We have a more or less random mix of old and new this week. We’ll start off with the new releases, “Death Name” and “Cold Storage,” both from 2026. We’ll watch a not-so-recent sci-fi movie, “Stranded” from 2013. For an oldie, we’ve got 1986’s Alice Cooper in the not-so-spectacular “Monster Dog.” We will then finish our series on Godzilla with “Godzilla: The Planet Eater” from 2017 (We’ve now seen ALL the Godzilla films!)
All this as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #55, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:
Mainstream Films:
2026 Death Name
Director: Réi Talas
Writers: Réi Talas and Regina Kim
Stars: Amy Keum, Kevin Woo, and Vana Kim
Runtime: 81 minutes
YouTube Trailer Link:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A young woman of Korean descent tries exploring her family history and accidentally awakens a family curse that followed her grandma to America. It is slow-moving and talky with some suspense and story that builds to a climax. But it’s low on scares, and neither of us were very impressed with it. It’s just middling in pretty much every way.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on an old news report of General Eisenhower and the Korean War. A pregnant woman hides in the closet as a strange man in a hat walks in to find a woman hanging from the ceiling. The man in the hat finds the woman in the closet, and she screams. Credits roll as we see Korean immigrants coming to America.
It’s Sophie’s first day of university, and all the good classes have been taken. She asks her mother why they never bothered teaching her Korean, and she doesn’t even have a Korean name. It’s something her grandma wanted. Grandma overhears part of the phone conversation and freaks out. Her father texts her that she was, in fact, given a Korean name, but there was a fight over it. She wants to know her name, and he sends it to her, in Korean text, which makes her phone blink with static.
Brian, Kwan, and Ari meet Sophie in class, and they’re all friendly. Professor Lee runs the Korean History class. Some of the students want to be called by their Korean names. She asks them for help translating her Korean Name, since she can’t read Korean. When Kwan tries, the power goes out.
Sophie goes home on a break and eats with the family. Grandma is especially interesting, asking the same question repeatedly– she must have some dementia. She mentions thinking about going by her Korean name now, and Grandma insists that she doesn’t have a Korean name– excitedly. Sophie’s parents explain about some of Grandma’s history– her great-grandmother killed herself, which was a big scandal in Korea. Grandma says there’s more to it than that; she’s been trying to protect the whole family from the family curse. “Don’t speak that name!”
Sophie goes to a nearby bar and meets Jun, a single guy from Korea. He tells her that it’s never too late to learn Korean. They talk a lot, and he walks her home for a kiss. Later, Ari says Sophie isn’t a real Korean; it’s just trendy for her– she’s been whitewashed.
Sophie and Jun have another date, and he admits that he’s got baggage too. Something keeps dripping through the ceiling in Sophie’s dorm room.
On the next break, Sophie takes Jun home to meet her parents. Her parents are normal, but Grandma’s taken a turn for the worse. Jun has brought a gift from Seoul for Grandma, and when she sees it, she screams. It’s pearls– no, it’s berries. She calls him an evil spirit.
As they talk later, Sophie tells him her Korean name, Park Joo-Hyun. This leads to kissing and sex for some reason. Later, she hears voices calling that name. All her photos of Jun are blurry, but only on his face. Is he real?
Sophie gets a flashback to her great-grandmother and the man in the big hat, who has a melted face. When his face is intact, he looks like Jun. Sophie gets a call from her parents; she needs to drive home and check on Grandma. Turns out, Grandma is right there on campus to warn Sophie about the curse. Sophie drives Grandma home, which is a mess.
Grandma tells the story about her mother, the man in the hat, and Sophie’s new boyfriend, who knows her Korean name. One of her ancestors caused Jun to kill himself and become a ghost. We see that opening scene again, with more detail this time. She moved to the USA and took a new name; he couldn’t find them under a different name. Now, with Sophie speaking her true name out loud, the ghost has found them.
Sophie has to go out to pick up more of Grandma’s medication, and leaves her home alone. When she gets home, Grandma is unconscious on the floor. At the hospital, she sees Jun in the room, and he’s angry. He wants Sophie to be his bride in the afterlife, and she volunteers. She wants 48 hours to tie up loose ends before going with him, and he agrees to the terms.
