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

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.

Tags: creature feature, gore for the sake of gore, horror, horror movie, not so original, The Descent

Interesting creature, albeit misclassified...

Okay, first I have to get my complaint about this movie title out of the way. It’s called Bottom Feeder, right? And a ‘bottom feeder‘ is a type of fish, right? But the creature in this feature has nothing aquatic about him! So what’s with calling the movie Bottom Feeder? I was expecting a fish creature movie, and get a man/rat/dog thing instead.

Oh well. It’s not like the movie is going to be one I watch again, anyways. It’s not as bad as some of the movies I’ve watched lately, but it’s definitely not a keeper. There’s guts and blood and slimy skin mutating, but it’s there for a reason, so I can deal with that. The characters are actually pretty funny, and there are lots of great lines bandied about.

Even the premise of the story is interesting, hinging on a genetic serum designed to heal all sorts of damage, including burns, broken bones, and other wounds. Of course with any scientific enterprise based on genetics, there are horrible side effects that can only be countered by more scientific stuff. In this case it’s blue stuff that has to be injected into the patient at the right time after you inject them with the green stuff. If you don’t, then they’re going to be very, very hungry, and eat anything that crosses their path. Disgusting as that can be, the kicker is their cells will continue to mutate without the blue stuff, and they’ll mutate into hybrids of whatever they’ve eaten. Fun stuff.

So a billionaire is hoping to buy himself full recuperation from his severe burns, and then a long life. He’s paid a team to track down the scientist who made the green and blue stuff, and lures him in with promises of money that would help the scientist’s ailing wife. Instead they test the green stuff on the scientist, and completely ignore what he tells them about the blue stuff, so he mutates, and the story goes into full swing.

Stumbling into the middle of the mess is a maintenance crew led by poor bastard Tom Sizemore. The four of them end up going into the tunnels where the scientist has been locked up to mutate. It isn’t very pretty after that, but there are some great one liners. There is also a good side story going on with this evil wench of a woman working for the billionaire. She has no problems beating and shooting someone, leaving them to mutate, and then go in prepared to chop up his body with a power saw, all the while making comments like “A woman’s work is never done.” She’s played by Wendy Anderson who has a Gillian Anderson look about her, but a lot more attitude. Her character by far is the most interesting of the bunch, and I found myself hoping she survived to the end.

The only thing this movie has going for it is the interesting characters and entertaining dialogue. The plot never really takes off, and the science is flawed, even for a B-movie. The theory is you’ll mutate into whatever you eat, so if you’re eating humans, you should become more human again, right? That probably would have called for too many changes to the makeup after the man/rat/dog hybrid was established, and I bet there wasn’t enough budget for it.

This was worth one viewing, but I won’t be making an effort to watch it again. For a creature feature it’s tolerable, saved by the dialogue, but this is another movie that will go in my mental ‘don’t bother’ pile.

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, action flick, action movie, Bottom Feeder, creature feature, Tom Sizemore, Wendy Anderson

Centaurs, griffins, ship mastheads come to life. All so very, very cool!

I’m a sucker for Sinbad movies. At some point in my youth I watched all three in Ray Harryhausen’s trilogy, from The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, to The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad, to Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger. I love them all for the cheesy train wrecks that they are. However, The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad seems to be the one that sucks me in the most often when I chance upon it on television. Maybe it’s the griffin and centaur fight at the end. Maybe it’s the evil sorcerer whose incantations are actually nothing more sinister than Trix and and Cocoa Puffs commercials read backwards (no, seriously). Maybe it’s the flying creatures that spy for the sorcerer. Maybe it’s the ship’s masthead that comes to life to attack Sinbad’s crew. Maybe it’s all the other wonderfully goofy, cheesy, corny effects interspersed throughout. Whatever the reasons, I can’t help but sit and watch this with giddy, girlish giggles of glee.

Honestly, I barely listen to the dialogue. The cast is well played, and the lines are delivered well, but this is a creature feature, and a pirate movie, and a sorcerer movie, so I’m just watching for the cool creatures and some magic. Yes, there are some funny lines, but that’s just a cookie sprinkling on top of the sundae. The characters are typical, and just there to push the story along. It’s the awesome creature effects that keep me glued to the screen. The attention to detail show the love that is missing from some of today’s slick CGI. The six figured statue of Kali that battles our heroic crew is mesmerizing to watch, especially knowing how much work went into it. Anyone trying that today would fall woefully short of Harryhausen’s standards.

The basic plot is Sinbad must quest for a third piece of a medallion, of which he has the first, and a grand vizier has the second. Along the way he encounters the evil sorcerer, Koura, is convinced to bring a lazy, spoiled sultan’s son on his ship to toughen him up, and also frees a slave girl named Margiana. She’s pretty much there as eye candy, although they hint that she has a higher purpose because she has an all seeing eye tattooed on her palm. Really, she is there so young boys from the 70’s could hope she pops out of her tight, low cut top.

Everyone journeys around trying to get this third piece of the medallion, which promises youth, invisibility, and riches. There are plenty of battles along the way to keep the movie from dragging, culminating with a fight between a centaur and a griffin, and then the centaur and Sinbad, and then Sinbad and the sorcerer. We get a nice, safe happy ending, and all is right with the world.

This might be too tame for some of those in the younger target audience, but I think anyone who watches this with the proper expectations of a 70’s flick, and perhaps a little glass of something alcoholic, will get a lot of laughs out of it, and be impressed with the creature effects. After so much CGI I think one needs to get a good dose of ‘old school’ to gain perspective and maybe appreciation for special effects as an art form.

If you get the chance, definitely watch all three of these Sinbad movies. However, if you have time for only one, definitely go for The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad. In this case the ‘middle child’ is the best!

Tags: 70's movies, Caroline Munro, creature feature, fantasy film, giggle factor, John Phillip Law, pirates, popcorn munching afternoon, Ray Harryhausen, The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad, Tom Baker

I want a plushie toy based on this movie!

I’ve watched this movie a couple of times now, and I still giggle my way through it, no matter how badly chopped up the plot continuity is. I suspect that things were deleted to make it fit the television time frame, but then again, there’s a distinct possibility that the writers decided they just didn’t need the surviving characters to even notice that one of their ranks, at their side only minutes before, isn’t celebrating victory with them, and is instead lying in an undignified bloody mess a few yards away. To my surprise, that’s one of the only complaints I have about Beyond Loch Ness, a.k.a. Loch Ness Terror.

The movie starts off with a father bringing his son with him to investigate the Loch Ness in Scotland. The father discovers a huge tunnel that possibly leads to the ocean, and also brings up an egg to the surface. Not a smart move. While everyone is all excited about the find, a 60 foot plesiosaur rises to the surface, and after securing its egg, kills everyone except for the son.

We flash to a small town in the United States where a grizzled man is insisting that he’s seen the Loch Ness Monster in their lake, and is determined to get its picture. He’s related to the town’s sheriff, a tough, no-nonsense woman with a college age son who apparently is more interested in running a bait shop than actually going to college. This son meets our lone Scotland survivor, who is now a rugged crypto-zoologist, in town on a lead. These two characters hit it off, and discuss science and daddy issues, much to the chagrin of the sheriff.

When deaths start happening, naturally our crypto-zoologist is the only one who can help, since he’s seen the beastie responsible up close and personal, and has made it his life’s mission to get revenge. Along the way we get teenagers on an island becoming snacks, and our bait shop boy coming to the rescue. Naturally he ends up needing rescuing, as well, because the plesiosaur has made a nest on the island, and there are lots and lots of cute, hungry, fast waddling babies around.

There’s not really much of a plot here, which is just fine. It makes it easier to watch when a movie of this caliber doesn’t try to aim too high. The characters are what entertain me the most. Brian Krause plays the crypto-zoologist with a chip on his shoulder, a cigarillo constantly clenched in his mouth, and a lot of humor. I think he even intended to be that funny, too. His character is so over-the-top cliched that there’s no other way to play him. Niall Matter plays the son who plays guide. He’s smart, has a lot of charm, and doesn’t overdo the ‘daddy issues’, so thankfully I don’t feel the need to slap him around and give him a reason to cry. On an interesting side note he went on to play the very small part of Mothman in The Watchmen film, and then progressed into a recurring role in Eureka, playing pretty much the same guy, just different setting and higher I.Q., as he is in Beyond Loch Ness.

We get lots and lots of scenes with the beastie, and the beastie babies. Watching these creatures waddle around on land just makes me think ‘Aw, how cute!’, at least until they start eating someone. The CGI has a lot of details, to the point I think either someone bought the CGI from the Discovery Channel, or just really, really loves dinosaurs. Either way, I appreciated the quality, and especially the quantity, of the graphics. As I’ve often said, never, ever skimp on the monster!

There is a bit of gore, but definitely not to the level some of these kinds of creature features stoop to. The story is decent, the characters are well-written and well-acted, and the CGI is great. The ending feels a bit rushed, as if the writers realized they were going too long for this genre, but even that I can forgive, because there’s still that over-the-top humor sprinkled everywhere. This is a DVD that I’d pick up if I found it for less than ten bucks, because it’d be a good movie to throw in on a lazy afternoon when your brain is begging you to let it stop thinking for a couple of hours.

Tags: Beyond Loch Ness, Brian Krause, creature feature, Eureka, giggle factor, Loch Ness Monster, Loch Ness Terror, Nessie, Niall Matter

Freaks in a small town...And then there's the carny folk...

I was very surprised that I didn’t outright hate Carny. I thought for sure from the previews it would be nothing but gore and entrails. Yes, there is a lot of blood, but there’s a lot of great Jersey Devil shots, and some interesting character studies on small towns and carny folk. It’s not going to be a classic or anything, but at least it was more substantial than a lot of creature features I’ve sat through.

It starts off with some poor schmuck who has inexplicably managed to capture a horrific beast, and is delivering it for cash to a creepy carnival owner and his sidekick. The carny owner is planning to sell the beast to yet another person, but not before showing it off in the next town for some cheap thrills and fast cash. Unfortunately for the poor schmuck who survived capturing the monster, he turns his back on the carny owner to count his cash, and ends up being a discovered body later in the flick.

We flash to the small town where the poor schmuck’s truck is being towed in and investigated. The plates are from Jersey, so there aren’t any obvious clues. Once again Lou Diamond Phillips plays a charismatic sheriff, and even though it’s a role he’s played several times before, I don’t get tired of it. His character is smart enough to have his deputy run interference between himself and the resident brimstone and fire preacher who rants and raves against the sinful carnival coming to town, all the whole ignoring the fact his own son is embracing the path to hell, and taking a nice kid with him. It’s hard to like this preacher, and you’re not meant to, especially when he later stirs the townsfolk up and urges them to burn the carnival, and the innocent, albeit freakish, people and their homes to the ground.

The sheriff ventures over to the carnival to check out the people, make sure the permits are all in order, and to get a sneak peak at the newest attraction, The Jersey Devil. I can’t imagine any sheriff taking the sight of such a creature, no matter how strong that cage is, with as much aplomb as this town’s sheriff does. Meanwhile we meet the carnival’s psychic who sees all sorts of death and destruction in our good sheriff’s future.

Never mind all the character setup, which is done admirably well for this type of movie. We’re here to see lots of the Jersey Devil, and we’re not disappointed. The creature breaks out very quickly into the movie, all because the preacher’s son is a snot who won’t stop taunting it by throwing popcorn at it. The beastie flies around snacking and chomping on any character unwise enough to be out in the open, or, well, still in town. The CGI is well done, and much better than what I recently saw on a Monster Quest episode about this same beastie.

The plot goes a bit sideways once the beast escapes. The psychic is ready to flee, but convinced to stay just so she can do a reading about how the carny owner can stop it (so he can still sell it off). She gives a cryptic reading which never pans out. The carny owner goes on to do even more despicable things, only to end up in a confrontation first with the vengeful preacher, and then with the Jersey Devil. The plan to sell the beast is conveniently buried under more bodies.

The ending came this close to leaving me satisfied with this movie. Then it did something some B-movies have been doing lately, which really ticks me off. It went off-formula and killed off a character who shouldn’t have died, and did it for no good reason. I like my B-movies to stick with the plan, and not try to be more than they are by being ‘different’. It’s a big letdown after a triumphant battle, and needlessly depressing. I shouldn’t be bummed after watching a movie like Carny!

This is a movie I had a hard time finding out anything about on the internet. Because of it’s dismal ending, I’m just going to stop my search right…about…here.

Tags: Carny, creature feature, Jersey Devil, Lou Diamond Phillips

City stomping fun!

Surprisingly, I’m not a huge Godzilla movie fan. I watch them if they happen to be on, but I never embraced them so much that I took the story or character of Godzilla very seriously. The older ones with their deliberately awful English dubs and cookie cutter plots are always good for a laugh, and are easy to watch. Godzilla 2000 was the first release since 1985 that hit North American theaters, and I remember seeing previews for it and wanting to go for the train wreck and camp. It was obvious to me that it was meant to be a lot of fun, and now that I finally had a chance to sit down and watch it in the comfort of my own home, that point was proven without a doubt.

We have a Godzilla Prediction Network dedicated to tracking the big guy around Tokyo, which is fronted by a father and his young, ‘I need to be smacked for being a snot’ daughter. A cute little reporter hooks up with them hoping to get pictures of Godzilla, and thereby get herself promoted to ‘real’ news at the paper she works for. We have a bad guy heading up Crisis Control Intelligence. His voice dub is really close to fitting him, but not quite, which brings out the giggles in me right away. This guy is focused on a large space rock that landed in the water near Tokyo, and he figures it’s a great idea to bring it to the surface to study and figure out how to exploit. Naturally he and the head of the Godzilla Prediction Network have a frosty history as former co-workers, to the point that the bad guy tries to blow the good guy up in a building on the pretense that he can’t stop the countdown, or the alien will win.

Oh, that’s right! There’s an alien! Of course the space rock is really a spaceship, fueled by solar power, and determined to suck up all the data from Tokyo, and all the genetic code from Godzilla so it can adapt to Earth and properly take over. We get plenty of monster fighting, models of Tokyo smashed to bits, and cool looking energy beams from both Godzilla and the alien.

