I couldn't really come up with another good idea for T so I'm using it for disaster movies. Trials and tribulations, disasters, whatever. I already had a D so let's do this.
Sharknado & Sharknado 2: The Sharknado movies were made by schlock studio The Asylum so they were pretty much intended to be bad. You almost don't need riffing and yet the two Rifftrax live shows for these are still pretty hilarious nonetheless. If you don't know the Sharknado movies are about tornadoes full of sharks. The first one is in LA and the second in New York. And somehow only retired surfer and bartender Fin, played by 90210's Ian Ziering, and his ex-wife April, played by plastic surgery aficionado Tara Reid, can stop the sharknadoes by throwing bombs into them. Makes sense, right? Um, no. Not at all.
Bad acting, terrible CGI, and a complete lack of logic make these movies so bad they're still bad. The first one was such a hit that unfortunately they made five more. The second one, called, wait for it, The Second One, features a lot of celebrity cameos. The sadly hilarious thing is the live show for the second one was the same week Jared from Subway was arrested so when his cameo comes on it's pretty uncomfortable for everyone. The Matt Lauer cameo is more uncomfortable in hindsight.
The Last Shark: Speaking of sharks, this late 70s Italian movie was basically a pale imitation of Jaws. It's pretty much the same story only the small town that's terrorized by a shark is having a windsurfing race. Because that's a thing. Otherwise it's like Jaws without real actors, Spielberg's direction, or the John Williams soundtrack. You know, everything that made it work.
Grizzly: It's like Jaws, only with a grizzly bear! Seriously it's kind of the same thing only there's a bear in a national park that's killing people instead of a shark terrorizing a small town. And it ends the same, with a guy blowing the grizzly up with a rocket launcher. That happened in Jaws, right? It's hilarious how the bear explodes like the Death Star; was its belly full of nitro or something?
Day of the Animals: Before Grizzly, the director of that made a disaster movie about even more animals terrorizing people. Basically without the ozone layer all the animals in a town go crazy, from rats on up to bears. It's gross when a sheriff goes home and all these rats are eating a pie in the dining room and then start jumping on him, because I guess they're like kangaroos or flying squirrels or something. Ick. Meanwhile Leslie Nielsen is a total jerk in the movie, constantly calling this one guy "hotshot" until a bear finally kills him. Hooray, bear!
Rocket Attack USA: This was made in the 50s around the time of Sputnik. The filmmakers were apparently really concerned that this would give the USSR an advantage to let it rule the world. In this cheap movie that's largely file footage, the US sends a secret agent into Russia to obtain its space and nuclear secrets. But the dumbass dies and the USSR launches nukes to destroy America. In the end it says, "Don't Let This Happen!" A real positive, feel-good movie. The filmmakers were obviously right-wing nuts because a couple of times characters lament that we're spending too much money on social programs and not enough on the military-industrial complex. Yeah, we're only spending 2/3 of our budget on it--we should spend the whole thing on defense! This was the only one of these on MST3K, maybe because disaster movies weren't much of a thing until the 70s.
There you go, what a disaster of an entry!
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