Schmollywood Babylon

Kongsploitation: Queen Kong (Frank Agrama, 1976)

Here's an idea, instead of a kongsploitation week I should have done a week of obscure spoofs, which I have a tendency to love and cherish more than what's healthy. Frank Agrama's Queen Kong belongs in both categories: a stupid comedy starring Robin Askwith and a lot of women in very little clothing AND a giant ape movie in the same vein as Goliathon and A*P*E. Agrama's spoof on Kong is actually extremely unfunny, but not without its merits. First of all, it reverses all the roles compared to the original King Kong: instead of leading lady Fay Ray we have Askwith as dope-smoking hippie Ray Fay, Rula Lenska plays Luce Habit, which of course is a take on the original actor Bruce Cabot... and then we have the title ape herself, Queen Kong - worshipped by a tribe of women who once in a while captures a man and feeds him to the ape. 

But this time the ape falls in love with him and of course it all ends up in London, where Queen Kong breaks free and starts to stomp down houses and becomes a feminsist role model. I'm not sure if there's an honest pro-feminist stance in this film, or if it's just spoofing the whole movement - it would be a pity if it was the last, because as an all-women comedy it's not that bad. It's just mostly unfunny. Hard to describe, but it's rare to see comedies where the women have the same amount of jokes - both word-plays and slapstick - as the men. That's something you rarely see even today, in this "enlightened" society. Askwith is not that fun, but still quite charming - I'm sure he was popular among the girls once upon a time. I actually think Rula Lenska is a lot more fun and perfectly captures a female version of the original's Carl Denham (that's why it's odd she's named after Bruce Cabot, Denham was played by Robert Armstrong!).

There's a lot of jokes here, at least - if not even more - on the same level as later flicks like Airplane and the same year's (brilliant) The Big Bus. Queen Kong even have a gag with a signing nun aboard an airplane! I guess that spoofs something from the Airport-films, but you know... every film with an airplane in peril looks the same and melts in to one boring piece of poo in my eyes. Except Airport '79 - pure brilliant considering the cheese-factor!

My biggest concern with the gags is that they're strangely out of sync. They never, never really fits in the rest of the script, being a bit too forced to feel natural. Not that these jokes must seem natural, but it's like watching your dad trie to tell a joke with modern references that he clearly doesn't understand. Thank Satan the monster action is quite fun, very cheap and with shitty effects, but at least it's not boring. The filmmakers used some real miniature town in Hampshire, about 55 miles outside London, which both is good (it looks quite nice) and bad (they can't really destroy anyhing!). Also watch out for some very early blue screen-effects, which could be right out from BBC sci-fi production quality-wise. And that's not necessary a good thing.

Queen Kong is clearly not for everyone. But if you like really, really, really, really bad jokes this might be the kongsploitation movie for you. 

Kongsploitation: King Kong (John Guillermin, 1976)

John Barry's score is among the best I've heard, and now - after rewatching King Kong - it's still the best thing with the movie. Not that it's a bad movie, far from actually, but the music by Barry really gives me goosebumps. Together with Laurence Rosenthal's masterful work for Ronald Neame's criminal underrated disaster movie Meteor, this is a score that literary creates the atmosphere of approaching danger, of doom. Just by writing about it gives me the chills. Not bad, eh? The first King Kong is basically THE movie that made me love cinema, made me love genre cinema to be more specific. You can read a little bit about it here. It took me many years to actually see the 1933 classic again, and before that one of the first tapes I ever bought was a x-rental of John Guillermin's King Kong, the blockbuster starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lang. 

I don't know why, but it's considered flop - but was actually a huge success! It costed the huge sum - at the time - of 24 million bucks, and generated 80 million at the box office. And according to some sources it went to break another record: "NBC bought the rights to air the movie and it was a ratings success. NBC paid De Laurentiis $19.5 million for the rights to two showings over five years; the highest amount any network had ever paid for a film at that time.". Not bad at all. Anyway, this is great, great adventure flick. It's dated and far from perfect, but it's also works very well even today (and I'm a big fan of Peter Jackson's 2005 version!). 

What doesn't work is Jessica Lange's underwritten bimbo. She's written as a naive, silly girl, someone who can't live with out men around her to save her from every problem that shows up. She's annoying. On the other hand, Lange is doing this character perfectly and there is, without a doubt, people like her. But together with Jeff Bridges environmentally conscious (and very hairy!) hero, it just seems so unlikely they ever would get along together. It's a very contrived part of the story, something that worked a lot better in both the old version and the latest. But it's also a part of the seventies, two cultures that clash. Which by itself is pretty interesting. 

The supporting parts is more interesting. From Charles Grodin and Rene Auberjonois to Julius Harris and Ed Lauter, a cameo by John Agar and super-sexy John Lone in an early part as "Chinese chef", this is a film packed with male talent. It's a pity the female characters are wasted on nothingness. I guess that's the closest it will come to the adventure romps of the 30's, even if Fay Wray had way more character. That old Republican bitch. 

Towards the end, after Kong breaks out from his cage, the movie is finally turning darker, the way the seventies treated their storylines. The sequence when Kong is shot down is bloody, bloody as hell considering this was rated PG. There's also some mayhem where he kills humans which still feels quite rough. If you've seen the deleted scenes there's even more action in the town, and it's a damn pity they removed it. Because the final, before the World Trade Center scene needs more action, more miniatures being destroyed.

But I guess you can't have it all.

Still a favorite movie of mine. Maybe because of nostalgia, but mostly because it's such a fun and crazy movie. You can see all the money that was spent on it, and especially the fantastic performance by Rick Baker and his ape-suit. Still impressive today. 

Blood Glacier (Marvin Kren, 2013)

Marvin Kren’s Blood Glacier might be the oddest monster flick I’ve seen in quite a while. Kren’s last film is the much talked about Rammbock, what I’ve heard it’s an oddity also, but with a zombie-twist. What he’s done here is taking the basic premise of The Thing (and some scenes actually), a little bit of John Frankenheimer’s The Prophecy and a dash of social-realistic drama and created an ecological thriller set in the German alps.

Gerhard Liebmann is Janek, a drunken technician responsible for the base camp in the Alps. The rest of the staff is geologists and no one really likes Janek. The shit hits the fan when Janek finds a red glacier, THE BLOOD GLACIER, who actually is filled with red algae and not blood, his dog gets bitten by something inside a nearby ice cave and soon becomes sick. When they’re back to the base again Janek steals some morphine and drifts away into the abyss of unconsciousness. When he wakes up its night… and he hears something behind the cabin, something very hungry…

To describe Blood Glacier could be very easy if I write “Scientists finds themselves surrounded by monsters up on a mountain”, but that would be to cheat the audience. For me Blood Glacier is a drama where Janek and his former girlfriend, Tanja (who’s on a hike together with a politican and a couple of other characters), will reunite and take care of the sick dog. There are some hints that their break-up had to do with getting a child or not, which makes everything – in several different ways – extra complex.

The actors are top-notch, this is realistic acting, far from the typical SyFy quality (which I expected without reading that much about the story) with lots of human touches. It strays into arty farty for a couple of moments here and there, but still – which is so damn strange – keeps exploitation atmosphere near. There are several nods to John Carpenter’s The Thing, and the one that actually works the best is the one that doesn’t end like in Carpenter’s movie. But you expect it to happen. As usual the American genre film critics over-use the word “gore” in their reviews. It’s violent and bloody, but not that much actually. It’s just not the important thing with it. The effects are cheap but effective, which also makes it even closer in style to Frankenheimer’s The Prophecy.  

The creature effects are highly original, but I don’t want to spoil the basic concept. You need to see this one!

Blood Glacier also has one of those endings which will divide the audience in two teams: love or hate. I liked it, but I need to see the movie again to fully appreciate it I think. Just don’t expect a typical creature feature… but still has in mind it’s a typical creature feature, just the very European way. I really need to see Rammbock now, after this experience.

Blood Glacier is way more original than the initial set-up and title hints. It dares to do something very traditional and twist it around a little bit, which will make some viewers very disappointed – but also make some of us happy. Let me know what you think!

Chillerama (various, 2011)

I've been wanting to see Chillerama for a number of years, even if most of the reviews out there have been mixed to negative. But you know, an anthology movie with one of the episodes named Wadzilla... I just can't resist that! I was almost expecting Lloyd Kaufman to do a cameo somewhere, because Chillerama in many ways feels like a movie from legendary production house Troma. It's not that far from the truth actually, considering Ron Jeremy has two cameos - one as the childrens TV-host Captain Fatso (you see, he's someone who can poke fun at his own look - I could never do that!) and also on a couple of photos in the porn mag Playbear, which is very funny.

So what the hell do we have here? First out is Adam Rifkin's Wadzilla, which also is the most ambitious and fun of them all. A man producers less and less sperms and those he produce is enormous! One day he just need to wack off, it's an emergency, and after a wild fight with the critter he think it's over because he flushes it down the toilet... but it only makes it more angry and grows bigger and bigger for every minute, until it's big enough to attack New York!

Wadzilla reminded me of the monsterboob episode in Woody Allen's Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask, except Wadzilla is a lot more gross and graphic in every way possible. The title - and poster within the movie - spoofs Gojira, of course, but the movie itself feels more something so strange as an American monster movie from the fifties - and colour! So it sure have an intersting look.There's a couple of very funny scenes here and the monster is well-made. Eric Roberts and Ray Wise makes cameos and there's enough sperm for the whole family!

I Was a Teenage Werebear have a fun concept, but because of the lack of money it looks very cheap and never captures that beach party feeling. It stars real-life gay porn star Sean Paul Lockhart as a young man who's confused over his sexuality - and when he's bitten by the leather tough guy Talon he gets infected by the bear-curse,  yes, when he gets horny he turns into a hairy, big man! A bear. I really think Sean Paul Lockhart makes his part work, he's a good actor and seems into the joke. In 2012 he starred in a movie called Buttfucked, sounds like a must. The atmosphere, even if its jokey of course, feels a bit harsh towards gay people. But because it spoofs a sixties beach movie/fifties teenage movie, it would be odd if they made the werebears too positive rolemodels. But the main problem is the style of the movie. It just doesn't feel to be made with enough passion... or money.

Adam Green's The Diary of Anne Frankenstein had a fun set-up, and looks very good, but this episode about Hitler himself discovering Anne Frankenstein's secret diary where she explains how make the dead live again fails on so may other levels. Mostly the comedy, which is the most important part in it. I saw this one yesterday and I honest can't remember that much. Yeah, there's one very fun joke where they use  an afro-american stuntman in one shot, which could be a very discreet reference to KISS meets the Phantom of the Park.

The wrap-around story, Zom-B-Movie, is set on the last drive-in theatre in the US, where they're having a final all night marathon of trashy movies - the above mentioned films. It's the second best part of the movie, with some decent acting, it looks great and cheap and fun gore. It's directed by Joe Lynch who also gave us the fun Wrong Turn 2. Time to watch that one again I think...

Chillerama is a mixed bag. If you expect something like Troma, but more coherent, this might be the movie for you. I could in all honest only have seen Wadzilla and been happy with that. But of course, then I wouldn't had the chance to see a constant half-naked Sean Paul Lockhart ;)

Caltiki – The Immortal Monster (Riccardo Freda, 1959)

Riccardo Freda, my dear friend. No, I didn't know him. He died in '99 and I never got a chance to communicated with him. I also heard, from a very initiated source, that he was a mean motherfucker. Not very pleasant at all. Actually, this person gave up the career because Freda kinda made him lose interest in making movies, because of the rudeness. Anyway, The Ghost is one of my favorite Italian horror movies. A smart and original (for its time) story with a few twists and turns, and Freda handles the direction to perfection! Caltiki on the other hand is a very different form of horror film compared to the quite low-key The Ghost, this is full-out monster mayhem with special effects signed by Mario Bava - who also completed the film for Freda. 

Somewhere in Mexico a team of archaeologists is investigating Maya ruins and comes across a mysterious well, underwater lake maybe is the more correct word. After diving there they find human sacrifices on the bottom together with lots of gold... and a huge fucking monster, a blob like no one ever seen before! Big and fleshy and who loves to suck the flesh of its victims! So of course they take a sample with them home to the civilisation... and guess what?! It's a very stupid thing to do! 

Caltiki might be the best monster movie of the 50's. It easly outshines the holy grail of blob-movies, The Blob itself - only to be surpassed by Chuck Russell's 1988 remake of The Blob. It's that good, and it's not only because Freda knows how to shoot a movie - this is, for its time, a graphic fucker with extremely impressive special effects. I'm not entirely sure how Mario Bava and his team did most of the Caltiki-monster effects. It's such an organic, realistic monster. Never seen anything like it before. The jelly used in The Blob pales in comparison.

Another thing is the script, which might not be that original, but feels ambitious and quite intelligent - like the filmmakers take the stuff seriously. The darkness in almost every scene both adds to the atmosphere and hides the low budget in shadows. A good old trick still used (for example by Donnie Yen in 1998's Ballistic Kiss). When Caltiki, this ancient monster of the Mayans finally breaks free in the civilized world, it's not to some big city - as the poster would hint - it's towards the mansion where the hero's family lives. It would have been awesome with a big city crumbling down, but this smaller - which isn't so small at all - affair of a finale is truly spectacular, using a mix of minatures and simple visual effects to make the monster more or less gulp the whole place!

It's nice with a 50's monster movie that doesn't references politics or paranoia. This is a good ol' adventure movie in it's core, but with a fantastic monster and some good characters. It's a rare thing, even for us who loves these old movies - but Caltiki delivers it all. It's a true monsterpiece. 

Big Ass Spider (Mike Mendez, 2013)

I love genre cinema made with humor, without destroying the genre elements with it. Movies like Arachnophobia, Tuck and Dale Vs. Evil, Tremors, Shaun of the Dead, Infestation, Spiders, Eight-Legged Freaks, Grabbers and Severance is real feel good movies to me. They build their success upon interesting and human characters, a dark sense of humor and of course also graphic violence. The latest in this specific genre is Big Ass Spider. One of my earlier memories of horror on DVD was actually this director's, Mike Mendez, debut movie The Convent. Uneven and sometimes just sloppy, but still with so much energy and fun that it was a hard one to resist. I like it anyway, but I know others who hate it. 

Big Ass Spider is the second big spider movie to open this year. The other was the fun Tibor Takács Spiders 3D, shot in one of those big studio lots in Romania and with a decent budget. Hardly a masterpiece, but which movies are that nowadays? Anyway, as a serious spider film I'll have to chose Spiders 3D, but as a warm and fluffy buddy comedy with a lot of spider action, Big Ass Spider for sure is the winner this year.

Greg Grunberg Alex, bug exterminator extraordinaire, finds himself bitten by a nasty little spider and ends up at the local hospital for treatment. At the same time a mysterious body is taken in, a body consisting a very hungry and aggressive spider. It bites a doctor, and somehow Alex ends up taking the responsibility to take care of the spider. What he doesn't know is that the military wants the same, and now they're taking over the hospital and - after some persuasion by Alex - takes him with them! But the spider grows and grows and grows, and soon the whole LA is in severe danger to be bug food!

Big Ass Spider was a nice surpirise. Imagine a creature feature with only nice and funny characters with warm personas and an optimistic viewpoint of life fighting human-eating giant spiders in a suntanned Los Angeles - yes, that's Big Ass Spider in a nutshell. And it's damn good also. The small budget (I guess!) shows from time to time, the spider effects ranges from so-so SyFy channel quality to really impressive. The big, huge scenes in LA at the end reminded me of Hyung-rae Shim's 2007 super-expensive South Korean monster movie Dragon Wars, but the latter film, this one, has a much better story and characters you care about. They're completely different movies, so don't worry (I, for one, likes Dragon Wars... but that's another story...).

