Life on Mars

I'll admit that, in reviewing Mars Men for Teleport City, I had some reservations about returning to the topic of Sompote Sands. He is a filmmaker about whom I've had some mixed feelings, to say the least, and it often pains me to think that my series Thai-Style Kaiju: The Films of Sompote Sands might have contributed in some small way to his current cult notoriety.

It pains me because said notoriety has insured that, no matter how hard I try, I cannot escape Sompote Sands. Case in point: the screening of The Dwarves Must Be Crazy at last month's Fantastic Fest, which was preceded by a lengthy clip from Magic Lizard. Surely that could not have been presented for anyone's enjoyment: It was clearly me that they were after. I envisioned Sands himself, sitting in the projection booth and laughing as I frantically tore at my eyes.

Clearly a reckoning with Sands--as well as a lot of Effexor--was due. And I thought that Mars Men might provide that opportunity. You see, Mars Men is a Taiwanese film that takes a Sompote Sands film, 1974's Giant and Jumbo A, and gives it the Sompote Sands treatment--in that it takes Giant and Jumbo A, recycled footage and all, and recycles it for its own purposes. The result, according to Todd Stadtman of Teleport City is a "daft crazy quilt of a movie" with "an astonishing global reach." To find out what the hell I meant by that, if anything, read the full review here.