Category: Scare of the Day (Page 6 of 7)

Scare of the Day: “Ice Spiders”

October 6, 2007 / Will Harris

As God is my witness, I don’t know how anyone could screw up any film with a description like this one:

“At a secret mountain-top government lab, a visionary scientist breeds giant spiders in order to use their super-strong silk to make lightweight body armor and new weapons. Suddenly, the aggressive spiders escape, invading a nearby ski resort and embarking on a killing spree among the guests and staff. Now, it’s up to the mad scientist’s colleague and a former star skier to take control of the chaos…before the entire resort is leveled!”

There’s only one word for this premise: GENIUS.

Unfortunately, if there’s any sort of Giant Spiders Union, then I’d recommend that a designated representative from the organization hightail it over to Sony to protest the God-awful acting in “Ice Spiders.” While I realize that you come to expect a certain level of badness in any Sci-Fi Channel original film, it’s so bad here that, for the first 40 minutes of the movie, I was convinced that there hadn’t been such a waste of giant spiders in a feature-length film since…well, truth be told, I think you’d have to go all the way back to the 1975 Alan Hale, Jr. vehicle, “The Giant Spider Invasion.” (If you’ve never seen it, surf immediately over to the online store of your choice and place an order for “The ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ Collection, Volume 10” right this minute.)

I was never a “Melrose Place” devotee, but I’m led to understand that it’s a vaguely big deal that “Ice Spiders” manages to reunite three of the series’ stars: Thomas Calabro (Dr. Michael Mancini), Patrick Muldoon (Richard Hart), and Vanessa Williams (Rhonda Blair). Calabro does well enough as the leader of the commando unit that’s trying to stop the spiders, but Williams is completely out of her element as a geneticist, and Muldoon turns in such an absolutely awful performance as a former championship skier that you can’t even believe that he’s a professional actor.

Giant spiders and “Melrose Place” fans won’t be the only ones let down by this film. Anyone who spots the DreadCentral.com blurb on the front cover of the DVD and thinks to themselves, “Wow, I didn’t even know I wanted to see a see a film that’s a cross between ‘Eight Legged Freaks’ and ‘Hot Dog: The Movie,’ but now I realize that my life won’t be complete until I do,” should get ready for profound disappointment. This is in no way a comedy. Like 99% of all Sci-Fi Channel original movies, “Ice Spiders” takes itself way more seriously than its budget or performances can stand. It’s a movie about giant spiders, people. There’s only one person in the film who seems to know how to treat the material, and that’s David Millbern, who plays the role of a not-evil-just-misguided scientist like he’s doing a Will Arnett impression, and his delivery is right on the money.

To be fair, the skittering of the obviously-CGI spiders makes for fun viewing, and when our eight-legged friends have the run of the film, you remember that, yes, there was once potential for this movie. Okay, so a film directed by the man who brought you “Mansquito” and “Killer Rats” was never going to be as good as the premise of “Ice Spiders” deserved.

But, dammit, I had such hopes…

By the way, in lieu of a trailer, here’s a clip from the TV Guide Channel where they do an Action Figure Reenactment of a scene from the film. It’s more entertaining than the film itself, but mostly because they repeatedly display that they don’t know a single thing about the movie by inaccurately referring to Vanessa Williams as being the former Miss America and the co-star of “Ugly Betty” when, in fact, it’s the other Vanessa Williams who’s in this:

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Scare of the Day: “Poltergeist II: The Other Side” / “Poltergeist III”

October 5, 2007 / Will Harris

I hadn’t really intended to focus on films that weren’t currently sitting in my “To Review” pile during the Scare of the Day feature, but given that last night found my wife and I attending a 25th-anniversary screening of “Poltergeist,” it seemed like an appropriate time to revisit that film’s two sequels, which were released as a 2-fer DVD a few years back.

I’ll go into this in more detail when I do a full review of the “Poltergeist” DVD reissue, but, for the purposes of this column, let me just say that, despite having seen the movie probably two dozen times over the course of the last two and a half decades, last night was the first time I’d ever seen the film in a theater. As such, it was the first time I’d really appreciated it as something other than just a string of scary moments and special effect sequences. Oh, it’s still a damned creepy film (even if the face-ripping scene seemed a lot creepier 25 years ago), but I’d never realized that it owes its effectiveness to the fact that it takes its time building an emotional core; by not feeling rushed, you’re given the opportunity to actually care for the characters…and that’s something neither of the film’s sequels allow for.

Given the success of the original film, it was pretty much a given that there’d be a sequel, and the good news was that Jobeth Williams (Diane), Craig T. Nelson (Steven), Heather O’Rourke (Carol Anne), Oliver Robins (Robbie), and Zelda Rubenstein (Tangina Barrons, medium at large) would all be returning for the flick. (Actress Dominique Dunne, who played Dana, was strangled to death by her boyfriend not long after the original film was released.) Although it’s great to see all of the old faces again, the bad news was that producer Steven Spielberg wasn’t constantly hanging around the set this time to help mold things into shape….and it shows.

