Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb, and let's see today we have an older episode of the show that we've never rerun, so we are unearthing it. It is the nineteen ninety one Japanese sci fi monster films zay Ram. I may or may not be pronouncing the alien's name correctly here. I don't recall the sights and sounds except for the pronunciation of this alien's name.
I certainly remember mostly the sights. This one has an amazing futuristic bounty hunter character and some various other effects that are just tons of fun. Maybe we'll get around to watching the sequel at some point. This one originally published four four, twenty twenty two. Let's enter the picture.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb.
And my name is Joe McCormick. And today's movie is a nineteen ninety one Japanese film called zay Ram, or maybe better to say Zerum, because the zay Ram really sounds like the Tennessee take on the name of the alien in this film. Yeah, but hey, what do you know?
This is our very first space bounty Hunter movie, And I think I'll have to be honest and say that Zayram is not the most scintillating movie I have ever seen, but it has a really great central monsters, has a fun bounty Hunter, and it is light years beyond the quality of the other main Space bounty Hunter title in my mental database, which is also from nineteen ninety one and is called a Braxis Guardian of the Universe, Rob Have you seen this one with Jesse the Body Ventura.
I have. I believe I watched the riff Tracks version of it, and I remember it being bad, and I definitely remember the two principal cast members.
Braxis goes way back like when I very first started getting into B movies in like high school, you know, My friends and I were going to the to like the used book and DVD store and digging through their like trash pile to see what we could find. This is one of the ones we dug up. So it's got Jesse the Body Ventura as the Space bounty Hunter, and it's got spin Ole Thorson, who you might know from Oh I don't know. He was in Conan I think,
and they're running around some Yeah. Yeah, they're running around some town in Ontario, and Spin is the is the fugitive, and I recall he keeps grabbing people and asking them if they know how to compute the anti life equation.
Oh yes, Spin shows up in a number of different Arnold movies. He was kind of like part of the ensemble, I believe, but then eventually starts showing up, you know, doing solo projects as well.
Do you think they originally wanted Arnold for a Braxis but he, I don't know, went on the Determinator or two or something.
I can't imagine Arnold was ever in talks for a Braxis. I think I think this project was a different orbit entirely.
But hey, a space bounty hunter can be a lot of fun because, okay, you know, you have like two parties arrived from other worlds. Now they're here on Earth, and there's already a chase going on, so like, you know, it's not like you have to get to that part once they're here. One is already in pursuit of the other, and that's a good setup.
Yeah. Absolutely, In general, the bounty hunter scenario makes for good fiction. Especially when you know, because you can do the same thing, like who's this mysterious individual chasing this other mysterious individual. Well, you're gonna have to explain it to the bystanders and they become part of the whole plot. But yeah, throw in space and aliens and you've got yourself a winning formula. And I think that's one of the things that I like about Zeram is that it's
a pretty simple formula. They don't. They get into a fair amount of complexity with the monster itself, but in terms of the basic plotting, into a certain extent, the world building, they keep it simple. This is a movie where the title is the name of the monster, so you know it's going to be monster centric.
There's extremely little plot in this movie. Yeah, But what it lacks in story complexity, I would say it's somewhat makes up for in the form of the far more interesting than spin only Thorson Fugitive, which is an elegantly haberdashed bipedal starbeast who has so many now I reveal my true form moments, I lost count of them. Like every time now I reveal my true forms, there's another one coming.
That's right, my son walked in and watched part of this with me, because this is ultimately a pretty pretty harmless movie. It's got a little bit of little bit of a monster blood and monster grossness in it, and some sci fi weapon fire, but for the most part, pretty wholesome. So he was watching part of this and he was he was at least acting a little exasperated. He was into the monster designs. But he's like, haven't they almost killed this thing like six times?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah they have. Luckily it finally sticks. But I'll tell you something else. It sticks. Yeah, this monster's design sticks with you. Because I had never seen this film in its entirety, but I caught I think I caught part of it back in the nineties on the Sci
Fi Channel. They had a dub version. I think they showed and it was one of those where you know, who knows what else was going on, But I only caught just a glimpse of it, just enough to watch like one or two scenes with the title creature, this hulking, relentless alien bio weapon that you know, it seems like
this thoroughly unique amalgam of alarming features. You know, which is which is good in any monster because monsters are often this sort of amalgam, but it's a monster where it's primary form, the one that gets the most screen time. It suggests elements of Samurai and onny mushrooms and stingrays. You know, obviously there's a little bit of Xenomorph sprinkled in there. There's also a sense of the Cyclops and just much much more like it seems like they've they've
added enough elements that it just becomes unique feeling. And it also made an impression on me because at the time I had not seen much in the way of Japanese cinema, especially you know, sort of the bio horror realm of Japanese cinema, you know, thinking of classics like Akira or Tatsuo the Iron Man. But again I didn't see the whole film. I forgot about this creature for the most part, but occasionally I would be reminded of him. And maybe it's because I've been watching the Boba Fett
series with alien Bounty hunters. Maybe that that made me think of him again. But I was like, Okay, I need to look this film up. I need to see who this mysterious creature was and what this film consisted of and give it a proper.
And I would argue, maybe you still don't know who this alien creature was, because I don't think the movie really addresses that question much.
