Shark Week: Sharknado

Welcome back my readers to the absurd collection of tripe that is Shark Week.  For those just tuning in I am not referring to the informative and entertaining Discovery Channel week.  Oh no, this is the bottom rung of cinema shark movies that have such a farfetched plot device that you need a rod and reel to haul it back to some sense of reality.  But hey buck up!  They can’t all be THAT bad.   So grab yourself some goobers, a savory soft drink and relax in the easy chair.   This is Sharknado.

Hehe hides my woody.

Spoilers be in the water. Our spoilers.

From the collective asshats of Asylum Pictures (Transmorphers, The Terminators, Almighty Thor, Sherlock Holmes) comes a preposterous notion of a hurricane and from the CGI standing has to be a class 4 or 5, scoops up a wide variety of sharks from the sea and somehow hurls them about L.A.   SUSPEND DISBELIEF AND SCREW PHYSICS!!!!!   Now for those of you that may feel we are off to a very rocky start…well we are.  The Mockbusters have been difficult for me to digest as they take popular movies and make an even worse one. 

Do not bring your evil here.

Our movie opens with a shark fin soup connoisseur (Marcus Choi of Enchanted, Make Yourself at Home, Raising Hope, 40 Days and Nights and Graceland) and salty dog Captain Santtiago (Israel Saez de Miguel of Venom, Five, Green Card, Black Rice and Rise of the Dinosaurs) conclude a million dollar purchase of sharks as a giant hurricane (not a tornado) that proceeds to gobble up different species of shark and chuck them at 150 mph off the coast of Mexico and into Southern California.  Sharks come tumbling in buildings, bars, homes and around regions of Santa Monica without killing them outright from the sheer impact, speed and velocity they were traveling at.  SCREW PHYSICS!!!!!!

Eat it boy, eat it!

Our would be hero  surfer and bar owner Fin (Ian Ziering of Beverly Hills, 90210) whose Zen philosophy has him totally in tune with the waves points out the fast paced weather is not normal in that regards.  Like the calm seas and clear skies going suddenly cloudy and storm brewing.  Fin’s main earner Nova (Cassie Scerbo of Bring It On: In It to Win It, Dance Revolution, Make It or Break It and Teen Spirit) hold a secret loathing for sharks and her gill shaped scar indicates.  Looks like she was getting a wax with a cheese grater but no other portion of her leg or body had scar damage.  Oops.  One such homeowner is startled by the arrival of said shark April (Tara Reid of The Big Lebowski, American Pie, Van Wilder and Alone in the Dark) gets her living room up to about 4 feet of water and yet the swells managed to miss her front porch/ parking garage. Hmmm… oh right I forgot.  SUSPEND DISBELIEF!!!!

Tara over me? As if.

Okay just a few side notes on the film.  Given how laid back the Southern Californian is I had a bit of a difficult time buying them rallying and beating back the sharks.   Tossing a bomb from a helicopter to stop a hurricane seems logical too.  Oh did I mention John Heard (On the Yard, Heart Beat, Cutter’s Way, Home Alone and In the Line of Fire) in this as well?  Playing a rummy former surfer he belches his lines and sways.  

Oh weather is calm for a matter of 3 frames per second and then the skies darken like Gozer the Sumerian had arrived.  Continuity was not a big issue for this flick as streets varies on being bone dry one minute and then flooded the next. Oh and apparently Santa Monica beach houses have their own gyroscopic mounts or anti-gravity units because I didn’t see a single swell wipe them out…

Shark Week: Super Shark

Hello one and all and welcome to Shark Week: Bad Cinema Style.   This week will be reviewing the particular conglomerate of straight-to-DVD movies.  We will laugh, cry, curse and praise God that they are finally over and go out for a sensible meal.   So with that in mind let’s get this rodeo started from the title alone we are in for a world of hurt.  So grab your oxygen tank, prep your M-1 Garand and tell that fishy to smile you sonvua… This is Super Shark.

 

Screw you, physics!

Spoilers fly!!!

From the warped mind of Jiggly Girl exploitation be it sci-fi, horror or creature feature; Roger Corman’s protégé Fred Olen Ray (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Venomous, Tomb of the Werewolf, The Bikini Escort, Solar Flare and Dire Wolf) dregs up from the salty depths of the ocean, YET ANOTHER prehistoric shark known primarily as the Megalodon due YET ANOTHER underwater oil rig drilling platform and releases and/or disturbs this ancient eating machine the size of two blue whales into a killing frenzy.   Relatively certain sonar would have picked that particular beasty up but hey we don’t need crazy things like logic and physics in our shark movie.

    

Think green ya jerks!

After ruthless Lex Luthor archetype Roger Wade (John Schneider of Dukes of Hazzard, Loving, Smallville, Lake Placid 2, Shark Swarm and Return of the Killer Schrews) finds his oil rig in tatters he gets violent and belligerent to all around him including his hapless comedic sidekick Stewart (Jerry Lacy of As the World Turns, The Young and the Restless, Dark Shadows, Play It Again, Sam, Chicken Soup for the Soul and Hatfields and McCoys: Bad Blood) screaming about the millions tied up in the investments and blah blah blah.    Meanwhile Marine Biologist Kat Carmichael (Sarah Lieving of The Hitchhiker remake, Cult, Carbon Copy, Lakeview Terrace, The Dunwich Horror and Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus) notices some vicious sea creature attacks in her findings that are previously unrecorded.  She will be our Matt Hooper archetype and try not to ignore her or she may swim up and bite you on the ass.  

Pretty sure my boy Clark will have this under wraps.

Of course this all takes place during a Fourth of July weekend so the beaches are packed with tourists, students and in general drunken yahoos.   Now come and suspend disbelief with me when we find out this shark can battle the humans on the land, the sea and even…the air.   Super Shark was not dropped in a self contained space ark created by Marlon Brando but appears to be a mutation or dare we say evolution in the species.   You will believe a shark can fly!!!  Well actually you will be more like myself in the many WTF moments this film projects.   Nigh invulnerable to bullets, bombs and other CGI vehicles this reign of terror shows no end in sight during the “Queen of the Beach” wrap party.   Oh and feel free to slap the DJ Dynamite Stevens (J.J. Walker of Good Times, Airplane, At Ease, Water and The Guyver) just for being in this turkey.  

The CGI is appalling with the exception of the underwater scenes,  our flying shark effects made me cough and choke on my sandwich as I viewed it and frankly the performances look very laxed.   Again if we were expecting anything but cheesy from a Fred Olen Ray film; then we clearly need to hang around more to the evolutionary bell curve and develop thumbs and brain cells.  Truly a Mystery Science Theater 3000 worthy material for mocking but do not view this film directly or you will have the IQ of a state senator or quite possibly a fairly smart cocker spaniel.

Git in ma belly!!!

Shark Week...the bad cinema kind.

Answering yet another request of the week I tackling what one would presume as the bottom of the barrel creature features.   To prep everyone for the upcoming Discovery Channel event in August, I had a fan give me a Shark Week theme.   Oh sadly I will not be tackling any of the Jaws franchise but that could also be a good thing given the headache Jaws: The Revenge was. Thankfully though no Mako or Orca as well so feeling better.   So prep your fish lines, slough some chum and let's catch ourselves a whopper.

Avast, ya salty dogs!!

Burt Reynolds Week: Gator

Welcome back readers for Burt Reynolds Week continuation.  I thought we would tackle a sequel and you know how I have issues with sequels but this might very well be enjoyable.  So grab a drink, take off your shoes and sit a spell.   This is Gator.

Uh, Black Russian please.

“Why do they call you Spoiler?” “Cause I TELL THEM too.”

When we last left McKlusky, he had pulled the rug out from under Sheriff J.C. and got out of the hoosegow and went back to his white lightning days.   Running liquor is risky as always but the cash is too good to pass up.  The governor (Mike Douglas of the Mike Douglas Show, The Carol Burnett Show and The Last Valley) is tired of hearing about the lack of stopping crime in his fair county when his PR boys in junction with a New York cop off to serve up the man that has been wrecking the county with prostitution, protection and moonshine. 

Domesticated swamp bliss.

After a lengthy speed boat chase through the swamps of which was about 8 minutes long, the cops just nab Pappy McKulsky and Gator’s little girl for leverage.  Low and behold the Feds pinch Gator (Burt Reynolds of Gunsmoke, Navajo Joe, Hawk, Fade-In, Impasse, Fuzz, Hustle and Shamus) and give him a deal overlook the shine and NOT take his 9 year old daughter to foster care if he is willing to rat out an old schoolmate Bama McCall (Jerry Reed of Smokey and the Bandit, Hot Stuff, Good Ol’ Boys, Concrete Cowboys, The Survivors, What Comes Around and The Waterboy). 

The undercover NYC cop Irving Greenfield (Jack Weston of The Thomas Crown Affair, Wait Until Dark, All in a Night’s Work, My Sister Eileen, The Honeymoon Machine, The Hathaways and It’s Only Money) wants to work the sting with Gator but he points out to Greenfield he will stick out like a bagel in a bowl of grits.   

Ready for my close up, Mr. Reynolds.

There is a far amount of racism throughout the movie and none too subtle but it is mostly delivered as snotty dialogue and sarcasm which makes it slightly entertaining.   Gator of course is back to his usual roots such as; drinking, racing, chasing loose women and pissing off the officials and the criminals. 

Gator gets in good with Bama only to spy a pretty little reporter Aggie Maybank (Supermodel Lauren Hutton of The Gambler, Viva Knivevel!, A Wedding, American Gigolo, Zorro: The Gay Blade and Once Bitten) and typical habits are to follow.

I have a quick few odds and ends about the film.  Initially Richard Kiel was slated to play Bones the behemoth bodyguard but he had a schedule conflict and suggested his also gargantuan buddy William Engesser.   The romance between Aggie and Gator feels a bit hammy and not as believable.  Sure Burt is pretty but that can last all of a weekend with this character while Hutton’s character is a charming, sophisticated and intelligent woman that just seemed out of place by this man’s side but that is just a writer’s critique.   

The action is impressive, the jokes are mildly raunchy and the car chases almost rival the boat sequence.  This follows under Good Ole Boy film in that the plot is decent but a bit pale compared to White Lightning.   Still not a bad film.

Burt Reynolds Week: 100 Rifles

Back again for more of Burt Reynolds week and I apologize for the delay.  I was busily assisting my folks in getting my mom back to more comfortable surroundings and last night’s thunderstorm said stay away from the computer.   

I thought this time around we would journey back to 1969. A western based on the 1966 novel The Californio by Robert MacLeond was getting a screenplay treatment by writer/director Tom Gries (Hell’s Horizon, Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Rifleman and The Rat Patrol) and writer Clair Huffaker (Lawman, Colt .45, The Comacheros, Posse from Hell and The Second Time Around) cooked up the wild western tale of a revolution in Mexico and our boy Burt is smack dab in the middle of it all.  So saddle them horses, ride till dark and don’t shoot unless shot upon.  This is 100 Rifles.

 

Well clearly I will blend into this town.

You big headed spoiler! You are such a dummy!

The year is 1912, the place Mexico as the tyrannical General Verdugo (Fernando Lamas of The Merry Widow, The Lost World, Magic Fountain, The Violent Ones, The Lonely Profession and The Cheap Detective) puts a virtual stranglehold over the land, exploiting the Yaqui Indians into slave labor and has anyone and everyone shot who disagrees with his policy.  Think G.W. only with bigger cojones.   Joe Herrera (Burt Reynolds of Sharkey’s Machine, Stick, Heat, Malone, Switching Channels and Evening Shade) a half-breed Indian (Sheesh am I in Gunsmoke again?) of the Yaqui tribe sneaks off to Arizona and steals 6,000 buckaroos to buy rifles for his people.   Their plan is a bloody siege and storm against Verdugo’s men and defenses. 

I'm sorry but you are too big for marachi. 

Lawman Lyedecker (NFL fullback of the Cleveland Browns Jim Brown of The Dirty Dozen, Riot, Black Gunn, The Slams, Three the Hard Way, Take a Hard Ride and Mars Attacks) hops a train down to Mexico to find this bank robbing little blaggard and toss his hairy hinder in a cage for the rest of his natural days.    The two men get damn near pinched by Verdugo’s men and they flee for the hills when they are found by gorgeous revolutionary Sarita (Raquel Welch of Fantastic Voyage, One Million Years B.C., Fathom, Bandolero!, The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeer: Milady’s Revenge and Right to Die) led into the hills for safety.  The fellas trade snotty comments, ethnic slurs and fists as well until Lyedecker agrees to take command of the Yaqui tribe for an assault on the general.

