|
October 2002 Damnaliens DVD Review by Steve Sawicki
Note: order the films from Amazon by
following the hyperlinks to buy junk food for the aliens and keep them
away from the dog.) Want a second opinion? We suggest www.imdb.com
- Ernest
Recent
Releases / Classics
/ SFTV / Anime
October is horror month although it's still really too early to reap
that bloody harvest. I think the dead guys in Hworld (they're not
really dead they just act that way) have also decided that the
country
isn't interested in Horror given the real life horrors that already
surround us. What with September 11, the Delaware sniper and Bushes
in the White House, Florida and various rehabs horrors abound. The
dead guys forget that during times of troubles we Americans retreat
to
entertainment so this would be the absolute perfect time to bury us
with horror DVDs. Instead they somehow manage to skip a few words
ahead in the dictionary and bury us with horrible DVDs. But they're
not all dead yet, for amidst the carnage there's a few twisting
remnants worth dragging home to the lab.
Recent
Releases -
 I was down in the basement yesterday,
cleaning the rabbit and cat carcasses out from the spider webs when I got to
thinking that it's been a long time since spiders have so dominated
the entertainment arena.
Spider-Man
(Widescreen Edition) is a
perfect example of this. I have to admit that there were a couple of
places where they started to push the credibility envelope but
overall this was a fun movie to watch. The characters were interesting and
the conflict, one of those places where they pushed, worked once you got past the initial dismay at it's unoriginality. It's also a movie you can bring the kids to. Leave the bunnies at home though the webs frighten them. Rated PG--Pretty Good
When Spiderman wants to get back to his past do you think he heads to the basement? Or maybe to the nearest nuclear reactor. Maybe he just
goes out to the movies or rents a dvd and stays home to reflect. What would he rent? Besides Kingdom of the Spiders? Why
Eight
Legged Freaks (Widescreen Edition) of course. Notice I never said SpiderMan had good taste. This is one of those flicks that tries to be campy and cult like on purpose which
pretty much defies the whole definition of that genre. This never works and it doesn't work here. Unless you like watching giant
spiders wreak havoc on small town hicks before getting splashed to gory bits you should avoid this like that dark corner of your
basement where the strange noises come from. Rated PG--Partially Gross.
You have to love any movie that focuses on the human condition. The condition in this case is
Spontaneous Combustion which while it is not something you run into every day creates great problems for those so afflicted. On the downside there's not a single
spider in the entire flick, not even the occasional web going up in flames as a human on fire runs by. I think this story would have been greatly enhanced by the addition of spiders. I think this story would have been greatly enhanced by the addition of a writer. Oh well, you still have to love a movie that sets people on fire and watches them combust. Rated PG--Pyrotecnically Groovey.
Classics -
    Sometimes you think that all the dead guys in Holly World share a
single brain? A
Brain
That Wouldn't Die?. This might explain why you see the same thing over and
over and over even if it's bad. This might also explain why they
continue to remake movies which were perfectly great the first time
around.
Take, for example,
which was
a perfectly good movie when it came out a couple dozen years ago.
Sure it was only seen by eight people when it played on PBS but that
was six more than saw Overdrawn At The Memory Bank which was the
companion flick. If you had the misfortune to see the remake
(The
Lathe of Heaven) without
seeing the original (The
Lathe of Heaven), or, if you've been bitten by a zombie and so
predisposed as to not even know there was an original then you need
to
see this. Rated PG--Progressively Great.
Have you ever noticed how so many aliens tend to look like spiders? I
don't mean exact copies but as if some spider DNA got mixed in with
their alien blood. Take
E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (Widescreen Collector's Edition), for example. Sure the little fella has the big
head thing going but if you discount that he's pretty spider like,
excepting the eight legs and bulbous body of course. This
re-re-release is for all of you who missed it the last couple of
times
out and the last 500 hundred times on television. It's still the
story of the little alien who falls to Earth and wants to get home.
Rated PG--Phone Gambit.
SFTV
-
  Farscape - The Complete Season 1,
Farscape Season 2 (Volume 3)
If the dead guys in Horrorworld aren't copying old, crappy ideas,
they're squasing new and interesting ones.
Thus it is that we find ourselves soon to be denied Farscape. In the
interim we will be treated to what will probably not be very good new
episodes. Take the opportunity to duck out and spend a few of your hard
earned pennies on the dvd collection.
This is the best stuff that was on television at the time. It had no peer
and it even had a couple of episodes with real spider-like aliens.
Yeah, eventually you get tired of Broders whining and the 'kill the
character of the week' kind of episodic formatting, but the special
effects and occasional writing excellence more than made up for it.
Rated PG for Pre-cancellation Grief.
Anime
-
There's not much superhero stuff on television, unless you count that
bad mutant show on Fox and the equally suspicious Smallville on UPN,
or is it the other way around? Luckily we have
Batman
the Animated Series/Justice L.
Sure there are problems here. Batman's just
too much of a vigilante and way
too moody and the Justice League has that Superman problem but it's
still really fun stuff to watch. The animations not great but there
is so little great animation on tv anyways that you hardly notice. JL
especially gets my vote for best animated series this year. I can't
wait for the epiosode where they fight the giant spiders from Mars.
-- Steve Sawicki
|
