Boa vs Python

Boa vs. Python (2004): Well, we’ve recently been exposed to Alien vs. Predator but that was an ‘A’ movie so I thought I’d wait until something more of a B type ‘vs.’ movie came along and this was it. Guess I made a mistake. If you like lots of computer generated giant snakes, this is the flick for you. Shot somewhere in Balkanland to keep costs down, the only name I recognized was one of the ingénues who was a former Playboy centerfold. You really need to get your tongue stapled to your cheek for this one; planting it in your cheek doesn’t use enough force to keep you from screaming ‘enough already!’ at the plot. While quite unbelievable the cast does give it a good try and there are many deaths to keep genre fans viewing. There is also a gratuitous nude bathing scene at 30,000 feet that gives a whole new meaning to the ‘mile high club’.

This one kind of borrows from the saying “It takes a thief to catch a thief” but you need to substitute ‘giant snake’ for thief. It seems a giant snake from Asia is smuggled into Pennsylvania (where?) for a big hunting expedition when it escapes into the Philadelphia water system (see what I said about unbelievable plot). The FBI has a nicely shaped-blond female scientist wire an electronic box onto another giant snake that has been domesticated by a brilliant muscular male scientist. They decide to send the ‘good’ snake after the ‘bad’ snake which is where the plot peaks and goes steadily downhill thereafter. You can tell the good snake because it is red while the bad one is green and eats people. The ‘hero’ who is leading the illegal hunting party and also smuggled in the bad snake is additionally very muscular and has a girlfriend who apparently doesn’t like a lot of cloth touching her. They all wind up in the underground water works fighting the snakes and each other. The hunter ‘hero’ uses a flamethrower to try and kill the bad snake and sets half a dozen soldiers fighting with him on fire. I don’t know about you, but this kind of diminished his status as hero in my book, but maybe I’m being too critical. This flick can be recommended to herpetologists only. The movie is rated R for: nude bathing, multiple decapitations from the waist up, bad flamethrower marksmanship, reptilian egg eating, and for the cold blooded snakes and hot blooded babes.

Peter Rottentail

Peter Rottentail (2004): Yes he does come hopping down the bunny trail but those expecting a parody of horror films would do better to look elsewhere. This one almost caused me to leave the horror field to other more determined reviewers. I just can’t take stuff this bad anymore. No budget, no plot, no logic, no nothing. It seems a really incompetent magician bumps into a voodoo doctor outside a home where he just bombed at a private party and receives a magic elixir. After taking this stuff he comes under the control of the voodoo guy and kills himself. Many years later some slackers say the magic words and back he comes, a dead magician with a rabbit head and a bad attitude. Everyone in this movie is either a slacker; a sorcerer, a demon, or an idiot. Along the way Rottentail gets a little tail from the floozy living across the street from the home he is sort of haunting. He kills some slackers, more slackers are introduced and one of the latter slackers eventually steps on Rottentail’s hat which causes him to disappear. The floozy eventually gives birth to a baby Rottentail and the movie mercifully ends. The best thing about the movie was that it lasted only about 75 minutes, and the flick is just a cut above an amateur movie. It does have a couple of clever slacker lines but that is about it. The movie is not rated, probably because all other critics refused to sit though this travesty. There is even a short bit after the closing credits admonishing the viewer for still watching and to ‘get a life’. You could do almost anything better with the 75 minutes of your life this is going to suck from you. Rotten certainly is the operative word for this flick.

Vlad

Vlad (2003): Boy did this horror flick come with a lot of words. The scrip writer must have been paid by quantity rather than quality. We have both transitive and intransitive verbs along with some pluperfect tense thrown in for effect. This movie does take a little different slant on the Dracula legend and there are no standard Mark One vampires on display, indeed not a single neck is bitten here. Those looking for a throat slashing time will be disappointed but those who enjoy long boring conversations will be pleased.

