IN THE SPOOKLIGHT: GODZILLA (1954)

After seeing GODZILLA MINUS ZERO (2026) this past weekend, which as expected proved to be an exciting cinematic experience, I came home in the mood to revisit the movie that started it all, Toho’s original GODZILLA (1954).

Now, GODZILLA is the original Japanese language version of the movie, not the 1956 American edited version entitled GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS! in which scenes featuring Raymond Burr as an American reporter were inserted into the movie. Honestly, even the Raymond Burr version is a pretty darn fine giant monster movie, but the original Japanese language version is much, much better.

I remain amazed that this first GODZILLA, a deeply somber film steeped in sadness, and featuring a deadly menacing and completely frightening monster in Godzilla, is the film which spawned the Godzilla series, a series which within a few years featured Godzilla as a heroic monster in brightly colored adventures (the first two Godzilla movies were in black and white) and more often than not with silly plots that were obviously aimed at kids. What happened was kids had become the main audience for Godzilla movies, and as such Toho pivoted and made Godzilla more kid-friendly to make sure their target audience, kids, could come out and see the movies.

For decades, GODZILLA remained nearly a one-of-a-kind movie, as with the exception of its serious sequel, GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN (1955), the rest of the Godzilla movies were all of the colorful silly variety. Some of the reimaginings in the 1990s and 2000s tried to be a tad more serious, but they still were too silly to be taken all that seriously. This changed with SHIN GODZILLA (2016), a more serious film, but even this film worked best as a satire. It took the next entry GODZILLA MINUS ONE (2023) to raise Godzilla to new heights and return the monster to its origins, as GODZILLA MINUS ONE was serious in scope and the best Godzilla movie by far since the first one. Its sequel, GODZILLA MINUS ZERO, continued with this formula and is also up there with the best of the Godzilla movies.

All this being said, my all-time favorite Godzilla movie remains the first, the subject of today’s IN THE SPOOKLIGHT column the 1954 GODZILLA.

Director Ishiro Honda imbues this movie with sadness, as it works as a metaphor for the atomic bomb drops on Japan in World War II, at the time of this movie’s making, only nine years earlier! Scenes of Tokyo in ruins, tormented citizens wailing, children crying, and intense scenes of destruction while the human characters all try to help each other through this crisis resonate deeply, and the symbolism here is not only easy to see and definitely felt, but it makes a powerful point regarding how awful those bomb drops were.

But Godzilla also works as a fantastic monster movie. Evidently, director Honda was inspired by THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953), the first giant dinosaur movie from the 1950s, an American movie featuring the stop-motion effects of Ray Harryhausen. There would be a ton of giant monster movies released in the 1950s, most of them from American studios, and so these films tended to have the same formulas. What’s special about GODZILLA is that it is a Japanese production with its unique take on storytelling. As such, it is a much more refreshing narrative than most other giant monster movies of the period.

In GODZILLA, ships are sinking in the ocean under mysterious circumstances, and the authorities have no idea why. Their investigation eventually leads them to the discovery of Godzilla, a giant prehistoric and radioactive creature, a monster that Dr. Yamane (Takashi Shimura) explains was awoken and created by atomic energy, proven by the fact that the creature is itself radioactive. The military sets out to destroy Godzilla, much to Dr. Yamane’s chagrin, as he would rather study the creature, and as in all good monster movies, their efforts are a complete fail, and Godzilla stomps through Tokyo in one of cinema’s greatest giant monster scenes.

But the main characters in GODZILLA are not military types. The main couple in the film are Yamane’s daughter Emiko (Momoko Kochi) and Hideto Ogata (longtime Toho actor, Akira Takarada), and they are involved in a love triangle with the complicated Dr. Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata). In fact, it’s Serizawa’s invention, the Oxygen destroyer, which is eventually used to destroy Godzilla, in an intriguing plot point as Serizawa is against the weaponization of his invention, which again speaks to the destruction caused by weapons of mass destruction. It’s a tight impactful screenplay by director Honda, Shigeru Kayama, and Takeo Murata.

And as I said, GODZILLA soars as a giant monster movie. In addition to the exceptional destruction-of-Tokyo sequence, Godzilla’s first appearance is one of the all-time great first monster appearances, and certainly one of the most frightening. As the occupants of Odo Island and Dr. Yamane and his team make their way up a huge hill, Godzilla suddenly appears from the other side, in an almost-jump scare scene, and he is terrifying to behold.

One of the reasons Godzilla is so scary in this movie is that for most of his close-ups, it’s the menacing puppet model that is used, and when we see the man-in-suit Godzilla, director Honda both keeps the camera at a distance and Godzilla’s face in shadow, because in general the face of the man-in-suit isn’t all that scary. The face of the puppet model is scary!

Honda also crafts a terrifying sequence before we actually see Godzilla, as during a driving rainstorm, Godzilla emerges onto Odo Island and causes destruction and loss of life, yet we never actually see Godzilla during this sequence. It works because of nifty camerawork and the focus being on the terrified occupants of the island.

GODZILLA also has a tremendous, and now iconic music score, by Akira Ifukube. His rousing Godzilla theme is used throughout the series, and to great effect in the two most recent Godzilla entries, MINUS ONE and MINUS ZERO.

Godzilla’s unique roar was also created by Ifukube, by rubbing a glove up and down the strings of a contrabass and reverberating the recorded sound.

It’s also interesting to note that in this movie Godzilla is said to be 150 feet tall, whereas in the American version he is said to be 400 feet tall.

GODZILLA is a classic of the genre, and this original Japanese version is also a full-fledged horror movie. Its serious tone and well-acted characters along with its tight storyline remind me a lot of THEM! (1954), which for me is the best of the 1950s giant monster movies, with GODZILLA coming in second. Both these movies rise above the rest because they play out as so authentic, true, and are genuinely frightening.

With the recent release of GODZILLA MINUS ZERO, it’s a great time to be a Godzilla fan. It’s also a great time to revisit the movie that started it all, GODZILLA.

GODZILLA is not only a classic of the genre, but a cinematic classic that is must-see viewing for students of cinema and movie fans alike.

Add it to your giant monster movie bucket-list today.

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GODZILLA MINUS ZERO (2026) -Takashi Yamazaki’s Character Driven GODZILLA Sequel Not as Perfect as Its Predecessor

If there’s one thing that writer/director Takashi Yamazaki excels at, it’s creating characters you care about and putting them in harm’s way. He did this perfectly in GODZILLA MINUS ONE (2023), a movie I loved, as it is one of the best Godzilla movies ever made, and he does it again here in MINUS ONE’s sequel, GODZILLA MINUS ZERO (2026). The result is yet another highly emotional story, because Yamazaki makes sure that the story, even when showing a giant monster battle, never deviates from the human perspective.

