Lake Placid 2 (2007) [REVIEW] #sharksncroc

While Anaconda did manage to have its first sequel come out in theathers.. that luck wouldn’t spread to other reptilian based killer animal series, since after the 1999 original, we had to wait 8 years for the first of the many direct-to-video/made for TV sequels to appear, with Lake Placid 2.

All roads lead to strings of TV sequels for SciFi, after all.

And by now you should have a good understanding what that entails: the same basic plot with basically all the same characters but a completely different cast, and often a bugdet slashed in half, if the production it’s extremely lucky. IF.

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Anaconda 3: Offspring (2008) [REVIEW] | Hit That Hoff #snakesofjune

As previously discussed, the Anaconda series did prosper… ok, “continue”, as this third installment was a made for TV movie that originally aired on SciFi, instead of a theathrical release.

And to save some extra buckaroos, you film two shitty TV killer snake movies in some Eastern European country for the price of one, as both Anaconda 3 and the sequel Anaconda: Blood Trail were shot back to back in Romania. I guess Nu Image claimed their “turf” for cheap shooting in Bulgary, so Stage 6 Productions did their business in the other closest country there.

While it’s described as a sequel to The Hunt For The Blood Orchid, the only thing that provides any slim bit of continuity is the name of the pharmaceutical company, Wexel Hall, there’s no returning cast from the second one, heck, not even any returning character. Plot involves an industrialist named Murdoch – played by John Rhys-Davey looking strongly like Pavarotti here – having an anaconda captured from the Amazon River and brought to the company’s Romanian branch to experiment on it a serum made from the Blood Orchid.

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Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid (2004) [REVIEW] #snakesofjune

Let’s go back to a slightly older time, not implying it was a better time per se, just saying that back in the late 90s – early 2000s you still could make B-movies about snakes with good effects and released widely in theathers, and this is true for Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Archid.

Though worry not, even if you didn’t see the original Anaconda (which we covered sometimes ago), this is a stand-alone sequel with a completely different cast and a completely separate plot, with directing duties handled to Dwight Hubbard Little (Marked For Death, Free Willy 2, Halloween 4).

Aside from proving than indeed what it’s old it’s eventually new again, there’s the fact that today this kind of sequel would never reach theathers, heck, not even the first/original movie would.

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Resident Evil Vendetta (2017) [REVIEW] | Remote Zombies

As Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City was released in theathers earlier this week (in most countries), let’s take a look at the final Resident Evil CG animated film, Vendetta, which is also technically the last of the “CG trilogy”, as in all three movies have Leon Kennedy as the main character and are set in the same universe of the Resident Evil games, to contrast with the live action film series (as previously said).

The biggest change – but not the most noticeable – is the animation, with this film produced by Marza Animation Planet instead of Digital Frontier, the studio behind all previous Resident Evil CG movies and even the short film Biohazard 4D Executer that we started this little retrospective with.

The name might not say much, but it’s actually a studio that started by providing CGI cutscenes for the Sonic The Hedgehog games, and eventually for both anime TV series and even full lenght features, working alongside japanese animation titans like Toei for the 2012 3D CG Space Captain Harlock movies, even Lupin III The First, and more recently being one of the production companies for the new Sonic The Hedgehog movies, in a kinda poetic turn of events.

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Resident Evil Damnation (2012) [REVIEW] | Slavic Struggle

4 years after Degeneration, Capcom followed it up with Damnation (i would wager they didn’t plan the titles beforehand, at all), made mostly to promote Resident Evil 6, released in Japan roughly 3 weeks before, as it acts as a prequel to that game’s storyline.

So yeah, it’s not really a sequel to Degeneration as there are no returning characters from that movie aside from Leon S. Kennedy and Hunnigan, and the events from that film don’t really ever get brought up or serve any purpose to the story of Damnation.

They just don’t.

Which i understand from a functional standpoint, you don’t wanna have people lost if they didn’t watch Degeneration, that movies was released 4 years prior and these CG movies didn’t exactly make people and fans drool over them en masse. But you could have tried to make some fuckin connections happen and try to build an overarching plot of sorts, if nothing else to artificially make the various plots seem more important and better due to the interconnection.

In hindsight it’s not a problem, so let’s talk about the plot of Resident Evil Damnation.

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Biohazard: 4D Executer (2000) [REVIEW] | Parasite Evil

While we wait for the new Resident Evil film reboot, i’d figure we’d take a look at the other forgotten Resident Evil film series, the CG animated one that basically most people don’t remember, know or care to do any of that.

But before tackling the movies you’ve might actually vaguely heard about, we need to go deeper and unearth the first actual 3D animated Resident Evil movie, 4D Executer, so unknown and so “important” it never got the Resident Evil title, so it still uses the japanese title for the series.

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The Spooktacular Eight #6: Dominator: The Movie (2003)

Are you ready to rock and roll with the most unknown Spawn-rip off you never heard?

Are you ever heard of “brit-manga”? Me neither, but apparently Dominator was the “new wave of brit manga animation”, according to what the front cover of the UK DVD release claims.

Yeah, this is some rare shit indeed, an animated movie that involves familiar names in the horror sphere like Doug Bradley, Ingrid Pitt, and metal bands like Cradle Of Filth providing not only the music but the voice acting, based on a series of british comics by Tony Luke, one that was still ongoing in 2006, but has since then been in hiatus.

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Arachnicide (2014) [REVIEW] | Going Digital On Yo Ass

This one is a bit special to me as an italian, as it fills a niche of monster movies that basically went extinct over time: the italian b-movie made for the international market.

Yeah, as you could ascertain from the poster (and the cast list) having almost exclusively italian actors on it, this is an italian movie, and if the look of the actors didn’t give it away (i’d argue it does, at the very least it’s obvious that these are not American), the english dub ABSOLUTELY will make that clear as day, and sadly you can’t watch it in italian with english subs, not only on the UK DVD release i imported, but apparently in all english languages releases on streaming as well.

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One Piece TV SP 10: Adventures In Nebulandia (2015) [REVIEW]

Director: Konosude Uda

Writer: Atsuhiro Tomioka

Runtime: 106 minutes

We’re finally taking a somewhat extended break from the recaps extravaganza (but not that extended, as we’ll find out) to have a TV special that actually features an original story, and calls back to a noticeably under-represented story arc, the Davy Back Fight, often completely eschewed from pretty much any adaptation of One Piece, and low-key hated by the fanbase, i feel.

Yeah, the premise sees Foxy and his crew send a false distress signal to the Straw Hats, seeking revenge after their Davy Back fight. The two crews begin another Davy Back, starting off with a mushroom eating contest as the first round of the challenge, but it’s a trap, as the new Foxy Pirates member, Komei, has made them eat the so called “Drousy Shrooms”, then reveals himself to be a Marine Vice Admiral and brings the four incapacited crewmembers as prisoners to Nebulandia.

The rest of both pirate crews follow them, but things get hairy as Nebulandia is an island that nullifies Devil Fruit powers due to its vegetation having adapted to live off sea water, acting as a natural prison for the many “gifted” pirates, so even more people get captured and it’s up to the few remaining to find a way to reserve the effects of the vegetation and escape the island.

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Virus Shark (2021) [REVIEW] | Bad Taste Sharks

While i promised myself i wouldn’t review stuff like the Corona Zombies films (made DURING the height of the pandemic in 2020 by an even more more shameless and cynical Full Moon Pictures)… i still will pretend they didn’t actually happen, alongside stuff like Angry Asian Murder Hornets, but chance and curiosity took the best of me when i stumbled upon this movie while walking down the river. I figured i could at least use it for this year’s Shark Month, and i selected it for the title alone.

So color me…. not really surprised when i actually started doing some research and finding out it’s yet another Polonia Bros joint.

And no, i didn’t plan out to review so many of their movies, at all. It just sorta happened.

At least they waited until 2021 came around instead of shooting it 3 days during mid-2020 so it could be “shot” and released during the height of the pandemic?

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