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Gladius77-1
Reviews
Kaibutsu ôjo (2007)
Serve Me For All Eternity
A young man sacrifices himself to save the life of a beautiful stranger on the street of a small town. This stranger turns out to be the Princess of the netherworld, who resurrects him, (Thus the title!), an act which binds poor Hiro to her service for all eternity. He soon finds himself in way over his head in a world of vampires, demons, mummies, and all manner of 1930s movie monsters- many of which are attractive women. The story settles in to a weird balance of slice-of-life, horror, comedy, and kind-of romance with some wonderful lesbian and femdom undertones.
Right out of the gate, this show might be my favorite thing ever. I adore the weird character dynamics and callbacks to classic horror movies. The characters aren't anything tremendously deep, but are well-realized and well-acted. The music ranges from good to great, with highlights from Ali Project. Compared to most other anime, the fight scenes aren't really anything to talk about, but the female cast is older, more mature, and more confident in their abilities and sexuality than one would normally find in the genre. The show actually has a talent for mastering the sex appeal of a subtle gesture compared to most others- a finger slowly slipping along someone's chin is portrayed surprisingly erotically, which is a far scale down from the panty shots anime is known for. The story, when it finally gets going, is a great idea and a vector for all sorts of fights and drama.
So why does this show only have a 6.6 with 111 ratings, and only four reviews from a decade ago? Princess Resurrection does have its drawbacks. The odd mish-mash of genres means I struggle to even categorize it, to know who to recommend it to. If I tell you it's a horror show, there's not -that- much horror. If it's a comedy, there's not -that- much comedy. If you want to see pretty ladies fighting monsters, the fight scenes aren't -that- great. The translation you'll find anywhere makes some choices that will likely confuse the audience- for example, the main character, the eponymous Princess Resurrection, asks to be referred to as 'Hime'. This is not her name- Hime is the Japanese word for Princess. She is being referred to by her title, and dislikes her actual name. But if you didn't already know this (I was lucky enough to catch the simulcast back in the day, which used a different translation) you would have no reason NOT to assume her name is Hime, which will leave you in the dust when characters call her by her -actual- name later in the story. The English dub is fine if you must use it, but I don't think any of the actors really got their characters 100% (aside from Hilary Haag as Sherwood, who nails her part)- and like I said, these characters aren't especially deep, so I'm not sure what wasn't to get. To my ears, the Japanese vocals seem much better acted. Worst of all, the show ends almost as soon as the main plot gets started, leaving you to track down the comics it was based off of if you want closure- and THEN your realize that the anime basically used the manga as a rough draft, and can be kind of alienating to those only familiar with the animation.
Overall, I adore the show, the story, and its characters, but I understand why it never especially caught on. If the phrase "Pretty ladies fight classic movie monsters" got you interested in watching, I think you'll enjoy it! Just be sure to temper your expectations. Anyone else could probably find any individual element of this show done better elsewhere.
Temple (2017)
Adam Sandler'd
Having watched this movie, I'm pretty sure they took the script for Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows and edited it to take place in Japan so the cast and crew could take a vacation. This movie replaced some of Book of Shadows annoying characters with padding shots of walking around Japan, so I'm on the fence for which is worse.
They seriously had to pad this out to 1:17. I can't imagine what was cut out.
Waxwork (1988)
Garbage
I love a bad movie. Some hokey, poorly acted piece that you can just laugh at how silly it all turned out. But sometimes, I just leave a movie angry. Cabin Fever, Transformers 2, and now, Waxwork 1 and 2.
It's a frightful mix of bad comedy and bad horror, flawed on a conceptual level by an inablilty to decide if it wants to use famous evil-doers from real life, or villains from far better movies. Rules and themes are established, then quickly forgotten. David Warner and John-Rhys Davies are -slumming- it here. The bad guy's scheme is so convoluted that Bond villains would send him back to the drawing board. In fairness, there is an awesome scene involving a vampire bat near the end, but it simply isn't worth watching the movie to get to it. Shame on everyone who watched this in theatres in 1988. Waxwork 2: Lost In Time is your fault.
American Streetfighter (1992)
You Piece of Low-Life!
The DVD box displayed such phrases as "There are some streets you don't double-cross" and "When war comes home, and home is the streets, you turn to... American STREETFIGHTER". Say that in the movie-trailer voice, and it will sound awesome. I was hoping that this would an overblown action movie, not good, but entertaining enough that I could laugh at how stupid it was. No luck.
The movie is... mediocre. The story is mediocre, the fight scenes are mediocre, the acting is mediocre. Okay, it picks up a little during a fight at the dojo, which is enjoyably stupid- featuring a motorcycle driving through a door that is quite obviously made of styrofoam, and the one guy in the movie with a gun choosing to pistol-whip people instead of, I dunno, shooting bullets at them. Still, the whole experience is mediocre- It's not bad enough to laugh at, and it's not good enough to enjoy. The whole thing is just boring. Two years later, Street Fighter, starring Van Damme and Raul Julia came out. At least that one you can laugh at.
And for a movie about street-fighting, there sure is a lot of time spent in the countryside...
Eliminators (1986)
Better than you'd think.
I basically bought this movie with the idea it was complete garbage, so I could mock it as it played. As it turns out, it's actually decent! I'm not saying -good-, but certainly not the worst movie.
If I were to explain, it's a movie about a cyborg, a ninja, Tasha Yar, and a guy doing a Han Solo impression teaming up to fight a time-travelling Roman cyborg who has a shield that shoots lighting force-fields at people. If that doesn't sound a -little- cool, I got nothing to say to you.
Again, it's not a particularly good movie, but had I watched this when I was 9-12 years old, it would've blown me away. That's my recommendation. It's a good 80s action flick for the kids. They'll like it, and you needn't worry about heavy violence or swearing.