Nemesis (1992)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Imperial Entertainment

RUNTIME: 95 mins

FORMAT: VHS

PLOT: In the future, where the average person now has various cybernetic enhancements, one cop questions his humanity and leaves the Force in pursuit of a major conspiracy that could change the world forever.

REVIEW: After recently watching Ghost in the Shell 2.0 and Blade Runner, as well as the Mystery Science Theater version of the mucho-low budget movie Future War, I was still in the mood to watch more movies of that kind, and a person on Twitter recommended that I watch and review Nemesis – a low budget 1992 sci-fi/action flick directed by Albert Pyun, who some of you may know as the director and writer of many low budget movies of various genres throughout the 80's and 90's, which include but is not limited to Alien from L.A., Dollman, Cyborg, Kickboxer 2 and 4, and The Sword and the Sorcerer.

I searched and searched but couldn't find the DVD of the movie for a reasonable price so settled instead for buying a super-cheap VHS copy and dusting off my old VCR to watch it. I forgot how awesomely oldskool VHS tapes are; back when you had to watch 10 minutes+ of trailers at the beginning and could only skip them by fast forwarding, back when lines would come up on the screen and you either had to fix the tracking or just deal with it due to damage on the tape. I'm thinking I should check out some more of these older low budget flicks on VHS instead of DVD or BluRay, cause if anything I think it added to the overall grittiness of the movie.

As for the movie itself – while not perfect, it was pretty darn enjoyable. It was way ahead of it's time, dealing with aspects that wouldn't be made popular until Ghost in the Shell and the The Matrix came along. Alex Rain is the name of the main character here and he's a human detective with quite a large number of cybernetic enhancements, but while on the trail of some cyber hackers led by his ex-partner he starts to uncover a much larger conspiracy that involves people in power being secretly killed and replaced by cyborg duplicates in a move by cyborgs to take over the world and turn humans into their slaves. Along the way, he constantly has to keep getting upgraded with more mechanical parts due to the state he's left in after some of the action scenes don't go his way. These tuneups have become so commonplace that he starts to worry about just how human he is or isn't anymore. At what point does he stop being human and starts being just a machine?

The movie starts off on a 10-minute long action scene in the rubble of Los Angeles that doesn't go even 5 seconds without gunfire or explosions happening, and that kind of fast pace doesn't let up much until the credits roll at the end. The entire thing is filled with non-stop well-choreographed and over-the-top action scenes, and intense elaborate shoot-outs (some of which have been outright copied by future movies such as Underworld), that culminates in a massive action sequence in the jungle that would make even Rambo and the Predators jealous for missing out on. To make those sequences even better, everything is done using practical effects and thus these action scenes were, to me anyway, more interesting to watch then almost any big budget Hollywood CGI-generated monstrosity from this day in age. Only detractor is one scene towards the end uses some really bad stop-motion for a fight scene between Alex Rain and a T-800 ripoff in the cargo area, and on the outside of, a futuristic jet as it zooms through the sky.

When one of those drooling-good action scenes isn't happening, there is still plenty going on to keep you interested such as nudity and robotic cyborg parts being displayed in gory fashion. It also takes the time between action scenes to set this world up and give us most of our information in regards to the way the world is and who all the major players of the movie are. However, it certainly doesn't help that pretty much all of the actors are really bad and the lead actor has such a thick Jean-Claude Van-Damme style accent that it's hard to pick out what he's saying a lot of the time, and when you can understand it, it's very stilted and broken up. However, the most important lines he will say – some classic hilarious one-liners – are crystal clear for all to enjoy.

In this future world, most of the world seems to lay in ruins. Despite the fact that it's established early on that people still live in Los Angeles and places such as hotels are still in business (since the first action scene starts off in one), most exterior shots show the city in ruins, with crumbling buildings and massive debris everywhere, and a desolate desert wasteland closing in on all sides. Adding to the atmosphere of an almost post-apocalyptic world is the fact that every exterior shot throughout the first half of the movie has a reddish tint added to it, giving the effect that the sun is dying. At least until Alex Rain travels to Japan, and then for some reason the sun and landscape are normal there, so maybe it's only America that's on the brink of being wiped out. That's something that's never really made clear.

Musical scores could potentially make or break a movie and luckily here it really fits. It's kind of an almost Native American style music mixed with detective noir kind of music and oddly enough, that fits really well with a futuristic cyberpunk flick, though you wouldn't believe it to hear someone say so. Then once Alex Rain goes to Japan, the music changes more to traditional Japanese-style music. Right from the opening moments, the musical score really stands out and sets the mood perfectly, and never once feels out of place during any scene of the movie. More often then not, it's the stand-out aspect in just about every scene. I find that low budget movies tend to have the best, most over-looked scores and it sucks that they almost never get officially released like bigger-budget theatrical movie scores do.

There's not really much more I can say about it. That's why I hate reviewing action movies, because I'm not able to articulate my thoughts as well as I can when there's some big monster stomping around or an alien invasion force going on that I can focus large chunks of my review on. However I told some people that I'd review this one, so I kind of had to follow through. I've been told that there are three sequels to this movie, but to stay away because none of them have anything at all to actually do with this movie and all are quite bad. However, being the sucker for bad movies that I am, and the fact that they're all written and directed by the same guy as this movie, I think I won't listen and will go track them down and watch them anyway, and since I've reviewed this movie, you can expect eventual reviews of the sequels as well.

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Raptor (2001)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Concorde 

RUNTIME: 81 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A small town Sheriff and a Wildlife Officer look into some grisly murders and discover that not only is a dinosaur on the loose, but it came from the nearby Government laboratory and they go to investigate, but only end up making things go from bad to worse as they accidentally cause all the Carnosaurs...err, I mean dinosaurs... in the lab complex to get loose.

REVIEW: I had really wanted to see Carnosaur 4 get made for the simple fact that I thought Carnosaur 3 was easily the weakest in the series and would have liked to see the series go out on a higher note. While Carnosaur 4 was never made, another movie was brought to my attention in it's place: Raptor. Made by all the same people and acts as kind of an unofficial Carnosaur 4 (apparently they couldn't get the Rights to the title, for whatever reason since it was made by the same company and people, however it's even regarded as Carnosaur 4 in parts of the world). As soon as the DVD arrived in the mail, I couldn't wait to pop it in and check this Raptor out and get started on a review, fully excited to get back into the world of Carnosaur.

Oh boy. This movie is bad. Even by my very low standards.

First off, there is no new dinosaur footage in this movie - every single scene with a dinosaur in it is just stock footage from one of the three Carnosaur movies, and while that stock footage was integrated pretty well in the first half of the movie, the second half was botched all to hell, combining shots from each movie together into the same scene, despite the fact that they don't match up at all. One part has a famous Tyrannosaurus vs Construction vehicle scene that this series is known for...except it's made up of footage from both Carnosaur and Carnosaur 2, despite the fact that the construction vehicle used in the first movie was different then the construction vehicle used in the second, but this movie treats them the same, so you'll see a shot of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and vehicle fighting, cut to a reaction shot of the person, then cut back to the Tyrannosaurus Rex and vehicle fighting again...except now the vehicle is suddenly a different one, even though it's supposed to be the same. The second half of the movie is filled with that kind of stuff. Up until that point, I actually didn't mind the use of stock footage as, understandably, the props and suits had gone into disrepair and couldn't be used in a 4th movie, and said stock footage was integrated pretty well. Hell, they even got an actor from the first movie back for this for a few scenes, just so they could re-use his death scene (although he is considerably older here then in the re-used stock footage, but it's the attempt and effort that counts). But then the second half of the movie comes along and does the above-mentioned horrible botching every step of the way and it just gets gross. There are quite a few scenes where we see someone get attacked, but then we cut to stock footage from one of the Carnosaur movies and suddenly it's a completely different person being chomped down on by the dinosaur in place of the one we were just seeing, and in a completely different location then the one the character was just in. It really made no sense whatsoever and was some of the most horrid use of stock footage that I've ever seen (in one scene from Carnosaur 3 used here, we see life boats and a life preserver hung on the wall...yet the characters in this movie are in the middle of an underground basement-level of a Government facility in the middle of the desert...). To further the point, when the dinosaurs start running amok in the facility, the Government sends in not one team, not two teams, but three different, unrelated, teams of Black Op soldiers to deal with it, so that they can use footage from both Carnosaur 2 and Carnosaur 3, where the government/military characters were dressed wearing different uniforms. And one of these teams is dressed in...rain jackets. Yes, rain jackets. No explanation is given in-movie at all for sending in three unrelated teams, nor why one team is dressed in rain jackets despite the fact that it's not raining outside.

And it's a real shame too, because apart from that stock footage debacle, this movie actually had some potential. It's more or less a remake of the first Carnosaur movie, but minus the dino-birthing disease and with more likable lead characters (the Sheriff is actually played by none other then Eric Roberts, oddly enough, though even saying that he's phoning it in may be giving too much credit). And IMO, this movie actually worked the mad scientist angle better then the original Carnosaur. Here, the guy (named Dr. Hyde if you can believe that) was actually making intelligent dinosaurs at the request of the Government to use in overseas warfare in a project titled Jurassic Storm, but then he decided to go rogue and wanted to instead sell them to the highest foreign bidder, but before he can get that far they break loose and start causing havoc first in the nearby small desert town, and then in the facility itself.

To flesh out Eric Roberts' Sheriff character, he has a teen daughter (played by a porn star that looks almost as old as him) that sets him on the path of figuring everything out, as she and her boyfriend get attacked by the escaped Raptor and results in her getting hospitalized and the Sheriff wanting revenge on whatever attacked her, which leads him to the nearby government facility. To aid him along the way is a Wildlife Control Officer (played by a stripper, who has since gone on to star in many movies of this elk). At first they think the creature may be an escaped cougar, which is a subplot not in the original Carnosaur movie but is in the original Carnosaur novel that the series is based on, so it surprised me they included it here, and a surprise that is more then welcomed. If the movie had continue to follow the path of the original book, even the stock footage may not have seemed so bad for me because that book was pure awesome. Adding to the cast, just over halfway through we get two teams of Black Op military characters, and then a third team shortly after that. Most, like in Carnosaur 3, are just background cannon fodder and don't even have names or more then one or two lines of dialog, but there is a couple that are given personality and they're pretty fun to watch, especially the hard-as-nails swear-loving Boston-native leader of the 'Black Team'.

Also in it's favor is lots of good gore (granted it's all from stock footage of the other movies, but they could have gone near-goreless like the third movie did, so props have to be given there), and surprisingly they got James Horner to do the music. What kind of giant ass favor he owed these people, I'm not sure, but it was good to see his name there because the music is one of the movie's strongest points and is really befitting of a much better movie then the one the music ultimately ended up being for. Often times I'd zone out of what was happening on-screen and just listened to the awesome music.

There's honestly not a whole lot more to say, since most of it is just a clip show of the previous movies, which I've already reviewed. If this movie had been filmed using the actual props and costumes of the previous movies instead of horribly badly-integrated stock footage, it actually would have been a really good Carnosaur 4 or Carnosaur remake, as a lot of the actual plot itself was pretty good.. Unfortunately the use of stock footage to the degree they use it, especially in the second-half of the movie when all the dinosaurs take over the facility and all those random Special Black Op teams are sent in, as well as some of the newly-shot story aspects that had to be there in order to have the stock footage scenes make sense, really brings it down to not even being enjoyable on a so-bad-it's-good level, as it's just too damn distracting and really takes you out of the movie, instantly making you think of the better Carnosaur movies.

2/10 rooms in the Psych Ward
 

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Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Concorde-New Horizons

RUNTIME: 80 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: When terrorists accidentally unleash the last remaining Carnosaurs, a Special Ops team is sent in to fix the problem.

REVIEW: After I managed to get my hands on Carnosaur and then Carnosaur 2, it was only a matter of time until Carnosaur 3: Primal Species came my way via Ebay. After Part 1 met my expectations, and Part 2 exceeded them...well...Part 3 was already in last place by numbering default so I guess it decided to stay there, but not without putting up a decent fight.

I'd go into the inner workings of the plot, except I don't really remember. That's the biggest problem of this movie – it's just so forgettable. Every time I watch it, I've forgotten about 90% of what happens in it almost right away. There is no real plot to this one - Terrorists hijack a Government transport truck they believe is carrying uranium, but instead it's carrying the last three surviving Carnosaurs (two Raptors and one Tyrannosaurus), which wake up and kill the the terrorists. Then some cops go in and check the warehouse out, also getting killed. Then a military Special Ops team is sent in to retrieve the truck, but they get ambushed by the Raptors and retreat. Then they return, get ambushed again, and retreat. Return once more and lead the dinosaurs onto a boat, get said boat out into the middle of the ocean and, going against their orders to capture the dinosaurs alive, blow the boat and everything on it into smithereens. The end. That is literally the entire plot. There were some good ideas scattered around in there, but they mostly just replaced plot with mindless action. Don't get me wrong, mindless action can be a good thing, but not when there is no plot connecting those mindless action scenes.

One of the good ideas they touched on in this that I did like was that similar with the first movie, we actually get to see the Government side of things during these events, now that the Government has taken control of the top secret Carnosaur Project. We of course get a beautiful female scientist who's in charge of the project and has been studying the Carnosaurs and wants them captured and brought back alive as she's near a breakthrough in reverse engineering them. While she's not exactly a saint, she's not nearly as insane or evil as the older scientist lady from the first movie. That one had wanted the dinosaurs to take over the world, while this one is just in charge of the now Government-controlled project, which consists of trying to reverse engineer the remaining Carnosaurs so they can create their own Carnosaurs and use them to somehow (never really explained) unlock potential cures for human diseases and other medical breakthroughs. Can't really fault them too much for that I suppose, although she did come across as a tad bit minor-crazy with her constant insistence the the dinosaurs be captured alive. By way of this subplot, we also get a pretty interesting in-depth briefing on the Carnosaurs and we're given far more information on them then we were in the previous two movies combined, with the reveal that they actually have some human DNA in them which explains why they're incredibly intelligent. It also includes newly revealed information on how these animals are starting to evolve and are becoming even more deadly then they already are. Gotta give props when a sequel takes what we already know from the previous movies and then adds onto it and builds on it to give us something fresh, especially when it's the final movie in the series; gotta up the ante somehow.

I also liked the over all basic plot of terrorists accidentally unleashing the dinosaurs and the military team being sent in - except that's ad deep as the plot goes and the action scenes all take place either in a warehouse (why the dinosaurs never feel the need to actually leave that warehouse is never explained) and then on a boat. Admittedly, I actually liked everything that took place on the boat far more and would have preferred it if the majority of the movie took place there instead of mostly all in the warehouse and just the last 15 minutes on the boat.

Unlike the previous movie, there aren’t really any memorable characters this time around. Granted, the ones we get are likable so that's a step up from the first movie in that department, but really, once the movie is over, there's only two or three that really stick with you. One would be the above-mentioned female scientist in charge of the current incarnation of the Carnosaur Project, another is the Sylvester Stallone look-alike leader of the Special Ops team who doesn't have much distinctive personality but the fact that he looks like he could be a long lost twin brother of Stallone makes him memorable all on its own, and finally we have the character named Polchek, who confusingly, is played by an actor from the previous movie and is given the exact same personality as the character that actor played in the previous movie (Monk from Carnosaur 2), but the two characters actually have no relation to one another at all. Normally that would probably bug me, except that despite his horrible acting I loved that character in Carnosaur 2 and I love him again here, albeit under a different name. Everyone else in this movie is not only forgettable, but pretty much just xerox copies of each other and only serve to be cannon fodder for the dinosaurs. Hell, I don't think most of them were even given names. On top of that, these guys are supposed to be a hardened military unit, yet the electrician tech characters in the previous movie had more testosterone and bravado then these characters do. And don't get me started on the acting. It's not like this series has ever had good acting, but this one takes the cake. You know it's bad when the worst actor of the previous movie is the best actor in this one.

But nobody really watches these movies for the deep human characters. As long as there's gore, the masses are kept happy. And while this is by far the tamest in the series when it comes to the gore, there's still a few good juicy bits in here; an awesome arm-ripping scene, a few scenes with massive blood splotches on the floor and/or walls with body parts strewn about, a head being ripped off, and a couple more that I won't spoil here. Unfortunately they're so spread out and most of the kills are cut away from before we see much that what we do get is just too little and far too spread out. This movie has by far the largest body count in the series...so why is it so damn tame on the gore?

The dinosaurs themselves still look really good for such a low budget movie though. Where the second movie had used different designs and models from the first movie (Tyrannosaurus aside), I was worried about what route they would go with this one, but I was happy to see they kept with the dinosaurs from Carnosaur 2. The only exception to that would be maybe the Tyrannosaurus. They either used a different robotic model this time around, or the thing was already starting to go into disrepair cause while it looked to be the same design as in the previous movies, there was just something totally off about it this time around that I can't quite put my finger on. Another thing that they kept from Carnosaur 2 is the same heightened intelligence of the dinosaurs, constantly setting traps for the human characters and outsmarting them. Actually, the heightened intelligence became quite an important plot point in this one. They did not, however, keep the creepy clicking noises that the Raptors make when they're on the hunt. That was a personal favorite aspect of the second movie for me and I was disappointed that they didn't carry that over here, for whatever reason. Without those creepy stalking noises, it removes a layer of suspense and atmosphere that the second movie was filled with and this movie really could have benefited from, especially once they got on the boat and had to hunt the creatures down in tight claustrophobic hallways.

We do get to see the Tyrannosaurus earlier then usual though, which was a nice change. In the first movie we get one look half-way through, but it's not until towards the end we get a real good look and the creature becomes a main driving force of the plot, and in the second movie it's not until the final 10 minutes that we even get a glimpse of it. But in this one, it makes it's first appearance and goreless kill less then 20 minutes in and then continues to pop up throughout at various points of the movie, which I wasn't expecting and oddly enough liked a lot more then I would have normally thought. After all, we've seen it enough times now between the other movies, there's no point in keeping it hidden until the final few minutes and use it as shock value anymore. Just let it come on out and have fun with the other dinosaurs. Then of course it returns in full glory at the end to once again be the 'Final Boss' of the movie, which this movie changed up and doesn't go with the construction vehicle fight like the previous two, and instead goes it's own route that really worked for me. Actually, dare I say, out of the climatic Rex fights from all three movies, this one is my favorite as the two surviving characters do battle against it on the deck of the transport boat and defeat it in a truly awesome way. They also added a new problem into the mix by having the Tyrannosaurus starting to breed, and as revealed earlier in the movie – each generation of Carnosaur is more evolved, more intelligent, and more dangerous then the previous generation, so that little addition really helped to bring more threat to the movie, which is always good to see for a final entry of a trilogy.

Another welcomed and surprising change is that while the first movie took place almost entirely during night scenes, and the second took place almost entirely in a low-lit cramped claustrophobic facility, this one takes place almost entirely during the middle of the day, with most of the scenes happening in broad daylight. Sure, the darkness adds atmosphere but we already had two full movies of that so for the third one it was good to see it changed up. And for those turned off by that, have no fear as it does return to both night time scenes and low-lit cramped claustrophobic areas once they get on the boat and out into the ocean so those scenes aren’t entirely absent.

When all is said and done, I really loved how they tried to change so many aspects in this entry instead of just copying the previous two movies, and I loved how they really upped the ante here to a level not reached by the first two movies. After all, by Part 3 you kind of have to start doing some things differently to make it stand out above the other two, so I can really get behind those changes and appreciate them. And despite not really remembering much even 15 minutes after its ended, it kept me entertained while I was watching and I never once looked to see how much time was left on it. It also never shies away from showing those addictive low-budget dinosaur effects; I'd say this movie shows them off better then the others, mainly due to lots of bright daylight scenes, and the Tyrannosaurus gets the most screen time here then out of the other movies in the series. Unfortunately, it's also filled with really boring and forgettable characters, a real lack of gore, no plot to speak of, and it's just an all around forgettable entry in the series, which all combines to really stop it from being quite as good as the first two.

On top of that, I feel they really dropped the ball with the lack of plot; you finally have these dangerous creatures that are getting more dangerous by the minute, loose in a damn city...and they just stay in the one building the entire time. What they should have done was had these things running loose around the city while the Special Ops team tries to covertly re-capture or kill them. That would have been an excellent third and final movie, especially with the Carnosaur's version of the Tyrannosaurus Rex standing among skyscrapers and roaring, or the Raptors sneaking into people's houses while they sleep to kill them in their beds or something. Alas, that idea alone is better then almost anything we actually ended up getting.

Despite my over-all disappointment with this entry, two out of three ain't bad and I still enjoy the series as a whole, and even this weaker entry has enough good stuff in there that if you're a fan of the first two then I still suggest you check this one out anyway. If you didn't like the others though, then nothing in this one will change your mind any. If the dinosaur suits and models hadn't gone into unfixable disrepair shortly after this movie was made (or during the making of it in the case of the Tyrannosaurus), I would love to see a 4th movie if for nothing more then to see the classic Carnosaur dinosaurs back on screen again, especially since the end of this movie sets up another movie so perfectly. Hell, with Roger Corman recently having returned to making campy low budget Direct-to-DVD flicks (Dinocroc, Supergator, Dinocroc vs Supergator, Sharktopus, Dinoshark, the upcoming Piranhaconda) maybe there's a little sliver of hope that he may do a Carnosaur 4: Extinction Revenge or something. Just maybe... (but really honestly not likely)

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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