Mandrake

If you read this blog, you know it is a ritual for my wife and eye to watch the spectacularly awful giant creature movies produced by the SyFy Channel (Sharktopus, Mega Sharp vs Giant Octopus, Wyvern, too many others to name). When I told her this week’s feature would be Mandrake, she said “Half-man, half-duck?” She knows her SyFy. However, the beast in question isn’t a hybrid between a man and a waterfowl, but a tree run amok.

Somewhere in the jungles of South America, a team sent by crazy rich guy Harry Vargas (Benito Martinez, The Shield) is searching for a dagger worn by a Spanish conquistador.* The team is led by Sgt. McCall (the underrated Max Martini of the sorely missed The Unit) and is unaware that at least one other team has sought the dagger and died for it. Vargas wants the dagger because…why do you have to ask so many questions? He just wants it, that’s all. The team finds the dagger, well preserved after 800 years, about ten minutes after they get there, so it doesn’t look all that hard.

Unfortunately for them, the dagger plunged into the ground was all that kept the giant killer tree from killing everybody. How did it do that? Always with the questions. It just did, that’s all. There are some evil tribesmen who having been killing outsiders by sacrificing them to the tree, but they seem to think an unrestrained tree is just too much. People are eaten by the tree, people are chased by the tree, and finally somebody remembers to put the knife back. During all this, Vargas goes steadily crazier and crazier because…well, some things we are not meant to know.

All those complaints considered, this wasn’t bad, by SyFy standards. The movie looks good, an d even the killer tree looks as realistic as possible given that it’s a tree. The cast is excellent, and really elevates this past SyFy’s usual standards. If you can avoid thinking about plot points which make no sense and enjoy this sort of thing, there is probably entertainment to be had here.

* Characters repeatedly refer to the dagger as being from the “fourteenth century”. Columbus made landfall in the Americas in 1492, which is at the end of the fifteenth century. Maybe it’s the former history prof in me, but that is the sort of thing that drives me batty.

Sharktopus

I admit to having a tendency to enjoy, in a slightly guilty way, the low-budget monster movies found on the Syfy Channel. Movies like Wyvern, Fire Serpent, Supercroc, the immortal Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus…big creatures who like to eat people. Lately, having exhausting the conventional monsters of mythology and legend, Syfy has moved on to “mash-ups”, and the ultimate of these is the wonderfully named Sharktopus (I suppose the idea is a combination of a shark and an octopus is the most scary hybrid imaginable, although personally, I think the Octomom is scarier).

A creepy corporation has developed the half-shark, half octopus (it also has spines sticking out of its sides, so there may be a little porcupine in there as well) for the defense department as the “ultimate weapon” – against someone, I suppose. Maybe they want calamari that fights back. The beast is tested by Evil Navy Guy in a scene which consciously spoofs the opening of Jaws, with the deadly creature being controlled by a device belted loosely around its midriff. If you’re thinking “that belt is going to come off”, you’ve figured it out. The belt comes off, and the monster goes wild, killing anyone around the beach at PuertoVallarta. Apparently, this beach attracts stupid people, because no matter how many people meet gruesome deaths in plain view of the other beachgoers, no one thinks to go home and come back on a more sharktopus-free day. Pretty much everyone is attacked, and the viewers rooting interest briefly swings in favor of the monster when it kills a trio of jetskiers, who deserve what they get.

Corporate Guy is under pressure from Evil Navy Guy to get the sharktopus under control before the media gets the story, ignoring the presence of news crews and the frequent TV spots about the attacks. Apparently, it will mean disaster if the public learns of the sharktopus, since then everyone would know it was a Navy project. Because that’s so rational. Corporate Guy hires a sharktopus hunter, who, in a feeble attempt at a subplot, was once fired by the Corporate Guy for asking for a raise. The Fearless Sharktopus Hunter is offered $300,000 for the job (later upped to a cool million) because “only he can do the job.” His method consists of boating aimlessly around the monster’s feeding ground and shooting a machine gun at it when it shows up, a worse plan than it seems, since the sharktopus is bulletproof, due to the production company being unable to afford CGI bullet holes. It is also revealed the sharktopus (no matter how many times I type that, it is still a ridiculous word) can use it’s eight legs to leave the water and walk around on land hunting for prey, just like a real octopus. Or something.

Eventually, stuff blows up, the creature is killed, Corporate Guy bites it, and The Fearless Sharktopus Hunter falls in love with Corporate Guy’s daughter, because they are the only ones left.

