MAN-THING: Let Him Dig. It’s His Own Grave He’s Digging.

Man-Thing (2005) – Directed by Brett Leonard – Starring Matthew Le Nevez, Rachael Taylor, Jack Thompson, Rawiri Paratene, Alex O’Loughlin, Steve Bastoni, and Conan Stevens.

Yup, this movie exists.

What’s really surprising about MAN-THING, however, isn’t that it exists, but that’s there’s decent talent involved. The director, Brett Leonard, is also the guy who directed Lawnmower Man and Virtuosity, Alex O’Loughlin (credited here as Alex O’Lachlan, his real name), star of Hawaii Five-O and Moonlight has a secondary role as a deputy sheriff, and Rachael Taylor, who had a minor role in a very successful movie (Transformers) and a major role in a very unsuccessful TV show (Charlie’s Angels).

If MAN-THING were made now with O’Loughlin and Taylor, they’d be out front, but since this was made when they were both starting out, it’s Matthew Le Nevez who’s out front, appearing in nearly every scene of the movie. Le Nevez is definitely a better actor than you might expect to find in a low-budget horror movie, but he’s not so much better that he can carry the film. I’m not familiar with Le Nevez but based on his resume he seems to be one of those actors that’s caught between movies and TV shows. Which is fitting, because according to the Never Wrong, the film was originally intended to be a direct-to-video release, then they decided to give it a theatrical release, then they changed their minds domestically, while still giving it an international release. When Americans finally got to see it, it was on the Sci Fi channel back when their name was short for “Science Fiction” and not “Syphilis.”

What I genuinely like about MAN-THING is that it represents an attempt at making a serious movie; this isn’t one of those low-budget monster movies that’s played for laughs or for campiness. What I dislike about it, however, is that it’s serious without being engaging, and the result is a slow-moving, predictable, grind-it-out film that’s perhaps better than it needs to be, and thus not good enough than I want it to be. It’s a shame because I’m always banging the drum for diversity of story in superhero movies and it would have been nice for Marvel to be able to show off that they could take one of their minor characters and build a successful horror movie around him. The result isn’t very scary, though, nor very good.

And really, MAN-THING’s biggest crime isn’t its predictability, but its dullness.

Kyle Williams (Matthew Le Nevez) is the new sheriff in a Louisiana swamp town. There’s been lots of disappearances and murders, including the previous sheriff, and now we’ve got that unwelcome outsider story who will take a fresh look at the strange goings-on in Bywater, Louisiana. (That’s actually the funniest line of the movie. When he’s in a boat with one of the locals, Kyle asks, “Why do they call it Bywater?” to which the single-toothed local says, “Because it’s by the water,” as if it were obvious. Which it really was.) Kyle quickly discovers there’s two problems in town, and we all know they’re related: all the missing persons/murders and the conflict between the oil company who are drilling the swamp and the tribal advocates who claim the land is sacred. There’s a missing tribal leader, who allegedly took off with all the money the oil company paid him for right to drill on the land, and a mysterious Yul Brynner cosplayer walking around in the swamp who’s allegedly the killer.

The movie changes much of the comic book origin (no super soldier serum), but it also names characters after Mike Ploog, Steve Gerber, and Val Mayerik, so there’s something here to both annoy and reward those who watch these movies for how closely they relate to the comics.

MAN-THING employs an environmental vs. corporation struggle, but it really doesn’t play a huge role in the film because the corporation is just a bunch of shifty redneck bad guys who wear a company logo that’s clearly supposed to remind us of the Nazi swastika for some reason, and the local Indian tribe, even though the tribe doesn’t really play a role in the film. Pete Horn (Rawiri Paratene) is the one tribal character in the film and he’s a spiritual leader who knows that there’s bad things in the swamp in the form of an ancient tribal guardian, but the Man-Thing kills him, too, because why the hell not, right?.

Really, MAN-THING is about a killer (Man-Thing) who we rarely see in full, killing everyone who comes into the swamp. The solution to this problem might seem rather easy to you and I – stay out of the swamp – but the Sheriff can’t do this when he’s got murders on his hand, although it’s not like anyone in town seems to care that there’s dead people or missing people. In the opening sequence, we see two kids at a party run off to get naked and screw in the swamp. The boy dies and the girl becomes traumatized, but Kyle only visits the girl once in the hospital and she’s all gone crazy. When the Sheriff shows up at the diner for the requisite “meet the locals” scene, we do, in fact, meet the bulk of the players in our drama, but there’s no sense that, “Hey, alright, here’s the new sheriff to stop all these killings.” Everyone in town seems cool with the fact that they’re happening, or that nothing’s being done about it. Maybe these locals have it right – the only thing you need to do is … say it with me … stay out of the swamp.

From the moment Kyle meets Teri Richards (Rachael Taylor) you know this is going to be the love angle, but then they don’t really do anything with it, and then later on they start making out like … well, like they’re young kids out in the swamp looking for some action. What’s hilarious about this moment isn’t that the lead up to the make out session is way, way, way underdeveloped (that’s just bad storytelling), but that when the oil company head (who is much more of the local tough guy variety instead of J.R. Ewing – we’re not talking about a major corporation here) rolls up on them and catches them in the act, both Kyle and Teri start buttoning up their half-unbuttoned shirts.

They were out in the open, making out for five seconds, yet each of them managed to end up looking like they were a half-second away from stripping down and going at it right outside of Pete Horn’s place.

Impressive.

The Man-Thing costume/CGI bit is weak, but that’s to be expected, and I don’t really hold that against the film – if the story is strong enough, any kind of monster will be fine. Instead of doing the comic book thing and making those who “know fear” burn at his touch, this Man-Thing just indiscriminately kills whomever walks around his swamp. As I mentioned above, this is a dull movie, so there’s nothing unexpected like all of the various human enemies having to team up to defeat it. Things happen, people die, Man-Thing gets blowed up, The End.

Despite the gratuitous boob scene at the start, MAN-THING isn’t a cheeseball SyFy or Asylum film with really bad acting and really cheap CGI and really campy stories. And that’s kinda too bad. I appreciate that MAN-THING is an attempt to mostly tell a solid (if predictable) horror story, but the film would have been well-served with a little something else added to the mix, even if that something else was to not take itself so seriously. If you are going to take yourself seriously, you’ve got to deliver a much better story than MAN-THING offers up. I would love to be able to tell you that MAN-THING was a real surprise and that you should add this horror movie into your superhero collection, but it’s just good enough to be anything more than a movie I need to see more than once.

GALAXY OF TERROR: You Were Marvelous in That Film Where the Giant Maggot F*cked The Girl

Galaxy of Terror (1981) – Directed by Bruce D. Clark – Starring Edward Albert, Erin Moran, Robert Englund, Ray Walston, Sid Haig, Zalman King, Taafe O’Connell, Jack Blessing, and Grace Zabriskie.

The quote in the title of this review does not come from the movie itself, but from the engaging “making of” documentary included as a special feature on the GALAXY OF TERROR DVD release. Robert Englund was talking about being at a release party for some other film when he was approached by someone he thought my be a high-and-mighty East Coast critic. “Are you Robert England?” the man asked in what I think was Englund’s attempt at doing a British accent.

“Yes, yes, I’m Robert Englund.”

“You were marvelous in that film where the giant maggot f*cked that girl.”

And that’s kind of how GALAXY OF TERROR has come to be known – that film where Taafe O’Connell gets raped by a giant maggot … and likes it. I’m not saying that’s a dumb way to remember GALAXY because, let’s face it, when a giant maggot gets freaky with a cute blonde girl, you might not be into it, but you ain’t gonna forget it. I’m not asking people to not think about the maggot-f*cking scene, but I am saying that if that’s the only people think about GALAXY, that’s a shame because this is a pretty darn good, serious B-movie. Yeah, there’s some cheesy special effects, and yes, the script and the acting isn’t what you’d find in a major studio picture with a massive budget, but for a Roger Corman B-movie made on the relative fly, GALAXY OF TERROR is a darn good film.

In fact, the way I think about GALAXY is ALIEN 1.5, and perhaps the bulk of the credit for that goes to Production Designer James Cameron. One of the best parts of the “making of” doc is that Roger Corman is such a great interview, coming clean about what kind of movie he was making and where his films sit in the industry. He fully admits that GALAXY was made to capitalize on Ridley Scott’s ALIEN, and thanks to Cameron’s involvement, the film also resonates strongly with ALIENS.

That makes GALAXY a rather unique B-movie, I think, in that it’s a riff on one movie and points the direction for that movie’s sequel. Sure, that’s largely because of Cameron, but that doesn’t change what it is.

Like ALIENS, GALAXY is a rescue mission. On the planet Morganthus, a crashed spaceship is attacked by the unseen bad guy. Back on the main planet, two weird people are playing electronic chess or something. One of them is an old woman who says spooky things and then disappears from the narrative. The other is “the Master,” but he’s not this Master or this Master, but a dude with a glowing red ball of light for his face. The Master decides to send a rescue ship out to Morganthus, which brings us to the crew of the Quest.

The ship is led by Captain Trantor (Grace Zabriskie), who was the captain of a previous ship that suffered some huge disaster. It’s hard to see why anyone could think this was, in any way, her fault, since she’s high-strung, a bit crazy, sexually strokes the ship’s computer, and says things like, “The Master sends meat but the Devil sends chefs.” GALAXY isn’t a movie where the captain is the main protagonist, however, and while the crew goes out to do their investigation, Captain Trantor stays behind to go a little crazy.

GALAXY benefits from having a really solid cast: Edward Albert plays Cabren, who emerges as the protagonist; Erin Moran plays Alluma, the ship’s empath; Ray Walston plays Kore, the ship’s cook; Robert Englund is Ranger, an unimaginatively named crewman; Zalman King, as Baelon, the rescue team’s leader; Sid Haig as Quuod, another crewman with a name so awkward that you can see why they just called Englund’s character, “Ranger,”; Taafie O’Connell is Dameia, the tech officer who goes on the rescue mission just so the maggot has someone to f*ck; and Jack Blessing as Cos, the rookie.

Everyone goes on the mission just so they can face their biggest fears and get killed. Well, Cabren survives, but the rest of them get killed. Their fears are mostly just an excuse to show gross things happening, but there is a real psychological foundation for all of their fears, which is a step the film didn’t have to take.

And no, Dameia’s fear isn’t to get f*cked by a giant maggot. Instead, she has a double fear of worms and sex, and the film just takes it from there. What caused a bit of trouble with the MPAA was that, by the end of the scene, Dameia is enjoying what starts as rape, and dies because her orgasm was just that powerful.

What’s impressive about GALAXY is that, for a B-movie, it looks phenomenal. If you get the DVD, you have to watch the “Tales from the Lumberyard” feature to hear all the stories of how the film was made (and try to figure out whether everyone thought James Cameron was a bigger talent or a bigger assh*le). The impressive hallways are actually partially constructed out of Styrofoam containers from Burger King that the crew stole out of the trash after the fast food joint closed for the night. One of the hallways was so impressive that it was allegedly rented out to a foreign watch manufacturer for an ad that allowed Corman to recoup his financial investment.

The sets are great, the effects are really good, and the feel of GALAXY is totally right. Yeah, there’s some missteps (especially with the dialogue), and the ending is a bit of unnecessary psycho-babble, but at least there’s some psycho-babble here to serve as a foundation for all the dismemberment and maggot-f*cking.

If you’re in the mood for a B-movie that’s actually a solid movie in its own right, check out GALAXY OF TERROR. If you just want to see something lurid and crazy, then check out GALAXY for the maggot f*cking, and stick around for a decent movie.

EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS: You’re Trying to Tell Me That a Giant Spider Ate Gladys?

Eight Legged Freaks (2002) – Directed by Ellory Elkayem – Starring David Arquette, Kari Wührer, Scott Terra, Doug E. Doug, Scarlett Johansson, and Leon Rippy.

If it’s been a long day and I’m tired and maybe a little cranky, if I’m mentally fried from doing too much work and I need to check out for a bit, I toss a movie like EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS into the Blu-ray player.

FREAKS is a surprisingly good little movie that knows it’s a B-movie, acts like a B-movie, but isn’t made with a B effort. It’s a smart script, full of expected thrills and likable characters. It’s not overly complicated but it’s not so simple there aren’t a few pleasant twists and turns. I didn’t plan to watch it this time because I was mentally exhausted, but it sat on my counter for a week or so while I finished up my 12-part examination of The Avengers. I had planned on watching it because it has Scarlett Johansson in it and the original plan of Avengers Month wasn’t to review Avengers 12 different ways, but to review it once and then watch a bunch of movies with the Avengers‘ actors or characters in it. The film was so good, however, that the plans changed and now instead of a month of Avengers-related films, there will only be a handful.

As much fun as it was to write those reviews, by the time I hit the Iron Man reaction, I was pretty much toasted. As a result, EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS ended up being exactly the right film to spin in the player.

The plot is simple enough. Two events pop in the town of Prosperity, Arizona: a barrel of toxic waste ends up in the town reservoir and Chris McCormick (David Arquette) returns home after being away for a decade. The town is nearly bankrupt and the mayor, Wade (Leon Rippy), wants to sell the mines (owned by Chris’ dad) and have the entire town relocate, but Chris isn’t having it. Wade is a shifty dude who convinced the town to invest in ostriches that no one wants to eat and a mall that no one can afford to visit.

Chris left town because he was in love with Sam Stroud (the always gorgeous Kari Wührer), who was married to a guy who was cheating on her. Chris beat the crap out of the guy and bailed on town without telling Sam he was in love with her.

And yes, before we go any further, it’s an entirely predictable plot. You know Sam and Chris are going to end up together, but what’s nice about FREAKS approach to this is that Chris tries to tell her a couple times and can’t get it out. When the film is nearly over and the conflict is at its deepest, Chris is determined to tell her, but Sam stops him and just lays out everything he’s been trying to say in about 5 seconds. It’s little things like this that show you how to make a genre film that ever-so-slightly plays with your expectations.

FREAKS is, as you would expect, a big monster movie. That barrel of toxic waste ends up making all the spiders grow exponentially larger. There’s an exotic spider shop in town for some reason and Sam’s son, Mike (Scott Terra), likes to go over there and hang out with the shopkeeper, Joshua (Tom Noonan). Mike gets out of the shop just before a spider attacks Joshua, who flails around and lets all the spiders out of all the cages.

After that, hilarity ensues.

The spiders start attacking and the townspeople start dying and freaking out. There’s a local pirate radio dude named Harlan (Doug E. Doug) who thinks everything is a government conspiracy. The whole town thinks he’s nuts but they all listen to him.

What makes a film like FREAKS work is that these are good characters in a well-told story executed at a crisp pace. Yeah, there’s a lot of types at play here, but every actor does their job. David Arquette really isn’t leading man material, but his sheepish awkwardness is something the film takes into account. It’s Sam who’s got the traditionally masculine role of being the town sheriff, as well as being a mom to Mike and Ashley (Scarlett Johansson).

Let’s talk about Ms. Johansson since this is Avengers Month and all. In the decade since FREAKS came out she’s become a legit superstar. She’s the fodder for tabloids, been married and divorced Hollywood style, and has become the darling of Woody Allen and had a starring role in one of the biggest movies of all time. She’s an actress that I really don’t quite get – sometimes, I think she’s really effective and others … not so much.

I saw FREAKS in the theater back in 2002 and Scarlett Johansson did not make a single impression on me that I can remember. She’s a kid here, of course, and in a small role, so there’s no reason she should have left an impression – which is good, because there’s just nothing remarkable here. Johansson isn’t bad, but there’s nothing her to suggest the kind of success she’s had. In fact, if I had to guess which kid would have had the better career, I’d have gone with Terra.

The town gets overrun with massive spiders and everyone runs to the mall for the final showdown. It’s a fun sequence with the townsfolk battling the giant spiders that come pouring into the mall. They get chased down into the mines and come across the big queen spider … and yeah, it’s a monster movie. Done really well. I wish I’d had Arachnophobia to toss into the player – and that’s a sign that FREAKS did it’s job because after watching one spider movie I was ready to watch another one.

There’s a really nice subplot with Chris and Mike; Mike mentions early on how no one ever listens to the kid in these situations, so Chris makes a point to listen to the kid. It’s a nice touch, and FREAKS does a really good job with these smaller subplots – Chris and Mike, Ashley and her boyfriend, Wade and his ostriches … FREAKS sets them up, does a little something with them, and then lets them sit for a bit before coming back to them one last time. It’s really simple, really effective storytelling that the film doesn’t need to do, and so it’s easy to appreciate that it does.

EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS is a good time and it’s the kind of film that reminds me why I like writing stories. There’s nothing here that’s going to change the world, but it will certainly give you an entertaining 90 minutes.