MONDAY MORNING MOVIE MADNESS AFTER NEXT

This week: ZARKORR THE INVADER!!!


Above: Amazing cover art for Zarkorr, created by Charles Band at Full Moon Entertainment in 1996.


Zarkorr The Invader was Full Moon Entertainment's first venture into the "giant monster movie" genre, a significant move considering Full Moon's long history of producing B-grade horror flicks (the trailer for their newest movie release, Evil Bong 2: King Bong, can be seen here). And while Zarkorr is an absolutely TERRIBLE no-budget creature feature, it does retain a couple points of interest that make it worth watching (but not really).

I couldn't find a trailer for Zarkorr on YouTube, but this trailer for Kraa! The Sea Monster (1998 - also made by Full Moon) is pretty much the same thing, only with twice the budget:



I've seen Zarkorr WAY too many times, and I'll tell you why: My son, in the early 2000's (from ages 3-5, approximately), was a complete Godzilla freak, and made me rent just about ANY monster movie we could find -- be it Zarkorr, Gammera, King Kong, Mothra, Pulgasari, or Yongary. So Zarkorr made his fair share of appearances in our living room. And, after awhile, I grew to enjoy this otherwise awful movie.

Zarkorr The Invader is the story of a highly intelligent alien race, who send a 185-foot-tall (seems like an oddly specific number), 300-ton, lazer-shooting monster to "test" the human race. The humans' only hope is Tommy Ward (Rees Pugh), a completely "average" (because the aliens designed him that way, we find out later) Postal worker who must save the Earth from this towering beast. His only ally is Proctor (above, right), a 5-inch-tall hologram also sent by the alien masterminds.
Apparently, Full Moon didn't have much money to spend on writing a script or hiring decent actors after blowing it all on the SFX budget, but that's part of the charm. Stone-faced, mid-90's film extras deliver their seemingly-improvised lines with deadpan awesomeness, oblivious to the fact that their presence in the film is 100% superfluous. We are here to see Zarkorr stomp on some shit.
And stomp on some shit he does:



The redeeming qualities in this flick are few and far between, but if you like watching dudes in rubber suits step on things, or giant monsters who shoot lazers out of their eyes, or people rocking really awesome mid-90's clothing and saying dumb shit, or poorly-constructed miniatures being blown up, or movies that steal sound effects straight from Jurassic Park due to lack of sound design budget (TRUE), maybe you should check out Zarkorr The Invader. Or maybe not. Depends on how stoned you are.


According to legend, Charles Band shot many of Zarkorr's destruction scenes BEFORE the film had a script (did it?), and ended up stuffing most of them into the end crdits. So the end credits are pretty much the best part of the movie. Luckily, someone on YouTube uploaded them. Check it out, and get a load of the awesome "Zarkorr" theme song while you're at it:



One highly observant YouTube viewer, "gtyme125", commented thusly after viewing the above clip: "if you think about it zarkorr looks like godzilla."

I don't know, gtyme125... I just don't see it.


------------------------------------------------------------

I was highly surprised to find out that Zarkorr The Invader made it to DVD, and is actually available on Netflix.