The Beaster Bunny (2014)

“Truly, Deeply, Terrible”

I can’t think of much else to say about this one, I’m afraid. THE BEASTER BUNNY proves they just don’t make rubbish anywhere near as good as they used to, and we should all shed tears that someone somewhere has had the nerve to charge people money to watch this. As the DVD began to play, all sense of coherent thought left me, and my mind was reduced to a series of phrases like:

“The Worst Film Of The Year. And Quite Possibly Ever”

The effects are truly astounding

Please don’t let that encourage you to watch this, though. If you’re my age and grew up in the 1970s, perhaps:

“Makes The Goodies Episode With the Giant Kitten Look Like KONG: SKULL ISLAND”

might deter you? Or if your tastes run to the more decidedly adult aspect of the movies, how about:

“Like The Worst Porn Film Ever Made, Only With No Sex”

A very…er...special film.

Perhaps a commentary track of thoughts aired at the House of Mortal Cinema during the running time might be of assistance:

Things We Said During The Running Time

1 Please make it stop

2 Why does that giant bunny have chicken’s feet?

3 Why didn’t they just have a man in a costume?

One of the better scenes. Because no one is talking.

4 Please make it stop.

5 The press release said the monster bunny was 50 feet tall. That looks barely 20.

6 Please, please make it stop.

I have no words

7 Where’s the fast forward button?

8 Shame on Second Sight for releasing this.

9 Where’s the STOP button?

10 It’s over. Thank God

And I’ll leave the final words to Mrs Probert:

“Now’s the time to show me some Jess Franco.”

This review has already had too many words devoted to it. Quite possibly my worst movie of the year. And ever. Ever, ever, ever.

As a review site House of Mortal Cinema is obliged to tell you that THE BEASTER BUNNY is out from Second Sight (what were you thinking guys?) on Monday 3rd April 2017. Run away from it. 

Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1973)

“I Did Not Laugh Once”

The DVD cover up there claims that this is “The Missing Peter Sellers Classic”. It is not. It is not a classic of any kind. Instead, it is a film that has only been heard of by a few and seen by even fewer. In fact this release by Fabulous Films is GHOST IN THE NOONDAY SUN’s worldwide DVD premiere.

There is a very good reason for this.

It is terrible.

Terrible.

Less a comedy pirate movie and more a shambles of lazy non-existent writing, appalling overacting, and utter lack of narrative cohesion aided by random bits of stock footage, the term sheer desperation came to mind many times as I watched this sad and sorry example of British comedy.

Do you want to know the plot?

Why?

Ok here goes. Peter Sellers (in probably his worst ever performance) plays ship’s cook Dick Scratcher (oh the hilarity) who kills pirate captain Ras Mohammed only to discover the man’s pirate map turns invisible upon death.  He therefore needs the captain’s ghost to tell him where it is, but only Spike Milligan (going full Q6,7,8,9 and beyond before his surreal British comedy show had been renewed after a six year hiatus and obviously itching to do some barking mad performance art / daftness) can channel the ghost.

Add in an opening half (!) of random nonsense involving appalling jokes, a giant plastic duck, and an opening theme song so sluggish and dull one can only assume it was written for something else, rejected, and then had ‘pirate words’ stuck on it for this load of rubbish and hopefully I’m conveying some of what it was like to actually watch this. The only actor who emerges with any dignity is Anthony TENEBRAE Franciosa, who actually makes a very good and endearing pirate hero, even when he’s wearing a giant plastic head and wandering around a burial ground.

All the above may have encouraged you to watch this embarrassing pile of redundant cinema. If so, then on your own head be it.There are no extras because Good God why would there be any? Instead, let me finish up with a few quotes from Fabulous Films’ own press release:

“It was an absolute living nightmare”

Antony Rufus Isaacs, producer.

“It’s the only film I can ever remember where the producers got sacked after the first week by the star”

Robin Dalton, agent.

“It turned out to be the biggest disaster of my life”

Peter Medak, director.

         Ah yes, Peter Medak, of THE CHANGELING, THE KRAYS, LET HIM HAVE IT, and...er...SPECIES 2. Blame him for this less than the movie’s star. Peter Sellers apparently tried to have the film shut down, faked a heart attack so he could have tea with Princess Margaret, went water ski-ing instead of turning up for filming , and got Medak replaced by Spike Milligan (!) as director for a couple of bits that are so awful it’s obvious. 

Can I write any more about this? No I can’t. The disc is going in the bin & I’m cracking open the Shiraz. In fact I already have. Hic.

The comedy disaster that is GHOST IN THE NOONDAY SUN is out on DVD from Fabulous Films on Monday 12th December 2016

Infernal (2015)

No.

Signature Entertainment are releasing INFERNAL on 
Region 2 DVD on 24th August 2015

Left Behind (2014)

Christian propaganda films tend to be traditionally both grotty and disturbing in terms of their subtext. Anyone who has been forced to sit through A DISTANT THUNDER (1978) in a revivalist tent in South America (I know I have) or indeed any of director Donald Thompson’s awful evangelical efforts will know what I’m talking about. 

Well, the spirit seems to be alive and well and responsible for what is officially (according to Rotten Tomatoes at least) the Number One worst film of 2014. LEFT BEHIND will shortly be getting a Blu-ray and DVD release in the UK courtesy of 101 Films so you can find out just how bad it is for yourself (if you dare), but in the meantime I have already been subjected to its 110 minute running time. I have suffered on the cinematic crucifix that is Bad Cinema so that you hopefully don’t have to, and here’s what I thought.

The first thirty minutes of LEFT BEHIND is nothing more (nor less) than a poorly put together soap opera. Nicolas Cage (why?) is an airline pilot who plans to have a bit of an assignation with stewardess Nicky Whelan, complete with Princess Diana hairdo and tightly buttoned blouse (her not him). How could he possibly cheat on Bible-bashing wife Lea Thompson, who seems to have forgotten everything she learned about time travel and now wears a lot of fish-related jewellery and gets into arguments with daughter Cassi Thomson about Belief? Nic takes off in his plane filled with sinners, or at least the script tries hard to make out that business class is certainly filled with them. So far so dull, and then Something Weird happens and people everywhere disappear, leaving only their clothes, their fish jewellery and their diaries with entries like ‘Attend Bible Class’ written in big letters. 

What’s going on? Could it be that the group of American Christians who bang on about something called The Rapture were right? If all the Christians were suddenly taken away would everyone left really not be able to cope? Would they just drive their cars into shops, shoot each other, and generally cause havoc because Christians weren’t around anymore? And why is it a good idea to have heaven filled with naked people anyway? 

It’s certainly a unique take on the apocalypse. Meanwhile the aeroplane is running out of fuel and Nic has to land somewhere. Surely it’s not going to be inches from that enormous tanker with ‘Flammable Liquid’ written on it, is it? And if everyone survives surely they’re going to get as far away from there as possible and not be stupid enough to spend ages standing around relieved they’re alive while fires ignite all around them?

LEFT BEHIND is packed chock full with stupid moments, stupid dialogue, and situations that will have you either picking your jaw up off the floor or chuckling along. I have to admit I didn’t touch the fast forward button once as I was so mesmerised by what was happening. Someone has likened this to THE ROOM and they might not be far wrong. 

101 Films offers us an entirely bare bones affair, presumably because all the out-takes made it into the actual finished film. I cannot recommend this one but if you want to see Nicolas Cage explain how a paper cup with holes in it is actually the aeroplane he's in then this is the film you’ve been waiting for. 

LEFT BEHIND is being released by 101 Films on Blu-ray and DVD on 5th January 2015

The Forgotten (2011)

Made a couple of years ago and, having been subject to a couple of retitlings since (never a good sign), what was originally known as FALLS THE SHADOW, and was released for the American market as ZOMBIE WARZ (oh dear) now rears its head on UK DVD as THE FORGOTTEN. The ad campaign has changed radically over that time as well. The US release does its best to capitalise on the then-success of the Brad Pitt-starring WORLD WAR Z. Anyone picking up THE FORGOTTEN could be forgiven for thinking, on the basis of the cover art, that it’s a riff on MAD MAX, which it really isn’t.

THE FORGOTTEN is a micro-budgeted, amateurish horror film that's been shot using one of those blue-grey filters that makes everything appear in a kind of gloomy, cold semi-darkness they really should start calling ‘Miserivision’.

There’s been an apocalypse, presumably of the zombie variety as there are still a few flesh-eating mumblies wandering the bleak landscape. A mad Reverend (Phil Perry) has painted a swastika on the confederate flag and considers it his God-given duty to create a new America, one that will be so right wing it’s going to meet itself coming round the back if it’s not careful. Michael the soldier returns to find his wife murdered and his daughter kidnapped by the Reverend’s redneck rabble. Will he and his father be able to save her? Will they be able to rebuild society? Will you care by the end?

One for the post zombie-apocalypse completist only, if you feel like watching a very cheap, cobbled together, not-terribly-well-acted cross between THE ROAD and STAKELAND then by all means give THE FORGOTTEN a go. Everyone else I hope has been duly warned.

       101 Films’ DVD of THE FORGOTTEN includes a making of featurette and a trailer. And I will admit the box art isn’t bad at all. 

101 Films released THE FORGOTTEN / FALLS THE SHADOW / ZOMBIE WARZ (oh dear) on DVD on 28th April 2014

Beach Babes 2: Cave Girl Island (1996)

Those kind chaps at 88 Films have sent me a batch of movies to review, and this one happened to be on the top of the pile. Rather than go with my instincts and immediately move it to the bottom in the hope it might have crumbled to dust by the time I finally got round to watching it, I decided to grasp the nettle of rubbish cinema with both hands and subject myself to something I suspected even I would be unable to find any real worth in.

Having missed the no doubt complex storyline of BEACH BABES PART 1 that hopefully sets up the situation we find ourselves thrust into in this sequel, I must admit to having found myself a little lost at the beginning of the film. It would seem that three young ladies hailing from a very warm planet where any kind of practical clothing must be illegal have jammed themselves into the tiniest spaceship imaginable and are now zooming across space in a riot of awful special effects of the flying biscuit tin and black backcloth variety.

      They crash land on a beach and one of their number ends up in a jungle with all her clothes having fallen off. She encounters a helpful native gentleman whose race has developed no further than the loincloth, the straw hut, and the side buckled beach sandal. It takes him a long while to find her something to wear, and even longer if you don’t fast forward through the interminable softcore scene that ensues. This is presuming, of course, that as a sophisticated viewer of such material you have chosen the ‘unrated’ option from the menu. I suspect the ‘R-rated’ version of this little opus is even shorter than the uncut version’s 76 minutes but I must confess I have little desire to watch this a second time in any version at all.

The two girls still at the biscuit tin spaceship rescue their ghetto blaster from it and enjoy an impromptu and appallingly choreographed dance on the beach. Then it's off to discover a village of catatonic cave girls whom they cure with the medicine of awful 1990s disco. 

Meanwhile a man sitting in a cave and wearing a black beret is busy trying to find a ways to capture our heroines. He’s already subjected them to a minute or so of footage of stop motion dinosaurs from another film that for some mysterious reason was considered sufficiently representative of BEACH BABES 2 to be included almost in its entirety as the film's trailer. 

Beret man soon has the girls in his big cage. Then he has some rather muscular gentlemen in his cage as well. But they all manage to escape and dance and then fly away in their biscuit tin spaceship. When it lands again you can see the Hollywood sign in the background, as well as a number of people’s houses. I have no idea if this was intentional or not.

           BEACH BABES 2: CAVE GIRL ISLAND really doesn’t deserve a review as long as this. Despite its very short running time it’s padded out with a number of softcore sex scenes that will either have you reaching for the fast forward button if you’re older, the pause and rewind button if you’re younger, or the slow frame advance button if you really, really don’t get out at all ever. The stop motion dinosaurs are very sweet but, like I said, you can see them in the trailer. 88 Films’ DVD has the film in 1.33:1. I have no idea if any other ratio exists and I suspect no-one else is that bothered. The disc also has a whole batch of trailers for films of equal or even greater trashiness which is actually more worth the price of admission than the film. If there are many more like these in the stack of discs sitting on my desk I suspect my ‘Trapped in the Room With It’ Section is just about to get a whole lot larger. Oh, and illustrations to accompany this review have been limited to the DVD box cover art as anything else would be inappropriate on the grounds of taste, decency, and the fact that they are unlikely to make you want to watch this film any more than what I've already said.

Chill (2012)

HP Lovecraft meets Jess Franco in this ultra low-budget homemade effort that uses the classic short story ‘Cool Air’ for its inspiration but throws in some topless prostitutes with their faces peeled off for good measure. Now, just before you go rushing off to watch this on the basis of that here are a few other items you need to consider: CHILL received its first UK release last year but the production date at the end of the film is 2006. Also listed in those end credits is a Mr Tommy Wiseau who is something of a cult underground character, having directed one of the ‘worst films of all time’, THE ROOM (I shudder to think if I’ll ever get round to writing about that one). Mr Wiseau is not the director of CHILL, that honour falls to Serge Rodnunsky who is also responsible for the script, editing and photography using equipment loaned to him by Tommy. The result of this mostly one man effort is by no means terrible but it is rather amateurish and should only be watched by the very kind and forgiving.

Sam (Thomas Calabro) is an ex-doctor and writer who gets a job working in a supermarket owned by Dr Munoz (Shaun Kurtz). Munoz spends most of his time living in a freezer in the back when he’s not driving around in his filthy white van urging his lumbering peeling-faced assistant Tor to abduct prostitutes. Tor should really be called Morpho in honour of the Franco vibe he elicits, and one suspects any reference to the Tor Johnson of Ed Wood’s movies is sheer coincidence. The prostitutes are taken back to the supermarket and hung up in the freezer in faceless prostitute corner. They’re needed for skin grafts, you see, as Dr Munoz has a tendency to extreme exfoliation every couple of days, although why he needs several of these girls hanging up when he’s only taken very tiny areas of skin from each of them (and interestingly never from the breasts) is never explained. 

Sam gets friendly with Maria who works in the shop across the road. Maria is played by Ashley Laurence. Twenty years on from Clive Barker’s HELLRAISER and still looking absolutely lovely one wonders how she got mixed up in a project like this. Dr Munoz kidnaps Maria and wants Sam to become his assistant. Before he or anyone else can say ‘Not on your Necronomicon’ (the doctor has a copy, you see) the prostitutes’ pimp turns up with his gang for a bit of a shoot out and a twist ending that can at best be described as sub-par and at worst as incomprehensible.

CHILL is reminiscent of the worst 1970s EuroTrash, and fans of that sort of silly stuff are the only ones who are going to get much out of this. Dr Munoz even wears a cloak and wanders around as if he’s searching for the Spanish vampire picture in which he truly belongs. Mr Lovecraft's name is on the top of the box cover, but he doesn’t get a mention in either the movie’s credits or on the trailer, which is odd as one would assume that this would be the movie’s sole selling point. One for utter, utter, utter HPL completists only. You know who you are.

Devil Hunter (1980)

It’s time to settle down for yet another slice of not-exactly-quality exploitation courtesy of Mr Jess Franco. This marks the fourth of his movies I’ve written about, which only leaves me about 195 to go, or as many as I can manage before, a bit like my old DVD player, my brain finally gives up and refuses to cope with the strain. Until then, however, I intend to keep going as for some reason I actually find something worthwhile in a Franco picture and DEVIL HUNTER is no exception.

For those of you unfamiliar with the man’s work: be warned - DEVIL HUNTER is not an ordinary film. Rather it’s a bit like what you might get if a group of long-term institutionalised psychiatric patients were told to make an Indiana Jones film as some kind of weird therapy. We kick off with film star Laura Crawford (Ursula Buchfellner) arriving in a sunny coastal town where locations are apparently being scouted for her new film. Laura never gets to see them, however because scarcely has she had the chance to take a soapy bath in water that only comes up to her ankles than she’s being kidnapped! Intercut with this is a second ‘plotline’ featuring a jungle tribe of such incredible cryptoanthropological obscurity that its members look as if they are all actually members of different races entirely. They’ve chased and captured a naked lady and have tied her up as an offering to their god. This turns out to be a large googly-eyed nude man who eats her in the most unconvincing way imaginable. 

Laura’s kidnappers take her to the same bit of jungle (we have to work out for ourselves) and the ransom is set. Al Cliver plays hero Peter Weston who, with his Vietnam flashback-suffering phobic helicopter pilot sidekick travels to the island where the jungle is with a bag of money and instructions to come back ‘with the girl and the money’. Everything goes a bit wrong at the exchange - our heroes have to bail out of their helicopter, which isn't too difficult as it’s quite obviously still on the ground. Various cast members get shot, leaving Laura to wander through the jungle in her strategically torn dress that we’ve already seen her rather fetchingly chained up in (Franco strikes again, but not as much as he will in a bit). The googly-eyed nude monster is still wandering the island, presumably in search of a decent pair of trousers or at least a loincloth. Al and his chum happen across a yacht which, naturally, has yet another naked girl aboard. Swiftly disarming her Al then hangs around drinking beer and setting a very bad role model for the two or three people who might have watched this on its initial release by throwing the bottle into the sea. 

He decides to try and rescue Laura. She’s been captured by the tribe of multi-ethnicity and is currently being undressed very slowly by very scantily clad village girls. It’s not long before Mr Franco cannot restrain himself and his camera falls to focus on various ladies’ ‘personal areas’. The only thing that can possibly distract him is a gratuitous googly eyed nude monster attack.

On the yacht, Vietnam Vet and Nude Yacht Girl are indulging in some Sophisticated Audience Entertainment. But whose bloodshot bulging eyes are those staring down from the deck? Yes it’s time to cut to a shot of animal’s intestines being pulled out before we’re back with naked Laura, tied up and ready to be sacrificed. In amongst all of this we’ve had possibly the worst and most unconvincing decapitated head to ever be committed to celluloid (it’s the actor lying down with some leaves around his neck) and a fight between Al and the ridiculously accented lead kidnapper that takes place in the sea and sounds as if the foley artist didn’t have much more to work with than a small bucket of water to provide the sound effects.

The mind-bending climax (and believe me your mind will have been bent by the time you get to it - this is a Franco film that’s over 100 minutes long) has Al in a showdown with the big naked beastie, whom he eventually skewers with a stick he produces from the magical nowhere that is bad editing before chucking Mr Googly off a cliff. Al carries nude Laura down a hill and looks as if he had quite a difficult job doing it. The End.

Once again I find myself watching a Franco film, once again it’s really not very good, and yet once again I could not take my eyes off this. It’s meant to be a cannibal film, presumably filmed in the weekend after Jess (or rather his producer) saw Ruggero Deodato’s CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, but it plays more like a 1930s jungle adventure movie but with the usual Franco obsessions and a monster with a waggly willy. And on that alliteration, which I hope I never have to repeat on this site, I leave you with the totally predictable opinion that DEVIL HUNTER is the usual mesmerising experience for fans of Jess Franco, and it absolutely shouldn’t be watched by anyone else. 

The Legend of Harrow Woods (2011)

A colleague of mine who shall remain nameless to avoid besmirching his taste in film recently lent me a movie called THE LEGEND OF HARROW WOODS, following a discussion I had in Manchester with one of the film’s stars, Robin Askwith, which piqued my interest. Mr Askwith, a veteran of numerous low budget British curiosities including HORROR HOSPITAL, TOWER OF EVIL and LET'S GET LAID now appears in more upmarket television fare such as Eastenders and Benidorm. His memories of the movie did not include the title, which is not surprising as even from the extras on the DVD it’s apparent that, since being made at some uncertain time last decade, the film has undergone numerous title changes including ALONE IN THE DARK, EVIL CALLS, THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE and THE RAVEN PART 2. It’s “directed” by Richard Driscoll, a name I shall now never forget, and stars Mr Askwith along with Rik Mayall, Jason Donovan and Norman Wisdom. I cannot possibly comment but a quick trawl of the internet has raised the suggestion that the reason for the numerous title changes is that these and other cast members have yet to be fully (or even partly) financially reimbursed for their efforts. Christopher Walken’s name is on the credits too. He doesn’t actually appear in the film, but his voice does, quoting "The Raven" endlessly and with a voice distortion filter so extreme it’s difficult to tell if it’s actually him, or indeed if it’s actually Poe’s poem. Again, I understand from internet sources that Mr Walken wished to have his name removed from the project and perhaps it was from one of the other versions but it seems to be in place here.

You will notice that so far I have not mentioned the plot. This is for two reasons. One is that I’m still not really sure what the film was about, and the other is that even trying to remember this film is giving me a horrid case of indigestion. The film starts with a group of jerkily-filmed actors travelling off to Harrow Woods where a witch called Lenore was burned several hundred years ago. People wander around for a bit and every now and then there’s a weird optical effect of an eye with a raven in the middle of it that’s probably there to justify the 3D. Yes 3D. I’m not going to say any more about that. There are a lot of sepia flashbacks to what looks like a hugely inferior ripoff of THE SHINING. Norman Wisdom appears as a toilet attendant, then Rik Mayall appears as the same character and says all the same dialogue all over again. There’s a weird orgy bit close to the end that may be ripping off EYES WIDE SHUT but by then my brain was starting to consider how to get out of my skull and away from all of this so again I can’t be sure. All I can be sure of is this is 78 minutes that no-one should ever have to be subjected to. It’s awful. Properly awful. The camerawork veers between static and so shaky I assumed it was all being done on a camcorder, so when I saw on the extras that Mr Driscoll actually had a full crew working on this I wondered how on earth it was possible to make something look so bad. Even Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman did a better job on their 1963 movie BLOOD FEAST and there was only the two of them working the camera and the sound. The sound in Harrow Woods was probably recorded beneath ten mattresses, put through a distortion filter, run through a mixing desk left in the hands of a bored five year old and then played very quietly while a much louder music track was added on top. 

Is Mr Driscoll the British Jess Franco? Absolutely not. Mr Franco has a few fans who can find something of interest in his work, and he has been known to make a  reasonably competent film on a very good day. Until I did some research for this column I had quite forgotten the hostility of the crowd reaction at a film festival to Mr Driscoll’s first film, THE COMIC, back in the 1990s. I understand he has made other films in the meantime and, unlike either the works of Jess Franco and Ed Wood, I have absolutely no intention of watching any of them.

The Cell 2 (2009)

      The Cell 2 is one of those 'pseudosequels' so staggeringly unrelated to its original that the only reason it bears the title is to part you from your hard-earned cash, merely to leave you with that vague and slightly depressing sense of despondency that you will never learn.

      When is an eighty nine minute film not an eighty nine minute film? When it lasts for seventy eight minutes and then pads out the remaining eleven by means of an endless credit crawl interspersed with shots of mountains, a behind the scenes shot of a car stunt that wasn’t very interesting to begin with, and a decidedly minor helicopter stunt where the gentleman concerned half-heartedly high-fives a random member of the crew afterwards once he remembers that he’s being filmed.

      The Cell 2 is a travesty of a movie in every sense of the word, but just in case you can’t quite grasp how terrible the implication of my use of that description is, here are a few well chosen words to illustrate just what I mean.

      There’s a killer on the loose who kidnaps young girls, then flatlines them and then brings them back to life. Repeatedly. Quite exactly why we are never told, but that’s okay – the only reason I know that’s his modus operandi is because I read it on the back of the box – the film never makes it very clear. Neither is it explained why he has been given the nickname ‘The Cusp’. Perhaps he was a dentist in a past life. He certainly wasn’t a doctor, because despite the film taking pains to make out he has medical training he can’t take a pulse properly and when he defibrillates his victims he puts the paddles in the wrong place.

      On his trail is a hunky testicle-squeezing alpha male sheriff whose niece is the latest kidnap victim, and ‘Beautiful psychic investigator’ (it says on the box) Maya Catenada. Maya was a previous victim who escaped but whose ordeal left her with psychic powers. It also must have made her so painfully shy that she went and hid under a sunlamp for six months when she wasn’t at the ‘Excess Blush ‘N’ Gloss’ beauticians. Maya’s not very good at saving victims. In fact at the start of the film most of them seemed to have died before the police could intervene, so quite why they let her carry on ‘helping’ them I have no idea. 

      The original ‘The Cell’ starred Jennifer Lopez as a psychologist who spent most of the time in the dream world of a serial killer. In The Cell 2 the rich dream reality created by Tarsem Singh is replaced by a narrow corridor of the electrical department of the local John Lewis, with our acting-challenged heroine picking up different sized television screens to try and work out what’s going on. And while we’re on the subject of electrical goods, our killer has somehow managed to equip an entire hideout with electrical generators and cardiac bypass gear the size of a fridge freezer which he must have somehow obtained, transported to his hideout, and installed without anyone noticing. In the cheap and cheerful exploitation movies of the seventies this wouldn’t have been a problem because one just did not need to explain such things, but like so many movies today The Cell 2 tries to be so earnest about its intentions to be a thriller that it just can’t get away with such contrivances. Mind you that’s not the worst. At one point a black clad bouffante-haired medallion wearing FBI agent gets murdered with the most obviously fake rubber axe since Christopher Lee did in Anoushka Hempel with a fake rubber knife in Hammer’s Scars of Dracula. That, coupled with the seriously short running time means that while it’s over quickly, it’s never quickly enough. Don’t just avoid this, run away from it. And if it comes after you hit it. With a real axe.

Piranha 3DD (2012)

PIRANHA 3D was one of my favourite films of 2010, a riotous, glorious mix of the elements that made 70s and 80s exploitation cinema great, delivered with just enough of a twinkle in the eye that all the daft gore-soaked proceedings ended up being one of the most enjoyable efforts of the year. Movie sequels, and in particular horror movie sequels have a habit of failing to meet up to their predecessors, and while I really should have learned my lesson by now I was still looking forward to seeing the follow-up, which has somehow managed to get a UK cinema release. The only thing I can say about it that isn’t entirely damning is that at least it lives down to the ‘bad sequel’ tradition.

PIRANHA 3DD is terrible, absolutely terrible. In fact I might go as far as to say that this is the worst film I have ever seen at the cinema. I may have seen more execrable horror movie product on DVD, but never on a big screen have I seen such a cavalcade of failure on every possible level. I’m not in favour of film censorship but there are some films people should never see, and this is one of them. 

The film begins with a recap of the first followed by shots of the grim, depressing, deserted place the first film’s Lake Victoria has now become. For a split second the viewer is conned into thinking this film is going to develop along interesting and bleak lines, and then suddenly we’re on a very cheap looking set with Gary Busey wading through some water looking for a cow that he finds semi-submerged and dead. The cow explodes and suddenly we’re at ‘The Big Wet’ (or something) an adult-themed water park that’s due to open in three days.
       With all the ham-fistedness of Garth Marenghi on a bad day we are then subjected to a series of deaths and sex scenes that are handled with such appalling incompetence and extreme poor taste that by the time some poor young chap was trying to cut his own penis off after having sex with a girl who somehow had a piranha inside her, the whole enterprise was starting to feel rather shameful. This is nothing, however, compared to the terrible, terrible climax, where the evil villain who owns the water park ends up having his severed head bouncing between a pair of breasts in a scene that does not do the reputation of our beloved genre any good at all.
       PIRANHA 3DD does not have one single redeeming feature. The 3D is terrible and makes a mess of trying to reproduce gags from the first film. Even Christopher Lloyd rambling on about ‘The Laughing Diarrhoea Baby’ that’s managed to get more hits on YouTube than him can’t redeem it. It is badly written, shot, edited and acted, and just when you think things can’t get any worse David Hasselhoff turns up with his Casio keyboard and starts singing. Seriously. The film runs a scant 83 minutes but the end titles go on for ages, include a mass of out-takes and continue to embarrass Mr Hasselhoff and run his career into the ground even more than the poor chap has managed to do to himself already. It’s a rare day when I feel stupid for having watched a film. PIRANHA 3DD is that film. The only good thing I can say about it is that now I can watch absolutely any other film in the universe and it’s going to look like a masterpiece next to this.