Creepy, crawly, radioactive fun!

With Halloween approaching, it is my duty to remind you to keep the fun apace with the frightful for those movie marathons countless of us will indulge in. I can appreciate a good scare, but I need a good laugh along with it, because after all, I am The Queen Of Cheese. I need giggles. I need cheese. I need plots lifted from old black and white sci-fi thrillers that were funny mostly because they were so cornball bad. I need Eight Legged Freaks, and so do you.

We have the small, isolated town of Prosperity where the most popular jock tries to get in the pants of the lady sheriff’s hot daughter, young kids ride their bikes everywhere without much concern from their parents, local kooks collect spiders, and trucks drive through with radioactive waste. There’s also a mayor trying to revitalize the town after the mining has died by building an eyesore of a mall with the theory that people will just gravitate towards it like a moth to a flame. Reenter the long lost son of one of the mine workers who left over a girl (naturally), who is now the hot lady sheriff. We get painful attempts at him romancing her, lots of scenes with the young son trying to warn the town that spiders are coming to get them, all punctuated by the mildly delusional narrations of the town’s only apparent radio broadcaster.

The plot isn’t important, and the writers knew it. Instead they focus on the colorful characters populating the town (and soon the cocoons of one ton spiders). They also pay a lighthearted tribute to small town life against the backdrop of wonderfully CGI-ed spiders leaping through the air, skittering after their prey, lunging from trapdoors in the sand, or just lumbering through main street because they’re the big bad tarantula that can. The fact the spiders occasionally roar like a lion, mutter obscenities, and giggle fiendishly is all just icing on the cake.

Even if you’re afraid of spiders, you need to give this movie a chance. David Arquette (Scream) fits perfectly in his “lovable loser trying to win the girl of his dreams that he lost by punching out her jerk of a boyfriend back in high school and that’s why he left without a word and now has a lot of explaining to do” character. His aunt Gladys is divinely played by Eileen Ryan, right down to the cigarette habit that helps save the day. Kari Wuhrer is recovering from Sliders by playing a tough, beautiful, believably intelligent lady raising her two precocious kids single handed, while juggling her career as sheriff. Her eldest daughter is a barely recognizable Scarlett Johansson (before the bleach blond hair and what I think is some cosmetic work) who does a good job being a snotty teenager who still loves her mom, no matter how much she resents still living in this little town. Scott Terra is the little brother obsessed with sci fi movies, and who naturally no one believes because he’s a kid who’s obsessed with sci fi movies. Rounding out the main characters is Harlan, our conspiracy theory radio broadcaster, played by Doug E. Doug.

Whoever did the casting on this film did it with care and made sure the chemistry fit. This wasn’t designed to be a blockbuster, by any means (especially since it was up against Spiderman of all things), so they didn’t try to get a “name” to sell it. As a result the large cast all meshed together to form a believable community of small town folk just trying to jab a pitchfork in the belly of that spider trying to get in through the mall door.

The graphics on the spiders are a huge selling point for me, as well as the acting and the writing. Someone did a lot of research to get the variety of spiders right, and tended to the project with the love it deserves. Little things like spraying perfume at a giant spider demands that you see the mandibles frantically waving the offending scent away, or else why bother?

Eight Legged Freaks is one of my ‘go to’ movies when I need a good laugh. The fact this movie embraces the cheese and giggle factor make me love it all the more. I have pushed this on to friends and coworkers to initiate them into the world of cheese with good results. I now insist those of you who have not experienced this wonderfully cheesy movie treat yourselves now that the Halloween sales are on! For those who already know and love this movie, do as I will, and pull out your copy for a Halloween (or any time) viewing, and giggle away!

Tags: b-movie, bug attack, cheese factor, creature feature, David Arquette, Doug E. Doug, Eight Legged Freaks, Eileen Ryan, giggle factor, Kari Wuhrer, Leon Rippy, Matt Czuchry, movie review, popcorn munching afternoon, Rick Overton, Scarlett Johansson, Scott Terra

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

Look out! It's a floating triangle moving very, very slowly towards you!

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!

Tags: b-movie, Blue Demon, cheese, creature feature, Danny Woodburn, Dedee Pfeiffer, giggle factor, Jeff Fahey, Josh Hammond, movie review, Randall Batinkoff, shark attack movie, Shark Week

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

Gather round! You can watch your career nosedive with this flick!

