Showdown At Area 51: Not even remotely a spaghetti western...

Where else will you see Matt Houston make a cameo appearance?

I've sat through a couple of viewings of Showdown At Area 51 and it's very okay. It's not horrible, definitely not great, borderline good, but lacking that special something that would make it live in my heart forever.

Part of the problem is the blatant rip off of all the other 'dueling aliens come to our planet for a final showdown' movies. They try to add a twist by throwing in a device that will end the world, where the only thing that can deactivate it is housed in 'the real' area 51. This just confuses things at the same time as it adds at least something to keep the plot moving forward. Since this long, hard rod is the only thing that can stop the countdown, and the bad alien wants to make sure the countdown isn't stopped, and the bad alien also already knows where the device is instead of having to decipher markings on the long, hard rod like the good guys, why doesn't the bad alien just sit in a prime sniper spot and pick the good guys off as they come to turn the device off? Okay, that would completely defeat the purpose of this being a cheesy movie, but the plot was so weak on this one even I can't help but say, 'That's kind of stupid.'

Be that as it may there's at least a lot of action between the ugly, naturally evil, alien, and the good alien who looks remarkably humanoid, named Jude, played by Coby Bell. There's even a scene between the two characters where they stand in a face off ala classic spaghetti westerns, hands twitching at the holsters of their weapons, just waiting for the other to make the first move. You could almost hear that classic whistle from old Clint Eastwood westerns playing in the background. Sadly, they didn't go for the cheese and actually put that music in.

The other two main characters have the typical back story of being former lovers with a stormy past. They start off helping Jude, then second guess themselves that he might be the bad guy, especially when Lee Horsley makes his cameo as a junk yard owner/former scientist with some of the best lines in the movie. When asked if he has any guns, he replies 'I may be smart, but I'm still a redneck.' and proceeds to reveal a small armory in his house.

Jason London finally plays a different character than I've seen him do lately, this time a former military man who threw away his career for the love of a woman, and now rides a motorcycle and can actually throw a decent punch. For such a stereotypical role he's very charming and believable.

Unfortunately I can't say the same for Gigi Edgley's character. She's supposed to be a linguistics expert, which is fine and well, but I think she feels uncomfortable in a role where she's not painted blue. She couldn't seem to figure out how much 'oomph' to put into her performance now that she's not acting through the layer of her old Farscape costume. Acting through a mask or heavy makeup is a lot different that going 'au natural', and she didn't look comfortable. Her chemistry with Jason London is forced, and lets lines that should have been a riot (including numerous references to the rod, and having to put it in the right slot) fall flat.

In the realm of B-movies this is definitely a B-minus, losing points for missed opportunities at humor, not giving Lee Horsley more screen time, and not going over the top ridiculous on the plot to make up for it being so lame. I can't see myself owning a copy of the DVD, but someone else might feel more forgiving of the flaws to give it a home. Besides, it wasn't all bad. It didn't take itself anywhere near as seriously as the finally ending new Battlestar Galactica.

"F" is for Flash Gordon

Cheese overload!

I've seen the 1980's Flash Gordon so many times I could probably recite all of the dialogue with it on mute. This is another film that made a deeper impression on me during some critical formative years than would be wise to acknowledge without the backdrop of professional psychiatric help.

Based on the classic comic strip character, this rendition starts off with a bored Ming The Merciless sending natural disasters of biblical proportions at Earth, and just for kicks starts the moon on a crash course for the planet. The intent is destruction, of course, but he likes to play with things a bit before annihilation.

On Earth, Flash Gordon and Dale Arden are boarding a small plane. Flash is a football player in this story, which plays nicely into some ridiculous costumes later on. They hit it off just in time for their plane to crash into the lab of crazy scientist, Zarkov, who recognizes that Earth is under attack. He plans to fly up to meet the threat in a homemade rocket, and grabs Flash and Dale to help him fly it.

Of course the rocket gets captured in space and brought to Mongo where they meet Ming, his creepy second in command, Klytus, and Ming's seductive daughter, Aura. Conveniently all of the tribes of Mongo are there to offer tribute to Ming, so we also get to meet the other two main players, Prince Vultan of the Hawkmen, and Prince Barin of Arboria. Everyone is at war with everyone else, so no one has thought to join their considerable forces to overthrow Ming. I guess it takes a bleach blond football player from America to make that happen!

The world of Flash Gordon is brightly colored, noisy, and violent in a cartoonish sort of way. Blood runs green, blue and red. Daughters of tyrants are manipulative and boy crazy. Some people dissolve into ooze when they die. Hawkmen soar through the air with barely a wing flapping, Arborians dress like Robin Hood's Merry Men, and everywhere you look someone is firing a really loud laser gun. A lot of detail went into all the worlds of Mongo, and there are a lot of secondary characters which add an extra layer of giggle factor. The whole thing is ludicrous, campy, and intentionally cheesy, basically a cartoon brought to life. There is nothing about this movie that doesn't make me giggle every time I watch it!

