What's that in the distance?...Is that what's left of our careers?

Okay, after being absent in my oh-so-valuable reviews of all that is cheesy in the world of B-movies, I’m finally back to a level of free time which allows me to indulge in this irresistible fixation of mine. The first movie I chose to review sadly has no deep meaning for me, no grandiose karmic communication I felt had to be imparted to an unsuspecting world. Nope. It just happens to be what was in my DVR for me this weekend.

So here goes a review of MegaFault, another venture from Asylum Home Entertaiment which has a lot of potential which was allowed to all shake to the bottom while the CGI team tried to make the graphics more believable. There was a lot to work with this time in the way of the cast, including Eriq La Salle, of ER fame (as well as one of my favorite 80’s movies, Coming To America), Bruce Davison (X-men and a schnike-load of other work), Brittany Murphy (whose “girly” movies I’ve never liked, but could appreciate her fortitude in working opposite of Ashton Kutcher), and Paul Logan (who others may say isn’t a plus, but whom I loved in Komodo Vs Cobra). To the credit of the cast they all played their parts very well. Maybe too well for a movie of this limited caliber. There wasn’t any sense of fun at any point from any of the cast, except an occasional smart-ass line delivered by the background actors. I know this is a disaster movie, but it’s a very far-fetched disaster movie, and one put out by Asylum Home Entertainment. C’mon folks, I know it’s not as fun of a premise as Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus, but roll with the punches and revel in the cheese factor!

I think the seriousness that “end of the world” movies incite is what turns me off of them. There seems to be a fear of making fun of anything, no matter how ludicrous the storyline gets. We have a man who specializes in blowing up mountains, named Boomer, and when he takes out a mountain, it causes a giant crack across North America, pretty much dividing the United States in two as it tears through the earth. The military enlist cute little Dr. Amy Lane who has no problem leaving her daughter and husband behind to go investigate the earthquakes, and then get called upon to calculate where the military should fire this secret weapon they have in space that can (wait for it….) start earthquakes! Back to the old “cure amnesia” theory of halting a crisis, whereby you simply have to start another earthquake in the right spot and the world will remember it’s real name is Alice, and she has a dog named… I mean, you’ll stop the first earthquake.

Not to be outdone, the cure then weakens the mantle. Naturally we then get a mega volcano that has to be stopped by blowing up a whole bunch of stuff, ’cause, well, they were running out of reasons why Boomer needed to keep hanging around.

There’s not much of substance along the way, but you do end up liking Amy Lane and Boomer, because they’re played by actors who know how to create empathy. Again, it’s just misplaced for a little movie like this. They’re acting like they’re going for an Oscar instead of just trying to keep their careers in forward momentum.

The special effects here are typical Asylum. Not horrible, not great, but still just bad enough to elicit a giggle. I think that’s why I keep watching Asylum’s movies, because at least half of them I can get through as a result of that cheese factor. The other half (such as The Terminators) are so bad I can’t get past the first thirty minutes, despite my stubborn, masochistic nature.

If you’re a fan of disaster flicks, you will probably enjoy Megafault. If you’re a fan of cheesy movies, you’ll be left wanting (and feeling a little sorry for Brittany Murphy and Eric La Salle).

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, action flick, Asylum Home Entertainment, Brittany Murphy, Bruce Davison, Eric La Salle, MegaFault, Paul Logan, You Poor Bastard

Giggles galore!

As soon as I saw the title Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus, I knew this movie was meant for me. I laughed my way through the wooden acting, and the frugally dispersed CGI of a cool looking Mega Shark and Giant Octopus. I even went so far as to watch the “special features”, and those were even funnier. The “outtakes” give one actor about five minutes more screen time than the two minutes he actually had, because he couldn’t get one of his three lines right. Listening to the four main actors discuss the movie is almost painful to endure. They try to talk it up, but look in their eyes. They’re dying inside as they do so. Three of the four don’t even get enough courtesy to have their interview conducted inside a nice, quiet room where you can even hear them. But that’s okay. For Debra Gibson’s segment I was too distracted by the guy working behind her who kept showing butt crack every time he bent over. The funniest extra was the short clip with the “cinematographer”, especially as he tries to get the poor camera person to help him demonstrate a cheap, but effective, technique to mimic a submarine being thrashed around.

But the special features weren’t what drew me in. It was the ridiculous plot, passable (I’m being generous) acting, and whiplash-inducing blips of CGI. C’mon, people, a giant shark takes out a passenger jet in mid-air! And attacks the Golden Gate Bridge! Show me that in the previews and you know I’m going to be salivating to watch the rest of what passes for the movie.

Sadly the previews give away the best parts, but this is such a train wreck I will be buying myself a copy when I see it cheap enough. $19.99 definitely is not cheap enough, but get down to the $7.99 range, and I’ll be reminding people about it at Xmas time.

So what’s all the hub bub about? Debra Gibson is an ocean scientist who is exploring underwater. She notices whales going nuts and crashing themselves into icebergs. This in turn knocks away enough ice for her to catch a glimpse of two prehistoric creatures locked in mortal combat, just before they come back to life and zip away into the murky depths. Giant sized incidents occur around the globe, including an attack on an oil rig, and our fun little plane munch. Governments naturally get involved, and our lovely scientist finds herself caught up in it, along with her former professor, and a forced love interest in the guise of a fellow scientist from Japan. After some lame science, an even lamer excuse for the main characters to have sex, and an even lamer resulting hypothesis about pheromones as a result of that sex, we’re off on a monster hunt.

Really, don’t bother trying to figure out the plot. It’s the same old stuff with government conspiracies, scientists saving the day, and narrow escapes thrown in. This is a low budget (comparatively) movie, and it shows in the small cast and limited sets. I’m actually pretty impressed with how much bang for their buck Asylum gets for their bad movies, and don’t mind how much they recycle things between them. I’m watching for giggle factor and cheese, and Asylum delivers at least one time out of five.

For the beleaguered cast I have to give props for at least having fun with the movie. Yes, in their little interviews they may be taking it a little too seriously, but at least that didn’t filter too much into the actual movie. There’s a lot of tongue in cheek delivery of lines, and I get the feeling that they were trying not to roll their eyes as they said most of them. Debra Gibson isn’t the best little actress in the world, but she’s definitely not as bad as some I’ve seen. She holds her own against poor bastard Lorenzo Lamas, who sounded like he really wanted them to kill off his character so he wouldn’t have to risk a sequel. Her professor, played by Sean Lawlor, is the believable mentor. The love interest, played by Vic Chao, plays his role a little too “this will get me an Oscar, right?”, but he’s still very likable, and has decent chemistry with Gibson.

All in all, Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus is a giant waste of time. However, it’s a funny-groaningly-bad-leave-you-giggling-and-feeling-slightly-guilty-about-finding-it-so-funny, giant waste of time. And for the Queen Of Cheese, that’s good enough!

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, Asylum, b-movie, creature feature, Debra Gibson, giggle factor, Lorenzo Lamas, Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus, Sean Lawlor, Vic Chao

Cheesy effects and great actors. What a combo!

Sweet, mad as a hatter Sean Connery is the only reason I sat down to watch the classic train wreck that is Meteor. Already old enough to feel he needed to wear a toupee, but still exuding that Connery charisma, he holds his own against other stellar actors who got suckered into this thing.

Meteor was plagued by all sorts of problems, mostly due to the folks behind it having grandiose dreams of a blockbuster, but not enough resources or people skills to pull it all together. Sadly for them, this was a flop back in 1979, but for the Queen Of Cheese sitting down to watch it finally in 2009, I loved it.

Meteor has all the elements that make a great B-movie disaster/science fiction flick. We have astronauts all the way out in a spaceship near Jupiter and Saturn. We get to see them converse with space command back on Earth, with absolutely no delay. Spiffy technology since there’s at least a few seconds delay just between Earth’s orbit and the ground! The acting aboard the space craft as a deadly meteor heads their way is awesome, too, especially with the cheesy lighting effects to simulate combustion. We get more questionable science as a comet zips through an asteroid belt and drags some big rocks with it, and one at least five miles wide ends up on a direct course with Earth, along with some baby meteors just big enough to cause lots and lots of damage, including destroying a ski resort, causing a tidal wave, and other general mayhem.

