The Sharknado Experience…

Ferrante, Anthony C., “Sharknado”, The Asylum Productions/Universal/Sony Pictures, 2013.

Ferrante, Anthony C., “Sharknado 2: The Second One”, The Asylum Productions/Universal/Sony Pictures, 2014.

Ferrante, Anthony C., “Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!”, The Asylum Productions/Universal/Sony Pictures, 2015.

Ferrante, Anthony C., “Sharknado: The Fourth Awakens”, The Asylum Productions/Universal/Sony Pictures, 2016.

To kick off, I’d like to apologise for going dark during the Winter Olympics. It’s not that I’m a fan, but every time an event like this happens, visits to this blog go through the roof, beginning in Russia (and, weirdly, Italy this time) and then, as the Russkie deluge tapers off, they get overtaken by the Yanks until – after the event finishes – business returns to normal. Despite appearances, a lot of work goes into this site, and frankly, I’d rather be reaching out to fellow travellers as opposed to a bunch of mindless, Internet-trawling web-spiders looking for a bunch of pre-programmed buzzwords. It might look good as far as my stats are concerned but it makes me wonder who I’m addressing out there in the wilderness, apart from people looking for sex in Republican China, students wanting to pirate my essay on Oliver Onions, or those planning a trip to Binger, Oklahoma. Yes, those three entries generate the most hits here people…

While all of this non-human attention was coming down, I decided to put my feet up and give myself a break. During this self-imposed sabbatical, I discovered this four-pack of meteorologically-affected marine horror and I thought it would be a good way to get back into things afterwards, as well as continuing my review of all things ‘cinematically shark-y’. Let me say right up front: I am not the target market for this material and, consequently, I may have judged it a little harshly. That being said, even the worst cinematic releases have something to offer the students of horror narrative, so let’s unpack!

To begin, it has to be pointed out that these films have been made incredibly cheaply. This is not a bad thing – restrictions to budget often force creative types to work around limitations and make something special. Sadly, Mr. Ferrante and Co. have not been so inspired and have resorted to a toolbox of standard gimmickry which has only served to let them and their project down. Foremost amongst these techniques is the clunky use of stock footage, a thing that was a hallmark of many films made in the 30s and later. This, for those unaware of how it works, is the judicious insertion of royalty-free film material in order to pad-out the film’s leaner moments, or to introduce fantastic elements which would be too expensive to A) go on location to film, or B) fake with special effects. It worked in the first “King Kong” film; it works less well here in the first “Sharknado” movie. Let me be clear: I don’t consider the use of stock footage to be a bad thing, not at all; if you’re going to do it though, don’t use the same piece of footage over and over again. After awhile, you’re going to have to give that lemon shark with its two remora buddies an acting credit…

Another technique well-and-truly overused in these movies is the close-up with off-screen sound effect, coupled with a camera jiggle and blood/water/evidence of high winds tossed in from out of frame. Usually, this signals that a shark has leapt out of nowhere and killed someone next to the actor in close-up, or that a piece of the environment nearby has blown up/fallen over. It’s also used to imply that Ian Ziering knows how to ride a surfboard (apparently, his first name is pronounced, rather pretentiously, “EYE-an”; for this reason, I will henceforth spell his name “I-in” in order to mock him mercilessly). This trick also has its limits: used too often, the audience begins to wonder if there’s actually anything at all to see here as most of the action takes place wherever the camera isn’t pointed. By movie four, when they pull this stunt merely to get Cheryl Tiegs through doorways, or into storm cellars, the audience members are rolling their eyes and masticating their popcorn with a sense of outrage.

I’ve said before, during these shark-film examinations, that I’m sure that there must some kind of ‘stock CGI programming’ out there which can be purchased on the cheap and used in various filmic capacities; sharks being simply wriggly torpedoes with a chomp-y end, they would surely be easy to create and mass-produce. Well, these movies are full of these virtual suckers, thrown in whenever the story requires a quick addition of teeth. These creations are often simply overlain upon actors performing some kind of ridiculous mime, with the solipsism of camera angles and water/smoke/fog/blood there to cover any lack of seamlessness. No-one making movies is spared the questionable results of such manipulation – remember the scene in “Deep Blue Sea” where Samuel L. Jackson gets taken out? – but the technique escalates to egregious levels here.

In short, the effects in these films are less than “special”, and arguably, this is what lends them some charm and is what has created a huge fan-base for the franchise. However, there are films out there which have done so much more with so much less (remember the HPLHS’s “Call of Cthulhu”?), and it makes you wonder if the guys making these movies just had a “she’ll be right” attitude to the whole film-making process. Let’s now turn to the scripting.

These flicks are all homage (or a pastiche) of 80s action hero movies, which – again – given the recent nostalgia-trip being pushed for that decade, probably explains these films’ popularity. This type of run down memory lane isn’t necessarily a bad thing and no movie production house – from Marvel Studios to this cheese-y company – is entirely able to fight clear of it. The unifying lynch-pin to the exercise would seem to be David Hasselhoff: he’s in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” and he shows up here as well in “Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!” as our hero Fin’s father. He’s also in the online Youtube short feature “Kung Fury!” which is arguably better than either of these two vehicles in terms of what it sets out to achieve. However, his inclusion in the “Sharknado” franchise signals a sudden bankruptcy of ideas and its inevitable demise (the moment when it - *ahem* - “jumps the shark”, if you will).