The story goes something like this: four honor students are invited to Romania to study at the locations where Vlad Drakul actually lived. One of them is a native Romanian who has a magic medallion once worn by Vlad. Apparently, the closer this little bauble gets to Romania, the more Vlad comes back to life and he tends to take a dim view of those still alive. However, he is a randy old bugger and beds down several of the movie’s starlets by the end of the flick. He also threatens to kill everyone, and the group needs to get the medallion back to the ‘sacred tomb’ to deactivate the ‘curse of Vlad’ while also fending off a group of Vlad supporters trying to keep them from completing their mission. The movie has quite a few threads sewn into the plot including Brad Dourif as a Romanian official and Billy Zane working on his best Romanian accent. The movie has many flashbacks, a bit of narration by John Rhys Davis, time travel, an occasional impaling, and lots of smoke and fog to hide the low budget. Shot in Romania, it is not a good movie at all but at least is a very different tale of Dracula. The movie is rated R for: multiple breastulations, trans-dimensional sex, a single impaling, multiple slashings, rampant talking, old castles, and for too much verbosity and not enough velocity.

The Hole

The Hole (2001): We are firmly back in the dead teenager category in this flick filmed in old blighty a few years ago. Rumors abound that its release in the US was held up by the troglodytes working in the Disney studio’s basement because their new star, Keira Knightley, showed a bit too much dermis in this early career film. On the whole however, it is a pretty well crafted little tale of terror. No vampires or werewolves to liven the scenery, just a few whacked out rich prep school students with a little mental disorder thrown in for good measure. It seems four students decide to hide out and party for a long weekend in an old bomb shelter, but oops, they get locked in. What transpires is a study in desperation, madness, and mayhem. The story is told from the conclusion in flashbacks and it takes some concentration to keep track of who is telling what to whom and to figure out what really did happen. In the end, you will probably figure out who did it and the movie does have a number of convenient unlikely events but all in all is an interesting flick. Populated with a couple of excellent female actresses, (Disney’s Keira and also Thora Birch) the movie has enough male nudity to keep the ladies happy. The movie is rated R for: Keira maxi-dermis, male maxi-dermis, the occasional blood splatter, rusty doors, dirty toilets, flies, and for prolonged vomiting.

Pitch Black

Pitch Black: (2000) Shot in Australia, this flick could be considered an A movie with a budget. Starring a then unknown Vin Diesel, you can see why he has become a rather large star. When I first saw the film, I expected to find a traditional special effects driven chase movie, and to a degree it is but it does manage to pull it off much better than most of the recent and more costly movies of this type. A space freighter runs into the tail of a comet (everyone is in cryo-sleep during the voyage) and the ship starts to take meteor hits. Now if everyone is snoozing, one might ask what happened to those failsafe navigating systems that had to be around to let everyone fall asleep…. but let’s not go there.

As plot would have it (yes by golly a plot) a meteor penetrates the captain’s pod and poof, turns out he had a very small part. I wonder if his agent knew. The rest of the movie deals with the 2nd’s attempts to land the ship, a couple of moral decisions she has to make, and some of the consequences of those decisions. Ole Vin plays a homicidal maniac going back to prison under the ‘care’ of a rent a cop. Over the course of the movie, it often becomes unclear as to whom the good guys really are or if anyone can be trusted or if anyone will survive. The planet they crash on is interesting in that it has three suns and no darkness. The movie changes lighting when a different sun comes up. At first I thought something had gone wrong with my TV! That is nice attention to detail if you ask me and people rarely do. Actions to get off the planet are well on their way when an interesting discovery is made that throws the proverbial monkey wrench (or spanner for you British out there) into their plans.

This movie is really about choices, what route do you take….what methods do you use…..who do you trust? Movies about choices are usually pretty good, and this one is. Naturally as with most of these movies, cast mortality is high. For those interested in obscure actors, Cole Hauser plays the rent a cop and I believe he is the son of B movie psycho veteran Wings Hauser. Ole Wings could really chew up the scenery in his day and put down many bit actors in his movies. Pitch Black is rated R for death by gunshot, death by impalement, death by beak ramming, and death by being dragged off screen to some unknown fate (ugh).

The Chronicles of Riddick

The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) After about 5 years, director David Twohy was able to film a sequel to the near cult SiFi film ‘Pitch Black’ reviewed positively in this column by your humble B movie adjudicator just above. Chronicles, generally savaged by the critics because it was almost impossible to understand what the heck was going on and who everyone was, quickly sank into the elephant’s graveyard of movies. Fortunately, with today’s technology the director’s cut DVD has added about 15 minutes to the theatrical run and the movie is a little more coherent than the studio’s release. Pitch Black put Vin Diesel (as Riddick) on the map of action heroes and he reprises that role here. I would advise anyone wanting to watch this to first see Pitch Black as the three survivors from that little bloodbath all play major roles in the sequel and you will have a better idea of their relationships and past history. You may also want to first view some of the extras on the DVD which explain details on some of the characters, races, and planets involved in the storyline. The original movie spawned a set of comic books, a cartoon movie, and video games and this movie is actually based somewhat on ‘graphic novels’. Movies based on that type of foundation are usually shallow, short on logic, and not very interesting. Chronicles, if anything, is just the opposite, being a quite complex movie with many characters who are interacting with different agendas. Make no mistake about it, this is an action movie so don’t expect a lot of sparkling dialogue, but the action and CGI effects are well done, keep your interest and Diesel occasionally grunts emotionally (or emotes gruntingly, I’m not sure which is correct.)

It seems that a new race called Necromongers are attempting to convert all humans to their ‘religion’ which after conversion, changes you into something sort of human but not exactly. These guys have near dead, quasi dead, and proto dead types and generate a load of real dead while trying to find the ‘Underverse’, their promised land. True to many old time religions, if you don’t join ‘em, you get toasted at the giant weenie roast when your planet explodes as the Necros leave with their converts. These guys seem to live in an ancient Roman decoupaged set equipped with energy weapons and the ever popular sharp implements. Fortunately for the universe, Riddick is a master with sharp implements and is the key to defeating this unstoppable bunch of semi-dead guys (and gals). The story is still a little hard to follow but is semi-logical and does tie in to the original movie with its logic. I liked this one but it is not for everyone. The DVD is not rated but would probably garner an R just for the huge amount of violence, exploding planets, severed heads, and piles of dead guys, semi-dead guys, quasi-dead guys, and proto-dead guys. The mind boggles. The Necromonger philosophy also is a bit R rated: “You keep what you kill.” Now that’s a philosophy on which to build a superior culture? OK, the movie has a few holes in it, but give it a try if you like SF films, and ole Vin is still being chased by rent-a-cops and gets to dispatch a record number of the cast members in this one.

Radioland Murders

Radioland Murders (1994) This movie is rarely talked about in Hollywood and you will have a hard time finding it in the video stores or seeing it on TV. This is one of George Lucas’ (Star Wars) few failures. Released to the big screen in 1994, no one saw it and the critics panned it. Naturally, I loved it. It is a 30s style screwball comedy with the requisite slapstick and pratfalls. It concerns the opening night of a 4th radio network with a nationwide broadcast from studios in Chicago just before World War II. Starring Brian Benben and Mary Stuart Masterson as a married couple both working at the station and also working on a few marital problems, it careens off in many directions at a fast clip. Someone is killing off the studio staff, owners and cast and the fairly inept cops have a time running back and forth chasing suspects while the show is going on. Populated with almost every ‘B’ grade actor in Hollywood, including Corbin Bernsen, Michael McKean, Jeffrey Tambor, Anita Morris, Ned Beaty, Bobcat Goldthwait, Christopher Lloyd, Harvey Korman and even George Burns and Rosemary Clooney, it parodies many of the old radio shows of that era. Perhaps, that is why it didn’t do well, as most people in the potential audience probably wouldn’t remember what a live radio broadcast was like or even sounded like. In any event, if you like those old screwball comedies or like movies about radio, this is one for you. The movie is rated PG for: death by hanging, death by falling, death by poison, death by….(well, there is a lot of death for a PG movie but all in good fun), giant penguins, idiot cops, Spike Jones parodies, Lone Ranger parodies, Lash LaRue parodies, Billy Barty singing, and for the low cut-ness of the VaVaVoom girl’s dress.

Stage Beauty

Stage Beauty (2004) Well, here is a non-horror, non-SiFi movie where no one is killed or even hurt and I loved it. I must be getting soft in my old age. Ok there is one beating to a pulp scene but I gave ‘em a pass on that one. This historical movie about an obscure event in 17th century England is a full blown costume drama with great English accents and the two leads are Americans! (Claire Danes and Billy Crudup). It takes place during the reign of Charles II not long after he defeated Oliver Cromwell and his round heads. The theater is back up and running in old blighty and the story centers on the plight of the leading female actor in all of England. It seems that women were not allowed to act on stage in those days and men were the top actors for all parts. Then Charles arbitrarily changed the rules and allowed women on the stage and forbid men to act as women. What a blow for our lead character.

Hardly seen by anyone when the movie came out, it approaches “Shakespeare in Love” in quality but deals with a bit of a naughty subject and bends a few genders in the process. Quality acting goes deep into minor rolls and the storyline works well. There are a number of excellent lines such as when Claire Danes auditions for a part usually played by Crudup and she tells him she can ‘explain everything’, he fires back, “What, are you a philosopher?” However, it actually is a story about discovering who you really are and the trials of finding the answer. Give this one a try if you want a break from watching werewolves fight zombies while and alien invasion is going on in Transylvania. The movie is rated R for: gender bending, tip of Danes, bum of blonde, multiple face crèmes, multiple horse poop, multiple fops, cross dressing actors, cross dressing royals, and for the appearance of Samuel Pepys in a movie, a rare event.

Larva

Larva (2005) While we are on the subject of homage’s to 70’s horror movies, here is another one that succeeds much better than Frog-g-g, recently reviewed! Most genre fans have seen many movies about parasites eating from within and this isn’t much different but when these critters break out, head for the hills baby! Those suckers first attack from within and then grow big enough to attack from without. They have you covered from both sides now. It seems we have another evil corporation marketing its new feed to the local farmers and it turns out the feed grows the local parasite populations more efficiently than the cows. Soon cow tipping, a favorite local sport, becomes far too easy as the cows start falling over without help. The meat from the cows also contains the parasite and soon it is introduced to the local population. Only the new vet (fortunately, a vegetarian) seems to see what is going on. Soon not only are the cows tipping, but the local population is too, and these goll-durn bat like thorny critters emerging from the tainted folks start flapping around and eating the remaining untainted stock (both cows and us). But it’s southern redneck NRA members to the rescue as a local paranoid farmer has hidden enough munitions to win the Battle of the Bulge and to turn the tide against the larva. William Forsythe has the best line as the redneck farmer showing his large caliber stash to the vet and a winsome lawyer by saying, “Welcome to redneck nirvana. Its times like these that true paranoia sure pays off.” The threat is finally put down, the villains get eaten and the hero and heroine survive, but only after lots of cast depopulation and lots and lots of gore. I think this one hits its 70’s target much more than most of its type. The movie is rated R for: gross gore, excising cow bowels, really disgusting worms, multiple exploding abdomens, multiple tipping cows, multiple flapping-flying-crawling beasties, multiple villains, bikini running, children eating tainted burgers, things emerging from tainted burgers eating children, and especially for the scene in which a guy explodes while romancing his date in the back seat of his car (Super-Yuck!).

Frog-g-g!

Oh to return to the days of yesteryear when life was simple and there were drive-in movies. In those days, the quality of the movie was much less important than the quality of the person accompanying you to the flick. And the movie didn’t even have to be any good because there were, um, other ‘things’ to do. Ah….…I’m getting way too nostalgic for my own good but I’m not alone. Here is a flick trying to recapture the glory days of drive-in movies. I hope you have a good date with you for this one.


Frog-g-g! (2004) This one is an attempt to recreate a drive-in movie in the style of the 70’s. These guys forgot that there is a good reason why no one goes to 70’s type drive-in movies anymore. First, no drive-ins and second, the movies were usually quite odorific. However, these guys did succeed well in the stinker category. It seems that some local industrial pollution is causing frog mutation in the local friendly swamp. You get a real clue as to where this movie’s head is at right at the start when the movie opens with the two female stars robustly engaging in an ‘Isle of Lesbos’ type of entanglement. Once outing the gals, we find out one of them is the head EPA inspector sporting a PHD and tight jeans. Her isle activity partner is the local bartender who has no degree but also comes equipped with tight jeans. The local good ole boy sheriff is the brother-in-law of the chemical company president and I’m sure you can figure out where we are going with that. After a few more naughty entanglements, our EPA PHD figures out that our mutant giant frog needs to mate with the closest species genetically. Well, goll-durn if that doesn’t turn out to be us! So what we wind up with is a giant frog with an unhealthy interest in the local female population. This puts a whole new meaning to the term ‘horny-toad’.

After dancing the dance of the two humped camel with a couple of unwilling young ladies, our froggy shows up at the big high school football game and gives one of the best illegal clothes-line tackles ever seen on screen. After briefly eyeing the cheerleader squad he escapes into the swamp. Tracing his path on a map, our heroine sees he is heading towards the local Catholic School for Girls (yes, really) and the big climax occurs at the school. Our heady PHD utters the best line when asked why the frog killed a nun rather than assaulting her by replying, “He probably sensed the low estrogen levels.” The school girls (who all apparently wear lingerie in school) are briefly menaced by our large frog who is then dispatched and everyone lives happily ever after except the impregnated lady who has a rough childbirth. Apparently our randy frog was quite potent. The movie is not rated but should come in about an R for: multiple breastulations, interspecies sex, anatomically incorrect rubber frog suit, illegal frog downfield, frog unsportsmanlike conduct, illegal frog procedure, and a host of other uncalled football penalties.

Code 46

Code 46 (2004): Here is an “A” SiFi movie that deserves a watching. Beautifully filmed with an interesting score, it stars academy award winning Tim Robbins as an insurance investigator in a not too distant future. The world looks much the same as today but is quite different when you take a closer look. While a love story on the surface, the film postulates about some of the consequences that might arise from breakthroughs in genetic research and communication technology. There are also questions about the growth and power of large corporations and big government, but these are subtly interjected and you are not bludgeoned by it as in many less effective movies. In this vision of the future, most populations seem to have merged into a multiethnic society while many others are still outside this technological based life. The technology comes at a price and the question asked is, “Are you willing to pay?”

The movie makes use of poly-lingual slang and several newly created words that have to be figured out before you can understand the meaning of everything. This may put off some people since it can be a bit confusing as to what is going on at times. However, if you don’t mind thinking a bit, this may be an interesting rent. Many scenes of this movie look and feel like the classic Blade Runner, another excellent SiFi flick (though Code 46 has a much lower budget). The movie is rated R for: brief nudity, rampant adultery, technical incest, good genes, nice jeans, nice clones, genetic viruses, prescience, and for multiple violations of Code 46.

Dead Man

OK gang, the legions of fans that read this site have been clamoring for reviews of movies starring someone they actually recognize or at least have actually heard of. The Tapehead, always one to heed requests from the fans of this widely read blogsite, decided this was the time to cover a flick with major domo stars in it. However, I’ll bet most of you still have never heard of this classic. Read and hopefully enjoy.

Dead Man (1995) This very odd black and white western opens with a very long train ride that sets the pace for the rest of the movie. The flick is populated with lots of recognizable ‘stars’ in cameo roles. Some of the cameos are better than the movie as a whole and it is somewhat of an ‘arty-farty’ type of affair from Jim Jarmush. Starring academy award nominee Johnny Depp in the titular role of the deceased homo sapien, it is really a road movie with Johnny wandering around the entire west with his salty mouthed faithful Indian companion who is clearly not any relation to good ole Tonto.

The movie is a series of vignettes strung together to tell the story of how Depp got that way (dead, that is). Depp seems to spend most of the movie wounded, unconscious, resting, or sleeping which kind of slows down the pace a bit. But this is a Jarmush movie and they are not known for having a fast pace. With great cameos from Billy Bob Thornton and Iggy Pop as a couple of good ole boys who have been out in the wilderness far too long, the movie has some very good parts. Even old Robert Mitchum shows up in a too small roll as one of the villains. Beautifully shot in black and white, this is a rather surrealistic view of the old west. If you like your history spooned to you in great heaping bits of unreality; this may be a movie for you. The movie is rated R for: nekkid butts, gunshots with bleeding wounds, Native American oath hurling, discussions on hair care, and for the high level of unconsciousness by the star.

Demon Summer

Demon Summer (2003) This one was filmed in Kent, Ohio and has the look of a semi-professional student movie. It starts out when two teen thugs roll the local loony. You get a clear picture of the intellectual level these guys are working at when they steal his opened bottle of beer and start drinking it…..ugh! He drops a book and they steal that too. I was surprised to see that the young lads could read and they go ahead and say the magic words from the book and a demon takes one of them over and then proceeds to kill just about everyone else in the cast. This movie must contain the ugliest group of teens ever assembled for a horror movie, but lucky for us, no one takes their clothes off on camera. Filled with mind numbing boring conversations by doofus teens, one is just hoping someone will get bumped off soon. They finally let the blood bags flow at about 30 minutes into this sorry film but it is too late, they haven’t killed these teens in time to keep them from massacring the script. To boot, the killings appear to be just an excuse to pump up the stock of the people who make Karo syrup, apparently the main ingredient in the fake blood. The movie is not rated but should be rated UC for Ugly Cast.

Time of the Wolf

Many have accused the Tapehead of having standards far too low for normal people or worse, none at all. Well, here is one that does not even come close to hitting my substandard standards.


Time of the Wolf (2003) Beware of French movies, they can sometimes be difficult to take. Hmmm, I guess you can say the same about the French in general. Anyway, this post-apocalyptic drama is typical of many French movies, no beginning, no end, but a painfully long middle where nothing is resolved and not a heck of a lot happens. Intellektuals liked this flick because it deals with humanity’s behavior under stress and, I think, tries to show how fragile modern society can be if major systems fail. The story goes something like this. A family drives to their country cabin only to find another family living there. The husband is killed and the wife and her two kids flee. No one will help them and they find refuge in an old wooden shed. The young daughter accidentally burns it down causing much emoting by the stars. By this time, you finally figure out that everyone is acting rude and unhelpful because of some sort of global disaster and not just because everyone is French. Talk about misdirection! And to boot, it seems anyone connected with the French government has bailed out and disappeared. Oh those lovable French!The family finally takes refuge in a train station with a bunch of other rude people and spends the rest of the movie waiting for a train and arguing about who has the water concession. They wait a really long time and the train never comes, but by golly, they don’t give up and they wait some more. News is heard that supplies are more plentiful in the South and are having a hard time getting to the North. Apparently, these poor souls are in the North but we never really find out. Many farm animals are dying from contaminated water but you have to take a wild guess as to what kind of disaster has happened because no one ever asks anyone else what’s going on. The heroine’s son gets depressed and contemplates suicide and her daughter takes up with a loser. Then, suddenly you are looking out a moving train’s window for about 2 minutes and the credits start to roll. Excuse me, but did the director have any idea where he was going with this? As I said, not a lot happens and nothing is resolved and I mean nothing, by the end of the movie. The movie is rated R for: very realistic horse killings, gratuitous dead teen’s breast, live teen’s bum, rude French people, hysterical French people, too many French people, a few Polish people, not enough trains, inane conversations, excessive goat’s milk, and for absolutely no ending whatsoever.