drawn to life.

 RIP Renato Casaro.

 

standby for action!

Celebrating 60 years of Thunderbirds with 60 minutes of Spectrum Sounds and Terrahawk tunes in one mighty Mysteron mix.....

 

 

 

never forget.

 

keep on trekkin'

 

Celebrate Star Trek Day with a 60 minute trip across the final frontier of sound.

beaches.

OK this is the last one. I promise.


Sand Sharks (2011).
Dir: Mark Atkins
Cast: Corin Nemec, Gina Holden, Eric Scott Woods, Robert Pike Daniel, Vanessa Lee Evigan, Brooke Hogan and some sharks.

"That's gotta be bad for business!"

The beachside resort of Fiddler's Slit has never recovered from a spate of shark attacks two years previously, local businesses are shutting and money is scarce.


Enter (quite roughly, you know he'd like it) wheeling dealing party animal and son of the towns mayor, local wide boy Jimmy Green (Parker Lewis himself (again) Nemec) returning home with a scheme to breathe some life into the dying economy (and hopefully clear his debts with the mob along the way) by organising a huge Neil Gaiman themed (possibly) beach party entitled the Sandman Festival.

"And the winner of the Vic Morrow fancy dress competition is...."

What Jimmy doesn't realise is that his ex-squeeze and current Deputy Sheriff, the cutely button nosed Brenda (Greg's daughter Vanessa Lee) alongside her burly bro', Sheriff John Stone (Immortal Island's Captain Jack himself, Woods) are desperate to close the beaches after a number of dirt bikers have been found half eaten behind the bins.

Fearing further shark/bin attacks (and partly to show Jimmy who's boss) Brenda calls in the eminent shark scientist Dr. Sandy Powers (Brooke, daughter of Hulk Hogan giving a credible performance as a scientist) to check for tooth marks and stuff.

The most amazing discovery she makes tho' is that all these shark attacks happened out of the water.

Scary.

"Trust us...I is scientist!"

Meanwhile the bodies keep piling up.

Well, bits of them do.

Calling a town meeting for the understandably concerned residents (all six of them), Sheriff Stone is surprised when town drunk and token comedy Scotsman Angus (video game voice-over god Daniel) stumbles into the meeting and quotes Quint's shark scene from Jaws in it's entirety before adding, in a neat spin of his own, that they're dealing with prehistoric Sand Sharks that travel thru' sand as if it were water.

Yeah....right.

Fortunately Dr. Powers agrees with this theory and, seeing as she has terrific breasts (unlike Angus whose breasts have seen better days) the town offer to help in any way they can.

Meanwhile Jimmy attempts to set up some staging without anyone noticing.

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

With his events team sneakily brought onto the island with a rubber shark in tow with the hope of convincing everyone it's the one they're after and Dr. Sandy busy giving the Sheriff the (glass) eye, Jimmy only has to plug in his record player for the festival to begin.

Unfortunately it fuses the whole islands power, leaving his big bald electrician pal to repair everything, little knowing that his constant banging is attracting the real killer.

The sand shark is on the move.

"Hello French polishers? You may have just saved my life!"

Luckily Sand Sharks are allergic to electricity (and perspective by the look of things) and the poor bugger bursts into flames leaving a smouldering carcass and the beach free for partying.

Awesome as our American cousins say.

It's not over yet tho' for as the festival continues and literally dozens of college kids arrive to enjoy the festival, Sandy realizes that the shark they killed was just a baby and that somewhere beneath the sand hundreds of sharks are heading toward the beach attracted by the (good) vibrations emanating from the party.

Clooney and Diaz: the abattoir years.

Will homely Brenda, sexed up Sandy, Sheriff Stone and bad boy Jimmy be able to stop the sharks enjoying their sand based snacks?

Will Brenda and Jimmy get back together?

And what is the secret in Angus' shed?

A top fish doctor yesterday.

From the director of Snakes on A Train comes this wild yet scientifically accurate story of sharks gone schitzo, based I'm informed on a true story and featuring a fantastic cast headed up by the naturally talented Brooke Hogan here (I could have sworn she was a real scientist), breath-taking visual effects and even a sly dig at Roger Corman  – why this never got a cinema release is beyond me.

Actually I do know, it's because it's cheaper, nastier and shoddier than your mums underwear.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I mean it's not like director Atkins is taking it all that seriously (the above mentioned casting seems to prove this) and the whole movie seems to wear it's threadbare budget as a badge of pride which does make the whole thing very endearing, a wee bit like that huge-headed, pockmarked faced girl with the nice arse you used to get drunk at youth club cos she'd let you touch her bra.

Don't deny it, I saw you.

Plus Brooke Hogan seemed to enjoy it seeing as she went on to make 2 Headed Shark Attack alongside that other great thespian Carmen Electra and the lovely (she reads this blog) Corinne Nobili.

And it's always good to see the under-rated Corin Nemec battling against woeful CGI again after his roles in the stunning 2005 hit Raging Sharks and the truly terrifying Mosquito Man, and best of all in this movie he gets to sing at the sharks too.

Well?

What more do you want?

fish fang grrrrrrr!

Maybe give up on the whole shark thing now eh?


Dinoshark (2010).
Dir: Kevin O'Neill (not the one that drew Nemesis The Warlock).
Cast: Eric Balfour, Iva Hasperger (me too), Aarón Díaz, Dan Golden, Christina Nicole, Humberto Busto and Lord Roger of Corman.

"Welcome to the Endangered Species list, bastard!"

Our story begins off the coast of Alaska (or at the very least a lovely painting of it), where solo yachtsman Sevrin Seas (as himself) has managed to bump his boat into a particularly sharp bit of CGI iceberg.

Deciding to dive into the icy waters to check the hull for scratches it's not long before our salty pal is being stalked by something in the deep blue sea.

And no, it's not LL Cool J.

Suddenly and without warning (apart from a whooshing sound) poor Mr. Seas (and his handy GPS) is swallowed whole by what looks like a huge, grey computer generated turd with fins.

And  a bad case of all over genital warts.

"Shark in mah mooth!"

Meanwhile in Mexico (just across the street from where they shot Sharktopus) the horse-faced and bullet nippled everyman Trace McGraw (Balfour from 24 and the Texas Chainsaw remake) having recently returned home from sailor school, has decided to put his training to work by running a tourist cruise throughout the holiday season in a kinda Carry on Cruising way.

Sun, sand, sexy senoritas and various STD's beckon.


Well it would be if the harbor patrol would let him live on his boat.

A sexy senorita yesterday.

Heading to his pal Jeremy's pub The Salty Seaman to drown his sorrows, a long (well longer than usual) faced Trace soon gets chatting the blonde bombshell, scientist and girls water polo coach, Carol Brubaker (Hasperger from the Billy Zane classic Vlad) who just happens to be a buddy of his bestest pal Rita (Nicole, who doesn't seem to list this on her CV so we won't mention it).

After a few drinks and a wee bit of character development, Rita makes her farewells and heads off to the beach for a swim leaving Trace and Carol to stare at each other giggling whilst trying to figure out who has the bigger chin.

Adrien Brody: the mooth shite-in years.

Making her excuses to leave (and no she doesn't just say "I have my women's period" and walk away) our brainy beauty heads of to meet hotelier and part-time dirty perv Mike (Bad Girls from Mars star Golden) who talks her into having her smooth thighed female volleyball team hold an exhibition game in a canal that leads to open sea.

For no other reason it seems than to make for an exciting climax.

Whilst all this chat is highly commendable (and unusual) for this kind of movie, what we really want is gratuitous scenes of Frank Dinoshark chowing down on some olive skinned beauty.

Well we get half of our wish granted when poor Rita becomes the main course in our prehistoric chums Latino lunch.

Entrails on mah beach!

Worried (kinda) by their friends non appearance at dinner time, Trace and co. head out to look for her, finding instead our titanic toothed terror chomping away on a couple of non speaking extras dressed as rejects from Baywatch Nights.

What the fuck is this giant scaly beast? inquires Trent with the worried look of a slightly constipated beagle.

Luckily for us (and the plot) as well as everything else, Carol is an expert on badly rendered prehistoric shark type things and heads over to see her old friend, eminent marine biologist Dr. Frank Reeves (the late, great Corman himself looking as sexy as ever) to see if he has any idea how to make it die.

Call me stupid but it doesn't matter how old and grizzled it is cos at the end of the day it's only a big fish?

Why would she need to ask how to kill it?

I mean it's not like it's lead lined or made of gold.....surely bullets, bombs or a big net would do?

"Come my children...suck the movie milk from my man tits!"

Anyway, Trace and Carol decide it'd be wise to hunt down and kill poor Dinoshark before he has a chance to eat any more of the admittedly small number of tourists there for the resorts annual bring and buy sale.

So will our dynamic chinned duo manage to kill this titan of terror before the budget runs out?

Or will the swim team get eaten whole?

Well, what do you think?

"Laugh noooooooooo!"

Another day, another big shark and another SyFy original movie produced by Sir Roger of Corman on a break from counting his money, directed by the man that gave you Dinocroc (and did the effects on the Feast trilogy) and starring the pretty one from the TCM remake.

What's not to love?

Apart from the acting, visual effects and shoddy production values obviously.

Filmed in exactly the same locations - and with exactly the same script - as Sharktopus you kinda know what you're getting yourself into even before you've slapped a fiver down for this beauty in your local Morrisons and if you don't then it's no ones fault but your own.

And frankly you should be ashamed of yourself.

Rum, sodomy and the lash.

I mean come on, you know the CGI beast is going to look like a market knock-off childs bath toy, that the performances will be pitch at comatose level and that the lead actress has been hired on breast size rather than talent but who the hell cares cos sometimes after a hard days toil you just want to see busty babes and comedy shirted men get eaten by monsters.

Admit it, you know it's true.

It's just a pity that Eric Roberts was busy.

fish lips.

