Snake Eater (1988)

Directed by: George Erschbamer

Writers: Michael Paseornek, John Dunning

 

 

 

I have a confession to make: I had a movie blog before this one. In fact, I had tons of (crappy) blogs before this one, but the one I'm talking about is the one I actually liked. It was supposed to be about people who can kick your ass (like Lorenzo Lamas, Richard Norton, etc., leaving out the obvious ones like Chuck Norris or Arnie) and the reviews were pretty detailed and full of pictures. Of course, this was too much for me, putting those pictures was a real pain and it took me hours to update the damn thing each time. So I took a few months off and decided to create a different kind of blog, with shorter texts and without pictures, and also with a bit broader field of interest, which gives me the opportunity to update more frequently and ensure my readers (both of them) visit it regularly.

 

Still, I kinda like some of my old texts, so for the sake of completeness I'm gonna reprint them here, without the pictures. First, we're gonna cover Lorenzo Lamas' Snake Eater trilogy. The first movie was originally reviewed here: http://speedtavern.blogspot.com/2011/09/snake-eater-1988.html

 

And here goes the original text (click on the link above to see some screenshots):

 

 

 

This is the first part of a trilogy in which Lorenzo Lamas plays Jack “Soldier” Kelly, a former member of the Marines, currently a cop whose job is to look cool, make the women around him take their clothes off, deliver one-liners so devastating they would make Arnie blush and occasionally beat up some bad guy. In this movie he faces a band of Deliverance-style rednecks who killed his parents and kidnapped his sister, but we will get there in a moment.

First things first – the Snake Eaters are an elite division of the Marines whose speciality are actually the search & destroy missions and not something else that might have crossed your dirty mind. I’ll be first to admit that this was a relatively poor choice of words on the screenwriters’ part – they couldn’t theoretically have made it more gay, unless they’d named them Village People. And that one was already taken. Anyway, this is actually not that important, because, as I said earlier, Lorenzo is a former Snake Eater. The only thing that reminds us of his past is his belt buckle, which has a drawing of a snake on it. Apart from that, we are pleased to announce that Lorenzo doesn’t eat any snakes in any of the three movies.

Okay, anyway – the very beginning of the movie shows us a disastrous drug bust led by Lorenzo that got him suspended. Without going into too much detail, I will mention that we get to see a naked woman (she had to remove her clothes to show that she’s not wired, but she required the same of Lorenzo and he did it, but fortunately he kept his snake offscreen) and a general Dirty Harry attitude that drives his character. At the same time, said rednecks kill his parents and kidnap his sister with every intention of doing reeeaaally nasty things to her, like raping and stuff, but they never get around to that because something always interrupts. You would imagine they’d have some privacy deep in the woods, but no.  

Lorenzo doesn’t act in this one – he simply revels in his own coolness and generally keeps the same don’t-give-a-crap-gonna-kick-your-ass face expression throughout the movie, except for the very moment when he learns of the tragedy, when he looks down in sadness for about a second, but he gets back on the track really quickly.

Unfortunately, his self-confidence isn’t always followed by his actions. Of course, he did save the girl, but he also got himself into trouble far too many times, definitely more than someone of his reputation should allow. For example, the very first time he meets the rednecks, he starts a fight with them and gets heavily beaten (and there are only three of them!). He also steps into a bear trap, he gets shot etc., but luckily none of that does him any noticeable damage.

Snake Eater is a pretty good movie. It actually started great – the drug bust was really hilarious and after that we had a few juicy fistfights, all of that enriched with Lorenzo’s one-liners; unfortunately, things got a little quiet in the middle, with him trying stealth tactics to infiltrate the rednecks lair and all that, which was kinda gay. Also, the rednecks were totally inept and never managed to get any of the women to take their clothes off, which was a bit frustrating. Lorenzo, on the other hand, spends virtually the entire movie shirtless. Still, there’s enough action and humor to keep you entertained, so I would wholeheartedly recommend this one to all you B-movie lovers out there.

