100% Weird Fridays: Don't Stop for Strangers

Back on March 28th, 2025, Raf and Brayton did a film noir double feature with hitchhikers getting into deadly danger. Both films from the Twitch stream have now been separated into halves, edited for presentation's sake, and uploaded onto YouTube for your viewing!

The first part of our Don't Stop for Strangers double feature, DETOUR, tells the tale of an unemployed piano player who hitches a ride and finds a whole heap of trouble barely held together by a wonky alibi. If that wasn't bad enough, our anti-protagonist is joined by a viperous companion, played by the fittingly named Ann Savage, who would famously murder and disappear noir expert Eddie Muller many years later! Mind the damn typos:

Raf and Brayton make light of real world crime with the second feature for Don't Stop for Strangers, the harrowing 1953 thriller THE HITCH-HIKER, proceeded with a discussion on the classic TWILIGHT ZONE episode which shares the same name:

Pachishohma: Riza of the Bloody Gaze

Around May 2022, I started my own series of Pachimon-inspired parody illustrations, repurposing my fan art of pre-existing fictional characters, all popular pieces online but useless for professional reuse, and dubbed the endeavor as Pachishohma (Pachimon + Enshohma).

I've made nearly 40 entries in this series and plan to independently print some art books featuring these weirdos in early 2025.

In the meantime, I'll be sharing my Pachishohma monsters here as well, both as extra content and as an additional backup for the aforementioned art book.

We'll start with the very first, off-color entry into the series, starring Riza of the Bloody Gaze, alias Bloodsucking Eyeballs.

NAME: Riza of the Bloody Gaze

ALIASES / NICKNAMES: Bloodsucking Eyeballs; Eyeboobies; Vampire Giantess

SPECIES: Demonically-enhanced vampire / parasitic demons

GENDER: Female

HEIGHT: 10 meters (over 32 feet)

WEIGHT: 90 metric tons

EYES: Red / yellow on both pairs

HAIR: Picotee blue

HOMEWORLD: Earth (Universe 1052620221970-S)

AFFILIATION(s): Rainbow Rogue (ex-boyfriend)

Riza was a callous and spoiled vampire mistress of lesser nobility who was active in 16th century Spain until her unnatural undead life was forever changed by an encounter with The Bloody Gaze, a bizarre pair of floating demonic eyeballs who may have originated beyond our known universe.

True to their title, The Bloody Gaze invaded Riza's hunting grounds and started absorbing the same human peasants that the vampire routinely feasted upon.

This macabre conflict lasted for six gore-filled nights until Riza and her loyal human familiars cornered the monster eyes, attempting to destroy them, only to have The Bloody Gaze violently possess Riza, resulting in a horrific battle of wills and a physical transformation into a twisted combination of the three fiends: a half-demon blue-skinned freak with a new pair of jumbo eyeballs, protruding from where Riza's bountiful bust once resided.

For most villains, merging with a demonic force would be considered a dark blessing, abandoning one monstrous form for an even greater one. However, for a vain and self-conscious blood-sucker like Riza, a giant pair of ill-placed eyes was too embarrassing to handle, and soon she ran off into the nearby woods, but not before drinking her familiars dry in a violent tizzy.

As the centuries passed, Riza mutated further into a wild giantess who could now magically extract and absorb the blood of her victims through her mutant optics, earning her the moniker of Riza of the Bloody Gaze.

Sometime in 1976, Riza's global hunting leads her to meet and fall for a fellow weirdo with fatal powers, the interdimensional taker of literal colors known as The Rainbow Rouge. The two were a terrifying power couple of gigantic proportions until an epic breakup in 1999 when they became bitter enemies.

Why the falling out isn't known by mere mortals but, as one last slight against his ex-girlfriend, The Rainbow Rogue lured Riza to the mountainous outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where a local giant statue has effectively imprisoned her within the region to this day... Though Riza still finds wayward prey who tragically venture beyond the city limits.

