I admit I wasn’t expecting much from “Slither”, basically because it looked so utterly cheesy, and in spite of Nathan Fillion’s presence, I just couldn’t find anything that could sell me on it. Surprisingly, I was wrong about it. A basic remake of “Night of the Creeps”, James Gunn’s “Slither” strives to be its own entity, and in many respects he succeeds in attempting such an endeavor. “Slither”, a throwback to fifties B movies with aliens, monsters, and zombies is stupid, and Gunn embraces the stupidity with scenes that are often ridiculous, but I was never bored. “Slither” in its stupidity is also pretty funny, and with the great cast it sports, I accepted the ridiculousness. And even from a Troma alumni like Gunn, I expected stupidity. It’s your usual B movie fodder.
Tag Archives: Aliens
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Director Garth Jennings mimics Ivan Reitman’s style, and sick humor down to every particular inch, and until I read up on this film, I’d convinced myself Reitman directed this. For a film that starts off with a musical number involving fleeing Dolphins singing “So long and thanks for all the fish!”, it’s obvious you’re going to get something new. I thought the dolphins would be CGI and animated, but having the song play while stock footage of Dolphins run on a loop is further proof of that not taking itself too seriously hypotheses. And its hard to hate something that sports a cast like John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, and Alan Rickman, it’s hard to go wrong, and I had fun.
H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds (2005)
No, this is not that movie with that religious maniac, the screaming girl, and the psychotic liberal they meet in a basement, this is that other more low-budget remake of the H.G. Wells’ classic, and much like everything these days, these brilliant authors are added to the front of these titles to instill a sense of credibility. Little do these studios know that these authors would consider these films abominations, because they are. Like every bad movie, I watch with the hope–and some would say naiveté–that these movies won’t be as bad as I’ve heard, yet I’m always wrong. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel to pick flaws from a film that has a relatively low budget, but could they have squeezed out a logical, coherent story in the process? Even Pal was able to give a great story along with–what is considered today–ancient special effects.
Doom (2005)
I don’t play video games anymore. Yes, call me a freak all you want, but I’m not the one spending over five hundred dollars for a ridiculous new game system that will be obsolete in two years. Either way, I used to play video games, but the game “Doom” was never my milieu. It was too much of a fast-paced game and I never gained interest, but I know the basic gist of the narrative involved. So, you can imagine my dismay with the utter abysmal alterations made to the storyline turning it from nihilistic action horror to cookie cutter action science fiction (and don’t feed me that “But it’s based on Doom 3” crap).
War of the Worlds (2005)
Spielberg has always shy away from making films involving aliens that were actually aggressive. His was a role to make the aliens more human friendly, and kind, so it was quite a surprise when he signed on to direct this remake which featured prominently aggressive aliens exterminating the human race. As much I truly wanted to hate this remake–and I really did–I couldn’t deny that this was one hell of a film, that only Spielberg could have mustered up. It’s another remake, sure, but I actually managed to like it a lot.
Alien 51 (2004)
[In reference to our main character Cleo]
Randy: Does she seem a little off to you?
Officer: She’s hot, Randy. She can be as off as she wants.
It’s a pretty safe bet that “Alien 51” is quite possibly one of the worst science fiction monster movies I’ve ever seen. I challenge you to find something else so creatively impotent, so utterly derivative, and so nonsensical as the movie I spent ninety minutes drudging and fast-forwarding through. Nothing in this film makes the slightest lick of sense, and it’s clear that either the script was horribly done, or the directors lost so much money, they literally spent the second half simply winging it, coming up with a remaining plot that is so stupid. You know a movie is desperate when it’s biggest star is Heidi Fleiss, you know a movie is desperate when it boasts “Starring Heidi Fleiss”, and you know a movie is desperate when its big attempted draw-in was a has been model who appears as a mustache twirling villainess.
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2004)
Ranger Brad: We take our horrible mutilations seriously around these parts.
What “Cadavra” has above the rest of the lot for spoofing old B movies, is it just screams for the dudes at “Mystery Science Theater” to spoof it. “Cadavra” is essentially a B movie spoofing B movies from the fifties and many times it really manages to pull off the gags. The director has obviously done his research to a great extent with much of the flaws, plot holes, and immense lack of continuity provided with schlock sci-fi films even going down to the horrible props including cheesy alien costumes, a spaceship that looks like cardboard, and often times the props re-appear in another scene ala Ed Wood; and there are many scenes that just mimic those of the fifties including animal stock footage used for the actual film, which was a common practice then.