Teenage Caveman (2002)

Directed by: Larry Clark

Writer: Christos N. Gage

 

Chances are you have probably heard of this movie before, and if you’ve read a few interviews you might have noticed that most people tend to easily dismiss it as pure crap. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is probably the fact that this movie is pure crap. Now, as is often the case with low budget movies, that doesn’t necessarily make it unwatchable. That depends on your tolerance to irritating teenage idiots and the amount of weed you currently possess. Personally, I’ve never smoked weed, but a cousin of mine who did said that it made him enjoy some pretty questionable films, so I thought it might help in this case, too.

What little story this complete failure of a movie has goes something like this: There’s this tribe in a post-apocalyptic future and it has this really annoying religious fanatic as a leader. He preaches abstinence and similar stuff, but that doesn’t prevent him from having piles of dirty magazines under the bed and from screwing all the attractive females in the tribe. Damn hypocrite! Well, we all know what Mel Brooks said about kings, right? (Hint: He said “It’s good to be the king!”). However, he really crosses the line when he choses none other than his son’s girlfriend for the honour of inserting his royal higness into her. The son gets pissed off, kills him and he and his girlfriend leave the tribe with a bunch of other nondescript (teenage) characters. For the brevity of the text, I skipped a few not so important scenes, like the son being sentenced to death.

So, the party, led by the late tribe leader’s son (whose name is David, but we will call him Ronald Reagan for the remainder of this review) and his girlfriend (Sarah, to be called Barbara Bush from now on) wanders through the post-apocalyptic wasteland, only to stumble upon the remains of a Great City, whose name isn’t mentioned, but someone on the IMDb said it was Seattle, so I guess it was... Seattle. However, we will call it Portland.

Portland is of course deserted, however, our “heroes” stumble upon two young people (have you noticed that everyone’s young in Larry Clark’s movies?) who live there and enjoy everything that modern technology has to offer, including, but not limited to, movies, music, drugs, jaccuzi baths, computers, drugs, paintings on the walls, drugs, music, drugs, alcohol, fancy shmancy scientific equipment, drugs and similar stuff. One of them is Tiffany Limos, whom you might now from another Larry Clark movie and the other is the late Richard Hillman who delivers one of the most ridiculous performances I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but damn my shoes if he isn’t overacting like a bastard son of Crispin Glover and Matthew Lillard.

 

Anyway, Ronald Reagan and his sidekicks have no knowledge of any of this modern stuff (as you may recall, they’d spent their entire lives in a primitive tribe), so they readily throw away the patriarchal bonds that binded them and plunge into the pool of drinking, heavy partying, drugs, sex, alcohol, loud music, sex, drugs, computer games, sex and similar things. All except Ronald Reagan and Barbara Bush, who find their hosts suspiciously suspicious, and for the right reason!

 

It turns out that these two are actually somehow genetically modified and thus immortal (!) and they want to use the unexpected guests for some sinister experiments. Ronald Reagan and Barbara Bush try to warn the others, but fortunately they are just too stupid to listen, so they all die by spontaneous combustion. Don’t ask, just thank the heavens for little things. After that, Richard Hillman’s character transforms into a hideous monster and dies and I’m sure Tiffany Limos also dies, I just can’t remember exactly how. Ronald Reagan is apparently infected with the same substance that made those two immortal (we will not dwell on the fact that they are both dead) so he takes Barbara Bush and returns to take the control of his old tribe. End. Sorry, I spoiled that for you.

The stupidity of the screenplay is something we can live with, however, the horrible acting and the characters that are more than irritating pose more of a problem. Fortunately, the fact that almost all of them die in horrible ways atones for that a bit. What also sucked is that the movie never provides a decent post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Everything takes place indoors (in two or three rooms) and even when they condescend to give us an outdoor scene or two, it just sucks and it’s boring and it doesn’t show anything interesting. The only thing (apart from almost everyone dying) that makes this at least semi-watchable is Larry Clark’s fascination with naked teenage bodies. He sets the record for the most gratuitous bath scene ever – in this one, all the main characters just hop naked into the bath together, immediately upon being introduced. It’s not completely unwise to stop watching the movie when that scene ends (what’s even wiser is also skipping the part before that).