Sam J. Jones and Melody Anderson who played Flash Gordon and Dale Arden never really had their careers take off after this movie. It didn't do well in the American box office, for one thing, and apparently Sam J. Jones ended up having his dialogue dubbed after the fact by a professional voice actor. Is it sad that I don't notice the overdub? Probably for Sam J. Jones.

Max Von Sydow is another caliber actor too good for this movie, yet there he is, playing Ming The Merciless with style and flair. Timothy Dalton and Brian Blessed are both solid actors which I'm still shocked to see in a movie like Flash Gordon. Brian Blessed seemed to have a blast. Timothy Dalton is so serious in every role I've ever seen him in I can't tell if he had fun, or not. Either way, his intensity just added more cheesy goodness.

Let's not forget the soundtrack, which was performed by Queen. Before this movie we were lucky to get maybe a song at the end of the credits, and something orchestral everywhere else. If you don't get a stupid grin just listening to the opening credits, you're not meant to watch this movie, because you won't understand it's appeal. Queen's music set the perfect tone to go along with the tongue-in-cheek humor, cornball acting, and all the other ridiculous aspects that make Flash Gordon one of the best cheesy movies of all time.

If you haven't seen this movie you need to set aside an evening and give it a viewing. Pop a giant bowl of popcorn. Get a box of Milk Duds, Good N' Plenty, or Junior Mints. Turn off your cell phone so you have no distractions. Make sure your 'You've got to be kidding! That's just ridiculous!' receptors have been disabled so your head doesn't explode. Then sit back and prepare to be entertained by a movie of galactic cheesy proportions!

And now enjoy a video of Queen performing the theme to this awesome movie!

Caved In: Prehistoric Terror: a.k.a. "How big bugs survive with no viable food source"

They don

For a giant bug movie, this isn't too bad. It's got a ton of CGI-ed prehistoric looking beetles, making me not-so-nostalgic for a crappy apartment I had in Denver years ago featuring Armageddon-resistant cockroaches. These creepy-crawlies move and swarm like the real things, and range from small to gargantuan. They even have little beady red eyes which are so cute on the puppet forms they use to attack the actors with.

The cast features Christopher Atkins of The Blue Lagoon fame, emerging to fight off creditors by starring in Sci Fi 'not so original' movies. He plays the father to a family-run tour guide service to the rich. Angela Featherstone (the shallow girlfriend from The Wedding Singer who made Van Halen break up by wearing their t-shirt) is the mother of the clan, who speaks French and wields pump action shotguns like a pro. Chelan Simmons and Stevie Mitchell round out the family as the spoiled daughter and slightly dim, but likable son. One thing I really found amusing in the the movie was how often the daughter got splashed with disgusting bug goo as the mother blew them to pieces. She didn't look amused after the third hit, but funny thing, I was laughing my copious butt off.

The story starts off with a mining incident in 1948 where only one man survives a prehistoric bug attack. He also manages to emerge from the mine with a map to the location of a huge cache of emeralds. This cache is what the bad guys are after. David Palfey plays your typical greedy bad guy, who is supposedly the grandson of this survivor, and gets the map. We're not clear of his relation to an old guy with a leg missing that he is shown negotiating with over property at the beginning of the film, but facts aren't what make a bad movie good, so I can overlook this confusion. The tour guide father gets enlisted to show the way around the mine, much to the irritation of the rest of his family who expected a 'real' vacation. The money is good, so they go, and his family has the use of a dead man's lake house while he earns the fee.

Christian Popa plays a brutal lackey left in charge of the family while the dad guides his crew around an abandoned mine. The daughter and the lackey start flirting with each other, and you wonder why the mother isn't being a bit more forceful in keeping them apart. You'd also think the parents would be more concerned that their younger son is off wandering a strange countryside, and doesn't check back in for a few hours. Fortunately there aren't child protective services available to ask these sorts of questions, so the storyline progresses.

Of course it's revealed to the naive father that he's leading a gang of thugs on a treasure hunt rather than a group of thrill seekers wanting to explore a mine. His family is held hostage based on his continued cooperation. The bugs begin attacking, so the story quickly picks up a more energetic pace.

The bad guys have brought along laser rifles, which is handy to have for blasting through rock, and big bugs. The rest of the storyline is pretty far-fetched, too, but it's still fun. The characters don't seem quite right, and there are coincidences that even I rolled my eyes. When the mother and daughter are surrounded by beetles, they happen to get the father on the radio in time for a shrill cry of help from the queen beetle to ring out. The attacking beetles hear this on the radio, and rush off to help their queen, saving the mother and daughter. Okaay... Plus you wonder how the bugs have survived so long underground with no source of food? Cannibalism can only get you so far. But you also get groaners of one liners like 'He said he had a splitting headache...' when someone gets their face bit in two by a beetle, so things balance out in the end.

There's a lot of entrails and goo, so I wouldn't recommend this for dinner and a movie. I would recommend it for a good way to waste a couple of hours of your day so you don't accidentally do anything productive!

