slime time.

As ever, up to my eyeballs in real life shite whilst continuing the whole 31 days of horror thing and have hit the point where - knowing that no fucker actually reads this blog - I'm just pulling random shite from the cupboard and hoping for the best.

Bodes well for the rest of the month.

Bacterium (2006).
Dir: Brett Piper.
Cast: Alison Whitney, Benjamin Kanes, Miya Sagara, Chuck McMahon, Andrew Kranz, Shelley Dague and Jessica Day.

Invade, Infect, Mutate, Devour.
Then shite in mah mooth.
Obviously.

There's nothing like opening your movie with an exciting chase scene - especially when your mate owns not only a model helicopter but also his own painting and decorating business, so it's with this in mind that the first thing we see is two guys in big white paper overalls giving - airborne - chase to The Incredible Melting Man's less attractive brother before he explodes for some reason whilst hiding in a toy barn.

Tho' not Al's Toy Barn which is disappointing.

Obviously the explosion happens off screen of course.

Scarpering before the parkie turns up, the bio-suit boys decide to cross their fingers and hope the scary green vial that the melting man was carrying was destroyed, rather than actually land and go check for themselves.

It seems that secret government agencies just can't get the staff these days.

Or a realistic model park made to land the toy helicopter in.

Meanwhile in the local woods, the films plot begins good and proper with two young couples enjoying a friendly game of paintball.

No me neither.

Taking a break from covering each other in splatty sticky stuff, Lemon sucking bad boy Ryan Jiggs (Kanes - not the Rob Lowe character from Wayne's World, I think) and the bucktoothed blonde beauty, Beth (Alison Whitney, star of Splatter Beach and not, I repeat not Alison Brie whose photo someone had inadvertently posted on the cast list for this film on a dodgy Russian peer to peer site and which I've reposted here just because she's fairly yummy) happen across a seemingly deserted house and, reckoning that their other halves may be hiding inside (why? are they twelve?) decide to take a look around.

Almost immediately the come across mad as a bag of spanners Dr. Boskovic (McMahon, survivor of the car crash that was Vampire Lesbian Kickboxers), desperately trying to find a cure for the aforementioned melty man green stuff from the movies opening sequence.

Brie - not Larson and not in this film. Pity.

Surprised to see a couple of young folk wandering around his house he quickly informs them that the place is surrounded by heavily armed black ops types with orders to shoot at anyone or anything that moves and that the safest thing to do would be for Beth to strip naked whilst he gasses her.

For her own protection of course.

"Are you the farmer?"

Unfortunately things go a wee bit pear shaped almost immediately after Beth uncovers her breasts as Boskovic - excited at seeing a naked lady in real-life has a nasty accident involving a toothbrush and a cheese grater, becoming infected by the green goo he's tried so hard to find a vaccine for and it's not long before he too is shite-ing emerald slime from his mooth and pissing snot by the bucketful.

Meanwhile Brook (Sagara, possibly not the one that used to be on the Real Estate Board of New York) and soon to die Chandler (Kranz, definitely not Matthew Perry) have also found the house, meaning it's up to our four chums to stop the rapidly spreading alien gunk beasts without getting diced in the crossfire.

Just to add a wee bit more excitement to the plot, the fairly frisky general in charge of guarding/shooting up the house has decided that the only way to stop the creatures from infecting the earth is to explode a black hole bomb in the infected area.

Nope, nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan.

No sir.

Let's just hope some angry bikers don't turn up too.

I wouldn't want that swimming up my arse.

Ah, Brett Piper, the gossamer winged savior of the trash movie genre is at his best with this terrifying tale of slimy snotters hell bent on if not world domination the a cheeky pinch of a ladies arse.

I love this man and not just because he once made a nice comment on this very blog when I wrote about his movie Dying Day - a film that formed the basis to the terrific Raiders Of The Living Dead.

Chock full of crappy CG-ed effects, big bogie monsters and a bit of totally gratuitous nudity for good measure, his cast of non actors struggle game-fully to deliver pages of schlocky dialogue as a man in a painted binbag does his best to look threatening whilst pretending to scoff a pile of joke shop bones ALA the creatures from that 1966 Peter Cushing classic Island of Terror.

 (well, I say classic but I really mean not bad....well, I say not bad...).

The creature, feeling guilty for all the bad murders, attempts to give Shelley Daguea pearl necklace as a peace offering.

Quality bits to savour include Beth's boyfriend getting killed but no-one noticing, the already mentioned nude gassing and the dolls house under attack whilst a big green nose goblin throws action men at it.

"Hello it's the blind man!"

And remember kids, there is an important environmental message in the movie which by default makes it worthy of praise.

I must be getting soft in my old age because I think it's genius.

Still not you.

silicone valley high.

Been busy hence the short review.

Like any fucker reads this blog anyway.

