Sunday, December 9, 2012

Jurassic Shark

"Dinosaur from the deep"
Dinosaur from the deep? Is that even a tagline, or it is supposed to be some sort of plot synopsis?

When you've watched enough monster movies (about three or four is probably enough) you know what to expect when you see another movie that has the work "shark" in the title. Crummy actors, bad special effects, unmotivated sex scenes, you know the drill.

Jurassic Shark does indeed take you to that special "what the hell were they thinking"-place, but does it so much more than most other movies. The actors are so bad I'm not really sure they're actually trying, or if it's some sort of parody movie.
The special effects are about as bad as you might expect, with the shark growing and shrinking in size between takes, and water surfaces that remain undisturbed by a megalodon swimming close to it.

There is something special here though. The first ten minutes are only the intro, which is kind of remarkable for a movie that's only 75 minutes long. About five of those minutes consist of two women standing in bikinis in knee high water and splashing water around. Not really at each other, I guess they didn't like the idea of getting wet (especially after getting to know each other so well during a hopefully awkward scene at the beach), just mostly splashing in general. Eventually, as the splashing continues, they are suddenly in deeper water even though they didn't actually walk anywhere. Cue the shark.

A bit later in, a team of wannabe scientists, I guess maybe it was a school project, but who cares, come to the same area to find some possible illegal oil digging, and spend the day at the beach. It's never explained how this can be combined, but whatever. Sharks, amirite?

At the same time, a team of criminals who just stole a painting sit on the beach and pretend they're in a getaway boat. The boat doesn't have an engine. They are trying to escape from a robbery with a row boat. Script writers are rarely this awesome. Anyway, they also get attacked by the shark, someone dies, the stolen painting is lost in the sea and now has to be retrieved, even though it's just covered by some taped together plastic, so it's obviously absolutely ruined the second it's under water.

I kind of stopped caring about the story at this point and just enjoyed the interesting acting and the weird things that occured. People throwing dynamites and getting blown up, others being eaten by an enormous shark even though they were standing i 20cm deep water, that kind of thing.

An interesting thing is that they seem to have stolen the whole prehistoric shark idea from Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, except they skipped the ice. The megalodon in Jurassic Shark has just hidden in some underwater pocket somewhere for million of years. I never really understood how that worked, but that's most likely because it was never explained in the slightest.

Edit: Actually, the plot synopsis XBMC finds for this movie read "When an oil company unwittingly unleashes a prehistoric shark from it's icy prison [...]". I'm pretty sure they never actually say anything about ice in the movie, but at least now we know they didn't just steal part of the idea from Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, but rather the whole thing.

You should absolutely watch this movie. It will surprise you in so many ways, and you will laugh more than you have for weeks. But like with all monster movies, don't watch it by yourself.

IMDb
Trailer

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Nazis at the Center of the Earth

"Dead...
but not gone."
I'm sure everyone heard of the finnish sensation Iron Sky, in which astronauts uncover a hidden nazi base on the moon, triggering an all out war between earth and the moon nazis. Pretty good movie, although not really mind blowing.
I'm also pretty sure most of you haven't heard of the mockbuster version of Iron Sky, Nazis at the Center of the Earth, the movie this review is about.

While Iron Sky was entertaining, it didn't really surprise me, I kind of expected most of the things happening in the movie.
Nazis at the Center of the Earth on the other hand is pretty insane. It's almost impossible to wrap your head around the events unfolding, mostly because the characters act like complete idiots and do things you would never expect a human being to do, but that is of course kind of the point of mockbusters.


Researchers (why are there always scientists fucking up in these movies?) running around in Antarctica fall down an ice shaft and manage to discover an enormous opening under the ice containing a whole landscape. Mountains with forests, plains, nazi headquarters, if you can imagine it, it's there.
Of course, they get captured and eventually discover that one of the scientist have been in on the whole nazi-hiding-in-ice-conspiracy all along. Not really surprising, but it's presented in an absolutely awful way. It's pretty great!

There's honestly not that much more to say, some characters get killed, other try being heroic, Hitler shows up in a mechanized armor.
Oh wait! Hitler shows up in a mecha!
Yeah, this movie is fucking epic.

After watching movies like 200 M.P.H. and Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies, I was starting to lose faith in The Asylum. Nazis at the Center of the Earth turned that frown right upside down.

IMDb
Trailer

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Ice Quake

"Nature unleashed"
I have no idea if this tagline is official, but it's bad enough to be.

The movie takes place in Alaska, where a bunch of geologists discover unusal tremors in the ground. Tremors caused by liquid methane trying to escape and kill everyone.

I actually had to do some research here to figure out how plausible this is. Why methane?
Apparently methane is pretty damn common in the earth (according to Wikipeda, "It is the major component of natural gas, about 87% by volume"), so I guess that's actually pretty plausable. If gases ever set out to kill people, methane would probably be the first one out to get you.

Since liquid methane is pretty damn cold when frozen (somewhere between -182 and -164 real degrees), everything that gets touched by the gas liquid gas is instantly frozen.
Yeah, that doesn't really make sense, but who am I to judge. Sure, I probably did more research to write this review than the whole crew did to make the movie, but whatever.

If the gas would escape, which it for some reason doesn't do through all the cracks it's already caused, everything would apparently die. The whole earth would just freeze in an instant. People, you'd better be fucking afraid of methane!
To remedy the situation, a family that happens to be in the area sets out to fight the methane, because that's just how you fix situations where all life on earth is threatened. The husband in the family is a geologist, so I guess that makes sense. Also, there's a dog.
The solution is so obvious that I'm almost embarrased to write it down: they have to blow up the gas.
And make sure the dog survives.

The effects aren't really that terrible, and to be honest, neither is the acting. It's no What's Eating Gilbert Grape (true story: I just now found out that movie isn't just called "Gilbert Grape"), but it's a far cry from the likes of Alien Origin. SyFy sort of managed to save face on this one.
Don't get me wrong, it's a horrible movie, but it's not that bad. With a few friends, a bag of chips and a bottle of coke (or beer or whatever you normal people drink) it's pretty enjoyable.

IMDb
Trailer

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Death Racers

"It's not about the speed...it's about the blood!"
There are few things I find more entertaining than mockbusters and Insane Clown Posse. I mean, seriously, how do fucking magnets work?

When I heard about Death Racers, it felt like christmas, only a lot better, since I don't really care about christmas. Death Racers is an Asylum production featuring Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope of ICP fame (honestly, they're actually famous). This should logically be the best movie ever made.

The cover states that the movie is "uncut, uncensored, unbelievable". I concur with this statement. It's absolutely unbelievable how this movie can be so awful.

Insane Clown Posse has a strangely enormous following. They even have their own festival. Their festival even has infomercials!
Little known fact: one of my biggest dreams is to attend Gathering of the Juggalos (and survive the experience). I mean, they have dwarves. And guys on stilts.
Anyway, seeing as how this band obviously has more money than they can spend, it's interesting to see that this movie seems to have the lowest budget of any Asylum movie ever made, except for maybe Transmorphers.

The story is what you'd expect, it's some sort of dystopian future and people race and kill each other. Whatever.
ICP runs around and acts like idiots. That's pretty much what this movie is. All the actors are absolutely terrible, in a bad way, the effects are atrocious, the production is among the worst I have ever seen in any movie, and it's simply not funny in any way shape or form.

I don't really know what else there is to say about Death Racers. It's simply awful. Don't watch it. It will make you lose all respect for ICP (heh, see what I did there?).


Oh god. I watched ~5 seconds of the trailer to make sure it's for the right movie. I feel sick.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Sharktopus

"Half-shark, half-octopus, all killer." 
I think the cover image is fan art and thus not official, but whatever, it's pretty damn awesome.

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus is, admittedly, a pretty great movie. However, it's a bit redundant to have two monsters in a monster movie. Star Entertainment realized this and figured the could one-up the Asylum production, simply by taking the same two monster sized animals and combining them into one. And thus, the Sharktopus was born.

This is actually a pretty good movie all things considered. The budget feels about a hundred times higher than the regular SyFy or The Asylum production, which means it probably cost about a thousand dollars to make.

Sharktopus is, like most creatures in monster movies, an experiment by mad scientists gone wrong. A shark and an octopus has been combined (for some reason, both parts are a lot bigger than the animals normally are) by the military to create the ultimate weapon or whatever. Seems pretty useless, but whatever.
The Sharktopus has a remote control device with which the military can decide who the creature should kill. In an expected turn of events, the device breaks during a demonstration of the weapon, and the creature is free to roam the seas. Also, it's free to roam the beaches, because this movie would suck if it couldn't walk on land. Which, of course, it can. Fuck yeah.

So anyway, the Sharktopus proceeds to kill people and a reporting team (why are there always reporters in these movies?) together with some other people I can't be bothered to remember set out to kill it before it eats everyone.
There are a lot of good special effects scenes that will have you figuratively rofling, and the actors are pretty much what you'd expect (so yeah, they're about as good as Steven Seagal). All in all, an entertaining movie.

The best thing is probably the almost mainstream success the movie for some reason managed to receive, which spawned some great things, like this absolutely amazing plushie, made by "a friend of someone that works at the network" (at least I tried to give credits..):

Trailer (Don't miss out on the song!)

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Sand Sharks

"Just when you thought you were safe out of the water"

This movie is unsurprisingly about sharks. Sharks swimming in sand.
I can't remember how many shark movies I've seen the last couple of years, but this is still probably the only one with sharks actually hanging around out of the water, at least for prolonged periods of time.

Sand sharks doesn't have much of a plot more than that there are sharks, they are out to eat everyone, and they swim in the sand instead of the water, and are attracted to sound/vibrations (so yes, this is a low(er) budget version of tremors with sharks instead of snakes).
Also, there are a bunch of scantily clad women, because who would expect something else with a movie that has "Sharks" in the title? I don't really see the connection, but for some reason it seems obligatory.

What makes this movie a bit special is the fact that it actually seems to a kind of parody of..this kind of movie. But it's still at the same level as for instance Megashark vs Whatever animal you can think of, and it's not really funny, it's just obvious that it's not supposred to be serious. Sadly, the movie don't really succeed in making fun of itself, so it feels like the parody part is wasted.

On the plus side, there are a couple of giggle-inducing special effects, and, well, sharks that swim in the sand. All in all, pretty entertaining, but no masterpiece in any sense of the word.

The next time I see a shark movie, I really want everyone to be fully clothed to be honest.
Especially the sharks. That would be a fucking awesome movie.

IMDb
Trailer

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus


Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus is the story of a huge prehistoric shark fighting an equally huge prehistoric octopus.

Both animals are frozen solid in the polar ice caps mid-battle, but they break free when the ice caps start melting due to global warming.

I really don't think I need to say very much about this movie, it's so obviously great that I'll just let this clip of the shark biting an airplane speak for itself.









IMDb
Trailer