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…)
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.
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.
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.
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.
WHITE BUFFALO opens with dread as John Barry’s eerie horror score rumbles through a view of a huge white buffalo grunting and snorting like a demon in a spooky cave somewhere. It feels like a nightmare and it is one. It belongs to Charles Bronson. He not only wakes in fright, he wakes with two pistols in his hands and he unloads them into the ceiling of the train car where he’s staying. Luckily nobody was upstairs and they let him off with a warning. 
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.
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.
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.
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. 