Two Headed Shark Attack (2012).
Dir: Christopher Douglas-Olen Ray.
Cast: Carmen Electra, Charlie O' Connell, Brooke Hogan, Christina Bach Norman, Morgan Thompson, Gerald Webb, Ashley Bissing, David Gallegos, Anthony E. Valentin Geoff Ward and the lovely Corinne Nobili.

"Wait, if it has two heads then it must have double the teeth!"

Somewhere in the local park paddling pool behind director Ray's house, hunky Simon McCorkindale alike Professor Franklin Babish (O'Connell, brother of teevee's Jerry) and his wife, Anne (ex-Baywatch babe and Marvel comics assassin Electra) are busy teaching a group of (very old looking) teens about life on the ocean waves aboard their boat cum classroom cum skimpy bikini base - the aptly named the Sea King - aided and abetted by the stone breasted Capt. Laura (Ex You Are the Supermodel host Thompson) and funny accented foreign fella's Han and Dikilla (Asylum regular Webb and ex-electrician Valentin).

Haveta admit that's a shitload of characterization for what is essentially a crap B movie but heyho.

Hogan: you would but you'd be thinking about her dad.

Anyways whilst discussing the best way to use a sextant (snigger) the boat hits a half chewed CGI approximation of a shark which unfortunately becomes lodged in the vessels propeller, damaging the hull and causing it to take on water.

Unlike your mum who would take in strange men she met in the pub and make you share a room with them.

Anyway, as Babish and co. run around trying to fix stuff and the students - all jiggly sunburnt breasts and stud muffin chests - attempt to imbue their cardboard characters with something vaguely resembling life a giant two-headed shark appears from nowhere and attempts to have sex with the boat, breaking the radio antenna and causing nice girl student Kate's (Unwell fave and Ex Crocodile Dundee Hogan from Sand Sharks) frankly terrifying breasts to slowly undulate from side to side in a manner not unlike a pair of hypnotic sex-trifles.

With Laura needing the ship empty to affect repairs and Anne's breasts wanting some screen time, Babish decides to take students, consisting of the aforementioned Kate, geekily pube bearded Paul (Gallegos), the yummy Kristen (pretty lipped Nobili) and rentahunk Cole (1313: Hercules Unbound! star Ward) alongside a group of soon to die, look-alike pneumatic beach babes and studs over to a nearby (and incredibly handy) atoll aboard a dinghy.

A butchers shop window yesterday.

As Professor Babish tries in vain to enthuse the students, Laura (and her breasts) enter the water in order to repair the big jaggy felt pen line that's appeared on the ship's hull but the shark quickly swallows her whole.

Nope it doesn't spit that bit out.

Meanwhile, as the rest of the group searches the atoll for scrap metal to help repair the boat (?), Kate opens her heart (but fortunately not her scarily skinny chest cavity, well not yet) to Kirsten.

It seems that when she was an ickle girl she was touched up by a shark at the beach or something and has joined the sea school in an attempt to master her fear of water.

Her fear of bad scripts tho' appears to know no bounds.

Realising that we're 25 minutes in and no-one has taken their tops off yet, faceless students Haley (fake boobs, big face) and Alison (real boobs, small head) decide to indulge themselves (and us) in a wee bit of lesbian based skinny dipping whilst the rodent like fratboy Kirk fondles their peachy arses as says "Whoa!" a lot.

Not too surprisingly the tonguing trio are attacked and eaten by the two-headed shark.

Or a rather large rubber approximation of it.

Tho' it may be fiberglass.

I mean do you really care?

Anyway back with the students and our polytechnic pals have come across (not literally) a couple of small speedboats in a bay but before they can celebrate an earthquake hits the atoll, causing the professor to trip over a stone and graze his leg.

Aya my BCG indeed.

Jam in mah shitey mooth ya bastards!

Nice guys Jeff and Mike offer to take Professor Babish back to the ship for a sticking plaster and a wee cuddle off his wife but on the way back are surprised to see Laura's severed hand floating in the water.

No doubt her rock solid breasts have sunk straight to the bottom before poisoning any fish unfortunate enough to chew on them.

As is the way in these movies, where's there's a rubber head there must be a rubber shark and within seconds of making the ghoulish discovery Jeff and Mike are frenziedly gobbled by the beast.
 

Matron!

"Laugh now!"

Meanwhile curvy Kate and polite Paul have managed to repair the abandoned boats and thick as mince Cole has even managed to find some petrol, overjoyed by this he jumps aboard one of the craft along with three of his pals and chugs off upstream prompting Kate and co. to chase after them in the other.

Boat that is not pal.

Nobili: knees.

The teens decide to have an impromptu race, blissfully unaware of the professor and his missis screaming "Shark!" at them.

Tho' by the look on his (manly) visage it appears from a distance that Babish is either having a wank or a stroke.

