40 Days and Nights

Year of Release: 2012
Genre: Sci-Fi / Action
IMDB Rating: 2.5 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

“When a colossal tectonic shift causes the sea level to start rising, a microbiologist gathers the DNA of as many species as she can, while the military creates an “ark” in a desperate attempt to preserve life on Earth.”

The Asylum and I have really got to stop meeting like this. Seriously, how many of the movies in my collection have their sneaky little paws behind it? Now, I was in the mood for a decent cheesy disaster flick, but this was too much. Above is the blurb for this movie taken directly from the Asylum’s website, which I feel needs to be addressed. Firstly, there was no tectonic shift, not on any of the 40 days this movie purportedly spans. Secondly, sea levels did not rise; at best we had a few isolated inland tidal waves. Thirdly, there is no way on God’s green Earth that that woman was a microbiologist. Fourthly, surely samples of 3 bees and a few moths doesn’t count as ‘DNA of as many species as she can’? Fifthly, no country has a military made up of 7 people. Sixthly, that wasn’t an ark, it was a strange train that floated. Seventhly, the DNA of 3 bees cannot preserve life on earth if you didn’t take any life with you onto the ark. So yeah, that about sums up how I felt about this movie, but I’m gonna do my usual review now to drive home just how daft it really was.

The script writer hasn’t a clue what he’s gonna do next…

Jon and Tessa are such a lovely couple – you’ve never seen a 50-year-old man and a 19-year-old girl so madly in love. They’ve got a pretty good life too – they work for the super-secretive black-ops illuminati division of the US military, which means they’re very clever, very wealthy, and very well looked after. All that and as many rooftop picnics as they could ever dream of! What could possibly go wrong for a couple as spritely as this? Oh right, the world’s about to come to an end. How’s the world going to come to an end? Be damned if I know; all I saw were four drunken kids driving around the Sahara desert when a few thunder clouds appeared over head. Next thing they (and I) knew, there’s an enormous tsunami coming over the mountains and the whole desert’s submerged by an ocean of CGI water.

We have a CGI helicopter coming in for a hovering sir…

In what turns out to be the Asylum’s answer to 2012, a massive super storm is developing over Africa, and within the next few days it will cover THE ENTIRE PLANET. How this super storm started to develop we’re never going to know, but said super-secretive black-ops illuminati division of the US military has to come up with some way of saving at least a nominal portion of the American public (mainly the smart ones though). To do this they’ve decided to build an ark. The ark will be the world’s first live-saving sea vessel shaped like a dildo, and despite the fact they have to cram in 3 years work into a week to get the thing built, everyone’s fairly convinced that it can be done with relatively few screw ups. Oh, how they underestimated Mr Murphy on that one…

The world’s largest water-resistant dildo.

Turns out there are a few hiccoughs to overcome before the ark can sail. Firstly, it’s powered by turbines built on completely theoretical technology that, despite being the size of a small cat, will harness the power of the waves and wind to generate enough electricity to keep it sailing for as long as they need. Surprisingly, there are a few problems getting these turbines working. Now, that’s Jon’s job. Tessa’s job is to collect DNA samples so that they can rebuild nature once the flood waters recede. Unfortunately a rock slide took out the train carrying all her samples, and now she has to go out into the wild to collect more before everything’s under water. And this is only the beginning of their troubles: once the ark sets out, who knows how long they’ll all be at sea? Who knows if the ark will be able to hold its own against the power of nature gone utterly berserk? In the end, none of it will really matter, since you’ll have been bored to tears long before the flood waters even cover your baby toe.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• If it means a quickie on a roof, saving humanity can just wait 15 minutes.
• If it means a quick tussle under the sheets, then escaping the rising Biblical flood will also just have to wait.
• There’s a lot more rain and wind in the eye of a super storm.
• You can safely transport DNA samples in an empty Evian bottle.
• The secret of human evolution, life, and all philosophical pursuits, ultimately lies with the humble moth.
• Most ships can be rendered utterly useless with a simple power drill.
• It’s easier to pistol whip someone than to answer a stupid question.
• The lesser-spotted cave bee is a key player in upholding the planet’s various ecosystems.

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Alien Armageddon

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Sci-Fi / Horror
IMDB Rating: 1.9 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Nephilim: a great buzz word for many end of the world movies. Despite the presence of such an awesome buzz word, however, this movie turned out to be a load of pants. It would have been a highly amusing load of pants had it not quickly descended into confusing chaos overloaded with more scenes of people vomiting and having bouts of diarrhoea than would ever be necessary. In amongst all of that is the usual supply of poor acting and laughable special effects. Of course were Alien Armageddon not a complete pile of rubbish it wouldn’t form part of my 2012 End of the World Month survival guide, so you pick your battles 🙂

I imagine creating this movie was a fairly similar experience.

As often happens on days when people are out going about their daily lives an alien army invades Earth and promptly begins blowing all our major cities to hell and back. Given that they’ve come over in relatively sizeable spaceships how nobody saw them coming is anyone’s guess. After a day or so of general carnage and mayhem the (white) US president surrenders the whole of Earth to the invading Nephilim. They were nice enough to explain to him that the reason they blew everything up is because they want to rebuild society from scratch and give us all a much better life devoid of the problems humanity tends to inflict on itself. Again, how one man can surrender the entire planet to an alien force I don’t know but I guess it’s all a part of the movie’s greater plan. Having secured Earth’s surrender the Nephilim begin constructing permanent bases of operation for themselves in the major city centres to begin processing the humans living there.

Some aliens were naturally wide-eyed when they discovered Earth porn.

