When Nature Attacks! – Missile Test

October Horrorshow: Alligator

If one is going to do a Jaws ripoff, this is how it should be done — with tongue planted firmly in cheek, and none of the dour mood that pervades a film like Orca.

Directed by Lewis Teague from a screenplay by the immortal John Sayles, Alligator tells the tale of a mutated alligator that lives in the sewers of Chicago and likes to munch on any hapless person who wanders by.

Following a popular urban legend of the day, a young girl receives a baby alligator as a souvenir from a trip to an alligator farm in Florida and, after the family returns home to Chicago, it is unceremoniously flushed down the toilet, landing unharmed, and probably quite annoyed, in the city sewers. Fast-forward to many years later, and the baby gator is now all grown up, and then some. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Alligator”

October Horrorshow: Shakma

Movies like Shakma are a dime a dozen. Cheap, throwaway horror flicks featuring vapid characters played by talent barely holding on to their careers in Hollywood, and maybe an aging star or two. The screenplay looks as if it was less than twenty pages long, sets are plain and repetitive, and what little gore there is must have been a strain on the miniscule budget. Everything about this movie screams cheapness and lack of effort. Everything, that is, except for one of the wildest creatures ever to appear in a horror flick.

In Shakma, from directors Hugh Parks and Tom Logan, filming a screenplay from Roger Engle, Typhoon the baboon plays the title character, a research monkey at some medical school, somewhere. Shakma has been injected with a serum that has turned him into a crazed killing machine, and that’s bad for a small group of med students and their professor, who have chosen that evening to lock up the medical school for a fun night of LARPing. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Shakma”

It Came from the Camcorder: Psycho Pike

From our friends and neighbors in the Great White North comes Psycho Pike, the 1992 SOV eco-horror/ black comedy flick featuring a mutated fish capable of decapitating unwary anglers.

Brought to life by writer and director Chris Poschun, Psycho Pike follows four college students who travel to remote Lake Shippagew somewhere in the wilds north of Toronto for a weekend getaway. They are: couple Tim and Dara (Wayne McNamara and Sarah Campbell) and couple Reg and Rhonda (Douglas Kidd and Dawn Kelly). To add some personal drama, Tim and Reg are best friends, and Rhonda used to be Tim’s steady girlfriend, breaking up with him so she could hook up with Reg. That drama isn’t necessary to the plot, but something had to fill the spaces between the killer fish doing its thing, and infidelity is as good a device as any other. Continue reading “It Came from the Camcorder: Psycho Pike”

October Horrorshow: Boa, aka New Alcatraz

Behold! Another early 21^st 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 reading “October Horrorshow: Boa, aka New Alcatraz”

October Horrorshow: Boar

I love a bloody, gory horror flick. Especially one with a monster that oozes and drips foul disgustingness. Not every day, mind you, but no October is complete without a film that makes a mess out of its cast.

Boar, the 2017 horror flick from Australia, did very well scratching that bizarre itch. My biggest criticism is that, although it delivered the nasty goods, it was kind of a bummer. A film where half the cast is brutally killed, a bummer? Who would have thought, right? But, if horror flicks weren’t a good time, for the most part, they wouldn’t be so prevalent and so profitable. Maybe we viewers are just diseased. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Boar”

October Horrorshow: Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid

So, how does a production company follow up a financially successful creature feature that surprised audiences and critics alike with its absurd watchability? By doing it all over again, but with less than half the budget. It’s almost criminal.

Anaconda, the 1997 giant snake flick starring future superstar Jennifer Lopez, ranks very high in the Shitty Movie Sundays Watchability Index. It was shocking how so stupid a movie ended up being so entertaining. It was also something of a surprise that it took another seven years for there to be a sequel, as Hollywood is not known for passing up free money. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Venomous

What 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 reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Venomous”

October Horrorshow: Slugs

What a putrid mess of a movie. Slugs is one of those shitty movies New World Pictures banged out that had little to no regard for the intelligence or attention spans of its audience. It looks rushed, feels rushed, and even sounds rushed. But, it’s got a lot of blood, so it has that going for it.

From 1988, Slugs is an American/Spanish collaboration. At the time, shitty Spanish cinema was mimicking shitty Italian cinema, making this production feel like an amalgamation of bad American and Italian horror. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Slugs”

October Horrorshow: Crawl, or Go Gators!

Before today, I never once considered what it would be like to be trapped in a basement crawlspace with ravenous alligators during a category 5 hurricane. Now, I know. It’s pretty scary.

That’s the setting for Crawl, the creature feature from earlier this year from screenwriters Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, and director Alexandre Aja.

The film follows Kaya Scoladerio as Haley, a swimmer at the University of Florida. A hurricane is bearing down on the area, but neither she, nor her sister up in Boston, have been able to get ahold of their father, Dave (Barry Pepper). There’s some family drama and token sappiness involving Haley and her father, but regardless, Haley decides to head down to the family homestead to check on the old man and make sure he’s still alive. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Crawl, or Go Gators!”

October Horrorshow: Frogs

Frogs, the 1972 environmental horror flick from screenwriters Robert Hutchison and Robert Blees, and director George McCowan, has a misleading title. There are indeed frogs in Frogs, and they do indeed pose a menace to the characters in the film, but there are also plenty of toads, snakes, geckos, iguanas, tarantulas, scorpions, and other creepy-crawlies lurking about. The title Frogs gives short shrift to all the other swamp beasties that make an effort to murder the film’s protagonists.

Sam Elliott, in an early role, stars as Pickett Smith, a freelance photographer taking pictures of the effects of pollution and littering in a swampland environment. It’s not pretty, as Smith finds civilizational detritus everywhere he looks. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Frogs”