then of course the monster gets loose and encounters a child which it murders and aggrieved villagers go around with torches, just like those great Universal films of yore. This almost makes it sound exciting but it isn't. To accompany all this nonsense is a very jolly music score that is totally inappropriate. The version I saw was called "The Revenge of Doctor X" which is about as misleading to the story as you could get. Again it sounds just like an old horror title Universal would use in the 1930s. The monster itself looks hilarious.