Is It Monday Yet?

In case my eagerness to insert Frogs or Empire of the Ants into any unrelated conversation has gotten past you, I really, really really, really really really, and did I mention really? love the strange pocket of genre cinema known as Nature Strikes Back. Whether we’re dealing with two-story high chickens or Leslie Nielson wrestling a bear bare-chested, there’s just something about animals banding together to take us silly opposable thumb wielders down that never fails to make me smile.

Colin Eggleston’s Long Weekend (with a script from Patrick scribe Everett de Roche) is best described as the arthouse interpretation of what is otherwise considered a fairly silly (yet incredibly enjoyable) batch of films. Think of it as Day of the Animals That Are Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Quick Plot: Marcia and Peter are an incredibly unhappy married couple with some disposable income and a lot of harmful secrets. To maybe mend some of their troubles, they begrudgingly embark upon a small road trip to what they expect to be a secluded beach located deep into the forests of Australia. Though Marcia would rather be basking in the comfort of a five-star hotel, Peter insists on lugging his expensive camping gear and chubby dog Cricket for one of those manly back-to-nature vacations that only rich people can actually take.

The ride there is not without its difficulty. Peter receives some strangely contradictory information at a local gas station that seems to be urging him away from his destination, although it’s the brutal running-over-of-a-kangaroo that sets an eerie tone. As news reports drop hints about bird attacks and Eggleston’s camera glares ominously at wayward wombats (band name trademark pending), we get the increasing sensation that nature isn’t crazy about these bickering humans.

Neither are we. Ever so slowly, Marcia and Peter reveal some of the reasons for their coldness towards each other, including infidelity and unwanted abortion. Throughout it all, Marcia seems to share our sentiment that something in this natural paradise wants them out. A sea cow (yes, it’s apparently a thing) washes up onshore. Peter gets Fabio’d by a giant seagull. 

Harpoons shoot on their own. A grime coated Barbie doll with Marcia’s haircut ominously shows up naked as Marcia sunbathes a few feet away. 

Something is off, and perhaps, the film surmises, deservedly so, as we witness Peter litter and nonchalantly chop down a tree while Marcia sprays pesticide at innocent ants. Their disregard for the outdoors is noted.

Long Weekend is a supremely strange film, one that sort of uses the guise of Nature Strikes Back to serve up a far more haunting story about a toxic relationship. Although we do get hints that animals are misbehaving elsewhere in the country, the two-character thrust of the film could almost lead you to believe all these seemingly ‘unnatural’ natural acts are actually part of our leads’ unraveling psyches. Certainly the fate of one character seems, albeit unclearly, to be more an act of human than god or goose. 

Some might find it pretentious, especially since the film is often categorized alongside much lighter fare like Food of the Gods. This is a horror movie in the way that Picnic At Hanging Rock is a horror movie: something supernatural is at work, but that’s ultimately just an excuse. The horror exists between a man and woman who seem to derive more pleasure in hurting their partner than loving them, and yet, as Peter points out so pointedly to Marcia, as clear as it is that the love is gone, the need for one another will probably never die. These people have ruined each other, and therefore, who else can take them?

Long Weekend isn’t shy about its metaphors (re: broken egg), but Eggleston makes them work by creating such a haunting and unusual mood through his depiction of nature. From both an audio and visual point of view, Long Weekend is incredibly atmospheric. Once you plop the saga of Peter and Marcia inside such a landscape, the results are bound to be intense.

High Points
Enough can’t be said about the look of the film, lovingly captured by director of photography Vincent Monton. In an age of forced perspective effects or artful editing around ever putting an animal in the same frame as a human, Monton finds ways to use close shots of creatures to hauntingly brilliant effect

John Hargreaves and Briony Behets have an uphill battle in playing two extremely unlikable characters, and credit must go to both for making such strong commitments 

Without spoiling, let me say that I adored everything about the ending of this film

Low Points
Well, the thing is that the very nature of Long Weekend feels like an uncomfortably long weekend where you ended up stuck tagging along as a third wheel to the most miserably married couple in Australia. So this isn’t exactly a fun romp, which can, you know, be a bit of a drag

Lessons Learned
A domesticated pet is, to the natural animals of the wildness, something of an uncle tom

Whatever you do, do not feed the possums

It’s not smart to leave your dog home alone unsupervised for three days, but when all is said and done, it might be preferable to spending a dreadful weekend in your company

Rent/Bury/Buy
Remade in 2008, Long Weekend is something truly unusual and well worth a quiet night of watching. The Synapse released DVD includes a fascinating commentary track and photo still gallery with an audio interview of the late Hargreaves (which comes with a spoiler warning, something I find endearingly adorable). White it won’t give you that fun beer & friends party night feeling like Frogs, Long Weekend is an eerie descent into marital hell that just so happens to be spoken in the language of animals amuck. Give it a try.

And watch your back. A koala might be doing the same.

Bear: It's about a bear

Perhaps my artistically inclined readers can enlighten me as to why so may paintings and sculptures are titled “Untitled.” It seems dreadfully lazy and worse, evidence that the artist didn’t actually know WHAT they were making. Calling a blank canvas with a dot of scribble something like “The War Between the Sexes” is of course quite pretentious, but doesn’t it seem incomplete to not call it SOMETHING?

I ask this question because a) I’ve always wanted to know the answer and b) I just watched a movie about a killer bear called, plain and simple, Bear. I almost wonder if the movie was written, filmed, and sold with the title “Untitled Bear Horror Movie” until someone in the art department charged with making a poster finally asked the question “Hey! Do we have a title for this thing?” The room got very quiet. Thankfully, it was Bring Your Daughter To Work Day. The graphic designer looked around for help, stumped until his 18 month old (who was just learning how to talk while playing with her Care Bear figurines) pointed to the working image and said so cutely “bear.”

And thusly Bear was titled...Bear.

Quick Plot: Brothers Nick and Sam are driving to an anniversary dinner for their parents with their ladies in tow. Oldest Sam is a smarmy yuppie type with bland wife Liz, while Nick is a rock star wannabe/recovering alcoholic early on in his relationship with the annoyingly free-spirited Christine. When their mini-van (it’s okay to laugh) breaks down just off the main highway, they meet a big ol’ grizzly bear mama and promptly shoot her dead.

Don’t you love these people?

Before you can get through one verse of “The Other Day I Saw a Bear,” grizzly mama’s old man is on the hunt. He’s bigger, meaner, smarter, and apparently, way more conniving than his late missus.

And he wants vengeance.

Bear is a very odd film in its construction. Rather than going the Grizzly Park tear-the-pretty-people-up route, it focuses tightly on its two couples and the never-quite-in-the-same-shot bear (who I’m just going to go ahead and name Charles Bronson for his revenge obsession). Our first kill comes well into the film, and perhaps because director John Rebel had what I imagine were limited monetary resources, it never really tries to make you think “yup, it would sure hurt getting mauled by a bear!” I *think* what it actually goes for is a “No! Not that character that I now know so much about!” effect instead.

In case that last paragraph didn’t give it away, I’m having an awfully hard time trying to figure out how to discuss Bear. Unlike the awful but enjoyable Grizzly Park, there’s nothing the least bit fun about this film. We’re given four characters who bicker obnoxiously, none with any real charm to make us root for their survival. At the same time, I have to appreciate the effort. The script (by Roel Reine and House’s Ethan Wiley) certainly TRIES to make Sam, Nick, LIz, and Christine into real, breathing detailed human beings. Considering my complaints about movies like The Darkest Hour (which assumes that just because they’re onscreen, we automatically care about the cast members), I do think Bear puts the right priority into crafting its characters, all of whom are capably played by their young actors. The problem though is that...well...they’re still kind of a drag.

For the first 45 minutes or so, we just get to hear Nick and Sam rehash old arguments about their differences in life. These are the kind of brothers who have discussions about how music isn’t a viable career and that’s why you’re not the favorite son! Then Liz and Christine bond over their own unhappiness with the kind of magical liquor bottle that makes you instantly drunk. It’s not the worst writing put forth in a direct-to-Netflix horror movie, but at the same time, there’s nothing overly clever or inspiring about it. I have no reason to care.

Well, I SAY that but then...well...then the bear has a flashback to the moment that played 10 minutes earlier where Sam shot his girlfriend dead, and suddenly, Bear becomes the greatest movie of all time. But then I realize there even though our titular grizzly howls with true pain, there’s no winking subtitle to translate the howl into “Nooooooooooooooooo” and I realize the film isn’t as smart as I hoped.

On the other hand, Bear is technically put together in a fairly impressive manner. Credit goes to young director Rebel and editor Herman P. Koerts for not making me realize until well after the film finished that no actor is ever ACTUALLY in the same frame as Charles Bronson. While the film never really inspires any true fear, it by no means embarrasses itself in how it uses a real-life grizzly stalking its young cast. Animals attack genre fans may at least find it a new twist on the old Cujo tale. That being said, I’d be remiss in my duties to not complain about some of the more contrived elements of the script, namely:

SPOILERS

As things are looking dimmer and dimmer for our young leads, Bear finds irresponsible rock star brother sitting alone with his stiffer WASPy sister-in-law for what turns into a rather inane downward spiral of third act revelations. Liz slept with Nick! And Sam is in financial trouble! And might go to jail for embezzlement! Bring Sam back into the van (because after he ran to get help, Charles Bronson dragged him back to die with his companions because bears are the reincarnation of Native American shamans or something something) primarily so Liz can tell both men that SHE’S PREGNANT! Which is crazy because she hasn’t had sex with her husband in five months BUT she had sex with Nick in two so HE’S THE FATHER! And of course, in the rationalizations of these characters, the entire reason the bear is hunting them with such ferocity is because they were all unhappy with their lives and nothing says new start like being psychologically tortured and maybe physically eaten by a grizzly bear.

Look, I think it’s great that a tiny li’l nature gone wild flick wanted to try its hand at Bergman-like character drama. But ultimately, having the last 20 minutes of an 80 minute bear attack film turn into Days of Our Lives (minus the possession) is sort of the equivalent of ordering a hot dog from a $1 cart for a quick bite only to then wait an hour while the vendor shows off his origami skills with the bun. It just misses the point.

High Notes

It’s always a pleasure when the most annoying character gets eaten first

Low Notes

I understand that it’s nighttime and bears don’t have track lighting, but it’s still nice for the audience to see what’s actually going on most of the time

Lessons Learned

Pregnant also means ‘with child,’ or ‘in the family way’

Unlike rock ‘n roll stars, real people don’t bed someone new every night

As I recently pointed out with Basic Instinct 2, having a character smoke in a no-smoking zone doesn’t make her a rebel; it makes her disrespectful and obnoxious

Rent/Bury/Buy

Bear is not what you would traditionally call a good movie, but it does manage to rise above its natural limitations. The cast isn’t quite memorable, but they service the clumsy writing with all their hearts and newbie director John Rebel makes the best out of some fairly terrible material. I only recommend it as an Instant Watch stream when you really need a bear fix and feel like seeing an incredibly inconsistent attempt. It’s not satisfying in the least, but it’s strange and capable enough of a film to warrant some of your time. I’d prefer an origami swan hot dog bun, but sometimes you just have to compromise.

Supersize That Food of the Gods

Synchronized swimming

‘80s stylin'

Cute rats

Cute giant rats

Giant kids that curse

A character named Carlos singing La Cucaracha while peeing in bushes

My question is obvious: in all the list of great sequels, why oh why oh why has nobody ever mentioned Gnaw: Food of the Gods 2?

Quick Plot: Set in a university, Gnaw begins with a bunch of flaky animal rights activists protesting the medical experimentation going on inside. I say ‘flaky’ not because it’s silly to protest this kind of thing, but more because these particular people are idiots who make the monkey releasers of 28 Days Later look like Stephen Hawking. The kind who break into a laboratory after hours to expose its cruelty and embark upon a 'trash the room!' montage (that truthfully, I long to participate in) without actually helping any of the creatures. Best of all, after making the papers and pissing off the administration, the trespassers return...THE VERY NEXT NIGHT.

Although I can't really blame these ill-advised coeds. They only have their education to blame, and considering a university that had been BROKEN INTO the very NIGHT BEFORE has done nothing to beef up its security measures, why would they possibly think repeating their crime would have consequences?

Thankfully for us, these do gooder dumdums are about to kickstart one of the best plot standbys in the history of film: giganticism. See, unbeknownst to the critter crusaders, Dr. Neil Hamilton was experimenting with a growth hormone. Why would a scientist experiment with a growth hormone you ask?

Well, that.

See, Neil’s doctor friend a few towns away was doing some of her own work with hormones and...oops, made little Bobby a hilariously gigantic (and even more hilariously foul-mouthed) monster. Although Neil generally restricts his research to plants in order to still be able to sleep with his horribly not smart animal rights activist galpal Alex (played by Prom Night 2’s Mary Lou herself, Lisa Schrage), he takes the risk and feeds a rat some untested drugs as a few others nibble on supersized tomatoes that would put Lisa Simpson's lost science fair project to shame. In the words of his assistant, Neil has created “an accidental hormone concoction, like trying to make a martini and ending up with LSD.” Shockingly, in the 1980s, this was considered a bad thing.

Naturally, once the lab gets broken into (for a second time in a row, did I mention that?), a few hulk-in-the-making rats get loose and begin a reign of terror on the small college town. Even more naturally for a genre film, there’s a single-minded bureaucrat (in this case, the college president) who refuses to close the campus despite, you know, the threat of Rodents of Unusual Size chomping through the student body. 

But how could one POSSIBLY be expected to cancel class when there’s a synchronized swimming competition on the horizon?

Yes dear readers, Gnaw: The Kind of Not Really Sequel to Food of the Gods features a synchronized swimming massacre. See, such a sport was apparently a HUGE spectator coup back in the day and therefore equals a battleground akin to Gettysburg when the rats decide to crash. What follows is a glorious scene of carnage that cares so much about its audience that it even includes a randomly crazed mob member picking up a policeman’s freed handgun and firing madly at the innocent crowd.

I pretty much adored Gnaw from start to finish. The effects of the rats--what I imagine is a combination of puppetry and forced perspective, much like Bert I. Gordon's original--are colorful enough to not worry you with whether they look believable in any way, and the kills, plentiful enough to keep you watching. It falters a tad in the dullness of its leads, but hey: any film that gives us the transformation of a greedy scientist into a low rent Toxic Avenger can't escape being awesome.

High Points

There are a lot of small touches in the supporting cast that makes Gnaw something clever, including an overly enthusiastic hunter with a flamethrower and minor character with a receding hairline and a subtle but quite funny obsession with scientifically curing baldness

Low Points

Though I loved her bitchy prom queen attitude as Mary Lou, Schrage’s good girl Alex is painfully unlikable here. Paul Coufos fares a tad better, but both roles are just not nearly as much fun as the movie they're in

Lessons Learned

To do experiments you need a lab...and research data

Don’t forget to take the lenscap off the camera

You would think diehard animal activists wouldn’t be afraid the thing they’re trying so hard to protect (i.e., rats). You would think but be very, very wrong

What’s wrong with this country: people not taking pride in their work

HILARIOUS DREAM SEQUENCE ALERT!

I was initially confused as to why the white toast Neil would allow himself to be so easily seduced by the school slut, but then something wonderful happened: Neil tasted some of his hormone juice and the effects were felt by his first confused, then grateful, then understandably horrified new squeeze. Then he woke up.

Crazy Cat Lady Alert

I tell it straight here: Neil’s habit of letting his favorite pet rat drape herself over his shoulder as he goes about his day is pretty much how Joplin and I spend evenings here at the Doll’s House

Montage Mania

Ingredients: 

Computer

Rock music

Bunson burners

Petri dishes

A rainbow of food coloring in glass vials

Fist pumps

That my friends, is science at work

Goof Squad

I am, quite possibly, the absolute worst judge of continuity (somehow I missed the infamous Leif Garrett wig/no wig switcheroo in Devil Times Five), making my catch of the lead protester's hair going from near House Party style to crew cut back to House Party over the course of two days either impressive on my end or really sad for the film. And yes, I rewound to see if I was missing a hairnet and no, I found none.

Rent/Bury/Buy

This is a fun film. Not scary or thrilling or, you know, actually good, but an enthusiastic animals attack popcorn flick made with fresh enthusiasm. Considering most of its competition in 1989 featured silent slashers, Gnaw is ridiculously refreshing for its throwback style. The DVD is sadly sans special features, but nature strikes back fans owe it to themselves to seek out this subgenre with an ‘80s sheen. 

Blood Monkey, That Funky Monkey

Ever go to a party where no one had fun but the host? The food is exotically inedible. The music, a demo CD of someone’s boyfriend’s struggling band. A guest falls asleep or starts a vomitfest in the bathroom just when that weak drink has reached your urinary tract. There’s no place to sit and no one to have an intelligent conversation with regarding the controversial finale of America’s Next Top Model and just when you’ve summoned the strength to hasten an exit, you discover someone has mistakenly grabbed your winter coat, leaving you with an ill-fitting loaner that your still sickenly energetic host has kindly dug up from the basement to put over your shoulders.

If Blood Monkey is that party, then bless dear old Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham for having a ridiculously good time hosting it, even if it’s at the expense of the rest of the cast, crew, and more importantly, the baffled audience who really just want more blood monkeys.

Quick Plot: Abraham plays Professor Hamilton, the typical Col. Kurtz-esque genius living deep in the jungles of Thailand with his badass female bodyguard Chenne. The pair are soon joined by a jeep-ful of attractive and annoying anthropology graduate students taking a semester to study with one of the preeminent minds in the field.

Also, to be eaten by blood monkeys.

Who are these young brainiacs with charming accents, you might ask? Or you might not, since like virtually any movie made today starring twentysomethings, the twentysomethings are the least interesting things onscreen. There’s a blond who carries the most luggage (cause she’s blond, duh), a nerd identified as such because he wears glasses, a screamy girl with a video camera, a good-looking guy who seems to make the most decisions, his dull love interest who seems smart because she’s a brunette, and in a feat of screenwriting superiority, the guy who introduces himself as such:

“I’m Greg. The good-looking one. And I’m also like a genius in anthropology.”

You gotta love when a script is fully aware that its audience identifies characters by their rating on an Are You Hot scale. Greg—or Craig, I don’t really care—also gets the fun job of sexually harassing every female  in sight in that charming manner that only happens in movies and would be sue-able in real life. I actually found myself pitying poor actor Matt Reeves for having to say some of the Neil LeBute-ish dialogue about that silly but sexy child-bearing gender.

You know who else I pitied? Me. That’s right, when I queue up a film called Blood Monkey, I expect little more than what its title promised. You know what it promised? A blood monkey.

It’s not that Blood Monkey didn’t have blood monkeys. Throughout its 90 minute running time, we see various evidence that blood monkeys—a separate branch of evolution—are well and good in Thailand. And that their point of view is very orange. And that they set the kind of traps you’d find on Endor and that their brains are really big. That’s all fine and dandy but WHERE ARE THE BLOOD MONKEYS?

I asked that question a thirty minutes into the film. I asked again at the hour mark. Do you want to know when director Robert Vampire Circus Young answered? In the very. Last. Shot.

That’s a lot of time to waste when one could be filling it with blood monkeys.

High Points

I joke about F. Murray Abraham’s role here—especially when he opens up a can of whoop tush—but it’s actually nice to see such a celebrated actor having fun in the boonies of SyFyVille. Never does Abraham show the slightest sign of being too good for this material, and his clear enjoyment at such a villainous and physical role is ultimately the only REAL reason to watch this blood monkey-less Blood Monkey movie.

In a similar vein, the only character who comes close to matching Abraham’s enthusiasm is his bodyguard/maybe lady love Chenne, played with such angry violence by Prapimporn Karnchada. Watching her smack nerdy anthropologist students or drop-kick their makeup caboodles is oddly wonderful

Low Points

Is it really THAT HARD to write and direct young people as likable, interesting creatures? As movies like Blood Monkey and Grizzly Park seem to suggest, the answer is yes, yes it really is that hard

Lessons Learned

Chekhov’s rule of handheld video cameras: if the feature ‘night vision’ is referenced, you can bet a barrel of blood monkeys that we’ll be seeing green in the final reel

Most idiots can’t resist taking a ride on the baggage carousel, especially the self-proclaimed good-looking ones

The jungle is not good for the complexion

Rent/Bury/Buy

Blood Monkey wasn’t originally made for the SyFy Channel, but that’s where it ended up and really, that’s where it belongs. The location is gorgeous, the characters dull, action not terrible and script generally more funny than it ever meant to be. What makes it mildly recommendable is the energy and talent of F. Murray Abraham, coupled, of course, with the fact that he’s actually in this movie. So while it might not satisfy your taste for blood monkeys, it will quench your Salieri salivation and hey, I suppose that’s more than King Kong can say.