Sophie talks to Professor Lee about some old family tree documents she needs to translate. Back in 1902, Jun committed suicide, and the family had his name cut out of the records. Sophie then runs to the Korean records library, which is closed for construction, and breaks right in. Ari follows her to see what’s going on and helps translate what they find.
Ari says Sophie’s name, and the ghost finds them immediately. Jun lets Sophie choose the manner of her death, and she chooses poison. Ari helped her find the ghosts’ true name, and she says it aloud. Suddenly, Grandma jumps out of bed, and Sophie accidentally cuts her throat. Jun the ghost vanishes.
Later, Sophie rubs her belly. She’s got Jun’s baby inside there…
Brian’s Commentary
If you don’t like this movie, you’re not a real Korean. OK, maybe you are, I dunno. A lot of the film seems to revolve around what a “real” Korean is versus a second- or third-generation immigrant.
I suspect the doctors are going to suspect foul play when they find Grandma’s throat cut in her hospital room.
Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t find it particularly compelling at all. The backstory of the curse, the deaths, none of it was particularly interesting.
Meh.
Kevin’s Commentary
There’s a lot of talk and not a lot of scare here. The Korean culture things were kind of interesting. The whole movie was kind of interesting, but I wouldn’t go much further than that.
I’d call it just okay over all.
2026 Cold Storage
Director: Jonny Campbell
Writers: David Koepp
Stars: Georgina Campbell, Joe Keery, and Liam Neeson
Runtime: 99 minutes
YouTube Trailer Link:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A semi-retired bioterrorism agent gets called back into action with his sidekick when a deadly fungus gets on the loose. Throw a couple of civilians into the mix, and hilarity ensues. This one has lots of humor and body horror. It’s juicy and gross.
Everything was well done, and it’s entertaining, but it’s not super original. There’s a lot here we’d seen before.
Spoilery Synopsis
We’re told about Skylab and the debris that mostly burned up in orbit. Some of it hit the Earth.
In Western Australia, 18 years ago, Enos rushes to make a phone call. Dr. Martins in Rome gets the call. “Something came out of your tank! We’re all dying!” The tank is NASA’s, and she doesn’t know much about it. 27 hours later, she arrives there to investigate. Robert Quinn arrives on the scene with Romano; they’re military of some sort. There was an O2 tank from Skylab that fell down here, but it had a parasitic fungus on it. We sent it up there in the first place, but what came down wasn’t the same thing.
The three check out the small town where the “outbreak” has taken place. There are no people. They soon find the tank and check it out. Dr. Martins quickly figured out what happened. Someone was trying to clean the tank and accidentally fed the thing inside. The creature finds its way into her through a hole in her boot. Then they find all the townspeople on the roofs of the buildings, dead.
Quinn calls in the military to burn the town to the ground. Martins has one sample in her bag and another in her foot. It acts really fast and takes over her mind. She shoots herself. As credits roll, the town is destroyed and the sample is taken to a secret research facility where it’s put into Cold Storage.
Years pass, and the facility shuts down and is eventually sold. Teacake drives to the new self-storage facility, which is the re-tasked cold storage place from before. He works security there, and his boss, Griffin, wants to do something illegal. He talks to Naomi, a new employee about how awful this job is.
An old woman comes in and wants to access her unit. She goes into the unit and finds her gun; this is her anniversary, and she’s thinking of shooting herself. She takes a nap first.
In North Carolina, Robert Quinn gets a phone call about the sample. There’s an alarm about a temperature change at the storage facility. He’s soon on the way to the facility.
Teacake and Naomi hear a beeping inside the wall and want to investigate. They break open the wall and see the same alarm that Quinn was notified about. There’s a whole wall of control-panel stuff back there. Naomi wants to explore the place’s sub-sub-basement, where the lab is. It takes a while, but they get there.
