DARK AGE (1987)

Following the release of JAWS, which is credited with the creation of the summer blockbuster (though that was unintended), a wave of killer animal flicks followed in its wake. To no one’s surprise, most of these were bad, and to no one’s additional surprise, a lot of these imitators were about sharks. (Just ask Universal — they were firing off C&Ds like it was their job, blocking the stateside releases of Italian produced shark flicks Great White and Cruel Jaws. (The latter flick was made by Italian trashmeister Bruno Mattei under one of his many pseudonyms and incorporated a lot of stolen footage from the JAWS series.)

Every once in awhile, an imitator slipped through and managed to actually be worth a damn, even if it was going more for satire than outright horror. (Joe Dante’s Roger Corman production of Piranha and John Sayles’ Alligator are some of these exceptions.) And, as stated, countries all over the world were getting in on the action.

One of these notable flicks is 1987’s Dark Age, produced and filmed in Australia, which told the tale about a monstrous crocodile munching on a handful of people and making the life of wildlife conservationist Steve Harris whose job is to convince the government to conserve and protect crocs really really difficult. What makes Dark Age especially notable are two specific components: an infusion of Australian culture (more specifically the local Aboriginal tribe, who become significant to the conflict) and its overall message of conservation. Especially when looking at the latter, Dark Age comes off ballsier than even JAWS, in that despite the crocodile killing whomever crosses its path, the intent on behalf of its main characters are not to kill it, but to trap it and release it in its usual place of inhabitation. Oh, there are a cadre of characters who want the croc dead — from bureaucrats to local poachers — but even after the croc chows down on a young aboriginal boy, the exciting and adventurous Free Willy-ish rescue attempt at the end will leave viewers surprised as they realize they’re rooting for the croc.

The stock JAWS characters are in place, with John Jarratt taking on a combination of Matt Hooper and Chief Brody, and Max Phipps embodying a much more bloodthirsty version of Quint. There’s even a local politician who is afraid of what the croc will do for tourism. Whether or not Dark Age would exist were it not for JAWS becomes moot in the face of how well made and unique Dark Age manages to be. (Not to mention that coastal Australians dealing with a murderous croc is a lot more realistic than New Englanders dealing with a great white.) Dark Age may lack the satire of Alligator, the adventure of JAWS, and the sly sense of humor of Piranha, but it’s still a worthy endeavor in its own right, bringing a slice of its native culture along with it. At this point, the killer animal subgenre can be broken down further just because of how many of those happen to feature a crocodile or alligator as the antagonist. Dark Age ranks as one of the best.

THE SHALLOWS (2016)

During 1999, there was one title in particular at the Sundance Film Festival that had people abuzz: The Blair Witch Project. The cheap and independently produced film made by a bunch of kids with very little experience managed to scare the hell out of attending critics and set off a bidding war by several major studios before mini-distributor Artisan Entertainment (now defunct and owned by Lionsgate Films) became the victor. The rest, as they say, is history. Not only did The Blair Witch Project change the way filmmakers approached the medium, it also added a new kind of film for which potential distributors should look — the cheaply produced thriller that, with clever marketing, had the power to be immensely profitable with little risk. Every year following, people were on the lookout for the next Blair Witch. 

In 2003, the same thing occurred at Sundance, only this film was Open Water, another cheaply and independently produced film made by inexperienced filmmakers with no-name actors. Based on a true story (unlike The Blair Witch Project, which only pretended to be), Open Water depicted a couple left behind in the middle of the ocean during a vacation scuba-diving trip, only to be slowly surrounded by sharks. While it didn’t capture the attention of the masses in the same way its witchy predecessor did, it still managed to make a splash with critics, who praised the film’s ingenuity and creativity in the face of budgetary restrictions. (Real sharks too, by the way — in the same water as the actors.)

And then along came The Reef several years later. The Australian production was a slicker product with a slightly higher budget, but also basically the same thing: shipwrecked people surrounded by sharks, each dying off one by one. It was an effective little number, even if the concept was a little less novel. (If we want to credit a sole inspiration for all of these sharks vs. people conflicts in modern cinema, maybe we can point to Quint’s stirring and still-famous U.S.S. Indianapolis monologue from JAWS.)

