Tag Snakes

New Alcatraz (2001)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , November 13th, 2012 @ 8:26 pm
  • AKA: Boa

  • Director: Phillip J. Roth

  • Writer: Terry Neish, Phillip J. Roth (story)

  • Starring: Dean Cain, Elizabeth Lackey, Mark Sheppard, Dean Biasucci

  • Run Time: 96 mins

New Alcatraz (2001)

12,000 feet below the Antarctic ice, it lays in wait.

A maximum security prison to house all of the world’s most dangerous prisoners is being built in the Antarctic. Under pressure to complete the prison, the engineers accidentally release a prehistoric snake-like monster from the ice which proceeds to start devouring anything in its path. So a call is sent out for the assistance of a palaeontologist, his wife and a team of military experts but when they get there, they are forced to team with the inmates in order to survive.

 

Apart from the mildly interesting Escape from New York-lite idea of building a maximum security prison to house all of the world’s most dangerous prisoners, New Alcatraz (which is a more misleading title than its alternative name, Boa) is another token CGI monster-on-the-loose flick which shares the same characteristics as its other slithery sidekicks Anaconda, King Cobra and Python. Though when I looked down the list of producer credits that director Phillip J. Roth has to his name and see the likes of Python, Shark Hunter, Dark Waters, Deep Shock, Lake Placid 2, Bats: Human Harvest and countless others, then I knew which sort of company I would be keeping for the ninety minutes of New Alcatraz.

New Alcatraz would have worked better as a low budget actioner without the monster…possibly. It’s so inept in almost every level that it’s virtually impossible to see how it could have worked as anything else in all honesty. Recycling every cliché in the book from every previous monster-on-the-loose flick as well as throwing in plenty of sci-fi action nonsense, the script borrows everything from Jurassic Park to Aliens and the isolated Antarctic setting is overly similar to The Thing. If even a quarter of the talent and entertainment from either of those aforementioned films was present here, then the film may have been something. But it wasn’t. Surprised? I didn’t think so.

I’m not sure whether building the prison from hell in the middle of the Antarctic and then filling it with the world’s most dangerous men with only a handful of guards BEFORE it is finished being built is something that any rationale country would go along with but it’s one of many ludicrous ideas that the script throws up. The prisoners range from Chechen rebels to Iraqi chemical experts to IRA terrorists – nice to see that they’ve filled up their quota of token ‘problem’ groups from around the world. All it needed was a rogue North Korean general and a Colombian drug lord and then you’d have had the full set.

There are too many characters plodding around the prison (which is weird considering that the prison itself isn’t fully populated with inmates and staff)and not enough time is devoted to some of the more interesting ones – the prisoners to be exact. It’s hard not to get drawn to charismatic Russian terrorist who infinitely is more entertaining than bland, one-dimensional scientists or wardens.

The cast is full of recognisable faces no doubt eager to get back into the big time. Obviously the star of the show (though he doesn’t appear until a third of the way in) is Dean Cain, fresh from Louis and Clark and clearly destined to appear in this sort of low budget nonsense for the rest of his career. Cain isn’t a bad actor and has a natural likeability but he just hasn’t got it, that extra dimension, which would have propelled him onto big budget films.Mark Sheppard has made a niche out of playing these snivelling bad guys in a whole host of TV series (see everything from 24 to The X-Files) and steals the show, Grand L. Bush was in a slew of 90s actions films such as Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and Licence to Kill and Craig Wasson, who plays the warden, had a pivotal role in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors as his genre claim to fame.

Finally, we come to the snake and it will come as no surprise to find out that the snake looks exactly the same as any other low budget monster movie CGI snake does. The serpent here could have come from Python or one of the Anaconda sequels and it wouldn’t look out of place. And the fact that the creature was a snake was a bit of a let-down. The script had the chance to create a unique prehistoric monster, something like the creature from The Relic for instance, but was happy reverting to type. Much like the rest of the film!

 

New Alcatraz is pretty bad. In fact it’s more than pretty bad, it’s awful. Once you’ve seen one modern CGI snake movie, you’ve seen them all and it’s just a case of seeing how repetitive things can get. How films like this get funding is beyond me, especially when more accomplished and promising talents get their films turned away at the first hurdle.

 

 ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Silent Predators (1999)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , October 30th, 2012 @ 6:44 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Noel Nosseck

  • Writer: John Carpenter (teleplay), William S. Gilmore (teleplay), Matt Dorff (teleplay), Patricia Arrigoni (story), Fred Brown (story)

  • Starring: Harry Hamlin, Shannon Sturges, David Spielberg, Patty McCormack

  • Run Time: 91 mins

Silent Predators (1999)

The hunt is on. You’re the Prey.

In 1979, a delivery truck transporting a deadly tropical rattlesnake in southern California is involved in an accident and the snakes manage to escape into the forest. Twenty years later and the construction of a new housing development disturbs a nest of these snakes which head straight towards the town and its residents.

