In The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol (2010), a metal guy is trying to make it big in Hollywood with, yes, you knew it, acting. He gets an audition for a snuff film producer. The metal guy, apparently, is a born natural at this killing stuff, mainly because he doesn’t know it’s real. Once he does, he doesn’t seem to be able to go back to normal life.

The movie opens with our main character, Tommy (played by co-writer and directer Artemis Sartorio), driving through Hollywood listening to metal (surprisingly, not terrible metal). He’s trying to get to a casting agent, who tells him he’s 45 minutes late. A month later, Tommy gets fired for suggesting that his boss’s mother urinate on his chest. Really. He wants to act and direct, and his wife just laughs at him (which she should). She and their cute kid need stability. She takes their kid and goes to her mom’s house.

A year later, Tommy’s living by himself, watching porn. He falls asleep and is apparently in dreamland. He’s traveling to Los Angeles as a sort of country rube and checks into a shifty hotel. After the hotel attendant makes sexually suggestive remarks to him, the guy hops on the bed and is pricked by a handful of really dirty hypodermic needles. I think this is still in the dream, but I can’t tell. He wakes up and is late for his acting audition. He shows up at the address and the guy is running some sort of bondage film production.

After a few pep talks and a moronic monologue to the camera, Tommy dives full-on into this work. He thinks these people are special effects, and he goes whole hog into mauling what he thinks is a dummy. He’s using common kitchen tolls. There’s blood everywhere and he’s laughing insanely. He’s beginning to hear voices in his insane state, even after the camera stops rolling. The production crew is absolutely loving it, seeing dollar signs in their heads.

One of the “extras” breaks free of her bonds and, misunderstanding, thinks that Tommy has also been captured. She tries to rescue him. She shoots up (with a gun) all the film crew and Tommy’s got that look in his eye, right before he smacks her in the head with a frying pan. She gains consciousness and Tommy has her tied up. Tommy thinks she’s an actress who’s trying to steal his thunder. So he makes a slip-n-slide with some plastic and her blood instead of water. Really.

Tommy sneaks onto a movie set where Arnold Schwarzenegger (played by Al Burke) is being a bully to the crew. This assistant lays into Arnold, and Tommy talks to her about it. Tommy claims he’s replacing her because she screwed up. Tommy then has to make a protein pie for Arnold Schwarzenegger using chicken parts and a blender. Seriously gross. He drugs Arnold and kills him so he can cut off his skin and pretend he’s Arnold. You can clearly see through the ridiculous skin costume. And then Tommy kills all of them.

Then things go wrong. I mean way porn-wrong. This originally started out bad, but then gets worse. I can’t even explain how wrong. I’m not even sure I can talk about it. In fact, I’m sure I can’t. Stuff people really shouldn’t see. Yes, kudos to these guys for bringing things to a level I can’t say I’ve ever seen on a film.

This film doesn’t have a lot going for it, aside from the whole “pushing the envelope” thing. The acting is quite atrocious and the special effects go way past corny to ridiculous, but never quite get to amusing. If you told me about this film and gave me a rundown, I’d venture I would go in with high hopes. However, the entire thing fell flat and had me looking at my watch, hoping it would end soon.

(1 out of 5 fus)

Some people like movies where the “monster” is shown, and some people like it when the suspense and action put images in your head that could never be adequately visualized on film (sadly, fans of computer generated imaging don’t believe in the latter). Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes is an independent film from Steve Barker, shot as a documentary. This film doesn’t show the monster, and supports that decision by providing plenty of suspense and hints to keep the viewer stuck to their seat. Despite the running, yelling, and flashes of …something… in the woods, the film is surprisingly well put together and competent.

Sean is shooting a documentary on the Lost Coast in Northern California—an area of the Northwest with the most Sasquatch sightings in the country. He’s tracking down Bigfoot. He brings his small crew (including his ex-girlfriend) to find the man who claims he’s found a dead body of Bigfoot. Sean is paying this mountain man, Drybeck, a lot of money to interview him and spend some time filming in his secure compound deep in the woods.

During the initial interview with Drybeck, the crew is interrupted by noises in the woods. Drybeck rushes some of them inside as the generator is destroyed, but the film crew is there to get to the bottom of this legend/hoax. Sean is convinced it is Drybeck’s associate playing tricks on them, but their confidence begins to erode a little bit, especially when Drybeck abandons them. The crew has some good footage to this point, but should they risk continuing the shoot, or should they try to get to safety and abandon the project?

The film is really well shot, even for a handheld-heavy “making of a documentary” film, with impressive suspense moments, especially considering there isn’t any music soundtrack to help. The parts are played pretty well by the actors, even though Drybeck is a little bit over the top at times. They play him up as being an eccentric to cover the fact that he’s a little flashy with his lines. There are plenty of self camera shots with screaming and blood, but I didn’t get motion sick like I did with The Blair Witch Project. It is a much better production and story than that early handheld “real-life” film. Yes, you’ll have to suspend belief in a few instances, and yes you’ll see a few things coming plot-wise, but overall, the film is worth watching, especially if you’re into the legend of Bigfoot at all.

Final Grade: B

Razortooth is another forgettable film about a genetically mutated swamp creature that escapes and begins killing innocent townspeople. This film is totally different, though, since it’s a killer EEL instead of a crocodile or shark. Oh wait, it isn’t different at all. And of course, the eel can slither on land and attack people by flying through the air. The producers (one of whom was only slightly associated with The Devil’s Rejects) should have demanded the eel was electric or had some other modified super power, rather than just growing to super-eel length. Maybe that would have held my attention longer than this particular plot.

The film starts with two inmates breaking out of prison through a drain. They’re running through some sort of drainage ditch when a horribly digitally-rendered watersnake-like monster starts gobbling up the people wearing police t-shirts. Commence laugh-inducing junior high camerawork, with flashlights in the bushes. The prisoners escape (even though they’re about 50 feet away and in plain sight) and the local lady sheriff lets the townsfolk know to be on the lookout for them.

Delmar is a local animal control officer who’s cleaning rat traps in a nearby restaurant. He tries to scare off some young girls who have been swimming in a local stream right before he gets called in on some various animal issues. The restaurant’s cook goes out back and finds the trash tipped over and this clear mucus all over the cans.

Some college kids are driving through the bayou and talking about Asian swamp eels that are apparently causing problems in the area and are taking over water sources. The kids are looking for a Dr. Abramson, to be his assistants/interns for the summer. Abramson is doing some sort of genetic modification to stop these eels that are disturbing the ecosystem. He explains how the eels can expel clear mucus to lubricate the ground as they slither across it, and also use their gills as a primary breathing apparatus, but still have lungs that function out of the water. Like on land. Seriously.

There’s a canoe club holding an outing in the swamp. The parents wave goodbye as their kids head out into the wild. Delmar is watching the canoe club paddle around and notices some clear sludge on the bank of the swamp. The same clear sludge on the side of the trash cans behind the restaurant. Hmmmmmm… AND, it turns out Delmar and the town’s sheriff were once an item, and haven’t quite turned off the emotions. Meanwhile, pets and people are beginning to turn up missing, thanks to this hilariously poorly computer-generated flying eel with giant teeth.

The sheriff seems to think it has something to do with the two escaped convicts from the opening scene. Seems plausible, doesn’t it? But it is weird that the convicts are swimming all around the swamp unharmed by the eel. The convicts hole up in one of their cousin’s shacks along the water. He’s already been eaten by eels, but they don’t know that yet. They find out soon enough, since the eel is like 25 feet long now and eating humans in two bites at this point.

There’s the typical “We got him! Wait. No we don’t!” fiasco, and the on-land and in-water chase scenes commence as expected. No plot twists rear their heads; it’s a pretty linear plot. Thankfully, the audience isn’t likely to expect much else from this film than what’s shown. I will say the lack of gratuitous nudity made the film that much more difficult to take, and the acting leaves a lot to be desired. The CGI isn’t even close and is absolutely unbelievable, even for a movie that will only air on SyFy. I’m a fan of genetically/radiation-mutated swamp creatures, and I was pretty bored in this film. Not recommended at all. And don’t let the “From A producer of The Devil’s Rejects” tagline fool you into thinking this is the same caliber film as that one.

(1 out of 5 fus)

Doomed to Consume (2006) starts out like a first-person shooter game, killing zombies POV with a shotgun in the woods. Very motion-sickness inducing. Flash to a kitchen with knocked-over chairs, and then to a cornfield. A redheaded girl is in a house lounging around in slutty clothes while holding a shotgun. A random girl crawls into the redhead’s yard because a zombie is chasing her. The redhead shoots the zombie and takes the random girl inside to fix up her injured leg.

A bunch of college-aged guys are driving down the road throwing things at zombies attacking civilians, when they realize it’s the last of their food supply they’ve just thrown at a zombie. When the college kids run out of gas, they end up at the redhead’s house looking for food and gas. The college kids end up shooting the injured girl when she attacks them all zombie-style. The newly formed group then heads out to find the car they left when they ran out of gas. There just happens to be gas in the basement of the house they were squatting in—since I guess that’s where people keep their gas cans in Iowa.

The boys are headed to their uncle’s house to see if he’s still alive. When they find no one home, they do some scouting to see if there are supplies. The girl comes clean about how she’s escaped the zombies up until now and the head college boy tries to figure out why she hates everyone. This is where we begin to see really poorly made-up zombies, including some really bad dummies, and a couple of zombies that are dead, but still breathing. The college kid falls down the stairs in what looks like a stunt gone wrong, but that director Jason Stephenson left in anyway. OUCH for falling/sliding down basement stairs. Wow. Then, Red goes on a vigilante justice zombie killing spree, wearing leather clothes she shouldn’t.

Wait. Then the movie just ends—a really pointless ending that I’m not sure I got. Maybe there wasn’t anything to get. Maybe it was a “Point A to Point B” movie without any excitement, tension, or plot twists. That’s really not a worthwhile film project, in my opinion.

Also: lots of handheld camera work. Oh my god, make it stop.

(1 out of 5 fus)

Shutter (2008) is a horror film that was shot in Japan and tells the story of a newly married couple who can’t get rid of a ghost. The husband is a photographer, sent to Japan on a long-term assignment, who brings his wife along to enjoy the city while he works. The ghost starts making trouble for them and she tries to get to the bottom of it. Oh, she gets to the bottom, alright…

On the first day in Japan, the wife, Jane (Rachael Taylor), runs over a girl on a backroad while driving. The girl isn’t anywhere to be found when the husband and wife regain consciousness. The police don’t appear to be worried since they can’t find any trace of a body, blood, or footprints.

The husband, Ben (Joshua Jackson), starts his new job immediately and is put up in a really nice apartment with a photography studio on one of the lower floors. Jane is a little uncomfortable with all of the beautiful Japanese women who have been hired to help her husband do photo shoots. Jane starts noticing that there are these white hazy images in all of the photos she’s in, starting the day after the girl she hit disappeared.

Ben doesn’t think it’s anything, but Ben’s assistant thinks it’s some sort of spirit photo. Her boyfriend works for some ghost-hunting magazine in Tokyo, and they arrange to have them meet and talk about this particular phenomenon. Then, while on a photo shoot, Ben begins to see things that aren’t there, and his photos aren’t turning out like he’d like them to. The spirit starts ruining his shots and starts affecting his job.

Jane goes to check out her husband’s company, since the spirits in the photo seems to be pointing at one of the floors of the headquarters building. She goes into the building and up to the floor that the light in the photos seem to be indicating. She starts taking photos with a Polaroid, because the magazine editor said that spirit photos can’t be faked in Polaroids, since they don’t have a negative. Sure enough, the spirit appears in her photos and leads her to start piecing this puzzle together. Things start to get creepy, then go a little haywire in the photo studio after the models and assistants leave. Jane finds out that this spirit is the ghost of a girl her husband had a relationship with before the wife even entered the picture. And, as it turns out, this husband and wife aren’t the only ones who can see this ghost.

This movie wasn’t nearly as scary as I had expected, based on the other movies this executive producer team has done (The Ring, The Grudge). There were more “Really? Come on!” moments than any sort of scary moments. There was a little bit of suspense, but I’ve seen scarier in some PG-13 movies. The CGI is pretty fakey, and not really believable at all (as usual). The “unrating” in this film isn’t worth it—not a single gratuitous nudity shot, and there’s only one scene where a guy jumps off a roof. There’s nothing here that needed to be rated in the first place, to be honest. Only one little twist made the plot slightly better than linear, which was sad, since they probably could have done some fun things with it. Sadly, this is not really worth the time watching, even if you like the filmmakers’ other work.

(2 out of 5 fus)

Wound is an independent horror film from David Blyth that takes the viewer through a sort of sado-masochistic, sexually dysfunctional, mentally disturbed Australian woman’s spiral into bizarro-world. There’s plenty of bodily fluids, yelling, gravedigging, mask-wearing, and gratuitous breasts to satiate the average horror fan, but the plot isn’t linear at all. If you’re planning to see the film, read up online to help you fill in the gaps the film doesn’t divulge…and good luck with THAT.

A car pulls up to a house in what looks like a swamp in Florida. A woman, Sarah, answers the door, and you see her through what looks like a security camera with a time and date stamp. It’s her father come to visit. He complains about America and then the house she lives in, and then she smacks him in the head with a baseball bat. When the guy wakes up, there is his daughter with a mask on getting ready in a mirror. There are lots of dolls everywhere, some candles, and a skull. The woman has her father tied up and he claims that she WANTED him to hurt her when she was a child. Then, she chokes him out with some electrical tape and graphically cuts off his ween with some scissors. Cue lots of fake blood and a fake penis.

Cut to a guy questioning Sarah about something, which quickly turns into a bondage and submission session. The guy is videotaping the whole thing on his computer for some sort of online audience.

Back to Sarah’s house: she’s cleaning up after herself and wheeling a body in a garbage can out to a shallow grave behind her house. She buries her father’s body in the grave with a bunch of things wrapped in aluminum foil. I think they’re baked potatoes—so weird. It looks like she’s buried him next to her mother—assumably, his deceased wife—based on the headstone. But then, the daughter goes inside and calls her mother to talk about how insane she (the daughter) is. After her mother hangs up on her, we find out the aluminum foil packages are filled with poop, from her toilet. Nice.

Scene change to a high school girl, Tanya, talking to her counselor. The counselor is asking about her love life and the girl wants to know if some sort of documents have arrived. The counselor turns over some papers and then tells her there wasn’t a father’s name on her birth certificate. The counselor sounds quite mean. Then, next thing you know we’re in a bondage club with loud house music playing and a guy in a pig mask masturbating quite publicly. The girl goes into the bathroom because she’s freaking out and some guy meets her in there. The guy kisses her and she passes out. All of a sudden, the guy with the pig mask is on top of her pumping away. Again, graphically. Then the girl is awake and the guy that was kissing her in the bathroom lays down on some train tracks with her to die. Must be symbolic, because I don’t get it at all.

Tanya from the train tracks shows up at Sarah’s door. She’s Sarah’s daughter. However, Sarah claims she’s childless. Sarah claims the daughter died before she could hold her, so she’s not having it. The girl ends up leaving and Sarah takes a shower. She’s bruised up, and for some reason she’s bleeding all over the shower. But wait, Tanya hasn’t left. She’s outside the shower door drinking the blood that’s dripping underneath. Really? Tanya then runs out behind the house and finds the grave where the body of her father should have been. The daughter then smacks her mother in the head and drops her in to the shallow grave where her father just was. But somehow Tanya ends up staying with the mother. I’m not sure what happened there.

Susan is at the psychiatrist’s office and he’s prescribing drugs to her for hallucinations. Back to the bondage club with two people being tied back-to-back while wearing masks. There’s all kinds of scenes that don’t make sense at this point. A woman tells a lady (presumably Susan) that her baby didn’t survive. The haggard old dominatrix witch who tells her this has shown up a number of times. Then the daughter and Susan end up together in Susan’s house crying.

She’s flashing back to when she had the child. The haggard old witch is hitting her in the pregnant stomach with a paddle in an attempt to either kill the children or cause an early delivery. Then there’s a grotesquely fake vagina spurting blood and delivering a baby. Or twins actually, played by grownups in masks crawling out of a giant prop vagina.

This is where I started doing some looking on the Internet to find out what the hell this movie is really supposed to be about. When I read the plot from the people who wrote the movie, I got mad. Why do directors/writers think they can piece some scenes together without any sort of flow and then explain what they MEANT to show via a description on the back of a DVD case? Ridiculous. The movie should stand on its own and make sense using only the film itself. Yes, I understand some confusion during a film, but resolution is a wonderful thing that doesn’t make you feel like you’ve wasted two hours of your life. I’d not recommend this film to anyone. Even with the description of the plot, this film made no sense to me and it angers me having to remember any piece of it.

(1 out of 5 fus)

Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997) is a film about a family enjoying their vacation lake home. They get set up in their home for a short stay and some friends of the neighbor’s come to visit. Things go south quickly.

The film starts out with a German family driving through the country pulling a sailboat. Anna, Georg (Ulrich Mühe from The Lives of Others), little Georg, and Rolfi the dog. They’re playing a game where you guess which song the other is playing on the CD player in the car. It’s mainly classical music, but when they roll the opening credits, there’s this insane screamy metal playing. Very weird opening to a movie.

The family drives past their uncle’s house and yells for help with the sailboat in a few minutes. Their vacation home is right next door to their uncle’s house, so it isn’t a huge deal. Uncle Fred is acting a bit strange when he arrives to help put the sailboat in the water. Uncle Fred is acting REALLY weird when he shows up at the family’s house with an equally weird boy to help with the boat. The weird boy is wearing white gloves that don’t get explained. Even the son asks why uncle Fred is acting so weird. And Rolfi keeps barking at all of them—the dog is clearly feeling something’s off.

Then, out of the blue, another creepy weird boy shows up from Uncle Fred’s house to ask for eggs; this is Peter. He’s super creepy and also wearing white gloves. The kid drops the eggs he is borrowing and the mom cleans up the mess while he looks around the house all shifty-like. Then the kid “accidentally” knocks the house phone into the sink of water, knocking it out of commission. Paul shows up and asks if he can try out the Georg’s golf club. Paul disappears with the golf club and the dog is going crazy, then suddenly, the dog isn’t barking. Paul tells Anna to give the eggs to Tom—the wrong name. Paul then smacks Georg with the golf club. Oh buddy, it is ON. The two creepy boys are playing a game with the family and it isn’t a fun one (well, it isn’t fun for the family, anyway).

The shifty boys decide to bet with the family. Peter and Paul are betting the family will be dead in 12 hours—Anna and Georg are betting they’ll be alive in 12 hours. Peter and Paul grab the little boy and put a pillowcase over his head and get the mom to strip. This game is going poorly for the family, if you hadn’t noticed. The kid tries to escape but Paul captures him again, along with a shotgun. Things get really messy here. A lot of the action appears off camera, so you’re only hearing crashing and screams and such. But you can tell things are not going well for the family.

The whole time, Pater and Paul remain extremely calm and matter of fact. They’re having fun, but it’s a very subdued kind of fun, since they apparently excel at head games and terrorism. The whole movie is really dark—both lighting and plot. Nothing good is coming from these two painfully prim and proper boys visiitng the neighbor’s house. It’s a nightmare. The movie is generally pretty intense; however, when Paul looks at the camera and actually talks to the audience—asking them if they’ve had enough and then winking—it ruins the whole feel of the scene.

The movie is really long and probably even feels longer than it is. Parts of it are good, but the flow is off. About halfway through the movie, I thought it was all over with, but realized it was less than an hour in, so it wasn’t going to be over anytime soon. The intensity and peaks and valleys seemed a bit off, even for a German film. Right at the end of the movie, it becomes a stupid Adam Sandler movie. I’d love to ruin the ending of this movie for you, but the movie sort of ruins itself. If you are brave enough to watch this movie, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s asinine. Don’t waste your time (like I did).

Final Grade: D

I would try to explain to you how 3D pornography blurs the line between awesome and horrific, as well as disgusting and hilarious, but I can’t. Suffice it to say, it isn’t arousing. It wasn’t arousing in the ’70s, and watching a movie from the ’70s in the 2010s STILL isn’t arousing. However, watching adult films with 100 other people in a large mainstream theater IS pretty awesome. (This isn’t the first 3D “blue movie” I’ve watched with a large crowd of people, sadly.)

I know Hot Skin is an adult film, but there truly IS a plot. Chick (yes, that’s his name) is a nightclub owner who can’t…uh…perform with a girl he likes. He can do everything else, but can’t seal the deal. He gets professional help from a few people. Chick’s ex-girlfriend still comes around the office with her creepy and sleazy boyfriend Harry. Anytime someone leaves the room, he whips it out. Harry is a wanted man, and the cops are trying to bring him down. Harry ends up…how can I put this delicately?…Harry ends up sodomizing a woman while simultaneously drowning her in a bowl of chicken soup. I didn’t say the plot makes sense, I just said there is one.

The humor in the film is pretty weak, but you’ll occasionally groan (seriously, from the jokes, not from anything else) (aside from the GIANT patches of unkempt fur you don’t usually see, since 1985). They keep repeating this annoying joke involving Harry’s name until it grates on your ears.

The legendary John Holmes is highlighted on the advertisements for this movie; however, he’s on the screen for like 30 seconds and only grunts. If he’s your selling point, you shouldn’t be buying. Also, Uschi Digard has a pretty major part in this film—you’ll know her from the Ilsa movies, a couple of Russ Meyer films, and a whole lot of adult films all through the ’70s and early ’80s. The best part about this film is watching it with a hundred drunken 18-50 year olds. People were laughing and cheering and mimicking the cat sounds coming from one of the ladies and mocking and commenting on the unkempt landscaping. This movie is great for that.+

You really have to TRY to like the 3D aspect of this. Basically, the 3D glasses given to you are just a hassle and actually detract from the film more than help it. Let’s just say they hadn’t quite mastered 3D in the 1970s. Not even close, in fact. However, they did have high aspirations for their placement of 3D-appropriate scenes. There’s a lot of bodily fluids headed at the camera lens. More so than in the other 3D adult film from the ’70s, Lollipop Girls in Hard Candy. Hard Candy had much better 3D scenes, but the plot was like Bruce Campbell had written it immediately after getting kicked in the head by a camel.

Go see this movie if they show it in a theater, but don’t run out and try to score a copy for your own “private” use. It isn’t worth it. However, telling your friends all about it, who DIDN’T go see it, will torture them for years!!!

(3 out of 5 fus)

My Afternoons with Margueritte (two Ts) is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time and arguably the best French movie I’ve ever seen. I don’t say this lightly, as I’ve watched numerous French films. It’s different than most of the ones I’ve seen, but it is a feel-good movie that I wasn’t expecting at all. The film stars Gérard Depardieu and Gisèle Casadesus, who play 100% believable small-town French folks who stumble upon a passion they both share.

Germain (Depardieu) is a 50-something-year-old small town farmer who lives with his mother. He grows crops in his garden at home and sells them in the local market. After work, he goes to a local café and drinks with his friends until his girlfriend gets off work. Margueritte (Casadesus) is a little old lady who comes to the park to feed the pigeons and read her books most days. They regularly run into each other around Germain’s lunch time and eventually strike up a conversation.

This simple conversation grows over time and, eventually, Margueritte reads him a few passages from her books—mainly classics. He has a knack for visualizing the words in his imagination and asks her to keep reading. She eventually reads a number of books to him. He uses some of his big words with his friends and they make fun of his new knowledge, since they only know him as a friendly oaf. Margueritte finds out Germain had a pretty rough childhood, since he doesn’t know who his father is, his mother’s boyfriends beat him, and he’s resigned himself to living his life as a dumb but gentle giant of a man.

Margueritte gives Germain a copy of a book of hers, and when he has trouble reading it himself, she gives him a dictionary. He has trouble with the dictionary, which ends up being quite amusing, so he gives it back to Margueritte. His relationship with Margueritte confuses Germain’s girlfriend at first, but once she realizes who he’s been spending all this time with, she gives it her blessing.

Margueritte develops some health issues and Germain is committed to helping her as much as possible. It is absolutely endearing and beautiful. The relationship between Germain and Margueritte is incredibly believable and is developed in a way not usually seen in film—in any language. The dialogue between the two is deep and touching and I heard a LARGE number of people tearing up in the audience in the theater. I admit, there was some dust in my own eye in a few scenes that caused some eye leakage.

You will not regret seeing this movie. Depardieu knocks this film out of the park and Casadesus makes you wish she were your very own grandmother. As we walked out of the theater, everyone that was leaving was talking about how brilliant the film was and was smiling from ear to ear. I won’t give away the ending of this film, but I will say that Jean Becker (the director) ended this movie the way he should have. I do not expect to see a film this good for many years. Bring your mother and father to this film. Bring your significant other. Bring anyone who loves classic literature or film of any genre. These actors and director deserve MUCH more than $10 per person for this film.

Final Grade: A++

Primeval is a film about a bloodthirsty alligator, based on a supposed true event. The giant alligator is wreaking havoc throughout Africa, and the villagers are getting scared to go in the water, despite it being their life source. Some American journalists are sent over to do a story on it and to capture the alligator, but the beast isn’t having it.

The film starts with a woman investigating a handful of men buried after an execution-style killing in a poverty-ridden country in Africa. She’s trying to figure out what happened to them. She puts her shovel in the ground for the first scoop of dirt and she hits something that bursts up out of the ground and attacks her. The crocodile is a legend in the country, and it is named Gustave. A news journalist in NYC is sent into the country (a warzone) to get the story. The guy’s boss thinks he’ll capture the crocodile in time for sweeps week and it’s all settled, despite the fact this has been going for years and no one has been able to even come close to capturing it.

The journalist (a real d-bag), his partner, and a cameraman are sent into the country to investigate. They have the help of an American tracker who’s been living in Africa trying to protect the crocodile. The hope is they can capture this giant (maybe up to 30 feet long) crocodile alive. They’ve got all kinds of electronics for tracking it and computers for filming it. It’s a pretty serious operation. They have to contend with local politics and customs and avoid the notice of the local warlord/bad guy, though that clearly isn’t going to happen.

There are some close calls that try to add some suspense to this film, but it only helps a small amount. The local bad guys (the warlord’s men) are doing what they can to disrupt the Americans’ operation. Gustave shows he can manhandle the flimsy giant cage they built to capture him, so they know that’s useless.

At one point, they’re all stranded on what looks like a dock in the middle of the river complaining about how it’s appropriate that they die like this and they’re helpless. Then a helicopter shows up and they think it’s a rescue team. So they literally climb off the deck into the waist deep water and walk to the shore. Really? I thought you were stranded and going to die. Moronic. The helicopter is filled with bad guys with guns and they’re looking to kill the Americans.

The CGI in this movie is pretty awful (as you’d expect from an unheard-of scary giant animal movie that appears to be made for the SyFy channel.) The acting in the film isn’t bad, but the action just wasn’t up to snuff. Yes, the alligator eats a bunch of people on film and there are tons of “running through the reeds on the river bank” scenes, but sadly, there just isn’t enough action to hold the viewer’s attention. I kept waiting for the film to be over. Some of the perspective is off, as well. At one point, a Range Rover hits the alligator, yet the alligator reappears and is like three times the size of it. This film isn’t even worth a bad movie night, sadly. Next!

(2 out of 5 fus)