That being said, Yamazaki does tip the scale somewhat in this sequel, as- while the human storyline remains excellent- there is a lot of this storyline, which takes away from the monster storyline. More so, King Ghidorah enters the fray in the very first sequence, again, an excellent one, but as the movie goes along, the focus remains more on Ghidorah and less on Godzilla. These two items definitely got in the way of this movie’s success.

Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed GODZILLA MINUS ZERO but liked its predecessor GODZILLA MINUS ONE more, as that movie had a perfect streamlined story. Everything about it worked. Here in GODZILLA MINUS ZERO, the story is not as streamlined, and things at times get a bit clunky.

GODZILLA MINUS ZERO takes place in 1949, two years after the events depicted in GODZILLA MINUS ONE, and the movie opens on all cylinders as we immediately witness a new giant monster, King Ghidorah, on the attack. After the events in GODZILLA MINUS ONE, Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) and his team of thinkers have been put in charge of dealing with monsters since they had successfully killed Godzilla in the last movie, although why Japan would expect more monsters to appear is anyone’s guess. Still, it pays to be prepared, and so Mr. Noda and his team are put in charge of stopping Ghidorah.

Meanwhile, the other main characters from the previous movie, Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and Noriko (Minami Hamabe) are quietly raising their young “daughter,” the little girl who they rescued in MINUS ONE. When Koichi learns that Mr. Noda needs pilots for his plan to stop Ghidorah, he volunteers, but Noda refuses, as he wants Koichi to stay alive for his daughter, but he does bring Koichi on as an advisor.

The plans to destroy Ghidorah fail, and in a plot development which makes perfect sense, but I’ll refrain from mentioning it to avoid spoilers, Godzilla is resurrected. The plan then becomes to bring Godzilla and Ghidorah together, the thinking being one will kill the other, and the one that survives will be greatly weakened, and at that time Noda and his team will be able to destroy that monster as well.

For this master plan, everyone ends up taking part, including Koichi and Noriko, and in the movie’s best sequence by far, we witness an epic battle between Godzilla and Ghidorah which for various reasons puts every character’s lives in jeopardy, and not all of them survive. The trouble is, it takes forever for this sequence to occur, and the events leading up to it are not always that compelling. GODZILLA MINUS ZERO gives its audience a satisfying payoff, but what precedes it is not as tight or as compelling as the events depicted in GODZILLA MINUS ONE.

Still, there is a lot to like about GODZILLA MINUS ZERO. First and foremost, the acting is off the charts good. The level and quality of acting here is not what one would expect from a horror movie, let alone a giant monster movie, but it’s there. The principal players all knock it out of the park. The emotions in this one run deep, and actually, that’s my favorite part of this movie, how emotionally moving it is.

Kudos again to writer/director Takashi Yamazaki for crafting these characters, putting them in harm’s way, and then making an exciting movie about them. His story here is not quite as on point as the one told in GODZILLA MINUS ONE, but it’s close. I love the way Yamazaki captures the feel of the original GODZILLA (1954), pretty much the only serious Godzilla movie before GODZILLA MINUS ONE came along. He captures the fear, the human component, and the monstrosity of Godzilla.

There are several gut-wrenching scenes in this one involving a crying child, and this hearkens back to that 1954 GODZILLA, where children were heard crying in scenes following Godzilla’s destruction of Tokyo. Also, due to her injuries in the previous movie, Noriko wears an eye patch, reminiscent of Dr. Serizawa in GODZILLA (1954). Speaking of Noriko, we learn how she survived nearly impossible injuries in the first movie, and it’s an intriguing explanation which is also integral to the plot. I enjoyed this plot point.

The special effects were okay. They are all CGI, and while yes, attention has been paid to making Ghidorah and Godzilla look as authentic as possible, I did slightly prefer the look of Ghidorah to Godzilla. There’s just something dissatisfying about an all CGI Godzilla. Not sure if this is because of the nostalgia from all those years of the man-in-a-suit Godzilla, or if I just view CGI giant monster effects as too cartoonish. I suspect it’s a little bit of both.

Now, both these monsters in this movie possess the power of regeneration, meaning that if you cut off an arm, it will grow back, if it’s wounded, the wound heals. And in Ghidorah’s case he mutates every time he destroys an opponent, absorbing their DNA perhaps, making Ghidorah similar to the alien in THE THING movies. When all is said and done, Ghidorah absorbs some of Godzilla’s make-up, making him even more powerful.

So, theoretically, neither Godzilla nor Ghidorah should be able to kill the other, because they should simply just regenerate, which make the conclusion of this sequence, a big letdown. I won’t say what happens, but strangely, director Yamazaki doesn’t really show what happens, and it’s the one time in this movie that things are not clear. Let’s put it this way, for the monster who loses, it’s undramatic and not really given much attention, because suddenly, there’s just one monster standing, and the other is forgotten.

Still, from the human standpoint, where the characters’ lives are in nonstop danger in a really intricate fight sequence, it’s the best sequence in the entire movie.

The sound in this one is also incredibly well-done, and very loud. I liked it.

Much has been made of the fact that GODZILLA MINUS ZERO is the first ever R-rated GODZILLA movie. Not exactly sure why this one is rated R, however. My guess is because of the emotional nature and seeing people scream in agony, not from bodily injuries but because of emotional scars and angst. The scenes of the injured are a tad more graphic, but let’s put it this way, the violence here is nowhere close to horror movie violence.

The antiwar message is still loud and clear in this one and welcomed. There’s also a neat scene of an imagined attack on New York City by Godzilla, in the mind of a character who wants to use Godzilla as a weapon to seek revenge against the United States for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. The themes of revenge and forgiveness, and the horrors of using humans as weapons, run throughout the movie.

I very much enjoyed GODZILLA MINUS ZERO, although I didn’t find it quite as compelling or as perfect in its storytelling as its predecessor, but at the end of the day it was still a darn fine good movie. And by the way it ends, it looks like writer/director Yamazaki has another chapter to tell, and I for one will be looking forward to it.

I give GODZLLA MINUS ZERO three stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

MOVIE LISTS: STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION Movies

With the passing of Patrick Stewart this past week, the venerable actor has been on my mind, and so this week on our MOVIE LISTS column, we’ll have a look-see at the STAR TREK: NEXT GENERATION movies, where, as he did on the NEXT GENERATION TV show (1987-1994) and more recently on the TV series STAR TREK: PICARD (2020-2023), he played Captain Jean Luc Picard.

I’ve been a lifelong STAR TREK fan, and my adoration for the series precedes Stewart and THE NEXT GENERATION, as I was a fan of the original STAR TREK series first, which starred William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley. As such, I’ve always preferred Shatner’s Captain Kirk to Stewart’s Captain Picard.

