Island Claws (1980): Or, Crabs Get Fisherman in a Pinch

With summer and beaches on the mind, my stomach sometimes turns to thoughts of sea food in the warm months. While I like salmon and shrimp as much as the next fellow who doesn’t have allergies, crab, particularly in a cake or deviled form, is one of my favorite things to order. The only problem with crabs is that I could eat so many, and crab legs are always so much work compared to the reward. Sure it’s buttery and incredible, but so fleeting. Plus, let’s face it, I’m lazy. What they need to come up with is a bigger crab, and, coincidentally, the heroes of today’s film have the same aspiration. Today’s film, Island Claws, is a rare case if I’ve ever seen one. By a one time director, featuring a cast of genre bit players, and detailing what should be a ludicrous attempt at a giant monster feature, Island Claws is actually way better than it has any right to be. So break out the melted butter and grab you best claw cracker, because we’re going to need them on this trip.

Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009): Under the Sea (Something Will Eat Your Ass)

The Summer months are officially upon us, and that means that often this genre film buff’s mind turns from the gloom and doom of dark winter horror and thrills to the Summery delights of action flicks, teenage romance, and killer animals. The last of these has become an exceedingly campy and popular staple of the poorly spelled SyFy network, but I have to admit that I’ve never sat down to watch one of these made for TV masterpieces. However, when I ran across a Blu Ray of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, an Asylum Home Entertainment rip off of SyFy’s oceanic themed animal attack flicks, I couldn’t resist. I figured at nothing else I would get three bucks worth of enjoyment watching ’80’s icons Lorenzo “The Renegade “ Lamas and Debbie (Deborah, cause she’s all grown up now) Gibson  of Electric Youth  fame fight off a pair CGI nightmare. I wasn’t wrong, at least not exactly. Just when I thought that I might have wasted my money, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus snatched victory from mid-air, literally.

Deborah Gibson stars as oceanographer Emma MacNeil who is cruising around the Artic in her mini-sub checking out the whales when a government helicopter stops by to test out some experimental sonar. The sonic waves make the whales freak out and ram a nearby iceberg unleashing the titular pair of prehistoric creatures. The Mega-pus puts the moves (and some serous devastation) on an oil platform while Mega-Shark gets frustrated trying to find a meal big enough and tries to pluck a plane from the sky. MacNeil gets canned from her ocean research job for taking the sub without permission, and she soon finds herself falling in with Japanese scientist Seiji Shimada (Vic Chow) and a team out to stop the giant creatures. After one botched attempt, the team is taken prisoner by government jerk face Allen Baxter (Lamas) and made to continue working on how to capture the creatures. Eventually, and kind of shockingly, a plan to pit the two against each other propels the film to its climatic final confrontation.

If you go into watching Mega- Shark vs. Giant- Octopus without expecting a movie that would be called Mega-Shark vs. Giant-Octopus, then I’m not quite sure what you expected. Perhaps someone mislabeled your copy of Magnolia, and instead of a serious film full of maddeningly morose characters, you ended up watching one of the dumbest films ever made. The fact that you didn’t realize it wasn’t Magnolia and watched the whole thing while wondering if P.T. has lost his mind, however, is on you. If you go into the film expecting a campy movie about two cartoonishly large creatures duking it out while and 80’s pop princess looks on, then you’re in lick because that’s what you’d be getting.

I’m not going to spend a ton of time defending or lauding the film’s action, direction, or performances. Doing so would only be a fool’s errand. Mega vs. Giant (as I’m going to call it for brevity henceforth) is an enjoyable film simply because it is so misguidedly bad. I’ll be completely honest and say that the scene of the shark snatching a plane out of the sky practically paid for the movie in and of itself, and the final battle between the two was also nearly as entertaining. Everything else in between is just filler, but it’s filler that features Debbie Gibson. Now when I was about 12 or 13 years old I had the biggest crush on Debbie Gibson, and now some twenty years later I am happy to report that I still have the biggest crush on Debbie Gibson. I can’t say the same for the Lamas.

Lorenzo Lamas is never the best actor, but back in the day Renegade was a pretty decent Sunday afternoon distraction when it cam on after the block of Hercules and Xena. Here he just shows up to be a harass government stooge that isn’t beyond throwing some racism at Vic Chow’s character despite him being one of the scientists trying to stop the monsters. Lamas’ character didn’t do the film any favors, and while I’m sure he was showing up to cash a check, it still seemed puzzling that it would have been worth cashing. As for Chow, while he should be one of the driving forces in the film, I often forgot he was around even though he had a stilted, forced love scene with Ms. Gibson. In fact other than Gibson’s oceanographer and her sub co-pilot, just a few hours after watching the film I already have trouble coming up with other characters.

In the end, Mega vs. Giant needed no characters, no plot, and no sense to be made because in the end the Mega-Shark fighting the Giant Octopus was all the film really needed. Though I do have to reiterate splicing in a few shots of Debbie Gibson probably wouldn’t have hurt. I can’t imagine that Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus will be a title I will find myself prying off the shelf with wild abandon every time I want to watch a film, but if I have a friend come over and they’re in the mood for something stupid and absurd, it would be one of my go-to choices. Will I pursue the Asylum indirect sequel that features both Gibson and her former rival Tiffany? You bet your boots I will, and when I do you folks will be the first to know. I hope you enjoyed the kickoff of the Summer season here at the Lair. So when you’re inside trying to beat the heat, remember to come back here all Summer long for a bunch of cool films.

Bugg Rating

Eaten Alive (1977) A Killer That's Got Real Bite

The second day of October cometh, and with it, riding along on a fall breeze full of crazy, comes Tobe Hooper’s 1977 film Eaten Alive, not to be confused with the Lenzi’s 1980 Italian cannibal mash-up of the same name. Adding to my own personal confusion, I picked this one up on a cheap DVD under the UK title Death Trap. It wasn’t until I got it home and fired up the good old IMDB (remember the good old days when it was easy to read) to discover that what I had was Hooper’s follow up to his 1974 horror classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Once more, the director chose a rural locale for his film, but in place of the stark realism of TCM, Eaten Alive is a schizophrenic impressionist nightmare awash with the same layer of dirty that Rob Zombie wishes he could capture on film. Plus, it has a crazy fake gator that takes a bite out of Freddy Kruger and The Phantom of the Paradise.

Hooper’s film begins on a moment that Tarantino fans will be very familiar with, “My name is Buck and I like to fuck.” The line isn’t delivered by a creepy orderly with a Pussy Wagon, but rather by horror icon Robert Englund as the previously noted Buck. Englund’s character is trying to corner prostitute Clara (Roberta Collins, Matilda the Hun in Death Race 2000) and do her somewhere that is very uncomfortable (not in the backseat of a Volkswagen). After causing a commotion, Clara is put out of the bordello, and with no where else to go ends up at the creepy Starlight Motel run by Judd (Neville Brand) , a crazy old coot that keeps a giant African crocodile as a pet. It doesn’t take long for Clara to become croc kibble, and no sooner is she gone than Judd is inundated with guests. First, a family arrives only to have their daughter’s dog gobbled up like an after dinner mint, and then Clara’s dad (Mel Ferrer) and sister (TCM’s Marilyn Burns) start snooping around. Before long Judd has his hands full taking care of all the guests, but with his trusty scythe and hungry croc, he’s going to really cut down on occupancy.

Just like Hooper’s previous film had taken some degree of inspiration from Ed Gein, Hooper mined the legend of Joe Ball, alternately known as “The Bluebeard of Texas” and “The Butcher of Elmendorf”, for Eaten Alive. Ball was suspected of killing as many as 20 women including barmaids, prostitutes, and his own wife before dumping the bodies into a pit of alligators he kept at his saloon, the misleadingly named Sociable Inn, as an attraction. When authorities came to arrest him on suspicion of crimes, Ball committed suicide instead of facing prosecution for the murders. Like Gein, Ball’s crimes served only as a skeletal basis on which the rest of the film was based. The story by writers Alvin L. Fast (Black Shampoo, Satan’s Cheerleaders) and script by TCM scribe Kim Henkel takes Joe Ball as a leaping off point, but Judd has little in common with the serial killer apart for a predilection for carnivorous amphibians

The role of Judd, which required an actor alternately to mutter like a crazy person and swing a scythe around, came to life thanks to Neville Brand. The actor, who started his career in films such as D.O.A and Stalag 17 before being cast time and time again to play Al Capone, made several drive in type pictures in the mid-70’s as well as the TV movie classic Killdozer. He brought a great presence to the character, and was able to carry the long monolog portions of film and make them interesting. The only thing that distracted me about his performance was that he kind of reminded me of Guitar Town era Steve Earl, a fact that won’t bother most viewers. There are several other good character actors in the film, Robert England as Buck, Phantom of the Paradise’s William Finley as the nebbish dad, actor/producer/ex-husband of Audrey Hepburn Mel Ferrer sleepwalking his way though his performance as the concerned father, and eight year old Kyle Richards also appeared the next year in John Carpenter’s Halloween, but the film belongs to Brand. From start to finish, all the horror issues from his character. His leering, erratic performance gave the film an unsettling feel that this was a window into the mind of a human monster.

