Zarkorr! the Invader
Peter H. Gilmore
I just picked-up this video last night (along with "Gamera vs. Gaos" and
a double video titled "The Two Lost Worlds" which included "Planet of
Dinosaurs" and "The Last Dinosaur") and I thought it was a very fun film
(all were $9.95 each--a kaiju bargain!).
The dialogue and acting in "Zarkorr" is mediocre, but the scenes of the
titular monster are really a great deal of fun--on the level of early
Gamera and Ultraman. They don't keep you waiting--the monster bursts out
of a mountainside in the first few minutes of the film. They do waste
time with the human story, which is quite silly, but I guess they
couldn't afford to do 60 minutes worth of monster images. And the beast
looks cool and shoots beams from his eyes!
It is a totally cheesy film, but clearly done by fans and not just some
creeps trying to make a fast buck (like those "Carnosaur" films, riding
on Jurassic Park's coattails). And the "making-of" featurette that
follows confirms the good spirit that went into this effort.
They need to expand their scope--have military confrontations happen
on-screen (not heard on the radio as happens here) and perhaps have
another monster in the mix so that there can be more of a climax at the
finale (the end is rather lame and far too swift). Also, they could use
better music (Charles Band who scored this has done some fine work, but
his heart didn't seem into this one--I'd like to have a crack at their
next effort).
They had a teaser for their next film "Kraa the Sea Monster" but I
haven't seen it anywhere. Anyone out there know about the makers of
this?
The film is really a delight for kaiju eiga fans. And perhaps there will
be a demand for more such films in the wake of Tristar's Godzilla.
Peter Gilmore
flashcat
ZARKORR was announcved as the first of an American package of giant
monster films, and was hyped in the trades with trading cards and other
things the retailers could get. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to do
enough for another entry in the projected series. At least nothing
further has been mentioned.
flashcat
Thomas Ward wrote:
>
> On Sun, 01 Mar 1998 18:03:20 -0600, flashcat <flas...@mail.feist.com>
> wrote:
>
> > ZARKORR was announcved as the first of an American package of giant
> >monster films, and was hyped in the trades with trading cards and other
> >things the retailers could get. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to do
> >enough for another entry in the projected series. At least nothing
> >further has been mentioned.
>
> monster on American soil again. Besides, the hero had a cool name. 8-)
The ads looked interesting, and there was a web page indexed which I
could never connect to. At the time, I was with AOL (say-no-MORE) and
had a lot of trouble connecting with many sites.
We didn't pick it up, nor did any of the other local stores (I tried
to find a rental copy out of curiosity), but I've heard it's a fun
watch.
Thomas Ward
> ZARKORR was announcved as the first of an American package of giant
>monster films, and was hyped in the trades with trading cards and other
>things the retailers could get. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to do
>enough for another entry in the projected series. At least nothing
>further has been mentioned.
Too bad. I liked it. After all this time, it was nice to see a giant
monster on American soil again. Besides, the hero had a cool name. 8-)
Thomas Ward
p.s. For those who haven't seen it, the hero is named "Tommy Ward." 8-)
Anthony Isabella
On Sun, 01 Mar 1998 21:49:36 -0600, flashcat <flas...@mail.feist.com>
wrote:
>We didn't pick it up, nor did any of the other local stores (I tried
>to find a rental copy out of curiosity), but I've heard it's a fun
>watch.<<<
It is. It reminded me of the Jack Kirby monster stories that
used to be cover-featured in early '60s comic books like STRANGE TALES
and TALES TO ASTONISH.
Tony Isabella
http://www.wfcomics.com/tony
NMS
Peter H. Gilmore wrote in message <34F999F8...@ix.netcom.com>...
>Peter Gilmore
I wrote the screenplay for Zarkorr, so I guess I'm qualified to tell you a
bit about it. It was Richard Band, not his brother Charles who wrote the
score (and I kind of like it) and many of the people involved in Charles
Band's "Full Moon" movies were also involved in this project. All of the
effects footage was shot prior to the writing of the script and what you see
on screen is all that we had to work with. I was told that we could matte
some people into some of the shots, maybe zap Zarkorr with a ray... and
that's about it. Since there was basically only around seven minutes of
monster footage, I had to figure out a way to have a monster movie with a
hero who fights a monster... without ever actually being in the presence of
the monster (except maybe for a few shots at the end) and for which we had
no footage of the monster being attacked with anything. I agree, a few shots
of somebody shooting at Zarkorr would have been a welcome addition to the
list of available footage.