In fact, when the NEXT GENERATION series premiered in 1987, I didn’t even watch it, as I felt, as did many other Star Trek fans, that a second show with new characters was doomed for failure. But it didn’t take long for word of mouth to spread the news that this show was actually pretty decent, and it wasn’t long after that I did start to watch it and eventually enjoy it immeasurably. In fact, a lot of the episodes outdid in quality many of the episodes from the original series.

And I grew to really like Captain Picard, as played by Patrick Stewart. So much so, that while I still prefer Shatner’s Captain Kirk, the preference is only by the width of a string on a Vulcan lyre. I ended up being a huge fan of the show and was saddened when it eventually ended.

But the show’s absence was short-lived because later that same year Picard and his fellow crewmembers made the jump from TV to the big screen with their first STAR TREK movie.

Now, the six STAR TREK movies featuring William Shatner and his fellow crew of actors from the original series, while deviating in quality, were all very entertaining and for the most part, on par with the quality of the original series. On the other hand, the NEXT GENERATION movies never quite captured the magic of their TV show, and as such, were cinematic and box office disappointments.

There were four STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION movies. First up:

STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994)

By far, this is my least favorite of the Next Generation Star Trek movies. It was an attempt to mix both Star Trek series together, an admirable idea, but the execution of this noble undertaking was a complete fail. If you’re going to bring the casts together, do it completely, not in the tepid way it is done in this movie, which is really only about having Captain Kirk and Captain Picard meet, again, a noble idea, but ridiciously, their meeting at the end is the worst part of the entire movie.

It opens well, with an early sequence featuring William Shatner as Captain Kirk, along with original characters Scotty (James Doohan) and Chekov (Walter Koenig) in a scene which supposedly shows us the death of Captain Kirk as he saves the ship. Hmm, where have we seen this before? (WRATH OF KHAN, anyone?)

The action jumps to the future with the NEXT GENERATION cast, and the story told here is largely forgettable. The key component is a thing called the Nexus, which plays fast and loose with the space time continuum, and it’s here where Picard (Patrick Stewart) meets Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and the two combine forces to defeat the movie’s villain, Soran (Malcolm McDowell). But these scenes of the two captains are laughably bad, thanks to some awful writing, and Captain Kirk’s ultimate death is contrived and forced and completely inferior to the cinematic death of Mr. Spock in WRATH OF KHAN. It’s a terrible send off for the penultimate Star Trek character. Sadly, not even the combined presence of Patrick Stewart and William Shatner could come close to saving this movie.

STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT (1996)

And quickly we move from the worst NEXT GENERATION movie to the best, as by far, STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT is the best of the NEXT GENERATION movies. It should come as no surprise, then, that Patrick Stewart’s best big screen performance as Picard comes right here in this movie.

The plot features the most notable villains from the series, the Borg, and since Picard has scars from when he was abducted by the Borg and turned into a cyborg, the plot of this one hits his character hard and as such, it’s a deep emotional performance by Stewart. Unfortunately, it’s only half the movie, as the other half focuses on a back-in-time visit to Earth where we meet Zefram Cochran (James Cromwell) the man responsible for establishing first contact with the Vulcans.

Still, this Star Trek adventure directed by Jonathan Frakes is highly entertaining and exciting, and features the best Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard performance in the movies.

STAR TREK: INSURRECTION (1998)

A decent STAR TREK adventure that is sadly terribly boring. It plays out like a slow episode from the series, which in a TV series, you’re allowed to have a slow episode here and there. But in a movie? Why bother! It’s got to be the best story out there, or else why make it? Again. Patrick Stewart turns in an exceptional performance as Captain Picard, and as dull as this movie is, I’ve always enjoyed it, mostly because I enjoy Patrick Stewart’s performance.

STAR TREK: NEMESIS (2002)

The final NEXT GENERATION movie, and the first STAR TREK film to be rated PG-13 as opposed to PG, has a neat idea for a story but then drops the ball with it. This one is about a clone of Picard, played by Tom Hardy, who is leading the Romulans in an effort to destroy the Federation. Once more, this movie is done in by sloppy writing and contrived ideas and situations. I’ve always wanted to like this one, but it always leaves me disappointed.

So, all in all, the NEXT GENERATION movies really aren’t all that good. The biggest problem is nothing in these films is as good or as of high quality as what we saw on the NEXT GENERATION TV show. Patrick Stewart, as you would expect, is decent in all four movies, with his best performances coming in the middle two, but if you really want to see Stewart excel as Captain Picard, you have to watch the TV shows, both NEXT GENERATION and STAR TREK: PICARD.

There you have it. A brief look at the four STAR TREK: NEXT GENERATION movies, inspired by thoughts of Patrick Stewart, as we honor his passing.

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YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING (2026) – Nathan Fielder’s Documentary on Elizabeth Holmes Fascinating and Exceptionally Creative

Can you really see everything?

The answer to that question is really the central point of the new documentary by Nathan Fielder, YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING (2026) where he and his camera crew were invited into the home of Theranos founder Elizabeth Homes 34 days before she would be sent to prison for fraud, the thinking being on Holmes’ part that she has nothing to hide and so she agreed to this intimate and uncensored look into her life.

And the answer to the aforementioned question isn’t that you can never really see everything, but that the more you do see, the less you know, because our minds speculate and wonder. And it’s no wonder that Fielder has a background in magic, because magicians are masters at making people see things that they think they see but in reality, are missing, the “sleight of hand,” where the audience thinks they are seeing something in plain view, but in reality they are missing the key component of the trick; they think they are seeing one thing, but they are really seeing something else.

This isn’t to say that YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING is disingenuous or insincere. It’s not. It comes off as all very true. But it is to say that Fielder has an understanding that the more layers you peel off, and the more you think you know, there’s still always that bit that you don’t know, and so it feels like that “sleight of hand,” where you are seeing one thing, but you know that you should be seeing something else, but knowing what that something else is, that’s the hard part.

The result is an absolutely fascinating and layered documentary that truly succeeds in painting a three-dimensional portrait of Elizabeth Holmes which really does shed light on who she is and how she got into the predicament which landed her in prison. The movie is also an exceptional exercise in how to make an exceedingly creative documentary, as later in the film, Fielder invites actress Amanda Seyfried, who played Holmes in the TV miniseries THE DROPOUT (2022) into the mix, both for discussion and also for playing Holmes again here in scenes which recreate sequences where Fielder wasn’t allowed to use his camera.

Hands down, YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING is an amazing movie.

It opens with Nathan Fielder and his cameras, and sometimes his crew, inside the home of Elizabeth Holmes and her husband Billy Evans and their young children. Billy and Elizabeth are working together now and plan to continue their medical business ventures even when Elizabeth is in prison. It doesn’t take long for the audience to realize that Billy is a narcissist and a very controlling man. In fact, most of the time hearing him speak, I was grinding my teeth in frustration.

During these sequences, Fielder begins to carve out a portrait of Elizabeth as someone who may be brilliant in certain ways, but in other ways, she’s not that savvy and is way too trusting, the point being that she allowed her previous husband to lead her in ways which got her into the legal predicament she found herself in, and this notion is supported by her blindly accepting the narcissistic Billy in the here and now. But Fielder continually questions this notion, pushing back, wondering, is this true, or is Elizabeth so manipulative that she is actively working here on camera to push that narrative forward?

Fielder tells her it seems to him that she lied about what Theranos could do, and in a key sequence, Elizabeth tries to explain why she wasn’t lying. The device was marketed as one that could run all tests from a single drop of blood, but as Elizabeth explains, the device will do this but only after the data is in the cloud. Fielder tries to explain that this sounds disingenuous, that sure the device works, but only if the data is in the cloud first, and as he says, the way Elizabeth explained it, it sounds like it works automatically when in reality it only works if the data is there first. And she can’t see the distinction.

In a telling follow up sequence, Fielder says it reminds him of the famous Abbott and Costello routine of “Who’s On First?” where words are said but the joke is Costello doesn’t understand them, and when he shows Elizabeth this comic clip, she laughs, but she is unable to explain why this is funny. Again, Fielder is left wondering, is she this clueless, this innocent, or is it all an act?

The second half of this three-hour documentary— and much has been made of its long running time, but I’ll be honest, this one actually flew by and it held my interest throughout- where Elizabeth goes to prison, and Fielder can’t bring his cameras there, he invites actress Amanda Seyfried to join him on camera, and she shares her insights on playing Elizabeth Holmes. She then plays Holmes in recreations of sequences where Fielder didn’t have his camera, the key one being in a pre-documentary meeting, where Billy, once Elizabeth had left the room, refused to do the documentary unless they were paid, and he negotiated a deal to do just that. Much later, Elizabeth says in a passing remark that she wasn’t profiting from the movie, which made Fielder question whether she even knew about the deal her husband had made.

Fielder and Seyfried really begin to distrust Billy, and these feelings grow after he agrees to meet with Fielder and Seyfried, and the meeting doesn’t end all that well, as he verbally attacks the actress. More awkward, while they are there, Elizabeth calls from prison, which catches Seyfried off guard, and when she asks Elizabeth if she knew she was going to be there, Elizabeth replies cryptically, that she might have known.

Red flags are raised throughout, but the more they are raised, the less sure the audience and Fielder are about what they mean.

It’s also a brave appearance by Amanda Seyfried, because she takes a lot of heat for portraying Holmes in a TV series that admittedly played fast and loose with the facts. At one point, when she is feeling very defensive, she says it wasn’t her or the TV show that got Holmes in trouble, it was Holmes herself. In short, her defense of herself falls somewhat short, as Fielder does show through interviews with Holmes and Billy how much the show influenced people’s opinions about Elizabeth. Then again, the source of this information regarding this influence is Elizabeth and Billy.

Ultimately, Fielder captures the persona of Elizabeth Holmes as a woman who believes she has done nothing wrong, who accepts Billy and his narcissistic ways completely, and who just may have been naive enough and uncultured in the ways of communicating to have innocently allowed herself to become a victim of the legal system. She may have frauded people, but she didn’t think it was fraud, even though it was. Or— she is an outright liar.

Now, the movie leaves it open, yes, but nothing the movie shows presents Elizabeth as an outright liar. The movie captures her as that person who is unable to grasp the humor of Who’s On First? Now, we the audience can still decide not to believe that, to believe that she was lying and in reality could understand that clip.

And this is what I meant at the outset, in that you can never really see everything. In this movie, we see an awful lot, and we have a pretty darn good idea from what we see of just who Elizabeth Holmes is, but regarding the question of innocence or guilt, seeing all that we see still doesn’t shed light on that question or provide a definitive answer.

I absolutely loved the way Nathan Fielder filmed this one. I also loved his onscreen persona, the quiet, calm, questioner of things, and he lets both the camera and the things both Elizabeth and Billy say speak for themselves. Later, away from them, he questions these things. He always asks the right questions, but the answers are never clear cut. Mostly because neither Billy or Elizabeth ever provide clear cut answers. They both come off as people who cannot be believed, Billy because he is incredibly manipulative, and Elizabeth because she seems to be living in an alternate reality. As Amanda Seyfried says at one point later in the movie about Billy, that he is “batsh*t crazy!” the truth is this notion applies to Elizabeth as well. She seems to be living on another planet. The question here is, by choice, as in being a manipulative liar, or by nature, as in being someone who can’t see reality, who can’t understand the joke of “Who’s on First?”

It was also fascinating to watch both Elizabeth Holmes and Billy on camera. The movie really does give us a raw intimate portrait of these two folks. You really do get an idea of who they are, and the one major uncertainty again is Elizabeth- liar or clueless innocent?

YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING was co-directed by Lance Oppenheim, who just directed PRIMETIME (2026), a movie I did not like. I’m not sure how much influence here he had on this movie, in terms of sharing the directorial duties with Nathan Fielder, but the result is a much better movie than PRIMETIME, so giving credit where credit is due for Oppenheim this time around.

If you want to see a fascinating and utterly creative documentary, then definitely check out YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING. It’ll have you questioning everything, including the intentions of director Fielder himself. One of the last clips he shows, is a very emotional conversation he has with Amanda Seyfried, about his prison visit with Elizabeth. Seyfried is fired up and upset and believes that Elizabeth is a victim of Billy, but Fielder pushes back saying he never witnessed feelings of fear or discomfort from Elizabeth when she was with Billy, but only a deep love.

Seyfried gets really emotional and implies that she feels Fielder is perhaps a bit attracted to Elizabeth and as result too supportive of her, and when Fielder asks her directly why she is so upset, she says, “It’s complicated.” Which, like the rest of the movie, while providing answers, just generates more questions.

In YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING, you pretty much can see everything, but that doesn’t translate to having all the answers. Quite the contrary, you actually leave with more questions, even as the portrait of Elizabeth Holmes revealed in this movie is pretty darn comprehensive.

I give it four stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

PICTURE OF THE DAY: HALLOWEEN (1978)

It’s Halloween. Everyone’s entitled to one good scare.

This line is from John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1978), spoken by the character played by Charles Cyphers, and as we approach Halloween on the calendar, I can’t help but remember the HALLOWEEN phenomenon which burst into theaters back in 1978. As such, today’s Picture of the Day column takes a look-see at the original poster for this horror movie classic.

This was not a film that was hyped like STAR WARS. It came out of nowhere, and suddenly, everybody was talking about it. I was a freshman in high school, and I saw this one at the movies with my best friend, and we were able to secure tickets for this R rated movie because back in the day they weren’t so consistent with checking for ages.