While much of that was achieved with Brand’s performance, Hooper does a really fine job of maintaining a balance between his archetypical characters and the surreal world he’s created for them. Much of the film is awash in a dusky light that gives the tense set pieces an extra feeling of menace, and the interior of the Starlight Motel looks to be the kind of place that the Firefly family would be hesitant to stay at. Working with cinematographer Robert Carmico, Hooper gives Judd’s world a sense of dread that hides in every shadow. In fact, according to some sources, Carmico might have been a bigger influence on the film. As the story goes, due to disagreements between Hooper and the producers of the film, some of the scenes were actually directed by Carmico.

While horror fans love Toby Hooper for Texas Chainsaw 1 & 2, Salem’s Lot, and Lifeforce, Eaten Alive is often relegated to the same rung as Hooper’s lesser films. I can only assume that is because it doesn’t live up to the expectations of its direct predecessor, Texas Chainsaw. Taken by itself, Eaten Alive is a very interesting mixture of the gritty style of TCM and the surrealistic art house visions of Hooper’s first film, Eggshells (1969). For me, while it took a different route to get there, Eaten Alive achieved the same effect as ‘Saw. It left me feeling entirely creeped out and in no hurry to drive down a country road anytime soon. Halloween is the night when monsters come out to play once a year, but a film like Eaten Alive reminds me that there are monsters all around waiting to have their own brand of fun.

Bugg Rating

Why I Didn’t and Won't See Piranha 3-D

Recently, a few days before Piranha 3-D came out, a friend of mine asked if I was excited about going to check out the film. With no compunction at all and without pause, I told him I wasn’t all that interested. He looked at me like I had just donned a brassiere and garters and broke into a number from Chicago accompanied by a coterie of trained dancing collies. I hadn’t. Mostly because that’s just not the kind of thing you do in public, but also because I was just turning down a movie that didn’t capture my imagination. I had a couple of reasons at the time, but it was late and I had imbibed a bit so my arguments weren’t all that well formed. Since then, Piranha 3-D has been on my mind. I watched the trailer a few times, I saw some glowing endorsements from people that I trust, and saw it rake in almost fourteen million at the box office in its first weekend out. Yet I still couldn’t get myself interested in it, and so now with a clear head and a modicum of sleep (plus some coffee), I thought I would lay the reasons out why I’m going to pass on Piranha 3-D.

1. Alexandre Aja. - His career spawned out of the French new wave of horror, but loyal readers will remember that I wasn’t even a fan of his big “hit” High Tension. Then he came to the States where he quickly jumped on the remake machine and cranked out The Hills Have Eyes. Some folks have really liked his version and have singled it out as one of the best remakes. I am not some folks. Then Aja made the world’s most boring gore film in 2008 with Mirrors, and yet people are still willing to give him a chance. Having seen all three of those flicks, I just don’t have any faith in Aja to make a film that I will enjoy.

2. Piranha- It‘s from 1978. It was directed by Joe “Gremlins” Dante. Its got Dick Miller, Paul Bartel, and Barbara Steele. It’s also got some shaky effects, a Roger Corman budget, and a script by John Sayles. It even pissed off Jaws’ home, Universal Studios, until Steven Spielberg saw it and gave it the thumbs up. Now obviously, I was 2 when it was in first run, so I saw it later on VHS. The original film is a solid entry into ‘70’s cult film, and no matter how hard you try to capture that magic, you’re just not going to hit the mark. I don’t want to come off as one of those people who hates a remake. That’s not the case. (In fact next month I’ll be making my case for the remake.) Piranha is a movie still worth watching 32 years after its release. Can you imagine anyone tracking down Aja’s film in 2042?

3. 3-D- I’m done with it. When did I get done with it? Well, when did it start? I’m not sure, but the first one done with the new wave of 3-D that I went out to see was the remake of My Bloody Valentine. Did I enjoy it? Yep, it was pretty good (not original film good naturally), but the 3-D really didn’t add much to it. What it did do was subtract a much larger amount of cash from my wallet. I’m just not down with paying sixteen bucks for a ticket. For sixteen bucks I could get four or five DVDs that I could have until the end of time or I could pay for the honor of renting a hosed down pair of giant glasses that could have been on a leper’s head in the last showing. You never can tell; theaters are notoriously lax about checking for leprosy. If I didn’t spring for Avatar, the black hole into which all movie going money fell for a while, then it’s a hard sell that Piranha 3-D would get my bread.