I usually say to people who watch a movie like this and complain about bad acting, a dumb plot and cheap CGI “It’s called Sharktopus, what did you expect?” That’s still valid here, but this truly is an atrocious movie, even by the dubious standards of the SyFy Channel. There isn’t enough plot to sustain the length, and even at 80 minutes, it felt long. Eric Roberts was obviously brought in to add a little class and professionalism, but it made things worse, since having him in a scene just emphasized how bad his co-stars were. The romantic couple who were the more-or-less leads were grating, and should have ended up sharktopus food. A subplot about a TV newswoman only served to kill time and provide more bodies for the butcher’s bill. Also, if you are going to name a character Pez, you should have him decapitated, right. What a missed opportunity.

I’m afraid Sharktopus is a movie to miss, much like the Puerto Vallarta beaches in sharktopus season. It’s definitely no Mansquito.
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Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

Every now and then, you watch a movie which manages to transcend its medium, one that illustrates dimly understood facets of the human condition and makes you feel a richer person for having seen it. Most of the time, though, you end up watching something like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.

Oceanographer Emma (Debbie Gibson) borrows a mini-sub from her employer in California to watch a pod of whales off the coast of Alaska. That mini-sub has a heckuva range. While there, she witnesses a relatively worthless military experiment testing new sonar equipment. This causes a glacier to calve, and frees two creatures frozen there for millions of years. If you were paying attention to the title of the movie, you already know the creatures are a Mega Shark (Megalodon Carcharodon) and a Giant Octopus (Completelyus Madeupus). They wander off in search of mischief. Apparently, in dinosaur times, freezing didn’t hurt seafood as much.

The two big critters engage in a variety of hijinks. The shark leaps out of the water to eat a jet liner flying over the ocean, I assume at 30,000 feet. What a jumper! The shark also eats a battleship the movie calls a destroyer despite the destroyer/battleship valiantly firing in the wrong direction. The octopus eats an oil platform, hopefully with the head of BP on board. Pretty soon, the government decides they’ve had enough of this and a task force led by Allan (Lorenzo Lamas, looking a little embarrassed by the movie) is composed to stop the creatures. They decide they can’t do the job without Emma, even though Emma doesn’t seem knowledgeable enough to tell a squid from a fish stick. A lot of time is spent on multiple scenes of Ms. Gibson looking wistfully out to sea, trying to spot where her career has drifted, I suppose.

It takes them a long time to figure out the answer to their problems is in a law of entertainment first formulated, I believe, by the great William Shakespeare: If you have two monsters in the same movie, they will fight each other. Eventually, they figure it out and the movie ends.

The CGI for this movie is about on par with a computer game circa 1995, and the script is far below the SyFy Channel’s dubious standards. The acting rarely rises to adequate. Watch this one to mock, and for no other purpose.

There is one great moment, when Lorenzo Lamas asks Debbie Gibson “How will it feel to have a career and then be washed up?” I think Debbie knows the answer to that one.
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20 Million Miles To Earth

Ray Harryhausen is the undisputed master of stop-motion animation, the process of creating special effects using articulated models, photographed with incremental motion and then turned into a movie clip. He is best known for his fantasy films, including a number of adventures of Sinbad and the original Clash of the Titans. In the 1950s, he had an impressive run of “Giant Creature” movies, including The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and It Came From Beneath the Sea. These and Earth Versus the Flying Saucers also moved his work into a more science-fiction direction. In 1957, he took his crew to Italy to film 20 Million Miles to Earth. Why Italy? According to Harryhausen himself, he wanted to take an extended vacation in Italy, and this was the only way he could afford it.

A fleet of Sicilian fishermen have their work interrupted by the splashdown of a giant spacecraft. Before the craft sinks, two of the fishermen rescue two survivors. It turns out to be an American spaceship, returning from a mission to Venus, a mission that was kept secret because…well, just because. A young boy with the fishermen recovers a container with what appears to be a giant larva inside it. The boy is an enterprising and mercenary lad, the president of his school’s chapter of FMS (Future Mafioso of Sicily), and sells the larva to a vacationing professor for pocket change. Fortunately for the plot, the professor has a beautiful daughter to serve as a love interest for an astronaut.

The larva soon hatches a cute little Venusian creature called an Ymir. Well, that’s its name, but it isn’t actually called that in the film because the producers thought it would be confused with Emir, a type of Middle Eastern ruler who is apparently a giant reptile. The cuteness of the Ymir doesn’t last long, because its size is increasing exponentially. By the time it reaches Rome, it has reached Godzilla size and is ready for a rampage. Only the astronaut, the professor’s daughter, and the Italian army stand in the way of the beast wrecking the ancient ruins of Rome.

The highlight of the film is definitely Harryhausen’s animation. The Ymir fights an elephant, has a face-off in the Coliseum with the army, and generally tears stuff up. The style of animation used in the film has become passé today, but it still stirs the imagination. Few have ever had the affinity for creating giant monsters as Ray Harryhausen, and the Ymir is a thrilling.

