One would think the nightmare notion that our next President could be a rotting orange racist would be all the horror and monsters a person could need. Yet here I am writing about a trio of movies I viewed last week. Compared to a Trump presidency, even the worst of these could be considered a “feel good” movie.
Pig Hunt [2008} was the best film of the three, which surprised me. I figured it for a typical “man-eatng monster versus mostly doomed to die characters in the woods” movie. It does have the man-eating monster in the form of a giant wild pig known as “the Ripper.” It does have a bunch of characters who you know aren’t going to make it to the closing credits. It does take place in the woods. Then it ups the ante in entertaining ways.
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
John [Travis Aaron Wade] takes his idiotic friends for a weekend of camping and hunting at his uncle’s cabin in the redneck backwoods area where he grew up. His girlfriend Brooks [Tina Huang] isn’t at all happy with his plans and invites herself on the trip, thereby elevating the intelligence of the group.
John’s friends are mostly assholes. They make fun of the locals and think they are great hunters and woodsmen. They’re like the dollar menu at the monster McDonald’s.
The locals are a seemingly inbred family of hunters and trappers. As a kid, John was boyhood friends with two brothers, who are even bigger assholes than his friends. There’s also a hippie community that grows marijuana in large quantities and not for just its own use. The family and the hippies will prove to be as big a threat to John and his group as the legendary wild pig that killed his uncle and remains in the background for most of the movie. Normally, I would feel cheated by a movie’s sparse use of such a creature, but this movie has so much other menace going for it that waiting for the Ripper didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
The city friends and the brothers go hunting. It ends baldy for one of the brothers. The redneck family vows vengeance on John and his friends. Some of the city friends prove to be better fighters than you would have expected. The hippie commune turns out to have more going on than naked hippie chicks and enough weed to supply Cheech, Chong, Harold, Kumar, Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson for ten years. The Ripper makes its presence known as well, even if we won’t see it clearly until the final scenes of the movie.
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
Pig Hunt is a genuinely suspenseful movie. Beset by peril on every side, John and his friends are in a seriously bad situation. While none of the actors deliver great performances, all of them do the job well enough that they never push the viewer out of the movie. The often fatal surprises never seem forced. The final battle with the murderous “Hogzilla” is worth the wait.
Neither the director [the late James Isaac] nor the writers [Robert Mailer Anderson and Zack Anderson] have extensive resumes in this kind of movie or, for the matter, movie making. Yet they delivered a pretty good horror/monster movie that makes me wish for more from them. Sadly, we won’t see any new work from Isaac, but I hope the writers take another shot at the genre.
On my just-invented rating scale of tasty barbeque, I give Pig Hunt four out of five slabs of succulent baby back ribs.
Pig Hunt [2008} was the best film of the three, which surprised me. I figured it for a typical “man-eatng monster versus mostly doomed to die characters in the woods” movie. It does have the man-eating monster in the form of a giant wild pig known as “the Ripper.” It does have a bunch of characters who you know aren’t going to make it to the closing credits. It does take place in the woods. Then it ups the ante in entertaining ways.
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
John [Travis Aaron Wade] takes his idiotic friends for a weekend of camping and hunting at his uncle’s cabin in the redneck backwoods area where he grew up. His girlfriend Brooks [Tina Huang] isn’t at all happy with his plans and invites herself on the trip, thereby elevating the intelligence of the group.
John’s friends are mostly assholes. They make fun of the locals and think they are great hunters and woodsmen. They’re like the dollar menu at the monster McDonald’s.
The locals are a seemingly inbred family of hunters and trappers. As a kid, John was boyhood friends with two brothers, who are even bigger assholes than his friends. There’s also a hippie community that grows marijuana in large quantities and not for just its own use. The family and the hippies will prove to be as big a threat to John and his group as the legendary wild pig that killed his uncle and remains in the background for most of the movie. Normally, I would feel cheated by a movie’s sparse use of such a creature, but this movie has so much other menace going for it that waiting for the Ripper didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
The city friends and the brothers go hunting. It ends baldy for one of the brothers. The redneck family vows vengeance on John and his friends. Some of the city friends prove to be better fighters than you would have expected. The hippie commune turns out to have more going on than naked hippie chicks and enough weed to supply Cheech, Chong, Harold, Kumar, Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson for ten years. The Ripper makes its presence known as well, even if we won’t see it clearly until the final scenes of the movie.
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
Pig Hunt is a genuinely suspenseful movie. Beset by peril on every side, John and his friends are in a seriously bad situation. While none of the actors deliver great performances, all of them do the job well enough that they never push the viewer out of the movie. The often fatal surprises never seem forced. The final battle with the murderous “Hogzilla” is worth the wait.
Neither the director [the late James Isaac] nor the writers [Robert Mailer Anderson and Zack Anderson] have extensive resumes in this kind of movie or, for the matter, movie making. Yet they delivered a pretty good horror/monster movie that makes me wish for more from them. Sadly, we won’t see any new work from Isaac, but I hope the writers take another shot at the genre.
