Zeegrade Reviews

Zeegrade Reviews
Movies for scumbags.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Attack of the Beast Creatures (1985)


     At least Obelisk Motion Pictures showed some introspection and made this their one and only film.  I don't get the fascination with the word "obelisk" as that's also the name of the lifeboat that carries our survivors somewhere in the North Atlantic in 1920.  It doesn't help that the beginning credits are interspersed between the incessant bitching and moaning aboard the Obelisk.
  One credit caught my eye that caused me to wonder where their priorities lie...

FUCK YEAH!!!

 I'm not sure if the sun didn't work during filming or if they smeared tar over the camera but this is one of the darkest movies ever.  How do you fuck this up considering there isn't even a cloud in the sky?  Anyway, the S.S.Dildo washes ashore where they are immediately spied upon by the tiny inhabitants: the eponymous "beast creatures" which seems kinda redundant if you ask me.  After a dopey twat accidentally mistakes Mr. Bruin as being dead the rest of the passengers make an attempt to go inland to find water for the sick man.  Despite the fact that there are ten people on this boat the characters are so vanilla except the selfish old prick, Mr. Morgan, I can't really establish who I should be pulling for to survive.  Hey, fuckit!  Kill 'em all for all I care!  And I don't.  If ever there was a scene to describe the bulk of the film, it's this:


Are you riveted?  They should have named this Island of Perpetual Hiking instead.  How fucking hard is it to establish that they are making their way inland?  Probably a few seconds, no?  And what's up with that fucking music?  Watch in amazement as our heroes walk slowly through a Connecticut forest preserve!  Thrill as they troll public restrooms looking for homosexual sex!  See Mr. Morgan get sodomized with a tree branch!  This reminds me of another movie I absolutely loathed called Slashed Dreams that substituted hiking as filler throughout the film.  I addressed it long ago on a video here.  After what seems like centuries one of the cardboard cutout actors discovers a little stream.  When he sticks his face in to take a drink it's immediately burned off:

Finally, no more hiking!  Sweet death embrace me!

Looks like a possible case of Wisconsin well water.  One down, I have no fucking clue how many left.  The remaining survivors don't seem too heartbroken over the death but ironically a fight breaks out over who should pick berries.  Go figure.  They do love their berries in this one:

Attack of the Berry Pickers

I've seen concrete monuments move faster than this.  After about twenty five minutes I figured out that John Trieste seems to have become the standout leader of this group (not hard considering the trees have more life than these characters) and if there is a said attack of any creatures it needs to kick itself in the collective ass and happen soon. 
     John and Case return to the boat to check on the dying Mr. Bruin when Case instead discovers a bloody skeleton.  How they determine that this is, in fact, Mr. Bruin is not known.  Maybe John has x-ray vision.  The pair decide to keep this grisly discovery to themselves, grab the supplies from the boat and return to the others.  John must have short term memory because he tells Phil later that evening about Mr. Bruin's corpse eaten clean to the bones.  
     A staggering thirty-two minutes pass before I finally catch a glimpse of the supposed attack.  One of the ladies on watch awakens Case when she sees these peering out from the woods:

The inside of a theater showing a Tyler Perry movie. 

Suddenly the sleeping castaways are being attacked by the tiny terrors as they seemingly drop from the sky.  They really seem more a nuisance than an act of terror as it appears most of the survivors can easily pull the ankle-biters off their bodies and throw them.  After suffering some bites and bruises, John tells them they should get supplies together and get off the island.  Which brings me to my observation concerning these so-called "beast creatures".
     When someone uses the word "beast" I automatically think something large and formidable like Godzilla or Chris Christie in a buffet line.  An action figured sized nibbler is a lot less than a beast:

Help!  This squirrel is raping me!!!

The rest of the film's forty minutes follows the same formula.  Hike a little.  Get attacked.  Hike again.  Get attacked.  They even throw in another acid bath.  Director Michael Stanley's storytelling is like a drunk guy farting into a campfire.  He definitely has a grasp of the tedium of island exploration though.  In the end, John and Cathy are rescued off the island by two sailors passing by in a row boat when one of the men asks what where those things.  The movie ends with John and Cathy staring down and saying nothing.  Yeah, that about sums it up. 



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