There are also quite a few weaknesses. Harryhausen’s preference seemed to be for fantasy (the original storyboards depict the Ymir as a giant Cyclops) and the sci-fi elements are weak. Where does the creature get the mass to increase its size so dramatically, and why does Earth’s atmosphere make it grow in the first place? There are also plot holes, such as why the Italian professor, who speaks with an Italian accent, naturally enough, has a daughter with an American accent. The plot serves a s a vehicle to get to the monster mayhem, logic be damned.

The acting is fairly wooden. The only recognizable actor is William Hopper as the astronaut, who was a supporting player on the Perry Mason TV show, and the actors aren’t helped by dialogue that clanks and groans. My favorite line is from the press conference after the spaceship crashes, when the American representative reveals the ship was on a mission to Venus. One of the reporters asks, “You mean Venus…the planet?” Fortunately for the reporter, the guy holding the press conference wasn’t as prone to sarcasm as I am.

Despite its flaws, 20 Million Miles to Earth is a lot of fun, and you get exactly what you would expect (a giant monster running amok). If this sort of movie appeals to you and you haven’t seen the movie, you should give it a try.

One final note: Like most movie buffs, I am fervently opposed to the “colorization” of old black and white movies. 20 Million Miles to Earth is presented on the blu ray both in the original black and white and a colorized version done for its 50th anniversary, and it might be the one exception to my opposition. Harryhausen himself, who wanted to film the movie in color but couldn’t afford it, supervised the process himself, and I have to admit it looks good. I’m glad both versions are available on the disc.
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Rise Of The Gargoyles

(Title discrepancy alert: Despite the plural title of this SyFy movie, there appears to be only one gargoyle in this movie, albeit one that seems to change size. A more accurate title would be Rise of the Gargoyle. Or The Gargoyle Rises. Or Glitter.)

Professor Jack Randall (Eric Balfour, almost always better than the roles he gets) is a professor of architecture discredited due to his theory that the gargoyles we see on buildings represent creatures that once existed. For this wingbat idea, he has been exiled to Paris, France (This is an odd idea of a punishment detail. My boss got mad at me once and sent me to Nauvoo, Alabama for a week, which is much more punitive.) where he teaches classes of very disinterested students. My theory as to why they are so unresponsive: His lectures are in English, while the national language of France is, oddly enough, French. They just don’t understand what he is saying. Paris, in this movie, is played by Romania. Jack’s only friend is his agent, carol, who can’t sell his book since everyone knows he is nuts.

Elsewhere in Paris, workmen demolishing an old church (Why? Why not?) wake up/disturb a gargoyle and are eaten. When Carol drops by to tell Jack that yet another publisher (lulu?) has rejected him, she suggests they snap him out of the doldrums by breaking into an old church and looking for loot. Will it surprise you to learn it is the same church where the workmen became Gargoyle Chow? Inside the church, they discover and take some oblong rocks (“Gargoyle poop,” I said. “Gargoyle eggs,” said my Beautiful Wife.). Carol takes the poop/eggs home with her, and the gargoyle follows to get them back, which causes the viewer to lean to the “eggs” point of view. The poor gargoyle is able to track them across a crowded city, but fortunately for the plot, can’t find them in the cabinet where they were placed. Still, the gargoyle chases Carol out on the roof and chops off her head to teach her to leave other peoples’ stuff alone. A French Inspector probably not named Clouseau though just as competent suspects Jack, of course.

With Carol gone, Jack needs someone else to hang with, and finds Nicole and Walsh, the host and cameraman of a TV show about unexplained phenomena. No one pays any attention to their theories, either, because, again, they present them on French TV in English, although this time it’s English with a French accent. They also hook up with the even crazier Father Gable, the priest of the church where everything is going down, and the latest in a long line of priests guarding against the gargoyles return.

Movie pet peeve: The priest is depicted as kind of a lone wolf, doing his own thing, solely responsible for the church. This happens a lot in movies, and completely ignores how hierarchical the Catholic Church is. Very little is done without supervision that doesn’t involve altar boys.

Father Gable provides the exposition for the film. The gargoyles once were the scourge of the earth, and now are coming back. The gargoyle and the hundreds of eggs it has laid (it wasn’t poop) must be destroyed or all mankind is doomed. Fortunately, sunlight turns the gargoyles temporarily to stone, a brittle state in which they can be easily destroyed. Why one of the priests didn’t go down in the basement to finish off the last gargoyle during the millennia they have been watching is not explained. Jack, the TV crew and the priest go to the church to finish them off once and for all. There is an explosion.

