When Nature Attacks!

Aw, would this little guy hurt you? Yes, yes it would.

Isopods are set to attack tonight in Barry Levinson's The Bay, but they're not the swarming, eco-horror threat the world has faced.

You might think frogs and toads are just cute amphibious creatures who hop, eat insects and host variety shows. But there's more to them, much more.  Frogs are strategic geniuses marshaling all the forces of nature, as Ray Milland and Sam Elliott discovered to their horror in Frogs (1972).

Ray Milland's character is 12x scarier than
a giant frog with a taste for human flesh.

The ants of Phase IV (1974) are similarly sentient and they are supergeniuses. As the trailer proclaims, "How can you outsmart an enemy who knows your next move before you do?"  Also, it was directed by known ant-sympathizer, Saul Bass. Who can stand against the united powers of Saul Bass and ants?

Surrender, human, you cannot overcome ants or
awesome shots composed by  Saul Bass like this one.

In Squirm (1976), humanity faced the actually slithering, slow-moving, squicksome horror of... earthworms, possibly even nightcrawlers!

It is, definitely, squicksome.

It's impossible to know whether the spiders in Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) have a plan. They are definitely ticked off, though. They've had enough of humankind and have decided to cover everything in webs. Not even the dulcet tones William Shatner can soothe them.

Spiders seize control of our air defenses.

Sure, there are piranha in Piranha, but in James Cameron's Piranha 2: The Spawning, the piranha can fly!  Ask any military strategist, even a human one will tell you that's a serious situation. Especially when our air forces have been grounded by pissed off spiders. Aggravated by humans catching fish while the fish are spawning, flying mutant piranha attack humans while humans spawn at a resort!

I can fly, mofos.

The Long Weekend (1978) is probably the ultimate in nature trying to kill people films. It demonstrates that sometimes nature really, really hates people and will do everything it can to kill them. Especially really horrible jerks.

Sometimes people are so horrible
that you just want to help nature out.

So have fun at The Bay, and remember don't go in the water, or too close to the water, or the woods, or outside the theater.  And maybe try not to shoot nature.


THE BAY screening times:
Wed., Sept. 12th, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Thurs., Sept. 13th, 2:45 PM CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 6

Midnight Madness at Trailers from Hell: HORROR ON PARTY BEACH

Today's Trailers From Hell video is so appropriate to this year's Midnight Madness.  John Landis comments on Horror Of Party Beach and I just know there will be resonances with Barry Levinson's The Bay.  Even if The Bay is East Coast and Horror Of Party Beach is West Coast.

East Coast style it's all parasitic isopods feasting on human flesh. West Coast style it's "Weird Atomic Beasts who Live off Human Blood!!!"

So pull on your swim suit and shimmy and shake to the Del-Aires while John Landis talks about schlock and fumetti, zombies and the living dead on Party Beach.





THE BAY
Wed., Sept. 12th, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Thurs., Sept. 13th, 2:45 PM CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 6

Aquatic Horror: A Brief, Particular History

Barry Levinson's The Bay and its army of invisible parasites is just the latest entrant in cinema's long, storied history of aquatic horror flicks. It's bad enough that fish do all kinds of debauched, disgusting things in the water to begin with, but then filmmakers have to go along and throw all other types of vicious nasties in there, too.

The tagline to Jaws was "Don't go in the water," and director Steven Spielberg and company meant it. But sometimes we find far scarier things under the sea then you're normal, everyday man-eating shark--like, for instance, genetically enhanced, super-intelligent sharks. That's case in Deep Blue Sea, a movie most best known for its out-of-nowhere Samuel L. Jackson death scene. But mutant sharks aren't this film's only horrors--you've also got a pretty silly, truly confounding (I've spent way too much of my life trying to figure out what "My hat is like a shark's fin" means) LL Cool J theme song to deal with, too.

The ocean is a truly vast, unknown world yet to be fully explored. One day, what kinds of things might we discover below the surface? If War-Gods of the Deep is to be believed (and I trust fully that it is), Vincent Price in a frilly neckerchief--complete with an "army of half-men, half-monster gill-men"-- isn't out of the question.

Really, if aquatic horror teaches us anything, it's that women are never safe in the water. Or really anywhere near a beach. Just look at Roger Corman's Humanoids from the Deep, as a race of intelligent sea-beasts invade our world for the sole--and quite rude, if you ask me--purpose of mating with human women as a means of advancing their species.

Truly, no one, and no beach is safe--not even Party Beach! Need proof? Check out The Horror of Party Beach, wher "an invasion of ghoulish atomic beasts who live off human blood" terrorizes fun-loving teens and cycle gangs alike.

And when Mother Nature isn't running amok, humanity's here to cause their own problems, like inventing "the most devistating device the mind of man has ever created," and then filling it with super-men with super weapons in Aragon.

THE BAY

Wed., Sept. 12th, 11:59 PM RYERSON

Thurs., Sept. 13th, 2:45 PM CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 6