the sting.

Saw this Brian (Society, Bride of Re-Animator and The Dentist) Yuzna classic about 5 years ago and had totally forgotten about it till I came across it in the pound shop earlier today.

Never turning down a bargain (ask your mum) I excitedly paid my cash and hurried home.

Returning home I noticed that the original review had only been read by about 5 people so as a public service I decided to rewatch it and see if it had gotten any better.

And had it?

Go on.....guess.

Amphibious 3D (2010 or is it 2012?....from the look of the whole thing I'll go for 1978).
Dir: Brian Yuzna.
Cast: Michael Paré, Janna Fassaert, Francis ("You're not taking Claire, Liam!") Magee, Monica Sayangbati, Francis Bosco, Verdi Solaiman, Timo Ottevanger and Elke Salverda in an ill fitting bikini.

If indeed you are what you eat then this poor fucker must of gorged itself on clichés and cardboard.

 

  

The oddly shaped - and even odder named - marine biologist Skylar Shane (Fassaert, an unholy hybrid of Uma Thurman and Noomi Rapace in a candyfloss wig) after drunkenly filling in her grant application realizes that if she hasn't proven the existence of giant shite encrusted sea scorpions by the end of the summer holidays she'll be sacked by the university and have to go back to tossing burgers (and old men off for coppers) in McDonalds.

Probably.

I mean I really wasn't paying too much attention as I was still recovering from the sight of Elke (part-time actress cum traveler cum freelance writer and owner of Wander-Lust.nl and Green Up Your Life Events) Salverda and her comedy breasts being spiked by a computer generated winged dog turd in the opening scenes.

"Put it in me!"

Anyway, Skylar decides to hire salty sea man "handsome" Jack Bowman (an upsettingly bloated Paré, channeling Han Solo via a Fulham taxi cab driver) to aid her quest to find fossil samples and the like in the depths of the north Sumatran Sea.

Or the local public baths as we like to call it.

Bowman isn't all that he seems tho' and during the trip has to go visit a group of his fish smuggling, child kidnapping friends led by ex-Eastenders badboy Magee to whom he owes money.

Operating from a ramshackle wooden  platform in the middle of the sea, Magee and co. spend their days drinking, smoking, beating children and disguising fish as tourists in order to get them past Indonesia's notoriously strict passport control.

I.E. They are very bad men.

On arrival at the fishing platform, Skylar is approach by a pretty lipped young orphan named Tamal (Scrabble scoring Sayangbati from Ghost Island, Obama anak menteng and the fantastic The Beetle Soldiers), who was sold to the smugglers by a mad uncle cum wizard.

Don't you just hate it when that happens?

"Laugh now!"

It appears that due to a lack of facial hair, aforementioned kissy lips and obvious child bearing hips, Tamal is constantly picked on by the other crew members for being a bit gay, and upon meeting our heroine, begs Skylar to take him away.

Being an empathic kinda woman and still suffering nightmares due to the death of her daughter (I forgot to mention it earlier, sorry), Skylar is determined to help Tamal with or without Bowman's help.

Just not right now obviously as there's a gunfight and a bit of will they/wont they? romance to deal with first.

"Shite in mah mooth!"

Leaving the platform in a hail of gunfire, Bowman and Skylar head towards the local tourist island in order to experience the local sea scorpion festival and in Skylar's case to also have a few incense induced child death flashbacks before booking into a hotel for the night.

Padding anyone?

Maybe, but it does give us time to return to the smuggler's den where Magee has drunkenly beaten Tamal's pal to death causing our tiny chum to mutter curses whilst holding a special scorpion shaped pendant donated by that mad uncle I mentioned earlier.

Could this be related to the inky black blob spotted jerkily moving under the water earlier?

We soon find out as without warning (well except for the ominous soundtrack and change in picture quality) a giant plasticine poo with legs emerges from the water to snatch one of the pirates from his perch and into a watery grave as Tamal watches silently from behind the chemical toilet.

David Yip, up the casino, Margate, 1981...YESCH!

It's the next day and our heroes are out searching for stuff when they come across the putrefying corpse (or a passable facsimile of) Magee's henchman bobbing alongside the boat like so much discarded (Natalie) Wood.

Bringing it aboard for Skylar to have a fiddle with (well it's either this or Bowman's salty man tits...which would you choose?) she soon deduces that his body is full of a nasty venom that turns human flesh into latex.

Sorry, I mean into mush.

Worried for Tamal's life (or fancying a bit of rough, you decide) Skylar persuades Bowman to head over to the platform to check everything is OK and excited at the thought of some exotic foreign arse (or at the very least a wee boy's embrace), he agrees to her request. 

On arrival Skylar sneaks aboard the platform whilst Bowman drags that dead blokes body around whilst shouting "I never done it! T'was a big boy what done it and ran away!"

Unfortunately no-one gives a fuck, so it's not long before the shooting contest starts up again giving the heroic Bowman no other choice than to leg it back to his boat and sail away.

Leaving poor Skylar at the mercy of a cut-throat band of horny smugglers and, most disturbingly in a scene that would probably give Kenneth Clarke nightmares, a filthy twelve year old Indonesian boy who keeps rubbing his crotch and winking.

Janna Fassaert: Dirtier than your mum.

With Magee drunkenly preparing to kiss Skylar on the lips against her will his fat pal Bruno attempts to pull Tamal from the relative safety of the mumsy marine biologists arms but only manages to tear Tamal's shirt revealing that him is really a her.

No way.

And that's not all.

It seems that the creepy scorpion pendant given to her by the mad wizard bloke seems to control the mysterious creature, killing anyone who even thinks about harming Tamal.

Oh and that unrelated couple from the start obviously.

I wouldn't want one of them swimming up my arse.

And when the beast finally makes an appearance it's heralds an even stranger connection between itself and Tamal.

Alongside a sense of crushing disappointment obviously.

Will our erstwhile heroine and pudgy hero be able to unravel the mystery and kill the best?

Or will everything ended with a ludicrously illogical ending with no other reason than to set up a sequel?

 

Fucking hell Brian that was rough.

Not content with giving us a plot so rehashed and recycled that it could barely stand unaided, the once cult favourite heartlessly throws in the largest group of wooden actors this side of builders yard stranding them on a flimsy water-based shed and leaving them to the mercy of criminally cack handed editing and a CGI beast that appears to be rendered in shite.

Apart from that tho' it's not too bad.

By that I mean it's a damn sight better than his previous two efforts; the Paul Naschy starrer Rottweiler back in 2004 and the waterlogged - in more ways than one - Beneath Still Waters in 2005.

Inside Jimmy Savile's mind.

And when the only good thing you can say about a movie is that it stars the fish-lipped star of Dagon, the charisma free yet smooth of thighed Raquel Meroño  then you know you're onto plumbs.

But as much as I'd like to see every copy of this abomination burned every time I go to slag it off I just see poor Brian's face pleading to me.

A conscience can be a bad thing in this line of work.