15th June 2009

No real theme this time; just a bunch of recently viewed DVDs....

Such is the random nature of rental by mail, that amongst all the Eurodross that drops through the mailbox, a few new and recent releases have drifted in as well. Unfortunately, none of them are any good: there is the occasional mildly interesting moment or a slightly eye-catching bit of gore, but that’s about it. Blockbuster shelves and ex-rental bins are full of blatant knockoffs and ripoffs and pointless continuations of franchises (or indeed single film) beyond their natural life expectancy; there’s very little out there that cannot be traced back to another, better source.

Anaconda, for example, probably didn’t need a second instalment (though Anacondas: Hunt For The Blood Orchid was big, agreeably dumb entertainment in a Friday Night popcorn way). It certainly didn’t need a third but it got one: Anaconda 3: Offspring pits the mighty David Hasselhoff against a 40-foot computer-generated snake somewhere in an Eastern European forest. Trillionaire tycoon John Rhys-Davies is funding scientific research into mutated snakes to cure diseases; inevitably the really big one gets loose and Hasselhoff’s team of badass mercenaries have to track it through the woods. He’s helped by the top-flight herpetologist who is about 25 and spends most of her time wearing a skimpy vest – it’s that kind of movie. Nonsense, but if you can forgive the dodgy CGI and Romania as a poor stand-in for the US, it’s got some gore and a few laughs, if only at the stupidity of it all, and it’s marginally better than Mega Snake. I am somewhat cheered by the fact that there’s a fourth instalment in my queue, while simultaneously dreading it.

More computer-generated monsters show up in Shark In Venice, a load of unmitigated aquatic twaddle in which Venetians are being eaten by unconvincing CGI sharks. It’s all to do with hidden treasure being sought by the bad guys; one of the Baldwins is the hero who has to swim down and retrieve the treasure or they’ll shoot his girl (played by Scarlett Johansson’s sister). Similarly, Shark Attack has more unconvincing CGI sharks around a small African resort: pretty tatty without being bad enough to bore or offend, and the two sequels (the last of them featuring John Barrowman) are also on my To-See list. Unemployment sucks, but I have to fill the unforgiving hour and a half somehow.

Otis is some kind of terrible and then some. Imagine, if you will (indeed, if you can), the bastard offspring of Captivity, and the third acts of The Last House On The Left and Reservoir Dogs remade as an episode of Roseanne. The obese idiot of the title kidnaps girls and chains them up in a fantasy dungeon so he can re-enact his college failures (cheerleaders, prom night, sticky fumblings in the back seat) and get them right; the latest victim’s family overplay the domestic scenes to a non-existent studio audience in desperately unamusing scenes with an imbecile from the FBI. But the intercutting of the nasty psycho stuff with the ho-ho sitcom material makes for some really jarring shifts of tone, and the music score is wildly inappropriate.

Speaking of psycho sitcom crossovers, here’s an episode of Friends as envisaged by the makers of Saw II. That’s Steel Trap, in which a bunch of charmless media folk wander round a deserted office block sniping at one another, and are periodically killed off by a mysterious figure from their past. Murky to look at, with no attractive characters, not enough gore and a silly denouement.

Then, there's Nursie, in which C Thomas Howell gets trapped in a rest home run by a couple of barking psychotics. Essentially it's a Deep South Misery spliced with that episode of One Foot In The Grave where Victor Meldrew uncovered cruelty in an old folks' home; it's actually an occasionally effective little cheapie.

Zombies Zombies Zombies is basically the exact same movie as Zombie Strippers except [1] it doesn’t have Robert Englund, and [2] there’s less in the way of surgical enhancements. And [3], it mysteriously failed to get a UK theatrical release (even if it was only a handful of shows at the Prince Charles). The living dead show up and surround a strip club; some poledancers, clients and boyfriends try and save the day. It’s rubbish, of course: much of the gore is done with CGI which as far as I’m concerned is cheating, it’s not funny or particularly interesting, and it’s not very well done: no better or worse than Zombie Strippers. And unless the upcoming Romero movie turns out to be Lapdance Of The Dead, this is perhaps an exploitation subgenre that needs no further exploration.

If you’re in the mood for a nasty bit of sub-Chainsaw grunge, then Carver, though by no stretch of the imagination any kind of semi-classic, at least delivers in the screaming and sudden death departments. Teens hiking through the backwoods encounter a clan of monosyllabic psychopaths with a fondness for hacking people to pieces. Hilarity ensues. It’s nowhere near good, but there are a lot worse out there (not that the existence of something worse is that much of a defence against merely being nowhere near good) and it does shovel the offal towards the camera on a regular basis.

Finally, Legion Of The Dead is a very cheap gore movie in which archaeolgists uncover an ancient Egyptian tomb in some California woodland: like idiots, they open the tomb, the mummified princess comes back to life, takes her clothes off and has to kill seven people in order to become immortal and take over the world or something. Just as in Anaconda 3, the expert on the scene is the kind of expert who’s about 25 and spends most of her time wearing a skimpy vest.

Until the next time.

Richard.

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