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InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Morlocks (Review)

May 28, 2012By

Morlocks


2011
Written by Adam J. Karp and Royal McGraw
“Based” on The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Directed by Matt Codd

Welcome to Florida!

SciFi Channel (now known as SyFy for years despite that name sucking) goes all H.G. Wells on us again to give us Morlocks, a SciFi Original Movie version of the classic time travel tale, that dumps the entire story in favor of having people trapped in time with crazy killer Morlocks. Though I applaud them taking familiar elements and doing something original with them, the original thing they do is just the same old basic creature feature plot where a team of people are killed off bit by bit until they kill all the monsters. And if you stop to think about it, little that happens makes any sense. But there are a few moments of goofy WTF that will get some praise.

The Budweiser Frogs, 2020 A.D.

Director Matt Codd also helmed the SciFi classic Dragon Dynasty. The keyboard theme blaring out reminds me of the Space Mutiny theme, which is always great.

Sure we’re untextured enough that you can’t tell what we look like, but you can’t see our cool CGI shading until THE FUTURE!

Dr. James Radnor (David Hewlett) – Former time travel project head, who quit his top secret job and wrote a book called Time Travels’s Strife that is pretty much a description of what he did in the top secret lab. No one cares. David Hewlett is also in the SciFi Channel classic Boa vs. Python
Dr. Angela Kelley (Christina Cole) – Angela still works for the secret government project, and is James’s exwife. Figures out what Colonel Wichita is up too, but a bit too late to not get tossed into THE FUTURE!
Colonel Wichita (Robert Picardo) – Military man in charge of the time travel project, his son John has cancer so he goes nuts in pursuit of Morlock DNA in the belief that it will cure his son. The time travel works sort of like Stargate, which is good that Stargate alums Picardo and Hewlett are starring.
Tyrell (???) – Thanks to squashed credits and an awful IMDB page, I have no clue who played Tyrell, one of the main soldiers sent with Radnor into THE FUTURE. Starts out as a stereotype but becomes a full-fledged character kicking Morlock butt.
Vera Cortez (Marem Hassler) – One of the prior team members who was lost in THE FUTURE, she helps Radnor and his team get back to the present. My favorite character.
Dr. Felix Watkins (Jim Fyfe) – Holy crap, Jim Fyfe from Encyclopedia! That show was awesome, Jim Fyfe is awesome, and I hope he pops up in more SyFy films! This time, he’s the rival scientist to Radnor who takes over after he quit, and every time the two are on the screen together they argue argue argue. Which is pretty funny.
Morlocks (CGI) – Green jerks from the future who are almost invincible unless the plot demands they be easily killed by a slight breeze.
Dinobirds (CGI) – For some reason there are dinobirds in THE FUTURE. Why? They never explain why. It makes no damn sense. It’s completely crazy. Just go with it, dudes! Dinobirds! I guess the CG house had an extra model lying around.
The most unreal tournament of them all!
Dragon Dynasty
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Dragon Dynasty (Review)

March 8, 2007By

Dragon Dynasty


2006
Starring
Federico Castelluccio as Marco Polo
Aaron Hendry as Giovanni Polo
Dion Basco as Gao Ling
Stana Katic as Ava
Peter Kwong as Shang Sei
James Hong as Emperor
Directed by Matt Codd

Welcome to the second run of the team-up between TarsTarkas.NET and FantasyFilmscapes.com known as The Dragon Slayers. Today, we will be taking on the 2006 SciFi Channel original movie Dragon Dynasty, because we can. The original team-up was Dragon. Also, before we begin, check out this cool graphic whipped up to celebrate the event:

As usual, the beginning section is co-written between Tars Tarkas and Iain Norman, and then the movie is divided into 15 minute chunks, alternating between each other, where our contributions are color coded. Iain’s version on his site is located here

Dragon Dynasty is one of the more recent SciFi Channel Original movies to air. Like many of their other films this ones features some big CGI monsters and a basic chase and hunt monster scenario – in this case the settings range from China to Italy in the late 13th century A.D. Usually SciFi puts about $1 million USD each into their ‘originals’ and uses Bulgaria for locations because it costs next to nothing to produce a film there. While not sure of the exact nature of the Bulgarian tax setup it is probably made quite affordable for foreign products to use the country in their shoots by way of tax credits in return for employing local actors and related industries. They usually drag over a few actors who are looking to make house payments and sleepwalk through their roles, but the supplemental local actors have been known to do bang up jobs.