The magic with this film, excepent the fun script, is the presence of charmig ordinary Joe Greg Grunberg, who together with his loyal security guard fan Jose (Lombardo Boyar) try to save the world. These to guys have so much chemistry together and it makes me wish it will be a big success and that will lead to more monster-killing adventures. A lot seem to have been improvisation, and it creates some hysterical dialogues and fine, classic American slapstick body language. While not as perfect - in my humble opinion - as Tuck and Dale Vs. Evil, it's success is only hampered by it's low budget. Outside that I have nothing to much complain about.

Also, watch out for a cameo by Troma guru Lloyd Kaufman!

It's a good one for the whole geek family. 

Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (Jonathan Winfrey, 1996)

1993's Carnosaur is one of my favorites from the factory of Roger Corman. I remember how I payed big money for a dutch VHS tape (I still have it) and found the longest trailer ever for Death Wish 5 - showing the entire movie, including the end. Very bizarre. Must have been a promo to distributors or something, I have no idea. But that trailer on the tape of Carnosaur made it one of my favorite possessions at the time. I watched it over and over again the first years and then I kinda forgot about it, DVD came and then it was lost in the very confusing labyrinth of memory lanes I have up in my brain. Until 2013 when I - as the last person possible - actually bought the mega-old DVD set released by New Concorde Home Video. Interestingly enought I didn't set out to watch the first movie - I'm gonna save it for a special day - but instead I threw myself over Carnosaur 2 - which I had some weak memories of, became bored and then abanoned the set for a month or two, until I felt that Carnosaur 3: Primal Species felt like the perfect movie.

And here I am, writing a review. Amazing, eh?

I have difficulties to find words how much I enjoyed Carnosaur 3, but I'm gonna try to at least give you the story: terrorists attack a convoy of trucks, hoping to find uranium, but instead they've unleashed the dinosaurs owned by the US government - and they're soon dead, leaving the dinos locked up inside a warehouse. There some militaries and a special team joins forces - without planning it - to finally take down the creatures once and for all - and it leads them to a ship, filled with even more of these bastards!

Yeah, my recollection of the story is very vague, and I'm writing this just minutes after finishing the movie. It's just nothing imporant. Like all good Corman movies from the 90's they're basically made to entertain, look good and sport some cheap gore and explosions. And that's EXACTLY what Carnosaur 3 do, and it do it very well. It's obviously very, very, very cheap, and the dialogue scenes suppose to be taken place at secret government facilities and offices are shot in extreme close-ups to hide the fact it's just a cheap set somewhere - and the rest is in a not-so-spectacular warehouse and inside a ship. 

The magic with Carnosaur 3 is the flow. It floooows like very few other dino-movies. There's virtually nothing boring at all with it - and it goes from action to action - from dinos to dinos and in three places it ends with a fun and cheap gore-effect (often someone getting their head bit off or an arm or so, fun fun fun!). The dinosaurs are left-overs from the first two parts of the saga, and finally we're treated with more footage of the quite impressive and cool giant t-rex animatronic used very sparsely in the first movie (I don't remember if it's used in part 2, sorry). Don't expect any realistic critters though, these are wonderfully stiff and seems to move on wheels around corners and out from dark places and doors.

It's cheesy, but very entertaining. Made with passion and love. Intensive attack sequences, actors who's having fun and a nice glossy look is what makes this second sequel a fine piece DTV-exploitation.