Even more ludicrous is the science behind how the meteor is going to be stopped. The U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. both have secret, illegal space weapons with nuclear missiles, originally pointed at each other. The plan is to cut through some political b.s., provide some political posturing, but ultimately aim those missiles at the meteor instead, coordinate a launch that will divert the giant mass away from the planet, yet not just break it up into smaller, just as deadly pieces that will hit us anyway.

Really, it’s not the bad science or laughable attempts at a political or military drama that will keep you watching this thing. It’s the heavy, ominous music that sounds every time the meteor is seen rolling slowly, inexorably on it’s path of doom. It’s the long, drawn out sequences as the missiles are readied for launch, again with overbearing, giggle inducing music throbbing away, making sure we know this is a serious moment we should all take pride in as citizens of the Earth. Or something.

The acting of the main cast is definitely more than this film deserved. Sean Connery is the bitter scientist sucked back in to save the day. Karl Malden is his friend and liaison who does his best to stand between him and the paranoid military man played by Martin Landau. Brian Keith plays a very convincing native Russian scientist, delivering his lines in an accent that makes you forget all about that diabetes-inducing show, Family Affair. Natalie Wood is beautiful and smart as his English translator, and Sean Connery’s tepid love interest. Henry Fonda takes a brief turn at being President of the United States, naturally being more noble of character than any real politician would be under those circumstances. The tons of secondary characters are all top notch, adding alternate touches of humor and melodrama. Even some of the silent, just in the background characters are a riot, including a duo of ladies in a caved-in subway scene who are doing their nails with looks of ultimate boredom as they await rescue.

There have been lots of disaster movies before Meteor and tons after, and arguably Meteor is not well done. However, there’s a certain charm to it with it’s over the top music, above average acting, and laughable premise of how the world would be saved from a crisis like this, not to mention the overtly phallic symbolism in all those nuclear rockets (which the movie lingers on for several minutes longer than necessary to simply say it’s ‘dramatic’). It’s got the 70’s hair, the 70’s wardrobe, the 70’s attitude about politics, the military, and science, and an awkward, unrequited romance between a young Russian translator and an ‘old enough to be her grandfather’ American scientist. It all adds up for a popcorn-munching couple of hours. In the end, if the looming meteor rolling towards you doesn’t make you giggle a bit, you’re not watching this for any of the right reasons!

Tags: action flick, b-movie, Brian Keith, disaster flick, disaster movie, giggle factor, Henry Fonda, Karl Malden, Martin Landau, Meteor, Natalie Wood, sci fi, Sean Connery

The Earth has to deal with a serious case of sunburn, or something...

The world is in danger again. This time the plot focuses on global warming, and how much methane is in our atmosphere. I promptly got distracted by jokes about cow farts, and don’t really know the ultimate outcome.

I remember Solar Attack decides that the way to save the world is to shoot nuclear missiles at the North Pole. Okaaay…. Sounds reasonable in a B-movie world, I guess. Then there’s something about Russians versus Americans, and all that old Cold War conflict coming to the surface now that an American billionaire used Russian technology to launch his personal manned craft into low orbit, but it blew up, killing an American astronaut/pilot, and everyone wanted to blame the Russian technology, but it was really because of a huge “coronal mass ejection” that lit the methane in the atmosphere on fire and incinerated him, and then the billionaire knows what’s really going on but no one will believe him now, but he has friends with Russian subs so he takes matters into his own hands to save the world… and stuff.

All I really remember is that after a slew of disaster movies in my recent viewing history, this one at least didn’t have a precocious kid that needed a healthy dose of discipline and a lesson in manners. This one at least didn’t have a contrived treacle-filled sub-plot about family sticking together through tragedy, or society trying to carry on in the aftermath of disaster. This at least just stuck to questionable science, showed plenty of pretty lights to make sure we know there’s lots of “coronal mass ejections”, and a requisite fist fight/action scene or two.

It just didn’t keep my interest, however. I don’t think it’s all the movie’s fault. I think it’s because I’ve seen so many of this genre of film in the last few days, and just got burned out. I know I fell asleep a couple of times trying to watch it, but there wasn’t anything going on that made me sit up and take notice. It’s just another typical “we’ve got to save the world…again” movie.