Naomi’s crazy boyfriend Mike drives up outside, and he’s more or less a stalker now. He calls her, but she doesn’t get the message due to being so far underground. Also, he’s got someone dead in the trunk of his car. It’s not a body, it’s a cat who appears to be infected. It climbs to the roof and explodes a load of spores that infect Mike, a deer, and gets the ball rolling.
Naomi and Teacup open the vault and go inside. They find an infected “rat king” on the ground. They nope right out and head back upstairs.
Quinn talks to Abigail and Jerabek, who explains that the man in charge of the cold storage unit died a year and a half ago. Jerabek is in charge now, but he doesn’t believe there’s any real problem here. Abigail takes it more seriously and wants to help Quinn.
We get a flashback to several years ago as the fungus broke out. It infected a cockroach just a few hours ago that got outside and into Mike’s trunk and the dead cat. Meanwhile, Naomi and Teacup watch the infected deer, which explodes. Mike shows up, and he’s acting very strangely. He starts shooting, which wakes up old Mrs. Rooney, who was asleep in her unit. Naomi calls the government agency whose name was on the vault door.
Quinn lands and meets with Romano, from the old days, and they have equipment to pick up. They get Naomi’s call. Naomi and Teacup argue about whether or not zombies are real. Outside, Quinn’s criminal friends arrive to steal stuff. They come upon the deer carcass and the hole in the wall. Ironhead, The Rev, Garbage, Cuba, and Dr. Friedman come inside to loot 4K TVs.
Mike finds and pukes all over Cuba, Garbage, and Ironhead. The Rev hears the action and just drives away. Old lady Rooney shoots Mike in the head, causing him to explode.
Teacup and Naomi get outside and run into Quinn, who has a mini-nuke. He gives the young couple hazmat suits and sends them down to the lab to place the nuke. Quinn stays outside to kill anyone who tries to leave the building. When they get down to the lab, they find that the timer is already counting down. Can they make it out in time?
Teacup, Naomi, Quinn, and Romano limp to the car and try to get away from the blast.
The bomb goes off, and it’s a BIG one. It turns the whole facility into a mile-wide crater.
Some time passes, and Abigail visits Quinn in the hospital. Naomi and Teacup are a thing now.
We then cut to another deer in the wild that explodes into green stuff.
Brian’s Commentary
It’s got loads of fairly big stars and recognizable faces in it. It takes zombie action, contagion action, and a little “Die Hard” action and mixes it all up with fun characters and a crazy setting. There’s not much new here, but it combines old tropes into a fun mix.
It’s billed as a horror comedy, but it didn’t seem all that comedic to me. It was good, though.
Kevin’s Commentary
I thought the casting was especially good in this one. It’s well made, but a bit formulaic. Everything is well done, but I didn’t feel like there was a lot new here that I hadn’t already seen before. It was entertaining though.
2013 Stranded
Director: Roger Christian
Writers: Roger Christian, Christian Piers Betley
Stars: Christian Slater, Brendan Fehr, Amy Matysio, Michael Therriault
Runtime: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes
Trailer Link:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Four astronaut miners on a moon base get clobbered by meteors. Which would be bad enough by itself, but the meteors bring an alien lifeform that dials the peril and body horror up high. Miscommunication and bad choices help move the somewhat predictable plot along, but the effects are good, as is the acting. The sum total is a pretty good movie that Kevin was more entertained by than Brian.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on the moonbase ARK, with four crew. It’s day 187 of the one-year mission. There’s an incoming meteor storm, and it blasts the base. The rocks keep falling, and there’s lots of damage. Commander Gerard Brockman wants to evacuate back to Earth, but suddenly, a meteor hits them right in the control room. Credits roll.
They all work on damage control for a while. Ava Cameron goes into a damaged section to seal a leak, and she finds a piece of a meteor embedded in a machine. That goes badly, but she does bring a piece of the meteor back to the inhabitable area; it’s got an unusual spore on it.
It’s going to be several days before an evacuation ship arrives, so they have to patch up whatever’s left. The spore starts growing, and it’s obviously of alien origin. Ava works with the spore, and she’s got a cut on her hand, so we know where this is heading now. She almost immediately starts feeling weird but doesn’t tell anyone.
