Bloggy Tony has been going through a rough patch lately. It’s not the Covid-19, but it is a frequent state of anxiety and exhaustion. It’s as if I was some kinda 69-year-old overweight man with type 2 diabetes or something. When I’m only 68 years old. Well, at least for one more month.
Last Saturday, I was more useless than usual. I slept in fitfully until noon. When I dragged my ass out of bed and onto the couch in our dining and entertainment room, I watched three movies on Amazon Prime. I decided I would feel less slothful if I wrote about them for today’s bloggy thing.
First up was Moose aka Moose the Movie, a 2015 comedy that was made in Alaska by Alaskans and starred Alaskans. In fact, it was shot in Wasilla where Sarah Palin served as mayor and on the city council. Palin does not appear in the film, which had an estimate budget of $100,000. According to the Internet Movie Database, $64,000 of that was raised by a Kickstarter campaign.
The film was directed by G. Logan Dellinger. It was written by Chad Carpenter, creator of the syndicated comic strip Tundra, and Darin Carpenter. Several better known cartoonists are thanked in the end credits. Here’s the IMDb summary of the movie:
In the small town of Gangrene Gulch, Alaska, the new Park Ranger, Zach, arrives at his post just in time to investigate a string of suspicious deaths. He teams up with Mike the veteran ranger and Sam the beautiful and determined young coroner's assistant to solve the murders. The hilarious residents of the rural Alaskan town must turn to the rangers to save them from the half-man half-moose, moosataur.
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The movie starts with an “animated” sequence showing the legend of the moose monster. It’s a series of comic-strip images, that sure sign of a very low budget. Kept in the underworld by a mystic totem pole, the creature is released when a couple of hunters burn said totem for a campfire. Let the ketchup and cherry juice flow!
Zack Lanphier plays the new park ranger. He looks like exactly the kind of sad sack who would end up in an insane small town where the mayor is am actual chicken and where puppets work as the town diner waiter, the town diner cook and the coroner. Those puppets work almost as hard as the slovenly brothers who are clean-up crew for the victims of the moosataur, tow-truck drivers and ambulance drivers, all from the same beat-up truck. It’s that kind of town.
Chantel Grover is Samantha the coroner’s assistant. She gets some great moments in the film. She constantly reminds the clean-up crew that they should not field-dress the victims before bringing them to the morgue. Near the end of the film, when her and Zack make a last stand against the monster, she recoils in amazement that the ranger tries to kiss her. It’s all about the timing.
Tom Gammill, who plays the veteran ranger, is the most accomplished of the actors. His matter-of-fact acceptance of all the nutty folks in Gangrene Gulch sells the movie. This is not surprising when you look at his writing credits: Saturday Night Live, Late Night with David Letterman, It’s Gerry Shandling’s Show, Seinfeld, Monk and The Simpsons.
The revived moose monster racks up a large number of victims as he rampages across the woods. The monster suit isn’t terrible, though some of the lead-ins to the victims made me grit my teeth. Notable among the scenery chewing is a group of “hippies” who get ripped to shreds. Don’t do drugs, kids.
Zack and Sam research the moosataur legend and find the only way to destroy the creature once and for all. However, how that happens is a delightful surprise.
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My reaction to the film, which I started twice because of the less-than-compelling opening scenes, is that I didn’t hate it. It’s not something I’d watch a second time, but it was entertaining. Maybe a bit long at 104 minutes, but goofy fun nonetheless.
Far and away, Uncaged [2016] was the best movie of the three. This Dutch horror film was written and directed by Dick Haas. Here’s the IMDb summary:
A zoo veterinarian gets caught up in a grisly adventure as she finds herself leading the city-wide hunt for a monstrous lion terrorizing the Dutch capital of Amsterdam.
On the surface, this movie is not dissimilar to Jaws. You have your man-eating creature. You have authority figures who don’t want to close the parks and create a panic. You have a trio of interesting characters who have a damn lion to catch. I don’t deny those Jaws tropes. However, I’ve seldom seen a movie that uses them as well as does this one.
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We don’t get to see the lion right away, but it gets right down to slaughtering a family: oldest daughter, her boyfriend, husband, wife, a second very young daughter. We’re spared the gory details, but it’s gut-wrenching when the police find the bloodied nightgown of the little girl.