Planet Raptor: Look out behind you! It's puppets and bad CGI!

There are so many cheesy elements to Planet Raptor, you can't help but laugh your way through it. It's pretty clear they weren't taking it seriously, at least judging by the video game style CGI they lifted from Raptor Island. They even stole an entire scene from Raptor Island, conveniently making sure there's an underground volcanic nesting area for the giant raptors stalking this odd, deserted planet.

The year is 2066 and we're all over outer space now. We even speak alien languages and have laser guns, but it's still not so sophisticated that our soldiers forgo a good old fashioned pump action shotgun. We can go into deep space and respond to distress signals, which is handy, or we wouldn't have even a superficial basis for a plot. A team is deployed to a remote planet with the vague premise of rescuing survivors, but then a convenient radiation storm prevents them from returning to the ship right away. They make sure a scientist wanders off on his own and becomes a snack, and the rest is B movie magic.

There's scientists among the soldiers, and they have their own agenda, even though I was never clear what that was. I think it was something about getting alien DNA, but frankly I was just giggling at the puppets and bad CGI, so I didn't pay close attention. I haven't seen raptor puppet action like this since Carnosaur 2, and I laughed myself silly through that movie, too.

Ted Raimi makes an appearance as an untrustworthy, rather creepy, doctor willing to inject the team with various concoctions to see how long they'll last. Mr. Raimi takes a raptor to the head with the best of them, showing that less is more when it comes to making us believe you're being killed by a puppet.

Peter Jason plays the crusty veteran, 'Pappy' with the same zest and humor we see from him in all his other roles (and he has a ton). He's easily my favorite character out of the whole lot, and is the one the writers kept 'in character' the entire time.

Vanessa Angel plays the token female scientist who is naturally drawn to the leader of the squadron. She's beautiful as ever, so I hate her, and she plays well against Steven Bauer (who happened to be the bad guy in Raptor Island). She's a scientist, he's a soldier. She wants to focus on her mission (whatever that is). He couldn't care less. The writing starts things off in the 'God, I hate you and all you stand for' direction, then veers into the 'Wait, I think this could be something beautiful' area so quickly I swear I heard gears grinding in protest. Let's say character development and consistency wasn't a key focus here.

This is an odd sort of flick that plunders plot points from old Star Trek episodes and other B movies. The acting is often over the top, the special effects are just awful, but somehow I really enjoyed it. I think it was the fact it revels in how bad it is, and actually strives to reach yet unattained heights in making a bad movie. Like an English bulldog is so ugly it's cute, this movie is so bad, it's entertaining.

Look at the characters, plot, dialogue and special effects separately, and you'll wonder why anyone bothered to make this thing. Put the pieces together, and it's kismet. Planet Raptor is meant to be laughed through. Sit down with a big bowl of popcorn and lowered expectations. I won't ask you to shave your head to join what I anticipate to be a cult following, but I may ask you to distribute pamphlets to help spread the word about this wonderfully awful bad movie!

Beneath Loch Ness: Too much Loch, not enough Ness

Objects in graphic are smaller than they appear...

This is a little movie with the occasional big graphic that could have been great, but isn't. It starts off with an older professor searching for Nessie when something happens, and he mysteriously vanishes into the cold waters, never to be found. Flash to an office where a woman, Elizabeth, is convincing her boss that this is something that can be made into a great story for their network, albeit one exploiting a man's death, and the story is set up. Sort of.

Flash to a desert where the deceased professor's protege, Case, is working. He gets called in to finish up the research, so he heads to Scotland. Okay, so now the story is set up. Sort of.

Case gets to Scotland in time for the memorial service, to have confrontations with the rest of the team, and to state that he doesn't believe in the Loch Ness Monster. But he's going to take charge anyway. Then we go around and around for a bit until we end up with Elizabeth showing up to take over, a few sightings of the big beastie, a sighting of a little beastie, some eggs, some diving footage, and a Scottish native dressing up like Braveheart to take it on.

The plot is all over the place, not even good enough to be B-quality. The characters are at least interesting, if not consistent, and there's a lot of fun dialogue bandied about. When we finally see Nessie, it's at least impressive, but those shots are few and far between. At the end, I still couldn't say what the whole thing was supposed to be about. I think the writers wanted to go for a Discovery Channel type tale, then realized that would be too boring, so they threw in random character conflicts to spice it up. If they hadn't skimped on the graphics of Nessie so much, this would have been a lot better. Remember kids, never, ever skimp on the monster!

Nevertheless, inconsistent writing and plot aside, this was still entertaining. Little things like the Braveheart makeup and one of the characters (and potential Nessie snacks) walking around in a t-shirt with a bulls eye on it gave me the giggles I need to call this one watchable. I wouldn't buy the DVD, but if it happens to air again, it's not one I'll rush to turn off. That's as glowing a recommendation as I can plumb up from the depths, so it will have to do.