[EXPRESSO] Death Of A Unicorn (2025) | Mediocricorns Out

Like i lamented in my review of Opus, this kind of satire about “eating the rich” has just about plateu’d itself into a modern clichè, despite the sentiment itself being more and more relevant, and Death Of A Unicorn just cements this further.

Even if it’s a killer creature feature mashed with The Menu (again, that or Knives Out), and there’s something to the concept, given the unicorn’s folklore.

The premise sees a lawyer bring along his estranged daughter to meet with the wealthy family he works for, but they accidentally hit something with the car.

That being an actual, factual unicorn, which is eventually discovered by the rich family that immediatly seizes it when they realize just their blood can do near miracolous things, and ignore the warnings of the daughter, who briefly but profondedly mind-linked with the unicorn cub…

It’s not that it doesn’t commit to its silly concept of “killer unicorns stalking-killing rich assholes”, it does so to the point its detrimental, mostly taking the idea too seriously while being stupid in a way that’s more exhauting and annoying than fun, the good cast can’t do much when these character are too fuckin stupid, it lacks some needed self-awareness, and it’s nowhere as fun as it sounds.

It also doesn’t take advantage of the absurd premise to make something creative with it, the effects are fairly good but don’t expect anything of inventive in terms of kills, for example, and while it’s under 2 hours, it feels longer, like they stretched a short movie or a comedy skit into feature lenght.

It’s at least a more coherent with itself than Opus, i will say that much, and it’s not awful, it’s just another middling entry in this already overdone, oversatured “eat the rich” style of satirical comedy.

Sabretooth (2022) [REVIEW] | Beeg Cat Means Beeg Trouble!

Before the year ends, it’s time to fullfil some promises nobody care about, so after reviewing Attack Of The Sabretooth (AKA Primal Park) back in whenever that happened, i realized almost before i finished writing the review, that this was sorta/kinda/vaguely a sequel to another movie about sabertooth tigers, as in they were sequelized only when localized in some foreign markets, as they have nothing to do with each other… aside from the writer, being Tom Woosley for both otherwise unrelated movies about extinct tiger species going about killing people.

Still more sensible than most of the italian cannibal film being retitled as “Cannibal Holocaust 2” when not even the lead actor’s dingus is a shared asset.

Simply titled “Sabretooth”, this is yet another TV movie that debutted on the ol’ Sci-Fi channel about killer animals that might or not be mutants or resurrected extinct evolutionary cul-de-sacs because Spielberg did a killing resurrecting the ancient lineage of the KFC bucket a decade ago.

And Roger Corman was also there to rip chickens up with its Carnosaur, then again, Clint Howard WAS eating chicken in front a chicken coup (and dinosaurs).

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Orcs! (2011) [REVIEW] | 3 Inches Of Snooze

Time to rummage through my B-movies DVD collection and pinch one out, in this case salvaging from one of the huge ass bookcase style holders Orcs!, a 2011 direct to video monster on the loose flick with a fantasy twist of sorts.

This time around it’s not mutated bears, cocained panthers, or landlubbing sharks running amok in a place, it’s the green, Dakka loving green boyz, that threaten to invade modern society starting from a US National Park, so it’s up to the resident Park Ranger, Cal Robertson, and his sidekick, Voluntary Cadet Hobie, to stop them hordes from leaving the park.

Sound like a fun little comedy horror B-movie, the formula it’s more than proven, have monsters invade and have two or more dorkuses left as humanity’s unlikely last stand, the cast being mostly made of people you’ve never heard or seen before it’s an acceptable risk and not damning in itself.

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Abyssal Spider AKA Mad Spider Sea (2020) [REVIEW] #giantmonstermarch

Want more spider movies? Want spiders so bad you’ll marry Rachnera Arachnera?

Well, here’s one about a fricking giant water spider from Taiwanese director Joe Chien.

No, it doesn’t involve a crew of on a ship trying to romance off the storm and the aquatic creatures, they just have to survive the weather and these mysterious things that attack them from the water, with the help of Aije, who previously survived a boat disaster where a large shadow in the abyss pulled the entire vessel into the depths….

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King Cobra (1999) [REVIEW] | Dropkick Cobras with Pat Morita #snakesofjune

Due to the overabundance of snake movies, distributors had improvising their own method of flute chanting to enthice people, in this case by slapping on the cover Pat Morita’s name, and with special effects curated by the Chiodo Brothers of Killers Klowns From Outer Space and Critters fame.