 

John Carpenter supposedly penned this monster-on-the-loose flick as Fangs back in the 70s, presumably when he was slumming as an amateur filmmaker before he hit it big with Halloween. His original vision apparently included a lot of scares and disturbing scenes involving the snakes, which I can fully imagine as Carpenter wasn’t a slouch when it came to his films packing a punch. Fast forward twenty or so years later and the script is dusted off and eventually turned into this TV movie. Unfortunately someone seems to have misplaced the page with the good stuff on because Silent Predators is de-venomised snake mayhem at its TV movie-blandest.

Jumping on board the dreadful spate of recent *insert killer animal of the moment* on the loose flicks, Silent Predators is so by-the-book that it’s a wonder anyone could claim to ‘writing’ it as it seems to have been culled entirely from other sources. There must just be one generic script floating around out there which studios grab a hold of and replace one animal with another one. All of these films play out exactly the same, and are usually awful to boot. Here we’ve got the town which fails to address the obvious problem because it doesn’t want to lose the investment. Usually it’s some sort of festival they can’t afford to cancel and ignore the monster in the hope of saving the town’s finances but the housing development has become just as a big of a cliché. Characters act according to formula and not according to common sense (you know, doing stupid things simply to be put in a position of danger to try and generate some tension or further the plot).

Even their backgrounds and character traits are stock: there’s the hero with the shady past that he’s trying to put behind him; the greedy developer who is just thinking about profit; the local mayor who is stuck in the middle and makes some bad calls to save face. I had a game for the PC called The Movies in which you run your own film studio and could actually write and shoot your own films. You can select how your film will pan out using the various pre-filmed scenes in the game and you can replace characters at your choosing. Well I guess someone has been using a proper version of this game for years because this looks like it was simply patched together from a collection of pre-determined scenes. There’s no sense of cohesion with the film and some of the earlier scenes actually have more tension and purpose to them than the finale.

The choice of title is a bit puzzling when the snakes in question are rattlesnakes, named that because of the loud rattling noise that their tails make – hardly stealth snakes. Secondly they just look like ordinary snakes despite the plot saying that they’re mutated snakes. I guess I shouldn’t grumble too much as at least they are real snakes and not computer generated. The threat that they pose is never given enough time to really convince you that they could do some damage. The attacks aren’t scary and there’s too few of them to really worry about anyway.

I don’t know where he’s been hiding but Harry Hamlin, star of the original Clash of the Titans, stars in this film. I guess he’s a bright spot in an otherwise un-noteworthy cast, although there is a brief role Dominic Purcell who would go on to greater fame as Lincoln Burrows in the awesome TV series Prison Break.

 

The only surprising thing about Silent Predators is that the ending doesn’t leave itself open for a sequel. This is stuff you’ve seen before, and hated before too. I’m still not entirely sold on the ‘John Carpenter wrote this in the 70s’ stuff although the final product resembles nothing that Carpenter would ever have conceived making.

 

 ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Python 2 (2002)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , October 9th, 2012 @ 11:26 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Lee McConnell

  • Writer: Jeff Rank

  • Starring: William Zabka, Dana Ashbrook, Alex Jolig, Simmone Jade

  • Run Time: 90 mins

Python 2 (2002)

The beast is back.

Another top secret military project has been discovered in a remote part of Russia – a giant genetically engineered python. The snake is kept inside an underground military base but the Americans want it back and send a small group of mercenaries in to take the snake back. They hire an American truck driver who operates in the area to ferry the snake back to the US. But when they reach the base, they realise that the snake has escaped, killing everyone there. Now it’s a race against time to get out alive before the entire base is bombed from the air.

 

Not content with ruining the reputation of CGI snakes everywhere, the brains behind Python are back with the originally-titled Python 2. But there’s a catch – there are actually two snakes in the film! Get it? It’s the second film in the series and there are two snakes! Ingenious! I guess there are no real surprises here. You had a CGI crap fest of a film about a genetically engineered snake on the loose and fill the cast with a few names like Robert Englund and Casper Van Dien to try and draw the crowds. That’s fair enough. Python was acceptable. Being one of the first of the CGI snakes to be unleashed, it at least has the benefit of being slightly more original than most. To go ahead and make a sequel to a film not that many will have watched anyway just reeks of desperation. To have it feature one of the minor characters of the original obviously to add a bit of continuity is grasping at straws.

Python 2 doesn’t really need me to bash the film too much as it does most of that itself without knowing. It’s got a really bog standard opening sequence with a bunch of supposed soldiers using supposed high-tech equipment to track down the snake. You can predict the immediate future here: the officer in charge sends nameless soldiers to proceed onwards to investigate strange sounds and we know that there is a giant snake on the loose. Why the snake is loose in Russia is never answered nor is any attempt made to explain why it is the Americans who want it back. Just accept it! But shortly after it has been recaptured, the damned plane it’s being transported in is shot down by Russian terrorists. So you’d think the terrorists would open the container themselves? Wrong.

Moments later a squad of Russian soldiers wipe out the entire terrorist cell and take control of the container once more. But the Russians don’t think to report their finds back to their superiors – they just stash it away in their underground base. This round robin of snake-possession gets boring quickly, simply because the film is stop-start. Just when you think it’s going to settle down and actually have the snake escape and the film focus on one set of characters, it continues to pull the rug out from underneath. The opening twenty minutes is literally a pass-the-parcel between rival groups, with the snake being the unwanted present.

