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| Ultraman Ace (1972 - 1973) BD box art |
This Static Age’s spotlight
goes to Ultraman Ace (1972 – 1973), ‘Ambassador
from the galactic federation’ as per the front cover tagline of Mill Creek
Entertainment’s excellent Region A Blu-ray box-set [Complete Series 05], which
contains of all 52 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).
Riding high on what is now defined as the second wave of kaiju
entertainment from Japan, this new Ultra incarnation is significant because for
the first time the series employ a story arc narrative that is prevalent
throughout its entire run, instead of the usual one-offs or two-part episode
format of the previous years. Said story arc finds the mean Yapool and his
“Terrible-Monsters” experiments (kaiju much more powerful than what we were
used to) attempt to push forward their plan for world domination, and it is up
to Ultraman Ace to stop them!
‘Shine! The Five Ultra Brothers’ introduces us to Ultraman Ace, the
fifth Ultra brother of alien saviors, who has passed his transformation ring to
Seiji Hukuto (Keiji Takamine) and Yuko Minami (Mitsuko Hoshi), and the union of
the couple upon cases of emergency will transform them to the superhero – and
what do you know, the first emergency comes in the form of the fire-breathing
monster Verokron that wreaks havoc upon the city of Fukuyama. A mysterious, oversized, silver egg that devours
people makes an appearance in ‘Surpass the Giant Terrible-Monster’, before the
ancient Chameleking monster shows up to battle with Ultraman Ace. In ‘Go Up in
Flames! Terrible-Monster Hell’ the skies break and unleash the Vakishim
monster. ‘A 300-Million-Year-Old Terrible-Monster Appears!’ is a very grim
episode in which manga artist Mushitaro Kuri drugs Mikawa and keeps her
prisoner in an attic with a dead body (such scenarios wouldn’t fly in today’s
television), not to mention that he also unleashes the Garan monster. In ‘The
Giant-Ant Terrible-Monster Vs. The Ultra Brothers’, young women disappear in
moving sand as the ground opens in the middle of the city, and the only common
denominator is that they all have type O Blood. An possessed-by-an-alien
astronaut won’t remove his gloves because his hands have eyes in ‘Solve the
Mystery of the Transforming Terrible-Monster!’. ‘Monster Vs. Terrible-Monster
Vs. Alien’ is featuring an impressive monster showdown and the story continues
in blood-soaked fashion in ‘Life of the Sun is the Life of Ace’. A pictures transforms a newspaper
editor into the Gamas monster in ‘100,000 Terrible-Monsters! Surprise Attack
Plan’. An evil version of Go is back in ‘Duel! Ultraman Ace Vs. Hideki Go’, but
is it really him? In the otherworldly and a bit sexist ‘Terrible-Monster is Ten
Women?’ the Unitang is really the women! The structurally unorthodox ‘The Red
Flower of a Vicious Cactus’ has Ultraman Ace fighting the Sabotendar monster
early on, before it transforms into a regular-sized cactus, albeit a
carnivorous one. The series go Christian-themed in ‘Execution! Five Ultra
Brothers’, in which the Ultra brothers get crucified, thanks to the Anti-Universe
also known as Golgotha – the story continues in ‘5 Stars Scattered in the Galaxy’, in which Ace-Killer also appears.
‘Summer Horror Series: Curse of the Black Crab’ is featuring Ultraman Ace
sumo-wrestling a crab monster. ‘Summer Horror Series: Scary Story of the Cattle
God-Man’ is about a man that transforms into the Cowra monster, a creature
resembling a cow. The titular
presence of ‘Summer Horror Stories: The Demon Woman of Hotarugawara’ causes car
accidents. ‘Give the Pigeon Back!’ is featuring the Black Pigeon monster. ‘The
Mystery of the Haunted Kappa Mansion’ is one of the best episodes in the series
and it includes a terrible monster that comes out of a swimming pool and steals
people’s bellybuttons (you can’t make this up!), while some of them also happen
to be eerie robots on the inside! ‘Stars of Youth is the Stars of Two’ is
featuring a flying ship, as well as the mandatory terrible monster, not to mention TAC team members’ disbelief of the
former sighting, as if the twice-a-week destruction of Tokyo by numerous kaiju
is not as strange. ‘I Saw a Vision
of the Celestial Maiden’ is an episode about the aforementioned beauty becoming
a monster.