But tossing teachers is the least of their worries when our two headed pal turns up and attacks Cole's boat and eats a boy, which at least warns the others that it's around, which is a good thing really.

I guess.

Luckily this gives brainy Paul time to work out that the shark, having two heads is twice as good at hearing, hence it's chasing the boat with the biggest engine.

Or something.

Surprisingly thicky Cole figures this out at the same time, abandoning his boat and leaving his pals to face the jaws of death.

What a nice guy.

Returning to shore, Kate bitch slaps Cole for a few minutes before Anne, Professor Babish and the comedy crewmen arrive via a very quiet dingy.

"Put it in me!"

The fight is cut short tho' by another earthquake which leads Babish to surmise that the atoll is collapsing and that this coupled with the fact that they're two thirds thru' the movie means that they have to come up with an escape plan pretty sharpish.

Paul, determined not to die a virgin (contrary to what he told you, your Uncle Peter doesn't count) comes up with a plan to hook up a handy generator to a couple of metal poles and placing them in the water to distract the shark while Kate (whose dad was a welder) and turncoat Cole travel back to the boat to repair it.

What could possibly go wrong?

Possibly one of the sexiest scenes ever committed to celluloid.

Will Kate overcome her fear of water/sharks etc. in time to fix the ship?

Will Cole come thru' as a hero or fuck off with the boat in an attempt to save his own skin?

Will Babish get damp and topless before entertaining us with an erotic dance?

And does anyone really care?

From the son of the director of Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers comes another of those early Asylum shlockbusters aimed fairly and squarely at the lonely geek masturbation crowd.

Which let's admit it, is most of the readership of this blog.

From their humble beginnings releasing barely watchable  rip off's (Monster anyone?) Asylum have gone from producing shite like Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls, The Da Vinci Treasure and The 9/11 Commission Report,  learning from their mistakes to a point where they now give us such top quality entertainment as the Tiffany starrer Mega Piranha Alien Rubicon and um, that one with David Carradine fighting the big crocodile.

Luckily this film is from before they became (sorta) legit so it still follows the Asylum template to the letter with it's unflinching emphasis on beasts, breasts and butts shoddily wrapped in a bow of cut-price CG with a topping of z list stars and yesterdays has beens, 2-Headed Shark Attack delivers exactly what the frighteningly photo-shopped box art promises.

Which is no bad thing if you're home alone on a Friday night with only a pizza, six pack and a box of tissues for company.

It's a pity then that I'm posting this on a Wednesday.

hairy nips and side sheds.

Was chatting with the twins on the way back from Return of The Jedi on Sunday about films featuring fur-covered beasts and the like (they're Ewok fans, what can I say?) and we got on to classic werewolf movies.

Obviously An American Werewolf In London, The Howling and The Beast Must Die! came up meaning that all this talk about hairy scares made me want to go back and revisit one of my personal faves.

So ladies and gentlemen let me present probably THE best werewolf movie ever made featuring not only the wonderful Dagmar Lassander but a star turn from that blonde woman who you might remember from bit parts in Truck Turner and Blood Orgy of The She Devils.

La Lupa Mannara (AKA Daughter of a Werewolf, Naked Werewolf Woman, She-Wolf , Werewolf Woman, 1976).
Dir: Rino Di Silvestro.
Cast: Annik Borel, Howard Ross, Dagmar Lassander, Tino Carraro and lots of other folk that I can't be arsed listing, except for the amusingly monikered Felicita Fanny for obvious reasons.

The place: a cow-pat covered field somewhere in Europe.

The time: Ye olden days - probably the early 70s by the state of the bush on show.

And I don't just mean the overgrow fauna circling the flaming pentagram that's been hastily drawn on the damp, muddy grass.

Obviously if you're a regular reader of this fine blog you'll know I'm making a childish reference to lady gardens.

In particular the one belonging to the top-lining (and topless) Annik Borel, who's currently dancing about in the all together and jiggling her lady parts like her life (or at very least her next mortgage payment) is counting on it.

But she is not alone.

Watching from the woods is a bunch of evermore nervous tinker types armed with flaming torches and pitchforks gazing in a mix of awe, terror and mild apathy as our buxom babe slowly transforms from a totally naked blonde 70s sexbomb into a blonde 70s sexbomb who appears to be wearing bits of carpet stuck to her body.

And black olives on her nipples.

Obviously.

The group surge forward, their weapons held tightly as Borel attempts to growl menacingly at the moon whilst dribbling thru' a set of comedy pound shop dentures.

In case you hadn't guessed this is indeed the naked werewolf woman of the title.

And unfortunately the only time we get to see her in all her hirsute glory, which by the state of the make-up isn't such a bad thing if I'm honest.

Obviously not wanting us to get too excited at the thought of a hairy woman eating a group of tramps (or spend any more money than he can get away with)  we abruptly jump forward 200 years (as in the movie does, it's not like some bizarre interactive Back To The Future style performance piece) to find a very sweaty (but thankfully clothed) Borel (as the very rich but oh so slightly mad Daniela Neseri) suddenly jump up in bed with a squeak.

You see, the poor girl suffers from a recurring nightmare caused by the fact that she believes she's the reincarnation of her ancestor who was burned at the stake for being a werewolf.

Which sounds a pretty legit if not really badly constructed bit of background story.

Not all of her family agree tho' especially her dad Count Tony Neseri (Carraro from Argento's The Cat o' Nine Tails) and sister Elena (Raven-haired Giallo goddess Lassander, obviously she had a new swimming pool to pay for) who think that the whole mentalist thing could be caused by her memories of being diddled by a dustbin man as a child.

Being a wee bit stubborn Daniela refuses their offers of help preferring to 'self-medicate' her violent desires by hiding in a wardrobe and fiddling with herself whilst watching her sister and hubbie having 'the sex'.

Tho' lets be honest, do you really need a reason (medical or other) to want to watch Dagmar Lassander getting naked?

"Laugh nowwwwwooooooooohhhhhh!"

Being the cuddly and caring types her family are all very supportive, occasionally nodding in a concerned manner whilst muttering that everything will be OK whilst scrubbing the stains off the woodchip wallpaper.

And to be honest everything's actually fine, until that is Daniela decides to lure her brother-in-law into the woods, start humping his leg then tear his throat out before tossing him off a cliff.

Oops.

With the Jeremy Kyle show cancelled due to the death of a guest, the family decide that it'd probably be for the best if they had Daniela committed to the local hospital, where seeing as she spends her days stripped naked and strapped to a bed, I'm assuming isn't BUPA affiliated.

It's not all nude bondage and bed-baths tho' as Daniela often passes the time shouting "whore" at her still mourning sister and hiding scissors under her pillow in case the mad lesbian patient from two doors up tries to sneak into her room for cuddles.

Sounds a brilliant place for a break if I'm honest.

I don't know what that is in her mooth but it's definitely not shite.

Daniela obviously doesn't think so because after a week she decides that she's cured and proves this by plotting a totally non-mental escape plan that involves hiding in a doctor's car, waiting for him to leave the hospital then smashing his face repeatedly against the steering wheel before driving off into the countryside to start a new life.



Which is nice.


Unless you're that poor doctors wife and kids obviously.

It's at this point that the movie bizarrely turns into a sleazy version of the old Michael Landon TeeVee show Highway To Heaven, only this time featuring a mad woman coming across (quite literally in some cases) the damaged dregs of society and killing them in a rage of sweat, screams and howls rather than that guy from Little House On The Prairie helping club-footed kids and single mums with shingles.

Tho' I can't imagine that it would have run for 12 seasons had it followed Rino Di Silvestro's storyline can you?

But our writer/director has another twist for us because just when you think the whole film has descended into poorly made - albeit fairly unique - (moderately) hairy woman kills tramps flick our heroine bumps into a hunky stunt-man (Howard Ross AKA Renato Rossini) named Luca and everything changes again.

Except her underwear obviously which by this point I could actually smell thru' the screen.

God may want you for a sunbeam but I just want to use your mouth as a toilet.

Picking up a hitch-hiking Daniela in his patented stunt-mobile, lovely Luca wins her over with his sensitivity, charm and respect for women, hairy or not.

Oh and with his ability to fall off tall burning buildings whilst dressed as a chicken obviously.

Prepare for a romance montage like no other as we see our beautiful couple frolicking on the beach, running thru' parks and gazing into each others eyes intercut with scenes of our stuntman hero crashing thru' windows, getting bottles broken on his head and the like before setting up home together on the actual movie set.

Which I'm sure is against union rules.


Anyone?

Somewhere to park your bike (and reuse old captions obviously).

Our lovers soon realize tho'  that a fake western town isn't the best place to raise a family so Luca pops down on one knee and asks Daniela if she would mind if he took her up the village.

To live that is.

She smiles (which frankly is much more terrifying without her false choppers in) and cries "Yes!" before falling into Luca's massively muscled arms for another wee bout of the love-making.

You see it appears that it only takes the love of a rugged, sensitive stunt-man to cure any woman of her latent lycanthropy.


Which kind of explains where I've been going wrong the last few years.

Doggy style.

At long last it looks like things could finally work out quite nicely for Daniela but you forget that this is a cheaply made Italian exploitation movie (albeit one with delusions of high art) so it wont come as too much of a surprise when I tell you that one day, whilst Luca is out buying a pint of milk and various Veet hair removal products from Superdrug a gang of very bad lads turn up at the studios looking for cheap booze and evil sex.

