Month: February 2018

UNKNOWN ACTORS DEAD DEBUT IN SNAKE REMAKE:

Greed, revenge, and pride are all good reasons to chase a giant whale (or snake) to your own demise. And the trailer for “Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid”, in which a boatload of one-dimensional characters crashes over a waterfall into a “snake orgy”, clearly hopes to make us interested in their fate.

But what compelled director Dwight Little to make “Anacondas” so soon after Luis Llosa's 1997 "Anaconda" set the high-water mark for the snake version of a Moby Dick film?

Llosa’s film benefited from the under-employed talents of Ice Cube, Eric Stolz, Owen Wilson, and some actress named Jennifer Lopez. Little’s film gives us a monkey mascot, albeit a monkey smart enough to abandon ship just before his cast of unknown actors goes over the cliff.

Llosa’s film cast creepy Jon Voight as the snake-hunting madman chillingly channeling Captain Ahab. Little’s film features Johnny Messner as the lead in its gallery of victims, an actor previously seen in “Operation Delta Force 4” and the “Guiding Light” TV soap opera.

A visit to the movie’s website reveals the real reason this film was made: video games (this is, after all, a Sony picture). The site promises “hours of play” from both the arcade and the 200-megabyte PC version of the game. Those with slow internet connections are encouraged to “start the download in the evening and let it run overnight.” While you’re waiting, why not also download some buff Johnny Messner desktop wallpaper images from the movie’s website?

Better yet, run out to BlockBuster and grab Llosa’s “Anaconda”. By the time the snake cuts off Jon Voight’s final monologue, your free video game will be ready.

This post is from a 2004 pitch for a series of columns in which I proposed to review awful movies by watching their trailers. It didn't sell.

Seed of Chucky or Cheese of Chucky?

By the end of 1998's terrible "Bride of Chucky", the re-animated doll possessed by the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray had killed his girlfriend Tiffany and re-animated her soul inside the body of a child's bridal doll.

We had hoped this unimaginative storyline brought the final death of writer and director Don Mancini’s impulse to continue his "Child's Play" filming spree. But like the ever revivable Chucky, Mancini has returned with a fifth installment, "Seed of Chucky". The trailer's snarling red-eyed fetus suggests Mancini has finally discovered something more horrible than yet another 90-minute doll killing spree: parenthood.

Sixteen years after the original "Child's Play" was released, and with few other writing credits to his name, Mancini could be accused of blatantly milking his only franchise. Perhaps he's the one currently selling all those "new in box" Chucky dolls on eBay for less than the price of a movie ticket.

Either way, if puppets and dolls killing people is your idea of rock 'em, sock 'em action, then come this film's Halloween release date consider Netflix-ing David Schmoeller's 1989 "Puppet Master" and all seven of its sequels instead.

This post is from a 2004 pitch for a series of columns in which I proposed to review awful movies by watching their trailers. It didn't sell.