4. Other Shit I Gotta See- If I had the free time to get out to the theater, there are so many other films that slip by me that I would much rather see. Just looking at the movies that are in the theater today, if I was going to go, I’d much rather see Get Low, Scott Pilgrim, or on Inception. Ok, let’s be honest. I would probably just go see The Expendables again. The more likely thing is I would just stay at home and watch something to review so you folks don’t have to wade though another rant like this from me. I’ve only got a bijillion stacked up all over the place begging to be watch, and I’m willing to bet that most….Hmm, let me back that up…. A good many….No, no, still too strong…. A few of these dang things are surely better than Piranha 3-D, and I am bound and determined to figure out which.

5. Because Someone Has To Not Go- Yep, I’ve got to be honest with myself. Sometimes I’ve just got to be the contrarian. I still to this day haven’t seen more than 3-4 consecutive minutes of Forest Gump. I still want to kick each and every person who enjoyed Gladiator in the shins. I still enjoy the collected films of Chris Seaver. I will always contend that Angelina Jolie is not hot, but Rachel Ray definitely is (Yum-o, indeed.) U2 are not elder statesmen of rock and roll. True Blood this season is kind of dull. Peaches > Apples. I’m plenty willing to take an unpopular stand, and everyone knows, if they’re completely honest with themselves, that sometimes doing just that is way more fun.

So there you go, there’s the reasons that I won’t be traipsing out to check out Piranha 3-D for myself. I don’t begrudge anyone who does or anyone who likes the film. I hear there’s stuff to like. Someone told me about the underwater 3-D lesbian make out scene, and I was tempted by that cinematic first. However once I realized that I could just put on my glasses and watch Bound through an aquarium and save myself a lot of cash, I decided to stay home. So that’s about it for today. I’m going to start sorting through those bijillion flicks I mentioned earlier and throw one on. I’ll see you folks again real soon with a review.

The Deadly Doll’s Pick: Baxter (1989)

Welcome everyone to another brand new feature here at the Lair. One of my favorite bloggers is Ms. Emily of The Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense, and she has agreed to swap films with me once a month. This time out I chose for her the 1976 wormy feature Squirm, and in return she chose for me the 1989 French film Baxter. I had heard tell of this movie before, but I didn’t know what to make of it. Often I saw it listed as a horror movie, but I’ve seen discussions of it in art film circles as well. So I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew it was about a dog with a bad disposition, but I wasn’t expecting the French version of Cujo to bound across my screen. So I put my faith in the judgment of Emily and watched the film with no expectations, and Baxter rewarded me by being a complex and wholly original film.

It would be almost impossible to synopsize the film without first saying that a great deal of the action is told from the point of view of a Bull Terrier named Baxter. Born in a kennel, he knows nothing but his longing to be with humans, and that longing takes Baxter on a strange journey though a series of owners. Baxter‘s first owner is a widowed woman who has never owned a dog. She finally warms to the dog, but Baxter is unhappy with her and obsessed with the young couple who live across the street. Feeling like the widow doesn’t treat him respect, he causes the old woman to fall down the stairs to her death. The disgruntled canine then finds himself adopted by the couple that he watched from the window for so long. Baxter feels like he has found happiness, but when the young couple has a child things change too much for Baxter. Soon he meets his final owner, a young boy named Charles (Francois Driancourt) who is obsessed with Hitler’s final days with Eva Braun (including building his own bunker). The budding sociopath and Baxter becomes quite a pair, but eventually they are set at odds where only one of them may survive.

I don’t want anyone to make the mistake and think this is a talking dog movie. The bull terrier never has any conversations with anyone, but instead narrates the film like a demented version of The Incredible Journey. As a dog owner, I’ve often wondered what my dog was thinking, but I’m not so sure I want to know anymore. While Baxter was clearly a troubled mutt, it was easy to see how his worldview could be a product of instinctual desires. The bull terrier breed is feared in Europe due to a number of vicious attacks (similar to the pit bull which is more popular in the U.S.), but I think many American viewers will take one look at Baxter and think “Spuds McKenzie”. Younger readers may not recall Bud Light’s #1 Party Dog, but it was the first thing that sprang to my mind. While I might have thought that “Spuds” might have a drinking problem, I never assumed that he would have a mean streak to him.

When it comes to talking about the acting in the film, it seems a bit strange to discuss. Baxter was voiced by French actor Maxime Laroux who also appeared in the 1990 Jeff Goldblum film Mr. Frost. Laroux gives the dog a voice that contains equal parts menace and innocence that perfectly fits the troubled dog. If we are to understand Baxter, then the voiceover has to hit a certain tone, and it fit perfectly giving the dog an aggressiveness while still illustrating that there is a certain sense that he doesn’t really understand why he acts or feels the way he does. The human actors in the film are not really the main focus of the film, and while the widow and the young couple are both interesting, we get to know very little about them. They are there for Baxter to react to rather than be fully formed characters. The same can’t be said of Charlie, played by Francois Driancourt. The young actor does a great job creating a character that is more frightening than the canine that becomes his companion. At first Charlie seems like a kid with some strange interests, but as the film progresses the cruelty and callousness of the young man becomes clearer. In some ways, the film poses an important question as to which of them, the boy or the dog, was the real vicious beast.

Baxter is not going to be a film that will appeal to everyone. Its mix of horror, black comedy, and art film combines to make a film that kept me attentive throughout. It is a challenging film that makes one reconsider what is going on in the mind of man’s best friend. So I can’t thank Ms. Emily enough for picking this one for me this month, and I encourage everyone to go check out her great review of Squirm. Next month we’ll be back again with another film swap, and I’ll be waiting to see what Emily has in store for me. For now, I think I’m going to watch Milo & Otis and regain my faith in the inner thoughts of dogs.

Bugg Rating

Shark (1969): Sam Fuller Swims In Troubled Waters

When the fellows over at Radiation Scarred Reviews announced they would be doing a special Shark Week, I knew two things instantly. The first was that I had to get in on that, and the second being the perfect movie. I knew there would be posts on Jaws and Jaws rip-offs because they are bountiful and extremely fun to watch, but I had something different in mind, Sam Fuller’s 1969 film Shark starring Burt Reynolds. While I had never seen the film before, I was very familiar with Sam Fuller. A while back Mr. Fuller came into my life when I reviewed a film called Pickup on South Street, and it instantly became one of m favorite films of all time. Since then I’ve seen a couple of Sam’s other films, the non-traditional Western 40 Guns, the neo-noir classic Underworld U.S.A., and one of the best war films ever made The Big Red One. Sam’s films were more often than not artistic triumphs rather than box office gold, but anytime I looked over his catalog one film captured my attention because of how odd it seemed. That film was Shark.

When Shark was filmed six years before Spielberg’s Jaws, Sam Fuller was just returning from several years in France where his last couple of films, The Naked Kiss and Shock Corridor, had been great successes in Europe. They were both artistically challenging films dealing with issues such as race and prostitution respectively. Upon his return to America, he found that no studio would give him the financing to get a film off the ground. He was finally approached by some low budget producers to adapt Victor Canning’s novel His Bones Are Coral. (Canning also penned the novel on which Hitchcock's last film Family Plot was based.) With no other prospects looming, he accepted the job. Shark, alternately titled Caine or Man-Eater, would become one of the most controversial films of Fuller’s career. Not because of content or themes as was usually the case with his films, but rather it was because of the knock down drag out fight that this film spurred between Sam and the producers.

Shark stars Burt Reynolds (pre-mustache and pre-household name) as Caine, a gunrunner whose shipment is destroyed in the Sudan. On the run with no prospects, he slips into a port city and soon takes on work with Professor Dan Mallare (Barry Sullivan) who claims to be doing scientific research on the oceans. Caine, of course, didn’t join up because of a love of science. He had two other reasons, the Professor’s beautiful confidant Anna (Silvia Pinal) and money. Caine soon discovers that money is on the Professor’s mind as well. It seems that the academic is actually out for a treasure in lost gold on the ocean floors, but with the waters infested with man-eating sharks, he wants someone else to go get it for him. That someone else just happens to be Caine.

While most Sam Fuller films are released in stunning collections or bonus laden Criterion editions, it is quite telling that the release of Shark that I watched was put out by Troma Entertainment. I would venture to say that this is the only Sam Fuller movie that comes with an introduction by Lloyd Kaufman. Granted, it was one of the most reserved intros I’ve ever seen by the notorious huckmeister. However, something tells me that Sam Fuller, the maverick filmmaker, and Lloyd Kaufman, the guru of D.I.Y film, might have been cut from similar cloth. Shark has never, to my knowledge, been given a restoration or any of the other niceties that Fuller’s other films enjoy. The reason for this is quite simple. After the production, Sam all but disavowed the film, and never spoke of the experience of making the movie any other way than in a negative light.

Throughout the filming, Fuller was at odds with his producers. They claimed to want a “Sam Fuller film” with all the character and camera work that make his films so stunning, but they constantly tried to get involved in his process. After the film was finished, Sam retired to L.A. to edit the picture, but unbeknownst to him, the producers were busy making their own cut. When Sam got a look at the hack job they had done to his film, he hit the roof. As the story goes, director Peter Bogdanovich was there that day and had to physically restrain Sam from going after the producers. Fuller filed a petition with the Director’s guild asking for his name to be taken off the picture, and even though it was approved, the producers refused, as they wanted the gravitas of distributing a Sam Fuller picture, with or without Sam’s blessing.

There was also the matter of the shark attack. A stuntman was killed during the filming of Shark due to an actual attack by the titular creature. When the movie was released, the producers marketed the film as containing the actual footage of the man being killed by a shark. Fuller was outraged and railed against the producers for such a cheap and disrespectful gimmick.   While the film does contain one brutal looking shark attack, apparently it was all just a scheme to gain some notoriety. In fact, the film does not contain the footage in question though the producers did slap a dedication on the beginning of the film to all the brave stunt men who worked in the shark-infested waters.

Now I’ve gotten six paragraphs in and I haven’t said a word about the acting or direction of this film. The reason for that is that neither is very good. Burt Reynolds had very little film experience at the time, and though he has a natural charisma that shows through, this is surely not the Burt we all know and love from Smokey and the Bandit or Cannonball Run.  He performs serviceably, but that’s about all I can say about that. Mexican beauty Silvia Pinal and American actor Barry Sullivan perform at about the same level. The character work by Arthur Kennedy as a drunken doctor and Carlos Beriochoa as the young boy that Caine befriends stand out above the lead actors as very Fuller-esque characters. Sam Fuller’s direction is harder to talk about because there is no telling what parts or shots in the film he actually intended to put on the screen. Some of the film looks pretty rough, but there are a few moments when Fuller’s fluid camerawork does appear, and it greatly enhances those portions of Shark.

In the end, Shark may be a film that has a better story about it than in it. The trials and tribulations of Sam Fuller against the producers make for a fascinating story that is unlike anything else the respected director ever had to face. As he would say later, “I don’t want to have anything to do with sharks. Not the ones in the water or the ones in slick suits.” To the end of his life, Fuller was bitter over the experience. So if you’ve never seen a Sam Fuller film before, this is not the place to start, but if you love shark films or you’re a Fuller completist, then this is an oddity that I encourage you to check out. I hope you folks had a good time reading this, and I hope you check out lots of the posts that the fellows over at Radiation Scarred Reviews have corralled for the Shark Week Blogathon.

Bugg Rating

There doesn't seem to be a trailer for Shark out there, but I did find the infamous footage that some still believe is an actual shark attack caught on film. So take a look and let me know what you think. It's quite a scene considering that's no animatronic, that is one real live shark. 

Island of the Dead (2000): Come Flies Away With Me

Exodus 8:21 says in part “I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into your houses.” You might be wondering why I would bring that up. If I were you, I would be. Well, there are just not that many instances of instances where flies are used in a threatening way. You can turn to the Bible for a good ole fashioned plague of flies or you could sit down as I did and watch Island of the Dead. I know what you’re saying. It sounds like a zombie movie. It sure as hell does. Intrigued by the promise of Mos Def and Malcolm McDowell sharing the screen in a zombie film, I snatched it up recently at one of my favorite DVD scavenging grounds. Imagine my surprise when no dead came shambling forth, and instead I was greeted by the terror of Sarcophagidae a.k.a. the Flesh Fly.

Since 1869, New York has been burying the unknown or unwanted in Hart’s Island, a small island off the Long Island Sound, but now real estate tycoon Rupert King (Malcolm McDowell) wants to change all that. He wants to build a low-income housing development on the island called “Hope City”. Accompanied by his assistant, a cop looking for a missing child, and some inmates whose job it is to bury the dead, King takes the ferry to the island for a groundbreaking ceremony. As night falls, King’s assistant goes missing after being attacked by a swarm of flies. When he is found later, his body is badly decomposed and riddled with maggots. As King’s true plans for the island come to light, the flies become even more aggressive, and the chances are that they will all join the dead buried on the island.

Even the set up to the film with Hart’s Island and its ground full of the neglected dead seem to point to a zombie film. This is really the major weakness of the film, the bait and switch. Everything about the film points to the rise of flesh eaters, but instead we get a problem that could be solved with a screen door, a can of Raid, and a fly swatter. No matter how aggressive or vicious they show the flies being, it’s kind of impossible for the little buggers to instill much fear. If it had taken the zombie route, it would have been a much better movie. Even though the film was made for TV, it still has a good look to it thanks to cinematographer Daniel Jobin and director Tim Southam. Island of the Dead was the first movie in the horror genre for Southam, and he nailed the feeling and the atmosphere. The big problem was his script based on Peter Koper’s story. The characters were there, but the drama and thrills got left back on shore somewhere.

Saying the characters were there might be a stretch, but at least a few of them showed up. Some people have talked down on Mos Def as an actor, but from 16 Blocks to Hitchhiker’s Guide, and now Island of the Dead, I’ve found that Def is able to bring a special kind of slyness to his roles. There’s always a twinkle in his character’s eye that makes them interesting to watch. Malcolm McDowell on the other hand is great at playing huge bastards, and this time is no exception. McDowell and Def both seem to be having a good time in their respective roles. However, the rest of the cast quickly fades into the background and that is unfortunate because neither Def nor McDowell is the main character in Island of the Dead. I don’t really have anything much to say about the other actors except for the lead Talisa Soto. The former Bond Girl (License to Kill), Mortal Kombat star (Princess Kitana), and Vampriella (the abysmal 1996 film co-starring Roger Daltrey of The Who) is a fine looking woman, but the fact remains that she just can’t act her way out of a paper bag. It is really no wonder that her career came to a grinding halt after only two more films.

All in all, Island of the Dead is a mess of a horror film. It had some interesting characters thanks to the two big name actors, some decent direction, and a solid title. Unfortunately, the title totally misses the mark of what the film is about, the other actors are either bad or uninteresting, and the threat in the film could be stopped by clever use of sticky paper hanging from the ceiling. While I had a great time watching the former Black Star rapper and former Clockwork Orange star do some verbal sparring, that is really the only thing that drew me into the film. The rest of the movie seemed like something SyFy would have turned down even when they spelled their name with enough letters. So beware the Island of the Dead, but not for the reasons that the film would like you to believe.

Bug Rating

There's no trailer for me to embed, but anyone interested can go HERE to IMDB to see the trailer. Instead, I will leave you folks with a little tune from Mr. Def.

Hitch on the Hump: The Birds (1963)

When it comes to Hitchcock and Halloween, many people sum up his contribution to the horror genre with one word, Psycho. Let me tell you I love me some Psycho, and next week you’re going to hear all about that. Today is all about Hitchcock’s lesser loved horror. It was the follow up film to the stay at the Bates Motel. A film that would break new boundaries with its cinematography and soundtrack and feature a villain will reach further beyond the bounds of possibility than ever before. It was a clearly different film from any the Master of Suspense had tried before, but when he discovered the Daphne du Maurier story in a collection of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” stories, he had no doubt that he wanted to make The Birds.

It wasn’t the first time Hitch had used one of Ms du Maurier’s stories, 1939’s Jamaica Inn and 1940’s Rebecca were both based off her stories, but Hitchcock claimed to have no particular affection for the writer. When Francois Truffaut inquired about what drew Hitchcock to The Birds, he replied, “I only read the story once. I couldn’t even tell you what it was about.” de Maurier’s story was first published in her 1952 collection The Apple Tree, and it followed the story of one family in a costal community as the birds begin to attack. Much is made in the story of the birds coming in off the east wind, and many have looked at the story as an allegory for the threat of Communism.

After going through a couple of failed partnerships, Hitchcock recruited author Evan Hunter to pen the screenplay for The Birds. Hunter’s first novel, The Blackboard Jungle, had been made into a film in 1954. He would continue to write under his real name for many years, but he may be better known for the 87th Precinct series of books which he wrote under the name Ed McBain. Even the original idea that Hitchcock relayed to Hunter varied wildly from the book, but some scenes from du Maurier’s work were kept completely intact. The script, as was Hitchcock’s usual process, was written slowly after daily meetings with his writer. The director was exacting in what he wanted Hunter to change or remove, and few of the screenwriters big ideas hit the screen. The most important of those that did was the opening scene where the hero and heroine “meet cute” in a pet shop.

When it became a finished product, it became the story of Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), a self absorbed rich girl, who travels to Bodega Bay to peruse a lawyer that she found handsome. Once she arrives, she, and the whole town, begins to be plagued by random attacks by birds. Melanie and Mitch can’t get anyone to heed their warnings, and as time passes, the attacks get more brazen and more violent. There seems to be no way to stop them, and the sky continues to fill with more and more birds.

When Hitchcock was writing the film, he imagined the lead as his favorite leading lady, Grace Kelly, but he knew better than to think that the Princess would return. Instead he looked for an unknown he could mold and make into a new leading lady. After seeing Tippi Hedren in a commercial broadcast on the “Today” show (it may have been for Pet Milk, hair care products, or a diet drink as there are differing stories), the director asked the studio to track her down. Tippi was screen-tested, given a crash course in Hitchcock’s films, and even asked to come to his home to re-enact famous scenes from his films. Finally, the director convened a dinner with Ms. Hedren, producer Lew Wasserman, and Mrs. Hitchcock. Over the course of the meal, Hitchcock presented Hedren with a pin featuring three golden birds in flight, and also the lead in his film. He coached Hedren through every frame of the film instructing her on each reaction and movement, a fact that she well admits to. Hedren also said, Hitchcock, “gives actors very little leeway. He’ll listen, but he has a definite plan in his mind as to how he wants the characters to act. With me, it was understandable, because I wasn’t an actress of stature.” Her character is very much pitch perfectly portrayed, and though the director exerted control over the character, it took Tippi Hedren to give the performance which she does magnificently. Hedren would go on work for Hitchcock again in his next film, Marnie.

The film also boasts a very impressive supporting cast. Australian born Rod Taylor, who gives Mitch the same kind of swagger one would expect from Bruce Campbell these days, had been in the business for many years, and Hitchcock cast him as a stand in for his preferred leading man Cary Grant (It has also been mentioned that the director wanted Farley Granger for the role.) At age 80 he is still at work today, and many of you might have seen him recently when he portrayed Winston Churchill in Inglourious Basterds.

There are also two ladies who definitely bear mentioning when it comes to this film. The first is probably known best these days as the woman Morgan Freeman is trying to drive to the store. Jessica Tandy might be Miss Daisy now, but in 1963 she played Mitch’s mother with a heartbreaking possessiveness. Years later Hitchcock would tell this story about filming Jessica Tandy, the wife of his old friend Hugh Croyne, in one of the intense bird attack scenes. He got many laughs at parties when he described the warning he gave her before the birds were released, “Listen, Jessica, if one of them gets up your skirt, grab it! Because a bird in the hand….”

The second lady I should mention is Suzanne Pleshette as Mitch’s former flame, Annie Hayworth. Not only was Bob Newhart’s future TV wife extremely attractive, her character provided a great earthy counterpoint to Hedren’s spoiled rich girl. Melanie was a bad girl who got what she wanted; Annie was a good girl who rarely did if it all.

For The Birds, Hitchcock surrounded himself with a trusted team of collaborators, and many familiar faces were back at work on this film. Robert Burks was once more behind the camera, Edith Head designed the iconic green suit that Miss Hedren wore, and Bernard Herrmann worked on the soundtrack, well, kind of. The Birds would not have a traditional score with the only music in the film being a song children sing in class. Herrmann was tasked to work with Oskar Sala, a nuclear physicist and Trautonium innovator. What is a Trautonium? Well, I’m not sure exactly, but along with Trautonium composer Remi Gassmann, Sala and Herrmann created a soundtrack pairing natural and electronic bird noises. Hitchcock loved the result noting that, “We were really experimenting there by taking sounds and then styling them so that we derived more drama from them than we normally would.” It is definitely true that the attentive viewer will be rewarded if he listens to this film as much as watches it. As good as the film looks, the sound design was only almost the best innovation Hitchcock brought to the film.

I say almost because there was one more technique that had to come into play to make The Birds the film that it was. At the time, traditional “blue screen” technology was as perfected as it could become, but the process left an obvious seam between film stock and the overlay. Hitchcock knew it would not do for his film, and he hired Ub Iwerks, a legendary animator and photographic expert who had done pioneering work with Walt Disney Studios. Iwerks served as the films “Special Photographic Advisor”, but what that really meant was that he was being paid to provide the sodium vapor process to combine the shots of the actors or setting with footage of the birds. Thus the scenes became a mix of real birds and multiple overlays of birds to swarm the screen. This process, which was devoid of any seam, gave the film going audience an impression that there were thousands of birds used in the film though in reality there were rarely more than 1000 birds on set at any time.

When it was released, The Birds was not the runaway hit that Psycho had been only three years earlier. The new film generated a lot of interest, but quickly was knocked down by critics who labeled it “inexpertly handled” and “silly plot boiling”. Only the Village Voice hailed the film calling it “a major work of cinematic art”, but the film was released to better reviews overseas. In the shadow of Psycho, it would be easy to dismiss Hitchcock’s killer bird picture as a misstep, but each time I view the film I find something new and wonderful in its tapestry.

While it may have shied away from much gore, what other American film in 1963 showed a man with his eyes gouged out so realistically? What other film balanced what boils down to a creature feature plot with a story filled with interesting and very human characters? I think you would be hard pressed to find another example. The Birds succeeds for the same way that other great monster movies do. The reasons behind their reign of terror are not important. What’s kept constantly on our minds is their presence. They are waiting. They can’t be negotiated with. They are The Birds.

Bugg Rating