Manticore (2005)

The manticore is a legendary creature of persian (300 villains) origin. Half man, half bear, half pig I believe. Or is it half pig, half man, half bear? Wait, I just looked it up. It's half lion, half man, half dragon, and half scorpion. The Sci-fi channel, in 2005's Manticore, has chosen to address this legend in a scathing treatise on the war in Iraq. Of course, based on this picture, the manticore is actually about 75% lion, 20 % dragon, and 5 % scorpion or actually, what I might consider to be stingray. So, not quite half and half and half. Thankfully, they didn't even attempt the "man" part, even though it's in the fucking title. That would have looked even more ridiculous. Believe me, this thing didn't need any more help in that department.

The first thing I noticed was "wow, I know this scene." What Manticore has managed to do, brilliantly I might add, is rip off several other far superior movies. Like most Sci-fi originals, there is a galling bankruptcy of imagination. Here's the formula. Take a creature (either mythological or genetically altered), come up with a basic plot involving a group of characters isolated from the rest of society, rip off scenes from classic movies within the genre, mix in a few C-list (and below) actors, and Voila! You've made yourself a Sci-fi original. Manticore is a part of the "essential" collection, so I can only imagine what crap is considered non-essential. God, this movie stinks

Here's the basic plot. We're a few years into the debacle known as the war in Iraq. Apparently, the terrorists must think we're winning the war because they wake up a manticore to help fight their battle. However, the manticore just holes up in an isolated town called Al Kumar and feeds on the villagers instead. That's ok, they can just blame it on the United States later. For some reason, an american journalist for GNN named Ashley Pierce, played terribly by Chase Masterson (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), and her cameraman come to this town because they heard some WMDs might be hidden there. What they find instead is a "living, breathing WMD". The United States Army stationed in the area, under the command of Major Spense (Jeff Fahey from Body Parts and Planet Terror), sends in a squad of soldiers led by Seargent Baxter (I swear it's George Lopez) and Corporal Kinky played by Heather Donohue (she was in Blair Witch Project, not The Bare Wench Project) to retrieve Pierce. I guess these are the C-listers. Actually, Fahey is more of a B- lister. No one else is really worth mentioning. So, the soldiers get to the town and are immediately under attack from the manticore. Can they hold out until support arrives? Oh, also one of the terrorists is in the town as well (played by Faran Tahir and looking like Mola Ram). There's also an Iraqi boy, with a heart of Saddam's missing bullion, to show us that not all Iraqi's want to blow us up.

The initial scene, the one where the beast is unleashed, is stolen directly from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom AND Conan the Destroyer. I guess the filmmakers need to be given credit for that small coup. The slaughter that follows, in this scene, is not quite as good as Conan, however. The red stuff flies certainly, but we don't get to see much detail. Wisely, the creature is shown sparingly. Unwisely, this was not the case later on. Typical of Sci-fi, they employed Playstation 2 CGI. My favorite line came in this opening scene when Mola Ram says "for 2,000 years they have slept, waiting paitently to be called to rid us of our enemies". George Bush? If you're listening, I think it's time we left Iraq. Do you really want to take the chance that terrorists have access to such a weapon?

Baxter's squad is introduced to us during a stone fight that escalates into a firefight. Think Saving Private Ryan meets Brotherhood of the Wolf, which in turn, says "hi" to The A-Team. It didn't really work. They're a rag tag bunch of loveable guys though that truly enjoy each others company. Baxter is under the impression that their job is to help these people (the Iraqis), but his commanding officer (Fahey) has other ideas. A potential conflict that isn't really dealt with once there is a monster to deal with.

Once the squad reaches Al Kumar everything goes to shit, including the movie. The jokester of the bunch, Mickey is torn to shreds because he's been labeled "the boy who cried manticore". The Sarge radioes in that they "are under attack from an unknown entity that can't be categorized". There's an attempted helicopter rescue that shamelessy lifts the attempted rescue scene verbatim from Aliens, a film I'm pretty sure is infinitely superior. The guy named Busey (not to be confused with Gary or Jake) I believe is taken out during the "spectacular" crash. One soldier tapes a goodbye message to his wife, so we can only guess what happens to him seconds later. Yeah, he gets impaled by manticore's barbed tale. One thing struck me as odd though. Apparently, there was no medic in this squad or perhaps he was killed early on and I didn't notice. As one soldier lies dying, All Baxter can do is tell him to "hang in there"? No morphine, no gauze, no impromptu surgery. This film might be the greatest deterrent to military service that I have ever seen.

This particular picture ends, as they all do, with the calling in of a strategic air strike. Is that going to destroy the manticore?

Are you kidding? Look at that thing! Clearly, the only way to defeat it is to rip off The Clash of the Titans and use a mirror. Then, the filmmakers can rape The Terminator and have it's glowing red eyes fade to black. By the way, the beast looked exactly like the image above, except it had the head of a lion and the wings of a dragon. Other than that, same thing.

If you're a Jeff Fahey fan, as I am, don't bother with this one unless you're a completist. I think he's halfway through his 50 picture deal with the Sci-fi channel, a contract he must be regretting. Why else would half his roles consist of throwaway parts filmed in the span of an hour? A quick word on the setting. This was apparently filmed in Bulgaria, a place I will not soon be visiting because it looks exactly like Iraq. A quicker note on Heather Donahue. Porn. It's in your future. How many times have I used that line before?

Quetzalcoatl - The Winged Serpent (1982)

I remember seeing this movie on the video shelf in the Quality Superette when I was a kid. I wanted to see it immediately, but couldn't rent it because of the R rating. It was on the shelf directly below the pornos. Remember the boxes that porn used to come in? They were ENORMOUS. At the time, I thought it was great. Porn, in full view of a kid. On GIANT boxes. As I got older, it became more frustrating. I mean, that's not very discreet. How am I supposed to get that giant box out of the store unnoticed? It's absurd. I think porn companies had a sense of humor in those days. Living in a small town, we didn't have too many video stores with the curtained off back room. Anyway, Quetzalcoatl. Or Q, I guess (not much of a market for movies with twelve letter titles). I never got around to watching this. The years passed and I kind of forgot all about it. Finally, DVD replaced video cassettes and all of these older schlocky films started coming back. I could now also access porn more discreetly, but that's another story for a different blog. Now, after 20 plus years I can finally watch a movie about a giant flying serpent-like bird thing.

The movie stars Woody Allen as Michael Moriarty and Chuck Norris as David Carradine. What a cast, huh? Well, actually that's not Chuck Norris. It really IS David Carradine. I'm slightly less impressed. Although, I guess if it was Chuck Norris it would be a short, instead of feature length. Do you really think a flying serpent could last more than ten minutes against Norris? Also, Norris would probably manage to give an even more wooden performance than Carradine, if that's possible. While I'm being honest here, Moriarty wasn't exactly played by Woody Allen either. Moriarty is better than that. I'm sorry. Woody Allen is the Michael Moriarty of Woody Allen films. Another guy in this picture is Richard Roundtree as Shaft. Well, actually two guys play Shaft. Roundtree plays him up until the end when some other guy stands in and gets plucked off a roof and dropped to his death. No way is Shaft getting killed by a fucking bird!

The auteur behind this film is Larry Cohen. Cohen is behind some classic B horror movies from the 70s and 80s. I've only seen It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (also starring Moriarty, Cohen's Deniro). If you haven't seen It's Alive III, please do so as soon as possible. If the title doesn't sound familiar you may know it as Survivor: Mutant Killer Babies. I plan on attacking the rest of Cohen's filmography soon, including such titles as It's Alive, It's Alive II, and The Stuff. Now, I called Cohen an auteur earlier. That's not to disparage everyone else who worked on the film, but this is his baby. He gathered the money, wrote the screenplay, produced and directed the film. It's his. Ok, fuck the cast and crew.

The movie doesn't waste any time. In the first scene we see a window washer on the 40th floor of a high rise. He's pretending to clean the window, but really he's just ogling the pretty young girl in the office. He's a pervert and says "I know you love me baby", but he's also a coward because he knows she can't hear him through the glass. Suddenly, he looks up and screams. His head is bitten off by some sort of flying bird/serpent thing, I think that must be Q (I'm abbreviating it's name from now on). So, apparently, Q has a thing against perverts. Well, that's good. Maybe this is the kind of monster we can get behind? In the very next scene we see a woman sunbathing topless on top of a high rise. On top of the adjacent building is yet another pervert watching her through his telescope. Ok, pretty predictable so far. He's going to get his, alright. But no, Q swoops down and plucks up the girl in clear view of the now stunned pervert. He must eat her in mid air because pedestrians on the street are rained on. By blood. So, what the fuck? Now I don't know WHAT to expect from Q. This bird/thing is an equal opportunity people eater. Perverts and women are one and the same. I like that.

Moriarty plays a character that's down on his luck. He's nervous, can be funny, twitches a little. He's got no luck with women and can't hold down a job. He does have a girlfriend (Candy Clark), but something tells me she won't be around long. He walks into a bar to try to get a job as a musician. The barkeep gives him an audition and he goes on to play the most bizarre scat bee bop tune I have ever heard ("Evil Dream". I'm going to youtube this after the review. If I find it, I'll include a link). He mumbles his way through the audition and the bartender makes his decision when he decides to blare the jukebox halfway through the performance. What a dick. Carradine, Shaft's partner, likes the song enough from his barstool and tells him so on his way out. Moriarty replies, "what the fuck do you know?" and walks out. So, yeah, there are several little character moments like this sprinkled throughout this film. I don't know, I guess they really don't make 'em like this anymore. When you have $150 million budget, why waste time on shots that don't contain special effects? Well? Michael Bay? I'm waiting.

The movies basic premise is that an ancient Aztec goddish bird-like/serpent thingamajig has made Manhattan his home. It's nest is on top of the Chrysler building. In a sub-plot, or I guess it's more of a lateral plot, there is someone going around town performing Aztec ritual sacrifices, these include skinning and heart plucking. Are these sacrifices somehow connected to Q? Moriarty, running from the police discovers the nest of Q. Being the weasely guy he is, he blackmails the cops with his newfound information. He wants a million dollars, immunity (which is funny, because they aren't charging him with any crimes), rights to all photos/videos taken of Q, and a tax free life. Carradine and Shaft have to work against time to solve the ritual murders and kill Q, while also putting up with Moriarty's shenanigans. Basic plot in a Q egg.

What did I think of Q (the monster, not the movie). Well, it's clear that Harryhausen didn't work on this thing, but I still liked the design. What do you want for $1.2 million? I'm hoping Shaft and Carradine didn't work for scale, so the creature budget was considerably less that that. I mentioned Harryhausen earlier. So, you can infer that the creature was made using stop-motion technology. You may think I'm insane, but I would take stop-motion over CGI 9 times out of 10. There's something beautiful about stop motion. It's organic. Even when done poorly it can still create life. Q was alive, but he didn't look realistic, if that makes sense. I prefer that to the soulless CGI that dominates movies these days. The work on Q was actually very effective and it would have fit right in with a film like Clash of the Titans (if Clash were based on Aztec mythology instead of Greek with a splash of Norse). I take it back, the creature IS Harryhausen-esque. We see it in bits and pieces early on and mostly just it's shadow until the final 20 minutes or so. I'm actually amazed that Cohen was able to pull off the creature as well as he did. I mean, have you ever seen the mutant killer babies in It's Alive III? This is a long way from that.

The final battle with the creature is actually a pretty brilliant set-piece atop the Chrysler building. Moriarty finally leads the cops to the nest in exchange for his demands. I'd say there's 30 or 40 cops, heavily armed, led by Carradine. This scene is kind of the anti-King Kong. Instead of the monster on top of the building swiping at planes, we have cops shooting at a swooping bird/lizard/harryhausen-thing as it plucks them off the building one by one. Obviously, you know how it ends. The very last scene before the credits roll (what's known as the "shock moment" in these kinds of monster films) rips off Godzilla (1998), except this movie came before Godzilla I think and I don't know if time travel had been made possible for human consumption by 1982. Someone wikipedia that and let me know.

Speaking of 1982, has there ever been a better year for film? That year alone produced Blade Runner, Poltergeist, Star Trek II, Conan the Barbarian, Creepshow, The Thing, First Blood, Basket Case, Enter the Ninja, Beastmaster, Friday the 13th Part 3 (in 3-D!), Halloween 3 (not 3-D), Slumber Party Massacre, Swamp Thing, and, yes, Quetzalcoatl. Holy shit, it's my desert island collection! Hopefully, those fucking babies won't be there.

I loved Quetzalcoatl. Seriously, I did. Dan, revise your rating on netflix. This is NOT a two star film. Of course, I do have a couple complaints. Why have David Carradine in your picture and not give him anyone to karate chop? I mean, yeah, he's NO Chuck Norris, but he's still better than, say, Franco Nero. The guy was in Kung Fu for Chrissakes! I don't get it. The second complaint I'm sure you can guess involves nudity. Yeah. Not enough of it. Check this one out.