Change Your Image
ezridax
Reviews
Red Water (2003)
"Here's a fish, you're a moron." Richard Jeni would love this movie. **SPOILERS**
And I thought Jaws 4 was the worst shark movie ever. At least that dreck had Michael Caine in it.
But noooo... TBS has to make it's own contribution to the shark attack genre. And I swear to God, if any movie needed to be MSTed, it would be Red Water. There is absolutely nothing salvagable in this movie. Worst no-name actors who couldn't deliver a line properly if their lives depended on it. The soundtrack is full of horrible '80s music that no-one has heard of, probably because it's the only music they could afford the rights to. Probably the producers spent all their budget money snorting crack off of public urinals. And talk about inappropriate. This hick fisherman just gets off his boat and sees his best girlie or whatever walk up the dock to him. And this classical music with soft French lyrics starts playing, like they're in some palace ballroom dancing and not on a boat and covered in fishguts.
And the dialogue would make baby Jesus weep. For some reason, there's some convoluted plot that has some down-to-Earth Cajun and Texan catfish-fishers, hot hippie ecologist chicks, and black gangsters complete with huge gold jewelery, all ending up at the same Lousiana river. So the horrible stereotypical dialogue just chokes the entire movie. You can tell the actors are thinking, "Why do I deserve to be in this TV movie. At least Jaws 4 had Michael Caine. Who am I co-starring with? The principal from Saved By the Bell."
The gangsters and drug-dealers have it the worst though.
"I want you to bust a tack in that guy's ass." (Yeah, it said tack. Note: Switching nouns around does not make it wittier.) "I hate that double-crossing blood clot." "So Jerry, you wouldn't be honking our geese, would you?" "Hey, send me home to mama, bitch." "I had a band." "What'd you call it? Jerry and the Idiots?" "You aint't no shark. I'm the shark. That's why I got da money!"
And the plot is not better. There are huge half hour stretches of the movie, where the shark isn't even mentioned. In Jaws, the shark is MIA for most of the movie, but the people are always talking about or trying to fix the whole problem of the shark. "Red Water" should have been named "Here's A Movie with Eco-Cows in Tight Shirts Who Get In Gun Fights With The Gangsters Who Are Hunting For Hidden Drug Money And the Shark Has The Best Agent Out of All of Them Because He Spends Most of the Movie Off-Screen Snorting Cocaine off the Back of A Public Urinal With the Producers."
There's a nice scene where Eco-Cow leader and her cronies get kidnapped by the gangsters and taken onto their boat. The Russian-sounding gangster starts molesting her and taking off her clothes with a hunting knife. And I swear to God that the camera is situated on her cleavage for the entire conversation. I mean, writers... C'MON! Your characters are on a lake the entire movie. Can you not think of a better reason to show some boobs that having a random rape scene in the middle of a shark movie. At least have the shark rape her if you must, and make him earn his paycheck.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1995)
Dark, creepy, and great for fans of Harlan Ellison
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is based off one of Harlan Ellison's short stories of the same name. A supercomputer gains the power of conscious thought, and kills everyone on the Earth except for 5 humans, which he takes down to the middle of the Earth. Your goal is to jump through the hoops that AM lays out for you and retain your humanity at the same time. A typical point and click game here. use commands such as Walk, Ask, Get, Use, Swallow on objects in your inventory or on the screen. The system is very intuitive, so you won't spend hours struggling on what to do with an object. The only reason this category didn't get a 10, is because there are several times you have to find an object that may only take up a few pixels on the screen, leading to some annoying hunting with your mouse. When you have to talk with people, you get several conversation choice, most of which will affect the plot. Say the wrong thing, and you might fail your task. You also can't just kill people to get your way, as in games nowadays. You have a spiritual barometer that measures how human you are. Treat a person with kindness and it'll go up, and your character will become happier and more-self confident. Do something against their moral beliefs and they'll go into panic attacks and possibly die. Ah, now this is where IHNM really shines. You get to play as each of the 5 humans AM has brought down with him. You must make it through a scenario for each character. You'll have to confront your past mistakes and your one character flaw that caused it. Locales will range from Egyptian electronic pyramids to Nazi Germany to a honky-tonk road side cafe. As you make it through scenarios you'll encounter forgotten machines that let you in on AM's past. And there are plot-twists galore, especially in the final scenario. The best thing about this game in my opinion. The music is ranges from creepy and bonechilling, to sorrowful and depressing. It all fits together with the story. You'll find tunes stuck in your head up to days afterwards. And the voice-acting. Harlan Ellison himself voices AM, the computer God. From the moment you hear him expound on his hate for the humans, you couldn't imagine anyone but him in this role. He speaks with passion and exuberance, making just sitting back and listening a joy. And the rest of the characters are done wonderfully too. With the exception of the child actor, none of these voices will make you cringe in embarrassment or turn down the volume. This game is a definite must-have for fans of the adventure genre, Harlan Ellison, or horror fans.