The Beast And The Magic Sword is a 1983 Paul Naschy movie that was made in Spain and Japan. It's the tenth in the Count Waldemar Daninsky film series about a guy's who's a werewolf. This movie starts in the 16th century Spain with Irineus Daninsky, an ancestor of the Count, wanting to cure himself of the werewolf curse. Some witch hunters attack the guy who might have helped Irineus. The man lies dying when Irineus shows up, before he dies he sends Irineus to Japan to look for a man called Kain.
In Japan Irineus searches for Kain. He's there so long that he's killing the locals during multiple full moons and the local authorities have taken notice. Kain and Irineus paths cross while the wolf is out, werewolf footprints allow Kain to follow Irineus to his house. Kain offers to help Irineus cure his curse but he can't seem to help quick enough and Irineus consults a witch. Irineus is kind of an asshole, he doesn't seem to care much to keep the werewolf locked up during the full moon, and he's willing to go see an evil witch against everyone's advice. She turns out to be a horrible monster and things go poorly for Irineus.
Surprisingly, it's one of the better of Naschy's movies. He wrote and directed it under the name Jacinto Molina. His real name is Jacinto Molina Alvarez and he used the first two names for most of his writing and directing credits, he acted under the name Paul Naschy. He directed 23 movies and acted in over 100. I just don't find him that interesting. Some of his horror movies are downright poor to me. I often joke about digging up Paul's body and using his fleshless skull to crack other poor film makers in the nuts. I wouldn't crack Paul for this one, his werewolf make up is better than some of his make ups in the past, and he managed to make a nice looking film. Sadly, his action scenes are a mess, some downright poor and others fair at best. It's a long film, nearly 2 hours, and it's a long slog to sit through. I'd give it a 5 or a 6 but wouldn't need to see it again.
Raiga: God Of The Monsters is a 2009 Japanese giant monster film. It's the sequel to Reigo: King Of The Monsters from 2008. I haven't seen that but they put in some clips in the current movie. There's a 2019 sequel called Raiga Vs Ohga.
Raiga: God Of The Monsters is pretty much a comedy monster movie. We spend a lot of time with a loud and annoying family, their loud and annoying friends, and some loud and annoying government types as the sea monster comes calling. Rather than get out of town the people we meet stumble about yelling and being annoying. The beastie does some damage to the city, the monster is a guy in a suit, but the cityscape is mostly altered by medium rez CGI. Some of the effects are better than others, some are crap like you'd find on the SyFy channel, they use big explosions to cover up a lot. At times I was thinking the buildings were filled with fireworks and gasoline.
It's going to appeal to the monster fan to some extent. I got a laugh or two out of it but I didn't feel I needed to see it again and wasn't planning to get the new Blu-ray. I'd rather spend my remaining movie watching time watching something a bit better, there are all those Toho movies to watch again, and again. I guess that's movie triage for ya.
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