Lord Doom is tired of sitting in the middle of a cold, dead planet. He wants to live somewhere that is warm. So he instructs his dwarf henchman to send planet destroyer Kraa off to Earth to wipe out its civilization, thus making a takeover easier. The Planet Patrol gets wind of this horrid plan and attempts to stop Lord Doom. But Doom anticipated this and knocks their Death Star kinda thingie into self-destruct mode. The Patrol does manage to send an operative to Earth to stop Kraa though. His name is Mogyar and he kind of looks like a cheese covered crab, and he takes in an Italian accent!
Oh how I love this small, dumb movie. It rips off everything that was popular in 1998. Godzilla, The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Star Trek, Men In Black, and it even tosses in Masters of the Universe for good measure. I doubt that words can get across how gleefully stupid I think this thing is.
Kraa! The Sea Monster was one of two attempts at making old school style Kaiju funness by Charles Band's once Paramount funded Full Moon Pictures. The other was Zarkorr! The Invader. By 1998 the deal with Paramount was finis and Band was on his own. Still with a little bit of cash (and a studio in Romania) he attempted to keep up the crank 'em out fast ethic alive. Under the Full Moon umbrella such smaller 'speciality' productions were founded. Pulsepounders (for tween entertainments), Surrender Cinema (for the *ahem* mature audiences), and Monster Island Entertainment (which distributed Zarkorr and Kraa) are the three I clearly remember, but I am sure there were one or two more. Sadly the whole operation crashed and burned within a year or two and, for awhile, Band floundered. Ever the astute survivalist though, Band has rebounded and Full Moon lives again! So Kraa! The Sea Monster now sees life on DVD. Sadly director Aaron Osbourne (or Dave Parker) contributes no commentary. Heck, I doubt there are even any chapter stops! There are some trailers, but parents be warned. Most of the trailers are for Full Moon's skin exposing output, which makes this juvenile friendly movie a rather juvenile unfriendly disc release sadly enough.
Clearly Kraa is aimed at kiddie's, what with its teen heroes dolled up as Star Trek convention attenders and acting like they are Power Ranger style defenders of the galaxy. Sadly they spend most of the movie trying to fix their busted Death Star station while the talking cheese covered crab attempts to convince the MiBs that he came in piece and can stop Kraa. There is a generous amount of building smashing and the monsters are goofy looking (look close when Kraa smashes through the power lines, you can see the man in the suit's chin behind the teeth) yet still kind of cool looking (well Kraa is). The only down side is that the dwarf henchman isn't played by Phil Fondacaro. Mr. Fondacaro is one cool dude. The dwarf in this movie, while I am sure he is a nice enough fellow, just doesn't hold a candle to the coolness that is Phil Fondacaro. We need more movies with Phil Fondacaro.
I wish that Full Moon had done more Kaiju!
