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Reviews
The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell (2006)
Best chainsaw starting scene ever
This movie is a particular type of "theater of the absurd". Think of something like "The Bed Sitting Room" post-apocalyptic, surreal movie starring Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. Of course, it's more gore-bent. However, it's the kind of violence where you can see spurting blood but never have to look directly at the source.
The improbable storyline makes just as much sense as a nuclear holocaust. Leo Coco is a study in psychosis. The budget is so low that they couldn't afford to "break-in" the costumes. The clothing is tattered and holed, but spotlessly clean, even with all that blood.
The only scene that looked improvised was the chainsaw-starting scene. It looked cinema verite to me and even funnier in that context.
I was pleasantly surprised that "gamma radio" could be picked up on a 1940s AM radio with a wooden cabinet. There are little touches throughout the movie, such as oddly pronounced words "eating human flash" vice "flesh" and "eviskerated" for "eviscerated".
In short: broad, bold and ultimately funny enough to sit through once.
Primeval (2007)
Writing is "Primeval"
The two male leads are so gorgeous that they made my heart (a confirmed hetero heart) go pity-pat and the senior male lead has a Scots accent that is captivating.
Apparently, some future fiend periodically opens a sparkly, rotate-y, gleam-y time gate into the past to wreak havoc on the present with prehistoric monsters. This means the fiend is the dimmest villain in the history of time travel. Want to wreak havoc? Open a gate to a volcano.
All the actors are very earnest but the CGI is just "off" enough that nobody appears to be in any real danger. I think introducing a small, cute, flying lizard (he becomes some kind of mascot) "took the edge off" the whole monster threat because it was much less realistic-looking than the other creatures and he's cuter than R2D2 "on ice".
Their "lizard expert" is a zoo keeper who is a fabulously pretty woman in a platinum blond, Cameron Diaz way. The comic relief is a student who "never met a conspiracy theory he didn't like". His purpose is to run behind our heroes. His backpack holds a laptop which just happens to have pictures and "bio" info on every dinosaur species that ever lived (how nice of those millions of species to pose and be interviewed). The "designated bureaucrat" role is filled by a woman who goes from asking questions in a pub to ordering in the troops in less than an hour.
Our Scot hero is allowed to go into the gate to look for his long-lost wife with no more government balking than a requirement that he sign a waiver. On the other side of the gate is a bunch of triceratops "jousting" playfully on a barren volcanic debris field, instead of hanging out in the nice forest in the background. Within minutes he finds remains of a campsite, human remains (not his wife) and her camera which later produces "holiday snaps" of the wife. The Scot and his military escort have a half-hearted fight of the "I'm-staying-to-look-for-my-wife" vs. "my-orders-are-you're-coming-back-with-me" variety and exchange a few punches before diving through the closing gate in the nick of time, so to speak. (I'm not sure "The Sarah Jane Chronicles" kid show could get away with this stuff).
It also employed one of the hoariest of the sci-fi movie traditions. After the trained soldiers run fleeing from the monster (their weapons apparently ineffective), one hero throws the other a machine gun (inexplicably handy, incredibly still loaded), which quickly brings down the dino.
In conclusion, the writing was "Primeval".
The Andromeda Strain (2008)
I want my 3 hours back
I would give this 2 points because I would pay to watch Christa Miller read aloud (which she seems to be doing in parts of this movie). I can only imagine people who rated it higher have a) only seen 2 movies or b) are associated in some way with the production company or A&E and were appalled by the nearly uniform negative reaction of the earliest posts.
All of its faults could have been forgiven had if been titled "Mutant Killer Virus Conspiracy Attack" rather than "The Andromeda Strain". It would be like ordering butter-flavored popcorn and getting yellow Styrofoam packing bits - all very good for padding but NOT palatable.
Michael Crichton is probably appalled. His "brand" is meticulous attention to scientific detail and extrapolation of fact to produce dramatic results. In this case "adapted from a book by Michael Crichton" means the word "Andromeda" is used frequently in the same manner than wormhole-quantum-encrypted-etc. are tossed around in SciFi Channel movies-of-the-week.
A criminal waste of time, technology and talent. See it with someone you want to annoy.