I wanted to love Star Runners. It has a lot of potential to be a wonderful, riotous good time. It obviously took its inspiration from Firefly/Serenity, Starship Troopers, and even a little The Fifth Element. Problem is it didn’t run with the blatant ripoffs, and tried to pretend it had an original idea. That only works when you have an original idea. When someone can point at the screen and dissect the movie into categories based on what film it was ripping off, you don’t have an original idea.

What frustrates the holy heck out of me is Star Runners could still have been saved. If they’d embraced the cheese factor (which was evident in the movies that obviously inspired it) and went for laughs, I would have been a happy camper. Instead the writers got all serious with political intrigue and character self-sacrifices and genocidal atrocities. Even that would have been alright if they’d not taken so much time to setup this up as a ‘buddy’ movie, promising a rollicking good time as the main characters get captured by the government, and then sent on a covert mission to retrieve a mysterious crate. Naturally they open the crate to find a frozen, naked, woman inside who wakes up with no memory. We’ve been introduced to a couple of interesting secondary characters in the middle of a space bar that is blatantly a pale ripoff of Star Wars‘ Mos Eisley. We should be in for a ton of fun as the trio of characters make a run for it.

Nope. It gets all serious after that with just a few one liners here and there to break up the monotony. And it is monotonous. We get a space pursuit through a wormhole into uncharted space, a crash landing, tiresome arguments among the survivors, a mysterious abandoned base that the survivors realize was populated by their kind, and then bugs. Lots of giant bugs. While interesting on the surface, as the movie progresses it’s all ‘by the numbers’ and I kept checking how much time was left in the movie.

One thing that wasn’t wrong with this movie was the acting talent. We have Connor Trinneer playing the would-be swashbuckling captain, Ty. He waffles between playing by the rules, breaking them as is convenient. He’s charming and likable, which is good since he’s the main character. Then we get a horribly wasted James Kyson Lee from Heroes fame. He’s the sidekick, basically, and is portrayed as a smart guy, but with a few gaps in the common sense area. He’s the funny guy who points out the obvious. There’s also relative newcomers, Aja Evans and Toni Trucks. Aja Evans plays the tough girl who is stuck with our wayward gaggle of people after they crash land. She has more to her than meets the eye, and when we learn her real role, it’s one of the few interesting twists in the whole affair. Toni Trucks plays the ‘Leeloo’/'River’ sort of character, the gal who was frozen, wakes up with no memory, but oh, she’s really special, and not just because our heroes see her naked. Toni does alright with this character, but a better actress could have made her shine despite this script. The rest of the supporting cast at least add positives to this mess, but it’s just not enough to save it for me. Not even my favorite bit actor, Todd Jensen, lifted my spirits enough to say ‘Well, maybe it’s not that bad…’, because, well, it was that bad.

For a throwaway movie this is at least watchable, especially if you go into it knowing it’s going to be a mish mosh of other movies you’ve watched, and probably loved. But when it’s all over, you’re going to feel a strong urge to watch some quality sci fi, maybe pulling out Star Wars or even Spaceballs, because Star Runners is a train wreck that will linger in your consciousness, and make you doubt that good sci fi ever existed.

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, Aja Evans, b-movie, Connor Trinneer, Firefly, Heroes, James Kyson Lee, Serenity, space bugs, Star Runners, Starship Troopers, The Fifth Element, Todd Jensen, Toni Trucks

Cool shark graphics, horrible English dubs, and cheesy fun!

There’s just something about a shark attack movie I can’t resist. When it’s a German made flick with horrible English dubs, that just melts the cheese into a bubbly fondue.

In this case we have Shark Attack In The Mediterranean. A man, Sven Hanson, is trying to keep his life together after losing his wife in what we’re told is a horrific shark attack. His teenage daughter is into jet skies and stealing people’s boyfriends (even though she does it so sweetly, and the current girlfriend is such a snot you can hardly blame the guy), and rolling her eyes at her father. His best friend is head of the local police force, with a wife wasting away from cancer. Our hero flies a helicopter, and his latest passenger happens to be an attractive marine biologist, Julia Bennett, arriving on the island to help with cancer studies involving lots and lots of sharks. We now have our basic setup of conflict.

Right off the bat we get a young girl (horribly dubbed with a voice too young to fit the actress) setting the stage by telling a tale of tragic love that ends at the bottom of the ocean. The girl is with her family, all tourists in this Mediterranean paradise who wanted to cage dive with sharks. Well, the sharks aren’t biting, so the captain of the boat decides to drag the cage, with the tourists still inside, along the bottom to a more dangerous spot where sharks are guaranteed. The cage gets caught on the bottom, the rope breaks, one of the tourists cuts their hand, and they’re suddenly surrounded by an awesome display of fluid shark graphics. Even knowing it’s got to be fake, it really looks cool, and eerily realistic, including sharks biting at the cage trying to catch a nibble of fingers and other parts.

So our pilot and his passenger come along in the nick of time to save the day. It gives us a chance to see that they have a lot in common, and to make it clear they’re going to be love interests. We also get a chance to see our hero be an over-protective father when he sees that his daughter is part of the crew of the ship in such dire straits. Arguments ensue, we get some melodrama over the father wanting to move back to Germany and the daughter not wanting to go, and the police friend stepping in with his sick wife to talk about living every moment instead of living in the past. Good stuff, and probably very well acted, despite what the voice actors would have you believe.

But the meat of the story is about a megalodon. It’s entirely unbelievable how a renegade scientist came into possession of a megalodon, although believable that it then escaped. However, the ensuing graphics are so very cool I can forgive all of this movie’s plot holes. You really need to watch the movie so you can hear first hand all of the flawed science, but more to see the CGI of the megalodon as it cruises the Mediterranean. There’s a scene where the hero is basically fishing for it with his helicopter, and the megalodon grabs a hold of the lure. We get several minutes of slick, believable underwater scenes of the shark rolling and thrashing, putting the folks at Discovery Channel to shame.

There’s also plenty of humor throughout Shark Attack In The Mediterranean, provided both by the ludicrous storyline and by secondary characters that are riotously exaggerated. Humor is what’s missing from a lot of B-movies lately, and this was like a breath of fresh air for me. Finally, another movie that doesn’t take itself so seriously, and revels in the cheese!

Shark Attack In The Mediterranean isn’t terribly original, but it’s fun, and has the best shark CGI I have seen. Surprisingly there’s no gore, which made me happier yet. A little blood, a flash of a body, but nothing horrendous trying to gross you out. Basically this is a well done B-movie about a prehistoric shark come to life, and was worth every second of screen time. If you love Shark Attack 3: Megalodon in all of it’s cheesy glory, you’re going to enjoy this movie for all the right reasons!

Alright, the trailer is in German, but it’s the effects on the shark that make this movie so cool to watch!

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, action flick, b-movie, German to English dub, giggle factor, megalodon, Patriq Pinheiro, popcorn munching afternoon, Ralf Moeller, Shark Attack In The Mediterranean, shark attack movie

Really needed more beasties...

Merlin And The Book Of Beasts is another stretch of the story about King Arthur, Camelot, Excalibur, Guinevere, Knights Of The Round Table, and all the rest of those medieval romantic sort of tales. It’s been years since King Arthur’s death, and presumably that of his son/enemy Mordred. Merlin has ensconced himself within the forest with magical booby traps to keep the world away. We see a group of knights traveling into this forest, seeking him out, with one knight conspicuously with their face guard down at all times to hide their true identity. Right off the bat with a cheap trick like that to keep you from knowing we have a warrior princess in our midst, I’m bracing for huge disappointments, even after an opening sequence featuring killer butterflies.

So we quickly discover that Princess Avlynn is our mystery knight, and she wields a satisfactory sword. She manages to come face to face with the antisocial Merlin, explains the world has gone to hell at the hands of a dark wizard, they need his help and wisdom, and so on and so forth. They banter back and forth, James Callis playing Merlin with the proper demeanor, but with a distracting, annoying affectation to the delivery of his lines. If he had dropped the overly forced deep and gravelly thing, I would have enjoyed his performance a whole lot more. Laura Harris plays Avylnn well enough with the lines she’s given, but I was so distracted by how unnatural her hair looked that I paid more attention to that than anything she said or did.

