The Screengrab : devil fish

Unwatchable Recap: 91-100

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Welcome to the Unwatchable Halftime Report! Yes, we’ve made it halfway through our journey up the IMDb Bottom 100 list and it’s time to look back at all the good times we’ve had so far. It all began on April 3, 2008, when I reported here on an article from The Guardian by Sam Richards, who subjected himself to a handful of titles from the list he says “exists to catalogue films that have been viewed out of error, obligation or last-turkey-in-the-shop desperation.”

As I said upon launching the Unwatchable project on April 28 of last year, “Any moron can sit through a few of these godawful pictures; it takes a special kind of idiot to watch all 100 of them. And I’m here to tell you, loyal Screengrab readers, I am that idiot. For your entertainment and my own detriment, I am going to watch and review them all, starting with #100 and working my way to the top. Of course, the IMDb list is constantly changing based on the whims of the voting public, but I will be sticking with the Bottom 100 I downloaded on the day I decided to tackle this most awe-inspiring task.”

And it’s true, I am still working from that very list. All this week I’ll be offering you the chance to catch up with Unwatchables you may have missed. I’ve already blocked many of these from my memory, so it should be quite a treat for me, too. Let’s begin with Unwatchables # 91-100!

100. Devil Fish. “A bony dolphin trainer, a beer-swilling scientist and the local sheriff join forces to battle a waterlogged monster that doesn’t actually appear to be much of a shark at all, given that it has tentacles. In a classic case of the cure being worse than the disease, the solution they arrive at is to douse the Everglades with gasoline and set it ablaze with flamethrowers.”

99. The Honeymooners. “Drained of all that hilarious domestic violence humor that might prove upsetting to a modern audience (Ralph’s “To the moon, Alice!” is transformed into a lovey-dovey sweet nothing), The Honeymooners is a decidedly mediocre but good-natured family comedy that has no business being on the Bottom 100 list. Ralph says it best: ‘You just a regular UPN sitcom, huh, Alice?’”

98. Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor. “Of course, this story is only the most threadbare clothesline possible on which to hang as many sessions of roundhouse kicking, neck-snapping and nut-crunching as possible. If you put 100 monkeys in a room with 100 typewriters and asked them all to write a kickboxing movie, 99 of them would come up with this one. But let’s be honest – anyone who watches Kickboxer 4 on purpose is expecting and hoping for only one thing: lots of people getting kicked in the face.”

97. Bolero. “Among its IMDb keywords are ‘Female Nudity,’ ‘Female Frontal Nudity,’ ‘Female Full Frontal Nudity’ and ‘Box Office Flop.’ All of this is accurate.”

96. Track of the Moon Beast. “You might think there’s an unlimited amount of humor to be derived from the story of a man who gets a shard of meteorite imbedded in his skull which causes him to turn into a giant lizard. But you would be wrong.”

95. Marci X. “With its flat television lighting, wokka-wokka music and cast of sitcom actors pitching their performances to the back row of the studio audience, Marci X is a migraine from beginning to end. It’s no wonder Chris Rock rejected it, telling Entertainment Weekly ‘It's the worst script I've ever gotten... I'd have been happier getting an envelope full of anthrax.’ And I’ve seen some of the movies Chris Rock has actually agreed to do, so you know that’s really saying something.”

94. Invasion of the Neptune Men. “The Neptunians – Neptunites? Neptunesians? – emerge from the craft in silvery suits, with slot machines on their heads, and naturally their first impulse is to strangle the small children.”

93. Howling III: The Marsupials. “There’s a bus full of werewolf nuns, a ballet dancer who turns werewolf in mid-performance, a were-skeleton that comes back to life, a leather-boy version of Alfred Hitchcock, a soundtrack full of synthpop power ballads that sound like Beverly Hills Cop rejects, and there’s even Dame Edna, years before her U.S. stardom.”

92. I Accuse My Parents. “This schmuck can’t amuse himself for an hour or so after school, particularly when the hot-to-trot neighbor lady is always dropping by for a drink? It’s about now that we begin to speculate Jimmy may be a little ‘slow.’”

91. Horrors of Spider Island. “Saved from unwatchability by a groovy bikini dance interlude and the exciting conclusion wherein the girls, armed with torches, chase the spider-man into a pit of quicksand. I’ve said it before, but I'll say it again - you just don’t hear much about quicksand anymore.”

Unwatchable #64: “Angels’ Brigade”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen our friends from Mystery Science Theater 3000. Longtime readers of Unwatchable will recall that our trek through the lower reaches of the IMDb Bottom 100 list was littered with MST3K fodder, including obscurities (like Devil Fish and Track of the Moonbeast) that would never have found their way onto the list without an assist from the ‘bots. It’s time to add another entry to that list: the 1979 drive-in drivel Angels’ Brigade (also known as Angels Revenge). As a reminder, my policy in these cases is to find a pristine, unsnarked-upon copy of the movie in question whenever possible. In this case it was not possible, but rest assured I have not consciously stolen any hilarious observations.

Angels’ Brigade was truly a pivotal film in the distinguished career of director Greydon Clark. Before making this quintessential ’70s jiggle-fest, his career had languished in the exploitation ghetto of Black Shampoo, Satan’s Cheerleaders and Hi-Riders. Afterwards, he rocketed to the A-list heights of 1983’s Joysticks (starring Joe Don Baker), 1983’s Wacko (starring Joe Don Baker and George Kennedy), and 1985’s Final Justice (starring Joe Don Baker and Bill “squeal like a pig” McKinney), before reaching the pinnacle of The Forbidden Dance (sadly Joe Don Baker-free). Can we legitimately credit Angels’ Brigade with this change of fortune? I say we can.

The movie begins in mid-action sequence, with seven boobsy women in tight-fitting white jumpsuits engaged in some sort of terrorist activity. This goes on for nearly fifteen minutes before the opening credits roll and inform us that the stars of the movie we’re watching are Peter Lawford, Alan Hale, Pat Buttram, Jim Backus, and Jack Palance. This comes as quite as surprise, but sure enough, all of those luminaries eventually show up in Angels’ Brigade, as does Arthur Godfrey. I have to believe some sort of tax shelter or money laundering scheme was in play.

Eventually flashbacks reveal in painstaking and painful detail the process through which lounge singer Michelle Wilson assembles a Fox Force Five-esque team of foxy ladies to take on a drug cartel she blames for her brother’s woes. Reasonable people can disagree as to the film’s moment of greatness. Some would single out the beach scene in which the gals strip down to their bikinis and seduce a couple of yahoos responsible for bringing a drug shipment ashore, or perhaps the slow-moving rooftop chase in which Palance barely breaks a sweat in his leisure suit. I would point to the white supremacist group led by Jim Backus in a Sgt. Pepper outfit. (No one actually says they’re white supremacists, but I could tell by all the little Hitler mustaches.)

If you somehow manage to get an hour into Angels’ Brigade without realizing it’s a Charlie’s Angels knockoff, the score actually rips off the Charlie’s Angels theme during the climactic action sequence. The ending appears to promise a sequel, but fortunately, promises were made to be broken.

Previously on Unwatchable:
65. Meet the Browns
66. Jail Bait
67. Nine Lives
68. Kazaam
69. The Perfect Holiday (pending)

Unwatchable #96: “Track of the Moon Beast”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

As was the case with Devil Fish, this low-budget 1976 tale of reptilian horror has made its way onto the Bottom 100 list courtesy of its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I suspected this would become a recurring problem, and that appears to be the case. (I’m not 100% certain only because I’m not peeking too far ahead on the master list. You see, I view the Unwatchable series as a major league baseball team views its season. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You’ve got to take it one game at a time, lest ye be overwhelmed by the insurmountable odds of achieving your goal. In this case, my odds are roughly equivalent to those of the Washington Nationals.)

I find the MST3K situation problematic for several reasons. In a strange way, the presence of movies that have been eviscerated on that show taints the purity of the Bottom 100 list. If you voted for Devil Fish or Track of the Moon Beast because you happened to see them at the drive-in or on late night television, fine. But I’m betting most people who voted for them did so because the MST3K crew pre-approved them as bad movies. Who among us can say we have seen Track of the Moon Beast as it was meant to be seen, without robots cracking wise in the foreground? Not me. But in the future, I will do my best to obtain and view non-MST3K versions of the movies on the list. That is my Unwatchable vow.

The second problem is, of course, that all the jokes to be made about Track of the Moon Beast have already been made. You might think there’s an unlimited amount of humor to be derived from the story of a man who gets a shard of meteorite imbedded in his skull which causes him to turn into a giant lizard. But you would be wrong. And the MST3K gang likewise drained every possible laugh from the name of the victim’s faithful Indian companion, Johnny Longbow. And what can I possibly add that would bring any additional mirth to the line uttered by the hotpants-clad love interest of the were-lizard: “Come on, Johnny Longbow – I’d like to see you live up to your name.” Not a thing, I confess.

One interesting thing – OK, the only interesting thing – about Track of the Moon Beast is that is was co-written by Bill Finger, the writer of many early Batman comics. It’s the one and only directorial effort by Richard Ashe, who takes a very small budget and does very little with it. The one eye-catching image in the movie comes in the first two minutes, when a big creepy, shiny mask appears before our hero in the desert. (It turns out to be a prank played by two of Professor Longbow’s mischievous students.) The only genuinely scary scene is the sudden, unexplained appearance of a country-rock singer in the mold of Keith Carradine from Nashville. There are low-budget horror movies that use their lack of resources to their advantage in creating a dank, grubby mood of despair, and then there are those with crappy rubber lizard suits. This is one of the latter.

Previously on Unwatchable:

97. Bolero
98. Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor
99. The Honeymooners
100. Devil Fish

Unwatchable #100: “Devil Fish”

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:00:00 GMT

A few weeks ago, you may recall, Sam Richards of The Guardian subjected himself to a handful of entries on the IMDb’s Bottom 100 list – the absolute worst of the worst-ranked movies of all time. At first I thought he was crazy. Then I realized he hadn’t gone nearly far enough. Any moron can sit through a few of these godawful pictures; it takes a special kind of idiot to watch all 100 of them. And I’m here to tell you, loyal Screengrab readers, I am that idiot.

For your entertainment and my own detriment, I am going to watch and review them all, starting with #100 and working my way to the top. Of course, the IMDb list is constantly changing based on the whims of the voting public, but I will be sticking with the Bottom 100 I downloaded on the day I decided to tackle this most awe-inspiring task. And on whatever day that was, the #100 ranked movie was Shark: Rosso nell'oceano, or as you may know it: Devil Fish.

There’s a reason you might know it: in what I fear may become a recurring problem with this project, Devil Fish is on the list because it was skewered by those pranksters at Mystery Science Theater 3000. This makes its inclusion somewhat illegitimate to my way of thinking, since nobody would have heard of it otherwise and it would have had no chance of making the Bottom 100. And I know this won’t make me any friends amongst the bad movie cognoscenti, but I’ve never really been a fan of MST3K; heck, I don’t even like the abbreviation MST3K. If I want to be trapped in a room with a bunch of dorks making lame jokes about a movie I’m trying to watch, it’s easy enough to accomplish that goal. I don’t need them actually pasted there in front of the movie I’m trying to watch, with no way of drowning out their commentary, but in this case, I had no choice. I did my best to pretend they weren’t there and come to the film with only the purest intentions, but it wasn’t easy.

Directed by Lamberto “son of Mario” Bava, Devil Fish (or Monster Shark or Red Ocean or even Devouring Waves) is a belated Jaws knockoff from 1986 set in the Florida Everglades. A bony dolphin trainer, a beer-swilling scientist and the local sheriff join forces to battle a waterlogged monster that doesn’t actually appear to be much of a shark at all, given that it has tentacles. In a classic case of the cure being worse than the disease, the solution they arrive at is to douse the Everglades with gasoline and set it ablaze with flamethrowers. I guess this qualifies as eco-horror, though perhaps not in the way Bava intended.

With its wooden performances, cheesy effects and slack approach to editing, Devil Fish is certainly ripe for mockery, but I don’t know that it’s any worse than a hundred other low-budget monster movies that could easily have taken its place on the list. Which brings me to my “Unwatchable” rating system, inspired by my loyal co-watcher, Maury the Wonder Chibeagle. On a scale of one to four Maurys – one being a movie that actually has redeeming qualities, four being an atrocity against mankind – I hereby award Devil Fish two Maurys: