Commented Todd:

When I showed Elden’s great 3D art to Terry Rossio, he agreed to commission him to make 3D models of both G’94 and the Gryphon. I will be eventually using them myself for the Godzilla ’95 graphic novel. This will definitely help me finish the G’94 GN quicker).

Looking good! The prospect of this graphic novel remains a future high point on any Godzilla fan’s calendar and would make a terrific companion release to follow-up from the upcoming Godzilla blockbuster being directed by Gareth Edwards. Keep at it, Todd!

To learn more about Todd’s Godzilla ’94 graphic novel (and his other kaiju project), check out this Undead Backbrain article and to read the 78 pages of the graphic novel that already exist go to Todd’s American Kaiju site.

Source: Todd Tennant. Note that the image is copyright and should not be used without permission.

If you have decent bandwidth, click here to check out the really big version, in which the exquisite detail is given full reign.

I’m still not sure how I’m going to react to the apparent action-thriller aesthetic of this Hollywood tentpole adaptation of Max Brook’s excellent novel, but I have to say that I’m getting more interested as the days go by.

In the meantime, here are the First-Look Featurette:

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and the international trailer:

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Source: WayToBlue

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Synopsis:

Giant monsters rise from the depths (or are they aliens from outer space?). Humans build giant mecha with which to defend themselves. A crack team of pilots is assembled, including one contentious, but highly proficient, member. Can he get his shit together in time? Will the individual pilots ever work together as a team? Will there be enough of a budget for there to be more than a few token appearances of the monster(s)? Will the Asylum be sued?

Trailer:

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Some of the questions asked in the synopsis above are answered in the screenshots provided in this article, including this one:

For its relatively low budget, Cohn seems to have managed some decent-looking scenes here. Not Del Toro standard, of course, but enough to pique my interest. Of course the rest of the film’s 87-odd minutes will determine whether or not it will be one of the Asylum’s better efforts — and worth looking at.

The real question is, however: “How do they get away with this stuff?”

Source: via Avery Guerra.

Indie production Chicago Rot is described as “A Supernatural Rock ‘n’ Roll Horror Thriller!!” With its somewhat divergent noirish take on an ever-popular revenge scenario, it explores a side of Chicago that goes beyond seedy into a deep, dark place… a place with attitude.

Made by Rot Studios, in association with Dakini Productions and Painted Face Productions and filmed in Chicago, Chicago Rot is directed by Dorian Weinzimmer, from a screenplay by Brant McCrea and Dorian Weinzimmer. It stars Brant McCrea, Shira Barber, Jeremy Vranich and Johnny Colon.

Synopsis:

After years of rotting in Joliet, Les, a wrongfully imprisoned street legend known as “The Ghoul”, is released into a mad search through Chicago’s back alleys for the man who slaughtered his mother and robbed him of his soul. Aided by supernatural benefactors, he must delve beneath the city into a modern labyrinth of gutters whose tendrils have grown deep while he was gone.

What unfolds is a desperate tale of brute force tragedy set in the supernatural underworld of Chicago, where heroes are reduced to horror-shows, villains dream of their own demise, and good and evil prove to be antiquated concepts.

Check out the trailer below:

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To quote an excellent article on the film and its relationship to “the Windy City”, Chicago Rot: Embracing the City’s Dark Side, from the Chicago-based website Gapers Block:

“Chicago Rot is the brainchild of Brant McCrea, Dorian Weinzimmer, Jeremy Vranich, Ryan Berena, and Sam Fell. All five were part of the 2009 inaugural graduating class of Flashpoint, the school for digital arts and media studies, which opened downtown in 2007. Rather than following the film student’s stereotypical path straight to Los Angeles or New York, however, they’re committed to proving Chicago can rival its coastal competitors as a hub for successful artists. Only fitting, then, that their first feature-length project should be what Weinzimmer calls ‘a personal love letter to the city — a dark love letter’.”

Check out the full article here.

In the following production shot, actor Brant McCrea wonders if his make-up’s been smudged…

Rumour has it that Chicago Rot boasts “a sonically-massive score that will eat your brains faster than a bus-full of zombies.”

Source: Producer Kelly Kerr via Avery Guerra. Film Blog.

Also check out the film’s Facebook page, where you’ll find lots of atmospheric production shots and further information on the film and its eventual release.

There’s another cryptid on the loose — and this one is a big, nasty dragon-like reptile, looking to contribute to the ongoing history of giant monsters in cinema. The film has gone through several name-changes (Legendary: The Shocate and Legendary: Tomb of the Dragon), but is now simply called Legendary (UK/China-2013; dir. Eric Styles).

Synopsis:

Travis and his team travel to China in search of what isn’t supposed to exist … their mission to capture a cryptid that is wreaking havoc in a remote village where a water pipeline is being built. They need to do this before Harker, the legendary bounty hunter, finds and kills it — and before anyone else falls victim to its rage.

The poster image — a big reptilian eye — irresistibly brings to mind such films as Godzilla (1998) and the Jurassic Park films, as well as the SyFy tradition in giant reptile films. Hopefully it will find a place among the better of these.

Teaser Trailer:

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The dragon isn’t, however, the only legend involved in the film.

Yes, it stars action-flick hero Dolph Lundgren as the bounty hunter, tidied up after enduring all the explosions and fire-fights of Expendables 2. Also from Expendables 2 is his co-star, Scott Adkins, who plays a cryptozoologist whose aim is to save the monster rather than kill it.

Directed by Eric Styles (pictured below on location with the cast) and written by Andy Briggs (who has written other genre flicks, such as Rise of the Gargoyles, Ghost Town, Dark Relic and the 2012 version of The Philadelphia Experiment), it looks like it could be a decent creature feature and something to help fill the giant-monster gap between Del Toro’s epic Pacific Rim and Gareth Edwards’ much anticipated Godzilla (2014).

Also in the cast are Chinese actress Yi Huang and from the UK Lydia Leonard (Jericho, London Hospital, Casualty 1909 and single-episode roles in other British TV series such as Ashes To Ashes and Spooks).

More Images:

Sources: via Avery Guerra; IMDb; Midsummer Films; Eric Styles website.

In the past I’ve expressed a certain ambivalence when it comes to camera-verité style movies (as I like to call them), sometimes referred to as “found footage” — you know, those rampantly kinetic, hand-held exercises in pretend reality that came to the fore in genre flicks following the success of The Blair Witch Project. We’ve had them with ghosts, giant monsters, werewolves, assorted crypto-zoological critters, trolls, aliens, tiny robots and zombies … lots of zombies. Some don’t work for the usual reasons that films don’t work. Others may be effective, but the unplanned frenzy displayed by the camera and a complete failure to achieve the appearance of accidental shooting more by intent than by accident makes them impossible to watch for anyone who suffers from cinematic motion-sickness. Others bypass this problem by actually knowing how to create a cinematic illusion of reality in ways that are tolerable to watch. Rhythm is the key. Nearly all of them suffer from a moment-by-moment bug-hunt plot structure that may be involving, but never succeeds in generating an actual plot. Certainly for them to work, they need not just an interesting scenario but characters the viewer can believe in and care about.

Embedded (US-2013; dir. Michael Bafaro) — a creature feature featuring an unspecified creature  — is the latest addition to the sub-genre. It has the potential to slot into the positive end of the camera-verité spectrum, firstly because it seems to have a genuine mystery at its heart, secondly because its news-footage approach offers hope of there being a rhythm to the camera movement that allows the viewer’s suffering optic nerves to adjust, and thirdly because the two awards it has won (as noted on the poster below) are for narrative and cast.

Synopsis:

Through the lens of the camera, James Parnell, a seasoned correspondent for NBS news and his cameraman Tom Whittaker, embed themselves into the nine-person posse that sets off into the rugged wilderness terrain of the Rocky Mountains to find a missing child who may become the next victim of what is believed to be a rogue grizzly… and to later discover that some things reach beyond the darkest realms of human nature…

The film’s cast includes Don Knodel (Man Without a Name), Steve Thackray (The Ennead), Jeb Beach (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Jennifer Koenig (Once Upon a Time), Krista Magnusson, Arpad Balogh, and Lori Watt (Watchmen).