Funnily enough, I remember really loving the film when it was first released, back in 1986. (Guaranteed, I was in the theater on opening weekend.) Looking at it now, though, it’s obvious that people were sitting on the sidelines, saying, “Okay, so what worked in the first film, and what’s the bare minimum that we can tweak it so that we can re-use it in the second film?” Perhaps that’s phrasing it a bit cynically, but, in particular, the moments of playful romance between Steven and Diane and sibling bickering between Carol Anne and Robbie which were cute and natural in the original feel utterly forced here.

The Freeling family has left Costa Verde and moved in with Diane’s mother (Geraldine Fitzgerald), but that ultimately only serves as a plot device, so that we can meet Carol Anne’s grandma, have her die, and then have Carol Anne use her gifts to speak with her from beyond the grave, and Grandma’s death occurs so abruptly – albeit quietly, no doubt because a lot of kids watched “Poltergeist” on HBO and had their allowance all ready to spend on the sequel – that there’s no virtually no emotional heft to it. There’s a subplot involving an Indian mystic (Will Sampson), but he’s all cliche, so, again, he feels like a plot device, too.

In fact, there’s only one character in this film who succeeds, and that’s why he’s the only thing you remember about this film…and why he’s over at the right, even as you read this line, screaming, “You’re gonna die in hell! All of you! You are gonna die!”

Yeah, the Freeling family really had it bad. Not only was their house built on top of a cemetery, but the cemetery was built on top of a massive underground cavern that, in the 1800s, became the final resting place of a Utopian cult led by Rev. Henry Kane (Julian Beck). Kane had assured his followers that the world was going to end, so he buried both them and himself in the cavern to wait for it; unfortunately, his prophecy didn’t come to pass, and everyone died screaming in the bowels of the earth, trying desperately to claw their way out. Being little more than a bunch of lemmings, however, Kane’s followers still clung to his every move, and the whole bunch of them were still trying to find their way to the afterlife…and it seems that only a little blond-haired angel named Carol Anne can help them.

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Scare of the Day: “The Food of the Gods”

October 4, 2007 / Will Harris

After three consecutive days of offering Scares of the Day that I’ve legitimately enjoyed watching and talking about, it’s definitely time to take a dip into MGM’s Midnite Movies series. If you’re a fan of cult cinema and you’ve never taken a dip into a Midnight Movies DVD…well, then, frankly, you’re a really, really bad fan of cult cinema, because lord knows it’s one of the best imprints out there. In fact, if there’s any issue to be had with it, it’s that MGM often lets the films go out of print pretty quickly after releasing them, so when you hear that a new disc is coming out, your best bet is always to grab it ASAP.

Of course, like so many Midnite Movies, whether “The Food of the Gods” truly falls into the category of “Must Own” is gonna depend on how well you enjoy the kind of film that’s so bad it’s almost good. While both the cover of the DVD and the actual title screen of the movie would have you believed that it’s based on an H.G. Wells novel, that’s not entirely true; when you get deeper into the actual credits of the film, the actual descriptor is that it’s “based on a portion of the novel by H.G. Wells.”

Man, if that’s not an understatement.

The novel starts off by focusing on two scientists, Bensington and Redwood, who are conducting research into the growth process of living things; they create a chemical foodstuff called Herakleophorbia IV that accelerates and extends the process past its normal cycle, set up an experimental farm, and test the substance on chicks. There’s a relatively brief sequence in the book where a couple who’ve been hired to run the farm slack off and accidentally allow other creatures – wasps, rats, etcetera – to get into the food, which results in a showdown with the other creatures and the destruction of the farm. Beyond that, though, the novel’s scope encompasses several decades, exploring the effects of the food on humans and how human society evolves when some are giants and some are still normal-sized.

If that sounds fascinating to you, you’d best just stick to the book.

In the movie, an elderly couple just kind of happens upon this strange substance near their house. They live on an island, and it seems to have just come into existence naturally, so they feed it to their chickens…and when they’re on the verge of trying to maybe make a few bucks off of it, that’s when they realize that rats, wasps, and even flesh-eating worms have gotten into it as well. It’s still not a bad idea for a horror film (or monster movie, if you’re a purist), but with a budget which appears to have consisted of whatever happened to be in director / producer Bert I. Gordon’s pockets at the time he pitched the flick, the only “food of the gods” on display here is cheese. There isn’t a single sequence involving the giant rats that doesn’t instantly inspire an explosive “BWA-HA-HA-HA-” of laughter; it’s painfully obvious…albeit hilariously so…that the normal-sized rats are going after Matchbox cars, model houses, and so forth. There are Sid & Marty Krofft productions with better special effects than “The Food of the Gods,” but, then, anyone who saw the trailer for the film would’ve known what they were getting into…

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Scare of the Day: “Return of the Living Dead: Collector’s Edition”

October 3, 2007 / Will Harris

Until “Shaun of the Dead” shambled onto the scene a few years ago, if you’d asked me to name my favorite zombie movie of all time, you’d always have gotten the same answer: “Return of the Living Dead.” I mean, there just wasn’t even a second-place contender.