Still on a celebrating Jaws kick and as an aside who knew that there were so many great shark movies out there?

Oh there's this one too.

Super Shark (2011).
Dir: Fred Olen Ray. 
Cast: John Schneider, Sarah Lieving, Tim Abell, Rya Meyers, Jerry Lacy, Jimmie “J.J.” Walker and a (super) shark.

That's one big ass shark!

Before we begin good and proper I'd just like to point out for any newbies that for those of us that actually like this genre it's the norm in modern monster shark based movies that the creatures appearance is usually always due to a pesky offshore drilling accident that the titular beast is released/awoken/reanimated.

The unique thing this time is that the entire operation appears to have been constructed out of Lego in someones bath.

Which kinda adds to the movies (wet) dream-like quality I guess.

Anyway there's no time to guffaw over the visual effects as we're suddenly hurtled into the plot good and proper were a couple of expendable wet-suited lobster lovers are busy taking photo's of their fave animal whilst a silicon enhanced woman rubs chip fat onto her stomach and lies about on deck.

Unfortunately we have little time to get to know these obviously important characters as mere seconds after the appearance of those frankly terrifying breasts the aforementioned super shark has scoffed the divers and eaten the poor damsel too.

He's that kinda fish.

"Hey! Ya got tits an' tonsils? Well yer hired!"

Enter (but not roughly from behind obviously) marine biologist Katherine 'Kat' Carmichael (fish lipped Lieving from that other creature classic Monster) a sharp suited ex- FBI (Fish Bureau of Investigation) agent ready to kick some pollution based arse, especially if the arse belongs to the luxuriously haired head of the oil company Mr. Roger Wade (ex Duke of Hazzard, father of Superman and sometime low budget beast botherer Schneider), whom she blames for some stuff.

John....raise your hand from under the desk very slowly....

Meanwhile back at the beach, hunky surfer type Jeff Sexington has returned home from college for the summer to take up the position of studly lifeguard alongside his ex-girlfriend Edna and the bookish ginger princess Calli (Meyers, the only memorable one of the three. Can you tell?).

it looks like it's gonna be love triangles ahoy tho' seeing as Calli loves Jeff but Jeff still has feelings for Edna with it all coming to a head at superstar DJ Dynamite Stevens (Jimmie “J.J.” Walker, no me neither) Ms. Wet T-Shirt night.

Really, I shit you not.

Rya Meyers reaction to this review.

Luckily everyone involved is eaten the next day leaving the script free to concentrate on the up till now useless Ms. Carmichael and her newly discovered sidekick and comedy sea captain, Skipper Chuck (the thinking woman's Jason London, Abell here seen channeling Kurt Russell's glorious Captain Ron by way of a drunken uncle) and their attempts to find then kill the shark.

But don't worry, there are plenty more unnecessary breast shots to go before then.

Which is a pity but par for the course in movies like this.

Plus the shark has still to fight a kiddies toy submarine and pluck a fighter jet from the sky before it's secret is revealed...

Yup, the frighteningly fake fucker can use it's fins to walk on land.

No, really.

Well I guess that does make it a kinda super shark.

Plus it makes a better title than CG-ed Shark Shite Fest I guess.

"Do you need any scissors sharpening?"

Don't get too scared tho'  dear readers for as luck would have it the dear old US army have a secret weapon for just such an emergency.

A walking tank.

That's all you need to know really.

I don't have the words.

God bless director, producer, screenwriter, actor, cinematographer and sometime wrestler Fred Olen Ray who after such an auspicious start in the business way back in 1971 with the frankly fantastic Demented Death Farm Massacre has given us such delights as Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, the Buster Crabbe starrer The Alien Dead and Evil Toons amongst others too many (and sometimes just too awful) to mention.

It's good to know that after nearly 600 years in the business he can still be relied on to deliver the goods.

Even if in this case the goods are a large plastic looking fish fighting a dog in an cut price AT-AT suit whilst a crack commando unit of three look on.

"Shite in mah big fish mooth!"

Obviously realizing he couldn't attract the fantastic Brooke Hogan back to the monster genre, Ray decided (wisely) to cut back on characterization and memorable dialogue and concentrate solely a motley collection bikini babes of various sizes and shapes either dancing to shit R and B, strutting their stuff on the sand like lobotomized Barbies or getting eaten by the shark.

Obviously the thinking behind this is that no red blooded male could fail to enjoy 80 odd minutes of 'gorgeous' girls in bikinis plus a big monster, which would be true if one of those bikini clad beauties was Unwell fave and monster fighter extraordinaire Corinne Nobili, who showed us how to properly fight monsters whilst being forced to wear a bikini should be worn in the 2012 classic Two Headed Shark Attack.

Which bizarrely enough was directed by Fred's son Christopher.

I'm getting a headache just thinking about it so here's a nice picture of Ms. Nobili to finish with.

Any excuse for a photo of Corinne Nobili.

I forgot to mention if it's worth the rental didn't I?

Well if you've made it this far I think you know the answer.