Saturday, April 22, 2006

"Heroes Aren't Born ... They're Cornered."

Bravo, SciFi. Bravo.

This week's Saturday night B-Movie, MAMMOTH, is finally what these things should be. Before tonight, SS DOOMTROOPER, MANSQUITO, et al, promised classic B-movie fun but wound up laying there (SS DOOMTROOPER culminates with a 15 foot tall gamma-radiation hulked-out Nazi ... losing a knife fight with Corin Nemec).

MAMMOTH was knowing, goofy fun from the great William Castle-style score, the truly amusing credits through the lovely little cheesy 50's ending beat. Vince Ventresca channelled the great dorky 50's scientist characters flawlessly. The script did what it could with being, well ... a script about a giant unfrozen wooly mammoth. A giant unfrozen wooly mammoth with vampiric powers.

Where the scenes had to look like a real movie, they did, and when they needed to be big B-Movie fun, they were. Don't get me wrong, it was by no means great cinema -- but it did its damn job. It is head and shoulders in style and tone above almost every other one of the Sci Fi originals.

Guys, if you're really committed to grinding out 26 of these accursed things every year, give them all, right now, to the team who made MAMMOTH.

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