Primal Rage (1988)

I did it again. I started poking around the streaming services that I subscribe to looking for something different to watch. I found Primal Rage on Shudder and thought I’d give it a chance. I mean it is one of those Italian made but shot in America late eighties horror flicks so what could go wrong? Plus, Umberto Lenzi co-wrote the script. So really what could go wrong… no I’m asking for real. Here we go.

The movie opens with some odd upbeat music as the camera follows students at a university getting about their daily activities. We are then introduced to a young lady, Lauren, who is about to have her sweet Lebaron convertible towed. Luckily for her the local student journalist, Sam, shows up and saves the day by quoting the laws of Florida to the tow driver. These will be our main characters for the rest of the movie in case that wasn’t clear. They end up going on a double date with Duffy, Sam’s friend and fellow reporter, and Lauren’s roommate, Debbie.

Here is when things get interesting. Our journalists were investigating “monkey abuser” Dr. Etheridge, played by Bo Svenson. Duffy was bitten by a baboon that he let escape and now has some sort of brain rage virus. He gets violent and nips Debbie, who also gets the rage virus. Well things get out of hand from that point forward as more folks get infected and it all ends up at the big annual Halloween party where everyone is in costume. Of course this takes place in October as all horror movies should.

This isn’t a great movie, but it also isn’t horrible either. The story is familiar and follows the typical outbreak plot. There are a few spots that seem a bit out of place when the movie teases some typical college hijinks (along with the oddly upbeat music I’ve already mentioned). Though it does get back to the horror quickly which is for the best. We get some fun puppet work with the baboon test subject that quickly goes squish on the window of a police car. There is a bit of a lull in the action as Duffy slowly descends to madness from his bite. But once he does things pick back up as it seems other infected turn homicidal much quicker. This all leads up to a finale that honestly was a bit lacking. I don’t feel like we get a proper payoff but that could be due to budgetary restraints.

The kills range from fun to meh. The fun stuff ranges from some neck ripping, scalping of a dude in an infant costume, as well as noggin’ violence from a pole, an axe, and awesomely enough bleachers! You give me a good bleacher kill and I’m down with your movie every time. Toss in the squishy baboon, a gnarly pulsating wound, and a final gag with a water sprinkler and I was satisfied. Though I was a bit annoyed by how many of the kills take place off screen. I feel like this could have been a much bloodier flick.  

Other than Bo Svenson the cast is nothing to write home about. Even he is playing the character very subdued. I would have much rather seen him play the mad scientist with some scene chewing glee not as a softspoken academic. Not sure if that is what they were going for or if he was just there collecting a paycheck. Regardless this was a missed opportunity.

Primal Rage has a weird charm that is unique to movies made by Italian filmmakers with American locations and cast. Think Cruel Jaws or Pieces, though be clear this isn’t anywhere near as fun but is in the same vein as the latter. If that sounds good to you then this one is probably worth a watch.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

REC (2007)

I keep saying that I’m not a fan of found footage but then turn around and review found footage movies that I end up liking. Now this one is a movie that I know I enjoyed when it first came out, but I hadn’t reviewed so I thought I’d give it a rewatch and talk about it here. Does the movie hold up? Do I still like it? Might as well find out.

The story has us following a reporter and her cameraman as they shadow a group of firefighters. The movie starts off with some interviews as they capture what an average night at the station is like. Then a call comes in and they rush off to an apartment building in the city. When they arrive they are greeted by police and the tenants. They were called because an elderly woman living on an upper floor was screaming and making an awful racket. They bust in and there is clearly something wrong with her. She attacks and critically injures one of the patrolmen. When they try to rush him out of the building for help they find all of the doors locked and guarded by armed me.

The rest of the movie are the ever shrinking group of survivors at first trying to find a way out around the quarantine and then trying to survive the infected. It seems that the old woman had some sort of virus that made her violent and anyone she bit also becomes violent. This passes from person to person until there are less uninfected folks than there are infected. That is what the authorities were trying to prevent. This is all explained and there is also a bit of a supernatural connection that I won’t spoil here. But this is basically an outbreak flick.

This is a decently paced movie that comes in at a rather tight seventy minutes. It wastes no time getting to the good stuff as our characters get the call after maybe seven or eight minutes of setup. Once they arrive at the building, we get some rather creepy stuff as they break into the apartment, get attacked, and then realize they can’t leave. It slows a bit while our reporter interviews folks which serves to introduce some of the other characters before picking up with another batch of violence that carries thru until the end. Even on a rewatch I found myself sucked in and never bored, which shows how well constructed and paced REC is. This is doubly impressive as this is a story that most genre fans, including myself, have seen repeatedly.

We get a few decent gags like a gnarly neck bite/wound, a shocking landing from height onto a tile floor, a snapped neck, and my personal favorite an up close injection into a face that while not gory did have me squirming in my seat. There are also plenty of spooky moments as well as a couple good jump scares. There is a sequence at the end in the attic which was super effective and creepy. And this movie has a memorable ending that was played in the trailer and became the poster child for horror during the first decade of this century with the woman being dragged away from the camera.

There is some of the shaky camera footage that I detest, but it is brief and relegated to the action sequences only. This means the audience gets to take a breath with the characters but also wait for the next horrible thing to occur. It works nicely and is an approach that I wish more movies like this would consider. I don’t need to spend an hour getting motion sickness and not being able to see what is happening. But I’m getting off topic. REC is a great example of a found footage movie done right and is worth a look. I need to go back and check out the sequels which I also remember liking. I also should mention that the US remake Quarantine was also a decent watch. Though I’d recommend this over that one.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Unhuman (2022)

Time to go digging into the offerings from Amazon Prime. I stumbled on this movie and thought I’d give it a chance. I’ve only recently discovered Marcus Dunstan’s Collector series and since he also directed and co-wrote this one with Patrick Melton (Piranha 3 DD) it had potential to be good. But was it?

The movie opens with our main character, Ever, getting ready to go on a field trip with her class. This group of kids are doing it for extra credit and involve the normal mix of outsiders and cool kids. Ever’s best friend Tamra is also going and picks her up in a sweet ass Gremlin. Not important to the story but I love those cars. They make it to the bus where their teacher/chaperone Mr. Lorenzo takes all their phones. So, no calling for help when things go sideways later on. They drive off down the road but along the way run into something and crash.

Right before the accident they hear a radio broadcast warning folks to shelter in place. There has been some sort of chemical or biological attack. There is something crawling around the outside of the bus and eventually it gets inside and attacks Mr. Lorenzo. This sends the students running off thru the emergency exit, though they don’t all make it off. Eventually Ever, Tamra, a couple oddballs named Steven and Randall as well as the bullies meet up and take shelter in what looks to be an abandoned apartment complex in the middle of nowhere. The infected, including the other kids from the bus, shamble up and lay siege to where they are hiding.

Okay now I need to enter spoiler territory. I can’t continue talking about Unhuman without giving some rather important things away. You can skip to the last paragraph of this review for my conclusion. I promise to keep that spoiler free. Now that the warning is out of the way let us continue.

What seems to be a straightforward infected/zombie type flick goes completely off the rails when it is revealed that it is all faked. The bus crash, news report, the elaborate setup of the “abandoned” apartment building was all part of the plan. Seems that the oddballs Steven and Randall are angry and want to switch things up on the bullies to teach them a lesson. They do this with the help of a couple adults in the bus driver who was bullied by the Mr. Lorenzo when the pair were in high school, and a drug dealer who likes to stir shit up. The latter is important because when they catch the students, they shoot them up with some drugs that make them super compliant which explains why they shuffle around chasing after the “survivors”.

Does it though? Unhuman strikes me as a movie that is trying so hard to be clever and in the end that is what kills it. The hoops you must jump thru to make any logical sense out of the plot are so enormous that after the reveal I couldn’t care less what I was watching and was just waiting for it to be over. I get it… this is a horror movie lighten up. Had this been an actual infected or zombie flick I would have been willing to suspend my disbelief. But they chose to reel that story back in and tried to set this in some sort of high school bullshit drama reality. As a viewer it isn’t my fault that I’m now expecting things to make some sort of sense.

There is no world where four people can have this planned out and think that everything will be okay after it happens. Folks get hurt, and while they may not feel it while shot up on the drugs (which is altogether a dumb narrative idea) they get hurt. Somehow they also have convinced themselves that no one will remember what happened. But not everyone is on drugs. Plus, the folks that they want to “learn” their lesson will have to remember or what is the point? And right from the start things get out of hand as the drug dealer attacks and kills Mr. Lorenzo. Why did they continue if this was an innocent bit of high school shenanigans? Oh, and I get it “they are just kids”. Well except for the two adults who will go to grown up prison, so yeah.

Then again, I’m thinking since Randall brought a bag full of weapons with him and beats the “zombified” bus driver to death with a piece of wood he maybe intended to kill them anyway. But then why didn’t any of his co-conspirators come free right then and there? I mean now there are two murders. How about a conversation to explain why this wasn’t a deal breaker? But then that would have required a well thought out and logical driven script which we simply don’t have here.

There isn’t much in the way of special effects work. No one really dies… well except for the bus driver… oh wait he is alive and tied up at the end of the movie, so I guess not. Well Mr. Lorenzo is dead as we have seen his dead body starring lifelessly for several scenes. Then he sits up and drops a one-liner as they get the bus fired back up and drive away. Was this supposed to be a comedy? It wasn’t funny so I certainly hope not. In conclusion no one dies, the entire movie is a fake out, and is a poorly executed one at that. I get that they wanted to do something different and give them credit for that. But you have to do a whole lot better than what we ended up with here.

If you want to see a decent angsty high school bullshit movie with actual stakes, then may I recommend the Christian Slater double feature of Heathers and Pump up the Volume. Ironically, they are far more realistic and have some funny black humor in them as well. Unhuman you can skip altogether as it is a mess of good intentions and poor execution.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

The Terror Experiment (2010)

I don’t often get really pissed off at a movie, but The Terror Experiment is one that pushed my buttons and seriously crosses over a line. I’ll explain that later in the review, but before I get to it let me talk a little bit about the plot.

We meet a man that is part of an organization that is trying to expose the bad things that the government does which includes developing chemical weapons to drop on enemy troops. The most reasonable way to make everyone aware of this secret is to bomb a Federal Building causing the release and infection of hundreds of innocent people. Tossed into this is Cale, the I.T. guy who is trapped above the deadly gas covering the lower floors of the building with some other survivors. He is worried about his ex-wife and daughter who are on the floors below his. Some predictable stuff happens, like a doctor who is up to no good and a punk that makes a break for it and gets himself killed. Oh, and there are some evil government guys that are trying to cover everything up.

Let me begin with the traditional review and the reasons that this isn’t a good movie. First up it is far too ambitious for the budget. This leads to the overuse of CGI to accomplish explosions, crashes, and a building imploding that looks terrible. They had a budget of five million dollars so there was some money to be spent, but not enough to pull off this story. They try the trick of having the news fill in the details to give the movie a bigger scale, but they didn’t spend any cash to make it look good. It appears as if they used the A/V equipment from a mid-eighties high school to shoot the stuff. It’s a total fail.

I wish that were the only problem. If they had a decent and coherent plot this movie could still have been okay. Sadly, it is like they read the playbook for every horror survival flick ever made and created a checklist of what they had to have. Like I’ve already mentioned you have the hero, Cale, trying to save his daughter. There is also the punk kid and the science guy up to shenanigans. We also get the “I didn’t like you but now I’m your love interest” generic female character and a cowardly fat guy that is… cowardly and fat. Seriously there isn’t a single unique or well thought out character in the entire movie.

It is clear that they spent a few bucks to get some known “B” list actors to appear. Judd Nelson, Robert Carradine, C. Thomas Howell, and Jason London have decent parts. All of them are wasted with a script that has nothing going for it. I keep saying in my reviews the one thing filmmakers have in their complete control is making sure they have a script and story that is engaging and worth watching. This is very disappointing because they had some money and blew it with this mess.

Clearly, we have a bad movie and if I’m being honest the adjective that I want to use is shitty. The Terror Experiment is awful, but I’ve seen a lot of movies like this. What makes me hate the movie is how it refers to real life tragedies to try and create a conspiracy. They make some pretty disturbing and callous references to both the Oklahoma City bombing as well as 9/11 in some attempt to prove how bad the government guys really are. I’m not going to repeat the dialogue or go into any detail because it is just too obnoxious to repeat. Guys if you want to make a crappy horror movie have at it. But if you do please keep your conspiracy theories to yourself and for the love of God don’t try to cash in on actual tragedies to sell your garbage film.

The Terror Experiment is a lousy movie that is also offensive and disgusting, but not in the good ways that we horror fans dig. Pass on this one…

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer