Camel Spiders (2011)

Directed by: Jim Wynorski

Writers: J. Brad Wilke, Jim Wynorski

With a title like this, you might thing that Camel Spiders is a part of the recent animal cross breeding craze that gave us such masterpieces as Sharktopus and Piranhaconda (to be honest, I haven't seen any of them, but unfortunately I'm going to). Unfortunately, camel spiders are real animals that look just like regular spiders, except that they're bigger and more CGI-driven. Reality is so boring!

 

The movie in Middle East or some similar place where the American troops are fighting some unnamed enemy. Suddenly, the fight is over, because the enemies have all been eaten by Camel Spiders (!). Some of those sneaky bastards find a way to infiltrate the coffin of a deceased American soldier and they are transported to America, where they start to multiply and grow to a horrible size. Oh, yeah, they also kill.

 

Alas, this movie was doomed right from the beginning. The computer animated spiders look absolutely horrible and it would have been a show-stopper even if all other things worked perfectly (which they don't). Everything is so generic and sterile, the setting is ugly, the killings laughable, but the worst thing is that everyone is so serious - the actors really seem to believe the horrible lines they're given, not to mention that they try their best to look terrified by the unconvincing spiders, which would bring a truck load of unintentional laughter just if it all weren't so damn boring.

 

Jim Wynorski hadn't made a good movie in about 20 years and he doesn't seem to have the intention to start now. Even his softcore films are more bearable than this.

Mega Snake (2007)

Directed by: Tibor Takács

Writers: Boaz Davidson (story), Robby Robinson, Alexander Volz

 

In a rare occurrence that a movie is absolutely perfectly described by its own tagline, this one proudly announces: "It's big, it's bad and it bites!". No argument there! Mega Snake marks Nu Image's less than spectacular return to the realm of animal horror, not that their previous attempts like Shark Attack have been timeless masterpieces. However, this was apparently made for the SyFy channel, so it's ten times worse by definition.

 

People may say what they want, but it seems that the size does matter. Regular killing animals are just not enough these days, we have to have them enhanced somehow, so the market is flooded with all sorts of mega piranhas, giant octopuses, dinocrocs, supergators, sharktopuses, piranhacondas and who knows what else. How does Mega Snake fit in? It's utter crap, so I guess it fits perfectly.

 

The mega-stupid story, which Boaz Davidson probably wrote while totally wasted, goes something like this: There's this weird church that uses poisonous snakes for the "worshipping" rituals. Basically - if you have no fear, the snake won't bite you. The prologue finds our hero (then a very young boy) having his initiation or something. Unfortunately, he's afraid of snakes and screws everything up, so a snake bites his father and sends him into the oblivion.

 

Fast forward twenty years later and the troubled hero still lives in the same house as before, with his mother and older brother. That brother is still a proud "church" member and provides snakes for them. One day he decides that there simply weren't enough deaths in the family, so he goes off to an Indian snake seller to buy the deadliest possible snake in the history of the Universe. It's the infamous Unteka snake, responsible for killing a really big number of Native Americans (here's a history lesson for you). Because of its unprecedented deadliness, the Indian refuses to sell it to this stupid redneck, however, he conveniently mentions the tree rules for the handling of this particular snake: 1) Never let it out of the jar, 2) Never let it eat live animals, 3) Never fear the heart of the snake. You may guess three times how many of these rules get broken in the movie. The third rule seems a bit obscure, but we'll get there later.

 

Of course, the stupid bastard immediately breaks the jar (not on purpose) and the snake escapes, but he manages to catch it and puts it in a measly plastic box. That's the last time we see anything resembling a real snake in the movie. Bad CGI, take the spotlight!

 

The following night, the deadliest snake in the world easily escapes and kills a cat, then hides in the chicken pen and kills some chickens and then kills the hero's mother. The catch is - after each killing it gets bigger, until finally it transforms into... a MEGA SNAKE!

 

This Mega Snake is actually a really boring, lame looking monster that's so artificial it's almost sad. Miraculously, some of the scenes where the snake is eating someone look quite convincing (I don't know how the people at SyFy could allow such blatant breach of their policy), but that's the only nice thing I can say about anything in the movie. The snake acts strictly like a murderer in a slasher film - it hides and kills people one by one in totally unimaginative ways, until our hero is advised by the wise Indian that "never fear the heart of the snake" means that you should actually let the snake swallow you, so you can kill it from the inside. I'm not kidding. If you were hoping for some cool scenes of mass slaughter (like in Piranha 3D), blood, guts, severed body parts and other fun stuff... well, the joke's on you.

 

It's not that they don't attempt it - there's this classic Jaws moment with the authorities refusing to close the town fair because for some reason they just don't trust the warnings about a MEGA SNAKE roaming around. So the snake breaks the party and kills some people, but it's even more pathetic than the regular killings - the stunts in the background must have been misinformed about the nature of the scenes, so they just stand there and do nothing while five meters further the terrifying MEGA SNAKE "wreaks havoc". You see, for this movie they haven't used a real MEGA SNAKE, they added it digitally in the post production, so the people probably didn't know they were supposed to be scared. Professionalism at its finest! They should really put some warning on these SyFy movies in the future. One simple "This movie was made for the SyFy Channel" at the beginning should be enough for anyone to decide if they want to proceed any further.

Blue Monkey (1987)

Directed by: William Fruet

Writer: George Goldsmith

This is why I love the eighties, the best decade in the history of humankind! Not because this movie is any kind of unforgettable masterpiece - it's far from it. In fact, for the standards of that wonderful decade, it's a completely average monster flick that you watch today and forget tomorrow. The catch is - that completely average 80's monster movie would easily blow to pieces 98% of today's genre offering with one hand tied behind its back.

 

Contrary to what you might expect from the title, there are no monkeys of any kind here, much less blue ones, though it would certainly be cool to see a blue monkey wreaking havoc and killing people. But let's not underestimate the villain here - while not being monkey (not to mention the lack of blueness), the giant insect does its best to bring as much pain and sorrow as possible.

 

The story takes place in a hospital, where a patient is admitted after somehow being hurt by a plant (!) Soon more and more people are coming and it seems a giant epidemic is about to take place. Things get worse when a huge parasite gets out of the man's mouth, runs away and gets in contact with some growth hormones. It transforms into a giant ant-like creature and the fun begins.

 

The screenplay is a bit confusing at first, with its somewhat unusual combination of the epidemic and the giant monster storyline, but we don't care about the story anyway. We want to see hideous monster violence, and we do get it! A first few killings are shot in that slightly irritating monster POV style that's mostly used for the budget reasons rather than the artistic ones, but at the later stage of the movie we see the monster in full glory (ah, those wonderful pre-CGI days!) together with some cool beheadings and other kinds of killing. The characters are the usual suspects - a concerned cop, a brave female doctor, a goofy scientist guy who's fascinated with the monster, a small kid, etc. Those clichés are certainly not irritating in any way - it's just how things go. Remember, what we don't have are retarded jocks, irritating stoners, blonde sluts, stupid idiots that make dirty "jokes" all the time etc.

 

As I said, the monster looks rather good and the rest of the technicalities is also completely fine. The music is of that stringy type that's usually used to build the atmosphere in the disease movies and it does a pretty good job here, too. The direction also does the job - you won't run away screaming to another room, but there's a good rhythm that keeps you entertained and when violence comes, it's mostly shown in full glory.

 

To tell the true, I've never heard of this movie before I found it on a friend's HD a few years ago. It's not unusual that it didn't make any kind of impact - in the eighties monster movies were on fire, we had Tremors, we had Slugs, various kinds of killing alligators, insects, sharks, octopuses, ants... Imagine an animal - there was a movie with that animal. Today of all animals we have sharks and an occasional crocodile, that's it. All other horror movies are either about zombies or ghosts or just some found footage crap that's not actually about anything. Watching older movies is like having a glass of nice cold water on a hot day. And it's not just about horror - I'm preparing to watch a truckload of ninja movies these days! Yyyyyyyyyyeaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!

Megalodon (2002)

Directed by: Pat Corbitt, Gary J. Tunnicliffe

Writers: Gary J. Tunnicliffe, Stanley Isaacs

Wow! I think this has to be one of the best megalodon movies made in 2002, topped only by Shark Attack 3! So, what is it that makes it so good? Well, nothing, actually. In fact, it's rather horrible :-(

The story somewhat deviates from the usual "Oh, no, the sea is infested with sharks, but we have a Very Important Competition That Will Bring Us A Lot Of Money to hold, so do we close the beach and lose money or pretend that nothing's happening and risk everyone's lives until some hero appears and saves everyone's asses?" cliché established in Spielberg's Jaws and repeated to death ever since. Here we have a rather claustrophobic setting of a huge sci-fi looking (but only from the outside) drilling platform deep in the ocean. That platform is situated in some kind of geologically sensitive area, which is of course the recipe for disaster. It doesn't take long for things to go wrong - some underground cave or something is unblocked, releasing a huge megalodon - sixty feet of prehistoric terror!!!1 Are you on the edge of your seat already?

 

If I saw such a huge prehistoric shark, I imagine I would be rather scared. Fortunately, the directors of this movie wisely decide to never let us truly experience that hugeness - the fake CGI shark is mostly shot completely alone in the water, without any solid objects in the background to allow for the comparison. That way, we are able to survive watching this film without dying of fear. Boredom, on the other hand, was a bit harder to repel...

 

Somehow, this movie is missing everything that makes for an enjoying shark experience. The setting itself effectively rules out beaches and topless beauties lying in the sun. The fact that the antagonist is a prehistoric shark that's supposed to be dead for millions of years (or something like that) makes impossible the traditional use of stock footage of real sharks. And the lack of money makes the existing CGI shark horribly unimpressive. Add to that the lack of horrifying death scenes and you have a movie that's best to avoid, unless you are a true megalodon fan. But even in that case, you're better off watching Shark Attack 3. The only good thing in the whole movie is the final scene - our heroine is on her boat and below her suddenly flows a huge terrifying shadow of sixty feet of prehistoric terror!!!1 This is a very nice short scene that slightly improves the bad taste left in your brain after watching (or preferably sleeping through) the rest of the movie.