Dangerous Animals (2025)

MAY 27, 2025

GENRE: PREDATOR, SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (ADVANCED SCREENING)

With Jaws turning 50 this year, we’re gonna see a lot of shark related stuff; some tied to the film (there’s another documentary on the way!) while others will just be coasting on its success and popularity. Given the fickle nature of moviemaking and distribution, it’s almost impossible to believe that Sean Byrne and writer Nick Lepard knew that Dangerous Animals would end up being released almost 50 years to the day after Jaws’ debut, but I’m sure they’re relieved that they made one crucial choice along the way which will help avoid strict comparisons: this isn’t really a killer shark movie.

"But there's a shark on the poster and in the trailer!" you are saying, right? Yes, there are sharks in the movie and yes, at least one character is bitten by one. But the real menace of the film is a serial killer, Tucker, played by Jai Courtney. He runs a little service that takes people out on his boat and then lets them descend into the water in a shark cage so they can get some up close and personal time with the big fish. But I guess he’s already gotten enough Yelp reviews, because after they have their fun and they get back on board he cuts them up a bit to lure sharks over (less stinky than standard chum, I assume) and then tosses them into the water while videotaping the ensuing carnage.

But as he points out at a crucial moment in the film, the sharks are just doing what they do. This isn’t Jaws or any of its countless knockoffs; maybe it’s because it’s also an Australian movie but I honestly thought about Wolf Creek more than Amity Island as the film unfolded. Indeed, at one point the sharks actually ignore an easy victim Tucker has lowered into the water, as if to make sure the audience is fully aware that these animals aren’t inherently evil the way so many “killer shark” movies make them out to be (or else the title might be Evil Animals). Most die-hard Jaws fans probably know by now that Peter Benchley regretted his role in turning sharks into some kind of menace in our minds and spent the last few years of his life working on preservation and education about them, but it's rare to see a movie that makes the same point.

As for Tucker? He is indeed evil, and I’m happy to say Courtney is absolutely terrific in the role. Like most moviegoers, I didn’t care much for his early appearances in things like Die Hard 5 and Terminator Genisys (that they were also bad movies anyway didn’t help), finding him to be a rather bland presence. “Why do they keep pushing this guy on us?” I thought every time he popped up in something. But then he turned out to be one of the bright spots in Suicide Squad, and now with this it’s seemingly confirmed: this man is born to play wackos and bad guys, not action heroes. Don’t get me wrong, the film’s two heroes (Hassie Harrison as Zephyr and Josh Heuston as Moses) are also quite good and their chemistry is pretty charming. But this is Courtney’s show through and through; the type of showcase that had me momentarily wondering why I ever used to roll my eyes when I saw his name. He’s dialed up to 11 more often than not and is clearly just having FUN playing this role, and the movie actually loses energy sometimes when he’s been off screen for a while. If you told me ten years ago, walking out of that awful Terminator movie, that someday I'd be saying "I wish that movie had even more Jai Courtney!", I would have thought you were insane! And then you could have told me who would be elected President twice and I'd be like "Nope, the Jai thing is still harder to believe."

Back to the heroes – they’re no slouches, either. They have a rather inspired meetcute (Moses sees Zephyr stealing some ice cream and tells her he will report her to the store clerk unless she helps him get his car started) and hit it off rather (OK, fine) swimmingly, but as she is a commitmentphobe she bails on him (while he preps a breakfast for her! Heartbreaking!) and goes off to surf on her own, which is how she ends up running afoul of Tucker. So Moses spends a chunk of the movie just trying to find her, and while his biggest clue is a rather large leap in ultimately correct guesswork on his part, I forgave this bit of contrivance because it just meant they'd be reunited that much quicker. Honestly, while we're all here for the sharks and Jai, I wouldn't have minded watching a whole movie about these two figuring their stuff out to give love a chance!

This of course helps the back half immediately, because (again, with Wolf Creek on my mind) at no point was I convinced either of them would definitely survive the ordeal. There are no other major characters in the movie (the closest is an associate of Tucker's, and we aren't sure if he is aware of the murders which also adds a bit of suspense to the proceedings), so it really comes down to "OK, one of them will probably bite it, but WHICH one?" with the added bonus of not wanting either of them to die because I want them to get married someday, dammit! Lepard's script really nails that balance of racing through their meeting/falling for each other so we can get to the exciting stuff but not to the extent that I can't believe Moses is bothering to go through all this for someone he just met.

Also, the shark stuff looks good. Again, since this isn't a movie where they are the main threat, there's not a lot of traditional shark action, but at least it doesn't look like crap when it's time for them to make their mark. And the runtime is a tight 90 or so (bless you all, in the wake of the painfully long new Mission Impossible), with almost no real lulls to it (unless you hate LOVE, you monsters). Byrne knows what he's doing; it might not be the triumph that Loved Ones was, but it certainly proves he was no one hit wonder, and hopefully it won't take another decade for him to get another movie made (after Devil's Candy, which was decent but not exactly a must-see). And I'm glad IFC is giving it a decent push for its theatrical run, because it's the sort of big screen thriller we don't get to see often enough these days, and my man (yes, I'm calling him "my man" now, that's how good he is in it!*) Jai deserves to have a mass audience give him an apology.

What say you?

*OK he also sang along to Meat Loaf at the after-party, in a bar where they foolishly allow people like me to control the jukebox. He coulda won me over even if I just got out of Die Hard 5 with that move.

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Under Paris (2024)

JUNE 7, 2024

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX)

Much like The Exorcist with possession movies, it's impossible to watch a killer shark movie without thinking about Jaws, which also happens to be one of the few undeniably perfect movies ever made (due to its themes and measured pace, I can understand why someone may dislike The Exorcist, but there's literally no excuse for Jaws. You either love it or you're objectively wrong). And it's spawned an entire subgenre of its own; I may put them in with the killer bear, dog, etc. movies here (the "Predator" sub-genre) but if I were to put all of those movies together, I'd guess shark-based entries would make up at least of them. Under Paris is the latest one, but I bet we're only a few weeks away from another.

Sometimes these movies lean into Jaws' mighty shadow, either by ripping it off blindly or offering direct homages/references as if to say "We are doing our own thing, but we respect our master." Deep Blue Sea is probably the most overt example of the latter, as not only do they find the same license plate that Hooper pulled out of the poor innocent tiger shark, but the three sharks in the movie were killed the same way the sharks in the first three Jaws entries were. So it was kind of amusing that Under Paris owes more of a debt to Renny Harlin's blockbuster than to Spielberg's, as the film is loaded with R-rated carnage courtesy of several sharks.

There's also a lot of DNA from the two Meg films, in that the 3rd act revolves around our heroes trying to prevent a disaster at a big event. While the swiping of the "close the beaches" plot point is practically a given with these things (here it's the Olympic triathalon that the mayor refuses to cancel), we have to recall that Bruce the shark never got a big smorgasbord; the one attack on the all important 4th of July occurs at the movie's halfway point, prompting the three protagonists to head out to sea to kill the fish. Here, the opening scene tops the body count of any single entry in the Jaws franchise, and the third act, as in the Megs and some other movies, they watch helplessly as the shark causes major chaos at the event (going on as planned), spending just as much time pulling people out of the water as they do on shark control. This helps keep the Jaws comparisons at bay, which can only help a movie like this.

