Komodo vs Cobra (2005)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Cinetel Films

RUNTIME: 94 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A genetically-engineered Komodo Dragon and King Cobra have become ginormous creatures hunting people on a remote tropical island. A small group of scientists must stop the creatures before they escape the island and destroy the rest of the world.

REVIEW: While Komodo vs Cobra seems to be advertised and constantly referred to as a sequel to Curse of the Komodo, it's actually more correct to look at it as a remake, despite being made not even a year later. It has the exact same plot, filmed in the exact same locations, complete with exact same military subplot with the exact same outcome of said subplot, beat-for-beat and pretty much word-for-word. If, like me, you've already seen Curse of the Komodo then you've already seen this movie, just replace some of the Komodo scenes with a Cobra.

There are only three differences - First, the group that happens upon the island in this one is a group of Environmental Activists instead of bank robbing fugitives. Second, the giant komodo dragon now has less screen time, as it's screen time is shared with a giant cobra as well. And third, the special effects aren't as good as they were in the first movie. Those three aspects aside, this is literally the exact same movie, even with cameos by some of the actors from the first movie, playing different roles this time around.

Also interesting to note, this movie stars Jeri from Season 2 of Survivor (and countless of the All-Star seasons), and she actually wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting her to be once I saw her pop on-screen. I think she needs to stop appearing one every other season of Survivor and get back into the B-movie game, cause she was quite the pleasant surprise here.

Despite being a direct clone of Curse of the Komodo, there's nothing especially bad in the movie, other then the CGI creature effects, and the only reason I don't like this is because I've just watched the other one and this is exactly the same movie. If it was the other way around and I had watched this one first, then I'd probably be preferring this movie to that one instead.


6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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The Curse of the Komodo (2004)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Royal Oaks Entertainment

RUNTIME: 92 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A genetically-engineered Komodo Dragon has become a ginormous creature hunting people on a remote tropical island. A small group of scientists must stop the dragon before it escapes the island and destroys the rest of the world.

REVIEW: After having watched some of his more recent work, I was in the mood to go back and watch one of Jim Wynorski's previous movies that I hadn't yet seen, and since I love creature features I figured Curse of the Komodo was a good one to start with.

Right off the bat I was pretty surprised that the military Special Ops team in the opening minutes were not the main characters like I had initially thought, and that the Doctor they were sent there to evacuate turned out to be the main character, and for once he was not evil, nor did he create the giant Komodo Dragon on purpose - It was a byproduct of his formula for growing larger super vegetables, funded by the military, and he's actually doing all he can to keep himself and his crew away from that thing (including a pretty cool Starship Troopers 2-style electric perimeter). A group of fugitives land on this island in the middle of the night, due to the severity of the storm keeping them from going any further, and I was once again left pretty surprised to see two of them being played by Paul Logan from his pre-Asylum days, and the main Chicky from Raptor, since I had no idea they were in this and I enjoy both of them (One for his acting, the other for her looks - ha).

The monster effects looked pretty decent, though I wish the creature had more to do other then just show up, stand there in one spot while they shoot at it some, then turn and leave - That's pretty much all it does for 90% of its scenes in the movie. Still, it looked cool all the same, and I actually like most of the human characters so I didn't mind spending some extra time with them. This movie also made me realize how much I really miss monster B-movies that take place at night and/or during massive rain storms. It adds a level of atmosphere that isn't there for daytime scenes, and most monster movies these days seem to take place entirely during bright day scenes.

This one was a definite surprise for me as I wasn't expecting much at all and ended up really enjoying my time spent watching it - only thing that could have made it better for me was some better Giant Komodo Dragon action.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Piranhaconda (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Horizons

RUNTIME: 84 mins

FORMAT: T.V.

PLOT: A low-budget horror movie crew, inept kidnappers, and a reptile expert battle a monstrous anaconda/piranha hybrid in the middle of the Amazon jungle. 

REVIEW: Piranhaconda premiered earlier this evening on the SyFy Channel as part of it's 'Most Dangerous Month on Television' campaign, and I wanted to rush and get this review written and posted while the movie was still fresh in my mind, and right off the bat I have to be honest here - I was not impressed with this one. It was nowhere near as entertaining as Sharktopus or as fun as Dinocroc vs Supergator had been, and it wasn't even as good as Camel Spiders was, all of which have also been made by the same crew of people.

