Tag Archives: Mike MacLean

Piranhaconda (Review)

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Piranhaconda

piranhaconda
2012
Written by Mike MacLean
Concept by J. Brad Wilke
Directed by Jim Wynorski

This won $20,000 on America’s Funniest Home Videos!

Piranhaconda is like a mix of SyFy meets the softcore bikini film. Elements of both merge together while director Jim Wynorski returns to his favorite stomping ground of Hawaii. Thankfully, we don’t have a rehash of the Curse of the Komodo/Komodo vs Cobra/A.I. Assault script, and instead have something wholly new. While parts of it may not work, overall Piranhaconda isn’t terrible and gives enough death and destruction to knock it into mid-tier SyFy creature feature region.

Piranhaconda comes from the period where SyFy had begun to run low on monsters that exist in nature/mythology and needed to just combine fierce animals together to create new horrors. Sharktopus is the one that started this trend, which has expanded to include animal/natural disaster hybrids.

piranhaconda

This is a preview video only! Get the full movie with Membership Access of Creatures Sliming Babes.com, only $9.95/mo recurring!


Piranhaconda doesn’t waste time trying to come up with a fantastical origin of the creatures, it just throws out a line or two about how the monsters have always been there and just hibernate a lot. They even grab a supernatural name for their creature – Kepolo, a Polynesian river devil. In reality, the origin of the creatures does not matter, what matters is if things are a grand ol’ time while all the monster action is happening.

Let’s get this out of the way right now. Piranhaconda is a gigantic dong that slithers through the grass and attacks its prey, often spewing goo over the chest of female characters. I think we’ve moved a bit beyond subtext here into hilarity. The two Piranhacondas don’t like each other very well, which isn’t surprising considering what they represent, but they’ve also mated and dropped dozens and dozens of eggs. Throw that into the fake film being a slasher film, which have their own phallic symbols going on, and things reveal themselves nicely. So, yeah. Piranhaconda!

piranhaconda

When we put our heads together…it hurts!


Rose (Terri Ivens) – A producer concerned with work and handling the difficult actress on her film. Figures out all the dumb stuff Lovegrove is doing that’s endangering everyone.
Jack (Rib Hillis) – Jack and Rose, huh? I guess their hearts did go on! A stunt guy with the hots for Rose, Jack helps save the day while avoiding dating Kimmy.
Professor Robert Lovegrove (Michael Madsen) – A herpatologist who has spent his life studying the piranhacondas that killed his dad, and has finally proved they exist just in time to set them loose on a killing spree. What a nice guy!
Kimmy Weston (Shandi Finnessey) – Famous b-movie actress, known for the line “Suck lead, you hillbilly buttnugget!” Shandi Finnessey is very convincing on playing the spoiled brat, adding a charm to the role a lesser actress wouldn’t know what to do with.
Pike (Michael Swan) – Leader of the random heavily armed gang who kidnap several of the characters for “ransom”, despite being so weirdly incompetent their game plant makes little sense.
Talia (Rachel Hunter ) – Female member of the random heavily armed gang who sort of has a thing with Pike. Is one of the smarter members, which means she dies quick so everyone else can do dumb things
Piranhacondas (CGI) – A monster who chomps lots of people and pumps out dozens of eggs in between long hibernation cycles. Also goes in long quests for eggnapped eggs. Piranhacondas can even takes down helicopters. The origin of Kepolo, a Polynesian river devil. Like the creatures in Flying Monkeys, a mythological creature from another culture becomes a star in a Western film with a quick name change for how culture in the West would call them. There are hundreds of awesome monsters in cultural myths from around the globe, enough SyFy could make films for decades just on them alone.

piranhaconda

This happens every day on the 101-N


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Sharktopus (Review)

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Sharktopus


2010
Directed by Declan O’Brien
Written by Mike MacLean

I hate it when people don’t leash their dogs at the beach

Sharktopus is Roger Corman’s latest, having found a new outlet to distribute his films through the SciFi Channel (never SyFy, never!), previous Corman films including Cyclops, Dinoshark, Supergator, and Dinocroc vs. Supergator. Thanks to me moving to a location without SciFi Channel at the moment, I have been slacking off on watching the newer flicks that don’t pop on DVD first, but Sharktopus is a special case so I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who I traded a rock shaped like Sarah Jessica Parker to for a copy of Sharktopus he recorded off of TV. This is the new economy. I think he got the better end of the deal, but then it’s easy to find rocks shaped like horses– I mean, Sarah Jessica Parker.

Hey, I have glasses AND a ponytail now, that mean’s I’m the smartest one in here

Sharktopus has also ridden the wave of internet interest, just by the name “Sharktopus”. Buzz started immediately, with people trying to figure out what the creature would look like. There had been a recent string of SciFi Channel movies that have produced internet buzz, including Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, Megapihrana, and MegaMegaMegaMegaMegaMega earthworm vs Giant Mega Vampire Cow. Granted, internet films don’t really have a big history of succeeding (see Snakes on a Plane) but for a low-budget creature flick on a cable channel, the buzz actually works. It has even succeeded in making an ever-increasing amount of films with ridiculous creature names and films where ridiculous creatures battle ridiculous creatures. Have the films themselves been any good? That’s more of a mixed bag.

But forget the rest of the flicks, this review is about Sharktopus! So let’s judge it against its peers, other SciFi Channel films. Compared to the rest, the acting is pretty darn awful. We usually expect the acting to not be very good, but Sharktopus is a step beyond the normal SciFi Channel mediocrity, even the bit players are worse than the stock bit players. You got to hand it to Bulgarian extras – they aren’t as bad as the spring break extras they got for this one. Since Sharktopus likes to set up different kills, we see a lot of the minor actors for an extended period of time. This becomes disadvantageous as many of them couldn’t act their way out of a paper sharktopus.

Mega Sharktopus vs. Herbie the Love Bug

The good is we see the monster a LOT more than usual, and that’s awesome. Because we want monster monster monster! This also makes it more satisfying when the bad actors get killed.

Dr. Sands (Eric Roberts) – Dr. Sands is the head of Blue Ocean, which makes crazy biological monstrosities to sell to the US Navy. Thus, Sharktopus is born. Dr. Sands then gets more and more drunk and despondent as sharktopus escapes and goes on a rampage, because he’s gonna be out lots of money. But at least he goes good about two seconds before he dies.
Nicole Sands (Sara Malakul Lane) – Dr. Sand’s daughter, and like all smart girls in movies she has glasses. Glasses that disappear later in the film! Sara Malakul Lane is half-Thai, and even starred in at least one Thai film called Match Point.
Andy Flynn (Kerem Bursin) – Andy Flynn was fired for demanding a raise. That bastard! Now he’s rehired to out-sharktopus sharktopus! But Sharktopus is a crafty one. Andy Flynn spends the entire film being a jerky douche, but he’s the hero. Sigh…
Stacy Everheart (Liv Boughn) – A reporter chick and the best actor in the flick. Chases the Sharktopus story with her cameraman Bones and local fisherman Pez. Despite her crew being better and more sympathetic characters, they all die.
Santos (???) – Santos is awesome because we all know he’s going to die, and he does, but at least he’s cool. Only the good die young.
Sharktopus (CGI) – called S-11 probably because then they could use it for anything they decided on calling the film, be it Sharktopus or Octoshark or Jerry. The Sharktopus itself is a rather exceptional SciFi Channel monster, because it is freaking crazy! A shark with tentacle (and an extra octopus mouth on its belly) There was one prior tentacled shark I know about, the one from Shark rosso nell’oceano (aka the MST3K movie Devil Fish.) Whose gonna get sharktopussed? Everyone sharktopus can get his tentacles on!
Eric Roberts – now with 95% more smug

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