Will the Luca return in time or will Daniela - after getting roughly bummed by the bad men - become a werewolf and hunt down her three attackers like a (hairier) Charles Bronson?

Or will true love prevail?

Dagmar Lassander: Ask your granddad.

Thank you Rino Di Silvestro (AKA Axel Berger, Cesar Todd, R.D. Silver and your 'Uncle' Pete) for not only giving us such classic calls for tolerance and love as Deported Women of the SS Special Section, Women in Cell Block 7 and The Erotic Dreams of Cleopatra but for following your dream and bringing this unique (yet oh so tedious) tale of love, sex, mental illness and furry nipples to the big screen.

A film that even after more than 30 years since my first viewing still holds a place in my heart as well as teaching me a valuable lesson in life.

When I was 12 years old I naively swapped a copy of the Video Network big box Betamax edition of Harry Novack's Axe for a dodgy VHS copy of La Lupa Mannara after being told that not only was it utterly terrifying but that it featured some top nude lady werewolf action as well as a scene where two girls stroked each others hair in a barn.

And I fell for it, hurriedly handing over Axe and excitedly running home, stopping only to buy crisps and Vimto ready for an evening of sheer terror.

And maybe, just maybe a glimpse of lady front bum, something at that point I'd only heard whispered about.

My friend Jamie had yet to obtain a copy of The Mad Foxes so the idea of men and women being different down below was pure hearsay.

But how was I managed to be duped so badly I hear you cry.

Well it's all down to the title the movie was released under in the UK.

You see over here it was called Naked Werewolf Woman.

Says it all really.

Bizarrely enough tho' the title change actually upset Di Silvestro more than the movies scathing (and in most cases hostile) reviews ever did seeing as he favoured the title The Lycanthrope, feeling that this was more in keeping with the movies serious arthouse aspirations.

No. really.

So imagine my disappointment, dear reader when what I ended up with wasn't actually the greatest, sexiest and hairiest movie ever made but a naked werewolf flick that singularly failed to deliver much in the way of either nakedness or werewolfism.

Ok I'll admit that it has an abundance of everything else you can think of; discussions on reincarnation, pseudo-scientific psycho-bollocks regarding lycanthropy as a side effect of sexual molestation, horny 70s Italian guys, revenge, tragedy and of course a stuntman years before Colt Seavers made it cool.

But that wasn't the point.

I don't think my 12 year old self ever recovered.



Come to think of it I'm still quite upset now.

I hope you're happy Rino.


Bastard.

cat baloo.

It's time for a holiday with todays 31 Days of Horror pick as we carry on abroad with this 'classic' from 2014.

But will there be any thinly veiled digs at Doctor Who today?

Go on, guess.

 

 

The Pyramid (2014).
Dir: Gregory Levasseur.
Cast:  Ashley Hinshaw, Denis O'Hare, James Buckley, Christa Nicola, Amir K, Faycal Attougui and Philip Shelley.

“This doesn’t look like the Egyptian stuff you find at the British Museum!”

It's August 2013 and those pesky, democracy craving Egyptians are rowdily rioting in Cairo’s Ramses Square, an historic turning point in Middle Eastern politics.

But fuck that cos there are far more important things afoot out in the desert where the American father/daughter archaeology team of Miles (American Horror Story stalwart O’Hare channeling Harry Dean Stanton) and Nora Holden (council estate Blake Lively, Hinshaw) have just uncovered a new (in the sense of it being hidden, it's not like they hired Bob The Builder to construct it for them - tho' that would make a great movie) pyramid.

Buried beneath the harsh desert sands for over five thousand years (possibly), the team are most excited by the fact that it only has three sides.

Which probably cheered the CGI team up no end too.

Unfortunately there's a chance that they'll never get to explore it seeing as the US government, always wary of being involved in other countries political problems when it doesn't concern them, want the pair out of Egypt as soon as possible save Ben Affleck has to be sent in to rescue them.

Plus it's full of a scary green gas that makes people vomit milk.

Which is nice.

"...And here we see one of Madonna's original bra's!"

 

Luckily the team are given 24 hours to complete their investigations by their military liaison, the permanently angry Corporal Terry Shadid (Attougui) so Nora persuades her 'love' interest and the teams techie Zahir (the Kafka-esquely named K) to send his borrowed NASA robot into the pyramid for a wee nosy around.

Which would be a great excuse for some spooky found footage style thrills if it weren't so badly handled.

At this point I was a wee bit worried that the entire film would be made up of footage from the robot intercut with reaction shots of the human cast but alas this fairly unique (if horrifying) prospect is soon dashed when the machine is destroyed by some slight - and unconvincing - CGI, leaving Nora, Miles and Zahir, alongside the terrifyingly eyebrowed news-anchor Sunni (Home And Away's Nicola) and her cheeky-chappie British cameraman Fitzie (The Inbetweeners Buckley, who once appeared in what's no longer the worst episode of Doctor Who ever, cheers Russell) no choice that to pack up shop and head back to the relative safety of America.

