Apex Predators AKA Jaws of New York (2021) [REVIEW] #sharksncrocs

Younger readers might think they saw everything, heard about everything, but don’t underestimate how deep the abyss is, since i can still search for and find more shark movies i’ve never even heard the title before, doesn’t matter if its decades or days old, the black depths keep spewing them out.

Cards on the table, what did i expect from the director of Ebola Rex, RoboWoman, Axegrinder 2, 5G Zombies, Angry Asian Murder Hornets (just to name a few)?

I’d say nothing, but that is not true, because a mental void would be quite calming, this isn’t the case here.

Plot? Sharks attack the beaches of Los Angeles, leaving corpses around just in time to ruin the opening of a new resort. Done.

The rest – as in 90% of the movie – is boring ass random padding or clumsy exposition dialogue that often has nothing to do with anything else, and even when an actual plot or narrative start manifesting, it just isn’t worth caring or describing in any detail aside from the shark being a spontaneous mutant, or at least we’re told so, and that’ll have to do since we never see any of this.

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Orca: The Killer Whale (1977) [REVIEW] #sharksncrocs

Let’s take a break from the “noughties”, enough of this modern shit, let’s go back to when Jaws rip-offs were still fresh in the eyes of audiences and a new glistening opportunity for some cheap cash grabs to exploit. So of course Dino De Laurentis was involved, may he rest in peace but damn he know when to jump on a bandwagon, even if this time we’re not talking giant apes.

And the story behind Orca The Killer Whale is indeed fairly simple in terms in conception, as Dino De Laurentiis saw the incredible success of Jaws, and wanted to quickly put together a similar film, though it wanted to upstage Jaws by having the title killer animal being even more ferocious and powerful, so he did really got suggested to make it about an orca, since they notoriously hunt sharks. And they are also quite stinky, if some orca-themed vtubers are to be believed.

Then again, how many movies marketed to exploit Jaws’ popularity have the Paramount Logo at the start, are directed by Micheal Anderson (Logan’s Run, The Dam Busters, Around The World In 80 Days), AND feature a score by Ennio Morricone?

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Lake Placid: The Final Chapter (2012) [REVIEW] #sharksncrocs

Some traditions die hard, to the point of never actually properly getting fazed on, and one of the fundamental ones for horror as a whole is titling the next installment of your series as “The Final Chapter”. Heck, even the Saw series did it a couple of years earlier, you can bet Lake Placid was gonna go for that low hanging fruit as well.

Though, one could argue that for many Saw fans that one does still feel more like a final chapter, despite two more films in the series having been released after.

But again, i’m getting off track, we’re talking about the fourth movie in a series of killer crocs, and a sequel to Lake Placid 3, which seems pointless to specify, but considering that these kind of movies will claim “sequelage” regardless of their plots being even vaguely connected, it’s important to specify if they can live to this self-made claim of continuity and crap.

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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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Lake Placid (1999) [REVIEW] | Feeding The Crocs

Given the overabundance of killer animals film in the horror as genre (or subgenre), it’s hard to say you’ve seen them all, as you most likely completely glossed dozens of the things, often entire series of movies about killer creatures. Lake Placid is one i personally didn’t bother with, more due to the timing of my proper interest in horror and related cinematic material blooming, i was aware of the series growing up but i didn’t care about killer croc films, and by the time i did it was basically already sequelized hard, so i turned to weirder, newer killer sharks movies and such.

Today we’re “correcting” this by starting a retrospective on the entire Lake Placid series, from the 1999 original to the most recent installment, 2018’s Lake Placid Legacy.

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Dinoshark (2010) [REVIEW] | #sharksncrocs

More Roger Corman, continuing his b-movie legacy well into the new millennium with the “Roger Corman Presents” line of made for TV or direct-to-video b-movies he produced, this one being a spin-off of sorts of the Dino Croc series. Yes, series.

At the time of writing i haven’t got around to those, not that it matters, as a movie like this was simply bound to be made, and i’m surprised it took this long for the words “dinosaur” and “shark” to be married by the ol’ “b-movie priest”, but i guess 2010 was the year for this kind of trash, as Roger Corman also produced Sharktopus.

The first of the “Sharktopus trilogy” i mean.

Also, apparently this is a remake of 1979’s Up From The Depths, another Jaws rip-off/inspired film.

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The Sharks & The Crocs

As promised, this year we’re gonna let our reptilian friends join what’s usually Shark Month on here, hopefully that’ll will make you wanna stab me with knives a little less, as the bi-daily posting schedule will remain, meaning the roster of reviews has been cut in half to 15.

Not too happy about that myself, to be blunt. It is what it is, sadly.

(also, yeah, baffled that Panty & Stocking is coming back, it actually is)

See you later today!

Anacondas: Trail Of Blood (2009) [REVIEW] | Bone Cancer Snakes #snakesofjune

It took this series 4 movies, but this we’re actually getting an actual sequel… to Anaconda 3, but still, unlike that claimed to be a sequel to Anaconda: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid, Anaconda 4/Anacondas: Trail Of Blood it’s actually a sequel to Anaconda 3: Offspring, and it has the director of that movie, Don E. Fauntleroy, returning, so let the spunk pumps go off in celebration.

As i’ve said before, you gotta treasure the small things in these movies, and a movie claiming to be a sequel actually being a sequel it’s definitely something you can’t trust/take for granted.

I’m gonna spin this into a positive note, for a change. You can’t stop me.

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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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Ninety Nine Nights X360 [REVIEW] | #musoumay

In the 2000s, the Dynasty Warriors series (and most of its subseries) was not well received in western grounds, often maligned by people that never even gave the formula a real chance but eager to play them for 5 minutes, stop and write some half-baked “review”, because it was cool to bash musou games, and they’re a niche interest anyway, who cares.

But that didn’t stop various other company from having a go at the formula, often proclaiming that them alone knew how to “fix” musou games… and then churning out shit that only demonstrated how people genuinely misunderstood the formula and the appeal of these games, often thinking that they just needed to beef up the enemy IA… leading to crap like Spartan Total Warrior.

One of the “musou pretenders” from that era was definitely Ninety Nine Nights, or N3 because we’re cool like that, dawg. Drop the beets for the l33t.

A X-Box 360 exclusive launch title, developed by Q Entertaiment and Phantagram, Ninety Nine Nights also had a fairly rushed development cycle, which you can really tell from the story perspective. It’s the usual “Light VS Darkness” bullshit set in a medieval-ish looking world with all expected high fantasy races and tropes: goblin, trolls, orcs, dragons and all dat shit.

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