And this has led to The Shallows, which, again, explores the concept of one person being trapped in the middle of the ocean by a monstrous shark that WILL eat her, even IF there’s a giant whale just a few feet away that it could eat instead. (Sharks like whale meat so much that mass feedings have turned into orgies—just sayin'.) But instead of the independently produced version of this concept with a realistic and downbeat finale, The Shallows is very Hollywood, sticking the beautiful Blake Lively in a tight wetsuit, tighter bikini, and pitting her against an unrealistically behaving CGI shark. Along the way she becomes friends with a bird, talks to herself a lot, and manages to pull off the impossible, which I can’t expound upon without getting into spoiler territory.

As dumb as that all sounds (and it is dumb), The Shallows is easy entertainment and exactly the kind of film it set out to be. The film’s marketing was quick to liken it to this generation’s JAWS and that’s kind of accurate, except it’s essentially a feature length version of JAWS' final five minutes made for the instagram generation. When theaters were flooded with multi Saws and Hostels, the term “torture porn” was coined (but used incorrectly as often as “hipster” is today); spinning off from that, The Shallows is basically shark porn: camera close-ups of Blake Lively’s flawlessly toned and tanned body, intercut with ominous underwater shots or dark silhouettes housed in waves signifying the presence of a shark. “Did you see that?” audience members likely asked and pointed to the shadow in the wave. But no, the glimpse is gone; now it’s back to a close-up of Lively’s bikinied bottom, or side-breast, or tropical ocean water dripping off her blonde hair. It’s absurd and not exactly subtle; again, it’s easy entertainment, at which director Jaume Collett-Sera excels. Vaulted into the game following his better-than-expected horror film Orphan, this is the kind of playground where he’s best utilized. 

Amidst all the unnecessary and already dated speed-ramping, there are moments of genuine effectiveness, generally when Blake Lively’s Nancy is getting beaten up by the ocean. And this sounds like mockery, but it’s not; as she’s taken by the tide and rolled over sharp coral on the ocean floor, or during the first shark attack sequence, you imagine you’re feeling her pain. You cringe at the sight and your body tenses as if you’re about to feel shark teeth in your leg. Collett-Serra knows what he’s doing, even if he chooses to do it for concepts that are about 90% close to being real, actual films. And sequences like these are strikingly realized — especially the before mentioned initial shark attack.

Despite the modern age's well established dependence on CGI, the shark looks terrible. The dummy version is obviously a dummy, and the CGI version is more obviously CGI. They must know this, as the shark only features on screen for maybe less than a minute, with the usual fin and shadow shots doing much of the heavy lifting. Every appearance of the CGI shark is distracting. Because the audience (hopefully) knows the filmmakers didn’t use a real great white shark (they don’t take well to animal training, in case you never knew that), they immediately look to deduce “the trick”—to determine the “how did they do that?” of it all. Well, the answer is easy: computers. And from the looks of it, quickly, and on the cheap.

The Sci-Fi/Syfy Channel, especially their grating and brainless Sharknado films, have done enough damage to the killer shark sub-genre that The Shallows actually manages to leave a not-so-sour taste in your mouth as the credits roll. It’s popcorn entertainment at its truest definition, but sometimes a little popcorn is okay. Lively actually puts a lot of effort into what must have been a physically strenuous role, and the crew deserves accolades for filming almost exclusively on the ocean, which is extremely difficult just from a logistical standpoint. The Shallows won’t make you forget JAWS or Open Water, but it’s certainly better than Deep Blue Sea and Shark Night, and in the age of Sharknado and Mega-Shark versus Roger Corman, I’ll take it.

DAGON (2001)

I’ve never been a huge fan of director Stuart Gordon outside of the original Re-Animator, but I respect any director who willfully works in the horror genre. Along with Re-Animator, Gordon has steadily directed several adaptions of horror author H.P. Lovecraft’s icky tales, including From Beyond, Castlefreak, Dreams in the Witch House, and finally, Dagon. Though his efforts vary in both loyalty and quality (again, I love Re-Animator, but it shares very little in common with the original story), his dedication to doing Lovecraft right is admirable.

Back during its initial 2001 release, about which I only knew because of its coverage in Fangoria Magazine, I gave Dagon a fair shot but determined it was another in a long line of overhyped under-the-radar horror releases that fanboys wold heap praise upon simply because it wasn’t “mainstream.” All these years later, I’m not prepared to say that the hype was worth it, and oh what a fool I’ve been, but I will say it plays a lot better for me now than it did back then.

For much of its running time, Dagon sidesteps gore and violence in favor of otherworldliness and a definite creep factor. Gordon has never tried to be “scary” like he does in Dagon; the director’s most well-known works are celebrated more for their shock value and violent gore gags. But as our lead hero, Paul Marsh, stumbles through the rain-drenched Spanish town of Imboca looking for his missing wife, and as the mysterious, mutated town citizens stumble in the background toward him in the midst of undergoing their strange transformation, the realization that this is actually pretty creepy begins to sink in. Don’t get me wrong, by film’s end, faces will be carved entirely off their skulls and worn, Leatherface-style, by the fishy members of the town, but until that point, Gordon chooses to walk a classy path of strange eeriness.

This being a low-budget, early 2000s production, whichever visual effects Dagon attempts look very poor. Thankfully there are only a handful of moments that call for these kinds of set-pieces that would be physically bigger than the production could afford, and even more thankfully, the film’s reliance mostly on practical effects all look great and very imaginative.

In general, Dagon isn’t a slam dunk as a horror experience, but it’s certainly one of the strongest titles in Gordon’s filmography and also one of the more solid Lovecraft adaptations out there.

THE 'SPECIES' SERIES (1995-2005)

Of all the films to have ever been financially successful, Species is not the first title that comes to mind. Essentially a film akin to cheeseball directors Fred Olen Ray (Bad Girls from Mars) or Jim Wynorski (Not of This Earth), but with an A-list cast and released by a major studio, Species was that film back in 1995 that made the female demographic roll their eyes and say, "That's that movie where that girl walks around topless the whole time," leaving their male counterparts to chuckle their best Beavis & Butthead chuckle and say, "That's why I want to see it!" Whether you like it or not, Species made bank while also inexplicably starring Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, and Forrest Whitaker. Normally I'd also throw in Michael Madsen to bolster my point, but then you'd think of the current Michael Madsen and go "So?" instead of the Michael Madsen of 1994, who was pretty respectable.

Species was a box office doozy in 1995, and it's actually kind of surprising it would take three years for Species II to rear its alien head. What isn't surprising is how bad it is, and by now I believe that's achieved common-knowledge status. Amusingly, there is exactly one critic's pull-quote on the current home video release:

"Great special effects!" – Boxoffice

And even that's a lie.

Maybe they were great special effects in 1998, but in 2016, sorry—today's soda commercials, literally, have better effects. It's tempting to believe that it's H.R. Giger's alien designs being celebrated, not the jokey MS Dos visual effects, but being that his creations receive roughly four minutes of screen time in the finale, what's likely being celebrated are the shameless close-ups of blown-off heads being digitally reformed by alien magic.

Species II was somehow directed by Peter Medak, a cult director perhaps best known for The Changeling and Zorro: The Gay Blade (and The Ruling Class, a personal favorite). His sly sense of humor is evident throughout, which is pretty much the only thing that makes it watchable. (The film opens with our astronauts floating around space in their vessel covered in sponsor logos [Miller Lite! Pepsi-Cola!], as if suggesting NASA had to sell out and go elsewhere for funding.) Medak might not have been the only person involved in the production who knew how stupid the film was, but he makes his near-disdain for it the most obvious. (Spoiler alert: in the film's finale, the bad alien literally mouth-fucks the good alien to death. You know, for kids!)

Film Fact! In Species II, James Cromwell plays Senator Judson Ross and father to a man who will soon became an alien. He tells him, "You're a Ross. Act like it." In Oliver Stone's W., James Cromwell plays Congressman George H.W. Bush and father to a man who was probably an alien to begin with. He tells him, "You're a Bush. Act like one." Ergo, we are forced to conclude that W. is a big budget remake of Species II—and like most other remakes, ain't as good.

For the first entry in the Species saga to go direct-to-video, gone are the established directors, reasonable budgets, the alien designs by H.R. Giger, and except for the opening five minutes, Natasha Henstridge. Instead what we receive is a silly plot recycled from—of all things—Re-Animator, a handful of tepid performances, and a plot that, somewhere—perhaps on paper—makes sense, but doesn't within the course of the film. Also sadly gone is former director Peter Medak's wry sense of humor, while newcomer Brad Turner instead makes the error of trying to take all this sexy alien nonsense way too seriously. He shouldn't have, as I can assure him, no one else is.

Our lead alien-dealer-wither, Dean, is played by Robin Dunne, who seems to have built himself a tidy career in the direct-to-video sequel world, having also starred in Cruel Intentions 2, The Skulls 2, and American Psycho 2. They are all bad, just like Species III is bad. And he is bad in them.

Considering the Species franchise is built on one very silly and shaky premise—hot alien babes trying to get knocked up—it was inevitable that an installment finally go full gonzo to create a majestic train wreck. Species IV: The Awakening is that installment. At first appearing to be the most serious of all the Species films, that soon devolves into alien babe nuns, mutant taxi drivers and hotel concierges, and apparently the most dangerous and alien-slimed town in all of Mexico. The acting talent pool sees a series-low, and for a film that looks to have had the lowest budget yet, the constant insistence on utilizing visual effects it can't afford soon becomes a thing of amusement. There are exactly two reasons to ever sit through Species IV: The Awakening—the astoundingly gorgeous Helena Mattson as the new alien babe, and the ludicrous and awkwardly choreographed fight scene between the two alien costumes during the finale. Picture the early Toho Godzilla films, which saw two mid-sized dummies flailing their lifeless plastic limbs at each other, and you're nearly there. The performers ensnared in these suits can barely move, let alone have a convincing fight, and it will give you a serious joy-joy feeling to see it unfold.

This might be a point I've made before, but I'll make it again because it's still relevant: We live in a world where all of the Species films are now on Blu-ray, but not all of William Friedkin's films are on DVD. Think about that as you watch sexy alien girls tearing off men's flesh and walking around in slime, or nothing, or slime/nothing, and wonder if it's really worthy of the newest home entertainment medium.

THE MONSTER MARCH!

I hope you're loving these awful monthly theme puns because I can keep going until eternity.

The best thing about monster movies is you can make whatever kind of monster you want and it still counts. You might think that a "monster movie" adheres to a certain kind of look, feel or rule, but it's pretty wide-reaching. The "monster" movie is almost the "miscellaneous" movie, and can even rob a little from more specific sub-genres. Vampires, werewolves, killer animals, or stuff you never would've thought existed, like little meatballs that live in picnic baskets or the entirety of the Killer Tomatoes series. (Yes, series -- there are FOUR movies about killer tomatoes.) 

March is MONSTER MARCH (I know you love it) so join me to see what kind of monstrous things we'll get into.

THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI (2002)

The western world has its own idea of the samurai. In this neck of the woods, samurai are sometimes blood-thirsty, meticulously trained savages who can disappear at will like wisps of smoke. They can appear otherworldly, even supernatural, suggesting that it wasn't generations of enlightenment and formal training that has led to their legacy, but mysticism and black magic. 

And then you've got nonsense like Kill Bill where old men stroke too-long beards and revel in bawdy bullshit. In this age of Quentin Tarantino and Tom Cruise, the true essence of the samurai has become muddied and lost. This is where The Twilight Samurai enters to shatter your allusions and change so much of what you thought you knew about this ancient culture. 

Seibei (Hiroyuki Sanada) has had a rough go of it lately. His wife has died from consumption, leaving him to not only care for their two daughters with little money, but he must also contend with caring for his mother, whom he is sadly losing to her increasing dementia. To support his family as best as he can, he has taken to working in an accountant's office, utilizing none of his skills of a samurai. Seibei struggles to find worth in himself in a world rapidly changing and one that he feels is consistently letting him down. 

One of the reasons The Twilight Samurai is so effective as a film is the sheer normality of it all, which sounds like an unusual point of praise, but it's exactly this normality that gives the film its power. Seibei the samurai is not a wire-flying hero; he does not befriend a westerner to fight off the advances of a nearby warring clan. He is a widower, father of two daughters, son of a sick mother; an office drone like the rest of us forced to work in a lifeless environment doing lifeless work. And in the midst of all this, Seibi finds himself living in a world where the concept of the samurai is outdated and unnecessary. He is not only contending with the drastic turn his life has taken following the death of his wife, but he is also contending with his own worth as a person, and feelings of his own irrelevance. 

Though the story of an individual examining their own worth is a timeless one, the foreign environment in which The Twilight Samurai takes place is what drives the story into unique territory. It gets a lot of mileage out of presenting a character study of this sad man who, though he bears the sword, the robe, and the tied-back hair, feels nothing like the samurai whom he has studied to be. Because of this, Seibei feels intensely human and, at times, sadly relateable. He's been dealt a shitty hand, he's barely making ends meet at a job he loathes, and his co-workers, who repeatedly ask him to come out for drinks and who are always turned down, have begun calling him "Twilight Seibei," because he always makes it a point to get home before dark so he can care for his family. They mock him for his anti-social behavior, his appearance, and yeah, even his body odor. He suffers the same indignities as your basic blue-collar 9-to-5er - it's just that he happens to be a samurai, and never has such a respected and awed-over figurehead been so castrated and dehumanized to the point of humiliation. 

The Twilight Samurai is definitely not for everyone. At a running time of over two hours, and with samurai everywhere on screen all the time, but none of whom are doing cool flips or slicing men in half or other dumb Hollywood shit, preconceived notions have the power to conflict with the story. Make no mistake, though there are scenes in which the samurai exercise their skills, ultimately The Twilight Samurai is a two-hour character study about a broken man learning to feel worth again - and that's equally compelling as any wire-fight.

The Twilight Samurai is available on Blu-ray from Twilight Time.

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (1969)

I adore Ray Bradbury. I grew up reading the author’s works, but without truly honing in on the emotion and sense of wonder that the author infused in his writing until I was much older. The Halloween Tree, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The October Country all rank as not just my favorite Bradbury works, but my favorite works ever. But as someone who leans more toward out and out horror rather than sci-fi and fantasy, there are some books and short story collections by the author I never felt compelled to read — an example being The Martian Chronicles, as well as The Illustrated Man.

By the studio’s own synopsis, one would think that the film adaption strayed away from the heavier sci-fi leanings of the anthology of the same name, but that’s not the case. Though the wraparound story (featuring the titular character played by an excellent Rod Steiger) exists in a mid-1900s, middle-America environment, every tale spun by the illustrated man exists in a science-fiction or futuristic environment. Source material aside (again, I haven’t read it, so I don’t want to tick off the purists), the wraparound story doesn’t mesh well with the stories that are told. (For once, the wraparound story is actually the best part of the anthology.) A single story existing in the sci-fi world would have been one thing, but by the second story, the theme is established and it feels at odds with the film’s opener (and closer).

Steiger and Claire Bloom (who plays the illustrator witch in the wraparound) play all the lead roles in each story, and though they do a great job, it also lends itself to confusion — especially with the very subtle inference that some of the stories may or may not overlap. Sci-fi aspect aside, there’s another thing that all the stories have in common, and it’s one very unexpected, and that’s a slight hint of sexuality. Steiger’s carnival drifter becoming attracted to Bloom’s witch and undergoing his body transformation in hopes to sleep with her is just one example, but each story includes something akin to this. I’m not sure what it all means, to be honest.

If there’s one reason to watch The Illustrated Man, it’s for Rod Steiger. He’s a blast to watch, and manages to play an intimidating, authoritative figure in every tale. His dominating performance anchors every segment, and there’s an interesting dichotomy in place in that, though every character is supposed to be different, Steiger’s approach seems purposely similar in each, suggesting that maybe all of them are him in some way. And if there was anyone with the audacity to attempt such a thing, it would be Bradbury.

Surprisingly, Bradbury hasn’t been adapted for film as much as you’d think (the most recent was HBO’s mind-bogglingly reckless and disrespectful Fahrenheit 451), given his large body of work and Hollywood’s tendency to adapt cult and horror authors. For reference, Stephen King is already starting to lap himself, racking up two adaptations, or more, per novel or novella. I can’t imagine that those Bradbury fans who enjoy or prefer his science-fiction writing won’t enjoy The Illustrated Man, but for me I was hoping for something a little more “supernatural” (as promised by the tagline). 

The Illustrated Man is available on Blu-ray from Warner Archives.