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Mansquito (2005 TV Movie)
5/10
The title will make you raise an eyebrow.....
28 May 2006
Warning: Spoilers
....at least... When I saw the previews for this movie, I was like, "You have GOT to be kidding me!" It was several months before i saw it was on TV and i decided to check it out to see how bad it really was.

********Full summary and spoilers below ********

OK, there's a widespread disease going on, and its spread by mosquitoes. So there's the all important pharmaceutical company that is trying to make a cure. How? By using radioactive blue goo, they put it in a glass case with infected mosquitoes, with the theory that it was cause their DNA to mutate and develop an anti-virus. Got it so far? Cause the female doctor, Dr. Allen(Muretta Vander) explains it in a few sentences but i had to think about it to get it.

Well, enter a death row inmate, Ray (Austin Jordan) under the orders of her evil boss to be a guinea pig. The prisoner breaks out of his cuffs, and takes the Vander's assistant hostage. In an attempt to save her friend, Vander lets the prisoner into the lab, but he shoots the assistant anyway. Then a shoot out blows up the reactor that held the goo and mosquitoes. Blue goo gets everywhere, mostly on the prisoner, but a little bit gets on Allen's arm.

Fast forward a bit, the prisoner escapes through the sewers and begins to mutate into a giant 'Mansquito" The two cops on the scene of the lab shootout, Morrison and Randall (Patrick Dreikass, Vander's BF and Corin Nemee) are on the move to capture the escaped prisoner. Detective Morrison takes Dr. Allen home and she has a few moments of examining her arm where the blue goo was.

The next day, Dr Allen is picking up blood packs and sees some on her glove and before she can stop herself, licks it up. She stops and reflects for a moment, but is interrupted by her boss. Her drunk boss accuses Dr. Allen of wrecking the company and after she storms out, he becomes dinner. Randall takes Allen out to dinner and but doesn't notice a few quirky things. She orders her steak very rare, is constantly sniffing the flower in her drink, adds a ton of sugar to her coffee. On the way out, she smells something appealing, and we cut to a shot of mutant Ray hiding in the bushes.

Obviously they didn't have an entomologist on staff, since male mosquitoes are the ones that love fruit and flowers, while the females suck blood.

Mutant Ray continues his rampage as he goes through a shacktown. Meanwhile Dr Allen is consuming chocolate and sugar. Her sex drive increases too, and her detective boyfriend is all to eager to oblige. She scratches him and starts to suck his blood but fortunately the phone rings. She's appalled at herself and vomits once Randall leaves.

Randall investigates the shacktown and meets up with the mutant Ray. Gun doesn't work, hitting him doesn't work, but guess what, a TASER scare him away. He then make the connection that the explosion altered Ray's DNA. Charlie of course doesn't believe him, and Randall goes to see Allen for advice. Allen meanwhile examines her blood under a scope and sees it mutating. She flips out a bit, but then sees Mutant Ray, who somehow got into the lab. She pulls back from him but as he gets closer she gets a whiff of him and for a moment is turned on, and then faints. Randall comes in, and finds Allen starting to change. He rushes her to the hospital while Mutant Ray follows. Cue the entrance of more snacks, I mean cops, and more carnage ensues as Mutant Ray fights his way in. SWAT team, security guards, even poor Charlie, is part of the carnage. Allen manages to grab her clothes and escape. Randall searches the hospital and comes upon the lone female security guard that managed to escape. He walks in on Mansquito hoarding the bloodbank, and fights a grenade at the nearby oxygen tanks, ('Hey, Mansquito!!!), causing a big explosion.

Is it all over? Big explosions normally signal the end of horror movies. But Randall staggers up from the wreckage looking for Allen, and he rushes off to the lab. Meanwhile, Mansquito also rises. Allen is still in pain and is watching herself transform. She picks up a glass case of mosquitos, supposedly the ones with the cure; takes them to the roof and opens the case. She heads back to the lab and draws up a syringe of poison. Randall stops her from killing herself as Mansquito burts in. He proceeds to beat the crap out of Randall, when Allen lets out a loud alienlike scream. (Mosquitos scream?) That gets Mansquito's attention and she escapes out through the sewers, then attacks Mansquito with a pipe. Randall jumps on Mansquito and uses the taser again but is thrown off. . Allen has mosquito strength now, and fights him. He tries to fly away, but she grabs him. She yanks out a power cord and electrocutes both of them.

