Bug Hunt: Aliens

Boy you would think a hardcore James Cameron fan, I would have reviewed this movie by now. Hey gang! Welcome back to the blog. Y'know going through my writing reviews I noticed the total lack of this Action/SciFi film and it left me a bit surprised I never touched base on this movie. Picking up where the 1979 SciFi/Horror Ridley Scott film originated, this is the continuing story of Ellen Ripley and all the craziness she must endure. This is Aliens.

Rough pregnancy.

Directed by James Cameron fresh off of the success of The Terminator, the fate of Ripley, the lone survivor of the Nostromo with her encounter at LV-426 needs accounting. Also that deep freezing may be needed tending to. A deep salvage cargo run finds the escape pod from the Nostromo, finds vital signs on Ripley (Sigourney Weaver of Alien, Half Moon Street, Ghostbusters, Gorillas in the Mist, Working Girl, Ghostbusters II, Dave, Be Kind Rewind, Avatar and The Defenders) and Jonesy so they have to bring her in safely. Imagine how dark a film it would be if they ejected her cryo pod or if we went disturbing sexploitation route. Hey it could have gone there. Not likely in a Cameron film but it could.

57 years have past since her cryo sleep, all her friends and family most likely have died, moved on or out of contact. For details on her daughter,...go play the game Alien: Isolation. Maybe find the cut scenes on YouTube. Someone has bound to have done that by now.

Fine bunch of bad asses!!!

Ripley gives her full accounting of what happened down to detonating the ship and representatives of the company, Weyland-Utani is not pleased. They remain skeptical to her accounts and give her a dressing down to the likes of Chuck Connors' Branded. Aging myself again. The colony that has been terraformed and mining there has seen no evidence of the creature Ripley described in all their surveys of the planet. I mean there is skeptical and there is plain rude. The lot of them needed a Terminator visit, car crash included.

Stripped of her pilot status she is stuck in the loading dock moving cargo. A few months later one of the company's mouthpieces Burke (Paul Reiser of Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop II, Mad About You, Bye Bye Love, The Thing About My Folks, The Story of Us, Strange Relations, Funny People and Stranger Things 2) claims they will restore her flight status if she is a technical advisor on this mission to see the condition of the colony and its people.

Going in with a squad. Yeah one squad of Colonial Marines with the latest firepower and weaponry she should be just fine. With a heavy heart and hopes that they will exterminate the creatures, Ripley goes on the mission.

Momma looks grumpy

Lt. Gorman (William Hope of To Save the Children, The Saint, As Time Goes By, c-12: Final Resistance, Sword of Honour, xXx, Headhunter: Redemption, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Spiders 3D) and his combatants stand ready to investigate the colony after breakfast, weapons prep and mission debrief. Still love that Sgt. Apone (Al Matthews of Aliens, Superman III, Funny Money, The Comic Strip, The Apocalypse Watch and Aliens: Colonial Marines) was one of the first black men earning the rank of Sergant in the Vietnam war, so yelling at grunts was nothing new. With faces like Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton and Lance Henrikson, please appreciate I do not want to write out their entire lengthy filmography.

Still cracks me up that Schwartzenegger is the reason for Biehn and Paxton to look shredded like they did for the film. A few tips to beef up and stay stronger. Thanks Arnold!

No sooner has their drop ship landed and an armored personnel carrier is zooming about, the colony seems completely deserted with signs of re-inforced welding and small arms fire discharge. Yet no bodies.

The marines move in and are limited to using lighter weapons due to heading around the reactor. Yeah armor piercing rounds going through the reactor that is clearly thermonuclear could be...bad.

With minimal life signs the colonists are embedded in the walls, almost cocooned there. THERE WAS A FIRE FIGHT!!! Oh sorry. Wrong film.

Creatures start coming out of the walls attacking and dragging away marines and the rest have to leg it away. Ripley brings the APV in to their location and saves them.

With the need for a mass evac underway, the drop ship and its crew are maimed and blown up thanks to more of the creatures. Stuck on the planet, the marines barricade themselves, take watch and formulate a plan to escape. With the only resident not taken by the creatures, Newt (Carrie Henn of Aliens) explains they hunt at night so they need to stay indoors.

Now I am reviewing the special edition of Aliens, giving more looks at the colony prior to the infestation, the armament aside from pulse rifles and the M56 Smartguns with gyro mounts but it also shows Ripley's struggle in her new role as a dock worker and how life had slapped her in the face. And my personal favorite of big toys, the UA 571-C Automated Sentry Guns. 4 of these bad boys with display screen, scanners and 500 round drums.

Will the team survive until help arrives in 17 days? Can the creatures wipe them out?

So overall this version is superior to the theatrical release in the sense of wanting more story. It clocks out at 2 hours and 50 minutes instead of the theatrical 2 hours and 34 minutes. OoOo a whole 17 minutes more but it really makes the difference as far as story telling instead of just the straight up action sequences. I would recommend both versions. I just prefer the special edition.

HOW'S MY BREATH??!!!

Random Reels: Alien vs Predator

Hey folks I am back again. Sorry for the delay but the Subspecies Audio Review took almost two days to cut, edit and complete. That being said we are doing some Random Reels today and I thought I would describe a film that was neither disappointing or amazing but really lackluster as a whole. A film combining two franchises that should have accelerated to the echelons of cinema and not in the bottom of the Best Buy five dollar barrel. This is Alien Vs Predator.

His name is Tusky.

This particular film had high hopes from anyone playing the arcade game of Aliens vs Predator based on a Dark Horse title started in 1993 which storyline has nothing to do with humanity and it is just Aliens and Predators going to town, along with Activison releasing a Super Nintendo version of the arcade game. With action figures, video games in development, these two terrifying creatures of space were held to a standard as high as the Universal movie monsters of yesteryear. So Fox green-lights a film treatment that was in development hell. Deciding if it should be a new Alien movie, will Ridley Scott or James Cameron come back for it, can they get Sigourney Weaver and/or Michael Behn back and so on. So how did this concept disappoint so many? Well...okay I'll tell you as best I can.

Looks like a remodeled Shang Sun temple.

Director/writer Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon, Soldier, The Sight, Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Resident Evil: Extinction, Death Race,Death Race 2 and Pompeii) tells a tale involving humanity, the xenomorphs (Aliens) and the hunters (Predators) and an ancient pyramid deep in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. Recorded by Weyland Industries satellite, a huge energy beam strikes the frozen region from the sky. For what purpose? No one can say. Owner of said satelite and growing corporation, Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen of The Terminator, Aliens, Alien 3, Pumpkinhead, Powder, Millennium, X-Files, Man's Best Friend, Madhouse, Hellraiser: Hellworld and Screamers: The Hunting) has video confirmation of something, a huge structure buried miles under the ice and wants to take an expedition to discover what it is.  Well being an Anderson movie you know this cast will consist of expendable one-dimensional characters who will tell the audience in clunky dialogue who they are and why they are so vital to the team. Anderson favorites include the very talented Colin Salmon, Tommy Flanagan and Liz May Brice. Yeah they show up in more than a few of these flicks and their roles as body count NEVER EVER changes.

Make two Blade sequels without me? What were they thinking?

To lead this dangerous trek we need a bad ass and there she is. Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan of Blade, Out of Time, Nip/Tuck, Powder Blue, Something New, Wonderful World, Tilda, Contagion, Boss and Shots Fired), mountaineer, trained medic and overall bad ass. Weyland describes what they will be facing and she puts her foot down worried that the expedition will be over before it begins. Some of these cats don't look cardio ready enough but Weyland will go forward with or without her help. So off into the tundra they go.

Meanwhile miles above the Earth, a landing party comprised of three predators proceed past this forgotten oil refinery/whaling town and head below the ice to find...a big honking pyramid somehow almost perfectly preserved from even these harsh climate changes. Let's be clear. This stonework is completely intact after years of no direct contact with the existing weather patterns. Our team of expendable (Not in the Stallone and Statham way) archeologists want the audience to believe it is an Aztec temple and the hieroglyphs speak of a hunting ground as a rite of passage to being full hunters. An Aztec temple in the Antarctic, possibly Cambodian. Boy, that will be a big shock for Mexico won't it? Oh and before we get into the sweet, sweet action this SciFi/Horror movie is rated PG-13. Conclusion on that? More young butts in seats equals a viewing pleasure.

Action scene wise, this is visually awesome. Watching two of the nastiest critters going at it in full death match looks amazing. You can hear every growl, snarl, bones cracking, masonry being shattered. Awesome sauce.

The downside is the dialogue is typical of Anderson creations in that it has no depth, no time for character development and no one is particularly interesting at all. Exception our bad ass mountaineer, the rest could have been replaced with voice actors and CGI green screen characters. I couldn't remember a single character name attached aside from Weyland and Alex and I have a near perfect memory. Bottom line, the story is crap but the visuals are amazing. The characters are dull and unfinished but the FX, props and makeup are astounding. My advice? Hit mute, turn on close caption and watch it unfold.

Sadly, Kevin Peter Hall did not get to reprise his Predator role as he died in 1991. the animatronic Alien Queen was rigged with a motion control remote allowing her movements to be recorded digitally and saved for implementation for the film. 

Guess the queen is into BDSM??

Vampire Chicks with Chainsaws...no, really.

Hiya gang. Y'know I am no stranger to power tools and mutilations, right? The fact that a myriad of such home improvement apparatus used on creatures, sex starved teens and even a more than a plethora of deadites throughout the films I have either enjoyed with friends and family as well as some of the cankerous piles of congealed monkey vomit I have endured for this blog. So when you pick a title so far removed from the typical, you kind of deserve everything you get, correct?

Well this turdwaffle flew out of the screen and ulcerated my soul for the day so feel free to duck because there is some petty rage heading. This is (can't believe I am writing this title) Vampire Chicks with Chainsaws.

Behold the awesome power of...Debbie.

Now I would like to think for the most part, I try to remain objective to all the films I watch, but there are times and films when that is physically, psychologically and spiritually IMPOSSIBLE! When I have sat through nickel and dime films like Camp Blood, Zombies Vs Vampire and hell let's toss in that Bloodlust flick, these movies do not have much going for them. Maybe decent camera work. Perhaps an actor actually attempted to emote for this film or my personal favorite when these shoestring budgeters do not rely entirely on nudity. That being said, our VAMPIRE movie is primarily under the cover of mid-afternoon...when the creatures of the night are awake? Look, this is not the first non-budget flick I have endured. Remember Platoon of the Dead with the store bought Stormtrooper blasters, ketchup and oatmeal zombie effects?!! You have any idea what kind of therapy is required to get over that??!! Me either. I more or less forgot about it until this cheeseball movie. Also everything that has ever been written about the mythos of vampires is completely wrong according to brainchild writer/editor/director Carlos Don Diego whose very name sounds like he should be freeing Mexico from the Spaniards on a black horse, bullwhip and saber.

Ax-Man!

Grab yer hip waders because in we go. Our moving picture opens with a Sony purchased metal music score with a Native American cat in a black trench totting a Spas shotgun that screams I am an Airsoft gun. Chased by what looks like twin skinheads in the woods for no doubt eyeing their lemon drink. Punishment is death of course. In fact, he seems to be leading this half-assed team into the woods. Spoiler! Get used to seeing a lot of the woods.

Ancient spirits tell him.. well nothing according the soundtrack and none these guys look like they even had a crash course with a local S.W.A.T. Which actually makes your film a teensy bit more impressive if your characters look like they know how to handle a gun and rifle. Decent enough hand held drags one of the good ole boys offer to Sega Genesis 1993 Jurassic Park raptor sound effects so you know he's in trouble. The three are dispatched squirting Kool-Aid Ecto Cooler, possibly a lesser shampoo under the terrifying time of about 5 at night.

Hillbilly extrordinare Quinn Ash (Adam Abram of The Collectors, The Eleventh Hour, SAGA: Curse of the Shadow and One Shot) has a poorly ADA recording for a narrative and saws up some trees describing his sad existence. The metaphors and idioms are so blase you kind of wish to be deaf at this point. FYI, this is our third bald headed guy, I guess there was a quota or long hair is for sissies. Not sure. His trailer looks like it was abandoned 10 years prior. I am convinced there are the corpses of dead raccoon in it and they couldn't afford to lease one for the film.

After handing off the divorce papers for his ex-wife and her goofball redneck, our protagonist accidentally runs over a girl? Smooth move there. The girl jumps up and injects him with some sort of drug, warns him off about Karel will kill him to get what she has given him, bolts for the thick underbrush to be abushed by 4 scrawny looking guys with guns. What is Quinn to do? Other than pants them all, give them rope burns and make them cry.

Our movie drags for 17 minutes and then out of nowhere the vampire "chicks" with chainsaws just attack. Screw having the strength to punch through walls, best dice them up with with a McCulloch! A brand they couldn't afford again. Most of these chainsaws look like hedge trimmers. A vixen with bad highlights and for some reason in vinyl and pleather attacks our "hero" with several punches and kicks but doesn't gut him with...hmm maybe a CHAINSAW??!!!! Trailing down our doofus takes over 15 minutes and this damn narrative is back, capturing him are four scantily clad vampires lead by Karel (Jenna Lisonbee of Take a Chance, Vampire Chicks with Chainsaws, CTU: Provo and 1900 Joe). Around of being a punching bag for another 5 minutes, Quinn figures out they do not want him for a booty call. The gist is warring factions of the Chainsaw Chippies vs the Outlanders (Insert Children of the Corn joke) have been preying on each other for centuries blah blah Underworld did it better and apparently whatever the girl injected into Quinn can actually dispatch vampires forever...and yeah I was bored out of my skull for 93 minutes.

Sorry sexist pig folk, no nudity and the gore scenes are ratcheted down...guessing they didn't have the skill set, jump cuts or knew how to make proper fake blood. Karo and black food dye!!!

So if you like aliens, vampire girls and bald headed doofs, have at this stink nugget. You can probably find it on Youtube for a tooter and a titter.

There can be only one, Josie!