REVIEW: Bug Buster

More Vintage reviewing... this one from a B-Movie Messageboard Roundtable Review challenge. The instigator? Tim "Telstarman" Lehnerer. The theme ? Giant Insect Flicks.

Before I begin this review, let me lay my cards on the table...

I HATE ROACHES.

There, I've said my piece. I have no problems with ants, spiders or centipedes and I'm on very good terms with slaters. (Little wood-louse-type critters.) I'll let a slater run over my hands quite happily... but I'll run a mile in my underwear if a roach was to come within five feet of me in a darkened room. Oh sure, turn on the light and they'll scamper beneath the fridge... but trust me... they're not hiding under there. They're scheming!

So, when I read Telstarmans' call to arms and set out to find a Big Bug movie, I knew what I was looking for. Giant spiders. Giant Ants. Maybe even the supremely-appropriate Giant Mosquito movie Skeeter. But noooo... my local video emporium was sadly understocked with Bug-Fests... Faced with a new-release DVD called "They Crawl", or a week-long-hire-for-three-bucks cheapie-flick, I went with the value-for-money option. (Helped in no small part by the exceptional Embarrased Actor list on the video box.)

And so, join me as we check out;

BUG BUSTER
(Part of the Unofficial B-Movie Messageboard "Big Bugs Abound" Roundtable)

As always, in bold text are my verbatimly-transcribed notes, with explanations folowing.

Abrubt start!: Clear sign of a cheap-ass video... we went straight from the video company logo to the film. And there's our first Embarrased Actor! George "Sulu" Takei appears as "Hiro Fujimoto", a stereotyped scientist with a VERY stereotyped Japanese name. He's at a press conference, protesting the use of "Theathyon", an insecticide the State Governer is about to unleash to wipe out a medfly invasion. George overacts wildly, setting the tone for the film early.

Overacting Contest? (Randy) Embarrased Actor #2 is Randy Quaid, playing "General George", a military man turned bug exterminator. We see an advert from him, in which he attacks mock bugs with a machete and promises to "Kick bug ass!". I got the first actual laugh of the film from his "1-500-KICK-ASS" phone number. It would prove to be one of the few INTENTIONAL laughs of the movie...

13 years later, Roach Motel: We cut to star Katherine Hiegel. (Steven Segals niece in "Under Siege II") She's earning her paycheck by having roaches crawl all over her in an obvious dream sequence. Okay, ick!

Welcome to Mountainview: Ahh, the traditional quiet, peacful mountain town. Incidently, if I ever think about moving to a town called "Perfection", "Tranquility" or the like, TALK ME OUT OF IT!

Cliched Skinny Dipping!: You knew this was coming, right? Although it's the wussiest midnight swimming scene in history... the camera hangs miles back, while the Slutty Chick only strips to her underwear. Her Reluctant Male (See "Jaws") swims in his jeans. Slutty Chick gets attacked, resulting in much thrashing about. A sudden cut to the next day reveals she's not only survived, but has a fairly small leg wound. Talk about an overreaction... We get to see Embarrased Actor #3, James "Scotty" Doohan as the town sherrif. His slow-paced delivery seems strange next to the over-acting of the rest of the cast, but oddly, seems to fit the "Small Mountain Town" setting a lot better.

Doc from the Love Boat(!) buys lodge: Man, there's some familiar faces in this flick. (Although I originally mis-identified him as the dad from "ALF" at first... ) And they're all looking real old these days... He's playing the father of Katherine Heigels as-yet-unnamed character.

Jaws reference, clipfest tape: The Sherrif rolls up to the lodge to inform the new folks he's closing the lake following the attack the previous night. (Using "Jaws" to illustrate his point... now, is referring to a much better movie that you've already stolen scenes from a GOOD idea?) At this point the cheap-ass tape suffered a bad case of the jitters, resulting in an unintentional split-screen of the lakefront and the local doctors office. And that was STILL better than the Texas Chainsaw Editing that I'd seen so far...

Sherrif Monotone & Doctor expose: I still hadn't twigged that the sherrif was James Doohan yet, but here he discusses the attacks with the towns' female doctor. The upshot is that the Sherrif takes his Doofus Deputy out to search the lake.

Fishing with lead, more "Jaws" references: As they bring the Lake Patrol boat back to the dock, Doofus Deputy takes a header into the water. Why? Ask the editor, who cut the fiilm so badly it appears he just dives in for no reason... Something attacks him, so Sherrif Scotty opens fire on the unseen assailant. This leads to the ludicrous visual of the sherrif proudly displaying his catch.. a fish that's a foot long, if it's an inch. Oooh... terrifying.

Crazy, Ugly Ralph!: Ahh, the stock character since the original Crazy Ralph in "Friday the 13th".. the doom-spouting wierdo. Here, he's an ex-preacher named "Jebediah", who looks like a cross between a leprechaun and a bleached werewolf. He takes the lead in the Overacters Derby with his over-the-top facial expressions alone.