Technotise: Edit i ja (2009)

Directed by: Aleksa Gajić

Writer: Aleksa Gajić

Wow! A Serbian animated sci-fi movie, now that’s definitely something you don’t see every day! In fact, you never see it! What’s more important – not only is this not crap, it’s actually a great movie that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

It takes place in Belgrade in the year 2074. Edit M. Stefanović, a young psychology student and the lead character in the story, after failing an important exam, decides to implant in her body a memory chip that is used to improve capabilities, so to speak. Of course, those chips are illegal, but when has that prevented students from cheating, eh? Anyway, the story takes an unexpected turn when Edit sees the actual formula of Life, Universe and Everything, you know, the one that reduces everything to a single equation (the thing Steven Weinberg wrote about in Dreams of a Final Theory). It is explained that when a computer sees that equation, it briefly becomes aware of itself and then immediately shuts down. However, the chip in Edit’s body reacts in a completely different way – it starts to multiply and gains more and more control, threatening her very existence.

Of course, this all is hardly new, I imagine this kind of stuff happens regularly in Japanese anime/manga, but that’s not really important. While maybe not being tremendously original, the story is very well written and serves to keep your interest throughout. The film is based on the graphic novel Technotise, which was illustrated by Aleksa Gajić and written by Darko Grkinić, and it shares its characters, though the story is different. Aleksa Gajić (primarily a great comic book artist, rather than a filmmaker) wrote the screenplay by himself. Why Grkinić wasn’t involved I don’t know, and the “making of” featurette doesn’t give an answer – in any case, he did work on the film, in the animation department, and he also voiced one of the more amusing supporting characters.

The real star of this movie is the animation. It’s really refreshing to see something hand-drawn after all those 3D animation films which I find somewhat soulless. The graphic novel look is carefully recreated, and while there is some 3D animation in there, it all looks like you have a moving comic book in front of you. The 2.5Dishness is provided by the occasional multilevel background scroll, like in some older platform computer games, and there are numerous funny visual references (for example, the modified Yugoslavian police cars from 1980’s) that give the movie a really unique appearance. Unfortunately, if you’re not from these parts, most of these will fly right over your head, but that’s really not that important as it’s not critical to the story in any way. Okay, I’m not very good at words and stuff like that, but trust me on this one – this looks good! To round the audio-visual appearance, there is great electronic music which really fits the atmosphere and is also a great listen on its own (a feature supported on the original DVD).

If we really have to bitch about something, it’s the characters, which are mostly dull and uninteresting, with some being real pain(s) in the ass(es) (I can’t even begin to think how to correctly plural this). Also, with the exception of some supporting characters voiced by some legendary Serbian actors, the voice acting is weak, to say the least. But that’s about it.

What’s really amazing is the fact that this movie was entirely made in a small apartment in Belgrade, by only 15 or so people (led by Aleksa Gajić, who worked pretty much on everything). Shows how talent, dedication and hard work can largely make up for lack of money. Let that be a lesson to all of you youngsters out there!

I think this one is pretty hard to find outside former Yugoslavia. I know there is a (subtitled) English version, but how available it is, I don’t know. If you stumble upon it, be sure to check it out, and in the meantime watch this trailer to give you a taste of it. Over and out!

 

The Kindred (1987)

Directed by: Stephen Carpenter, Jeffrey Obrow

Writers: Stephen Carpenter, Jeffrey Obrow, John Penney, Earl Ghaffari, Joseph Stefano

 

 

Two directors, five screenwriters?! I mean what the hell? A lame and generic story such as this could have easily been written by a ten year old on a lunch break, but here it took them no less than five people, including the writer of Psycho (!)

It all starts when a woman (apparently a famous scientist or something) on hear deathbed (because, you see, she is dying) pledges her son to go to her old house and burn everything, I mean EVERYTHING, from top to bottom. She has been conducting some dangerous experiments and wants all notes, equipment and other stuff gone before someone EVIL uses it for their EVIL purpose. However, her idiot son equips himself with a group of other idio... errr, I mean friends, and instead of fulfilling his mother’s wish, he continues her research. Sure enough, all hell breaks loose, by which I mean that a hideous monster appears and starts killing everyone. Also worth noticing is a supporting role by Rod Steiger, who plays a mad doctor.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t paying much attention to the “story” (if you can call it that) because I was tired and it wasn’t very engaging anyway. I couldn’t care less about any of the characters and the acting was absolutely horrible.

Thankfully, however, this movie was made in 1980’s, back when they were still trying to entertain the audience instead of just shooting random crap on a shoestring budget and hoping to sell a few DVDs by making the cool-looking cover. What I’m referring to are the special effects, which are way above average here. Great looking monsters, nice killings and one exceptionally well-made transformation scene where a woman slowly turns into a horrible fish-like creature – it’s all something you simply won’t see in today’s CGI-dominated movies. So, despite the obvious shortcomings, The Kindred deserves a look.

Det okända. (2000)

Directed by: Michael Hjorth

Writers: Michael Hjorth, Tomas Tivermark

 

Det okända. (complete with a dot in the title) is some kind of a Swedish answer to The Blair Witch Project, and of course it’s completely inferior to it in every possible way. Throughout the rest of this babbling, if I ever need to refer to the title, I will use the English version (The Unknown), because that dot is pissing me off.

Anyway, the story here is actually not bad and draws its inspiration primarily from films like (Invasion of the) Body Snatchers and The Thing. Five biologists are investigating the effects of a large forest fire or something similar, somewhere at the north of Sweden, far away from any civilization. They encounter a strangely disfigured carcass, take it to their camp for analysis and then of course crap starts to happen. First one of the girls gets sick and starts acting progressively stranger and whatever the hell causes it starts to spread to the other members of the team and you can pretty much guess where it goes from there.

The Blair Witch Project’s influence is, apart from the fact that for some reason all the characters share names with their respective actors, mainly in the visual domain. First, there’s that burned (burnt?) forest that’s creepy almost by definition, and the style of filmmaking which worked so well in BWP, but causes nothing but skin irritation here. Strictly speaking, The Unknown is not a found footage film (because, to begin with, there wasn’t any footage to be found). The events aren’t filmed by any of the characters in the movie, but that surely doesn’t prevent the director to win the Golden Asshole award for the most remarkable achievement in the handheld camera abuse. It goes without saying that it’s constantly flying all over the place, whether it’s justified by the context or not, and most often it’s NOT (think of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, multiply it by ten... million, to the power of infinity, and you might start to get a slight idea how it all looks).

Okay, honestly, it’s not something we haven’t seen many times before, but what made me want to kill that director bastard is the fact that that damn camera, in all its frantic moving, conspicuously avoids to show anything even remotely interesting! Some really cool stuff happens here – there are bizarre disfigured carcasses, there are alien parasites in people’s throats, there are some animals killing each other etc. etc. but we never see any of that! Just when the camera starts panning down and you think you’ll FINALLY see something – boom! – it suddenly goes straight up and films the treetops and the wonderful blue sky while we have some loser describe the proceedings for us. Well, thanks for nothing, bitches! Imagine you watch Cloverfield and they never show the monster and instead you see only the characters talking like “Hey, there’s a really huge and nasty monster mofo in front of us! It’s so scary! If only you could see it! You would really be TERRIFIED! Gee, I haven’t seen such a scary monster since John Carpenter’s The Thing! Did I mention how scary this monster is?” Well, it’s something like that. This should have been called Det Infodump instead.

Add to this that the characters are extremely irritating and that they’re constantly throwing in our faces their private stuff which I’m sure nobody gives a rat’s ass about. Who cares if that blonde was with Tomas for a few weeks before she met Jacob? Who really gives a crap??? I mean REALLY?!?!? Well, I certainly don’t! Instead of that stupid high-school drama queen crap, I’d prefer to see some nasty body horror, but nooooooo sir, not here. Fail.

Naked Fear (2007)

Directed by: Thom Eberhardt

Writer: Christine Vasquez

 

I’m not very good with words and similar crap, so I often have hard time convincing someone to watch a movie I liked. For example, I used to tell everyone how The Signal is an absolute masterpiece, but no one took me seriously. Or Intouchables – “Hey, you really really REALLY have to see Intouchables, it’s a great French movie about a rich quadriplegic and a poor black guy who works for him as a caretaker...” to which the person I’m talking to reacts either with eyes rolling or a facepalm.

However, with Naked Fear it’s a sitter. Lend me your ears! I mean - eyes! OK, this movie contains a scene in which the lead actress is continuously naked for more than twenty minutes and after that pretty much bottomless for another ten (!) I guess that does the job unless you’re gay or female, but even then you should be able to appreciate the beauty of a naked human female form. My Bloody Valentine 3D and Lifeforce combined do not even come close to Naked Fear in this department! In fact, to my best knowledge (and if I’m wrong, by all means do not hesitate a second to inform me!), this might be the longest nude scene in film history.
 

In other news, this comes from Thom Eberhardt, who made some really cool movies in the eighties. The direction is good and the movie does contain some suspense – for example, when the naked heroine is running away from the bastard that’s chasing her, you’re rooting for her not to get killed, but you’re also hoping she won’t find any clothes for as long as possible. Seriously though, even without the infamous nude scene, this would have been a perfectly acceptable B-thriller. And WITH the infamous nude scene, there’s absolutely no excuse for not seeing it.

A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (1990)

Directed by: Brett Piper

Writer: Brett Piper

 

I don’t care what everyone says, A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell is a piece of crap! Okay, everyone DOES say it’s a piece of crap, but that’s not the point. The point is - A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell is a piece of crap.

The main problem with A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell is that nothing really happens in it. There’s this girl, the aforementioned “nymphoid” barbarian (whatever that might be), who’s job is to constantly run away from other people, some bizarre half-human creatures and various dinosaurs in what’s supposed to be a post-apocalyptic world where prehistoric and prepubescent meet (don’t hit me, I didn’t come up with that, it’s from the trailer). If this doesn’t make any sense to you, remember that this is a Troma film – not making sense is not only allowed, it’s highly recommended.

Anyway, she runs, gets in trouble here and there, punches someone in the face, runs again, gets into trouble, this guy saves her, she runs, someone captures her, she runs away, then some mutants are fighting, then she runs, then she’s attacked by someone or something and just when you think they’re gonna get her, this guy appears and saves her and then she runs away, but (you won’t believe it) a DINOSAUR appears (!) and this guy saves her from the dinosaur but then some mutants appear and try to catch her so she punches them in the face and runs away (why didn’t she stay with that guy the whole time I don’t remember, I probably overslept) and after that she gets into trouble because there’s this guy (not that guy who saves her, but some other guy) who wants to capture her so she runs away but she’s finally captured but then a dinoaur appears and this guy (not that guy who captured her, but the guy who constantly saves her) fights the dinosaur and she runs away and then some mutants are fighting and...

You probably see where this is going. Due to the lack of dialogue, lack of actors (I wouldn’t really call that piece of wood that plays the main role “an actress”) and the direction that is deep below any acceptable level, all this gets boring after ten minutes or so – after a full hour and a half, you’ll feel like you just got out of a washing machine.

For better or for worse, A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell has a truly great trailer (?!) that looks like one of those faux trailers, made only for fun, that never actually get turned into full movies. Unfortunately, this one did.