I remember clearly the long line outside the theater, and also the loud announcement by a theater employee, “HALLOWEEN is sold out!” and the loud groan of the people in line. My friend and I weren’t among them, as we had already purchased our tickets.

HALLOWEEN was the first horror movie I saw on my own at the theater that really scared me. I had seen JAWS (1975) when I was 11, but my mom took me to see that. And I had seen other horror movies since then at the movies, but they were of the PG variety. HALLOWEEN was a whole other animal.

I remember the sold-out audience screaming throughout the movie, and the part that I noticed then and continue to marvel at all these years later was that most of the screams came when nothing was happening. The violence in HALLOWEEN is minimal. John Carpenter’s masterful direction was mostly about suspense in HALLOWEEN. Michael Myers would suddenly appear, the audience would shriek, and he would just as quickly disappear right after, and the suspense would grow because the audience knew he was still there. Somewhere.

Of course, you can’t talk about HALLOWEEN without talking about John Carpenter’s iconic music, his HALLOWEEN theme. Honestly, what stayed in my head for days afterwards wasn’t the images from the movie, but the music! I couldn’t get it out of my head. I remember when my dad picked up my friend and I after the movie (we were only 14 and no driver’s licenses yet) and drove us back home, Carpenter’s music was embedded in my brain and I couldn’t stop hearing it.

Today, nearly 50 years and a plethora of sequels and reimaginings later, it’s the first and original HALLOWEEN that I like to remember, a movie that along with a lot of other films in the 1970s, put horror back on the map.

The poster above also became iconic. It was everywhere in 1978, with its powerful tagline, The Night HE Came Home! The hand around the knife as part of the Jack O’Lantern. Brilliant. The image, like the rest of the movie, struck fear into audiences everywhere.

If there’s one movie that defines Halloween and is perfect Halloween viewing, it’s John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN. And for those of us of a certain age who experienced it at the theater back in 1978, it’s an experience that one will never forget.

Because as Donald Pleasence’s Dr. Loomis says at one point, “He came home.”

That he did!

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CLAYFACE (2026) – Horror Movie from DC Comics Earns Its R Rating

It’s the A-Team.

That’s all you need to know about CLAYFACE (2026), the new DC movie about the origin story of Batman villain Clayface, and pretty much the first ever horror movie in the DC universe.

Who’s the A-Team? The people who made this one.

The screenplay was written by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. Flanagan is one of the most talented writers/directors on the planet right now, having created such gems as the Netflix’ series THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (2018) and MIDNIGHT MASS (2021), two of the best horror TV miniseries in recent memory, and his most recent TV hit is Prime’s CARRIE (2026) based on Stephen King’s novel. And Amini wrote the screenplay for the superior thriller DRIVE (2011).

CLAYFACE was directed by James Watkins, who also directed the well-made horror movies SPEAK NO EVIL (2024) and THE WOMAN IN BLACK (2012).

With these guys at the helm, you would expect something special from CLAYFACE, and that’s exactly what you get. This movie delivers.

CLAYFACE tells the story of Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), a popular actor whose success is just taking off as he has just been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, but when he meets a woman on the dance floor of a popular nightclub and accepts her advances and spends the night with her, it turns out to be a tragic decision, as she is the girlfriend of Gotham City’s most powerful mobster, Markos Szabo (David Dencik). As a result, Markos and his goons exact payback by taking a knife to Matt’s face and cutting it up until he is extremely disfigured.

His acting career ruined, and after multiple failed plastic surgeries, Matt turns to a young scientist Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) who is researching a groundbreaking and controversial procedure using gene therapy to be used on degenerative diseases, but Matt convinces her to use it on him, and she does. At first, the serum works, and Matt’s looks are restored, but then bizarre things begin to happen, as Matt discovers that not only can his skin regenerate, so if he’s wounded, he heals immediately, but he possesses the ability to take on the look of different people.

This comes in handy when he realizes that some of the people he trusted in his life betrayed him, and so he goes on a revenge crusade, with the ultimate goal of taking down mobster Markos Szabo.

For a movie about a comic book villain, for most of this movie Matt comes off as a very sympathetic character. There is no one in this story who he kills who didn’t kinda deserve it, and so it’s not like he’s a murderous monster going after innocent people. This does change near the end, but for most of this movie, the audience is right there rooting for him.

The big thing about CLAYFACE is it definitely earns its R rating with some very graphic images which are often wince inducing. This movie definitely enters body horror territory. That being said, the gore never really reaches the level of a full-fledged horror movie.

And since the filmmakers’ here cited David Cronenberg’s THE FLY (1986) as an inspiration, there are definitely images in the movie that hearken back to Cronenberg’s masterpiece, although again, it never reaches the horrific levels of THE FLY.

While Tom Rhys Harries has a lot of movie and TV credits, this is the first time I’ve seen him on screen, and I enjoyed his performance quite a bit. He succeeds in making Matt a sympathetic character and also a realistic character, which is important considering he’s playing a comic book villain.

Naomi Ackie has starred in such movies as THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB (2025) and BLINK TWICE (2024), and she’s been fine in these movies, but her performance here in CLAYFACE is her best yet. She makes Caitlyn a three-dimensional caring character. She knows she shouldn’t proceed with the experiment on Matt, but she also sees this as an opportunity to do good and move her groundbreaking research forward. And Matt falls in love with her, and she infuses enough caring and sincerity into her performance that these feelings from Matt come off as natural, even though he is anything but natural at this point with the serum inside him.

David Dencik is sufficiently villainous as mobster Markos, and Max Minghella delivers a sincere performance as Caitlyn’s boyfriend and honest Gotham City cop John Borrelli. Ruby Sear gives a siren-like performance as Markos’ volatile girlfriend, Theresa.

Character actor Eddie Marsan, one of my favorites, lends credibility as Matt’s attorney.

While the screenplay is one of the movie’s strengths, which is no surprise when Mike Flanagan is a co-writer, I also enjoyed the direction by James Watkins. There are a lot of memorable sequences, from the wince inducing scene on an airplane experiencing extreme turbulence where Matt is in the restroom taking a scissors to his eyes to remove skin that is growing over them- most likely you will have to look away from this sequence- with the fun part being the camera is in up close, and you are waiting for that big bump from the turbulence which will make Matt’s hand slip. It’s a great scene! To the lively sequence near the end where Matt infiltrates Markos’ nightclub and wreaks havoc on the dance floor.

I really enjoyed CLAYFACE and was entertained from start to finish. Hardcore fans of the comic may take issue with its deviations from the source material, but as a standalone movie separate from the comic books, it works very well.

Which is no surprise considering the talent of the people behind it.

I give CLAYFACE three stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER (2026) – Story of Muslim Hit Man More Than Just an Action Movie

Your mother your mother your mother.

Say that fast three times in a row.