At some point just after the occupation the Nephilim constructed an enormous wall right the way around Los Angeles (where most of the movie takes place). This wall serves to keep the people of Los Angeles from escaping and to stop anyone from the human resistance army from breaking in and getting up to any mischief. The resistance movement is a fragmented and ill prepared group of predominantly red-headed females but, for us, the most important is Jodie, a fierce red-head trying to reclaim Earth for humanity and find her missing daughter. The whole Nephilim ‘peace and love’ story soon falls apart for Jodie after she is captured and imprisoned in one of their laboratories. So far as prisons go this one isn’t really the worst; Jodie and her cell mates are fed and watered at regular intervals but the food seems to be making anyone who eats it incredibly ill. Outside their little cell there are also a few scientists doing a lot of DNA research for the Nephilim. Could there be a connection?

Come at me bitch!

Of course there’s a perfectly sane and rational reason for all these things that are going on. In a move that may shock you to the core of your belief system the Nephilim did not, in fact, come in peace. They came because they were hungry. The Nephilim are actually native to Mars (again, how did we not see them?) and are running out of food (they’re cannibals). To that end they’ve come to Earth in search of a new food supply: us. The problem is that the Nephilim can only eat their own species so the scientists have been slipping drugs into the prisoners’ food that restructures their DNA to be like the Nephilim’s, thus making humans edible. See? Makes perfect sense. Jodie must now fight her way through force fields, never-ending gun fights and surprised looking aliens to try and rescue her daughter and avoid becoming lunch. Will she make it? After 20 minutes of this movie, you won’t really care.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• The word ‘princess’ is an insult to Jewish people.
• Hand guns can fire as rapidly as a machine gun.
• At the slightest sign of an invasion the American president will just surrender the planet.
• Aliens can be easily distracted with the words ‘hey sexy’.
• Alien food makes humans throw up shaving cream.
• Some of the strongest friendships are those forged between women who are part of an alien breeding programme.
• Humans are an excellent alien delicacy, provided you reconfigure their DNA just right.
• Jesus was known to personally visit aliens on Mars.

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Jack Frost

Year of Release: 1997
Genre:  Comedy / Fantasy / Horror
IMDB Rating: 4.2 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium

WHAT ITS ABOUT:

Since it’s Christmas tomorrow I thought I’d dig this little piece of winter blood-shed and dust it off. I remember watching this movie when I was much younger and actually being quite scared – proof that some childhood adventures are best left alone. Watching it again when I’m a little older and more used to CGI effects, there was still something warm and inviting about seeing the Creditsmas Tree as the movie opened. For those who haven’t seen one of these before, a Creditsmas Tree is just like a Christmas Tree, but instead of hanging tinsel and ornaments on it you hang the opening credits. I would also like to offer advanced warning for those who hasn’t seen this movie: the snowman in the movie looks nothing like the snowman on the cover. The actual snowman is just that, a snowman. Carrot for a nose, coal for eyes, twigs for eyebrows and spray-painted oven gloves for snow. And he’s evil, of course. But for all this movie is bad it is still entertaining because you can laugh at the sheer absurdity of this snowman rolling and melting his way through town on his killing spree.

One night, in the middle of a blizzard that puts this year’s snowfall in Europe and Britain to shame, federal police are transporting mass-murderer Jack Frost who is scheduled to be executed at midnight that evening. The route takes them through the town of Snomonton, the place where Jack was eventually apprehended by the local sheriff after eluding the police for five years and leaving a trail of 38 murder victims. Unfortunately, with visibility on the road being virtually non-existent, the transport drivers don’t notice the oncoming vehicle carrying a load of genetic-experiment grade acid and the two collide with one another. Jack manages to escape from the transport vehicle after the accident but lands up being in the line of fire when the truck containing the acid breaches, melting Jack on the spot.

In Snomonton itself Sheriff Sam Tiler is still fixated with Jack Frost and cannot forget the man’s threats to find a way to get back at the man who had him put away. These fears are compounded when members of this quiet little community begin to show up dead, and soon two members of the FBI come into town and order a curfew to be enforced. While the police and FBI bicker (and beat up one another and a few townsfolk) about how things should be done, we discover that the acid that melted Jack was actually a genetic experiment aimed and storing human DNA in inanimate objects so that, in the event of the apocalypse, we as a species could be resurrected later using this stored DNA. As usual this experiment doesn’t go exactly to plan and instead of just storing Jack’s DNA in the snow the acid has actually bonded the two, bringing Jack back to life in the form of a snowman (this is also the beginning of a LONG discussion about how the soul is real).

The people in charge of bringing the snowman to justice now fall into two groups: Sam, his friend Paul and kickass police secretary Marla who want to kill Jack and ‘FBI’ agents Manner and Stone, who are actually from the company that developed the acid, who are under orders to capture and contain Jack for further study. With the use of aerosols, hairdryers, lighters, salt and anti-freeze, it’s now up to this rag-tag team to stop the world’s most pissed off snow cone before he manages to get hold of Sam, his family and every horny teenager in the little town of Snomonton.

THINGS I’VE LEARNED:

• Snowmen are apparently the best medium to store human DNA in the event that the apocalypse happens.
• Despite being made of frozen water snowmen defy the laws of thermodynamics by being able to melt and refreeze at will.
• Snowmen are excellent drivers.
• You must ever question why pissed off looking snowmen suddenly appear on your front lawn and start talking to you.
• A bobsled won’t only decapitate you, but going from a stand-still it can make your head fly a good 200m.
• Despite not having legs, snowmen can run at remarkable speeds.
• When genetically altered snowmen melt themselves the coal and carrots attached to them melt and refreeze along with the main body of ice.
• Despite being able to melt themselves whenever they feel like it, evil snowmen get really pissed off if you hold a hairdryer up to them.