Still Biting After All These Years!

Piranha 3-D (Dimension Films, 2010)

Before the camera:

Elizabeth Shue (Adventures in Babysitting)
Ving Rhames (Casualties of War)
Jerry O'Connell (Stand by Me)
Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future)
Steven R. McQueen (grandson of Steve McQueen!)
Jessica Szohr (TV's Gossip Girl)
Adam Scott (Torque)
Dina Meyer (TV's Birds of Prey)
Kelly Brook (The Italian Job)
Riley Steele (adult entertainment aplenty)
and
Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws)

Behind the camera:

Directed by Alexandre Aja

Produced by Alexandre Aja, Mark Canton, Grégory Levasseur, Marc Toberoff and 13 other assorted associate and executive producers

Written by Peter Goldfinger & Josh Stolberg

 
 
    Although it sports the same title, this is less a remake of the 1978 drive-in classic produced by Roger Corman and directed by Joe Dante than it is a VERY rated R Syuh Fyuh (SyFy - but I write it phonetically) channel Saturday night premiere flick. But this one has the clear advantage of being in 3-D! We start to realize the tongue might be in the cheek in the opening moments as the old guy we see fishing in a small boat turns out to be Richard Dreyfuss in his Matt Hooper outfit from Jaws, singing “Show Me the Way to Go Home” (the song he and Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw sing out on the Orca in Spielberg’s classic) and drinking “Amity” brand beer. Moments later, seismic activity in the lake bed underneath results in our learning several lessons: Lesson #1: this movie is keeping things nice and simple. No long scenes of the local seismic monitoring station predicting quakes to come, no town officials being mad about impending quake activity, none of that. Richard Dreyfuss, Jaws jokes, quake, killer fish swimming up out of resulting crack in lake bed. Lesson #2: there is going to be a lot of CGI in this movie, and it’s going to range from pretty good to PlayStation 1 cut scene in quality; and Lesson #3: they could only afford Richard Dreyfuss for one day.

"What? Was Lorraine Gary too BUSY?"

    From there we get 3-D credits, and then settle in for a little plot as we meet our characters. Young Jake (McQueen) is the son of the town sheriff (Shue) and is on a very short leash, forced to miss out on the town’s annual spring break festivities again to babysit his younger brother and sister (who seemed cloned from the youngest duo on the Partridge Family). He has an almost dating thing going on with Kelly (Szohr) and gets 3-D sodas thrown on him by the town bullies. His luck changes when he meets the gorgeous Danni (Brook) then changes again when he meets her boss Derrick Jones (O'Connell), the hyperactive producer/director of the naughty "Wild Wild Girls" DVD series. With his hormones a'ragin' Jake makes plans to pay off the little ones to stay home and is hired to join the production crew on Jones' rented yacht ostensibly to show the producer the most visually sumptuous spots on the lake but really to see Danni and her co-star Crystal in bikinis and hopefully even less. In the meantime the sheriff and her trusted deputy (Rhames, wasted here, sad to say) find Dreyfuss's chewed up body and send it off for autopsy. The next day, we gear up all of our subplots: while she waits for the autopsy results, Shue also welcomes a scuba crew from that local seismic activity organization I mentioned who plan to dive down and take a look at what the quakes did to the lake's bottom; Jake heads out with Derrick and crew, but not before finding Kelly invited along by the ultra lecherous video producer; to better their fishing (and put more people in jeopardy in several different places) the Partridge Family twins leave the house, jump in a rowboat and paddle over to a small island nearby where they promptly lose the boat back out into the middle of the lake, stranding them; and the producers manage to get about a thousand extras into the town harbor for the Spring Break party. At about the same time, everyone figures out there are prehistoric piranha in the lake when people near them go into the water and red spew foams up. Eventually one is captured and taken to the local pet shop owner (Lloyd) who doubles as a prehistoric fish expert. (!) He warns Shue to get everyone out of the lake, but that's not going to be easy, starting with her kids. Who will survive, and what will be left of them?

After thirty seconds, anyone in the water was Eli Roth's date for the night.

This is a wonderfully silly horror flick done to a T, with gratuitous EVERYTHING, and that goes triple for the cameo by Hostel director Eli Roth. Among the highlights: a nude underwater ballet between Brook and Steele (after they'd been down for about four minutes without air my niece and movie watching bud Sandra leaned over and said they sure were holding their breath for a long time - I pointed out they were wearing their air tanks right up front); more ways to kill people with fish and boating equipment than you ever would have believed possible - good mix of Greg Nicotero & Howard Berger makeup effects and CGI gore here; hundreds of babes in bikinis, a couple of dozen babes out of bikinis; one cheeky piranha who swims into closeup and all but winks at the audience; and 3-D that was added later but obviously planned for early enough to get quite a bit of the usual stuff into your face, and some things I never expected to see floating before my eyes in a 3-D movie. Just when you think this movie has gone as far as it can go in terms of outrageousness, director Aja finds a way to take it a bit further. Rumor has it that Aja wanted Piranha director Dante and Piranha II: The Spawning director James Cameron (yes, that one!) to pop in for a shared cameo as boating safety instructors. As might be expected, Dante was up for it, but Cameron "couldn't fit it in his schedule." That's too bad, as it would have been a hoot. And, despite this flick being almost a complete departure from the original, there is one very welcome climactic nod to the 1978 gem involving McQueen, a boat, and a long (almost magically long) rope that ties them together. As for the acting, Shue, McQueen and Scott play it straight, which does give the later reels some decent suspense, but everyone else is showing up for a wink and a paycheck, which is just fine too. Kudos must also go to O'Connell, who pulls out all the stops in his depiction of Screen Weaseldom right through to his expected messy end. The biggest disappointment is that Rhames, who has a bravura last scene, is given almost nothing else to do. Why hire him if you're not going to let him throw off some wry lines like he does in the Mission: Impossible movies? Still, that's quibbling in a movie like this. It is a lot of fun, and you know going in what you're going to see, (or maybe you don't - all the more reason then) so by all means throw on the glasses and give this one a try!


Let's Get Out Of Here ?

Well, I hate to say it, but with all of the visual assault that is Piranha 3-D unspooling before my eyes, my ears let me down and did not catch The Line in my one viewing in the theater. But I would bet real money it's in there somewhere, and as soon as I confirm it, this section will be rewritten so I don't come off looking so bad...


Eye Candy ?

You tell me.

Kelly Brook (l) and Riley Steele (r)

Buddha Man's Capsule Review

Buddha Man says "It's got almost everything you could want in a movie called Piranha 3-D. Except Dick Miller."

Until next time, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!

Now You Don't See Him, Now You Still Don't!

Abbott and Costello Meet The Invisible Man  (Universal, 1951)

 

 

Before the camera:

Bud Abbott (worked with Lou Costello a lot)
Lou Costello (worked with Bud Abbott a lot)
Nancy Guild (Francis Covers the Big Town)
Arthur Franz (Invaders from Mars '53)
Adele Jergens (Beware of Blondie)
William Frawley (Fred Mertz himself!)
Sheldon Leonard (Another Thin Man - and our first digression - Sheldon Leonard is a pretty danged cool guy -  he went from playing gangsters in almost every acting role he got - from a movie in 1934 to an episode of Dream On in 1992 - the IMDB lists over a hundred acting credits - to being an incredibly successful television producer and director - some of his producing credits include The Danny Thomas Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gomer Pyle USMC and I Spy. I'm guessing he must have had a hand in the early days of currently prolific writer producer Chuck Lorre's career since the lead characters on The Big Bang Theory are named Sheldon and Leonard in his honor.)



Big Bang Shmig Bang, but I'd make time with that blonde they got!

Behind the camera:

Directed by Charles Lamont

Produced by Howard Christie

Written by Robert Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo, and John Grant (story by Hugh Wedlock Jr. and Howard Snyder)


    By the early 50's, Abbott and Costello had been making movies for ten years, but after spending several years in the mid-40's as the biggest stars in Universal Studios' stable of contract players their stars began to wane a bit. Their formula of a wisp of a plot stretched around several of their old vaudeville routines had gotten a bit stale. Then, in 1948, their stars rose again when they went high concept and starred in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein which pitted them against the titular monster as well as Count Dracula and the Wolfman. This film did boffo box office, so the studio looked for lightning to strike again by putting the boys up against more scary folk every second or third picture, like 1949's Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff. More big time box office ensued, and that led to this picture in 1951, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1953, and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy in 1955.
     The boys play their usual characters, here named Bud Alexander and Lou Francis, which happen to be the actors' middle names, which I guess kind of makes up for their later work when they stopped even coming up with character names and just called each other Abbott and Costello. The boys graduate detective school (thanks to Bud's bribe on Lou's behalf) and they immediately find a case when they get mixed up with Tommy Nelson (Franz), a prizefighter wanted for the murder of his manager. Tommy asserts his innocence, but A&C don't believe it. Tommy forces the duo to take him to his girlfriend's house, where they conveniently continue to hang around long enough for events to take a turn for the contrived when it just so happens that Tommy's girlfriend (Guild) has a scientist uncle who just happens to have been bequeathed The Invisible Man's formula by the Unseen One himself - and there's a framed photo of Claude Rains on the wall, making this a direct sequel to the first movie! Tommy wants to use the formula to turn invisible and seek out the real murderers but Uncle Philip nixes this, explaining about the formula's degenerative effect on its user's mental stability. But then the police, led by Frawley, show up, and while they are making their way inside, Tommy grabs a needle full of no see juice and plunges it into his arm. From there we get invisible slapstick aplenty, as the boys go undercover as a boxer (Lou) and his manager (Bud) and the Invisible Man goes naked to get the goods on gangster Morgan (Leonard) who really sent Tommy's manager to the Great Beyond. (Lesson #1: if you're a gangster guilty of murder, and you insist on talking about your crimes with your henchmen in auditoriums and such, pay attention to the next row of seats - if one often folds out like someone is sitting in it, listening in, assume someone is!) Morgan retaliates by sending his confederate Boots (Jergens) to spy on the boys.

   

Boy, are we glad this isn't Abbott and Costello Meet The Invisible Woman!

    It all comes down to a wild finale involving a boxing match between Lou and Tommy's archenemy, who doesn't realize there are two opponents in the ring with him. The final gag doesn't make a lick of sense, but I'll bet you remember it if you saw the movie long ago or you will remember it if you watch it now.
    All in all, this shapes up as one of the better latter day Abbott and Costello films. It's not really one of the A&C monster movies, since the Invisible Man here is on their side. There is a subplot about the invisibility formula's effect on Tommy's psyche, but little is made of it and he never threatens the boys. The special effects are very good, as was typical of Universal Studios. A lot of people who review this film, however, really go out of their way to praise the effects. I wonder, do these people realize how little of the film's scenes actually feature an "erased" Arthur Franz? I almost think they believe he's actually there and erased in every shot the Invisible Man is in, but that is not the case. I'd say the shots where Franz was actually "on camera" but rendered invisible is probably around a dozen or so. The rest of the movie uses a lot of other tricks, like props on wires, empty shots with voiceovers, doors opened by off camera stagehands, and even a really cool shot when the now unseen Tommy shucks his pants which actually uses a physical wireframe model wearing pants with remote controlled unbuttoning. Still, regardless of how the effects were achieved, they combine very well to give Abbott and Costello their most transparent co-star ever and make this movie a solid recommendation for the comedy team's fans or anyone who enjoys a little old fashioned comedy now and again.


Let's Get Out of Here ?
Oh my, The Line gets a real workout here, occurring at approximately 10:00 as Lou reminds Bud they're with an accused murderer; again at about 23:30 when Tommy sees the police arriving; again at 54:00, right after a bar patron takes a punch he didn't see coming; and finally once more at 1:13:00 when Bud takes the prize by saying it twice in quick succession to get Lou moving.


Eye Candy ?
Sadly, though both Nancy Guild and Adele Jergens are kind of cute, neither qualify for the coveted title to these jaded eyes. Guild has a jawline only Jay Leno could love, and Jergens is a bit over the top in her blonde glory, getting dangerously close to "possible drag queen" territory. Better luck next time, ladies!

Buddha Man's Capsule Review

Buddha Man says "Re: Abbott and Costello Meet The Invisible Man, my advice to you: always bet on Bud and Lou."

Thank you sir, and until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!