Okay, so it’s not exactly a tongue twister, but it is certainly an unusual title, and it’s apropos, because YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER (2026) is an unusual movie.

Don’t even get me started that we just had another “mother” movie released last weekend, the dreadful horror movie OTHER MOMMY (2026). The good news is YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER is a much better movie than OTHER MOMMY. Then again, so is STOP! OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT (1992) the infamous awful Sylvester Stallone comedy. (Okay, I admit, I may be exaggerating here. They’re both really bad!)

But YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER is not really bad. It is unusual, as it tells a story about a religious hit man, a Muslim, who suddenly finds himself after his wife dies having to be a single parent for his teenage daughter, 10 year-old son, and infant daughter, all the while having to fend off the sinister forces around him, his employer who wants him to do one more job, and an unhinged aggressive “preacher” who is leading an army of armed Christian soldiers on a quest to stomp out a pornography ring run by a local Muslim.

WTF?

Exactly!

First off, the tone of this one is completely dead on serious. It is much more a drama than an action movie, which considering its plot, really surprised me.

I wanted to see YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER because it starred Mahershala Ali in the lead role. I’ve been a fan of Ali for a while and have enjoyed his performances in such movies as GREEN BOOK (2018) and HIDDEN FIGURES (2016), as well as on the TV shows TRUE DETECTIVE (2019), LUKE CAGE (2016) and HOUSE OF CARDS (2013-2016). As expected, he’s excellent in the lead role here as Latif, the reluctant hit man who has his own code of honor, in that he doesn’t use guns, but swords.

When his wife dies suddenly, the responsibility of caring for his three children falls on his shoulders alone, and most of the movie is about exactly this, his struggles to take care of his children. Complicating matters is his employer Mike Mahmoudi (Laith Nakli) wants him to eliminate the crazed militarized preacher Pastor Hwan (John Cho), because Hwan and his Christian militant group have set their sights on Mike’s son, Hatty (Abubakr Ali), who runs a stripper/pornography business from their luxurious home. Latif isn’t interested, as he is struggling to care for his three children, but Mike won’t take no for an answer, and before Latif even thinks about going after Hwan, the preacher finds him first, and suddenly Latif and his family are being threatened by both sides.

What’s a religious hit man to do?

Why, protect his family of course!

I jest here, but as I said, there is nothing funny or light about YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER. Even the action scenes, which are very good, take a back seat to the drama, and the good news is, the drama, the story, works really well.

The bulk of this movie is about Latif getting to know his children, especially his teenage daughter Adia (Fatiha), and he spends most of the movie in frantic chaotic scenes trying to get breast milk for his infant daughter who is allergic to formula. All these scenes resonate well and better than the action scenes.

Writer/director Bassam Tariq has made a layered movie that also has a lot to say about religion. All of the characters, especially the Muslim ones, question their faith, and conversations surrounding just how relevant God is in the here and now are frequent. Well-deserved jabs are taken at Christian Nationalism with the character of Pastor Hwan and his fellowship. It would be too easy to make all of these characters caricatures, but Tariq doesn’t do this. These folks, in spite of their flaws, really want to believe, and their faith never leaves them.

Last week I gave the movie ANGEL AND THE BADMAN (2026) a hard time because its message of religious faith and Christian values fell flat because it was presented in a vanilla Disneyesque package. Interestingly, YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER does a much better job telling a story about religious faith. Everyone in this movie has their doubts, which comes as no surprise as life for these folks is a hot mess, but the theme of faith never goes away, and late in the game, there’s a moment when Adia absolutely needs help from a higher being and prays her heart out in a gut wrenching scene that really resonates, and this sequence works so much better at showing faith than anything seen in ANGEL AND THE BADMAN.

The supporting cast is solid.

John Cho makes for an interesting villain with Pastor Hwan. Early on, it’s unclear how his and Latif’s paths will cross, and if they will be allies or foes, but the lines are eventually drawn quite clearly. Cho delivers the goods in an effective performance.

Likewise, Laith Naki does a nice job as Mike, the volatile handler who desperately wants Latif for one last job and will play hardball with his enforcer if he has to, and he does.

The young actors here also acquit themselves well. Abubakr Ali has a field day as Hatty, the loud-mouthed often idiotic young Muslim who thinks he’s tough and knows it all, and who’s basking in his stripper business, but he quickly finds out he’s in over his head. And for my money Fatiha gives the performance of the movie as Latif’s daughter Adia. Her strained relationship with her father is at the core of this story, and her crisis of faith moment late in the movie is one of the best scenes in the film.

And Giancarlo Esposito shows up as an elder Muslim and mentor to Latif, in a role not unlike we just saw him play in BY ANY MEANS (2026), in that he’s a force early on, a voice of reason to the main character, but unfortunately doesn’t last long in the story.

YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER is more than just an action movie. It’s a well-written and well-directed drama about a man fighting for his family, in a world where faith is important to everyone, and everyone is trying to understand just where their faith begins and ends.

I give it three stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

WHALEFALL (2026) – Underwater Adventure Too Steeped in Sadness to Really Thrill

Wow, that’s a whale of a problem!

Imagine getting stuck inside a 60-ton sperm whale! How does one get out of that predicament?

Honestly, when I heard of this plot point in WHALEFALL (2026), I couldn’t help but think, you can’t be serious? Is this a comedy or something? Wouldn’t someone swallowed up by a whale just be dead? How would they survive?

But WHALEFALL is anything but a comedy. I wish I could say it’s an intense edge-of-your-seat thriller, but sadly, it’s not, and “sadly” is the operative word here, because if there’s one thing WHALEFALL is throughout its one hour and 46 minutes running time, is sad and depressing. So much so, that I was distracted throughout and never really got on board with the story this one was telling.

WHALEFALL wastes no time playing its sadness card, as in the very first scene we witness a sickly on-his-deathbed Mitt Gardiner (Josh Brolin) on his boat with his best buddy, and it’s clear that Mitt has little time left. He peeks at letters he has left his family, and then he dives off the boat to his death.

We then meet his family, his wife, adult daughters, and his college-aged, estranged son, Jay (Austin Abrams), who unfortunately had a very tumultuous relationship with his dad. In fact, he moved from California to Iowa to go to college mostly because he wanted to get away from his father. Yet, he always wanted to please his dad, and so he goes off on a dive on his own to locate his father’s body, and it’s here he gets in the middle of a battle between a sperm whale and a giant squid, and along with the squid, he gets swallowed up by the whale. And while inside the whale, he hears the voice of his dad, who guides him to survival.

So, there’s your story.

Honestly, I was really intrigued to see this movie, because I was really curious as to how someone could survive inside a whale, and I expected a pretty intense movie. Unfortunately, WHALEFALL offers no insights into how a human could sruvive inside a whale or any background information on whales at all, other than Josh Brolin’s Mitt character- who we see and hear from quite a bit in flashbacks- going on and on about his own philosophical thoughts on whales and the creatures’ place in nature. I really thought the screenplay dropped the ball here.

