Frankenstein

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

Right from the start, there were two things that bugged me about this movie. First, in the credits they called the author Mrs. Percy B. Shelley instead of Mary Shelley. Yes, she was married to Percy Shelley, but seriously! Second, they changed the name of the lead character! Instead of Victor Frankenstein, we have Henry Frankenstein. They gave the name Victor to his friend.

I’m going to be generous here and pretend I haven’t read, and enjoyed, Mary Shelley’s classic tale of a man slowly driven mad by obsession. The only thing her book and this movie have in common is the fact that it’s about a man named Frankenstein, and he brought a dead man back to life.

The movie starts old style, with a narrator in a tux, on a stage, introducing the story. This fades into a funeral at a cemetery with one of the cheesiest back drops I’ve ever seen. Creepy looking Fritz (not Igor) and Frankenstein are lurking behind a wrought iron fence (like the bars would really keep them hidden).

If you’re the least bit observant, you’ll see that the portly grave digger throws his hat and coat on the ground before filling in the grave (after the funeral goers have left), but when he’s done they’re hanging off the handle of a shovel that’s stuck in the ground. Same thing happens when Fritz and Frankenstein dig the coffin up again.

As they’re on their way home with the coffin in a hand cart, they pass a cross with a body tied to it and Frankenstein makes Fritz cut it down - mmm, fresh meat! - only to reject the body because the man’s neck is broken. Apparently a broken neck means the brain’s no good.

Now we see a doctor giving a lecture on the difference between a normal brain and an abnormal one. Fritz is peering in through a window, and after everyone leaves sneaks in to steal the normal brain. A noise startles him and he drops the beaker it’s in, so he takes the abnormal one instead (anyone else hear Marty Feldman’s voice saying, “Abby Normal?”).

Next we visit Frankenstein’s fiancée, Elizabeth, who’s reading a letter from him telling her all about how his experiments are so important they come even before her. Frankenstein’s friend, Victor, commiserates with her and promises to help. They go to the doctor and convince him to come with them to visit Frankenstein.

It’s a dark and stormy night. Frankenstein and Fritz are in the ultimate mad scientist’s lab high up in the falling down castle. They’re preparing for a great experiment - a lot of electrical arcing going on as they test the equipment.

Suddenly there came a rapping, as of someone gently tapping, tapping at the castle door. Frankenstein sends Fritz to send whoever it is away, but they’re not budging and start yelling for Frankenstein. He yells down at them to go away but they won’t, so he reluctantly lets them in.

Frankenstein tells them that he’s discovered a ray beyond ultra-violet on the spectrum and that this ray is the source of life. He allows the doctor to confirm the body he has on the table is dead. The storm continues to rage as Frankenstein turns on the equipment and uncovers the body. He raises the table up through a hole in the ceiling and begins counting. Lots of thunder, lots of lightning, lots of static. Slowly he lowers the table again - the body’s hand moves!

Apparently Frankenstein has a bit of a God complex and goes into near hysterics at his success.

Leaving the castle behind for the moment, we next find Elizabeth and Victor visiting with Frankenstein’s father, the baron, who’s complaining quite vociferously about his son’s continued absence. Thinking his son is holed up with another woman, the baron decides to go in person to bring him home.

Back in the lab, the doctor advises Frankenstein to lock the creature up because it’s dangerous - the stolen brain was that of a criminal, not a normal brain. The creature wanders in and appears somewhat harmless until Fritz rushes in and starts waving a torch at it. The creature’s frightened and reacts accordingly - Frankenstein and the doctor manage to subdue it and chain it up in another room.

We aren’t told what Fritz’s problem with the creature is, but he seems to enjoy tormenting it with a whip, and when Frankenstein takes that away from him, he uses a torch again. Frankenstein and the doctor are in the lab when they hear a scream and they rush into the creature’s cell to find Fritz hanging from the ceiling. Serves the nasty little worm right.

Frankenstein manages to give the creature a shot of something that knocks him out. At this point Victor arrives to warn them that the baron is on the way, and helps them hide the creature’s body. The baron is kind of pompous, demanding entry, and then he and Elizabeth go up to the lab. Frankenstein opens the door and promptly faints. They revive him and the baron tells him he’s taking him home.

Despite the fact the doctor promised Frankenstein he’d dispose of the creature humanely, he spends the next few days performing his own experiments on the creature, having to use increasingly larger doses of drugs to keep him unconscious. Unfortunately for him, he misjudges the dosages and the monster wakes up and kills him, then escapes the castle.

Meanwhile, Frankenstein is recuperating with Elizabeth at his side and they’re making wedding plans. Fast forward to their wedding day - the whole town is celebrating.

Out in the woods, the creature is wandering around and stumbles across a little girl playing by a lake. She invites him to play with her and they have fun floating the heads of daisies in the water. The creature gets a little too enthusiastic with the game and tosses her in too.

Back to the wedding. There’s celebrating in the streets, but Elizabeth has a really bad feeling and talks to Frankenstein. He brushes it off as wedding jitters. Victor interrupts them to tell him the professor’s been murdered and the creature’s on the loose. Frankenstein locks the door to Elizabeth’s bedroom as he leaves.

Suspecting the creature might be in the house, the men search upstairs. And while they do so, the creature climbs into Elizabeth’s room through the window. By the time the men get the door to the bedroom open, the monster is gone again and Elizabeth’s in a swoon on the bed.

The father of the little girl walks into town carrying her body, putting a damper on the festivities. The crowd follows him to the baron’s house and he promises that justice will be done. Elizabeth’s still in shock, so Frankenstein leaves her in Victor’s care so he can help search. The Burgomaster separates the large, angry mob into three smaller angry mobs to search for the creature.

The backdrop for the searchers is even worse than the one at the cemetery. You can practically see the brush strokes on it. Frankenstein gets separated from his group and the creature knocks him out and drags him off. The mob sees them and chases the creature to an old windmill. Still carrying Frankenstein, the creature climbs to the top where he growls at the mob below from a balcony.

Frankenstein regains consciousness and he and the creature struggle - the creature tosses him off the windmill. He must have had a soft landing because he’s still alive and some men carry him off. The rest of the mob set fire to the windmill and watch it burn. The monster is screaming as the entire thing is engulfed in flames.

They really could have ended the movie right there. But instead the tacked on a scene with a group of giggling maids with a bottle of wine on a tray. They knock on a set of double doors - the baron opens up and we can see Frankenstein in a bed with Elizabeth at his side. The maids suggest the happy couple might want the wine to celebrate but the baron decides not to disturb them, he’ll drink it himself.

I actually did find a copy of this on YouTube, although it’s only 49 minutes instead of 71. The beginning has been chopped off - it starts after the grave digger is about to leave the cemetery. I haven’t watched this one, so I have no idea what else may be missing.



My advice? Skip the movie. Read the book.

Teenage Zombies

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

I don’t know whether to applaud or curse the fact that we were able to access YouTube through our TiVo to watch this movie. Though it was released in 1960, this black and white film looks like it was filmed in the early ‘50s. It begins with three kids meeting at the soda shop (two malts were a total of 50 cents). They’re wondering what kind of clean cut fun they could have - Morrie leaves to go horseback riding, but arranges to meet the others in a couple of hours. Stick with me here because that’s important to the story.

Cut to a boat where Reg, Skip, Julie, and Pam are all set to go waterskiing. They discover an island (that apparently was really hard to find) and land to have their lunch. Since they’re already there they decide to go exploring for a bit.

Nothing much to see here and they keep going and are surprised to see a building in the distance. Even more surprising is the line of workers shuffling down a path. There’s a woman in an evening gown that appears to be overseeing the procession and when she catches sight of the kids she halts the parade, but the kids get scared and high tail it back to the boat.

Oh, no! The boat is gone! Figuring they might have just misplaced it, the start following the shoreline to see if it magically moved somewhere else. They wander for quite a while before finally sitting down to rest. The girls decide to keep resting while the boys mosey on up to the house they saw.

Being the polite sort, they knock on the door. The woman they saw earlier, Dr. Myra, opens the door and invites them in, offering them a soft drink. They ask about their boat but she plays dumb. She tells them they have no boats because no one ever leaves the island. The guys get kind of cranky at this point and threaten to go to the sheriff - an empty threat without their boat to back them up.

Suddenly, they hear a couple of screams! This hairy hunchback named Ivan has the girls in a cage down in the basement. Dr. Myra takes the boys down there and has Ivan throw them in the adjoining cage. She tells them if they behave, Ivan won’t hurt them.

Back at the soda shop, Morrie is getting a little worried about the others because they never showed up like they said they would. And because this is the ‘50s, a teenager being a couple of hours late is something to worry about and the soda jerk advises Morrie to talk to the sheriff. So off Morrie and his girl Dottie go to the sheriff’s office.

The kids get kind of panicky as they tell the sheriff how worried they are about the other four, and convince him to send out a search party (which consists of the sheriff and a deputy tooling around in a boat). They meet Morrie and Dottie at the dock and tell them they didn’t find anything, so after the adults leave the kids liberate a small boat and go looking themselves.

