None of these deserve a full review quite frankly, which is why they are being merged into this all inclusive B-Movie review. It’s strange, after another evening spent throwing yet more hours of my sorry life down the bog, I still don’t feel as depressed as I did when I came out of the cinema after seeing James Cameron’s Avatar. Admittedly that might be because 3D films give me a headache even Shane MacGowan would flinch at, but it really comes down to the simple fact that where Cameron’s blue nonsense cost close to $200 Million, these shitty B-Movies barely registered on the monetary scale. They are, when it comes down to it, harmless. They’re not going to have any great affect of the film business in the long term.
And what were these masterpieces, I hear you ask?
…
Return of the Killer Tomatoes
(1988)
Dir: John De Bello
Well, we begin our grubby journey with the infamous Return of the Killer Tomatoes from 1988, the sequel (if you can believe it) to 1978’s Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. See if you can guess what the plot is from that great title. If you went with attacking tomatoes, you’d be wrong. Return is all about Anthony Starke’s clueless klutz Chad and his literally juicy girlfriend, Karen Mistal’s Tara, as they try to avoid her creator, the brilliantly named Professor Gangreen.
This has to be one of the most annoying films I’ve ever seen. If, like some of the other films in this review, it just featured monsters attacking people, it would be at least some fun. As it is, Return of the Killer Tomatoes is so up its own backside with winking its big fat, fruity eye at the camera and Jimi Hendrix-fucking the Fourth Wall into oblivion that what we get is just one great, smartarse, ketchup mess.
The only humour that can be derived from this film is seeing a young, mulleted George Clooney strutting his stuff. And guess what? He’s playing the same character in 1988 too. Come on, George. We know you’re a suave bastard; make more films like Syriana please.
¾ / *****
You say tomato, I say … what a piece of shit.
…
Crocodile
(2000)
Dir: Tobe Hooper
Next on the list is Crocodile. Yep, that’s the title. Again, I’d like you to try and guess the plot yourself with this one. Fortunately, this time you’d be quite right with the obvious selection of a crocodile. But not just any crocodile. It’s a big fucking angry crocodile with a grudge, and plenty of annoying, nubile Spring Break youngsters to gobble up.
Believe it or not, this Millennium masterpiece is actually from the man who brought you such genuine classics as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist. That’s right, folks, whilst Michael Bay continues to get work, a truly talented director like Tobe Hooper gets stuck directing bollocks like this.
And it is bollocks, I’ll be honest. It’s essentially just a series of very gory deaths at the jaws of a fairly terrible CG croc. But at least Hooper knows what he’s doing. He knows he doesn’t have a budget. He knows he doesn’t have a full model. And he knows all anyone watching a film like this really wants is to see these attractive wankers have their limbs chomped off one by one like a fat kid in McDonalds. He doesn’t waste time being a savvy prick like in Return of the Killer Tomatoes.
What’s funny is, with a better cast, Crocodile would actually be a pretty decent flick. Just look at this year’s Piranha, a well-made, smart and funny remake of Joe Dante’s 1978 original. That film had a budget and had stars like Elisabeth Shue and Ving Rhames to at least make it watchable. Crocodile has neither of those things, and so poor Tobe Hooper is left fighting a losing battle.
** / *****
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Hell Comes to Frogtown
(1988)
Dir: Donald G. Jackson and R. J. Kizer
Number three B-Movie is a strange one. I give you Hell Comes To Frogtown from 1988, starring former WWF wrestler ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper. This one doesn’t quite have the easily decipherable title that the others do, so I’ll do my best to summarise the plot for you.
In a post-Apocalyptic future wasteland, Piper is the absolutely brilliantly named Sam Hell, a random wanderer, who just so happens to be the most fertile man on Earth. Lucky him. He is dispatched, along with a team of sexy and sassy scientists/soldiers to rescue and impregnate a group of equally fertile human women, who have been captured by a gang of mutant amphibians in the accurately named ‘Frogtown’.
Great stuff eh?
The funny thing is, Frogtown is actually not that bad. It’s certainly leaps and bounds better than Return of the Killer Tomatoes, and in the same category of fun as Crocodile. It’s helped by the fact that Piper is actually not that bad a leading man. Doing his best Han Solo impression, he wanders through this frankly bizarre plot with the same wide-eyed look that made him a star during his battles with Hulk Hogan. With some of the weird bastards he’d been wrestling all his life, the crappy, villainous frogs he was faced by here probably didn’t look that bad.
Frogtown actually has an excuse for the overtly sexy women accompanying Hell on his quest. His, uh, ‘Jewels’ need to be both protected and kept in a constant state of readiness, so it wouldn’t be much good having Susan Boyle sitting next to him giving him the eye. It would actually be interesting to see what a proper film would make of this plot, as it raises all kind of ethical issues, which obviously get about the same attention as they do in a Sex in the City film. Hell is essentially going to be impregnating these women whether they want him to or not, using a variety of drugs and other coaxing methods. Those of us who aren’t professional footballers would probably call that rape, but the film doesn’t touch on it.
It wants to be Mad Max with sex and frogs, from every dusty track to the crappy cars they drive - women would drive pink cars apparently - but it really, really isn’t.
* ¾ / *****
**************
The opening of Hell Comes to Frogtown concerns the usual apocalyptic tale. The world has ended in a flash of mushroom clouds and now everyone who survived need never worry about mortgage repayments again.
Why exactly does every post apocalyptic story have to begin in this way? I’m pretty sure we can figure out where we are. It’s clearly an apocalyptic wasteland. I can see that straight away.
Anyway, the film’s opening few segments actually have rather a lot to be praised about them. The cold, static perspective shot that kicks the movie off is a genuinely inventive one. The Statue of Liberty is shot like it is sinking into the rubble that surrounds it. The filmmakers actually show a modicum of clear shining talent with that shot because it does a job of subverting expectations. Moments later, a gloved hand reaches into the scene and picks the statue up and so we can see that it was just a tourist model all along. The rest of the movie never quite manages that same level of inventiveness again. The characters all suffer from a lack of imagination and dress up like typical Mad Max rejects. The guy holding the statuette at the start of the movie is a particular example of it because he appears to be clad entirely in an extreme bee keeper’s outfit, complete with a protective helmet to keep all those pesky radioactive bees out of his face. All this however is nothing when compared to what the inhabitants of Frogtown look like…
Lucky he hasn’t got opposable thumbs.
I think this is where most of my particular trouble with Hell Comes to Frogtown is rooted. The film as much as it might be thought otherwise given the title, is so much better before Hell gets to Frogtown. The rubbery looking frog things are just so dumb and also as far as I can recall are never explained properly in any way whatsoever. The second half of the film is just not as exciting as it so easily might have been. The filmmakers could have used their time far better by developing the first few parts of the movie instead. The stuff about his reputation for being a sort of big pimp daddy of the wasteland is far more interesting to me. The whole frog thing when it’s added into the mixture as well is I think too much craziness for just one movie to handle. Nevertheless Hell comes to Frogtown ends up as a decent B-movie flick but it’s just to put it bluntly never really in any risk of being mistaken for anything more than what it is – trash.
*/*****
“No wait! Keep the Austin Powers glasses on. It does something for me.”
…
Spiders
(2000)
Dir: Gary Jones
Next comes 2000’s Spiders from director Gary Jones. Probably the most genuinely disgusting of the B-Movies viewed, based solely on the fact that spiders are just fucking horrible, and a film about them fucking people up is always an uncomfortable watch, even if the actual eight-legged freaks themselves look about as convincing as Sylvio Berlusconi’s hair dye.
Like Crocodile, the plot is summed up by the oh so catchy title. There’s, uh, spiders. Think they’re friendly? NASA, in their usual cinematic wisdom, are conducting experiments in space with a rare breed of spider, which, as you might have guessed, goes a tad wrong, resulting in them bringing back down to Earth with them the most horrendous fucking creature imaginable. Of course, a trio of pesky young college reporters sneak into the top secret military base and witness the carnage that follows.
Spiders benefits from the same simplicity as Crocodile, understanding that the only reason anyone is watching this piece of shit is out of some sick curiosity at seeing people being ripped apart by a giant spider. Unfortunately, Spiders also suffers from that same old B-Movie disease that everything looks terrible, with shot after shot of someone writhing around on the floor with a crappy looking plastic spider on their face. The acting is on a similar level of shit, although one tightarse government agent played by Mark Phelan provides at least some entertainment as the angriest man in the world. But unfortunately even his scenery chewing and random doctor killing can’t save Spiders from the plughole.
* ¾ / *****
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Return to Horror High
(1987)
Dir: Bill Froehlich
And last and most certainly fucking least comes Return to Horror High, a 1987 ‘classic’ from director Bill Froehlich and starring once again George bloody Clooney. How Clooney got the career he’s had after starring in these tedious turds is beyond me.
The plot revolves around a film crew who return to a high school where a series of grisly murders were previously committed, intent on making a film about them. Unfortunately for them, it seems as though the killer isn’t quite done yet.
Just like Return of the Killer Tomatoes, Horror High seems to forget what it is, a sodding B-Movie, and starts to think it’s The Sixth Sense. Which is the film and which is reality? How are we supposed to care about this when the acting and everything else is so turgid that it’s hard to pay any attention whatsoever? About the only fun to be had from this film is seeing George Clooney playing, you guessed it, a suave actor.
For a horror it lacks any chills, although one scene in which a science teacher is dissected whilst still alive is rather creepy and bumps the overall rating up a smidgen. Other than that, there’s not much fun to be had from this crap. Like Return of the Killer Tomatoes, it disappears up its own rear end fairly quickly, and just keeps on going. Even hearing Alex Rocco of The Simpsons fame can’t save this cinematic massacre. An episode of Itchy and Scratchy would be more effective.
¾ / *****
The mullet is mostly hidden away in this movie. For decency’s sake it has to stay under the policeman’s hat.
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