KRAKEN: TENTACLES OF THE DEEP
You ever notice how the less famous siblings of actors or celebrities tend to look like slightly faulty clones or even like a version of the star but with acromegaly? Your Stephen Baldwins and such. Think of the big, lumpy Kardashian sister. You know, the sasquatch one. Well anyway, the usually dependable auteur of the Sci Fi (now SyFY) channel, Tibor (MANSQUITO) Takacs, brings us this squid story starring Charlie "My brother somehow married Rebecca Romijn" O'Connell and Victoria Pratt (CLEOPATRA 2525).
Ray (O'connell) sees his parents killed by a squid as a youngster so he grows up and is all about giant squids. Nicole (Pratt) is a sexy archeologist who takes her two college interns out treasure hunting. Jack Scalia plays the bad guy, some kind of Greek mobster who needs to find a legendary opal in order to be cool again. You guys remember "Tequila and Bonetti"? He played Bonetti. So Nicole finds the opal but it is guarded by a giant squid. She seems to believe the squid is the basis for the Greek legend of Scylla, so you'd best bust out your Edith Hamilton. But Bwana, aren't Krakens Scandanavian? Yeah, I think so. But SCYLLA: TENTACLES OF THE DEEP just doesn't pop like KRAKEN. There's treachery and Euro-henchmen thuggery while the squid plucks off cast members here and there. As you can imagine, the squid is cgi. It's okay cgi for a low budget production. It's a fairly realistic squid, not too huge or monstrous, maybe a bit boring. All in all, I consider this lesser Takacs as it's really not crazy enough like the awesome MANSQUITO. They really need to start shooting these water monster flicks somewhere besides Canada or eastern Europe. Part of the appeal is all the eye candy, so sprinkle some chicks in bikinis all over these motherfuckers - like pepperoni on a pizza. There's your cheap special effects right there.
RAZORTOOTH
Back to the low budget waters for a cheapie monster eel movie, RAZORTOOTH. I watched this a few weeks ago and it's already blurry but here it goes. A scientist created a monster Asian eel that escaped into the swamp. RAZORTOOTH is set in the fake South so there are lots of fat guys in overalls, but sadly there's not an Yvette Vickers lookalike anywhere. It starts with a Corman-esque feel as some convicts escape into the swamp with the cops right behind them. I kept thinking "I wish Touch Conners was in this." The cops get eaten by the cgi eel in a fairly gruesome fashion. Instead of following the convicts, the story turns and we meet our hero named something I don't remember. He's a game warden though. There's some sort of scout canoe trip that's in jeopardy and various hicks get eaten quite frequently. Comic relief comes from the hicks and a pair of bumbling college interns. The scientist behind it all is vaguely British for some reason. Most of the eel attacks are ridiculous, like the eel coming up through a shower drain. And there are so many they just run together. I just wish on these smaller creature features they would try to make do with a rubber monster for a change. This one is not a SciFi Channel original and features no slumming stars trying to pay bills. So no Bruce Boxleitner. Not even his brother Larry Boxleitner. In the world of direct to video creature features, RAZORTOOTH is about average. It's fairly broad and cartoony but seems to be a sincere effort. The eel effects are what you've come to expect and there's a lot of fake blood tossed about. The forecast called for nudity but it never comes - and RAZORTOOTH could have definitely used some swamp tramps. There's a guy in it that looks a lot like Frank Conniff, only not as handsome. I should mention the eel has diabetes. Not sure why.