The main characters are a lot of fun to watch, because everything is over the top, especially with the English dubs. We get exchanges like this:
Good guy head of Godzilla Prediction Network: “Are you sure you remembered to take the lens cap off?”
Cute little reporter: “Oh, bite me! Grrr!”
The “Grrr” is seriously in the dialogue. It’s those kinds of gems of witty banter that kept me laughing and thoroughly entertained the whole way through, even when the monster fights seemed to drag on a little too long.

At the end there’s a debate over whether Godzilla is a destroyer or protector of Tokyo. The good guy makes the case for ‘protector’ as Godzilla heads back out to sea after his monumental fight with the alien that surely bankrupted several insurance companies. What makes that commentary completely ludicrous is the fact that Godzilla is doing even more damage as he leaves, tromping on cars, knocking down even more buildings, and leaving plenty of fire and chaos in his wake. Yep. That’s just how I like my city to be protected…

Never mind that the plot leaves a lot to be desired. The plot isn’t the reason to watch a Godzilla movie, and anyone willing to sit down and waste an hour and a half or so of their life watching a man in a rubber suit hop around while that classic Godzilla roar sounds in their ears knows exactly what I’m talking about. It’s campy. It’s cheesy. It’s timeless. It’s a great way to ignore the scary real world and giggle yourself silly!

Tags: action movie, b-movie, creature feature, giggle factor, Godzilla, Godzilla 2000, monster, popcorn munching afternoon

No where near as frightening as the cover would have you believe...

The Bone Eater is a harmless, mildly entertaining movie chock full of stereotypes that can make you cringe. The main conflict is the nearby reservation protesting the building of a new resort on land they say is cursed, and shouldn’t be disturbed. You have the militant faction willing to resort to violence against the owner (although you don’t really see that), and the more passive protesters following Storm Cloud, the wise spiritual leader of the Katonahs. You also have the sheriff of the town who turns out to be half-Katonah, himself, and struggling to maintain neutrality as he enforces the law.

It starts off with three construction workers on the night shift. They uncover what is clearly a burial site, and accidentally release The Bone Eater, who promptly turns them all to dust, and sucks up the bones from the site. The graphics on this guy are awesomely cheesy, and I was a happy camper right off the bat.

The owner having the resort built is naturally a jerk with no respect for historical artifacts. He instructs his workers to hide anything they find, and just keep building. With three of his workers now missing, he points the fingers at the protesting Katonahs, and insists the sheriff arrest someone just on his word. This is all a conflict that doesn’t really pan out, because no one comes in to actually force the sheriff to do anything against his nature or will, but that’s alright. That actually adds to the cheese factor.

The story behind The Bone Eater is a fairly interesting tale about an evil being subdued by a magic ax, and the bones scattered around in unceremonious graves with the intention of preventing his reawakening. This poor ax gets shuffled all around, and finally finds it’s way into the proper hands for a sadly anti-climactic battle that left me disappointed.

Weak ending aside, the movie is filled with plenty of interesting characters to keep me entertained. There are cameos by Walter Koenig and William Katt. Gil Gerard plays a significant role as the head of construction on the resort project. I didn’t even recognize the former Buck Rogers and was actually miffed in my belief that he’d been mis-credited somehow. Then I saw his picture on his IMDB page. Oh my. I’ll leave it at that.

Of course the main reason I tuned in was for poor Bruce Boxleitner. After Babylon 5 he hasn’t found a solid lead on another show. All the better for me, because he’s fun to watch in these kinds of movies. He typically plays the stern but loving father whose daughter is just slightly out of control, but still a ‘good girl’, and he usually plays the town authority figure. It just suits him. Even roles that are beneath him (which is most of the things I’ve seen him in lately) he brings his full talents and charm to. I’m a little nervous at the idea of there being a Tron 2.0, since Hollywood insists on ruining everything else that was good and pure from my youth, but if it gets him back to the big screen I can forgive (a little).

I like this movie because it’s not hard on my brain, has no gore to worry about because the creature just turns people to dust, and the main creature is just a riot to watch, especially as it conjures itself up a skeletal horse to chase trucks with. The plot has plenty of holes, but you don’t watch a movie like this for a plot, so that’s okay. The characters are mostly likable, if mostly cardboard cutouts.

I recommend The Bone Eater for anyone who needs something easy on the brain that will offer up some cheap laughs, and absolutely no scares whatsoever. Overall, there are worse ways to spend an afternoon, and I guarantee I’ve wasted my time on movies with less entertainment value.

Tags: b-movie, Bruce Boxleitner, creature feature, giggle factor, Gil Gerard, Native American legends, The Bone Eater, Walter Koenig, William Katt