As for the performances, some of them I like, some are not so great, but you
have to remember that all of the live action for this thing was shot in
under a week. There was not much time for finessing performances.
For awhile, a Zarkorr "package" was being advertised in Fangoria... you
could get the movie, the script, the posters, the trading cards (which I
actually have a set of)... but I honestly don't know if that deal is still
around.
Zarkorr didn't do as well as was hoped, perhaps because audiences were led
to expect something rather more serious from the box art than what was
inside... which was an off-beat humorous send-up of the old Kaiju movies
from the sixties.
Kraa was shot and is now in the process of being completed. That process
was a long and byzantine one as well, and what will ultimately emerge will
be rather different from what I wrote originally. It will also, I think, be
much more specifically tailored and targetted for a younger audience.
As for other "Monster Island" movies... only time will tell.
Benjamin Carr (aka NMS)
TwoZbar
"NMS" <nmstev...@email.msn.com> wrote:
>
>I wrote the screenplay for Zarkorr, so I guess I'm qualified to tell >you a
bit about it.
(snip)
Thanks for the additional info about Zarkorr. I enjoy reading a more candid,
behind-the-scenes view of filmmmaking rather than the gloss and glitter that
the public is fed most of the time. Best of luck in your future projects.
- Red (from the Two-Z-Bar)
Stomp Tokyo
In article <#Me7siy...@upnetnews02.moswest.msn.net>, "NMS"
<nmst...@email.msn.com> wrote:
> I wrote the screenplay for Zarkorr, so I guess I'm qualified to tell you a
> bit about it.
I've got to admit, Benjamin, I didn't think much of Zarkorr. Mostly the
performances, I guess, but I also object to the whole process by which it
was made. Shooting the monster footage before you even have a script? It
smacks of shoddy filmmaking, and I guess you're aware of that. I wonder
what would have happened if you'd been allowed to write the script
beforehand and plot out the monster action. Would Zarkorr have had an
entirely different plot?
> Kraa was shot and is now in the process of being completed.
I hope the script was at least finished before the monster footage this
time. I really enjoy the fact that Full Moon has fun making movies, but
Zarkorr was a tragedy and I'm apprehensive about the end result.
A review of Zarkorr I co-wrote (and, now that I look back at it, mentions
your letter to G-Fan) is available at the URL below. It's not kind, but I
suppose it goes easiest on the screenwriter. =)
Chris @ Stomp Tokyo
--
Stomp Tokyo Video Reviews
http://www.stomptokyo.com/
NMS
Stomp Tokyo wrote in message ...
No, no. JUDGE DREDD was a tragedy. VOLCANO was a tragedy. DAYLIGHT was a
tragedy. Frankly, I'll match the writing in Zarkorr against any of these
empty, stupid, big-budget bombs, despite the fact that the scripts were
written well ahead of the special effects.
Look, nobody's putting this thing up for an Oscar, but what we did was part
of a whole "tradition" of low-budget filmmaking, from the Americanized
Godzilla, to "Magnetic Monster" to "Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet" to
"Queen of Blood." Is it ideal? No. Well, guess what? I've never heard of
any movie whose making was "ideal." We didn't set out to shoot the footage
and then write a script around it. We had the footage. It had been shot. We
had what we had.
If there's a "process" that *I* object to in movie making, it's the process
where people who are only interested in collecting big pay checks make
crappy generic movies without any soul or reason for being, other than to
try to suck up money. Certainly, making money is part of the game, and it's
what lets you keep making movies, but I believe that Zarkorr was made by
people who have affection for the genre (I certainly do) and who set out to
do the best they could with extremely limited time, budget, and production
limitations.
