Absolute Zero

Year of Release: 2006
Genre: Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 3.2 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

So there I was, minding my own business, when I was suddenly struck by a terrible case of the shakes. I broke out into a cold sweat, my mouth was bone dry, and I was starting to see double. I had gone into soft science withdrawal. It’s a terrible thing when it happens, and you need to have a sci-fi b-movie ready for when these symptoms strike. Thankfully, I’d saved Absolute Zero for just such an emergency. The movie manages a number of feats: it’s a b-grade disaster movie that wasn’t made by either the Asylum or the Syfy Channel, it’s mind-numbingly painful to watch, and the science is so soft that it would make a marshmallow roasting over Satan’s arse seem like titanium. Prepare to witness the movie that dares to ask the question: how soft is your science?

How the hell’d I get here?

Meet Dr David Kotzman, a brilliant man working for Inter Sci. Dr Dave specialises in looking at the effects that temperatures plummeting to absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius, or -460 degrees Fahrenheit for my American readers) would have on life on Earth. They’d be fairly devastating, to put in mildly. But Dr Dave has a theory, you see: he’s convinced that the last ice age didn’t occur over a period of hundreds or thousands of years as modern science would have us believe. No, he believes that the ice ages are brought on when parts of the world suddenly plummet to absolute zero for a few seconds, freezing absolutely everything in sight. For all we know this theory could have been brought on by a night at an opium den, because the movie really isn’t going to explain how we got there. Then again, the theory could have been inspired by the constant thumping porno beats that play when he’s doing his research. Suffice to say Dr Dave is going to get an opportunity to test out his theory soon enough.

Tough crowd.

You see, there’s been some very strange weather going on across the globe lately: thunder storms over Antarctica (which are apparently very normal), ice bergs floating through the harbours of Florida, tropical weather in New York, and the list just goes on. How are we ever going to find out what’s going on before it’s too late? With cave paintings, that’s how! Dr Dave meets up with an Inter Sci research team already out in Antarctica (presumably building the emergency opium den) and, with a little help from global warming, manage to find a cave full of fully frozen people. Using a tiny microscope and a few spare grad students that just happened to be lying around, Dr Dave concludes that the world’s magnetic poles are about to shift themselves. This will have devastating consequences across the globe, as everything along the equator suddenly finds itself fighting off the onset of absolute zero (dun dun dun!).

It’s a bit nippy out! Don’t forget to put on your thermals!

Can we stop all these terrible things from happening? With this much soft science? You must be joking! Unable to save the world from succumbing to this frozen nightmare, Dr Dave has to at least try and save his grad students and his ex-girlfriend who he’s never forgotten and conveniently met up with just before the disaster struck. Luckily she’s a specialist in ancient cave drawings, and using the ones from Antarctica she arrives at the same conclusion as Dr Dave: the world is about to be thrown (rather haphazardly) into the next ice age. It’s a race against time as temperatures continue to plummet, funnels of freezing air strike at random, 10-year-old girls speak monotonously into walkie talkies, and lifeguards take over half an hour to evacuate a paddling pool. The world will never be the same again after it succumbs to… ABSOLUTE ZERO (dun dun dun!)

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Global warming means grad students can now spend a semester out in Antarctica.
• Even the president doesn’t have the authority to pull university students out of Antarctica.
• You can just book commercial flights to Antarctica these days.
• When light freezes, it’s time to get the winter jerseys out.
• Even with a doctorate degree in the field, it’s very easy to confuse archaeology for anthropology.
• Antarctica once held a small, but thriving, colony of ancient Egyptians.
• We can date 10 000-year-old cave paintings to the exact day they were drawn.
• Only in America can big corporations think that they can stop the weather from happening.
• The Earth’s axis of rotation has absolutely nothing to do with the seasons.
• There’s nothing quite as ineffective as an optional evacuation.
• Strip clubs provide excellent landmarks in times of crisis.
• Absolute zero is really dangerous, but people can still survive quite comfortably at -158 degrees Celsius.
• Always remember to keep your emergency power supply dangerously far away from the bunker that’ll save your life.

ABSOLUTE ZERO TRAILER

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Collision Earth

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Sci-Fi / Action
IMDB Rating: 3.4 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

So, it had been a while since I last watched a good, old-fashioned end of the world movie. Since I promised the people at Syfy that I’d watch one of their movies to thank them for the upcoming Aladdin and the Death Lamp and Pegasus VS Chimera (a Tweet to which I got no response 😦 ), I decided to take a shot on Collision Earth. The result? WOW! Just WOW! I love me some questionable science in a disaster movie, but this little baby took it to hitherto unknown levels. I will try my best to demonstrate the lunacy that was this movie throughout my review, but should you ever feel the need to watch the most horrifying attempts at astronomy in a movie at some point in the future, make sure you have a copy of this on stand by for when the moment takes you.

Not good! Not good!

The year is 2011 and mankind is about to take its first steps on the planet Mercury. Why Mercury of all planets remained a mystery to me since it’s not really anything other than a hot Moon, but I decided to run with it and see where the movie wanted to take me. Onboard the spaceship are three people: Veronica, a jack-of-all-space-trades and master of the universe, and two people who don’t matter cause they die relatively early on. These three will never have the honour of being the first humans on Mercury because, just as they arrive at the planet, the Sun sends out a giant solar flare that blasts the ship and the smallest planet in the solar system. This blast leaves the Asian contingent of the space mission dead and the ship in a bit of a bruised state, but that’s gonna be the least of their worries in a minute.

Tractor flipping of the gods!

You see, it wasn’t actually a solar flare. For a very brief second the Sun transformed from a normal star into a magnetar. The flare was actually a burst of magnetic radiation that not only knocked Mercury out of its orbit, but also magnetised the entire planet. Since Earth has a strong magnetic field, it begins to draw Mercury towards it, setting us up for a series of catastrophic and preposterous events. Now, to digress for a moment, I would like to address the moment when people realise that Mercury is on the move. Rogue astronomer James, upon noticing that Mercury isn’t where it was a few hours ago, shouts out “A planet doesn’t just move”.

We can confirm that we have some sciencey stuff going on here, sir.

Upon hearing this I actually paused the movie to fight with the TV. Why? Because planets do move, and they move in a number of different ways. They’re rotating on their own axes all the time. While they’re doing that they’re rotating around the sun. The gods were merciful by not placing us in a binary star system, because I don’t think I’d have the energy to school the movie on how that works as well. I never thought I’d live to see the day where I heard dialogue like that, but here we are. Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, as you can well imagine, the government is in no way capable of protecting us from Mercury’s collision, and it will fall to James to find a way to save us all. He will be aided by two college students with a pirate radio capable of sending messages to Mercury, an agoraphobic and socially awkward scientist side-kick, his wife, who is busy flying around Mercury, and a weaponised asteroid built for just such an occassion. Interspersed amongst all of these characters will be even more scientific fallacies, some jaw-dropping CG and some recycled footage from Ice Twisters. Enjoy!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Judging from the controls, flying a spaceship isn’t overly different to playing an Xbox.
• Spaceships are so fast they can outrun solar flares.
• Despite it being a complete vacuum, fires regularly occur in space.
• Only YOU can help save the Earth from a meteor collision.
• The sun is fully capable of changing the kind of star it is and then switching right back again.
• A car can protect you from a high-speed, interstellar meteor shower.
• Astronomers are utterly astonished when planets move in space.
• Astronauts are trained to sling shot space ships around magnetised planets, just in case the situation ever calls for it.
• Power surges make the same sound as old dial-up modems.
• Our solar system is just crammed to capacity with weaponised asteroids.
• They don’t teach you how to tie people up in astronomy school.
• No security convoy can match the strength of an Asian woman with a tyre iron.

Dracula 3000

Year of Release: 2004
Genre: Horror / Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 2 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Holy sweet mother of God my brain… I’m not much of a vampire fan, my preference has always been with zombies. None of this intelligence nonsense, just eat the damn human and be done with it. I’m sure I’m not the only one with this prejudice, which is why Dracula 3000 is actually quite heart warming: a vampire movie that was clearly made by a horde of mindless zombies. This isn’t so much a movie as it is 86 minutes worth of shots of a storage / boiler room with various morons running around in it. If they were going for a Jason X kind of vibe they missed the mark horribly. I honestly cannot think of a single person I would recommend this movie to. If you are unfortunate enough to come across it expose it to sunlight (or a blowtorch) and wait until it melts.

This man needs an intense moisturiser, stat!

In the year 2950 the spaceship Demeter was just cruising through the universe when it ran into a spot of bother. After picking up some cargo the ship’s crew all became mysteriously ill and the captain began to lose control of the ship as all the guidance systems began to fail and the engines failed to fire. I’m sure the captain’s wife had very similar complaints, but that’s a story for another day. When the ship’s emergency distress signals would no longer go out the Demeter became lost in space for the next 50 years. In the year 3000 Captain Abraham van Helsing and his ship, the Mother III, are also cruising through the universe and just happen to stumble upon the Demeter. Given the size of the universe the fact that you would stumble across anything at all is quite remarkable, but here we are.  Claiming salvage rights on the Demeter van Helsing and his crew board the stricken star liner to see what happened to it and just how much they can make off with.

Casper van Dien is tired of your shit!

Accompanying van Helsing is the most useless crew space ever has or ever will see. Aurora is the token blonde who’s an uncomfortable cross between radical feminist and sex kitten. Mina is the whiny female intern that tries to do stuff but can only accomplish things with the help of men. Our on board professor is a cripple who actually seems to know very little about anything other than whining and hiding under things. Then we have our two stock black characters: the pot head, 187, and the take-no-shit-and-kick-your-puny-white-ass Humvee. Points must be given for their collective intelligence: as soon as they discover the very first rotten corpse tied to a chair with a crucifix in its hand they have this sneaky suspicion that something may have gone wrong on the ship. Van Helsing’s the loose bolt in the fine machine that is the collective intelligence of the crew since he’s not going to let one little rotten corpse and rooms littered with crucifixes frighten him off from collecting a little scrap metal. He’s far too manly for that kind of thing.

Stabbed through the heart, and you’re to blame. You give love a bad name.

So what could have possibly happened to the Demeter? Well, you see, what happened goes a little something like this: while cruising through the galaxy the ship received a transmission from the planet Transylvania in the Carpathian star system. No I’m not making a joke, that’s really where they were. Since none of this set off any alarm bells the Demeter’s captain obviously wasn’t going to question why he was transporting over a dozen coffins through space towards Earth. Turns out that Transylvania is a vampire planet (gasp, shock, horror) and Count Orlock, the head vampire, wants to be taken to Earth for a little snack. Oh, if only now, 50 years later, there coincidentally happened to be the descendant of some of the best vampire hunters in history on board the Demeter! If such a hero were here then perhaps he could save the day and defeat the evil Count? Even if he had to do so while being surrounded by useless professors, whiny women and stereotyped black men. To be fair I didn’t see the ending coming. The flip side of that coin, however, is that the ending is awful and makes you want to throw a brick through the TV. You have all been warned.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Women dream of a life where they can work alongside sweaty men for no pay.
• Lacking a sustainable blood source, vampires transform into beach sand and hibernate.
• Vampires make whooshing noises whenever they move.
• Most intergalactic starships come equipped with a modest speed internet connection.
• Only white people suck other people’s blood.
• Women should be tied up and held captive whenever they offer advice that may save your life.

DRACULA 3000 TRAILER

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Humanity’s End

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Sci-Fi / Fantasy
IMDB Rating: 3.8 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

There are many ways for the world to end, as End of the World Month has testified to. I’m not the kind of person to be content with half measures so, since this is the final movie in this little experiment, I wanted to take it one step further than just having Earth annihilated. I want to see just how cheesy the demise of mankind can be if we were to take it interstellar and wipe ourselves out across the universe. The result? Humanity’s End, a horrible, cheesy and incredibly confusing tale of mankind’s final stand against a variety of alien species that, while apparently infinitely superior to us, look exactly like us. The scary thing is that this movie had a budget. Someone actually believed in this movie enough to throw money behind it. My sincerest condolences to that person.

I whip my hair back and forth.

The story of our ultimate demise begins with a short montage of babies followed by an overly Darth Vadered voice recounting the ages of man and finished off with an overly long credit sequence. The babies and credit sequence are unnecessary but the voice’s story sets the background for the movie. The voice isn’t the easiest thing to make out so you need to derive most of your information from the pictures you’re being shown. In essence mankind started out as inferior neanderthals but quickly moved up the ranks and overtook their masters. Over the ages we wanted to perfect ourselves and, to that end, engineered new species of ourselves and sent them out into the universe. These experiments resulted in, amongst others, the Konstrukts, a technologically advanced race, and the Nephilim, seemingly psychic beings with a Hitler complex.

Joan Rivers just took it one step too far.

In a typical example of humans not really thinking their ridiculous experiments through the Nephilim have now decided that we’re an unneeded and unnecessary waste of interstellar space. With the help of the Konstrukts they plan on wiping us out and taking over the universe. In the process they will absorb the DNA of any other species they come into contact with in order to further perfect their race. Before all that happens, though, they need to wipe out the humans’ home planets. Earth, at some point in the storyline, went from being a forgotten myth to being completely blown up and Mars is a radiated wasteland so we humans have moved a little further out with the help of little space tubes that move us hundreds of light years in a matter of minutes. The Nephilim mount their attack and wipe out all the human colonies across the universe through a combination of advanced tactical warfare, heavy-duty explosives and big ass robots with big fuck off guns.

The latest in interstellar alien torture fashion.

With the destruction of every human home world the final remnants of humanity are Derasi Vorde, an arrogant and exceedingly horny space captain, Contessa, a butch spaceship maintenance woman with a crush on Derasi, and Alicia, a young human breeding female saved from one of the colonies. They are joined by Sorgon 387, a clone of something or other, and Blue, the spaceship’s bolshy and aggressive AI. The Nephilim and Konstrukts know that this lot are out there and the only things standing between themselves and universal domination. Derasi knows he wants to get into Alicia’s pants and Contessa knows that she’s jealous. Sorgon knows something secret and Blue knows she likes to shout at people. Somehow this final outpost of humanity will have to take on the Nephilim Empire, destroy it and then attempt to bring humanity back from the brink of extinction.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Religion is just a way for aliens to keep us occupied while they go about conquering the universe.
• Humans created the atomic bomb in biblical times.
• Classy star ships have a leopard print interior.
• We all make mistakes and occasionally we blow up a planet.
• Star ship AI’s become jealous if they think there’s a more powerful AI out there.
• There is no greater betrayal than when a man erases his AI’s history.
• Computers need to feel special and loved by their owners.
• Women should perform in the bedroom in the same way they would during war.
• Teddy bears make excellent human sperm and egg carriers.

HUMANITY’S END TRAILER

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Aliens VS Avatars

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Sci-Fi / Horror
IMDB Rating: 1.7 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 1 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Just thinking about this movie again makes me giggle. It was either a very entertaining hour and a half or the worst thing I’ve ever seen, I can’t quite decide. The best way to imagine this movie, I feel, is that had it been made in the 1950s it would have probably been an incredible creature feature. That may be what gives it a little bit of its charm. It has absolutely everything you could want from a b-movie: Aliens with Predator-like cloaking abilities, reverse Avatars, special effects that are right up there with the likes of Birdemic and a very 80s Casio soundtrack. All these wonderful things, wrapped up in a cacoon of blue candyfloss. Definitely not for the inexperienced b-movie viewer, but I’d give it a recommend to the more seasoned amongst us; if nothing else it’s one hell of an experience. It’s also the only movie I’ve watched during End of the World Month to score anything on the Breast-O-Meter.

Finally, a spaceship that runs entirely on old Atari hardware.

Earth is under siege! Unbeknownst to all of us our forests are slowly being invaded by an alien race known as the Scythe (that’s Scythe with a hard ‘c’). Thankfully a strange race of pink-haired blue people are flying around the universe doing their utmost best to protect all the other little species out there. Earth falls within Ava’s sphere of protection, but unfortunately the robot she tried to send down that usually takes care of the hard ‘c’ed Scythe has malfunctioned. The lesson in all this? Never send a robot in to do a knock off James Cameron extraterrestrial’s job. The reason the robots are sent in is because they are designed to see through the Scythe’s cloaking abilities rather than Ava having to fumble around with her arms out in front of her. What ever will she do now?

Irrefutable proof that alien life is far from sexy.

We’ll get to that in a minute, because before the Earth can be invaded and we as the audience can take it all seriously there needs to be a group of people in danger that Ava has to save. Enter our team of stereotypes: Jock, Jock’s Friend with Benefits, Rebel Girl, Nerdy Virgin Guy, Nerdy Asian Girl and Slut. This lot’ve been friends since they were knee-high to a grasshopper and are heading out to a camping spot that they’ve been going to since high school. OK, nobody’s really friends with Slut, but Jock’s hoping that she can pop Nerdy Virgin Guy’s cherry. It’s understandable why nobody really likes her: while not only a bitch she is entirely impractical and thinks that wearing a pair of hooker heals is perfectly alright for taking a hike through the woods. With the Scythe nearby and looking for blood, of course, poor choice in footwear will soon be the least of the group’s problems.

You just know there’s a Power Ranger steering this thing.

So, with a malfunctioning robot and an alien on the loose, Ava must come down to Earth and save us all from the horror. Being an alien and unable to breathe in  Earth’s atmosphere Ava will actually stay in her ship and send down a human avatar imbued with her life force to do the job. When she meets up with the group of hikers they’re a little bit wary of the leather-clad female with Ke$ha-like autotune for a voice but after a little story and nearly killing one of them they’re all ready to jump on board and do their bit to save the world. They need to find where the Robotar’s (the robot that’s going to protect the world) pod landed so that they can go and fix it. Trust will become an issue since the Scythe can shape shift into anyone whose DNA it has come into contact with and there’s the small issue of humanity being a hopelessly technologically backwards species. Can the group come together to power up the machine and save the world or is Earth doomed to becoming a plastic alien’s new breeding ground?

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Giant explosions and fire balls in the sky are no cause for alarm.
• Women hike up to cabins just so they can complain that they want to go home.
• Some girls will sleep with a homeless guy just to make him feel better.
• Stilettos make less than desirable hiking boots.
• Sluts make superb bear hunters.
• Just because everyone else goes off to save someone doesn’t mean you can’t scarf down breakfast.
• Earthlings are highly insulted when they’re told that English is one of the simplest languages in the universe.
• It’s mankind’s fault that the Earth and the solar system only have one sun.

ALIENS VS AVATARS TRAILER