A big problem with Piranhaconda is that there's no overlaying plot in the slightest until over halfway through the movie, so a good 70% of the movie is mostly just random generic scene after random generic scene that could  have easily been placed in any random order without changing the movie one iota, with an occasional misc death scene sprinkled in there. Then when they do finally put some form of plot in (I.E. the kidnappers attempting to put their plan in motion, and the film crew having to try to escape from them), it's mostly just boring, uninteresting and totally takes away from the rest of the movie and what people are actually watching a movie called Piranhaconda for - the damn Piranhaconda! They actually go almost half an hour without showing the creature at all, to focus on this uninteresting subplot of boring, terribly-acted human villains.

Adding to all of that, the title creature itself is very uninteresting as well. Giant snake with a piranha head? Other then visually, how is that any different at all then a regular giant snake? Change the visual model of the creature's head, and nothing else at all, and you could slap Anaconda 5 onto the title of this movie instead and have it fit perfectly. The creature doesn't even do any non-snakelike stuff - I was expecting some good water play or something else, but it mostly just slithers across the ground like normal and eats people like a normal giant snake would. They could have done so much more with the whole crossbreeding part in terms of cheesy scenes like Sharktopus did. Hell, they even say in the movie that it can burrow under the ground and come up to attack, which sounds friggin' awesome, but then they never actually have the Piranhaconda do that at all. It certainly didn't help that every single scene was shot in the exact same locations as Supergator, Dinocroc vs Supergator, and parts of Camel Spiders so with this being the 4th movie in the last couple years to use all these exact same locations, it's getting really rather boring now to watch different people run down the exact same paths and by the exact same factories, and get eaten in front of the exact same waterfalls. Roger Corman and Jim Wynorski are really going to have to step it up for their next release if they want to impress me, locale-wise.

On the plus side, I do like the twist of there actually being multiple creatures and not just the single one (though it was a total missed opportunity as well, seeing as how they do nothing at all with that really, but it's the idea of it that I like), and I thought the actual creatures themselves, in terms of the CGI graphics, actually looked pretty good and interacted with the physical objects realistically and quite well, which that alone can be a tough feat for these kinds of movies to overcome.

Also, those looking for a bloodbath will be kept mildly entertained as the red stuff hardly stops flowing, from gunshot wounds, to severed body limbs, to exploding people, there's enough in this one to keep your eyes on the screen during the action scenes. Sadly, while there is a nice bit of bloody deaths, there's not a whole lot of variety to them, as the majority of them are just the exact same kind of deaths over and over. Still, it's at least something, and something is always better then nothing in my books.

Other then those couple hings though, and a few funny lines of dialog, there really wasn't much in this one that I could find to like, sadly. Even the presence of Michael Madsen, an actor I tend to really enjoy (especially in movies like this), couldn't make this one worth it to me.

I had really been looking forward to Piranhaconda a lot as well, especially after the greatness of Sharktopus and Dinocroc vs Supergator, but this came nowhere even near as good as those movies had been.

4/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Camel Spiders (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Horizons

RUNTIME: 85 mins

FORMAT: BluRay

PLOT: When a U.S. soldier returns home from Iraq, he accidentally brings with him a cargo of deadly baby Camel Spiders that soon get loose in a small town and start breeding, killing anyone that they come across.

REVIEW: I've gone on many recent rants about the over-abundance of killer shark movies and how I'm glad that it seems 2012 is the Year of the Spider, what with movies like Camel Spiders, Arachnoquake, Mega Spider, and Spiders 3D all announced at various points for this year, I'm thrilled to see B-Movie companies (for the most part) making a shift away from sharks finally. So of course it would go without saying that I would be reviewing each killer spider movie that comes out this year, to help get the word out and do my part to help get those sales figures up so companies continue to move away from sharks for awhile. Of course with that said, it took me longer then I planned to get my hands on Camel Spiders, mostly due to lack of extra-spending funds, but long story short I got the BluRay in the mail the other day and popped it in, really hoping that Roger Corman and Jim Wynorski (using here his well-known pseudonym of Jay Andrews) would not let me down and that I would actually be championing something good.

I have to be honest though and say that after the snazzy camp-filled opening title sequence ended (that directly took the theme music from Dinocroc vs Supergator at that), I soon started getting a tad worried. The film style was a bit below what I would expect from a Corman movie (though really should have seen coming from Jim Wynorski, considering he also did Raptor and Cheerleader Massacre), and there were some questionable creative decisions such as roaring spiders, when these spiders are supposed to be normal camel spiders and not mutated or aliens or some other genetic anomaly, just regular ol' camel spiders in Iraq...that somehow roar and also screech like they're long-lost relatives of the Warrior Arachnids from Starship Troopers. The brutal acting (which admittedly is to be expected), dreadful CGI creature effects (normally to be expected, but the CGI creature effects in Dinocroc vs Supergator, Roger Corman and Jim Wynorski's previous team-up movie, were above-average so I was kind of expecting something of that caliber here as well), embarrassingly bad CGI helicopters, and just the general overall cheapness of the entire production certainly didn't help matters much.

But it didn't take long for me to change my tune somewhat and lighten up a bit. Once the action moves away from the war-torn desert landscapes of Iraq and into middle-of-nowhere small town Nevada, and the spiders finally launch their invasion on the town, something along the way changed. I can honestly say I don't have a clue what it was, it's certainly not anything within the movie itself as all the detractors I mentioned above still stuck around for the most part, and even a few more got added to the mix (which will be discussed below in greater detail), but something within my mind-set changed and I just started to enjoy what was unfolding in front of me – a fun campy little roll in the hay, along the lines of a lower-budget Tremors but with some killer spiders invading the small desert town instead of monster worms.

That's not to say there weren’t some major problems after that point of course; The CG creature effects seemed to get even worse as the movie went on, and the spread of the spiders made no sense at all - Three of the Camel Spiders came over from Iraq, yet within the span of three scenes that appeared to all take place around the same time as one another, there were already two completely separate nests, one out in the desert and another one in a gas station in the middle of town (where the spiders previously were never even near), plus a couple straggler lone spiders here and there as well. The movie also seemed to repeat one of the major (and probably only) issues I had with Sharktopus, and that is constantly introducing random nobody characters that we don't care about nor get to know anything at all about and that have nothing to do with anything else in the movie, and then killing them off in that very same scene that we're first introduced to them. Dinocroc vs Supergator did all that correctly, by having most of those characters have two or three scenes previous to their deaths to better establish them before they bite it (or in this case, 'it' bites them – ha!). Granted, this doesn't do it as often as Sharktopus did, but it still did it enough that it irked me.

Once the actual spider invasion started however, my mind quickly left all that and I began to just enjoy myself a bit more, as a group of the town's residents, along with the Sheriff (played by an almost unrecognizable C. Thomas Howell), a Military Man and Woman that got stranded in that town on their way to a military base, and a couple sketchy land developers get trapped inside this tiny diner with the killer spiders trying to get in – and from this point on, like I mentioned above, it pretty much becomes a lower-budget Tremors in tone, with spiders instead of worms. The fact that it also takes place in a small town in the middle of the desert helps make that connection as well, as does the fact that they attempt to leave town in a crappy truck.

Helping the entertainment factor here for this part of the movie was the nice little bonus of everyone introduced in the previously-mentioned diner scene actually ending up sticking around for awhile and didn't just get offed later in that scene, and all these characters were actually enjoyable to watch, as most were quite quirky in their own unique ways and we also got some decent amount of backstory on each one, which made them pretty likable and I found myself hoping that at least a few of these people might actually live (some of the deaths and survivors may even be a bit unpredictable). Once the movie settled down and focused primarily on this group, that's when my attention was kept best. There is a second group of characters – some college kids played by actors in their late 30's that looked nothing like college kids that get stuck in a house out in the woods, but these characters were neither interesting nor well-acted so I didn't care for those scenes as much. I was actually waiting to see how these two storylines would intersect at the end, but oddly enough they never do. They really are just two completely unrelated stories that have nothing to do with each other in any shape, way, or form, like two mini-movies intercut together. Luckily this sub-plot of the college kids wasn't the main focus and the movie centered more on the other more interesting group the most, as they tried to work together and devise a plan to rid the town of the invading killer camel spiders. It even seemed like the director didn't care much for the college kids part of the story, as he seemed to just drop it from the movie mid-way without any resolution to what even happens to these characters; at one point we cut away from them to focus back on the main group and then we just never do go back to those characters again - it was actually pretty weird and made me wonder what was even the point in having those scenes in the movie to begin with.