No, we don't know really where he's from or what he did to have a bounty hunter chasing after him. I mean, he could be the good guy for all we know, though probably not his his backstory is not really fleshed out. All we're really told is that he's essentially some sort of bioweapon.
I'm going to buck expectations and argue that when it really comes down to it, Much like the original Alien, zay Ram is a movie about work in the workplace, you know, because it's about a it's not really about human relationships. It's not really about good versus evil. It's really about people trying to do their jobs. So you have a couple of power company guys who have a
job to do. There are main human characters, and then you have your Zeno legal bounty hunter who has a job to do and she's our main sort of you know, superhuman hero. And the movie is essentially what happens when those two groups trying to do their jobs jam into each other at cross purposes. It's like, you know when you see a road partially blocked for digging on a pipe or something, and then there's a delivery driver who has to get through, but their truck won't fit the gap,
and they start arguing. Except add in space tentacles.
Yeah, I think I think you're essentially right here. I wonder what we're to make of the fact that Xeram itself is essentially a product in a humanoid form. You know, hmmm, I don't know. Maybe there's nothing to be made of that, but ross cross my mind.
Oh no, I can see it if he's a bioweapon. I mean, like much like you know when I watch Alien. The movie raises lots of great questions and I love it, But one of the ones I think people don't think about very often is I'm like, man, if like the Whyland Utahani Corporation had better workplace protections, Like if they had better like union regulations in place or something, A lot of this could have been of did, but probably
all of it. But no, I mean, it's just like it's a movie about work problems and this is kind of the same. It's like, why did these two electricians have to go into the warehouse to investigate the alien technology themselves. Couldn't they have called a supervisor to deal with this?
Yeah? Yeah, it seems like there should be more of a system in place. Shouldn't the police maybe get involved?
I don't know, Yeah, you would think so.
All right, So the elevator pitch for Zayram. I feel like we've basically done it already. It's alien Bounty Hunter, Alien Bounty taking place on Earth, drawing earthlines into the wild cosmic scenario.
Did you did you say earth lens?
Did I? I don't know earthlans, Earthlings, maybe earthlins.
Is maybe I miss Earthlings.
Like this universe, I'm just I'm expanding on the zay Ram universe here already.
All right? Okay, so who made zay Ram? Oh?
Oh no, we have some trailer first.
Oh oh sorry, okay, let's hear some trailer.
The people of Earth are about to be visited by some guests. While they're here, try and make them the feel welcome. If you can't take the heat, get out of the galaxy.
Yeah. Not a great trailer, but that's the English language shower. The voiceover is a bit a bit much, but we wanted to have something for you that wasn't just explosion sounds.
I mean a big part of this movie is explosion sounds. Yes, okay, so who made this thing?
All right? So the director, one of the writers, and the character designer is Kita Amimia. Emma has an illustration background, born nineteen fifty nine. And I think the illustration background makes sense given just how visual this movie is, Like, this is a movie that's very much about look at this look at this monster. Look what happens when he has a costume change.
You know.
The character design elements are very strong in.
This I agree so much so that there are even moments of this movie that look like hand drawn illustrations. Like there is an opening scene. Actually, it might be my favorite part of the whole movie is the black and white silhouette opening sequence and when the outline of Zayram is first revealed, before we see any of the you know, the surface detail, Zaram kind of looks like
an illustration. He looks like a hand drawn animation until it's revealed like, oh no, this is somebody in a costume lit from behind.
Yeah, and it's yeah, it's pretty great costume. It's one of these where zay ram generally feels enormous but has a very you know, a very humanoid gait about him, very humanoid dimensions. I feel like it was very effectively done.
Heavy footfalls. Zaram likes to kind of clomp around on the floor.
Now. Emamia has done a lot of work in design and effects, including this is interesting. He was an effects animator on nineteen eighty nine's gun Head, which we covered on Weird House in the past.
Oh yeah, that's right.
He's also worked as a character designer for video games such as clock Tower three, which I believe I played that one back in the day on like PS two. He was also involved in some only Musha titles and does zay Ram as very much as sort of his follow up to his first full length film, Cyber Ninja from nineteen eighty eight, which I've not seen, but I looked at some stills from it. Looked at at least one clip. It looks like a lot of fun and there are also some really out there monster designs in it.
I have not seen it, but I will watch based on the title alone.
So he would go on to direct a sequels z a Ram two in nineteen ninety four, and there was also a spin off animated series that seemed to have
quite a following, Aria Zerium The Bounty Hunter. He's worked a lot of it years though, and his filmography includes some common writer films and what seems like dozens of titles in the film TV franchise Gero, which, like these other titles, is a tokusatsu or live action special effects drama, this time about a man in magical armor who has to protect humanity against the horrors, which I believe are
some sort of demons. Now. Gero I've seen is sometimes described as a midnight tokusatsu series, as it yes contains like people in heroes and fancy armor suits battling monsters, but it apparently has darker elements for grown ups and such as is shown on TV like Late at Night. Zairam, however, is not midnight tokusatsu. This is tokusatsu for the whole family. Again. My nine year old son walked in and seemed to enjoy it and critiqued it a little bit.
Yeah, I'd say probably the scariest thing in here is well, I mean some shots of Zairam the monster have like that scary face thing that comes out of it. Which we can talk about more. But probably the worst thing is that it like really bites the electricians arm bad and leaves a big bloody welt. Yeah, you can deal with that. I think the movie's cool.