Artist's Commentary: Riza is a reworking of Maximax, a bodacious Brazilian giantess, greedy hoarder of treasure, and occasional predator of lesser mortals, created by fellow artist of monsters and babes Animewave-Neo, as shown in the compilation piece above. Another major influence was the colorful if unsightly and crass demons-of-the-week from the 1972 animated series Devilman.

EXTRA ARTWORK:

Mad Monster Party Commentary?

Today's date, March 8th, was the original release date for MAD MONSTER PARTY? (1967), an animated horror-comedy from Rankin-Bass productions which also features IT, a giant King Kong-inspired gorilla monster who appears in full in the third act.

Unlike the film's other supernatural weirdos, IT was not deliberately villainous, even showing moments of kindness and mercy, but was a destructive menace who ultimately doomed Dr. Frankenstein's Island and almost every soul living there.

While on the subject of Mad Monster Party?: several years ago, me and my friends Wyn, Brayton, and KaijuNoir did a live-watch and Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary track for the film, which can be viewed on the following link:

https://archive.org/details/livewatch-mad-monster-party

Enjoy!

Terror of The Tertiary Titans: July 2020

So... What the Hell is Terror of The Tertiary Titans?

This is a new series of articles where I showcase three or more minor monsters (giant or otherwise... but usually giant) from fiction who barely had enough screen-time or impact to deserve a full article and presented together with no particular rhythm or reason.

Yeah, that's about it.

Scavenger Raven: "What?"

SCAVENGER RAVEN
First Appearance: King Kong (1933).

A large species of scavenger bird native to Skull Island of whom sailor Jack Driscoll encounters as he approached the freshly killed carcass of the Meat-Eater (the official name of the not-quite-a-tyrannosaurus-rex-not-quite-an-allosaurus-either-dinosaur there). Startled by the human, the lone Scavenger Raven flies away.

Scavenger Ravens also appear in the 2005 novel Kong Reborn but I know nothing significant concerning said book to share here.

For the longest time, me and many other monster movie fans assumed this odd-duck (pun interned) was a Teratornis: a once living North American bird of prey whose size is virtually near that of the onscreen Scavenger Raven. While similar, The Scavenger Raven is supposed to be its own fictional bird which adds extra flavor to the relatively little seen fauna of the 1933 classic.

RELATED LINK: Wikipedia's page on this same character.

TRAUMA GAMERA
First Appearance: Gamera III: The Revenge of Iris (1998).

A terrifying nightmare version of the otherwise benevolent giant turtle, Trauma Gamera briefly appears in the black-and-white nightmares of Ayana Hirasaka, a high school student who blames Gamera for the death of her parents during the latter's battle with Super Gyaos four years prior, tying back to the events of Gamera: Guardian of The Universe (1995).

Gamera's current form in the 1998 film is not that dissimilar to Ayana's traumatic visions and the turtle's unintended but no-less-callous destruction of Shibuya while battling a pair of Hyper Gyaos only fuels Ayana's hatred, leading her into awakening the villainous monster Iris to ultimately battle Gamera to the death.

While this monster technically doesn't exist within the film's reality, Trauma Gamera has been given a secondary life through model kits and similarly rare merchandise (not to mention unofficial fan art and fan fiction). Trauma Gamera was created via a refurbished suit leftover from the aforementioned 1995 film.

Interestingly, an early concept for Gamera III was to have the trilogy's titular turtle go up against a pure evil variant of his own species before the creative crew opted for a more unique newer monster instead.

Another villainous clone of Gamera was featured as the surprise final boss in the 1995 video game adaptation of Gamera: Guardian of The Universe for the Japanese Game Boy.

BEZAZELSHUN
First Appearance: Godzilla In Hell, issue 1, variant cover by Jeff Zornow.

Okay, now we're getting to the truly obscure goodies!

Bezazelshun is a large Hell-spawn demon who appears only on the EC Comics inspired variant cover for the first issue of Godzilla In Hell (July 15th 2015).

While meant as a homage to EC Comics (the publisher famous for Tales From The Crypt and other 1950s horror comics), artist Jeff Zornow took a more imaginative and admittedly more awesome heavy metal route with the Hellish landscape it presents.

The winged humanoid goat demon who appears to be casting judgement on Godzilla has no finalized / official name but a helpful Facebook chat with Jeff Zornow himself christened his creation as Bezazelshun - an obvious play on Beelzebub.

Before we move onto the next entry, mention must be made of the two gigantic devil skulls littering the background, suggesting that far bigger demons once inhabited Hell.

EMERALD CITY COMIC CON MONSTERS
First Appearance: Emerald City Comicon 2008 advert by Dan Brereton

One-off postcard advert for the 2008 Emerald City Comicon, illustrated by comic creator Dan Brereton and featuring his genetically engineered hero Giantkiller up against two monsters while straddling The Seattle Space Needle.

Giantkiller himself (or Yochu as his scientist creator calls him) was the titular star of Brereton's 1999 comic book miniseries who hunts giant monsters that have crossed over from a paralleled universe, having taken over and settling in San Francisco, California, during their initial invasion.

While the miniseries featured a nice variety of monsters (heavily inspired by Japanese kaiju films and the pre-Spiderman-era monsters of Marvel Comics), the two featured above are wholly exclusive to this standalone advert.

Speaking of advertisement exclusive giant monsters...

THE THING (That Isn't Mothra)

First Appearance: American adverts for Godzilla vs The Thing (1964).

In one of the most blatant examples of misleading Hollywood ballyhoo, the North American release of Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) not only renamed the film Godzilla vs The Thing but also had the official poster (beautifully illustrated by poster artist Reynold Brown) pitting Godzilla against a tentacled eldritch horror hidden behind a censored sign, giving an ominous mystery to who The King of The Monsters could be fighting.

Of course, if my previous paragraph didn't give it all away, The Thing's true identity within the movie itself isn't some mind-blowing mass of horrific feelers but the more comprehensible form of Mothra.

While Mothra is a beloved figure in pop culture today whose popularity has garnered her multiple film appearances (something the more edgy giant monster fans regret, similar to hardcore Batman fans' resistance towards Robin), she was relatively new and untested in 1964 with this film being only her second appearance. 

American International Pictures (AIP) who distributed Mothra vs. Godzilla under the new title, felt audience wouldn't go for a monster movie where one of the titular beasts was basically a fuzzy butterfly and decided to hide that fact behind an admittedly cleaver mystery to what 'THE THING' might actually be.

I don't know how disappointed or pleasantly bemused American audiences were with Mothra's reveal but I can state that the hidden identity ploy extended into the US theatrical trailers as well, minus a few brief glimpses of Mothra's twin larvae babies and the brightly colored egg they both hatched from.

Of course, what conversation about misleading movie posters and giant Japanese movie monsters wouldn't be complete with mentioning those wacky Italians!

Italy released a steady steam of Kaiju EIga throughout the 1960s and the 1970s and, while that's commendable compared to other European countries that had less luck with the genre (SEE Britain and Russia), the Italian releases were a little infamous for their wildly misleading titles and wildly more misleading posters however beautifully painted many of them are.

Re-titled Watang! Nel favoloso impero dei mostri (literally means Watang! In the Fabulous Monster Empire in English), the Italian release of Mothra vs Godzilla took the original Reynold Brown ad art and reworked it to feature more dramatic background mayhem and an uncovered Thing itself, now an otherworldly starfish-like weirdo over a plant-like mass.

The Italian release poster for the original "Mothra vs Godzilla"

That's it for the first edition of Terror of The Tertiary Titans; when I do another one of these, I'll probably limit the number of featured monsters to three-or-less entries just to make things a little easier for my typing fingers.

Daimajin and the Nerds Who Love Him

Our incredibly fearsome hero, ladies and gentlemen.

After the surprised success they had with the very first Gamera film, Daiei Films continued dipping their toes into the giant monster genre by producing AND releasing three films all within 1966 featuring Daimajin, a giant stone idol and supernatural deity who comes to life  to brutally punish mortal villains in feudal Japan.

The Daimajin trilogy joined the popular giant monster boom of the 1960s with the highly praised samurai period dramas of the same decade, resulting in a unique if brief series of dark fantasy films.

