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InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Heebie Jeebies

March 26, 2013By

Heebie Jeebies


2013
Written by Trent Haaga
Directed by Thomas L. Callaway

Heebie Jeebies
Gold prices skyrocket as the fear monster eats world gold supplies, mocks bitcoins

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—and also mining accident fear monsters out for revenge!” — Franklin Delano Roosevelt, shortly before battling the mining accident fear monster that cost him the use of his legs.

Fear. Nothing is more scary, except maybe terror. Now, it is hard to have a concept such as fear attacking people on a SyFy creature feature, so we have the next best thing, a creature that attacks by causing fear. Heebie Jeebies is not just a goofy title, it’s a concept that extends to the plot. To drive the whole fear thing home, the main character even gets panic attacks!

Heebie Jeebies
The Man with the Golden Gun? We ate him!

Heebie Jeebies gets points for having an innovative monster design and concept, and being a parable about how greed is bad and ultimately destructive. It also gives us a glimpse of the history of exploited immigrant miners. The Asian-American family’s dynamic is similar to actual Asian-American families I know, it’s cool to see characters jumping back and forth between languages. It does lose points for having the only black character be a criminal.

What is weird is I watched Heebie Jeebies back to back with Flying Monkeys, and Tyler Forrest is in both of them. In Flying Monkeys, he plays a creepy guy, while in Heebie Jeebies, he plays a terrible boyfriend. As Louisiana seems to be the new it location for filming SyFy films (at least as long as the tax breaks last!) I expect Tyler Forrest will be showing up a lot!

Director Thomas L. Callaway has had an insanely awesome cinematography career (Critters 3 and 4, Road House 2, Who’s Your Caddy?), but has only helmed one other film, 2007’s Broke Sky. Writer Trent Haaga is a hardworking actor/writer/producer who has some Troma roots.

Heebie Jeebies
A terrible Mr. T costume…

Todd Crane (Robert Belushi) – Small town cop who has crippling panic attacks, like all good cops. Is working on controlling his attacks with meditation therapy with Theresa. Is investigating the mysterious murders committed by what turns out to be a revenge monster while trying to be a parent to his little sister. Robert Belushi is James Belushi’s son.
Theresa Lim (Cathy Shim) – Doctor and medical examiner who becomes extra busy thanks to the rash of murders and the simultaneous freak out of her grandmother who knows more than she lets on. Is also helping Todd meditate in what is prelude to a romance. Cathy Shim is awesome, and deserves to be more famous. She’s probably best known for Reno:911 and 3Way.
Billy Butler (Michael Badalucco) – Local mine owner and owner of a cash for gold business. He’s like one of those obnoxiously hilarious local commercials come to life. Just think Boss Hogg meets Yukon Cornelious. Gets gold fever when he sees the monster bleeds gold and tries to capture it.
Zu Mu (Lucille Soong) – A Tiger Grandma of Theresa and Tracy, who knows more than she hints about the awakened revenge monster. Responds by freaking out on her family, but eventually tells Todd about how Chinese laborer miners were trapped and left to die in 1840, and her ancestor – a witch – cursed the mine and created a revenge monster from the souls of the trapped miners.
Veronica Crane (Evie Thompson) – Todd’s sister, who can’t wait to get it on with her boyfriend, Mace. Veronica is desperate to have some fun in the small town, so her and her friends plan to hang out in the abandoned mine like all the cool kids do.
Mace (Dave Randolph-Mayhem Davis) – Veronica’s reluctant boyfriend, who seems very apprehensive about having the sex with Veronica. Even still, he’s probably one of the few good catches left in town.
Tracy Lim (Olivia Ku) – Theresa’s sister and Zu Mu’s granddaughter. She gets instantly grounded by Zu Mu to keep her safe, even though her grandmother doesn’t explain anything. Is rebellious and sneaks out with Veronica and their boyfriends, ending up in trouble at the mine.
Sheriff Tatum (Carl Savering) – The local sheriff who spends most of his time yelling at Todd or making bad decisions like putting lots of civilians in harms way. And he gets captured by Billy at one point. Is Mace’s dad, so he’s the genius who named his kid Mace.
Agnes Whitehead (Marion Ross) – Mrs. Cunningham from Happy Days! A retired teacher and not nice woman. Mrs. C is packing some heat, and even yells former student Todd Crane into a panic attack when he attempts to give her a ticket. Gets Heebie-Jeebied!
Fear Monster (CGI) – Monster with gold blood that eats gold. Expels fear gas to paralyze its targets with terror. Eats gold as well. Was created by a witch curse from wife of one of five miners abandoned alive underground after an accident. The best part is it has gold monster vision!
Heebie Jeebies
How about a little fire, Scarecrow!
InScience

2-Headed Shark Attack in real life!

March 25, 2013By

two headed shark fetus

Unlike the film 2-Headed Shark Attack from Asylum, this 2-headed shark is just a fetus that probably would have died. But life has found a way to borrow from SyFy movies.

This particular two-head is a bull shark embryo found inside a bull shark caught off the coast of Florida. The fisherman shared his find with scientists who published a paper on the specimen in the Journal of Fish Biology. Two headedness is called dicephalia, for those of you who want some big words to use to impress people in the bar after work. This is the first known 2-headed bull shark specimen.

The shark probably wouldn’t have lived because the two heads would cause problems when chasing prey, as well as a stunted body.

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Flying Monkeys

March 25, 2013By

Flying Monkeys


2013
Written by Silvero Gouris
Directed by Robert Grasmere

Flying Monkeys
What did you say about my stinking paws???

Flying Monkeys is a perfect example of a SyFy flick. It’s got a swarm of ridiculous creatures, lots of bloody death, bad CGI, and random acting talent. Released to cash in on Oz: The Great and Powerful, Flying Monkeys wedges in two small Oz references, but then goes on its own direction in what may be one of the most liberal SyFy films ever.

Flying Monkeys
This monkey is a curse to all it touches…it was in Hangover 2!

Does Flying Monkeys promote exotic animals as pets, or is it a warning against them? Without being preachy, Flying Monkeys shows that exotic animals are smuggled into the US, are sold by a gun-packing jerk, and can cause horrible ecological damage and death when introduced to a new ecosystem. Also that they slaughter and devour entire towns full of random people, just like kudzu does!

Even more crazy, Flying Monkeys has a commentary on gun control! Flying Monkeys is anti-gun. If the flying monkeys (actually a Chinese mythological creature called a hsigo) are killed, they just turn into two hsigos. They can only be killed by special weapons blessed by the Emperor of China. Guns just make things worse, though they may cause a brief way to escape, they ultimately just increase the problem. Characters disparage how everyone in the US has a gun, because it makes the effort to kill the hsigos that much harder. Hsigos are like Gremlins, except they reproduce thanks to violent gun culture instead of water. Expand this out to how gun violence can create more gun violence, and Flying Monkeys is suddenly drawing a line in the sand.

Flying Monkeys
First we catch the monkey, then I argue with it about post-Baum Oz books and which should be considered canon, until it dies of boredom!

There is also a throwaway bit about how Skippy the flying monkey leader doesn’t kill Joan because she’s nice to him in monkey form. The hunters are shocked at this, stating because no one has ever been kind to a hsigo, ever. Then they go to kill him anyway, though this suggests that maybe, just maybe, the killer monkeys could be rehabilitated.

As we declared long ago, Type A SyFy films feature one (or a small number) of invincible creatures that slaughter everyone. Type B SyFy films (which Flying Monkeys is an example of) feature a whole swarm of creatures that slaughter everyone, but the creatures have a weakness in that they have a Queen-type creature that if killed, they all die. Type C SyFy films feature a whole swarm of killable creatures that slaughter everyone, with no leader creature. I’ve since added Type D SyFy flicks, which is when creatures battle each other, though those films can also fit in with any of the prior three types.

The hsigo of Chinese mythology (from what little I’ve found on them in English) are actually helper animals, winged monkeys with human faces. Their depiction in Flying Monkeys seems largely invented. The creatures are played by a mix of real monkeys, CGI, and gloved monster hands used for closeup shots. But let’s not forget the greatest thing of all, FLYING MONKEY VISION!

Flying Monkeys
Rainbow Heart: The sign of a true killer

Joan Palmer (Maika Monroe) – High school graduate and one day veterinarian who is getting over her mother’s death and her father’s lack of interest. Is gifted with a pet monkey, that turns out to be a killer flying monkey. It could happen to anyone! Maika Monroe is a famous kiteboarder turned movie star.
James Palmer (Vincent Ventresca) – Joan’s absentee dad who decided the best way to get over his wife’s death was to work himself to death and ignore his daughter. He begins to make up for it just in time for the flying monkeys attack! Interesting they made the Invisible Man into the Invisible Dad…
Sonya (Electra Avellan) – Joan’s friend who has the classic Kansan accent. She just wants to live life and party and shower without monkeys spying on her.
Yin (Boni Yanagisawa) – Female Hunter of hsigo whose clan has been doing so for centuries under order of the Emperor. Sure, the Emperor is long dead and China’s now run by a completely different government, but the hunt continues. Yin is very intense.
Chin-Lee (Lee Nguyen) – Hunter of the clan that was ordered to track down and destroy the rogue hsigos. Possibly the best actor in the entire movie.
Flying Monkeys (real monkeys, CGI, gloves) – These hsigo are cute monkeys by day, vicious winged killers by night. If you kill a hsigo, you only make it split in two and both of them mad! Joan names her monkey/hsigo Skippy, though later it is revealed the hsigo’s name is Nico (a traditional Chinese name??) and if he dies, all the hsigos die. Animated without hair, because CGI hair is expensive.
Wang (Alvin Chon) – Smuggler pilot and best character in the film!
Flying Monkeys
Delicious!
Godzilla Marvel 19
InRiffTrax

Breaker Breaker – New RiffTrax VOD!

March 23, 2013By

RiffTrax has a new VOD flick, the crazed Chuck Norris trucker movie Breaker Breaker! See noted delusional homophobe Chuck Norris drive trucks, wrestle arms, and not have a mustache. Also there is probably a plot or something about rescuing his brother and some TV dinners, but who gives a crap about the plot? I’ve come for the hot trucking action, and I will get me some hot trucking action!

Breaker breaker good buddy! We got a bear in the air on 95 going north, a bear in the grass on route 50, with Brother and Sister Berenstain Bear running a checkpoint for icons in the bear community over by the bear shop, so buckle your bearbelt, step on the bear pedal and get ready to haul some bears. We don’t know much about trucker slang here at RiffTrax, but we gather that roughly 98% of it is bear based.

In Breaker! Breaker!, Chuck Norris, star of the jokes from 2007 that your lamest uncle is just now finding out about and preparing to forward to you, stars as a trucker who is also a champion arm wrestler. It’s like Over The Top only with slightly less confusion about the hero’s last name.

Chuck’s brother is making his first ever trucking delivery, and his cargo is several hundred frozen TV dinners. His routine haul goes awry when his truck is attacked by lonely men in search of cheap, barely edible food-like substances. Actually, he’s captured by the citizens of a rogue town of drunken hicks led by the delightfully Kelsey Grammer-esque Judge Trimmings.

Chuck must go in search of his missing mustache, and also his brother. To rescue him, he’ll need to very slowly kick some butt, due to the lack of mobility afforded by his denim jacket/pants combo. Fortunately, he’s got an ace up his sleeve: all his trucker pals who are apparently willing to kill dozens of people and destroy an entire town based on one CB radio message from an anonymous source reporting that a guy who they’ve seen arm wrestle once or twice is apparently in some sort of trouble.

It’s a tale full of moonshine, hillbillies and sweet airbrushed eagles on the sides of vans. Mike, Kevin and Bill 86 the tuna, get the six top seated and give the blue plate special wings (trucker slang) in one of Chuck Norris’ finest mustache-less films, Breaker! Breaker!

Any sales pitch that attacks Chuck Norris jokes is a sales pitch I can get behind.

Breaker Breaker RiffTrax

InMovie News

The Wrath Of Vajra will flow!

March 22, 2013By

Dr Vajayjay Kimmel

No, The Wrath Of Vajra has nothing to do with another weird name for lady parts invented by Oprah (and having them seek revenge!) but is an upcoming Chinese martial arts film that looks like they took Ong-Bak and combined it with Fist of Legend or Ip Man. So the winner is everyone who loves brutal martial arts action!

Xing Yu stars (you might remember him from Kung Fu Hustle) and as he’s an actual Shaolin Monk, his kung fu is pretty authentic. The theme will be cultural pride, so expect the Japanese characters to be a big bunch of jerks. Even the plot synopsis agrees with my theory:

In the 1930s, before the Western powers entered World War II, a Japanese death cult called the Temple of Hades is ordered to work alongside the military to aid in the spiritual destruction of China. The elite warriors believe that the war can be won without the use of man-made weapons. They buy young children from impoverished parents and train them in martial arts to be assassins serving the Japanese Empire.

When he was 8 years old, Vajrasattva was among the children sold to the Temple of Hades. Forced by his captors to fight for food, he accidentally caused the death of his brother. He made a secret oath to take revenge. Many years later, and now the greatest assassin in the temple, he escapes to China and joins the Southern Shaolin Temple, where he receives spiritual enlightenment and vows to protect his own country against the Japanese.

Law Wing Cheong directs. The Wrath Of Vajra also stars Steve Yoo, Nam “Poppin” Hyun-joon, Jiang Bao Cheng, Zhang Yamei, Ikeuchi Hiroyuki, and Kurata Yasuaki. The trailer is up at Twitch, click on through to give it a watch. (it’s too wide to embed here)

Now if you excuse me, I have to go write a screenplay about a vagina that goes on a revenge quest…

Sleepy Hollow
InMisc News

The Martian Urban Garden

March 21, 2013By

Last year we started growing some plants to have some fresh vegetables once in a while. This sounds easy enough, but as my wife and I live with her parents who use the available yardspace to grow their own plants, we have to turn to growing plants in containers. Thus, we became urban farmers, because farmpunk is not a word I want to use, ever. So the adventure of growing lettuce and basil in pots began, and it went pretty well, considering we had more lettuce than we could eat at one point. It wasn’t until we were halfway grown that I thought I should have been taking photos. And if taking photos, why not share them here, in between trailers for movies involving terrible monster costumes and remakes of remakes.

Thus, suck on some garden news!

Here we see some temporary containers I set up using leftover seeds from last year to see if anything will grow. Most probably will, and I’ll transplant the bigger ones to better containers in a few weeks. This batch was planted on March 10th. It is a mix of lettuce (green and purple), heirloom tomatoes, basil, and carrots.
Garden

Next up for this year, we ordered seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, because even the worst garden blogs had nothing but praise for them. We ordered Morado (a type of purple tomato), White Tomesol (white tomato), and Rocky Top Lettuce Mix for a good mix of lettuce. They threw in a free pack of sunflower seeds.
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

Here I planted two lettuce seeds in each of the leftover soup cans
Garden

and lettuce seeds were also scattered in this trow that has a bonus already sprouted lettuce plant leftover from our attempt at winder gardening (which wasn’t as successful)
Garden

We had leftover of these disks from sprouting plants so I decided to use them to see if the tomato seeds will sprout in them. If nothing shows up in 2-3 weeks, there are still seeds leftover to plant more traditionally. All of these seeds were planted March 17th.
Garden

Luckily the weather here is warm enough that planting is okay. The biggest trial is paying attention to the weather reports to move everything under cover if rain is approaching. So far, there are a few sprouts on the seeds from last year, I’ll have some pictures up in a week or two.

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