But I digress. Avylnn ends up calling Merlin a coward because he refuses to help her, she rejoins her party, they travel along a road only to be attacked by a dragon soldier, and Merlin makes his completely anti-climactic entrance to save the day and join them after all. From here on out it’s just a matter of sitting with a cup of coffee and hoping for some better beasts than what we’ve seen so far.

We get some decent Gorgon action, but that’s about it. I was really hoping for lots of beasts being unleashed onto our heroes so they could pass the time more entertainingly by battling them. Since the plot left me so cold, some cheesy CGI action would have warmed the cockles of my heart, and made me more amenable to thinking this wasn’t just a waste of my time, and the actors’.

For a typical Camelot regurgitation, this was tolerable. It just wasn’t what I expected. From the previews I expected fights among warring sorcerers complete with lots of pretty lights. I expected lots of wondrous creatures of myth and lore. I expected more than what looks like a wig ready to fall off our heroine if she thrashed around too much, and certainly more than an uncomfortable plot line revolving around Mordred wanting to do his half-sister.

I never watched enough of the newer Battlestar Galactica to form an opinion about James Callis. However, from what I saw in Merlin And The Book Of Beasts, I think he was holding back and going against his instincts to play Merlin the way someone else wanted him to. The rest of the cast does admirably well with their roles, to the point I’m frustrated at such a waste of talent. This is yet another movie that should have been really cool, but falls just short.

What’s missing from it? I think it’s passion. This was more of a ‘by the numbers’ medieval/Camelot/Merlin story than anything else, and no one seemed excited to be part of it. Even the CGI-ed snakes on the Gorgons’ heads looked like they were bored. That came across to me as a viewer, and that with the lack of cool beasties guarantees I won’t bother snatching up the DVD when it’s released.

Merlin And The Book Of Beasts is worth one viewing. Sadly, that’s about all it’s worth.

Tags: Avylnn, b-movie, Battlestar Galactica, Camelot, descendants of knights of the round table, Excalibur, fantasy movie, Guinevere, James Callis, King Arthur, Laura Harris, Merlin, Merlin And The Book Of Beasts, Mordred, movie review, Sword In The Stone

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

This cover is awesome! I wish the movie were, too...

Once again the movie industry makes a movie where they can at least say, “We got a Baldwin…”, and it is dear Stephen Baldwin. We’ve had a slide backwards in acting proficiency since The Harpy, and he once again displays one facial expression to encompass all ranges of emotional states, whether it is learning of his father’s death, waking up in a hospital after being attacked by a shark, or realizing his wife has been kidnapped by the stereotypical bad guys. I think we’re also experiencing a slide backwards in physical fitness, because the movie makers are careful to not make us see Stephen Baldwin shirtless, but they can’t keep us from seeing things jiggle around under his shirt when he runs down a street.

The premise of this movie is promisingly ludicrous. People are seeking Marco Polo’s treasure, which is supposed to be under the canals of Venice. Venice begins to have more and more “boat accidents” that result in floating body parts with teeth marks in them. Stephen Baldwin’s character travels to Venice with his wife to identify his father’s body, who is also classified as a “boating accident” despite the teeth marks. When the Italian police refuse to listen to the know-it-all, monotoned American, our hero decides to pick up where his father left off, especially once the bad guys approach him and offer him a schnike-load of cash to help them out in the search.

Turns out that there are lots of sharks in Venice, and they’re big ones, all great whites. Supposedly they were dropped in as babies, and never found their way out to the ocean before they got too big to leave (or died because this isn’t their environment, and the trauma should have killed them). So now Venice has hungry sharks in their canals snacking on divers, and then getting more aggressive and attacking gondolas and people passing on the street. That’s right, people passing on the street. You heard me.

Along the way an Italian cop alternately helps and hinders them based on her own agenda. The bad guys proclaim they need Stephen Baldwin’s character alive to help them, and then send in ninja assassins in the next scene to spray his hotel room with bullets. There are other fight scenes placed throughout, but there’s just not enough shark action to satisfy me. We have to wait too long in between those moments, and then it’s a lot of spliced Discovery Channel footage with some goofy, but fun, CGI, but instead of making it a nice, fluid sequence, they flash back and forth between sets in the movie. I guess they were trying to build suspense, but they just irritated me.