Another really disappointing aspect in that otherwise-good second half of the movie was that there wasn't really any in-town mayhem like I was wanting to see. The main diner group didn't take long to get away from the diner and out into a military bunker just outside of town where they holed up for the remainder of the movie, and the other story in the movie took place in a house in the middle of the forest which left next to no scenes actually taking place inside the town itself, which I was looking forward to seeing, especially after that one creepy scene in the gas station near the beginning with the store workers strung up in the giant spider web. It was a pretty glaring missed opportunity in my eyes to not have the central action taking place within the town itself.

Speaking of those spiders though, I have to say that really enjoyed that the killer animals here were just regular animals: No genetic mutation or science experiment or alien creature or anything of that style, just 100% regular blood-thirsty animals. Of course they're in no way accurate to the real-life version of these spiders apart from their visual design, but hey – this is a Roger Corman monster movie so I was never expecting that anyway. Besides, less accurate normally means more cheese, and that's perfectly fine by me! For instance, there's a couple really hilarious Facehugger-inspired moments in the movie, as well as some gory limbs being ripped off of dead bodies, that we would have never gotten if they tried to go with a realistic portrayal.

All in all, it may not have been as good as I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't outright terrible either. If I had to place it on a chart with the other recent Corman/Wynorski team-up movies, I'd say it was not as good as Dinocroc vs Supergator (my personal favorite by this partnership) or Sharktopus, but more along the same level as Dinoshark – possibly a peg or two below it, as Dinoshark at least had some decent creature effects while Camel Spiders' were horrid and this also came with a pretty large missed opportunity and pointless side-plot. But while this one may be the weakest movie yet from the recent Corman/Wynorski team-ups, there's still enough within it to keep a B-Movie fan such as myself at least moderately entertained, thanks in large to the likable main characters of the primary group, some hilarious spider kills, and a few fun action beats.

I wouldn't tell you to rush out and buy it right now, but if you happen to come across it while browsing at the store and it's at a cheap price, or it shows up on Netflix or TV, then I'd say it's worth at least a one-time watch – you could certainly do a lot worse out there.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Raptor (2001)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Concorde 

RUNTIME: 81 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A small town Sheriff and a Wildlife Officer look into some grisly murders and discover that not only is a dinosaur on the loose, but it came from the nearby Government laboratory and they go to investigate, but only end up making things go from bad to worse as they accidentally cause all the Carnosaurs...err, I mean dinosaurs... in the lab complex to get loose.

REVIEW: I had really wanted to see Carnosaur 4 get made for the simple fact that I thought Carnosaur 3 was easily the weakest in the series and would have liked to see the series go out on a higher note. While Carnosaur 4 was never made, another movie was brought to my attention in it's place: Raptor. Made by all the same people and acts as kind of an unofficial Carnosaur 4 (apparently they couldn't get the Rights to the title, for whatever reason since it was made by the same company and people, however it's even regarded as Carnosaur 4 in parts of the world). As soon as the DVD arrived in the mail, I couldn't wait to pop it in and check this Raptor out and get started on a review, fully excited to get back into the world of Carnosaur.

Oh boy. This movie is bad. Even by my very low standards.

