Yes! It's finally here! Bad Movie....Wednesday. Yeah, Monday's overrated some of the time. It's the weirdest feeling when Sunday hits--"Oh shit, dude, it's Sunday! Do you know what that makes tomorrow?? Bad Movie Monday!!"
This week, I'm reviewing the ultimately pointless Creepozoids. That link goes to a rather good synopsis/overview/reaction for the movie. I don't feel like recapping it myself because the (joke supposited as) plot pretty pathetically unremarkable. Read it, though. It's quick. And amusing.
So instead of recapping plot, I'm going to poke at some of the more annoying--ie, hilarious--parts of the film.
So let's get this out of the way. The plot is...non-existant.
How can a movie exist without a plot? Well, besides the obvious answers ("because it can" and "just to piss off Tophie" are two that come to mind), in short: Linnea Quigley (Night of the Demons, Return of the Living Dead), a scream queen of apparently vast success. Seriously, go to that link--it's her writeup on IMDB. She's been in over a hundred roles--almost all certifiably B-movies. Hm. I might have to do a features piece on her someday.
Anyway, her job is to bring half/three-quarters of the sex appeal to the movie (depending on your sexual orientation, obvs). The other half of that sex appeal is a thuggish stud who cameo'd in Hobgoblins (hard to imagine anyone having a cameo in that cheeseball--excellent MST3k, though) as a...thug. Type-cast much? Meeeeh....
Anyway, he exists to help this scene happen:
This week, I'm reviewing the ultimately pointless Creepozoids. That link goes to a rather good synopsis/overview/reaction for the movie. I don't feel like recapping it myself because the (joke supposited as) plot pretty pathetically unremarkable. Read it, though. It's quick. And amusing.
So instead of recapping plot, I'm going to poke at some of the more annoying--ie, hilarious--parts of the film.
So let's get this out of the way. The plot is...non-existant.
How can a movie exist without a plot? Well, besides the obvious answers ("because it can" and "just to piss off Tophie" are two that come to mind), in short: Linnea Quigley (Night of the Demons, Return of the Living Dead), a scream queen of apparently vast success. Seriously, go to that link--it's her writeup on IMDB. She's been in over a hundred roles--almost all certifiably B-movies. Hm. I might have to do a features piece on her someday.
Anyway, her job is to bring half/three-quarters of the sex appeal to the movie (depending on your sexual orientation, obvs). The other half of that sex appeal is a thuggish stud who cameo'd in Hobgoblins (hard to imagine anyone having a cameo in that cheeseball--excellent MST3k, though) as a...thug. Type-cast much? Meeeeh....
Anyway, he exists to help this scene happen:
 |
| Linnea Quigley at work.... |
Something quite essential to a good/functioning monster flick is, of course, the science guy/know-it-all. How the hell else is the explainer-of-all-things-Science going to have any cred? Well this movie kills off--er, melts off--its nerd fast. Like, first to die (besides Nerd lady, but she was only in the prologue, miracle that she was...).
See, as the Consciousness Stream (CS) guy points out, this, and frankly most movies like this, operates on at least some level of Science. It's just...Science. No, not science, people; it's a capital S. For pseudoscience.
It's hard to have a monster movie that nobody understands. Oh, it can be done. But the Nerd Guy or a vaguely centralized Science or even just Superstitionz (the nemesis of Science, obviously) helps bad writing give the illusion of order; their explanation(s) can make up for vast failures of writing/directing. (Usually with a bit of suspension of disbelief, but less than without.) All those weird inexplicable scenes become slightiy more explicable with a Nerd guy around.
Another big reason for bad writing to have a Nerd guys around is usually he only helps find some palatable excuse for the monster but also usually comes up with (if indirectly) the Solution to said monster. You know, that long-shot, bullshit way they kill off said monster in the end (or do they!?). So yeah, with-Nerd-guy, and you've got, what, two fifths of a plot right there?
So this movie kills off its nerd guy. Rather quickly, too. And it's a loss it never really recovers from, I don't think. Instead the heap the Science briefly on to some dykey lady who has eyes for the commander dude, but she quickly recedes back into cardboard state until her (peculiar) death. Later, commander dude uses some vestige of the Science to "kill" the monster.
Which brings me to two major points. Oh yes, we're only halfway through, bitches.
The first is a case of number(s)es. Let's take a moment to look at the movie poster, which apparently looked a little like this:
So, we have two chicks and a guy and a monster. Not quite the movie (there's three guys), but okay. We have the blond--obviously Linnea Quiggley, see how she orgasms all over bones? Then we have a brunette--obviously not the other girl--the androgynous lesbian--who certainly didn't have the sort of sex appeal to appear almost bare-breast on a cover. Plus, she didn't have those cheekbones. Then we have muscle man, who at best guess is probably suppsosed to be Hobgoblins thug dude. K.
Almost right, I suppose, but here's where I start getting annoyed. Notice the title(Fuck that, look at that subtitle!), see how it has an "s" at the end? Creepozoids? Implying a multiplicity of horror, a cornucopia of monstrosities, a...one single monster and a...baby....thing. But we'll get to that.
This monster...it almost looked cool, as long as they kept the camera in nice and tight, and stuff.... But...okay, look at that poster again. See how the monster's cut off? It's actually about the right proportions, if you literally had the man in the rubber suit standing just behind where the side cuts off. Like, you'd have a normal sized dude in rubber, then you'd continue from his shoulders up into the head, and back down to the ridiculously over-long arms. That's what this monster looks like. How do I know? They made the mistake of doing long shots near the end. Right near the "climax".
Personally, I'm calling shenanigans on the title. There was nothing I'd have quite called "creepozoidal" about this monster, nevermind to any extent allowing a plurality. THERE'S ONLY ONE MONSTER. And, now, I refuse to accept baby-thing as an additional monster. It's timing is all wrong.
After everyone's either melted, weirded, or de-headed, the wimpy-voiced commander dude "kills" the monster--the alleged creepozoid(s). Of course, he's catching his breath, so we already know it can't possibly be over yet--who the fuck catches their breath before end credits? And then the fail-weird happens.
It's like some cyst rupturing--the creature's, er, head (silently, far in the background, while pansy voice scuttles off to catch his breath--back turned, the fool!--some unknowable distance away) gives birth to...a baby. Thing.
It's hard to know which part to call the "climax". Pansy-voice's "face-off" with good ole rubber suit, or...the subsequent 10ish minute slow-jerk with the baby-thing. Seriously.
This babything lacks any kind of menace. It's slow. It's tiny. It's a fucking baby. It's also clearly plastic, but that's neither here nor there.
It makes a series of weird, goofy sounds, puppets about, then takes way too fucking long to get over to the pansy-man, does that obnoxious shoulder thing--where the tiny monster somehow appears over someone's shoulder apparently without touching them at all--and...well, from here it's a slow-churn 5 minutes of anti-suspense. Largely because we have no idea where anything is in relation to eachother. Or any idea why it's all happening. It just does.
Goddamn, I hate when movies do that.
Alright, I get it. This is some sort of example of a gross out flick; I should probably do some research on schlock films and their subtypes, and I'm sure I'd find it all makes perfect sense.
Except that it just doesn't. I expect even schlock should manage to hang together in some way. Plot is probably too big a concept for some of this stuff, but at least a slight coherency of events should be plausible enough.
I could attempt all kinds of abstract arguments as to why this kind of hanging-together-maybe-even-plot stuff is important or should be expected, but I'll spare you another 3 pages of reading. Let's just look at what happens when there isn't any.
This movie is but a series of things, loosely assorted meltings and effects, some sex and eating and sleeping. Cardboard characters seem to teleport about and then scream at and/or melt because of a man in a rubber suit. There are large rats that zombify, loosely, lesbians. And it all seems fashioned as some cheap knock off of Alien*. And none of it relates, none of it goes anywhere, none of it does anything.
If it weren't so ridiculous it wouldn't be funny, if it weren't funny it wouldn't be worth watching. I kept waiting for shit to happen, for something to start happening; instead I was dragged through what felt like a drawn out exposition punctuated by amusingly bad effects/cinematography.
I know it's asking a lot to expect movies like this to try, even a little, to be movies. But really I don't feel like it would have taken a lot to have made a lot more out of this movie; call it wasted potential, call it laziness. It's a little annoying, but the movie's still funny overall. At the least, I laughed at my frustration.
* Check out the site I got that movie poster from; the other poster flagrantly compares the movie to Aliens. It's funny cuz you'll see, from time to time, people try to defend this movie as not-a-rip-off-of-Alien/Aliens, but here's the movie's own marketing to prove the plainly obvious.
Which brings me to two major points. Oh yes, we're only halfway through, bitches.
The first is a case of number(s)es. Let's take a moment to look at the movie poster, which apparently looked a little like this:
Almost right, I suppose, but here's where I start getting annoyed. Notice the title(Fuck that, look at that subtitle!), see how it has an "s" at the end? Creepozoids? Implying a multiplicity of horror, a cornucopia of monstrosities, a...one single monster and a...baby....thing. But we'll get to that.
This monster...it almost looked cool, as long as they kept the camera in nice and tight, and stuff.... But...okay, look at that poster again. See how the monster's cut off? It's actually about the right proportions, if you literally had the man in the rubber suit standing just behind where the side cuts off. Like, you'd have a normal sized dude in rubber, then you'd continue from his shoulders up into the head, and back down to the ridiculously over-long arms. That's what this monster looks like. How do I know? They made the mistake of doing long shots near the end. Right near the "climax".
Personally, I'm calling shenanigans on the title. There was nothing I'd have quite called "creepozoidal" about this monster, nevermind to any extent allowing a plurality. THERE'S ONLY ONE MONSTER. And, now, I refuse to accept baby-thing as an additional monster. It's timing is all wrong.
After everyone's either melted, weirded, or de-headed, the wimpy-voiced commander dude "kills" the monster--the alleged creepozoid(s). Of course, he's catching his breath, so we already know it can't possibly be over yet--who the fuck catches their breath before end credits? And then the fail-weird happens.
It's like some cyst rupturing--the creature's, er, head (silently, far in the background, while pansy voice scuttles off to catch his breath--back turned, the fool!--some unknowable distance away) gives birth to...a baby. Thing.
 |
| wazzuuuuup..... |
It's hard to know which part to call the "climax". Pansy-voice's "face-off" with good ole rubber suit, or...the subsequent 10ish minute slow-jerk with the baby-thing. Seriously.
This babything lacks any kind of menace. It's slow. It's tiny. It's a fucking baby. It's also clearly plastic, but that's neither here nor there.
It makes a series of weird, goofy sounds, puppets about, then takes way too fucking long to get over to the pansy-man, does that obnoxious shoulder thing--where the tiny monster somehow appears over someone's shoulder apparently without touching them at all--and...well, from here it's a slow-churn 5 minutes of anti-suspense. Largely because we have no idea where anything is in relation to eachother. Or any idea why it's all happening. It just does.
Goddamn, I hate when movies do that.
Alright, I get it. This is some sort of example of a gross out flick; I should probably do some research on schlock films and their subtypes, and I'm sure I'd find it all makes perfect sense.
Except that it just doesn't. I expect even schlock should manage to hang together in some way. Plot is probably too big a concept for some of this stuff, but at least a slight coherency of events should be plausible enough.
I could attempt all kinds of abstract arguments as to why this kind of hanging-together-maybe-even-plot stuff is important or should be expected, but I'll spare you another 3 pages of reading. Let's just look at what happens when there isn't any.
This movie is but a series of things, loosely assorted meltings and effects, some sex and eating and sleeping. Cardboard characters seem to teleport about and then scream at and/or melt because of a man in a rubber suit. There are large rats that zombify, loosely, lesbians. And it all seems fashioned as some cheap knock off of Alien*. And none of it relates, none of it goes anywhere, none of it does anything.
If it weren't so ridiculous it wouldn't be funny, if it weren't funny it wouldn't be worth watching. I kept waiting for shit to happen, for something to start happening; instead I was dragged through what felt like a drawn out exposition punctuated by amusingly bad effects/cinematography.
I know it's asking a lot to expect movies like this to try, even a little, to be movies. But really I don't feel like it would have taken a lot to have made a lot more out of this movie; call it wasted potential, call it laziness. It's a little annoying, but the movie's still funny overall. At the least, I laughed at my frustration.
* Check out the site I got that movie poster from; the other poster flagrantly compares the movie to Aliens. It's funny cuz you'll see, from time to time, people try to defend this movie as not-a-rip-off-of-Alien/Aliens, but here's the movie's own marketing to prove the plainly obvious.
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