The cast is the movie is generally pretty good, although the part of the priest is played as if there is an Oscar category for over-emoting and the actor is determined to win. The CGI is adequate, what there is of it. There are some moments of unintentional hilarity, as when the inspector is hoisted into the air by the flying gargoyle and ripped to shreds, while the evidence team nonchalantly goes about their work. The French are hard to ruffle.

The biggest problem of the movie is the lack of gargoyle face time. The gargoyle is on screen maybe five minutes, and if you sit down to watch a cheesy creature feature, you want to see lots of the creature, dammit. We mostly see the aftermath of what it has done.

Whether you should watch this depends on your enthusiasm for this kind of thing. Unless you have exhausted the pool of available low-budget monster films, there are many better options.
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Wyvern

A monstrous throwback to the past emerges in Alaska to menace all mankind…I’m sorry, sometimes the Sarah Palin jokes just write themselves.

A ancient creature called the Wyvern has been imprisoned in the Arctic ice for thousands of years, but melting ice (global warming, I suppose) has now freed it, and it woke up hungry and apparently pregnant, not that the two don’t go hand-in-hand. Good news for fans of giant reptile movies, not such good news for the residents of a small Alaskan town. The creature basically looks like a flying dragon, and its diet consists of homo sapiens Alaskanus, which would seem to be a high-alcohol diet.

The town seems to be one of those small villes that exist only in fiction where everyone is nice to everyone else, to the extent that no one seems to be able to bring themselves to charge anyone for goods or services. Thank heavens for that oil subsidy. The male lead is Jake Suttner (genre vet Nick Chinlund, in a much-deserved lead role), an ice road trucker whose rig was lost along with his brother in an accident. He’s just hanging around waiting for the replacement for his rig to arrive from the insurance company, moping a little over his lost sibling, and mooning over Claire (Erin Karpluk), who owns the diner. There is a fair amount of Northern Exposure-style eccentricity, such as the Mayor holding town meetings with the treasurer, who has been dead for a year. No ghost, more of an imaginary friend. The Northern Exposure connection is further hammered home by the presence in the cast of Barry Corbin, one of the series’ leads. The only slightly smarmy character is the town doctor (Rob Morrow must have been busy) who is Jake’s competition for Claire, so we know who is going to be eaten first.

Fairly quickly, the Wyvern is binging at the all-you-can-eat human buffet, and the cast is dwindling, rapidly being converted into Wyvern manure. One nice thing is there is very little time spent in convincing everyone what the menace is. I guess when your mayor talks to invisible dead people, you get used to using your imagination. Anyway, shut off from the outside world by the Wyvern using the local power grid to make a nest, it’s up to the townfolk to stop the creature from breeding. Will Jake’s ability to drive a big rig help defeat the monster? Will Jake get the girl? What do you think?

Wyvern is a cut above the usual monster-of-the-week SyFy channel fare. The CGI, while not feature film quality, is more than adequate, there is some refreshing humor in the script, and the cast is pretty good by any standards. One sad note: the local military guy/gun nut is played by Don S. Davis, better known as General Hammond from the Stargate franchise, and it was his last film. He died of a heart attack shortly after filming, and the movie is dedicated to him.

If you are the creature feature type, you will probably enjoy Wyvern. It doesn’t set the world on fire, but does a decent job of delivering what you would expect.
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Supercroc

Hopefully, I’m really back, now. And what a way to resume snarking, with the big-screen hit Supercroc!

Direct-to-DVD masters The Asylum have been very successful in branding their company. You always know what you are going to get when you pick up a DVD with their logo on it, and in no way do I mean this as a compliment.

At a lake/pond/river/ocean near Los Angeles, a group of soldiers have been sent to investigate something, although they don’t seem to have a clue what. They move through the brush, the leader usually silent hand signals to direct the squad. Although these are usually used to hide the presence of soldiers from the enemy, here the purpose may be because the squad leader of indeterminate rank couldn’t be heard over the incessant yakking of the other soldiers, mostly talk of weddings. Eventually, they learn that the thing they have been seeking is an enormous crocodile – a supercroc! – and seconds later, they are all fertilizer except for the cute female GI who was going to get married. Sadly, her fiancé is making his way through the supercroc’s alimentary canal, although she doesn’t seem too broken up by it. A second squad is dispatched and also goes straight down the gullet.

Meanwhile, a command center has been established to fight the menace, although they mostly just exclaim “Oh, my God” at appropriate moments. There is a sleazy scientist woman, with the hidden agenda of exploiting the supercroc for military purposes, and you’ve got to wish her luck with that. She masterminds the theft of supercroc eggs and sends them to Los Angeles, meaning the Supercroc heads that way, too, with mayhem on its mind. This is still probably better news for L.A. than Lane Kiffin, but I digress.