Why did I enjoy it so much? Well, certainly, Linnea Quigley dancing nude (save for a pair of thigh-high stockings) atop a crypt is always gonna rank pretty high on my list of reasons, but, on the whole, it’s because the film manages to start off feeling like a broad slapstick comedy, then slowly pulls back on the humor while raising the level of tension. By the time the film ends and you think back to what you’ve witnessed, you’ll realize that you aren’t exactly sure when the transition happened. That’s a testament to the abilities of director Dan O’Bannon, who’d already earned a name for himself in Hollywood through his screenplays for “Alien” and “Blue Thunder” but had never helmed a movie ’til this one. Given how successful he was at it, it’s surprising to discover that he’s only directed one other film since then (1992’s “The Resurrected”), but that fact in no way detracts from his successes here.

“Return of the Living Dead” begins in the Uneda Medical Supply warehouse, where Frank (James Karen) is training the company’s new employee, Freddy (Thom Matthews), of the ins and outs of the business before they head out to celebrate the long 4th of July weekend. When Freddy asks Frank the weirdest thing he’s ever seen in his time there, Frank replies by asking Freddy if he’s ever seen the movie “Night of the Living Dead.” Turns out that the events in George A. Romero’s classic zombie flick actually happened, but that the specifics had to be changed up and switched around, and that the basement of the warehouse actually houses some of the (un)dead bodies, which are housed in sealed barrels. (There’s a plot thread which runs throughout the film about how the U.S. Army is still on the lookout for their missing barrels, which pays off handsomely.) Inevitably, Frank feels obliged to show Freddy, and when Frank pounds his fist upon one of the barrels to assure Freddy that they’re sealed up tight, he manages to crack the seal and send 2-4-5 Trioxin gas spewing into the air. The pair pass out, and when they wake up, they realize that the gas has seeped into the warehouse and brought the various cadavers within the building back to life; even worse, it turns out that one of the bits that had been changed in “Night of the Living Dead” is that the zombies can’t actually be killed by a blow to the head! They can, however, be killed by being burned to ashes…but, even then, if the ashes mix with water and seep into the soil of, say, a graveyard, then it’s zombies a go go.

Would it surprise you to learn that that’s exactly what happens? Yeah, I didn’t think it would.

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Scare of the Day: “The Fly Collection”

October 2, 2007 / Will Harris

Halloween is the time of year when studios decide to empty their vaults of everything even remotely frightening and foist it upon a public who enjoys being scared. As I mentioned yesterday, the quality of the material ranges from legitimately good to downright excruciating, and as the years go on, we’re also finding the market flooded with the same material simply being reissued and re-reissued and re–re-reissued. Once in awhile, though, you get handed a film that’s either never been on DVD before or is almost impossible to find anymore, and that’s the case for 1/3 of Fox’s brand new set, “The Fly Collection,” which rounds up the fondly-remembered first two films in the saga of the Delambre family – “The Fly” and “Return of The Fly” – then also resurrects the oft-forgotten 3rd film, 1965’s “The Curse of the Fly.”

David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of the original film was actually a successful modernization of the tale of a scientist whose attempts to master the technology of teleportation go awry when his DNA is accidentally melded with that of a common housefly. Unfortunately, the special effects of a ’50s film obviously can’t compete with those of an ’80s film (especially not one made for the kind of budget that Cronenberg had to work with), so a lot of people tend to dismiss the original “Fly” because, oh, well, the guy’s got a big, fake-looking fly head.

Don’t be one of those people.

In fact, Kurt Neumann’s 1958 adaptation of the George Langelaan short story worked remarkably well for its era, with Neumann wisely choosing to avoid showing the aforementioned fly head for as long as possible…and, even when we do see it, it’s not the almost-cartoonish creature that you see on the cover of the DVD set, which is actually a shot from “Return of The Fly.” The head of the creature in “The Fly” actually looks comparatively realistic, and because of the emotional build-up to the reveal, we actually find ourselves not focusing on it nearly as much as we otherwise might have. “The Fly” is very much a tale like “The Phantom of the Opera,” with scientist Andre Delambre (Al Hedison) accidentally fusing himself with the fly in the process of testing his own invention, then pleading for his wife, Helene (Patricia Owens), to assist him in finding the other half of his experiment – the fly with a human head and hand, of course – before his brain gives in to the fly side of his being. Naturally, she’s horrified by his appearance, which he hides from her for the majority of the film, but even once she’s seen how he now looks, the bond of love between them proves stronger, which is why she finally agrees to his request to kill him and destroy both his head and hand beneath a metal press (yikes!) so that no-one will know what’s happened. Inevitably, we do see the fly with a human’s head and hand, and although the special effects may be laughable by today’s standards, the horrific, high-pitched shrieking of the creature as it’s being eaten by a spider – “Help meeeeeeeeeee!” – is still creepy stuff in 2007.