It also dropped the ball with the emotions, as this one is so steeped in sadness and depression it just lost me. I get the point. Jay and his dad struggled to get along. They both wanted to get along. And in spite of how badly his dad treated him, Jay still loved his dad, dives into the ocean to find his dad, and once inside the whale, relies on hearing the voice of his dad to survive, and the two have a reconciliation after Mitt is dead. I get all this.

The problem is in those flashback scenes, we see Mitt treat Jay so horribly, it’s to the point where I’m asking, why are we even seeing a story built around this guy? Sure, he was aware that he was being too harsh on his son, but so what? It didn’t change the way he treated him. We witness Jay enduring such emotional angst at the hands of his dad, it’s pretty much abusive. So, this whole storyline just lost me. I didn’t care about Mitt at all, and I couldn’t help but think Jay would be better off without him.

The screenplay is also completely devoid of humor, which comes as a surprise, because director Brian Duffield wrote the screenplay, based on a book by Daniel Kraus, and Duffield previously wrote the screenplay for the lively horror movie THE BABYSITTER (2017), a film that was full of humor and was quite funny.

Actors Austin Abrams and Josh Brolin are reunited following their pairing in Zach Cregger’s WEAPONS (2025). Speaking of Cregger, we just saw Austin Abrams in the lead role in Cregger’s RESIDENT EVIL (2026), a horror movie that was incredibly funny. Humor goes a long way, and it is sorely missing from the proceedings here in WHALEFALL. It even affects the performances.

Austin Abrams was so much fun to watch in RESIDENT EVIL, but he’s sad beyond belief here in WHALEFALL. Likewise, Josh Brolin’s performance makes Mitt a guy I just wouldn’t want to know.

Even with a decent supporting cast, which includes Elisabeth Shue and John Ortiz, the acting, like the rest of the movie, is a downer.

I also wasn’t impressed by Brian Duffield’s directorial effort. The scenes inside the whale should have been exceedingly intense and exciting, but they’re not. There are a couple of decent sequences, like when Jay is tangling with the squid which like Jay is still alive inside the whale, but so much of the camerawork takes place up close, you don’t really get a feel for what Jay is going through. I get it, as it is supposed to capture a claustrophobic feeling, and it does do this up to a point, but the camera never pulls back enough to give the audience a feel for what it is like inside that whale. Most of the shots are all close ups of Jay’s face.

The CGI effects are also nothing to write home about. Obviously, the filmmakers here didn’t shoot “on location” inside a whale’s body, and pretty much everything we see in this interior setting, as well as shots of the whale itself, never reach the level of no doubt believability.

It also doesn’t help that every time things do get a tad intense, Duffield “treats’ us to another flashback, where we have to suffer through another scene where Mitt torments his son. Even the “dad knew what he was talking about” reveals late in the movie, where Jay remembers things his dad said to him, and uses them to survive, fall flat, because as I said, Mitt is such an abhorrent character.

Yet, I was mildly intrigued throughout this one, mostly because it’s not every day you see a story about a guy trying to survive while inside a whale. That being said, “mildly” intrigued is a disappointment, because there’s nothing “mild” about a human being trying to survive after being swallowed up by a whale.

This one should have been much better.

I give it two stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

IN THE SPOOKLIGHT: THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD (1957)

This Halloween season, I have giant monsters on the mind, specifically from the golden age of giant monster movies, the 1950s.

The decade of the 1950s was the gold standard for giant monster movies. It’s the decade which first saw Godzilla emerge from the ocean depths in the original GODZILLA (1954) and also featured for my money the best giant monster movie ever made, the giant ant thriller THEM! (1954). 1954 was certainly a good year for giant monster movies.

But one giant monster movie that doesn’t get as much love as many of the others from the decade, films like THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953) and TARANTULA (1955), is one that I think is among the better made giant creature films from the 1950s, and that movie is THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD (1957).

Part of the problem, I think, with THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD, is it features as its monster a giant mollusk. Yeah, a giant clam is about as frightening as a giant moth. (Sorry, Mothra!)

The good news is the creature in this movie doesn’t really look like a giant clam, but more like a giant larva of an aquatic beetle, which is certainly more frightening looking than an oversized clam!

Speaking of frightening, that has always been my favorite part of THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD, which is, at times, it’s pretty darn scary! The monsters are pretty frightening looking, and director Arnold Laven films this one like a full-fledged horror movie, complete with jump scares here and there, the best being a scene where a man is looking about silently after hearing a noise, and when you least expect it, bam! The monster attacks!

Laven does a nice job at the helm, and while THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD was his only horror movie credit, he did direct several episodes of the PLANET OF THE APES TV show in 1974.

The movie also benefits from having its story take place in an intriguing setting, a town situated around the canal system of California’s Imperial Valley. The canal system setting adds to a lot of the suspense in this one, as the creatures make their home there.

In THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD— actually a better title would have been THE MONSTERS THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD, since there are lots of these giant critters here— these oversized mollusks start killing people, and it’s up to the personnel at the military base there to solve the mystery, led by commanding officer Twill (Tim Holt) and Dr. Jess Rogers (Hans Conried). During the investigation, Twill gets to know Gail Mackenzie (Audrey Dalton), a secretary at the base, and her young daughter, and Twill and Gail begin to see each other in a relationship that resonates better than the traditional wooden romances in 1950s horror movies.

Twill and Rogers eventually solve the mystery and put a plan in place to destroy the creatures, but not before lives are lost and in the movie’s climax, one of the creatures emerges from dormancy in the lab and attacks Gail and her daughter. Will Twill arrive in time to save them? It’s a 1950s giant monster movie, what do you think?

The cast is solid.

Tim Holt makes Twill a three-dimensional character. At first, he’s a strict by-the-book military officer, but his relationship with Gail reveals a softer side. Holt enjoyed a long movie career, mostly in westerns, and THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD was his only genre credit.

As I said, Audrey Dalton as Gail generated some nice chemistry with Tim Holt as the movie’s lead couple.

Hans Conried brings authenticity to his role as Dr. Jess Rogers. Conried had a gazillion credits, even showing up on an episode of KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER (1974). Conried is probably most famous for providing the voice of Captain Hook in the Disney animated classic PETER PAN (1953).

The screenplay by David Duncan and Pat Fielder is a good one. It has a compelling story to tell, has better dialogue than most of the 1950s giant monster movies, and creates three dimensional and interesting characters. In fact, the screenplay is one of this movie’s strengths, which comes as no surprise as both these guys had a ton of writing credits. Duncan wrote several other horror movie screenplays, including THE BLACK SCORPION (1957). MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS (1958), and THE THING THAT COULDN’T DIE (1958), as well as the English language version of Toho’s RODAN (1956). He also wrote the screenplay for George Pal’s version of H.G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE (1960).