There's Nothing Out There (Rolfe Kanefsky, 1991)

Some people think that There's Nothing Out There only claim to fame is to have introduced the self-referencing humor in horror movies, just like some years later in Wes Craven's Scream. There's been earlier examples of similar ideas in Wacko, Student Bodies, Class Reunion - spoofing/satirizing horror conventions, but There's Nothing Out There might be a little bit more smarter and it's also not spoofing slasher movies, but good old monster movies. Anyway, there's so much more than the self-references in this film. It's not a bad horror/monster movie of it's own, even if it dwells deep down among the cheap movies that never got the respect it earns. Thanks to his parents, Rolfe Kanfesky, was able to shoot this flick in 24 days, based on a script he wrote in 5 days when he was 18 years old - hardly dry behind his ears. That's also one of the best things with the script, it feels like it was written by someone young and enthusiastic. The comedy feels natural and silly in that naive way only a kid could have written it. 

A bunch of youths goes out to one of their parents country house for a weekend of booze, breasts and bongs... well almost, there's at least booze and breasts available - and of course, sooner than later, a beast shows up. Maybe an alien beast or something else. It wants to mate and starts attacking the men and touching up the women, while one of them - a horror movie obssessed nerd - references horror clichés all the time. It's not much of a story, but it kinda holds together quite well.

The biggest problem, which also is the best thing with it, is that it never really dares to do something drastically different with the genre itself. It's exactly like an eighties monster movie (it was shot in 1989 by the way), just with some added humor. Most of the comedy is quite subtle, but witty and gave me a few laughs here and there. The only time I felt it stepped out from that wonderful little world Kanefsky created, was when it went into spoof-territory and one of the characters grabs the microphone boom and swings his way to safety from it. It breaks the fourth wall, which isn't bad - but it's a gag that drastically also breaks the rhythm of the movie. 

But enough whining. This is a smart and fun movie, or smart... I mean, it has more passion that intelligence, bigger ambitions than budget. The monster sure looks odd, a slimy tentacled blob with huge teeth, laser beams from the eyes and a taste for women. Like all really good tongue-in-cheek horrors it also have enough gore and blood to make the comedy get stuck in the throat, which I always welcome, but never gets disgusting. It makes me think of The Deadly Spawn, but a lot slicker and well-made.

Kanefsky - this is the only movie I've seen by him - makes the film looks like it had a bigger budget than it probably had. He uses the camera in the most creative ways, telling stories just with movements and skips the worst traps - like endless talking-heads and flat sceneries. He knows a movie needs to be a movie, and for being so cheap and shot so fast, it looks fantastic. I'm amazed its not more known and hailed out in the fan community.

Released by Troma in an excellent 2-disc DVD edition (the movie itself looks very good, which is uncommon for releases from Troma) and is well worth the money. Go get it!

Squirm (Jeff Lieberman, 1976)

Roaring worms. That's the key word in this entertaining 70's romp directed by the quirky and original auteur Jeff Lieberman. From the beginning Martin Sheen was cast in the lead, but after a discussion regarding a Shakespear-reference in the script Don Scardino (William Friedkin's Cruising - and later a very mainstream director himself) took the part as Mick, the big city boy coming to Georgie to meet a girl and fight - once again - the roaring worms. 

What I mostly enjoy with Squirm is the setting - and the last half of the movie - which feels very geniune, dirty and realistic. Which is understandable, because it was shot in rural Georgia using locals in the supporting parts. The story is basically that a storm hits a small town, turns over some electrical thingies, making the electricity go right down into the ground creating growling, screaming, roaring worms who just wanna eat some people! The act like ants, like one big mass of intelligence, so maybe - if it was a sequel - would we have seen one giant mother worm show up to create mayhem? That would be cool!

While the script is kinda slow during the first half, not bad though, just a bit slow, the last half is packed with fun worm-action and some pretty amazing low budget effects. The make-up was created by Rick Baker, and his knowledge is visible especially in the scene where the worms crawls into the face of one character, which still today looks very cool. The rest of the worm effects was created by everthing from printing the footage backwards, using boyscouts to hold up a carpet of worms covering a whole living room, using 250000 real works (who got electrocuted to move!) and 50-60000 fake rubber worms. 