Cut to Randall writing up to a report, and there's a news broadcast on about how the virus had seemingly disappeared. We hear in voice-over how he lose everything he cared about, but with every end there is a new beginning and we fade to black.

Not too bad, but not the greatest. Not bad for a lazy afternoon or evening or if you're all alone and have nothing to do. Lot of plot holes, and a VERY lame ending but what can you expect from a movie with this name? Just knowing that only female mosquitos suck blood blows the whole concept of the movie. Funfor a laugh, or for you and your buddies having a bad horror movie fest.

5/10
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Deadly Swarm (2003)
nice idea, but horribly done
1 May 2004
Warning: Spoilers
*****PLOT SPOILERS*****

The movie opens in Guatemala where a man in military garb threatens to kill a native boy unless the guide takes them to a specific, but "very dangerous" place. The native guide takes them to ancient ruins, but eventually runs away. The hired translator is killed easily by a booby trap. (He must have thought that ruins are safe for strangers. You think he would notice that if the rest of his party are in protective suits, that being in shorts and a t-shirt wouldn't help him any) Then two more extras, though they are in protective gear, fade to black screaming as wasps (or bees, I couldn't tell the difference) appear. Then the two remaining guys, the main bad guy and his right hand goon, who are unharmed, hand this huge crate to this trucker, warning him not to open it. Of course the truck crashes. Like we didn't see that coming. The first police officer on the scene inspects the truck and though a lot of the crates are broken, showing drugs and other contraband, he approaches this one unbroken crate and opens it, and dies. The resident scientist, (Shane Brolly) is on the crash site and finds what looks to be an empty hive in the opened crate, and the police officer apparently "stung to death". He tries to adivse the mayor, who naturally refuses to close a coincidental "festival" in hopes of making more money from tourists. Blah, blah, blah, lots of people are killed during the festival and the bad guys conviently arrive, promising to provide medical help. Basically, the military bad guy obtained a hive of really, nasty killer bees. Even though the truck crashes, there's a town of about 500 people that are excellent test subjects. Why? Because the military posing as medical scientists are looking for the one person out of 500 people that survives the wasp stings. And guess what, if the military finds someone that can survive the stings, and can make an antibiotic out of their blood, then the wasps turn in a biological weapon or a possible cure for diseases. Oooooooooooooooo.... So the leading lady just happens to be the one that survives. The scientist confronts the bad guy who has taken the queen, and is holding the lady hostage. The bad guy is in an protective suit, while the scientist and lady are in their street clothes, and all three are standing in front of the hive and no one gets stung. (Even though there was a guy with a smoke machine and when the smoke clears, the wasps are busy elsewhere until the bad guy dies) Obvious plot problems: 1. There are four guys in protective suits, and two guys are apparently killed and the other two remain alive only because they are the bad guys, and bad guys don't die until the end of the film. 2. If there's a hive within a crate, those wasps are going to be royally p***ed off, so the box would be totally humming. Yet the trucker, the customs officer, and the police officer don't seem to notice that there's a hive of really angry wasps shut in a wooden crate. 3. When the leading lady is found to be immune to the wasp stings, the bad guys tries to take the queen and run. The queen is carefully extracted from the hive and put in a metal box. I'm no entomologist, but I would think that if the queen was threatened in any way, the rest of the hive wouldn't be just flying around even with smoke around. They would be attacking anything that moved, protective suits or not. 4. As in all insect movies, the only way to kill them is to either kill them all in a huge explosion, which is nearly impossible; or suddenly introduce a natural disaster or predator to the killer insects. In this case, when the scientist and the leading lady are running for their lives (even though trying to outrun a swarm of insects is pointless), who comes to save them? Is it a giant explosion? No. Is it a giant flood? Not a chance. No, a gigantic swarm of bats (which the scientist just happened to be studying and attracting with tape recorded sounds of wasps) appears and proceeds to attack the swarm of wasps. And the scientist assures the leading lady, "Don't worry, bats eat hundreds of insects every night. Those wasps don't stand a chance." Yeeeeaaaahhhhhhhhh, right. Predictable and abismal dialogue, obvious plot, and bad computer effects surround this movie. I have a great time laughing, it's like watching a comedy. If you like laughing at bad horror movies like me, then you'll enjoy this movie. It's right up there with Marabunta, the Killer Ants, but where as the ants are "killed" by a flood; the wasps are killed by a conviently timed swarm of bats. Guess the perfect followup movie to this would be the movie with Lou Diamond Phillips about killer bats. hehehehehehe
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Dune (2000)
Very nice.......but....
6 December 2000
I never read the book for this, although my father highly reccomends it. I saw the 1984 version on Saturday night and got the general idea of it, but there were a lot of things I didn't like. Most of them have already been mentioned.

In the miniseries, i kept an open mind and I liked it. I would say I liked about 95 percent of it. There were some sequences in the 1984 version that should have been kept and redone in this version and vice versa. Both of them had their perks. For example,

1984 things I liked:

The use of the voice by Jessica and Paul to escape. The funky voice Paul uses to break the huge obsidian block and stuff.

The blue tears, those creeped me out the first time I saw it.

2000 things I liked:

The suits- I didn't care for the weird things stuck up the noses in the first one. Some of the costumes and fight scenes, i thought were nice as well.

Now then, in the Harrison version here are other things that caught my attention that I didn't really like or care for.

-The break in time. For anyone that doesn't know the book, has no idea that six years pass between parts 2 and 3. -The "weirding way" or the way Paul and Jessica could fight was cool looking, but scarcely touched on. -Diction. Sometimes I couldn't understand what was being said. -The random changes in light. One second it's dark and the next it's light. At first I thought it was a camera trick, but then it seem like a cloud or something. But wait, there aren't that many clouds on Arrakis, so where are the darn lights coming from? -Paul's transition from Part 2 into 3 and after drinking the water of life. How did he become such a tyrant? Sure it looks cool, but it comes across as mean as opposed to strong. -Certain costumes didn't make sense. Will someone please explain the triangle on Feyd's back? What the heck is that supposed to be? Also why does the baron need that hover thing to begin with? It was never mentioned in either movies. -The fact that Jessica is Hanokken is barely mentioned too. When the young sister calls the Baron, "grandfather" and Paul calls Feyd, "Cousin" is it that much of a shock? We hardly even knew anything on that subject.

But overall, I thought it was a cool movie. But just looking at both movies, and the whole novel in general, I don't see how you can put it onto the screen without cutting things. As I writer myself, certain things have to be mentioned and shown, but choosing which ones is the tough part.

Rating: 7/10
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Blue Tornado (1991)
An English "Top Gun"
23 July 2000
Another nice fighter pilot movie this time in England. It might be elsewhere, but all the english accents seem to point it to England. :) The film is credited to be from Italy. It has similar quirks to "Top Gun". Such as: the rock music, the fancy manuevering, and the enemy wearing dark helmets so you can't see their face. There's also shots of Dirk Benedict walking the airstrip with dark sunglasses and his flight jacket. It all starts with Dirk Benedict as Colonel Alex Long, a.k.a. Fireball. He is the "Maverick" type character that is kinda reckless and hates following orders. Dirk has the suave look, but he's no Tom Cruise. His partner, Philip, a.k.a. Thunderball, flies a separate airplane, (unlike Goose in Top Gun) loves the mountains, and has a family, of course, unlike our main character. After Philip is killed, Alex has to deal with Philip's family, and trying to get the nerve to fly again. Sound familiar? The strange thing is, there is no trace of Philip's body. The love section comes way too quick. One minute Alex meets Isabella in the library, and the next they're making out in an observatory. Hello? where is the verbal fencing that normally occurs between the two lead characters? Also there doesn't seem to be any other tension or conflict. No competeting pilots, no superiors that they butt heads with.

And the UFO concept is ok, but is slow to get going. Isabella's only role seems to be to support Alex's UFO theory, that's all. That and being his lover. And the only way to solve this problem is to hike up into the mountains to find out for himself? Seems like "Close Encounters" meets "Top Gun" I have a hard time seeing Benedict in anything else after seeing him in "The A-team" He lacks in this movie mainly due to the poor script writing. There's no growth for him, and the only things that drives him is to pursue the truth about the death of his friend. An ok movie, but not really worth it. The UFO concept is muddled and nothing is really put into it. I would say a 4.5 out of ten for me.
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