Syfy Orgy.

I do have a certain fetish for Syfy originals or movies that have their premiere on the channel. They're easy to get into and most of the time far from boring as long as you know what you are getting yourself into. The last few weeks I've been home looking after our newborn daughter and what better to do with my miniscule spare time than to watch movies like this? So here goes, the latest batch:

Sharknado (2013)

 

Seriously, if you go into this expecting a good movie then you have only yourself to blame. But if you are in the mood for silly cheese, Sharknado delivers most of the time. It is a cheap movie about tornadoes full of sharks, come on. How the hell did John Heard end up in a movie like this?!?!

Dark Island (2010)

 

Not sure if this is a Syfy premiere but it sure as hell feels like one as we follow a group of people on an abandoned island being infected by a black mist, very Syfy. Story is intriguing, sfx are better than I expected but the characters are weak and the actors so-so. A decent view.

Mandrake (2010)

 

Not bad horror about a giant walking plantcreature in the jungle (shot in Louisiana). A decent script, minor gore and better than average special effects make this a decent watch, though I would have liked even more creature and less of an adventuremovie. And Betsy Russel sure as hell has aged well.

Arachnoquake (2012)

 

Yes, the sfx are subpar and the tone of the movie is a bit too silly but then again is kinda hard to hate a movie with such an awesome title and one that features firebreathing spiders. Pretty good as these movies go.

Shark week (2012)

 

I usually have a lot of tolerance for Asylum movies but this one is truly truly awful. Listen to the plot: a group of people are kidnapped by a drugbaron and told that they will be given their freedom if they survive a number of encounters with different sharks (which usually means that they will go into a partially flooded cave and flap around while someone in the fx-department later adds a poorly lit cgishark). And thats about it. The dialogue is as awful as the actors (though Patrick Bergin and Yancy Butler seem to have some fun spouting their strange lines). Just mindnumbingly dull and about 90 minutes too long.

And now I feel like I have to watch something with a brain. Shark week almost killed me.

The Colony (2013)

In a setup straight out of a Syfy original, the last remnant of humanity are hiding in bunkers underground after global warming combined with weather tinkering has caused Earth to freeze. Their existence is harsh and a simple flu can have devastating consequences. When they receive an S.O.S from a colony a days journey away a rescue party is sent out, only to find out that everyone is dead. Murdered. Ensue some bloodletting.

When a movie with a very simple plot has four writers you know something is wrong and my expectations were pretty damn low but this scifi/horror hybrid about wasn't that bad, just a bit cliched. There is only going from plot point A to plot point B and so on, without us ever really caring about any of the cast. When things do get going it is actually fairly entertaining and there is even a bit of gore. The plot is simple to the extreme, the characters thin as that wafer in Monty Pythons Meaning of life but sometimes you need a movie like that. Think of it as a Syfy original with a slightly larger budget. And Bill Paxton playing an asshole.

The Colony is a so so movie with just about enough entertainment to keep you satisfied to the end and although I don't really think I would recommend it to anyone other than a few people in in circle of friends that appreciate movies like this, I still don't regret actually buying it.

The Slaughter (2006)

Ok, stop me if you've heard this story before.

A group of EXTREMELY annoying youths arrive at an old house with the purpose of fixing it up in order to sell it. They moan and whine and behave like immature assholes (come on, the guy who spouts crap about the conformist society who bends to the whims of capitalism is quite possibly the most annoying character EVER! And he is one of the leads!). Soon they find a book in the basement, stuff is read from it and something evil is unleashed.

To the credit of the filmmakers, The Slaughter looks quite good for what was obviously a very low budget movie. The location is used well and the camerawork nicely atmospheric. We also get some cheesy nudity and a bit of nasty gore. Unfortunately all of this is destroyed by a really horrible script and a lot of overacting. The Slaughter has a script that wants to be a huge wink to the genre fans, there is a lot of very cheesy dialogue that feels like leftovers from a Scream sequel and none of it works.The actors try their hardest but it just doesn't work and the movie becomes more and more of a chore to watch the further you get.

I suppose I might be a bit harsh on the Slaughter, if this was an 80s movie i had just discovered on a rip from a vhstape then I would be a lot more forgiving. And to tell you the truth, I have seen a lot worse movies. But in the end, this is just a big wasted Meh. You'd do a lot better watching director Jay Lees Zombie strippers instead, the winking there works a lot better.

War of the worlds the true story

 

War of the worlds the true story has a fun concept that easily could have dragged it to the bottom of bad movie hell, staging the "true" story of the Martian invasion of Earth in the early 1900:s. Claiming to contain actual, previously classified footage along with newly shot reenactments, WOTWTTS has the aura of a History channel documentary and it actually works reasonably well. We've seen/read/listened to the story before and it is actually a fairly close adaption of the original novel as I remember it with the exception of adding a long interview segment with the last living witness of the events. Earth is pummeled by strange cylinder from Mars that open up and bring forth death in the shape of giant tripods with deadly heat-rays that incinerate everything living. Classic stuff indeed.

 

The mixing of newly shot footage along with a ton of archival stuff (they threw in everything and the kitchen sink, we get some pretty recognizable clips from movies) with added heatrays and destruction never actually gels that well, it is fairly obvious what scenes are new. The filmmakers tried their best on a limited budget but degrading digital video so that it is supposed to look a hundred years old is a really hard thing to accomplish and I would go so far as to say that this is a fail. But, and here comes the money shot, it never matters. WOTWTTS is edited like everyone is on cocaine, breakneck is the understatement of the year. The screen is constantly filled with mayhem, destruction and those scrumptious tripods...

I make no secret that I am a big fan of Steven Spielbergs 2005 version. It has a couple of significant flaws such as an overschmaltzy story and Dakota fucking Fanning - the most annoying character ever in a movie but in return we get the tripods that are truly some of the most awesome scifimoviecreations ever. WOTWTTS damn near equals that movie on a budget that probably wouldn't pay for Tom Cruises coffee. Seriously, Timothy Hines and his crew has achieved near perfection in these scenes using only models and it works wonders, I just kept grinning like a six year old watching Godzilla for the first time.

Not everything works of course. Like I mentioned earlier, the "new" footage isn't integrated that well and the whole movie is based around the interview footage which is supposed to be shot in the sixties but just looks like what it is, new digital footage with some pretty halfassed fake degrading. A lot of the actors (most of the smaller roles) aren't particulary good and the english accents are most of the time just awful. But none of this really matters. Those tripods win me over.

Not a perfect movie by any means, WOTWTTS is a triumph in execution. It just works that well and although the first ten-fifteen minutes of the movie might be a bit hokey, as soon as you see the first Martian crawling out of the cylinder and their tentacles picking up puny humans to destroy, you are hooked. Maybe the movie really is awful? I don't know. I just know that I love those tripods.

You can buy this little gem here.

Blood salvage (1990)

 

I have a very vague memory of seeing pictures from Tucker Johnstons quirky little movie in what I believe to be an issue of Fangoria, pictures that promised quite a bit of gore, and after watching the movie I feel kind of cheated as the premise is quite fun and could have been turned into a lurid little exploitation movie. Now, I don't really know if this is true, the memory lane is a hazy and vague place so correct me if I'm wrong. I might be confusing this with a totally different movie. Anyway, Blood salvage does not really suffer from this, it is still a fun little movie that just feels a bit too tame for being R-Rated.

The story is simple, we've seen it a LOT in the last twenty years. John Saxon and his family runs into a group of bibletoting rednecks that cause roadaccidents in order to harvest the organs of the victims and the patriarch of the salvaging rednecks decides that curing Saxons daughter of her paralysis is next on the agenda all while cutting open the rest of her family. Ray Walston even pops up in a nervous cameo as a shady guy buying all of these livers and kidneys and whatever.

Tucker Johnston really made a movie that could be considered somewhat of a minor cult "classic", the story is fun and servicably executed and it is a hoot to watch Daniel Nelson spout religious gargles as he removes stuff from living people. Most of the actors does tend to overact a bit, especially the two redneck brothers but it kinda fits the joke of it all. I just wish that it would have been a bit nastier, the scenes in the barn where the Pruitts have quite a large group of "patients" nailed to the walls, only barely alive so that they can be slowly cut to pieces, would have benefited from some grue and kept the movie in peoples minds for many years to come but I guess we can't have everything. A fun watch that might be hard to track down, it is not available on dvd and I sure as hell wouldn't mind a nice dvd/blu with cool extras.

And am I confusing this with another movie? Were there gory pictures from this in Fangoria or is my mind playing tricks on me?

The Frankenstein theory (2013)

 

Andrew Weiners Found footage/mockumentary might be dismissed by a lot of people as another movie coming late in a dying genre. Let's face it, there are quite a few really bad movies where the filmmakers have watched Blair witch project and constructed a lame story about morons running around in the woods. The Frankenstein theory on the other hand, while not breaking any new ground, actually has a lot of thing that speak in its favour.

First of all, the story is quite interesting, claiming that Mary Shelleys Frankenstein was a work of non-fiction, based on an event that actually took place. We follow Professor John Venkenheim who is the subject of a documentary while his academical and personal lives are falling apart. You see, he has quite an odd theory that he wants to prove, that Frankensteins monster was an actual creature - a triumph/catastrophic failure of very early genetics and that it is still out there roaming the wastes of the Arctic circle, killing to stay hidden from humanity. Haunted by the fact that it was his own family that spawned the creature he decides to find it, no matter the cost and takes the cameracrew in the the arctic wilds of Canada. Of course, things go wrong.

Another of the movie's strength is the fact that it does look like a real documentary, the camerawork is professional, the wobbling camera is kept to a minimum and all the characters (a lot less annoying than the usual assholes that run around in the woods chasing spooks) are played by decent actors. The snowy landscape is an excellent setting (I want more snowhorrors goddamnit!).

The Frankenstein theory is a decent enough Found footage film that isn't you run of the mill crapfest, if you like the genre you might possibly be enjoyed by this. It does have one quite substantial flaw (and this will get slightly SPOILERish) and that is the fact that is doesnt really go anywhere with its interesting story. They travel to the wilderness and encounter some strange going ons and while it is still entertaining and somewhat creepy, it ends up fairly cliched. Just another Boogeyman. It doesn't kill the movie, just makes you yearn for what could have been. (END SPOILERishness).

In the end The Frankenstein theory is an above average Found footage movie (Believe me, I have seen much worse) and I'd advise you to check it out. It won't rock your world but you will be reasonably entertained.

Stranded (2013)

 

I actually preordered this movie just from reading the plot, I am that much of a sucker for scifi/horrors. I mean, come on. Meteorite crashes on moonbase, bringing spores that infect a woman that goes instantly pregnant and within 24 hours gives birth to a humanoid thingie with a predator-ish mandible mouth. I did not go on Imdb to read reviews or look it up online, I had to have it. It was as simple as that. Roger Christian, the director, will always live in infamy because of him being responsible for Battlefield Earth but we have to remember that he also directed The Sender, a very underrated little chiller back in the early days of his career.

Stranded is quite a timeless movie, it doesn't have any clothes or technology that specifically places it in a particular time and it uses miniatures instead of CGI. It could easily have been set in the 80s or the 2000s. In fact, the only thing that actually tells us that we are watching a movie made in 2013 is the fact that Christian Slater is getting "older-ish" (That man has aged well, that's for sure). It feels like it could have been a Roger Corman production, released by either New World or Concorde. The story is straight out of a fifties scifi movie and gets in gear without any real character setup, the meteorites start smashing the half-decent models right after the credits and moves on at a good pace introducing the ways of the creature right up until the cliched ending. It doesn't try to break any new ground whatsoever and works fine just because of that. Sure, the actors are bland (mostly because of the weak characters) and the movie could have gone for a bit more of the ole' gross-factor but the important thing is that you never have the chance to be bored. It won't be remembered as a cult classic in the years to come but I sure as hell don't regret buying it. It's no Forbidden world but you could do much worse.