I think Zarkorr is a fun little movie. I think part of the problem with it
is that the box created the impression that it was going to be something
other than it was, so that people who rented it expecting one thing, found
something else. That's unfortunate.
As for Kraa, who can say? It, too, has gone through changes. It's not
unusual for a movie to end up being something very different from what it
was to start with. That's also part of the process. As with baseball, so
with movies. There are the "experts" in the stands and the experts on the
field. The experts in the stands have the right to their opinion, but it's
the experts in the field who, win or lose, are actually out there playing
the game.
NMS
TwoZbar
ch...@stomptokyo.com (Stomp Tokyo) wrote:
>
>I've got to admit, Benjamin, I didn't think much of Zarkorr. >Mostly the
performances, I guess, but I also object to the whole >process by which it was
made. Shooting the monster footage >before you even have a script? It smacks of
shoddy filmmaking, >and I guess you're aware of that. I wonder what would have
>happened if you'd been allowed to write the script beforehand >and plot out
the monster action. Would Zarkorr have had an
>entirely different plot?
Chris, you really seem to be unaware of the absolute horrid conditions under
which many low budget films are produced. In the perfect world, logic would
dictate that the script be written beforehand and many months of planning take
place before a single frame of film be shot. This is simply a luxury that a
majority of low budget productions can not afford.
In low budget filmmaking (for which quite frequently "no-budget filmmaking" is
a better definition), a lot of the points that you've brought up are completely
out of the control of the people involved, whether they be the screenwriter,
the director, the effects staff or the actors. In my own experience doing
special effects on low budget films, we would sometimes be told "we've got four
extras coming down tonight for shooting and we have to rig effects so that
such-and-such monster can kill them on screen." This was all done with
absolutely no money and we would literally pick up pieces of junk latex or foam
rubber off the floor (whatever was laying around) with which to construct our
effects from in a matter of hours. Forget about the scene being scripted or
planned -- a script, what is that? It's a situation of either do-or-die and
you simply don't sit around saying "I wish we had more time to plan this
sequence, etc." All the director and producer (most of the time, the same
person) know is that four people are coming to the set to appear in the film
for free and they (usually the producer most of all) want to get this film done
so that the distributor can start selling it. We called this approach "combat
filmmaking" and perhaps that is even an understatement to how bad things can
really be at times.
Another concept that people take for granted is that the more money you can
afford to pay, the better the script, director, actors, crew etc. you will have
on your film. Entirely NOT true. The film industry is fraught with people who
are a lot of talk and no action, especially where low budget or no-budget films
are concerned. I doubt anyone hangs around a James Cameron set for very long
if they fail to produce, but in low budget films, you've got to make do with
whom and what you've got. Many times, the people who prove themselves to be
competent (or at least, enthusiastic) end up taking up a lot of the slack from
others. During one of my stints on a no-budget Alien-on-the-loose "epic," I
started out doing special effects, but ended up doing lighting, filming, music,
sound effects and even acting in the monster suit when everyone else was too
goddamn fat to fit into the costume that they already had. (It didn't matter
that I was several heads shorter than many of the people the monster was
supposed to "kill.") Had I known that I would be working in all these areas, I
would have appreciated the luxury of being able to plan better. Of course, I
didn't get that and the quality of the work, while acceptable, could have been
a lot better. This doesn't matter for much when you are talking about a
homemade, amateur film that is never intended for release. But when that
silly, no-budget flick ends up being distributed to video stores across the
country, you start to wish that you had a little more time to get it right.
I can sympathize with Benjamin's position on Zarkorr! I'm sure that he did the
very best job possible given the less-than-ideal situation that he was given in
which to produce a working script. It takes a lot of guts to grab the bull by
the horns and not quit when the going gets rough. The pay ain't so great (if
it's there at all) and regardless of any hard work that you do, you're probably
just going to be criticized later for aspects of the film that you had no
control over, anyhow. In a nutshell, you'd better really love what you do
because your love for the filmmaking process is probably ALL that you're going
to get out of it.
The screenwriters of most Hollywood multi-million dollar productions would
scoff at working under such conditions, but perhaps they wouldn't produce so
many bombs if they were forced to put up or shut up once in awhile.