While Pat Fielder wrote mostly for television, he also penned the screenplay for one of my favorite Dracula movies not made by Universal or Hammer, THE RETURN OF DRACULA (1958).

And the look of the monsters here are cool and frightening. No, they’re not super huge like Godzilla or Tarantula. They’re more the size of the giant ants found in THEM! The other cool thing about these monsters, besides the fact that they look scary, is that they’re unusual. It’s not every day you get to see a creature billed as a giant mollusk which more accurately resembles a giant sea beetle!

THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD scores high on the scare meter, especially those of the jump scare variety, something that was rather unusual for giant monster movies in the 1950s. It may not be in the top three of these 1950s creature features, but for a movie we don’t often here about much anymore, it’s certainly in the upper echelon of this subgenre.

And we’ll close with yet another reason why these creatures are scary. While Twill and his military personnel are struggling to contain the giant mollusk threat, Dr. Rogers utters a chilling reminder as to why these creatures are difficult to pin down when he says, “We must remember that these creatures can travel over land too.”

Yikes! Double threat!

So, watch out. While you may set your eyes on the water, don’t forget to keep an eye looking over your shoulder, because these babies move on land as well. They just might sneak up on you, and by then, as some folks in this movie discover, it’s way too late!

Happy clam digging!

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ANGEL AND THE BADMAN (2026) – Tepid Western Substitutes Christian Values for Story Conflict and Characterizations

ANGEL AND THE BADMAN (2026) is a remake of a classic John Wayne movie of the same name from 1947.

It’s also produced by Angel Studios, and that, really, is all you need to know about this one and how it plays out.

Angel Studios is not officially a Christian based company, but it does focus on faith-based stories and on what it calls, “values-based entertainment.” It also avoids profanity, nudity, sexual content, and graphic violence, as if these things are in and of themselves evil. They are not. And that’s the problem I have with faith-based values-based stories. They dumb down attitudes towards controversy, and label things that sometimes are necessary to tell stories based on truth, because after all, the truth is often messy, as “bad,” and so you have a story being told with the emotional maturity of a child, with good and bad, and no gray. In the hands of a company like Angel Studios, a work like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, for example, would play out like a Disney movie.

That being said, if you are a fan of Hallmark movies, you’ll no doubt enjoy ANGEL AND THE BADMAN. It’s a safe wholesome family romantic western. But if you’re a fan of cinematic movie westerns, you’ll most likely be bored.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against wholesome stories, and I know there are plenty of people in the world today who want to see this kind of movie. I have no problem with that. But this is a story about an outlaw and a murderous gang chasing him. So, for this story the vanilla style of movie making just doesn’t cut it.

In a nutshell, the plot is about a “bad man,” Quirt Evans (Zachary Levi) who is an outlaw and on the run, who is wounded and then nursed back to health by a family on a farm, which includes the lovely adult daughter, Penny (Meg Fraser), her mother, Irene (Jean Louisa Kelly), her feisty grandmother, Harriet (Melissa Chambers), and precocious little brother Johnny (Barrett Ellis Luca) who conveniently strolls around talking like he’s living in 2026. It’s no surprise, of course, that in this movie Quirt and Penny fall in love, and so when the outlaws who are pursuing him, since he stole their gold, show up, of course it’s up to Quirt to protect them, because, in this movie, they are helpless females. Well, not really. They do fight back. But there’s no way this one isn’t ending with Quirt riding in on his horse to save the day, and that’s exactly what happens. Ho hum.

Quirt and the outlaws are also pursued by the law here, led by a very old and grizzled Marshall, played by a very old and grizzled Tommy Lee Lones. Jones is 80 years-old, and he looks it. He also displays about as much energy as an ailing 80 year-old. That being said, it still was a lot of fun seeing Jones back on the big screen again. In fact, I can safely say that Jones, even at 80 and rather slow, was the best part of this movie.

Zachary Levi is okay as Quirt, but he looks like he’s just dying to start blabbering comical commentary a la Shazam, the role he played in the recent SHAZAM superhero movies.

Director Julio Quintana films Meg Fraser as Penny with her bright blue eyes with a Disney princess aura throughout. So yes, she is beautiful and wholesome to look at, but the movie doesn’t once dare to generate any sexual chemistry between Fraser and Levi. If these two were to get married, you could be sure that they’d be sleeping in separate beds, a la 1950s American television shows.

Jean Louisa Kelly who years ago shined as the troubled teen in the John Candy classic comedy UNCLE BUCK (1989), is respectable here as Irene the matriarch of the family, but every other word she utters is about how to live a good Christian life.

Neal McDonough shows up as main baddie Laredo, the latest in a series of ineffective villains played by McDonough. It’s reached the point where when you see McDonough show up to play a villain, you know he’s going to fail.

The screenplay by Kevin M. Townsend, Christopher Tuffin, and Jaime Hernandez is too busy spouting on about Christian values and prayer to pay any attention to character development and story structure and conflict.

The ending to this one is never in doubt. Like a Hallmark movie, you know the bad guys will lose, the main couple will not only prevail, but they’ll get together and live happily ever after.

Even the shoot outs in this one lack luster. There is no suspense, no excitement, and no payoff at the end because it’s all so predictable.

It’s no surprise that I saw this one in an empty theater. That’s right. I had my own private showing since no one else bothered to pay money to see this movie.

The other problem I have with “faith-based” stories is that they get the faith part all wrong. There’s a reason it’s called faith. That reason is in the real world, God/Jesus/whomever doesn’t show up in the flesh and take charge. You’ve got to believe without proof because nine times out of ten, it seems like prayers are not answered.

But in a movie like ANGEL AND THE BADMAN, the characters are all praying for things like changes of heart amongst the villains, and in some cases, this happens. The characters believe that going to church and praying means that things will work out in the end. There’s nothing wrong with believing this. But stories like this only speak in terms of fantasy, because here, prayers do work 100 % and the characters do get everything they want. It’s exactly this kind of storytelling that turns people away from faith, because they feel alienated. Why don’t I have a seat at the table? Why aren’t my prayers answered? Why is God ignoring me?

A smarter faith-based story would show prayers not working out the way a character expects, and then that character’s faith would be tested. If that character keeps their faith, then that’s a story about faith.

I was largely bored watching ANGEL AND THE BADMAN because while the characters here are all amiable, in terms of a western about an outlaw getting a second chance at life, it was pretty dull because it was clear from the outset that this second chance for redemption was pretty much a no brainer.

If you like wholesome Hallmark-type movies, you’ll enjoy ANGEL AND THE BADMAN. But if you’re a fan of movie westerns like me, you’ll no doubt be bored with it all.

I give it one and a half stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful