I'm gonna need a bigger blog...!!

Shark Spot - #1 – Why I love shark movies! – Shark Attack [1999]

When I was a kid, probably somewhere between the age of 5 and 10, I stayed up late with my parents to watch JAWS. I was lying on the couch, under my mam’s furry multi-colored coat, my feet nestled in behind my dad at the other end of the couch. This was the mid 80’s and this was an EVENT!!! Nowadays, movies are on demand, streaming, on DVD or even just on the television a year or two after release. In the 80’s, it took years for a film to come out on video, and longer still for it to show up on telly. And crucially for young people of today to understand, if you missed a program, that was it, you’d missed it. There was no +1s, no endless repeats over the next week, or download services. You just missed it. If you were lucky, you had a VHS and could record it, but these were the relatively early days even of home video, at least for the not very well off.

Anyway, a big movie on TV was a huge event; you talked about it the next day at school, at work, in the streets. If you hadn’t seen it, in the street lingo of the day, you were a craphead, so, parents hopefully obliging, you did your best to watch it. And JAWS was amazing; JAWS scared me, right from the beginning, with its sploshing waves, buoys clanging at sea, the dangerous rising music score signposting the entrance of the huge shark. The shots of feet dangling and splashing in the water as an underwater camera circled in, closer, closer. A lone night-swimmer is dragged under the water, reappears, panics, screams, goes under; the shark has got her, and it got me too. It got me big time.

JAWS remains one of my favorite films; I have it on DVD. I have a T-shirt, a mug, a coaster, all bearing the brilliantly iconic image of the shark ready to strike on a helpless swimmer. Loads of scenes electrified me as a kid, and continue to do so to this day. When police chief Martin Brody is chumming the water and the shark looms hugely out of the water behind him; when scores of beachgoers run and swim for shore when the shark alarm goes up; when a severed head drifts by underwater in the sunken boat; when the shark is attacking Hooper in his inadequate-looking shark-cage; when Quint tells his story about the USS Indianapolis, and later when they are harpooning barrels of air into the shark to tire it out, and later still when Quint is crunched in two inside the creature’s giant jaws. The film is excellent, iconic, and my admiration of the film only grows every time I see it.

A couple of years later, a little bigger, I saw JAWS 2; again an event movie, a big deal, and I loved it. A bunch of kids, trapped at sea, by a huge and menacing shark. Great stuff. Every time that Jaws or Jaws 2 was on TV when I was a kid, I tried to watch it – in reality they were probably only on a couple of times each over a number of years, but it seemed to me that it was always an event, always a big thing. I lapped it up; I loved it.

Now, somewhere along the way, as I grew up and got into all kinds of horror movies and creature-features, monsters have always been one of my great loves, particularly, giant animal monsters, particularly, water-going creatures, like fish, snakes, octopi, crocodiles and most definitely sharks. In 1975 Jaws was about alone in the sub-genre; 40 years later, you can’t turn on the horror or syfy channels without coming across some kind of shark be it a Mega, a 3-Headed, a snow, zombie, ghost or avalanche variety, super, swampy, raging, in a tornado, attacking, or versus giant octopi or robotic predators. Sharks are everywhere, and I love ‘em. But, of course, some of the films are actually not really that good. So I’m gonna attempt to look at lots of sharky films and give my own completely-biased opinion on them. This project may take me a few months, or it may take forever. I’m betting on the latter. But one thing is probably certain; I’m gonna need a bigger blog....

Jawsome Shark Movie #1 --- SHARK ATTACK (1999)

Mostly, apart from the wave of JAWS imitators in the late 70’s and 80’s, the killer shark genre has been reasonably quiet until the 21^st century. Just before then, and making a decent claim to be the beginning of low-budget shark-attack films is the Nu-Image TV movie SHARK ATTACK of 1999. The most notable thing about the film now, looking back, is that there is nothing particularly unnatural about the sharks; they are not mega or robotic or half-something-else. They are just normal-sized, albeit more aggressive creatures.  It stars Casper Van Dien, fresh from his star role in STARSHIP TROOPERS as a marine biologist who goes to an African coastal town to investigate the mysterious death of his friend and former colleague. There he meets Jennifer McShane, his friend’s sister and they team up with a local taxi/boat guy to investigate why this little town is having more than its share of ferocious shark kills. Smooth-talking Ernie Hudson [most famously from GHOSTBUSTERS] is on hand as a local authority of some kind and businessman, and Bentley Mitchum is a scientist using the sharks in experiments to find a cure for cancer. The film is decent, although clearly is an evening TV Movie thriller and not at all a horror or monster film. It’s reasonably well-made and has a good story to it, though the script is sometimes a bit fishy, and van Dien’s acting is variable. The sharks themselves pop up quite a bit, there’s a variety of species, and the majority of them are real sharks, although largely made of stock footage or shots filmed somewhere completely different from where the actors were. Early on there’s an obvious studio tank shot where you can just about see the back of the set above the ‘ocean’. In general SHARK ATTACK isn’t bad, fairly tense at a couple of points, with a fair bit of normal-sized shark action. Sadly, it overstays it welcome by about ten minutes, and you’re ready for the cheesy ending and the credits when they come. If you can stand it, watch it on a double feature with its sequel and some beer.

Movie Rating:- 6/10

Shark Score:- 4

[Shark Score is based on several factors and is entirely unscientific and awarded by me. I base it on the amount of screen time the shark(s) has; its jawsomeness and originality; special-effects, and just generally how cool it is for shark-movie freaks like myself. 10 is the highest, 1 the lowest, but any film that gets a 1 cant really qualify as a shark film at all really.]  

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Godzilla: The Return Of The King

                                    GODZILLA [2014]

THE RETURN OF THE KING

It’s great to see the King Of The Monsters back on the big-screen, and it was a no-brainer that I was gonna go and see it. I’ve had a couple of weeks since seeing it now, a couple of weeks to think it over, think it through and get over my initial slight disappointment and grumpiness at all the plot holes. On coming out of the cinema, I was a bit unhappy; why wasn’t it perfect, dammit! However, after a couple of weeks to calm down, let’s have a more balanced little look. Apologies for the lack of flow.

First of all, the good stuff. At least he looks like Godzilla! It sounds D’oh! But the Emmerich 1998 version got it wrong. There veteran creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos [also Broderick’s surname in the film] was given instruction to ‘redesign, update’ Godzilla for a modern audience. Well, Tatopoulos did create a pretty cool reptilian monster but it just so plainly wasn’t Godzilla. The Big G is stompy, not speedy!  That 1998 film is kind of derided nowadays but I’m fond of it, it’s a good monster movie, just with the wrong title. Anyway, the 2014 version of Godzilla is spot-on. This part of the film couldn’t be better; Godzilla  is a force of nature, a huge and awesome behemoth of angry scales and grumpy stompy feet. His design, with bleeding-edge special effects, is fantastic; proper old school King Of The Monsters. Also, in his manner and expression I got the idea of him being an old monster, hundreds or thousands of years old, the last of his race, proud and honourable; director Edwards has described him as being like an old samauri warrior, and I think that comes across, especially towards the end. Godzilla is not undefeatable, he is fallible, he needs a breather and a lie down now and then. The tantalising glimpses of him swimming about underwater or whatever were, for me, a highlight of the first hour, leading up to the big reveal.

More good stuff; the other monsters, the MUTO’s [Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms] are pretty good, again, as you’d expect, with excellent CGI. While I would perhaps have preferred something a bit more old school and kaiju, these creatures nevertheless are welcome to the film. To my mind, the things [which are slightly different, male and female] are a bit like Bagorah the bat-monster, with a head like Gyaos’, and in some ways are similar to the Cloverfield creature. It’s all good stuff, bring on the monsters, and they cause plenty of carnage and causing buses to be late. The climactic battle is great, very well done, I didn’t want to blink to miss any action [whereas I ran off to the toilet in the first half [shouldn’t have had my pre-cinema pints]] This was perhaps my favourite part of the movie, along with the nostalgic scenes of Godzilla’s huge feet smashing through the streets, and seeing his spine spikes whiten as he prepares his heat ray. My wife didn’t know about his heat-ray, and my mother must have forgotten, but all three of us gave suitably appreciative “Oooohhh”s at this point. Basically, Godzilla is awesome!

This brings me to my bad points, and I’m gonna really try not to go on for ages. Mainly, THERE SIMPLY WASN’T ENOUGH OF GODZILLA!! It takes around an hour [half the film] for him to be properly revealed, and I reckon he’s only on screen altogether for about 25 minutes. It’s an awesome 20 minutes, with some proper bridge-smashing, train-eating monster-in-the-city carnage going on, but more please!  I could have done with less of the army boys running around in confusing fashion, trying to deliver a bomb, a plot point which ultimately goes nowhere. And while the basic story is good [check anywhere else online for a detailed plot] the film sometimes disappoints and is slightly confusing; sometimes certain scenes don’t follow on properly and don’t seem to make sense, and the details of the plot are often left unexplained leaving the viewer to just go along with the plot as a whole. I got the feeling that sometimes the film gave the illusion it was making sense, but actually wasn’t in some parts. I was often left a bit unsure of exactly what the intricacies of all the military action was all about; the viewer kind of gets the idea of it all, but sometimes the film skips a bit of explanation. I also thought that it was curiously cut, with things or concepts built up to and then just left in favour of something else. These two points are demonstrated in the climactic scenes with the nuclear bomb; much is made of the bomb, many minutes are spent moving it about and setting up plans for it, yet ultimately, at the end of the film not much comes of the bomb at all, and now that Godzilla has dealt with the threat, the bomb is surplus to requirements and forgotten about..
Basically there was too much screentime [often confusing] with the military. The first hour was good set-up, and Bryan Cranston a sympathetic and engaging character, but as he moves off-screen in the second half, the plot and characterisation fall a bit flat. It’s a good job there’s giant monsters to boost up the interest.

A few last quick words; the opening credits are fun and clever, Bryan Cranston plays about the best character in the film, the final scene is really cool, comic-booky, but a bit twee, and the film suffered only a tiny bit from not having a giant mechanical monkey in it.
It was an okay, a good film, but it was excellent to see Godzilla at the cinema again [I’ve only actually seen the 1998 version at the cinema, and that wasn’t really him], and to have his image in the media again and on the sides of buses and stuff. I’m pleased me and the family went to see it, to support it, and I’ll be buying the DVD when it comes out in December [or asking for it as a Christmas pressie! – Does my wife read this blog?] to likewise support it. I believe a sequel has been announced already, which is great. My thoughts for the sequel;  let’s have a bit more work on the consistency of the story, a couple of decent human characters to get behind, an enemy monster from the vast kaiju stable [Guiron or Speiga, but your best bet is Ghidorah theThree-Headed!], and most importantly, a bit more of the title monster please.And possibly a giant mechanical monkey!
 











                               SPECIAL NOTE TO MY WIFE: That Godzilla T-Shirt's pretty cool, innit?

Doctor Who And The Creative Synchronicity

I'm annoyed, and instead of ranting at my wife I'm gonna get this out now, in blog form. I have just read the brief episode details of the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who, and was aghast at what I read. It seems that this upcoming episode (to be aired in five days or so) has certain striking similarities to the "original" ghost story, "Uncontainable", that I have been working on for the last few weeks. Bugger!

I hate this creative synchronicity; something you have been working on for a while, thinking it's a fairly new and original idea, and suddenly something huge comes along with the same idea, so that, in the future, anyone reading your story will simply think you have just copied the idea. Bugger again. In science-fiction terms, I don't think there's anything bigger than Doctor Who, certainly nothing that will reach so large an audience. And it's very annoying when this sort of thing happens, so that your small, original, and very modest story, even though it was written independently and/or earlier, becomes nothing more than a re-hash of "that Doctor Who episode", or whatever. It is extremely frustrating! 

Certainly I will watch the episode, although not when it is aired. I will take care to complete my story first [it is nearly done], and then watch it, to see how similar things were. No doubt, I'm just having a rant here, and the two stories will be very different [hopefully]. But Bugger again anyway!

Curiously, this has sort of happenned before, although not as simoultaeneously as this time. The last Christmas episode of Doctor Who [I forget the title, but the one with Richard E Grant in], had an idea about sentient snow. I wrote a story about this, "Snow Wonder", ten years ago; and even though this story was published on Smashwords before the episode aired, I'm sure that any Doctor Who fans who might read my story would simply think it was a rip-off of their idea. Don't imagine for a second that I'm saying that Stephen Moffat and crew are spying on my writing, in some clever science-fictional way, and ripping off my ideas. Not at all; I'm simply having a grrr at this writers coincidence. One shiny bit of fruit in the clouds though is this; if I'm having the same sort of creative ideas as the Doctor Who people, then that can't be a bad thing, really.

I have heard tales of it happening before; authors working in secret on "great-idea" novels, and just as they are writing the last page, the same idea comes out in a film by James Cameron or a Michael Chrichton novel or something like that. If I remember rightly, I think John Brosnan [as Harry Adam Knight] wrote CARNOSAUR, about genetically-engineered dinosaurs, at the same time, or before, Chrichton's JURASSIC PARK came out. I also remember that Roger Corman bought the rights to CARNOSAUR and made it into a confusing film, just so, I think, he could say that although his film came out after JURASSIC PARK, he could say it was based on a book that came out before Chrichton's novel, and thus that he sort of had the first film-rights to the idea of "genetically-engineered dinosaurs". But that's very off topic. So for now, Grrrr, and I'd better go and finish my story.

 

P.S. Jenna-Louise Coleman's character seems to be a much better companion to the Doctor; I was never really keen on Amy Pond, and I'm sick of her now [in fact, am just watching her final episodes now, about six months or so after they were shown.] But bring back Jon Pertwee, that's what I say!

Sexy Crocodiles

CAUTION: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS IMAGES OF AN EX-EMMERDALE ACTRESS WITH NO CLOTHES ON. AND SOME CROCODILE SEX. SORT OF.

Another quick post. I have just hilariously noted from looking at my blog statistics that someone out there has googled the search term;

CROCODILE SEX SCENE

And, joy of wonderful joys, the clever magic interweb has brought them to my blog page. Now I hadn’t really thought of it before, but it’s true, if my blog lacks anything at all its almost certainly crocodile sex.

Now, this got me wondering. Was the googler searching for

A – scenes of human sex in a giant crocodile film.

B – scenes of crocodile sex in a giant crocodile film

C – Scenes of crocodile sex in just anything, really

D – Scenes of human/crocodile sex

Well, if it was C there are plenty of HOT XXX ADULT CROCODILES ONLY nature documentaries out there.

If it was crocodiles and humans having sex together in some strange way, that this person was looking for, then I’m sure there’s a fetish site out there somewhere. Forgive me if I don’t search for it myself, but I’ve just had my dinner. In any case, the idea is a fabulous one, with a heavily-pregnant crocodile giving birth to a croc with a human head, or possibly the other way around; they could make a film out of it. It could be called CROC-BOY or possibly just CROCK! And could premier on the Horror Channel. I could write it; I’m good at writing horse-shit, after all.

Anyway, if this googler person is looking for option A up there, then I have wrestled my brains to think of what he could be looking for. Now, understand that I enjoy Giant Crocodile films for their artistic value, the prowess in the make-up and prosthetic departments and the subtleties and subtexts of the story. And sometimes for the crocodiles [although I have seen one or two crocodile films that didn’t have any crocodiles in them!]. Never for the sex scenes. Well, not much anyway.

Which brings me to what lingers in my brain like a cold smelly minestrone soup; in the film BLOOD SURF [which I have on good old-fashioned video] I remember there being a memorable sex scene. It has a bloke and a young Eastern woman [not a crocodile] going for gold in a small rock-pool. The scenery is lovely, and the water nice and clear, and these two are clearly having a fun time, until I believe, the giant crocodile asks for a threesome and spoils it all. I remember this scene quite vividly, particularly ‘cos we watched it one day when my mum had popped round for her tea. Obviously, I’d forgotten about the sex bit, and thought it was a “Mam-Friendly” film to put on while we all ate our fish fingers [or whatever we ate]. The film is also known as KROCODYLUS or something like that, and actually, as giant crocodile films go, isn’t bad.

Anyway, if that google searcher revisits then hopefully that might help to answer his question.  I don’t remember any other particular sex scenes in crocodile films without googling it myself [which I’ll do later! {I won’t later “google myself”; that’s not what I meant at all.]}. I do however remember Roxanne Pallett, a young actress who used to be in Emmerdale in the UK for quite a while, who went to Hollywood to make it serious as an actress. She whipped off all her clothes for the camera and went for a swim in giant crocodile film LAKE PLACID 3, which, I suppose if you’re writing a PH.D on Sex In Giant Crocodile Films, you’ll probably need to take a look at.

Right. I,m going to go and find some pictures on the internet, which, magically, are already above. Int' technology brilliant!