Monday, February 29, 2016

MUTANT (1984)

Mildly entertaining early 80's horror movie about two brothers who are out enjoying a road trip when they're run off the road by some hillbillies and their car trashed.  Even worse than that, is the small town they're now stuck in is slowly being taken over by zombies.  Zombies that leak some kind of acidic, honey mustard-looking goo out of their hands!  On the plus side, the older brother hooks up with a hot blonde.

As far as zombie movies go, MUTANT is okay.  The pace moves along quickly with a passable body count, but the whole thing is just too by-the-book for my tastes.  It doesn't have that special personality to it that makes other lower-budget 80's horror films like THE ABOMINATION, THE NAIL GUN MASSACRE or BLACK ROSES so awesome.  Although I did get a kick out of Wings Hauser's shorts, the boom mic reflection in the police car window, the blonde driving with her hand hovering over the steering wheel (she even turns a corner without moving the wheel), the obviously fake hand on that one zombie and the other zombie who trips and stumbles skull first into a wall. Ouch!

There is a slight charm to MUTANT and 80's horror fans will see that, but the charm will be lost on other less experienced viewers.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

JURASSIC WORLD (2015)

You would think that with over a decade between sequels there would've been plenty of time to write an awesome script that would make the audiences eyeballs pop out of their heads, but...I guess not.  Instead, we get what looks to be a list of "cool ideas" strung together with a connect-the-dots style script.

So we got these two kids who's aunt works at Jurassic World island.  She's like super important and always has her phone out and stuff and like she can't be bothered to watched the kids cause she's trying to get investors lined up for this awesome new genetically altered dinosaur.  I think his name is like Awesom-O or something and so like the kids just wander off by themselves all over the joint and then you got that handsome dude from that one movie who's like a raptor whisperer or something and can talk to raptors, but then there's a evil military dude and the big new dinosaur gets loose and starts wreckin' shit.  He even eats that one guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm.  You remember the one where Larry kills the swan at the country club and then gets in a argument with the tombstone carving guy?  The tombstone guy is the guy who gets eaten by the dinosaur!  Anyway, so there's like dinosaurs running all over and then the bird ones gets loose and start flying around eating people.  I mean this place is going to get sued to Hell and back!  Audie Murphy-style!  Oh yeah, oh yeah, so there's like this plastic ball that people can get in and roll around with the dinosaurs and stuff, so like the two kids get in there and the bad dinosaur attacks them and they run away and find a Jeep from the first movie then the T-Rex gets loose and he's like "What the fuck?  This is my island motherfucker!" and beats up the Awesom-O dinosaur.  Boom, boom, boom, bang!!!  And there's raptors on motorcycles and cavemen in jet planes...oh wait, that was BATTLEFIELD EARTH.  I watched that right afterward.  I mean, what the fuck?  Whoever thought that would be a good movie?!  How'd it even get financing?  I mean, yeah, it starts out alright, but then next thing you know you got cavemen in jets and nuclear bombs and flight simulators!  How'd they even know to fuel up the jets or how to load the machine guns?!  Plus the shit's been sitting there for a thousand years!!!  Anyway, so JURASSIC WORLD was pretty cool.  BATTLEFIELD EARTH was "auggghhhh!"  For a single viewing, JW was alright.  I'd watch it again if somebody wanted to watch it, but JURASSIC PARK...shit, I still watch that motherfucker like 2 - 3 times a year!

Part 1 - Jurassic Park (1993)
Part 2 - The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Part 3 - Jurassic Park III (2001)
Part 5 - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Part 6 - Jurassic World: Dominion (2021)