Monster of the Day #3347

Updated on February 20, 2023 By Ken Begg 13 Comments

Hello, folks. Still a little fuzzy headed. Normally I take a day off after the B-Fest week to rest up and get my head on straight, but now that we’re doing Basement Fest THIS weekend (and in many ways it’s a larger event than B-Fest, at least as far as I’m concerned), I can’t really do that. So I’ll muddle through, and then take a day off after that ends, and hopefully reset.

Anyhoo, B-Fest started with Gator, the sequel to the Burt Reynolds Crackerploitation epic White Lightning. It was a bit overlong, but pretty good. Reynolds (who I’m not the biggest fan of) was fine, Lauren Hutton was fine (at least she didn’t have to romance a paunchy Evel Knievel), Jerry Reed was surprisingly great as a vicious Cracker crimelord, and even Burton’s direction was solid. Good start.

Second film, though, was Big Man Japan. My biggest problem with it is that I’d already seen it. So I knew the score; monsters cool and weird, when they were onscreen, but the film was way too long at two hours, it didn’t know how to end (and thus just goes with nonsense) and the endless scenes proving the titular hero a sad sack really start to grate after awhile. Should have been a great short subject, instead was a fitfully amusing two hour movie.

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  • Gamera977

    Good to hear things went well.

    Interesting, Paper Finz had pretty much the same opinion of ‘Big Man Japan’. I haven’t seen it yet, from your two opinions I feel kinda lukewarm to renting it.

  • 🐻 bgbear_rnh

    Monsters with human like skin are too creepy for me.

  • We watched along from home, and I will totally admit that I abandoned Mr. GJ to his own devices 15 minutes into Big Man Japan to take a nap. I saw it at my very first T-Fest and had no need to rewatch for exactly the reasons above.

    Man, I never knew I could loathe Jerry Reed like that. He had better acting chops than he usually showed playing his long string of Aw Shucks good-ol-boys.

  • It really is *way* too long and the protagonist is actually pretty whiny and unsympathetic.

  • Gamera977

    Thanks! I’ll keep that in mind.

  • Gamera977

    BTW I watched ‘Devil Dog Hound of Hell’ over the weekend on YouTube. Richard Crenna and Yvette Minieux square off against the cutest hellhound ever. I mean it’s a German Shepard but instead of having it do the whole growly, snarling, vicious police dog thing it just stares at people and they pretend the dog is putting the mental whammy on them to do dangerous stuff. Seriously the dog looks at Crenna like ‘are you hiding a treat behind your back???’ while Crenna plays like ‘oh nooesss the evil dog is hypnotizing me into shoving my hand into the lawnmower blade!!!’
    The ending is better, where we find out the dog is really a barghest (which I thought was only a D&D monster, so that’s pretty cool). The FX aren’t very good but still it’s kinda creepy. All in all since I was looking for an awful movie not bad for a piece of forgettable ’70s TV fluff.

  • Ken_Begg

    Long and repetitive. It would have been so easy to chop this film down by 20 minutes (or an hour and twenty minutes) and it would have been much improved by doing so. And there’s no character arc, he’s a schlub in the beginning and he’s still a schlub at the end.

  • Ken_Begg

    Yeah, Reed gave a surprisingly great performance as a really nasty villain. The two blandest actors were Reynolds and Hutton. Jack Weston and Alice Ghostly were great. Reynolds did so a surprisingly decent turn as a director, although I think he fell in love with his scenes a bit too much.

  • Ken_Begg

    It’s Crenna. That guy knew what he was about. Also R. G. Armstrong, a Satanist veteran from Race With the Devil. Martine Beswick is briefly in it, as is Victor Jory. Fun film.

  • I was pleasantly surprised with the realistic way the romance angle was handled. They clearly have real feelings for one another, but also know that there is no way for this to work in the long run and actually handle it like adults.

    Alice Ghostly was possibly the best thing about the whole shebang. Although I was dying when they had to carry out a heist while carrying (real) cats, who were not always best pleased with the exercise.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I’ve loved ‘Devil Dog’ ever since first seeing it. First for the (mis)use of Black Dog mythology — usually the Barghest/Old Shuck/Padfoot is a local ghost or the like, rather than a murderous demon. They seem to be found just about everywhere in world myth too. I heard stories about them growing up here in Pennsylvania, some from older relations who swore they’d seen one.

    The other reason I love the movie is what you said about how the dog puts the whammy on people. My favorite moment is when the family’s Mexican maid has Devil Dog staring at her when it’s a puppy. An adorable, cute little puppy, and she treats it like its a king cobra! I have to wonder how the movie works as well as it does. I figure it’s got to be the cast. They just sell the goofy idea as well as they can, and for me it works.

  • Eric Hinkle

    The cast is what saves this movie. How was the Satanists’ plan supposed to work, though? Future leaders of society will get one of the canine Anti-Christs and turn evil? The most evil thing I can recall Crenna’s kids doing is back-talking him while under Rover’s influence. That’s kind of normal for teenagers in my experience.

    I do think they missed what might have been a great ending. Show the family moving into a new house in a new neighborhood, and as soon as they go inside every other front door on the street opens, and half a dozen German Shepherds come out and start staring at their new house.

  • Gamera977

    Yeah, I think the housekeeper and the killer puppy destroys any pretense of being a serious movie for most people. I got a good chuckle out of it.

    Funny I’d heard of ‘Old Shuck’ but not the Barghest outside of the D&D, weird…