There is some anticipation of Godzilla-style pandemonium in Los Angeles, but it doesn’t happen. A few people get squished/eaten, including the evil scientist woman, stuff blows up, and the movie ends.

I always try to say something good about a movie, but this has me beaten. Terrible CGI, a terminally dumb script wooden acting…one of the techs at the command center does come out with a quip, but everyone else bitches at him about it, so he shuts the hell up. Recommend this one to your worst enemy.
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Loch Ness Terror

You’ve got to admire a movie that titles itself Loch Ness Terror and mostly takes place in Lake Superior (the original title was Beyond Loch Ness, and that would be more accurate, since Lake Superior is certainly beyond Scotland). I guess it doesn’t matter, since the lake near Vancouver which serves as bock Loch Ness and Lake Superior for the film doesn’t look like either one of them.

Before we start, if you want to know the truth about what lurks in Loch Ness, click here. Just don’t blame me if the disillusionment is too much to bear.

The SyFy Channel must use a customized script element generator to produce their creature features. Here you have the prologue scene where a boy watches a parent killed by a monster, inspiring him to grow up to be a monster hunter (if the monsters realized how vindictive humans are, they wouldn’t leave any uneaten rugrats behind when they attack), the remote island used as a breeding ground for the creature where a group of dimwitted teens get marooned, and the emo kid who has lost his girlfriend to the rich dirtbag who inevitably turns out to be a loser. I guess if something comes close to being arguably competent, keep doing it.

Brian Krause plays the traumatized kid who grows up to be a fearless Nessie hunter, and the only other recognizable face is the late Don S. Davis, who played General Hammond on Stargate SG-1. The plot goes something like Nessie moves from Loch Ness to Lake Superios by way of underwater tunnels (!) and shows up to eat people and breed. There doesn’t seem to be a Mr. Nessie around, but maybe there doesn’t have to be. There is the requisite, albeit it brief, hesitation of law enforcement to believe people are being eaten by a plesiosaur (“It could be an alligator,” they say, their breath smoking in the frigid air.) and then the surviving cast gets to monster killin’. There is some hokum about the creatures being blind when they are around magnets for some reason, but it all works out well in the end, largely because aquatic dinosaurs are apparently intensely flammable.

The CGI creatures are actually decent by SyFy standards (which means they look like they come from a high-end computer game, rather than a low-end one) although when they switch back and forth between CGI and puppets, the two don’t look remotely like the same creature. The baby dinosaurs actually look pretty cute in their CGI version, except when they are pulling out someone’s entrails.

By all reasonable artistic standards, this is a pretty bad movie, but by SyFy giant critter movie standards, it isn’t that bad, which I suppose is damning with faint praise, or maybe praising with faint damnation. If you are the type of person that enjoys this type of movie, you will probably enjoy this one. We did.
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Anaconda 3: Offspring

I’m sure some of you have walked down the aisles of your local video store and observed the boxcover for Anaconda III: Offspring. I’m also sure two thoughts popped into your head: “That has got to be a crappy excuse for a movie.” and “I bet that weirdo from Dead in the South watches this.” You are very perceptive people.

The first Anaconda movie was, IMO, a fun B-movie flick, good enough to overlook the casting of The Most Annoying Actor in Show Business (Owen Wilson). The sequel, while lacking the star power of the first cast, was much better than expected, with the scene where the snake approaches the paralyzed guy being pretty shudder-worthy. But both movies were lacking in something, and it becomes obvious after watching the third installment: They were entirely Hasslehoff-free. Anaconda III does not repeat that mistake.

At the conclusion of the second Anaconda, all the giant snakes were dead, and the blood orchids which could cure cancer and Alzheimer’s, end world hunger and give everyone a constant erection were gone also. When Anacondas III opens, an evil pharmaceutical company owner (John Rhys-Davies) has set up a secret plant in some foreign yet unnamed country (it was filmed in Romania, giving hope we may one day see the sure classic Anaconda vs. Dracula) to synthesize the blood orchid extract. The company has been giving the extract to two anacondas, because that is absolutely the stupidest thing you could do, and they have grown to giant size. The snakes are cared for by a herpetologist (Crystal Allen) who warns everyone there is about to be a catastrophe, but of course everyone ignores her.

Naturally, the snakes break out, and head into the countryside to eat as many people as possible and for the pregnant female (of course) to give birth. When asked why they would breed a giant snake and then get it pregnant, the scientist’s reply is more or less Eh, we wanted to see what would happen. And you scoff at the idea the Large Hadron Collider is going to kill us all.

Fortunately, there is a tram of professional snake-hunting mercenaries nearby, and they are immediately called in and quickly eaten. The evil company also hires Hammet (the Hasslehoff) to come and run the operation. Hammet is evil, since we see him selling a rhino horn before he goes after the snakes, and seems to drink a lot. I wanted to give Hasslehoff a break, but Jeebus, this is one poorly acted performance.

Most of the cast is eaten, although the one black guy lasts longer than most black characters do in this kind of movie. Eventually snakes explode and burst into flames and there is an open-ended finale (Anaconda 4: Trail of Blood was shot back-to-back with this one and will take up where this movie leaves off).

I can’t really recommend this one, even to the people who watch this sort of thing. As giant snake movies go, it’s no Boa vs. Python.

There is one awesomely great line in the movie. While tracking the giant snake*, Hasslehoff utters this “Where there is blood…there is…more blood.” I mean, really, whiskey tango foxtrot?

* How hard could it be to track two giant snakes which weigh eleventy million pounds apiece? For Pete’s sake, they knock over trees.
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Python 2

Watching a load of cheesy movies and having a wife who enjoys rampaging giant critter movies has given me the equivalent of a PhD in giant snake movies. True, it’s not the future Mom dreamed for me, but any idiot can grow up to be an astronaut, how many can say they have the depth of knowledge to compare and contrast Python, Boa and Boa vs. Python? You are reading the wisdom of one such.

Somehow, we had missed the 2002 sequel to Python, imaginatively named Python 2. It was obvious that it was, like many remakes, going to have a hard time living up to the original. After all, the characters played by Robert Englund, Wil Wheaton, and Casper van Dien didn’t return, due to a severe amount of squishing they endured (or didn’t, really) in the first one.

In Russia, there is a giant snake loose which is a military experiment or something. The Russian army, led by an American colonel/sergeant, traps the 85 foot 12 ton beast, and then has it flown out of the country. Here’s a rule for you: never transport a giant snake by air. The first movie involved a plane crashing with a giant python, and here the filmmakers figured why mess around with success? The plane is shot down by Chechen insurgents, after flying around slowly at a low altitude so they could get a good shot at it. Everyone is killed. Then the Chechens are ambushed by Russians, who execute everyone, even the women, even though there weren’t any women until they needed some to make execution seem bad. The container that holds the snake was undamaged in the crash, and it is taken to a Russian military base, where it gets out of control. The giant python also spits acid, which seems illogical since real pythons aren't venomous, they are constrictors. the giant snake also roars like a bear, which seems uncommon behavior for our slithering friends, too.

A brief digression: absolutely the most ridiculous thing about this ridiculous movie was the carrying case for the snake. It’s the size of a large suitcase, considerably smaller than the head of the snake inside. When the case is opened, it takes forever to flow out of the little thing.

Meanwhile, a former professional baseball pitcher who hit a batter in the head in a game and had to flee the United States is working in Russia as an independent truck driver. He is approached by a blonde American guy who offers him $100,000 to drive something to Germany. Now, if you are offered that much money to transport something a short distance, here are a couple of assumptions:

1. It is illegal, because you wouldn’t get paid that much if it wasn’t. If you accept, don’t bitch later on when you find out about it.
2. You shouldn’t ask any questions, or indulge in any other curiosity. The less you know, the less likely your employers will kill you to keep you quiet, and the more likelihood you have of getting a reduced sentence if it all goes south.

Naturally, our pitcher ignores both these things.

The trucker and Blondie’s crew travel to the military base, where the snake has gone on a rampage and killed everyone. After many more deaths, as you might guess, the pitcher’s ability to throw something at someone/thing’s head comes into play.

Even by the low standards of giant snake movies, this is pretty bad. The main character is annoying as hell, and it’s difficult to watch knowing the guy you want to be eaten by the snake won’t be. The CGI is mediocre, but about on a par with others of its ilk.

In conclusion, if you are going to see only one giant snake movie, don’t let it be Python 2.
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I'm embarrassed on behalf of my species.

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Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep

I would say there’s trouble when there are three nouns in a movie’s title and two of them are inaccurate. The giant critter in this movie isn’t a kraken (it’s a squid, which is some interpretations of the word, but not most) and the water isn’t at all deep. There are tentacles, though, so give credit where credit is due.

The boxcover also promises “high seas adventure”, but there isn’t a shot in the movie where you can’t see the shore, so that seems a loose interpretation of “high seas” as well.

