• Directed by Michael Deak (with Aaron Osborne and Dave Parker)
• Written by Benjamin Carr
• Starring
  • Alma James
  • Bobby Machek
  • Robert Garcia
  • Alison Lohman
• Produced by Michael Deak
• Executive Produced by Charles Band

What can I say? The kids saw the promo at the front of The Shrunken City, and insisted that I bring this one home. They would not be dissuaded, and anyway, I couldn’t easily explain to them that expecting quality out of two Benjamin Carr-scripted movies in a row was really against the odds.

Although I really shouldn’t bag on Carr (yes, I know that’s not his real name, and no, the IMDb hasn’t clued in yet). I know that these movies are severely hampered by budgetary and other resource constraints, and frequently a writer will have to try to make a workable script out of three set locations, a couple of signed actors, and an already-fabricated prop or costume. Then the script gets mucked up by producers and directors, who have their own ideas of how their buck-ninety-five budget should be spent. But though I can’t blame Benjamin Carr for the bad movies which bear his name, I still must say that his name on a movie has never been a good sign.

“Funny, they always seem so much more impressive in the postcards…”

So here’s how I see this movie coming about: Charles Band had unofficially been declared a contender for being the “Roger Corman of the ’90s” (because, honestly, who would have the authority to officially declare him such?). Unfortunately, with the mid-90s parting of Band’s Full Moon Studios and distributor Paramount, Band’s opportunities to become the modern symbol of entertaining exploitation were severely hampered. If you study the history of Full Moon through this period (and if you do, in the name of all that’s holy, get a life!), you know that Band tried several experiments designed to increase his video-shelf “market share” while keeping the budgets lower than they had been in the Paramount glory days. Most of these experiments took the form of separate “labels,” niche-marketed video lines which, usually, died after a handful of releases. There was Pulsepounders!, aimed at the “Goosebumps” demographic; Alchemy Entertainment, providing “urban” horror (which apparently has been reborn as “Big City Pictures” with The Vault); the “Monsters Reborn” line; and several others which don’t stick in my memory. (The only spin-off line that did well — releasing thirty original titles so far, plus some re-issues — is Surrender Cinema, which released softcore genre-based erotica, in both R-rated and unrated versions. I guess we know what brings home the bacon.)

And then apparently one day, looking for a cheap genre he hadn’t tried his hand in, Band said, “I haven’t made any kaiju movies.”

And thus Monster Island Entertainment was born. The first release was Zarkorr! The Invader, which holds the dubious distinction of having had the monster footage shot before the script was written. I don’t know if Kraa! followed a similar path, but with three credited directors (Michael Deak for the monster segments, Dave “The Dead Hate the Living” Parker for the Planet Patrol scenes, and Aaron Osborne for everything else), the stitch marks holding together our barely-long-enough-to-be-a-feature feature are very visible.

“I AM a lord of evil! I even have my own midget! See?”

In what seems to be a combination of Godzilla movies and those interminable Power Rangers series, we’ve got a character named Lord Doom, who lives with his loyal subject (singular, apparently) on Proyas, the Dark Planet, whose sun has gone red and is dying. He plans, quite naturally, to relocate, and Earth seems to be a good piece of real estate, if not for the pesky current inhabitants. So his plan, delivered with many a gesticulation and throaty laugh, is two-pronged:

- Send monster-for-hire Kraa! to Earth to wreak havoc.

- Fire on the local planetoid-station of the interstellar police force, the Planet Patrol, disabling their ability to intervene.

Frankly, this Planet Patrol doesn’t look too formidable in the first place — it’s four teens in blue spandex on a space-station set. My guess is that a PS2 and a large pizza would have been sufficient distraction to allow his invasion plan to go forward. (Not to mention the fact that the team is two guys, two girls. And the blonde psychic (Alison Lohman) is a hottie. You do the math.)

Hey, I saw this picture up in my orthodontist’s office.

As it is, the members of the Planet Patrol can only look on in horror as fourteen lightyears away, Kraa! crashlands in earth’s oceans and starts his rampage.

And to be fair, it’s a competent rampage. The suit looks like someone fed growth hormone to the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but the miniatures are fair (especially the one scene that was shot in natural daylight). Not great, mind you, but for those of us who’ve seen all the Godzilla films from the 1970s (not to mention any of the Gamera films), well, it’s not noteworthy in its mediocrity. What is lacking is any sort of wit or charisma in the rampage (the closest we get is Kraa! crashing through a building plastered with a poster for the 1998 American Godzilla. Not exactly shooting the moon here, are we?)

Meanwhile, the Planet Patrol has located a single patrolman in the vicinity who might be able to get to earth and help. Unfortunately, he’s pretty much a sentient clam. Yup, that’s right. Mogyar is apparently a clam the size of a manhole, with a face and hands that extend out the front thanks to the magic of puppeteering. He aims his landing craft toward Italy, where a nuclear lab has the correct equipment to build a weapon to defeat Kraa!, but instead ends up crashing through the ceiling of a diner in Jersey, where the owner Alma (Teal Marchande) and surprisingly well-educated biker Bobby (R.L. McMurry) retrieve him and attempt to keep him away from the obligatory government goon squad. (You’d think that the military would have their hands full dealing with a two-hundred-foot fishman and not have anyone to spare on chasing a hubcap-sized bivalve, but inscrutible are the ways of the Pentagon.)

“Welcome to Muppet Labs, where the future is being made today.”

Since I have decided that this will not be a “bag on Carr” review, I’d like to point out three things which actually were good ideas, which I can be reasonably sure were Carr’s contributions. True, most of them are only dimly seen in the finished project, but they’re at least signs that Carr was trying to craft a quality project way back in the beginning.

1) Lord Doom and the Planet Patrol make it sound as if Kraa! is basically a galactic kaiju mercenary, leaving a trail of destruction wherever the money leads him. I find the idea of a mercenary kaiju to be endlessly fascinating. Of course, none of the actual kaiju footage contains even a hint that Kraa! has any sort of peronality at all, but just think what a movie that actually ran with that premise could be like.

2) Bobby, the biker, is a very well-educated Renaissance man. Though long-haired and bearded, he orders a decaf tea at the diner when we first meet him, and makes references to the couple of years he spent in medical school as well as the time spent at NASA. By the end of the movie (with his beard and hair shaved off), he can walk the walk well enough to fool the scientists at the Harvest Point Nuclear Facility that he’s one of them. Again, it’s no biggie, but the idea of the Renaissance man biker is strangely appealing. (I’m getting the idea that Carr was just trying to keep himself interested while he typed.)

“101 Recipes for Clam Chowder?! Mamma mia!”

3) Mogyar, our giant clam, had Italian programmed into his brain in preparation for his landing in Naples. He learned English once he lands in Jersey (or at least as close an approximation as he’d be able to pick up in Jersey), but spends the rest of the movie with an Italian accent. (Now I’m sure of it — Carr was bored, and jus threw this stuff in for his own amusement.)

That’s about it. The movie fills out maybe 70 minutes (if you count the entire credits, and maybe a few minutes blank tape after that), but because of the general blandness and the pointlessness of the different productions stitched together, it seems so much longer to sit through. Even my kids started complaining about how long it was. (These are kids who can sit through both tapes of Walking With Prehistoric Beasts without blinking.)

The good news is that those same kids will probably take the coming attractions on the tape with more suspicion, which in turn would mean that Zarkorr! and Phantom Town may not be in immediate future.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 0 (unless you count Kraa! himself)
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 26
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Jeff Rector (the assault team leader) played “Alien 2″ in the TNG episode “Allegiance”