Big surprise, they go almost directly to the island, even though the sheriff missed it after being out there for hours. Of course they go exploring instead of going back for the sheriff, and the first thing they see is Ivan lurking around. They manage to avoid him and follow the path to the house. They knock on the door and Dr. Myra (wearing a different evening gown) lets them in.

They ask about the four missing kids, but get kind of nervous and skedaddle out of there when the good doctor tells them that no one ever comes to her island. Their boat is waiting where they left it, and as they’re pulling away from the island, two men in suits are pulling up to the beach.

Turns out Dr. Myra is a mad scientist and the suits are there for a progress report on their plans to conquer the United States. She takes them down to the lab for a demonstration of the mind control gas she’s been developing. Her victim of choice is a gorilla because “unlike a man, he’s not human.” Once he’s gassed, the gorilla is docile and obedient and the suits are impressed.

Meanwhile, the boys have managed to pick the lock of their cell, but they’re having trouble with the girls’ lock. They have a bit of an argument with the girls, but decide to leave them behind and go look for a boat or help or something and promise to come back for them. Of course they don’t find anything helpful, not even the boat the two suits came in. Just as they’re about to give up hope they get the brilliant idea of building a raft, but they don’t get much of it done before it starts getting light and they figure they’d better get back to their cell.

Back in town, Morrie and Dottie tell the sheriff about the suspicious island they found and how the woman lied about living in isolation. It takes a lot of convincing, but finally the sheriff agrees to go have a look.

Dr. Myra tells Ivan to bring the two girls - he drags them in kicking and screaming and the boys follow surreptitiously behind. The girls are shoved into the testing chamber and the boys don’t know what to do. At this point the sheriff and the other two kids show up and it looks like the sheriff is in on Dr. Myra’s evil master plan.

Ivan corrals Morrie and Dottie. The boys look for something to pry open the door to the testing chamber, the adults start arguing, the sheriff goes off in a huff and one of the suits shoots him in the back. Ivan is forced to let go of the kids so he can dispose of the body, and once he leaves all hell breaks loose and it’s a free-for-all fight between the adults and the kids.

Oops! Dr. Myra managed to release the gas into the chamber and the girls are doused with zombie gas. The kids win the fight and make her open the chamber, but it’s too late. When she refuses to produce the antidote, the boys put her in the chamber and turn her into a zombie. Unfortunately, she’s a little too zombified, so they threaten to put the men in the chamber next. One of them caves and points out the antidote.

After pouring some of the liquid into two glasses, they set the beaker down on the desk. They try it on Dr. Myra to make sure it works, and the first thing she does is sweep the beaker onto the floor. Good thing they poured two glasses of it. The boys de-zombify the girls and a scuffle breaks out. While the boys are fighting with Ivan and one of the suits, the other suit and Dr. Myra escape. But the gorilla (no idea where they were keeping him) wanders into the lab and licks up some of the antidote from the floor. He takes care of the suit and Ivan, allowing the kids to escape.

The other suit and Dr. Myra reached the boat the sheriff came in at the same time the kids do, and the adults prove to be no match for the determined kids. The kids deliver their prisoners to the sheriff’s office and the deputy tells them the military will be very grateful. It’s implied that they’ll get to meet the president himself for this. They’re heroes.

This was kind of a fun movie, set as it was in a simpler time. You couldn’t get away with a story like this these days. Well, you could have the mad scientist trying to turn the U.S. into zombies, but you wouldn’t have anyone blink twice at teens being a couple of hours late meeting a friend. And I think kids themselves are a little more savvy today.

The hubby says, “It wasn’t the worst bad movie we’ve seen, but it did have its dumb moments.” I think that’s supposed to be a good thing. ;-)

The Incredible Petrified World

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

Once again hubby and I fell victim to false advertising. I mean, look at that poster. Octopus getting over-friendly with a woman, the weird creature with the spear, the volcano in the distance - it looks like it has all the makings of a good creature feature, right? Yeah, that’s what we thought too.

This black and white movie, filmed in 1957, begins with footage of what we’re supposed to believe is a storm tossed sea. Cue the suspenseful music. Now we see a squid and a shark duking it out on the ocean floor while the storm rages above. And I feel the need to point out, this was the only appearance by a squid in the whole movie. The suspenseful music speeds up - looks like the shark won.

The narrator starts talking about a “phantom layer” in the ocean that rises to the surface at night, and descends back to the bottom during the day. It’s filled with luminescent fish that apparently have the ability to turn their glow off and on at will.

La la la - boring description of these black and white fish that look like they’re swimming around in some big aquarium. Okay, now the lights come up and we see the narrator is actually a rich dude showing a film in a library. He talks about this diving bell he’s financed, to be used to explore the ocean depths and how there’s another one being tested in the Caribbean as they speak.

This diving bell was created by Dr. Wyman, and he’s really excited that the divers will be going deeper than anyone has ever gone before. The bell, which is pretty much a big water tight metal sphere, is manned by two men, Paul and Craig, and two women, Lauri and Dale (because you have to keep the numbers even, right?). Paul, Craig, and Lauri appear to have some kind of scientific background, and Dale is a reporter.

Down, down, down they go. At 1700 feet the lights start to flicker and the diving bell is rocking. Communication between the ship and the bell is lost. Dr. Wyman feels really bad because, you know, it was his bell and all and was lost so deep there’s not a chance of rescuing it ... or the people inside it.

Meanwhile, the bell is resting on the bottom of the ocean and the groggy crew are just waking up. Dale immediately goes into hysterics until someone slaps her. They realize the cable the bell was attached must have broken, but they couldn’t be as deep as they thought because there’s light outside the bell. If they’re high enough to see light through the water, then obviously they’re high enough that the pressure won’t kill them, so they get into their wet suits (which they just happened to have packed in a suitcase), and abandon ship - or sphere.

They start to swim slowly (VERY slowly) to the surface. The radar on the boat actually picks them up, but Dr. Wyman doesn’t think they have a prayer of making it to the surface, what with the pressure and all. They’re just too deep. More footage of them slowly swimming. La la la. Oops! They surface in a cave. I’m kind of impressed. Despite hours of swimming, the girls’ hair is not only dry, they retained their fancy hair-dos.

Meanwhile, on the boat, the captain asks Dr. Wyman how long it’ll take the bodies to surface. They decide to wait another five hours. The men from the sphere decide to leave the women in the cave and go back to the bell for their shoes so they can climb to the surface through the cave system. They go pick up shoes for everyone and one of the guys sharpens a stick to bring back with him.

On the way back to the cave, the guy with the stick manages to kill enough fish for them to dine on for dinner. Then they all take a nap. The next day, dressed in perfectly dry street clothes (no idea where they came from), they begin wandering through the caves. They see a lizard that hisses at them (showing us how loudly Dale can scream) and continue to wander. It didn’t occur to them that they could have eaten the lizard, but they do stumble across a small spring to drink from.

Leaving the women at the spring to rest, the men wander off to explore a bit. Lauri wants to be friends, but Dale is a bit of a snarky bitch. It’s at this point I have to wonder where the light in the cave is coming from. I mean, in the ocean we could say it was the luminescent fish the narrator made a point of talking about, but the cave is pretty well lit without there being a source.

Wandering, wandering, and more wandering. It all looks pretty much the same to me. Ruh, oh Shaggy, the gang found a human skeleton. Eek! There’s an old bearded man spying on them through a hole in the rocks above them. They yell up to him but he doesn’t answer, so they climb on up to see him.

He tells them he’s the survivor of a ship wreck and he’s been there for 14 years. There’s a volcano nearby that provides air, but there’s no way out. Not sure why the volcano means they can’t escape, haven’t any of them ever read Jules Verne’s Journey To the Centre of the Earth? Everyone settles in to make the best of things.

Meanwhile, Dr. Wyman has gone to the rich guy from the beginning. He heard he cancelled the launch of his own diving bell and persuades him that he knows what went wrong with the first bell and how to fix it on the second one. Blah, blah, blah, way too much technical explanations. Wyman’s younger brother worked on the second bell, and together they fix the new bell.

Lots of machinery spinning, lots of consulting. Finally they’re back on the boat. The second bell has launched, just in time because they spot the two guys from the original bell as they’re swimming back to scavenge for parts and one of them has run out of air. They make it to the second bell where the guy is revived by a cup of coffee from a handy dandy thermos.

Back in the cave, the creepy old dude is putting the moves on Dale and he must have angered the volcano gods because the earth starts to shake and an eruption is imminent. He gets buried by rocks and the two women run back through the tunnels. More running, more rock falling. The guy who came back for the women gets knocked out slightly. Now we’re seeing some really fast moving lava and the earth pulling apart.

Um, I guess he’s okay because they’re all aboard the second bell now and before you know it they’re back on board the ship. Happy, happy, joy, joy - smiling faces all around. As the ship powers off into the sunset I’m left wondering two things - if they really were on the bottom of the ocean, as we were led to believe, why didn’t the pressure kill them? And where the heck was the volcano that erupted? There wasn’t so much as a hint of it on the surface of the water - no rock sticking up out of the water, not even a puff of smoke.

This movie wasn’t even that bad, it was just incredibly boring! The incredible part of it was that we sat through the whole 70 minutes.

Monstrosity the Atomic Brain

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

As much fun as shark month was, it was kind of nice to get back to our normal bad movies. This turkey lemon bad movie was filmed in black and white in 1963. It runs for 64 minutes which is plenty long enough, I assure you.