Also like The Meg, our hero is dealing with a tragedy on a previous underwater excursion. Bérénice Bejo plays Sophia, an oceanologist whose entire team (including her husband) is chomped by the shark in the opening scene. Years later, she discovers the same shark is now swimming through the waters of the River Seine in Paris, which is being cleaned up for the upcoming Olympics (which really are in Paris, making me wonder why Netflix dropped the movie now instead of next month when their marketing would be basically free). Naturally no one believes her, but after convincing a handful of cops to check it out, and they see it for themselves, they have her back for the rest. Unfortunately convincing the mayor to cancel the events is a non-starter, and there is also a group of "save the sharks!" activists who are trying to lure the shark back to the ocean, so the movie has no shortage of potential victims.

Luckily for us sickos, director Xavier Gens doesn't chicken out and keep the body count low. In two glorious sequences (not counting the occasional brief carnage along the way), the sharks make a buffet out of large groups (the activists and then the swimmers), offering up the sort of R rated chaos that the PG-13 Megs shy away from. Legs get eaten off, the water rapidly becomes more red, people are yanked back under the water only inches from safety... it's the sort of stuff that'd have an appreciative crowd hooting and hollering in a theater, but of course that's not an option when it's the latest movie being tossed onto a streaming service where it'll be forgotten in a few weeks. But back on point, Gens manages to bring some of his "French Extremity" energy (he gave us Frontiere(s), if you recall) to what often resembles an Asylum/Syfy type killer shark movie, which is novel. I even got the impression that no one was truly safe, which is nearly impossible in this sort of thing.

I just wish the CGI was more convincing. It wasn't just the plot that had me thinking of things like Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, as some of the VFX shots didn't really look much better than the ones in those Z-grade movies. There's a part where the shark jumps out of the water from under a boat, capsizing it and sending its four occupants plunging into the river, and it should have been a major highlight, but the shark animation was so silly looking it was hard to really get the intended rise out of me. And while we do see some folks torn apart, there is a tendency to just pull someone out and see that they're missing a leg (or both in one case) without showing the attack itself. That trick is effective once or twice, but at a certain point it becomes obvious they're cutting around things that would just look bad anyway.

Also (spoilers here) the ending is abrupt and not very satisfying. I like the general idea, but it's not even a phyrric victory for our heroes, they just don't ever accomplish anything. And (again with the offscreen stuff) the jerk mayor is seen plunging into the water, but not eaten by a shark like they deserve, adding to the generally unsatisfying nature of its closing moments. The "Planet of the Sharks" idea is fine and even intriguing, but there needs to be some kind of "win" to balance it out, either by killing the main shark or at least showing that it ate the human antagonist at the very least. Also it had one of my pet peeves, where people don't even make an effort to survive and just stand there despite it seeming like they had plenty of time to get to safety (in this case, they're in a boat as a surge of water approaches, and they make no effort to, you know, drive directly away from it). The hopeless nature of its conclusion felt like it was from a different movie entirely, souring things just a touch at a crucial moment.

But otherwise it's a good time. Bejo made for a solid heroine, the setting was novel for this kind of thing (a shark movie without a beach?), and it was taken seriously by its makers, which I can always appreciate. Again, it's a shame that it's being dumped to Netflix instead of playing in theaters, because I suspect the visual flaws would be more forgiving with everyone cheering for the moment, but oh well. One thing Netflix offers a theater can not is the ability to change the language, and you should be sure to do so and put it in its native French as opposed to the English dub that plays by default. It's not too bad as far as lip "syncing" goes, but it has that weird tinniness to it that makes it sound phony even when you can't see the actor's face in the show anyway. Plus if you can't understand the dialogue without the subs you won't be able to look at your phone the whole time, which I assume is how 90% of all Netflix content is watched. But even in English, it's a decent entry in this overcrowded sub-genre and should scratch any itch you may be having for such things.

What say you?

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65 (2023)

MARCH 20, 2023

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I find most conspiracy theories (and the people who make them) to be total nonsense at best, but I will entertain the notion that IP obsessed studios like Sony purposely make a movie as forgettable as 65 every now and then. Because they spend a lot of money on such things, and there's zero chance it'll be a hit, but when they announce yet another nostalgia chasing sequel (indeed, another Ghostbusters started shooting this week) and people complain that they never make anything original, they can point at something like this and say "Yes we do, and you don't show up, so why should be bother?" $100m to justify and defend the billions they spend on sequels and reboots seems a small price to pay, no?

Because the thing is, the movie isn't terrible or anything - it's just... THERE. The concept sounds fun on paper: a passenger vessel crashlands on an unknown planet, where dinosaurs are the only lifeform and an asteroid is inching ever closer to the atmosphere. "Like the one that killed all the dinosaurs?" you ask, and yes - in fact it's exactly that one, and that's why the movie is called 65 (as in million years ago - and don't worry if you didn't piece that together yourself, as the title screen literally spells it out for us). But it's not a time travel thing; we're just told that in the vast infinity of space there are other systems with people who, you know, speak English and play with Legos. It's almost like they started with the idea to make the fact that this was Earth into a 2nd act reveal/twist, but then opted to just tell us right at the beginning without realizing that the movie no longer had any compelling reason to exist.

However, therein lies one of the issues with the movie: Adam Driver's pilot and the little girl he has to protect - the only two survivors of the crash - don't KNOW that this is "Earth, 65 million years ago", so there's no real in-movie hook to their predicament. A time traveler who happens to land 24 hrs before the asteroid wiped out all the dinos would probably figure that out and understand the gravity of the situation, but neither of our characters do for the majority of the runtime. And since they are the only two people in the entire movie (except for Driver's wife and daughter, who are seen briefly via flashback and are not on the planet), there isn't much suspense to the proceedings, either. Will this PG-13 movie from a major studio kill its main star any earlier than the final scene, if that? Or the 9 year old girl who just lost her parents? If you believe either of these answers could be "yes", then you might love 65!

(And yes, I know that this comes from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who came up with the - ahem - "original" script for A Quiet Place, which did indeed kill a child, but the key difference is that the kid died in the first scene to sell us on the concept, and left us with three others to worry about including the baby. That's not the same thing as "Adam Driver has to protect the only other person in the movie.")

For the rest of us who know better, even at 90 minutes it starts to get a bit tiresome, because there's simply no danger involved in any of it. It's like riding one of those immersive screen rides where the IMAX size movie screen makes you think you're on an out of control roller coaster or being flung around the city by the Green Goblin or whatever, but in reality you know you're just sitting in a seat that tilts back and forth. You get the illusion of a thrill, like when a dino snatches the girl by her coat and starts to drag her off, or when the two of them are separated by a tunnel caving in, but there's simply no chance at all that one of them will rescue the other within minutes, and then we will watch them walk around for another ten minutes until the next action scene is rendered. It's all just, you know, fine.

Since there wasn't much to genuinely engage me during the movie, I kept thinking of two ways that it easily could have been improved. One just required a different perspective: tell the story through the eyes of the little girl, with Driver as someone she (and in turn we) wasn't sure she could trust. Not only could this provide a possible secondary threat to our hero, but also - once we know he wasn't really a bad person - generate more suspense during the action scenes, because he could die at any moment if she was our audience surrogate. They don't even speak the same language, so that could have been used for more tension through her eyes (well, ears), because he could be saying "I want to help" but she'd have no idea. The other thing that might have helped would be if it was set up as a more Enemy Mine kind of scenario, with someone that's Driver's equal in terms of audience trust/recognition (Oscar Isaac?) and the two of them have to learn to trust each other if they're going to survive the dinosaurs and get off the planet before the asteroid hits. Either way, there'd be some narrative intrigue that the movie sorely lacks.

