October Horrorshow: Boa, aka New Alcatraz

Behold! Another early 21st century bag of shit from producer T.J. Sakasegawa and actor Dean Cain. This isn’t to say they were a team, working together to conceive, execute, and then release these dogs on the public. There were many more people involved, but in the early 2000s, if one of these men was on a project, then, more than likely, so was the other.

Boa, a direct-to-video sci-fi/horror flick also released as New Alcatraz, comes to us via director Phillip J. Roth and screenwriter Terri Neish, with Roth also getting a story credit. It tells the tale of a gigantic snake terrorizing guards and prisoners at a secret prison in the Antarctic. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Boa, aka New Alcatraz”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Venomous

VenomousWhat a disappointing movie. With a title like Venomous and a poster featuring a giant snake’s head on the attack, I was expecting this direct-to-video cheapie to be a ripoff of Anaconda. Instead, it’s a ripoff of Outbreak. All the epidemiological plot points are there, and every character has an analogue. But, Treat Williams is no Dustin Hoffman, Mary Page Keller is no Rene Russo, Hannes Jaenicke is no Kevin Spacey (are we allowed to like his acting again, yet?), and Geoff Pierson is no frickin’ Morgan Freeman.

From way back in 2001, Venomous is the story of a viral outbreak in the small town of Santa Mira Springs, California, played by the Blue Cloud Movie Ranch. The virus in question is a bio-engineered disease that the US government introduced into rattlesnakes. After a terrorist attack on the lab during an introductory scene, the snakes escape into the wild. That would be that, except that a series of earthquakes in Santa Mira have caused the snakes to flee from their underground hiding places. Townsfolk are bitten, and it is discovered that antivenin isn’t saving their lives. A closer look at the blood of the victims reveals the presence of the virus. That’s when this thing becomes an Outbreak ripoff. Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Venomous”

October Horrorshow: Jason X

Jason XIt’s Friday the 13th! In October! Missile Test couldn’t possibly let the day go by without watching a Friday the 13th flick, and this one is a doozy. By 2001, the original Friday the 13th franchise was on its last legs. The producers, recognizing that the old formula had been ground into dust by overuse, decided to shake things up. And by shake things up, I mean they all contracted serious cases of the awfuckits and sent their franchise property into space. That’s right, no more summer camp and no more Crystal Lake. This film takes place in outer space…in the future. Hell yeah.

Jason X, from writer Todd Farmer and director James Isaac, is the tenth film in the Friday the 13th franchise. It’s the second to ditch the Friday the 13th moniker, after 1993’s Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. When a film franchise forgoes using its title — the most significant brand that it has — a viewer can tell that things haven’t been going so well lately. The Friday the 13th flicks were always moneymakers, but the return on investment had been going down with every film, and the franchise had earned an unsavory reputation for being cheap, exploitative schlock. Clearly the only thing to do was to double down. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Jason X”

October Horrorshow: Ghosts of Mars

Ghosts of Mars movie posterJohn Carpenter is one of my favorite directors. He’s not on the Mount Rushmore of filmmakers, but his best films can be thought of as eminently watchable. They are respected. They are known and successful enough that a lot have been remade. But he also has some films that are not so good. It would be easy to blame Carpenter’s poorer quality films on budget, but that does not compute. Carpenter worked magic with the measly budgets he had in Halloween and Escape from New York. Rather, something happened in the late 1980s, starting with Prince of Darkness in 1987, that precipitated a steady decline. There were still sparks of life in his films, but that eminently watchable quality of his films seemed to fly away. In its place was substituted cheapness, sometimes of rank quality, and this turn was inexplicable from a filmmaker who had done so much with so little throughout his career.

I knew Ghosts of Mars was going to be trouble before the opening credits. Viewers are treated to a voiceover explaining the situation on Mars in the 22nd century, while at the same time captions flash on the screen providing even more information. It’s a jumble of sci-fi exposition, and the lack of care taken in this introduction is not a good sign. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Ghosts of Mars”

Stallone Month: Driven

Driven movie posterWhat a putrid, rotten mess of a movie. I was really hoping before I sat down to watch this movie for Stallone Month that it was not as bad as I remembered — that time had distorted what I recalled being one of the worst films I have ever seen. As it turned out, this memory was a reliable one. I hate this movie. I haven’t hated a movie this much since I reviewed Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave. In fact, this movie joins the short list of films I absolutely despise.

Driven, from 2001, was a passion project from Sylvester Stallone. Apparently he had been doing extensive research on the sport of motor racing while working on draft after draft of this film’s screenplay, and I can’t see any evidence of that. There are objects in this film that resemble racecars and people dressed up as racecar drivers, but that is where similarities with the actual sport end. Sly took the look and feel of a sport and jettisoned all else in order to shove it into a stupid and flimsy narrative. Oh, and lest Sly take all the blame, this flick was directed by Renny Harlin, and features some staggeringly inept performances from Sly, Burt Reynolds, Gina Gershon, and someone named Kip Pardue. Continue readingStallone Month: Driven”

The Empty Balcony: Black Hawk Down

Black Hawk Down is perhaps the simplest movie I’ve ever viewed, and also the most complicated. The United States intervention in Somalia is a footnote in America’s foreign policy history, but it is quite weighted, to the point that a student of recent American politics ignores it at their own peril. The initial American operation in Somalia, Operation Provide Relief, part of UNOSOM I (United Nations Operation in Somalia I), began in August 1992 as a response to the massive amount of killing and humanitarian suffering throughout the country. It was followed by UNITAF (Unified Task Force), also known as Operation Restore Hope, which lasted from December 1992 to May 1993. During that time, the United States suffered 43 killed and 143 wounded, but was able to increase the security of much of the country. After the mission ended, however, the peace did not last, as the warlords reasserted their control and chaos took hold once again. This led to UNOSOM II, Operation Gothic Serpent, and ultimately to the Battle of Mogadishu. Continue readingThe Empty Balcony: Black Hawk Down”