Under a Gibbous Moon

Made by Asylum Studios for the idiotically renamed SyFy (seriously, where they trying to pull a Prince or something?), Megapiranha promises and hour and a half of mind meltingly sublime cinema.

Asylum Studios is probably my favorite peddler of schlock movies. They understand that they are not making A list movies and don’t bother trying to pretend they are. This gives their movies a tongue in cheek feel to them that makes them as fun as they are stupid.

The very premise of the movie is hilarious. Apparently some scientists, in an attempt to end world hunger, decide to genetically engineer fish to grow extraordinarily large. Of course, tuna or bass are much too mundane so they decided to use a “particularly bloodthirsty” strain of piranha. Seriously.

The story opens up with two lovers swimming in a secluded area of the Orinoco river. If you squint and cross your eyes like you are looking at one of those magic eye pictures you can almost see the opening scene from Jaws.

After that, the fish swim downstream and eat the American ambassador to Venezuela who is out drinking and whoring on a river boat with his counterpart. Of course, this is labeled as terrorism and our hero is flown in (an actor who was hired solely on his ability to grimace).

As the film progresses, the piranhas get progressively larger until they start eating naval vessels, submarines and the Florida Keys. After nuclear weapons fail to stop the giant fish, our hero (and some expendable comestibles)  decide to fight them underwater with 20 mm hand cannons. Surprising, this fails and the fish are only stopped by the last second stealing of another scene from Jaws.

A piece of humor for the sharp eyed viewer, there is not even a little bit of an attempt of continuity. See how many different cars various actors drive as they change frequently and usually while in motion.

On a final note, if you were wondering where they would have possible come up with an idea for this movie, here it is.

Compare to this

Movie adaptions of graphic novels seem to be all the rage these days. While I have never read the source for this movie, I have no particular doubt that it is far superior to this movie. Within the first ten minutes you’ll see Kate Beckinsale in her underwear. The movie goes downhill from there.

The premise of the movie is that it takes place in Antarctica just before the long winter sets in and cuts off the outpost from the rest of society. As everyone is getting ready to leave, there is a series a murders that must be solved before darkness sets in and the murder gets away with whatever he is trying to get away with (by the end, you won’t care either).

Within the first twenty minutes you know who is behind the murders. There is no ambiguity as each event that occurs only strengthens your conviction. This leaves you with an hour and twenty minutes to kill as our heroine catches up to where the audience is at. This lack of opacity or even a surprise twist makes the movie stumble around (literally) as the characters try to figure out the obvious. Even the red herrings are easily dismissed.

The movie is dull, the romance is forced, and people wandering around in a snowstorm gets old after forty-five minutes.

If you’re looking for a film that doesn’t portray Irishmen as dirty drunks then go watch… Well, I’m certain someone made a move that doesn’t. Other than that, this movie has vampires, zombies, aliens, and Ron Perlman. What could possibly go wrong?

I have to admit, I watched this movie expecting the other shoe to drop. It didn’t. This movie was both funny and scary in a way that reminds me of Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.

It’s the story of Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan), a grave robber who is about to be executed via the (anachronistic) guillotine. Father Ron Perlman comes to take his pre-execution confession and the story is told as a series of flashbacks.

Despite being a horror movie, it is largely character driven and Arthur Blake and his partner Willie Grimes are entertaining to watch.

They start out stealing corpses for a creepy old doctor. After receiving a tip about a fresh corpse buried near a crossroads, the duo discovers that the undead really do exist and not only that, but there are those who will pay handsomely for them.

Their new work leads them into conflict with an insanely colorful (being that they are colorful and insane) characters who are also in pursuit of the same “corpses”. This leads up to the climax and a pleasant double twist ending.

Overall, I was really impressed with this movie. Being ostensibly low budget,  it never resorted to the cheap thrills that plague many similar movies. Instead it focuses entertaining characters that you actually care if they get eaten, even if the monster is a bit cheesy looking.

By some amazing quirk of fate, I dusted off X-COM and started playing again about a week before it hit the news. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, Shamus Young describes it best, “X-Com was an overhead turn based game where you directed a team of extremely expendable commandos.” Of course, he was being generous. The Zerg die in fewer numbers than your commandos do.

I was first introduced to the game back in 1995 in the form of its sequel X-COM: Terror from the Deep. The two games are functionally identical as back then sequels were nothing more than the same game just with better graphics (wait a minute…). The game takes about 15 minutes to learn and then you can sit back and let the aggravation begin.

As mentioned above your commandos (or aquanauts) won’t stand up to anything more than a stiff breeze. Causality rates approaching 50% are not uncommon. Not only do you have to contend advanced alien weaponry but your newly hired “elite” troops are weak, whiny, and can’t shoot straight. That and they get paid something like forty grand a month.

In order to keep them (and your other staff paid) it is your job to keep the countries of the world happy with you. If you don’t they will reduce or eliminate your funding (because that will make it better). Because of this, just like in the real world, you spend you time and energy focusing on protecting the rich countries.

Researching new technologies scavenged from the fighting aliens is a huge part of the game. Without access to better weapons and armor your soldiers will go from being slaughtered to massacred as the game progresses.  In order to research some technologies, though, you don’t just need the weapon or an alien corpse but you need live aliens to talk to. Of a certain rank. And all ranks look alike. There’s nothing like sacrificing the lives of your men to bring one back alive to find out it doesn’t know anything.

So now your saying, “That doesn’t sound like fun, that sounds like the video game equivalent of Sisyphus.” Well, kudos to you for making that reference but it is actually a hell of a lot of fun. Actually, it’s more like an addiction. Despite the pain (hair pulling frustration), you just want to play more.

I find this to be because of the games frustration and difficulty. As you move through the game, you have to fight for every inch of it. Every mission is difficult enough that it still feels like an accomplishment even after the hundredth time.

If you’re still brave enough to give it a try, I hear there is a version available under Valve’s Steam or if you can track down and old copy it runs great in DOSbox.

A couple of weeks ago, I read about YouDunnit on Boing Boing. I went to the web site, downloaded it, and then promptly forgot about it. More recently, I found it when taking a look through my download folder. I fired it up (plays like a charm under Wine). It is a truly fascinating game.

The graphics are nothing to write home about, somewhere around Final Fantasy I level, but sepia toned. The game play is what really makes this game interesting. It is about a murder mystery, well not a mystery because you did it.

It also starts at the end of the story, when the detective has gathered everyone in the drawing room to revel the murderer. Your job, is to make sure that he doesn’t finger you.

The game is played in a series of levels that go progressively farther back in time. At each point you have to commit actions that implicate one of the other suspects. What makes this difficult is that while you do this, you have to interact with other people and things and, in order to preserve causality (your lie), you must remember what you did in the future so you can take the appropriate steps in the past.

This makes the game rather challenging (I still haven’t gotten all the way through it) and if you get caught in a lie, it’s time to start over from the beginning. Keeping a piece of paper handy to remember what you’ve done and to whom is defiantly a help here. The game can be very frustrating as it does a poor job of explaining what it is you’re supposed be doing it and how the game mechanics actually work but it doesn’t take very long to get the hang of it.

For the price of free, this game is a great find. It doesn’t rely on graphics but instead upon a unique game play style to hook you in.