Bruce and Lance find her and examine her; she’s suddenly very pregnant. They put her into a very loose kind of isolation. The thing inside her grows very fast, and she has nightmares. Then the real thing comes out, and it’s even worse. This brings about lots of arguing about what to do next.
Ava wakes up to find some kind of monstrous baby feeding from her, and she doesn’t react well. It bites Bruce and runs off. Lance insists that Bruce and Ava are hallucinating from the bad air in the place. Bruce starts hallucinating that he’s infected as well after the bite. We see the creature growing and mutating into something fully grown and humanoid; it looks like Bruce, only naked and slimy.
Bruce keeps imagining seeing the alien creature, but no one believes him. He unties Ava from the “quarantine” room and lets her out. Gerard finds out and sedates her, but not before she stabs him with a scalpel. Meanwhile, the alien doppelganger kills Bruce, makes it look like a suicide, and steals his clothes.
Lance finds Bruce’s body at the same time Gerard is attacked… by Bruce. They have no choice but to release Ava to help them find the alien. The alien then traps Lance in an airlock and he gets blasted out on a very slow timer.
Gerard and Ava decide that now that there’s only the two of them that they can take the escape pod. This requires all manner of running around and packing supplies.
Soon, there’s a big three-way brawl, and the alien gets in the escape pod, launching in one minute. Can they stop it? No– the rocket blasts off toward Earth.
With only 17 minutes left to live, the escape shuttle arrives. Can they run to the shuttle with no air for three-and-a-half minutes?
We cut to Earth, where the escape pod has landed. There’s no one inside and no tracks. Not far away, the creature is mutating again…
Brian’s Commentary
These may be the dumbest space-people who ever lived. None of them know what “quarantine” means. They know there’s something alive on the base, but they all keep pretending it isn’t. Ava gets infected by an alien spore and doesn’t report it at all.
The acting is fine, the sets are good, and the creature effects are effective. The overall plot, however, requires all the characters to make every stupid decision in the book. It’s pretty predictable and more than a little dull after it gets going.
Kevin’s Commentary
It starts right out with the meteor clobbering and doesn’t let up with one damn thing after another.
For a group of astronauts isolated on a base who would have been highly vetted and trained, they don’t communicate well, and they make some dumb decisions.
The pluses outweighed the negatives overall though, and I was more entertained than not.
1986 Monster Dog
Director: Claudio Fragasso
Writers: Claudio Fragasso
Stars: Alice Cooper, Victoria Vera, Carlos Santurio
Runtime: 84 min
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A rocker returns to his hometown with his crew to shoot a music video, and they find a town infested with killer dogs. But there are supernatural forces at work, and they aren’t just ordinary doggies. It’s not awful, but there’s nothing really noteworthy either. It’s generic and pretty forgettable.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on Vincent Raven making a music video. He sounds and looks a lot like Alice Cooper. We get most of a whole music video with him, then we cut to later, while he’s in a van with Sandra, talking about how terrible it was. He wants to make something more original. They’re all heading back to his ancestral home; he hasn’t been home in decades.
Meanwhile, at the big house, the caretaker investigates some strange noises. It sounds like a dog has gotten into the house. Turns out, it’s a whole bunch of snarling, growling dogs. In the van, Vince and his friends talk about hearing about the wild dog problem in the area. Vince and the sheriff have a weird history. The sheriff warns him about the dogs– there have already been five deaths to those dogs. Back in the day, something happened with Vince’s father, and the locals remember the incident. As soon as Vince’s group leaves, the sheriff and deputy are killed by a nasty-looking dog.
Vince hits a dog with his car, and they all stop to help. Vince finishes the dog off with a blow to the head. A creepy old man comes out and says, “Now you’ve done it. Now he’s back at last. He will command the hounds, and all of you will die!” He’s fun. Vince and Sandra get a glimpse of the monster in the woods.
The group arrives at Vince’s family home, but old Joss, the caretaker, is nowhere to be found. Vince grabs a shotgun and investigates the upper levels of the house. Angela senses that they’re all in danger and horrible things are about to happen. She has a weird nightmare where she sees Vince as a werewolf who kills all of them. When she tells Vince about it, he doesn’t laugh.