It begins with our mad scientist (c’mon, you had to know there’d be a mad scientist) breaking into a mortuary/cemetery to steal the body of a young woman who’s just died. After his henchman (who kind of looks like a wolf man and the narrator tells us he’s one of the doctor’s “mistakes”) kills the poor, clueless security guard, they load the girl’s body into the back of their station wagon. If they wanted a fresh body, why didn’t they take the security guard? Ah! Because he wasn’t a woman! ;-)

The scientist, whom we’re told is Dr. Frank (the hubby claims he’s not sufficiently evil enough to earn the “enstein” part to the name) is working for this very rich old lady who wants her brain put into a much younger and prettier body. Wouldn’t we all like that?

The machine Dr. Frank built to do this is atomic and as he explains to the old woman (Mrs. March) and her henchman (Victor) it has a radioactive failsafe. In case the police or anyone ever want to search the place, he can set off an atomic explosion to destroy all the evidence. Okayyyy.

Dr. Frank demonstrates his machine for Mrs. March and Victor, using the, uh, fresh body. The room is like a big iron boiler with a viewing window - to enter it, Dr. Frank has to wear a radiation suit but no such precautions are needed for visitors to his lab. The woman he’s experimenting on is naked (of course she’d be naked!) but has two strategically placed straps holding her to an upright table.

Now despite the fact that this whole thing is to put Mrs. March’s brain into a fresh body, he brings this girl back to life without finding her a new brain first. Apparently, once the brain is dead you can’t bring it back to life. No idea why not. So now we have a sexy, brainless zombie to wander aimlessly around.

Nevertheless, Mrs. March is impressed enough that she hires three girls from Europe as servants because there won’t be any embarrassing questions when they disappear. Of course it’s pretty obvious right from the start which one she’s going to pick - the hot blonde with the huge rack and the jiggle butt.

Mrs. March has the doctor examine all three (which makes one of the want to quit on the spot) and he discovers one of them, named Anita, has a birthmark on her back. The old lady tells him he can do what he wants with her. Anita gets a room in the basement, Bea (the blonde) is given a room on the second story, and Nina (the one who wants out of there) gets a room in the attic.

The next day, Bea and Nina wonder where Anita got to and Mrs. March tells them she left - funny, since they were told no one gets to leave. The girls sneak down to Anita’s room and all her stuff is still there so they decide they need to escape. They wander around the basement some more and find a door they’re able to jimmy open but they hear someone coming and don’t go through it.

These girls are so dumb they almost deserve to get used in Dr. Frank’s experiments. They don’t leave through the door they jimmied open, they don’t leave through the freaking front door, they go back to Bea’s room to make plans.

Mrs. March goes down to the lab to see how Dr. Frank’s latest experiment is going. He successfully put the brain of a cat into Anita’s body. Anita not only acts like a cat, she makes pretty authentic cat noises too and even kills an eats a mouse. Mrs. March is impressed.

Meanwhile, the wind blows open the door the girls jimmied and the zombie girl wanders out to walk aimlessly around the estate. The girls, who are cleaning one of the sitting rooms, catch a glimpse of her through the window and see the wolf man attack her. The good doctor beats him off with a cattle prod but it’s too late. The wolf man ends up being chained up like a dog.

The girls realize they really have to get serious about escaping, and Bea decides to seduce Victor for the keys to the car. She seeks him out and because the wolf man is safely chained up, they go for a walk through the gardens. Before they get very far (or should I say, before Victor gets very far), Mrs. March summons him. Bea wanders over to a stone gazebo and sees Anita perched on the top of it. Anita springs on her and we hear screaming.

Nina, not knowing what happened to Bea, also catches a glimpse of Anita, who’s up on the roof now. You’d think if someone’s up on a roof they’re there for a reason, but no, Nina decided she needed to rescue Anita. Anita does NOT want to be rescued and Nina chases her across the roof where Anita falls to her death.

Running down to the lab to tell the doctor, she finds everyone in the lab with Bea, who’s still alive but badly hurt. One of her eyes had to be removed but the doctor has it in a big beaker of some kind of solution and he’s quite excited about the prospect of putting it back in her.

Mrs. March gives Victor the heave ho. Once she’s in her new body, she’s not going to need an old fart like him. Later, Nina finds him in the study, drunk as a skunk, and he spills his guts - tells her how Mrs. March has made her heir, but it won’t really be her it’ll be Mrs. March in her body. She agrees to make him rich if he helps her, but then she goes off to pack or something and Mrs. March stabs him in the back with this really, really long needle.

Nina tells Bea (who’s in her bedroom now) that they’re going to escape, and then goes back downstairs to find Victor’s body. Mrs. March keeps her busy while the doctor chloroforms her.

Cut to the lab where the two women (Nina and Mrs. March) are strapped to gurneys. Dr. Frank asks Mrs. March why she had to go and kill Victor - she tells him “he was a fool.” You can almost see the wheels turning.

Nina wakes up alone. The doctor figures if a deal was good enough for Victor it’s good enough for him, and has put the brain of Mrs. March into his cat. As he contemplates what he should do with Eva, he goes into the atomic chamber. The cat (Mrs. March) presses the button that seals the door and then turns on the machine.

Bea, sensing something’s going on (gee, ya think?) gets out of bed and pulls off the bandage around her head so we can get a good look at her scratched up face. She makes her way down to the lab and frees Nina. They turn for one last glimpse and we see the doctor become a skeleton inside the machine. Bea sees her eyeball in the beaker and turns to rescue it. Of course she’s killed.

Eva runs into the night, the cat following her, the mansion being consumed by flames behind them.

The end.

I can’t believe I actually paid money for this DVD! Fortunately, you don’t have to:

The Best of the Worst

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

Welcome to the final installment of shark month. I’m thrilled you could be here and you’re in for a treat! I’ve saved the best of the worst shark movies I’ve ever seen for today. The third runner up for stupidest cheesiest worst shark movie is Avalanche Sharks.



Despite this movie being set in a ski resort, there are bikinis galore - it’s like a skier’s spring break in the mountains. Anyway, an avalanche releases these Native American snow shark spirits that are pretty much ready to eat everything in sight.

The management of the ski resort tries to cover up what’s happening - snow sharks eating the customers is bad for business and they have a bikini contest to sponsor. In the snow. But as much as they try and deny there’s anything fishy going on, they can’t keep up the pretense for long, there’s just too many people disappearing.

The avalanche also took care of the only way in or out of the area, so tourists and residents alike are trapped. You gotta love those shark fins zipping through the snow in pursuit of dinner. Sometimes a victim is just pulled down into the snow, which is then stained with blood, and sometimes a shark head pops up to chomp them. In one scene a group of bikini babes get eaten while they’re lounging in a hot tub.

The whole Native American curse thing is kind of an interesting twist, and this is what ultimately saves the survivors. While a heavily armed group keeps the shiver (the name for a group of sharks) of sharks occupied, this Asian woman hikes up the mountain and straightens up these sacred totem poles that were knocked askew by the avalanche. Not sure how she knew that would stop the sharks, but that was the least of the unbelievable things about this movie.

The second runner up for best (worst) of the worst shark movies is Sharktopus.



Is it a shark? Is it an octopus? No, it’s both! And not only that, it was secretly created for the U.S. military. Unfortunately, during a demonstration of its abilities, the sharktopus (aka S-11) goes AWOL and embarks on a journey of mass destruction along the Mexican coast.

The advantage this shark has over the others is the tentacles, that allow it to walk short distances on land. As it eats its way through the tourist population, the daughter of the head scientist (who was instrumental in helping create it), is frantically trying to save it. There’s also a really annoying reporter who’s determined to get the story that will make her famous.

Though it’s called a sharktopus, the tentacles are more like that of a squid, which it’s able to use to stab its victims. It eventually kills its creator, and his daughter realizes her little pet has to go. The movie itself may have been pretty bad, but at least it was good for a laugh.

This brings us to the best of the worst shark movies, my all time favourite, Ghost Shark.



Apparently mutant sharks appearing as a result of natural disasters - icebergs melting, tornados - is no longer the thing. Mystical events are. This one is actually pretty cool, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The movie starts out with a group of hicks on a fishing boat who fatally wound a shark, and its body ends up in this sacred cave that magically allows its spirit to come back for revenge. This shark’s special ability (well, aside from being a ghost) is that it can appear in any kind of water - ocean, swimming pool, sprinkler, puddle, glass of water ...

The first ones to notice the ghost shark are a bunch of teens, but of course no one believes their story, even after the shark crashes a pool party. This movie is also a little different than its predecessors in that it centers around a group of teens who are trying to figure out where the shark comes from and how to stop it.

They enlist the aid of a drunken lighthouse keeper named Finch (Richard Moll, what were you thinking?) who seems to know more about this than he’s letting on. The appearance of the ghost shark has as much to do with the circumstances under which Finch’s wife died as it does with the sacred cave, and if you want to know how, you’ll have to watch the movie. :-D

I hope you’ve enjoyed shark month as much as I have. Next week we’ll be back to just your regular bad Sci Fi and Monster movies. Until then, enjoy that swim!

A Trifecta of Sharks

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

Welcome back to Shark Month!

When I sat down and started thinking about all the bad shark movies I’ve seen over the years, the Sharknado or Mega Shark movies were not the first ones that sprang to mind. There are a lot of really bad shark movies out there - bad acting, bad story lines, bad CGI (computer generated imagery). In fact, when I did a Google search to see if I’d missed any from my list, one site boasted 57 bad shark movies!

But a lot of them I haven’t seen yet. So I’ll be sticking to my own list and reviewing three this week, and my final three next week. Starting the countdown to the end of shark month, we have Malibu Shark Attack.



The movie begins with an underwater earthquake that stirs up a whole bunch of prehistoric goblin sharks. They begin eating people along a well populated beach and as the life guards are dealing with this, the tsunami alarm goes off. Apparently sharks aren’t the only thing the earthquake unleashed.

Several life guards and a couple of stragglers end up trapped in one of the lifeguard towers when the tsunami hits. It’s amazing that the only thing that survives is the tower - everything else is swept away. One of the occupants is injured, and the wound drips just enough blood into the water to attract the goblin sharks. As the survivors realize just how far from shore they are now, without any way of calling for help, the goblin sharks attack the tower they’re in, breaking through the floor and eating one of them.

A couple more people get eaten and the rest have relocated to the roof of the tower when a couple of guys who were constructing a house on the shore show up in a boat (one of the lifeguards was a former girlfriend of the home owner). They eventually make it back to the half-built house and there’s lots of action of them trying to avoid sharks in the flooded house. Eventually the survivors are rescued by a helicopter.

As terrible stupid bad shark movies go, this one is pretty tame, but it’s worth a look if only for the prehistoric goblin sharks. The full movie is available on YouTube, but it’s in two parts (which is why I didn’t include it here).



Next up we have the 2-Headed Shark Attack, a movie that’s so bad it’s funny, despite the body count. This movie features a boatload of students on a “Semester at Sea” whose ship hits a shark and starts taking on water. Fortunately there’s an island/atoll nearby, so the students and their professor take the dinghy over to check it out. While they’re exploring, one of the crew attempts to repair the ship and gets eaten by a two-headed shark.

There’s a few abandoned buildings on the atoll, and the kids and professor search them for metal that can be used for repairing the boat. Three of the kids sneak off to go swimming and get eaten by the shark. The island is shaken by a tremor and for the next hour or so we get a lot of screaming, running, and jiggling - over half the students are girls dress in shorts with bikini tops. Oh, and let’s not forget the two headed shark chomping on students.

Tremors continue to beset the island and although it almost looks as though the shark is ramming the coral anchoring the island, it’s actually just the atoll collapsing in on itself. More screaming, more jiggling, more kids getting eaten. The kids distract the shark long enough for one of the girls to fix the boat, but then one of the boys takes off in it, leaving everyone else behind. But karma’s a bitch and the shark sinks the boat - which is actually a good thing, because it sets off a distress beacon. Unfortunately, by the time help arrives, the island is pretty much gone and of the twenty-three souls that started out, only two survived.




I didn’t think anything could be worse that the 2-Headed Shark Attack, but then they came out with a 3-Headed Shark Attack. This movie starts out on a research station and quickly moves to the water. Apparently, the three headed shark is the result of a mutation cause by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is actually a real thing, and the people at the research station just happen to be studying this mutation. It actually makes for a bit of an interesting sidebar to the story.

When the research station is attacked, you kind of have to wonder why everyone didn’t just stay on the small island the station was attached to, but no, the survivors took off in a boat. Having its fill of scientists, the shark follows a trail of beer cans and garbage to a party boat filled with rich kids where it starts chomping its way through the passenger list. This is one hungry shark!

Answering a distress call that was put out is what is supposed to be a fishing boat, but these guys look more like drug runners or something and they’re all heavily armed. You’d think guns would be handy against a three-headed shark, but not so much. The funniest part of this movie is when one of the thugs cuts off one of the heads of the shark with a machete and three more heads grow in its place - pretty darn quickly too.

The body count by this garbage loving shark is pretty impressive - out of about 70 people only two survive. And despite the promising beginning, this movie has issues: it uses the same scene cuts over and over, things won’t be working one minute but are perfectly fine the next, boats will go full tilt but not leave a wake behind, and the size of the shark tends to fluctuate. Looks like three heads are not better than one. Or even two.

Still, if you’re in the mood to waste some time and maybe a laugh or two, you can catch it on Netflix.

Mega Sharks!

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

Still keeping with the theme of shark month here, and it just wouldn’t be the same without a nod to the Mega Shark franchise. For some reason I thought there were more of them, but apparently there’s only four (maybe it just seems like more).



We start with: Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. In a nutshell ... okay, you can’t really do a nutshell summary, but I’ll try and be as quick as possible: A pod of whales off the coast of Alaska go a little crazy after the military drops experimental sonar transmitters into the water. They start ramming an iceberg, freeing a frozen megalodon (giant shark) and giant octopus which had been locked in battle when frozen. They go to their separate corners to thaw out because the octopus attacks a drilling platform off Japan, while the shark leaps thousands of feet into the air to bring down a commercial airline.

Emma, an oceanographer who was fired from her job after borrowing an experimental sub without permission, teams up with her old professor and a Japanese scientist to figure out what exactly is on the video she filmed in Alaska - turns out to be both the mega shark and the giant octopus. Meanwhile, the mega shark eats a naval destroyer, which the navy takes a dim view of, and the three are shanghaied by the authorities to stop the monsters.

There’s several failed attempts, with a lot of collateral damage (more boats, a couple of subs, the Golden Gate Bridge), before the two giants are finally brought together in an ice trench off the coast of Alaska where they fight to the death. If you’re a fan of shark movies, this one is worth watching if for no other reason than to see the mega shark jump 15,000 feet into the air to grab the plane.



Next we have Mega Shark Vs. Crocosaurus. Apparently the megalodon wasn’t quite as dead as we thought at the end of the first film, because here he is again chewing up more navy vessels. At the same time, in the Congo, we have a 150 foot long crocodile who’s tranquilized and then loaded onto a cargo ship headed for Florida.

Mega shark attacks the ship, inadvertently freeing the crocodile. Turns out old croc has been pretty busy laying eggs all over the place and there’s nothing mega shark likes better than crocodile eggs and it starts eating them. This kind of ticks off the crocodile who invades Miami and then Orlando.

The military uses more eggs to attract the creatures to the Panama canal where they duke it out, but at the same time we have a bunch of eggs that were laid along the American coastline starting to hatch. The hatchlings attack the Santa Monica pier while the grown ups take the fight towards Hawaii. The military uses as sonic emitter to lure the all of the creatures towards an undersea volcano which erupts, killing adult and baby creatures alike. The world is safe again, until the next movie.

You really want to see this one because I’ve barely touched on all the action and destruction, and come on, who doesn’t want to see a 150 foot crocodile stomping through Miami?



The third movie in this series is Mega Shark Vs. Mecha Shark. This one starts with the mega shark being released from an iceberg that’s being towed into the port at Alexandria, Egypt, to begin its reign of terror. Scientist Emma McNeill (again played by Deborah Gibson) is back to warn the military that the reason the mega shark is so aggressive is because it’s looking for a mate.

To combat this new threat, a prototype submarine, the mecha shark, was created and is piloted by the team of Jack and Rosie. While Jack stays in the control room, Rosie pilots the submarine, with the help of an AI computer system called Nero, and goes after the shark. She tries to shoot it with a torpedo but manages to sink the USS Virginia instead. Oops!

Man, the US navy really takes a beating from these mega sharks! The best scene is where the mega shark launches upwards towards a commercial airplane (just like in the first one) and then mecha shark launches upwards and they bounce off of each other.

As the mega shark swims towards Syndey, Australia (where it was spawned millions of years ago), the mecha shark is having computer problems as Nero goes on and offline, decides all humans are evil because there were soldiers pointing guns at it, and becomes amphibious and terrorizes the streets. Now we have two giant killer sharks on the loose!

Jack and Rosie manage to get inside the mecha shark and get Nero back online, and then escape again before the mega shark bites into the side of mecha shark, setting off a torpedo that destroys them both. Sushi anyone?



The final entry in the franchise is Mega Shark Vs. Kolossus. In this movie we get the double whammy - a mega shark and a giant robot (a leftover doomsday device from the Cold War) that’s accidently reactivated.

Of course you have to know there’s a lot of senseless destruction, like the mega shark using its tail to bat a submarine into the Christ the Redeemer statue that stands over Rio de Janeiro, navy ships taking a beating, and Kolossus pretty much stomping everything in its path. But there’s also some pretty interesting characters, like the megalomaniac who wants to rule the world, the doctor who wants to preserve the mega shark, and the mentally unstable admiral.

A plan is devised to have the Kolossus and mega shark duke it out. Kolossus is lured into the water by an American flag trailing out of a helicopter and while the two monsters are occupied, everyone tries to stop the giant robot (I guess he’s the more serious of the two threats). The megalomaniac gets control of Kolossus and threatens everyone else into making the world more eco-friendly. The mentally unstable admiral tries to blow up Kolossus with an attack satellite. Kolossus takes out the satellite by tossing the mega shark at it. Yes, all the way up into space. And yes, mega shark is like a Timex watch - it takes a licking and keeps on ticking, because it’s still alive enough for Kolossus to give it a hug just before it self-destructs.

While these movies may not have the increasing campiness of the Sharknado movies, they’re still good for a laugh ... if you have nothing better to do. ;-)

Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens

Welcome back to Shark Month here on my bad movie reviews. Yeah, I know I said "week" last week, but I meant month. There are just so many really cheesy shark movies out there, and I've seen them all! ;-)



You know how the Scary Movies included a bunch of references to other movies and basically spoofed them? That’s pretty much what Sharknado 4 did too. So if you’re not up on your pop culture you’re going to miss a lot of the, uh, humour in it.

So ... five years have passed since Sharknado 3. Super rich Aston Reynolds developed a superfast space ship and rescued Gil Shepard (played by David Hasselhoff) from the moon. He also took Nova’s sharknado zapper a few steps further and created something called Astro-X pods that zap sharknados before they’re even fully formed. Fin and his five-year-old son are living on a farm in Kansas (called April’s Acres) with his mother Raye (played by Cheryl Tiegs).

Fin and his niece (? cousin?) Gemini are on their way to Vegas to meet up with Matt, Fin’s son, who’s on leave from the military. This just happens to coincide with the grand opening of Reynolds’ latest venture, Sharkworld, a luxury hotel and casino that features a humongous shark-filled aquarium as one of its walls. Of course a storm develops, this one a sandstorm tornado, and the Astro-X pods are unable to stop it.

Matt and his fiancé get married on the plane and then parachute out of it ... right into the sandnado. Trust me, there are almost as many ‘nados in this movie as there are cameos. And right on cue, here come the sharks, sucked right out of the aquarium wall in Sharkworld. Let the mayhem begin - people running, screaming, being eaten and maimed. The glass wall shatters and Vegas floods. Fortunately, Fin and Gemini are able to use a replica of a pirate ship to rescue Matt and his bride Gabby.

Thank god we have the opening credits at this point because I don’t think I can take any more one liners from Star Wars.

Here’s where it starts to get a bit complicated. Gil and Fin’s daughter Claudia are both working at Astro-X. Gil has been working closely with a scientist named Wilford (played by Gary Busey) on some kind of super-suit. It turns out that Wilford is also April’s father, which we discover when we find out - surprise! - April is still alive. After being hit by the piece of the shuttle at the end of Sharnado 3, April was in a coma for four years. Wilford convinced Fin to pull the plug and then spirited her body away, turning her into some kind of cyborg.

Fin, Gemini, Matt, and Gabby are on a train headed for Kansas when a dust sharknado appears from the desert and everyone has to fight for their lives. Again. The engineer is decapitated by a shark so Fin punches, wrestles, and fights his way through the sharks to the front of the train to save the day as the sharknado moves away to take out Hoover Dam. In an effort to save lives, Reynolds blows up part of the Grand Canyon to stop the ensuing flood. The sharnado picks up the debris from the explosion, turning it into a bouldernado (their word, not mine!).

Fin and his family end up at Reynolds’ headquarters in Arizona, where Reynolds makes a pitch for Fin to be an Astro-X spokesperson and go on TV to tell everyone everything’s going to be okay. When Fin refuses, Reynolds gets a little insulting. Leaving Reynolds behind, Fin’s group somehow ends up in a small town in Texas where they stop at a store run by Dog the Bounty Hunter and his wife, who sell them chainsaws (best line so far: “It wouldn't be Texas without a chainsaw massacre.”)

The sharknado heads towards the Texas oilfields and becomes an oilnado. Their efforts to stop it cause it to catch fire and, you guessed it, it becomes a firenado. They need something bigger to fight this, and Finn uses a forklift that just happens to be fitted with a large chainsaw. Fin loads up the forklift with fire extinguishers and lets it get sucked up, then blows it up. But instead of stopping it, it sucks in an electrical plant and creates a lightningnado that’s heading straight for Kansas.

Meanwhile, two other sharknados form - one near San Francisco that becomes a hailnado, and one near Yellowstone that becomes a lavanado. April catches the news report and is surprised to hear the newscaster wonder where Fin is. Apparently daddy dearest lied to her - he told her that her family was dead. She immediately rushes off to find Fin.

Meanwhile, Gil and Claudia are fleeing one of the sharknados and are in danger of their car being sucked up into one. April saves their car, not knowing who’s inside, and there’s a tearful family reunion. Gil is also a little ticked at Wilford for keeping the truth from him.

Mayor of Chicago (wearing wicked witch stockings) warns Fin that he’s to blame for the sharknados and he’s not allowed in Chicago. Just over the state line into Kansas, Fin gets a car from an old friend of his - the car’s name is Christine, as in the book by the same name by Stephen King. We see general mayhem caused by the sharknados, many celebrity cameos, many one-liners from a plethora of movies. They reach April’s Acres just ahead of the sharknado.

Raye and little Gil made it to the storm cellar. A herd of cows gets sucked into the sharknado amid many Twister references and it becomes a cownado. Fin’s group not only has to battle the sharks, but the winds too. Matt’s wife gets her arm bitten off and then a shark falls on her. Little Gil wants his daddy and leaves the shelter - a lot of crazy holding on while the wind tries to suck them in. Everything is suddenly quiet and Raye leaves the shelter to look at the devastation around her. The storm is over - and that’s the last we see as we break for commercial.

Suddenly, we’re back in the middle of the twister - more screaming and yelling, more trying to hold on, lots of debris. It’s like they messed up the order of things or something. We never do find out what happened to Raye. The other survivors manage to hold on to various parts of the house as it’s sucked up into the wind. Predictably, it lands on the mayor of Chicago and all we see are her striped stocking clad legs sticking out from under it. Even more predictably is the line delivered by little Gil: “Dad, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.”

April, Claudia, and Gil team up with Reynolds who takes them on his private jet for a tearful reunion with the others. Oddly, there’s no mention of Matt’s dearly departed bride, nor does he seem all that upset about her being gone. By making some alterations to the Astro-X pods, Reynolds was able to shut down the lavanado and the hailnado, but can’t stop the lightningnado which hits a nuclear power plant to become, you guessed, a nukenado, filled with radioactive sharks.

He’s going to use a “quantum box” to reverse the flow of water from Niagara Falls so the water will get sucked up into the nukenado, turning it back into a regular sharknado so they can deal with it. Well, the box he had wasn’t powerful enough and he falls into the gorge. Fortunately, there’s a second box so it’s Fin and his family to the rescue.

Gil’s going to put on the super-suit to use the second, more powerful box, but before he can do so, he’s swallowed by a shark. Claudia is also eaten by a shark. Fin gets to the suit and puts it on; Matt puts little Gil into a barrel for safety. Finn activates the quantum box and the water from Niagara is sucked into the nukenado, making it a regular sharknado, but Fin is electrocuted in the process.

Matt gets eaten by a shark. Little Gil goes over the falls in the barrel. Gemini falls into the gorge. April, who can fly and shoot lasers out of her hands, saves little Gil. Fin is swallowed by a shark, which is swallowed by a series of progressively larger sharks until the last one is eaten by a whale that lands in the park at the top of the falls.

Little Gil pulls a chainsaw from a stone and cuts through the whale, then cuts various family members free - Claudia, Matt, big Gil, and finally Fin. Fin’s not breathing. April and Gil try CPR on him to no effect, so they make a defibulator from two small, electrically charged sharks and shock him back to life. Just as the family stands tall and proud that once again they’ve saved the day, the Eiffel Tower comes sailing down to crash into the gorge, the silhouette of Nova (who was mentioned earlier in the film as being on vacation in France) standing on it.

So now that you pretty much know everything that happens in the movie, why should you watch it? Because if you don’t, you’ll never get to see all the wonderful cameos, or see a Chippendales dancer repel a shark with his pelvis, or hear the lines from all the different movies they pay ... tribute to, or witness things like the pair of Baywatch babes who assist Hasselhoff with his suit (which includes some slow motion running). Okay, so you pretty much saw the Chippendales dancer scene in the clip at the beginning, but you didn’t see the sharks descend on a comic-con in Sault Lake City, nor did you see Fin being chased by the world’s largest ball of twine, a la Indiana Jones.

Watch it because in a series of progressively more stupid movies, this one was the best (or maybe that should be the worst). Let me not be the only one who’s tempted to throw popcorn at the screen as they yell out: “Are you kidding me?”

I can’t wait to see how they top this in Sharknado 5!

Sharknado 1 to 3

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

WARNING! Rather long post happening here!

Welcome to Shark Week here on my bad movies reviews. Seriously, have you seen the number of terrible, cheesey, bad shark movies out there? Man, are you in for a treat!



We’re going to start with the Sharknado phenomenon. And the first one truly was a phenomenon. Television networks synchronized their settings so the first Sharknado movie aired simultaneously around the globe. It was awesome!

So here’s the story: A freak tornado filled with sharks hits Los Angeles and Fin (played by Ian Ziering) can only stand by - not exactly helpless, he has to fight off a bunch of these sharks - and watch as his beach-side bar is destroyed. When Los Angeles begins to flood, with sharks as well as water, he and his friends make their way to his ex-wife’s (April) house to save her and their daughter Claudia. There’s a lot of sharks, a lot of people getting eaten or otherwise losing limbs to said sharks. Fin’s son Matt and Nova, who worked in Fin’s bar, try tossing bombs from a helicopter into the sharknado, and Nova falls out of the helicopter right down a shark’s throat. In the end Fin prevails by bombing the sharknado and the sharks begin to plummet to the ground. At the very end, one open-mouthed shark plummets towards the group of survivors and Fin jumps into its path with a chainsaw, only to cut his way out again with an unconscious Nova in his arms.

Think it sounds pretty bad? Just wait.



Sharknado 2: The Second One, had celebrities clamouring to be part of it. Most of them got eaten by sharks. Despite the fact that this one was even sillier than the first, it was the highest premiering film on the Syfy Channel. This one starts with Fin and his no longer estranged wife April on a plane headed for New York to promote her book about surviving a sharknado. The plane flies through a storm and is bombarded by sharks, losing its engines, the two pilots, and many of the passengers in the process. Fin manages to land the plane, although April’s hand is bitten off by a shark. And still, no one takes Fin’s warning seriously about the impending disaster.

Lots of sharks, lots of people getting eaten, lots of running and screaming. Throwing bombs into the sharknados (there were three of them) from the top of the Empire State Building wasn’t working because it was too cold. The plan is to detonate a tank of Freon gas on the top of the building, connecting it to a lightning rod, and freezing the storm. Fin makes an impassioned speech to the crowd below to rally them into fighting the falling sharks with whatever they can. You know, like the chainsaw April is now sporting from her stump.

Fin’s old friend Skye ends up sacrificing herself to make the connection from the lightning rod to the Freon, the tank explodes, Fin is thrown into the sharknado and grabs onto a great white shark using chains to steer it as he rides it down onto the building’s antennae. April is waiting for him on the roof and they find her severed arm in one of the sharks. Fin takes the wedding ring from her defunct hand and proposes marriage. She accepts. All together now, awwww.

And yet, as silly as this movie was, it gets even sillier!



Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! begins with a kind of James Bondesque sequence with Fin racing through traffic and jumping over obstacles to get to the White House to receive a medal from the president. Bam! They’re slammed by a sharknado and Fin and the president work side by side to fight them off. Meanwhile, a very pregnant April and her mother (played by Bo Derek) are at the Universal theme park in Orlando with Claudia, who goes off on her own with some friends.

There are sharknados springing up all over the place and as Fin makes his way back to his family, he meets up with his old friend Nova, who’s become some sort of sharknado tracker aficionado. In one of the cheesiest scenes to date, her partner sacrifices himself - losing first a leg, then the opposite arm, then the other leg, then the other arm - finally sending a pulse into the current sharknado using his nose to hit the button. Yeah.

Reunited with his family again, they realize that all these storms could combine, creating a massive sharkicane, taking out the entire east coast. Fin reluctantly calls in a favour from his father Gil (David Hasselhoff), a former NASA colonel. The idea is to destroy the sharknados from space using a laser weapon. The plan works, but David Hasselhoff is left floating in space, and as the shuttle falls back to earth it’s attacked by sharks - Fin is swallowed by one, April by another (um, she somehow ended up on the shuttle too and they just happened to have a maternity space suit for her).

Fin’s shark hits the beach and he uses his laser chain-saw to cut his way out. Then he hears the faint sound of a chainsaw from another shark and a hole opens up in its side, and April hands him his newborn son. Not only does one have to wonder how she gave birth inside a shark, one also has to wonder how her clothes shrank to fit her pre-baby looking figure again (never mind the whole giving birth through her clothing thing, and where did her space suit go?). We have a final glimpse of David Hasselhoff standing on the moon in his space suit, saluting. And as Fin salutes back (almost as though he could see him), April bends down to pick up something from the beach and a piece of the shuttle comes hurtling down towards her. Seriously, that’s where it ends.

Each movie gets progressively, um, sillier. The sharknados get bigger, and more celebrities beg for cameos! The list of cameos for number three is even longer than number two. You see Will Wheaton (with his real life wife apparently) get eaten on the plane. Judd Hirsch (remember him in Taxi?) plays a taxi driver in New York. Robert Hays (from the Airplane movies) plays a pilot. A myriad of newspeople/talk show hosts play themselves - Al Roker, Kathie Lee Gifford, Natalie Moralies, Elvis Duran, and Matt Lauer, to name but a few.

One of the best features is the way Ian Ziering (Fin) and Tara Reid (Fin’s wife), take their roles so seriously. That shows amazing self-control to deliver some of those lines so dead pan. The other great thing about these movies is that they waste no time getting right down to the action. None of this coy glimpses of the monster for this franchise, these sharks are there, bam! Right in your face.

Come back next week when I review Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens. I can’t wait to see how they get David Hasselhoff down from the moon!

Creature From the Haunted Sea

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

Billed as a horror/comedy, this movie was filmed over the course of five days. FIVE DAYS. That explains a lot. It was actually meant to be a parody of spy, gangster, and monster movies, which I guess accounts for the clichéd dialogue and cheesy monster.

The creature was described thusly by Beach Dickerson (one of the actors): the Creature was made from a wetsuit, some moss, lots of Brillo pads. [...] Tennis balls for the eyes, Ping-Pong balls for the pupils, and pipecleaners for the claws. Then we cover him with black oilcloth to make him slimy.

As the hubby says, you can’t go wrong with a cheesy monster!

Okay. So it stars with a spy named XK150 getting what I’m sure is his sneakers shined. The shoe shine guy slips a folded note into the spy’s sock, and as he leaves the shoe shine guy is shot. Naturally the spy runs and the shooters give chase. He finally loses them and after taking a moment to read the note, he puts on dark sunglasses and the phoniest looking moustache in creation. Oh, yeah, and he eats the note.

Entering the bar the note directed him to, he exchanges a really lame code about wine with a deadpan woman playing chess with herself, and we learn she’s his contact. Then we finally see the opening credits - cartoon opening credits with this really goofy looking, scaly monster, kind of like a wingless dragon.

The actual plot of the movie, such as it is, concerns a mobster named Renzo Capetto who meets with Cuban President Tostada who wishes to hire him to transport himself, a few of his men, and a chest full of gold to parts unknown. The loot is going to be used to finance a counterrevolution.

Once everyone is on board the mobster’s “yacht” (kind of small for a yacht if you ask me), the narrator introduces all the key players. These include the mobster, who’s also the captain and appears to be a Humphrey Bogart wannabe, his girlfriend, a former gun moll named Mary-Belle, her younger brother (Happy Jack), bumbling fool (Pete) who’s more comfortable making animal noises than actually talking, and our spy (who seems to be the sole deck hand, not really part of the gang) who’s under cover name is Sparks Moran.

The captain calls a meeting of his gang and the spy listens at the door. Surprise, surprise, the captain is trying to come up with a plan to ditch the Cubans and keep the gold for themselves. He comes up with the idea of creating a “Creature from the Haunted Sea” to dispose of them.

The gun moll seems to be making a lot of friends. First the Cuban general is hitting on her, although when she’s pretty adamant about telling him to get lost, the interpreter does not accurately translate. She no sooner gets rid of the general and his minion and the spy starts hitting on her. He tells her she’s too good for this life - he’ll save her, or die!

So the bad guys make it look like a monster came on board and killed an innocent Cuban using a plunger over his face, and then use it to leave tracks all over. But wait! there really is a monster! And he kills another Cuban!

The next day, the captain explains to the general that one of his men was killed by a strange creature from the deep. The interpreter outright laughs at him, but the general actually believes him. After they leave the captain scolds his men for getting carried away and killing two Cubans and his minions are just dumb enough to think they must have killed two by mistake.

The plan is to run the boat aground on a reef and Pete will take the chest of gold in a skiff and sink it in shallow water for them to pick up at a later date. So the yacht ends up smashing into the reef and taking on water and everybody abandons ship. The boat the Cubans are in sinks and the creature gets at least a couple of them. Hubby observes that it looks like the Cookie Monster, only with fins.

Eventually they all end up on shore (well, except for the Cubans that got caught by the monster). The Cubans get busy building a hut and the captain wants to dive for the chest and hide it in the reef.

Our friendly neighbourhood spy wanders off down the beach and finds payphone. Say what?? He has the operator put him in touch with Cuba and has to have it charged to his home phone because he has no money.

OMG! Some random guy with a patently fake grin lines up to use the phone. He just stands there with this smarrmy grin on his face. The spy finishes his call and heads back, and passes a guy in a suit with a cane who carefully steps in every puddle along the way. What the hell???

Meanwhile, Pete is off making animal noises and hears answering noises - OMG, it’s a woman named Porcina and it’s love at first sight. They gather a pile of fruit to take back to everyone.

Uh, oh. There’s a hitch in the captains plans - the Cubans are all certified divers and the general is chomping at the bit to have them start diving for the gold. All the men except the general jump into the water to look for the gold. The bad guys kill another Cuban and since they had so much fun, the kill another one. When the general learns that he’s missing two men, the decides from now on they’ll dive with spear guns.

Meanwhile, Happy Jack was sent off somewhere and brings back a girl named Carmelita along with a bunch of diving equipment. He declares love for her but she starts swooning over the spy, who tells her in no uncertain terms that his heart belongs to Mary-Belle. She doesn’t seem to care.

Pete takes Jack off into the jungle and he’s introduced to Porcina’s daughter Mango. Once again we have love at first sight, at least on his part. The four of them just want to live happily ever after and decide they’ll have to kill the others to make it happen. That appears to be okay with them.

The creature starts randomly picking off people. Mango is the first to go missing and Jack is heart-broken. The divers with the spear guns find the gold but the creature is watching. Back on the boat, the captain and Mary-Belle get into a fight and somehow the spy and Mary-Belle end up in the water. The monster attacks! He’s even cheesier out of the water than he was in it.

The Cubans are all dead and one by one the gang members are killed off too. The only ones who escape are the spy and Carmelita, who’s still in love with him. So the spy gets the girl, but the monster gets the gold.

Not the worst movie we’ve seen lately, but certainly not the best.

The Giant Claw

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

Also known as Mark of the Claw, this was one of the better stupid movies we’ve seen in a while. This low-budget, black and white film was made in 1957 and features a cast of unknowns. We watched it using our TiVo to access YouTube and it was pretty good quality.

It begins at the North Pole where electronic engineer Mitch is flying around so the people in the military station below can test the radar equipment. He sees an unidentified flying object “as big as a battleship.” The guys in the station are not impressed - nothing else showed up on their radar.

It flies by again and Mitch chases after it. He insists there’s something out there. He doesn’t know what, but it’s big and it’s fast. The radar guy presses a big button that says “Hot Button” and the interceptors are launched into the air.

When Mitch returns to the station, he’s given a cool reception. Not only did the interceptors not see anything, one of them didn’t come back. As Mitch hangs his head in shame, the radar guy gets a phone call that an air force transporter plane is missing. The pilot said something about a UFO before the radio went dead, but nothing showed up on the radar.

So Mitch and Sally, a mathematician who was also at the station, fly back to New York in a small plane. The pilot keeps looking around nervously and spots a UFO. There’s some really heavy turbulence and not only is the pilot knocked unconscious, they lose and engine. Mitch takes over and they crash land, apparently in Canada.

A friendly French-Canadian moonshiner takes them to his house. The police take away the body of the pilot (he died when the plane exploded and they all hit the dirt). General Buskirk phones to ream Mitch out, claiming he put the pilot up to calling in to report a UFO. Even Sally doesn’t believe in the UFO, although something hit the plane.

It’s really stormy out there and Pierre goes out to calm the livestock. He screams like a little girl, and Mitch and Sally go rushing out and find him unconscious. They drag him back inside and when he wakes up he begins blubbering about la Carcagne, a winged creature that looks like a woman with a wolf’s head. Legend has it if you see this creature it’s a sign you’re going to die soon.

As the police drive Mitch and Sally to the nearest airport we’re given a camera shot of a really big bird footprint in Pierre’s field. There’s a lot of flirting going on during the plane ride and arguing about what the object could be. Something Sally says triggers a thought in Mitch. He maps out the sightings of the UFO and finds a widening spiral pattern. Sally’s still skeptical about it being a UFO and Mitch starts to pout. Then they start kissing.

A military plane flies towards where Sally and Mitch crashed and is attacked by a giant bird-like creature. How can I do the description justice? I can’t, so here’s a picture of it.

The military guys are forced to jump ship and the bird eats them one by one.

Mitch and Sally don’t know anything about this until some military guys come to get them from their hotel. Then they learn there’s been two more sightings and another plane was destroyed. This time there were reports of a giant bird, not a UFO. Mitch and Sally go with the general to a facility in Washington.

Their biggest concern seems to be why the radar can’t pick it up. The big wigs are getting pretty hot under the collar and everyone takes turns having hissy fits. One of the squadrons they have up in the air have spotted it and the general gives the order to shoot it down. Then he puts the radio on speaker so everyone can hear what’s going on.

First we hear the pilots cracking lame bird jokes, then the bird starts screeching at them. Their rockets don’t affect it and the bird munches on a plane. The pilot bails out and the bird eats him. The general notifies the joint chiefs and more arguing ensues: “It’s just a bird!”, “Ten million dollars worth of radar equipment can’t track it!”

The two generals, Mitch, and Sally go to a research lab where they’ve been looking at the plane wreckage (not sure which plane). The researcher explains about atoms, and matter and anti-matter. The bird somehow generates an anti-matter screen which causes the radar to just slide around it. But the bird can open the screen to use its beak and claws as weapons.

They found a feather from it and it defies analysis: “The bird comes from some godforsaken anti-matter galaxy billions of light years away." One of the generals suggests they all pray.

Meanwhile, the bird that’s supposed to be a closely guarded secret buzzes a beach, then London, then snacks on some people in a square and somehow sets fire to a road. Sally runs some figures for Mitch in her “calculating machine” and speculates on why the bird came here. Could it be looking for a place to nest?

For some reason they figure the most obvious place to look for a nest is back at Pierre’s farm, so off she and Mitch go. With Pierre’s help they actually do find a nest, but don’t spot the egg until the bird lands on it. Mitch shoots holes in it and mama bird ain’t too pleased. Pierre has run off and the bird gets him.

Mitch thinks he’s figured out how to get past the bird’s shield. There’s a lot sciencey talk about masic atoms - if they can get close enough to the bird to bombard it with masic atoms they can bring down the anti-matter shield, so they proceed to build a machine to do so.

Failure after failure after failure and they’re losing hope. Panic and terror have spread to all corners of the earth - the bird is shown flying away, a train trailing behind it like sausage links. Mitch finally figures out how to get the machine to work (blowing himself up in the process) and everyone does a happy dance.

While they get the plane ready, the bird perches on the empire state building (of course) and chews the top off of it. For some reason the falling pieces are exploding. The plane is on its way and they spot the bird on top of the UN building now. It seems pretty proud of the mess it’s making.

The bird chases the plane, people are running, oops! There goes another building. The bird is right on the tail of the plane and they start shooting the atoms at it, then they shoot the bird with rockets. They got it! The bird falls into the water belly up.

As THE END flashes across the screen we have one last glimpse of the bird - one clawed foot sticking up out of the water, like it’s giving us the finger.

Monster A Go-Go

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

After last week’s movie I’d pretty much had it with movies so bad they were depressing. I wanted something so bad it was funny. Something utterly stupid. So I got out the list of bad/stupid movies the hubby had made out, and picked what was sure to be a lot of fun - Monster A Go-Go.

Boy was I wrong!

There were no go-go dancers in this movie, although there was one short, kind of random dancing scene. Research done afterwards touts it as one of the worst movies ever made, and I believe it. And I also believe that I need to start researching these movies before we watch them.

The budget for this 1965 movie was so low they couldn’t even afford to film in colour. It begins with a capsule being launched into space to check on “stuff” floating around out there. It lands/crashes back on Earth but whoever’s keeping track of it has a hard time finding it. A couple of guys in uniform - they seem to switch from being cops to being military guys - in an unmarked car go looking for it with a helicopter backing them up.

There’s a lot of talking on the radio between the chopper and the car, but despite cranking up the volume it was still hard to make out what they were saying. The guys in the car find the dinged up capsule, and also the helicopter. The chopper pilot is dead and there’s no sign of the guy that was in the itty bitty capsule.

It was a little confusing - I actually thought they were looking for two separate people because sometimes they said the name Frank, and sometimes Douglas. Turns out the guy in the capsule was Frank Douglas. The two cops/military guys are joined by Frank’s wife and another couple who just happen to be scientists.

Anyway, the helicopter pilot is shriveled up like a prune - their words, not mine, he didn’t look that bad to me - and there’s also a few burn spots on the ground, which are dismissed as kids playing a prank. Deciding there’s nothing more they can do at the crash site they go to the lab.

There they determine that the chopper pilot was literally cooked to death and that Frank couldn’t have survived, even though the chute on his capsule opened, because there’s no trace of him. And he’d be pretty radioactive because there’s an excessive amount of radiation in and around the capsule. Please note that the capsule was left where it landed and no precautions were taken to keep the public out of danger.

So then a bunch of military guys, presumably from the lab, arrive at the airport to meet a big air force jet with Dr. Chris Manning on board. Despite the fact he’s a civilian, they decided the case was important enough to send for him. They go to the lab to examine the pilot’s body.

Suddenly we cut to a random scene of some kids dancing - beehive hairdos, pencil skirts, boys in cardigans. I assume this is the “go-go” part of the movie. One of the guys gets mad that his girlfriend is having a little too much fun and pulls her off the dance floor. She must like being pushed around ‘cause she doesn’t protest and they drive off together. They don’t go too far before he’s pulling over so they can start necking.

He gets a little too touchy feely and she gets out of the car. Someone (we can’t really see who) goes up to the driver’s side window and she turns and screams. The three military guys appear out of nowhere and find the body of the boyfriend. Then they hear some moaning and find the girl. They take her to the lab.

Now we get some weird ass, nonsensical music as Dr. Logan goes back to the landing area. The narrator keeps giving away the action before it happens. So ... Dr. Logan’s looking around and finds a burnt stick, and then turns on this thing that looks like one of those guns the police use to clock speeders. He hears a noise like radar blips and a Lurch-like creature comes up behind him and strangles him.

The others get word there’s been another strange incident and toddle off to have a look see. First they find the speed gun, then they find Dr. Logan who looks worse than the other bodies they’ve found thus far. They look around, trying to figure out why he was out there.

A new doctor is flown in and once he’s in the lab he asks to be brought up to date. Dr. Kramer, the token woman in the lab, says that there was no blood in the body, it had turned to powder. It’s determined that Frank Douglas must have died in space and his place in the capsule taken by a 400 pound, ten foot tall, radio-active creature.

Dr. Kramer shows the new guy Dr. Logan’s notes. Apparently, Logan had been injecting himself with something that was supposed to keep him from being affected by radiation - obviously it didn’t work. Then we learn this was something the lab was working on.

There’s another scientist in the lab - didn’t catch his name and was unable to find a cast listing to check - after Dr. Kramer leaves he goes to drug up the creature they were talking about. Excuse me? Did I miss something? When did they catch this creature? I thought they just figured out it existed. Anyway, he’s late with the drug and goes back to the lab to find it trashed.

Now we’re at a park where girls in bikinis are sun bathing. The Lurch-monster comes out of the bushes and heads towards them. They see him and run away screaming. The military guys get a call that the monster’s been spotted. The science guys and the military guys have an argument and decide that the monster is actually Frank Douglas, changed by the radiation he was exposed to. They must catch him!

Lots of random shots of them searching. The military guys are getting something on their equipment - lots of flashing lights, more vehicles arrive. The scientist guys put on clunky suits - they think they have him trapped in the sewers. They blow a whistle like a train whistle - not sure why - and then they blow anti-radiation gas into the sewer. They check out the sewer and the monster is gone.

But wait! Everything is okay! They receive a telegram that Frank was found 8000 miles away in a lifeboat. He’s alive and well and normal size (their words, not mine). The monster was not mentioned again.

At this point the movie just kind of stopped, and hubby made the flippant comment that it was another movie where they ran out of money and just stopped filming. The most entertaining part for him was the fact that when I looked up the movie on the internet, that’s exactly what happened. At least according to Wikipedia:

Director Rebane ran out of money while making the film. Herschell Gordon Lewis, who needed a second film to show with his own feature, Moonshine Mountain, bought the film, added a few extra scenes and some dialogue, and then released it, creating an odd, disjointed film with little continuity. Rebane had abandoned the film in 1961; Lewis did not finish the film until 1965 and so was unable to gather all of the original cast, resulting in almost half the characters disappearing midway through the film to be replaced by other characters who fill most of the same roles.

Of all the movies we’ve seen so far, this is the worst. And not worst in a good way.

Phantom From Space

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

This black and white movie was made in 1953, with a budget so low I couldn’t find any information about it. It was directed by W. Lee Wilder, who is also responsible for such gems as Killers From Space, Manfish, and Man Without a Body.

It’s never a good sign when a narrator has to set the action up right from the beginning. He tells us that an unidentified flying object has been spotted over Alaska and for good measure we get the stats on its trajectory, speed, height, etc. The air force goes on alert and interceptors become air-born to the tune of a high pitched warning hum. The narrator goes through several such warnings, each accompanied by the vital statistics. With each successive colour coded warning, the annoying hum gets louder and rises in pitch.

The UFO disappears over Santa Monica and I guess it must not have been that big a threat because the red warning and hum also vanish. It’s up to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to try and figure out what’s causing the massive communications interference. No one seems to connect it to the UFO. Mobile One and Mobile Seven are dispatched to find the source of the problem. They’re driving cars with old-style television antennas on top.

Mobile One, with FCC agent Hazen, is cruising around when a woman comes running down the road and flags them down. She says that her husband and their friend Pete were attacked by a strange man who was wearing a suit like a diver. When Hazen can’t get his radio to work, he goes to try and help. Her husband has been killed, but their friend is just hurt. Because it’s now a murder, they all traipse down to the police station for questioning.

Police Lieutenant Bowers thinks they’re making the story up to cover up their plot to kill the woman’s husband, especially when Pete insists there was no head in the diving suit helmet. Just then, Bowers receives a phone call telling him there’s been another murder, and a fire, near the Huntington Oil Fields (same area). The night watchman also confirms the presence of a guy in the diving suit.

Meanwhile, Mobile One and Mobile Seven meet up at the oil field (that’s still burning) and after talking it over, figure the media interruption is being caused by a saboteur wandering around carrying something. Back at the station, someone draws a very cartoonish looking figure in a deep sea diving suit and the witnesses confirm that this is what the man looked like, and that there was no head in the space suit.

The FCC guys contact Washington and agree to keep the press out of it until they find this guy. They’re told to contact Air Force Major Andrews and Doctor Wyatt at the Griffith Institute and Observatory. Bowers, Hazen, Andrews, and Wyatt toss around ideas of what’s really going on and Andrews admits to the UFO sighting earlier. What a coincidence! That just happens to be when the interference started.

The FCC redoubles their efforts to find the signal and close in on the oil field again. It’s too bad they don’t think of looking up - the spaceman is up on the roof watching them. While the mobile units are setting up some equipment and wandering around with Geiger counters, the spaceman is bopping around like the Samurai Chef from Saturday Night Live.

Finally, they trap him in a shed, but the cunning spaceman takes off his suit which renders him invisible. So the good guys find the suit and surmise that he took it off to avoid detection. Gee, ya think? They wave a Geiger counter over it and the thing goes crazy, so they use tongs (and bare hands) to put this incredibly radioactive suit into a lead lined box. Never mind the fact that if it was that radioactive they’d all be dead by now. Or at least have one foot in the grave.

They put the box in the back of the car and the invisible spaceman sneaks into the back seat to hitch a ride with them to the Griffith Observatory. Here we’re introduced to the token female of the movie, Barbara, who works with Dr. Wyatt. They run a whole bunch of tests on the suit, trying to cut it up, burn it, drip acid on it - but nothing seems to damage it. They’re very puzzled.

Barbara tests the gas in the helmet’s tank and discovers - da da da! It’s mostly unknown with some methane thrown in. They realize the spaceman’s probably not going to last long without his breathing apparatus. They get a call that there’s an insistent reporter wanting to talk to them, so the men all leave and Barbara stays to run more tests. You can see what’s about to happen, right?

The door to the lab opens and closes, Barbara conveniently spills some power on the floor and a footprint appears. Then the key turns in the lock and starts to float around. Barbara’s husband Bill arrives to escort her home and she tells him she’s not alone. He runs to get Bowers, Hazen, Andrews, and Wyatt, and when they get back to the lab the door is open but there’s no sign of Barbara. We have no idea why the spaceman chose her over his suit, but we see her floating around (unconscious) the observatory - obviously the spaceman is carrying her. The other guys are busy running up and down hallways and Barbara comes to sitting in a chair in the lab.

We get a lot of blurry vision from Barbara’s point of view. She sees the door close and the lock turn, and when the spaceman puts his helmet on it freaks her out. He uses scissors to tap out a code on the table. Barbara starts writing down the code but then uses an ultraviolet light on him and sees his very human looking hand. They both kind of freak out. He escapes through a window.

Back in the lab the guys are having a lengthy discussions of the spaceman’s origins and how his cellular structure must somehow react with the natural gasses of the Earth to make him invisible. Meanwhile the suit is disintegrating and again, for something that’s supposed to be so incredibly radioactive, they don’t seem to have enough sense to stand back and not breath in the noxious fumes it releases.

Dr. Wyatt uses the UV light to show the remains of the suit. The helmet is still okay and they assume the spaceman carried his own atmosphere with him. Now they’re all sympathetic with him because he was probably shipwrecked and didn’t mean to kill those people and blew up the oil tank to try and make more gas to breathe. They figure he’ll be back for his helmet and really want to capture him - for his own good, of course.

They make sure the path is clear to his helmet and wait in the laboratory for him. Sure enough, he eventually appears - we see staggering footprints appear on the pavement. For a bunch of people who don’t want to scare him away, they sure are in a rush to “get ‘em!” Now we have a lot more running through the hallways of the observatory. Barbara goes back to the lab and there’s the floating helmet again. She stays calm and tries to communicate with him, and simultaneously uses the PA system to tell everyone where he is. They come in quietly and try to communicate with him, but no luck. Then a reporter snaps a picture and the flash freaks the spaceman out. He drops the helmet, breaking it, and then escapes again, this time smacking the reporter on his way out the door.

More chasing through the endless halls, and they finally corner him as he climbs to the scaffold surrounding the telescope. They just happen to have UV lights with them and spotlight him, showing him to be pasty white, hairless, and human in appearance. He’s trying to speak but there’s no sound - he’s suffocating. His glow is almost gone and he falls. His body evaporates just like the suit did and they watch with long faces. Dr. Wyatt opens the dome so they can see the stars. The end.

I can’t even really call this a bad movie, it was more like a meh movie. Hubby says: “It’s not the worst thing we’ve ever seen. I was a little disappointed it wasn’t so bad it was entertaining.”

Hard to be entertained when it was so boring.