The end.

Only joking of course, obviously they throw caution (and logic) to the wind and head forth into the pyramid.

Not even industrial gas masks can hide the stench of this script.

Aware of the films meager running time the group quickly become lost, then after a section of dodgy crazy paving collapses beneath them, trapped in a big hole.

Luckily only token foreign bloke Zahir is injured, pinned to the ground by a huge lump of polystyrene.

Luckier still is the fact that Sunni is not just a top TV type but is, in fact also a trained climber which means that she can climb out of the hole and go for help.

Which as far as logical plans go is pretty good for this movie and it just might of worked had it not been for the pesky cat (a highly trained Egyptian attack cat at that) that destroyed the robot lying in wait to pop out and surprise her, leading to this priceless dialogue exchange:

“There's something up there and it scratched my face! ”

Admit it, it doesn't really chill you to the bone or fill you with dread does it?

After, oooh, minutes of debating they decide to leave Zahir behind and take their chances in a nearby tunnel, only to turn back when they hear the poor sod screaming for help.

They probably shouldn't have bothered seeing as all that's left of the bloke is a jammy smear and a toenail.

There's no time to mourn their fallen comrade tho' as the angry tones of Corporal Shadid are soon echoing around the room which means there must be a way out.

Either that or the director fancies killing off another foreigner before starting on the English speaking cast.

Milk in mah mooth!

Hurrying thru' a narrow tunnel with an army of killer cats in hot pursuit our merry band soon find Shadid, who drags them to the relative safety of yet another chamber before being ignominiously dragged into the tunnel by a thing (or things) unseen/not yet rendered by the films animators.

From this point on it's sand traps and spiked pits ahoy as no Mummy movie cliche is left unburied as our surviving heroes race towards a thrilling (well I say thrilling) climax as the true nature of the pyramid is unveiled.

In part thanks to the mummified remains of a notebook clutching Freemason they just happen to find in a burial chamber.

Obviously he'd been caught painting the sand stone red, white and blue or trying to organise a march thru' the tunnels when he was found by the non- Protestant occupant.

And you'd never guess who that is.

"Woof!"

Why it's none other than Jeff Anubis, famed protector of the dead and god of funerals.

It's like Through The Keyhole on smack.

Anyway back to the plot (what there is of it) where it seems that, oh, years ago (2000–1700 BC at least) Jeff's dad/creator Osiris, on account of not suffering from dog breath beat poor Anubis in the annual most important god of the dead competition and leaving him in second place.

Although this didn't come without it's perks and a fancy job title ("Guardian of the Scales"), Anubis soon got bored tearing out folks hearts to see if they could get into heaven and decided to do other stuff instead.

The film/history books don't mention what so I like to imagine him surfing or opening a chip shop, go on, see what funny situations you can imagine Anubis in.

Be warned tho' none of them will be as amusing as the thought of his best mate Set/Sutekh spending an eternity squatting atop the TARDIS before morphing into a coal covered Chuckle Hound.

Cheers (again) Russell.

"Look at the dog!"

Anyway the Egyptians, being a leather obsessed and frankly untrustworthy lot decided to build a huge pyramid to imprison him in and leave an army of cats inside to stop him escaping.

As you do.

Now if only they'd thought to write this above the entrance none of this would have happened.

The ancient god Anubis, sniffing someones arse yesterday.

Plus Anubis himself wouldn't have to suffer the indignity of being portrayed as a badly rendered CGI stick man wearing a dodgy fur-suit dogs head clad only in a hula skirt.

Don't you know about Anubis? He'll take you up a hill, beat you up and then he'll bum you! And if he doesn't kill you, you kill yourself because of the shame of you getting a boner whilst you was being bummed!

 

So will the rapidly dwindling team manage to escape from the clutch of Anubis?

Can you actually clutch if you have paws?

Does Anubis even have paws?

If the cats are frightened of fire, why not just remove their jackets and make torches?

Why trap Anubis in a Labyrinth when they could have just sealed him in and filled the whole structure with sand and suffocate him?

And most importantly why does every film of this ilk have a shitey mock-rock song over the end credits? 

Pity poor Gregory Levasseur, the writer behind the genuinely brilliant Maniac remake (as well as the not too shoddy Hills Have Eyes reboot and the sexy shocker High Tension), with a pedigree like that behind him you'd reckon he'd have been a wee bit more choosey when it came to picking the script  for his directorial debut.

Writers Nick Simon and Daniel Meersand ransack the tombs of both the Egyptian undead and found footage genres with little knowledge or understanding of either in the vain hope that some of it will stick out in a memorable way.

