Undead Backbrain

Check this out, the latest teaser for Todd Tennant’s American Godzilla ‘94 graphic novel:

• Source: Todd Tennant

In advance of the Spanish release of Outlander — the epic alien monster vs Vikings movie we here at the Backbrain have been anticipating for some time — the filmmakers have placed a variety of teasers, trailers and clips on the official website. This is great stuff and I’m even more excited about the film as the date for a general release draws closer.

Below is a clip that contains potential spoilers, but it’s too cool not to display for you. You get to see plenty of the monster — known as the Moorwen — as two of the main characters, Kainan and Wulfric, venture beyond the Village walls and confront it.

I should also point out that it’s in Spanish….

But make sure you go to the website for lots more.

• Source: Official website via Avery
• Previous Backbrain article

Todd Tennant has sent along a new, spectacular image of King Komodo, created as part of the ongoing comic serial that he produces with Mike Bogue.

Todd says, “I’m just calling this one ‘The Cage’.” Click here to see a very large version in all its glory.

It will appear in Tales of King Komodo, episode 4, appearing soon in G-Fan #86.

I commented that KK seemed to be “doing a Kong”, poor chap… and Todd described it, more correctly, I suspect, as a “Gwangi”. Then, intriguingly, he added: “… though he’ll escape his cage in a very different way.”

You’ll have to check out G-Fan to find out. Believe me, it would be worth your while to have a subscription, if you don’t already.

• Todd’s American Kaiju website
• G-Fan

The Tale of How (2006) by the Blackheart Gang is an incredibly beautiful piece of animation — a surreal adventure filled with profound whimsy and ornate decoration, not to mention the biggest octopus you’ve ever seen.

Click here to see larger version

According to the Gang, The Tale of How is the second part of a trilogy of works called the Dodo Trilogy. It will be flanked by The Tale of Then and The Tale of When.

The Dodo Trilogy (which it is called) in turn fits into a much greater work called The Household.

In the The Tale of How we meet a giant octopus with a tree growing in his head, the terror of the Indian ocean , OTTO THE MONSTER! His lonely pastime is to devour the innocent dodos who live on his head. But the dodos unite and with the help of a little white mouse, they escape the clutches of the terrible be-tentacled tyrant and sail off into the sunset on their mother the tree.

The Tale of How consists out of a series of thirteen prints and a short animated film:

The website includes a wealth of the Blackheart Gang’s other work, include more pages from The Tale of How like those below:

Click here to see larger version

Click here to see larger version

Coming up next will be Part One, The Tale of Then, which, according to the Gang, helps make sense of The Tale of Now.

The Tale of Then is a tragic love story with a difference, as it tells the tale of a hill who fell in love with a girl.

In The Tale of Then we explore the character of Otto, we’ll learn of his dark past and how he got to be such a grouch. But most importantly we’ll learn about the tree that grows on his head. It is a story of love and loss and the tragedy which lies between the two. A story of a girl and the silent hill who loved her. His name is Otto … and for years he watched this young lady as she herded goats on his head. As the seasons came and went his interest became fascination which soon grew into love. He longed for her so that even a peach pip, carelessly disregarded by the girl, became the subject of his eternal embrace. The tree that grew would watch her, blades of grass would caress her, his rivers cease to flow when she grew near. But alas! In the autumn of her life she grew old and she no longer walked on the hill. When she finally past away, she was buried inside of him and the tree turned red and lost its leaves. Fueled by her cold blood, Otto’s love turned to madness, and howling his loss to the moon, Otto tore his ancient body from the cruel earth. The earth shook as he raised high on his tentacles, engulfed in rage, Otto lay her city to waste and fled into the ocean … and this is where The Tale of How begins. (Source)

And now for good measure (because it is so beautiful), here is an ad by the Blackheart Gang’s Jannes Hendrikz and Ree Treweek (known as Shy the Sun):

Sea Orchestra from Shy the Sun on Vimeo.

• Source: via Kaiju Search-Robot Avery

• The Tale of How
• Blackheart Gang website
• Vimeo

As promised, here are the first images from Brian Lonano’s Attackzoids! sequel, Attackzoids, Deploy! — which is currently in production.

“Costumes and props are being constructed as we speak and I just had a meeting with a composer to create an orchestrated score to enhance the newsreel approach that I hope to achieve with this film.

“All in all, the film is unlike any project I have ever done before … it’s more ambitious in its short length and so many things are being made from scratch. I know the low or no budget filmmaker has to buy certain things and modify them, but a large percentage of the effects, costumes and props you will be seeing will be hand crafted by the Robot Hand team.

“I am very excited to see how the film will turn out in the coming months. I hope to have the film completed by March 2009 and from there I will be submitting it to big genre festivals and perhaps try our luck at some Academy Qualified Festivals.”

Having seen the first film and enjoyed it, I’m keen to see where Lonano and his crew go from there.

• Previous Backbrain article

The full-length trailer for Elias and BiFF JUGGERNAUT’s poignant new vampire comedy, Dead Sucks, has been released via Fangoria.

Here it is:

• Previous Backbrain article

And now, a teaser trailer for Maggots, a film from unstoppable exploitation king Fred Olen Ray!

THE MOST DISGUSTING GIANT MONSTER EVER FILMED!

… though it looks a little like a giant claw (no, not THE Giant Claw)….

But wait! This title doesn’t appear on IMDB or in any of the online filmographies of Fred Olen Ray. So what’s the story?

• Source: Avery

What if you could have your own custom-designed giant robot made to order? What would it be like? What would you do with it?

A fascinating and awesomely cool project is underway that helps 20 kids answer these and other giant-robotic questions, giving them the chance to see their giant-robot dreams come to life as high-quality animations. The project is called My Giant Robot! and project creator is a dynamic filmmaker and animator from Ohio by the name of Jeff Boddy.

The ultimate aim of the project is to produce a short film that traces the process by which the giant robots were conceived, designed and brought to life. It has been underway since 2004 or so, but is still very much a going concern. Boddy commented to Kaiju Search-Robot Avery (recognising one of his own, no doubt): “I’ve been taking my time to get this right — that and getting sidetracked by other projects. I’m still working out the animation effects.”

Nevertheless the Project’s website hosts a number of excellent animated sequences, such as this one that asks the pertinent question: “How tall would your robot be?”

The site documents the process right from the start. The first result of the project was the filming and editing of 20 kids as they responded to questions about their robot. You can get a feel for this in a trailer that was premiered at 21st Annual Ohio 24 Hour Science Fiction Marathon in 2004. The beautifully filmed and very funny trailer can be viewed on Boddy’s website (click on “WORK” from the header menu and “My Giant Robot” in the right-hand sidebar).

The My Giant Robot! website illustrates how the 20 kid’s individualised robots are being conceptualised and then transformed from concept to 3D. Below is “Parker’s Spidertron”, for example, which Boddy designed by drawing on a variety of inspirations:

Another is Lovey, imagined by Avery (but not our Avery — or so he claims), which is made from bricks:

Lovey, of course, flies and has some rather spectacular powers, as you can see from this test animation:

Finally here is a longer animated sequence that features the House Robot:

Boddy has promised to keep Undead Backbrain informed about future developments as they happen. In the meantime, check out the My Giant Robot! website for lots more on the project.

• Source: via Kaiju Search-Robot Avery

The Backbrain has featured work from the Ray Harryhausen Presents imprint of Bluewater Comics before, but here’s a bit of an update, focusing on the most monstrous of covers.

Wrath of the Titans: Cyclops

First introduced by Bluewater in their Wrath of the Titans series (an extension of Harryhausen’s film Clash of the Titans), the Cyclops from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad gets a comic of his own.  The story follows the beast “as he matches wits and muscle against pirates, prehistoric monsters and even other Cyclopeans, with the magical lamp as the glittering prize.” It’s an interesting concept, as many of the Bluewater titles are.

20 Million Miles More

Based on Harryhausen’s 20 Million Miles To Earth and featuring one of his most iconic monsters, the Ymir.

It’s been 50 years since the strange being from Venus rampaged through Italy. So it has been 50 years of secrets, misinformation and outright lying. Once the world was convinced that the Ymir was a giant hoax and the mission to Venus never happened, it was lulled back to sleep, ignorant of the truth. But no one counted on genetics. Years of secret testing and breakthroughs in many of the gray areas of science created unintended consequences that could bring the Earth to its knees…and only an 11-year-old child can save it.

War of the Elementals

Based on a Harryhausen project that never got off the ground (as it were).

1915 France. The Great War rages and a new breed of hero take to the skies. Part bull-terrier, part daredevil, the aces of the Royal Flying Corps’ 5th Squadron are Britain’s elite. It was an era of counter-intelligence, dogfights and drinking songs. But that was before the world changed. That was before the Elementals. When a routine mission goes awry, the 5th Squadron finds itself trapped in an unreal world called The Source. Here giant bat-like creatures dominate the world keeping the Universe, and all of its parallel realities, in a precarious balance. But despite its serene appearance, it is a violent, predatory land. Trapped along with Germany’s greatest flying ace, they all must work together to find a way back home. But the home they left is no longer the world they knew.

It Came From Beneath the Sea … Again

Based on … well, you know what it is based on!

