I’ll never forget the look on my dog’s face when one of our guests at a barbecue fed her a veggie burger when she was expecting the real thing. That, and the ptoo! that followed.
I bring this up because it’s so close to my reaction to Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus. Never judge a film by its trailer!
#1 by Read MacGuirtose on June 26, 2009 - 3:26 pm
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Please forgive my ignorance, but why is it that the trailer showed the whole movie “literally, in the case of Quarantine”? I’m not familiar with Quarantine (I looked it up on the IMDb, but that wasn’t as illuminating as I’d hoped), and I’m just curious how it could have showed the whole movie in the trailer…
#2 by Braineater on June 26, 2009 - 6:13 pm
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Well, I was exaggerating a tad. But having seen the original Spanish movie not long before I saw the trailer for Quarantine, I was a little surprised to see how many of the coups de théâtre from the original were included in it. The success of the movie depends on a series of carefully-timed shocks, and since it’s filmed with a POV camera, it has a feeling of immediacy that’s really terrifying… provided you aren’t prepared for it. I felt the trailer gave away far too much; it seemed to me like I’d just seen the entire movie on fast-forward.
#3 by lyzard on June 26, 2009 - 6:31 pm
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So you rank this with Hell Of The Living Dead and Porno Holocaust, huh? At least tell me that something terrible *does* happen to the helicopter.
And yet…and yet… MS and GO being counteracted by the mixing of colourful liquids in conical flasks..? Guess they figured out my pheromones, too.
#4 by The Rev. D.D. on June 26, 2009 - 6:56 pm
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Foywonder thought it was decent; Will Braineater did not like it.
Guess I need to rent the damn thing and see what I think of it.
#5 by Braineater on June 26, 2009 - 10:30 pm
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Read: You’re absolutely right: “literally” should always mean literally. I’ve changed the sentence to reflect more what I meant.
Lyz — According to Dante, the mediocrities go to Hell, too, but don’t get past the gate. I wish I could rank it with those other movies, but it’s just not interesting enough. The monster scenes are barely longer than the flashes you see in the trailer. If you’re gonna give me crappy monster effects, then damn it, I want to wallow in them.
This is for you, though: a montage of colorful liquids…
Rev — I saw it alone and sober. I urge you not to repeat my mistake.
#6 by Gavin on June 26, 2009 - 11:47 pm
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I didn’t think it was that bad, myself. Nothing great, but I’ve seen worse.
I actually reviewed it for a site I “freelance” for. I imagine my review was far more positive than yours.
#7 by Thomas on June 26, 2009 - 11:49 pm
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I saw this, and I’ll agree that it wasn’t very good. However, I’d argue that it was a perfectly serviceable time-waster. It wasn’t ever irritating, at least, with the exception of those blasted bits of anti-government agitprop, and it had the cool bits from the trailer, and the cast were likable. I guess I just assumed that it would be awful and was pleased that it was “TV good” instead.
Why am I defending this movie?
#8 by Gavin on June 27, 2009 - 12:52 am
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Funny thing I noticed when I saw it: This movie has something in common with It Came From Beneath The Sea.
In both cases, the FX artists didn’t seem to realize that an octopus does not have eyelids.
#9 by lyzard on June 27, 2009 - 1:14 am
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Time to change the blog motto again, I think. “The B-Masters Blog: Ahh, We’ve Seen Worse”.
#10 by Braineater on June 27, 2009 - 1:11 pm
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I understand what you’re saying. But look at the trailer again. Clearly these folks had enough technical skill and (crucially) enough self-awareness to make a better movie from this premise. In this case, “meh” is just not good enough. If they needed a little more money to polish up the effects, they could have just replaced Lorenzo Lamas with, say, a tree stump (whch would have looked even more like Steven Seagal), and funneled his paycheck back into the SFX.
As I get older, I find I’m losing patience with time-wasters. They make me realize I could be spending my all-too-precious, all-too-limited time and money on something genuinely and passionately awful. I don’t usually quote the Bible, but Revelation 3:15 – 16 sums it up nicely.
#11 by lyzard on June 27, 2009 - 4:46 pm
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Actually, it’s worse and more cynical than that: they spent just enough money on the SFX to get just enough footage to put in the trailer, which was just enough to sucker all of us in.
Ah, the biblical bell-curve! At the moment I’m inclined to read that as vindication of my love for disaster movies.
#12 by Anrkist on June 27, 2009 - 8:57 pm
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Lorenzo Lamas… Debbie Gibson… how could this movie fail? Tiffany would have been a more appropriate casting. “I think we’re alone now… there doesn’t seem to be anyone around!”
#13 by Braineater on June 27, 2009 - 9:42 pm
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Anrkist — Believe it or not, Tiffany was otherwise engaged: she was busy doing a horror film called Necrosis.
Lyz — spot on. The difference in quality between the (admittedly brief) bridge attack and the underwater swimming scenes shows where the money went.
#14 by MatthewF on June 29, 2009 - 4:45 am
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Reminds me of Snakes on a Plane, which was not a terrible moved but, like Megla-whosit vs. giant thingy it should have stayed a title. The best example of this I can think of is the greatest Hammer movie that never was ‘Zepplin Vs Pterodactyl’, http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/31/zeppelin-vs-pterodac.html
I can guarantee you that there is no way that if they had made it, it would be remotely as good as the movie in my head. Let’s face it, it would have Doug Maclure in it and some plastic dinosaurs handing from all-too-visible wires while banging sadly against a three foot model zepplin.
#15 by El Santo on June 29, 2009 - 7:40 am
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” Let’s face it, it would have Doug Maclure in it and some plastic dinosaurs handing from all-too-visible wires while banging sadly against a three foot model zepplin.”
You’re thinking of those Burroughs “adaptations” from Amicus. Hammer’s dinosaur movies (One Million Years B.C., When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth) had excellent special effects in proportion to their paltry budgets, while that studio’s adventure films got casts every bit as good as their contemporary horror pictures. Admitedly, the Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls project dates from the early 70’s, so we could expect a weaker cast than the movie might have had ten years earlier: Ralph Bates as the hero, some useless glamour girl like Pippa Steel as the heroine, maybe somebody like Mike Raven as the captain of the airship. Still, greatly preferable to Doug McClure, and in combination with a flock of Dave Allen-Jim Danforth pterosaurs, quite possibly enough to counteract a butt-sucking script from the long-past-his-prime Val Guest (my best guess as to who would have wound up being assigned the screenwriting duties had Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls ever made it past the ad matte stage).
#16 by MatthewF on June 29, 2009 - 11:17 am
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I think you are widly optimistic sir
#17 by The Mud Puppy on June 29, 2009 - 3:14 pm
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I’m sorry, but I still would see Zeppelins vs. Pterodactyls if it were an Amicus Production. By god, I loved their pathetic little plastic dinosaur puppets.
Of course, Hammer had a lot of unmade projects that would have been quite awesome. One of them was Nessie, and was to be a collaboration with Toho!
#18 by KeithA on June 29, 2009 - 4:47 pm
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“I can guarantee you that there is no way that if they had made it, it would be remotely as good as the movie in my head. Let’s face it, it would have Doug Maclure in it and some plastic dinosaurs handing from all-too-visible wires while banging sadly against a three foot model zepplin.”
I’m not sure I’m seeing a criticism here. Although my cast would have been Doug McClure and Jurgen Prochnow.
#19 by lyzard on June 29, 2009 - 8:39 pm
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Ahem. I object to the mention of Snakes On A Plane in this context. After all, it promised snakes on a plane and it delivered snakes on a plane, so I don’t see that the cases are comparable.
#20 by MatthewF on June 30, 2009 - 2:31 am
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My point with Snakes, was that it was a better title than it was a movie. And to everyone else, yeah I would have seen it too.
Recently there’s been a trend to replace the effects in old TV shows with CGI, I want to go the other way and retrofit all the latest blockbusters with models and stop-motion. Also, all dinosaurs will now be plaved by monitor lizards.
#21 by The Rev. D.D. on June 30, 2009 - 8:00 am
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I’d rather they use stop-motion or puppets. I don’t want a return to the days of nose-wrestling.
#22 by MatthewF on June 30, 2009 - 8:14 am
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I can see that, like the glove puppet shots in the original Godzilla. Let’s face it, Michael Bay should just have bought some old transformer toys off ebay and then paid Aardman Animtation to move them about. That I would have enjoyed. He could have spent the spare $100 million on scriptwriters.
#23 by Thomas on June 30, 2009 - 11:43 am
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They should be using CGI to replace all modern dinosaur footage with perfectly-rendered digital iguanas.
#24 by The Rev. D.D. on June 30, 2009 - 8:58 pm
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I meant more like full-size puppets, like in The Land that Time Forgot. That G puppet is about the only thing that doesn’t utterly enthrall me about that movie.
I love the idea of Aardman doing the animation though. “Let’s get us a bit of cheese, Wheeljack!” And then they go to the moon, where they fight a penguin with a rubber glove on his head.
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