International Eye Candy
August 5, 2009

Why, yes, hello. It is, once again, Todd from Twitch here with another edition of International Eye Candy – our fortnightly grab bag of amusing goodies from around the globe – but before we are able to dive in to it I must present you with this cautionary message. Has everybody turned their phone off now? Good, then we shall begin.

And we begin with something stupid, frankly, albeit stupid in that gloriously 80s way that means 'cool'. Yes, that's Dolph Lundgren in the attached photo and, yes, he's playing the drums. The film is COMMAND PERFORMANCE, Dolph directed it, and in it he plays a biker turned rock drummer who must save the family of a prominent Russian politician from terrorists. We've linked up the teaser to this one before but now we've got the full trailer. Tell you brain cells that I apologize.

Watch Dolph rock the kit here

And we now follow up stupidity with silliness, in this case the silliness of fully grown men dressing up in foam latex monster suits and stomping scale miniature cities in the name of entertainment. You bet, it's a proper old school kaiju film – nary a CGI effect to be found – coming from Tomoo Haraguchi, Japanese effects wizard whose work has graced the high brown (AIRDOLL) the cult (UZUMAKI) and the classic (GAMERA). His own contribution to the kaiju canon? Meet the DEATH KAPPA! It's everyone's favorite yokai turned bad! This one is still in production but there is an extended behind the scenes video that shows off the suit, the models and the man at work.

Find the elusive DEATH KAPPA here!

Why am I writing about the prequel movie to a popular Chinese television show that hardly anybody here will have ever heard of, let alone seen? Because TURNING GATE – from director Herman Yau, who helmed the cult classic EBOLA SYNDROME back in the day – marks a return to active production for the legendary Shaw Brothers! They're back, kids, and it looks like they're doing it right. This is a precursor to television series EU and they've tucked heavyweights like Francis Ng and Anthony Wong in the supporting cast.

Click here to let the logo make you feel all warm and tingly

You're going to be hearing more about Dave Green in the future, I guarantee you that. Why? Because the man is shooting a short film about vengeful roadkill right about now with Sam Raimi producing, that's why. And even before we get to that, you're going to hear about him because of MELT DOWN, a horror comedy set in a fridge. With fridge things. Really. The voice of the sandwich is David Cross. I think I'm in love.

Find the MELT DOWN here.

Enjoyed that cell phone PSA up above? Here's some more for you, in the form of the full, complete trailer for Indonesian slasher MACABRE. Easily the most anticipated horror title out of Asia this year, MACABRE screened a rough cut at the recent PiFan festival in Korea, where it scooped a best actress award for its lead villain, and with the film rounding into completed form – before, no doubt, being hacked to bits by Indonesian censors with a savagery well beyond anything depicted on screen – the official trailer has finally arrived.

Find the MACABRE trailer here

Jonathan Nix loves them boobies! And I'm loving the second trailer for his animated short THE MISSING KEY, the award-winning Australian animator showcasing far more of his unique world and jazz loving characters this time around. Nix is a gem and I'd love to see someone hand him the keys to a full feature.

Find THE MISSING KEY here

The director of DAI NIPPONJIN – aka BIG MAN JAPAN – is playing very coy indeed with the marketing for his sophomore film, SYMBOL. The first teaser featured simply a pajama-clad man in a blank room that soon filled with CGI cherubs seeping through the walls. And there's more of the same in this second trailer, only this time Hitoshi Matsumoto has added a fat man barking at dogs. All I know is I really want to see it.

Can you figure out the SYMBOL?

Oh, geeze … I hope I didn't use up my stupid / silly quotient off the top because here comes the newest – and supposedly final – trailer for Jeffrey Lau's KUNG FU CYBORG. Let you imagination run with that for a bit and, yeah, you're probably pretty close to being right. Director Lau envisioned this as being a Chinese response to TRANSFORMERS. I'll say one thing, it's certainly funnier. Though I'm not one hundred percent sure it's meant to be …

Find the KUNG FU CYBORG trailer here

Considered by many to be the best zombie film of recent years, [REC] tore up the box office in its native Spain before being slavishly remade in the US as QUARANTINE. And so what have the producers done? They've brought back the original directors and – if the promo materials are to be believed – gone all ALIENS with the sequel. Remember how ALIENS ramped up the action quotient from Ridley Scott's original? Same deal here. Remember how ALIENS ended up being one of the best sequels ever made? Here's hoping. The latest teaser kicks an awful lot of ass in a very short time.

Find the new [REC2] trailer here

Bruce Campbell voicing a samurai film? Well, he's not really, but he is voicing a fake samurai movie that appears within another movie and has since been all bundled up as a clever – and quite convincing – bit of viral marketing. The real film is an indie comedy titled WHITE ON RICE which has been included here before. The fake one is titled AMBUSH AT BLOOD GATE TRAIL and I kind of wish it was real, too …

Get AMBUSHed here!

Fans of Asian horror are almost certainly aware of Thai production house GMM Tai Hub, though they may not know it by name. GMM have quietly become the purveyors of the very best horror films to come out of Asia, producing a consistently high quality – and consistently scary – slate of films over the past five or so years. The original SHUTTER, sterling ghost story DORM, and SHUTTER follow up ALONE are all GMM films. And then a couple years ago they assembled all of their core talent to create four part horror anthology PHOBIA. That proved every bit as good as the individual films and has now spawned a sequel, the five part PHOBIA 2, which feature solo films from the directorial duo behind SHUTTER and ALONE, reunites the DORM director with his star, features a segment from the hyper-kinetic director of BODY #19, plus the directorial debut of the producer who backed all of these films. And, yes, it looks just as good as its pedigree.

Find the PHOBIA 2 trailer here
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Ray guns! Aliens! It's THE MERCURY MEN! I normally avoid web-serials like the plague but this one – which takes its cues from 1950s scifi serials – looks to be an exception. A very fun, brain-in-a-jar sort of exception. Zap.

Find the MERCURY MEN here!

From the American Cold War to the Polish, we head now across the ocean for upcoming Polish animated short TERROR FROM OUTER SPACE! Propoganda inspired designs fused with very current 2D animation techniques, giant robots, glowing ooze and the promise of robot versus superhero hand to hand combat. What more can you ask for?

Experience the TERROR here!

And, finally, we end in France, were director James Huth is putting the final buff and polish on his live action adaptation of classic French comic character LUCKY LUKE, a character who sprung – at least partially – from the same pen that gave birth to ASTERIX AND OBELIX. Luke has been brought to the big screen before in both animated and live action form, but with Jean Dujardin – of OSS 117 and 99 FRANCS fame - in the lead and as technically skilled a director as Huth at the helm, expectations are huge for this. And it looks like they've been met. The just released teaser could have been lifted straight from the pages of the books …

Get LUCKY!