Finally though the snake is released and bad CGI carnage commences. Body count boosting is a pretty shallow ploy in these type of films, none more so than here. You’ve got the male hero, the hot female in distress, the shady government op and one of the hero’s friends (sorry mate, you’re too nice to survive these films) but apart from that the rest of the mercenaries are just there for fodder. The snake has a whole Russian base to munch through too which sadly happens off-screen. In a slight turn of events, it turns out that our male hero is in fact a famously washed up baseball player who fled America after an incident during a game. What the hell? Now he’s busting giant snakes for a living? It’s a totally pointless subplot but I guess it’s the sort of mindless nonsense that you’d expect from a film like this.

I think the only other thing worth noting about this piece of mindless drivel is its main star and said baseball player, Billy Zabka. He struck terror into the hearts of high school teenagers back in 1984 as the martial arts bully who tormented the Karate Kid and who was told to “sweep the leg” by his sensei. Years later and it’s refreshing to know that the guy has turned into a bargain basement action hero in straight-to-video fodder like this. That serves you right for trying to take short cuts to victory!

 

Usually you root for the snake in films like this simply because the cast suck and you want them to die sooner, rather than later. However the only thing I was rooting for here was the power to fail or the DVD to jam so I wouldn’t have to finish this miserable specimen of a sci-fi/action/horror  – whatever the hell Python 2 thinks itself as. Definitely a clunker for the Bottom 100 on IMDB in years to come.

 

 ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Snakes on a Plane (2006)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , October 3rd, 2012 @ 6:01 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: David R. Ellis

  • Writer: John Heffernan (screenplay & story), Sebastian Gutierrez (screenplay), David Dalessandro (story)

  • Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna Margulies, Rachel Blanchard, Nathan Phillips

  • Run Time: 105 mins

Snakes on a Plane (2006)

Sit back. Relax. Enjoy the fright.

After Sean Jones witnesses powerful mobster Eddie Kim brutally murdering a prosecutor hell bent on putting him behind bars, experienced FBI Agent Neville Flynn convinces him to fly to LA to testify against Kim. However, Kim has stowed a crate of poisonous snakes on board the plane which are released in mid-air with the aim of bringing down the plane and any potential witnesses.

 

I’m not going to trawl back through the whole history of this film to start my review. Other reviews will have done it a lot more in-depth and I’m pretty sure everyone gets the gist of the phenomena behind the film. The whole internet thing from developing the story, to adding lines and demanding more violence is well documented. It’s certainly a unique hands-on approach with ‘fan power’ dictating a great deal of how the film was to turn out but given the disappointing box office returns, I don’t think Snakes on a Plane is going to usher in a whole new era of filmmaking from the comfort of the couch at home. The only thing on anyone’s lips right now shouldn’t be how it was made but whether it is any good or not. That can be answered with one word – Yes.

I must state on the record that Snakes on a Plane wasn’t as good as I had hoped. I was expecting something a little more cheap and cheerful along the lines of Eight-Legged Freaks. I was expecting the characters to ham it up a lot more. I was expecting more throwaway dialogue and a few more in-jokes and spoofs of other films. But forgetting all of that, the film is still one hell of an entertaining way to spend one hundred and five minutes. To be fair there wasn’t really a lot that could go wrong with this premise, even if director David R. Ellis had completely messed it up. He was on a win/win either way which is a bit of a cop-out. All he had to do was make sure the right buttons were pressed and he does. There’s the obligatory character development before they all get on board the plane. It’s almost like placing a bet on a horse. You do a bit of research first, see how each horse has been performing and decide which horse you’re going to wager your money on. Here it’s no different. Each character is given a few minutes to emit something like a personality and all you have to do is decide who is going to survive. There’s the obnoxious businessman (doomed). There’s the soon-to-be-retiring air hostess (doomed). There’s the horny couple (doomed). There’s the secondary cop (doomed). There’s the young, pretty air hostess (safe). There’s a baby on board (safe as houses). You get the message. It’s good to see such an array of clichéd characters – normally I’d have a bitch about this but given the nature of the film, anything but cardboard cut-out characters would have been supremely disappointing.

It isn’t long before the snakes are released and get doing some serious damage. These pesky things slither everywhere: up toilets (in a scene which will no doubt have guys triple-checking the toilets before taking a leak), up trousers (giving a new meaning to the phrase ‘trouser snake’) and lurking around in sick bags too. The snakes don’t look too bad. You can tell which are real and which are CGI. I guess that’s another reason why to cheer the film – it doesn’t make any bones about not having the greatest effects in the world. It just gets on with them and says take it or leave it.