Unfortunately saddled with dialogue along the lines of “We’re just like food in a bowl right now,” the only place it sticks is in the viewers throat, or in the case of the almost schizophrenic 'is it or isn't it?' found footage style, the audience is left to play the who's filming who? game.

Which if I'm honest does add an element of enjoyment from the film that's sadly missing from the (frankly ludicrously nonsensical) plot.

Charlie says practical effects are best.

 

What scares the movie does attempt are more like old friends than genuine frights being taken as they are from (better) genre movies going back to the 50's and earlier and the sub par CG makes the already vaguely amusing idea of an army of highly trained, god fighting killer cats unintentionally hilarious.

Tho' not as side-splitting as the reveal of Anubis in all his floating about not quite in shot, plasticine faced glory.

Honestly I've seen better CG in an average episode of Numberjacks.

No.

In both cases tho' I have to wonder why they just didn't buy a kiddies dog mask instead I’ll never know but saying that, there is an oh so clever train of thought that says that monster looking this shite are, in fact really clever as we can't and shouldn't judge people and things on their outward appearance.

I mean who's to say that the Egyptian god of the dead wouldn't choose to appear to be made out of kiddies modelling clay and hastily painted in shit?

A better man than me that's for sure.

Nothing special but a fairly harmless way to pass 90 minutes.

Especially this early into 31 days of horror.

But saying that so is shagging your gran and I know which I'd find more satisfying.

rage hard.

Got a huge pile (ooeer) of brand spanking new movies to watch for 31 days of horror so have spent days (well hours) pouring over what to watch first.

Unfortunately my autie-ness and fear of all things new kicked in so to calm myself down I ended up picking this old favourite.

Raging Sharks (2005)
Dir: Danny Lerner.
cast: Corin Nemec, Vanessa Angel, Elise Muller, Corbin Bernsen, Binky Van Bilderbeek (bless you!) and some raging sharks.

Far out in deep space a cock headed alien and his crab-faced wife are arguing over directions to Waitrose or something, oblivious to the fact that another big spaceship is heading directly towards them. Suddenly the arguing couple are bought back to reality by a huge explosion (borrowed from an old episode of Buck Rogers in The 25th Century by the look of it) as the craft collide in a mish-mash of slow mo Airfix glory and quality shaky cam. Luckily the mismatched pair manage to jettison what looks like a big wheelie bin into space before everything blows up.

The mysterious space bin comes crashing to Earth via the centre of a fishing boat (with more added on explosions and stock footage) much to the surprise of her Oscar quality crew, before coming to rest at the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle...

How will they explain that to my nan?

Beware the bin men.

Cut to five years later and we're aboard the Oshona deep sea lab where team leader the lank haired Dr. Mike Olsen (80's teeVee hunk and former Parker Lewis Can't Lose star Corin Nemec) is having a wee bit of a run in with his fellow researchers (one of whom is his wife) regarding the inadequate facilities and general state of the place.

 

Which is fair to be honest, looking as it does like it was made out of loo rolls and pipe cleaners by a blind Blue Peter presenter. 

 

A blind Blue Peter presenter with wooden hands.

Adding to his troubles is the fact that he and his aforementioned (and fish lipped) missis (Angel) are arguing over settling down and having babies and the general feeling that no one has a scooby as to what they're meant to be 'researching'.

The contents of my kitchen
drawer yesterday.

“We need results, people!” shouts Olsen at Vera, a particularly big chinned babe in pigtails (star of Hammerhead Sharkman and less charismatic Tara Reid lookalike Muller) as he leaves for the 'institute' to try to raise some cash (and probably wash his hair) whilst faceless extras 'Don' and 'Jake' head outside 'to fix the relay'. 

 

As you probably guessed the mismatched pair are munched by sharks (well, by sharks I mean a heady mix of scratchy shark stock footage, a shiny plastic shark nose and leftover CGI shark stuff from Shark Attack 3) within minutes of leaving the base, causing the crew to start screaming and shouting "Are you all right Don? Are you all right Jake?" for about half an hour, getting louder and snottier nosed every time.

Meanwhile Olsen is taking in the sights of downtown Boston when his bosses ring to tell him about the Don and Jake incident and before you have time to catch your breath he's on a submarine commanded by the Dentist himself, Corbin Bernsen and heading back towards the base.

 

Seriously it's like an ADHD version of Stingray.

Scarily with all this exciting shit going down, Vanessa Angel is still on Oshona's radio shouting "Are you all right Don? Are you all right Jake?" whilst watching bits of grue and wetsuit float past the monitor screens so just to make sure they're dead she decides to head outside to take a look for herself. 

 

Within minutes she too is attacked by a shark but, partly thru' luck but mainly due to second billing in the title credits manages to stab it in the face and return to the base.


