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| Return of Ultraman (1971 - 1972) BD box art |
This Static Age’s spotlight goes to Return of Ultraman (1971 – 1972), ‘On a mission to save Earth, Ultraman has returned’ as per the front cover tagline of Mill Creek Entertainment’s excellent Region A Blu-ray box-set [Complete Series 04], which contains of all 51 episodes in their original Japanese (DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0) with optional English subtitles and a stunning 1080p High-Definition 1.33:1 transfer. The set also comes with a booklet that is featuring an introductory article to the series, and several guides (hero, episode, kaiju, character, and key technology).
Although Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) was planning to wrap the Ultra
series with its previous installment, fan demand and merchandise sales forced
the studio to bring Ultraman back, this time a little different. Fans
originally called this version of the hero New Ultraman, but later went with
Ultraman Jack.
The first episode, ‘All Monsters Attack’ is epic in scope, as Weather
awakens all monsters and all hell breaks loose, but it is also a fascinating
episode in terms of story as we are introduced to our hero, as well as in terms
of visuals especially when director Ishiro Honda opts for psychedelics and
weird sci-fi. Ishiro Honda’s second chapter, ‘Takkong’s Great Counterattack’
brings more mayhem as the titular monster is unleashed again. ‘The Monster Realm
of Terror’ kicks off with a mysterious monster roar and then it is all about
kaiju battles. ‘Fatal Attack! Meteor Kick’ is featuring the awesome Kingsaurus
III monster, that Ultraman will be able to defeat only with a special kick. The
title of ‘Two Giant Monsters Attack Tokyo’ is self-explanatory, but it should
also be added that they resemble nasty cockroaches. The battle continues in
‘Showdown! Monsters Vs. Mat’. The chameleon-like Gorbagos monster makes an
appearance in ‘Operation Monster Rainbow’ and MAT will try to defeat it by
painting it in the rainbow colors, giving an extra queer touch to the
proceedings. ‘Monster Time Bomb’ is about Ghostron a monster with a time-bomb
in its body, threatening to explode a dynamite factory! MAT’s New York headquarters
develop a special monster detector in ‘Monster Island S.O.S.’. Biology in
general and evolution in particular come up front in the eerie ‘Dinosaur
Detonation Order’ episode when Stegon, a sympathetic dinosaur fossil comes to
life.
The Mognezun monster swallowed poison gas in ‘Poison Gas Monster Appears’ and is now far more
deadlier. In ‘Revenge of Monster Shugaron’ we’ll get to find out whether the
titular monster has a connection with a famous painter or not. In ‘Terror of
the Tsunami Monster: Tokyo in Peril’ the Seamons and Seagorath monsters initiate
large and deadly waves; the story continues in ‘Terror of the Two Giant
Monsters: The Great Tokyo Tornado’. In ‘Revenge of the Monster Boy’ the Eledortus monster gets his power by
sucking up electricity! In the eerie ‘The Mystery of Big Bird Monster
Terochilus’, unexpected snow and a mysterious red gas cause misery and madness;
the story continues in full action mode in ‘Monster Bird Terochilus Big Air
Raid of Tokyo’. The Bemstar
monster that resembles a flying turtle and that is sucking up gas cannot be
defeated by Ultraman, so ‘Here Comes Ultraseven!’. Ultraman returns solo to
fight Sartan, a monster that resembles an elephant, in ‘The Invisible Giant
Monster from Outer Space’. Ultraman has to fight the Magnedon monster that
resembles an alien bull in ‘The Monster is a Shooting Star in Space’. ‘The Monster Channel’ is as eerie as it sounds.
Ultraman has to face a trash-eating, web-spitting, and missile-catching monster
in ‘Leave this Monster to Me’. In ‘Spit Out the Stars, Dark Monster!’ we are
introduced to Zanika, the Cancer monster. In ‘Horror! Birth of the Apartment
Monster’, a kid grabs a small part of an alien creature recently destroyed by
MAT and nurtures it until it becomes the dangerous Kingstrom monster. ‘Leaving
My Home Planet, Earth’ is less about the monster on display, but rather about a
kid obsessed with guns.
And now, let’s switch our focus towards some recent series…
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| The cast of Penny Dreadful - Season 3 |
The 9th season of Doctor
Who (2005 – present) continues with more adventures of the titular
time-lord (Peter Capaldi) and his sidekick Clara (Jenna Coleman). Airplanes are
stuck in the sky in ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’, and Clara looks for
explanations as well as the Doctor. Clara does find both in ‘The Witch’s
Familiar’, but the Doctor has to employ his rock star qualities in order to
save the day. The U.K. cultural phenomenon keeps on getting better and better.
‘Under the Lake’ brings The Doctor and his sidekick to a secluded underwater
facility, the inhabitants of which live under the terror of the local ghosts;
the story continues in ‘Before the Flood’ in which we are introduced to the
evil Fisher King and get to question the origin of Beethoven’s 5th
symphony. In ‘The Girl Who Died’ we are introduced to Vikings (sometimes I wish
today’s people would be as tough as Vikings, because due to us citizens being
vanilla, we exchanged our privacy for access to social media, essentially
becoming as dumb as to swallow laws that destroy many of workers’ rights and
project no sense of reaction to our future being stolen by the ruling class)
and Ashildr (Maisie Williams), who in the next episode, entitled ‘The Woman Who
Lived’ becomes the beauty in a sort of Beauty and the Beast tale set in 1651
England. ‘The Zygon Invasion’ is about the titular aliens who have integrated
well on planet Earth, until some of them betray the mutual trust between them
and humans; the story continues with Clara playing a double part in ‘The Zygon
Inversion’. By employing the legend of the Sandman as well as shaky video
footage, ‘Sleep No More’ is one of this season’s most eerie episodes. The very
original ‘Face the Raven’ episode is about a strange number tattoo initiated by
a raven and is basically a countdown to the person’s death; the story continues
in the excellent one man show episode ‘Heaven Sent’ in which The Doctor has to
deal with loss; and the story concludes with the season’s grand finale in ‘Hell
Bent’.
Stunning art from Doctor Who - Season 9
Also, please allow me to speak a word or two about some recent
mainstream films…
Knives Out (2019) poster
Knives Out (2019) takes the whodunit genre to exciting horror comedy territory,
benefiting from an unconventional, intelligent, and original script by Rian
Johnson (who also directed) and a great cast that includes Daniel Craig, Chris
Evans, and Jamie Lee Curtis. It comes highly recommended and I can’t wait for
the sequels.
And finally, I would like to let you know that I enriched my bookshelf
with the following additions… Stuart MacBride’s ultra-violent police procedure
thriller Flesh House (2020), Stephen King’s kinetic and frenetic Firestarter (1980) and the non-fiction
opus Danse Macabre (1981), and six
books by Roberto Saviano [Il Contrario
della Morte (2007), Il Bellezza e
L’inferno (2009), Vieni via con me
(2010), ZeroZeroZero (2013), La Paranza dei Bambini (2016), and Bacio Feroce
(2017)].
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