Posts Tagged ‘killer animals’
Thursday, October 8th, 2020
My friends, we have not only come to the conclusion of my exploration of the films of Dick Maas, but the culmination. His first film THE LIFT showed me that the Dutch writer/director has a strong shooting style, a taste for deadpan absurdity, and a knack for quirky character detail. AMSTERDAMNED applies that to a more ambitious I-can’t-believe-I’m-seeing-this story (action-packed scuba slasher), and even his 2001 American THE LIFT remake DOWN is trashy, audacious fun. (I also checked out his Halloween episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which you can read about on Patreon if you’re interested.) Some joy was dampened by the amount of screen time spent on dull procedural business in the ’80s ones, but I liked them all. I’m a fan now.
Let me bring up a completely unrelated director for a second. When I reviewed EXTREME JUSTICE recently I wrote about how Mark L. Lester doesn’t get enough credit for having directed CLASS OF 1984, FIRESTARTER, COMMANDO and SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO. And yet I (rightly or not) have little faith that Lester’s 21st century movies like PTERODACTYL, POSEIDON REX or DRAGONS OF CAMELOT would be worth watching, because I assume they’re not coming from the same place. I had similar feelings when I heard that Maas made a killer lion movie in 2016.
But – holy shit! Maas’ most recent movie – which I found as UNCAGED on Shudder, but it has apparently also been released as PREY – is a new instant favorite. It has most of what I loved about his other films, but way more of it. It’s loaded with quirky characters (both the leads and incidentals) who say and do funny things within the context of a story that is knowingly ridiculous but unashamed to take itself seriously. And unlike those other ones it never slows down for long because it has a high, unforgiving body count and provocatively over-the-top gore to attend to. UNCAGED is a total blast.
(Thank you Martijn for trying to tell me in the comments for THE LIFT. You were right!) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amsterdam, Dick Maas, killer animals, lion, Mark Frost (actor), Sophie van Winden
Posted in Horror, Monster, Reviews | 18 Comments »
Monday, July 29th, 2019
Both the weakness and the strength of CRAWL is how simple and slight it is. On one hand, I felt like it was already dissipating from my brain by the time I got home. On the other hand it’s refreshing to see something that just gets in there and gets it done and says “okay, bye.” It’s a monster movie meets disaster movie – alligators attack a house during a hurricane – but it doesn’t fuck around with any before and after or unneeded explanations.
When Haley (Kaya Scodelario, CLASH OF THE TITANS) gets out of the opening credits swimming practice, the hurricane is already approaching. When she tracks down her not-answering-his-phone dad (Barry Pepper, THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA) in the crawlspace under her childhood home, he has already been bitten by a huge alligator. I think only one sentence of dialogue is spent on speculating how the gators got in there (later confirmed visually), and not one word on why they’re so big. It takes place over one day, it’s all over in 87 minutes and it concludes with a freeze frame. No wind-down, epilogue or sequel tease. That’ll do, pig. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexandre Aja, Barry Pepper, giant alligators, hurricane, Kaya Scodelario, killer animals, Morfydd Clark, Ross Anderson, Sam Raimi
Posted in Horror, Monster, Reviews | 35 Comments »
Saturday, November 13th, 2010

SQUIRM is an odd duck. (note: come up with worm pun, save “odd duck” for killer duck movie, or DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING.) This killer worm movie pulls a bait and switch (get it, bait? not switch though, that’s not part of the pun) where it’s setting up the characters before it gets to the killer worm mayhem, then it starts to reel you in (reel) to what’s going on with these characters to the point where you don’t even care that it doesn’t show the worms much or kill very many people.
Not saying it’s as good, but for some reason it reminds me a little bit of PHANTASM with its low budget depiction of not-at-all-Hollywood characters uncovering weird goings-on in a small town.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jeff Lieberman, killer animals
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 32 Comments »
Saturday, October 30th, 2010
Watching the remake of LONG WEEKEND today something seemed awfully familiar. I mean not just the movie itself. It was the opening credits. Flying over Australian trees and bodies of water, gently pulsing electronic tones, for a second I thought I forgot to change the DVD because it seems like the exact same credits as the last movie I watched, STORM WARNING. I knew it was the same writer, Everett De Roche, but it turns out it’s the same director too, Jamie Blanks (also editor and composer). So he must’ve been on a De Roche kick just like I am.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australian cinema, Everett De Roche, Jamie Blanks, Jim Caviezel, killer animals, remakes
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 18 Comments »
Friday, October 29th, 2010
Peter (John Hargreaves from DEATHCHEATERS) and Marcia (Briony Behets) are a couple who are really pissed off at each other when they decide to go camping on a beach out in Middle of Nowhere, Australia. There have been some serious betrayals and traumas that they’re still dealing with and spending the 3-day weekend together is supposed to maybe help, but only seems to be exacerbating things. You know these two aren’t the best for each other when Peter is introduced watching Marcia through a rifle scope. He also likes to fake at hitting her when she has her back turned to him. This guy might be kind of an asshole, I’m thinking.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australian cinema, Colin Eggleston, Everett De Roche, John Hargreaves, killer animals
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 32 Comments »
Sunday, May 16th, 2010

Let’s say you’re a huge great white shark. I mean, just enormous. You’re gonna need to eat, right? Sometimes you can eat orcas, but you try to avoid those because sometimes they’ll eat you back. And little tiny fish won’t do it. A guy your size, it’s hard to find a meal that’s filling.
So you come across this nice little joint called Amity Island. Wide open, not much competition from other sharks or orcas. (There was one smaller shark, but some people killed it, mistaking it for you. Suckers!) So it’s a good set up. Just little pink morsels wiggling around, as far as the eye can see. Which is not that far actually, because sharks don’t have very good vision. But they do have a weird thing where they can sense the electromagnetic pulse of even a heartbeat. And these heartbeats feel delicious. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce, Joseph Sargent, killer animals, Mario Van Peebles, Michael Caine, sharks
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 107 Comments »
Friday, May 14th, 2010

Okay, good. If you’re gonna be an asshole and make a sequel to JAWS, I figure this is more how you should do it. You’re never gonna match the achievement of the first one, so you should zig where that one zags.
First you acknowledge that the directors you hired won’t have the skills to fill Spielberg’s filmatic shoes. You put director Joe Alves into the shoes and fill the extra toe-space with credit-flying, severed-limb-and-head-floating, dolphin-and-orca-jumping, water-splashing-in-the-camera, slow-motion-water-ski-jumping, harpoon-firing-just-like-FRIDAY-THE-13TH-3D-but-what’re-you-gonna-do-you’re-fighting-a-shark, fake-dragons-and-snakes-popping-out, shark-exploding-and-spraying-goo-all-over-the-audience 3-D. I mean, not on video, but that’s what it was originally, and I would’ve enjoyed that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 3D, Bruce, Dennis Quaid, killer animals, sharks
Posted in Monster, Reviews | 51 Comments »
Friday, May 14th, 2010

Watching JAWS 2 for the first time I was thinking maybe man is actually worse than shark. Because would shark make a sequel to JAWS? I don’t think shark would. I think they’d know to leave it well enough alone. But then I thought well, the shark in this one, Jaws 2 we’ll call him, is pretty much sequelizing what Bruce “Jaws” Shark did in part 1. He sees that Bruce caused a splash (get it?) eating people at Amity Island and he thought you know what, I will do the same thing but not as good and with a higher body count.
So I guess man and shark are the same. Sharks swarm when there’s blood in the water, men when there’s money to be made. We’re creatures of pure instinct. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce, Keith Gordon, killer animals, Roy Scheider
Posted in Monster, Reviews | 92 Comments »
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
Loosely based on Hanna-Barbera’s YOGI BEAR, GRIZZLY is the story of an uptight forest ranger (Christopher George) who just can’t stand that a bear is running around his woods living the free, unencumbered life of fun that his conformist philosophy won’t allow him. This is the more realistic BATMAN BEGINS version though so Yogi doesn’t talk or wear a hat or tie. Instead he’s 15 feet tall and weighs over a ton. Instead of stealing pic-a-nic baskets he steals people, by which I mean he eats them. Boo Boo is not a major character but is represented by a bear cub who some yokel hunters decide to capture and use as bait for Yogi. Yogi’s wiseass response? He eats Boo Boo. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: killer animals, William Girdler
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 49 Comments »