Yeah. Now with the next I want to hit the other writing credit on this, who is also the visual effects coordinator, and I think it becomes pretty obviously we're kind of in Pumpkinhead territory with this film. This is this is a film, you know, by special effects people, with very much a special effects design mentality that goes into it. So it's it's monster first, it's visuals first, and maybe the actual plotting and acting and so forth takes a backseat to all of that.
Now your Pumpkinhead comparison, that was directed by Stan Winston, right, Am I right about that?
I believe so yes, that of course a legend of special effects, not so much, you know, a legendary director. But he did get in there. He got in there with Pumpkinhead in nineteen eighty eight, I think he did. He directed mostly some other short stuff. He directed a film titled A Nome named Norm from nineteen ninety that I'd never heard of till just now, and he did some video shorts, but yeah, Pumpkinhead was his chance to really get in there and show what he could do.
And it's mostly about a really cool monster. You got some Lance Hendrickson in there too.
I guess. Yeah, yeah, it's it's an okay horror movie. It's a great looking horror.
Movie, also featuring Dick Warlock. Oh yes, okay, So anyway back to the za Ram writing credit and visual effects coordinator goes to Hajimi Matsumoto as a writer. They only worked on the Zerium movies and three other titles, but Matsumoto has primarily worked in special effects, including some Godzilla movies. Nineteen ninety five's Gamera Guardian of the Universe, which which
I love. That's a really fun one with a lot of like cute Gamera when he's little and then he becomes your expected Gamera.
Is this the second movie we've mentioned in this episode called Guardian of the Universe with the subtitle Guardian in the Universe. Oh man, that sets up a perfect sequel idea Gamera versus a braxis they got to duke it out and figure out which one is the real Guardian.
Oh, it's got to be Gamera. I'm going to I vote Gammera every time, especially over Ventura. But let's say yeah. But Matsumoto was also also involved in the special effects on nineteen ninety eight's Ring, the original Japanese Ring upon which the American film The Ring was based. He also worked on some of the Ring sequels. He worked on Spiral, and he worked on The Grudge, both the Japanese version and the American remake.
All right, but we would not have a Space bounty Hunter movie without our Space bounty Hunter. So who plays this all important character.
It is Yuko Moriyama, playing Area of the bounty Hunter. She was born in nineteen sixty eight, Japanese actor. This was her first role apparently, and she went on to do the sequel some TV. She was in Reborn from Hell too, And it looks like she retired from acting between two thousand and two thousand and four and possibly went into some sort of education field.
For some reason. I usually just like to see that, I mean, assuming it wasn't caused by some bad experience or something. When somebody's just like, Okay, I was acting for a while. Now I'm career change, I'm gonna do something else.
Yeah, based on the limited English information I could find about it, it sounds like she just like she eventually found her calling somewhere else. So yeah, more power.
To her now. As we talked about, this movie doesn't place a lot of dramatic demands on its actors, but I'd say she's good. She fills this role quite well. She wears the power armor, she does good fight scenes. She has a good determined stare when facing down the monster. Thumbs up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, solid action performance. You know, she comes off as a badass and unlike her AI help her, Bob, she's kind of reckless. She's relentless. She's like, she's got to get her bounty, while Bob the AI is more concerns earned about, you know, how this is going to affect their license? Oh yeah, the lead do they hit? Did they have the actual permit to use this particular super weapon against the alien? And stuff like that.
Oh. I got that interminable argument at the beginning about the zone and whether using a zone will cause them to forfeit some percent of the bounty, And.
Maybe we should have had more of that. It could have been the the shin Godzilla of Alien Bounty Hunter films.
Oh, that would be a good idea.
All right, So two Earthlings or Earthlinks, if you will, get get sucked into this, this whole situation, and the first of them we'll start with is I believe his name is Tep Tepei. I'm sorry Tepe. I think Tepe Tepe the handsome electrician unknown age. This character was played by Kunihiro Ida and very limited credits on this guy. He was in both the zebraz Ram movies. Doesn't seem
to have been active in a long time. But then the other Trician who's our funny electrician, are kind of obnoxious electrician because you know, that's kind of how your duo should go in a film like this. This is Camea and he is played by Yukihiro Hotaru. Born in nineteen fifty one. Hotaru is very active still today, mostly on Japanese television. He made a career for himself, initially
playing detectives, usually in Japanese pink films. This is a broad category of erotic films in Japanese cinema, with some particularly sleazy titles, but he seems to have gradually crossed over into mainstream sci fi and horror as well. Ultimately starring or at least acting in a number of TV shows, even kids films. He worked in that Garo series that I mentioned earlier. So yeah, you can see you can ultimately see why because he has a very charismatic face.
He's constantly pulling funny, weird faces in this film, So you can see why an actor like this would be sort of your go to for sort of you know, a wonky character roles. You know, it was certainly in recent decades.
Yeah, he's doing a zany Jim Carrey kind of thing.
Yeah, and we usually mentioned the music, so I'll go ahead and say that hirokazu Ota is credited with the music. The score is a bit much in places for my taste, but it's pretty effective in other places. This individual also scored the film Roboman Hakaider from nineteen ninety five, which I haven't seen, but I've noticed on shells many times. It's another one of these sort of hero in armor or robot gear battles evil.