The dialogue is quality. You’ve got Samuel L. Jackson’s immortal line “Enough is enough! I’ve had it with these mother f*****g snakes on this mother f*****g plane!” which will go down as an all-time classic. But there’s plenty of other great one-liners including one where the lights on the plane go out, prompting an extra to shout “it’s the snakes!” at the top of their voice. A lot of other lines involve characters saying things like “get this f*****g snake off my (insert body part here)”

Samuel L. Jackson does seem to be trying a bit too hard to turn this into a cult flick though and it’s clear that he is leading from the front in trying to be too self-conscious. The rest of the cast don’t do that bad either. There’s a whole host of familiar names in there, although none really famous on the big screen (Julianna Margulies from E.R. is there, as is David Koechner from Anchorman and Kenan Thompson from Kenan & Kel). They add a bit of credibility to the characters they’re playing although anyone truly famous in the supporting roles would have just been wasted.

 

After all of the hype, Snakes on a Plane turns into a better-than-average horror thriller that doesn’t quite live up to it’s potential but certainly delivers a smack across the faces of those who doubted it at the beginning. It’s self-conscious, knows what it wants to be and also knows its own limitations of what it can’t be. It never pushes the boundaries of the genre too much which is what I was hoping for but it’s still a fun, entertaining way to waste some time with Samuel L. and a horde of pythons, boas and anacondas. Everything just blends together so well into a neat little package.

 

 ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 

 

 

Snakes on a Train (2006)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , September 28th, 2012 @ 3:49 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Peter Mervis

  • Writer: Eric Forsberg

  • Starring: A.J. Castro, Julia Ruiz, Giovanni Bejarano, Al Galvez

  • Run Time: 91 mins

Snakes on a Train (2008)

100 Trapped Passengers.. 3,000 Venomous Vipers!

A powerful zombie curse causes a young woman to be devoured from within by snakes. Her only chance for survival is the shaman uncle of her runaway lover and the two hop aboard a train destined for Los Angeles. Unfortunately for the rest of the passengers, the snakes hatch inside her and spread throughout the train.

 

The internet phenomena known as Snakes on a Plane conjured up such a whirlwind of interest that it was only a matter of time before some bright sparks came along and decided to spoof what was pretty much a spoof anyway. And it wasn’t going to take much to come up with the cheesiest title possible. Snakes on a Train probably took all of two minutes to think of. What’s next? Snakes on a Bus? The sheer stupidity of the title of the bigger budgeted flick is going to open the floodgates in the future for these type of names. I mean the original story didn’t exactly take ages to write did it – throw a bunch of snakes on board a plane with Samuel L. Jackson and you’re set. So it’s not like the writers here were going to try and top that with anything. And they don’t even try.

The problem here is that the over-simplified plot of Snakes on a Plane has been meddled with. Now there are Mayan curses to contend with, transformations and magic. It adds more stupidity to the film, especially when plenty of things happen out of left field simply because they have to in order to further the film. Guys: keep it simple and easy and you wouldn’t have that problem.

The bigger budgeted Snakes on a Plane (commonly known as SoaP) was simply a B-movie with a big budget and an A-list cast. That was pretty much the whole novelty value. So when you replace the big budget and A-List cast with no budget and Z-List cast, you’ve taken out anything that people would remotely want to watch your film for. The Asylum isn’t known for their high budgets and production values and it shows. The snakes look like Playstation sprites and the film has a grungy, handheld camera feel to it which cheapens everything. You never get the feeling that these people are on board a train. The sets are dimly lit and sparse. Only at the beginning and the end of the film is it based outdoors. You’re never even given a glimpse out of a window at the passing scenery. The train is grotty and I wouldn’t want to shell out my cash travelling on something that looks like it belongs in India (you know the sort of trains where hundreds of people clamber to hold onto the sides).

“100 passengers…3,000 venomous vipers!” goes the tag line. Exaggerations don’t come much bigger than this. I counted about ten people on board the train but at least there was a variety of stock characters with pointless subplots that go nowhere. There’s a bunch of illegal immigrants hiding on the train, a conductor with a ridiculous moustache, some stoner guys, a pair of hot chicks, a family, a rather seedy-looking cowboy and an even more sinister-looking Middle Eastern. They’re all given a brief few moments to talk about some subplot and gain minor character development before they’re put to the back burner. At least one of the hot chicks gives some much-needed gratuitous nudity in a rather pointless scene with an undercover cop.

But where are the damned snakes? There were no where near three-thousand vipers either. They were supposed to be rattlesnakes too! But since when did rattlers grow to about the length of a finger? These tiny pitiful snakes could be stood on, let alone considered a threat, and they remind me of those sweet snakes you can get in the shops. The snakes do get bigger as the film goes on but I want to see big snakes to begin with, not little jelly snakes. Completely underwhelming is the snake quota here. At least SoaP used plenty of CGI snakes to fill up the background to make it look like the plane was crawling. Here it looks like the outbreak is confined to one measly compartment.

The film is reasonably gory though which does add a little extra exploitation factor to proceedings. There is a heart ripping moment (pretty slick) and the snakes have an annoying habit of tunnelling into the wrists of their victims (quite a few gooey times I have to add). The finale beggars belief too with a giant snake and a magic necklace coming into play. It has to be seen to be believed.

