Tremors: Shrieker Island (2020) – Review

What can you bring to the seventh film in a franchise that fans haven’t seen before? This was the problem facing the producers of the latest Tremors movie, a series that had been direct-to-video since practically the beginning, and their solution was “Let’s try and rip-off The Most Dangerous Game only instead of unsuspecting humans being hunted it will be genetically modified Graboids.”

In this Tremors installment, we find that a tech-billionaire named Bill (Richard Brake) has set up a unique hunting preserve on a private island off the coast of Taiwan for him and his rich buddies, where he has genetically altered the Graboids so that they are stronger and smarter because, apparently, an armoured burrowing monster wasn’t enough of a challenge. Helping him guide this bunch of weekend warriors – idiots from Wall Street and Silicon Valley – is his best hunter Anna (Cassie Clare), and just how good is she?  Well, she is shown as being an incredible badass with bow and arrow, which is cool, everyone loves Robin Hood, but I do question the idea that this is the best choice of weapon when your prey has an armoured exoskeleton.

 

Lara Croft vs. Graboid, where would you put your money?

Over on the mainland we have Dr. Jasmine 'Jas' Welker (Caroline Langrishe) and colleague Jimmy (Jon Heder) who work on a research site with a group of interns that are doing sciencey type stuff – don’t worry what kind of science it’s not important – but when they start experiencing unnatural seismic vibrations Jas decides to boat on over to Bill’s “No Trespassers” island to investigate. Needless to say, things don’t go well and one of her employees is eaten by a Shrieker – the second stage of the Graboid life cycle stage which has legs and a nasty acoustic attack – and so she sends Jimmy to track down the world’s greatest Graboid hunter, Burt Gummer (Michael Gross).

 

Was Michael Gross secretly auditioning for Cast Away 2?

What makes little to no sense is sending for Burt Gummer, the poster boy for the NRA, to hunt Graboids but then don’t bother to tell him you have no actual guns for him to use. He’s shown an old WWII bunker that contains some machetes, a couple of flamethrowers and old sweaty cases of dynamite, with the last item being about the only thing remotely capable of hurting a Graboid, but Burt doesn’t lose his gung ho attitude and storm off in a huff, because…I got nothing, this is about the stupidest plot contrivance this series has posited yet. On the plus side, we do get Michael Gross tossing off such fun one-liners as “That ass clown is a skid mark on our collective underwear” which can at least distract us a bit from the idiocy of the film’s plot.

 

The idiocy of the plot is only matched by the idiotic characters within.

Stray Observations:

• A small Shrieker running through the jungle is basically a low-rent raptor from Jurassic Park.
• We are told that the character of Travis Welker is unavailable to help because he’s in a Mexican jail, more accurately, Jamie Kennedy was too busy recording podcasts to bother returning.
• An island “Alcatraz for Graboids” makes no sense, the creatures burrow through the earth and the last time I checked the earth still connects islands.
• A tech billionaire agrees to take part in a “William Tell” target practice, apparently, hunting monsters isn’t dangerous enough for these idiots.
• Taking refuge in an outhouse when you're in a horror movie is pretty much a death sentence.
• The acoustic attack of the Shriekers brings Bill and his hunting party to their knees but somehow it doesn’t affect Burt and his friends who are just a few feet away.
• The Graboids have infrared vision, and we even get “Predator POV Shots" which makes sense considering most of these supposed tech billionaires looking like extras from Predator.

 

They even found a bargain basement Jesse Ventura.

I guess that after six movies the threat of a nigh-unstoppable monster was no longer enough which is why we have this Captain Ahab type villain who spouts such nonsense as “I never call off a hunt” even after most of his paying customers have been eaten, and I don’t care if they “signed a waiver” losing your guests to a monster is not a good business model. I’m not innately against throwing in a human antagonist into the fray to spice things up but the one we get here isn’t just cartoonishly evil but a moron as well. What is even more disappointing is that so much time is spent with this particular villain that we barely get much screen time with the actual monsters.

 

At this point aren’t they the real stars of this franchise?

Jon Heder is a nice substitute for Jamie Kennedy but even his addition isn’t able to prop up a terrible script – though to be fair it’s still better than Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell as it, at least, didn’t try to pass off the South African desert for the Arctic Circle – and the lack of any decent monster action certainly didn’t help keep fans happy. Tremors: Shrieker Island is a textbook example of filmmakers milking a franchise until there isn’t a drop of creativity left and this particular entry isn’t even fun in the “So bad it’s good” kind of way.

Orca (1977) – Review

With the success of Steven Spielberg’s Summer Blockbuster Jaws many a film producer scrambled to cash in on that hit with various rip-offs and famed Italian filmmaker Dino De Laurentiis wasn’t going to miss his shot at this burgeoning subgenre, so he turned to his producer friend Luciano Vincenzoni and requested that he "Find a fish tougher and more terrible than the great white." The result of this search was the film Orca a movie about a vengeance-seeking killer whale and its Captain Ahab type protagonist in what could be considered one of the classier Jaws imitators.

The film’s protagonist is Captain Nolan (Richard Harris) an Irish Canadian who hopes to catch a great white shark to help pay off the mortgage on his boat but when he sees said shark being killed by an orca he switches targets to the killer whale and our movie is off and running. Where Orca differs from many of its fellow eco-horror movies is that the motivations for all the death and destruction are of a more personal nature. In Nolan’s attempt at capturing a killer whale he accidentally harpoon’s the female of the species that not only results in her death but that of her unborn child, which horrifically spills out onto the deck of Nolan’s boat, and thus it is the mate of the murdered female orca and child who propels the film’s narrative.

