Great Moments in Toy Robot History: Shogun Warriors

The origins of popular and recurring trends in pop culture can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint, especially trends that have gone on for so long that they become an accepted fixture of everyday life. For this post, I'm talking about Japanese robot toys that are imported and sold in the U.S. I'm sure robot fans who are around my age will remember how Japanese robot toys dominated the shelves of toy stores during the 80s, but the trend of U.S. toy companies securing the rights to sell Japanese robot toys in North America actually began in the 70s with Mattel's Shogun Warriors. While the Shogun Warriors line didn't last long, its influence would impact the toy industry for decades to come. Read on for my retrospective of this trend-setting toy line.

The idea of importing toys from one country and then selling them in another is not a new idea unto itself. However, what made the Shogun Warriors different was that included merchandise from many different points of origin but was sold under a single brand name. Mattel marketed the robot toys as if they all inhabited the same shared universe but they actually originated from over a dozen different Japanese "Super Robot" anime series, series such as Brave Raideen, Gaiking and Voltes V.

To encourage the perception of a unified product line, Mattel gave the licensing rights to Marvel Comics to create a Shogun Warriors comic book series, where the robots coexisted as a single force for good against an evil alien force. There was also a syndicated cartoon series called Force Five that was set up to show five of the anime series upon which the Shogun Warrior toys were based. Unfortunately, the Shogun Warriors line was winding down by the time Force Five made it to the air and only a handful of TV markets carried the series for the brief time that it ran.

Not to limit itself to Super Robot anime, Mattel also secured the rights to Godzilla and Rodan, two monsters from famous Japanese Atomic Age kaiju movies, so that they could be added to the Shogun Warriors line as monsters for the giant robots to fight. As far as I know, Shogun Warriors is the only toy line that has combined Super Robot anime with live-action kaiju films; from that perspective, Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim (2013) could also have been named Shogun Warriors: The Movie.

A Godzilla figure from the Shogun Warriors line, complete with 

launching spring-loaded claw and extendable tongue of fire.

Shogun Warrior robots came in three different sizes: 24 inches, 5 inches, and 3.5 inches. Even though the 24-inch robots are what most people remember about the Shogun Warriors line, you could see some items from the robot toys' original anime series in the Shogun Warriors' "Action Vehicle" toys. For example, the Rydoto Action Vehicle was actually from the Brave Raideen anime series and the Kargosaur Action Vehicle was from Gaiking.

 

Curiously, some of the Shogun Warrior Action Vehicle toys had nothing to do with any Super Robot anime series; they were just toys that Mattel apparently decided to include in the line anyway because they looked similar enough to the robots. After all, none of the anime series upon which the Shogun Warriors toy line was based aired on U.S. television during most of the line's release, so it wasn't as if the kids who were buying the toys would know the difference.

The Shogun Warriors' Heli-Capter Action Vehicle 

(Japanese TV show of origin unknown).

The Shogun Warriors line didn't last long and completely disappeared from toy stores within a few years of its launch. Regardless, its approach to licensing Japanese robot toys in bulk was also used by other toy and model kit lines that were released in the U.S. during the 80s:

* Hasbro's Transformers line was a combination of Takara Tomy's Diaclone and Microman lines, and the Transformers marketing campaign depicted the robots and sentient beings from another planet.

* Matchbox's Voltron line was a combination of robot toys from three anime series: Beast King GoLion, Armored Fleet Dairugger XV and Lightspeed Electroid Albegas. However, when the Voltron cartoon series was assembled to help promote the toy line, footage from Albegas was not included.

* Revell's line of Robotech model kits combined robot kits from three anime series as well: Fang of the Sun Dougram, Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Super Dimension Century Orguss. Yet when the Robotech cartoon was assembled, footage from Dougram and Orguss were not used and Macross was edited together with footage from Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA.

One of Revell's Robotech model kits that's originally from 

the Fang of the Sun Dougram anime series.

Over time, the concept of mashing together Super Robot anime series into a single line of merchandise eventually made it back Japan itself with the arrival of Super Robot Wars in 1991. Super Robot Wars is a series of tactical role-playing video games where players can choose from a selection of Super Robots from various anime and manga series. This selection also includes the titular robots from Mazinger Z and Getter Robo, two of the robots that were also featured in the Shogun Warriors toy line. The Super Robot Wars game series continues to this day, and has since expanded to include anime and manga series of its own.

To learn more about the Shogun Warriors, check out the following fan sites:

* Wildtoy's Shogun Warriors Page

* Weird Science-Fantasy's Shogun Warriors Page

* Ted Terranova's Robot Page.

A Shogun Warriors Halloween Costume.

Big 'Bots and Belligerent Behemoths Clash in Pacific Rim (2013)

Since I'm planning to wrap up 2013 with a look back at a few examples of Japanese robot toys--one of my favorite kind of toys--I thought I would kick off this year-end series of posts with a review of Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, one of the big-budget releases from last summer that I missed when it was playing in the theaters.

Summer blockbusters have never been held in high regard by the film critic community, and such critics have been particularly displeased with Hollywood's over-usage of CGI effects to produce increasingly bigger and louder blockbuster movies. To be sure, such criticism is not entirely inaccurate: CGI does permit the creation of larger-scale environments and set pieces in ways that miniatures, matte paintings and other practical effect techniques could never allow. As such, CGI has enabled the production of many, many summer blockbusters that are enormous in terms of spectacle but conspicuously short in terms of creative ideas and conceptual depth. Pacific Rim is not one of those movies, because del Toro eagerly packs every frame of his film with enough details and ideas that fans who know what they're looking at will be reviewing this movie for years to come. Pacific Rim is a "big" in every sense of the term--big CGI, big landscapes, big battles, big ideas, and big ambition. In fact, I can't think of how any other special effects technique other than CGI could have accommodated del Toro's story.

In a nutshell, Pacific Rim is about a group of pilots, military leaders, scientists and technicians who build and operate giant robots called "Jaegers" that are designed to fight a seemingly endless series of giant monsters called "Kaiju" that have been emerging out of the Pacific Ocean for years to regularly trash the nearest city. The movie takes places during the closing days of the Kaiju war, when the Jaeger team is planning its final offensive that promises to put an end to the Kaiju menace.

Pacific Rim is a well-made film in every aspect: a well-written script, a well-cast ensemble of actors, and a well-directed approach to the material. Yet to really appreciate this movie, one has to understand that it is a tribute to Japan's "Super Robot" fantasy-science fiction genre and its "Real Robot" spin-off subgenre. Super Robot and Real Robot anime and manga usually involve giant robots that are piloted by human beings to fight giant monsters, other giant robots, or both. The Super Robot genre began in the mid-50s with the manga series Tetsujin 28, and it has continued with popular titles such as Mazinger Z, Mobile Suit Gundam, Patlabor and Neon Genesis Evangelion.

One of Pacific Rim's Super Robots, complete with "Rocket Punch" action.

Pacific Rim also draws inspiration from Japan's kaiju movies (ergo the collective name of the giant monsters in Rim), and the monster designs in the movie demonstrate how much del Toro and his production crew love and understand kaiju films such as Godzilla and Mothra. Nevertheless, most of the film's other details--the characters, their technology, the situations they face and the world they inhabit--are clearly modeled after Super Robot and Real Robot narratives. To put it another way, Pacific Rim is to Super Robot and Real Robot stories as Star Wars is to pulpy sci-fi space operas such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.

With so many details spread throughout the movie, some aspects feel somewhat lacking. In particular, so much detail is applied to movie's fictitious world (a world where there's even a black market for dead Kaiju parts) that the characters feel more like broad personality types than fully-developed individuals. We see bits and pieces of who they are and their roles within the beleaguered, monster-pummeled society they represent but not much more than that; at times, it almost feels like watching Top Gun with giant robots instead of fighter jets. Yet del Toro's enthusiasm for the material permeates every aspect of the film, so I enjoyed geeking out with him just to see what kind of unique interpretations he could put on machines and monsters that are so closely associated with Japanese pop culture. To say that del Toro went above and beyond what he set out to do is an understatement, making this one of his best films to date.

If you don't understand why anyone would want to make a big-budget, live-action film based on anime and manga stories about giant robots, then Pacific Rim probably isn't for you. Otherwise, if you love big brawling 'bots and are looking for an example of CGI done right, then go grab some popcorn and treat yourself to del Toro's magnum mecha opus.

Crayola Encourages Budding Kaiju Fans Through Its Create 2 Destroy Toy Line

Imagine this holiday shopping scenario: You're a life-long fan of giant monster movies and want to foster an appreciation of such entertainment in the next generation of geeks--your kids, your nieces and nephews, or both. However, you think that they're too young to grasp the finer points of such giant monster mashes such as Godzilla, Gamera: Guardian of the Universe and Pacific Rim, so you have no idea what to get them for Christmas. Well, never fear because Crayola has got your back this year with its Create 2 Destroy line of playsets.

The Create 2 Destroy playsets aren't strictly kaiju merchandise, but they might as well be because half of the playsets involve giant monsters trashing a city, a shopping mall, and a suburban community. These playsets make up the Dino Destruction sub-series, where kids use Morphix (Crayola's answer to Play-Doh) to mold cars, buildings and trees that the included dinosaurs can stomp with their feet and crush with their jaws. Some of the dinosaurs have spring-loaded tails that kids can use as catapults to launch Morphix-molded boulders into nearby targets.

The other Create 2 Destroy sub-series, Fortress Invasion, are designed to have kids build fortresses, castles and walls with the goal of knocking them down by using the included catapults. While these playsets don't include any monsters, adult fans of King Kong can buy their kids a Dino Destruction playset and a Fortress Invasion playset that so they can imagine dinosaurs tearing through the enormous protective wall on Skull Island. This is the kind of stuff that brings geek families closer together during the holiday season!

Great Moments in Video Game Licensing History: Alligator People and Planet of the Apes for the Atari 2600

Since early days of their history, video games have been used like any other form of merchandising--as the recipients of licenses for popular characters, movies and TV shows for the sake of making money based on name recognition. It didn't matter how limited the graphics and game play options were in early video games; as long as gamers were willing to associate vague shapes, garbled noises and repetitive tasks with famous characters such as Buck Rogers, Dracula, Popeye and Superman, entertainment companies were willing to add video games to their vast inventories of licensed merchandise.

Yet as with most things in the entertainment industry, some oddities were bound to surface in what would appear to be a straightforward system. Case in point: unreleased games based on The Alligator People (1959) and Planet of the Apes (1968) for the Atari 2600. I can understand why Atari, Intellivision and Coleco were looking for new game content to promote their respective consoles in the early days of home gaming, but using licenses as obscure as Alligator People or in decline as Planet of the Apes to develop games doesn't make much sense even by today's standards. Read on for more details about these strange artifacts from video game history.

How Alligator People and Planet of the Apes wound up on the production list of video game developers during the early 80s is not entirely clear. Both are owned by 20th Century Fox, but the reasons why Fox licensed these particular titles out for video game development have been lost over time.

As a movie, The Alligator People was a ripoff of The Fly and was produced to be shown on a double bill with Fly's first sequel, Return of the Fly. It was produced during the later half of what has since become known as the "Atomic Age" of horror--namely, when horror stories depicted atomic radiation either awakening a prehistoric monster (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) or creating a new kind of monster from a pre-existing animal (Them!) or from people (The Amazing Colossal Man). Atomic Age horror films would provide ample amounts of material for video games from the 90s onward, games such as It Came From the Desert and Zombies Ate My Neighbors; however, the unfinished Alligator People game would have been one of the first video game nods to Atomic Age horror cinema had it been released.

A reproduction box for The Alligator People (photo courtesy of RetroGamesShop).

So what is The Alligator People game about? According to the description provided by AtariAge, "You are lost in the deepest part of the jungle. Six of your friends have fallen under the spell of the Alligator People. They are slowly being transformed into alligators and you are the only one in the world who can save them! ... To stop this transformation, you must inoculate each of them with a special antidote that you gather throughout the swamp. You don't have a lot of time! Not to mention, the alligators are chasing you as you attempt to gather vials of the antidote! The longer you wait, the more antidote you need to reverse the effects of the Alligator People!"

Whether the excitement of the game's description carries over to the game itself depends upon how you feel about retro gaming. While the idea of fighting off horribly malformed human-alligator hybrids sounds like a great idea for a horror survival game, the Atari 2600 Alligator People game has players controlling what looks like a giant hypodermic needle to find doses of antidote and shoot attacking alligators. The game's difficulty can be adjusted to add a constantly shifting maze that hinders the players' movements. Click here to read a profile of Alligator People on the AtariProtos site, and you can see an example of game play in the video window below.

For its time, Planet of the Apes was the premiere sci-fi franchise; Star Trek was still building its fan base during the 70s and Star Wars wouldn't appear until 1977. Even though Apes has appeared in movies, novels, comic books, Saturday morning cartoons and toy lines, this franchise never had much success in the area of video game entertainment. The first official Apes game was released in 2001 as a tie-in to the Tim Burton remake; however, if 20th Century Fox hadn't closed its video game unit, the first Apes game would have appeared either in 1983 or 1984 for the Atari 2600. (Then again, it also didn't help that the Apes franchise was largely dormant during the 80s and 90s, the decades where video gaming began to catch on as a viable market for home entertainment.)

A fan-created depiction of an Atari 2600 Planet of the Apes video game box.

In the Planet of the Apes game, players guide an astronaut who is stranded on the titular planet through different locations until they reach the final screen, the remains of the Statue of Liberty. Three types of apes are in the game--Chimpanzees, Orangutans and Gorillas--and they can shoot at, capture and kill the astronaut. Since this game was programmed for the Atari 2600, each location in the game consists of multiple screens and players have to figure out how the screens for each location connect to each other in order to make it to the final screen. Click here to read about the game on the Planet of the Apes Wikia site, and you can see an example of game play in the video window below.

Given how pop culture shamelessly mines older media brands for the sake of making money from nostalgia, producing games based on The Alligator People and Planet of the Apes for today's market would barely raise an eyebrow. Yet to know that these titles were under development as far back as the early 80s, the fledgling years of home gaming, provides us with a glimpse as to how developers were experimenting with using films from previous decades to create fresh content for what was then a new kind of home entertainment.

Richard Matheson, 1926 - 2013

As giants in the horror and sci-fi genres go, Richard Matheson is a unique case. He's not a familiar name for most media audiences, yet his influence is so pervasive that it's impossible to imagine modern horror and sci-fi pop culture without him.

In the early years of my geekhood, I familiarized myself with both classic and contemporary horror and sci-fi movies and TV shows but Matheson's name never stood out in any obvious way. Unlike horror/sci-fi celebrities such as Stephen King and Steven Spielberg--both of whom have been heavily influenced by Matheson--I rarely saw Matheson's name used to promote his work. It wasn't until I noticed the appearance of his name in the credits of many movies and TV shows that I was able to understand who he was.

Even though he is a well-respected novelist and short story author in his own right, Matheson frequently contributed his talents to film and TV production. He would either adapt his written work into scripts (The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Legend of Hell House), adapt the work of others into scripts (Burn, Witch, Burn, The Devil Rides Out), or create completely original scripts (The Comedy of Terrors, Kolchak: The Night Stalker). Outside of his direct contributions to Hollywood, many of his other stories and novels were adapted by others into movies and for episodes of TV shows such as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Twilight Zone, and Night Gallery. Chances are that if you're a fan of any horror/sci-fi movie franchise or TV series within the last 60 years, Matheson probably had something to do with it.

Although he recently passed away, it's still Richard Matheson's world. We horror and sci-fi fans are just living in it.

Ray Harryhausen, 1920 - 2013

I heard this week that stop-motion effects legend Ray Harryhausen passed away at the age of 92. Geek sites of all stripes have been doing obit and retrospective pieces about Harryhausen and his astonishing legacy, so it's only fitting that I share a few thoughts of my own about this amazing monster maker.

I was first exposed to Harryhausen's work the same way I was first exposed to most classic fantasy, horror and sci-fi cinema: through syndicated TV, during weekend afternoon sessions of channel surfing. I initially didn't know who Harryhausen actually was, but I knew his work when I saw it. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, It Came from Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Mysterious Island ... whenever these movies would air, I would tune in and gawk in amazement at Harryhausen's stop motion creations as they terrorized us feeble, fragile human beings. I couldn't have told you a thing back then about how he brought his creations to life, but I knew that there was something magical about them. Harryhausen was a master puppeteer and animator, and his attention to the details of emotion, form and movement was so meticulous that even after I had a firmer understanding of how stop motion animation actually operates, it still felt like these creatures had a kind of life of their own. Some may complain that stop motion animation isn't "realistic" enough, but such a complaint completely misses the wonder and excitement that comes from artistic inspiration and ingenuity.

If we can learn anything from Harryhausen's work, it is that the creation of illusions is an art form unto itself. Making things move that do not otherwise move, making things big that are actually small, and making things appear close together when they are actually far apart were techniques that Harryhausen skillfully applied to make his creations seamlessly share scenes with flesh-and-blood actors. It's easy to take these techniques for granted, especially since movies in general specialize in creating a wide variety of fantasies, but Harryhausen was an artist in a truest sense who in turn influenced subsequent generations of special effects artists.

I don't mind CGI effects in general, but something gets lost when physical effects like stop-motion are replaced by digital images, when computers do most or all of the sculpting, animating, assembling and calculating; the craftsmanship and creativity of artistic vision gives way to the novelty and convenience of technology. The mass production of CGI effects has led to the mass production of flashy yet forgettable blockbusters with no uniqueness of their own. In contrast, Harryhausen was a pioneer of imaginative cinema and his distinct and distinguished work will live on long, long after the CGI-overloaded movie franchises are forgotten.

Great Moments in Body Horror Cinema: The H-Man (1958)

Growing up as I did during the heyday of VHS rentals, I noticed one recurring idea among gory, low-budget horror movies: melting people. Quite a few exploitation horror films from the 70s, 80s and early 90s, films such as The Incredible Melting Man (1977), Street Trash (1987) and Body Melt (1993), featured shocking scenes where monsters and/or victims would melt into messy puddles of blood, bones and liquefied flesh. Of course, such a plot device allowed for huge amounts of stomach-churning gore. Yet what's remarkable is that the grandfather of these films isn't that gory at all and is actually much more disturbing for it: The H-Man, which was directed by Ishirô Honda and produced by Toho Studios.

The H-Man is an Atomic Age horror movie from Japan, although it's much different than the Atomic Age kaiju movies for which Japan is largely known. Even though it's often compared to The Blob (which was released in the U.S. later during the same year), The H-Man is actually an early "body horror" movie; it was released the same year as another Atomic Age body horror movie, The Fly, and it predates David Cronenberg's first body horror film Shivers (1975) by over a decade. Director Honda did two other Atomic Age body horror films in addition to The H-Man: The Human Vapor (1960) and Matango (1963).

Not only was The H-Man ahead of its time in the body horror subgenre, it was also ahead of its time in terms of melting people effects. Read on for more details about this strange and haunting Japanese horror classic.

The H-Man takes place in the streets of Tokyo during a police investigation into a drug smuggling ring that operates out of a seedy nightclub. The detectives are baffled when one their key suspects disappears in front of a group of eye witnesses, leaving only his clothes behind. As more suspects disappear and the case reaches a dead end, the police get some answers from Dr. Masada (Kenji Sahara). Masada believes that the suspects are victims of "H-Men", people whose intense exposure to atomic radiation has turned them into gelatinous, amorphous creatures that feed on other human beings by melting their flesh. After a close encounter with the H-Men at the nightclub, the police accept Masada's theory and work with local authorities to stop the monsters before they spread further into Japan.

The H-Man is a creative mix of pulp detective fiction and Atomic Age horror. Honda composes many memorable scenes in this film, from the ominous opening shots of the abandoned and irradiated Dragon King II freight ship (the H-Men's place of origin) to the closing shots of Tokyo's gasoline-imbued waterways going up in flames to kill the H-Men. Before the end credits roll, one of the characters provides a voice-over line that accentuates the endless waves of apocalyptic fire that dwarf the Tokyo skyline:"If man perishes from the face of the Earth, due to the effects of hydrogen bombing, it is possible that the next ruler of our planet may be The H-Man." Interestingly, The H-Man is the title that the American distributors gave to this film; the original Japanese title translates to the much more poetic Beauty and the Liquid Man.

Of course, what steals the show are the H-Men themselves, which appear in two different forms: a thick, green liquid that moves itself up walls and across floors, and a glowing green humanoid shape that lacks distinct features. The humanoid shape usually appears when an H-Man is faced by more than one person, as if to suggest that the sight of other people prompts the liquid creature to fleetingly 'remember' its original shape. Having the formerly human monsters' assume a glowing humanoid shape gives the movie a ghostly feel, of a past that can't be recalled completely but nevertheless refuses to go away and threatens to destroy the present.

Yet of all the elements in this film, the one that really stood out for me (and ergo prompted me to write this post) were the effects used to depict the victims as they are being dissolved by the H-Men. Most melting people effects I've seen over the years were done by a combination of detailed makeup work, fake entrails and stand-in puppets, with the end result being extremely gory. In contrast, the effects in The H-Man are much less gory than its cinematic successors yet just as effective. How can that be?

The answer is very simple: Honda's special effects team created human-shaped latex balloons that were dressed like the actors who played the victims, and then he deflated the balloons while filming them in fast-motion for later playback in the film at normal speed. Such a simple idea is expertly exercised under Honda's eerie lighting and skilled editing; it's hard not to shutter when it looks like an actor's head is collapsing into his torso, followed by his torso and legs collapsing on to the ground in a puddle of ooze. Furthermore, unlike the Blob, a monster that has to cover its victims in order to dissolve and digest them, the H-Men seem lethal simply to touch. The way the attack scenes are shot implies that the victims absorb the H-Men through the skin and thus begin to dissolve from the inside out almost instantaneously--a very disturbing concept to watch.

What’s even more shocking about The H-Man outside of its ideas and effects is the fact that it’s loosely based on a real event. The liquefied fate of the Dragon King II’s crew was inspired by what happened to the crew of the real-life Japanese fishing vessel, the Lucky Dragon No. 5, after it was exposed to and contaminated by nuclear fallout from the Bikini Atoll thermonuclear device test in March 1954. According to Mykal Banta on his the Radiation Cinema site, "All 23 crew members suffered from acute radiation syndrome, the symptoms of which include, headaches, nausea, bleeding from gums, burns, etc. Within 6 months, the chief radio operator, Aikichi Kubouama, 40, was dead from injures. At the time of the test, the ship was operating well outside the danger zone, as given in US Government warnings, but the test was twice as powerful as expected."

The special effect techniques that Honda used to bring the H-Men to life have their limitations. There aren't any direct confrontations between the H-Men and the film's heroes, since such techniques largely preclude the H-Men and live actors appearing closely together within the same frame and thus dampen the film’s tension during its finale. There’s also a scene where one of the scantily clad showgirls at the nightclub is dissolved by an H-Man that doesn't work as well as the other attack scenes. Since the showgirl isn't wearing enough clothing to hide a human-shaped balloon, animation and frozen frames are used instead to much lesser effect. Nevertheless, most of the balloon effects successfully depict the gruesome, horrific idea of physical dissolution by an inconceivable force--an idea that perfectly complements the many fears that were stirred by the rise of nuclear warfare.

For more thoughts concerning The H-Man and its place within Ishirô Honda filmography and Atomic Age pop culture, visit the Radiation Cinema link I posted above and the H-Man articles posted on the Musings of a Sci-Fi Fanatic and the Film Quarterly sites.

Great Moments in Creature Feature Special Effects History: The Monster That Challenged the World (1957)

It's almost impossible these days to read online discussions about new and upcoming creature features without encountering some debate over the effectiveness of practical effects versus CGI. I personally think that a combination of both is the best option, although I've been told by someone who works in the industry that the major studios will often dump practical effects for CGI for the sake of cost-cutting and expediency. That's a disappointing development, but unfortunately that is how Hollywood seems to work these days.

Regardless, for those of you who appreciate practical special effects in your monster movies, you should check out the 50s-era "big bug" movie, The Monster That Challenged the World (1957). There are a few things that are misleading about the title--in particular, there is more than one monster in the movie, and the monsters never actually get around to challenging the entire world. Also, this film is technically not a big bug movie because the monsters are actually giant prehistoric mollusks; nevertheless, the film's plot uses conventions that are very similar to the big bug movies from that decade, particularly Them! (1954) and Black Scorpion (1957).

Where this film earns its place in the history of monster movies is in its special effects, where early animatronics technology was used to bring the titular monster to life. Before there was a mechanical shark in Jaws (1975) or a life-sized Alien Queen puppet in Aliens (1986), there was a giant mechanical mollusk in The Monster That Challenged the World. Read on for more details about this early attempt at using animatronics to put giant monsters in the same sets as their human co-stars.

For a film that was shot in 16 days for a budget of $200,000, the 10 foot tall fiberglass mollusk puppet that was featured in The Monster That Challenged the World is still very impressive to watch. It was designed by Augie Lohman so that the head could tilt in various directions and its mandible pincers could twitch menacingly. According to producer Arthur Gardner, the monster's movements were controlled by Lohman and two assistants through a series of air pressure valves. Gardner estimated that the monster cost around $15,000 to build, and that it weighed around 1,500 pounds. After production, the monster was sold to the Ocean Park Pier in Santa Monica, CA, where it was incorporated into one of the attractions. (Fun horror trivia: Ocean Park Pier was the setting of the 1961 cult classic thriller, Night Tide.)

The film never shows a monster in its entirety. At first, you only see its head and neck, which look like some kind of fanged caterpillar; in other shots, large shells are shown, suggesting that the mollusk monsters looked as a whole like giant snails. I suspect that the giant snail design choice was made for budgetary reasons: As you watch the movie, it becomes clear that only one mollusk puppet was made even though the script says that there are dozens of mollusk monsters lurking in the waters of the Salton Sea, waiting to escape to the Pacific Ocean through a series of water canals. Thus, the filmmakers used the single puppet for attack scenes, and then used several giant shell props (in which the mollusks retreat to rest when they are not on the move) to indicate that there is more than one monster present.

Unfortunately, such a production decision drains the narrative of much of its tension. Even though the mollusk puppet is more impressive than the puppets from Them!, the giant ant film has two things going for it that the giant mollusk movie did not: Them! had 1) a better script and direction and 2) it had more than one puppet. A film is more likely to scare audiences with the threat of a pending giant monster invasion when more than one moving monster appears on the screen. With only one mollusk puppet available, you can't get past the feeling that you're watching the same monster in every attack scene--because you are. In that sense, the movie's title is a Freudian slip: there was only one monster to challenge the world because there was only one monster on the set, no matter what the characters say. Then again, many of the scenes feel like they were scripted in a manner so that characters could talk around the fact that the audience would never see more than one attacking mollusk at a time.

Another shortcoming of the movie that didn't help the mechanical puppet was the monsters' aquatic origin. Even though several scenes in and around the Salton Sea will remind horror fans of Jaws, the mollusk puppet wasn't designed to function in the water. Thus, the water attack scenes were either shot on a set with a rear projection of the Salton Sea or on a set that was supposed to look like the bottom of the Salton Sea. Neither approach is very convincing and they ultimately detract from the puppet's effectiveness.

Don't let my criticisms keep you from watching The Monster That Challenged the World; it may not be an influential classic, but it actually is one of the better creature features from its decade. Watching this film will give you an idea of what it was like to include complex practical special effects in a movie with a low budget, particularly during a certain era of Hollywood history. If you need a break from CGI effects in your horror and sci-fi movies, then you might want to spend some time with The Monster That Challenged the World.

A resin model kit of The Monster That Challenged the World

(photo courtesy of The Doctor's Model Mansion site)

KMD Artistry Restores Two of Hollywood's Classic Human-Insect Freaks of Nature

KMD Artistry, which is owned by visual artist Kelly Delcambre, specializes in restoring and replicating props and costumes that have appeared throughout Hollywood's history. To date, KMD projects have included replicating costumes from Universal's classic monster movies to restoring mechanical props used in films such as the original Fright Night (1985). Delcambre has also designed and produced many cosplay costumes, which are very remarkable in their own right. Yet with me being a huge fan of "Big Bug" movies, I wanted to call attention to one of KMD's restoration projects that is near and dear to my dark, twisted heart: the human-fly costumes from the original The Fly (1958) and its first sequel Return of the Fly (1959). Click below for more pictures of the human-fly monster restorations, as well as a few thoughts about how the restorations compare to the original costumes. All pictures are provided courtesy of KMD Artistry.

KMD's recreations of the human-fly monsters from the early Fly movies speak for themselves--they are very faithful to the original designs. The fly head from The Fly is closer to human proportions to accommodate the hood that concealed it through most of the movie, while the fly head from Return of the Fly is larger and more grotesque to add shock value to the sequel's lean, low-budget script.

Because KMD's fly head recreations are not meant to be worn by actors, additional details were be added to the heads and claws while others were removed. For example, David Hedison could move the fly head's proboscis in The Fly by using his mouth. As you can see from the replica produced by KMD below, the proboscis does not move because there is no one inside the mask to move it.

David Hedison in The Fly ... 

... and KMD's replica of The Fly.

The fly mask in Return of the Fly had two triangle-shaped patches of mesh fabric that were below the eyes, one on each side of the mouth. These patches were put in the mask to allow the actor who wore the mask to see and breathe.

The man-insect monster from Return of the Fly ...

... and the same monster mask on display at the "It's Alive!" Animatronics Exhibit at

the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, 2006.

Note the triangular patches on the lower half of the mask.

Since KMD didn't have to worry about an actor underneath the mask, additional monstrous details were molded into the fly head in place of the mesh patches.

 Kelly Delcambre and his Return of the Fly replica.

KMD's life-size Return of the Fly bust. 

The Delambre-Delcambre connection: Brett Halsey (who played Philippe Delambre 

in Return of the Fly) and Kelly Delcambre at Monsterpalooza 2010. 

Check out KMD Artistry's Facebook page and YouTube channel for more examples for Delcambre's amazing work. Click here for some additional commentary about the original Fly trilogy.

The Age of Feature-Length 3D Horror and Sci-Fi Cartoons in America Has Arrived

Feature-length cartoons have been around in American cinema since Disney released Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs back in 1937, but cartoons for genres outside of fairy tale-based musicals have been very rare for most of the time since that milestone. Thus, I've been ecstatic that three horror-themed cartoons--ParaNorman, Hotel Transylvania and Frankenweenie--are being released in American theaters between August and October of this year. Furthermore, all three of them are in 3D and two of them were shot using stop-motion animation, a special effects technique that has almost completely vanished from live-action films.

To be sure, these titles aren't horror cartoons per se--they are mostly comedies with plot points and imagery based on the horror genre. Yet having three of these films debuting in American theaters within weeks of each other is unprecedented and I think that it reflects what 3D and CGI technology can contribute to cinema animation in terms of the kinds of subject matter that animators can explore. I've already posted about how 3D technology has found a home in video games and feature-length CGI cartoons; here, I'll examine how 3D and CGI have sparked new life into animated storytelling, which has resulted in a selection of horror and sci-fi themed cartoons (five of which I will discuss in this post) that will pave the way for new generations of horror and sci-fi fans. In a time where live-action horror and sci-fi films that are released on the big screen have been overrun with remakes, reboots and retreads, this can only be a good thing. Read on ...

For the longest time, the only horror-themed cartoon movie around was Mad Monster Party, which was produced by Rankin/Bass Productions back in 1967, yet that stop-motion cult classic was a rarity even among certain groups of horror fans. I first saw it on syndicated TV when I was just a wee lad during the late 70s (the film was followed by a broadcast of Son of The Blob, which scared the crap out of me before I was old enough to know better). I didn't know the name of the cartoon movie when I first saw it but I remembered enough of Mad Monster Party's visual style and plot that I could tell my friends about it in the years and decades to come, even though none of them had the slightest idea of what I talking about other than to remark that they had no idea that the makers of such holiday favorites as Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman would produce something so monster-centric. Tim Burton would eventually make his own contribution to horror-themed cartoon movies with A Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993, but that still left only two animated titles that dealt with horror themes and visuals amid a long list of American cartoons that didn't.

Things have been picking up for horror and sci-fi cartoon movies in the years since thanks to CGI and 3D technology, even to the point of getting Nightmare Before Christmas re-released in 3D in 2006. Sure, these films aren't as serious as the horror and sci-fi cartoons produced in Japan (then again, what other country is more serious about animation than Japan?), but the fact that American animation companies are willing to expand their subject matter into horror and sci-fi territory is a step in the right direction that is long overdue. In chronological order, here are five examples of 3D horror and sci-fi cartoon movies done right, the models that future 3D animators should follow when blazing new paths of their own.

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Monster House (2006)

When Monster House arrived in 2006, I was amazed. It was produced using top-notch CGI, it was in 3D, it had a great voice cast, and it was an obvious homage to the many kid- and early teen-friendly horror/sci-fi/adventure films of the 80s, films such as Gremlins, Goonies, The Gate, Explorers, The Monster Squad and Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. (Then again, with executive producers such as Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, two filmmakers who excelled at these kinds of movies during their heyday, what else would you expect?) Even though Monster House is told from a kid's perspective and is largely devoid of violence and gore, it still tells as a satisfying ghost story that can be enjoyed by an audience of varying ages. If you're looking to introduce kids to the horror movies, Monster House should place high on your list of titles.

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Meet The Robinsons (2007)

Meet The Robinsons has everything: A goofy sense of humor, an intriguing story that is both a parody and a homage to the plot device of time travel, a tribute to Walt Disney's futurism, and a heartwarming message about family, belonging and making peace with an uncertain past to move onward into a brighter, better future. In particular, retro sci-fi fans will love the movie's chrome-plated, tail-finned vision of the future that's skillfully rendered in 3D.

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Coraline (2009)

2009 was a fantastic year for horror/sci-fi 3D cartoon movies, beginning with Coraline. Henry Selick applied his animation magic to an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's dark, twisted fairy tale, and the results were astonishing. Not too shabby for the first stop-motion animated feature to be shot entirely in 3D. Also, even though Coraline is not a CGI-animated film, it could not have been animated without computers: The characters' different facial expressions were molded by a 3D printing computer program, which allowed for up to 207,336 possible face combinations for a single character.

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Monsters Vs. Aliens (2009)

There are so many nods to Atomic Age horror and sci-fi movies in this cartoon that it's impossible for a creature feature fan like me to resist it. It features homages to such classics and cult favorites such as Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Fly and Mothra, and it casts Stephen Colbert himself as the President of the United States--what's not to love? Monsters vs. Aliens is also the first computer animated movie to be directly produced in a stereoscopic 3D format, instead of being converted into 3D after completion.

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Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)

Whenever filmmakers decide to take a short children's book and adapt it into a feature-lenght movie, they really need to look at Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs as the example to follow. Not only was this film able to take the book's original idea and expand upon it in a way that could sustain a full movie, but doing so also allowed the filmmakers to do a hilarious parody of the science-running-amok plot that has become a cliche in horror and sci-fi movies. Furthermore, Cloudy's 3D effects are amazing, and this level of quality carries over into the 3D Blu-ray version of the movie.