Kaw

If you have not seen the movie, The Birds, then I guess this movie could be somewhat entertaining.  At least the ravens were not all computer generated.

 

A flock of ravens have gone mad after they had eaten the meat of some diseased cattle.  The Mennonite farmers didn't disclose that they could have diseased cattle and they have doomed us all.  Mennonite are not to be confused with Amish.  The Mennonite have some of the modern day luxuries, such as black sedans, but they still have a commitment to traditional methods.  I could go on about the Mennonite religion, but this movie is about murderous ravens.

 

The ravens attack and kill several people in the town.  And the flock has a weird ability to sense danger.  During the movie, one of the deputies, heck .. I think he might be the only deputy, comes out with a gun and the flock goes wild.  The deputy retreats and the situation becomes more calm.  Well, as calm as it can be for a flock of ravens.

 

There is not much to see here, but I do have to applaud the people who put this film together.  There are not a lot of scenes with digital crows attacking people in front of a green screen.  It looks like they used some real birds along with some marionette birds.

 

It's not that great of a movie.  It is a cheap rip off of The Birds.  There is no way to disguise it.  At least they could have had the sheriff be named Alfred or Hitchcock.  Something like that to give a slight nod to this movie's predecessor.

 

I give this movie 1 out of 5 basketballs.

SS Doomtrooper

Creating a digital superhuman to destroy the enemy is one thing, but to do it in the 1940's, well now you have something.  While the Allies used nuclear power in a bomb, apparently the Germans used it to genetically alter some soldiers.

A German facility has begun testing genetic alterations on some animals.  And the head scientist is ready to take his testing to the next level and use a human test subject.  A lucky soldier is put in the both and when he comes out, he transforms into a nine foot wrecking ball of a man.  He is outfitted with gear and will be used to prevent the rag-tag bunch of Ally criminals that are out to destroy the facility.

The problem with having a nine foot super trooper that cannot be stopped by the Allies, he cannot be stopped by the Germans either.  The Doomtrooper has a few enhancements from the transformation.  He now has the ability to electrocute his victims via touch, he can withstand the blast of several grenades and a direct hit from a tank, but can't take someone cutting him with a pocket knife.  What a joke.

If they are not fighting the digital creature, then the group of soldiers are performing great heroic acts.  At one point in the movie, the "actor" can't think of how to get out of a situation, so he coughs while practically screaming for another soldier to open fire.  Pathetic.

Very few, if any, scenes to get excited about.  If you enjoyed The Thin Red Line, then this is a movie for you.

I give this movie 1/2 out of 5 French resistance soldiers.

Candy Stripers

This is the kind of B-Movie that I like.  Barely any plot explanation, mostly non-digital special effects, and over-the-top senseless violence.  Add in some gratuitous nudity and you have the making of a classic.

 

Two girls are heading down the highway in their truck, when they encounter an overturned vehicle.  They investigate the scene and then they are on their way.  But there is something in the truck bed, and it means business.  Because the passenger is now in the hospital.  A candy striper sit and waits with the patient and when the patient wakes up, she calls the candy striper over and asks for a kiss before she dies.  The candy striper obliges and gets some sort of alien cucumber transferred to her.

 

The local basketball team is playing a game with a tough opponent and fights break out in the course of the game.  A few of the team get sent to the hospital for their injuries and this hospital is not exactly top notch.  There is a scene where the doctor is laughing as he tries to reset a dislocation of one of the players.

 

The infected candy striper begins to infect several other candy stripers and also some of the nurses.  COOL DEATH SCENE ALERT: A candy striper slices the neck of one security guard and a police officer shoots her in the forehead.  She drops, but comes back to life.  Another COOL DEATH SCENE ALERT: another candy striper pulls the heart out of the janitor and claims, "Men can be so heartless."

 

There are several scenes like this during the movie.  I was hoping for a few more, but there was enough to keep you watching.  The captain of the basketball team and his love interest are able to save the day.  But not before a head gets ripped off or having someone else getting their face melted off.  Worth the watch and even worth to watch again.

 

I give this movie 4 1/2 out of 5 insulin guns.

Sea Beast

It's not often that you lose a member of your crew in this fishing village.  But for one captain, he loses his entire crew.  Just not all at once.  We have a long movie people!

 

The digital sea beast for this movie is a cross between The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Predator.  The sea beast, not the movie plot or dialog or action or any other similarities, just the sea beast.  The sea beast has the ability to camouflage itself to an almost invisible state.  It has a paralyzing venom that is also a toxin.  It also has a tongue that has enormous reach and strength.  If this were a better movie, everyone would have a plush sea beast on their mantle.

 

Captain Will is trying to make ends meet and can't catch any fish.  One of his hands just got taken overboard and now a second hand has gone missing getting the boat ready to go back out to sea.  A green goo is found on the pier and Ms. Arden, who is a biologist, helps Captain Will determine that it is a toxin that behaves much like a deep sea angler fish.  Only this fish can live out of the water.

 

The third crew member has taken Captain Will's daughter to "the island" to have a get away weekend.  The island is crawling with younger sea beasts.  The two of them manage to keep alive.  In one scene, the crew member (Danny) has the sea beast's tongue wrapped around his ankle and to save him, the daughter (Carly) drops a heavy stone on the tongue which forces the tongue to drag the sea beast's face into the stone.

 

The only other scene worth watching is when the Harbor Master, Barbara, gets her head bitten off by the momma sea beast.  Other than that, it's business as usual.  And they get to kill the sea beast.

 

It's not that scary of a movie and the story jumps between characters a lot.  I would have liked to have seen more action when the digital sea beast was on screen.  Or maybe a foam sea beast that the people can wrestle with or something.

 

I give this movie 1 1/2 out of 5 fishing vessels.

Dinocroc

Another mad experiment goes wrong when a research lab tries to use DNA from an ancient crocodile to splice into new specimens.  I don't even remember why they wanted to do this research.  I only know that the town of Grant's Lake is going to have some problems.

 

One of the funnier moments of the beginning is when one of the research team is trying to control the specimens after they begin to fight amongst each other.  She does this by banging on the glass and yelling, "Stop it!"  When that fails, she enters the chamber so that she can get attacked by one of the small dinocrocs.  What ... could .. she ... have ... been ... thinking?  "My taser will protect me!"  Sure.

 

The movie does not get any better after that scene.

 

The "croc doc" comes in to help get the dinocroc.  And what do you know, he's Australian.  He's an expert for tracking crocodiles.  If you want to track this croc, all you have to do is wait for the dramatic choir to start singing.  It's like the dinocroc theme or something.

 

The sheriff and deputies attempt to hunt down the croc, but they fail.  Five of the deputies are killed, which is apparently the entire force.  A plan is eventually put together to attempt to gas the croc with carbon monoxide.  Cue the montage.  Nothing says we don't have a lot of time, but want to show that we can get a lot of work done in that short time like a montage.

 

Two large gates are constructed and they lure the dinocroc into a sewer pipe, gas the croc.  They think that it's dead, but there is about 20 minutes left in the movie, so of course it's not dead.  Only after being hit with a nearby freight train, does the dinocroc become immobile and can have a large metal pipe shoved into its eye.

 

I know it's predictable.  I know that the female lead is eventually going to have a romantic encounter with the male lead.  And, I know that the person running the research facility will eventually get killed by the experiment that was created at their lab.  So why watch it?  I'm asking myself the same question.  No good kill scenes.  The digital dinocroc is more dinosaur than crocodile.  But they did have a real three legged dog named "Lucky", so I guess that was cool.

 

I give this movie 1/2 out of 5 three legged dogs.

Supercroc

Have you ever watch a movie so bad that you forgot it and watch it again?  I am guilty of that happening for this movie.  Supercroc is a super crock.

 

In the Los Padres National Forest, approximately 65 miles north of Los Angeles, a small team of soldiers is performing a maneuver.  Possibly a training exercise.  It doesn't seem to be too terribly important, because two of the team are not focused and keep talking of their wedding plans.  Meanwhile, back at command, they are monitoring the team's movements.  The command center is a small room that can barely hold six people and a couple of wide screens.

 

Of the first unit, only one soldier survives the brutal onslaught of an 80 foot digital crocodile.  The surviving female soldier that happens to be from Florida and is conveniently an expert on crocodiles.  A second unit is deployed to perform a rescue mission.  All of this seems rather normal military procedure.

 

Here is where the movie breaks down for me.  There is some research doctor lady in the command center.  She send a unit of soldiers out in a white van to collect a few of the eggs that the other two patrol units had discovered.  How she is allowed to manipulate the soldiers is amazing.  And the fact that they obey the orders from her is something else.

 

The Supercroc is mad and now is on the hunt for her lost eggs.  Supercroc has survived an air strike, being gassed, and being shot.  She is going to get to those eggs.  The eggs are moved to the AFB in Los Angeles.  The research doctor lady steals one of the eggs and hides it in a dumpster, then she is crushed by Supercroc.  The Supercroc finally gets taken out with a bomb to the belly.  And I was thankful that it finally got killed.  But now they have to worry about the dumpster egg.

 

I don't know if the people who wrote the film had much faith in the military or if they just didn't have the budget.  The people in charge panic a lot.  One solution was to nuke the croc.  I am glad it didn't come to that.  Seeing the digital crocodile attack the digital helicopter was fun, but the over-acting by several of the cast is just too much to take.

 

I give this movie 0 out of 5 crocodile eggs.

Bottoms Up

I originally was going to watch and review a classic, non-b movie to list here for April Fool's Day.  Instead, I just watched another Paris Hilton movie.  I guess the joke was on me.

This is not as bad of a movie as Pledge This!, but even having Jason Mewes around doesn't save this film.  It almost seems odd to look at Paris Hilton as a brunette.  I wonder which came first.  Her platinum hair color or her fame.

 

Owen (Jason Mewes) is a bartender at his dad's failing steakhouse.  He is one of these "Cocktail" type bartenders who flip the bottles around and create a show.  And he's pretty good at it.  He wants to enter a contest to win the prize money for his dads' steakhouse.  Only, the competition is out in Los Angeles.  He leaves Minnesota and is going to stay with his gay uncle Earl.  Owen enters the contest and loses.  But he still wants to find a way to get the money for his dad, so he begins helping out uncle Earl.  Uncle Earl works at the gossip program "The Hollywood Scoop".  Think of it as TMZ.

 

Owen has to blackmail Paris Hilton in order to try and get an interview with her boyfriend, who happens to be the hottest young actor around and refuses to give interviews.  Everything falls into place and it all works out in the end.  Basically, ... Owen needs to get the interview.  After getting to know everyone, he is in turmoil over if he should screw over his new friends or let things continue on without changing things.  He finally screws over one of the jerks of the group and wins the girl and the money.  The end.

 

A few boobs at a pool party and a couple of good lines.  But other than that, this is a yawner.  There are several familiar actors in the movie.  Look for "Silent Bob" (who is not silent or named Bob) and "Jackie Chiles" (from Seinfeld).  Paris Hilton looks like she is playing herself.  Bored, looking at her phone.

 

I give this movie 1 out of 5 fecal therapists.