Who ordered the Calamari with cheese?

   

 

Octaman

                                                          Director: Harry Essex 1971

In a little Mexican village radiation is poisoning the water and American scientist Dr. Torres is there trying to solve the mysteries of the deep, or at least the lake.  Mysteries like why does his voice not match his lips, why is it so dark all the time and why does a plastic octopus have human eyes?  

This plastic octopus gets Torres excited but when he whips back over the border to get more funding he finds the scientific community want nothing to do with him so he’s forced to accept the backing of a carnival owner who is hoping to bag himself a freak for the carny. Carny brings his buddy Bert Reynolds Jr along for the ride too. By the time they get back over the border to Mexico all the doc finds though is his friend’s corpse and an empty bucket.  The plastic octopus is gone!  A couple of leftover Spaghetti Western actors then wander on set and tell the tale of Octaman, a many armed, tentacle legged half man/half beast who, after the doc shares a brief dialogue about pollution, turns up to take out a couple of the locals. No more western movies for those guys. Luckily the good looking one survives so he can continue to help the gringos out. Good thing too cos it turns out Octaman has his eye(s) on the doctor’s gal and attacks the camp while the doc, the carny and Bert are out on the lake looking for him. (now there’s an episode of River monsters I’d like to see!) Occy gets the gal but the doc and Bert discombobulate him with lights (too many eyes you see) and then form a ring of fire to burn up the oxygen around him!  An ankle high ring of fire it must be pointed out but it seems that Occy isn’t smart enough to lift those tentacles over the flames so he collapses and is netted and tranquilised by a very happy Carny crew.  

did you want the Calamari well done?

But nature has a way of fighting back and when it rains, the water revives our many tentacled rubber skinned fiend who is less than happy at his surroundings and once again escapes.  When our intrepid heroes decide to get outta town they discover that though Occy isn’t smart enough to step over the flames he is smart enough to topple trees on the road and trap them.  Our Mexican friend then tracks Occy down to a cave and invites the rest to follow.  Of course they get trapped down there too since nighttime isn’t dark enough in a shitty, low budget way, a dank dark cave is perfect for making sure you can’t see shit.  In the end they find their way out to sunlight where Occy starts the party with a great rendition of Devo’s Whip It Good.  I won’t give away anymore cos hell, I fell asleep so I don’t know what happened. (actually that’s a lie, I stayed awake for the whole thing but the end was so dull I’ve erased it from my memory). 

look, there's our agent!  let's kill the bastard!!

This movie is bad beyond description, not helped by the “digital remastering” that seems to just mean it was dubbed straight from VHS to CDR – there are times when you seriously cannot see a thing but then again that just may be a blessing.  Featuring very early FX work by Rick Baker, the Octaman is actually pretty cool for a zipper wearing, rubber suited whatever he is but in the end you get what you paid for, so don’t pay too much.  An eco- disaster movie where disaster has more than one meaning, Octaman promises so much more than it delivers but then come on, what else did you really expect?

You want fries with that?

Sometimes a movie is just so bad, you can't help but love it!

Swamp Witch

Directed By: Kerry KnightYear: 2009

Written, directed, produced and starring Kerry Knight, this is a movie destined, like the Titanic, to go down in history! 

This movie holds a special place in my heart.  A place for the cheese, the bad, the outrageous and the dumb. Swamp Witch is something special, I mean really, really "special".  It's fitting that Cheezy Flicks are distributing it, I mean who else would? 

Our story starts with a couple watching the film “Swamp Witch” whilst out camping in the woods, (as you do when you are camping) – only to be attacked by the (digital) Swamp Witch!! This scene has nothing at all to do with the movie but heck why let logic get in the way. It introduces us to the Swamp Witch and throws in a couple of low budget kills so what the hell it’s done its job!  Now we get to the real movie.  

It’s 1910 Jamaica and Shona is a rich whitey’s mistress who gets sprung and is cursed to live forever as a witch at night but still gorgeous by day. (Much like my first wife) A century later we find Shona working at a 4 table café in a little southern town in Powaqa County in between stealing kids for food and fun.  Luckily for her the local sheriff (played by Mr. Knight himself) is a nonchalant laidback sort of chap who doesn’t let things like rising body counts and missing kids affect that laidback manner at all. Hell he finds a chewed up arm, even sees the witch but doesn’t break a sweat. His deputy tells him the stories about the witch in the woods and kids disappearing but he doesn’t get the hint, yet. Even the Halloween massacre – kids disappearing, two decapitations (including a little digital head in a bowl action!) doesn’t make him move any faster. And as it is one of the murders never gets mentioned so I don’t even know if anyone even noticed?  The mayor however is a little more agitated, this sort of thing isn’t good for the town so she calls in her daughter (Poe) who just happens to be a blonde CSI agent! (I think we all know where they got the inspiration for this character from – Miami anyone?)

what do you mean I can't get out of the contract?

 Now it starts to get funny bad instead of just bad.  For example: Poe’s son went missing years ago and she is still haunted by the case and flashbacks abound although they don’t lead anywhere or add anything to the story.  The sheriff goes to check out the “witches” shed in the woods, bumps into Shona and accepts her story that grandma lives in the shed.  He doesn’t even go inside.  Kids are missing, there’s an old lady living in the woods but he doesn’t check the place out?!  Instead he flies to Jamaica (as you do when you are a local sheriff) to check out Shona’s story and then ambles back with the truth but doesn’t quite know what to do with it. His deputies think there is someone in the police station but rather than look for them, they just leave and lock up! Shona drives a pencil through a customer’s arm but they don’t report it straight away. Oh no, they make us wait while Knight still just ambles and Poe has more flashbacks. When they eventually do get there to report Shona, they also mention an old lady they saw chowing down on a deer in the woods.  So the sheriff and Poe check out the old shed in the woods again, find blood and weapons but still don’t do anything about it.  Meanwhile the boys cop some Shona revenge with a forklift impaling but again, no one seems to care.  Hell, at one point Poe and the sheriff find a body in the woods and then have a philosophical discussion by the lake about life, the universe and unsolved crimes!  

the catering on this film leaves a lot to be desired

In this town everything seems to move slow until finally Poe heads out to the shed, finds a body in a car and pulls it out to take the car (as you do) and confronts the witch. The sheriff ain’t far behind, just a little more leisurely.  I won’t spoil the ending because hell, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

At first I wasn’t sure what I was watching, was it a TV movie that never made it to the small screen, was it a training tape (Knight apparently runs a film school) or was it just plain bad? Well it is bad, very, very bad but in a way that you just cannot believe!!  And that’s what makes it so good.   This film goes on far too long (105 mins!!??) but that is because Knight was trying to add back story and give his characters life rather than just kill them off… he should probably have just killed them off but then that’s what makes this movie so “special”. It lacks, tension, logic, reason but it does have Poe (Lori Wilford) and Knight. It has bad digital fx, made for TV acting, great (and bad) lines and an ending that just makes you go “seriously?” Swamp Witch is in a class of its own.   Like Scream Dream, Robo-Monster, Curse Of The Screaming Dead and all those cheesy, c-grade, no budget, I need a 6 pack at least to watch this, type of films, Swamp Witch is destined to be a remembered, just probably not the way Kerry Knight wanted it to be.  

EGO thy name is Kerry Knight!