Raptor Ft. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2001
Genre: Horror / Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 2.6 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 2 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

There are few things in life that can guarantee as much fun as an early 2000s movie with cheap animatronic dinosaurs brought back to life by a mad scientist, Eric Roberts and all of his self-importance in the lead role, and a sex scene that we could have sworn was on a perpetual loop. I present to you, dear reader, Raptor, perhaps one of the most glorious achievements of b-cinema I’ve seen yet. I gathered my most of my elite team of movie watchers for this one: Tropical Mary, Stygian Mole, and our newest recruit, Plaas Meisie. There are no words to describe the sheer awesomeness and cheesiness of this movie, but if you’re a fan of b-horror you absolutely NEED to watch this as soon as is humanly possible.

Officer Mom Jeans and Black Cop consult on the case…

As is often the case in these movies, we’re thrown into the middle of some little town in the middle of absolutely nowhere where the most thrilling crime that probably takes place is a little old lady having her dentures stolen. Eric Roberts is the local sheriff, and this gives him the right to practically smear himself with smarmy and then roll around in a vat of self-produced and bottled egotism. Armed with two belts, a pair of mom jeans and a token black deputy, Eric’s ready to find out what happened to those poor drunken teenagers out the middle of the desert – because something ate them up good. Thinking that it was something reasonably standard, like a bear, a cougar or a shark, he’s joined on the investigation by Busty Blonde Animal Control Lady (hereafter referred to simply as ‘Busty’), but she’ll be damned if she knows what killed the kids. Maybe it has something to do with the recent spate of mass-chicken murders happening all along the county’s various highways?

This was just unholy and unnatural…

Over at the Eunice corporation (nominally a chicken manufacturing plant, whatever that may be, and which is still running blue-screen DOS computers by the looks of things), something’s more than a little amiss. There are far too many crazy scientists in would-be berets pushing far too many flashing buttons on control panels for this to be a simple chicken farm. Of course, for the omnivident viewer, we know that the trucks transporting enormous numbers of chickens is simply a cover up – that’s how Eunice Corp. is transporting all of its raptor and t-rex eggs between its different facilities after one of the raptors escaped into the desert. Being a team of maybe four people, however, means that the people at this particular facility aren’t doing a great job keeping track of their genetically re-created little monsters, and more and more are starting to wreak havoc on the little town.

Disco T-Rex is getting down tonight!

For Officer Mom Jeans the problem becomes personal after his sweet, innocent little girl is attacked by one of the raptors after getting it on with a man twice her age and squealing like a little pig while they did it on the back of his pickup truck. But how exactly does one small town sheriff take on a giant company like Eunice Corp.? Infiltration and a Busty sidekick – that’s how.  The two of them are determined to get to the bottom of what’s going on, but there’s a little more going on behind the scenes that they don’t know about. Apparently this whole dinosaur resurrection process originally began as a government military operation for fighting overseas, so they also want in on the action when they realise that their supposedly cancelled project is back online. Can Eric Roberts’ seemingly infinite supply of self-satisfaction conquer the might of an angry, resurrected mother T-Rex? Do silicone boobs move at all? Why are everyone’s intestines in this movie brown? Watch, dear reader, and have all of these questions answered.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• ‘Whatever happened, happened here’ is usually how most police investigations start.
• Deserts can be right quirky creatures sometimes.
• Character enhancement is best done with copious amounts of silicone.
• Surprised raptors shed their toenails like geckos shed their tails.
• If it’s not as intense as black ops, and at least 2 black guys are involved, it classes as dark ops.
• Most companies have emergency spaceship entrances installed in their elevators.
• Clones can be pulled out of thin air and given all the memories of the original person.

RAPTOR TRAILER

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Underground

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.8 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Movies like this are the reason you should always double-check IMDB. When I got my copy I checked IMDB and it had a rating somewhere in the vicinity of 7 so I got it thinking that I could watch it one night when I was in the mood for a real movie. About 15 minutes into it I started thinking to myself, “none of these characters are at all likeable”, and my b-movie senses started to tingle. I checked IMDB again and to my delight it now had a 3.9 rating. My guess is that the people involved in making it hopped on and gave it the original good rating. Shame on you! I’m no stranger to bad movies but it’s not nice to catch someone off guard; I didn’t at all have my game face on. So far as the movie’s concerned, should you find yourself about to watch it, imagine The Descent but with less likeable people and a few Nazis thrown in for good measure.

