ZillaFoot is the debut film from Anthony Polonia, who, as you may have guessed is the son of Mark Polonia (Return to Splatter Farm, Noah’s Shark) and nephew of the late John Polonia (The House That Screamed, Splatter Farm). It started out as an hour-long film before being padded out to feature-length with a mix of newly shot and fan-submitted footage. Which is a fairly fitting start for the second generation of Polonia filmmakers.
ZillaFoot begins with a narrator telling us how man’s warlike nature and atomic weapons unleashed giant monsters on the world and attracted attention from beyond our planet as well. This is accompanied by footage from Konga TNT, Gappa: The Triphibian Monster, Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters and a couple of other kaiju films SRS has the rights to.
Aliens send a capsule to Earth containing their ultimate weapon, ZillaFoot, a giant creature that’s part lizard and part Bigfoot. Believing it to be a meteorite Missuri (Cassandra Hayes, Amityville Island, Radiant Dark) convinces Flash (Dave Fife, Shark Encounters of the Third Kind, Bride of the Werewolf) to take her to the place it landed. He’s initially unwilling due to the heavy security around it. But an offer of “I’ll do that thing you always wanted me to do.” quickly changes his mind.
At the same time Dr. Kaski (Mark Polonia), inventor of the GXG-1 the ultimate spacecraft and artillery platform is being made aware of it. As is the military’s Emergency Response Team. But it’s too late, the aliens have already unleashed the beast.
From the start, it’s obvious that ZillaFoot is meant to be a parody of kaiju films. The cast are all Caucasians but have Japanese names. One, Dr. Mosku, is even played by Wayne W. Johnson (House Shark, Night of Something Strange) in makeup that looks like makes him look like Warner Oland as Charlie Chan And like the American versions of older Godzilla films, their dialogue is badly dubbed in.
That’s mildly amusing, the seemingly endless scuba diving sequence with its constant voiceover proclaiming the divers to be in a typical American lake when it’s obviously a tropical ocean, and other voices arguing about it, is just annoying. The much more subtle background gag with a facility 2,000 feet underground having exit doors you can see the parking lot from works much better.
Between this and the very disjointed way the various scenes fit together ZillaFoot never really gels as a film. The elements are all there for a fun sendup of the genre, monster vs tank fights, monster vs monster fights and even an Ultraman-style character. Unfortunately, the new footage is so obviously added in after the fact that it ends up feeling more like a collection of sketches than a feature film.
The effects by Brett Piper (Lycanimator, Kinky Kong) and the director are about what you would expect from a film made by the Polonias. Horrible CGI and green screen work, worse miniatures and the wavy distortion effects in some of the alien’s scenes are headache inducing., Kinky Kong) and the director are about what you would expect from a film made by the Polonias
The story behind the making of ZillaFoot may well be more interesting than the film itself. It apparently started shooting back in 2014. And Anthony Polonia, or somebody claiming to be him, has said they only got half the budget he was promised and that he just used the test effects for the film when he learned he wasn’t going to be paid for the film.
I should add for those that don’t hit the link, that’s via comments on a YouTube review of the film. YouTube comments are not the most reliable of sources for information and I haven’t seen anything anywhere else. If true though it would explain why the original footage sat around for so long, and why it was padded out with such random footage.
A promising idea that, for whatever reason, never really manages to deliver, ZillaFoot is available from SRS Cinema.
Just to set the record straight, I had nothing to do with the effects for ZILLAFOOT except to stand over Anthony’s shoulder now and then while he was working and say “You know, you might want to try it this way.” As for Wayne Johnson’s Charlie Chan make-up. he wasn’t actually wearing any. I guess he just looks like Charlie Chan.
In his picture on IMDB he actually looks like the late Peter Steele from Type O Negative