It starts with a prologue in which a small boy named Ray watches his parents killed by a sea monster. That sort of thing can scar a person, and in this case, it causes him to grow up to be Jerry O’Connell’s brother Charlie, playing a character. Thirty years later, he’s still searching for the beast that killed Mom and Dad when he crosses paths with an archaeologist named Nicole (Victoria Pratt, from the terrible series Mutant X) who is searching for a giant Opal famed in Greek history. For some reason, this opal has been lost somewhere off the Pacific Northwest, so we assume some ancient Greek sailor was none too swift with the navigation.

In an amazing coincidence, the kraken and the opal are in exactly the same stretch of water. Apparently, the kraken is the opal’s protector, and kills anyone who touches it and sinks their boat, which really raises the question of how the hell it managed to get all the way from Greece. There follows many shots of divers swimming with video of squids of various sizes superimposed on them. There is also a gangster who is desperate to get his hands on the opal, since it once belonged to his family, and if he can recover it, it will make him an Official Original Greek Gangster. You know he’s gonna end up squid chow.

Terrible acting, horrible special effects, and a dumb plot. If you still want to see it, be my guest. I probably wouldn’t let these things stop me.
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Cloverfield

It is easy to see why this is so divisive a movie. From its photographic style to the lack of information given to viewers about the exact nature of the threat, this is a broad deviation from traditional American filmmaking.

Cloverfield is the story of a group of ordinary (by design) vapid twenty-somethings, whose going-away party for one of their group is interrupted by an attack on Manhattan by a giant creature of unknown origin. Once the action starts, it becomes a struggle to survive and escape. The point of view for the film is one of the party-goers, who is given a digital camera to document the festivities. He then uses the camera to record the effects of the attack, and the fate of the surviving members of the group.

The film is shot in a cinéma vérité style, with a herky jerky, up-and-down camera motion, with frequent sharp cuts, much like a standard home movie (there have been reports of some patrons becoming seasick from watching it, but this seems like hyperbole to me). This can be frustrating, as we are used to standard camera work remaining focused on exactly what we want to see; instead we are at the mercy of amateur camera operator “Hud” (Head Up Display, get it?).

There is also a big lack of traditional exposition (you know, the scene where the learned guy comes on and explains exactly what’s happening. If you watched Buffy, think Giles in the library.). The characters only know bits and pieces of what’s going on, and never learn what the creature truly is or how it came to be in Manhattan. This irritates many viewers, but I found it very effective. Part of the terror of being at Ground Zero for a catastrophe would be in not knowing what the hell is going on. You can’t get CNN, and all the cell phone towers are down. The closest they get is asking an army officer what the creature is. The reply: “I don’t know. I only know it’s winning.”

There is also a highly effective set piece, in which the erstwhile party-goers flee through the subway tunnels, only to find they are being chased by dog-sized parasites from the giant creature’s skin. (Helpful hint: If you see all the rats fleeing, you should run in the same direction.) It is a spooky and creepy sequence, with fateful consequences.

There is no escaping Cloverfield as a 9/11 metaphor, with Manhattanites fleeing from an unexpected attack, but this is common to horror movies. King Kong was a metaphor for the passing of the natural world in favor of the new technological age, and Godzilla (which Cloverfield is most closely modeled after) was a metaphor for the atom bomb.

You may love Cloverfield or hate it, but if you want to see a fresh take on an old concept, you should give Cloverfield a chance.

Breeding Ground

I’m writing this hoping that Erin Andrews has not already broken the internet, and these words will be read…*

For some time, people whose opinions I respect have been telling me I should read Breeding Ground by Sarah Pinborough. “You’ll love it” they said. Being a contrarian by nature, I ignored them, and kept it buried at the bottom of my To Be Read pile. Recently, though, I noticed a sequel was on its way (Feeding Ground) and I didn’t want to face the possibility of an entire series sitting there taunting me with its come-hither eyes (like Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, all of which I own but have never read). So I gave it a shot, and you know what? All those know-it-alls were right. It is a helluva book.

Matt and Chloe are a happy young reasonably affluent couple in England. They become even happier when they receive the news that Chloe is pregnant. But Chloe begins to gain lumpy weight in all the wrong places. This section is very well done. The reader knows pretty much what is going to happen, and Pinborough paces it just right to properly exploit the feeling of dread.

Sure enough, Chloe’s day comes, and in a horrific scene, she gives birth to a …giant spider. A giant man-eating spider. What’s more, almost all the women in the country (presumably the world) have done the same thing. The few men (and a couple of women) who survive the initial onslaught struggle to find a place where they can survive.

This is a creature feature mixed with a post-apocalyptic story. Pinborough deftly produces the sort of shutters you’d expect to have if you saw a giant honkin’ spider, and there are intriguing mysteries that accompany the appearance of the beasts. Very few of which are answered here, as there is a sort of open ending. That’s okay, since the knowledge there would be a sequel started the whole adventure.