- Red (from the Two-Z-Bar)
P.S. A.M.M.'s chief pain-in-the-butt Steve Zivanic saw one of the no-budget
films that I worked on. I expect retribution to follow shortly. :)
Stomp Tokyo
In article <19980306080...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
two...@aol.com (TwoZbar) wrote:
> Chris, you really seem to be unaware of the absolute horrid conditions under
> which many low budget films are produced.
Not unaware, but simply unwilling to give a movie a higher rating because
it had less of a budget to work with. I'll admit that Waterworld is
probably a greater tragedy than Zarkorr, because it had an actual budget
(!) and supposed talent to work with in the first place, but Zarkorr is
still a bonafide bad movie. As a "critic" (a word most often used as an
insult, I grant), I'm supposed to be honest about this.
> I can sympathize with Benjamin's position on Zarkorr! I'm sure that he did
> the very best job possible given the less-than-ideal situation that he was
> given in which to produce a working script.
And as I mentioned, our review was kindest to the screenwriter.
Unfortunately, his best efforts weren't (and, no matter how good a writer
he is, couldn't be) enough to save this film from being a bad example of a
giant monster movie. Let's hope Kraa offers us more.
--
Stomp Tokyo Video Reviews
Illuminating the dark heart of video every week.
http://www.stomptokyo.com
Stomp Tokyo
In article <#NFqBdI...@upnetnews02.moswest.msn.net>, "NMS"
<nmst...@email.msn.com> wrote:
> Stomp Tokyo wrote in message ...
> >I hope the script was at least finished before the monster footage this
> >time. I really enjoy the fact that Full Moon has fun making movies, but
> >Zarkorr was a tragedy
>
> No, no. JUDGE DREDD was a tragedy. VOLCANO was a tragedy. DAYLIGHT was a
> tragedy. Frankly, I'll match the writing in Zarkorr against any of these
> empty, stupid, big-budget bombs, despite the fact that the scripts were
> written well ahead of the special effects.
JUDGE DREDD, check. VOLCANO, check. DAYLIGHT, check. ZARKORR -- check.
Fine, great.
> Look, nobody's putting this thing up for an Oscar, but what we did was part
> of a whole "tradition" of low-budget filmmaking, from the Americanized
> Godzilla, to "Magnetic Monster" to "Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet" to
> "Queen of Blood."
Yes, and that "tradition" includes a long line of bad movies. I love
Godzilla, and I wanted to love Zarkorr, but that doesn't blind me to the
fact that there are some pretty freakin' awful Godzilla movies out there
-- and the reviews I (jointly) write of those are equally critical. See
GODZILLA VS GIGAN, for instance. You have to admit -- the monster action
in G vs Gigan was at least in synch with the script, however wacky that
may have been.
Zarkorr was NOT a good film, and excuses of "small budget" and "that's the
way this part of the film industry works" aren't valid! I understand what
you're trying to say, but the end result wasn't good. There were
obstacles, and, IMHO, Zarkorr failed to overcome them.
> There are the "experts" in the stands and the experts on the
> field. The experts in the stands have the right to their opinion, but it's
> the experts in the field who, win or lose, are actually out there playing
> the game.
For that, I applaud you. (Normally, I would dispute the whole "if you're
not out there doing it, you have no right to criticize" statement, but
there's another point to be made here, and that's not precisely what you
said.)
I definitely keep an open mind when watching movies, and I will watch Kraa
and anything else you have to offer without prejudice... until the track
record becomes too long to ignore, of course. If the giant monster movies
coming from Full Moon get better, hurrah! If it's just one Zarkorr after
another, I may lose interest. To use your metaphor, it's your job as "the
pitcher" in this baseball game called moviemaking to do your best as part
of the team and win a few games -- in other words, keep viewers like me
interested.
Play ball!
Chris @ Stomp Tokyo
--
Stomp Tokyo Video Reviews
Scott Hamilton
> Chris, you really seem to be unaware of the absolute horrid conditions under
> which many low budget films are produced.