Well, that sure would have gotten my attention, but even the funny Erik Estrada cammeo wouldn’t properly mask how this is the squintillionth Jaws rip-off.

That’s literally it.

I know i did eventually described the same plot over and over since lots of b-movies ripped off Jaws in everything, you wanna know the context that lead to a giant snake hybrid breaking loose? Fine.

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The Spooktacular Eight #8: Spookies (1986)

Another classic staple of horror retrospective, the “frankensteined” project that started as something specific, never got made and was later edited, injected with new footage, and eventually released as the obvious hodge potche it became. One that for years was quite elusive, not that well known, and was available on VHS only…. but this changed as it finally got a DVD release in the US and some european contries (surprisingly i didn’t even had to import it, since there’s an italian DVD release).

And of course the title is that kind of cheesy that bode wells for retronauts in search of cult sensations from the bowels of horror history.

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Mega Snake (2007) [REVIEW] | Snake Of The Father

Things lead to things, and so i accidentally started out a Tibor Takacs mini-retrospective of sorts. It just kinda happened, i guess.

And sadly, no, he never made a TV movie about killer frogs or slugs to complete the “asian rock-paper-scissors” trifecta or the “Aesop fables’ bingo”, but he did direct this for SyFy the same year as Ice Spiders, and that would the last creature feature from him until Spiders 3D, as he preferred to do more disaster movies about tornadoes (regular ones) and christmas-family movies, which is – in a way – quite usual for older genre directors to end up doing in the later years.

But today is snakes, or at least one singular Mega Snake, and it’s a bit more interesting than Ice Spiders, more ridiculous but also less by the numbers, even if it’s another Nu Image joint shot in the Bulgarian capital for the same reasons already discussed in previous reviews, as it’s quite cheap.

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Ice Spiders (2007) [REVIEW] | Ski Spiders

As promised in the review of Spiders 3D, here’s the review of the spider creature feature TV movie Tibor Takacs directed before the 2013’s Nu Image/Millennium Film one that happened to pretty much be a remake of the 2000’s movie Spiders, produced by the same company.

You might argue i maybe should have done this before Spiders 3D, and you would be correct, but i didn’t even find out Ice Spiders existed before doing research for the other one, so here we are.

I should have guessed that a movie like this would exist, because i do believe this type of genre B-movies (especially if made for TV like this one) will eventually fall victim to what i call the “Pokemon Singularity”, with desperate filmakers mixing and matching animals with a random element/type, and if we can have sharks made of ice, sand (so “earth”), fire (atomic), even ghostly “dark” sharks, sure as shit we can have a movie called Ice Spiders. Possibly about literal spiders made of ice.

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Spiders 3D (2013) [REVIEW] | Arachnids Of The Third Dimension

B-movie about spiders have tenaciously popped up decade after decade, because arachnophobia it’s quite common, so nothing is more cathartic than seeing spiders of giant size getting blown the fuck up… after eating people, rampaging through cities, etc.

So it’s no wonder than once in a while a new one comes out, this time Spiders 3D, also known as Spiders in home video releases, which might make people confuse it for the older one (already featured here), so the 3D monicker feels kinda necessary, as it was actually shot in that format… which is obviously lost on a regular DVD release.

This one comes from Tibor Takacs, a genre director better known for the cult movie The Gate and episodes of Sabrina The Teenage Witch old tv series (alongside the Sabrina Goes To Rome movie), whom we already spotlighted when we reviewed the TV movie The Black Hole, and fittingly this isn’t even the first time he did a creature feature about spiders with 2007’s TV movie Ice Spiders.

Which i guess i now gotta review as well, don’t see why not.

Don’t see why either, but whatever.

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Spiders 2: Breeding Ground (2001) [REVIEW] | The Ship Of Spideus

There are few things as inevitable as sequels in cinema.

No matter what stratum and levels of production we’re talking about, it’s weirder NOT seeing a movie getting a sequel. Time doesn’t matter either, because nostalgia marketing made a new Space Jam happen, and there’s no degree of separation, cultural or temporal, that will ensure you someone won’t try to make Citizen Kane II, and have it about Charles Foster Kane’ parents murdered by a roving pack of sentient, blood hungry sleds named after floral varieties.

Titanic II (or Holocaust II, not joking) exists, and i guess only does only to make it crystal clear there’s no end to the metaphorical barrel, encased in another barrel.

And so on ad infinitum.

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