Friday, June 02, 2006

Animals Gone Wild, Gridler-style, Part II

Grizzly – 1976

This movie was actually made before last night’s Day of the Animals. Some people even think that DOTA is the sequel. It isn’t, obviously, as the two stories have no connection. The only thing they have in common is the greatness that is the actor Christopher George. Also, this movie is much gorier. Any movie that has a decapitation in the first half hour is okay by me.

The only problem is that the damn bear keeps changing size. In some shots, he appears to be about 9 feet tall. In others (and according to statements the characters say) he’s twelve feet (and 2K pounds. Holy crap! He weighs more than my wife’s truck!).

And it kinda jumps the shark towards the end. First, a bear manages to push down a ranger tower. First off, how the hell does it know to knock down a tower to get the tasty ranger up in it? Second, even at 2,000 pounds, I don’t think it has enough leverage to push it down. I guess it was rickety to begin with.

Second, in the end, gunshots don’t affect the bear, and they have to resort to a bazooka to kill the damn thing. That’s one tough bear. Perhaps the sequel could be the Army artificially creating more of these guys from some DNA they get out of a piece of this guy, to drop into combat situations. No dumber than bats (and that movie got made).

Three beers out of five. Some nudity would have helped, but I guess Mr. Gridler didn’t like titties.

Warning Sign – 1985

Here we have an agricultural company being a front for a germ warfare facility. And some get out of containment. And of course, it turns people into bloodthirsty zombies. Because as we all know, the only germ warfare weapon our government is interested in developing are virus’ that turn people into zombies.

Well, okay, they’re not really zombies. But they seem to die, then come back. And they want to kill everyone. Close enough.

The beginning of this movie, which shows all the protocols and procedures to prevent an accident rings really true. Having been in the Navy and worked on nuclear weapons, I can attest that this is pretty realistic.

It only fails right at the end, but it’s a pretty obvious flaw. The doors have been electronically locked. It takes a password to unlock them. There is a scene showing that the password that they initially had was expired, and no new one had been issued. But in the end, the survivors key in the original password and the doors open right up. “No way, Jose’, press any key to fight” [if you can correctly identify this reference, I’ll send you a movie]

There were no subtitles, but there was a commentary by the writer/director Hal Barwood. Interestingly enough, he now works for LucasArts Games, making video games. About the only point of interest in the commentary is that this movie took 36 days to make. Wish he’d mentioned the budget. Overall, it was an enjoyable flick.

Three beers out of five (once again, no nudity). I need me some sexploitation pretty soon.