The Planet (2006)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Stirton Productions

Runtime: 69 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: In the far future, a group of shipwrecked mercenaries must struggle for survival on an uncharted alien world; A world where death is only the beginning...

Review: MTI Home Video recently sent me a whole bunch of screeners for some of the backlog of movies they've distributed over here in Canada and the U.S over the years, and the first of those that I wanted to check out was the ultra low-budget sci-fi/horror from 2006, simply-titled The Planet.

Now right out of the gate, I have to dock some points for such an unimaginative bland title like The Planet. It does nothing to help tell you what the movie is about, or even what genre it is. I personally can't stand boring bland basic titles like that (movies with similarly-bland and overused titles like any form and variation of The Possession or The Possessed are top offenders as well). Anything more would have been better, something like Death Planet, Planet of the Dead, Planet Trap, The Planet of Lost Souls, just anything more then simply The Planet would have sufficed and done a better job with informing the viewer what to expect from this movie. Please MTI Home Video, feel free to use any of those suggestions upon potential future re-releases!

As for the movie itself though, it has quite the very low budget, almost home video quality about it. If you've seen movies like Recon 2020, and its sequels Recon 2022 and Recon 2023, then you kind of know what to expect from The Planet, but with even less special effects then those movies. We get a pretty decent opening space battle between a cargo ship being piloted by Mercenaries transporting a captured terrorist/cult leader and their pursuers trying to get the terrorist leader back, and the special Effects for this portion of the movie are pretty much what you would expect from a 1990s Wing Commander game, which is to say really not good at all, however that's somewhat excusable if you know beforehand going into this that it will be a micro-budget affair. Once they crash on the mysterious uncharted and supposedly-uninhabited desert planet though, we get the occasional brief special effect shot of viciously-attacking near-indivisible alien energy beings that, while a simple effect, actually look pretty impressive, especially when they're gliding through the air like fast-moving killer ghosts. That's all we get in terms of special effects here, but I'm fine with that as I'm always saying that a low budget movie needs to know its limitations and work within those limits, and apart from the opening space battle that was pretty brutal to sit through, this movie does that quite well.

The acting is one of the areas where, surprisingly, this movie truly shines. Normally with micro-budget flicks like this the actors are beyond terrible and are mostly made up of the director's own personal friends. I'm not sure what the case was with where he got them for this movie, but whatever that case is, it works quite well because everyone here turned in pretty great performances, and far better then what you would expect. Unfortunately, the downside here is that the cast is a bit too big for its own good, as most of the characters are written as pretty one-note characters with little to no distinctive personalities and were so similar to one another that I kept forgetting who was who and most everyone kind of just ran together for me. Sure, there's the main character tough-as-balls muscular leader of the mercenaries, his trustworthy level-headed second-in-command, and the unit's old-and-wise personal medic, but then everyone else (which is a good seven or eight characters) are essentially identical to one another with no unique attributes to distinguish one from another. There's even one moment where one of their ranks is revealed to be a traitor and had purposely set up most of the events of this movie to play out the way they do, yet the impact of the reveal was totally lost on me because I was just sitting there asking myself “Ok, so who exactly IS this guy and what role has he had in the movie up till now?” because I honestly didn't know him from any of the other handful of secondary characters. If they had focused on a much smaller cast of characters, I think this issue could have been avoided all together.

And it shocks me even more that the writing of the characters were so piss-poor, because the writing in every other area of the script was actually really damn good. Sure, the movie's plot itself is pretty basic – that being a group of military-style space mercenaries crashing on a desert planet and have to find a way to send for help or get off of it, which is also at first meant to be void of life but they soon find out it's inhabited by savage lifeforms and half-buried ancient temples and statues – it's a plot we've seen some variation of countless times before in movies like Pitch Black and Starship Troopers 3: Marauder to name just a couple that instantly came to mind, but it's the extra unexpected world-building where the writing really shines. This may be nothing more then a very short (more on that in a bit) micro budget home movie style of flick, but the extra world-building really made it feel like this was just one small side-step in a much greater story, set within a fully-realized and thought-out universe, that even greater and bigger stories are happening in but we're just not around to see them. This is a fictional future that I wouldn't mind returning to from time to time to see further adventures and other stories told from other point of views and characters, however I know that's asking for way too much here.

The movie does, however, include many of the usual technical problems that micro-budget movies tend to have – some audio issues pop up here and there where there's some background static while characters are talking or sometimes the sound effects are louder then the dialogue, making it hard to pick out what people are saying at times, a few shots linger for just a tad bit too long and a few scenes probably could have been tightened up a bit and shortened, there's an overly-dramatic and overbearing music soundtrack present during some portions, it has some of the above-mentioned annoyingly 1990s videogame-style CGI effects in some parts, and piss-poor character development. Luckily though it doesn't have these issues quite as often or on such a high level as most of these kinds of movies do, but they are still present and pop up from time to time.

At just an hour and nine minutes (about an hour if you cut off the opening and closing credits), The Planet takes what I like to call the Full Moon Approach – it has a short runtime, moves at a brisk pace, and is over pretty quickly, so even if the movie may not be the best, at the very least it doesn't take much of a time commitment for you to check it out and decide for yourself. I mean, that's essentially just one episode of Masters of Horror (a show that was treated criminally unfair by its TV channel. Hell, I don't think Season 2 ever even got a proper DVD release). While I don't normally like movies of this much of a low budget (you're essentially paying for something that's the quality of an online fanfilm), The Planet was better then the average micro-budget flick by having some good acting, fun creature scenes, and excellent world-building. Plus, seeing as how the runtime is so damn short, I really can't complain much anyway.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Fatal Call (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  Zingraff Motion Pictures

Runtime: 94 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: Mitch meets the beautiful and seductive Amy at a happy hour and begins a tantalizing romance. Before long, Mitch learns that nothing is as it appears and, unable to trust anyone, finds himself on a nightmarish roller coaster ride as he is accused of murder, and has to run from the law in addition to a mysterious stranger out to kill him.

Review: Fatal Call was among the second group of screeners that MTI Home Video sent my way, and while at first I was a bit cautious of it (just because direct-to-video action movies tend to be a bit bland to me most of the time – I'm much more of a monster, killer animal, sci-fi, horror, or mockbuster kind of guy), I then saw who was starring in it – Danielle Harris, the beautiful and unbelievably hot horror scream queen that has been in countless horror flicks and always brings her A-game. That alone turned me right around on this one and had me excited to start watching it.

And as expected, she gave her performance here 100% as she played exactly the kind of girl that you can just fall in love with right off the bat, but then begin to slowly start to not trust anymore, bit by bit. Hell, even knowing that things aren’t quite right with her, she's still adorable enough that I'd probably still marry her, hahaha. And even though she plays many different 'versions' of her character, the real shocker with her is that she actually smokes in the movie! I know, I know, on first glance that doesn't seem like a big thing at all, but in all honesty I found it rather refreshing to have a character smoking in a movie these days. Not that I'm pro-smoking, because I'm not, but its no secret that Hollywood has shied away from having characters smoke in movies in the last decade or so, and while I'm not personally pro-smoking, there's no point in Hollywood trying to hide the fact that people do smoke, so its refreshing to get a movie that's not scared to have one of its leads be a smoker this day in age. It's actually a minor detail that I wish the later Die Hard sequels had brought back to the John McClane character, but I suppose that's neither here nor there in this particular review.

The cast also includes Jason London, who is quite accustomed to these low budget direct-to-video flicks, as the main lead and kind of the 'boring every man' sort of character that meets 'by chance' Danielle Harris' character at a bar one night and pretty much instantly falls in love with her, gets her phone number, and a day or so later gives her the title phone call that then sets in motion the events of the movie that proceeds to spiral his normal boring everyday kind of life right out of control and into a deadly cat-and-mouse game that, even if he survives, may leave him with not a whole lot to return back to. And the person (other then Danielle Harris, that is) that Jason London is caught in this game with? That would be none other then Hercules himself, Kevin Sorbo who, much like with Danielle Harris, is always a joy to watch (well, in anything that's not Season 5 of Andromeda – ye-ouch). What struck me as different with him this time however, is that I'm used to seeing him play the good guy hero character (Hercules, Andromeda, the Walking Tall remake sequels, Never Cry Werewolf just to name some), so it was a really interesting change to see him playing a creepy methodical assassin-like killer, who only gets even creepier once his true identity is revealed later in the movie; With his role in this movie, Kevin Sorbo went from being a guy that if I saw him crossing the street in front of me I would run up and shake the hand of, to someone I would probably cross the street to avoid as quickly as possible, haha.

Lastly we have Lochlyn Munro (Freddy vs Jason, Scary Movie, Charmed) playing one-half of a detective duo that, when together with his partner, form a very hilarious Abbott and Costello-like frenemy couple that despite being partnered with one another, seem to dislike each other, often with hilarious results and played up with some great chemistry. Granted, he's hardly in the movie (only three scenes, I belive), but every time that he is, I knew I was in for a really good funny scene to lighten the mood to this otherwise pretty serious thriller.

What I didn't like though was the framing device. It starts off with, and constantly cuts to, Jason London's character running like a frightened rabbit through parts of the city while bruised and bloodied, obviously running away and trying to hide from a mysterious figure that is soon revealed to be Kevin Sorbo trying to kill him for reasons currently unknown until much later in the movie. During this over-long and drawn-out chase scene we keep flashing back to the various events leading up to this night, which is where the bulk of the movie takes place. The main thing that bugged me about structuring the movie in this style is that it removed a lot of the impact that some of these scenes were meant to carry, simply because we just didn't yet have the background information or experience required to make some of those scenes tense and impactful, not to mention that it also made sections of the movie a bit confusing at times and I found myself going back and forth trying to figure out if the scene that was currently happening was one of the flashback scenes or the over-long framing chase and by the time I figured it out, it was switching back to the other again. With that said, on the flip side I did kind of feel that it added a bit of extra mystery to the movie as it went along, in terms of how Jason London got from there to here.

The biggest issue I have though isn't really an issue with the movie itself so much as it is with the DVD cover art. As you can see with the picture at the top of this review, the cover would lead you to believe that the movie has non-stop balls-to-the-wall explosive action, and that's very misleading as there's almost no in-your-face action beats at all. While there's some good tension throughout and a couple minor chase scenes scattered around, the majority of the movie is a straight-up thriller mystery. Now I'm not saying a thriller mystery style movie is a bad thing, as it's clearly not since I love those kinds of movies and as you can probably tell from the review up to this point, I've enjoyed this one quite a bit, but I just want people expecting lots of action to know that the cover art for this is very misleading in that regard, so try not to go into the movie being influenced by and expecting what the cover shows. In addition to that, something else it misleads you on is in regards to Ms. Danielle Harris - she may play an intelligent, manipulative, and evil bitch, but she in no way partakes in any of the action in the manner that the cover art shows, so don't go in expecting her to be running and jumping around in tight leather, guns a-blazin' and explosions going off around her, because that couldn't be further from the truth.

I can't really talk a whole lot about this one since so much of it hinges on mysteries and uncovering the truth behind what's going on, that to talk much further or into any greater detail would just start ruining the movie. As it is, there's already a few things I had to spoil in order to talk about anything, but I tried to pick and choose the more obvious twists to mention or the ones that happen pretty close to the beginning. As for all the various twists and turns that populate the movie that I haven’t talked about and spoiled, well some are actually quite genius and had me pretty excited when they happened, while a couple of others were terribly-obvious and you can probably see them coming from really early-on if you're paying even half-attention and that seemed thrown in just for the sake of another surprise twist as opposed to any actual story-related reasons. So much so, actually, that by the end of the movie this thing pretty much had just as many twists and turns as any of the direct-to-video Wild Things sequels.

In short, it's probably nothing I'd re-watch, mainly because most of the enjoyment to be had with it comes from all the twists and once you know how it all ends it kind of makes it difficult to sit through again, but as a one-time watch, if you like a nice low-key, suspenseful, thriller mystery that's well-acted and has the always-lovely Danielle Harris in it (although admittedly, has just a few too many twists for its own good), then you can check Fatal Call out when it hits DVD late next month on July 23rd, however if you're looking for an explosive non-stop high octane action movie like the cover art portrays then you're better off moving onto the next movie on the shelf because this one couldn't be further from that style.

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Cloned: The Recreator Chronicles (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Recreator Labs
 

Runtime: 90 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: Three teenagers stumble upon a secret laboratory while on a camping trip and encounter superior clones of themselves. Duplicates; Doubles; Recreations; they are exact copies of Craig, Tracy and Derek, and the teenagers are no match for their physically stronger, faster, and all-around better selves. Their only hope is to outwit them and to escape before they are replaced.

Review: Alongside a screener for Attack of the Herbals, I was also sent another screener by MTI Home Video for a movie they recently distributed here in The U.S and Canada titled Cloned: The Recreator Chronicles, a movie I had heard nothing about before seeing this screener, but was pretty excited to check out based on just the title alone - after all, I always love me some clone action!

This one starts off with a group of fun-loving teens going camping in the woods one weekend and during a really bad storm have to seek shelter in a nearby seemingly-abandoned cottage. Shortly after, identical clone copies of them pop up out of nowhere to save them from being attacked by the murderous couple who own the cottage, but it isn't long before its clear that these aren’t exactly identical clones – they are stronger, faster, mind game-playing evil clones that are out to replace the originals, which provided plenty of great tension-filled scenes. Actually, one of the things I enjoyed most about this movie was that it was never dull. It pretty much started off jumping right into the main plot pretty quickly, with something interesting happening almost every step of the way, or some sort of attention-grabbing scene going on to keep your focus rooted on the movie. Granted, there is a short bit in the middle where things slowed a bit, but it was only for a little bit and even during that it was still kind of fun to watch the characters interacting with their mysterious cloned copies.

Which brings me to another of the movie's really strong points. Each of the main actors here all did an excellent job, especially considering that each had to essentially play two characters, a good version and an evil version of themselves, which all of them did really well, never making it confusing as to which one we were watching. There was even some good twists toward the end as well, one of which I really loved that had to deal with one of the characters and their clone essentially switching roles for the climax. Of course with a movie like this, the majority of the fun comes from watching the evil versions of everyone as they loved to play mind games with the Originals and screw around with them - in both meanings of that phrase. See, another thing the movie has going for it is that it has plenty of good eye candy; steamy sex scenes, changing-clothes scenes, shower scenes, skinny dipping scenes, and walking around naked scenes. The only thing I love more then an evil clone babe? An evil clone babe that seems to have an allergy to wearing clothes!

There are a couple minor things I wasn't a fan of though. For instance, it takes way too long to start explaining what's going on in the movie, so during a lot of the scenes instead of really paying attention, your mind is instead focused on trying to come up with explanations as to what the deal is with these clones, where they came from, why they're doing what they're doing, and all that. I feel if they had explained some of that a bit earlier in the movie instead of saving it for the final little bit, it would have made things a bit more clear and my mind wouldn't have been wandering to try to piece things together quite so much. Especially since it's not like it's a part of some big twist or anything, I mean, we know right off the bat that these are evil clones, so it's more of just filling in some backstory on them a bit sooner then it actually does.

I also wasn't such a fan of the fact that none of these people seem to be freaked out or even care by the fact that exact duplicate copies of themselves just showed up at the door. They go around for most of the movie acting normal about this, as if these people were long-time friends that showed up to party with them. They eat and drink with them, play games with them, chat with them, screw around with them (again, in both senses of the word), as if it was no big deal that they're mysterious clones. I would have liked to see much more of the reactionary mental impact of that, but they kind of get over it and move on really quickly. The sole exception is the one teen that leaves right away because he doesn't want to deal with any of it and returns later in the movie to help save the day (which itself is kind of a plot hole since the clones are supposed to know what their Originals are going to do at any given time, so why didn't his clone know he was sneaking around and planning an attack?).

This movie was a pleasant surprise to me that while far from great, was a decent enough little time waster on this rainy day that I certainly don't regret watching. The fact that the actual title during the opening credits is simply 'The Recreator Chronicles', and then the subtitle of 'Cloned' comes up a few minutes later into the movie has me thinking that this was merely Part 1 in a pre-planned series. However, direct-to-video B-Movies, especially this day in age, very rarely get sequels so I wouldn't hold my breath for one, although I'd be thrilled if we actually get it. 

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Attack of the Herbals (2011)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  Clear Focus

 
Runtime: 81 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: After years in exile, Jackson McGregor has returned to his grandparent's home in Lobster Cove, a small Scottish village where the daily routine consists of eating, sleeping, fishing... and drinking tea. After discovering a mysterious crate of herbal tea washed up on shore, Jackson, along with his friend Russell hatch a plan to sell the tea and save the village from a rich businessman. Unfortunately the tea given to the townspeople soon turns into a nightmare, and Jackson finds himself in a village of flesh-eating zombies.

Review: MTI Home Video recently got in touch with me and offered to send some screeners my way for some of their films, and since I'm always on the lookout for more screener opportunities of course I accepted. The first one that came my way for review is for a movie I've actually heard a bit about in the past, but isn't one I really followed progress on or knew a whole lot about. Attack of the Herbals is a horror/comedy in the vein of movies like Shaun of the Dead, Dead and Breakfast, Black Sheep, The Doghouse, and movies of that ilk, and it's about an old Nazi experiment during WWII that involved herbal tea that could turn whoever drank it into zombie-like creatures, and some remains of that experiment end up in present day in some small coastal Scottish town, and it's not long until it starts causing zombie havoc. That was pretty much all I knew about it going into it. This one I believe has already been released in the U.K. and some other European countries a couple years back, but just recently hit DVD over here in Canada and the U.S. thanks to MTI Home Video.

Unfortunately, the end result wasn't quite as much fun as I was hoping/expecting, given the very unique plot of herbal tea-created zombies. To start, the main lead is incredibly unlikable, which right off the bat makes it hard to really get into the movie. He's rude to pretty much everyone around him – his so-called friends, co-workers, grandparents, old bosses - but then expects those same people to bend over backwards for him over just about everything, and blames everything that goes wrong (even if its his fault) on everyone else...and yet all these people love him? Huh? The fact that this is a character we're supposed to connect with and sympathize with makes no sense to me because he's just so unlikable. There are antagonists in other movies that aren’t as much of a whiny asshole as this guy is. And if that's meant to be part of the joke of the movie, it totally went over my head because it did not seem that way at all.

Adding to that, the movie overstays its welcome quite a bit. It's only an hour and 21 minutes, but feels so much longer. I think the main reason for that is because many scenes, especially in the first half of the movie, were only there for awkwardly-delivered exposition and most of that exposition was for things that don't even really matter in the greater scheme of the movie, so it all came across as needless padding. All of those scenes could have been cut and the movie could have been tightened up a bit. It also takes way too long for anything to happen; Other then the opening scene, and one very quick 20-second scene of a dog being eaten (off-screen, at that), it's well over halfway through the movie before anything even relating to zombies or horror-esque stuff even happens. For about 85% of the movie, it's a total ABC Channel family-drama movie through and through. I keep saying that the worst offense a B-Movie can make is to be boring, and this one came very dangerously close to that, especially since the main lead is someone I couldn't get into at all, it made that first chunk of the movie very hard to sit through. Attack of the Herbals probably could have benefited from taking the Full Moon approach and have it only be just barely an hour, but a very tight and well-executed hour.

Luckily most of the supporting cast were much more likable and fun to watch, and I wish one or more of these characters could have been the 'central hero' instead of the guy we got. His best friend is clearly the real highlight of the movie and the kind of fun-loving but down-to-earth best friend that everyone kind of wants to have. In addition to him, the main character's grandparents play off each other quite humorously, as any couple who have been married for 40-odd years probably would, and I was genuinely sad when their fates came later in the movie, and all the random miscellaneous town residents are pretty quirky and have at least one or two good moments each. Hell, even the main antagonist (a rich guy trying to buy out the main guy's family's post office land so that he can make a golf course) was a blast to watch anytime he was on-screen as he was just such a hilarious kind of asshole, especially to his servants – you could always count on his scenes for a good laugh. It also helps that the acting is pretty decent from everyone involved. Sure, it does tend to go up and down depending on the scene, but it was mostly pretty good more often then it wasn't.

As for the reason anyone would even give this movie a second glance on the shelf, the zombies themselves, wellll...as I said above, it's well over halfway through the movie before any show up. As in like, an hour into this hour and 21 minutes movie. So we don't even get to the zombie action until the last quarter of the movie, which was a huge and major bummer for me as I was expecting something along the lines of the movies I mentioned above, where they kind of just get to the point pretty quickly. However when we do finally get them, the movie is a total blast for that last half an hour. These aren’t zombies in the traditional sense – here the tea just gets them addicted and wanting more and more of this tea, until whatever the Nazis put into it has worked its way into the people's systems and turns everyone into a wacky/looney boiling rage and makes them feel like they have to kill everyone else...and they only get worse from there, having their eyes go all creepy glow in the dark Underworld-style, and they get Evil Dead-esque demon multiple voice syndrome. This twist on the traditional zombie lore may turn some away, but I personally really enjoyed it. This day in age, zombie movies have been done to death, so I always appreciate it whenever one throws in some kind of curveball to make it at least a little fresh. And as to be expected in a movie such as this, there are a ton of really fun (and hilarious) zombie attack/fight scenes filled with lots of gooey gore once this portion of the movie hits, with a couple of really unique moments that I won't spoil here but I will say that one of them involves a drunk wheelchair guy that essentially becomes a hilarious Bruce Campbell wannabe, and that both of these scenes alone almost make the entire movie worth it.

Unfortunately all that excellent zombie stuff was just too late to really save the movie. While the first hour does have some quirky characters, funny moments, and decent acting to get you through it, it's still a very long and tedious hour, following around a very unlikable lead, before the movie finally gets to the goods. Props have to be given for attempting something new in a tired and overdone genre (awesome vicious demon-like zombies created by Nazi-experimented tea sure is a First in my books), but the outcome turned out to be a bit of a fumble that could have been salvaged had it been for better editing and some tightening up of the movie. As it is, I would recommend watching the first 15 minutes or so to get a feel for the characters, and then just skip to a few minutes before the hour-mark and watch the rest from there. Trust me, you really won't be missing much in between, and the movie will feel much stronger to you because of it.

4/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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