I watched it mostly for Mark Dacascos since he’s sunk to the level of Casper Van Dien and Lorenzo Lamas. Decent actor, has plenty of action star chops, but he’s not so good that he can rise above mediocre roles like this. Sometimes he’s funny, and then sometimes intentionally so. I also watched it for Louis Gossett Jr, an actor I feel deserves more respect than a movie like this. I didn’t watch it for anything else except a morbid curiosity about how bad this would get.

To sum this up, I tried to watch yet another disaster movie, and got absolutely nothing out of it, including an even halfway decent review. I’ll give it another try in a few months and see if my “disaster movie tolerance level” has subsided, but I don’t have high hopes that anything will save this movie for me.

In the meantime, I’m eagerly awaiting my next movie from Netflix, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, and the following trailer will tell you why!

Tags: disaster movie, Disaster Movie Tolerance Level, Joanne Kelly, Louis Gossett Jr, Mark Dacascos, movie review, Solar Attack, solar flares, Solar Strike, Sugith Varughese, We Have To Save The World Again

In space, no one can hear you act in a bad movie...

Jack Scalia deserves better than this movie. He must have been desperate for work back in 1996 when Dark Breed was made. He got shoved into a tiny pigeonhole of a character who potentially has a lot of depth, except the writers were afraid to venture into the deep end. He’s a decorated war veteran with strong feelings about how other vets are treated, takes the lives he saw lost very seriously, takes his job very seriously, and still loves his astronaut ex-wife. He now works for a shadow agency of the government which sent him up to a secret space station to retrieve astronauts previously sent there. And by retrieve, apparently that meant retrieve the bodies. He faced off against an ugly alien, and still has horrible nightmares about the experience. With all this back story we should have a richly developed character, and an interesting story.

We should, but we don’t. It’s not that interesting of a movie, even with aliens possessing the bodies of astronauts who went up in yet another secret space launch, only to crash back on Earth. We have bad aliens who want to hatch their eggs and destroy the planet. We have a good alien who also possessed an astronaut (the ex-wife of our main character/hero) who is out to fight the “Dark Breed.” Why they’re the “Dark Breed” and she’s not is never explained. Or maybe it was, but I missed it because I was too busy downing another cup of coffee to stay awake.

There’s a little gore, a little violence, and a lot of action, so that at least is pretty cool to watch. There’s a ludicrous scene where the good guys are driving off in a van that has a giant dish satellite on top of it. The dish falls off the van and drags behind it, slowing them down. Jack Scalia’s character tries to cut it loose, but in the process ends up sitting in the dish and basically road surfing behind the van. Kowabunga! Or something…

There are some laugh out loud funny moments. One of the aliens gets loose from his restraints after being captured and put in a hospital for observation. The human host ends up running around and making sounds that I’m sure were supposed to be terrifying, but I swear to god was just a recording from a hog calling contest. A little difficult to take that part as seriously as they meant it to be. There’s also plenty of stereotypical military jargon that I doubt is actually authentic. Plus one of the officers is a lovely young lady with non-military approved hairstyle, and way too much makeup. The banter among the good guy characters is often funny, but not always intentionally so.

Another scene that cracked me up was when the astronaut possessed by the good alien meets our hero in a diner. The waitress is nonplussed by the yellow eyes and stilted vocal patterns. She’s too busy being snarky to her because the alien is wanting to order pizza for breakfast. None of the other patrons are even paying attention to the lady in an astronaut’s jumpsuit with the U.S. flag all over it, although I’ll admit that part is probably true to life.

Dark Breed had a lot of potential, but fell very short of it. There’s a lot of angst going on with the astronauts possessed by the “Dark Breed”. They are cognizant of what is happening to them, and what the aliens are making them do, but are powerless to stop it. There’s a tense scene where the humans are temporarily in control of themselves while the aliens are presumably resting, and they debate whether they should kill themselves while they have the chance. As soon as a gun is raised the aliens yank control back, and two of the three actors play it off wonderfully while the third seems to be too distracted by the uncomfortable yellow contact lenses he was forced to wear.

I watched this one strictly for Jack Scalia. I was hoping for a cheesy performance like I got in Kraken: Tentacles Of The Deep. I was disappointed. There is a lot of cheese here, but there’s good cheese, and then there’s cheese that’s just so stinky you can’t even be in the same room with it. Dark Breed falls somewhere in between.

Trailer contains some blood and gore. But, if you watch it, it’ll save you 90 or so minutes, because they put most of the film’s major points in it!

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, action flick, alien movie, astronauts possessed by aliens, b-movie, Dark Breed, Jack Scalia, movie review, We Have To Save The World

It really should be plural, since there was more than one asteroid, but that name was already taken...

With the video game Asteroids already calling ‘dibs’ on that name, this made-for-tv movie from NBC decided to use it in the singular form, even though there are actually more than one asteroid threatening the planet. Maybe they were running on the theory that it was ‘one asteroid at a time is threatening the planet, so technically we’re correct, so nyah!‘. Of course, it’s not a good enough of a movie to do in-depth research to figure out, so we’ll drop this whole part of the conversation.

The movie starts off mildly interesting with an astronomer watching a comet, and noticing that it’s picked up some hitchhikers. She decides that it’s noteworthy enough to call FEMA, and a very brief interlude later we have the evacuation of Kansas City, Missouri ordered. We have to deal with tons of side stories about different characters so we know there’s a ‘human face’ to the coming disaster. The astronomer has a precocious kid, a too-good-to-be-true father who’s also a great doctor, and a deceased husband to make sure there’s opportunities for treacle. The FEMA agent is dedicated to his job to the point of risking his life at the drop of a hat. We have a firefighter with a wife and children, where the wife doesn’t understand why he has to keep fighting fires when she needs him at home. There are other gripping stories peppered throughout, but it’s mostly filler to make up for the lack of actual asteroid action, and the fact we were promised a science fiction-y sort of tale, but got an uninteresting human interest story instead.

It wouldn’t have been so painful if it weren’t by the numbers human beings triumphing over disaster and reaching out a helping hand to everyone around them. It’s unrealistic, and knows it is, and practically screams “This is the way we should all be, don’t ya think???”. Beat me over the head too much with this type of message and I just want the whole world to explode so I don’t have to watch good actors get dragged down by lazy, saccharin-laced writing.

The first half of the movie wasn’t so bad. This was where they put the asteroid action, and we even get a nifty scene with Kansas City flooding. I liked it mostly because it wasn’t slick CGI, but instead someone actually put the effort into making a scale model, and then flooding and filming that. The blue screens were hit and miss. Some were seamless, but the ones that weren’t jump out at you waving their arms. The shots of asteroid chunks hitting are passable, but not done as well as the flood scene.

The second half of the movie is when it all goes belly up. The asteroids are done pummeling the Earth, so now it’s time to watch everyone wander around aimlessly, shout at FEMA agents who are trying to help, or do dumb ass things like leave a town where you and your kids are safe in order to rush to where the big asteroid hit because you think your firefighter husband might be dead. I’m sorry (actually, I’m not), but if my spouse did that, the first thing I would do would be to scream myself hoarse at them for bringing my children into harm’s way, especially because of such a stupid reason. What would she have done if her husband were really dead? Let her kids hug the corpse while they breathed the dust-filled air in a disaster zone? Of course we’re also supposed to believe this resulted in happy endings all about when in real life I think it would have ended in divorce court.

Maybe I’m just cynical and unfeeling, but this painful endurance test would have been a heck of a lot better if it had just gone for a quick ’science fiction’ resolution and left all the angst out. Send even more planes up to shoot the asteroids with even more lasers. Super heat the atmosphere by igniting the methane from all the cow farts so the asteroids dissolve on impact. I don’t know. Just do something different than what I sat through for nearly four hours and am now kicking myself for doing.

If I can do any good in this world, let it be this. Let my warning to not waste your time on this ‘epic’ mini-series go out in the universe and save even one person from my experience.

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, Annabella Sciorra, Asteroid, asteroid hitting the earth, catastrophie movie, disaster movie, Michael Weatherly, Micheal Bien