El Monstro Del Mar! is a 2010 Australian film that was written and directed by Stuart Simpson. It's not got any actors in it that I know. What I do know is the people he hired to act in the film aren't quite so good at their jobs as the people behind the camera are. The story is simple, some bimbo killers are on the run, they hide out in a seaside town, there's drinking and loud music, then the monster happens. Other reviews comment on the opening of the film as being an homage to Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! I can see that, it's shot in black & white and there are three women in a car. I'm not a big fan of FPKK and I've never grown into a Meyer's fan so that homage means little to me. I've seen a few of his films over the years and never re-watched them.
The only other residents of the seaside town are a young woman and her wheelchair bound grandfather. They live in the house next door. He tells the trashy women to stay out of the water but they make fun of him. The noise and the splashing attract a giant multi-tentacle monster from the depths of the ocean and the few people that are active in the area are getting chomped up pretty quickly. Eventually the monster makes a full on play for the last of the cast holed up in Grandpa's house. It wrecks the place, takes a beating when the girls fight back, and runs off into the depths to lick it's wounds for the sequel. The nice girl, gramps and the leader of the trio of killers survive. The bimbo promises to return with some friends to finish off the monster. So far that hasn't happened.
Sadly it's not really very good. It's slow at first, there are no monsters for quite a while and much of the movie is tinted a sickening green color. The trailer seems to have less green tint so I am guessing that the copy that was uploaded to Amazon Prime might be the problem. Not something I need to watch again and I won't be looking to add the DVD to my collection.
I feel the same about our next feature, Cop Car, though it's a better movie. Kevin Bacon stars in, and produces, the 2015 film directed by Jon Watts. This is Watt's second movie, he directed Clown last year and some segments of Onion News Network. He's working on the latest Spider-Man reboot for 2017. Christopher Ford and Watts wrote the script which is about a couple of dumb kids who are running away from home. They steal a cop car and that opens a can of worms that they weren't expecting.
Kevin is the sheriff and he'd left the car in the woods so he could dump a body. We will soon learn he's a crooked cop with some ties to the drug business. He's not a clever guy but he sure works hard trying to cover his ass before the boys are found in his car and the jig is up.
The kids, Travis and Harrison find all the guns in the car but they can't figure out how to turn off the safety's. They hear a noise in the trunk and wow, there's guy tied up in there. They release Man, as he's called in the script, who locks them into the backseat of the car. He has them call Kevin for help. Kevin desperately wants the car and he comes running. Man hides nearby with rifle and waits for Kevin. Camryn Manheim wonders into the scene and takes a bullet in the head for helping the police. The sheriff and Man are shot, we never find out if the latter is dead but Kevin is still alive. Travis gets shot with a ricochet as Harrison fires the pistol into the back door window frame trying to break the glass. He gets the window on the second shot and drives the car to town to a hospital. The sheriff follows but gets taken out by a cow in the road. The boys had left a pasture gate open earlier and the cow must have wandered into the road. Poor Beefy. It's ambiguous if Travis survives his joy ride. It's a well made movie, good action , well acted but kind of sad. It would be a good movie to show kids, good lessons to be learned.
We ended with a short called Harry Knuckles And The Treasure Of The Aztec Mummy off of a Troma short collection called Best Of Troma Dance Film Festival. It a 1999 short written by Ian Driscoll and Lee Demarbe. They are a team responsible for Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter and Harry Knuckles And The Pearl Necklace. I'd seen the first one, we watched it at a Friday Night Movie night back in 2009 and I didn't think much of it. This short was goofier than that. I did put the Harry Knuckles feature on my Netflix queue. The short is funny sometimes and it that might appeal to the right person. If low-budget makes-no-sense comedy is up your alley, take a look at the short in the link in the title.
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