Aim it at the movie!

If we are to believe this movie then everyone in the world enjoys nothing more than getting bombed out of their skulls at a little rave. While this applies across the board the people who are most likely to enjoy a rave are soldiers returning from fighting the war in Iraq. At least this is true for Eric, Storm and Mira. Luckily this particular rave is being held at a mysteriously abandoned US military base so the three should feel a bit more at home and they’re accompanied by a few others whose names completely escape me. Names aren’t particularly important anyway; every character is just a distinctly overdone cliché. Eric’s the badass sergeant type who’ll never leave a man behind, Storm is Latino so he’s obviously a gangster and Mira is the tough girl who, despite all her bravado, needs a man to help her through everything she does.

A fair attempt at doing Mariah Carey's whistle register.

While everyone’s getting jiggy with it on the dance floor some guy gropes the arse of one of Storm’s friend’s girlfriend. The friend is obviously upset and gets into a little tiff with the man that’s twice his height but, since Storm is Latino and therefore obviously a gangster, it suddenly gets taken to a whole other level. I accidentally blinked at this point and when I opened my eyes again people were lying sprawled on the floor, knives were on people’s throats and guns were being fired at random. The guns must’ve been the final straw because the next thing you know Eric and Co. are running for their lives and taking shelter behind a rather heavy-duty door. The opposing Latino gangsters have the attention span of a fridge magnet so they quickly leave but Eric decides that they need to find another way out rather than facing what’s on the other side of the door. Poor guy, you’re in a horror movie! It’s what’s on your side of the door that you need to worry about.

Good upper body strength, but she needs to work on her core.

Before this point you know that there are bimbos in this group but now you learn that they’re the constantly whining variety, which becomes very irritating very quickly. Unfortunately for them (but luckily for us) there are some demented creatures running around in this mysteriously abandoned military base that might just do away with them soon. You see, back in the day when World War II was coming to an end, the Nazis had a doctor especially trained in horrifying genetic experiments. Not seeing why the fall of Nazi Germany should bring an end to his work the American government brought him over to see what he could cook up for them. By using a few kidnapped women, lots of piping, a gas mask and by combining the DNA of humans, a crocodile and a few other select beasties he managed to create a species of hominids that think like soldiers, have the teeth of crocodiles, are afraid of nothing, are amphibious and remarkably good climbers. Eric and Co. will have to fight their way through the dark labyrinth of the base if they ever want to see daylight again while fending off fear and monsters with a taste for flesh.

Since everyone in the movie is irritating as hell I was personally rooting for the monsters, but you can watch for yourself and decide who you want to win.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• At the slightest sign of any trouble the US military will just abandon its bases and leave all their weapons behind.
• Despite being 3 stories underground a military base can still have windows that let in plenty natural lighting.
• US military bases are relatively uniform and dead easy to escape from.
• Women think it’s a much better idea to run off alone into the darkness than stay in a group for protection.
• There’s a huge market for well-trained but unemployed mad scientists with a Nazi background.
• You can ram any amount of tubing into a pregnant woman’s belly without there ever being a risk to the baby.

UNDERGROUND TRAILER

Queen Cobra

Year of Release: 2007
Genre:  Horror
IMDB Rating: 2.2 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

OK horror fans, time to stand our ground and do the world a favour. If you own a DVD copy of Queen Cobra, burn it and cover the spot where it was burned with rock salt to prevent any of its evil spirits from re-entering our world. If you own a digital copy of the movie then delete it and do the same with your hard drive as I recommend people do with the DVD. We can’t be too careful. This particular little gem ranks right up there with the utter worst of the worst I have ever seen. Only the most seasoned of b-movie horror fans should attempt to watch this, and if possible I recommend doing it in a group setting. People don’t always come back from this sort of thing…

Sorry honey, there wasn't enough in the budget for me to take my top off.

It’s just another day on a non-existent college campus with its own resident mad scientist. The mad scientist in question is Dr Hall who is being funded by the government to do research on how to genetically mutate king cobras. These snakes are named sweetly after Homer and Marge Simpson and their parts are played by 4 different individuals: 2 real snakes that are quite clearly stock footage and 2 other snakes that are quite obviously made of plastic. Helping Dr Hall with the experiments are Courtney and Jeff, two of his postgrad students who are hopelessly in love with one another and who, despite having been involved in every step of the process, are completely unaware of what these snakes are actually being bred for. So far the doctor has managed to mutate them so that they can shoot (copious amounts) of acid at anyone who comes near them that completely melts the skin in a matter of seconds. No mad doctor, however, is ever content with simply having snakes that shoot acid and staying within the confines of his government contract so you know havoc and terror are about to rain down on this little campus.

Fierce honey, fierce!

This is where Rita comes in. Bless her, Rita’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer and she’s not doing very well in Dr Hall’s class so she needs to find some way of passing that doesn’t involve the use of a brain. As any girl would do in this situation does she dons her tiniest skirt and most low-cut top, goes to see Dr Hall and explains that she is willing to do simply anything to get a passing grade. Sadly for Rita what Dr Hall has in mind is slightly different to what she was implying and she lands up being stabbed to death with a tiny, tiny little knife and having her blood drawn for a DNA sample. This DNA is then given to the irradiated Marge the snake as part of the experiment. When Homer is killed by Dr Hall after he escapes Marge becomes very angry and escapes as well and, with the help of Rita’s DNA, transforms into a snake-woman hybrid, ready to take her revenge on everyone for the loss of her one true love.

When a neck massage becomes too intense...

Now the research facility where all of this is taking place really isn’t all that big. In fact all the makers of this movie seemed to be able to do was get hold of one room and free rein on a corridor and they were hellbent on making the most of the situation. Since the facility is so small the sounds of Marge mutating and then killing one of the security guards makes its way to Courtney and Jeff who then become the newest targets for the Queen Cobra. Floating around in all of this we are also given insight into Dr Hall’s marriage to his (much younger) wife and her TV repair man lover. None of this is at all important and in no way move the story along but simply provide one way for this movie to pad out its time a little more when people and creatures aren’t running up and down the corridor. While the Queen Cobra continues her attacks on anyone she comes into contact with Courtney and Jeff need to try and outsmart both the creature and Dr Hall who isn’t prepared to go down without a fight and is intent on training the Queen Cobra to obey his commands.

Apart from the obvious overuse of the corridor and the fact that, at most points, the plotline is holding on by the skin of its teeth the most fun part of this movie is watching the Queen Cobra herself. Obviously the budget didn’t allow for many touch ups of the body makeup and, as the movie progresses, more and more of it begins to peel off. It’s a horrible movie, but I would recommend it if for no other reason than to say you watched it and survived the experience 🙂

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Any man who creates a snake woman suddenly thinks he’s God.
• Scientists are not at all perturbed by melting corpses lying around on the floor.
• Irrespective of whether or not actual experiments are taking place something in a lab is always making a bubbling sound.
• The use of grad students extends to making them help you with horrific DNA experiments.
• Some people are very concerned about the rights of king cobras.
• Secret agents should, at all times, walk around like a mentally challenged robot.
• Security guard stations often have only red lighting and porno music playing in the background.
• Snake women don’t hunt, they prance about.
• A snake woman’s skin has evolved a natural thong.
• Human heads being torn off a body sound a lot like fabric ripping.
• Snake women have natural lesbian instincts.
• 2 night guards constitutes an entire security force.
• Secret agents are always one scene behind the monster.
• It takes a person a few seconds before they realised they’ve been shot in the head and are now dead.

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Monsturd

Year of Release: 2003
Genre: Horror / Comedy
IMDB Rating: 4.1 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Let’s start this review off on a good note, shall we? As years of experience have taught me, some of the most effective horror movies ever made have been brilliant not because they contained buckets of blood, ridiculously involved plots or were produced on a budget of millions of dollars – they were brilliant because the premise was simple. Monsturd fulfills all of the above criteria: the ‘gore’ is a distinct shade of brown but doesn’t happen very often,  the plot is confused rather than involved, it certainly wasn’t made on a very large budget and the premise is so simple it was scraped off the bottom of a very deep barrel. I know it wasn’t meant to be serious and I am aware that there are people out there that enjoyed it but for me, personally, when the toilet humour actually involves being sucked down into a toilet it all gets a little bit too much. As a precaution to those that may watch this movie it makes ridiculous use of short and stubby scenes, so be prepared to be thrown backwards and forwards from one area to another.

With master craftsmanship like this, it's no wonder prisoners are escaping all the time...

Monsturd is framed as a scary story told by a little girl to her father on a night of an intense red lightning storm. The evil scientists over at Dutech are hatching an evil scheme: to genetically mutate human faeces (or the bacteria in it, I’m not sure) so that it kills people. They will then sell these mutant strains to the government to be used as biological weapons. Meanwhile, over at the local prison, Jack Schmidt, the county’s most notorious serial killer, has managed to escape from prison and is on the run. His reputation as a killer is so great that the FBI has dispatched agent Hannigan, the woman responsible for bringing him to justice in the first place, to investigate. While Schmidt is on the run, we cut back a few times to Dutech where one of the experiments has gone wrong and a scientist has been killed by the bacteria. Not wanting to have his work exposed the head mad scientist, Dr Stern, melts the body in some form of toxic waste that contains the bacteria and dumps the mixture in the sewer system. Sadly for Schmidt, who has been running through the sewers in an attempt to evaid capture, the mixture acts rather like an acid and, when he lands up in a tank of sewer water which has been contaminated by the toxic waste, he melts (or, at least, his skin melts. The skeleton remains completely intact).

This is how Shakespeare first got all of his skulls too...

Of course, melting our criminal in the first 5 minutes and not doing something with it would make for a rather boring and short movie. Intent on finding out what’s in the sewer system Hannigan orders that tests be run on the water to see if there’s anything unusual in it. The team of scientists discover that in the petri dish brown stock footage of cell replication is being played. From this they deduce that the bacteria dumped into the sewer by Dr Stern has somehow managed to bond with Schmidt’s DNA, thus allowing the fast replicating pile of crap to take on Schmidt’s personality and desire to kill people who dare sit down on a toilet. This desire is soon acted on in an entirely different scene where a rather angry lady (either a wife or a landlady) holding a big knife tells her husband / tenant to go downstairs and clean the toilet. In this movie it would appear that men neither know how to use a toilet or how to clean it: it was a royal mess when he started cleaning and, half-way through the cleaning process, it was all over the walls. Thankfully the monsturd crawled out of the toilet at this point to kill the man and put him out of his ineptitude. And thus begins the reign of terror brought on by the shit man (the movie’s name for him, not mine).

Quite literally, a giant pile of shit.

While the shit man stalks the toilets and sewers in pursuit of fresh prey, the local sheriff and Hannigan realise that there’s big trouble in store for the town. For some unexplainable reason the town council doesn’t believe them when they are informed that a homicidal turd has made the sewers its lair and are unwilling to cancel the upcoming chilli fair as it provides the town with about a quarter of its annual income (from this I deduce that either the chilli is REALLY good or the town is REALLY poor). With no support from the upper echelons of local government it falls to Hannigan, some random guy in a truck and some local policemen to do battle against the monster before the townsfolk begin to feel the effects of the chilli contest. But how exactly does one do battle with a giant pile of shit that has decided it wants to capture and eat you? Simple. You gather as much anti-dierrhea medication as you can find, load it into water pistols and let the beast have it! As a finishing touch you also let a million (no more, no less) plastic, snickering flies loose to eat whatever’s left behind. That’s how a true hero defends their town against an angry, murderous pile of shit!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Children, from an early age, have a natural knowledge of the government’s use of bio-weapons.
• Somewhere in the world there are scientists dedicated to mutating shit.
• If you don’t want anyone to know you’re talking about sex, use doughnut code.
• Arguments with a ventriloquist dummy can become very violent, very quickly.
• Drunks are easily lured with a beer can on a rope.
• People aren’t really surprised when a half-rotten corpse suddenly comes to life and starts screaming.
• Flies are a shit man’s natural enemy.
• A million flies can be easily stored in a cat box.

MONSTURD TRAILER

Mutants

Year of Release: 2008
Genre: Horror / Action
IMDB Rating: 2.5 / 10
Level of Awful: High

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

In my humble opinion I think there’s something terribly tragic about a movie when a director gets so caught up in the filming and the actors that he forgets to have things happen. In fact so very little happens in this movie that if you watched the last 25 minutes of it you’d catch the entire story of the movie. It’s meant to be a zombie movie of sorts, but to describe the creatures in Mutants as zombies would be stretching the meaning of the term to its very limits. As a matter of fact to call them ‘mutants’ at all is a bit of a stretch. Taking a shot in the dark I’m gonna say that it’s probably meant to be a message about the poor eating habits of America and any other country where a McDonald’s can be found on every street corner, but it falls more than a little flat in the general mess that this movie is. I wouldn’t even give it half a brain for effort in zombie madness – it’s just a long, drawn out, boring mess. And for that reason it has earned its place here – after all, there couldn’t be a B-Horror Blog without pieces of cheese to review!

"Add 18 cups of genetically altered mutant sugar? Doesn't sound right..."

As many of us have suspected over the years, sugar truly is addictive, but the Just Rite Sugar Company wants to take the deliciousness and necessity of sugar to a completely different level – they’re genetically modifying it so that it becomes as addictive as heroine and crack. As is the case when you’re trying to rule the world in such an obscure way getting the formula for the crack sugar has taken some time to get right and sometimes you have to get things wrong before you land up getting them right. A number of problems have arisen during the testing stages of this new brand of must-have sugar: the test subjects have had this irritating tendency to develop warts and boils and then either descend into madness or begin to melt. To avoid raising any questions resulting from mass disappearances Just Rite Sugar has a dedicated team of vagrant catchers, the thinking being that if they only abduct homeless people and runaways then no one will miss them (this point is drilled into your head at the beginning – I think it’s a social commentary, but again this was definitely not the best vehicle for it).

When zombies go on a sugar binge...

From here on out it all starts to get a little murky and unnecessarily drawn-out. During one of the most recent raids the wrong people were abducted, proving that even trained vagrant catchers get it wrong sometimes. The team accidentally abducted Ryan and Hannah, two people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ryan’s abduction complicates Just Rite Sugar’s plans because he is the brother of their head secretary Erin and she is on a mission to find out what happened to him. Thrown into the mixture is their alcoholic and depressed father (who doesn’t look any older than Erin does). At work Erin begins to receive cryptic self-deleting e-mails (from someone who has taken the codename Cinderella) that give her clues about the more morally questionable actions of her company. With dad in tow the two manage to make their way to the abandoned sugar mill where the test subjects are being held.

"Now ma'am, I promise that if you don't develop diabetes within 13 seconds I will personally ship another crate of our sugar directly to you!"

Thinking that they’ve finally perfected the formula for their crack sugar Just Rite Sugar has begun shipping the product to various outlets across the country. Unfortunately their head (and only) scientist Sergei (who has the worst fake Russian accent I have ever heard) discovers that the test subjects they thought were infection-free had, in fact, developed a new strain of the same virus that had simply been lying dormant for 3 months. This news couldn’t come at a more inconvenient time since Just Rite’s other managers are touring the facilities and admiring the general misery that the company’s managed to inflict on its test subjects. While checking in on one of the subjects that was thought to be clean they are attacked and the mutants stage a break out. They’re not really a major threat since, although violent, they aren’t interested in eating brains like other zombies: all these guys want is a sugar fix. Also, they don’t need to be shot in the head to bring them down, so they’re easy targets. With Erin & Co. running around the complex breaking Ryan out, various security guards (which are fighting in factions) trying to kill one another and the mutants and Just Rite CEOs trying to escape the scene is set for an incredibly unremarkable zombie showdown.

All in all this movie is more painful than the comedown from a sugar high or a caffeine withdrawal headache. 50-odd minutes of it is told in flashbacks (often with a flashback within a flashback), the mutants only come in after about an hour and only one person is actually bitten by any of the creatures. Zombie movie? Social commentary? Fails on both counts. Hot zombie mess? Perfect 🙂

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Cocaine + caffeine = the ultimate addiction.
• Druggies, bums, illegals, ex-cons and the like are ideal mutant sugar test subjects.
• There’s nothing like being held captive by a sugar company to help form a budding romance.
• Companies see no need to cover their paper trail when converting abandoned sugar mills into labs for genetic experimentation.
• There’s nowhere you can’t get into with a hairpin.
• An over-sized pizza oven works just as well as an incinerator.
• An over-sized outhouse is just as effective as any hi-tech science laboratory.

MUTANTS TRAILER