Trailer:

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I have no idea what sort of monster we’re dealing with, but this I will say: it involves teeth, hair, blood and a touch of drool:

And the victims? Much the same:

The film will be coming soon.

Source: Don Knodel via Avery Guerra.

But I have to put the latest trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim on this site to record the moment when giant monster geekdom came into its own.

This film looks like it’s destined to change the daikaiju subgenre forever — or at least for a week or two after it premieres.

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Main title notwithstanding, the new indie horror film Demon (US-2013; dir. Rob Walker) is not a version of The Exorcist. It is in fact a cryptozoological horror film based on reports of the Chupacabra — or “Goat Sucker” — filmed in locations throughout Sarasota and Manatee County, Florida, for Ocean Productions. Its alternative title is The Demon: Story of Chupacabra.

Instead of giving the Chupacabra pride of place on the above official poster for Demon, the filmmakers have decided to emphasise one of the film’s key assets: the beautiful lead Jasmine Waltz, who plays Nicole Diaz — an FBI agent sent to a town in Sarasota to investigate murderous goings-on — but discovers there is a government conspiracy afoot….

As for the lead monster, Chupacabras, a genus of cryptid originally associated with Puerto Rico, are said to look like this much reproduced image:

or even this from www.chupacabramagazine.com:

Not that the monster in Demon necessarily looks like either of these. The trailer below, like the poster, carefully avoids giving anything away in that regard. Moreover, all that blood on the poster seems indicative of the fact that Demon‘s Chupacabra doesn’t just suck the blood of goats.

Synopsis:

After being cleared in an internal investigation, FBI special agent Nicole Diaz is reinstated and sent back home to the town of Oro Negro to help solve the bizarre murders of two agents in Sarasota Florida. She’s met with disdain by the local Sheriff, a good old boy who doesn’t believe they are being taken seriously and is insulted that the authorities sent a woman. At first it’s thought the killings are random acts committed by smugglers or drug dealers, until the resident Tribal Ranger realizes the bodies have been drained of blood and suspects it is something more. His beliefs are, however, dismissed. Soon after a mysterious woman and her aide appear during an autopsy and claim responsibility for creating the perfect killing machine: a creature designed specifically for desert warfare to be used by the military. However, it has escaped and they need help reacquiring it. Unsure who to believe, Nicole assembles a team and they set out to capture it, but bizarre events make her second guess who to trust. Nicole must overcome her recurring childhood nightmare of the lost of her brother and the guilt and pain that consumes her every day as she plunges deeper into a government conspiracy in search of a killer. (IMDb)

Demon stars Jasmine Waltz, Michael Placencia, Bill Houskeeper and Joel Wynkoop.

The official trailer gives you some idea as to what we can expect:

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Addendum:

Producer Luis Montalvo has recently finished filming a supernatural thriller titled Let Me Out, which is currently in post-production. It too looks like it has great potential. Filmed in Grenelefe Resorts, Florida, this one stars Michael Placencia, Jackie Siegel, Bill Houskeeper and Ana Quintana. It is written and directed by Montalvo.

An entire family is murdered in their home in a tragic and bizarre way. Two years later, a newlywed couple move into the “murder house” and immediately find themselves caught up in a series of paranormal disturbances. But when an alcoholic writer begins an investigation into what happened to his daughter, who disappeared from the house a few years before, he uncovers a shocking secret about this house and about his daughter that no one will ever believe.

Hopefully we’ll hear more about this one soon.

Source: Producer Luis Montalvo via Avery Guerra.

Well, that’s just what co-directors Miri Stone and Denby Weller and their crew are doing:

Synopsis:

When a team-building hike strays into the territory of an unknown Australian predator, this group of tech-savvy, thrill seeking city folk will discover that some legends have teeth…

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The production process — made possible by a successful Pozible crowd-sourcing campaign — was thoroughly documented on the movie’s blog and Facebook page. It involves location shoots in various scenic places in New South Wales, perilous rock-climbing, cast wrangling, fear, elation … and even a zombiroo….

Meanwhile, here are some concept/proposal drawings for the Bunyip:

I guess we have to wait for the movie to be released to see the genuine article.

Screenshots:

Looks good!

Source: Via Avery Guerra. Check out the official website.