I would highly recommend Sarah Pinborough’s Breeding Ground, and Feeding Ground will automatically receive a place high on the TBR pile.



* Lest I be perceived as being too crass, let me say that what was done was outrageous, and she has my sympathies. But the amount of attention being paid to something that should only really concern the victim is staggering.
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Razortooth

There are movies that make us think. Movies that broaden us, and make better people out of us. Movies that serve as a communal experience enabling us to connect with the rest of mankind. Those movies have nothing in common with Razortooth, which is about a group of morons fighting giant eels in the Everglades.

The Everglades has a problem with a new invasive species, a type of eel from Asia. So a group of scientists working on the project genetically alters the eels to make them grow to enormous size. Why on Earth would they do that? Because they’re scientists, that’s why, and that’s what scientists do. Always poking things with their grubby scientist fingers and giantifying everything in sight. Those people need a keeper, I tell you.

Anyway, the scientists create enormous eels, and they go on a people-eatin’ rampage. Fortunately, they will be opposed by the local animal control officer and the sheriff, who in a movie coincidence used to be married. They are estranged, so it takes about five minutes of movie time before they commence PG-13 style shagging. The guy who plays the animal control officer also plays the harmonica incessantly for the first part of the movie, which began to tip my sympathies more toward the giant eel side. He also likes to walk around the local diner dangling dead rats on a string, despite which the owner of the diner thinks he’s just great. Despite the fact the town is located on the edge of the Everglades, the animal control guy is the only one in town that knows anything at all about any type of animal, which seems far-fetched.

Almost all the characters are some type of Southern stereotypes, which was funny back in 1970. There are plot lines that don’t go anywhere, such as the launch of a canoeing expedition filled with kids. You would expect there to be an extended sequence where the eels chase the kids, but nope. The next time we see them, they are corpses. The movie is steadfast in its determination to avoid anything plot-like or suspenseful. It is just one sequence after another of the giant eel eating someone, and then at the end the sheriff and the animal control guy blows it up, while they enjoy an oblivious, passionate kiss being showered with pieces of giant eel. I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m getting romantic and someone splashes me with eel guts, it takes me right out of the moment.

One of the taglines on the boxes is “always eating, never full.” I can explain that. When the eel attacks someone, it bites just enough of the person away to kill them, leaving 80-90% of the body to be found later. The eel would be much more satisfied if it would just clean its plate, rather than treat the Glades as a free-range human tapas bar.

Both the leads are primarily singers rather than actors, so the DVD has a music video, something of a rarity among giant eel movies. You should watch this if: you look at the DVD boxcover and think it would be something that would entertain you.
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The Deadly Mantis

My dear BW has a weakness for Giant Thing movies. Godzilla, King Kong, etc. To be honest, I find them a hoot, also. One of our favorite things is to cuddle up on a rainy day with a super-sized tub of popcorn and the two dogs, and watch some cheesy giant monster movie. The most recent of these was the recently-released-on-DVD The Deadly Mantis. It is a classic of the genre, unintentionally hilarious.

The movie opens with what you assume will be brief map-and-narration exposition about the Arctic, the DEW line, and various defense department projects. This doesn’t end. It goes on for minutes and minutes, with more and more dotted lines drawn on the map. I opine to BW that they must have been hedging their bets, if the movie didn’t work out, they’d just sell the first half to schools for educational purposes. BW just munched her popcorn. At last it ended, and we were on to the meat of the film.

Apparently, millions and millions of years ago, the earth, in addition to the dinosaurs, the Earth was populated by giant praying mantises, who had the power to ignore the squared/cubed law. One of these mantises was caught hanging around the North Pole when an ice age unexpectedly struck, and got frozen solid. In cheesy movies, freezing never hurts anything (see Batman and Robin), so when the giant mantis thaws out, it wakes up, thinks “”holy shit, it's cold around here”, and heads for the equator, flying at high speeds, snacking on humans along the way. But not so fast, my exo-skeleton-wearing friend! The Distant Early Warning system, which kept all of us except me from having to learn Russian, detects the creature, and a crack team of military officers and scientists spring into action, saying insightful things like “The mantis is the deadliest of all predators”, and attacking the mantis with fighter planes, which are no match for the mantis, but finally wear it down, forcing it to land in the continental U.S. There we are treated to the film’s special effects set piece, a quick look at a praying mantis (possibly a grasshopper) walking on a photograph of a building. The creature is finally destroyed through the noble efforts of our brave heroes. But who knows what else is frozen up there?

Highly recommended. Although it can’t stack up against Them!, this is probably one of the top ten all-time giant bug movies.