Incorrect. Anybody who half as big a movie fan as I am (or Chris is) has
heard plenty of stories about low-budget film making. Read the book, seen
the documentary, etc. David Scwimer was telling some pretty funny stoies
about his current situation, working on two films at the same time with
radically disparate budgets.
> In the perfect world, logic would
> dictate that the script be written beforehand and many months of planning take
> place before a single frame of film be shot. This is simply a luxury that a
> majority of low budget productions can not afford.
>
> In low budget filmmaking (for which quite frequently "no-budget filmmaking" is
> a better definition), a lot of the points that you've brought up are
completely
> out of the control of the people involved, whether they be the screenwriter,
> the director, the effects staff or the actors. <SNIP of a lot of stuff
about low budget filmmaking>
This is all well and good, but does it make the finished project any more
entertaining? At Stomp Tokyo, we try to review films in context, but this
only goes so far. At some root level, a movie has to be entertaining and
fun, and it shouldn't make you want to claw your own eyes out.
We review movies, not budgets. If a movie is obviously lower budget, we
may cut it some slack for maybe not having the best special effects. But
if a movie has really great special effects that help with our enjoyment
of it, we're going to say so. And if a movie has really bad special
effects that detract from our enjoyment, we'll say that too. Is it fair
that some movies have higher budgets than others? Maybe not. But life's
not fair sometimes.
Are you suggesting that we should take into account everything that
happened behind the scenes and say, "This movie is as good as they could
make it, so we should really give it a really good review." By those
criteria every movie would have to get a really good review. Shakes the
Clown really WOULD be the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies. After
all, Bobcat Goldwaith used the best script he could write, did the best
job as director and actor he could, and made the best movie he could. Is
it his fault he's not as talented as Orson Welles? Not really. But Shakes
the Clown is still a bad movie, IMHO.
Ugh, it hurts to think about the movies we'd have to give good reviews to.
The Lonely Lady would be the best film ever made where Ray Liotta sexually
assualts Pia Zadora with a gardening implememnt. Brrrrrrrrrr....
Sorry, isn't going to happen. We cut Zarkorr slack for being low budget,
but c'mon, alien super intelligences wearing go-go boots? Just because
it's low budget, doesn't mean it's good.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
ScoPi in St.Petersburg|| Visit Stomp Tokyo Video Reviews
sco...@atlantic.net || http://stomptokyo.com/
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Peter H. Gilmore
NMS wrote:
> I wrote the screenplay for Zarkorr, so I guess I'm qualified to tell
> you a
> bit about it. It was Richard Band, not his brother Charles who wrote
> the
> score (and I kind of like it) and many of the people involved in
> Charles
> Band's "Full Moon" movies were also involved in this project.
Sorry about the Band mix-up!
Well, please let us know when this becomes available. Will Richard Band
again be scoring? If not, looking for a composer? ; )
What was important for my experience of Zarkorr was the spirit of the
production--it definitely seemed produced by people who enjoyed the
genre--and there is certainly a specific genre of low-budget kaiju films
that I think most of us find enjoyable.
I watch the first Gamera series and Yongary (and others of their ilk)
and get pleasure from them that is different from my experience of
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla of 1993 (though there were plenty of less
than state-of-the-art moments in the Heisei series). We certainly don't
get to see many new films of this sort, though that may change if the
new Godzilla is a hit.
Best of luck on Kraa!
Peter Gilmore
Bill Stanton
On Thu, 5 Mar 1998 17:36:22 -0500, "NMS" <nmstev...@email.msn.com>
wrote:
> If there's a "process" that *I* object to in movie making, it's the process
> where people who are only interested in collecting big pay checks make
> crappy generic movies without any soul or reason for being, other than to
> try to suck up money.
Fuckin' A. My friends and I watched AIR FORCE ONE last week and that's
exactly what we all said, almost in unison.
> I think Zarkorr is a fun little movie. I think part of the problem with it
> is that the box created the impression that it was going to be something
> other than it was, so that people who rented it expecting one thing, found
> something else. That's unfortunate.
Well, I felt some of the F/X could've been much better, but the mini
girl was adorable and strangely enough, when I rented it my friend and
I couldn't turn it off. I have turned off MANY rented films in the
past few years, but somehow ZARKORR wasn't one of them.