The channel Up From the Depths recently finished up their trio of video reviews on Daimajin presented here because why not (I felt like it, okay).

DAIMAJIN: The last remaining members of a royal family call upon their god to save their village from a brutal warlord.

RETURN OF DAIMAJIN: Two peaceful kingdoms call upon their god to save them from a rival invading clan.

DAIMAJIN STRIKES AGAIN: Four boys set out through the Majin's Mountain to rescue their family members from enslavement at the hands of a rival clan.

Last but certainly not least is a fantastic video lecture from the always awesome Maser Patrol discussing both the Daimajin trilogy alongside other giant-monsters-meet-samurai properties. Tons of cool obscurities and educational history points to chew on.

Since I too am a nerd who loves him, here's some more Daimajin images to end the post on.

Daimajin parts the waters, from "Return of Daimajin" (1966)

Daimajin in his inert statue form and his living form on the warpath.

Up Mill Creek: The Ape

In the suspect tradition of Fractured Flickers, Mad Movies, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Rifftrax, blah, blah, blah, comes the first episode of a new comedy-commentary series entitled UP MILL CREEK (WITHOUT A PADDLE), staring Brayton Conner, Andres Perez, and Raf Enshohma (hey, that's me).

In this inaugural pilot, the three jerks talk over the 1940 Boris Karloff vehicle THE APE with humorous results. Mockery aside, we're very happy with how this pilot turned out and I'm pleased to share that there's more episodes coming.

Here's the full uncut recording session for the episode complete with an unused pre-show segment based around the Gumby short Lion Around. Unlike the completed episode, this unlisted extra is something I'm less proud of but sharing it here for posterity sake (plus future blackmail).

Zelmkethou, The Living Threshold

Time for old kooky Enshohma to once again share his original creations with you.

Zelmkethou, The Living Threshold

NAME: Zelmkethou (pronounced Zelm-Keth-Thoo)
SUBTITLE: The Living Threshold
ALTERNATE NAMES: The Abyssal God; Great Zelmkethou
SPECIES: Extradimensional

GENDER: Nonsexual (completely lacking any form of gender in a true evolutionary sense - extremely difficult for most humans to comprehend)

LENGTH: 299 meters (roughly 980 feet)
WEIGHT: 100,000 metric tons (estimated)
EYES: None

Zelmkethou is a gigantic sea dwelling monster who originated beyond our known universe and possesses a unique feature to its biology: housed within its orb-shaped shell lies a fully stable dimensional wormhole that reacts to the willing mental desires of anyone who enters it, hence making Zelmkethou a living gateway to anywhere within The Whole of Existence that anyone can wish to be transported to.

While this sounds like a living miracle, there are several key issues with this gateway, the first being that it's on the back of a giant monster and one that's particularly hostile towards anything outside of itself. Many attempts to reach Zelmkethou's shell via spaceship, submarine, and massive-sized robot have almost all but failed.

Secondly, smaller scale attempts such as single individuals simply swimming up to the beast is as dangerous for Zelmkethou is ignorant if not unresponsive to anything too small for its notice and thus many have been accidentally killed by beast during such attempts.

Thirdly, The Zelmkethou Gateway, the orb-like shell itself, is a one-way trip as those who have made it to the portal have never returned. This is simply the nature of The Zelmkethou Gateway much like how most time travel methods are highly limited to one temporal direction. There have been evidence confirming the lucky few have survived after entering the dimensional orb but this has still led to widespread conspiracies across the universe theorizing that there is no portal and Zelmkethough is simply using a giant deception to lure in smaller-sized prey - The Zelmkethou Gateway being nothing more than a illusion-sporting digestive organ.

Finally, the fourth reason why it's nearly impossible to reach The Zelmkethou Gateway... No one agrees what planet the great monster resides upon or within. It's fully agreed that Zelmkethou lives in a water-heavy environment to support its great weight but the exact identity of said world's been lost over time.