Of course, penning a paean to the 80s action genre means necessarily that the writers partake of a slew of Stallonenegger tropes that are often funny, but occasionally wince-worthy. Fin is able to fly a jet aeroplane in the later films because his son took flying lessons, a slim rationale of the kind that proliferated throughout video-nasty fare of the decade of excess. He also has an extensive working knowledge of space-flight by virtue of the fact that his absentee dad (Hasselhoff) has a career flying space shuttles. This stuff will break your brain if you wrestle too long with it. As well as this kind of slipshod writing, the movies necessarily run the Hollywood Morality play-book, which leads to a slew of inevitable demises and dismissals. Slap the girl on her butt? You die. Leer down the front of her dress? You die. Make bitchy comments about how your BFF from your school days hasn’t aged as well as she might? You die. Claim that your unrequited love of the hero is the cause of your unfulfilled life but let him know that the door to those possibilities is still open? You…well you get the picture!

In the first two movies, there is a witty sense of appropriation from various sources, paying homage to fan favourite vehicles of the genre. “Sharknado 2: The Second One” begins with a faithful replaying of William Shatner’s memorable turn as a jittery aeroplane passenger from “The Twilight Zone” intercut with elements of “Snakes on a Plane”, before riffing off “Die Hard” for the rest of its run time. After this, the writers had obviously done their dash, and couldn’t quite rise to this level of creativity once more. The remainder of the series is simply a run of clunky cameos held together with some tenuous plot.

I’ve had friends whooping for joy after just reading the cast list from these films – Tara Reid, Bo Derek, Vivica A. Fox, Kari Wuhrer, Frankie Muniz, Cheryl Tiegs, Gary Busey – but really? If these 80s (and later) actors were your favourites, seeing them here is only going to disappoint. Most of them are struggling to act without the benefit of their Zimmer frames and, in the case of Cheryl Tiegs (as stated above), her obvious frailty is more confronting than entertaining. If you like your memories intact, you’d probably best avoid this whole series.

As an aside to all this, there are cameos throughout which involve celebrities I’ve never even heard of (what the hell is a Carrot Top?), and the sly, knowing presentation of their moments onscreen are increasingly irritating and alienating. By movie four, it seems as though the creators have become obsessively focussed upon shoe-horning every cut-rate celebrity they can think of into the film: from Wil Wheaton to Lou Ferrigno, the screen is so overpopulated that you’d be forgiven for forgetting who the lead actors are.

Speaking of which: I-in Ziering (of “Beverly Hills 90210” fame) is an inspired choice for the lead role of Fin Shepherd, ex-surfing star and now a magnet for flying sharks; but even he seems a little put out by the number of unemployed celebrities who show up to hog his limelight. With each movie, more secret, or resurrected, members of his over-extended family appear out of the woodwork and it’s clear by the end that even he’s trying his best to keep track of who’s who. Add to which, whatever chemistry there is supposed to between him and his on-screen, divorced-now-pregnant-and-soon-to-be-re-married cyborg-wife Tara Reid, is completely absent: as far as I can tell, these two were only acting in order to take a breather from the on-going “my trailer is bigger than yours” bitchiness. By movie four they’re both essentially ‘phoning it in.

By the time the pre-title sequence for “Sharknado: The Fourth Awakens” starts to run (with all the attendant references to the “Star Wars” franchise you’d expect), the writers and producers have completely dropped the ball. Initially in the series, the threat was a sharknado – that is a whirling column of air which is filled with sharks; before the end of this, the last instalment, we’ll see “bouldernadoes”, “oilnadoes”, “firenadoes”, “lightningnadoes” and radioactive sharknadoes (yes, they had some quippy name for these also, but I had tuned out completely by this stage). In all cases, the answer to the threat was to make a large explosion that would snuff out the meteorological aspects of the phenomenon leaving only (only!) a rain of sharks (or boulders, or oil, or fire, or lightning, or radioactive fish) to be dealt with. The sharks learn to fly, exist out of water, get studded with rocky armour-plates, learn to navigate outer space and glow green with lethal radiation, but none of these modifications are ever remotely explained. Along with the physical limitations of fluid dynamics, the writers are not about to let a little real-world biology get in the way of their story.

In the final analysis, this is a film to watch with your brain in neutral, preferably with a few drinking buddies over for a mindless evening of dumb entertainment. You should probably eschew (unlike me!) watching them all in one big whack, and instead dip judiciously. Start off with the first film; creep your way into the second offering, but then leave it that – as the bean counters are wont to say, there are ever-diminishing returns to be gained from your continued investment in the exploits of I-in and Co.

I’ve rated each film individually above but overall, I’m giving one-and-a-half Sharktacled Horrors to the whole franchise.

Postscript: I've just been watching the third season of "Scorpion" (a guilty pleasure) and discovered an episode entitled "Sharknerdo". It's the usual socially-inept science-geekery that we've come to expect, but if you want to see every shark-movie trope I've been examining over the last little while, it's all in this one episode, from bobbing heads, to buoy escapes, to cheap CGI shark moments. Looks like I'm not the only one doing the research!

Review: "Sleepy Hollow" - Season 3

Wiseman, Len (Dir.) et.al., “Sleepy Hollow – Season 3”, Twentieth Century Fox, 2016.

The slow demise of this TV show has eventuated – after Season 4, there will be no more shenanigans in the ‘Hollow (of a cockily-proposed seven, sure-fire seasons) and, in the final analysis, these guys have no-one to blame except themselves.

The first season of “Sleepy Hollow” had chutzpah and a budget and very little else. With just these elements onboard, they forecast a silly, but entertainingly scary ride to come. By Season 2, they dropped all pretence of being witty or funny, and the entertainment factor went into a sudden nose-dive. Here, in Season 3, the budget has been slashed, the writing apparently outsourced to the junior staff and the will to live (or, at least, to act) strangled within all the performers contracted. What you’re seeing here, folks, is a death rattle. The shark, as they say, has well-and-truly jumped.

It’s really a shame, too. Initially, this series had a lot going for it – a handsome cast, a hefty budget and some interesting notions. However, they traded all of their advantages for a lazy complacence that has destroyed their credibility and alienated their audience. I’ve mentioned before how the writers assume that their viewers are au fait with other supernatural TV shows and don’t bother to explain or ground their own material as a result: “it’s like a wendigo, right? Y’know, like in X-Files? So yeah, like that.” Add to this that they short-cut required knowledge in any situation by putting the umbrella notion of an Oxford education circa 1770 over it, and suspension of disbelief goes right out the window. As a series of examples here are some instances:

The first steps towards deciphering Sumerian Cuneiform were made by Georg Friedrich Gotefend in 1802, published in 1815, but were generally ignored by the academic world. It wasn’t until 1857 that the language was considered definitively understood. Ichabod Crane readily translates a stone tablet written in this script which he rescues from a crypt beneath his (somehow, unoccupied, un-redeveloped, and un-demolished) ancestral home in – Scotland? (What: were they trying to channel “Outlander”?)

The earliest known reference to gunpowder dates to the work of Wei Boyang in 142 AD during the Eastern Han Dynasty of China. Jenny confidently attributes the discovery of gunpowder to scientists in the Tang Dynasty (618 AD – 907 AD) at one point. I would at least have expected Ichabod – as a Brit - to object to this notion on the basis that Francis Bacon is also often credited with the discovery.

Jesuit missionaries were active in China from the late 1500s. They published Christian theological materials in Chinese between 1593 and 1607. Louis XIV appointed a Chinese immigrant – Arcadio Huang - to catalogue France’s collection of Chinese texts and artefacts and, with Etienne Fourmont, he produced a Chinese grammar in 1742. The first European Sinology institute was established at Naples in 1732. Most other learning centres in Europe did not embark on any real study of China until after 1860, being more interested in the study of Assyria and Egypt (due to Biblical connexions) and, in the case of England, India. And yet Crane, who arguably wasn’t even in Europe during these events, can read Chinese. The Romanisation of the Chinese language – the Wade-Giles System – was published in 1892. So again, how can Crane read this stuff?

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War was written in the 5^th Century BC and translated first into French in 1772, and again in 1782, by Jean Joseph Marie Amiot a Jesuit priest. A partial translation into English was published by Everard Ferguson Calthrop in 1905 as The Book of War; this was completed by Lionel Giles in 1910. And yet, Crane quotes Sun Tzu at length over games of chess with Abbie, a book which wasn’t even in common parlance in Europe during his lifetime, let alone the United States.

Starting as a paper in 1922 entitled “Old British Trackways”, Alfred Watkins published The Old Straight Track in 1925, outlining his theory about the concept of ley-lines, which he invented. This, however, doesn’t stop Crane spotting ley-lines all over the countryside.

The “Ynglinga Saga” is the first part of a legendary saga entitled Heimskringla, a history text originally written in Old Norse by the Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson about 1225. It was first translated into English and published in 1844 by Samuel Laing. It outlines the history of the earliest Norse leaders, tentatively connecting them to the Norse gods. It’s not the grimoire that this show’s writers claim it is; it’s not a grimoire at all.

Spirit cabinets – or manifestation cabinets - were designed by fraudulent spirit mediums to fool séance members. The medium would invite an audience member to tie their hands and then draw the curtains over the medium inside the box. Despite being tied, musical instruments inside the box would play, “ghostly” hands would emerge from behind the curtain and so on. Of course it was all stage magic of a low order and yet our cast make use of one in actual, serious, magical endeavours. Perhaps this is an in-joke on the writers’ part, evidence that they know that what they’re shovelling is pure hokum? Naaah…

And finally, the giant-killer: Sleepy Hollow was founded in the Nineteenth Century as “North Tarrytown” a village in the orbit of Mount Pleasant in Westchester County, New York. Located between Mount Pleasant and Tarrytown proper, the village was re-named “Sleepy Hollow” in 1996. Rather than being the haunt of decapitated Hessians, it is better known as the birthplace of Mythbuster, Adam Savage.

I could go on. All of this information can be discerned by a quick stroll through Wikipedia via a Google search, but did anyone connected to this show even bother? Of course not. And here is where they made their fatal error: they can’t be bothered, but their audience can, and by relegating the intelligence of their viewers, they’ve killed their cash cow. Writers be warned: judge your audience at your own peril.

But the blame for the show’s demise cannot be laid entirely at Ichabod Crane’s door. As before, with Abbie’s career, the show’s writers use this as another egregious umbrella to cover a multitude of sins. First – it only takes nine months at Quantico to become a Federal Agent? Seriously? If this was the case, why aren’t all the ISIS sleeper cells putting their representatives through the routine in order to tool them up? Why doesn’t everyone in the US take the course as, I don’t know, some kind of military service? And afterwards, when you’ve graduated, you get to be posted wherever the Hell you want? I’m certain that this isn’t the case: schoolteachers don’t have this luxury; I’m pretty sure Government law-keepers follow suit.

As in previous seasons, Abbie’s blanket “career” allows her to do all kinds of investigate-y stuff, but there’s never any blow-back from when she’s derelict in her duty. She ignores cases, procedures – even her superiors – every time it interferes with her (lacklustre) ghost-busting activities. At one point she even quits, but the Bureau keeps her job open for her to come back to if she wants. Seriously? With all of the cadets coming through Quantico after their nine-month internship, you’d think job vacancies would be filled in a heartbeat. As before, the writers never let the exigencies of the real world interfere with their weekly monster hunt.

And speaking of which: in past seasons, there were some actually scary opponents to face. Now, with the budget being so obviously trimmed, the villains are all definitely B-grade, even recycled from previous seasons, and the wow-factor has diminished accordingly. This season’s main nemesis, Pandora – she of the Box - is obviously where the money went and even then the writers fail to capitalise on all of the funky set-dressing by giving her a focused rationale. By the mid-point of Season 3, she seems mostly bored and regretful of ever coming to the ‘Hollow. That’s okay though, because Abbie also loses the plot and appears to have much better (unspecified) things to do elsewhere.

In the first season, Crane exhibited bursts of outrage about the state of the country which he fought to create. These were, by and large, the best thing about the show. Season 2 toned them down almost into pastiche, and in Season 3, they’re entirely absent. Given that these moments were the best thing about the show, I’m gobsmacked that they got relegated. Rather than being a fish out of water, Crane is simply an oddity, and not a very good one at that. I’ve said before that you need to leave your degree in American History at the door before watching this show; by this stage, the savaging of American history is the least repellent thing about it. I’m prepared to believe that Ben Franklin’s glass armonica was a device for controlling resurrected corpses, or that Paul Revere built caskets to contain god-summoning widgets, or that Betsy Ross was an arse-kicking chop-socky wunderkind, but only if the show’s designers build a vaguely-credible rationale around these concepts. Instead we get this.

Did I mention that there’s a crossover episode to the “Bones” franchise? If there’s one truism in TV-land, it’s that you can’t prop up two dying televisual commodities by marrying them together.

It’s over, folks. After Season 4, there is no more – the money has spoken. There are only two words to sum up this wasted effort: Sloppy. Hollow.

Review: "The Lost City of Z"

GRAY, James (Dir.), “The Lost City of Z”, Mica Entertainment/Northern Ireland Screen/Plan B Entertainment/Keep Your Head/Madriver Pictures/Sierra Pictures, 2016.

The story of Percy Fawcett’s mad dash to the Matto Grosso in the Amazon Basin is a classic tale of adventure and exploration. Ernest Hemingway used to carry a copy of the book with him and referred to it as one of the greatest adventure tales of all time, even moreso because it is all true. It was only a matter of time therefore, that someone would turn it into a movie. If only it hadn’t been these people.

My first exposure to Percy Fawcett (outside of some sparse gaming material) was through a book entitled Brazilian Adventure written in the 1930s by Peter Fleming. It recounts the efforts of the author, along with some mates, to try and retrace the footsteps of Percy Fawcett’s last expedition along the Amazon and possibly solve the mystery of his disappearance. Despite a lot of serious difficulties, it reads a lot like something that P.G. Wodehouse might take a swing at – like Bertie Wooster goes to Brazil. However, in the background of that narrative is the looming spectre of Fawcett and the quest upon which he was bent. Inevitably, I moved on to another book – Exploration Fawcett: Journey to the Lost City of Z – which is the account of all Fawcett’s travels in South America, edited by his youngest son Brian.

Like Hemingway says, this is a mighty work, detailing years of painstaking exploration and mapping across the Amazon River Basin. It’s unflinching in its portrayals of the discomfort and the sheer back-breaking work of travelling through the region and is full of many bizarre and wonderful encounters, from eccentric murderers and landholders, to meetings with ghosts. (I posted a review about this book several years ago now, so if you want to know more, you can back-track.) You could say that any section of the work would contain enough material to keep the average script-writer, or movie director, occupied for a lifetime; however, this movie actually spends very little time in the jungle.

This treatment of Percy Fawcett focuses almost exclusively on Fawcett’s relationship with the society back home in England. We see him struggling in the army to win recognition for his efforts; we see him being passed over for various favours from the aristocracy, due to the circumstances of his birth (his father disgraced himself rather badly and placed his family beyond the pale); and we see him being handed an onerous job by the Royal Geographic Society that would see him sent out of the country and which no-one else thought was ‘exciting’ enough to consider taking on. This, of course, was the Bolivian mapping expedition which introduced Fawcett to South America and which set him on course for his mysterious disappearance.

All of this is interesting background, but it plays rather too strongly throughout the film. Various incidents where the ‘Old Boys’ Network’ prevents Fawcett from making any kind of headway take place and these are as outrageous as they are unfair, as you’d expect. They serve to underscore the desire that Fawcett must have felt to leave so-called “civilisation” behind and get back to where the ability to succeed depended upon a range of entirely different skills, not dependent upon who you were, or how well you could stab someone in the back. As it is, this celluloid Fawcett is rather un-fazed by all the bickering back home: he seems far more interested in hoofing through the jungle than looking after either his career or his family. When at home, he appears little more than mildly irritated and bored.

The jungle scenes themselves are somewhat lacking in anything that would serve to promote any notion of there actually being a Lost City somewhere out there. The motley crew find a pile of broken potsherds and a face carved into a tree; Fawcett sees a bunch of… skulls? Carved heads? It’s not clear, but then he has to turn back and temporarily abandon the quest. Throughout Fawcett’s writings, there were encounters with natives and traders who told him about the City and other clues that reinforced the possibility that something was out there somewhere; here, there’s very little of any merit to convince anyone, let alone the viewer.

A major feature of Fawcett’s travels was his desire to treat the local indigenes well and to learn things from them. The encounters with the natives shown here are colourful but they often don’t serve to push the narrative ahead. We have moments where Fawcett disappears into the Bush with a group of bow-wielding Indians, then he returns moments later with free access to the village, food and supplies and a new compass heading. The sense is that the natives are merely a colourful background before which the explorers move without impinging upon in any significant way.

Muscularly-faced Charlie Hunnam is a good pick to play Fawcett physically, but it feels like he’s tired all the way through the movie; Robert Pattinson – almost unrecognisable beneath layers of beard and spectacles – is sulky and world-weary as Fawcett’s right-hand man; and Tom Holland – while barely in the film at all – is distracting behind his moustache (I kept thinking, “Spidey has a lip-fairy!”). Added to this, Sienna Miller, as Fawcett’s wife, is completely wasted. In fact, most of the scenes in which she appears feel tacked-on and pointless: her constant cavilling to be treated as her husband’s equal feel like they are intentionally timely, homilies drawn from our current zeitgeist rather than the circumstances of the source material. I don’t want to take anything from the #MeToo movement (of which I approve), but this comes off almost as a paid advertisement for it, more irritating than the most blatant product placement in a blockbuster.

Political hedging aside, this film feels as though it’s treading a line, following links between narrative points in Fawcett’s life and desperately trying to miss nothing. However, all of the episodes it so painstakingly screens are the bits that took place in England, and very little of what took place in Amazonia, arguably the bits that are described by Fawcett in his own words and which are far more interesting than stuffy period piece club rooms, society galas and aristocratic get-togethers. Add to this, the fact that the film kind of tapers off at the point where Fawcett pere et fil vanish into the jungle, borne away by natives, the whole thing just comes across as fuzzy and poorly focussed. In short, this is a bloodless re-telling of beside-the-point facts, deliberately missing all the really interesting parts of Fawcett’s life in favour of painting a “Downton Abbey”-esque backdrop to it. I was left wondering what Werner Herzog could have done with it?

Three Tentacled Horrors from me.

Another Day, Another Shark Flick...

ROBERTS, Johannes (Dir.), “47 Metres Down”, Dimension Films/The Fyzz Facility/Dragon Root/Flexibon Films/Lantica Pictures/Tea Shop & Film Company, 2017.

With my passive sonar pinging, I encountered this DVD just the other day. I know it’s quite soon after my previous foray into deadly waters but I suspect that the surfeit of shark films that have been appearing lately might have something to do with a general public awareness campaign to do with surf and swimming safety and good boat-handling practice. Perhaps. It could also have something to do with idiotically self-important surf stars demanding shark culls on their favourite breaks, or perhaps it’s a sneaky campaign by those companies who make cans of shark-fin soup to demonstrate why we really do need a sharp increase in shark killing – or perhaps not. Regardless, these vested interests are probably being well-served by this kind of cinematic fare, which makes me kind of queasy about discussing it in any kind of positive light.

The best way to start I guess, is to rake over all the arguments once more in the interests of providing a counter-argument to hating on sharks. First and foremost: you are more likely to be killed by a cow, a bee or an automobile than a shark (in fact you’re more likely to get killed by a donkey, or a hippopotamus); second, you have to be in the water and acting stupidly in order for a shark to even notice you; third (and it galls me to even have to bring this up) sharks are not submersible torpedoes loaded with a pecker-stiffening Viagra equivalent – they’re fish. You’d probably earn more cred in the macho stakes by sucking down a jar of rollmops (from me certainly). There’s a particularly roast-y part of Hell for all those cretins who think that Chinese Medicine has any kind of potency and who support its planet-destroying trade…

So there you have it: arguments against everything that shark films prey upon. The real reason why these films are so popular comes back to those old tropes of Hollywood Morality, which mostly devolve to a sneaky thrill generated by watching young girls get killed by horrific monsters, fates predicated upon morally-dubious actions and activities set up in the early part of the movie. Too, in these days of computer-generated horrors, sharks are easy to model in a virtual environment: I suspect that there are readily-obtained pre-generated constructs out there that require only a little tweaking to suit any film-maker’s needs. Increasingly, we’re moving away from the practical effects of Spielberg’s “Jaws” and Renny Harlin’s “Deep Blue Sea”, and into a realm where shark flicks are almost 100% CGI, in terms of their finny antagonists. Finally, I’ve yet to see a shark movie where the location shooting isn’t some exotic beach locale or tropical tourist paradise – given that these stories are all about young people, there’s a definite ‘spring break’, or ‘schoolies’ mentality at work here, reflecting the target audience, but also manifesting as a tangible holiday perk for the film cast and crew. In short: cheap; nasty; easy; with benefits. Voila! I give you the shark film!

This movie contains all of the above, in a presentation which could have been assembled by rote. Two sisters, Lisa and Kate, go to Mexico for a vacation, and it is soon revealed that Lisa is escaping from the severance of her long-term relationship, a fact she kept secret from her younger sister. When Kate finds out, she sets about ramping-up the party tone of the holiday, insisting upon drinks, dancing and hooking up with the locals. Since ex-boyfriend Stephen claimed that he broke up with Lisa because she was “boring”, when the opportunity of cage-diving in shark-infested waters presents itself, Kate insists they both go, in order to demonstrate the fault in Stephen’s thinking.

So far, so obvious. When they get to the boat the next day, things get a little iffy: the vessel (named “Sea-esta”; yes, it’s that bad) is rusty and ancient and the crew leering and disorderly, with the exception of Captain Taylor (Matthew Modine, slumming again!). Lisa has further reservations, but Kate puts her foot down. Here is where Kate crosses the Hollywood Morality line for the final time: not only – by this point – has she insisted on making Lisa a party girl, encouraging her drinking, staying up late and kissing strange boys, now she pushes her into doing something that she absolutely does not want to do. Oh, and she lies to the Captain about the level of Lisa’s diving competency (zero). At this point we understand that Kate, along with the greasy, sarcastic first mate Javier, will not be coming home (no spoiler alerts required here).

Strangely, it’s at this point that the film takes off and shows some ingenuity. Rather than simply turning the last half of the film into a series of floating heads (a la “Open Water”) we instead learn the subtle and debilitating mysteries of SCUBA diving:

SCUBA diving is one of those activities that utterly bewilders me. The dangers and threats that you have to expose yourself to in order to take part in this sport boggle the mind. Not only are you putting yourself in harm’s way (low as it generally is) in terms of sharks, but you also mess with your body chemistry, exposing yourself to myriad life-destroying impairments along the way. The Bends is no joke: you can suffer aneurysms; burst blood vessels in your eyes resulting in permanent blindness; ruptured eardrums; you can split your hard palate and crack your teeth; create debilitating ruptures of your spinal cord; suffer paralysis; haemorrhage your lung tissue; and that’s if you don’t straight-up die. Nitrogen narcosis is a bitch.

Kate and Lisa enter the shark cage (swinging from its rusty chains, attached to a dodgy cable running through an even dodgier winch) and head into the depths. They become surrounded by sparkly fish and soon a big shark glides by creating a momentary thrill. Then the cage drops downwards a fraction: via a radio transmitter system, Captain Taylor says “nothing to worry about – just a little winch slippage” …then the cage plummets to the bottom of the sea. Didn’t see that coming! The girls end up on the ocean floor at 47 metres of depth – the radio transmitter conveniently cuts out at 35.

Now the scenario becomes a race for freedom while the air in their tanks slowly runs out. Initially Lisa panics and wastes a bunch of air by doing so; Kate is the first to venture out of the cage, in order to make contact with the ship by swimming up to 35 metres. Captain Taylor informs them that he’s sending the reprobate, Javier, down to them with a cable attached to a back-up winch and tells them to watch out for his tell-tale flashlight. They see the light, but Javier has roamed too far afield and has wandered into a benighted abyss far from where the cage is. Lisa – now with more air than Kate after shark encounters have upped her consumption – is forced to swim out to Javier and haul him back. Several close calls with sharks later, she meets up with him in time to see him horribly eaten. She returns with the cable, a few signal flares and a spear-gun (hooray!).

From here on in, every permutation of rescue from this unendurable situation takes place with varying degrees of failure and success - the new cable breaks; the spear-gun goes off accidentally (and doesn’t find a piscine target); fresh tanks are dropped and must be retrieved – and all the while the air pressure in the sisters’ reserves is ticking down. The end of the film provides an interesting wrinkle: before sending down the spare tanks, Captain Taylor warns them that breathing a second round of the oxygen mixture could cause hallucinations, dizziness and other neurological side-effects. He cautions them to watch each other closely for signs of this happening. This signals a distressing twist at the film’s conclusion but also paves the way for some truly outrageous stunts with the finny denizens of the deep, with Lisa going mano-a-mano with one of them as it leaps from the water to pluck her from the jaws of safety, amongst others.