If the idea that the sharks seem to be hunting in packs (and growling) isn't enough to scare the shite out of the scientists then the fact that they decide to attack the power and life support cables connecting our merry band to the surface definitely is. 

 

All they can do is hope Olsen can reach them in time.

Meanwhile on the surface, the supply boat (that I forgot to mention, sorry) is having trouble of it's own; every time they send a diver down to repair the cables a shark eats them and things get worse when a coastguard plane arrives to help. It's attacked by an obviously raging shark causing one of it's crew to fall into the water and get gobbled up!

Down below tensions are rising, stoat faced, rubber mouthed Harvey (Van Bilderbeek) the chubby 'cockernee'/Scots guy/Welsh mechanic is being very cowardly and shouting about not wanting to die whilst Vera is complaining about not being married. Vanessa Angel is standing about pouting, trying to maintain calm whilst a cat faced woman and a bearded scientist hum and ahh a lot in the background.

On a sunny Bermudan beach a handful of holidaymakers are suddenly attacked by the sharks (this bares no relation to the rest of the movie and will not be returned to) in a frenzy of plastic snouts, rubber arms and cardboard fins whilst an offshore news crew find they've bitten off more than they can chew when one of the beasts appears to ram their boat and explode!

Tunnel or funnel?

Somewhere else a doctor is performing an autopsy on a shark and is surprised to discover some bright orange crystals inside it's tummy. 

 

Could this be related to the outbreak of shark rage? (umm...yes).

Back aboard Corbin's sub, Dr. Olsen is determined to make it back to his wife but is having trouble with a scary 'government investigator' that has been assigned to him. Cue many "You're not following standard procedure" and "My wife is over there Goddammit!" confrontations as the pair swim over to the base. The investigator stops to take photo's and is almost eaten only to be saved by Olsen, tho' I've no idea why.

“Damn magnetic spikes!”

Everything is going to hell over at Oshona now that Vera has noticed the “Damn magnetic spikes!” on her computer screen and everyone has realised that 'the relay' is still broken. 

 

Vanessa is bugging Harvey to go repair it, using the argument that it's possibly a suicide mission so she doesn't want her hubbie to have to do the job.


Harvey, perfectly reasonably tells her where to go and storms off to get pissed whilst the other crew members tut at him for refusing to swim into certain death, leaving Olsen and some French guy (who's sons sixth birthday it is) to venture out in the mini-sub to the relay and put extra cash in the meter or something.

Can you guess who's going to die?

Frenchman in mah mooth!

Everything seems to be going to plan when sharks attack the sub and kill Frenchie, leaving Olsen no choice but to get Captain Bernsen to fire a torpedo at his location, hopefully killing the (raging) sharks but leaving him unscathed. Back on Oshona tho' things have gotten even worse (if that's at all possible) when government guy reveals himself to be a 'black ops' bad man with insider knowledge of the orange crystals and shark rage.
You see, it appears that the alien bin was carrying special space fuel and now that the sharks have eaten some of it their intelligence has shot thru' the roof causing them to work as a team to protect it at any cost! (and no, I didn't see that one coming).

His mission is to salvage the bin and kill anyone who knows about it (which no-one did till he told them).

Will Olsen survive the torpedo blast and get back to rescue his wife and kill the bad man? Will Captain Corbin stop sweating and drinking coffee? Will the sharks eat Harvey when he tries to escape in (another) mini-sub whilst singing 'Blow The Man Down'? and will logic (and physics) be thrown to the wind at the movies climax when the force of the base imploding throws the survivors clear of the wreckage and up to the surface?


Notorious big animal and stock footage obsessed filmmaker Danny (Shark Attack 1-3, Octopus 1-2, Spiders, Alien Hunter....basically all the hits) Lerner delivers a genre classic almost matching his masterpiece Shark Attack 3.

The scripts bizarro mix of aliens, mad sharks and special forces action is a fairly straightforward romp only spoiled by plot holes so large that as the film approaches its climax you begin to think that the whole thing is about to collapse around the casts ears but Learners bullish determination pulls the whole thing off with aplomb.

Frenchman in mah mooth.

His choice of stock footage is almost as entertaining as the film itself; with cars and houses visible when the sea plane lands on the 'ocean' and deep sea shark attacks that show the creatures breaking thru' the waves to footage from his previous hits and  whilst it's nowhere near Raptor quality (famously cobbled together by Roger Corman from three existing films and re-employing key actors to reprise their roles) it does come close at some points.

Corin Nemec and Vanessa Angel discussing who they have to fuck to get off this movie.

In his ten year career spanning over seventy (!) movies, Lerner appears to have learned nothing about film making except that all you need is action, a big monster, a (kinda) famous face and a few explosions to guarantee a hit.

And who are we to argue with him?

In equal measures arse numbingly awful and a work of utmost genius, this is the kinda movie the zed grade was made for.