The home of cult movies and genre cinema: from grindhouse to schlock, sexploitation to blaxploitation, kung fu to samurai, manga to J-horror, monster movies, mondo, spaghetti westerns and space operas. With added Steven Seagal.
This sci-fi spoof is like a bizarre, micro-budget cross between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Tristram Shandy. Mad professor Clayton Forrester (Trace Beaulieu) explains that he is attempting to break the will of an astronaut (Mike Nelson as himself) stranded in an orbiting satellite by forcing the poor schmuck to watch some of the worst movies ever made. There promptly follows a viewing of Joseph M Newman's 1955 schlock epic This Island Earth, with Nelson and his two wisecracking robotic shipmates (voiced by Beaulieu and Kevin Murphy) in unwilling attendance.
With films such as Fright Night (1985,) The Monster Squad (1987) and Night of the Comet (1984,) comedy horror enjoyed a brief but glorious vogue in the mid-Eighties. It's bloodstained high-water mark was surely Return of the Living Dead (1985,) writer-director Dan O'Bannon's riotous take on the zombie genre.
“Twas brillig, and the slithey toves,” an elder intones, aghast. A traveller has arrived, beaten and battered, at a medieval village – a nice clean one, with a friendly Labrador wagging its tail in the main square– claiming to have been pursued by a flying monster. Said monster descends upon the village, causing mayhem, and is quickly identified as the Jabberwock, as featured in a prophecy of old which bears a strong resemblance to Lewis Carroll's famous nonsense poem.
“The Watermen” nails its colours to the mast from the off. In these first moments, a bedraggled blonde, her vest disarranged to reveal one pert breast, creeps through a reed-bed, only to be gorily harpooned and dragged off screaming. Exploitation flick ahoy.
The plot is a sort of sea-going “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Trust fund douche Trailor (Jason Mewes) goes on a fishing jaunt in the Chesapeake Bay with brothers Mike (Luke Guldan) and Bret (Tyler Johnson,) nice girl Diana (Tara Heston) and bikini-clad floozies Lisa (Joy Glass) and Chrissy (Ashley Myers.) Unfortunately, they soon run afoul of a bunch of whiskery fishermen types who like to chop up rich white folks and sell them as bait.
There can be something very satisfying about those old American made-for-TV movies – direct, no-nonsense direction, solid scripts and a chance for an unstarry cast to shine. “Sometimes They Come Back,” a late example from 1991 based on a Stephen King short story, shows at least some of these virtues.