 

Snakes on a Train is a terrible cash-in. It ditches the tongue-in-cheek stupidity and novelty value of Snakes on a Plane and tries to play it as straight as possible with devastatingly bad consequences. Low on budget, low on talent and definitely rock bottom on entertainment.

 

 ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Snakeman (2005)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , August 21st, 2012 @ 1:38 pm
  • AKA: The Snake King

  • Director: Allan A. Goldstein

  • Writer: Declan O'Brien, Ken Badish (story), Boaz Davidson (story), Allan A. Goldstein

  • Starring: Stephen Baldwin, Jayne Heitmeyer, Larry Day, Gary Hudson

  • Run Time: 96 mins

Snake Man (2005)

Pure venom.

An expedition to the Amazon discovers the remains of a man they later determine to be over 300 years old. A second expedition is sent down there to find out why he managed to live so long and to locate a remote tribe who may be his modern day ancestors in that hope that they may also possess this seemingly eternal youth. However the expedition is beset by problems and the helicopter crashes during a thunderstorm. Stranded in the jungle with little hope for escape, the expedition then comes across a giant multi-headed snake that the tribe worship as a God and protector of their secret. When the expedition begins to get closer to the secret, the snake god Naga begins to kill them off.

 

Don’t have any sympathy for me, please. I just can’t keep myself from watching such abominations as this. It’s like an addiction. Some guys get addicted to cocaine. Some are attracted by the lure of cheap hookers. For me, it’s an unhealthy obsession with watching as many monster flicks as possible within my lifespan. So is it any wonder I start to rant and rave once I’ve watched another turkey. It’s not like I’m surprised to find out that the film sucks. Like driving past a car crash, you can’t help but take a look and see what has happened. Well put a giant snake on the front of a DVD cover and that’s my car crash right there – I can’t help but look and either rent or buy.

A giant multi-headed snake would have been a kick ass monster had it been done properly. I keep saying multi-headed snake because depending on the scene, the snake has an indifferent number of heads and grows more throughout the course of the film. At one point it has three heads and then in the finale it has about eight or nine! It’s also THE SINGLE WORST SPECIAL EFFECT EVER. I mean I’ve seen some clunkers in my time but this CGI monster is the worst thing to crawl out of a computer since that annoying fat plumber Mario! Words can’t describe how utterly poop this monster is. Worst is to come during the attack scenes where the snake heads have to pick people up and start tearing them apart in mid-air. Again words can’t describe how bad these scenes are. You know, I’m just going to recommend this film to everyone just so that you can understand ‘words will fail you’ upon viewing this monstrosity. I’d rather we all be struck in silence than just me having to rant on here about how bad it is.

The snake has an ability to change shape and size at any given time, usually depending on the scene. Need it to tower about the tree line to show how huge it is? Right we’ll make it super-huge for this scene. Need the snake to hide in a small river? Cue the reduction on the computer. Or how about chasing some people in underground caves? You’ve got it, let’s make it lean and mean. Computers have a lot to answer for but surely anyone in their right mind would be able to pick these silly inconsistencies out during post-production? The snake is also rewarded with its own POV shots ala Predator with the camera simply having a lime green filter stuck over the top to make it look like the snake is zooming in on its kill.

The film blows when the snake is on the screen so spare a thought for the scenes in which the snake isn’t around! They’re unbelievably boring and dull. I guess they need a story to pad out around snake attacks so the whole tribal thing is mainly nonsense. The tribal leader speaks perfect English even though his tribe has never been in contact with humans. At least they can further the story by having each character communicate with each other with relative ease. The tribe mainly consists of white guys in fake tan or at least the guys with speaking parts. Everyone else looks like they live in the jungle.

Stephen Baldwin yawns his way through the film. If he’s the best ‘action man’ that they can get for these terrible films, then they’re really scraping the barrel. He was never a great actor to begin with an was always overshadowed by his brother Alec. But between this and Shark in Venice, he’s slowly turning into my nemesis! If I see his name on a future sci-fi horror, then I’ll be sure to skip it.

 

Snakeman is terrible. I’m actually glad that the CGI was rubbish because a decent multi-headed giant snake would deserve better than a low grade straight-to-TV movie. Alas that is not the case so the snake, Baldwin and the rest of the cast and crew deserve as low as mark as I can give.

 

 ★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent (2008)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , August 21st, 2012 @ 1:24 pm
  • AKA: Carniverous

  • Director: Amir Valinia

  • Writer: Jodie Jones, Evan Scott (screenplay)

  • Starring: DMX, Wes Brown, Louis Herthum, Lauren Fain

  • Run Time: 76 mins

Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent (2008)

Terror Unearthed

Sick and tired of his father beating him and his mother, young Adam stole an ancient stick from a voodoo priest and drew a picture of a snake-like creature biting the head off his father. Little did he realise that the monster would come to life and kill his father. Years later, Adam is now married. But when his wife is killed in a hit-and-run by five friends, he digs the stick back up and draws the monster again to take revenge.

