The Hatching – What A Croc

Lately I’ve been wondering what it would be like to have a crocodile for a best friend.

Aside from the obvious drawbacks (your limbs make excellent snacks), the perks are plenty. Stupid zebras drinking out of your bath tub? Snappo. Monkeys peeing in your pool? Chomp, chomp, fizz, fizz. Noisy neighbors? Hop a’board the chew chew train, b*tches. The list is endless. And hey, if you ever get tired of your croc-o-buddy, new shoes!

Which is why I’m excited for the impending (as of this bloggety blog) crocodile gone mad flick, The Hatching. Check out the riveting plot…

“Tim, a teenager at boarding school, and his friends Baggy and Nick take a dare to sneak out of the dormitory and steal crocodile eggs from a nearby zoo. But the prank ends in tragedy with Nick being killed. It appears the time has come for both Baggy and Tim to pay for their actions of years ago. Those crocodile eggs that came home with Tim hatched!”

Two things – who in tarnation would name their kid “Baggy”? A name like that deserves to be eaten alive by, oh, I don’t know…A CROCODILE, perhaps? Secondly, there’s more than one crocodile on the loose. This means one thing: entertainment of the highest order. And really, what is a crocodile but a shark with legs?

Can’t wait ’til this movie hatches. Heh.

A Gnawing Feeling

A venture capital business mogul saw Jurassic Park (1993), gets inspired by the profit potential of dinosaurs, and spends his last fun coupon building a science lab and revamping an abandoned island amusement park to grow sabretooth tigers from prehistoric DNA stool samples.

The cloned toothy beasts are kept in a compound surrounded by a fence that wouldn’t keep Catwoman’s little sister from getting out.

Those that go into the compound to find out why the fence door is open, get dismembered as easily as if they were a can of cat food being opened by a gasoline-powered can opener. One chick gets torn apart so viciously, her entrails and body parts look like props from Saving Private Ryan (1998).

While Attack of the Sabretooth (2005) is another one of those SyFy Channel™ flushers, all the deaths are pleasingly gory and graphic, with faces being detached first. I haven’t seen that many heads roll since I was in the audience of a guillotine infomercial.

Bearing Your Emotions

We finally get an answer to the age old question: does a bear sh*t in the wood? The answer is yes – and what the bear craps out is YOU.

Two brothers and their respective mates in an SUV (i.e., metal cupcake with screamy filling inside) take a back road short cut while on their way to a dinner with the folks. A flat tire sparks arguing, where we learn there’s a lot more going on between them than just uncomfortable family secret conversations.

Before they can get on their way, a freakin’ huge bear corners them. The older brother, packing a gun (it was a family dinner, you know), shoots the bear six times in the head. Ouch.

The boyfriend, husband, and the bear’s mate, bear witness to this and goes on the attack, flipping the vehicle over and making calculated revenge attacks designed to mess with their minds. And this is one grisly grizzly.

Oddly, the bear attacks, while nicely staged, are secondary to the unfolding drama between the three remaining people (see second sentence). The ending of Bear (2010), while at least sounding delicious, doesn’t show us people getting torn to shreds. Too bad – after knowing their secret, I really wanted to share in the bear’s gratification.

Dead & Breakfast

Stopping in the redneck town of Lovelock on their way to Galveston (that sounds so made up) for a friend’s wedding, six college students spend the night in a Bed & Breakfast run by an eerie owner and a French chef with a painful accent. I say painful because later that night he’s found with shears sticking out of his throat. (Heh.) And the B&B’s owner just suffered a heart attack and is now lying dead on the colonial hardwood floor. There go your travel rewards points.

The town’s redneck sheriff is P.O.’d and makes the kids stay there until he gets to the bottom of that there murder mystery. This makes them miss the wedding. Cool – more wedding cake for ME.

Unknown to almost everyone, the B&B owner had a mysterious box in his possession that acted as a good luck talisman, promising good luck and fortune and hotel guests that didn’t steal towels.

But it also worked in reverse. Once something from your personal body was put inside the box (hair, skin, bloody hair, bloody skin), the box owns YOU. When its powers become your soul’s landlord, you become a sort of half-living/half-dead citizen of Lovelock. You’re not quite a zombie, but the same rules apply (a shot to the head and/or removing skullcap stops you cold), but you don’t really crave brains, or Texas cottage cheese, for brunch.

Played as a horror comedy, Dead & Breakfast (2004) manages to make you laugh stridently (sorry…word of the day calendar). The gorefest bar fight is a hoot, with one of the students getting his head cut off. His friend, already a sorta zombie, puts it on his hand makes it a “talk” puppet.

The zombie showdown at the B&B is a laugh riot. A honky tonk band – making song commentaries throughout the movie – are now zombies themselves and do a freakin’ hilarious rap song as the sorta dead make a siege upon the not dead. A pick-up truck full of gore and body parts and blood, and some dang tootin’ funny dialogue.

I totally wanna be a redneck sorta zombie as it looks like it’d be fun. For a short time.