In the 1950s, the U.S. Navy encountered and destroyed a gigantic octopus that attacked shipping and wreaked havoc on the west coast of the United States. American forces killed the creature and ended the threat once and for all. Or so they thought. They were wrong. Now, another monster is rising in the warm blue waters surrounding Taru Taru, a speck of land far out in the Pacific. And this time it’s worse than anyone ever imagined.

The Imaginaries

This one isn’t a Harryhausen adaptation. Rather it is the work of Mike S. Miller, who is associated with such franchises as The Adventures of Superman and Wolverine.

The story began with the universal idea of imaginary friends, and what happens to them when their creators stop believing in them; they go to a miraculous world called ‘the Imagined Nation’.

[This] new series takes a slightly more mature tone visually [than the original, published through Image Comics] while maintaining the wonder and imagination of an all-ages title. Superhero G has found a new purpose for his existence, but struggles with his desire to return ‘home’ to his best friend and sidekick, Tanner.

• Source: Bluewater website (on the suggestion of Kaiju Search-Robot Avery)

The American Film Market 2008 features a slew of Japanese films, many of which are definite Backbrain material. Apart from Monster X Strikes Back — Attack the G8 Summit (aka Guilala no Gyakushu / Toyako Summit Kiki Ippatsu; directed by Minoru Kawasaki), the long-anticipated 20th Century Boys (aka 20 Seiki Shonen); dir. Yukihiko Tsutsumi),

and a rather intriguing comedy from Takashi Miike — God’s Puzzle (Kamisama no Pazuru), which is about a couple of university students studying particle physics who cause humorous havoc by attempting to prove the proposition that with the proper equipment man can create a whole new universe — the AFM is screening:

Reigo: The Deep-Sea Monster vs the Battleship Yamato (aka Shinkaiju Reigo; dir. Shinpei Hayashiya):

In the midst of World War II, the battleship Yamato, the pride of the Japanese navy, joins with the main squadrons of the Combined Fleet in the South Seas.

Ensign Takeshi Kaido is one of the officers serving on the Yamato at the front lines of the naval war. His childhood sweetheart, Chie Kojima awaits his return back in their seaside hometown. Unsure of what the future may bring, Kaido went off to war without publicly declaring his love for Chie Kojima (Mai Nanami). But he still carries her photo in his coat pocket, always.

While lurking in the waters off the Truk Islands, the crew of the Yamato spot what is believed to be an enemy submarine and fire on it. The attack is a success, however what sinks to the sea bottom is not a submarine at all but a massive mysterious creature that will later bring disaster upon the fleet…

Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (anime; dir. Kazuya Tsurumaki, Masayuki, Hideaki Anno)

The first of four feature-length films in the “Rebuild of Evangelion” series of “remakes” of the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. I’m really looking forward to this one.

In the global disaster ‘Second Impact’, half the human population of the earth was killed.

15 years later, a 14 year-old boy, Shinji Hikari, sees a giant creature when he comes to Tokyo-3 to visit his father. The unknown creature is called an ‘Angel’, and it starts attacking the city and the army. Shinji is caught in the crossfire and saved by a woman, Misato. She takes him to a paramilitary organization ‘NERV’, and there he finds his father Gendo Hikari, the commander of NERV.

Gendo shows his son an enormous mecha called ‘Evangelion’, and demands that the boy use it to fight the Angels. At first, Shinji refuses to be the pilot of Evangelion, but gradually changes his mind and accepts his fate. How does the boy fight for the world’s future?

Gendo knows the secrets behind Evangelion, but just watches his son struggle.

Ichi (dir. Fumihiko Sori)

Though I’m totally conflicted about Ichi (largely because the original 26 Katoichi the Blind Swordsman films starring Shintarô Katsu are among my favourite movies ever), this “updating” could be interesting as a curiosity.

Ichi is a sole goze (blind woman singer) carrying only a shamisen (Japanese stringed instrument) and a walking stick, traveling on her own to find the man who has brought her up and cared for her as a child. People try to take advantage of the fact that she is blind, but Ichi fights back with her unusual skill with swords, using the sword hidden inside her walking stick.

A man named Toma tries to save Ichi from the Banki-to gang, but ends up showing his awful skills in swordplay and is instead rescued by Ichi. Ichi and Toma come upon a village controlled by the Banki-to gang, led by the inhuman and heartless Banki. They also run into Toraji, who is the successor of the Shirakawa yakuza family trying to keep order in the village. Toma offers to help, but Ichi is uninterested until she finds that Banki might know the man she has been looking for. Now the deadly battle is about to begin!

Check out SciFi Japan’s report on these and many other Japanese films here.

Source: SciFi Japan via Avery