Now I have a few bones about this movie, and seeing Raquel’s shower scene was NOT one of them. This is in all intents purpose an action movie and yet I get the feeling Tom Gries had little experience in such matters.  Apparently his idea of zooming up on Raquel or Jim firing then cut scene to staggering soldier was the end all.  Half of the time these actors avoided physics in that they fell forward when they should have dropped to the side or on their back.  Also there were so many dynamics with rough and tough thief, iron clad lawman and then sexy revolutionary I was trying to figure out whose story I should be following. 

Alright Palmer, where's my alimony??!!

The whole love story between Lyedecker and Sarita felt a bit sudden but hey I am not writing the bloody thing.  It was a bit confusing but this is very common when trying to translate a 500 page book into a script not even half that long. 

It felt like the film wanted to tell the entire lands their tale but they ran out of time.  Still all in all a fairly enjoyable flick and quite a crack up to see Reynolds sock it out with Jim Brown.

Burt Reynolds Week : White Lightning

Welcome one and all to the week of Burt Reynolds.  Now I will be going over his earliest movies as we already covered him being in Gunsmoke for 4 years.   This time around we have a guanine time line movie for you.  It’s all about stilling shine, bribes and a bit unorthodox police brutality.  So strap on your seat belts, keep a look out of smokeys and brace yourselves.  This is White Lightning.

Silly smokeys think I am gonna pull over.

You damn peanuthead, you don’t know your spoiler from second base, you know that?

Bobby”Gator” McKlusky (Burt Reynolds of Navajo Joe, Gunsmoke, Shamus, The Longest Yard, Hooper, Starting Over and City Heat) is doing a nickel stretch in Arkansas corrections for running moonshine when he finds out his younger brother Donny was murdered.  He believes that the sheriff of the county he grew up in is responsible.  He knows that Sheriff J.C. Conners (Ned Beatty of Deliverance, The Thief Who Came to Dinner, The Last American Hero, Gator, Superman, Midnight Crossing and Homicide: Life on the Street)is more crooked than a white fence and agrees to go undercover for the Feds to expose the sheriff for the dubious, heartless bastard that he is.  To do that, the Feds outfit Gator with a ’71 LTD with a V8 big block so he can tear ass around the county and sign up to run moonshine or “White Lightning” as it is called in these here parts.   Yikes, talking like that is contagious.

Ladies dig the burns, fellas. Remember that.

Gator hooks up with an ex-con mechanic name of Dude Watson (Matt Clark of In the Heat of the Night, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Back to the Future Part III) to bring Gator into the shine business.  Reluctant as hell but knows when he is whipped, Dude links Gator up with Roy (Bo Hopkins of the Wild Bunch, American Graffiti, Midnight Express and Cowboy Up) a good ole boy that needs a blocker to mess with the cops between deliveries.  Gator starts jotting down how much gets delivered and to whom, in the hopes this will tighten the noose around J.C.’s neck.  A bit of side action from Roy’s ladyfriend Lou (Jennifer Billingsley of General Hospital, Lady in a Cage and The Thirsty Dead) who could not outwit a stuffed iguana but is easy on the eyes.

I have just a few points to make about the film.  This flick was shot in 35mm Spherical and sadly recorded in Mono.  Stereo was a trifle expensive.   As the cops are chasing Gator down a dirt path I noticed the rear window in his car was indeed missing but prior to the chase he leapt in the car and it had a rear window.  Continuity people!!!!   We had a few six shooters fire more than their fare share of rounds than the revolver carried but again this tiny oversight can be ignored.   

Best be good, boy or I make you squeal like me.

This film has street brawling, car chases, shoot outs and more action in just one film that I have seen in a while.  Yes fellas, you get to see a fair amount of Billingsley; now move on.  All in all it was a fun flick.

Blog 225!!! Burt Reynolds Week

Hey folks I thought this week we would pay a bit of homage to an actor who paid his dues from Westerns, Action, Comedy and serious Drama.  A man that stands at 5'11" and for many ladies appreciation did a near nude in Cosmopolitan in 1972 on a tiger skin rug.  So this week will be focused none other than Burt Reynolds.

So ladies try to not swoon, Fellas don't be haters.  I hope you all enjoy.

Little cheesecake for the ladies.