Lizzy [Sophie van Winden] is summoned to the scene by a policeman she’s worked with before. She confirms his fears. Before long, the lion has struck again and again. Some of those attacks are pretty surprising, so I’ll let you discover them for yourselves.
Also involved is Lizzy’s estranged boyfriend Dave [Julian Looman], a cameraman for a TV newscast, and Jack [Mark Frost], a once-famous hunter and Lizzy’s former paramour. Initially, the chief of police passes on hiring Jack in favor of bringing in his brother-in-law. Bro-in-law has hunted lions on safaris, albeit lions who were doped to the gills to make killing them easier and safer. Unfortunately, our lion has said “no” to drugs.
Jack has a multitude of problems. He’s in a wheelchair because he lost a leg to a lion. To Jack’s credit, he shot the lion smack dab between the eyes while the lion was eating him. He has more than a bit of a drinking problem and he’s dying of cancer. Yet his jungle smarts are way beyond anyone else trying to bring down this lion. Even Dave takes a liking to him.
As in Jaws, we have three likeable heroes. Far from infallible. But courageous and inventive when they need to be. I was on the edge of my seat, especially during the final confrontation between the good guys and the lion in a spooky morgue.
I won’t tell you about that confrontation or its aftermath. Trust me. This is a movie you want to see.
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Some quick trivia:
No concrete explanation is given as to how the lion ends up making Amsterdam its feeding ground. One expressed possibility is that it escaped or release from a secret private zoo owned by a drug dealer or some other millionaire.
Though the lion was intended to be CGI, that would’ve cost a third of the film’s budget. A detailed, manually operated animatronic lion was used for close-up scenes with a CGI lion used for the few scenes showing the entire lion.
The movie’s original title was Prey and that’s the name it appears under on the IMDb. On Amazon Prime and on the DVD released earlier this year, it’s Uncaged.
I enjoyed the bejabbers out of Uncaged. It’s one of the best Jaws-inspired movies I’ve seen and, as my regular readers of this bloggy thing know, I’ve seen an awful lot of Jaws-inspired movies. Check this one out. You won’t be disappointed.
Last and least of my movie marathon was Llamageddon [2015]. It was also the shortest of the three films with a running time of just 69 minutes. How short is that? During the end credits, the entire film is speeded up and shown again. The. Entire. Film.
Llamageddon was directed by Howie Dewin; it’s his only credit as a director or an actor. You’ve never heard of any of the other actors either. Here’s the IMDb summary:
A killer llama from outer space crash lands on Earth and brings death and destruction to everyone in its path.
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The back story of how the alien llama got to earth is told through comic-book pages that are worse than those in Moose. There’s what seems to be a mass llama migration. This llama’s spaceship, which looks like a common horse trailer, is knocked off course and lands on Earth. It starts killing people by stomping on them or blowing them up with some sort of explosive eye beams.
Our main characters are a brother and sister. She’s a popular girl and he’s an awkward nerd. They are watching the home of their dead grandpa. She throws a party. Before long, there are lots of horny young people for the llama to slaughter.
By the time the kids figure out they need to run for their lives, there are only five of them left. One of them is a guy transformed into a semi-llama. The alien llama has non-consensual sex with the guy and, before long, the guy is popping out llama eggs. As if one alien killer llama wasn’t enough.
We’re down to three kids - the brother, the sister and the layer of llama eggs - for the final confrontation at Grandpa’s barn. Enter the father of the siblings. A military man who quickly assesses the situation and takes action. He’s the only kind of sort of likable character in the movie.
The movie is filled with gross attempts at humor and drunken sex. The only thing I liked about it was that the means dear old Dad uses to end the llama threat was in place early in the film. Yes, I called it from the moment I saw it, but I was still glad to see even this merest example of decent storytelling.
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I know that, even if I tell you not to watch this movie, you will still watch it. I mean, how many fans of horror/monster movies can resist a film called Llamageddon? Just remember that I warned you.
That’s it for today’s bloggy thing. I’m started to get my writing mojo back, so I hope to be back soon with more stuff.
© 2020 Tony Isabella
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