 

The film is basically a rehash of Pumpkinhead, only with a different creature taking revenge for some misdeeds. The setup isn’t too bad in all honesty, especially if some innocent person is the victim of a tragic accident because at least there’s a character to sympathise with. Unfortunately this film has no clue about to handle that story and what we get is yet another really crappy low budget creature feature with a snake. CGI snakes are so oversaturated now and Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary.

There’s little in the way of proper script as some really stupid contrivances happen simply to further the plot. The most notable one being the fact that no one in the car realises they have just ploughed through a woman crossing the road despite the huge thud she makes off the bonnet. I mean at least have one of them realise, stop for a moment to get their act together and then just drive off in fear of what may happen if they are arrested. But they just drive on, blissfully unaware of the storm that is about to head their way. Is it a little harsh for the guy to wish revenge on them in light of this? It’s not like they knew what happened. They could have pleaded ignorance but I doubt that would have stopped the monster. If they had realised and stopped to help, would that have helped matters?

The rest of the film involves the characters doing typical teenage stuff (smoking, drinking, having sex, wandering off outside in the dark, etc) whilst the monster makes an occasional appearance to eat someone. The finale falls short of delivering anything although it’s not like the rest of the film promised a big pay-off. The CGI snake looks as crap as the rest of them. It’s funny that despite being one of the first films to feature a CGI snake back in 1999, Anaconda is still the daddy of the snake flicks. The rest of them, mainly from the Sci-Fi Channel, have featured appalling special effects. They should be getting better and more convincing over the years, not progressively worse. This snake has a big crocodile-like head which makes the whole thing look silly as opposed to scary. It’s not particularly well fed either which was a great disappointment. The attack scenes are typical of these snake flicks which means that the snake will rear up for a moment, pause and hiss, allow its victim to stare in horror for a moment before being swallowed whole. I much prefer people being chewed up, bitten or slowly constricted and attacks to last more than a brief moment. Milk the deaths, draw them out a bit to make the audience feel the pain of the victim and empathise with them in their moment of death.

DMX gets top billing but it’s almost a glorified cameo from him. Expect some gruff delivery, lots of weapon handling and some pretentious ‘bad ass’ dialogue from him and little else. The other actors are bland and just not really with it. Wanting them to get eaten is a blessing in disguise. You know a film has failed to deliver even the smallest mercies when the only worthwhile reason to watch is for the hot chick to get her top off – and when that fails to materialise, you know you’re in trouble.

 

Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent is one of the poorest Sci-Fi Channel features out there but when you’ve got company like Raptor Island, Warbirds and Lake Placid 2, then it’s not really hard to be any worse.

 

 ★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Mega Python Vs Gatoroid (2011)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , , August 15th, 2012 @ 11:41 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Mary Lambert

  • Writer: Naomi L. Selfman

  • Starring: Deborah Gibson, Tiffany, A Martinez, Kathryn Joosten

  • Run Time: 90 mins

Mega Python Vs Gatoroid (2011)

Screaming, Scratching, Biting… And that’s just THE GIRLS!

A nest of pythons is freed into the Florida Everglades by a group of animal rights activist. But these snakes soon grow larger than normal and begin killing off the local alligator population. Determined to stop the threat of the snakes and maintain the natural balance of the everglades, local park ranger Terry O’Hara hands out permits to allow hunters to shoot the pythons and keep their number down. When the ranger’s fiancé is killed by the snakes, she obtains an experimental serum, injects it into dead chickens and then starts feeding them to the gators to increase their size so that they can fend off the snakes. But with the pythons happy to eat gator eggs, the serum finds its way into their system too. Soon both the pythons and the gators are growing to gigantic size, threatening everyone.

 

It’s a ridiculous plot but barrel scraping springs to mind when I think of the two giant monsters that do battle in this one. Fresh from their antics with mega sharks, giant octopi and a crocosaurus, The Asylum are back for another contrived, unashamedly awful and ultimately pointless ‘versus’ film. In fact the title should be pluralised as there’s not just one mega python and gatoroid but a whole score of them on either side. It’s a clash between two genetically-enhanced reptilian armies and only two washed up 80s pop stars can save the day!

There’s little to differentiate Mega Python Vs Gatoroid from any other CGI-monster fest of late. The CGI gets worse as each new film is made and you’d get more bang for your buck out of a PC game. Not only do the snakes and gators look really fake, they recycle the same animations time after time. CGI blood is used. Human actors tangle with themselves as they wait for the computer guys to do their thing in post production. You know the score. CGI overkill has gone to the extreme in these low budget efforts and most of the time, effects seem to be implanted into the film simply for kicks when physical practical effects would have made more sense (such as the scene in which a guy is trapped underneath the dead body of a snake – watch as his hand glides through some poorly-rendered CGI when a rubber prop would have been much more believable). A slew of minor characters are fed to the monsters and the repetitive nature of each death only adds to the tedium.

