Oy, PAX just keeps 'em coming.
Six Degrees of Bad Movie Separation: Peter Beckwith wrote and produced this wet turd; he also produced several of PAX's recent disaster melodramas, including the astonishing awful "Frozen Impact," "Trapped: Buried Alive," and "Lightning: Fire From The Sky." However, MSTies might recognize his name as the producer of David Giancola's "Tangents"--AKA "Time Chasers." (Giancola also directed "Lightning: Fire From The Sky." 'Round and 'round we go! When I'll hurl, no one knows!!)
Now the trivia gets really weird: another Beckwith/Giancola colaboration, "Icebreaker," features THE Bruce Campbell as a nuclear-armed terrorist (!), who is holding an entire ski resort hostage, and must be foiled by a ski-patrol officer played by Sean Astin. Yes, Sean Astin. Yes, the guy who plays Samwise the Hobbit in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy--that Sean Astin. The hero of an action movie.
...Which is all SO much more interesting than anything that happens in "Killer Flood," you'd be amazed. Here's a brief rundown of lowlights:
--Bruce Boxleitner plays the Standard Evil Industrialist, complete with the utter disregard for human life that ultimately cumulates in attempted murder, followed shortly by the Standard Ironic Punishment. That's such a cliche. In real life, heartless, cowardly, greedy slime like that get away scot free.
--A lot of the dam-collapse footage is lifted from "Dante's Peak." As you might imagine, these are the only effects that don't suck. I was astonished to see that "X-Men 2" features a climactic damburst, especially since this remains one of the hardest-to-get-right effects in movie history. "Dante's Peak" did it best--aside from one brief but godawful shot filmed at water level and in real time, making the true scale of the minature elements plainly obvious--and the climax of "Earthquake" wasn't so bad compared to some of the other effects in the movie, but in "Superman: The Movie," "Force Ten From Navarone," Irwin Allen's "Flood!," "Hard Rain," and others, the damburst scenes are universally giggleworthy. Hollywood can hardly ever ("Dante's Peak," again, almost got it perfect) do it right, yet keeps going back to it. Why?
--Aside from the "Dante's" footage, the special effects are on a high-school film-project level. There's one decent miniature that gets flooded (repeatedly), but most of it's "miniature" water-effects matted (VERY) sloppily into real footage. It reminds one of "Food of the Gods" or the Hong Kong scene from "Meteor." Except for one thing: there's a LOT of it. And not one shot of it matches the non-effects footage, not for a second.
--Screamer scene: a woman sees a thirty-foot wall of water rushing towards her. She runs to her car and starts it--then notices a very stupid dog has wandered nearby. She calls to it. It sits. She calls again. It lies down. She jumps out of her car and dashes over to the mutt, and turns around to see her car get hit by the wave. At this point, SHE RUNS. In fact, she stays ahead of the water for a good half-mile or so. She (hold onto your hats) TRICKS the water by running down a side alley--it takes several seconds for the water rushing by to begin spilling into the alley (!!!), like Elmer getting turned around chasing Bugs--giving her enough time to get herself AND the dog into a dumpster. They both almost drown in wet garbage, but the rushing water subsides before anything so ironic can happen. Damn, that must be some thick water, so slow...and stupid! (I was hoping she'd throw a banana peel out of the dumpster and the flood would slip on it, sliding right past her into an open manhole.)
--You know that old submarine gag, where people have to duck for cover when pressure causes bolts to snap and shoot off like bullets? It finally pays off, removing a minor character so the alienated father-son conflict can resolve itself in private. Ee-yewww.
--Footage isn't the only thing lifted from "Dante's Peak." The climax involves the movie's "family" blazing through town in a truck, ridiculously outracing the pursuing cataclysm. The climax of "Dante's" works because you have the amazing effects, tight direction and editing, and you give a damn about the family involved, so you may be inclined to cut the film a little slack. No such luck here. At least the water's moving faster this time.
--Our hero is such a brilliant and foresightful architect, he specifically built a mid-town parking garage to withstand a major damburst! Oh, I hope I didn't give too much away. P.S.: the water gets stupid again, deciding to chase the truck UP the garage ramp instead of just flooding the whole thing--which, according to the final effects shot, it does anyway. Der, water! Derrrrrrr!
Next week, PAX slaps us up side the head with "Cave In"--not the Irwin Allen/Ray Milland picture, but a "new" one about family-career conflict and some trapped miners. Wonder where they got the idea for that?
PAX. It's free. And it's funny. You should watch.
From The Makers Of "Time Chasers!"Nothin' Sucks Like Electrolux.