Vince pulls out a big book about werewolves and explains to Sandra that it’s related to some kind of heart condition and that werewolves do exist. His own father was accused of being a werewolf; he would go out under the full moon and kill animals. The locals eventually caught and killed Vince’s father.
In the morning, the group sets about getting started filming their music video, the reason they came here. We soon get a second musical number (This is better than the first one). Suddenly, in the middle of the song, they find the caretaker’s body.
Angela wanders off into the countryside, and Vince goes looking for her. At the same time, a group of locals cut the phone lines and talk about killing Vince. They want in the house to wait for Vince, but Sandra doesn’t like their looks. Frank and Jordan invite the group inside for beers which turns into a mistake almost instantly.
Lou, the leader of the troublemakers, explains that Vince is a werewolf, and he intends to kill him. Lou explains what really happened with Vince’s father, and he’s convinced that it wasn’t a mistake. Vince controls and commands all the wild dogs in the area; that’s his special power.
Vince and Angela return to the house, and Lou shoots Angela dead by accident. The men play hide-and-seek with Vince and shotguns. Meanwhile, the pack of wild dogs arrives outside. Vince eventually shoots all the bad guys, but by this time, the dogs are inside the house.
The dogs tear up Frank and Jordan, but suddenly go away, as if they’ve been called. The big dog wants in, and he’s going to break in the door. Yep, it’s the werewolf, and the dogs obey him. Things get hectic, quickly.
Soon, it’s just Sandra and Marylou locked in a room as the werewolf tries to get them. Vince shows up, and the werewolf vanishes. Marylou puts two and two together and decides that Vince is the monster; where was he during all the attacks? Vince definitely has a calming presence on the wild dogs, who sit and whimper when he’s around.
The group runs out to Lou’s car after retrieving the keys and drives off. They don’t notice right away that Marylou is dead and the monster dog is in the backseat. Sandra jumps out the door, and Vince crashes the car.
Sandra goes to the crash scene, but doesn’t find Vince or the monster. The creepy old man shows up, apparently a minion of the werewolf, saying “We have a new king!” before dying.
Sandra finds Vince, and he warns her to stay away. He is a werewolf, at least now. He wants her to shoot him. As he turns into a werewolf, the monster dog comes out of the bushes. She shoots Vince, and everything gets calm immediately.
We get the opening musical number again, this time overlaid over a retrospective of scenes from the rest of the movie.
Brian’s Commentary
The dubbing is really poor here, and it detracts from all the performances. The story is pretty formulaic, and the film is very low-budget.
They used a bunch of real dogs for this, but the werewolf is basically a mask in the dark or a mask in the fog; we never get much of a look at it. The monster dog, which isn’t the werewolf, is a big puppet.
Overall, it’s a very generic 80s international horror film.
Kevin’s Commentary
The old man is the least subtle harbinger ever; he was awesome.
It’s said that no one did their own dubbing in the film, and the only time we hear Alice Cooper’s real voice is during the musical numbers. It’s strange seeing him just being a normal looking and acting guy when we usually see him being freaky and made-up on stage. But it would have been better with their own voices or at least better dubbing.
I had never even heard of this movie before. And I can see why. It wasn’t too bad, but it was very bland and forgettable.
2018 Godzilla: The Planet Eater
Director: Kōbun Shizuno, Hiroyuki Seshita
Writers: Gen Urobuchi
Stars: Mamoru Miyano, Takahiro Sakurai, Tomokazu Sugita, Yūki Kaji
Runtime: 91 minutes
YouTube Trailer Link:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This is the third in the anime trilogy of a fully science fiction Godzilla movie set in the future. This one has much less action than the second movie, and a lot more talk about philosophy and religion. We thought it was okay, on the weak side for a finish.
Spoilery Synopsis
Metphies narrates about how the Exif have been watching humanity since long before Godzilla appeared. He talks about humanity’s need for heroes, religion, and God. He thinks the hero that humanity needs is Haruo Sakaki. Credits roll.