All that said, it's at least a reasonably OK timekiller. Since the Jurassic Park movies are usually our only source of big screen dino action, it's nice to have one where they are the primary threat, as those films (particularly the most recent one) seem hellbent on human villains taking up the majority of the screentime. The designs look a little weird as a result, because my mental image now and probably forever of say, a raptor is going to be how they look in Spielberg's universe, but they're at least well done in terms of feeling like flesh and blood presences for the most part. And there's a pretty great jump scare early on that is perfectly executed, with directors Beck and Woods drawing your attention to one side of the image before springing a dino on the other. The marketing was sure to remind us a lot that this came from the creators of Quiet Place, which did the movie no favors since that movie got more suspense out of a nail on a stair than this one managed with dinosaurs and asteroids, but at least they could pull off a few decent monster movie thrills.

Basically, it's the sort of movie TNT or SYFY will run at 2 am and/or 4pm for the rest of our lives, and you'll half-watch it while doing the Wordle or whatever, and later in life you might be able to surprise someone with the reveal that it played in theaters. There's nothing really wrong with that - it's OK for movies to be OK! - but it just makes me sad that they couldn't put more effort into it and make it something worth championing. I'd love to tell you to go check out this original genre film over all the sequels playing alongside it (seriously - the other movies in the theater were all franchises: Scream 6, Avatar 2, Creed 3, Ant-Man 3, and Shazam 2), but the sad fact remains that it peaks early with the ludicrous title reveal and never generated a moment of genuine tension until its final scene. Even at 90 minutes (and bless em for it!), there are simply better things to do with your time and money (and health - happy 3 years of Covid, everyone!).

What say you?

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Strays (1991)

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I've wanted to see Strays for a while now, because there are so few killer cat movies (due in part to the fact that they're nearly impossible to train like dog actors) and as a cat owner who has been scratched a time or two, I figure I might find them "scary" (relatively speaking). But the reason I ended up *owning* a copy is laughably depressing: Scream Factory was having a sale and if I spent over $50 I'd get free shipping, so after adding the two things I wanted (which totaled around $40), I poked around for a relatively cheap movie that wouldn't be all that much more than the shipping charge. After twenty minutes of clicking I decided on Strays, and then... the other two items (Space Truckers and a Carpenter vinyl) got canceled because they ran out of their stock. So all I got was this, the movie I didn't really want to own and only found because I enjoy seeing the words "free" somewhere.

Anyway, as expected, it was fine. It was a basic cable movie in 1991 (USA if memory serves), and I'm sure it served its purpose of giving someone like me a breezy way to kill two hours and maybe be inspired to buy a new kind of soap, or that double disc collection of the best '80s power ballads. But it has no real use as a standalone blu-ray (even one you buy to get free shipping!), because not only is it completely featureless save the trailer, but who in their right mind would want to watch this movie a second time? It's barely even a movie, and you can tell because it's bookended by padding scenes and it's still only 84 minutes long with credits. In fact there are TWO generic "maybe a sequel?" setups at the end: one in which we see one of the titular strays has survived (dun dun DUNNNN) and another in which another family moves into the house (dun dun DUNNNNN... DUNNNN!!!).

The overlong opening is about an old lady who feeds the strays and is killed for her trouble, and no one ever mentions her again. Granted, it's how we establish that the house our hero family will move into is both available and relatively cheap, but it goes on much longer than it should, setting the tone for this awkwardly paced (but not without entertainment) movie. Hell the family doesn't even move in right away; they come check it out and debate for a few minutes over whether or not they'll take it, which is the sort of scene I hate because there's no real value to it: the conversation can only go one way (if they don't take it, there's no movie) and the concerns could have been explained in a line of dialogue from someone begrudgingly carrying a box into their new/not really wanted home. It takes about 40 minutes for the damn cats to finally do something, and while it's amusing (they pee all over the owners' bed and clothes), by which point I'm sure most of those old USA viewers had probably nodded off (as I did; it took two sittings for me) or changed the channel, only checking in when whenever they landed on instead went to commercial.

Weirdly, the movie generates more suspense from a love triangle than the damn cats. Our hero couple is played by Timothy Busfield (at his most Dreyfuss-y, which doesn't help when you mentally track back to what likely led to the movie's existence in the first place) and Kathleen Quinlan, and they score the house from Quinlan's sister, Claudia Christian. In exchange, Busfield's lawyer character is helping Christian with her divorce, which seems to be the end result of her infidelities - a habit that seemingly doesn't stop with her brother-in-law. At one point she full on kisses him on the mouth right in front of her sister (not a quick peck, either), and makes innuendos throughout. Meanwhile, Busfield is constantly defending her against Quinlan, who being her sister has been putting up with her crap all their lives, so it seems like there's a real possibility the two of them end up in bed, maybe with a cat lashing out on Quinlan's behalf. Hell, it's almost kind of set up that way: Busfield is allergic to cats and wants them gone, but Quinlan and their daughter take a liking to two of them (they think it's just the two; there are like a dozen that seem like normal cats but are led by a Church-like jerk cat).

Beyond giving the movie some tension the cat scenes rarely managed, the temptation stuff only served to remind me of Of Unknown Origin, in which Peter Weller faced off against an angry rat that spent some time psychologically torturing him before stepping up its game (and when his wife was out of town, his secretary put some moves on him, but he rebuked them). That movie worked by contrasting Weller's home life with his office life, where his coworkers seemed baffled about his newfound rat obsession and we see how this once fastitidious, detail-oriented man sort of went to hell. We don't get anything like that here; Busfield and Quinlan don't even stay mad at each other for long; the cats attack their dog (off-screen, and the pooch lives, thankfully) and they basically forget all about her sister trying to usurp him for herself. And there's precious little of the outside world; beyond the four principals I think there are only four other people in the movie: a vet, a phone repairman, the old lady at the beginning, and Busfield's secretary (who we only hear over the phone anyway).

Things finally pick up in the last 20 minutes or so, when it basically becomes a realtime account of Quinlan and the daughter trying to escape the cats around the house as Busfield races home. There's some pretty hilarious stuff here (Quinlan, god bless her, keeps a straight face while wrestling with a cat puppet), with most of the sequence revolving around different ways she can get the cats wet (because cats hate water, the vet told us earlier), kind of destroying the house and reminding me yet again of Origin. And we get the long awaited payoff of the family's broken microwave cord (which is the most blatant safety hazard this side of Clark Griswold, despite having a kid, a dog, and two cats!) when Busfield holds the frayed part between his hands and basically Jaws 2's the attacking feline. Honestly I assumed it would just start a fire and give them another obstacle to avoid as they made their climactic escape, but this was better. Kept the house standing for Strays 2: Still Strayin', which I assume is probably actually in the works somewhere since TV networks can't let a damn thing go anymore.

Anyway, it's sadly among the weaker killer cat movies I've seen, reminding me why the best examples either use them as one of several threats (Pet Sematary) or use them in shorter tales (The Uncanny, the "Cat from Hell" segment of Tales from the Darkside). The fact that they can't really be trained to do much means there's little believable action (drink every time the soundtrack utilizes a screeching hiss when the onscreen cats are clearly just running around doing their thing) and too much padding things out with other things that, no matter how well the writer and director (in this case Shaun Cassidy (!) and Jaws 4 DP John McPherson) excecute them, will never be as entertaining as the promise of legit actors pretending a cat can do anything besides give you a few scratches or generally annoy you.

