Megashark Vs Crocosaurus: One glass of wine was not enough...

Warning: Movie not as awesome as DVD cover appears

Megashark Vs Crocosaurus is one of the lamest movies I've watched in a long while.  And for The Queen Of Cheese, that's saying something. 

Asylum Productions recycles the surprisingly enjoyable Megashark Vs Giant Octopus storyline, but brings in a giant, prehistoric crocodile instead.  I'm all for recycling ideas and churning out B-movies, even C and D movies.  But this ended up being an endurance test to sit through the entire thing.  That's why I finally cracked open my 1999 bottle of Castillo Del Corzo red wine and had a tall glass while I vowed I would make it to the end of this "movie".

What makes this bad, and not in a good way?  Absolutely no love given to the script.  It's a mish mash of plot holes, random associations, and completely wooden characters that give you nothing to grab onto.  The weak attempts at humor just make it more pathetic.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm glad they at least tried to put some funny in there, but with a story that discombobulated it just falls flat.

Add to that an ensemble of actors who seem like they could have done so much better than this "movie'.  We have Sarah Lieving as the hard nosed military type person first sent to recruit Jaleel White as the lone survivor of the Megashark's attack on a Navy ship, and then Gary Stretch as the less than savory guy who takes advantage of natives to make a buck, and somehow has enough manpower and connections to capture and transport a gigantic Crocosaurus across the ocean.  We even get a surprising amount of screen time for poor bastard Robert Picardo, who I loved way back when he was on China Beach, and am vaguely aware of from Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis. Jaleel White survived child star fame, only to be in something this bad?  Gary Stretch has an impressive resume, but this role definitely leaves a black hole in it.  Sarah Lieving has a lot of roles under her belt, too.  I've seen her in a few, including Beast Of Bray Road, and I know she has more talent than this role showcases.

There's a lot of chemistry amongst the cast, despite the distracted, lackluster script.  I suspect a lot of the issues with Megashark Vs Crocosaurus are due to brutal editing to fit a certain time constraint.  With the way the scenes jump around with very little connectivity, the way characters are thrust together with casual mentions that they know each other and have prior conflict, and giant plot craters, the actors can only deliver their lines and hang on until the bitter end.  There could have been genuine camaraderie among the characters, but any scene that could have made you care is probably on the cutting room floor.

This is soooo much better than the sequel!Let's talk about the special effects.  Maybe it was the tall glass of wine, but the graphics weren't that bad, all things considered.  But then again, all things considered, the CGI didn't have high standards to live up to.  There's plenty of recycled CGI of the Megashark, and some good looking CGI of the Crocosaurus.  There's more footage of the creatures than there were in MegaShark Vs Giant Octopus, but Asylum saved some bucks by showing lots of shadows in the water instead of actual creatures.  At least a little love was there in the details, even though the details were still as sparse as ever for an Asylum Production.

Megashark Vs Crocosaurus had no plot, managed to waste a lot of actor's talents, and an hour and a half of my time.  This one is so bad I won't even buy the DVD if I see it on sale for $5-like I did with a squeal of delight when I spotted Megashark Vs Giant Octopus for that price a few months ago.  The poor clerk in Fred Meyer's may never be the same.

Ferocious Planet: Nibbles more than it bites...

Run! Bad career moves are right behind you!After suffering through Your Highness and it's total lack of funny, when I sat down to watch Ferocious Planet the next day my expectations for anything to ever be good again were way, way down there.  That's probably why I found enjoyment in this hollow ripoff of Savage Planet (which didn't have much to inspire with itself), or any other B-movie offerings that came before it.

This wasn't horrible.  The graphics on the monsters were pretty good.  Not as good as the DVD cover would have you believe, but that's typical.  I can forgive less than stellar CGI when there are other elements that keep my interest.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of, at least in the beginning.  Naturally they start getting picked off one by one, so we get down to a core group for the majority of the movie pretty fast.  John Rhys Davies barely makes it to the first commercial break, but that's just as well.  He's better than a movie like this and it makes me wonder if he takes these roles because he thinks they'll be fun, or if he's just that tired.

What really won me over was the well placed humor through the whole movie.  Finally a newer movie that gets it!  Fine, give me melodrama, give me action, even some blood and gore.  But make sure you break it up with some humor.

It's not even over the top humor.  It's surprisingly subtle things all throughout.  One liners here and there, looks exchanged between the characters, and just simple dialogue between them, as well.  It makes you feel a little more at home in this parallel dimension they got themselves thrown into, and  makes the threadbare script just a minor annoyance.

Most notable of the cast besides John Rhys Davies is poor bastard Joe Flannigan, of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis fame.  He's also so much better than a role like this, but he plays it with charm, so you can't help but root for him to survive  until the end (and what will surely be an even more pallid sequel).  He's the main reason this movie had some warmth, depth, and humor.  I look forward to seeing him in what will surely relaunch his career, Spore.  Sadly for Mr. Flannigan, it looks like a movie right up my alley, so I'm not  holding my breath for a sudden jolt in his fame after it airs.

Overall, Ferocious Planet had a lot more going for it than many movies of its ilk.  It had a decent cast, halfway decent writing, well placed humor, and pretty cool looking beasties.  It was certainly a better way to spend an afternoon than the last movie I paid good money to see.

Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus: Yes, it's as bad as the name would have you believe!

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!

Blue Demon: The most terrifying floating plastic triangles you'll ever see!

Look out! It

Blue Demon is yet another entry into the "demonized shark" movie category. A secret lab funded by the government is researching ways to control sharks to do their bidding. The scientists believe they are doing work to benefit mankind, but unbeknownst to them the government has other plans. Plus, there's someone hijacking their project with deadly results. dun, dun, dun, dun!

