German vs. Germ, Man

The flesh-eaters in The Flesh-Eaters (1964) are miniature marshmallow-sized sparkly organisms in the water that eat your flesh. You don’t need to know where they came from or why human flesh is the only thing that makes their tummies feel all nice ’n happy. All you really need to know is that the handsome pilot of a chartered sea plane and his two hot clients (an alcoholic movie starlet and her tight-sweatered assistant) were forced to land on a barren island whose waters are teeming with said hungry microbes.

Thinking they’ll have to wait out the storm by sleeping in the dirt, a German scientist scuba diver comes out of the surf and lets them sleep in his zelt (tent). Ach du lieber — this man’s a Nazi! Accent aside, he seems nice — AT FIRST. He even acts appropriately sympathetic when a picked-to-the-bone skeleton washes up on shore (Was not aware skeletons were bouyant.). “Must’ve been a shark,” he rationally deduces. There’s German logic for you.

With no coconuts to make a radio out of, the castaways have to wait a few days for a supply boat. But the German — like all zelt-dwelling Germans — has a secret agenda. He figured out a way to stun the microbes. By throwing a positive and negative charge into the water he can immobilize the twerps, then put ’em in jars and eBay™ ’em off to the highest bidding government as a war weapon.

But what the Nazi didn’t count on was that the electricity makes the organisms bond together and grow into an electric shellfish with one eye. Fortified with 10,000 volts, this “electro-crab,” the size of Godzilla’s dining room table, rises out of the ocean, ready to shock and awe. Mostly shock, though.

Can the pilot save the day with his good looks? Will the Nazi get a taste of his own burning flesh? Will the hot assistant find another reason to take off her shirt? Man, they really knew how to make drama-filled sci-fi back in 1964.

Mutated Frozen Burritos

Harbinger is defined as anything that foreshadows a future event. For example – you eat a few 7-Eleven Truckstopper™ microwave burritos and a bathroom is a foreshadowed conclusion.

Another Harbinger is a boat in the upcoming horror/sci-fi thriller, Harbinger Down (2015), involving mutated sea creatures and global warming. (Look for Harbinger Down on VOD and limited theaters on August 7, 2015, as well as a commerical release on September 1, 2015.)

So how did the Harbinger encounter such boat-stopping creatures? Glad you asked politely: “A group of grad students have booked passage on the fishing trawler Harbinger to study the effects of global warming on a pod of Orcas in the Bering Sea. When the ship’s crew dredges up a recently thawed piece of old Soviet space wreckage, things get downright deadly.”

“It seems that the Russians experimented with tardigrades, tiny resilient animals able to withstand the extremes of space radiation. The creatures survived, but not without mutation. Now the crew is exposed to aggressively mutating organisms. And after being locked in ice for three decades, the creatures aren’t about to give up the warmth of human companionship.”

Pffft – the warmth of human companionship can be found in any bottle of the good stuff, the cheaper the better. Still, I like the idea that a bunch of grad students, who are bottom-dwellers on the human companionship scale, are likely to be devoured alive, like some sort of human Truckstopper™ burritos.

Man, I’m easily entertained/fed.

P.S. Do not confuse Harbinger Down with Beast of the Bering Sea (2013). That one had sea vampires in it. Same location, though.