Did I like this film? It starts slowly and the sound levels are truly weird at the beginning – I was raising and lowering the volume over and over trying to reach some kind of sweet spot before finding a level (about 20 minutes in) that catered for both the dialogue and the sound effects. Matthew Modine was a huge distraction and I wondered as to the thinking behind his inclusion. It’s been awhile since “Memphis Belle”, or “Cutthroat Island”, or “The Transporter 2”, or even that weird episode of “The West Wing” where he sleeps with Allison Janney at a school reunion, but he still stands out like a shark fin in a cast replete with no-names (Mandy Moore, pop starlet, included). I get it – even moderately well-known actors need to pay the rent occasionally, but this was really slumming it!

The sharks are all CGI spectres and they glide in an out of the dark on cue. There are some nifty shots of them through the surface of the water from the boat’s deck but underwater they seemed a bit lacklustre. There’s a ridiculous moment during a rescue attempt when the signal flare goes dark and, when the girls light the next one, it’s only to find themselves surrounded by gaping maws. Do the sharks carry on with these launched attacks despite the sudden illumination? No: like a pack of underwater Stooges suddenly caught in the act, they flee into the dark – “Nyuck! Nyuck! Nyuck! Whoops! Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo…!” Like a shark going into a full-on bite frenzy, I rolled my eyes…

I enjoyed the extra layer of dramatics that the SCUBA process brought to the table in terms of creating complexity in the narrative – it was far and away better than just watching heads floating through the waves and listening to endless bitching before the inevitable. This film also had its moments of “it’s all your fault we’re in this mess!” recriminations, but thankfully, it was low-key. It’s not “The Shallows”; it’s not even “Jaws”; however, “Open Water” 1, 2 or 3, it certainly isn’t either, and that gives it three Tentacled Horrors from me.

Review: "The Shape Of Water"

Del Toro, Guillermo (Dir.), “The Shape of Water”, Bull Productions/Double Dare You/Fox Searchlight, 2017.

Here’s a question: say you’re on the production team of Universal’s “Dark Universe” project, wrestling with the critical non-acclaim of its first turkey – the Tom Cruise-led ‘un-make’ of “The Mummy” – when an Oscar-winning independent director films a re-boot of “Creature From The Black Lagoon” that’s far better than anything your team could come up with and which is completely outside of your ambit – what do you do? Well, since Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” is already on-track for Academy Awards success, I guess all you can reasonably do is wring your hands, quietly shelve the whole “Dark Universe” mess and hope that no-one remembers what you were up to.

Del Toro has been a little off track of late. “Crimson Peak” – while visually stunning – was a disorganised mess, and the TV series “The Strain” was more than a little patchy. Even “Pacific Rim” had some troubles. I put a lot of this down to the frustrations of being involved with the whole “Hobbit” fiasco, which must have been distracting at best. Now, however, it’s clear that time away from these lesser vehicles has given del Toro a chance to re-set and to focus on what he does best.

There are a lot of parallels between this film and “Pan’s Labyrinth” – an ingénue encountering fantastic elements in the face of a repressive regime. In this story, a mute cleaner at a Top Secret research facility in the 1960s discovers a ‘fish man’ being studied there and decides to release it before it is killed and anatomised. This contest of pure and determined innocence against dark and vested forces is a hallmark of del Toro’s best films, notably “Cronos” and “Pan’s Labyrinth”. The setting allows for much playfulness in terms of design and the wonderful soundtrack, but it isn’t a random or whimsical choice: the 60s was a period of gloss and glamour, but it was also a time of conformity and repression where socially unacceptable elements were swept violently beneath a Hugo Gernsback-styled veneer. In this tale, the baddies are the ones with slick hair-dos, shiny cars and magazine-curated homes and families. In this sense, del Toro is commenting quite a bit about the world of today.

Many of the traditional del Toro touches appear throughout this film. Shoes – and shoebrushes – are a feature, as are cats; there is a signature colour throughout (green this time); and a distressing hand injury takes centre stage (hearkening back to “Pan’s Labyrinth” once more). And the ubiquitous Doug Jones is here as well. In fact, knowing that he was going to be playing the creature in this film, I had a few qualms going in:

Many actors, over time, develop a unique ‘tool-kit’ of tics and flourishes that cover most situations in which they find themselves. For this reason, I can’t watch Meryl Streep anymore. In the course of her career, she seems to have become a caricature of herself on screen, where once, in her earliest film appearances, she was daring and kinetic. Robert de Niro also has this effect on me. Doug Jones, no matter how many layers of latex he’s covered with, is almost always recognisable. I was worried that this role would be another Abe Sapien re-hash from “Hell-Boy”, but I was more than pleasantly surprised. As “the Asset” in this movie, he plays it low-key, abandoning all of the quirky C3-PO head jerks and shoulder twitches, and focuses not only on portraying his character, but also the interconnectedness of the two lovers at the heart of the story. I was very impressed.

But it’s not just the main characters who get all of the attention. Like most of del Toro’s films, each character on screen gets moments to shine, no matter how small their contribution. Here, the second-string and background characters are as luminous as the leads. The bitchy queue-jumper hating Yolanda is great; the lugubrious theatre owner downstairs who thinks ‘Mardi Gras’ is spelt ‘Mardi Grass’; the incompetent Russian spy ‘nyetwork’: they all serve the story brilliantly. It’s part of what makes a del Toro film a rich and varied tapestry.

If I have a beef with this film at all, it’s to do with the language. Here, I’m talking about the four-letter word kind of language, rather than the prevailing idiom. There are some scenes here, of such finely-constructed beauty, that get trampled by an overuse of the F-word, and also some scenes of menace and threat that lose energy by being verbalised with the same excess. They’re called “F-bombs” for a reason – they’re loud, distracting and destructive. Less is more.

Before I conclude, I have to take a moment to mention the soundtrack. There are few films that I go to where the music is not just some background orchestral thing that underscores the action. “The Illusionist”, the soundtrack of which was written by Philip Glass, almost overtook the visuals in that film – it was the first movie, I think, where I shut my eyes and listened rather than watched. This film was similar. The soundtrack is circuitous and almost tangential, coming out of various 60s pastiche moments and doing its job wonderfully as well as subtly. It’s noticeable but not demanding of your attention; it serves the movie while being utterly unique, rich and captivating.

If you’ve never seen “Creature From The Black Lagoon”, you should really try to before seeing this film. Of the Universal monsters series, it’s one of my favourites simply because the visuals – especially the underwater sequences – strive to rise above the B-movie cheesiness of the concept and attain something greater. I think that is what has inspired del Toro here – the notion that a piece of genre storytelling can talk to wider and higher concepts than its ostensible basis would intimate. Watch both of these films before the "Dark Universe" puts its grubby mitts all over the concept - you can't go wrong.

Four-and-a-half Tentacled Horrors from me.

"The Haunting" Handouts

I have recently taken the plunge and bought the 7^th edition rules for “Call of Cthulhu” and I am ploughing my way through them. Some things have definitely changed, but on the whole these are changes for the better and not to the game’s detriment. I am not unhappy to see the old “Resistance Table” as a thing of the past, for instance. The presentation is a bit wordy but there is a concerted effort to talk to newcomers while leaving old-timers to do their own thing – the presentation and organisation reflects all the other iterations, so returning readers won’t easily get lost. Some things have been retained – Harvey Walters is back as the Example Character and – in the Quick-Start version of the rules – the introductory scenario, “The Haunting”, has been dusted off for another run around the block.

This isn’t a bad thing, because it’s a good introduction to the game for new players and Keepers alike. I’ll admit that I have never run this story for my players, or played it myself, but I can see the quality of the design. One thing that always bothered me about it was the rudimentary presentation of the player handouts: rather than being anything of note, they comprise a simple set of boxed statements telling the results of inquiries at various locales. Of course, Keepers are allowed to flesh these out as they like, but I’ve always felt that, if you’re going to try and lead by example, you should demonstrate to the newbs what is possible, not the minimum effort.

To this end, to celebrate the return of this tried-and-true tale under a new and streamlined system, I’ve thrown together some more elaborate handouts which can be given to players, and which will help generate a little more atmosphere than just bald lines of text. Essentially, there is no difference between the original handouts and these ones – the essential information provided is identical; these ones are just a bit more picturesque. Enjoy!

“The Haunting” Handout #1:

“The Haunting” Handout #2:

“The Haunting” Handout #3:

“The Haunting” Handout #4:

“The Haunting” Handout #5:

“The Haunting” Handout #6:

“The Haunting” Handout #7:

“The Haunting” Handout #8:

“The Haunting” Handout #9:

(All information presented here is copyright Chaosium Inc., taken from CALL OF CTHULHU 7th Edition Quick Start, 2013.)

XI - Aichmophobia: The Fear of Sharp and Pointed Objects

“The desire for life, the desire for love, are too strong within us to be repressed for long without serious hurt to the mental processes. Aichmophobia is simply another version of the agonized protest of the life-force crying out against atrophy and disuse. The sublimation of sexual impulses into so-called higher activities is all very well in theory, but frustration sometimes wreaks a horrible punishment on its voluntary or involuntary victims. The maladjusted man who, either out of personal conviction or the restraining hand of social forces, has disregarded and suppressed the natural urge to sex-expression, may end up by wishing for death or castration to release him from the fury of impulses he is unable to gratify. The aichmophobiac fears the cutting edge and the sharp point for an obvious reason: he does not trust his own power to resist their insidious appeal. He is fascinated and terrified by sharp and pointed instruments that may release the surging flow of blood – a symbol for an orgasm in which the entire body makes a last, convulsive sacrifice.

“Prisoners in jails, inmates of asylums, driven to frenzy by their enforced sexual inactivity, have been known to mutilate their genitals with pieces of glass or wire torn from the springs of their beds. This same tendency exists to an advanced degree in the aichmophobiac, and the slow erosion of mad suggestions ends finally by breaking down the mind. Razors, knives, scissors, needles, fence-palings, iron gates, hundreds of the commonplace objects of his daily life, are all means to an end he desires and fears. He is constantly haunted by visions in which he sees himself stabbing his friend, or opening his veins, or mutilating his organs: by any of these acts his purpose is accomplished – the destruction of life itself or the emasculation of the life-giving principal (sic.).”

John Vassos

New York City

May 25^th, 1931