Lieberman clearly have a sense of spectacular. The scene when one of the characters open an door all the worms falls out is a classic, so is also in the bar when the floor suddenly is covered with slimy, damn bastards. In a way Squirm is a good sibling to Juan Piquer Simón's 1988 classic Slugs, which is the comic book version of the same story - more colorful, cheesy and... stupid. Love 'em both of course! Can't live without slimy killer critters without hair!

Acting-wise... well, Don Scardino is the best and so is R.A Dow, the weird - and mysterious actor doing his only movie - playing the retardo-guy transforming into a worm-man (more or less, he's angry as hell anyway!). The rest is okay-ish, but it fits the show. The star is the worm and director Lieberman, who's visual talent is superiour to many more famous guys in the biz. Out now is a blu-ray from Arrow which - and I'm not exaggerating - looks so good it's not f**king true. I never seen this movie so clear, so crisp and without loosing any of its grindhouse-qualities. There's a good Q&A included, a featurette where Kim Newman rambling about the movie and Lieberman and a commentary track I haven't listen to yet. But I'm sure it's good.

After a few bumps along the way I think Arrow (together with Shout!) is the two main companies to trust nowadays. Cool fan-favorites for the first time on blu, not always the most obvious choices. I think I can forget Arrow for their (or their partners) bad behaviour to make fun of Luigi Cozzi in the bonus materials to several Italian classics. Maybe they've finally grown up?

The Eden Formula (John Carl Buechler, 2006)

John Carl Buechler, John Carl Buechler...what have ye done? And why do I love you so much? I bumped in to Mr Buechler a couple of years ago. Or actually he bumped into me - literary - in Germany, gave me a smile and said sorry and continued his journey out into the convention location. I regret I didn't talk to him, or at least made him sign something, because I love the guy. Sometimes it's a love-hate relationship, sometimes so much more than that - on both levels. It took me a few years to actually get myself a copy of The Eden Formula (no downloading indie movies for me!), mostly because of the nice cast: Tony Todd, Jeff Fahey, Dee Wallace and a rubber dinosaur.

The Eden Formula is so cheap the Carnosaur trilogy looks like the Jurassic Park movies. It's so cheap it looks like everyone's gonna start fucking any moment. It's so cheap the title could be "Rocco Siffredi presents: 101 Facials part 14". But it's impossible to dislike it. It might not be the best show Buechler have given us, but it's so non-boring it's adorable. Tony Todd and his gang of mercenaries breaks into a secret lab (surprise!) where Jeff Fahey, Dee Wallace and their team of experts have bred a huge motherf**king dinosaur. The female hacker of the team opens every door with few hacker-ish tricks and unleashes a very hungry dino! It eats half the team and then escapes out in the night... 

Alright, it might be two or three dinos, I'm not totally sure, but it's one mess of a script - very confusing, odd stock footage (sometimes in the wrong ratio) mixed with new dino-footage and very awkward dialogue performed by sometimes embarrassed actors (mostly Tony Todd, he's not comfortable at all) and an odd sense of humor. In one of the oddest scenes we're suddenly witnessing a martial arts fight - which turns out to be a movie being shot, which leads to a long dialogue exchange which ends in a bad joke connected to dinosaurs - which is the only reason why that scene exists. Brilliant. 

The script is pretty lazy, sometime Buechler did in his sleep, but here and there is some kind of inspiration - including a scene where the female baddie tries to bad-talk one of the male baddies, including "I bet you never had a girlfriend!", to which he replies "No, I'm gay!".  And that's that. The special effects are really "special". Some of it is lifted from Carnosaur (and maybe something from Carnosaur 2 and 3...), but there's a lot of original effects. Some of them quite gory, which is awesome. But if you want cheesy and silly dinosaur-puppets, this is the movie for you. There's a lot of them here, so much I actually had to film television set to prove to some friends what brilliant entertaining this is.

It would be easy to call this "so bad it's good", but I'm not one of those guys. I honestly like this piece of trash, because it's trash with a little bit passion and a little bit humor. More movies of this kind needs that, and John Carl Buechler really delivers what I expected! Respect!