Monday, June 4, 2018

MONDAY DOUBLE FEATURE

There was a time when Syfy (formerly the Sci Fi Channel and Sci Fi) could be counted on to broadcast a fun new monster movie every few weeks. Alas, those days are long gone. We get a bunch of new shark flicks for Sharknado Week, but, beyond that, the pickings are as slim as the leftovers after a giant gila monster or Sasquatch has dined on some hapless human.

I love those cheesy monster movies. Which is why I knew I’d have to watch Lake Placid Legacy [2018], even though the advance press made it clear this new giant crocodile movie wasn’t tied to the earlier Lake Placid films in any way.

Here’s the Internet Movie Database summery:

Legacy finds the team of young explorers out to reveal the secrets of an area removed from modern day maps and hidden behind electric fences. However, once they reach the center of the lake, they discover an island that harbors an abandoned facility with a horrific legacy: the island is home to a deadly predator eager to feast on those dumb enough to ignore the warnings. But before they can turn back, our hapless heroes get dragged into a battle for their lives and will need to work together if they hope to survive.

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This relaunch of the Lake Placid franchise fails on every level. It lacks the geographical splendor of the original movie. It lacks the interesting characters. Instead, it’s the story of a pharmaceutical company trying to garner huge profits by creating giant crocodiles and somehow using them to create vaccines. Seeing as how they got the hell out of that area without even bothering to get rid of the crocodiles, I’m guessing their plans didn’t work out.

From what I could gather, the cast, director and writers have done more TV than movies. Katherine Barrell and Tim Rozon are regulars on Wynonna Earp, one of the shows I hope to watch in the very near future. The rest were unknown to me.

The “young explorers” are actually eco-warriors set on exposing the company’s wrongdoing. Joining them are the guy who runs their boat and the former soldier who works with him. The latter has moments of coolness, but her dialogue is pretty awful. Not that any other dialogue is better.

The most likeable character is a young tech wizard. Once the boat guy and the black guy were killed, I figured he’d be the next to go and I was correct. The rest of the cast: the arrogant leader of the group, his girlfriend, the sister of the girlfriend who is also a reporter, the arrogant leader’s even more arrogant rival and a mad scientist trying to recover data. I think the scientist is mostly there to explain what was going on at the secluded research center.

We barely get a decent glimpse of the giant crocodile(s) until the end of the movie. After it’s killed everyone but the sisters, we do get a pretty good scene of the older sister taking the creature out with a bulldozer and a fire and an explosion. Clearly, that’s where the movie spent its doubtless meager budget.

In the kind of final scene I hate, the two sisters are swimming to what appears to be safety. Once out of frame, a second, hither-to-unmentioned crocodile breaks the surface of the water behind them. I saw this coming ten miles away. It’s just that kind of cheap-ass monster movie.

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Lake Placid: Legacy runs 90 minutes. It’s wasn’t worth that much of my life. Avoid it.
                                                                                  

Blood Tide is a 1982 UK/Greece horror film directed and written by  Richard Jefferies and co-written by Nico Mastorakis. It stars James Earl Jones, José Ferrer, Lila Kedrova, Mary Louise Weller, Martin Kove, Lydia Cornell and Deborah Shelton. The movie contains a quick shot of boobies, not particularly convincing gore and a extremely shy monster who is rarely seen clearly. Here’s the IMDb synopsis:

An adventurer hunting for treasure in Greece accidentally frees a monster that forces local villagers to sacrifice virgins.

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Newlyweds Kove and Weller have come to a secluded Greek island in search of Kove’s somewhat demented sister (Shelton). The sister has some sort of mystic connection to the monster, which might be the result of her stripping away layers of a painting to reveal ever more terrifying images of the creature and its victims.

Ferrer is the mayor of the island and kind of a dick. He does not like outsiders messing around his island and has a special dislike for Jones. Taking their cue from Ferrer, the island children also behave badly. If you want to take this as foreshadowing of Donald Trump’s power over his insane followers, be my guest.

Outside of Jones, his girlfriend (Cornell), Kove and Weller, every one else on the island is pretty gloomy. They know the legends of the monster and the virgin sacrifices are true. They know that the monster is back because it kills a whole bunch of women before the movie is over. And, even after the monster is killed, they really want the surviving outsiders to get the heck off Synanon, the name of the island. Whatever “Synanon” means, it sure isn’t friendship.

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Jones gives a commanding performance. Most of the other actors are okay. The movie has some decent moments of suspense, but many more moments of tedium. The appearance of the monster is more goofy than terrifying.

This is the U.S. cut of the movie, which runs 82 minutes. There’s a longer UK cut that runs 97 minutes. I’m assuming the additional 15 minutes have more gore, more nudity and more grim people talking about how grim things are.

Blood Tide is worth watching once, mostly for Darth Vader taking a vacation from the Dark Side of the Force.

I’ll be back tomorrow with more stuff.

© 2018 Tony Isabella

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