First off, there is no new dinosaur footage in this movie - every single scene with a dinosaur in it is just stock footage from one of the three Carnosaur movies, and while that stock footage was integrated pretty well in the first half of the movie, the second half was botched all to hell, combining shots from each movie together into the same scene, despite the fact that they don't match up at all. One part has a famous Tyrannosaurus vs Construction vehicle scene that this series is known for...except it's made up of footage from both Carnosaur and Carnosaur 2, despite the fact that the construction vehicle used in the first movie was different then the construction vehicle used in the second, but this movie treats them the same, so you'll see a shot of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and vehicle fighting, cut to a reaction shot of the person, then cut back to the Tyrannosaurus Rex and vehicle fighting again...except now the vehicle is suddenly a different one, even though it's supposed to be the same. The second half of the movie is filled with that kind of stuff. Up until that point, I actually didn't mind the use of stock footage as, understandably, the props and suits had gone into disrepair and couldn't be used in a 4th movie, and said stock footage was integrated pretty well. Hell, they even got an actor from the first movie back for this for a few scenes, just so they could re-use his death scene (although he is considerably older here then in the re-used stock footage, but it's the attempt and effort that counts). But then the second half of the movie comes along and does the above-mentioned horrible botching every step of the way and it just gets gross. There are quite a few scenes where we see someone get attacked, but then we cut to stock footage from one of the Carnosaur movies and suddenly it's a completely different person being chomped down on by the dinosaur in place of the one we were just seeing, and in a completely different location then the one the character was just in. It really made no sense whatsoever and was some of the most horrid use of stock footage that I've ever seen (in one scene from Carnosaur 3 used here, we see life boats and a life preserver hung on the wall...yet the characters in this movie are in the middle of an underground basement-level of a Government facility in the middle of the desert...). To further the point, when the dinosaurs start running amok in the facility, the Government sends in not one team, not two teams, but three different, unrelated, teams of Black Op soldiers to deal with it, so that they can use footage from both Carnosaur 2 and Carnosaur 3, where the government/military characters were dressed wearing different uniforms. And one of these teams is dressed in...rain jackets. Yes, rain jackets. No explanation is given in-movie at all for sending in three unrelated teams, nor why one team is dressed in rain jackets despite the fact that it's not raining outside.

And it's a real shame too, because apart from that stock footage debacle, this movie actually had some potential. It's more or less a remake of the first Carnosaur movie, but minus the dino-birthing disease and with more likable lead characters (the Sheriff is actually played by none other then Eric Roberts, oddly enough, though even saying that he's phoning it in may be giving too much credit). And IMO, this movie actually worked the mad scientist angle better then the original Carnosaur. Here, the guy (named Dr. Hyde if you can believe that) was actually making intelligent dinosaurs at the request of the Government to use in overseas warfare in a project titled Jurassic Storm, but then he decided to go rogue and wanted to instead sell them to the highest foreign bidder, but before he can get that far they break loose and start causing havoc first in the nearby small desert town, and then in the facility itself.

To flesh out Eric Roberts' Sheriff character, he has a teen daughter (played by a porn star that looks almost as old as him) that sets him on the path of figuring everything out, as she and her boyfriend get attacked by the escaped Raptor and results in her getting hospitalized and the Sheriff wanting revenge on whatever attacked her, which leads him to the nearby government facility. To aid him along the way is a Wildlife Control Officer (played by a stripper, who has since gone on to star in many movies of this elk). At first they think the creature may be an escaped cougar, which is a subplot not in the original Carnosaur movie but is in the original Carnosaur novel that the series is based on, so it surprised me they included it here, and a surprise that is more then welcomed. If the movie had continue to follow the path of the original book, even the stock footage may not have seemed so bad for me because that book was pure awesome. Adding to the cast, just over halfway through we get two teams of Black Op military characters, and then a third team shortly after that. Most, like in Carnosaur 3, are just background cannon fodder and don't even have names or more then one or two lines of dialog, but there is a couple that are given personality and they're pretty fun to watch, especially the hard-as-nails swear-loving Boston-native leader of the 'Black Team'.

Also in it's favor is lots of good gore (granted it's all from stock footage of the other movies, but they could have gone near-goreless like the third movie did, so props have to be given there), and surprisingly they got James Horner to do the music. What kind of giant ass favor he owed these people, I'm not sure, but it was good to see his name there because the music is one of the movie's strongest points and is really befitting of a much better movie then the one the music ultimately ended up being for. Often times I'd zone out of what was happening on-screen and just listened to the awesome music.

There's honestly not a whole lot more to say, since most of it is just a clip show of the previous movies, which I've already reviewed. If this movie had been filmed using the actual props and costumes of the previous movies instead of horribly badly-integrated stock footage, it actually would have been a really good Carnosaur 4 or Carnosaur remake, as a lot of the actual plot itself was pretty good.. Unfortunately the use of stock footage to the degree they use it, especially in the second-half of the movie when all the dinosaurs take over the facility and all those random Special Black Op teams are sent in, as well as some of the newly-shot story aspects that had to be there in order to have the stock footage scenes make sense, really brings it down to not even being enjoyable on a so-bad-it's-good level, as it's just too damn distracting and really takes you out of the movie, instantly making you think of the better Carnosaur movies.

2/10 rooms in the Psych Ward
 

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