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

BUY ABSOLUTE ZERO AT AMAZON.COM

Seeds of Destruction

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Sci-Fi / Action
IMDB Rating: 4.4 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

I do love an accidental find. Sitting at home, having done all the exciting things for the day (like washing dishes and cleaning out cat litter trays), I was channel surfing when I landed on the Universal Channel and saw that the movie coming on in 5 minutes was Seeds of Destruction. An awesome title, and when I saw that it starred Stefanie von Pfetten (of Odysseus and the Isle of Mists fame) I knew that I had found the perfect way to kill an hour and a half. From the ludicrous plotline to the horrible CGI and spending the whole movie’s duration trying to figure out how Ms von Pfetten’s surname is pronounced, Seeds of Destruction was a delightfully cheesy romp worthy of End of the World Month.

Oh dear God, more nature!

Let us all cast our minds back, dear reader, to a much simpler time at the dawn of creation. Adam and Eve are froliccing in their delightful Garden, God doesn’t have too many humans to manage and the air has never been so fresh (because, up until this point, it had never existed). It’s the plants that make the Garden of Eden so wonderful; they suck up any and all pollutants and leave Adam and Eve with the luxuriously clean air to which they’ve become accustomed. And then they screwed it up because someone just had to be tempted and eat the forbidden fruit. Now, what if Adam had had the foresight to steal some of the seeds from the Garden’s plants so that he could plant his own Eden 2.0 while in exile? What if some of those seeds were still lying around for us to find today? What if…

Virgins.

Well we can all stop with the ‘what if?’ questions because the movie is going to explain exactly what would happen in this kind of scenario. Jocelyn is a brilliant plant archaeologist who isn’t afraid to be blonde and biblical. She and her team were the people who discovered Adam’s urn containing the seeds and sent it back to her boss Frame to carefully open and inspect the seeds. Frame lied to Jocelyn and said the urn was empty when in fact he’s been experimenting on them ever since the discovery. Unfortunately Frame wasn’t very selective when it came to hiring his other staff and one of his lackies is now trying to sell one of the seeds on the black market. Environmentalist kids Joe and Kate are there when the whole deal goes down and, as often happens in these situations, mistakes are made, people are accidentally shot and seeds from the dawn of time are dropped on the ground and allowed to take root.

The dangers of improper garden maintenance.

Now, the world as we know it today is just slightly more polluted than when Adam and Eve were running around so the plant, doing what God made it to do, goes a little berserk in its growth. The bigger it is the better it is able to absorb all the pollutants in the atmosphere. While this is a very noble attempt on behalf of the plant some people aren’t so happy about the fact that it will have to bury most of the North American continent in order to do its job properly. Jocelyn, Agent Jack, Joe and Kate want to find a way to destroy the plant and stop its rapid-growth rampage across the country, but Frame has different ideas. He wants to study the plant and try and slow its growth, thinking that a modified version of the plant would be infinitely more useful to mankind. Either way someone’s gonna have to do something fast before it reaches the ocean and decides to go global and wreck everything. Only Stefanie von Pfetten can get us out of this mess of Biblical proportions!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Adam and Eve were the very first international seed thieves.
• Government agents can’t develop a battle plan based on the Bible.
• Blonde plant scientists, however, are more than willing to base their theories on the Bible.
• In moments of extreme disaster you should always go with the plan that has virtually no chance of success and the most horrifying consequences.
• The whole point of having a safe haven is to keep innocent people out of it.
• The Bible has a very draconian approach to pollution and global warming.
• Dead boyfriends are of absolutely no use to anyone.
• Running blindly into a situation is the best way to find out if it will help you or kill you.
• There is a debate as to whether or not giant plants ravaging the Earth are a part of God’s greater plan.

SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION TRAILER

BUY SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION AT AMAZON.COM

Heatstroke

Year of Release: 2008
Genre: Sci-Fi / Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.5 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Global warming: the great threat our generation faces. A number of possibilities have been given for what causes it: burning fossil fuels, deforestation, increased solar output, the list just goes on. The truth, however, lies in Heatstroke: aliens are the cause of global warming. This was a fantastic movie to watch; it goes back to the good old days of Syfy original movies where the special effects are so awful that they give you a great belly laugh while the endings aren’t anti climatic, a problem faced by so many recent Syfy movies. If you’re in the mood for a good laugh, some cheesy sci-fi goodness and indulging in an alien conspiracy theory then this is the movie for you!

Well well well, look what the tide washed in.

It’s a beautiful day for the world to end in Hawaii. The sky is blue, the oceans are crystal clear and bikini models are frolicking gayly on the beaches during a photo shoot. Captain Steve O’Bannon is busy flying his ultralight around one of the islands, taking a relaxing afternoon to monitor any usual radiation levels that may exist in these here parts. Given that this is such a relaxing pursuit and the weather is absolutely gorgeous he doses off behind the wheel of his 1 man aircraft and begins a rapid decent towards a tree. Thankfully there’s something very similar to a velociraptor living in the tree and it leaps up to try and guide the aircraft away but, unfortunately, takes a giant bite out of the ultralight’s engine. Captain Steve awakes with a start and is forced to make an emergency landing in the middle of the bikini models’ photo shoot, much to their dismay.

The script's first draft was a painful sight for all concerned.

Following Captain Steve’s emergency landing head bikini model Caroline comes over to read the man the riot act for interrupting this photo shoot of groundbreaking importance to mankind. When Captain Steve doesn’t seem very interested Caroline brings over her hired goons, who Captain Steve quickly dispenses with. He beats the crap out of them again later when he finds them at a bar, this time with the help of his team mates Jillian and Waters (first name unknown). Somehow between coming to the bar, having a boiling beer and beating the crap out of everyone the team (including final team-mate Romeo Romero) decides that there must be something on the island causing the strange radiation spikes and they’re determined to find out what it is.

He died a hero. 1000 alien virgins await him in heaven.

The cause of the radiation, of course, is an alien invasion. The aliens look like some reject bunch of dinosaurs and have come to earth to heat up our climate to make it a little more hospitable for themselves. I don’t know about you, but personally I find it a little rude when guests drop in on your planet unannounced and then spend the whole time complaining about how you’ve chosen to do the place up. Captain Steve wasn’t about to tolerate this lack of manners in the first place and he certainly isn’t about to tolerate these rather rude invaders when they start melting the faces off his crew and the hapless bikini models that inhabit the island. Unfortunately, since he isn’t a rogue scientist and is contracted by the US military to study these creatures, he’s going to have to play things by the book, at least until he can discover just how big their plans are and how quickly they plan on turning our little Blue Marble into an alien cafeteria. Thankfully he’s not alone in his mission to save the planet; he’ll be accompanied by a rag-tag group of old Hawaiian natives, military grunts and a bikini model with a flower in her hair. God speed to you all!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Models take great offence when people try to inspect their own crashed ultralights.
• The military isn’t ready to believe global warming is the result of aliens living on earth.
• Afghanistan is many things, but it’s certainly not a boring place to go on honeymoon.
• Models are intrigued by kung fu fighting special ops agents.
• Women are terrified when sounds come out of the woods.
• ‘Top Secret’ means giving broad enough hints that everyone figures out what you’re doing.
• Earth is a prime insect farming location for extraterrestrial life.
• Earth can go from temperate to Venus in less than 2 hours.

HEATSTROKE SAMPLE

Birdemic: Shock and Terror Feat. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 2 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Oh sweet mother of God what the fuck just happened? When Tropical Mary and I sat down to watch an awful movie (and we’ve seen a lot of shit together) we never would have thought that something like this could happen. This makes Syfy movies look like Oscar contenders. Bad CGI is one thing, but never in a million years did I think I’d see a movie that used clip art for the “monsters”. If nothing else Birdemic: Shock and Terror is an excellent argument for atheism: if there really was a God, He would never have allowed something like this to be made.

There really isn’t enough plot to do a proper review for this one, so instead I’m going to give a very brief rundown of what happened and then I have taken Tropical Mary’s live tweets from the movie and turned them into a helpful little walkthrough.

The movie centres around Rod, the most wooden and bland man you’ll ever meet. One day at a coffee shop he spies a woman named Nathalie who he was once in school with. After some brief stalking and one whole date the two fall madly in love with one another and plan on spending the rest of their bland, wooden lives together. That is until the clip art eagles attack (that’s another thing: the only birds in this movie are eagles, so it’s really more Eagledemic than Birdemic…). Rod and Nathalie will have to blandly fight their way through the eagles, saving and killing a few friends and children along the way.

That really is all there is to it, but the 90 minutes worth of movie really do feel like an eternity has passed by and a few limbs have been hacked off your body in the process. If you own this movie burn the disk it’s on and then anything that was used to play and watch it. Fire is the only way we can cleanse the earth of this foul menace.

BIRDEMIC WALKTHROUGH:

Credits at an incredibly steep angle. Filming and driving is dangerous.

Open movie with stop/start dialogue using Special Olympics cast members.

Rod and Nathalie have business cards. Now they’ve swapped cards.

And he’s driving, and he’s driving, and he’s driving, and he’s indicating, and he’s finally stopping.

Suddenly, fashion shoot of the Asian persuasion.

Rod: “I have rabies for you.” Nathalie: “Thank you for getting me the kid.”

Rod and friend get together for unneccessary hip thrusting.

Rod’s got a rose and Nathalie’s wearing nothing but a t-shirt.

Rod and Nathalie are a match made in duuuhhhhville. Commence smile-and-nod date.

Phrases like “dancing in the clubs” are being thrown around willy nilly.

Romantic walk with giant slow motion humming birds from Alice in Wonderland followed by dancing in a green screen club.

Meeting Nathalie’s ‘I forgot my lines’ mother.

She-male in orange bikini.

Clapping. Chair thrusting. More clapping.

Rod loves his plug-in, hybrid ‘stang.

Handkerchief dress and Asians imagining peace.

Art & pumpkin festival.

And they’re driving, and they’re driving and they’re fucking driving!

In the pub. initiate two-man party while doing the stupid robot. No extras for this scene.

Same room, different sex.

Suddenly, birds making fighter jet noises, coat-hangers as weapons and space invader formation birds.

Kill one bird with 5 bullets, twice!

During an avian onslaught it’s very important to take time for lunch with the family.

Driving again (to heroic music).

Bottomless ammo clips and birds with acidic shit.

The nuclear family goes a-looting.

Not enough rain in the water.

Asian she-male was imagining peace but was roused.

Kamikaze eagles.

World saved by whited doves without olive branches.

THE END

The most epic scene ever filmed.

BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR TRAILER

BUY BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR AT AMAZON.COM

Titanic II

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Action / Adventure
IMDB Rating: 1.9 / 10
Level of Awful: High

This is my first time doing a guest review 🙂 Head on over to Mr Movie Fiend to read my review of Titanic II.

TITANIC II TRAILER