> As for Kraa, who can say? It, too, has gone through changes. It's not
> unusual for a movie to end up being something very different from what it
> was to start with. That's also part of the process. As with baseball, so
> with movies.
And with video games. *sigh* I've been in exactly the same boat. You
create some characters, write a story, fit the story around something
and some idiots come in and screw it into something different.
But I'm not bitter.
TwoZbar
bsta...@gte.net (Bill Stanton) wrote:
>
>And with video games. *sigh* I've been in exactly the same >boat. You create
some characters, write a story, fit the story >around something and some idiots
come in and screw it into >something different.
Tell me about it. And they usually do this "just because," not due to the
original work being weak or poorly developed, etc. only because it wasn't
"their" idea.
NMS
TwoZbar wrote in message <19980308071...@ladder02.news.aol.com>...
I paraphrase Robert Heinlein: "If you let them piss in it a little bit, they
like the flavor better."
NMS
Bill Stanton
On Sun, 8 Mar 1998 10:58:19 -0500, "NMS" <nmstev...@email.msn.com>
wrote:
> I paraphrase Robert Heinlein: "If you let them piss in it a little bit, they
> like the flavor better."
It's gotten to the point where if marketing execs or exec. producers
(because some regular producers can actually synch with a designer if
they're good, but give one an executive slot and they lose all touch
with reality) approach something I'm working on, I say,
"Ah, you've come to stupificate my product."
Bill Stanton
On 6 Mar 1998 08:06:39 GMT, two...@aol.com (TwoZbar) wrote:
> ch...@stomptokyo.com (Stomp Tokyo) wrote:
> >
> >I've got to admit, Benjamin, I didn't think much of Zarkorr. >Mostly the
> performances, I guess, but I also object to the whole >process by which it was
> made. Shooting the monster footage >before you even have a script? It smacks of
> shoddy filmmaking, >and I guess you're aware of that. I wonder what would have
> >happened if you'd been allowed to write the script beforehand >and plot out
> the monster action. Would Zarkorr have had an
> >entirely different plot?
>
> Chris, you really seem to be unaware of the absolute horrid conditions under
> which many low budget films are produced. In the perfect world, logic would
> dictate that the script be written beforehand and many months of planning take
> place before a single frame of film be shot. This is simply a luxury that a
> majority of low budget productions can not afford.
Or low budget video games... Jeez, the more I learn about the film
industry, the more similarities emerge.
> I can sympathize with Benjamin's position on Zarkorr! I'm sure that he did the
> very best job possible given the less-than-ideal situation that he was given in
> which to produce a working script.
I'm sure he did, too. Being the originator of an idea or script or
anything like that almost always means you're the first guy in a chain
of ass-fucking that stretches all the way back to the top. And by
cracky, you don't get a reach-around, either.
Bitter? Not me.
;)
Bill Stanton
On Sat, 07 Mar 1998 00:33:54 GMT, sco...@atlantic.net (Scott Hamilton)
wrote:
> Incorrect. Anybody who half as big a movie fan as I am (or Chris is) has
> heard plenty of stories about low-budget film making. Read the book, seen
> the documentary,
I hate to be a naysayer, but hearing stories and seeing the
documentaries isn't a zillionth the same as being there on the set or
at a design/scripting meeting for five minutes.
Scott Hamilton
Okay, let's say I don't know a darn thing about the making of low budget movies.
Does it make my perception of the finished product any different? Some low
budget movies are just BAD. I'm not going to say, "Gee, this a low budget
movie, so I have to like it."
Guy McLimore
In article <OLC9jsq...@upnetnews02.moswest.msn.net>, "NMS"
<nmst...@email.msn.com> wrote:
> I paraphrase Robert Heinlein: "If you let them piss in it a little bit, they
> like the flavor better."
You aren't just whistling Dixie, pal!
The "Not Invented Here" syndrome is alive and well and living in
Hollywood. (And it's pretty common in MY industry, too...)
Guy McLimore / gu...@evansville.net
MC+ Creations Game Design and Consulting
http://bounce.to/mcplus