Close Encounter of the Dull Kind

In one of the more awesomely ridiculous back stories ever invoked to explain a human hunting creature from another planet, a 20-nothing guy is having prescription-strength nightmares about his uncle, an airforce pilot, being stripped of his military flesh by an alien.

Uncle’s jet was exploded in half while pursuing a UFO that looked like an intergalactic can opener. He was taken aboard, strapped to a table, and had his blood spilled on an empty chocolate chip cookie wrapper. I am totally not making that up. Moreover, how would the nephew know any of this? Plot hole #15 out of  #147.

Needing to get away from anything remotely chocolate chip, the agitated dude heads out into the California desert hills to do some four-wheelin’ and moto-crossin’ with four multicultural supermodels, and the same ratio of mixed race guys. Testosterone, booze and a gun was all it took to flag the attention of “The Catcher,” a spindly creature with War of the World (1953) hands, wiggly things on its head, and bear teeth. More accurately, it looks like Pumpkinhead took a dump and named it.

This alien walks around in a black robe (Earth’s day time makes him all sun burnt-y), and stalks the young morons by night. You can tell when he’s about to attack, as they switch to point-of-view alien vision, which is like looking through a jar of mint jelly being shaken in front of your face.

The alien can displace dirt (same as sand, but not as clean), making huge sinkholes to capture his prey. Once caught, the dirt swirls back closed and you’re pretty much trophy case action figures. His other weapon is to rip your spinal column out of your body, which wrecks whatever you’re wearing. He then wields your bones like a bullwhip to bring your screaming ass down. And so it goes on like this for an hour, which seems like three.

In a not-so-subtle scene, they have the monster being chased by a dune buggy while a black guy hurls spears at it. You may moan out loud at your discretion. The girls are hot, but are not smarter than desert rocks. The chest-thumping males take a beat down, and the alien, who would look more at home in a Coleco™ video game – from 1980 – gets a gasoline car wash with a flame finish.

Yeah, I just spoiled the ending. That’s because I don’t want you to endure the spine-ripping pain I went through by watching the creatively titled, Creature of Darkness (2009).

Darkness: Familiar Haunts

The problem with haunted houses like the one in the dazzlingly titled Darkness (2002) is that there’s always something messed up that happens in ’em, oh, about forty years ago.

Shortly after moving into a gloomy house in Spain’s gloomier countryside, unusual things begin the usual fright fest pre-func: blinking lights, black stuff coming out of the faucets, pencils disappearing beneath the couch, bugs talking to your mind. This is a precursor to the full solar eclipse that’s due to plunge everything into (say it) darkness. The closer the eclipse gets, the more people start having psychotic breaks, which require a LOT of aspirin.

Anna Paquin (Rogue from the X-Men/2000) sees spookiness about to hit the fan, but no one believes her. (I totally did, but no one ever listens to me, either.) Through a little CSI work she discovers an evil cult sacrificed six children to the Eclipse God 40 years ago in the very house she lives in. What are the stinkin’ odds of that?

The reason e-cult returned is because it was supposed to be seven kids, the last one being her dad, who lived in the house 39 years and 12 months ago, almost to the day. So the cult dudes aren’t after her little brother after all, but rather demento dad.

His brain does a Jack Torrance, so mom has to stop him with a sharp thing to protect the kids. Mom stays in the dark house with sacrificial dad and the kids escape. Or did they? That car they just got in runs on souls (regular, not leaded).

This is where it ends. Excuse me? Did dad get sacrificed? Did mom wear her new eclipse blouse for the occasion? Is grandpa still helping the Darkness? Maybe I’m asking too much to want the story to have an ending.

Old Time Space Invaders

Sam Danville, about to be hanged for wrongness in the late 1800s, is saved at the last minute from wearing a Texas necktie by alien metallic scorpion bugs that shoot gasoline-powered sharp stuff out of their tail. Weird, but then Sam’s daily horoscope did say he’d meet new and exciting friends this week.

Problem is, these bugs aren’t anybody’s friends. They are here to suck uranium, which one enterprising guy has been mining in order to one day cash in. There’s just no market for it right now, so he’ll just have to put up with those weeping radiation sores a bit while longer.

A whiskey drinkin’ female bounty hunter is in town, trying to cash in on her latest client, and tangles with these RV-sized creatures. But you gotta shoot ’em in the uranium hole in order to bring ’em down. And speaking of gaping holes, the bugs are digging big tunnels right in the middle of town to get to the potentially profitable mineral.

Well, hey – just dump some dynamite in there and blow them there bugs to smithereens. Two problems: there’s not a whole lotta dynamite. Secondly, the mothership, a giant metal golf ball UFO, floats into view and dispenses hundreds more bugs. Gol’durn it.

Roads outta town are blocked. There’s one horse left, and it’s crapping all over the place. The plan is for all the survivors – Rose, the bounty hunter, Sam, another criminal sprung from jail, and Sam’s sorta girlfriend Abigail, a doctor who keeps losing patients – to go to the secret uranium stash, rig it to blow up, then live happily ever after. Looked good on paper.

Greed intercedes (hey, that rhymes), and Rose and Gus (the aforementioned criminal) make to run off with the uranium and sell it once future markets are established. The bugs don’t think so.

Fortunately, there’s one stick of dynamite left. Unfortunately, the fuse has been compromised. Someone’s gotta stay as bait and manually light the fuse at just the right moment. Ain’t gonna be me. Since Sam made himself out to be an OK guy earlier, and since Abigail is still in love with him, you do the math.

High Plains Invaders (2009) may have come up short on the plot (and a dull thud of an ending), but the bugs looked cool, as did their metal golf ball mothership. But I can’t help feeling something was missing. Probably a rap music soundtrack.

Ghost Lake: I See Wet People

A lonely twenty-something hottie goes to a nightclub in an easily-discarded dress because she wants to attract a man. She finds one, dances with him, then has sex with him in the backseat of her car. So far, so good.

Meanwhile, her parents – who urged her to quit moping around the house and to find a baloney pony to ride – perish when the stove starts leaking gas. (Somewhat odd, since the appliance was electric.) Dad’s already in a wheelchair and mom has foaming bubbles coming out of her mouth because she’s clearly allergic to propane. This is all in the first five minutes.

Discovering her foamy dead parents and overcome with guilt, the young slut heads to the family’s summer home on…Ghost Lake. Once there, weird stuff starts happening, like people drowning and coming back to haunt her. And there’s a little girl who’s freakin’ eerie and seems to turn up in social hubs like the attic and graveyard.

While this is going on, a studly neighbor tries gettin’ himself a taste of the ghost-seein’ chick, but ghost-seein’ chick ain’t giving up any of the good stuff. (Sure, she’ll do it with a guy she doesn’t know in a romantic parking lot, but not with a guy who tries to seduce her with flowers, whiskey and good deeds.)

It’s pretty clear by now evil blows bubbles in the lake and every 13 years comes back to claim 13 fresh souls. And the little eerie girl? Part of the plan, even though she’s the (gasp!) twin sister of the actual girl who drowned.

The dialogue in Ghost Lake (2004) is so cheesy as to be written by Kraft™. Acting? Let’s just say the only Oscar anyone here is gonna be getting is an Oscar Meyer™. The lake zombies don’t eat anyone, despite what the DVD liner notes say, and they make growl-y sounds like drunk sea lions.

Leave ’em all in the drink for another 13 years and see if that doesn’t fix the problem.

Your Unfriendly Neighborhood Sasquatch

Suburban Sasquatch (2004): “He’s out of the woods…and in your neighborhood!” Weak tag line. They should have gone with “There goes the neighborhood.” That works on several levels if you think about it. This is why I’m paid the big bucks. (Big bucks being a bag of Cheetos™ every now and again. Hey, those things are freakin’ addictive, man.)

Yet another cheap costume shop gorilla suit being used to pass off as Sasquatch. No wonder our forest friend is so mad all the time, what with us stink humans portraying him like a dork.

Sasquatch finds his way out of the woods (too many Blair witches running around in there), and ends up in a lower middle class suburb, where blood and plastic mask scares run rampant.

Two forest rangers hunting the gorilla suit, I mean, Sasquatch, enlist the aid of Talla, a Native American spiritual warrior. (You can’t go into any suburb and not trip over one of ’em.) They track the beast who only wants to get to the Men’s Warehouse™ and get out of those ridiculous clothes and into something more respectable – like a Speedo™. Couldn’t be any worse than what he’s currently sporting.

How’d it end? Heck if I know.

More Zombies To [REC] Your Life

[REC] 4: Apocalypse. Sigh. Yeah, they’re driving around on fumes for another installment in the once brilliant Spanish zombie franchise. The original premise – a fixed income apartment building (locked down by the CDC) full of virus infected people feeding on uninfected rent payers – was simple, yet highly effective in terms of sheer poop-your-pants thrills.

Since then, the series has milked the zombie cow with diminishing results, culminating in the wretched [REC]³ : Genesis (2012), in which the virus takes over a lavish wedding party and turns invitees into well-dressed flesh eaters. That was the whole plot. A little dancing, a bit of singing, a lot of chewing with mouths open. But hey, the bride looked nice  in that gown. For a while, anyway. (Honeymoon denied.)

So it looks like they’re going back to the drawing board with [REC] 4…

“Angela Vidal, the young television reporter who entered the apartment building with the firemen (see [REC]/2007), manages to make it out alive. But what the soldiers outside don’t know is that she carries the seed of the strange infection.”

“She is to be taken to a provisional quarantine facility, a high-security installation where she will have to stay in isolation for several days. An old oil tanker, miles off shore and surrounded by water on all sides, has been especially equipped for the quarantine.”

Color me cynical, but isn’t this just a set up for the same plot of people stuck in a plot device with nothing to do but scream, bleed, eat, repeat?

I hate being right all the time.