All right, Well, you might have already guessed from the way we've been talking about it so far. This is not really one of those movies where it will make much sense to go scene by scene since there really is very little plot. It is mostly a showcase for visual spectacles, you know, sci fi tech battles, tentacle attacks, monster transformations, and so forth. But we can give you a general picture of the shape of the plot and
then talk about some highlights that we really enjoyed. And the first highlight I would say is actually the very first thing in the movie. Strong. Strong opening sequence might have been my favorite part of the entire thing. And interesting connections throughout this opening sequence to the Saudakar, because you have this background of deep chants as if you know,
the moon monks are doing mattins. But then also you have space marines and these egg shaped Eva helmets much like the like the they're shown in the most recent Dune movie.
Yeah, yeah, so they're they're they're clearly here or I don't know that they're here. They're there. They're somewhere, presumably in space, maybe on a space ship or something space station. Yeah, to stop zay Ram and who they don't stand a chance.
No, So what we see is a black and white silhouette of a creature who looks like a person wearing a wide brimmed hat, or perhaps somebody who has a large mushroom cap for a head, and it's hard to tell more than that because the person's in silhouette except when it pauses to suddenly reveal a face, but not with the correct proportions for like a human face. So it's not a face that would fill what is presumably
this creature's head. It's like a little tiny face and it's in this pale makeup that looks kind of like a mask from no theater, but with super nasty black teeth, like very scarified.
Yeah, and when we zoom in on it, it often makes little noises kind of like yeah, stuff like that would add to the creepiness.
But then okay, so when we see the face, the face is not proportional to the size of the head. It's much smaller. It's like a little cameo, you know, little tiny face on this big head with the wide brim hat. And then it is the body of this creature looks like it is wearing some kind of fibery cloak, you know. It's like it's got a big kind of ragged cape.
Yeah, like it's been it's been tramping through humanoid realms and so it has taken on the guise of human clothing, and I think it adds to sort of the category confusion of this monster, like what is it? Is the thing and the little face on its hat? Is that is there like some sort of a hybrid I mean, or at least a symbiotic relationship going on here? Or is that the face of the thing is you know, it's wearing clothes. So does it his it cultured?
Is it?
Or is it just a brute beast? There's so many questions that rise to the surface.
Yeah, so the space Marines unload their pulse rifles on the monster, but to no avail. The Sombrero creature slaughters them all and escapes whatever wherever it is this opening takes place. I imagine it's supposed to be some kind of exo prison, and we see in the very opening scene that it has a kind of xenomorph like stabbing, a jaw to face attack that I think is done by that little tiny face on its hat.
But a lot of this action is taking place in it like kind of extreme close up. This is a film that likes close ups at times that feel like a little bit too much, Like I felt like you could you could pan out on that row of weapons, and I would I would maybe get more out of the scene, but fair enough.
Okay. But next thing, after the intro, we go to meet our main characters, who are all going about their business somewhere in modern day Japan. So we meet our bounty hunter. This is Eriea, and she is very on target. She's very on task. She will stop at nothing to
capture or kill the hat beast. And I couldn't remember if they explained this anywhere in the movie, but she looks human, but I think she's supposed to be from another planet, right, She's not like a human who secretly went to space and became a bounty hunter, because this is not understood as far as I can tell, to take place in the future or anything when humans have gone into space and some of them might be space bounty.
Hunters, right, she is, I guess what we might loosely think of as a space human, which to a certain extent is kind of the legacy of budget constraints on sci fi from various cultures and film cultures in various decades, where yeah, you just can't have a crazy looking alien for everybody. Some of them got to be human, And I don't know, maybe it's something that's fleshed out more in the sequel or the TV series, But she is. We're never given any glimpse that, like, oh, she may
look human, but her blood is blue or purple. No, she just seems to be a human who happens to have this job. And maybe I don't know, it's one of these things we're not supposed to think about too much.
I guess right, it's Planned nine from outer space. The aliens just look human, except they're wearing a shiny shirt. Yeah. Well, but the other possibility of considering again, I don't think they ever said this, but I was like, well, I wonder if she's like doing I don't know, assuming the appearance of the dominant life form on this planet.
Oh yeah, I wasn't that one of the elements and critters where we had We had alien bounty hunters in that, but they ended up looking like people, but they weren't people.
That could be. Yeah, my critters knowledge is abysmally low. So as we've threatened a few times, we may have to break the critters seal on the show.
It's just hard to choose. I don't know, we've talked about it. I think off Mike before. But each Critters movie offers its own alluring choices. I mean, do you go with Critters one? I think, is that the one or maybe it's the sequel that Leonardo DiCaprio is in it,
But then that third one? Is that the third one? Okay? Well, I don't know, two or three perhaps, But then you have a pretty good cast in the first one, and then by part four you have Brad Doriff showing up, so I don't know, there's so many directions to go. And then of course they're row poly alien create creatures in all four of them, some wonderful Gromlin action.
Yes, okay, so you got Aria, she's the main hero. She's she's the bounty hunter. But then you've got Erie's got of a sidekick, right, sort of the nerd who does her computing for her. And in the case of this movie, you know they're not going to just go another humanoid who acts kind of nerdy and does computing. They actually have a talking computer. It's just an AI sidekick who constantly explains to the viewer what is.
Happening, Yeah, Bob the AI, Which I think one of the reasons I like this is this, this this alone. And I'm not comparing this movie to Ian m Banks culture series, but in those, in those novels, you'll frequently have an individual who's often a member of the culture and they have they have an AI that they're they're talking to all the time, and they're having little conversations
and disagreements and so forth. So this felt, you know, not to say that this was even you know, remotely inspired by it's a pretty you know, i think common idea regarding science fiction, but it made me think of that a little bit.
Bob's got a little bit of personality. Bob is not just a you know, purely giving the answers to you know, He's not like a Google search result, like He's got some some thoughts of his own.
Yeah, yeah, again, he's he's very into making sure that they get to keep their license, that that any weaponry or tactics that they employ, that these are they have the correct certifications, that they're they're not going to get in trouble. So he's you know, he's very much a very lawful mindset, and Aria has more of a chaotic mindset.
I'd say that's right, Yes, So Bob is sort of lawful, neutral and area's kind of chaotic good yeah, okay. But then the other two main characters are our power company guys, and we mentioned them already, but you have Tepe, who is he's handsome, sweet, shy. Earnest don't have a lot of notes on Tepe. He's just like, oh, he's a nice guy.
Yeah.
But then the other one you've got is Camilla, who seems a little bit older and he is our fidgety clown, but he ends up really coming through in a pinch at the end of the movie. And early on, Camia has a near meat cute with Eria the bounty hunter, because she seems to be buying hundreds of apples and she drops one in the street and then Cama picks it up out of the gutter and tries to run after her. But I don't think they ever come face to face.
Not at that point, but of course later on they meet and he's like, oh, it's the woman from the street. Though I don't know what.
The purpose of that is, like that opening sequence, because it's like, oh, yeah, I saw you before. Anyway, So this movie, especially early on, is very heavy on technobabble. There is a long scene with Eria and Bob just discussing regulations on the technology they use. Like, the main thing I think you need to understand is the concept of a zone. And so there's a long scene where Erie and Bob are talking about the idea of a zone.
Here's my best interpretation of how it works. So Eria and Bob know that the monster Zeiram is headed toward Earth, and they know that it will crash land at roughly a given place at a given time, and they get there before it. So in order to capture Zayram with as little risk as possible, Eria and Bob make an alternate dimension copy of the city district where Zayram is going to land, and then somehow get him to land there instead of in the regular dimensional place. And this
alternate dimension city district is known as a zone. It's like surrounded by invisible walls and it's just like a regular city, except it has no people in it except whoever teleports into that using area's transporter. And apparently you collect a reduced bounty if you quote use a zone, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
Ultimately, I liked this aspect of the movie, like it adds an extra little wrinkle to it. And I'm not sure how much of it is them wanting to do something cool with kind of like, oh, they're not battling the alien just on the streets. They're battling it in this strange shadow zone, or if it's kind of like, well, if they're battling in the zone, we don't have to have any extras or worry about why the police aren't showing up.
Right, So most of this movie just takes place in the zone. So, like you say, there's no need for extrasm. There was one scene where they cut back to the regular world and they show like the people that the Electricians were supposed to be partying with later that night, hanging out and like they're not there, but they're like, oh, I don't miss them. I don't care that they're not here.
Yeah, that was strange. Oh, but by the way, I should ask at this point, did you watch we both use the same Blu ray copy on this. Did you do dubbed or subtitled subtitles? You did subtitles, Okay, yeah, because so I did the thing where I wasn't sure because sometimes there is a drastic difference. It's between subtitles and and and the dub on films like this. So I did the thing at first where I had both going on, and I was, you know, you kind of like trying to split my head by following both and
seeing like which one was the way to go. And I quickly decided, Okay, that doesn't seem to be a tremendous difference. Maybe the subtitles are a little tighter, but I don't think I'm missing out on a lot of plot if I just go ahead and and and employ the dub instead.
I mean, it always varies by case, but I think in general dubs are a great option for like silly movies, B movies and stuff like that. I think, you know, I gravitate more towards subtitles if it's like the they're real strong, dramatic performances by the original actors, and you kind of want to hear their original tone and things, even if you don't understand the language.
Uh.
And and just rely on the subtitles for the for the semantic uh. But yeah, I mean in a monster movie, I think dubs are great.
Okay, well we'll come back to this because they'll be two points where I want to know if you have a different understanding of what was occurring based on the subtitles versus my understanding via the dubs.
Oh oh, but we didn't finish talking about the zones because the other the okay, right, So the one last thing with the zone is like, you can't just walk into or out of a zone like a zone. Again, it's an alternate dimension. It's surrounded by invisible walls, and you have to have some kind of teleporter device that Aria has set up in her command center in an empty warehouse in order to teleport in and teleport out.
And multiple times in the movie, these teleporting devices get broken and that prevents somebody from going one way or the other. But okay, Eria and Bob are discussing zones, discussing bounties, discussing regulations and technology. Meanwhile, Tepe and Camia are our power company guys are trying to finish all the jobs they've got left on their list for the day because at least one of them has a date
that they need to get to. I don't remember. I think it's Cameo, or maybe both of them do anyway.
But I think Tepe has an actual date date and Kemia is just like hanging out at the box.
Yeah, Kemia needs to go hang out with people who don't actually like him. So one job that they have to deal with before they can finish up for the day is that somebody is stealing electricity, so they are called to the location where this is allegedly happening. They arrive at a warehouse where somebody is rigged up a bootleg power line coming off of the pole, and instead of just cutting the line, they have to go into the warehouse to investigate, and lo and behold, it's the
command center. It's full of weird, blinking, beeping gizmos.
Time to start touching stuff right, Also, just put our hands all over this long story short, the two electricians accidentally get teleported into the.
Zone along with eria Xeram arrives, and this leads into the rest of the movie, which is just one long chain of fi chases, monster attacks, and monster transformations.
Yeah, all in kind of dreary look mostly dreary looking industrial locations that you know, fit the zone and fit this style of movie. Though there is also a wonderful looking I think it's a playground, like a really modern yeah, like early nineties Japanese playground. I didn't look this up, just try and figure out where this was. But it looks really cool. I look at this and I'm like, yeah, I want to head.
I want to play on that. And so from here on out, I think, because it's just sort of fights and chases and transformations, uh, maybe we can just focus on highlights.
Uh.
The first big fight between Xerram and Erea is great. It involves energy weapons, ballistic weapons, strange traps, like area has all these different kinds of traps, Like one shoots out all these tethers that wrap up the monster. One is like, it shoots up these spikes that surround the monster, and yes, they're like metal spikes, and I think it has to like bend them down. But then the it
also has hand to hand fighting. Eria has the full gamut of bounty hunter skills, so it seems like she is a trapper first and foremost, and she likes using this device that encases someone within, like a giant crystal, but then when a fight breaks out, she throws down.
Yeah. She does have a wonderful array of sort of Mandalorian esque or predator esque weaponry, you know, all the various bells and whistles.
But of course Zaiam has his own tricks, and one of them, one of the weirdest ones I thought, was that he throws out these bioprisms that like hatch open and then release these creatures, these weird google eyed critters that look like a cross between Final Stage bundlefly Et and the baby from the nineties puppet sitcom Dinosaurs.
Yeah.
Yeah, and there's one he patches multiple of these things. Again, it's like it's like a little sea organic seed pod looking thing, and when it breaks open, it kind of like like whatever's inside rapidly grows and mutates into this kind of squat gobblinoid creature that it runs around and squeeze and stuff. There's one that pops up later on that has three faces and not just one, and the faces kind of remind one of the baby masks from Brazil.
And they make it kind of noise too, don't they.
Like these are squee noise.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, these are not they're not doing you know, heavy heavy booted martial arts like zay ram Is. They're just sort of going like and like running at the at the heroes.
Yeah, it's almost like he's he's weaponizing some other technology, like like these things are mostly just distractions. They're not They're not going to really make a huge tactical difference. He's not hatching like elite hunter killers. These are not his hunting dogs. These are just like blithering clone goblins that you know are just there to cause a distraction.
Agreed, Yes, but I love Yeah, I like them too, And there's a number of them throughout the movie. There was one part, though, I thought it was funny, where the Electricians are figuring out what's going on, and I think Eria says to them, at least this was how it was in the subtitles. She goes, don't you get it now, we're in an alternate dimension, and then one of the Electricians goes, you're right.
Now. One of my favorite sequences in this occurs, I want to say, you know, more or less halfway through the film. You know, we've already had the initial battle with zay Ram. Then we get this scene where where's you know, zay Ram has a run in with our two humanoid characters, and I think at this point it's been established that the humans are on their own in the zone and Eria has been like ejected from the zone and can't get back in due to like gadget reasons.
Right, Yeah, the transporter breaks or something.
Yeah, so this is where it gets fun because we know she can hold her own against z a Ram and effectively captures a Ram, but then she gets booted. Our two human characters mess things up, accidentally freeze a Ram, and zay Ram has to figure out what he's going to do. And so we have zay Ram still in this this form of this whol king bio weapon, you know, clothed in this shroud and having this large hat like head.
We already know that he can rapidly grow grotesque goblinoids to do his bitting, and in a previous scene he used that the mouth or the face on the on the hat, it kind of came out like a tentacle and it bit one of the human's arms. Cameo yeah, yeah, like tore off a bit of skin. So ah, it
has a tissue sample. So we go to this scene where it's just za Ram alone in this open industrial space and he removes the cloth from his mouth region and he spits up one of these He kind of like you know, flexes his muscles strains, spits up one of these seed pods. But instead of throwing it and
letting it hatch. He crushes it in his big muscular hand and some sort of clone slime drips out of it, pulls up on the ground, begins to bubble and rapidly grows into a kind of half formed clone of Cameo, or at least the head, one arm, and part of the torso just laying there in a pile. And it's really grotesque and wonderful. It mostly just spits up clone goop.
He but then Xerium seems to sort of wordlessly question this thing, and then the goblin clone responds with kind of alien gibbering and also a little more or oozing of clone goo from the mouth, and then satisfide with all this, Zirium then crushes the goblin clone underfoot. I absolutely love just the alien weirdness of this whole scene. One of these scenes where there are no humans at all.
It's just monsters doing monster things and having some sort of conversation that we can scarcely understand.
Now, this is one of the one scenes I would say if somebody was thinking about showing this movie to a very little kid, I don't know. This one's pretty grotesque. Yeah, and It's kind of pathetic the way the creature is like no, and zay Ram's just like done with you and then squashes him.
Now did this have subtitles in your version?
No? It didn't.
Okay, excellent, that's good. I would be disappointed, first of all, if I missed out on this, the details of this conversation. But I ultimately like not knowing, Like as a human viewer, we're just completely cut out on the details here, Like what is he just saying? Hey, where did that guy go? And he's like, oh, he's over there. I was like, all right, good squash. But maybe he's getting more information about the planet. I'm not sure. It's just it's a
lovely scene. This, I believe, is the scene that I saw on television, and it just stuck with me because it was just so strange.
Yeah, this is a great one. They pushed the weirdness past eleven. It's off the charts here. Another thing that stuck with me was I think, I wonder if you agree there's a part in this movie that I think is a direct homage to Aliens, because there is a scene where they're fighting with Zairam and then suddenly it pans over to reveal somebody coming in to say that I think Tepe is being threatened. But then it pans
over and here's Camea driving an excavator. He's working with heavy machinery with and I think it's like framed in stage with the same kind of lighting and stuff as when Ripley comes out in the power loader fight at the end of Aliens. Would you agree?
Yeah? Absolutely, And it seems like that's where they're gonna go, Oh, we're gonna we're gonna have kind of a rip off of that scene where it's gonna be bulldozer versus zarium, but then it ultimately ends up being for comedic payoff, right because doesn't Zeriam just sort of like swat the bulldozer and turns it out there? Yeah? Yeah, and uh and then and then Camea just runs for it. So I like that ultimately a successful scene if they'd gone if they'd actually had it be kind of this fight,
which I think they've done. Didn't they do that in Carnosaur. Doesn't a bulldozer fight a dinosaur in Carnoisaur?
Oh yeah, somebody gets into like a bobcat or some one of those smaller one of those little I don't know what you call those smaller bulldozer, a little min dozer.
Nobody wants to see that. I mean, Ripley did it best using a space bulldozer suit. I don't want to see just a normal bulldozer fight a dinosaur. Now I have another question for you, Joe, regarding dubs and subtitles. Uh. Okay, So a large part of this film is that the humans are trapped in the zone with zay Ram, and then an area is stuck on the outside. Okay, but then the humans get in trouble with zay Ram and
then Eria jumps in and saves them, saves the day. Yeah, and I don't if it was established how she was able to do that. I missed it.
Oh, I don't know. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of stuff like that. I don't I know what you're talking about. And I don't remember. I think they must have fixed it somehow. And then they just like don't show her teleporting or something. It's like, oh, here she is, you know, Bob got Bob got it all put together.
Okay, but she's ultimately not that important.
But no, no, no, But yeah, there's some gaps like that and a lot of the a lot of what Aria and Bob are doing later on is they're like trying to put together like the super cannon or something, or trying to get permission to use it or something.
Yeah, there is some question from Bob, especially if they have authorization to use the super weapon and then they have to get it there, and then once it's there it has to be a symbol. Then clearly our electricians are not quite up up to the task, so Eria has has to slap it together, and it's a pretty cool weapon when she fires it off.
Though I like some of the more low tech fighting you see that you see the electricians doing because and I think we're going to talk about the monster transforming into different stages in a minute, but one of stages it's attacking the two electricians and they just start piling furniture on top of it, which I thought was very funny.
Yeah. Yeah, there's another scene where I want to say that the monster is either thrown into or throws somebody else into one of you know your you're just go to set pieces in a film like this, A wall of cardboard.
Boxes, yes, clearly empty.
All right, So yeah, one of the this is a film about the monsters, about the monster itself here, and one of the great things about it is that it goes through multiple stages again, like you said, this is a film where Behold my true form happens again and again.
Yeah.
So we have stage one Zerium, which we've largely described clothed, hulking humanoid warrior. And in my opinion, this is zay Ram at his best and realizing here I may be saying Zerium at times it's okay, who knows, but I think I think zay Ram the Tennessee and version is correct. Anyway, this this primary look, primary za Ram, tremendous clothing, accessory options, numerous bioweapons, really comes off well. But then eventually Zayram gets blasted and we get stage two zay Ram, which
is a skeletal, multi limbed walker. And this one's a lot of fun because it's a stop motion effect, which obviously has limitations in a film like this. It even has limitations when it's done especially well, like in a Ray Harry Howsen or like RoboCop two, but it, you know, generally examples of really well done integration of live action and stop motion. But still the monster looks great in this Yeah.
Yeah it does. It's it's sort of a mix of an insect and like a mammal skeleton.
You know, multi limbs lashing around. Pretty fun. But eventually that gets blasted too, and we're off to stage three zay Ram, which it had been established earlier that only the head is important.
I think they literally say hat, just.
The hat, okay, so I just about so that at this point za Ram is reduced to just that hat, shroom cap, stingray thingy, and it flies around, floats around, you know, kind of looking like a rubber bat on a string. It reminds me a lot of a lot of various flying Kaiju monsters. Yes, so maybe less compelling, but very much expected.
I feel like maybe a Kaiju movie that we watched for this show had a monster that could transform into something that looked like this flying mushroom cap or stingray thing.
Was it the Godzilla movie?
Was it?
Did the pollution monster have a flying stingray form?
Hmm?
You might remember.
Anyway, they eventually capture the stingray hat thing. They get it sealed up in its crystal, but of course it gets out of that as well again, and then we get one last pretty great transformation where the hat is like upside down and a whole bunch of like mutation stuff starts boiling out of it, a very John Carpenter's The Thing esque transformation, and then it transforms into this the Thing esque abomination, which this was I guess, the logical place to go. Like at this point, Zayram is
backed in a corner. It's just going to mutate a bunch and just lash at you with a bunch of tentacles and teeth and mouths and so forth. I feel like this incarnation of zay Ram was maybe a bit ambitious, and the full monster comes off a little stiff here, but it's still it's still pretty cool.
Well it has at this point though, it is also because it has incorporated some human DNA from cameo. I think it has like little human body parts coming out of it. Yeah, it's like nipples and stuff.
Yeah, there's it looks like there might be a boob on it. Yeah, but not in a way that like is distressing. I guess just kind of like, oh, I guess it's supposed to be a human breast. Oh yeah, okay, now that would have been an interesting way to go if it had taken Cameo's form, that's the final form. I don't know.
Oh yeah, yeah, Like if it had gone full, like they just made a clone of him, but a defective one.
Oh you know, it would have been another great ending. They should have done this. I know we squashed the camea half clone earlier, but wouldn't it have been great for like a post credit sequence where it's Cameo's friends at the bar but the clone has shown up to hang out with them, and it's like being outed the bar and has a drink, but it's still like spitting up clone goo.
So they're in the middle of talking about how they don't miss Cameo and they don't mind that he couldn't make it. But then he does show up and he's just bleeding goo everywhere, and they're like, oh, hey, we were just talking about you.
Yeah, Titter is in an alien voice and they just don't notice.
A couple more things that I thought were interesting about the ending. One is that in the end, Camea has to come through and save the day by using electrician knowledge. Yes, he has to repair the wiring I think multiple times in order to I don't know power up the device they're using to defeat the monster in the end.
Yeah, this is really great and it made me wonder, not enough to actually watch it. But in the Super Mario Brothers movie, did the Super Mario Brothers end up using their plumbing skills to save the day against Dennis Hawker?
That would be a good twist.
Yeah, it's seen it and I don't remember.
That movie is weird. That's a contender for the show.
That is a strange film. I cannot imagine that the Chris Pratt Mario Brothers remake is going to really equal or you know, excel in creating the same kind of weird cinematic experience.
Waites Chris Pratt playing Mario super Mario.
That is what Seth I believe, was telling us for Other Day.
Okay, so they went from Bob Hoskins to Chris Pratt.
Yeah, well it's a it's a different, different take on the on the source material.
Okay. Oh oh, No, one last thing, final comment about the movie. I like how it ends with a graduation photo.
Yes, why, I don't know.
All the humanoids So after the monster has defeated Iria Cameo Tepe, They're like, hey, let's all pose for a photo and Bob just like they stand together and pose and Bob takes their picture and then it's like best friends, friends forever.
It's so wholesome. I love it. Yeah. So yeah, this is not a film that is going to really hit you with a lot of mysteries and intrigue and double crosses and so forth. The plot's pretty simple. The payoffs are pretty much everything you'd expect, but wonderful, weird monster. And I think this is one of those films kind of like Pumpkinhead to a certain extent, is you see action figures and costumes and fan art depicting the monster like the monster has really sort of is really kind
of more popular than the film itself. It seems to be the case.
Yeah, that would make sense.
Now a credit? Where credits do here? When I first started poking around for places to watch this film, I could not find Zayram anywhere. I think Zayram two was available as a streaming option or at least a digital purchase option, and the anime spinoff TV series was also available that way, but it looked like I was going to have to obtain a physical copy for sure, So I inquired with the good people at Atlanta's own Videodrome video rental store about it, and they said, sorry, we
don't have a copy. But then they wrote me back and said, actually, we just ordered a copy of it. We've ordered the thirtieth anniversary Blu Ray and so that came in and that's how we got to watch it. I think, a solid Blu Ray release from Media Blasters. It includes a couple of trailers and also a making of feature that I believe popped up on a previous laser disc edition.
Ooh oh man, can you imagine the experience of watching this on laser disc?
Yeah? I watched part of the making of video, but it's it's pretty bad. Like they were talking to the director and the star and the directors like, I wanted to make a film that was fun, So making a fun film was my primary my primary goal here. Okay,
so this is, you know, that sort of thing. I don't know, maybe there's some more depth, in depth stuff about the effects later on, but anyway, if you live in Atlanta, you can certainly go to Videodrome and rent the same Blu ray disc that we watched it on. You can also check out Video Drome at videodromeatl dot com. And if you want to get some of their merch, and they have a lot of cool merch, you can go to videodrome dot tv. So thanks again to the guys at video Drone for hooking us up with our
z A ram. All right, if you want to check out more weird house cinema, it happens every Friday in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed we're primarily you know, science and sometimes culture or sometimes philosophy podcast and primarily science though, but on Fridays we set most most of that aside and we enter the zone where there's nothing to worry about except for maybe a strange monster and some you know, questionable acting performances that sort of thing.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,