Planet of the Plants

A biological organism, which feeds off light and energy (low carbs), gets loose and exponentially grows like jock itch run amok. Since the military doesn’t have enough Tinactin™ to stop it, they decide to nuke the entire town this thing is growing under, through and above.

At it’s worst the vine-like tentacles look like they were drawn by a right-handed person, but with that person’s left hand. At its best the organism burrows under your skin and grows up through your eyeballs and gives new meaning to the phrase, “die your roots.”

It’s revealed a guy named Frank had a dad who created the organism as a Cold War military weapon, and it got out of the fridge. Frank’s DNA is the only thing that can kill it, meaning he has to bleed all over the thing, which is now the size of 13 Costco™ outlets.

The plant looks a heckuva lot like something Swamp Thing might e-mail a wink to on Match.com™. The premise kinda works (clearly a nod to The Blob/1958), but the below-grade special effects bury Organizm (aka, Living Hell/2008) in the garden. That, and how practical is it to keep cutting yourself open to water the damn thing? Not thinking ahead here, people.

Low Tide Love

In the super odd/unusual/weird horror flick Venus Drowning (2006), a cute British gal is having a really bad day. The boyfriend that knocked her up just died of cancer. Then she suffers a miscarriage. Then the tries to commit suicide with booze, pills and a knife in a bathtub. (To be fair, she did have non-lethal shampoo.)

It was an off-yourself FAIL. So her mental doc prescribes her a holiday at an off-season seaside beach. But as everyone knows, British beaches are always gray, cold and overcast. Good atmosphere for recovering from of depression.

It’s here she finds a reverse meatloaf creature thing during low tide. She takes it home, tries to feed it (I’m really hoping that was a mouth), and rubs it. The creature’s secretions stay on her fingers like Cheetos™ dust – and it’s doing to her what catnip does to cats.

A girlfriend comes to visit and after a drinking run ends up bringing a guy back to the pad for a little shag on the carpeting. Meanwhile, the creature in the basement is responding to the pleasure emotions right above what I hope is a head. Then it starts to throb. I really hope this isn’t a clue as to what it is.

This affects the suicide girl and she ends up licking it and rolling around on the floor in horniness. This compels her to pick up the SAME GUY her visiting girlfriend did and HAVE SEX WITH HIM. By now it’s clear – the pulsing flesh lump is feeding off the sex energy.

The squishy thing sprouts long tentacles and violates the post-sex sleeping LUCKIEST GUY ON EARTH and sucks out all his chi. When the girl wakes up, she has a blackened, chi sucked rotted corpse in her bed. So much for Saturday night.

She breaks the brittle corpse into firewood, piles it in a shopping cart, rolls it down to the beach, and makes a cadaver camp fire. Later, back at the flat, she stabs the sex lump and tosses it in the trash. Solid waste or recyclable – the movie leaves it up to your imagination.

Not sure what the point of all this was. But it did hang me up with unresolved questions – what did she do with the shopping cart?!? Did it belong to a local grocery store? Won’t they want it back after it’s washed with commercial-grade Mr. Clean™?

And this is what I took away from all of the above.

Future Sci-Fi Bikini

Somewhere between existentialism, a planet-sucking garbage disposal, and painfully dumb, rubber-suited aliens, is The Fifth Element (1997), a sorta serious/sorta comedy sci-fi movie about a supermodel in a Band-Aid™ bikini who is prophesied as the ONLY ONE who can save the world from Judgment Day. Well heck – why didn’t they just put Jesus in a Speedo^®?

In the 23rd Century, a former military special agent, now a floating cab-driving loser, is re-drafted to stop a commerce-minded Zorg (first name Jean-Baptiste) from stealing ancient magic stones or (“Elements”) he got from the  rubber-suited Mangalores in trade for advanced weaponry.

Growing the “perfect being” from a sample of the Elements, scientists were able to regenerate Leeloo, the bikini’d one, when combined with the first four Elements, is foretold to stop the  “Great Evil.” She has orange hair and speaks gibberish. Could it be Future Cyndi Lauper coming to save us?

They throw everything in here: religion, space action, bombs, explosions, an intergalactic deejay, site gags, floating cabs, an opera singer with tentacles for hair. (One wonders, how does she comb it?)

Oddly, The Fifth Element is rather entertaining, especially the Band-Aid™ bikini, which never seems to come off, even when being pursued by floating police. Man, the future has some kick ass technology.