The gorgeous water world of Jumo-Umo, the dying oily seas of Ranagader Ex-Prime, the vapory gas giant of Vinhea, the weather chaotic world of Barley Open, the silver seas of Dahmeia Third, the water-ammonia oceans of Neptune, and the briny seas of Earth, all have been believed in being the home-world of Zelmkethou but no positive identification been made on the matter.

The Great Zelmkethou is a living miracle, a colossal hazard, and a frustrating mystery all wrapped up into one gigantic monstrous package.

ENSHOHMA'S COMMENTS:

Despite my love for the works of cosmic horror author H.P. Lovecraft and his various contemporaries, I have an admittedly tertiary knowledge of The Cthuhlu Mythos as a whole. Because of this, Zelmkethou is something of a repurposed blunder since its design started out as my misinformed (and misnamed) rendition on the titular monster from The Dweller in The Gulf, a 1932 short story written by Clark Ashton Smith.

I didn't even get The Dweller In The Gulf's name right!

Also known as The Eidolon of the Blind, The Dweller is is an ancient, possibly immortal subterranean creature that dwells deep within the planet Aihai (known to us humans as Mars). It is served and worshiped by a cult of Martians who have been captured and blinded by the beast as its equipped with two proboscises for the extraction of eyes (how charming, Clark).

While The Dweller in the Gulf resembled a tortoise, albeit one of gargantuan proportions, its more alien or at least chimeric in overall form and, despite its connections to The Cthuhlu Mythos, is a relatively tangible animal instead of the reality warping cosmic entity I had originally imagined based on a scantly read character description.

When I returned to revisit this design and compared it to its source inspiration, I realized it wouldn't work as an adaptation of The Dweller in The Gulf and revised it as my own loosely inspired creature, hence Zelmkethou The Living Threshold.

My friend Jesse Alonso helped with the monster's name which is a play on the Czech phrase for globe, zeměkoule.

RELATED LINKS:

The Dweller in the Gulf at Monster Wiki:

https://monster.fandom.com/wiki/Dweller_in_the_Gulf

The Dweller in the Gulf at H.P. Lovecraft Wiki:

https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Dweller_in_the_Gulf

Two Schmucks Watch THE GREEN SLIME!!!

Here's a humorous video featuring me and BranzantFiLMS' live viewing / audio commentary of the 1968 American-Japanese co-production The Green Slime, staring a whole lot of B-list white people and a whole lot of green-colored monster suits operated by Japanese child extras (not all but most of them are).

The audio commentary here is unlisted hence why I'm sharing it through my blog here:

For a second opinion, here's Brandon Tenold's 20-minute-long review of the exact same film:

Devilman 2004 Is Terrible and You All Know It!

FINALLY! I've been vindicated!

Kind of.

YouTube producer and reviewer TitanGoji​ (an extremely nice fellow in person) does a great service towards an ungrateful tokusatus fandom, huh, I mean "humanity" and shares his extremely negative (rightfully so) review of the truly terrible live action film adaptation of demonic superhero manga DEVILMAN (2004).

Seriously, it's nice to see someone relatively popular among the current tokusatsu fandom lay into this film because this crummy mess has TOO MANY DAMN defenders online! Perhaps loyal Devilman fans who's never seen this film what-so-ever but will defend the franchise regardless and at all costs? Or an anime fan who doesn't like it when their genre-of-choice is being criticized even if said criticism is limited to one minor aspect that really does suck regardless?

Even I know that's a stupidly blind thing to do! Fandom loyalty isn't worth dying on a poorly rendered hill of CGI demon bodies for!

Seriously though, this film is terrible and makes most other anime-to-live-action-adaptations look like honorable B+ efforts by comparison - something that TitanGoji goes into further detail towards the end of this accursed film and the sordid production history behind it.

Good Bad Flicks vs The Giant Monsters!

There is an alarmingly massive amount movie reviewers and related retrospectives online with an even smaller number of which dedicated to some semblance of serious film appreciation beyond the mainstream weekly film review outlets. Than there are those bizarre yet wonderful movie lovers who balances both extremes but never abandoning the latter (analysis) over the former (funny business).

Among this rare breed is the always entertaining YouTube channel Good Bad Flicks, overseen by its uniquely named host Cecil Trachenburg.

Recently, Good Bad Flicks posted a sincere video asking for help to keep up their channel's quality so that they won't have to resort to desperate advertising measures as The Unfathomable Beast Dubbed YouTube continues to breath down their undeserving backs (excessive word usage is fun).

Seriously though, this channel could use all the love and support it can garner (here's the Patreon page) even if its just through shared awareness among your own friends online.

Since this is a blog primarily dedicated to overlooked giant monsters (something I've strangely gotten a lot of negative flack for from mainstream Godzilla fans), the following collection of videos feature such 'Fantastic Gigantics' in no particular order:

Baby: Secret of The Lost Legend Review

Island Claws Review

Grabbers Retrospective

Monsters Retrospective

Troll Hunter Retrospective

The Stuff Retrospective

Jurassic Park III Retrospective

Moontrap Review

Up From The Depths Review

The Crater Lake Monster Review

Arachnoquake Review

Peter Benchley's The Beast Review

Spiders Review

Robot Jox Review

Robot Wars Review

The Blob Review

The following films discussed by Good Bad Flicks do feature giant monsters in them, they're tertiary elements compared to the bulk of said stories but I wanted to share these Good Bad Flicks episodes regardless:

Spaced Invaders Review

Ghostbusters II Retrospective

In The Mouth of Madness Retrospective

The Guardian Retrospective

My Science Project Review

Killer Klowns from Outer Space Review

The Relic Retrospective

Rare Exports Retrospective

Mosquito Retrospective

Hulk Retrospective

Crash and Burn Review

Krull Review

Prophecy Review

The Guyver Review

Howard The Duck Review

The Decline And Fall Of Nostalgic Networks

I know you younger people and more tech savvy individuals are enjoying the virtually unlimited promise of streaming services with the variety of programming it offers.

However, with the way things are going now, with every company creating their own streaming channels, limiting their libraries to only the most marketable and recent fair, a reliance on syndicated show packages from the same handful of entertainment monopolies, and phasing out older films and television shows in turn, I feel like it's only a matter of time until streaming services will become the same miserable wasteland that modern cable television has long ago become.

A television wasteland where we literally have thousands channels but with nothing interesting to view beyond the same 44 reruns of BIG BANG THEORY and the original CHARMED scattered across multiple networks.

I don't care if you're a fan of BIG BANG THEORY or not, but 20 channels playing the same set of episodes is NOT a good thing: that would be like going to a grocery store that only sells french fries and only the same brand of french fires in all fifteen of its aisles.

You probably don't believe me, of course, but this nifty video from FredFlix perfectly illustrates the wonderful if not offbeat variety of film and TV programming we use to have on cable entertainment, back in the day when you could be up at 2AM and have a wide choosing of rarely shown movies to watch as opposed to today.

The House of Wu: A Fallen Kingdom Review

I along with friends and fellow nerds KaijuNoir and Brayton sit down and share our audible thoughts via podcast on one of the year's more decisive-yet-belittled films Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom. Take a listen and enjoy.

Caltiki, The (Not So) Immortal Video Collection!

It's October, the month of Halloween, so what better time than to share some of the more macabre giant monster movies ever made, starting with tonight's featured film Caltiki The Immortal Monster (1959)

The story concerns a team of archaeologists investigating Mayan ruins who come across a deadly creature that is a shapeless amorphous blob. They manage to defeat it using fire while keeping a surviving sample of the creature which, ultimately, leads to more death and destruction when the archaeologists return to Mexico City.

You can read more about Caltiki through this well-written review from the blog-site Cool Ass Cinema.

Here's the trailer to wet your gooey appetites:

Alternative upload of the trailer, just in case:

Here's the feature-length film itself:

An alternate upload of the same film because, again, we're dealing with YouTube here:

If you enjoyed the film than I'd recommend the recent Blu-ray release from Arrow Video which, as you'll see in this ad, is teaming with bonus features:

And, lastly, a humorous second opinion from Dark Corners Reviews: