Super Cyclone

Year of Release: 2012
Genre: Action / Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 1.6 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

When I’m alone and life is making me lonely I know I can always go – to the DVD cupboard and rake through it long enough until I find a movie by The Asylum. I’d had a rough day and I knew that only a movie with implausible disasters and highly questionable science would do the trick, and so far as those two things go Super Cyclone is a major winner. It’s so implausible and questionable, in fact, that I didn’t even believe the opening credits. Plus it has Dylan Vox in it, and wherever that man goes absolute cheese is sure to follow. I’m going to try and explain this bizarre series of events to you, but I recommend getting yourselves a copy and watching it yourselves – this one’s good for a few dozen laughs.

We appear to have sprung a hell-fire leak, captain.

OK, so, the movie goes a little something like this. We start off on an oil rig where the men are out going about their day as usual. They’re about to tap into a rather large oil deposit which, given the current economic climate, is going to mean good business all round. During the survey of the area, however, nobody seemed to notice the GIANT magma pocket located just next to the oil, and the rig drills into it. This sudden release of pressure creates a super volcano that begins to erupt under the ocean, as well as taking out a series of small islands. Despite the fact that the rig is clearly floating, it also starts to leak into the structure but without causing any serious damage or threat to the people on board.

Dylan Vox is The Rig Captain.

This erupting super volcano begins to cause a number of problems. First of all, it starts to make the ocean boil. No really – the ocean is bubbling like a kettle. This, in turn, creates a massive cyclone above the rig that’s roughly the size of the entire continent of North America, and it’s (very) gradually making its way towards land. Now this cyclone is particularly dangerous because it’s also creating freak lightning storms, tornadoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. The other problem comes in with the oil reserve – the oil begins to mix with the lava, gets sucked up into the cyclone and suddenly the whole storm (and subsequently the sky) are on fire.

I have a sneaky suspicion that Adele’s behind this…

Thankfully Dr Jenna Sparks is on the case. She’s Asian and uses phrases like “We may be able to use my nanotechnology research to stop the storm!”, so you know she’s gonna be able to save us all. Of course, before she can save us all she has to get herself to a safe location, which is tricky in amongst the general looting, angry black hillbillies with guns, and minor catastrophic flooding. Her first plan to save mankind involves taking one tiny plane with a suicidal pilot, flying it into the eye of the cyclone and seeding it. This will stop the storm and, through some mysteries of science, also plug the volcano. When that fails she’ll have to resort to a more daring plan of that involves a navy destroyer, some good sailing, and a tanker of liquid nitrogen. Then, and only then, will she be able to call herself Earth’s saviour and begin dating one of the daring young men that assisted her in this endeavour.

Note to self: when you win the lottery, donate an actual helicopter to The Asylum so they don’t need to keep CGing them in. It just looks silly when people are meant to look like they’re being blown by the wind from the propellers and the helicopter hasn’t been edited in anywhere near them.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation cures people with serious burn wounds.
• ‘Hold it together’ literally means grabbing onto a plank of wood and trying to stop an oil rig from falling apart.
• Warm water and moist air are the real Devil’s playground.
• Every movie needs a crew member to act as the designated hay thrower.
• Performing minor surgery in a ship’s kitchen in no way compromises minimum hygiene standards.
• Clean shirts are the signature look of a man with a college education.
• The oceans in the tropics are known to boil from time to time.
• Modern ships and cars are designed to withstand being picked up and dropped by enormous tornadoes.
• After being adrift in near-boiling water for 5 hours what you really want is to be covered with a blanket.

SUPER CYCLONE TRAILER

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Sinbad and the Minotaur Ft. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Adventure / Fantasy
IMDB Rating: 3.5 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0/5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

The time has come for another episode of Historically Inaccurate Movie Night with Tropical Mary. We’ve done quite a few of them already, but we always had a special love for Cyclops, the movie that started this particular little adventure of ours. Nothing’s beaten Cyclops yet in terms of sheer laughs and total disregard for any semblance of historical truth, but this came pretty close! I don’t know much about Sinbad, but if we were to take the accuracy of the Minotaur’s portrayal as a guide, I’m gonna guess that they got his character completely wrong as well.

In a very loose sense Sinbad and the Minotaur follows Sinbad as he tries to locate the lost treasures of King Minos. There’s a minotaur, a sorcerer, a cannibal and various horned zombies thrown in to pad out the action, but not in any serious way that’s gonna make truck loads of sense. When all is said and done, though, it’s a barrel full of laughs if you’re in the mood for some mindless entertainment. As I did with The ImmortalsI present to you the polluted stream of consciousness that flowed during the course of this movie, followed by a fun little exercise Tropical Mary and I did in transliterating the Greek text in the movie 🙂

Kiss me, kiss me hard!

• America World Pictures and the Brothers Bradley present… Manu Bennett.
• This female is skilled in the deceptive art of stripper belly dancing.
• The Seven Wonders of the World before there were Seven Wonders of the World…
• And he’ll beat the crap out of you with the pepper grinder of doom!
• Make way for Emperor Trenchcoat Terry!
• Use the magic mist to escape!
• I have no idea what’s going on, but apparently it has something to do with a coke whore called Germaine.
• Now they have to go to the gates of the rash. Things are about to get nasty.
• Ancient Greek spoken by the whole Tourette’s of the world.
• Does anyone in this movie speak English?
• Quickly! Don the see-through harem pants of escaping!
• Everyone’s been at sea and now they’re bitter and blue-balled.
• Quickly men! Gather your ancient sporks and do battle with the enemy!
• This whole forest is made out of plastic.
• I totally promise this is a real cave. It looks like plastic bags held together by used chewing gum, but it really isn’t.
• I wonder if Harry Potter’s dad inherited his invisibility cloak from Sinbad?
• Reptilian Minotaur! I command thee to stand sloppy or get loosen!
• Something about Cinnabon’s adventures on the Seven Seas.
• The Dannii Minogue / Natalie Imbruglia look-alike is either plotting something spectacular, or her next album.
• By the blood of Pythagoras, if anyone here owns a MILF, kill them!
• What draconian laws these people have.
• Wait, if only the MILF owners are being killed, what happens to the MILFs?
• Welcome to a very special episode of Law and Order: Ancient Edition.
• How did Helios, the sun god, father a giant scaly minotaur?
• Hang on, how is this minotaur any different to a regular old bull?
• Helios the All Father? Got some Scandinavian leakage going on here…
• This girl’s really clever – she’s actually a raptor.
• He is the Lord of the Dance said he and he’ll lead you all wherever you may be.
• So the Minotaur is the god of the mountain named Monkey?
• You’d think the Colossus of Rhodes would be… more colossal.
• The High Priestess of the Minotaur is super high.
• A prophylactic like that must be worth something.

A big part of the movie’s plot revolved around Sinbad’s discovery of an ancient text written by King Minos. For such an ancient text it’s been typed out in beautiful Arial Greek font. Now, Tropical Mary’s Ancient Greek is far superior to my own, but I can read the alphabet, and we had a great time transliterating the text that popped up on-screen. To give you an idea of just how archaic the language is, the scroll reads:

espskssss kssiphgsb s hste oite uksooe ou zdksthtksieeph ksopsephbks chti thdrzd szdepsch.

Bet the guys behind the movie weren’t betting on people like us watching it 🙂 That’s Greek as spoken by a two-year old with a forked tongue.

The unholy offspring of a bull and a dung beetle’s night of drunken regret.

SINBAD AND THE MINOTAUR TRAILER

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2012: Ice Age

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Action / Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 2.3 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

At this stage in the game I’m well acquainted with movies made by The Asylum. Although they usually tend to throw out really z-grade versions of far superior movies this wasn’t a real mockbuster, although if I’d be lying if I said it was entirely original either. Instead I’ll go with ‘Inspired by events from The Day After Tomorrow‘. The poor acting and general sub par CGI aside the main issue I take with this movie is that the title is misleading. There isn’t an ice age! At best there’s a lot of implausible snow, but certainly no ice age. That said, if the movie was good and full of enjoyment it wouldn’t be here for End of the World Month 🙂

She overgathered her thought.

So the world’s end begins in Greenland where an enormous volcanic range is about to blow. Our entire base camp has been evacuated except for one fool who’s been left behind to relay information to his boss Bill. Bill is currently stuck in traffic dropping his daughter off at the airport so he’s in no immediate danger but Fool in Greenland has to make a very daring attempted escape for his life. Sadly his helicopter is blown out the sky by some flying ice / volcanic ash, but he managed to accomplish his goal of telling Bill that an entire ice shelf has detached from Greenland. Bill, being a family oriented man, ignores what he’s being told and tells Fool in Greenland that he’ll check the data when he gets back to the office in an hour. While he was occupied on the satellite phone his daughter, Julie, got tired of waiting and hopped out the car to catch her flight to New York.

Mr. Bill "I'll crash anything I drive" Hart.

Keeping his promise to check the data when he got back to the office, Bill realises that the world (i.e. America) is up to its knees in crap. The ice shelf / glacier / ice berg (no one can decide what it is) that blew off Greenland is hurtling itself towards the States at 200 mph and threatening the entire eastern coast. Bill decides to try and get his family, made up of his possibly ex-wife Teri and son Nelson, to safety. His son is one of those people who has an ‘I’m surprised / shocked / saddened’ acting range and we’re never quite sure how he’s feeling at any given time. Not to crush any dreams but Nick Afanasiev, who plays Nelson, really has no future in acting and I hope he realises that soon and pursues a more realistic career path. Teri and Nelson decide not to run for safety and instead opt to go with Bill to New York to save Julie and her hanger on Logan.

Disaster movies: 2, Lady Liberty: 0

This, of course, will not be a simple search and rescue mission. Apart from the main threat of the glacier / shelf / berg that’s hurtling towards Manhattan the ice also seems to have special powers over the world’s climate. These include: tornadoes, blizzards, hurricane-strength winds and the ability to completely block out the sun. Then there’s the human factor that needs to be taken into account, although there’s a relatively low-level of looting and general chaos in this movie. All that really happens is Bill’s held at gunpoint for his truck but it sinks into a frozen river 2 minutes later, so it really was all for the best in the end. Throughout their journey to New York friendships will be forged, family ties will be tested and complete strangers will be killed by giant chunks of flying ice. Truly, a testament to the power of the nuclear family.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Summit meetings are far more important than out running enormous glaciers.
• You know shit’s going down when no one at the White House answers their phone.
• Men are very turned on by the possibility of having sex on a dirty New York pavement.
• Back in the day science classes were there to teach you how to blow cars up.
• A good general defence policy includes nuking things now and dealing with the fallout later.
• It’s entirely possible to safely fly a light aircraft through a few tornadoes and a blizzard.
• Norway lies half way between Greenland and New Jersey.
• America, being infinitely awesome as it is, is fully entitled to declare war on a glacier if it feels like it.

2012: ICE AGE TRAILER

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