Remember when the shark in Jaws only killed a handful of people? Or Michael Myers killed four people on-screen in Halloween? Less was more and you always felt more threatened. Now it’s just a race to get as many people eaten in as little time possible. Surprisingly enough, I was going to comment on the DVD cover which shows a city being destroyed by giant monsters. Unlike the other CGI monster versus films of late, Mega Python Vs Gatoroid actually does contain footage of a city being attacked by the monsters. It’s literally only a minutes worth of screen time but at least it shows them doing a little bit of damage to Miami. There is also an in-joke thrown here somewhere as one of the monsters takes out a blimp with The Asylum written on the side – it’s probably the highlight of the film in an amusing way.

Hold up though! Giant monsters beware because on hand to save humanity are a pair of 80s pop stars. Deborah Gibson and Tiffany, both teen idols in the 80s, each takes the side of one of the monsters and thus the film turns into some sort of bizarre tag team match with Gibson protective of her snakes and Tiffany desperately trying to help the gators. They both try and one-up each other which leads to the eventual catfight between the two and then realise that they need to stop their bickering and join forces to stop both sets of monsters from running wild. Dialogue throughout the film references both of their singing careers which will either leave you cringing if you know the words or completely in the dark if you’ve never heard of them before. But in a film where the actors should be winking at the camera at the silliness of it all, they play it straight. The tongue-in-cheek catfight between the two is arguably the highlight of the film, rather pitiful when you consider it’s supposed to be some giant monsters duking it out.

The scene resembles everything that the movie should have been – silly, daft and with a knowing sense of humour. Instead, it feels like an isolated scene. When all is said and done, it’s nice to see two older women playing the lead roles in a film like this instead of your typical twenty-somethings. And in a film that is scattered with moments of oversized CGI monsters, it’s sad that the biggest things on display are Tiffany’s silicone-enhanced breasts which attempt to escape her top at every opportunity. Just when things couldn’t get any more bizarre, there’s a really random cameo from Mickey Dolenz, formerly of The Monkees. See, the film doesn’t just cater for the 80s market but the 60s market too!

 

Mega Python Vs Gatoroid is yet another awful CGI monster mash-up which scrapes the bottom of the barrel for scraps left behind after the recent onslaught of rubbish ‘versus’ films. The sight of former pop stars Tiffany and Deborah Gibson (who apparently had a real life rivalry back when they were in the limelight) taking each other on and then teaming up may have some appeal to former fans of their music but for any lovers of monster movies, stay well clear of this mess.

 

 ★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Anaconda 4: Trail of Blood (2009)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , August 15th, 2012 @ 11:16 am
  • AKA:

  • Director: Don E. FauntLeRoy

  • Writer: David C. Olson

  • Starring: Crystal Allen, Calin Stanciu, Linden Ashby, Danny Midwinter

  • Run Time: 85 mins

Anaconda 4: Trail of Blood (2009)

Bigger, Faster, Hungrier

Determined to make amends for her previous mistakes, Amanda heads into the Carpathian Mountains to destroy the research of a fellow scientist who has been trying to create an anti-aging formula using the Blood Orchids. However once again the experimental anacondas that he was modifying with the Blood Orchid escape into the mountains and begin to cause carnage.

 

The third sequel to Anaconda takes a dramatic nosedive for the worst (if at all possible) even after the dreadful mess that was Anaconda 3: The Offspring. Why? Well it’s sad to say it but this film really needed David Hasselhoff. He gave the previous sequel a little cheesy edge whereas this one just goes straight for the generic killer snake formula. If you’ve seen one killer snake film then you’ve seen them all and this one is no exception. See, the memorable thing about the last one was that it had The Hoff in it – whether that’s good or bad is irrelevant but at least I remember it. However this one is no different to the likes of Boa Vs Python or Python 2 in which stock characters run around the woods for a lot of the running time.

I’m really struggling for comments to make on this one in all honesty. It’s just so bland. It’s just so ‘meh’ that it pains me to even think I bought this (and promptly re-sold after watching). At least the original two films were set in the jungle where you had rivers, canyons and the sweltering heat. They gave some credibility to the notion that these giant anacondas were living in remote parts of the Amazonian rainforest. But here the snakes are just set loose in someone’s back woods. You know the sort where college kids go to make their first zombie movie. This film finally pushed me over the boundaries of tolerance towards the continual use of filming in Eastern European countries. Fair enough it’s all well and good to shoot in these places. But I’m just sick of seeing rubbish Romanian or Bulgarian two-bit actors clogging up most of the supporting roles in this type of film. Their accents are usually thick and heavy and they’ve got as much charisma as a wet paper bag filled with dog turds. I’m sick of seeing the same setting for every one of the Sci-Fi Channel’s monster movies. These European woods aren’t the scariest places to be lost in and they all blur into one.

The snakes look as bad as ever. This time not only do they constantly change their size but they seemingly smile at the camera! The attack scenes are animated terribly and the gore is all CGI once more. I never realised that snakes usually bite the heads off their victims first – whatever happened to the coiling, the crushing and the slow digestion that Jon Voight’s character suffered in the first one? Once again the snakes have had a stealth gene inserted into their DNA which means they can sneak up on anyone, hang from trees or move through bushes and wooded areas without making a sound. Their appearance is nice and shiny and they don’t create shadows, trails on the floor or give any indications that they were actually there. It’s a wonder the humans actually manage to kill them in the end!

Crystal Allen reprises her role as Amanda from the previous film and yet again does the ‘cute scientist in a tank top’ role to perfection but you’ll buy her as a scientist as much as I ever bought Gordon Brown as a Prime Minister. John Rhys-Davies turns up again to get paid. Maybe he enjoys these low budget shindigs? And the rest of the cast is filled with Romanian wannabe actors with really bad accents and all clearly auditioning to be the next bad guy in a Steven Seagal flick.

 

Anaconda 4: Trail of Blood is so bad that I can’t even think of a decent summary. It’s just a nothing flick which could easily be any other snake film with the Anaconda mantra slapped on to trick people into thinking that it’s a sequel of sorts. It’s demonstrative of the Sci-Fi Channel’s sloppy and generally poor attitude to making even average films any more.

 

 ★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Anaconda 3: Offspring (2008)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , August 15th, 2012 @ 11:12 am
  • AKA:

  • Director: Don E. FauntLeRoy

  • Writer: Nicholas Davidoff, David C. Olson

  • Starring: Crystal Allen, David Hasselhoff, Ryan McCluskey, Patrick Regis

  • Run Time: 96 mins

Anaconda III: Offspring (2008)

They can smell your fear

In a secret research facility, two giant snakes are being bred by a brilliant scientist. But when the wealthy financier behind the experiments pushes the snakes too far, they escape from the facility, hungry, heading for civilisation and expecting a litter. Ruthless snake hunter and mercenary, Hammett, is hired to track the snakes down before it’s too late.

 

The second sequel to the modestly successful (and let’s face it, mildly entertaining) Anaconda sees The Hoff himself, David Hasselhoff, pitted against a deadly CGI snake duo. It’s a major comedown after watching Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube and Jon Voight tussle with the snake back in 1997 but eleven years later, who really cares? The film series has been confined to the straight-to-TV basement bin and rightfully so. It’s not like we haven’t seen this thing recently (Python, King Cobra, er…Boa Vs Python, etc) and there’s only so much originality a giant snake flick can have. The Sci-Fi Channel has resurrected this series for financial gain as it has nothing to do with the earlier two films and could have been just another snake film had it not been slapped with the Anaconda moniker. Damn them and their endless supply of cheap killer animal flicks!

The film follows the standard ‘killer animal escapes remote science lab’ plot to the wire. We’re shown the security measures at the facility, only for them to be broken moments later. We’re shown plenty of security guards and personnel standing around in non-speaking parts only to be fed to the creatures when they escape. We are told plenty of facts about the snakes to make them appear more threatening and intelligent than they really are. Then as soon as the snakes are free we’re given numerous token characters to throw into danger. If you’ve seen one of these killer snake films, then you’ve seen them all. And if you haven’t seen one, then please don’t start!

The snakes look really bad. It’s almost as though CGI is getting progressively worse when it should be getting better. The snakes stick out like a sore thumb from the undergrowth they are supposed to be hiding it. Weather, lighting and natural conditions seem to have no affect on these snakes as they are exactly the same colour and shape every time you see them – sort of like a shiny piece of piping. They can strike from anywhere without the slightest rustle of a bush or breaking or a branch. This flick also has the unfortunate tendency to use CGI gore effects instead of a bit of make-up and corn syrup. I guess that has something to do with the snakes deciding to bite people’s heads off instead of crushing them to death, like anacondas are supposed to do. It does manage to eat a few people whole including an unlucky farmer who goes into his barn to investigate a noise, knocks himself out cold and then wakes up to find himself half in the snake’s mouth.

Whether you love him or hate him, Hasselhoff does have a massive fan base and its cheesy films like this that cement his ultimate B-grade celebrity status. He’s not the greatest actor alive but he’s entertaining enough in his roles be it charming the pants off a hot chick or trading punches with someone. Surprisingly, he’s not actually that bad here and his whole persona fits the mercenary role of Hammett to a tee. He hams it up and overacts but why not? He knows the film is just a pay cheque and at least it gives the viewer a few chuckles and cringes along the way. He doesn’t have a lot to do in the film though so it’s a criminal waste of his ‘talents.’

John Rhys-Davies has a small role as the financier who causes the snakes to escape. He could have played the role in his sleep such is its complexity. All he needs to do is remind everyone of how much money the project is costing, that he wants results and that he wants everything covered up when the snakes get out. I keep forgetting that he was Gimli in the Lord of the Rings trilogy so why the hell he’s returned to these cheap schlock sci-fi horrors is beyond me. Crystal Allen does her ‘hot blonde scientist in a tight white tank top’ thing to perfection which had me hooked. It’s a pity that the film just wastes her character with sloppy interaction with Hasselhoff’s mercenary.

 

Even giant snakes know not to Hassle the Hoff. It’s a sad state of affairs to claim that the Hoff is the best part of your film but that’s the only claim to fame that Anaconda 3: The Offspring is going to get. It’s arguably one of the Sci-Fi Channel’s better killer monster flicks but that’s like saying you’d rather kiss a turd than drink wee. Either way you’re screwed.

 

 ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

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