Bigfoot (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 88 mins

FORMAT: Screener

PLOT: When a Bigfoot attacks an 80s-themed music festival, a concert promoter and a hippie burnout that are at odds with each other both set out to bring in the creature.

REVIEW: We're coming up on the final movie of what SyFy has been calling 'The Most Dangerous Month On Television', which has been made-up of the four weekly Original Movies starting with Jersey Shore Shark Attack, continuing with Piranhaconda and Arachnoquake, and now ending things off with Asylum's furry-Hulk-starring creature feature Bigfoot. And oh boy, what a month this has been – I don't think I've ever before had such a busy month filled with so much excellent cheese and B-Movie goodness. I don't even know what I'm going to do with my spare time after this, when the Original Movies slack off a bit and go back to having only one or two a month – don't get me wrong, it'll be nice to have a little breather, but I've been spoiled by having so many great new B-movies in such quick succession this month, hahaha.

Much like with Jersey Shore Shark Attack and Arachnoquake, this one will not only be airing on SyFy at 9pm Eastern on the night of June 30th, but also in Canada on the Space Channel as well; I love the fact that Space here in Canada is airing more and more of these movies at the same time as SyFy. I'd also like to thank the Space Channel once again for sending the screener of Bigfoot my way for early review – they've been a big help this month with providing me early screeners for many of the SyFy Original Movies, and without them I wouldn't have been able to have nearly as many reviews posted to the blog this month. What's a bit odd to me though, is that Bigfoot (still think it deserves a less generic and more cheese-filled name) is a bit of a strange pick to end off a month of summer B-movies for the simple fact that it actually takes place in the winter, with lots of snow and winter weather abound in it. Kind of an odd choice to have a month filled with movies that take place along the beaches of the Jersey Shore, in the hot jungles of Hawaii, or in the humid swamp lands of New Orleans, to then finish it all off with a movie that takes place in the winter, with snow storms and the like.

Anyway, this one plays off of the real-life rivalry between two classic TV legends by bringing in Danny Bonaduce from The Partridge Family and Barry Williams from The Brady Bunch. Danny Bonaduce plays a local small-town legend radio show host that hires a construction crew to clear a ton of forest land so they can make room for an upcoming 80s-themed music festival, with the intent of bringing back classic 80s rockers such as Alice Cooper and Sting (only one of which appears in the movie). That construction however, is cutting into the Sasquatch's home turf and disturbing it, causing the creature to be very angry and hostile, and thus the events of this movie take place due to that. Barry Williams plays the leader of a group of hardcore environmentalists that are willing to go to extreme lengths to protest this deforestation (and then later in the movie, they also run a 'Protect Bigfoot' campaign). As you can imagine, this becomes grounds for plenty of great tension-filled confrontations between these two characters, with tons of winks and nods to real-life stuff regarding the two of them.

If this all sounds a tad familiar, well that's because there was a similar rivalry between 80s teen singers Debbie Gibson and Tiffiny in a previous Asylum/SyFy movie titled Mega Python vs Gatoroid. Hell, there's even a similar brawl between these two guys that has a hilarious initiation that I won't spoil here, though sadly it didn't go on for as long as the one between Gibson and Tiffany did in Mega Python vs Gatoroid. This one was really quite short and not at all as fulfilling, but it still had a couple hilarious moments during it. Actually, it's pretty clear that Asylum intended this as a non-sequel follow-up to Mega Python vs Gatoroid, due to the massive amounts of similarities between the two, so I'm not really sure why SyFy and Asylum aren’t promoting this movie nearly as well as they did with that one – For Mega Python vs Gatoroid they had the two leading ladies go through the press circuit and make their interview rounds with several websites and well-known magazines, as well as host the movie the night of its airing, have a one-night-only theatrical screening of which they were in attendance, as well as had both of them release new song Singles to go along with the movie. This time around, none of those things are present for Bigfoot. Anyway, rounding out the main cast is the stereotypical small town Sheriff that these movies always have. This one is played by Sherilyn Fenn of Twin Peaks fame, who is only temporarily taking up the role of Sheriff from her recently-deceased father, until they find someone to take the job full-time. She's in the movie quite a bit (just as much as Danny Bonaduce and Barry Williams) but regardless, she still doesn't really have a whole lot to do here.

Of course, you can't talk about the cast of a movie called Bigfoot without mentioning the title creature itself, as it plays just as much of a character in the movie as anybody. In regards to that, what will become clear very early-on for those who are not already familiar with The Asylum, is that they are certainly no masters of subtlety; They show off the hairy Hulk in all it's full-on rage and glory not even 60 seconds into the movie. No build-up or anything, just boom, there it is, standing tall and roaring loud. And good GOD, does it stand tall. Very tall. The Asylum cranked this creature's size up to max and completely super-sized it – not one word of a lie, the Bigfoot in this movie is pretty much just about the same size as King Kong. Even when he walks, the ground trembles and his footsteps sound like the footsteps of the Tyrannosaurus Rex from Jurassic Park. Considering its gigantic size, loud walking, and its penchant for constant rage-roaring, I find it amazing that these creatures are still only myth and have gone so long unnoticed. Then again, maybe it goes so long unnoticed because the damn thing brutally kills any witnesses; There's even one scene where it takes out an entire construction crew in a matter of seconds – Sasquatch don't play around. As for how it looks...weeellll...the CGI is up and down. There are some shots were it looks excellent while there are other shots where it looks horrible (especially towards the end). If anything, I'd say the CGI model itself looks great, but it just doesn't interact with the physical real world stuff very well at all and looks terrible when it tries to. One thing in regards to the CGI that I was surprised with though, and I also greatly appreciated, is there was this one scene where the Sasquatch is rampaging through the town and a tank fires upon it. From that scene on, the creature's face is badly burned and it's missing patches of fur from its upper body. That's more detail then is usually put into these things, and even though a lot of the CGI was pretty bad, I can still really appreciate the effort for that bit of continuity.

Another bit that surprised me was the fact that the 80s-themed music festival that all the promos mention as being the center of the movie, actually happens pretty early-on, and in the end had very little impact on the movie itself. In Mega Python vs Gatoroid, the main event of the movie was built up to gradually over the course of the movie and happened towards the end (as they so-often do in these movies), so I never once for a second even considered that this movie would be any different. Surprisingly, by 30 minutes in, the two leads have it out between one another several times, make-up and get along for a short period of time, have it out again that will last the rest of the movie, the music festival starts, and Hulkfoot (as I like to refer to the monstrously oversized and rage-filled Sasquatch as) interrupts by going on the expected rampage and killing half the concert-goers, which included my two favorite deaths of the movie – one via a falling port-a-potty and the other gets ripped in half by the Sasquatch. Also, it's during this scene that Alice Cooper cameos as himself, as a special guest at this outdoor concert, and of course he doesn't last long once Bigfoot shows up. Yes, I know, I know, this movie follows all the same beats and even some of the same jokes as Mega Python vs Gatoroid, but if a certain formula works well then why screw with it? Plus Alice Cooper's hilarious face-off with Bigfoot here was such a better moment then when Micky Dolenz bit it in the other movie. He may only be on-screen for a moment or two, but Alice Cooper totally steals the entire movie during that brief time.

The remaining hour of the movie consists mostly of Danny Bonaduce and a group of hunter friends trying to hunt down and kill Bigfoot (and then later switching to trying to capture it alive to make them rich by turning it into a tourist attraction), Barry Williams and his group of environmentalists trying to protect and save Bigfoot (and later trying to capture it to transport it to a nature preserve), continuing confrontations between those two characters, the military arriving and setting up a perimeter around the town to protect them against further Bigfoot rampages (which, shocker, doesn't work well), some not-so-smart residents venturing into the forests to try to get pictures and videos of Bigfoot to put online or sell, and of course Bigfoot itself continuing to rampage around - first through the forests, then back into the town for a bit before being chased away into the mountain-range. Of course nothing that I just mentioned above really works out well for anyone involved, many other people die, tons of more property damage happens, and it culminates in a pretty decent set of scenes of the Sasquatch climbing the famous Mount Rushmore president faces, as well as our two main rival leads fighting one another atop those as well. And if you've seen Mega Python vs Gatoroid, you can take a pretty accurate guess as to how that scene turns out for everyone involved (though not without a pretty interesting little twist first).

What stops the movie from reaching its potential (other then needing to bring Bigfoot back down to a more realistic size), is that neither character played by the rival 70s TV stars are as interesting or as engaging as the rival characters played by Debbie Gibson and Tiffany in Mega Python vs Gatroid. The actors did great with the material, don't get me wrong there, they were both excellent actors, it was just the characters themselves weren’t interesting or likable in the least. Really, the only scenes with them in it that I enjoyed at all were pretty much just the scenes that they were both in together – they had excellent enemy-chemistry together, but when they were apart I just wasn't invested in either of them. Adding to that, after the awesome Music Festival rampage that was filled with all sorts of unique and fun Bigfoot-related kills, the deaths during the rest of the movie were pretty much the exact same – The Bigfoot either picked a person up, bit off their head, and then threw the rest of the body away, or it stomped on them and squished them into the ground. Not a whole lot of variety there to keep things fresh, which was a pretty big letdown after the first thirty minutes created such promise for a wide variety of cheesy death scenes.

Alice Cooper cameo aside, I still think Mega Python vs Gatoroid is the more entertaining of these movies, by a long shot. This one is still a decent companion piece for that one, to watch afterward, with its main faults being boring and unlikable lead characters, uneven CGI, repetitive kill scenes, and a terrible oversized scale for the title creature - it's definitely not Asylum's best, or even the best SyFy Original Movie this month.

However, while this one doesn't have much of a re-watch factor with me, it did keep my attention well enough while watching for the first time, and if you're into B-Movies like I am then it's worth giving a once-over when it airs on SyFy and Space on Saturday, just don't go into it with the expectation that it's as good as Mega Python vs Gatoroid, or even as good as most of the other Original Movies this month.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Komodo vs Cobra (2005)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Cinetel Films

RUNTIME: 94 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A genetically-engineered Komodo Dragon and King Cobra have become ginormous creatures hunting people on a remote tropical island. A small group of scientists must stop the creatures before they escape the island and destroy the rest of the world.

REVIEW: While Komodo vs Cobra seems to be advertised and constantly referred to as a sequel to Curse of the Komodo, it's actually more correct to look at it as a remake, despite being made not even a year later. It has the exact same plot, filmed in the exact same locations, complete with exact same military subplot with the exact same outcome of said subplot, beat-for-beat and pretty much word-for-word. If, like me, you've already seen Curse of the Komodo then you've already seen this movie, just replace some of the Komodo scenes with a Cobra.

There are only three differences - First, the group that happens upon the island in this one is a group of Environmental Activists instead of bank robbing fugitives. Second, the giant komodo dragon now has less screen time, as it's screen time is shared with a giant cobra as well. And third, the special effects aren't as good as they were in the first movie. Those three aspects aside, this is literally the exact same movie, even with cameos by some of the actors from the first movie, playing different roles this time around.

Also interesting to note, this movie stars Jeri from Season 2 of Survivor (and countless of the All-Star seasons), and she actually wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting her to be once I saw her pop on-screen. I think she needs to stop appearing one every other season of Survivor and get back into the B-movie game, cause she was quite the pleasant surprise here.

Despite being a direct clone of Curse of the Komodo, there's nothing especially bad in the movie, other then the CGI creature effects, and the only reason I don't like this is because I've just watched the other one and this is exactly the same movie. If it was the other way around and I had watched this one first, then I'd probably be preferring this movie to that one instead.


6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Zombies vs Strippers (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long
 

  
COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 75 mins

FORMAT: Screener

PLOT: The Tough Titty is a strip club that's seen better days, but tonight it's gonna see a whole lot worse. Spider has been losing money on his business for years, but now it's finally getting the traffic he's always wanted... unfortunately, most of his patrons are undead. With a sudden outbreak of the zombie virus, strippers Vanilla, Bambi, and Sugar deal with the disaster the way only a stripper can.

REVIEW: You don't wad in the B-Movie pool for any good length of time without coming across Full Moon Entertainment. Even if you don't know their name, chances are you know about at least some of their titles; titles such as Puppet Master, Demonic Toys, Dollman, Dollman vs Demonic Toys, Trancers, Subspecies, Robot Wars, The Evil Bong, The Gingerdead Man, Killer Eye, and even some child-friendly titles like Prehysteria, Pet Shop, and the 6-movie Josh Kirby serial. Granted, classic Full Moon titles from the 80's and 90's are easily their best, with their more recent stuff being of far-lower caliber, however that's not to say there's nothing good to find here. Sure, more often then not their titles disappoint these days (Evil Bong and Evil Bong 2: King Bong were decent, but Evil Bong 3: Wrath of Bong was a let down. And while Gingerdead Man was really good, each of the sequels got significantly worse then the entry that came before. And Killer Eye was really just a porno in disguise so I never even bothered with Killer Eye 2: Halloween Haunt), but when you stumble upon one of their true gems this day in age, all that just makes it all the more sweeter.

When they first announced this movie my gut reaction was another soft-core porno in disguise and I had zero interest in following through with watching this one, but then when the trailer came out, it actually looked pretty entertaining and I decided I'd give it a shot. Shortly after that, Full Moon offered to send me a Screener copy of Zombies vs Strippers for early review and since I've been trying to break into the Screeners Game lately, I pretty much said 'Sure, what the heck'. I figured worse came to worse, and the movie was a total dud, at least Full Moon's recent movies have incredibly short runtimes (an hour and 10 minutes normally, and that's including overly-long opening and ending credits, so really just an hour of actual movie-time), so at most I'd only be wasting an hour of my time on it. Well, when the ending credits rolled on this one, it certainly wasn't of the high fun caliber as The Gingerdead Man or The Evil Bong, but it wasn't quite too terrible either. Nothing I'd probably ever rewatch, but a good enough hour-long time waster that never did reach that softcore porn level that I was initially fearful of (though came close a time or two, but that's for later in the review).

Just like the sun rises every morning and sets every night, the movie opened up on an overly-long opening credits sequence (done in an almost-disturbing Rob Zombie-esque kind of style) that ran for well over 3 minutes, and that any sane person would start to skip past after the first 60 seconds. After that, we get introduced to our main lead, the sketchy strip club owner as he's arriving to work for the night at his seedy club, The Tough Titty. One of the things I loved most about this movie (at least in the first half, where it was applicable), is the entire zombie apocalypse is going on in the background of the movie in subtle little news channel broadcasts and radio reports playing in the background, but this guy is just not paying attention to any of it because he's too wound up and stressed out over his strip club running out of business, and having to deal with incompetent and trouble-making employees. Much like in movies like Shaun of the Dead, he's just so self-absorbed in doing his regular day-after-day bullshit job that he's not paying any bit of attention to the world ending around him just outside of this strip joint. Adding to his problems is the fact that the very few amount of business that they are getting (by way of only two men in the entire place), doesn't seem to be enjoying the girls on-show at all, leading him to blame the strippers for not being good enough. Of course as the viewers of the movie (and as the workers of this club will find out soon enough), we can already tell just by how these 'people' are acting and looking, that they're actually already zombies and they're kind of just...sitting there, groaning and mumbling ('Hmm. Dead crowd tonight' as one of the strippers hilariously worded it).

After just a tad bit too long of establishing these characters, the zombie patrons get kicked out as if they were street bums, and the sketchy manager decides to shut the club down early, since it's their final night before selling the building and he figures he'll let them all celebrate instead. Before they get to do that however, people start coming in to get out of the chaos of the zombie apocalypse outside, thus jump-starting business all over again and giving them their most profitable night all year – that is, until the zombie hordes get attracted by all the noise and music and find their way into the strip club as well, and it soon becomes the job of these tough-as-nails wise-cracking Strippers, and a temporary team-up with a biker gang led by a hilarious poetic 'The End is Nigh' kind of badass, to save everyone and fight off the zombie apocalypse that has spilled into their little slice of real estate.

And fight they do. Granted, the first half did slow to a crawl for a little bit, but just as I started to find myself bored, the second half of the movie kicked it into high gear and never let up until the credits started rolling. There are two things in the title of this movie, and it delivers all the way on both of them: This had all sorts of gory kick ass zombie-killing action, and not just by way of guns – this came complete with awesome make-shift weapons as well, such as one stripper taping her Stiletto shoe to a rod and using it as a hammer, and one really-old man zombie having his head explode because he can't take the death metal music that was playing over the radio system. But don't worry, it's not just the Strippers that get good kills in either, oh no, the zombies get some great stuff to do here as well, such as biting off fingers, ripping into stomachs, ripping someone's face off, and all sorts of various bites, scratches, and gougings. There was tons of blood and gore to be seen here, which surprised me quite a bit with how well done it all was (including the zombie make-up). Full Moon didn't give this movie its usual 25-cent CGI treatment, but instead opted to go with really well-done practical effects, and the movie came through a lot stronger because of that choice, so kudos on whoever came to that decision. There was even this one nightmare-inducing 'Big Boss' kind of zombie they had to go up against, that was some kind of weird pig-faced clown from a children's TV show-turned zombie, and the make-up work on that guy was astounding.  Nightmares for Jeff tonight!

As for the second part of this movie's title...well...It goes without saying that there is quite a lot of good eye candy and tons of toplessness. Most of the girls look smoking hot as it is (especially the main female lead), but I don't think the movie goes more then five minutes at any given time without throwing some nudity out for us. Hell, when one of the strippers gets lunged at by a zombie and she steps back to get away from it, it still manages to grab hold of her bra and rip it off. She then proceeds to spend the next ten minutes topless, until she finds a stripper nun costume...only to later have the front ripped off of that, leaving her breasts exposed for the rest of the movie. And that's just one of many examples I could use, not to mention any of the numerous actual stripping and dancing scenes themselves, with one particular pole dance scene coming towards the end that totally stole the movie.

Now the main problem I had with this movie, is it's clear that it wanted you to root for these characters, however that's pretty hard to do when every single person in the entire movie is assholish, sketchy, grimy, and totally unlikable. Not a single person in this movie is worth rooting for because these are all people that I would want to have die if a situation like this ever happened. Hell, I probably wouldn't even stick around with them long enough to see them die. It's also part of the reason why I'm not such a fan of the first half of the movie, since it was spending all that time building up these characters, when really, I didn't find myself caring about them at all, so it just made me more antsy for the zombie stuff to finally start. My other issue is, while it was nowhere near the soft-core porno that Killer Eye was, there was a tad bit too much sex going on. I mean, don't get me wrong – as a straight male I do love seeing hot girl sex scenes in movies, but like with everything else, it's best in moderation and not with such an over-abundance of it. Now here, thankfully, they were all pretty quick scenes and mostly done with some kind of comedic element at play with them so it wasn't too grating, but they did keep going back to that well just a tad bit much, in my opinion.

While the movie doesn't have much re-watch value behind it, it is a pretty fun way to pass a quick hour some stormy evening with a few beer, for a one-time watch. At the very least, it has some decent actors, excellent practical effects, inventive deaths, lots of blood, tons of toplessness, some hilarious sequences (including a Michael Jackson zombie moment), and an ending that may surprise some people as to who survives and who doesn't.

Not the best movie I've watched this week, but certainly Full Moon's best movie in a long time. It hits DVD in just a few weeks on July 10th, so if you're a Full Moon fan, or just a fan of either zombies or strippers in general, then I say pick this one up and give it a watch.


6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

The Curse of the Komodo (2004)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Royal Oaks Entertainment

RUNTIME: 92 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A genetically-engineered Komodo Dragon has become a ginormous creature hunting people on a remote tropical island. A small group of scientists must stop the dragon before it escapes the island and destroys the rest of the world.

REVIEW: After having watched some of his more recent work, I was in the mood to go back and watch one of Jim Wynorski's previous movies that I hadn't yet seen, and since I love creature features I figured Curse of the Komodo was a good one to start with.

Right off the bat I was pretty surprised that the military Special Ops team in the opening minutes were not the main characters like I had initially thought, and that the Doctor they were sent there to evacuate turned out to be the main character, and for once he was not evil, nor did he create the giant Komodo Dragon on purpose - It was a byproduct of his formula for growing larger super vegetables, funded by the military, and he's actually doing all he can to keep himself and his crew away from that thing (including a pretty cool Starship Troopers 2-style electric perimeter). A group of fugitives land on this island in the middle of the night, due to the severity of the storm keeping them from going any further, and I was once again left pretty surprised to see two of them being played by Paul Logan from his pre-Asylum days, and the main Chicky from Raptor, since I had no idea they were in this and I enjoy both of them (One for his acting, the other for her looks - ha).

The monster effects looked pretty decent, though I wish the creature had more to do other then just show up, stand there in one spot while they shoot at it some, then turn and leave - That's pretty much all it does for 90% of its scenes in the movie. Still, it looked cool all the same, and I actually like most of the human characters so I didn't mind spending some extra time with them. This movie also made me realize how much I really miss monster B-movies that take place at night and/or during massive rain storms. It adds a level of atmosphere that isn't there for daytime scenes, and most monster movies these days seem to take place entirely during bright day scenes.

This one was a definite surprise for me as I wasn't expecting much at all and ended up really enjoying my time spent watching it - only thing that could have made it better for me was some better Giant Komodo Dragon action.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Piranhaconda (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Horizons

RUNTIME: 84 mins

FORMAT: T.V.

PLOT: A low-budget horror movie crew, inept kidnappers, and a reptile expert battle a monstrous anaconda/piranha hybrid in the middle of the Amazon jungle. 

REVIEW: Piranhaconda premiered earlier this evening on the SyFy Channel as part of it's 'Most Dangerous Month on Television' campaign, and I wanted to rush and get this review written and posted while the movie was still fresh in my mind, and right off the bat I have to be honest here - I was not impressed with this one. It was nowhere near as entertaining as Sharktopus or as fun as Dinocroc vs Supergator had been, and it wasn't even as good as Camel Spiders was, all of which have also been made by the same crew of people.

A big problem with Piranhaconda is that there's no overlaying plot in the slightest until over halfway through the movie, so a good 70% of the movie is mostly just random generic scene after random generic scene that could  have easily been placed in any random order without changing the movie one iota, with an occasional misc death scene sprinkled in there. Then when they do finally put some form of plot in (I.E. the kidnappers attempting to put their plan in motion, and the film crew having to try to escape from them), it's mostly just boring, uninteresting and totally takes away from the rest of the movie and what people are actually watching a movie called Piranhaconda for - the damn Piranhaconda! They actually go almost half an hour without showing the creature at all, to focus on this uninteresting subplot of boring, terribly-acted human villains.

Adding to all of that, the title creature itself is very uninteresting as well. Giant snake with a piranha head? Other then visually, how is that any different at all then a regular giant snake? Change the visual model of the creature's head, and nothing else at all, and you could slap Anaconda 5 onto the title of this movie instead and have it fit perfectly. The creature doesn't even do any non-snakelike stuff - I was expecting some good water play or something else, but it mostly just slithers across the ground like normal and eats people like a normal giant snake would. They could have done so much more with the whole crossbreeding part in terms of cheesy scenes like Sharktopus did. Hell, they even say in the movie that it can burrow under the ground and come up to attack, which sounds friggin' awesome, but then they never actually have the Piranhaconda do that at all. It certainly didn't help that every single scene was shot in the exact same locations as Supergator, Dinocroc vs Supergator, and parts of Camel Spiders so with this being the 4th movie in the last couple years to use all these exact same locations, it's getting really rather boring now to watch different people run down the exact same paths and by the exact same factories, and get eaten in front of the exact same waterfalls. Roger Corman and Jim Wynorski are really going to have to step it up for their next release if they want to impress me, locale-wise.

On the plus side, I do like the twist of there actually being multiple creatures and not just the single one (though it was a total missed opportunity as well, seeing as how they do nothing at all with that really, but it's the idea of it that I like), and I thought the actual creatures themselves, in terms of the CGI graphics, actually looked pretty good and interacted with the physical objects realistically and quite well, which that alone can be a tough feat for these kinds of movies to overcome.

Also, those looking for a bloodbath will be kept mildly entertained as the red stuff hardly stops flowing, from gunshot wounds, to severed body limbs, to exploding people, there's enough in this one to keep your eyes on the screen during the action scenes. Sadly, while there is a nice bit of bloody deaths, there's not a whole lot of variety to them, as the majority of them are just the exact same kind of deaths over and over. Still, it's at least something, and something is always better then nothing in my books.

Other then those couple hings though, and a few funny lines of dialog, there really wasn't much in this one that I could find to like, sadly. Even the presence of Michael Madsen, an actor I tend to really enjoy (especially in movies like this), couldn't make this one worth it to me.

I had really been looking forward to Piranhaconda a lot as well, especially after the greatness of Sharktopus and Dinocroc vs Supergator, but this came nowhere even near as good as those movies had been.

4/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Jersey Shore Shark Attack (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: ARO Entertainment

RUNTIME: 88 mins

FORMAT: Screener

PLOT: It's a holiday weekend at the Jersey Shore and, unbeknownst to anyone, underwater drills have attracted dozens of albino bull sharks to the pier. When a man goes missing, The Complication, Nookie, and their friends fear the worst and plead with the police chief to close down the beach, but of course no one listens. Now, the Preppies must work together with the Guidos in order to save the Jersey Shore and its inhabitants from a vicious slaughter.

REVIEW: I pretty much didn't give Jersey Shore Shark Attack a second-glance when it was first announced. There's just been such an over-abundance of killer shark movies flooding the B-Movie market in the last several years that I've stopped caring about them (though I can still admit when one comes along that I really enjoy, such as 2-Headed Shark Attack). Ever since then however, I've been slowly coming around on this one, first some behind-the-scenes photos that looked interesting, then the fact that they seemed to perfectly spoof the hit MTV show Jersey Shore and the cast on that (even going so far as to hire Vinny, one of the stars of Jersey Shore, to be in this movie), then as each trailer came out showing more and more footage, I was completely won over and excited, despite my earlier lack of caring.

Then SPACE comes along and offers to send me an early screener copy for review, so of course I jumped at the chance so I can see if the excitement that this project ended up making me feel during production would pay off, or if I was better off listening to my initial gut feelings. And for those wondering how you can get your hands on this one to make up your own mind, Jersey Shore Shark Attack airs tomorrow night, June 9^th, at 9pm Eastern Time on SPACE here in Canada and on SyFy in the United States.

I can honestly say, right from the opening minutes I was pretty much hooked. This is more then just a regular B-Movie – this is a full-on spoof movie kind of like the ones made by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, only – you know – actually good. You'll find this movie funny anyway, but if you've had experience watching any large amount of MTV's Jersey Shore then you'll get oh-so-many more laughs out of this; They do perfect parodies of the cast (Nookie instead of Snooki, The Complication instead of The Situation, ect), they way they talk, the specific things they constantly say, the way they act – it's all here, complete with all the drinking, fighting, slutty dancing, hook-ups, and fist-pumping of that show, and it's all parodied to perfection. Actually, they do such a great job of it, that for a few seconds somewhere in the midst of it all, I almost forgot I was watching a SyFy Original Movie and (just for a second, mind you) thought I was watching an actual episode of Jersey Shore. Hell, they even have those grainy-film transitions between scenes that Jersey Shore uses – you know the ones...with the words that flash in them...? Wait...am I the only one that's familiar with Jersey Shore here? It was all for the research – I swear!

To sell the perfect parodying shown here of course, a large part of it comes down to the actors and how well they play the roles, and here they do excellent. They may not be the greatest actors ever, but they certainly know how to mimic the cast of Jersey Shore quite well, right down to specific tiny little mannerisms. Put these people in any other movie and they'll probably bomb, but here they were rock stars in my eyes. Of course, I can't talk about the cast without talking about a couple of the guest stars as well – two of them specifically. The first being Jersey Shore's own Vinny Guadagnino (seriously, the most 'normal' and sane person on that entire show, and not at all a jackass like most of the other people are portrayed as, but anyway - moving on...). Fans of Jersey Shore may be disappointed that he's regulated to cameo status here, as some of the advertising would have you believe he plays a larger role, however having spent many years watching these kinds of movies I was full-on expecting that anyway. Here he plays a news reporter in a few scenes, and he's honestly not very good, but he seems pretty self-aware of that fact and you can tell he's just having a blast doing his scenes, as short as they are. He fully understands that he's in a movie that's making fun of the show that made him famous, and he's in on the joke instead of being the butt of the joke. The other cameo guest appearance is by N'Sync member Joey Fatone, playing himself as he's the guest of honor at the Jersey Shore's 4^thof July Shore Party, which of course the albino bull sharks interrupt and, well, if you've seen Mega Python vs Gatoroid (in which legendary Monkee's rocker Mickey Dolenz had a cameo in), then you'll probably already have a good idea as to Joey Fatone's role in the movie.

And that is a nice way to seq-way into one of my main complaints here. The CGI for the albino bull sharks look atrocious, even by B-Movie standards, and what the hell was up with their mouths? Seriously, whenever they attacked they seemed to morph into the Leviathan from the latest season of Supernatural, and I'm not even joking. They were made all the more distracting by the fact that whenever there was a close-up of one of the sharks munching down on someone, it was practical effects (also not that well-made, though admittedly, better then the bendy-teeth practical close-ups from 2-Headed Shark Attack).

Luckily this movie didn't shy away from the bloody red stuff (to the point where I'll actually be surprised if SyFy and SPACE leave it all in without cutting any of it down). This movie was filled with lots of blood and gory shots to appease any gorehound, so even though the Leviathan themselves...err...I meant the sharks...even though they were horrible, they more then made up for it by at least making their attacks still really fun to watch due to how violent they were; My personal favorite is this one scene where a fisherman gets his fingers bit off and the laughably-fake blood just keeps pumping and squirting out of them – good stuff! I was also really impressed by the fact that our less-then-intelligent Guido and Guidette leads were able to figure out what exactly was going on so quickly. Most movies of this kind don't have the main cast figuring things out until towards the end, but they were able to quickly deduce that there were sharks invading the Jersey Shore after one of the first couple of victims got killed, and then instantly set out to stop them...with an arsenal of fireworks...? In all seriousness though, that scene is a total laugh-riot, and if you know how the real Jersey Shore cast is like then you can imagine how that ends up ultimately playing out (hint: there's a bit of horsing around, a firecracker is accidentally dropped into their bag of firecrackers, and well...boat goes boom). Though with that said, they surprisingly still manage to do a bit of damage to the sharks in that scene as well. Actually, the sharks seemed rather easy to kill in this movie - most of the time they just have to get shot in their fin as it's sticking above the water and that seemed to do the trick in almost every single case.

Sadly, when the movie was not focusing on the sharks killing people, or the Jersey Shore spoof cast, it got a bit boring as it followed around characters that just weren’t interesting (Like the Sheriff, the greedy Oil Tycoon, or the Mayor.) Where the Jersey Shore spoof cast, as well as Vinny, knew what kind of low-grade B-movie they were in, these side characters (all played by recognizable names) seemed to think they were in a much better movie then they actually were. Their acting was good, don't get me wrong there. Actually it was some of the best acting in the entire movie, but that's almost the problem – they played their roles a bit too straight-faced, and I just found those characters, and the time spent focusing on them, to just not be that interesting and it really wrecked the flow of the movie and slowed the pacing of it down more often then not. Luckily though, they didn't give us an over-abundance of these scenes, and the rest of the movie was enjoyable enough that these scenes are pretty quickly forgotten about once they were over.

Even without the whole killer shark parts of this movie, Jersey Shore Shark Attack would still have been an excellent Jersey Shore parody movie, filled with equal parts making fun of as well as love towards the source material. The really bad effects work and uninteresting sub-plots do bring the overall enjoyment down just a tad, but there's still enough hilarity and fun to keep this movie afloat.

I actually wouldn't mind seeing further 'Jersey Shore' spoof movies with this same cast of characters returning – Jersey Shore Arack Attack next perhaps? Jersey Shore Avian Assault for Part 3? Somebody get on that. 

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Arachnoquake (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Active Entertainment

RUNTIME: 86 mins

FORMAT: Screener

PLOT: After earthquakes ravage New Orleans, dozens of locals fall victim to a previously unknown species of deadly albino spiders. Despite their best efforts, spiders swarm out of the earthquake-opened fissures and infest the city.

REVIEW: I've been backing killer spider movies now for awhile, hoping that they would overtake the shark movies as the popular go-to killer animal for B-Movie companies, however the first of many killer spider movies to hit this year, Roger Corman's Camel Spiders, was only so-so and far from the great 'Second Coming' that I was hoping it would be to usher in the other killer arachnid movies of 2012 and beyond. Well luckily, coming up on Saturday, June 23rd at 9pm Eastern Time on Space: The Imagination Station in Canada, and the SyFy Channel in the U.S., we have our second major spider movie of 2012 – the awesomely-titled Arachnoquake, starring none other then John Connor himself, Edward Furlong! And huge thanks to the wonderful people at Space: The Imagination Station (The Canadian affiliate for The SyFy Channel) for sending me a screener copy of Arachnoquake to check out for early review!

Sadly, my screener copy was only 58 minutes long. It would seem, judging by the regular length of a SyFy Original Movie, that there's roughly half an hour missing from the screener and I think a large portion of that, if not all, is the end. There may be a tad missing from the beginning, since when the screener starts it opens on two characters talking about the earthquake that's already happened, and one of them had already been bitten by a spider, but the title screen comes up shortly after that so I'm thinking that might really be how the movie starts. An hour into it though, the video just abruptly ends mid-battle, so I can't really comment on how it finishes or on anything that may be contained within that last half an hour. With that said, it's certainly a great way to get me to review the screener but still make sure I tune in for the movie when it airs, because I really loved what I saw here and I just can't wait to find out how it all finishes!

Arachnoquake starts off with a group of co-workers that work at a small egg farm out in the woods, and as they work and horse around with one another, they talk about a mysterious earthquake in the area the night before, and one of them complains about having been bitten by something in his sleep. It doesn't take long after that before we discover that the earthquake unleashed a nest of killer mutated albino spiders in the middle of New Orleans, that had previously been trapped below the ground where they evolved through the generations to the way they are now. Of course, as these things go in movies such as this, pretty soon after that the spiders start causing havoc in New Orleans and turn the city into an all-you-can-eat buffet of Human as they continue to grow and multiply, leaving it up to a slacker tour bus driver and his diverse group of tourists for the hour, to save the day.

