Monster of the Day #3353

Updated on March 2, 2023 By Ken Begg 11 Comments

After Boy that Cried Werewolf was American Ninja. Not as good as American Ninja II (that’s the one with the clone ninja army, right?), but hey, Cannon ninja movie. Can’t go wrong there.

Then it was a typically incoherent (in the best possible way) Asian sword / magic / everything movie Thrilling Bloody Sword. Man, Mondo Macabre needs to start releasing a LOT more movies.

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  • KeithB

    You guys still want to say that practical special effects are the way to go?

  • Gamera977

    Well, they can be charming. Charming in an awful painfully bad way sometimes.

    I watched ‘House of Flying Daggers’ for the first time in years last week. And the CGI flying daggers looked really good which is more than I can say for a lot of late ’90s CGI.

    Personally I don’t have any issues with CGI, only the wild overuse of it that Hollywood seems so obsessed with for the last decade or so.

  • 🐻 bgbear_rnh

    Many CGI critters still have that lack of heft that defies gravity.

  • Yep. And I’m not a big CGI hater by any stretch. But bad CGI doesn’t have the charm of bad practical.

  • NathanShumate

    And sparingly used CGI can sometimes be worse, as it intrudes on a visual world that otherwise needs no suspension of disbelief. (I’m thinking specifically of HIDDEN FIGURES, in which the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time shots suffered especially because they were juxtaposed with grainy 16-mm news footage.)

  • Ken_Begg

    I’d say the biggest problems with CGI, aside from the inherent ones, is that a) it allows you to do too much, making all these boring, same old same old mass destruction scenes, but moreso, really encourages a “we’ll fix it in post” mentality that encourages the morons in Hollywood to start shooting with bad / incomplete scripts. The Disney MCU stuff since End Game has certainly suffered from this, as each and every movie (Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Eternals, Multiverse of Madness, Ant-Man 3, Wakanda Forever, the upcoming Marvels–man, what a roster of crap) have been subjected to last minute radical reshoots to “fix” them.

    Man, having Disney buy Star Wars, the MCU and Pixar has certainly benefited fans, hasn’t it?

  • NathanShumate

    Re “doing to much” — I think if you want a great example of that, look at PHANTASM: RAVAGER. The first four PHANTASM movies, to a greater or lesser degree, relied on quiet dread (and adolescent humor) punctuated by FX. The fifth movie didn’t have a greater budget, but because of what’s available now, the director (NOT Don Coscarelli) through gobs of eye candy at the screen. Not a good thing.

  • Gamera977

    I thought Ravager was okay but yeah going from a series of small personal horror films to an insanely over-the-top world destroying threat was indeed not a good thing.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Yes. I seem to recall that Mr. Begg himself said that horror works better on a small scale, with a few people being the center of attention rather than a cast of thousands.

  • “Then it was a typically incoherent (in the best possible way) Asian sword / magic / everything movie Thrilling Bloody Sword. Man, Mondo Macabre needs to start releasing a LOT more movies.”

    An unofficial Blu-Ray had been released by Golden Ninja Video, complete with extras. But now it will get a more official release by the Boutique distributor Error4444 in the near future.

  • Ken_Begg

    Fantastic news! Thank you for the notice.