In March, there are tons of great titles available to stream – some of which sync great with the franchises we are spotlighting this month! It’s our latest roundup to compliment your loot when it arrives. Go wild with PRIMAL, and some fun picks for this month!:
Wolverine
If you are still hankering for some “snikt” action (and you’ve already seen Logan, like, four or five times already), most of the X-Men films in which Hugh Jackman does his Canucklehead thing are available for a rental fee from the usual suspects. That said, if you’re subscribed to Hulu and really want some retro Wolverine goodness, all five seasons of the classic 90’s X-Men: The Animated Series is now available to binge. The BEST theme tune! Bright colors! Sentinels! Logan’s gravity-defying hair! So good. Hulu’s also got the rather good X-Men: Evolution cartoon; meanwhile if you’ve got HBO Now, you can grok X-Men: Apocalypse which features a brief but ballistic Jackman cameo.
Predator
So, here’s a bummer: The titular intergalactic hunting machine of the Predator franchise is in four of our crates this month, and yet none of the streaming services are doing him much justice right now. The nerve! Maybe they’re all just waiting with bated breath for Shane Black’s upcoming reboot like the rest of us. Anyway, outside of rentals, if you’ve dropped coin for the STARZ package through Amazon or Apple TV, the original (and still best) Predator with Arnold and crew is available there. HBO Now also has the fairly entertaining-in-a-totally-cheeseball-way Alien vs Predator: Requiem.
All Things Jurassic
Now we’re cooking!: Though HBO Now sadly pulled Jurassic World a few months back, it’s now part of the Cinemax streaming package. The real binge-worthy opportunity though is on Netflix, where all three of the original Jurassic Park flicks are now available to stream. The 1989 original is still the very best, but The Lost World isn’t as terrible as you’d be lead to believe. (Nothing that stars Jeff Goldblum is really that bad by default, right?) And while Jurassic Park III is somewhat lacking in the character dynamics of the original, it makes up for it in dino-riffic action.
Godzilla
While, unfortunately, Gareth Evans’ very good 2014 remake is only available to stream as a rental – and the really pretty awful 1998 version is available via STARZ, if you insist – the big score for Godzilla fans is over at Shout Factory TV. The amazing folks at Shout Factory, if you didn’t know, have a fantastic arsenal of titles you can stream right in your browser, at any time, for free! And there’s a wealth of classic kaiju action, including 1958’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters as well as the original unedited Japanese film; Terror of Mechagodzilla; Rodan; Monster Zero; and, yes, even Godzilla’s Revenge. All of you little Minilla fans, rejoice!
King Kong
Sometimes, you just have to recommend a bad movie for that “it must be seen to be believed” factor. Such is the case with Dino DeLaurentiis’s 1976 remake of King Kong, which is available to stream on Hulu. It should have been great, right?: Jeff Bridges is the shaggy paleontolgist hero, Charles Grodin is the greedy oil prospector, and Jessica Lange (her screen debut!) is the spacey aspiring actress who ends up catching they eye of that oversized ape in his lost jungle kingdom. If the dialogue doesn’t crack you up, the expressions of the guy in the Kong suit totally will (The great Rick Baker, who designed the suit along with the equally great Carlo Rambaldi, admitted later that he wasn’t happy with the final result.)
Beauty and the Beast
Although Hulu recently began adding some great Disney titles as part of its new licensing deal, including Mulan, Hercules and more… despite hype for the new live action film, 1991’s Beauty and the Beast isn’t one of them. Womp womp. Nevertheless, if you’re a fan of all forms of that “tale as old as time,” you have streaming options. Netflix currently has the CW’s 2012 modern take, which itself was a re-imagining of the 1980’s CBS adaptation which starred Linda Hamilton as a beautiful New York D.A. who falls in love with subterranean lion-esque heartthrob Ron Perlman, in his first major genre role. That show, as bizarre as it was, was a massive hit and is available to watch now on Amazon Prime.