Gettin' to know you...: The lead actress meets a local lad, and we finally get some names. (She's "Shannon", he's "Steve") We also discover Leg-Bite Girl is "Veronica"... who's of the Sluttus Maximii species..

Fish autopsy, Scarfish!: Rememeber the scene in "Jaws" where Richard Dreyfuss opens up the shark to see if the kids body is inside? Now imagine that same scene in 1/50th scale. Doctor Laurie finds a roach corpse, of course. (Bum bum bum!) It's a "scarfish", incidently. (Not played by Al Pacino, sadly...) She calls her mentor of Bugology from college... and yes, it IS George Takei! Who'd have thunk it?

Tyson vs Holyfield=Komedy!: George is studying a computer mock-up of fighting bugs named "Tyson and Holyfield" when the doc calls. His line "Tyson just bit Holyfields antenna!" is such a knee-slapper, I almost cracked a smile.

Kitty scare, heavy on the kitty. (Light on the scare): We get a quick scene where Shannons' window blows open, allowing a black cat to jump inside. This leads nowhere, as does her subsequent meeting with Crazy, Ugly Jebeidiah. So we cut to the;

Badly dubbed band: Who are playing at the lodge. Because we have some banal dialogue to hear, they sound like they're playing at the other end of a phone line... Steve and Shannon exchange a few;

Big-eyed Significant Looks!: Man, Steve has some HUGE eyeballs...

Saxophone of DEATH!: The Bugs finally start to appear, albeit in normal-sized form. One crawls inside a saxophone and somehow kills the Redneck who plays it. First off... HOW? I happen to know saxophones use a reed, meaning there's a VERY small gap at the mouthpiece. (Too small for the roach to do anything bar stick it's feelers out and wiggle them in a vaugely threatening manner.) And secondly... are they supposed to be poisonous? (The Redneck literally took ten seconds to pop his socks.) Oh, well.. I'm sure the film will explain things... (Yeah, right!) Post-death, Shannon has her recurring dream again.

Larvae inside corpses, SUPER-SCOPE!: Doc Laurie has sent George some bug corpses, which he studies in his Lab O' Isolation! (After the press conference scene, George Takei never ONCE has another scene with anyone else. I summed it up eventually as "George Takei=Bela Lugosi?" in my notes. See: "Glen or Glenda") His SUPER-SCOPE is a regular microscope that is so powerful he can apparently see the DNA of a bug. Ummm.. sure he can!

Rent-a-Storm: The best Non-Intentional running gag of the film starts here, as we get an establishing shot of the lake everytime night falls. And EVERY shot has a flash of lightning in it! I'm no meterologist, but what exactly are the odds of five consecutive nights of thunderstorms? (In high summer, no less!)

General George hasn't aged a day!: Another advert from Randy points this fact out... It's a blessing, because neither has George Takei. (Who's aged more quickly than Shatner! Although Shatners toupee could be considered "cheating"...) Randy gets off a good line, ending the advert with a straight-faced "General George: I also hate rats!"... Glad SOMEONE'S having fun in this picture...

Movie Munchies: Steve and Shannon head to a Midnite Movie.. "The Fall of the House of Usher", it turns out... Here, we're treated to the charming visual of Shannons' bug-infested popcorn. (It's a minor infestation, though... two roaches and a centipede. My long-suffering, B-Movie Neutral girlfriend Dawn took exception to the out-of-place centipede. It was a justified observation, unless centipedes are some sort of interim roach larvae...) Meanwhile, two innocent movie-goers are nibbled to death one row behind them. (A scene that just revels in it's own ludicrous-ness, as neither of the Snack-ettes gets enough time to say "Ouch" before being reduced to a mangled corpse.)

Yeah, FU2 Julie: Pointless Cameo of the Film: Julie Brown as an annoying TV reporter who revels in the gory details of the movie casualties. She represents "FU2 News", which would be funny, if it wasn't so... unfunny. She chews more scenery in fourty-five seconds than the entire cast of "Dungeons & Dragons" did in two hours before being dragged off-screen. The Overacting Stakes are now a four-way tie between George, Randy. Julie and the guy who played Jebediah...

Big Buckin' gasjockey...: Buck is Steve's boss at the gas station and fixit shop. Not a small man by anyone's standards.. Veronica arrives and tries to win Steve back with some Generic Sluttyness.

Irritating Computer: George Takei runs some experiment with the worlds most annoyingly monotonic talking computer. The results indicate the roaches are warm-blooded. Will this play an important part in their downfall? Nope.

Slightly obvious plan: The Doofus Deputy suggests aerial spraying of insecticide. Get that man a Mensa application, stat! Of course, they decide to use the same pesticide that created the killer bugs. I assume that was meant to be ironic... although if they've been using the same chemical for thirteen years, I'd also expect a butt-load more Giant Bugs...

VERY low-level spraying: In a laugh-out-loud moment, a Cessna takes off to begin the drop, and begins spraying the pesticide before it's more than five feet above the runway. That seems somewhat counterproductive to me... Sherrif Scotty compounds the sillyness by issuing a 9PM curfew to prevent any side-effects from the spraying. (After the plane took of in mid-afternoon... I guess the pilots simply going to circle the town for 6 hours or so, THEN drop the dust!)

Peeping Jebediah, Boy I hope that's a curling iron!: Shannon takes a quick bubble bath during the nights Obligatory Thunderstorm. The window flies open (AGAIN?) revealling Jebediah having a quick perve. Shannon sits up, but, due to her bath of choice, only gives us a RANDOM GRATUITOUS BUBBLE shot. She grabs a curling iron to defend herself with. (I hoped it was a curling iron, or else she's defending herself with an industrial-strength vibrator!) The scene suddenly cut to the next day, making the events entirely meaningless.

Surrogate Motherhood: Doc Laurie has figured out that the roaches are being mothered by the fish in the lake. Which seems an odd arrangement, but natures' a wonderful adapter...

Pattern?: Meanwhile, Doofus Deputy is pushing pins into a map to determine a pattern of attacks. So far, the four attacks in ten years make a nice diamond pattern. CSI, look out!

Gratuitous Nude Scene, Buy better latches!: And we're instantly back to nighttime again. Shannons nude scene tonight is behind a frosted shower door. And once more, the window flies open. No-one's there. Yes, we are SERIOUSLY padding the script, as it's been nearly ten minutes since the Movie Attack, and I summed up the action in four paragraphs. Where's the GIANT BUGS?

Veronicas' pathos scene/Acne for days/"Aliens" rip-off?: Steve, who WAS on his way to the lodge to pick up Shannon, arrives at Veronicas' place instead. (This is confusing, until he asks why she phoned him... what, they couldn't have shot that one little scene?) Veronicas' leg-wound has taken a turn for the worse... or so we're led to believe. A combination of a low special effects budget and some lousy film-making means we basically have to imagine what's happened to her legs. One medium shot shows her with lots of lumps down one leg. I figured they would do the "Alien" thing, giving myself nightmarish mental images of roaches erupting from her body. Which goes to show that a vivid imgination beats a cheap film any day of the week... Veronica in fact buys it during a cut-away shot of the Lodge Family Robinson. (Where they disclose that "someone" has made an offer on the lodge... at 25 cents on the dollar. PLOT POINT!) Also during that one shot, Sherrif Scotty has instantly arrived at Veronicas. (Maybe he kept the teleporter?)

General George III/Parentsex!: Yes, yet another advert by Randy is seen before Shannons parents retreat to their room to do the wild thing. A centipede is hiding in Dad's heart medication bottle. I would like to point out that the centipede is obviously far to big to fit in the bottle... which was capped tightly in the first place. Anyhoo, Shannon spies her parents through an open window, which is slightly icky. She retreats to her room for a...

Dream Reprise... Or is it?: Yep, this time the roaches crawling over Shannon are the real thing. They're obviously not too hungry, as they don't so much as nibble her. (Despite consuming everyone else they meet in five seconds or less.) Never fear... As Steve comes to the rescue!

Nothing lives in a vacuum!: That's a lousy pun, as Steve literally sucks the bugs off Shannon with a nearby vacuum cleaner. We cut straight to the next morning, only to discover...

Mom & Pop are munched!: Fare thee well, Dad From ALF... Shannon gets over the deaths of her immediate family pretty well, though. Before that happens, we get;

More Julie Brown sillyness: As she reports on the deaths. It's her last appearance in the film... thank goodness!

Darkness and Water! Yes, after MUCH thought, both George Takei and Dr Laurie reach a stunning conclusion together. The roaches hate light and like water. (Well, duh... 1) They're roaches and 2) They were found in the lake! I'll alert the media.) This gets George off his butt, though, starting work on growing a Mutant Roach in his lab. SCIENCE!

Randy arrives, Komedy ensues: The town deputies seal off Mountainview, but guess who rolls on in! It's General George! Buck fawns all over him and farts a lot. Yep, when all else fails, have a greasy fat guy pass wind. That'll make the movie a classic...

Toilet humour!(w/sound effects!): Hmm.. a prolonged shot of Buck taking a dump. There had better be a point to this!

Kill the sign! Buck McNuggets: Oh, good... there was. Buck gets eaten on the crapper mere seconds after Randy shoots an innocent neon sign. Why? Because he's CRAZY! And because it's funny! Only, once again... it's not.

Mr Science, George phones in his performance: Literally... I had just realised that George spent the entire film acting down a phone to Dr Laurie. He's created a massive Bug-type creature in a tank in his lab... it breaks out and kills him before he can impart any pertinent info, though. Logically, this means Tokyo now has a Giant Cockroach on the loose... although it'll prbably just become a Godzilla-Snack next time the Big G stomps back into town...

Flambed Lobster for table 6!: Randy has figured out where the bugs are, less than an hour after hitting town. (Boy, he's GOOD!) At the lake, he unleashes his flame-thrower on the worlds most Goegraphically-Confused Lobster. (I for one never knew they lived in cold mountain lakes, several hundred miles from the coast. But in the interests of Komedy, they do now...)

One plot, double the exposition.: This annoyed me no end... to further pad the plot, there was always two groups coming to the same conclusions at the same time. First it was George Takei and Dr Laurie, then Laurie and Randy Quaid. Meaning we kept getting the same dialogue repeated over and over again... just bring on the GIANT BUGS already!

Gold in them thar hills: After a joint flash of inspiration, both groups (George, Steve and Shannon/Doc Laurie and Doofus Deputy) head for an abandonded gold mine. Laurie has realised where the bugs are by looking at the Deputys map-with-pins-in... somehow a small circle of push-pins points her in the right direction. Ooooo-kay. In the mine, Randy hears something approaching! Could it be... a GIANT BUG? Nope, it's a...

Bat-on-a-string: Which flaps clumsily at the group, only to get flambeed by Randys flamethrower. His line "A vampire bat! Their bite is deadlier than the King Cobra!" was the highlight of the film for me... I nearly laughed myself off the couch!

Randy has fun: He freezes some roaches with his Dry-Ice Gun, before running into the Sherrif. I should add that Randy really seems to be enjoying this role... more than anyone who watches the film will, anyway...

Sherrifs' plot! Both group team up as we find out the Deep, Dark Secret! In a plot twist both lame and confusing, it seems that Sherrif Scotty is using the roaches to drive people out of town... allowing him to buy up their gold-laden property cheap. Yeah, whatever... he threatens the Scoobies with a gun, so Steve plays Manly-Man. Steve: "If you're going to shoot anyone, shoot me!'

Steve gets shot: Yeah, good plan, dude...

GIANT BUG!: Well, it's about frickin' time! Dramatic Irony means Sherrif Scotty gets attacked and killed by it first. Lame special effects means that he reacts to getting attacked a full second before it actually appears in shot. We get a good look at the giant bug, revealling it to be...

Man-in-Suit Bug/Puppet Bug: Good lord, that suit is CRAP! And did anyone read the script? It's about Giant Roaches! So why does the Giant Mother Bug look like a huge wasp? The clearly-obvious wires operating it's feelers during the fist-fight it has with Randy Quaid are a nice touch, too...

Bug Rumble!: More Bela flashbacks, as Randy wrestles with the none-too-mobile Puppet Bug. ("Bride of The Monster", anyone?) The bug gets the upper... uh, feeler, so Randy drops a...

Surrealist grenade: That's the type of grenade that explodes three feet away from you with a small flash and puff of smoke, but makes a large (And badly realised) Special Effect of rushing flames appear at the mouth of the gold mine you're in. The Bug flies away from the "explosion", so Doofus Deputy chases it on horseback.

Tough-ass Randy: General George comes stumbling out of the mine, seconds after having a grenade explde three feet from his head. The Giant Flying Wasp... Uh, Roach... is still chasing Dputy Doofus around, while the womenfolk look on helplessly. Randy unleashes the...

Rocket Launcher of DOOM!: BOOM! One bad special effect explosion later, no more Bug. And there was muted rejoicing. Dawn felt obliged to point out that both Doc Laurie and Shannon should have been slightly scorched, as both were standing directly behind Randys rocket launcher when he fired it. I guess backblasts don't exist in this universe.

REAL tough-ass Randy: On to the post-script, where a radio report informs us that General George is in a satisfactory condition. (Lucky he brought those cheap, Army Surplus grenades, huh?) Shannon packs up and moves out of town, seeing as both her folks and her potential boyfriend are dead. (And she seems SO cut up about it... not. The End. No, I'm kidding.. of COURSE there's the patented Shock Finale!)

Stowaway Bug, The End: Y'know what'd be a REAL shock? If one of these movies finished withOUT a shock ending! Or, an ending that made the slightest bit of sense, that'd be nice too...Wheras this movies' ending ranks right up there with Tim Burtons' "Planet of the Apes" remakes as far as logic goes. But, on the bright side, as least the film is over... Even though I never got to use my "Roach Clip" gag...

Skeeters' Summary: I still hate roaches. But I hate this movie even more. Thanks a bunch, Telstarman... remind me to commit Evil-type Revenge against you someday, okay? Now, where's that giant Mosquito movie?