Martin talks about Godzilla and the other monsters’ origins. Maybe humanity’s whole purpose all along was to create the monsters. There’s arguing between the Bilusaludo and human leaders. After the previous battle, Yuko is now brain-dead, but not completely dead. Some of the humans have come to the conclusion that Sakaki is being divinely guided somehow. God is watching over them all, and he might be speaking through Sakaki.
Martin points out that the Hauta treatment that Sakaki got was what saved him from the nanometal. Metphies is fully aware of this, but he promotes the religious ideas of the others anyway. Metphies’ god is supposedly capable of beating Godzilla. Metphies explains that only Sakaki can summon their god to Earth– by using his hatred.
Up in orbit, Dolu-Do and the Bilusaludo revolt and take over the mothership by force. They want Sakaki’s head, so Sakaki has to go into hiding, and Maina, one of the Hauta twins, offers to help. Meanwhile, Metphies uses the religious crystal thing he had repaired in the previous film to send a signal into space.
Metphies and Miana discuss their telepathic abilities. He then does something bad to her. Maina, the twin, senses that something has happened to her sister. The Exifs, on the planet and on the spaceship, hold rituals, and all the human followers call upon their god, named Ghidorah, to come to them.
Ghidorah hears and arrives quickly, killing the human followers one at a time. Yeah, it’s that Ghidorah, coming through a black hole that suddenly appears. It surrounds the mothership and pulls it toward the black hole; time gets messed up and the whole ship explodes spectacularly.
Sakaki quickly comes to the conclusion that Metphies is crazy and has sold them out. As the disturbance from space reaches the planet, Godzilla wakes up again and heads toward the trouble. Godzilla blasts it with atomic breath, but it bends the ray away with his gravitational field. The human’s machines don’t pick up the new monster at all; is it real? Does it not have a physical form? All three of the glowing yellow monster snakes grab onto Godzilla.
Sakaki confronts Metphies, who explains everything. The Exifs have travelled around the universe, choosing planets for Ghidorah to eat, like the Silver Surfer and Galactus. They all basically have a death wish for the entire universe. As he rambles on, Godzilla’s body temperature goes up, but the energy is going somewhere else. Sakaki gets a vision of the people who have died fighting Godzilla.
Meanwhile Miana grabs Professor Martin and takes him to the Hauta’s base. They talk to the Great Egg inside. After about a month’s worth of exposition, Sakaki turns against Metphies and smashes his magic eye.
Suddenly, Godzilla is able to physically touch Ghidorah, and the big yellow monster is now visible on the humans’ sensor. Godzilla then, quite easily, defeats the three-headed monster from space. Metphies dies, and Sakaki cries.
The human survivors go to live with the Hauta and learn their natural ways. Professor starts the nuclear reactor on a crashed vulture. He can use the nanotechnology to rebuild civilization, which Sakaki realizes is the pathway to destruction, just as before. He takes Yuki’s body and steals the vulture. He flies into Godzilla.
Brian’s Commentary
This is the third of the anime trilogy. The appearance of Ghidorah is treated like a big reveal, but he’s right there on the movie poster, so that wasn’t a shock. Mothra never really did make an appearance other than a sort of telepathic messenger.
This one is very talkie, with Metphies’s explanation seemingly going on for an hour. Still, the series overall has a lot going on, with many details and interesting ideas. I guess at the end, they all learn to live with Godzilla, which is weird.
I liked the first two films of the trilogy a lot, but this one was just slow moving, too philosophical/religious, and not that much actually happened beyond all the talking. It was a weak ending to a trilogy that started out pretty great. Overall, I still liked the trilogy, but the ending really brought it down a lot.
Kevin’s Commentary
Summoning an even bigger and worse monster to fight Godzilla. What could go wrong?
I didn’t care for the first movie that much. I thought the second one was really good. So I thought the third would be even better! It’s not. There’s too much talk and not enough action. The animation is still cool and equal in quality, but the script isn’t nearly as entertaining. It wasn’t a strong finish to the trilogy.
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