I had quite a few surprises waiting for me within the confines of this movie, none of which I was expecting. First up is the acting; a few roles aside, the acting really impressed me from almost everyone, and not once did I ever stop and think 'Boy, that was some horrible acting right there.' Heck, even though Edward Furlong is the bigger name, it was Bug Hall as the slacker tour bus guide that really surprised me, and he was a much better actor then Furlong (who falls into the small 'few roles aside' section). Also, you just have to love that name – Bug Hall. My only wish at this point is that his next SyFy Original Movie be one about killer bugs. You just know he has to do it at some point (Bugpocolypse: Starring Bug Hall - seriously, somebody get on that). Also because of his great acting, as well as most everyone else's top-notch skills in this, a lot of the comedic beats honestly came across as genuinely funny. Far too often in B-Movies, moments that are meant to be funny just come across as a lame attempt, but here almost every time (and there is indeed quite a few), all the comedic beats and funny one-liners are full hits, thanks in large part to everyone's excellent comedic timing and acting abilities. Make no mistake – this movie knows exactly what it is and has tons of fun with it, and tons of fun making fun of itself, with almost every scene having some form of comedy within it, be it a visual gag, a one-liner, a silly sound effect, or an insane situation. Actually, one of my favorites is a Deep Blue Sea speech moment. Even though here it's pretty easy to spot coming from a mile away thanks to how the frame was obviously shot, but that didn't make it any less hilarious when it happened.

Another of the surprises are the creature effects. Are they great? No. But they are quite passable and fit within the surrounding physical environments far better then they did in Camel Spiders, and they never once took me out of the moment. Then again, it's hard to be taken out of the moment by low-quality effects when what they're doing is so amazingly cheesy that is is literally candy for the eyes; We have giant mutated albino killer spiders of all sizes ranging from tennis ball-sized to as large as a car rampaging through New Orleans and the surrounding backwoods areas, chomping down on people and webbing entire vehicles up, and we also have a few other little treats such as a scene where an alligator fights with one of the giant spiders in the swamps, and Edward Furlong, along with the girl softball team he coaches, take their bats to an attacking spider with hilarious results. Oh, and despite their large sizes, magically they're still light enough to walk on top of water, and scurry fast enough on it that they can keep up with a speeding boat! Like I said, such awesome cheese to fill your mind that the last thing you're thinking of are the effects because you're just having such a blast with everything else. And that's not even the cheesiest stuff with the spiders! There is one, um...special ability...that they can do, that I won't ruin here in my review, but let's just say I totally was not expecting it, and I loved it every time they utilized it (and the effects for it were indeed really well-done and realistic-looking).

Of course with a killer animal movie, there are two main aspects viewers normally look at – the animals themselves, and the kill scenes. While the death-by-spider scenes were normally either off-screen or light on the red gooy stuff, they made up for that by having very disgusting spider 'births'. See, it's never really explained how (at least not in the first hour that I saw), but everybody that got bitten by one of these spiders had spider eggs implanted in them within that bite, and it doesn't take very long for those baby spiders to...well...burst out. Yes - of the skin, in a grisly and disgusting display of puss and gore, done with a mix of CGI and excellent practical effects.

I do have one complaint though, but it really is only a minor one and it's to be expected in low budget fair like this where they don't exactly have lots of money to spend on background extras, but MAN, New Orleans sure is empty this time of year. There was rarely (if ever) anyone else on the streets of this supposed 'Party Central' city, other then our main group of characters, that at times I was starting to think if maybe what came up out of the ground wasn't albino spiders but really The Ancient Enemy from the 1998 movie-based-on-the-book Phantoms (Screw ya'll, I loved that movie). It would have been a nice touch to see other background people reacting to the invading army of spiders as well.

Apocalyptically-empty city aside though, there were some really great set pieces on display here, such as the tour bus weaving in and out of stand-still traffic in the middle of the city to try to shake off the spiders that were crawling all over it, or the above-mentioned spider chase across the surface of a bayou, or the spiders dragging someone through the thick vegetation of the swampy forest. And I must say, speaking as someone who spent three years in my youth working at a grocery store – I REALLY enjoyed this one scene where the main crew of characters were chased by one of the spiders through a grocery store (which much like the entire city around them was also 100% void of other people). Actually, this movie started really quick with the action and almost never let up on it for the entire run-time, save for maybe 60 seconds here and there in between, and almost every action scene took place within a different set piece so we got quite a nice variety of locations, which in my eyes was a really good creative decision as it prevented the movie from ever getting stale or repetitive. I'm always saying that the worst crime that a B-Movie can commit is to be boring, and this is certainly not guilty of that.

Having not yet been able to view the final half an hour, that's pretty much all I can say on the movie for now. I'm even more anxious then ever to watch the movie when it airs on June 23rd, cause I enjoyed the first hour so much that I'm looking forward to seeing how it all wraps up, especially after having seen some photos online of a couple shots from during that last half hour of the movie that included one of the spiders so big that it was as large as a house, climbing up two skyscrapers, and another shot of it in-battle with some military vehicles – NICE. My below rating is based on just the first hour, so it could easily go up or sink lower (or remain the same), depending on how that last half hour plays out when I watch it on Space. Either way, when Arachnoquake airs in-full on TV look to my Twitter page or Facebook Page to see what my thoughts on that final half hour were, since I don't really see the point in writing up a second review.

Missing 30 minutes aside though (since I can't really speak to that yet), this was a much better killer spider movie then Camel Spiders was, and more along the lines of what I was expecting Camel Spiders to be. If the other upcoming killer spider movies of 2012/2013 (Mega Spider and Spiders 3D) are anything like this, then spider movies still could be in the running to overtake the throne from the sharks as the new Rulers of the killer animal B-Movies! Muah ha ha ha ha!

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward