Really Awful Movies

We’re not hunting him, he’s hunting us!

If Rambo: First Blood Part II mated with The Most Dangerous Game and was then lobotomized, the result would be Deadly Prey, a ludicrous, ham-fisted 80s action flick that’s as entertaining as it is inept.

In a forest somewhere just outside of Los Angeles, a large group of mercenaries are training under the tutelage of Vietnam vet Colonel Hogan to “be the best.” Of course, this being peacetime, as a training exercise the mercs (each interchangeable, each without a lick of muscle tone) naturally kidnap average joes off the street and chase them through the forests of L.A. before killing them. When the last portly “runner” proves little challenge, Hogan orders them to get someone nasty this time. Big Mistake (best read in your finest Stallonesque growl)!

Enter Mike Danton, your average former military killing machine now living a peaceful, domesticated life out in the ‘burbs. Danton, who is played by Ted Prior and looks a bit like wrestler Terry “The Red Rooster” Taylor, is taking out the trash in a pair of exceedingly short shorts when the mercenaries pull up and abduct him to be their next runner, unaware that they’re picking up deadly prey. Ha!

The mercenaries strip the jacked Danton down to just his shorts but also see fit to oil him up before they turn him lose. Almost immediately Mike springs into action, taking out the mercenaries like a one man army corp. He grabs one unfortunate recruit and this awesome exchange follows:

Danton: How long has this been going on?

Recruit: I don’t know! I just joined today!

Danton: BAD TIMING!

He then stabs the poor guy in the stomach.

Meanwhile, Danton’s wife, who looks and acts like a wide-eyed fourth-grader, calls her retired policeman father for assistance in finding her husband. Pops, played by Hollywood journeyman Cameron Mitchell, goes off on a one-man crusade to find his son-in-law. Why he didn’t call any of his cop buddies for backup remains a mystery, but to his credit, the old guy fights pretty well for someone who looks like he should be playing shuffleboard in Del Boca Vista with Frank Costanza.

Upon seeing the corpses of his mercenaries, Hogan – a poor man’s Martin Kove if there ever was one – exclaims “I know his style, it’s my style…Know him, I TRAINED him!”Danton then reaches out of the bush, grabs Hogan, turns him around and growls:

You trained me to be the best. Well, I still am…I STILL AM!!!!

Danton then inexplicably let’s Hogan go just so Hogan can bellow to the heavens “DANTON!!!!!”

Later, Danton, who has pretty much been fighting with his bare hands and picked-up weapons of his fallen foes, finds a weapon’s cache and shit gets super serious and super ridiculous. Danton levels up huge. He emerges armed to the gills and looking like someone dressed for Halloween as a thrift-store Rambo. He booby-traps the entire forest to take out each remaining mercenary, save the John Travolta-looking one whom he saved in ‘Nam and who now is Danton’s ally.

At this point, many questions arise. For instance, why when Danton throws one knife, two people fall down and die? Was there some sort of ricochet? And just how does a machine gun act like a bazooka, causing a helicopter to explode as if a nuclear missile hit it? Furthermore, we know that Danton is good but is he from Krypton? The man has grenades thrown at him and is shot point black and emerges literally without a scratch! And why is that when a man shoots a machine gun in an action film, he makes the same face Eddie Van Halen does when ripping out a guitar solo?

It’s impossible not to love Deadly Prey. The film is uber-goofy and ridiculous but the entertainment factor is off the charts. Compounding the lunacy in a film that features so much carnage is the complete lack of plasma. Shit, they saved big-time on Danton’s wardrobe budget: Couldn’t they have at least afforded a squib or two?

By the time Danton bludgeons one of the few remaining mercenaries to death with the merc’s own severed arm, you too will be bellowing “DANTON!!!!!!!”

So much fun!

**** (out of five)

As proud Canucks, it behooves us to begin this review with a word or two about the world’s second largest rodent. In 1975, due to the fur trade’s importance in the development of our land, the beaver was adopted as our national animal. It appears on our five-cent piece and is the symbol of many units within the Canadian Armed Forces and also the Toronto Police Services and the Canadian Military Engineers. Many a Canuck youth enjoyed watching the installment of Hinterland Who’s Who showing the busy beaver building dams and gnawing through pieces of wood.

Suffice it to say, gentle nature programs never showed the beaver as a rabid, mutated beast with a taste for human flesh. For that we need to turn to Zombeavers, a horror-comedy that we caught at Toronto’s After Dark Film Festival. In turning a relatively benign creature into a carnivorous killer, Zombeavers attempts to do for the Castor canadensis what Peter Cottonhell did for the Lepus.

As the film begins, that deus ex machina of movie mutations, the barrel of toxic waste, is seen floating down a river. It abuts a dam and immediately sprays its contents all over the habitat.

Cut to a girl sitting in a gas station bathroom sobbing. Her name is Jenn, and she’s lamenting her cheating rapscallion of a boyfriend. To take her mind of the lout, her two friends, Zoe and Mary, decide to whisk her off to Mary’s cousin’s cabin by the lake for a girl’s weekend.

The trio is alternately complaining about having no cell reception and commiserating about men when a series of loud bangs puts them on alert. Turns out the boyfriends, including Jenn’s philandering ex Sam, have decided to join the girls even though they were clearly not invited. Along for the ride are the truly obnoxious duo of Buck and Tommy.

The bangs continue and Jenn finds a giant, mutated beaver in the bathtub. Tommy bludgeons the poor fella to death with a baseball bat, stuffs it into a garbage bag and places the bag on the front porch. The next morning, the bag is still there but no beaver.

Before long, the kids are stranded on a raft in the middle of the lake being attacked by hordes of the Zombeavers. Sam confirms his douchebag credentials by tossing Zoe’s admittedly adorable puppy into the water as beaver bait.

Eventually, they join up with a Grizzly Adams outdoor survivalist type and try to fend off the hordes of rampaging rodents. They barricade themselves in the cabin Night of the Living Dead style and board up all the doors and windows, blissfully unaware that beavers chew through wood like William Shatner chews through scenery.

Any discussion of Zombeavers would be incomplete without mentioning that those who are bitten by the rabid beavers eventually grow gigantic incisors and a large thumping tail and become beaver hybrids themselves.

So is Zombeavers worth a…ahem…dam? It really depends on your sensibilities. Horror-comedy when done right can be a joy (see Tucker and Dale vs. Evil), but when done wrong can often grate. Unfortunately Zombeavers falls decidedly more into the latter camp. Despite some good gore and the originality of the premise, the characters are unlikable, the jokes for the most part aren’t terribly funny, and in the end, there really isn’t much left to chew on.

**1/2 (out of five)