Sabertooth

Sabretooth (2002) This time, it’s not a giant crocodile, its not a computer generated giant python, its not even a cloned extinct dinosaur, this time it’s a cloned extinct computer generated giant mammal. Yes, it’s another really unique monster movie, but this time the beast is furry with a large bicuspid problem and a severe overbite, a real orthodontist’s nightmare. If for some reason anyone out there actually rents this flick, please look for anything original happening because I sure couldn’t find anything new here. Stop me if you’ve heard this one, mad scientist (ok, she’s a good looking blond here) and a greedy industrialist (John Rhys-Davies) manage to clone a sabretooth tiger. They hire a goober truck driver to move it and by gosh, the truck crashes and the beast escapes. In another part of the forest (Big Bear Lake, CA.) a group of campers are on a training trip and several other people live in the area in smart looking cabins. Mr. Tooth immediately starts depopulating the area. The villains find the crashed truck and hire a hunter to tranquillize the beast withholding key information that it is considerably larger than a standard Mark I mountain lion. The hunter is played by the studly David Keith as opposed to the more cerebral Keith David. Well, the mad scientist keeps the hunter from killing the beast and it becomes a race to see how much depopulation occurs before the mighty hunter depopulates the cat. As usual, cast mortality is appalling. This is a real run of the mill big monster movie. The movie is rated R for: deep incisions, blood pooling, excessive feline appetite, boring plot, evil blondes, camping blondes, dead blondes and for the hunter who never gets to fire his big gun.

Narc

Narc (2002) This independently shot police thriller is one of my faves so far this year. Directed by Joe Carnahan and starring Jason Patrick and Ray Liotta, this flick should have made a much bigger splash at the big screen circuit than it did. It is a realistic looking tale about police work in Detroit. It is also a tale about moral relativity, that is, where do different people’s morals overlap or go beyond the other’s pale. The story is about an undercover cop (Patrick) who shot a bystander while pursuing a wanted drug dealer. He is brought off suspension onto a case to help solve the murder of another cop’s (Liotta) undercover partner. They work their way through the case, bump up against a number of unsavory characters and Liotta frequently appears to be out of control and perhaps not completely forthcoming at all times. One of the strengths of the movie is the way their family lives are inter-cut with the main story line. You get to see the impact on their home lives that police work can have and to feel the losses they take along the way. This can be a bit of a brutal experience as there is a lot of fighting, bloodletting, and general all around nasty business but if you can hang on to the end, you will be rewarded with an excellent story. The movie does not have a typical Hollywood ending and will be subject to some interpretation by the viewer. The DVD comes with several shorts about making the movie and an excellent commentary track by Director Carnahan and his editor. The movie is rated R for: Blood curdling violence, curdling blood, missing teeth in a wall, bathtub you really don’t want to see, and for a wee bit of excessive oath hurling (swearing) and projectile vomiting.

Deadly Species

Deadly Species (2002) This movie shows the value of staying in school and getting a graduate degree while at college. While similar to the dead teenager category of flick, this is more like a dead undergraduate movie. That is, all the undergraduates in the flick die horrible deaths but those with graduate degrees seem to have a slightly better chance of starring in the sequel. The movie also has the required number of naked and semi-naked coeds to pique the interest of those of us with poor taste and low expectations. Without giving too much away, let me just say that the first coed to take a bath and become totally naked also dies first.
The plot goes something like this: PHD professor and graduate degreed wife get turned down for a grant to finance an expedition into the Florida Everglades to search for evidence of a lost tribe not seen since the Spanish explorers. Funding mysteriously comes from a shady financial supporter who must come along if they want the money. Off they go into the swamps with a boatload of student victims and as sure as eggs fry on asphalt in Florida, they run into problems and body parts. Their benefactor is hiding something important from the professors and he is looking for something far more valuable than a possibly extinct tribe. The plot appears somewhat lifted from the movie Congo.

I wasn’t expecting much from this flick but it was better than expected. There is some logic to the plot, and they do tie down a lot of the plotlines at the end even if it is a stretch. If you like your monsters to look like guys in funny rubber suits, this movie is for you. The best line went to the professor’s wife warning him about going out in the swamp alone by saying, “Be careful”. Additional sparkling dialogue of similar quality can be heard throughout the flick. It could have been worse, and if the horror rack is low when you visit the video store, this could be for you. The movie is rated R for: multiple gratuitous orb exhibitions, nekkid coed, leftover foot, blood splatter, poor tent construction, under armed guards, goofy looking rubber monsters, and for the lack of sweat from any of a cast supposedly in the tropics.

Death Tunnel

Death Tunnel (2005): Well, there’s the Lincoln tunnel, the Holland tunnel and other useful tubes around the world but this tunnel appears devoid of anything useful. It starts out with five college bimbettes being talked into staying in an abandoned hospital used to treat some sort of plague that hit Kentucky back in the 30’s. Apparently it was incurable and you developed a terminal rash and then got hidden in the death tunnel so the hospital could hide the fact that everyone sent there was dying. You hear a lot of train whistles apparently warning you the train is coming to pick up the dead bodies but no train ever shows up but at least it sounds like a steam engine from the thirties. That theme seems to disappear midway through this mess along with a lot of other plot threads that seem to get snipped in the shuffle.

The gals all are wearing negligibles and there is an early nekkid shower scene. Ok where did the hot water come from? This sequence of events makes you suspect we may have stumbled into a low end semi-naked co-eds in peril movie. But no, as soon as you lower your expectations sufficiently (or raise them for some of us) we suddenly get an artsy fartsy cut to old newsreels showing what happened historically and pointing to ghosts and unsavory health care practices while the nudity just plain disappears along with much of the plot.
Then it turns out the gals are all related to someone who worked or died there 70 years ago and they all start getting eliminated (but not in the Death Tunnel) as the movie progresses. There is a stumble bum guy running around in a modified gas mask that appears dangerous but never gets close to anyone. Later the gals appear in old pictures pasted on the walls and turn out to look exactly like some of the nurses who died there in the past. So are they ghosts too? What the heck is going on here? Well don’t expect an answer; it appears they changed plot lines so many times during the filming they just couldn’t decide which ones to keep and kept ‘em all. The titular death tunnel which you are expected to believe has a central role in the movie is barely seen. The last two survivors run through it without much of a problem at the end of the movie, get outside and then decide they really belong in the abandoned hospital and go back. WHAT!!!! After 85 minutes of trying to escape, two get out and then go back through the death tunnel (again with apparent ease)….give me a break. They should have called it the dirty tunnel, or the gross tunnel or even the disgusting but safe tunnel, but Death Tunnel, come on. The flick is really far worse than it sounds here so I’d stay out of the Death Tunnel if I were you. The movie is rated R for: one gratuitous nekkid shower scene, inane dialogue, safe tunnels, multiple partially completed plotlines, multiple bleeding, multiple useless scene cuts, and especially for another set of really dumb college kids.

Dr. Moreau's House of Pain

Dr. Moreau’s House of Pain (2003) I am sure H.G. Wells’ moldering remains are valiantly attempting to turn in their grave. This must be true because viewing this travesty of a film would surely cause any living author of a fine classic tale like “The Island of Dr. Moreau” to become either suicidal or homicidal. The novel has undergone several film treatments over the years. After enduring a pretty well done movie in the 30’s under the name of “Island of Lost Souls” starring Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi, another big budget version came along in 1996 (100 years after the novel’s publication) staring Val Kilmer and with Marlon Brando as the titular doctor. It was rumored that Brando gained an enormous amount of weight during the filming due to his chewing up all the scenery in this film. This version had lots of special effects and a special lack of respect from critics.

With the new century comes a new version with no budget, no stars, no credit to H.G. Wells and only a loose connection to the original story. It looks like the producers couldn’t afford a whole island so the story is moved to an old house which looks like the inside of a small industrial building. They apparently got hold of a few old cars so they moved the story up to the 20’s or 30’s so they could use them. OK, we do have the mad doctor turning animals into somewhat human things but he surely isn’t doing well in the research department. Keeping to true B-movie quality, one of the ‘manimals’ is a blonde cat lady who has multiple nude scenes. It also looks like the good doctor did a little early silicone enhancement to his experimental feline. In keeping with the low budget, the cat lady looks like a fairly normal blonde that has really long painted white fingernails and growls a lot to enhance her catlike motif. The movie has to use really lame set ups to keep the plot moving. When the group of potential victims follows cat-girl back to the house, they watch her open and close an iron gate to a fence that goes around the house. But wait….she didn’t lock it and they are able to just walk in and of course, get captured later. They find the gate is inconveniently locked when they escape so a fight with the bad guys has to occur. The cast of unknowns is at least enthusiastic and do the best they can with the weak material. The movie is not rated but would probably get an R for: cat-lady unclad, cat-lady running around in lingerie, multiple oozing wounds, really ugly pig-boy, super ugly fish-girl, and for the complete lack of respect for H. G. Wells’ original story.