 

Note: The male orca has his dorsal fin nicked by Nolan’s harpoon which gives the audience a nice identifying feature.

The scene of the female dying a rather bloody death – she kind of commits suicide by running along the ship’s propeller before being hauled out of the sea – is fairly hard to watch and the fetus of the baby orca spilling out onto the deck makes this a film best avoided by younger audience members, but it does make this entry into the genre rather unique as for the most part the viewer is on the side of the killer whale because if some shit-heel human murders the mate and child you certainly can’t fault the creature’s desire for vengeance. What is even stranger here is that we are also given backstory where we learn that Nolan’s wife and kid were killed by a drunk driver and the script even comments that Nolan himself is the orca’s drunk driver and that “He loved his family... more than I loved mine.”

 

“I should have hunted down and eaten all of the drunk driver’s friends, that’s true love.”

With this film, we have what could be considered a reverse Moby Dick as the killer whale is the more obsessed character and Nolan only goes full Captain Ahab during the movie’s last act, for the bulk of the film Nolan has no desire to hunt down the orca, and it’s the killer whale who forces the final confrontation. And how exactly does a killer whale force a person to sail out to sea for a big showdown? Well, this is easily the silliest aspect of the movie as we have the killer whale economically targeting the local community by driving the fish away and sinking all the boats in the harbour while leaving Nolan’s boat untouched.  How a marine mammal understands the economic pressures this will cause is a true mystery but it gets worse.  The pièce de résistance is when the creature breaks a pipeline, then knocks over a kerosene lantern which then ignites the spilled fuel, resulting in the local refinery exploding.

 

Is this a killer whale or Professor Moriarty?

In one of the film’s earlier scenes, we get killer whale expert Dr. Rachel Bedford (Charlotte Rampling) giving a lecture where she discusses the fact that the orca has the same intelligence and capacity for emotions as a human but this does not explain how a marine animal would understand even the concept of fire let alone how to start one. Yet not only does this genius killer whale recognize the mechanics of arson it somehow also knows that these actions are harming the fishing community which would then result in the residents forcing Nolan to go out to sea and face the orca. I’ve come across my fair share of movie bullshit in my time but this one takes the cake, it’s one thing to imbue an animal with human characteristics and motivations, and I’m sure as a species the killer whale is a very bright and emphatic animal, but the leaps in logic this particular orca makes are beyond the pale ridiculous.

 

“From Hell’s heart, I laugh at thee!”

Where this film really fails in its inability to create any real suspense, the film has a total body count of five victims of the killer whale – excluding poor Bo Derek who only loses a leg and not her life – and all of these kills are so abrupt that we the audience barely have time to react before they're over. There are no scenes of the orca stalking its prey, instead, the creature just leaps out of the water to pluck some poor sod off the deck. Aside from the aforementioned leg chomping the deaths are also rather antiseptic with the killer whale going for quick rather bloodless kills, and the film’s one Native American character (Will Sampson) is even killed by an avalanche of ice and not by the razor-sharp teeth of the orca.

 

Are we awarding the killer whale points for creativity?

Stray Observations:

• Much of the underwater footage of the killer whales features clear blue-green water which makes it quite obvious that this was shot at Marineland in an aquarium and not off the east coast of Canada.
• Some shots of the orca show a drooping dorsal fin but this indicates the animal has lived in captivity as it would not be found on an orca in the wild.
• The 1978 sequel Jaws 2 featured a scene where a killer whale’s carcass is found and believed to have been the work of a great white shark, which was a pretty clear rebuttal to this film.
• Our introduction to the killer whale is in a scene where it brutally kills a Great White Shark, a not very subtle shot at Spielberg’s film.
• Actor Will Sampson fills the bill as the all-knowing indigenous person who often pops up in these kinds of films to explain the creature’s spiritual nature. What’s odd here is that he joins up with Richard Harris in his quest to kill the orca.
• Charlotte Rampling’s character makes a rather strange statement about killer whales, “This is without challenge the most powerful animal on the globe.” Elephants are easily the most powerful animal on the globe but even if we were to narrow the field down to the most powerful sea creatures the orca still wouldn’t win as the saltwater crocodile is easily the stronger of the two. Someone needs to check her scientific credentials.
• The orca pushes around an iceberg that would probably weigh in and around 100,000 tons, not something even a super strong killer whale could do.
• The film ends with the orca tipping the ice so that Nolan will slide down towards its might maw, much like Quint’s fate at the end of Jaws, but to avoid that comparison the movie has the killer whale then smack Nolan through the air and into the side of an iceberg.

 

Richard Harris seen here reaching the film’s tipping point.

I’ll give director Michael Anderson credit for not making a blatant rip-off of Jaws as this film’s themes differ greatly from that of the basic “Man against Nature” aspect of Spielberg’s film, and the animatronic killer whale was truly impressive and a definite improvement over Bruce the Shark, but where this film really drops the ball is in providing us with relatable characters. Nolan harpooning of killer whales for money makes Richard Harris’s character a hard one to sympathize with and then we get Charlotte Rampling’s as a scientist who loves and respects the creatures but ends up in a “relationship” with the man whose very profession she despises. At one point she is exclaiming, “You'll murder him - you'll sit here safe on the jetty, and shoot him through the eye? You're not a man, you're an animal! Its creatures like you science should be observing!” but then at the end the film she’s screaming, “Jesus, shoot!” clearly having joined the “Humans First” movement by this point.

 

“Smile, you son of a bitch.”

There are certainly worse Jaws rip-offs out there but this entry does have one of the more ridiculous premises and though I do give Dino De Laurentiis and Michael Anderson credit for not stinting on shots of the killer whales in action, animatronic or real, the film still fails at generating the kind of suspense and thrills this type of story needs to function. Orca is one of those weird entries in the eco-horror genre that fails despite having a great cast and some amazing visual effects

Suspiria (1977) – Review

 When one looks over the horror genre it’s impossible to ignore the influence that the Italian Giallo subgenre had on the North American film industry, good or bad, because even though those films were similar to American slasher films in the area of violence and exploitation they were often more lush and colourful than what you would find in their American counterparts and none more so than legendary director Dario Argento, the master of the genre, but it was with Suspiria that Argento stepped away from what would be considered traditional Giallo and move towards fully embracing the supernatural.

The plot of Dario Argento’s Suspiria is, at a glance, a rather simplistic one with its tale of a young and beautiful American ballerina named Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) arriving at a prestigious ballet school somewhere in rural Germany, one that just so happens to house a coven of witches. It’s clear from the outset that story structure was not important to Argento and as the film unfolds it raises many more questions than it could possibly answer – I’d say the ratio of questions to answers is about four percent – but one doesn’t sit down to watch this type of film for logic or intricate plotting. This movie is equal parts fantasy as it is horror with Suzy’s life taking a detour into the world of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, she literally drives through the Black Forest to reach the Tanz Dance Academy, and thus the idea that witches are running a ballet school isn’t all that farfetched.

 

A curriculum of ballet and occultism seems rather fitting for this place.

It’s the dreamlike quality of Suspiria that will capture the hearts and minds of the viewer, with its beautifully saturated primary colours and the wonderful blend of gothic and art deco designs – Argento desired to capture the bold look of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves – and with the ethereal expressionistic aspects of the film’s overall art design, we find ourselves trapped in what could be a painting by either Hieronymus Bosch or M. C. Escher. Of course, as gorgeous a looking for as Suspiria is it’s also a ruthless horror film and Argento does not shy away from the gore and brutality of the genre. When Suzy arrives at the ballet academy she has a brief encounter with student Pat Hingle (Eva Axén) who screams something at her about “secrets” and “iris” before disappearing into the night. That poor girl is later stalked and killed by a shadowy figure in one of the film’s most cruel moments.

 

One does not want to be expelled by the Tanz Dance Academy.

Aside from the supernatural horror aspect we also have a bit of Nancy Drew element thrown in here for good measure with Suzy and her roommate Sara (Stefania Casini) trying to figure out some of the mysteries surrounding the school. Who is the enigmatic directress of the school that no one has seen, and where do the teachers go every night? The footsteps that are heard during the night do not lead out of the building but deeper into the school, and with the creepy likes of Miss Tanner (Alida Valli), the head instructor, and Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett), the deputy headmistress running things it’s obvious something nefarious is going on.

 

Madame Blanc would be right at home with the cast of Rosemary’s Baby.

The surreal and dreamlike quality of the film also highlights another facet of the film and that would be the darkly whimsical nature found in the classic story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As Suzy journey progresses it can be rightly compared to that of Lewis Carol’s protagonist Alice as they both have fallen down a bizarre rabbit hole, one literal while the other a little more abstract, and Suzy’s experiences in Suspiria can be nicely summed up this quote from Alice “When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!”  And like Alice, our poor Suzy runs into a series of oddball characters ranging from a weird kid dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy, a blind pianist to a mute ogre-like manservant who brings her food that is obviously drugged. It’s this drugged nature of Suzy that can leave some viewers wondering if all the strangeness is nothing more than a drug-fueled hallucination or a dream-like Alice had under her tree. Regardless of one's interpretation of the events, it cannot be denied that they are as bizarre as they are fascinating and worthy of the likes of either Edgar Allen Poe or Lewis Carol.

 

“Curiouser and curiouser!”

Visually there really isn’t anything quite like Suspiria but for those of you who are fans of Italian filmmaker Mario Bava it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that he was a mentor to Dario Argento, and if you’ve seen Bava’s use of colour in such films as Planet of the Vampires and Hercules in the Haunted World it’s obvious where he got his inspiration for the bold use of colour and shadow that is found in films like Suspiria and Inferno.  If you have seen Suspiria it should be noted that it has recently received a wonderful 4K restoration and the result is simply stunning and will leave any viewer gobsmacked at the film’s blend of horror and beauty.

 

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before” – Edgar Allan Poe.

Dario Argento’s Suspiria is nothing less than a full-frontal assault on the senses that wonderfully captures the nightmare landscape that haunts our childhood, but a visual feast for the eyes wasn’t enough for Argento so he also enlisted the aid of the Italian prog-rock band Goblin to compose a score that is practically relentless in its drive to keep you at the edge of your seat with unease and terror. Suspiria’s haunting theme and creepy music box-like motif are practically characters unto themselves and much of the success of the film is owed to this blend. This film may appear a little over-the-top at times, and even a little unhinged, but if you are a lover of horror, or simply a lover of great filmmaking then treat yourself to a viewing of Suspiria and enter a world like no other.

 

Note: When viewing this film it is very important to set aside such questions as “Why does a ballet school have a room full of barbed wire?”

Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015) – Review

Over a decade after the release of Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, which one has to admit is quite the dry spell in the world of direct-to-video movies, Universal Studios decided that after such a long hiatus a re-launch of the franchise was the best option and to say their reasoning was sound is, at best, debatable. This would also be the first entry in the franchise without any participation from the original writing team who had started it all back in 1990, needless to say, Michael Gross and his character Burt Gummer were more than game for another go at Graboid hunting.

If the franchise wasn’t already the “Burt Gummer Show” up to this point it certainly became that with Tremors 5: Bloodlines as this re-launching of the brand made this quite apparent with the movie opening us finding out that Burt Gummer (Michael Gross) has become a star in his own survivalist web-series where he’s traded on his notoriety as a man who has encountered and killed a variety of Graboids, all to sell such condiments as “Burt Gummer’s Cactus Juice” marinade, but what this film does with its clever web-series opening is it gives us a refresher course on Graboid history and their life-cycle to old and new fans alike.

 

“For those of you newcomers, who don't have a clue about Graboids, let me bring you up to speed.”

This entry also introduces us to Travis B. Welker (Jamie Kennedy) an extreme-sports advocate and war-videographer who becomes Burt’s new cameraman – that he is later revealed to be Burt’s love child from a brief affair he had while attending a Florida gun show back in the 70s is a nice little twist – but before we can have any father-son bonding moments we have a monster movie to attend to. The pair are soon approached by South African Wildlife Ministry agent Erick Van Wyk (Daniel Janks) who hopes that Burt will help deal with an Ass-Blasters outbreak in South Africa, and despite Burt’s insistence that is impossible, that the Graboid menace is confined to the northern hemisphere, the unlikely duo head to the Dark Continent to investigate.

 

Could these two be our White Saviors?

Upon arriving in Gauteng, the Cradle of Civilization, Burt learns that his heavy weaponry has impounded due to South African gun laws, and though Wyk provides a small assortment of guns Burt protests that their calibre is far too small to kill the monsters in question. This brings us to the key issue of franchise continuity as to what will and will not kill a Graboid. In the original Tremors it took an elephant gun to kill one of the creatures, or if you were lucky enough to get it to swallow a pipe bomb, but in the subsequent films a variety of weapons have been used to take out various Graboids, Shriekers and Ass-Blasters. So is Burt being cautious or just a wuss?  Now, Burt and Travis are not alone in this adventure and are helped out by a somewhat crazy helicopter pilot named Den Bravers (Ian Roberts) and Dr. Nandi Montabu (Pearl Thusi), the woman who owns and runs the local animal refuge and it is she who provides a possible romantic element for Travis as if this movie needed one.  But it’s when two paleontologists are found eaten, and fossilized remains of a Graboid is discovered, that Burt comes to the realization that they are dealing with a different and more dangerous breed of Graboid.

 

“Quick, someone call Alan Grant!"

Sadly, what starts out as a fun monster movie quickly devolves into random silly scenes that are only briefly interrupted by a Graboid or Ass-Blaster attack, the camaraderie between Burt and Travis eventually evolves into something akin to a relationship but it takes way too long to get there and we are forced to suffer through a lot of groan-inducing Banter while we wait. Things get even worse when it’s revealed that Erick Van Wyk is actually a poacher and he is planning to sell the eggs on the black market, yes quite a shocking revelation to anyone who hasn’t seen a movie before. Things devolve further when he locks Burt in a metal cage and we are forced to witness a naked Burt Gummer drinking his own piss to stave off dehydration, which is utter bullshit. Burt Gummer is touted as being a survivalist but somehow he doesn’t know that not only will drinking your urine not rehydrate you, it will have the opposite effect and dehydrate you at a faster rate.

 

Did I mention he also gets peed on by a lion?

Stray Observations:

• We see an ancient African tribal dance about Ass-Blasters but if they’ve been around recent enough to be part of African culture how does the rest of the world not know about them?
• If the South African Wildlife Ministry is not actually a thing why would Nandi, an African veterinarian and owner of an animal refuge, not know that Erick Van Wyk was a fake?
• Nandi scouts around her place with a silly bow and arrow, even though she knows most guns have a hard time taking out one of these creatures, makes her either suicidal or just stupid, you be the judge.
• Wait a minute, apparently multiple shots from a .45 automatic won’t even slow an Ass-Blaster down but Nandi will kill one with just a couple of arrows, how does that make sense to anyone?
• A Graboid attacks a couple of dudes while ignoring a herd of cattle a few feet away, which begs the question “Do Graboids have a thing against eating beef?”
• Two of our characters stealthily avoid an ass-blaster in a cluttered kitchen which is an obvious nod to a similar scene involving velociraptors in the original Jurassic Park.

 

“If it’s considered homage we don’t get sued, right?”

What is most disappointing about Tremors 5: Bloodlines is that director Don Michael Paul is fairly good at his job and the look and feel of the film is dynamic and visually appealing but he is constantly hampered by a poor script that was cobbled together by screenwriters Woodrow Truesmith, C.J. Strebor and M.A. Deuce who managed to undercut the film’s actual moments of tension with bad jokes and cheesy one-liners, that is when they weren’t ripping off Jurassic Park, because along with the kitchen sequence being lifted from the first Jurassic Park we also get the Graboids chasing our heroes because they are carrying a Graboid egg, which is straight out of Jurassic Park III. That all said, the monsters themselves are fairly well-realized, a definite improvement over what we saw in the previous film, and Don Michael Paul does manage to create a sense of danger and menace, it’s just too bad this entry was not quite worthy of his effort.

 

Note: The mid-credit footage hints at Burt and Travis becoming monster hunters, possibly going after creatures like gremlins and Bigfoot, sadly, the franchise stuck with Graboids instead of branching out to other monsters. Talk about missed opportunities.

Scooby-Doo! The Sword and the Scoob (2021) – Review

The Scooby gang has encountered all sorts of foes over the years, from men in masks posing as monsters to honest to goodness zombies and witches, but in The Sword and the Scoob, our heroes may be facing a magical menace that even their crime-solving skills can't solve.  Given the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court treatment Scooby-Doo and friends are whisked back in time where they must face off against the legendary sorceress Morgan le Fay.

The movie starts with a cold open where the Scooby gang solve a mystery involving a monster terrorizing a passenger airplane, which is later revealed to be a dude in a costume who was trying to lower the cost of airfare by sabotaging the flight with his monstrous shenanigans, but during this mystery Velma (Kate Micucci) discovers that Shaggy’s (Matthew Lillard) ancestry can be traced back to a northern English village called Norville Der Morgana. It should be noted that members of the Scooby gang have ancestors in all kinds of places across the globe. The grateful airline owner grants the gang free passage to England and before you can say “Sword in the Stone” our heroes are busy doing touristy things in Jolly Ole England, but when the gang finally arrive in Norville Der Morgana they learn from the Mayor (Ted Barton) that this town is believed to be the last remnants of the legendary Camelot, which leads to Velma heading to the local library to investigate such a preposterous allegation.

 

Could an Arthurian storybook lead to the truth?

A not very helpful librarian points the gang in the direction of a book that tells the "Legend of King Arthur" and is where they learn that Arthur had faced attacks by the notorious Morgan le Fay, an evil sorceress who demanded the throne, and when everything seemed hopeless a knight named Sir Norville appeared brandishing the sword Excalibur. After a tournament this mighty knight became the rightful ruler of Camelot but no sooner did he take the throne than Morgan le Fay returned and whisked him away to her castle where the two were never heard from again. King Arthur decreed that if Norville or any of his children returned they would be declared rulers of all the land. Now, I’m no Arthurian scholar but that is one seriously messed up retelling of the story of King Arthur and Camelot.

 

I think T.H White would like to have a word with the screenwriters of this film.

Soon after learning of this startling revelation, that Shaggy could be heir to the throne, they are accosted by the ghost of Morgan le Fay who declares that she will “Finally have my revenge” which leads to a chase across the English countryside that ends in and amongst the remains of a low rent Stonehenge. When Morgan le Fay catches up with them she casts a spell that sends them back in time to the court of King Arthur. This does lead to a big question "How exactly would casting them back in time be beneficial to the ghost of an ancient sorceress?" As Scooby-Doo mysteries go The Sword and the Scoob is pretty thin on the mystery side of things, as suspects all we have is the mayor who probably doesn’t want some American claiming the rights to their land and then we have the grumpy librarian who is barely a character, so it’s hard to even qualify her as a suspect. This also the era of “Velma the Denier” and she will spend the bulk of the movie denying that magic exists, despite her encountering actual magic in such outings as Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island and Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost, and once they appear to be in 5th century Britain she is quick to declare that, “Nope, not a mystery it’s a hoax.”

 

“We did not time travel, this is a prank or a Japanese game show.”

What follows is a collection of wacky hijinks with the Scooby gang arriving at Camelot, Shaggy pulling Excalibur from the Stone to cut a sandwich, Velma getting “lessons” in magic from the legendary Merlin the Magician (Nick Frost), Shaggy's challenge to the throne which results in a tournament where Daphne (Grey Griffin) will have to step in as Shaggy’s champion because Fred (Frank Welker) is paralyzed by one of Morgan’s spells. Now, we may be in the era of “Velma the Denier” but we also have the wonderful “Daphne the Badass” for counterpoint as later shows and movies have done their best to leave the “Damsel in Distress” aspect of the character far behind – though making Fred a bit of an idiot seems to be this show’s strange way of counterbalancing that – but Daphne does have her own weird moments as well, such as her strange belief that “Reality is a simulation, the universe can’t implode because it isn’t even real.” That said, despite her belief that we are all living in The Matrix seeing her defeat each and every one of the Knights of the Round Table was the highlight of this movie.

 

Daphne, the Gloria Steinem of Medieval Times.

Stray Observations:

• The pre-credit sequence pays homage to The Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet."
• Velma is somehow able to get DNA tests run during the cold open mystery, which takes place aboard a plane, but as DNA tests take 24 to 72 hours to run that must have been one very long flight.
• Daphne and Velma are, apparently, big fans of the animated series Thundarr the Barbarian, a fun 1980s show that gets several shout-outs in this movie.
• Shaggy wears a family heirloom around his neck that has never appeared in the previous five decades of Scooby-Doo history, a clear case of ham-fisted backstory.
• We learn that Velma has a pet peeve against libraries that keep horror and romance books next to each other and I can't say I blame her.
• While the gang is being whisked back through time we get flashes from various Scooby-Doo shows and movies, which seems to imply that they are all somehow part of one continuous continuity, but as we are dealing with five decades of material this is pretty much impossible. Are we possibly seeing flashes of alternate realities?
• Velma uses a picture of the gang in the present to gauge if they’ve changed the future; much like Marty McFly did in Back to the Future.
• As a “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” Velma is given Mickey’s hat from Disney's animated classic Fantasia, but despite that she is still in denial of the existence of magic.

 

No dark tome of magic is going to shake her pigheaded beliefs.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Velma was basically right all along, it’s revealed that the town of Norville Der Morgana was being fitted to become a major theme park tourist attraction and the Mayor was concerned that Shaggy could lay claim to all the surrounding lands and ruin all their plans, so what is their solution to such a dilemma? Why the obvious answer is, of course, to drug the Scooby gang and gaslight them into believing the newly constructed Camelot theme park was the real deal so as to trick Shaggy into signing over the land. Clearly, this was their only option. That this was Velma’s first assumption when the gang first arrived in the supposed legendary "Camelot" makes her reveal at the end to be rather anti-climactic, and once again the technology the townsfolks utilize to create magic spells and flying dragons is all fairly outlandish and laughably ludicrous, but hey, it is a kid’s show and not to be taken too seriously.

 

These Renaissance Fair people really do get carried away with their costumes.

That Velma attributes this scam to sleep gas, flying wire rigs and Fred’s gullibility – seriously, he believes he’s paralyzed by Morgan le Fay simply because she tells him that he is – and it is all fairly farfetched and beyond implausible but I did like the fact that the big tip-off was that when King Arthur (Jason Isaacs) used Thundarr the Barbarian’s catchphrase “Demon Dogs!” it made Velma suspicious and then she had those suspicions confirmed when he later revealed his fantastic ab muscles, which were the real give away to her that this was the actor who portrayed Thundarr and not the legendary King Arthur.

 

“I’d recognize those abs anywhere.”

I’ll admit I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t actually get the Scooby gang travelling back in time but I shouldn’t have been too surprised as the recent movies have shied away from the idea of real supernatural threats. Now, it should be noted that the film does end with the reveal that the Merlin we see helping Velma was not one of the hired actors and is possibly the real deal, but that’s more of a final stinger than anything substantial to the Scooby-Doo canon. Overall, The Sword and the Scoob was a fun enough adventure that if one is able to glance over the preposterous plot and lack of real mystery – the secondary reveal that the librarian who posed as Morgan le Fay and was secretly working against the town was pretty unnecessary – and I did get a chuckle out of seeing a King Arthur who acted more like a frat boy than the legendary ruler of Britain.

 

Yes, that he wasn’t actually King Arthur was such a shocking reveal.

For Your Eyes Only (1981) – Review

After the rather over-the-top science fiction adventure that was Moonraker, the producers decided maybe a return to a more down-to-Earth setting was in order, something more in keeping with the novels written by 007 author Ian Fleming, and thus in this entry Bond hangs up his laser gun and tackles KGB agents and a revenge-seeking woman with a more plausible flare. This is not to say that the filmmakers were interested in making a faithful adaption of a Fleming book, that’s just not going to happen, but they hoped to make one that was, at least, a little less farfetched and a tad more grounded.

The first thing to note is that For Your Eyes Only was not a novel but a collection of short stories, including the titles From a View to a Kill, For Your Eyes Only, Quantum of Solace, Risico and The Hildebrand Rarity, and the plot of the short story For Your Eyes Only was about an elderly British couple who refused to sell their Jamaican home to a former Gestapo officer who was currently working as the chief of counterintelligence for the Cuban secret service. When the couple is murdered the angered M, who was friends of the family, sends Bond on an unsanctioned mission to assassinate the ex-Nazi as a warning to future criminals who might think of targeting British citizens. When Bond arrives on the scene he finds the daughter on her own mission of revenge, with a bow and arrow.

 

In the movie, she is upgraded to a crossbow.

The plot of the movie surrounds the accidental sinking of British spy vessel St Georges, that stupidly netted an old naval mine, but onboard the ship is the ATAC system (Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator) which is what the Ministry of Defence uses to communicate with and co-ordinate the Royal Navy's fleet of Polaris submarines. When a marine archeologist and his wife are murdered, after being secretly tasked by the British government to find the sunken ship, James Bond (Roger Moore) is sent to Greece to retrieve the device before the Soviets can get their communist little hands on it. Things get complicated when the first link in the chain of killers is murdered by Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet), daughter of the murdered archeologist, and she has vowed revenge on the men responsible for their deaths. And who is the man behind the murders and the hunt for the ATAC system? Could it be the charismatic Greek smuggler Milos Columbo (Topol) or his ex-partner Aristotle Kristatos (Julian Glover), a former war hero turned smuggler whose every action screams Double Agent.

 

“I’ll also betray Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, so don’t feel too bad.”

It should be noted that if Bond had simply destroyed the ATAC, after finding it aboard the sunken St Georges, the movie would have ended 30-minutes earlier, but instead of following procedure, he disarms the self-destruct mechanism and basically hands it over to the villains. The device is eventually destroyed at the film’s climax, so all that silly rigmarole does is allow us time to go on a scenic detour to the beautiful Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Greece so we can “witness” a 54-year old Roger Moore scaling the 400 metres high rocky precipice as if he were Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 2.

 

“We’ll have the final confrontation there, it will be as exciting as it is pointless.”

Stray Observations:

• Blofeld trying to kill Bond during the pre-credit sequence was a pretty dickish thing to do, even by supervillain standards, Bond was visiting the grave of his late wife and you’d think there would be some sort of honour among enemies that would prevent such a tasteless act, but apparently not.
• Why would an officer be handcuffed to the ATAC console? Was British Intelligence afraid someone would grab it and run off with the thing? Also, being handcuffed to something that can sink is an intrinsically bad idea.
• The ATAC can apparently transmit to British submarines and order them to launch their Polaris ballistic missiles, but the idea that the Ministry of Defence couldn’t simply have their subs turn off the ATAC receivers is a bit ridiculous.
• Bond’s Lotus Esprit is “Burglar Protected” which means it explodes if someone tries to break into it, now, one must admit this is a bit extreme and if done by just a regular car thief, in a populated area, it could lead to innocent casualties.
• They send hockey players to take out Bond, seriously?  Is this a Bond film or a sequel Slap Shot?
• We do get a young Charles Dance as one of the villainous henchmen, so that’s nice.

 

“A Lannister always pays his debts.”

I can understand the filmmakers wanting to return to a more grounded Bond, one that is closer to what was found in the earlier films, but those were the Connery days and Roger Moore’s Bond wasn’t quite up portraying a Bond from those grittier spy thrillers. What we have is a James Bond who travels from one exotic locale to another yet none of these trips really serve the plot, instead, they simply set up the next action set-piece and the “dramatic” moments between these bouts of action don’t really add up to much and certainly not helped by French actress Carole Bouquet whose vacant expression throughout the film had me wondering if she were on valium. I’m not saying Bouquet is the worst Bond girl in the franchise but she is easily the most forgettable.

 

Maybe the very idea of bedding James Bond requires a drug supplement.

This outing moves back towards a more ruthless Bond, an aspect that Roger Moore was against, and though the action sequences on display are quite spectacular nothing really stands out – the ski chase pales in comparison to the one found in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and this one resulted in the death of a stuntman – and once again we have Bond bedding some poor woman only to have her killed by the villains in the very next scene. It seems that for every attempted step forward the franchise took two steps back. That all said there are, of course, some solid adventurous elements to For Your Eyes Only and both Topol and Julian Glover were fun to watch and Moore brings a nice sense of sadness and gravitas to his world-weary superspy, unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to overcome the key problem with the film, which is the fact that there simply wasn’t enough story to keep everything afloat – the hunt for the sunken AVAC system just wasn’t all that interesting and a bit too close to the plot of Thunderball – and Roger Moore embarrassing himself with younger actress each film only gets worse from here.

 

Could he possibly look any more uncomfortable?

The VelociPastor (2018) – Review

Making an intentionally bad movie has become quite the growing genre but most of those types of films are simply cash grabs and are the movie equivalent of clickbait, entries like the Sharknado series being a prime example of this, but then along comes a film like The VelociPastor that renews your faith in bad cinema.

Inspiration can come from almost anything or anywhere but writer/director Brendan Steere may be the only person to get his inspiration from the autocorrect feature of his phone - "Velociraptor" to "Veloci Pastor" – and that simple origin story for The VelociPastor pretty much sums up the film itself. There is no deeper meaning than “Boy, that sounds goofy, let’s make a movie” and with a $35, 0000 dollar budget that’s exactly what Steere did. The film’s basic premise is that while on a spiritual journey through China, Doug Jones (Greg Cohan ), a young priest who recently lost his parents in a car bombing, comes into possession of a powerful artifact that turns people into the Dragon Warriors. Upon returning home Doug soon discovers that when he becomes enraged he transforms into a dinosaur version of The Incredible Hulk.

 

"Don't make me hungry, you won't like me when I'm hungry."

Lucky for Doug his first night as an avenging velociraptor brings him into contact with a hooker named Carol (Alyssa Kempinski ), the kind with a heart of gold, and she has her own problems which come in the form of an obnoxious pimp named Frankie Mermaid (Fernando Pacheco De Castro), this leads to Doug and Carol deciding to team-up and rid the world of evil.  Despite the reservations of Doug’s mentor Father Stewart (Daniel Steere) who thinks exorcism is the best route to take when facing such an unholy terror. Oh, and did I mention there were ninja? Turns out there is a group of ninjas who not only have their own beef with the Dragon Warrior but they also have a strange Templar doctrine involving cocaine and Christianity. Because sure, why not?  Many questions face our stalwart heroes, such as “Who murdered Doug’s parents? Can Doug survive his crisis of faith as well as a group of ninja, and will Father Stewart’s attempts at exorcism bear any fruit?”

 

I’d say that the last one is rather doubtful.

Stray Observations:

• China looks a lot like the woods behind my house.
• It’s surprising how similar a severed mugger’s head is to that of a department store mannequin.
• “Dinosaurs never existed, and even if they did I didn’t transform into one” is possibly one of the most insightful lines of dialogue illustrating the dichotomy of religion over science.
• The line “There is a surprisingly low demand for hooker-doctor-lawyers” perfectly illustrates just how bad the economy is.
• Vietnam looks a lot like the woods behind my house.
• When we eventually see the Paper-Mache dinosaur one can’t help but wonder what Brendan Steere spent the remaining $34,995 dollars on.

 

Ninjas versus Dinosaur tonight on “Head to Head.”

Of course, not all the humour in this film works, the uncomfortable long villainous laughter scene had already been done better in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, but overall what gags are attempted and what tropes are lampooned will bring an easy chuckle to fans of the genre, and I was quite surprised at the natural chemistry between the two leads whose performances are what really held the film together. With its brief 70-minute runtime The VelociPastor clearly knows exactly what it was doing and doesn’t outstay it’s welcome, now, whether or not the promised sequel happens I'd say this particular offering can be enjoyed if you have an equally bent sense of humour.

 

Note: It’s not every film that features a dinosaur, a hooker with a heart of gold, ninja and yet still manages to provide a proper message. So this movie, at least, has that going for it.

Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004) – Review

Where to go in a franchise after three films can be a tricky thing, actually, coming up with three entries isn’t all that easy in the first place, so with three movies under their belt the producers decided to go the prequel route, yet this wouldn’t be your typical prequel but one that would be set a century before the original film took place. Think Back to the Future III but with Graboids.

It’s the year 1889 and the newly founded town of Rejection, Nevada, has run into a spot of trouble when the local silver mine, which was the town’s sole economic support, is closed due to the strange deaths of seventeen miners. No one knows what caused these deaths – obviously Graboids of some kind but we have to treat this like a mystery for some reason – and thus the owner of the mine, East Coast dandy Hiram Gummer (Michael Gross) arrives in the town to put things to right. The sad thing here is that Tremors 4: The Legend Begins is basically a one-joke movie, which is that Hiram Gummer is inexperienced with the ways of the West and is not fond of firearms, and with him being the great-grandfather of Burt Gummer, a right-wing, conspiracy spouting gun-loving survivalist this is supposed to be some kind of hilarious counterpoint. It’s not.

 

“I say, good people, did you say monsters are afoot?”

This installment introduces a new element of the Graboid life cycle, a small trout-like creature that can spring out of the ground like a Jack Rabbit, and this continues the franchise’s complete lack of continuity or concern for how biology and evolution works. These baby Graboids quickly grow to become the creatures seen in the first movie but with an even more limited budget to bring them to life. In the original Tremors the filmmakers saved money by dragging a large object under the dirt, thus perfectly simulating a Graboid burrowing under the ground, but this time out we are stuck watching bad CGI dirt trails instead of using the simple practical effects used back in 1989. Was this laziness or more a case of the series’ continued overreliance on CGI? The movie gives us one a brief sense of hope when Hiram places an ad for a gunfighter and the notorious Black Hand Kelly (Billy Drago) arrives to help with their “Dirt Dragon” problem, unfortunately, the late great Billy Drago is poorly utilized here and is quickly gobbled up by a fully-grown Graboid. Aside from Michael Gross trying his best with the “Dandy” version of Burt Gummer it was Billy Drago who breathed life into what is a fairly lifeless endeavour and that he was dispatched so casually is a true crime.

 

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

Stray Observations:

• For a boomtown Rejection is really damn small, it doesn’t even have a saloon which is pretty ridiculous for the time period.
• Hiram arrives in Rejection not knowing the mine was closed, but if that is the case why is he here there at all? An ill-timed inspection perhaps? We also see that the town has a telegraph so there’s no reason why that information wouldn’t have been sent out to him.
• This crappy little town has a steam engine that wouldn't be invented for another 23 years.
• Seeking the safety of rocks makes no sense when the baby Graboids can launch themselves out of the ground like tiny missiles.
• Billy Drago played a great villain in the western series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and that show’s tone and sense of humour was clearly what the filmmakers here were trying to replicate, sadly, failed at almost every turn here.
• Hiram Gummer returns to Rejection with an assortment of useless firearms and the extremely cartoonish and surprising somewhat historically accurate Punt Gun – though not designed for an individual to fire from his shoulder but from a mounted position – but why Hiram didn’t even think of bringing along few boxes of dynamite as well?

 

The suspension of disbelief can only go so far and then you are left with this.

The real crime being perpetrated here is that not only is this a rather nonsensical entry in the franchise but it also commits the cardinal sin of being quite boring. Tremors 4: The Legend Begins takes forever to get going, wasting tons of time introducing a variety of characters that could only generously be called one-dimensional, and when the monsters finally attack the filmmakers fail to create even a modicum of suspense. There is no sense of danger surrounding these particular creatures as our “heroes” should be dead multiple times over but then they are saved by lazy screenwriters who can’t be bothered to keep track of what a Graboid can and cannot do. I could almost forgive the unconvincing effects and hokey acting, there can be a lot of charm in that, but Tremors 4: The Legend Begins is a complete miscarriage of a concept that pretty much failed from its inception.

 

Note: The existence of the Graboids not being known after the events of this film is explained away by Hiram stating “That if word ever got out no one would ever settle here” which is a load of codswallop because even in 1889 you’d have both naturalist and monster hunters clamouring all over the place trying to make a name for themselves.