Basically, this is another movie with great potential for cheesy goodness, and it falls short. I don’t know if Stephen Baldwin had a hand in how things played out, but it all ends too goody-goody-gumdrops, and it just doesn’t fit the tone of the movie. I personally think he insists all scripts be rewritten to make him a hero, but also to make sure we have happy endings for all the characters who “come through” in the end. What surprised me in this movie was the violence and the blood, because lately Stephen seemed to steer a wide path clear of them, most likely for personal reasons.

Whatever the case for why Stephen Baldwin “landed” this role, once again he only provides painful comic relief. Maybe he thought acting with Scarlett Johansson’s cute older sister, Vanessa Johansson, would lend him credibility, but he was wrong. I hope Vanessa didn’t think that acting with a Baldwin would help her career out any, either.

For a better, more entertaining, shark movie, go for Deep Blue Sea, or even better, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. Watch Sharks In Venice once, get over your disappointment, and move on.

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, action flick, b-movie, shark attack movie, Sharks In Venice, Stephen Baldwin, Vanessa Johansson, Venice

Ah, Stan Lee. You have a sense of humor, I’ll give you that much. I’m pretty sure that’s the reason you put your name to this almost painfully bad, oddly endearing movie called The Harpy, a.k.a. “Stan Lee’s Harpies”.

It stars Stephen Baldwin desperately wishing he were as cool as Bruce Campbell in Army Of Darkness. After all, he plays pretty much the same character, where he’s sucked back in time, wields a shotgun to impress the medieval natives, romances a medieval wench who’s full of fire and initial hatred for him, and is proclaimed “The Chosen One” who will save the land from the evil that infests it.

This isn’t an Army Of Darkness ripoff, but there are enough similarities that I couldn’t help but hold it up in comparison. That’s just not fair, because Army Of Darkness is easily one of my favorite movies of all time, in fact one of the best worst movies ever made, and all else is going to come up frightfully short standing next to it. That being said, The Harpy has a certain charm that comes from a B movie that is really more of a B minus movie. It tries really hard to be funny in the right places, melodramatic in the right places, and action packed in the right places. It is very funny, often intentionally, so it wins points with me there. The action is mild, the violence very toned down, and the harpies are just too-skinny wanna-be models with too much eye makeup who run around in long white slips and horribly fake wings and laugh out loud hilarious fangs. The special effects are “special”, alright, but more in that short bus kind of way. This just adds to the giggle factor, especially when we’re expected to believe the harpies are taking flight, but they’re clearly just standing up straight really fast and having the camera flash to something else quickly while people scramble to get a blue screen in place.

I like to make fun of Stephen Baldwin, but he at least seems to enjoy himself in this movie more than he does in other ventures. He’s not as tedious as a result, and uses at least three expressions to convey his character’s emotional state instead of the one he showed for everything in Earth Storm. Keep up the good work, Stephen, and you may get up to an even half dozen facial expressions in your acting repertoire!

The actor I really watched this movie (twice) for is Scott Valentine. This is a man who knows how to run with a cheesy script and play it to the hilt. He’s a bad guy, and gets to be a wizard bad guy, to boot. He walks around in cloaks, consorts with the Queen Harpy, and generally makes sure every word out of his mouth gets some kind of overtone of smarmy bad-guy-ness. He even gets to play two versions of his evil character, one in present times who seeks to open the portal to the past, and then of course the medieval wizard seeking to open the portal to the future. So we get double the fun and double the Scott Valentine, who is the real star of the film in my opinion.

There’s a formulaic romance in the story which is at least entertaining. There’s also the stereotypical band of men who follow The Chosen One around so they can help defeat the bad guys, and provide additional comic relief, and the occasional emotional barometer for the audience. The storyline in general is nothing original, but the script has so much cheese and giggle factor that it doesn’t matter. Really I just watched it to see how bad it could get before it ended. And it got really, really bad, but in a good way! (Just not as good as Army Of Darkness…)

Tags: army of darkness, b-movie, Bruce Campbell, Earth Storm, movie review, Scott Valentine, Stan Lee, Stan Lee's Harpies, Stephen Baldwin, The Harpy