That's about as serious as the movie gets, and I was so very happy to sit and waste an hour and a half of my time on it. It has a lot of goofy extras to it to provide much needed humor, and doesn't go for the gore factor. This is a funny, good time movie with a decent cast to back it up.

I've made it clear that I think Dedee Pfeiffer is very difficult to tolerate onscreen for more than a few minutes at a time. She's twitchy. She's fidgety. I think they keep messing with her dosage. But in the very cheesy, gloriously ludicrous Blue Demon, she fits wonderfully! Her cutesy act isn't nauseating. Her overly-caffeinated persona makes sense as a quirky scientist who's just a bit too smart to speak with us 'regular people', let alone have more than basic social skills. Plus, she's balanced out very nicely by her co-star, Randall Batinkoff, who plays her long suffering, potentially ex-husband. He's the anchor that lets your eyes focus while she vibrates and hums herself practically into another dimension.

The rest of the cast all fit this odd little movie just perfectly. We have Josh Hammond playing a weird little lab assistant named Avery that you keep expecting to start talking about surfing, but plays with the computers instead. There's also Danny Woodburn who plays the uptight, possibly corrupt, boss to our lab gurus, Lawrence Van Allen. He easily steals every scene he is in, and it's not because he can't help but stand out because he's so much shorter. He's got remarkable screen presence, and makes his character the most believable of the lot as he yanks food out of their hands because they're not paying attention to him, and alternates between making the lab gurus lives hell, and needing an antacid to deal with them.

Then there's our big, bad, evil military character, played by Jeff Fahey. He plays a character named, of all things, General Remora. Right there you know for a fact this movie is not taking itself seriously, which is why I love it so morbidly. Jeff Fahey plays it to the hilt, clenching cigars, spitting out orders, seething with righteous indignation when he's questioned. He's out to create a military weapon, gosh darn it, not out for a day at the beach!

But the cast is just the icing on the cake of Blue Demon. The "short bus" special effects are a riot, and almost painfully bad. I swear to god the shark fins in the water scenes are just waterproof cardboard cutouts painted black and on the slowest motor they could find. When people are frantically trying to get out of their way, I checked my watch several times just to make sure I hadn't fallen into some kind of slow moving time warp. In all of those scenes I could have gotten up and microwaved another bag of popcorn and not missed a thing.

The little bit of CGI they went for is actually pretty good. They give the sharks expressions, and have them zip back and forth (not unlike the frenetic pace of Ms. Pfeiffer). Yes, it's so obviously blue screen out of the water it's laughable, but it just adds to the cheese factor, so I forgive.

If you're tired of shark movies that flash way too much chomped flesh at you, Blue Demon will be a pleasant respite. If you're also tired of movies taking themselves too seriously, especially when they should know better, this will be a breath of fresh air. And if you've been given a headache trying to keep up with Dedee in other movies, I think you'll be as shocked as I was at how tolerable, and even likable, she is in Blue Demon.

With Discovery Channel airing Shark Week, Blue Demon should be on your watch list to help get over all that darn reality and education they insist on adding to their quest for ratings. It also has the added bonus of plenty of giggle factor! This is a Queen Of Cheese "must see", or at least "must watch once, and wonder what the heck is wrong with that Queen Of Cheese to think this is watchable...". Enjoy!

The Descent: Well, it plunged me into a dark void with no escape...

Hour long setup for a whole lotta gore for the sake of gore.

At least it's not zombies. That's the only thing I can say positive about The Descent. Otherwise it's just another 'gore for the sake of gore' horror movie, this time featuring ravenous cave creatures that are mostly human, a little bat, and all ugly.

Okay, another difference between this and boring zombie flicks is this makes you sit through about an hour of set up where the characters emote about one character's tragic loss of her husband and child, and how they feel bad they didn't stick by her during the tragedy when she needed them the most, but hey, why don't we just get drunk and go spelunking to make up for it? Then we have to watch these women find a cave entrance, maneuver themselves deeper into it, let one of them have a panic attack when she gets stuck, and then have everyone else get all pissed off (rightfully so) as they realize the gal who coordinated the trip decided to take them into uncharted and dangerous territory.

Finally when things begin to happen, it's nothing more interesting than cave creatures that want to make them into meals. Yes, it's horrifying. Yes, it's bloody and gruesome. Yes, it would be a horrible way to die. But it's nothing original, even with the albino humanoid creatures who stalk their prey by sonar like a bat, and can crawl all over the cave walls and pop out of any place the director thinks will make you jump.

Through it all there is still all this angst among the characters as one of them finally realizes through her dense fog of grief and anti-depressant medication that her dead husband cheated on her with one of her friends. That it's the friend who decided they all needed to wander around a cave that no one ever made it out of alive before, well, that's just icing on the cake, since you need at least that much to get any kind of emotional connection with these characters.

Maybe I went into this with the wrong expectations, and that's why I'm so thoroughly unimpressed. But my expectations were so low it only would have taken a few good lines, one sympathetic character, or anything original in the horror vein to make me sit up and take notice, instead of grab another cup of coffee to try and stay awake. I see the rave reviews of this, and I just don't get it. Is it because the main characters all have British accents? Is that why other people think this is a class act of a horror movie? Or is it the long, drawn out setup before you even get a glimpse of the cave dwellers? All I saw was a bunch of tripe better suited for a 'chick flick' about how someone gets their groove back than the backbone of a horror movie. Then all I saw was gore for the sake of gore, cheap tricks to try and make me jump, and an ending that just made me roll my eyes and say out loud, "Well, that was just stupid."

This is definitely a movie I won't own on DVD, or watch ever again. I was curious about it because of the hype, but now I know that The Descent is just another movie that didn't live up to it. I need more than just 'beastie wants to eat me while I cry about my feelings', and The Descent barely even delivered that.