Featuring fascinating kills and an amazing terrible
monster, ‘Vengeance Demon Yapool’ is truly one of the greatest episodes in the
series.
‘A Game Changer! Here Comes Zoffy’ is about old men
luring children into ceremonial chants before they disappear (in today’s world
this scenario wouldn’t fly, let alone in a children’s show); it’s your only
chance of seeing a finale that has children falling from the sky, as if there
was not enough bad shit in the air anyway. ‘Behold! Midnight Transformation’ is featuring raining blood, but instead
of the metal band Slayer, you get another awesome kaiju! ‘Pyramid is a Terrible-Monster
Nest!’ is about Michiru and her dangerous red smoke games, until the story
escalates to a Pyramid that is housing a Pharaoh-like monster. The five Ultra
brothers finally meet their match in the form of the Hipporit monster in ‘Annihilation!
The 5 Ultra Brothers’; the story continues in ‘Miracle! Father of Ultra’, in which the Ultra father
saves the day. The landmark ‘Goodbye Yuko, Sister of the Moon’ episode is
horror-themed, featuring a werewolf-like terrible-monster, as well as the
departure of Yuko, leaving Seiji the sole Ultraman Ace ringmaster. The dangers
of alcoholism, as well as a monster that comes out of a graveyard are covered
in ‘The 6th Ultra Brother’. ‘You Can See the Star of Ultra’ is
featuring the Red Jack terrible-monster.
And now, let’s switch our focus towards some recent series…
 |
| Handmaid's Tale - Season 4 |
The 4th season of The
Handmaid’s Tale (2017 – present) finds resistance leader June Osborne
(Elisabeth Moss) on the run after managing to organize the capture of several
leaders of the tyrannical Gilead misogynist and fascist dictatorship. Boasting
great drama as well as starting relevant discussions on freedom versus
authoritarianism, this is absolutely one of the most intelligent, important,
and relevant television series ever. What’s more this is the series’ best and
most engaging season since its first.
 |
| Locke & Key - Season 2 |
The 2nd season of Netflix’s Locke & Key (2020 – present) and its seemingly complicated and
difficult to achieve shoot had me thinking that cinema (and nowadays also
series) is all about showing you things you hadn’t previously seen whilst
maintain a conventional narrative, and this show completely succeeds at this.
What is it about? Well, the teenage filmmaking team finds some success but also
amidst a chaos involving memory loss, demonic powers, and the keys of course.
Although, at the end of the day this is a show about people who lost their keys.
 |
| Doctor Who - Season 11 |
The 11th season of Doctor
Who (2005 – present) is original for both maintaining a story arc for most
of its run and introducing the first female Doctor (the quirky and gorgeous
Jodie Whittaker). It kicks off with ‘The Woman Who Fell to Earth’ and introduction
to the female protagonists and her group of sidekicks as well as an alien
menace in the form of an impressive ‘man in a suit’ robot. In ‘The Ghost
Monument’ the Doctor attempts to solve the mystery of the Desolation. In the
excellent and touching ‘Rosa’ the Doctor and her sidekicks find themselves in
1955 Alabama where they meet Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Part U.S.
election satire and part spider horror, ‘Arachnids in the U.K.’ is a
fascinating episode. ‘The Tsuranga Conundrum’ is a decent monster-of-the-week
episode. ‘Demons of the Punjab’ is a soapy episode about the marriage of an
Indian girl to a man from Pakistan. Although ‘Kerblam!’ kicks-off with an eerie
concept, it ends up blatantly preaching anti-capitalist messages – I mean, we already
know the system sucks, and it looks a bit naïve having a BBC series to explain
this. One of the season’s better episodes is ‘The Witchfinders’ in which the
protagonist team finds itself in 17th Century Lancashire amidst witch
trials. Set in Norway, ‘It Takes you Away’ is about a mirror that is also a
portal to another dimension. The season concludes with ‘The Battle of Ranskoor
Av Kolos’ and ‘Resolution’.
Also, please allow me to speak a word or two about some recent
mainstream films…
 |
| The Addams Familly 2 (2021) |
The animated The Addams Family 2
(2021), directed by Greg Tiernan and Cornard Vernon, finds the mysterious and
kooky cast of gothic characters facing a new challenge, namely a lawyer’s
demand for Wednesday to have a DNA test in order to prove that he is not an
Addams, but rather the daughter of a mad scientist. Less dark than the first
installment, but still a beautiful manifesto on being difference and how
weirdness is good, it surprises me in a good way that these old comic strip
characters still have an audience today, in a world that being alternative to
the instagram-dictated norm is less and less relevant and tolerated.
Director David Gordon Green’s Halloween
Kills (2021) finds Michael Myers (a surprising but absolutely welcome and
honorable return from Nick Castle – one of many tributes to the franchise’s
original run) continuing his onslaught of murder and mayhem in Haddonfield,
Illinois, preying upon his family members (Jamie Lee Curtis returning) just
where he left them off in this trilogy’s first chapter (this being the second).
Filled with numerous Easter eggs for fans of the series as well as unbelievable
gruesomeness (it’s as if Blumhouse wanted to make the bloodiest entry – it
succeeded), and a top-notch score by John Carpenter himself, this is a slasher
masterpiece that should not be missed. Now, I can’t wait for the next one!
 |
| Stargate (1994) poster art |
In Stargate (1994) the action kicks off in 1928 Egypt
when a mysterious device is found during an expedition. Fast forward to the
present day (i.e. 1994, when this was made) and nerdy linguist Dr. Daniel
Jackson (James Spader) is approached by the military to decipher an ancient
hieroglyph. He does so, only to find out that the code unlocks the device’s
ability to transfer you in other planets. The scientist takes Colonel Jonathan
O’ Neil (Kurt Russell) and his troops to another planet indeed where they find
a civilization that worships Ra. Made
on a $55 million budget and looking even more expensive and massive thanks to
the ambitious staging by director Roland Emmerich [Independence Day (1996)] this takes the conspiracy theory-like plot
[ever so prevalent in The X-Files
(1993 – 2018) that was already a hit] and takes to another level of
entertainment with its Indiana Jones-influenced approach. Grossing a massive
$196.6 and defining a generation of sci-fi audiences, it spawned a massive
franchise (mainly in television), in which we will dive further into in future
installments of this column.
And finally, I would like to let you know that I enriched my bookshelf
with the following additions…
After criminally neglecting adding Stephen Thrower’s landmark Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci
(FAB Press) to my collection when it first came out in 1999, I gladly did so
with its new and updated 2018 massive hardback edition, which is chockfull of
lavish design and high quality picture reproduction from a seemingly endless collection,
but its real strength is the unparalleled text by its renowned author,
generously unveiling years of hard work, research, passion, and knowledge. An
essential work not only for the fans of Lucio Fulci, but also any fan of genre
cinema in general.
Stephen Thrower’s excellent mammoth work Flowers of Perversion: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco Volume Two
(2018, Strange Attractor Press) is as you might have guessed (in case you live
under a rock and haven’t yet heard of this delicious book) covering the second
half of anarchist Spaniard director’s lengthy career. By combining academic
(but genuinely interesting) analysis with deeply-dug historical fact, all
filtered via the witty writing of its ace author, each review is pretty much
the final word of the film tackled (the final analysis, as well as the ultimate thesis). Although Jess
Franco’s work is so multi-dimensional that I doubt that we will be short of
further analyses in the future (a book on the auteur by Tim Lucas is long due),
it will be hard for Thrower’s input to be matched. Come to think of it, and in
regards to the apparent continuum of Franco’s work – something that is well
aided in the book as the films are presented in the order they were shot – I
couldn’t help but feeling that it is a pity that his career of excesses and
liberation had to end at some point (the moment of the director’s death),
because the ideas in his films are like the ‘time’, they just go on
infinitively. There are only a few pieces in the puzzle of his filmography that
I have not yet seen. Also included in the limited edition of the
package – aside from postcards etc. – is another 100+ pages hardcover book with
scanned reproductions of abandoned Jess Franco screenplays and their
translations, appropriately entitled The
Sinister Case of Dr. Franco.
Get books, comics, graphic novels and more at
bunny17media.com. Use the code CHC at checkout for 15% off your purchase!
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