Santa Jaws Review

And now we present a review by our new contributing writer, Lennie. Enjoy! 

Santa Jaws is coming to town with her eyes all aglow. Listen for the jingling in the water and watch out for her Santa hat situated atop her fin. And yes, this is a real movie. Real money went into making it.

The film opens with an intense fight scene on a dock that starts rather abruptly. I was unsure if I was even at the beginning of the film. A deranged looking Santa Claus has a woman tied up, and our hero is trying to save her. I lost it immediately when he kicked Santa in the jingle bells, and the sound effects were relative to my euphemism. I was more than intrigued at this point, but knew I was in for something very bizarre when I first saw her, Santa Jaws.

Suddenly we are transported to a comic book shop where two young boys are working on their own story. Our lead, Cody, is the artist, and his best friend Steven is the writer of Santa Jaws. We now realize that the opening to the movie was the story the boys were working on. The owner of the shop encourages the kids to keep working on it and invites them to the comic book Christmas Eve party the next night. Cody is sure he won’t be allowed to go, but he has his heart set on it.

With family coming into town and a big Christmas Eve dinner planned, Cody wanted to escape even more. On Christmas Eve morning, Cody’s grandpa, “Papa”, invites him to go fishing with him and promises to sneak him to the Christmas Eve comic book shop party later that night. Before this, Papa gives Cody an early present: a magical pen in an inscribed wooden box. Cody is especially fond of this gift as he realizes he can use it to finish his book. He starts drawing with it right away, unknowingly opening a world of chaos and death.

Without giving too much away, Cody’s family and friends start dying off one by one. The cause of death: Santa Jaws. The magic pen had brought this imaginary creature to life. Cody bands together with his older brother, aunt, best friend, and crush to try to stop the monster he created. When Georgia, Cody’s aunt, is almost attacked, she stabs Santa Jaws in the eye with a candy cane. It seems to be the only thing that has been able to injure her so far. The crew realizes that he can only be hurt by things from his world, the Christmas world. They fashion together multiple weapons wrapped in lights and garland and try to put an end to all of this.

The movie doesn’t have many twists or turns or surprises. The shark is bad CGI, but very festive. And overall, most of the characters are not very likable. However, for a horror Christmas shark tale, this is a win in my book. Don’t expect a masterpiece but expect to be entertained. It is definitely worth a watch during the holiday season.

For those with Amazon Prime, this is available streaming, enjoy! 

Exterminators of The Year 3000 Review

Exterminators of the Year 3,000 VHS

This is an interesting science fiction trope, but man was it tough to get through. It took me a few attempts to finally see the whole thing, and it’s not easy to watch. This is a foreign film that was originally done in Italian and Spanish. You can tell the dubbing is terrible from the VHS that I got my grubby hands on. The dubbing was beyond terrible, but hey, all for the love of horror and science fiction right? “Exterminators of the Year 3,000” may very well be one of the worst, best, and yet terrible movies that I’ve had to power through in a long time. It’s rough, I’m not going to lie. You probably won’t like it.

The opening sequence was badass. I loved it. It very much has a “Mad Max” feel to it. Some great driving in the desert, and some gnarly crashing, with a lot of practical effects and stunt drivers pulling some turns in the sand. The movie starts with this notion that there is no more water, and that there may or may not be droids driving. I wasn’t sure. As the renegade driver gets out of his car and see son a dead dude, another drives away with his car, leaving him to chase again, and this is the best part of the movie.

From that point we get taken to a movie that is very much like “Mad Max 2”, only now there’s no water on the planet and it’s up to one man to go out and try to save the village. This is where I kept fighting myself to pay attention, but it’s not simple or easy to work with. Everyone is fighting for water, and it very much feels like “Mad Max” with an even lower budget than that movie had. This is an obvious rip-off, but I tried to keep with it and hope that there was going to be more back story, or perhaps less cheese, but nope, things kept going that direction.

This is an abysmal rip off, but I loved how the movie had some cool driving. I’ll give it that. As for the VHS I got my hands on, it’s ok I guess. I’m not a diehard for this movie, so you can easily scope this out if you want to watch it. However, aside from the cars and stunts, this movie is abysmal. It’s by far one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long time, but the stunts are still cool, so I guess I’ll give them that. From what I read, the writers didn’t have the most fluid grasp of the English language, and well, it shows. If you get to watch this one, maybe you’ll like it, I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it so much that I didn’t finish it, so I guess that counts for something right? “Exterminators of The Year 3,000” is not a high recommendation, unless you absolutely must see the influence that “Mad Max” had on the 1980s movie scene.

Believe it or not, "Exterminators of the Year 3,000" is on Blu Ray. If you buy it here, and you like it, drop me a line and you can guest post a review. Otherwise, this stands as one terrible movie in my book. 

Sharknado 3 Oh Hell No Review

There’s nothing quite like the overblown media coverage of Sharknado. I finally sat down to watch the third installment, and while I managed to like the other two in the series, this was definitely the weakest one. Then again, I think that’s the point. How can we go insane with the plot and the whole concept of Sharknado? Well, we can make fun of it all and even leave it all with a cliffhanger too. Overall, this is one hell of a movie, but not in a good way, as there are some serious points of contention.

First and foremost, the acting has completely taken a backseat. I know, the other ones haven’t been great either, but there is a special kind of terrible that is sewn throughout this movie. So much that I had a hard time enjoying it, as everyone just phoned it in. If that’s not bad enough, the effects and the deaths are all even worse than ever. Then again, the cameos were kind of cool. I can’t deny that it was cool to see so many celebrities get involved. My favorite of course was none other than Chris Jericho.

Ok, so the acting is bad, so what? Well, the movie is plotted really slow. Slower than the other ones at times, but right when I thought I was going to give up on it, I decided to give it another shot. Simply put, the movie is just boring. I was bored by the time The Hoff showed up. Now that was ok, I liked the notion of going into space to send off missiles, but leaving The Hoff on the moon? (I Kid You Not)

Perhaps the biggest hit to my intelligence was the baseball bat that was Tara Reid giving birth to a baby in the belly of a shark. It was enough for me to walk out of my own living room. Then the cliffhanger, does she live or die? Oh and there will be a Sharknado 4! Come on! Come on! This is just bad. I don’t have fun with these any more. I give up. I’m just done. Instead of investing in the terrible movie that this was, take a moment to reflect on anything better. Ugh, this Halloween season is ruined by another lame movie.

Then again, maybe I’m looking for diamonds in sacks of poop. I know, I’m wrong. I just can’t watch anymore Sharknado movies. I can’t. Yet, I will probably see the fourth one when it comes out. I’m a sucker. Enjoy Halloween tomorrow, I’m going back to watching horror movies and trying to keep this site from dying a slower death than it already has.