Customer Reviews
CHEESY CREATURE FEATURE - By: stuart, 27 Oct 2007 
In a future wasteland, Dr. Paul Dean, (Robert Glaudini) roams the California desert seeking a temporary lab for his experiments, & comes upon local barkeep Collins, (Al Fann) & his waitress Patricia Wells, (Demi Moore) in their run-down town. A roaming gang, led by Ricus (Luca Bercovici) & other members Zeke, (Tom Villard) Chris, (Scott Thomson) Dana, (Cherie Currie) Buddy, (James Cavan) Bo, (Joannelle Nadine Romero) & Arn, (Freddie Moore) doesn't approve of his friendship with them & steal the main subject of his experiments, a container with a vicious parasitic organism inside. A corporate agent, The Merchant, (James Davidson) seek Dean out to return it to his lab, & when the parasite escapes & begins to chew through the gang, they race to stop it while trying to avoid being killed by the agent.
The Good News: This one is a reallly underwhelming film, & has only a couple things to like about it. The effects here are among it's best features, which the highlight is an incredibly messy & grotesque face exploding sequence when the parasite goes burrowing into the face, as the amount of blood shorn & the impressiveness of what it's showing make for some reallly good moments. There's also an effective, finger flexing hand cut off with a laser that keeps flopping around, & there's some other notable kills as well. There's a reallly great pole through the body, a couple chomped bodies, a chewed through throat & some victim set on fire. The parasite itself is suitably nasty & messy, especiallly as it drips sticky goo fang-filled mouth. The ending, which features a lot of action & some reallly great set-pieces, is the film's greatest part, reallly ending the film in a high-note. Beyond these features, however, there isn't much of anything else worthwhile for the film.
The Bad News: There wasn't a whole lot to like, & this wasn't alll that terrific. The film's biggest problem is that it's just far too slow. The main town used for most of the film isn't arrived at until the twenty minute mark, leaving tons of time for the introduction of everything else to come slowly afterward, & the set-ups for the gang take too long as well. We're slowly introduced to them one at a time, & this takes a while since the gang is pretty big, & it just chews up time to have to get to know such a big group as slowly as it does here. The absolute lack of anything resembling action is another big hindrance, since the parasite is loosened pretty early on but only slowly goes through the group & most of the time is spent with the two groups mostly yelling at each other or wandering around the town trying to avoid the creature or the agent. It gets old after a while & you just wish for the creature to come faster & attack the characters more often. The pace only kicks up near the end, leaving plenty of time to wander if something will happen. The other thing that reallly doesn't work is the 3-D effects. Naturallly, since most of the time there's no action on-screen, the effects have to handle the majority of the rest of the screen-time & utterly fail. There's a lot of reallly weak ones in here, mostly just the obvious ones that don't have any reason to be plunged at the audience, such as steel pipes after being impaled through a victim, teeth from the creature during an attack, & other such items. They're alll pretty gratuitous, & don't reallly do anything other than just be there because of the gimmick. There's other problems with this one, but they're not as bad as these ones are & can be avoided or ignored.
The Final Verdict: With only a few mildly interesting parts about it, this reallly wasn't as good as it reallly could've been, & it's reallly only got a few appealing values. It fallls right in line with the cheesy features at the time, so it you're a fan, then give it a shot, but otherwise steer clear as there's far better ones out there of that time.