On my just-invented rating scale of tasty barbeque, I give Pig Hunt four out of five slabs of succulent baby back ribs.
KillerSaurus [2015] is maybe 10% as exciting as its DVD cover art. Here’s the back cover copy:
When a scientist runs short of funding for his life-saving medical research, he accepts an investment from a shadowy military organization to finish his work. But, in return, he is forced to use his new technology to create the ultimate battlefield weapon - a full size Tyrannosaurus Rex, who is ready to break free and start the ultimate battle with the human race.
That summary isn’t even close enough for government work.
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
Written and directed by Steve Lawson, this 75-minute movie has one good character and performance, but little else. When it ends, it seems like it ended one reel short of the actual ending. My guess is that ran out of money. A $60 budget doesn’t go as far as it used to...and yes I’m being snarky.
Professor Peterson [Steven Dolton] has developed a 3-D Bio-Printing technique that, when successful, will allow him to create working human organs for transplants. He is highly motivated because he has a daughter waiting for a transplant and not likely to survive long enough to work her way up the list. His daughter dies on the night of the fateful experiment that creates a T-rex. This ends badly. Workers are killed. His research facility is shut down. Those who survived are laid off without severance pay.
The professor is the one good character, which makes Dalton the one good actor. He succeeds in making Peterson a basically decent but morally shaky man. It’s a good job in a bad movie.
Nagged by her investigative reporter boyfriend, researcher Amy goes back to the facility to talk to the professor. In short order, the boyfriend ends up locked in the holding area for the guess-what’s-still-live dinosaur. The head of the shadowy organization shows up to claim the result of his investment. A soldier gets gene-spliced with T-Rex cells, killing his boss before the large-scale model of the real T-Rex bites his head off. Amy and the Professor escape and decide not to save their research and then...
Nothing. That’s it. No T-rex escaping from the research complex for that ultimate battle with the human race. Nope. The movie ends as the Professor proclaims some research isn’t worth saving in such a calm voice that I expect he then invited Amy for a nice cup of tea. Not even a “sorry about your boyfriend.”
The T-rex is a joke. It looks like a giant model being pushed from behind by stage hands. Its only movement is when it lowers its head to eat the gene-spliced soldier.
The research facility is the usual warehouse with bad lightning so the viewers won’t realize they are seeing the same stairwell over and over again. I did realize this.
Outside of Dalton’s performance, the only other interesting element of the film is the shadowy organization wanting to create dinosaur-human hybrids for use in combat. That could make for a fun movie.
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
On a scale of 3-D printed body parts, KillerSaurus rates one out of five middle fingers.
While at a slumber party, twelve-year-old Olivia is blamed for the horrific and mysterious death of her friend after singing a song, created by a reclusive mastermind, Milo [Michael Jai White], which summons a demonic figure known as “The Crooked Man.” Returning to her hometown six years later, a string of unusual deaths lead Olivia [Angelique Rivera] to believe that she's still being haunted by whatever she saw that fateful night. Once you sing the rhyme, everyone in the house is cursed to die by his hands.
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
White doesn’t have much of a part in this movie. Most of the movie centers on the efforts of Rivera and Cameron Jebo, playing a young police officer who was also on the scene of the earlier murders in that he was peeking into the windows of the house. Being near the house also counts.
Olivia was blamed for the murder of a friend in the first killing. Released from the sanitarium where she was sentenced until turning 18, she returns to a town that hates her. Her return releases the Crooked Man to continue what he started. It takes a few murders to convince her former friends that the supernatural killer has come back to kill them anew.
“The Crooked Man” is a shaky special effect that gets old because the movie doesn’t get very creative with it. The best use is when the hands of a musician (the babysitter during the slumber party) are broken in front of us. The end scene with the sudden appearance of a crooked house in the woods also works well.
The spookiest thing about the movie are moms Amber Benson and Dina Meyer. Benson is the mother of the girl slain at the slumber party. Her pain defines and unhinges her. However, she is the very model of sanity next to Meyer’s character.
Meyer’s character is living in the past, like the past a decade or two prior to the slumber party. She dresses like a 1950s housewife. She dresses her 18-year-old daughter, who was also at the slumber party, as if the young woman was twelve years old or even younger. She won’t let her daughter leave the house unless she’s with her. You could have made another scary movie with just Meyer’s deranged character. Someone should.
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
Directed by Jesse Holland, written by Peter Sullivan with co-story credit going to Jeffrey Schenck, The Crooked Man is pretty much your standard “Bloody Mary” horror movie. It’s quite watchable, but not entertaining enough for repeat viewing.
On a “names you shouldn’t say out loud” scale, I give The Crooked Man a respectable “Candyman Candyman Candyman” out of a possible “Candyman Candyman Candyman Candyman Candyman.”
I’ll be back tomorrow with more stuff.
© 2016 Tony Isabella
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