Vicious

Tom Savini, Bill Moseley, Brinke Stevens--How could you? How could you dupe me into renting this god-awful piece of cinematic garbage? I didn't expect much, but this is bottom of the barrel quality. Vicious is about a government operative named Kane (Savini) who captures unsuspecting campers and feeds them to a carnivorous beast living in the woods. From that description alone I was expecting what could have been a camp classic. But no, it's handled very terribly and the folks that I rented the movie for have very little screentime. The "actors" that do get the most screentime are BAD. But what really killed any enjoyment of this flick was the beast itself. When that photoshop-looking thing popped unto the screen, I really wanted to turn it off. I just simply hung my head in shame. I'm trying to forget this one already. I was wanting a film in the same vein as Mosquito but I got something much, much worse.

I think that if I video taped my hair growing, that that would have made a better movie than this drivel. Was this someone's failing grade film school project? Was this someone's idea of a bad joke? Was this a dare? Inquiring minds would like to know. I've seen better CGI monsters on old Nintendo games. Once again, I rented this for free and I still felt like I wasted my money. I wanted my 2 hours back. I wanted to be able to tell people that I didn't sit thru this garbage...but I can't. Those 2 hours are gone forever. If you see this movie on a shelf..avoid it like the plague. Don't let the cover art fool you....go home, read a book or a recipe or lick the floor.....something else besides watching this miserable excuse of a movie. This doesn't even get a "B" rating. Rated Z for bottom of the barrel.

Our government's idea of "field testing" a giant, scaly, fanged, genetically-created lizard creature is simply to let the damn thing run free in the New Jersey wilderness, where it can merrily munch on campers, fishermen and the citizens of the nearest small town. It is carefully contained behind a chain a three year old could get around with a hilarious "Do Not Enter" sign posted in front of it and is "supervised" by Kane (Tom Savini); a wild-eyed war vet who makes sure the creature has plenty of 'food' on hand. Kane lures people into the monster's clutches by giving them false information, ties people to trees, shoots them, snaps necks with his bare hands and runs people off the road to make sure his pal gets a square meal.

In Washington D.C., corrupt Colonel Jim Hardwick (Marco St. John) and Mr. Wallace (Bill Moseley, who's awful!) discover 'Project Carnivore' is getting out of hand and they go all out to stomp out the threat by sending out a grand total of (ha!) TWO black-ops marines to snuff out both Savini and the beast. And surprise! Four young people also show up to hunt and fish and get stuck in the middle of all this. They consist of wise-ass Steve (Robert Pralgo), pudgy heavy-drinker Hal (Ted Huckabee), bug-eyed good guy Doug (Brian Bremer) and his very annoying girlfriend Barbara (Melanie Parker), who crashes the "guy's weekend" with her own set of stupid "rules" for the trip (No Beer!?). Additional monster fodder comes in the form of other campers (including Brinke Stevens, who's completely wasted in a tiny cameo), a couple in a car wreck (the woman goes crazy) and a redneck fisherman.

Usually the reviews for this one are terrible, but overall I didn't think it was THAT bad. Most of the acting was OK, photography is pretty blurry (and I don't recall a movie off hand where everything was almost drowned out by the color green), story is too familiar but tolerable I guess... But when the monster finally shows up and you discover it is computer animated... Whoa, boy. It's the worst looking thing ever. I mean, those SciFi Channel original movies have way better sfx. They'd have been better off with a model mock up, which can be cheaply done and no matter how bad it looked it would have been more convincing than the terrible CGI seen here.

This film was put together very well. The editing was wonderful. Matt Green has a great eye when it comes to the angles and feel of the film. I think the Sci-Fi channel should premier it SOON, hear that SCI-FI..HUH? Great Film!!!!

Low-budget monster movie about a Military experiment that goes horribly wrong, releasing a lizard-like carnivorous monster into the wild. An X-Millitant (Tom Savani) lures people to the creature's habitat so it can feed....off human flesh. Tom Savani's "Vicious" is a great shoe-string budget monster fest with lots of gory on-screen death, a cool monster, and decent writing and performances for a film made under a million dollars. Okay, it's extremely corny, but the excellent gory special effects and the presence of Mr. Savani make up where the film fell short! 8/10.