Piranha - 21st October 2010

Joe Dante's semi-Jaws rip off for Roger Corman's legendary low rent but high fun studio is not unlike the fish equivalent of Kingdom of the Spiders and for those who have read my review of that below I won't repeat the point too much but basically this is a film that when the fish turn up and start attacking people it frolics on at a mean old pace and is several large industrial drums worth of pure fun with great, obviously cheap but perfectly acceptable effects and solid set pieces. 

It suffers, like Kingdom of the Spiders, with a bit of a slow and, at times, silly build up but its ace up its sleeve is its sense of humour. Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Burbs, Innerspace) is a film maker with a knowledge of cinema past and a great, cheeky and sometimes black sense of humour. It is this willingness to go a bit ridiculous and have fun with the cliches of the monster picture genre that saves Piranha from becoming a) just another rip off and b) a bad B movie.

It is helped in this endeavour by the glorious over acting of its cast. From Invasion of the Body Snatcher's extraordinarily hammy Kevin McCarthy to comedy camp leader Paul Bartel but the extra special mention has to go to the outrageously bat shit crazy and almost demonic eye rolling performance of Barbara Steele who steals the show "ahem! pardon the pun" by being an actress who seems to use the "I'm acting in another movie, altogether more gothic and mysterious, all by myself" method of screen performing. It's like watching a local amateur dramatics player from your aunts tea-party production of the life and times of Edgar Allen Poe wander aimlessly onto the set of a fun little monster movie and far from destroying it, actually giving you something to guffaw over till your trousers burst. Sheer, unbridled genius. 
This comes as no surprise when you IMDB her back catalogue. Barbara Steele is the gothic scream queen to rival all others.


The film plays out much as you would suspect from the title and the poster and is filled with lots of highly gory and unnerving effects in a series of more and more gruesome set pieces. The finale, where the main character appears to hold his breath for over three minutes and continues to carry out his objective despite lacking oxygen and being nibbled to death by hungry fish defies all realms of logic but that's a small price to pay for a film where the whole thing is filmed nicely, edited well and a simply joyous viewing for all the right reasons.
The only other thing I'd like to mention about it is the wonderfully old fashioned stop motion animation creature in the science lab near the beginning of the movie is a fantastic touch, never repeated or explained in the film but obviously and desperately needs its own spinoff!


7.5 out of 10 fish finger sandwiches
Points from the Misses 7 out of 10 fish finger sandwiches

Kingdom of the Spiders - 17th October 2010

William Shatner stars in B Movie about rampant tarantulas taking over a small town with their increased, doubly powerful venom. That's about all you need to know about this wonderfully kitsch, 70s classic. If you don't like the sound of that then, firstly have yourself checked for the existence of a soul and if that doesn't work, avoid this fun film at all costs and leave it for the rest of us who crave little oddities like this.
When the Misses mentioned having grown up seeing this film before I couldn't believe I'd never heard of it, a horror/monster B Movie staring William Shatner as a cowboy womanising veterinarian? This was going to be right up my street, I hoped.
As any fan of B Movies knows, it is a tricky tightrope we walk between the ideas for these films sounding wondrous and the execution being about as entertaining or polished as a folding chairs display on the home shopping network from 1985. I did fear, during the first 10 minutes of Kingdom of the Spiders that despite the splendid presence of The Shatner that this was going to be a dud, that without the requisite childish nostalgia, this was going to be a turkey. That's because B Movies do scripting and character development just a slight notch above porn films and often you have to fidget and cough through 40 minutes of tedium whilst the second assistant director's cousin flashes her acting chops and sets wobble before finally you get a glimpse at a bad rubber beastie, with obviously fake gnashers trying to chase a puppy or something. 
Luckily, with Kingdom, this was not the case because despite a pretty poor opening with a lot of unnecessary waffling (we don't need to know what the local inn keeper charges for cabins!), clips of Shatner trying to flirt in cowboy duds and a dull, sandy Arizona back drop, once the tarantulas show up properly and really get going the film just throws more and more creepy crawlers at the screen until literally the screen is covered in spiders. Job, as they say, done.
The film makers boast that they had 5,000 real live orange kneed tarantulas for this film (at $10 a spider, apparently) and the cast must have had nerves of steel coated in lead and glazed in gold the way these hairy critters are dropped with gay abandon all over them, even Shatner gets a ton dumped on his head and back towards the end. Thank goodness CGI had not been invented then because the real thing, mixed with the odd animatronic model in the distance, or in stunt shots, is so much more effective. This film also contains a couple of real stand out moments like the scene where, in slight homage to The Birds, a swing set goes from being devoid of spiders to slowly covered in them, trapping a terrified little girl in the process, a scene in which the sheriff drives through a small town gone mental as people frothing, swelling and dying from toxic spider bites throw themselves at the car and out of shops like deranged zombies, a crop dusting plane crashing into a barn as the pilot is over run with spiders and so on and so on for scene after scene. For a low budget B picture, it has some marvelous, uncomplicated but wholly effective set pieces.
The film even managed to whip in an anti-pesticide/environmental message that was a decade ahead of its time! 


For once one of these films had obvious ambitions and achieved them without the thing looking too hokey. The real shame these days, with CGI getting cheaper and cheaper, is that independent low budget movies have turned to using ridiculously bad CG effects that look completely awful rather than having to find inventive, simple, old fashioned and effective techniques to achieve their objective. I think that's why Kingdom of the Spiders was so refreshing and fun for me because it seemed to achieve everything it set out to do, some of it very big and exciting and you never felt it was made out of the back of a caravan for a handful of crisps and a can of soda (which no doubt Shatner kept all to himself).


Yes the script was absolutely awful and no there weren't enough Shatner as a hero moments but as spider movies go I think I'll make it my top one. Stick with it and this movie has a lot to love about it. Just look at the poster, it's pure genius!


7 out of 10 sushi spider rolls
Points from The Misses 7 out of 10 sushi spider rolls