What say you?

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Beast (2022)

AUGUST 27, 2022

GENRE: PREDATOR, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

When I saw the trailer for Beast, I had two thoughts:

1. Idris Elba punching a lion in the face is prime cinema.
2. "I bet the poachers are the real threat throughout the movie and they're overselling the lion stuff."

Well, I was right about the first one, of course (Idris Elba punching anything is usually pretty good cinema at the very least), but ironically, I merely WISH I was right about the second one, because while the lion was a suitable horror/thriller villain, the movie never really put anyone beside Sharlto Copley in actual danger. Elba plays a doctor whose ex has recently passed, and he's now the sole provider for two teen girls. As is always the case, he's not ready to be a full time father, he's a bit out of touch with their interests and passions, etc. So naturally, the movie is about him proving that he can be the father they need, whether it's helping them grieve and move on with their lives, or stitching up a wound they got from a crazed lion while in the middle of the African Bush.

All well and good, but... we know he'll make it, because a studio movie isn't going to orphan two teenagers, and also because it's his story from start to finish. I think if the story unfolded from the girls' perspective, showing how maybe the older one (who is 18, the other is about 12) is capable of taking care of them both and maybe don't really need their dad, then maybe Elba's fate could be more of a question mark. Likewise, there's no way either of them are going to be killed, and there are no other characters of note out there with them, so that only leaves Copley, as their honorary uncle/best friend to both parents. He's a nature lover who takes care of the animals in the area (a scene where a lion plays with him like a cat might is both astonishing to watch on the technical side of things, and just plain adorable) and is also an anti-poacher, i.e. someone who will resort to extreme measures to protect the animals from those who are after their fur/bones/etc. Making him the movie's most interesting character.

Naturally, he gets a major wound almost instantly, so there really isn't much suspense to his fate either - a "when, not an if" kind of deal that nonetheless gives the film its most suspenseful moments. There's a scene where Elba is walking him through a quick patch for his wound via walkie talkie, with the lion's location unknown, and you're constantly wondering if the lion is heading to finish him off, or if it's about to pounce on Elba and the girls and interrupt the impromptu medical advice. The movie could have used more of that sort of thing, because once Copley's out of the picture you're just sort of watching it roll along until it hits the 90 minute runtime.

As for the poachers, their appearance in the trailer (surrounding Elba and co. with guns, attacking him) is pretty much their entire role in the movie. The lion shows up and makes quick work of them, once again leaving us only with the people we know the lion won't actually get. Copley's assistant is introduced early but then returns back to their base or something, making him a non-entity, and hell even other animals don't even show up to mix things up. There's a scene of Copley tracking the lion when he sees a gator (or croc, I can't and never will be able to tell them apart) wading past, but that's all we see of it - give us a lion v croc scene, dammit! It's admirable to strip a movie down to its bare essentials, but sometimes they go too far and as a result the movie gets too uninvolving, generating about as much suspense as a movie you've seen a dozen times.

Incidentally, the last trailer before it was for Jaws, which is being re-released on Labor Day weekend in both 3D and Imax. I've watched that movie 30 times and I still hope Chief can hold on to Quint long enough for the shark to swim away or something, so it's even more disappointing that this first time viewing didn't inspire even half that much intensity for any of its scenes. Luckily, the lion itself looked terrific; I never once doubted it was real (it was entirely CGI from what I can understand; no animatronics or whatever) and they thankfully didn't make it a mutant or anything - it's just severely pissed off. That said, I'm curious about the film's R rating, as nearly every bit of violence is off-screen (they find a village that it wiped out; most of the poachers are also dispatched under the brush or while we watch someone else react to it). The parents guide on IMDb says there are two F bombs, but I don't even recall those - it really just felt like a PG-13 movie throughout. Not that that's a bad thing, but when you promise an R and everything is pretty tame, it's hard not to feel like you got sold a bill of goods.

Basically it's a movie that is just aggressively fine. Elba and Copley's chemistry was good, the scenery is of course gorgeous, Steven Price's score is effective, etc, etc... but it just never really got my pulse pounding the way these things should. Director Baltasar Kormákur (who made the incredibly fun 2 Guns and has some survival movie experience with Everest) favors long takes for many of the film's big moments (and even smaller ones, like the girls seeing their mother's house for the first time), and I can't help but wonder if some traditional editing could have given them a little more oomph. It's the sort of movie I often found myself watching at the drive-in during that first covid summer (i.e. stuff that would have debuted on streaming in normal times), where it was generating just enough excitement to make me think "Well at least I'm not sitting in the house", but precious little more.

What say you?

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FTP: Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre (2015)

MAY 2, 2022

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I try not to generalize, but let me be clear: you're a complete idiot if you sit down to watch a movie called Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre and expect tight plotting, strong characters, etc. And hell, even if the movie had a more ominous title like "From The Depths" or some nonsense, the credited "Directed by Jim Wynorski" (who also co-wrote) should revert expectations back to the former. So as long as you are aware of its title and director (who can be hit or miss even with his unique set of standards), I think it's fair to say that this actually skirts with "not bad" territory, all things considered.

Since the plot itself is ridiculous (land fracking unleashes prehistoric land sharks) Wynorski and his collaborators are never encumbered by much in the way of human logic, nor do they ever make us wait too long between attacks. All in, this makes the movie move along better than a number of its shark movie peers, so since "don't bore me" is all you can really ask of this sort of thing, I recognize that I've certainly seen worse. Our victims are a group of female prisoners who are doing their cleanup community service, one of whom is about to be rescued by her lover (Dominique Swain), so along with the two cops that are assigned to their group, you get this kind of low key Assault on Precinct 13 thing where some of the prisoners are just trying to keep their head down and don't want to go along with the escape, ending up siding with the cops. And then all of them have to band together to dodge land sharks.

Even better, it doesn't do the thing that annoys me about most of these Syfy-esque shark/monster movies, where they just randomly cut to a new person who we don't know and kill them 30 seconds later just to keep the film's "action" level high. After the sharks are unearthed they kill some dudes in the opener, and then for the rest of the film they're after the prisoner/cop group or a pair of other cops (one of whom is played by Traci Lords, who "understood the assignment" as they say), whittling down their numbers instead of boosting the body count with interchangeable randos. I guess "focus" would be the word I'm looking for here, which is sadly kind of novel with these things, though it helps me appreciate this more than I probably would otherwise.

It shouldn't shock anyone to learn that the shark FX kind of suck though. Since they are land sharks they spend most of their time just kind of tunneling through the ground like the Graboids from Tremors, except with bad CGI making the crumbled up "rocks" look more like giant puffs of popcorn (and when the shark passes by, the area resets itself with flat unbroken ground, naturally). There isn't much in the way of good deaths, either - a big one near the end is just sort of vaguely represented by blood in the water. They even use cheap VFX for body parts; Lords and her parenter find a victim in the woods that is in pieces, and each chunk of leg or torso or whatever is clearly generated over a shot of the ground. Like they couldn't find one (1) FX guy in Florida who had a few fake body parts from a previous shoot just lying around and would be willing to donate them for a few hours?

It's also an ugly film, so be prepared for that. The entire thing seems to be shot at the brightest time of the day with extra lights for good measure - it's not until near the end, when they make their way through a cave to safety, that concepts like "darkness" and "shadow" are shown on screen for the first time. You've likely seen more interesting cinematography on the Spice Channel circa 1997. Again, no one should be LOOKING for this sort of thing here, but unlike the silly plot and bad CGI, it almost seems like they have to go out of their way to make the film look this garish and would be better off just pointing a phone at the actors, so I should mention it.

Wynorski and two of the girls provide a pretty amusing commentary; they're not afraid to call out some of the film's sillier moments and dialogue readings, so it's just as low key charming as the film itself. Long story short, for a movie you could "watch" without your phone ever leaving your hand (or even your vistion), you can do much much worse, and given the ever abhorrent state of the world, such silliness is only going to be more and more welcome, I feel. Long as you keep it in moderation, I feel there's always room for this kind of B-movie nonsense as long as the filmmakers and actors know exactly what they're making and find the right tone with their edit, and - perhaps more importantly - you're in the right mood for it when you watch.

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Grizzly (1976)

MAY 19, 2021

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

When Severin announced they were releasing Day of the Animals and Grizzly on special edition Blu-ray, I was stoked for an excuse to watch them again. But as it turns out, I had never actually seen the latter film; in my head I had caught it at the New Beverly in the pre-HMAD days, but unless my memory is even worse than expected, I just combined my memories of Day of the Animals, Prophecy, and whatever else I caught before it was all documented (via this very site) to form some kind of recollection of seeing the film. What a delight to finally actually see it and discover it was better than my "memory"! I thought it was just OK, but no, it's pretty fun!

Now, longtime readers know I occasionally am convinced I didn't see something only to discover I did (in at least one case, I even reviewed it again), but I'm confident that this isn't another of those fried brain cell moments, because a. the lead actress in the movie kind of resembles my mother-in-law, which is the sort of thing that would stick out in my mind forever, and b. the movie has one of the most graphic child attacks this side of Assault on Precinct 13, as the titular bear grabs the kid, squeezes and snarls at him a bunch, and then tosses him to the side, somehow sans his leg even though the attack never suggested anything like that. He then eats the kid's mom for good measure, and while it's not "funny" per se, it's the kind of thing that would have sent the New Bev crowd into a fever pitch.

No, this was my virgin experience with William Girdler's infamous Jaws ripoff, and I was 100% delighted with it. Knowing exactly what I was in for probably helped, as did recently suffering through a pretty bad shark movie (Deep Blood), so it was like the movie gods wanted to set things right by sending this down with the message "THIS. THIS is how you rip off Jaws!" That said, I was kind of surprised that there was no town event; the "close the beaches" plot is pretty flimsy and doesn't even really seem to matter much, as the mayor simply doesn't want to close the park, but the bear is often attacking isolated people (and at one point, leaves the park entirely), so there's no potential smorgasboard or anything. At one point he attacks a camper who is near a bunch of others, but doesn't even bother going after the guy with her sitting a few feet away, let alone anyone else.

But what it lacks in that department, it makes up for in characters, as they are pretty much identical to their Jaws counterparts; hell, the "Hooper" standin (Scott, played by Richard Jaeckel) even wears the same outfit. Andrew Prine more or less fills Quint's role; he's mostly just the guy flying the chopper around while hero Christopher George (a ranger, not a sheriff - very different!) looks for the bear, but he's got some hunter skills and even has a little monologue about bears attacking a tribe of Indigenous people (he, naturally since this is 1976, uses the term "Indians"). They even ditch "Brody's wife" halfway through like Jaws did; George has a love interest played by Joan McCall, a photographer who wants to tag along when they head out into the oc- er, woods to find the bear, but George won't let her come along and that's pretty much that. She only appears in the background of another scene, a weird decision since they establish her as a bit of a take-no-shit woman, so you'd think she wouldn't listen to George and end up in danger anyway (or, if such a thing would fly in the '70s, saving the men/day), but nope. She listens to him and stays home, because that's what Mrs. Brody did and doing something else would mean coming up with new ideas. I love it!

It also has a much hungrier antagonist than Jaws; in fact I was kind of shocked to discover this was a PG movie, as it's pretty graphic at times and even has some brief nudity, which would suggest an R even in these more lenient times of the MPAA. I actually kind of get how Tobe Hooper and co. thought they could get a PG on Chain Saw, since this movie is gorier and has nearly double the body count and managed to score the softer rating. Oh, you wacky MPAA board! So don't be fooled by the PG into thinking that the big guy only gets a few kills; I think he racks up a total of nine in the movie, and they come along at a steady clip, so the movie is rarely dull. Apart from some of the romantic stuff between George and McCall (which is sweet in its way, kind of a precursor to the gold standard set in Alligator) the movie is either scenes of the bear attacking, scenes of our heroes looking for it, or scenes of George snarling at the mayor, who is occasionally reasonable but then switches gears in between lines. Like at one point George says he wants to close off half the park, and the guy is fine with it, but then ten seconds later they're screaming at each other about something else. As a fan of George (particularly his snarling), it offered a number of wonderful moments, particularly an "Up yours!" that got me wondering why that phrase went out of vogue.

Severin's Blu-ray is pretty packed, with two lengthy looks at the career of Girdler (who only made two more movies before he was killed in a chopper crash), two commentary tracks, and a handful of other interviews and archival featurettes (one of which seems to have been assembled for a previous DVD release). Of the two commentaries, the one with Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson is the better; they offer the usual biographical info and some "state of cinema then" context along with good natured jabs at some of the movie's sillier moments (and naturally, elements lifted from Jaws), making it engaging and far from pretentious. The other track, by McCall and producer David Sheldon (the two are married) has a number of good anecdotes as well, but they also fall silent on occasion, and Sheldon frequently says he or the other producer actually directed this or that scene, which may be true but kind of feels disrespectful to Girdler at times. So if you only have time for one, stick with Howarth and Thompson's.

The other pieces are all enjoyable, particularly Stephen Thrower's look at Girdler's career as he walks through all of the films he made, spending equal time on each. The other one, with Girdler's longtime business partner, dwells on the earlier ones more then races through the others (Manitou is barely even mentioned at all) as the two of them were no longer working as closely in the latter part of the director's career. I should note if you go through this stuff you're going to hear about Girdler's death at least four times, so if you have a fear of flying this won't help in the slightest. One archival piece features some terrific behind the scenes footage of the crew working with the bear, so that one is definitely worth a look for anyone who thought it made have all been faked with stock footage or something.

Day of the Animals might be a slightly better movie thanks to its ensemble cast and varied antagonists, giving it a little more pizazz, but considering this one's mercenary origins and low budget, I found it to be better than expected. But it wasn't all smiles; as I watched the bonus features and kept seeing the same scenes over and over, I couldn't help but think how fun it would have been to see this sort of thing at the drive-in last summer when I was going all the time. Now that theaters are reopening there's really no need to keep driving all the way out there (especially since their programming has been fairly terrible for the last few months, holding the same movies there endlessly instead of changing it up), so I lament that Beyond Fest was the only outlet really taking advantage of the renewed interest in the venue with repertory programming. And even their selections weren't always exactly "drive-in" fare - I mean, Silence of the Lambs is a Best Picture winner! Hopefully, now that no one needs to go to the drive-in for their big screen entertainment, the programmers opt to dedicate at least one of their four screens to B-movie junk that isn't playing at the AMCs and Regals. Hell even if they were just projecting this very same Blu-ray, it'd be worth the drive in my opinion.

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Deep Blood (1990)

APRIL 26, 2021

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

It's gotta be kind of demoralizing to make a shark movie, because you know you're going to get compared to Jaws (a masterpiece) even if you're only aiming for Jaws 2 (an enjoyable film) territory. Certainly there are several that manage to escape Bruce's shadow and work exactly as their filmmakers hoped (Deep Blue Sea and The Shallows come to mind), but then there are ones like Deep Blood (Italian: Sangue negli abissi) which might as well have presented its foreign pre-sale information on screen. There are probably worse shark movies, but those are probably at least more fun than this, which commits the cardinal sin of Italian horror: it's boring.

To be fair it was a late '80s production, so the Italian film production market was already in collapse. But I've seen other movies from this era and while few if any of them are all that great, they're at least serviceable timekillers that more or less get their job done. Deep Blood can't even manage to clear that low bar, and there's a palpable sense of indifference right from the start that never gets any better, to the point where a major character is never even given a name beyond "Ben's Father". Hell there isn't even a "close the beaches" kind of plot; just some very flimsy pushback from the higherups about causing a panic. More often than not you'll feel like you're watching the deleted scenes compilation; you can practically hear the director noting that the scene didn't advance the story and it had to be cut for time.

In fact if someone were to say "Actually that's exactly what happened, oops!" I'd feel better, because that would explain why there's no actual shark in the movie. Ill-fitting stock footage is used to show one swimming around before a character goes underwater while someone explodes a fake blood bomb, and that's all you get for each "attack" - there's barely even any shots of a fin breaching the surface! And no, it's not a "we hide the shark", "less is more" kind of thing - there simply isn't any real presence at all for the thing, which is kind of a problem, wouldn't you agree? The actors don't bother to make up for it by acting scared, either; one guy just casually watches his girlfriend get eaten before he drives away without as much of a "Nooooooo!" Even its demise (kind of a hilarious shot where it breaks in half like a dropped ceramic statue) is cribbed from another movie, per the IMDb. Maybe I should just watch that one.

And it's a shame, because the story is actually grounded on something that might be compelling to watch even if the shark element was lacking. In the opening we meet four kids, who are told of an old legend of a sea creature and even do a blood pact to bond them together, and then we cut ten (?) years later to when the shark has started vaguely menacing the community. The four guys are all in town for one reason or another (never left, back from school, etc) and enjoy catching up, but then one of them is killed, prompting the other three to fulfill their pact. So... yeah, basically IT, but with a shark. As ripoffs go, it's not the worst idea, but with so little evidence of a shark at all, let alone one that's the embodiment of an ancient curse, it never gels. Plus the guys are all dull as dirt, and their conversations with one another are largely along the lines of "We gotta stop the shark!", so there's no sense of their brotherhood OR the backstory in any of their following actions. They even bring another random guy along with them for the climax (in which no one is even attacked, let alone dies), so it's just a waste all around.

The movie's only real saving grace is the dialogue, which is often so bizarrely straightforward that it becomes comical. In one of my favorite examples (there are many contenders), a crowd on the beach is inexplicably all fascinated by the guys (and the aforementioned "Ben's Father") getting on their boat to go after the shark (which is nowhere around, mind you). A cop arrives on the scene and asks what everyone is looking at, and someone helpfully replies "We're looking at three guys and an old man go after a shark." I mean, she's not lying! There's also a hilarious scene where another dad (not Ben's) yells at his son for being sad that his mom was dead, basically saying he shouldn't miss her because she was a drunk. Another dad (lot of dad stuff in the movie!) tells his son he's proud of him and asks for a handshake, but the son comes over and gives him a hug! Aww! It'd be so sweet if it was the resolution for several scenes where the two were at odds or something, but nah.

The music is also quite special. Sometimes it's the synthy Goblin/Carpenter ripoff stuff you'd expect, and that's fine, but the rest was seemingly stolen from a particularly syrupy melodrama. More than once it reminded me of the music that would accompany the overwrought romantic/dramatic flashbacks in (the original) Final Fantasy VII, which isn't exactly fitting for a killer shark movie. Even the part where the dad yells at his kid has curious a soundtrack choice: the dad has to keep yelling at him to turn down his music, which you'd think would be some kind of heavy metal or rap, but nope: it sounds like John Tesh or something.

I know that sounds funny, and it is to a degree, but there's only so much of that you can take in 90 minutes, and also keep in mind I'm cherry picking "highlights". Most of the movie is go nowhere, aimless scenes of people looking at the water, fishing, arguing about things that have no bearing on anything (one guy wants to drop out of college to become a golfer! Does he need his golf skills to kill the shark? Like swing a club to knock a grenade toward it or something? Nope. Means nothing.) The best thing one could do with the disc is to throw it on in the background when friends are over, if only to ensure no one will ever get too distracted by the film and stop socializing. Clearly Severin agreed that this is for completists only; the lone extra is a trailer.

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Bug (1975)

JANUARY 11, 2021

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, PREDATOR
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Sometimes it's legitimate ignorance/confusion, but one type of joke I often can't stand is when there are two movies with the same name and when you say you are watching or enjoying one, someone will make a crack about the other (one basic example: you say you're enjoying Jack Palance in Alone in the Dark and someone will ask if he's in a scene with Tara Reid, who starred in the other, awful one). The reason for this is that I am already annoyed I have to clarify which one I mean, because so many producers are too lazy to come up with a title that hasn't already been used, so when I take the time to specify and STILL get a hacky joke reply, it's just twisting the knife. I bring it up because when I said I was watching Bug, I specified that it wasn't William Friedkin's while simultaneously thinking that the two films couldn't be less alike - only to discover they actually DID have a number of similarities by the end.

I mean, if you haven't seen Friedkin's 2006 thriller, the quickest way to sum it up would be "Two people gradually go insane while barricading themselves in a room", whereas *this* Bug is, in general, a typical 1970s nature gone amok movie about a breed of cockroach type bugs that begin decimating the populace of a small southwestern town. And given that it was produced by William Castle and directed by Jeannot Szwarc - whose work here helped him get the Jaws 2 gig - it's reasonable to expect the same kind of schlocky thrills you also got from the likes of Frogs and Giant Spider Invasion, right? Well, for about 45-50 minutes that's indeed what you get, and then... well, it turns into a movie about a guy going insane while barricading himself in a room. Hell, I can go further with a SPOILER and note that the protagonists also burn to death, which means that Friedkin's Bug, while obviously not a remake, shares more surface similarities with this one than some legitimate remakes did with their originals (Prom Night and the most recent Black Christmas come to mind). It might actually be an interesting double feature, especially on a crowd of people who had never seen either and only knew that they were in no way related despite having the same title.

Until it pivots, it's certainly a fun killer bug movie, if a bit TV movie-esque (no surprise; Szwarc came from TV and, after Jaws 2 and a couple other features, returned there and hasn't come back). An earthquake sets the little things loose in the opening scene, so you get the Star Trek sort of "shake the camera and have all the actors tip themselves to the side" goofiness that's always enjoyable and also more visually exciting than the usual man-made explantion you get in this kind of film (i.e. the pesticides in Kingdom of the Spiders). It's like a bonus mini-disaster movie! From there we get a few isolated attacks, including one in, believe it or not, the Brady Bunch kitchen! Seems that this film was going into production right around the time that show had gotten canceled, so to save money they just slightly redressed their set and shot the scene there. Since the victim is a Mrs Brady-esque lovely lady, it almost feels like a strange, Adult Swim kind of sketch to see someone in that iconic room being killed in the most ridiculous way possible.

See, these bugs don't bite people to death or whatever. Instead they... well, they basically fart fire. Our hero scientist James (Bradford Dillman) gives it a more scientific explanation of course, but "they fart fire" is how it looks, and it's this little superpower that causes all the deaths. In the Brady kitchen, one of them gets in the poor woman's hair and starts a fire, one she doesn't even notice at first while she is puzzling over her recipe. In another scene they cause a truck to burn up, and since they are also attracted to fire and eat ashes, this is the most pyro-driven killer insect movie I think I've ever seen. There are like four different scenes of Dillman lighting a newspaper or something on fire and sticking it near them in order to lure them somewhere, which at the time was kind of obnoxious but when it was over I actually appreciated the repetition, as it was lulling me into thinking this was gonna be the usual deal and the climax would involve them finding the nest or something and blowing them all up.

Nope! You see, that lady in the kitchen was Dillman's wife, and after her death he becomes obsessed with the bugs and studying them in order to find a way to eradicate them permanently. And this is where the movie pivots into nuttier fare, with the non-Dillman cast more or less disappearing as we focus almost exclusively on him in his house for the final thirty minutes. But it's not like, him facing off against the bugs as a last man standing thing; instead it enters into Phase IV territory (the bug footage was actually shot by the same guy, incidentally) as the roaches start communicating with Dillman by forming words out of their bodies. It's like the writers had gotten 60 pages into their standard nature gone amok script, went to see Phase IV during a break, and got inspired to change course but never bothered to thread their new ideas into what they had already written.

But I liked that! One thing I love about 1970s genre fare that was never as prevalent in other decades is that they were often pretty grim, killing off heroes and/or ending on a note that suggested the evil thing was just getting stronger (even Kingdom of the Spiders, a pretty goofy movie throughout, ends on a major downer), but the TV movie aesthetics had me thinking this would not go that route. Plus, even though Rosemary's Baby had already come and gone (well, not GONE but you get it), William Castle's name still suggested whimsy and fun, an element that is entirely absent from the film's back half. Hell if anything the end was dark even by the standards of this sub-genre, since the insects are seemingly specifically driving this guy crazy after murdering his wife, AND they evolve into something bigger/stronger for good measure. Hahaha, GRIM. I love it!

The disc has but one bonus feature of note: a commentary by Troy Howarth that is a little more defensive than I'm used to for him. He tends to be one of the more engaging historians they get for these things, but here he seems to be particularly annoyed that Dillman never got as much respect as an actor as he believes the man deserves. I don't disagree, necessarily, but it starts to overwhelm the track at times, at the expense of learning more about the other players involved. The movie is almost over before he even really starts to give a little background on Szwarc, for example, but by then we've heard him defend Dillman's presence five or six times. Calm down, man!

I tried to focus on the track, but I did zone out a few times, so maybe Howarth mentioned this himself, but I think it's amusing that this movie - released two weeks before Jaws - starred the guy who'd star in one of its most famous knockoffs (Piranha) and was directed by the guy who'd direct the actual Jaws sequel, both films released a few weeks apart just three years later. After Jaws came along there was definitely a shift in these sort of things, some holding on to the darker elements of the earlier movies while attempting to make things more commercial, so I think it's funny that the director and star of what had to be the last one released (perhaps even made) prior to Jaws changing the game forever went on to make films that literally owed their entire existence to it.

Long story short: I'm gonna program a film marathon of Phase IV, Bug (1975), Jaws, Jaws 2, Piranha, and Bug (2006) someday, hope you can make it.

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Uncaged (2016)

SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: STREAMING (SHUDDER)

Asian countries frequently get wacky titles when they import our movies; Army of Darkness is called "Captain Supermarket" and the Fast & Furious films are known as "Wild Speed" (Furious 7 in particular was "Wild Speed: Sky Mission") in Japan, for example. Normally they're just kinda goofy, but in this particular case I wish we just had theirs, because Dick Maas' film Prooi (which translates as "Prey", and we have enough of those) became Uncaged, which is kind of generic, but in China they got "Violent Fierce Lion"! Not only is that awesome, it's also more helpful in describing the movie. Uncaged sounds like a prison-set action movie or maybe a documentary about my man Nicolas.

No, this is indeed about a violent and fierce lion, who begins terrorizing Amsterdam after picking off a few folks on the outskirts (including kids! This lion is not discriminating!). The heroes are a zookeeper, a budding reporter (also her on/off boyfriend), and a big game hunter that she used to date; there are other supporting characters but in keeping with the scriptures (i.e. Jaws) we mostly only deal with the core trio. That said, one of the many things I enjoyed about the movie is that it was relatively free of Jaws-y things - there's no "close the beaches" type plot, no celebration to cancel, etc. In fact Maas goes the opposite route - the government officials are quick to act (though careful with their wording as to not cause a panic), and it's the press and townsfolk who think they're nuts.

(If I watched the movie in 2016 I might have rolled my eyes at the idea of the press not taking a grave threat so seriously, but nope, now I know that it's pretty accurate.)

But what elevated this from an enjoyable enough nature gone amok movie to something that made me smile (and get one of those coveted hearts on letterboxd) was the "love triangle" between the three leads. See, the new guy Dave is not the best boyfriend in the world, and Lizzy is kind of getting tired of his shit. So when her ex comes to town to save the day, Dave is understandably jealous and a bit concerned she might go back to him. But then they meet and... they become bros! Jack has moved on, is totally welcoming to Dave, and invites them both to dinner, and they're all pals for the rest. It's so sweet! It's almost a shame Dave has to sit most of the climax out when Jack and Lizzy are trapped with the beast inside a medical school; I was hoping for some more of their newfound friendship.

As for the lion, it's... not a real lion, let me crush those hopes right now. Instead it's a mix of CGI and an animatronic, and while the former looks dodgy at times (a global concern for the film, as there are also a number of lion-free shots that look bad due to poor compositing), the latter is fine and appreciated, since they could have just gone all in on the CGI. Of course this means its size seems to change in a few shots (he looks much bigger in earlier shots than he does near the end, when the up close encounters with the heroes means we get more of the animatronic version), but he's not a "monster" - it just seems to be a normal escaped lion, freeing the movie from any mad science/evil corporation kind of nonsense.

The setpieces are nicely varied too - there's a bus attack that causes massive chaos in the streets, a brief playground bit that benefits from the fact that he's already killed a kid in the opening scene (which, naturally, doesn't show him at all), a couple of one on one chases... the movie may run a little long (1:45ish) but it's never dull. And it's logical enough to accept that the lion can disappear into the woods or whatever, allowing the action to spread out over a few days without it being completely unbelievable. It's kind of the best of both worlds - unlike Jaws or other fish types, there's no safety in simply staying out of the water, since it's in a major city, but it's also small enough to get around (though Maas conveniently skips a few of its entrances, so it'll just suddenly be on that bus) and avoid non-stop detection, so the filmmakers never have to pull a Godzilla '98 and simply "lose" the giant creature.

It's a shame it rarely attacks any of the supporting cast though; we meet some people along the way who seem to be perfect fodder (like some guy who claims Dave made a porno tape of his girlfriend) but they never become lion food. The attack scenes are all good on their own, but the impact is diluted when we never know who the hell they are; the movie ends up feeling a bit overpopulated as a result, so whittling down the named characters a touch would not only give the deaths more impact, but also increase the threat that the lion presents to this world. At times it almost feels like he's attacking people in a different movie, as it's not until near the end that any of its victims has a direct impact on our heroes.

But otherwise it's a blast, the exact kind of escapist fare I wanted and a solid example of why I think Shudder's curation is top notch, because it's sitting there in the spotlight section next to "elevated" horror stuff, early 80s fare, and beloved classics, giving you a little bit of everything without having to dig for it like you do on the other services. And it reminded me that I STILL haven't seen Maas' killer elevator movies (which are referenced via a throwaway bit of dialogue about two people trapped in an elevator), so thanks for that, movie.

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Universal Horror Collection: Vol. 5

JUNE 23, 2020

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, PREDATOR
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

As Covid-19 continues to wreak havoc (and very stupid/selfish people continue to spread it by being stupid and selfish), it's looking more and more likely that the fall will be spent not at my usual film festivals and repertory screenings, but in my own home 24 hours a day except for the rare trips to the grocery store (and the drivein, bless it). The thinnest silver lining to this grim future is the fact that being forced to stay home means I'll have more time to watch old horror movies during the season, something I love doing but rarely have the time to. There's nothing that gives me that life-affirming jolt of nostalgia like staying up late watching a selection of Universal, Hammer, and AIP horror movies with a cup of (oft spiked) hot cocoa, but I'm often pulled away for a 35mm screening of something more recent, or a Screamfest/Beyond Fest premiere. Probably won't be the case this year!

With that in mind, I hope Scream Factory keeps these Universal Horror sets coming, because they're a perfect fit for that kind of late night, "Maybe I'll fall asleep but it's OK" comfort viewing. With Universal releasing deluxe editions of their big guns (i.e. Frankenstein, Dracula, etc) themselves, Scream Factory has been cranking out four-film sets of the studio's B-movies from the same era; the sort of films that probably wouldn't get picked up individually but when packaged together (with historian commentaries on each one to sweeten the deal) become quite attractive additions to the collection. This fifth volume focuses on "Jungle" horror from the early '40s, with The Monster and The Girl along with the "Cheela" trilogy that began with Captive Wild Woman and was followed by Jungle Woman and The Jungle Captive.

Now, the 1940s are generally considered to be the weakest decade for horror (thanks a lot, WWII!), but Universal was of course the company to get around that thanks to The Wolf Man and the entertaining "Monster Rally" films that followed. But alas, despite the two sequels, Cheela never quite found herself joining the likes of Larry Talbot and his frenemies. One could argue that the timeline wouldn't match up, since these three films seem to be taking place in the time they were produced instead of some vague yesteryear, but it's not like the continuity made any goddamn sense across the "Monsterverse" anyway, so they could have thrown her into the mix if they wanted to despite the anachronism.

Then again they couldn't even keep much consistency within the series itself, so perhaps it's better they didn't muck it up further by having her interact with Dracula. In Captive Wild Woman (the best of the lot), a circus trainer finds a female ape named "Cheela" (played by a guy in a suit) in the jungle and brings her back to the States in order to train her along with all the other animals he captured (mostly lions and tigers - real ones in this case). John Carradine shows up as a mad scientist type who wants to turn this intelligent ape into a human, and using his own assistant's brain and the body of a patient he turns Cheela into "Paula", a lovely woman played by Acquanetta. But Paula shares Cheela's devotion/attraction to the trainer guy, and gets jealous about his traditionally human fiance, which turns her back into her animal form - very Cat People, admittedly. However she only scares the fiance - as a "monster", she's quite heroic, going after only Carradine and then, during the climax, some animals that have broken free of their cages and attack the trainer.

All of this is summed up at the top of Jungle Woman (complete with recycled footage - in a movie that only runs 60 minutes! Charles Band must have seen this as a lad), but despite the attempt to present it as a direct sequel, the film then goes off in a different, largely disconnected direction as "Paula" is revived and finds herself committed at a sanatorium, where she sets her sights on her doctor's would-be son-in-law (the trainer and his fiance from Captive Wild Woman pop up early on but then disappear with little explanation). But this time she never turns back into Cheela as we saw her in the first film, and since there's no wild animals to cause a threat, she goes after innocent people (including a dimwitted fellow patient who has a crush on her, poor bastard). A few dialogue snips and it could very well just be a movie about an insane woman. It's enjoyable enough, but even with Acquanetta returning it feels like a very different character.

The actress sat out the third film, The Jungle Captive, with Vicky Lane taking over in a film with an even flimsier connection. None of the other characters return, newspaper headlines suffice to briefly explain the connection before Rondo Hatton (!) steals her corpse from a morgue, bringing it to yet another mad scientist who is trying to make human/animal hybrids. This time around, instead of her becoming obsessed with a handsome (and taken) young fella, Hatton becomes kind of infatuated with Ann, the scientist's assistant who is being held there (they need her blood for the experiment). Of the three films it's got the most traditional horror elements and action (there's even a car wreck!), but it's a good thing I accidentally watched it first (didn't realize it was a sequel) because anyone showing up for "Captive Wild Woman 3" would be disappointed or even confused, since it's so far removed from the series' origins. Even if you ignore the recasting of Paula, her role in the film is almost unnecessary, as the focus stays mainly on Hatton's growing conscience and the cops who are trying to find the assistant/solve the murder Hatton caused at the morgue. But on its own, it's a decent little mad scientist tale, and Hatton's character is more interesting than his usual "Creeper" appearances.

That leaves The Monster and the Girl, a true outlier on the set as not only is it unrelated to the others, but it's not even a true Universal movie (it was produced by Paramount and bought by Uni later). It's also needlessly confusing, with a flashback-heavy opening half hour devoted to a mob plot where a guy is framed for a murder while trying to save his sister from a prostitution ring (!). At the halfway point, the guy is killed and his brain is put into a gorilla, allowing him to avenge his own murder as an all powerful beast, which must feel kind of awesome for him since he was a clumsy square kinda guy as a human and probably would have gotten instantly killed all over again if he had to use his own body. The gorilla scenes are pretty great, but you'd be forgiven if you checked out by the time they finally arrive when the movie is essentially almost over since it too is only an hour long. Watchable, but of the four movies on the set it's probably the last I'd ever revisit.

The accompanying commentaries are a mixed bag; the most interesting is fittingly for the best movie - Tom Weaver on Captive Wild Woman. He's got the usual biographical info for the actors, but he also tracked down a lot of the production history for this film as well as The Big Cage, the earlier film from which most of Captive's circus footage was obtained. I also enjoyed Greg Mank's discussion on Jungle Woman, especially since he rightfully notes how horror-lite the movie is, and both Mank and Weaver also discuss the unfortunate racial issues with the two films (Acquanetta was a black woman, but claimed to be Venezuelan to keep her career afloat). The other two are less interesting; in fact Scott Gallinghouse doesn't even make it all the way to the end of Jungle Captive before running out of things to say. Ideally they'd just have all of these guys sit together and do all of the movies since there's definitely a "more is merrier" law to these historian tracks, but as far as solo ones go, they're certainly better than average.

Scream Factory has been putting these volumes out every three months almost like clockwork, and hopefully they continue the trend as that would put the next one out in September, when my "old horror movies" itch really starts to go off. I haven't watched every film on the 3rd and 4th volumes (and missed the 2nd one entirely somehow), so if Volume 6 isn't out in time I still have a few to tide me over. But as the Blu-ray format continues to be "last-gen" (even Scream's parent Shout Factory is starting to release 4K UHD discs) it seems the time to get these "filler" kind of movies the proper presentations they deserve is inching closer to being done with, I truly hope they are already working on it in some capacity. It's become a nice thing to look forward to every couple of months; enjoyable movies plus bonus history about the legendary horror studio's golden era to soak in thanks to the omnipresent commentaries!

What say you?

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