Flicks: Attack Of The Giant Crabs (2010)

In France, they have crabs. Big ones.

The French editor of the ferocious Caged (2010), Grégoire Sivan, has an excellent grasp of exploitation cinema. He's like a horror movie chef. He combines the most essential ingredients: low-brow humor, gore, an inhuman monster and oh, yes: beautiful babies. Sivan cooks these key ingredients into a perfect and unique meal of crab cakes drenched in blood red Thai Sriracha sauce.

As a director and editor of independent short films (12 and counting) Grégoire displays his own unique sense of humor in strange takes of classic "atomic" monsters set in urban fairy tales.

References:
IMDB, Attack Of The Giant Crabs
Undead Brain, King Krab, ATTACK!

Flicks: Grave Encounters (2011)

Do you wanna see something really scary? Really? Press play. Once.

Horror movies posing as documentaries are nothing new in Hollywood. For the past two decades film makers have been eager to capitalize on utilizing this genre within a genre as horror masquerading as "found footage" (see REC, Quarantine, Blair Witch Project)^[0]. This is an accessible method of creating a sense of credibility then immediately bypassing the audience's ever-present skepticism.

This Vicious Brothers movie (funded by Tribeca Film) features Lance Preston (Sean Rogerson) and the crew of "Grave Encounters", a Ghost Hunters type of reality television show, who plan to shoot an episode inside the spooky ol' abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital.

"American horror films have become increasingly safe and predictable.... the genre isn't taken seriously anymore. Our intention was to take things back to a time when horror films didn't play by the rules."

- The Vicious Brothers.

Collingwood is reputedly a place where unexplained phenomena has been reported for years since it's closing. In the name of Must-See-TV the crew locks themselves inside the building for a night to begin a paranormal investigation by capturing everything on camera.

The production crew quickly realizes that the building is more than just haunted - it's alive - and it has no intention of ever letting them leave.

Notes:[0] = Film makers do this in order to get around traditional conventions that horror movies (Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street) get deeply mired in. As an unintended consequence of obeying genre dogma - so do horror movie audiences.

References:
IMDB, Grave Encounters (2011)
Vicious Brothers, Hard Line
Horror Movie Blog, Grave Robbers Inc.

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Flicks: Frankenfish (2004)

Yappy yuppies vs. giant mutant ichthyoids? The winner: audiences everywhere.

It's not funny because it's true. It's scary because it's true. Based on the snakehead fish incident in a Crofton, Maryland pond, Frankenfish is a made for TV movie from the Sci-Fi channel. This film is one of two movies based on this real life incident, the other being the more successful Snakehead Terror.

Directed and co-written by Mark Dippé (former Industrial Light & Magic animator and director of Spawn (1997)) Frankenfish is centered deep in the Louisiana bayou where the eating is good. The only problem is: Man is on the menu. That is, if yuppies are in same biological category as humans. And if years of watching bad b-movies has taught America anything it's that yuppies have got it comin'. In spades.


Mark Dieppe's Frankenfish in an early state of FX evolution. FX by The Animation Picture Company (TAPC).

Frankenfish sports eye-popping practicals and CG effects for the main monster(s) plus flock animations of hungry lil' baby Frankenfish as they fill their precious lil' bellies with the two things that Louisiana does have in a great abundance: yuppies and swamp billies!

Mark Dieppe's movie features work from his own FX company none other than The Animation Picture Company (TAPC) whose credits include FX for S. Darko and Dead Birds.

References:
IMDB, Frankenfish (2004)
Wikipedia, Frankenfish

Flicks: Piranhas! Part I and II

What's part bat, part fish and all trouble? None other than the oft-misunderstood Piranhners!

The original Piranha, produced by Roger Corman's New World Pictures in 1978, was a classic 70's horror movie mix of dark humor, sexy brunettes and gore. Featuring the brilliant late Mr. Kevin McCarthy (whose 204 film appearances include Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and Twilight Zone The Movie), Dick Miller (Bucket Of Blood) and the adorable Barbera Steele.

With Piranha 2: The Spawning in 1981, Mr. James Cameron (Avatar, Titanic) made his inauspicious and official directorial debut as the American director for the Italian production of Pirahna II. Although Cameron has continuously fought to have his name removed from this film due to his spectacular success as a film maker beginning with The Terminator, all his efforts have failed.

Cameron is to be forgiven for this effort. This is not because of his shame of making a bad movie as a young director but due to the fact that in 1981 the film's Italian producer Ovidio Assoniti ended up firing Cameron at the end of the production and taking full directorial credit. The ol' Hollywood handshake - in Italian...


Oh, Honey-pie! Sweetie-face! You did remember to pack the Pirahners!

Pirahna Two: The Spawning features veteran actor Lance Henriksen, friend to Cameron and a re-occurring supporting actor in many of Cameron's blockbusters such as Terminator and Aliens. Hendriksen co-stars as Police Chief Steve Kimbrough in a b-movie with unusually well-crafted SFX (flyin' and walkin' pee-rahna!) that is primarily nudity driven, in the best of Italian farce that features with some lighter moments mixed in with a generous portion of gore.

It should be noted that Lance Hendriksen has appeared in 177 films and games and counting. He will soon be appearing in Tron: Uprising an animated TV series set to debut in 2012 from Disney.

References:
IMDB, Piranha (1978)
IMDB, Piranha 2 (1981)
Wikipedia, Piranha II
Bleak Cinema, Pirahners Part Due
Isle Of The Deserted Pop Stars, Carole Davis
Hollwood Cargo.com, Cameron Drawings

Flicks: Cannibal Women (1989)

The Heart of Darkness in bikinis? I only have one thing to say ... GREENLIGHT!

Perennial softcore actress Shannon Tweed known for her work in the dicey "erotic thriller" genre and tv comedian Bill Maher star in this Romancing The Stone parody with some pretty pointy teeth. Bill Maher, today, is a well known political and social satirist with his hit show Real Time on HBO. Maher's shows, dating back to Politically Incorrect on ABC, have earned 26 Emmy Award nominations and zero wins^[0].

Adrienne Barbeau (who was still Mrs. John Carpenter in '89) makes a few cameo appearances as "Dr. Kurtz" as Maher and Tweed bumble their way through fierce tribes of Pirahna Women and deep into the Avacado Jungle of Death ... aka, the avocado groves at University of California at Riverside (UCR)!

Notes:
[0] = According to the L.A. Times Politically Incorrect and Real Time w/Bill Maher have received 26 total Emmy Nominations, including best Writing and Host, yet neither have won, in any category, as of 2011. Maher is competing with John Stewart but losing to Jay Leno.

References:
IMDB, Cannibal Women In The Avacado Jungle Of Death (1989)
HBO, Real Time w/Bill Maher
HBO, Real Time w/Bill Maher Blog
L.A. Times, The Gold Derby

Flicks: The Fog (1980)

In John Carpenter's Fog, what you can't see won't hurt ya - it'll murderize ya.

On February 1st 1980, actress Adrienne Barbeau (Swamp Thing, Escape From New York) and director John Carpenter were newly weds when The Fog (1980) rolled in American theaters. Barbeau's 70's porn-sheik good looks and big brown eyes brought the Van Morrison outta red-blooded men across the country while Carpenter's sparse, gruesome directorial talents earned the The Fog itself a cool $21 million dollars^[0].

These earnings came at a Recession choked point in American culture when the over-marketed Saturn 3, the truly wretched Kirk Douglas/Harvey Keitel sci-fi vehicle released the same month, earned $10 million ^[0] the same amount as it's production budget and barely breaking even.

It is an act of courage to make a film. It is very hard and very destructive.

- John Carpenter.

Made for a Hollywood shoe-string, even in 1980, at $1 million bucks, The Fog was the suspenseful tale of a small New England town's horrible secret. A secret that stalked the city cloaked in the dense eastern seaboard fog. Carpenter's painstakingly detailed approach to creating an atmosphere of paranoid immediacy works in The Fog - although admittedly not as well as it does for The Thing, In The Mouth Of Madness and of course the original Halloween. Hal Holbrook (Creep Show) and the deliciously adorable Jamie Lee Curtis (True Lies) co-star in a what has often been called a horror classic.

In 2005, The Fog was re-made as a disastrous teen horror movie by Rupert Wainright on an $18 million dollar budget and earning $46 million. Wainright, commercially successful with the nearly universally hated re-make, is currently attempting to redeem himself with Waco dealing with infamous siege in 1993. According to IMDB Waco stars Giovanni Ribisi as David Koresh, with Adrien Brody and Kurt Russell, with a TBA release date in 2011.

Notes:
[0] = These 1980 box office numbers courtesy of Wikipedia.

References:
Wikipedia, The Fog (1980)
Wikipedia, Adrienne Barbeau
IMDB, John Carpenter
Sleaze Blender, Directors: John Carpenter
Den Of Din, Interview With John Carpenter

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Flicks: Bong Of The Dead (2009)

Genre confusion reigns supreme as Dazed and Confused meets The Evil Dead.

Genre confusion reigns supreme in red showers of zomboid blood as Weedsploitation (Super High Me, Dazed And Confused, Cheech and Chong, Half-Baked) meets survival horror (Resident Evil, Night Of The Living Dead) in Bong Of The Dead (2009). Thomas Newman's British Columbia based Mind In Motion Inc.'s terrific short concerns two post-Apocalyptic stoners and their desperate search for the most excellent weed fertilizer known to man: rotting zombie brains. What else, eh?

Along the way the two hapless and frantically jonesin' hipsters meet up with the spunky and adorable Simone Bailey (Battle Star Gallactica and Stargate SG-1) and set out to the Danger Zone to harvest a bongload of brains.

This inventive cliche exploiting movie is being actively marketed and distributed in 2011 w/a grass roots campaign that allows individual theaters, galleries and night clubs to book the film!

References:
IMDB, Bong Of The Dead (2009)
Mind In Motion Inc., Official Site
Bong Of The Dead, Official Site

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Flicks: Scream, Blacula, Scream! (1973)

Mamuwalde returns to L.A. to feast upon the blood of even more b-movie actresses.

William Marshall reprises his signature role of the undead African prince Mamuwalde in Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973). This time Marshall stars with the bodacious Pam Grier (93 movies to her credits including Coffy and Jackie Brown). Grier is the voodoo priestess Lisa whom our old friend with the pointy teeth has directed his vampiric attentions towards.

This sequel to the original Blacula, released by infamous American International Pictures (AIP), features much higher production standards than the first and choreographed fight scenes. No more badly staged improvised chop-socky as was the case with the first film. This chapter adds an unexpected ferocity with Marshal's characterization of the doomed prince.

No offense to Bill Marx who arranged the sequel's soundtrack - but he was no Gene Page. Gene Page's soundtrack work on the first film from 1972 was funky, sometimes dark and unquestionably excellent. Key tracks from the original film include "Blacula", "Run, Tina, Run!", "Good To The Last Drop" and the inspired composition of "Wakeeli".



"Wakeeli" tells the story with one drum, re-calling Mamuwalde's African heritage then moves into high notes from a xylophone and warning tones from a violin followed by deeper drums and a harpsichord. Then, the tempo is shattered - before picking up a slower and more fractured pace.



The composition echoes the story of Blacula very well. Additionally, as the last song on the album, Wakeeli means "Farewell" in Swahili.

References:
IMDb, Scream, Blacula, Scream! (1973)
Wikipedia, Scream Blacula Scream
Wikipedia, Blacula
Realm Of Horror, Scream Blacula Scream

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