Ghost Shark (2013)

"It's a shark that's a ghost. Need anything else?"

A lot of people avoid reviewing "Syfy Original" movies, and after watching "Ghost Shark", I can see why. Not only is this one not a patch on "Sharknado", but it doesn't even try to be anything better. "Ghost Shark" is just a lazy piece of made-for-TV filmmaking with no redeeming qualities other than the silliness of its premise and several blatant homages to "Jaws".

Knowing that there's nobody in "Ghost Shark" who I've ever heard of apart from morbidly obese Shawn C. Phillips (aka "Coolduder" from YouTube) should have been my warning not to proceed any further once the "good stuff" in the opening five-minute scene was over, but I foolishly left it playing for company as I clipped my toenails and arranged them in jars. It has to be done, and I came to the conclusion a long time ago that this is the best use for Syfy channel movies anyway.

As expected, the acting in "Ghost Shark" is all over the place, from feeble to mediocre, and the youngest-looking girl mumbles her lines so badly that the movie would benefit from subtitles. For obvious reasons including the budget and casting choices, it looks and feels like a glorified YouTube video, albeit one filmed with high-end equipment. The cheap gore effects and CGI are the only things which are somewhat entertaining in spite of themselves, but this isn't an intentionally made to be "so bad it's good" movie, it's just plain bad.

As usual, there are no characters to care about, the clichéd "teenagers" (several of whom are pushing 30 in real life!) are annoyingly entitled and selfish, and the adults aren't any better. The story is so rushed that none of them are given any time to grieve over their best friends or relatives who've been eaten by the ghost shark, but I doubt that they'd even know how to display those emotions if they were given the chance to.

You're going to need a bigger shed!

The scenes with the ghost shark go from mildly credible (considering the nature of the story) to ludicrous as this Great White doesn't remain in the sea. Taking things several steps too far, our piscine villain pops up in a freshwater swimming pool, comes out of burst pipes, and even leaps out of the rain! Yes, "Ghost Shark" really does exploit the term "jumping the shark" quite literally, which I suppose is kind of the point.

I'm not sure who the target audience is for this crap, but it certainly isn't me. Although I admit to being out of touch with "kids today" and what passes for entertainment in their ADHD world, I don't understand why or how these Syfy movies keep getting made for the two or three hundred people who watch them. I don't think I'll be watching any more.

Durr dumb... durr dumb...

It's Caturday! The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)

What's this? Is Dr Blood really starting a post without a YouTube video or an Amazon affiliate link? Has the updated Blogger interface finally kicked in and the end of all good things begun? Nope, I just couldn't find a decent trailer and I don't have the patience to look up the Amazon code for a movie you will never buy anyway.

Yes, it's Caturday! This is the day of the week when the internet goes dead, all the cats which run the internet go out to play, and nobody reads blogs. So, just for the sake of having a weekend post, I watched "The Ghost and the Darkness" AKA "Jaws on land with lions not sharks" ('cos, like, land sharks would be stupid, yo!).

In case you've never heard of it, yes, indeed, "The Ghost and the Darkness" really is an African-based version of "Jaws". Having never read the true story which this is based on ('cos, yeah, I'm ignorant), all I watched this for was the lions. I LOVE LIONS! I love lions almost as much as I love other cats... or tigers. Actually, I'm not much fussed about tigers since they are bigger, smellier and I don't like sugar on my cornflakes. No, I'm lying (lion, geddit?), of course, I love tigers too. It's cougars that worry me.

So anyway, I got this DVD from the pawn shop a couple of weeks ago because I'd never seen it (did I mention that I love lions?) and stuck it in my bedroom DVD player for the cats and me to fall asleep to. Well, that was the plan.

In the sweltering heat, three stretched-out heaps of fur (shut your dirty mind, right now!), soon fell asleep without even noticing that the movie didn't get past the menu screen. When I (one of the furry heaps) woke up, I realised that the DVD had an error on it so I had to put it in my computer to play it instead. It came up as "undefined" rather than "DVD Video" but it still played. I have no idea about these things. I just buy them and watch them.

Anyway (again), I started watching it and it was all yadda, yadda, yadda, with Val Kilmer doing the worst Irish accent I'd ever heard and Tom Wilkinson being an asshole. Then the scene changed to some nonsense with Emily Mortimer who I fancy, want to feed, and detest the scratchy voice of, all at the same time. I really hoped that was the end of her part in the movie and I was glad that she disappeared until right at the end.

So I'm watching this historical, period piece, drivel meander on for another 15 minutes until Val Kilmer's character killed a lion which I knew wouldn't be the man-eater since this is "Jaws" all over again, right? It trundled along with more padding and two-dimensional characterisation until, at 32 minutes in, this happened:

I was all like "YEAH!" and "KEWL!" and, the lion was all like landing like Kate Beckinsale in "Underworld" but like tearing people apart and stuff... but then I realised that I wasn't a 12 year old girl and stopped thinking like that.

The action was as short lived as the acting careers of the lions' dinners and it was another 15 minutes until something happened again. I had noticed a pattern forming in which the action scenes with lions were occurring every 15 minutes and it was amusing me how poorly constructed and obvious this method was.

At the 45 minute mark, the Christian missionary guy who was quite likeable got his throat ripped out (which was lush!) and, thus, it was revealed that the first lion wasn't the killer and now there were two more. Nature abhors a vacuum which is why you don't interfere with cats and their territory but all these people were pretty dumb anyway.

The lions, in reality named Bongo and Caeser [sic], were renamed "The Ghost" and "The Darkness" by the superstitious natives who were building a bridge. Did I not mention that the whole reason any of these idiots were in the middle of nowhere was to build a bridge? Well, probably because that trivial detail didn't interest me. Like I said, I only wanted to watch this for the lions.

A curious thing was that Michael Douglas was given top billing in this yet it was almost an hour before he appeared. I know he produced this garbage but you can take vanity too far. His character was completely fictitious, called Remington (either after the gun or the typewriter), and was basically Quint but less boozy and a little bit brighter. He still wasn't all that bright though.

I'm not sure when this happened ('cos I was dozing again) but Quint, I mean Remington, shot this lion and Patterson (Val Kilmer) finished him off. THE BASTARDS! Two against one? So not fair. Yeah, ok, so the lions had eaten hundreds of African and (bizarrely) Indian bridge builders without so much as indigestion but they are LIONS! Who cares about people when you have LIONS?

The amount of stupidity in this movie, what with making a giant "inhumane" cat trap, a wobbly bridgey-thing which you just knew anyone shooting a gun from would fall off, and, then, finally, to climb a tree to escape a lion... HELLO! A lion is a big CAT! What do cats do? They climb trees, yeah?

I was past caring at this point. The glorious scene of Emily Croaky-voice and her baby getting eaten had turned out to be a stupid dream, the great white hunter Remington had disappeared in a bloody crop circle, and, since I'd lost all the enjoyment that I was previously having, when it came for Colonel Patterson to get the movie back to historical accuracy by finally shooting the lion, I was just glad that it was all over.

Everything ended all nice and happy, the bridge was built, the Pattersons and their sprog were reunited, and the lion skins were taken to a museum in Ohio or some such nonsense.

Do I recommend this film? No. Even if I hadn't seen "Jaws" and all its sequels, this would still have been pretty desperate stuff. On the plus side, it had lions in it.

Jaws - the pointless Blu-ray Edition

You've probably already had your fill of the news about "Jaws" being released on blu-ray from all the other horror movie websites so I'm not going to re-cover the same ground with all the boring technological stuff which I know for a fact that hardly any of them understands either.

I've already reviewed "Jaws" on here so you know that I love the film and I've seen it hundreds of times over the years. What's not to get excited about with a blu-ray release of one of my favourite films?

Well, like I said, I've seen it so many times and in so many formats that the new "Anniversary Edition" of "Jaws" is hardly something I'd rush out to buy. I've actually lost count of how many times it was released on VHS and DVD as a 10 year, 15 year, 20 year, 25 year or 30 year "Anniversary Edition" (either fullscreen or widescreen) and I've probably made a few of those up. Whatever the case, it was a lot of times.

So what are they adding to sell "Jaws" to everyone yet again? A documentary. I'm sure it will be very interesting but does that justify buying a new version of the same film? In five years time, Universal will only bring out another version.

If you've seen "Jaws" once (or twice), what else is left for you? How many times can you watch the same film? Hasn't everyone on the planet already seen "Jaws" and at least two of the three crappy sequels on TV? Some of us have even read the books!

Since I don't even own a blu-ray player, all this is a moot point anyway. I'm not going to buy one for the sake of watching a nearly 40 year old film.

However, I would buy a blu-ray player if the studios actually started releasing some of their other 20, 30 and 40 year old films which hardly anyone has seen.

For instance, where are the blu-ray editions of "Last Exit to Brooklyn", "Scum", or "Twisted Nerve"? What's wrong with releasing some decent films instead of just the ones which the executives think will sell to the largest audience?

What about the thousands of horror movies such as the ones on VHS collected by KandJHorrordotcom (on his YouTube channel) which still haven't seen a DVD release and will never be on blu-ray? These are the movies that people really want not just re-releases of the most popular titles. The movie industry is dying. Everybody knows it and horror has already been the first casualty.

All this makes me think of "Demolition Man" where all the restaurants in the future are "Taco Bell". It's not hard to imagine that in another 25 years, if the movie industry still even exists, the only movies available will be "Indiana Jones", "Star Wars" and "E.T."!!! Or worse, it could be a renaissance of handycam "faux found-footage" zombie crap being burnt to 3D blu-ray at home by 14 year old amateur filmmakers who got their inspiration from classic Best Buy commercials.

Sometimes, I just don't want to live in this world anymore.

Snowbeast (1977)

"A Colorado ski resort is besieged by a sub-human beast that commits brutal murders on the slopes."

I actually remember watching this TV movie on British television about a year after it came out and I was still the right age to appreciate it. I now have about half a dozen copies of it scattered throughout my Mill Creek (and EastWestDVD) collection. It's not my favourite film or anything ridiculous like that but it does have a great late '70s vibe to it and is still a pretty solid Yeti movie.

"Snowbeast" suffers from a plot so derivative of "Jaws" that you just have to laugh at the sheer cheek of it all. It's not the only movie to do this as "Blood Beach" was even more of a ripoff and, later, the "Alligator" movies could just as well have been called "Jaws On Land". To be fair, there aren't many ways of making a "Creature Feature" but you would think there would be some attempt back then to be original. For those of us who weren't old enough to see "Jaws" back in the day, "Snowbeast" was a very welcome substitute.

One of the main criticisms about any of these films is either that too much or too little of the creature gets shown. "Snowbeast" actually falls into the latter category since the Yeti (or whatever it is) gets all of a couple of minutes of onscreen time. It's a shame really because, when you do get a close-up, it isn't too bad at all for a guy in a hairy suit.

I nearly always feel sorry for the creature with these kind of movies but somehow I just couldn't in this case because there wasn't enough shown of it to empathise with. Without that, Bo Svenson's change of heart from arguing for the creature to finally joining in the hunt for it is nothing more than formula.

Bo Svenson is the big star in this, of course, and he really is a big guy too. He's massive for an ex-Olympic champion skier and his flared yellow skisuit isn't too flattering. I don't know if he did his own stunts or not, presumably not, but if he did then he skis really well. It's a pity that he doesn't really fit his character. Clint Walker tends to steal all the scenes out from under him although whether he is actually acting or not is another matter.

I didn't really care about either of them too much though because I was trying to place Yvette Mimieux. It dawned on me that she was the dopey Weena from "The Time Machine" (1960) although I really remember her most from a terrible TV movie remake of "Bell, Book and Candle" (1978) which I watched one rainy afternoon. She's very pretty though.

There isn't really much more to say about "Snowbeast" other than there's a lot of snow, some pretty dangerous looking snowmobile driving at one point, lots of skiing, and the creature doesn't have a very happy ending. The final scene was horribly rushed.

The only major problem with "Snowbeast" (which means that I'm only rating it as average) was that there were plenty of places where some tension, jump scares or just some action of any kind could have made a big difference. It's still worth watching for a dollar.