Tag Archives: syfy

BloodMonkey

BloodMonkey

Speaking of apes, which we weren’t, it’s Friday night, which means it’s finally time to watch BloodMonkey. I know we promised to watch it as a double feature with Flying Monkeys, but we lied.

This movie is so Not Good we hadn’t even gotten through the title sequence before a cocktail party broke out here in the living room.

So, BloodMonkey. A bunch of sociocultural anthropology graduate students go into the jungles of Thailand. Little do they know, BloodMonkeys live in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The students traipse into the jungle to work with megalomaniacal anthropologist Conrad Hamilton, played by Fidel Castro as played by F. Murray Abraham.

Sociocultural anthropologists who cavort about in the jungle collecting new species of wildlife?

Hint: this is not what sociocultural anthropologists do.

Technically, primatologists do something sort of vaguely not really kind of like what these people might possibly be doing, if gigantic bloodsucking gorillas actually existed and biological anthropologists or primatologists or biologists or zoologists were still chasing the idea of a missing link and those researchers got enough funding to randomly fly dozens of inexperienced grad students halfway across the world just so…well, it’s not really clear why they were chosen to fly to Southeast Asia.

Wait…I know…

This large group of inexperienced grad students were flown half-way around the world to die, bloody.

Yes, it all makes more sense to me now.

Clearly, I’m sober and it’s impairing my SyFy craptacular film judgment.

Hey! While I wasn’t paying attention the grad students developed some knowledge of anatomy and physiology, sort ot, but I think that’s just so when BloodMonkey shows up they’ll know what’s killing them.

Real primatologists would be able to tell that this thing that’s killing them all isn’t a BloodMonkey at all. It’s a BloodApe. BloodApe doesn’t have the same zing, does it?

What I really want to do here is move the “tags” from the footer of each post up into the byline, just below the “categories” list, but I can’t do that while BloodMonkey leeches away my IQ, so instead I’m just cleaning up the header and some of the navigation elements over there in the far-right column. This place is a mess. I’m a terrible blogger.

We’re also eating frozen custard. Banana pudding, in honor of BloodMonkey. Not really. We’re eating banana pudding frozen custard because that was the flavor of the day at the Dairy Godmother so I got some this afternoon and stashed it in the freezer for later because it’s awesome.

BloodyMonkey? Not awesome.

Wait, what just happened? Um, I guess that’s the end of the movie. I think it’s best to just let it rest in peace. BloodMonkey was bad, but it’s wasn’t Bad. And that’s too bad, because that means it was just boring when it wasn’t annoying us with it’s representations of anthropology, primatology, and with the way it besmirched the good name of BloodApes.

We should have made this a double feature with Congo but I think Husband is smart enough not to let that happen. Watching Congo late on a Friday night runs the risk we’ll be running around the house chanting, “Amy Good Gorilla” all weekend.

That’s a terrible quality clip, but it’s midnight and my brain has just been broken by BloodMonkey and the custard is wearing off and it’s the best I could do after almost 20 seconds of youtube searching.

Flying Monkeys

SyFy: Flying Monkeys

SyFy Channel: Flying Monkeys

Flying Monkeys is one of those movies that compels the viewer to ask the eternal question, “Sure, why not?”

It makes a fine double-feature with BloodMonkey, especially on the weekend that Oz The Great and Powerful hits theaters.

BloodMonkey is a 2007 classic in the “anthropology done (horribly and nonsensically wrong) on film” genre. It stars F. Murray Abraham as the anthropology professor. That dude was Amadeus!

That’s some quality programming!

Here’s a summary/viewing guide for Flying Monkeys that contains details that might be spoilers for people who a) care and b) have never seen a made for tv movie before, especially a SyFy movie.

In the opening scene, hilarity and bloodshed occur on an “airplane.”

Then, it’s a sunny day in Gale, Kansas, where a high school graduation is happening.

(Gale, Kansas. Flying monkeys. Go on, go make yourself a strong drink – I’ll wait)

It’s a sunny day in Gale, Kansas, which looks and sounds suspiciously like Louisiana. Sure, why not?

A guy who looks like Dr. Oz would look if he’d been punched in the face is late to his smart and responsible daughter Joan’s graduation. She expects him to be late because he’s been irresponsible ever since Mom died, which is totally clever and unique and in no way the relationship of every other father and daughter on television.

Face-punched Dr. Oz feels bad for being a terrible failure, so he goes to a pet store and buys Joan, who works as a vet tech, a monkey. A killer flying blood monkey disguised as a cute capuchin monkey! The capuchin who killed a smuggler in an airplane in the beginning of the movie!

What could go wrong?

We find out what could go wrong as the first act ends and the second act begins, after Joan and Face-Punched Dr Oz let the monkey live in their house. Loose. Without a diaper. For almost an hour of running-time which seems to be weeks of story-time.

That means you now have about 45 minutes to go forage for some dinner and make yourself another drink before the third act. You won’t miss much. At the sound of the screaming, there will be some badly rendered CG flying monkey action, so you might want to take a peak at those scenes because they’re pretty awesome. Or pretty awful. It will depend on how many drinks you’ve had, I suspect.

Monkeys. Possessed by demons. Sure, why not?

So a bunch of stuff happens but none of it really matters. I don’t think. I may have missed some stuff. (Those drinks don’t mix themselves).

Husband says you didn’t miss much if you weren’t paying attention. There was some gibberish exposition from some random secondary characters in the jungles of Louisiana/Hong Kong about how you need sacred weapons to kill the Flying Monkeys because if you just shoot them with a regular gun they multiply spontaneously and you suddenly have not one, but two, full-grown rubbery-looking hairless flying monkeys. More shooting, more monkeys. Like gremlins, only sillier.

Sure, why not?

This explains why there was only one winged demon-monkey left on Earth when I went into the kitchen and an army of them when I returned only moments later.

Robert Rodriguez’s niece-in-law, Electra Avellan gets top billing, presumably because she has a shower scene. She’s an otherwise infrequently-seen supporting character named Sonya who is Joan’s best friend. That seems to be the start of the third act, her shower scene. It’s normally wildly obvious when one act ends and the next begins in this movies, but to be honest I haven’t been paying a lot of attention.

(Niece-in-law? That sounds ridiculous. Just call her his niece).

I can only hope that monkey diaper authority Jungle Pete doesn’t see this movie (without me). All that un-diapered monkey action in that house would make him twitchy, despite the movie’s overall anti-exotic pets/animal smuggling “message.” And the demons.

Pegasus vs Chimera

Pegasus vs Chimera, tonight’s SyFy Saturday Night Craptacular, is the single greatest movie I’ve seen in the last 6 minutes.

The movie, which we started about 5 minutes ago, is set in some hokey mythological past somewhere. The Kingdom of the Seven Realms, where I think they live, must be catty corner from Game of Thrones and adjacent to Conan the Barbarian. Several towns away from Lord of the Rings, though. Might have shared a beach house one summer with Reign of Fire. Can’t rule it out.

Pegasus vs Chimera co-stars That Guy Who’s in Everything, Sebastian Roche, and That Guy Who’s in A Lot of Stuff, Carlo Rota. And Rae Dawn Chong.

I know! Right?

I was so busy thinking about all of that, I spaced out and just returned 3 minutes later to a scene where That Guy Who’s in Everything is yakyakyakking about vengeance to a dewy young woman who I think might be a Princess.

At least Reign of Fire has Christian Bale and Matthew Matthew McConaughey. With the exception of That Guy Who’s in Everything, this is a movie about slightly doughy men delivering manly-man dialogue with what simply has to be an intentionally overwrought & stereotypically effeminate affectation.

As for wardrobe, many of the actors seem to be wearing their own bedsheets, held together by accessories purchased at a KMart in Central Florida sometime in late 1983.

I suppose you could argue this is the movie for people who always complain about the anachronistically tanned, toned and waxed characters on Game of Thrones. (See also: the King’s Landing Strip).

I have no idea what’s happening in this movie but apparently now there’s a Chimera. Apparently, it’s the Bad Creature That Must Be Stopped. Husband says that’s obvious because everyone loves Pegasuses. I ask how he knows that, because I thought everybody loved unicorns. Husband says people love them both.

We spend some time wondering if Pegasuses and Unicorns would be friends or enemies. We discuss this for a lot longer than we should admit, but to be fair, this is a (delightfully) terrible movie and this debate helps pass the time.

Husband asks me if I’m blogging this. I think he’s laughing at me. Hey, I have an excuse to be watching this, I’m blogging it. He’s just watching it. I’m not live-blogging it, though. It was on earlier tonight, but our Tivo, Overlord II is recording it so we could watch when we got home.

The movie is 2 hours long and we’re timeshifted by about 90 minutes…so that means that those of you who watched this movie on the east coast in real time tonight will probably be dead by the time I post this.

It’s really a pretty terrible movie.

The key is apparently to stop paying attention for a few minutes, because I just looked back up and Rae Dawn Chong is doing something hilarious and bizarre while Acting. Husband describes it as Greek Goddess Stick Dancing.

Husband can be charitable.

“But our only choice Is. To. FIGHT his monster!” The Princess just spat, with the same tone and delivery she’s used for every other line in every scene, no matter what the alleged emotional tone of the scene.

Holy crap, this whole movie has been totally worthwhile for the completely cheesetastic scenes of That Guy Who’s in Everything and the Princess pretending to fly around on the pegasus. Or on a mechanical bull. It’s unclear, really. Husband believes Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was their point of reference for how to Act like you’re flying.

Hey, so get this: in Japan, Reign of Fire was released with the title, “Salamander.” Seriously?

That Guy Who’s in Everything plays George Washington in the official big-budget Hollywood biopic they show at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate. Henceforth, Pegasus vs Chimera shall be known in our household as “that movie where George Washington rides around on a pegasus.”

And well it should.

I think every “major” character in Pegasus vs Chimera has had a season-long role on 24. There must be some seriously messed up drinking game they play on the set of that show – it would explain a lot about this movie.

As the final dramatic scene of the movie unfolds, Husband yells at the screen in complete exasperation, “Fuck you, Pegasus! Why didn’t you do that over an hour ago?”

Thereby proving my point that probably not everyone loves Pegasuses.

Mega Python vs. Gatoroid

(edited because this post was intended for next week, so by “tomorrow” I meant January 29th, not January 22nd).

Don’t forget to record Mega Python vs. Gatoroid tomorrow next Saturday night. It’s going to be awesome.

It’s okay to use the word “awesome” in this context because this movie has very special co-stars. I know, I know, you’re saying to yourself, “Duh, of course it does – MegaPython and her arch-nemesis Gatoroid!” You’re only half-right. MegaPython versus Gatoroid has two other co-stars: Tiffany (Mega Piranha!) and Debbie Gibson (Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus!)

Awe-some.