← Back to Reviews
in
I decided that Just Before Dawn was just way too high-brow and high-budget for April, so I took an even deeper dive into... The Strangeness.
Here in The Strangeness, we have a team of characters who are going down an abandoned mine to find gold that a new survey has suggested was missed on previous expeditions. We know this because 5 minutes into the movie, the closest thing to a main character we have, Geoff, literally tells his buddy in the car, “We’re going to join a team of people who are going down an abandoned mine to find gold that a new survey says was missed on previous expeditions”. So that saves us some time. Thank god. We’ll need it later for wandering in circles around a small set made to look like a bunch of different caves by using (slightly) different lighting and angles, built in the director’s grandparents’ garage. I am not making that up.
Anyway, the group consists of Geoff, who we find out later is supposed to be a sort of charming-rascal-but-competent type guy, a very attractive photographer (because you need one of those on a mining expedition), a company-stooge bad-guy, and then some people who are going to die.
Our intrepid explorers enter the mine and keep finding piles of bloody bones as they descend (over the first 45 minutes of the movie)… yet keep descending. Eventually, they run into The Tentacled Vagina Monster:
… which is a stop-motion animated Tentacled Vagina Mine-monster that spits acid and eats people (obviously).
Already you may be asking, “Wooley, why did you watch this?”, especially since I ask that, at least in my head, of many of you and the movies you post.
The answer is because I love pluck. The idea that some people got $25,000 together (the actual budget of this film) and filmed a movie on nights and weekends over the course of 1979, shooting exteriors and early interiors, including the entire opening of the movie, without permits at an actual abandoned mine, and then made a set in their grandparents’ garage and made a film that, honestly, is at least minimally credible for an ultra-low-budget late-70s Alien ripoff… well, kudos to them, ya know? I mean, honestly, on $25,000, you’d be surprised.
And you should read the reviews!
“I was surprised by how the film managed to hold my attention, despite the bland acting on hand and monotonous 'dark-blue-paper-mache-as-cave' settings.”
“It is very very slow and very, very uneventful, but not completely without charm.”
“…there are even two or three scenes that are well-made enough to be worth watching.”
How ya gonna pass on all that?!!!
And, of course, the one that nabbed me:
“Fans of lesser-known cave-creature flicks like The Boogens will probably have a lot of fun. Just don’t expect anything special.”
I love The Boogens.
Anyway, I can't say that this movie charmed my socks off or anything but I can say that I came away from it with a smile on my face that they even freakin' pulled this off at all and I was just kinda happy for them. We've all seen a lot of movies with much larger budgets, even in this genre, just completely and utterly lack competence. And someone these folks put this together with nights and weekends and $25,000 and paper-mache in grandma's garage.
And, as long as you have something to read during the first 45 minutes, that's gotta be worth a slot on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Post-script:
1. This movie is not as good as The Boogens.
2. Obviously "lazy Sunday afternoons" are when most low-budget Horror movies are getting watched in Wooley's world. Wait'll you see the next one.
I decided that Just Before Dawn was just way too high-brow and high-budget for April, so I took an even deeper dive into... The Strangeness.
Here in The Strangeness, we have a team of characters who are going down an abandoned mine to find gold that a new survey has suggested was missed on previous expeditions. We know this because 5 minutes into the movie, the closest thing to a main character we have, Geoff, literally tells his buddy in the car, “We’re going to join a team of people who are going down an abandoned mine to find gold that a new survey says was missed on previous expeditions”. So that saves us some time. Thank god. We’ll need it later for wandering in circles around a small set made to look like a bunch of different caves by using (slightly) different lighting and angles, built in the director’s grandparents’ garage. I am not making that up.
Anyway, the group consists of Geoff, who we find out later is supposed to be a sort of charming-rascal-but-competent type guy, a very attractive photographer (because you need one of those on a mining expedition), a company-stooge bad-guy, and then some people who are going to die.
Our intrepid explorers enter the mine and keep finding piles of bloody bones as they descend (over the first 45 minutes of the movie)… yet keep descending. Eventually, they run into The Tentacled Vagina Monster:
… which is a stop-motion animated Tentacled Vagina Mine-monster that spits acid and eats people (obviously).
Already you may be asking, “Wooley, why did you watch this?”, especially since I ask that, at least in my head, of many of you and the movies you post.
The answer is because I love pluck. The idea that some people got $25,000 together (the actual budget of this film) and filmed a movie on nights and weekends over the course of 1979, shooting exteriors and early interiors, including the entire opening of the movie, without permits at an actual abandoned mine, and then made a set in their grandparents’ garage and made a film that, honestly, is at least minimally credible for an ultra-low-budget late-70s Alien ripoff… well, kudos to them, ya know? I mean, honestly, on $25,000, you’d be surprised.
And you should read the reviews!
“I was surprised by how the film managed to hold my attention, despite the bland acting on hand and monotonous 'dark-blue-paper-mache-as-cave' settings.”
“It is very very slow and very, very uneventful, but not completely without charm.”
“…there are even two or three scenes that are well-made enough to be worth watching.”
How ya gonna pass on all that?!!!
And, of course, the one that nabbed me:
“Fans of lesser-known cave-creature flicks like The Boogens will probably have a lot of fun. Just don’t expect anything special.”
I love The Boogens.
Anyway, I can't say that this movie charmed my socks off or anything but I can say that I came away from it with a smile on my face that they even freakin' pulled this off at all and I was just kinda happy for them. We've all seen a lot of movies with much larger budgets, even in this genre, just completely and utterly lack competence. And someone these folks put this together with nights and weekends and $25,000 and paper-mache in grandma's garage.
And, as long as you have something to read during the first 45 minutes, that's gotta be worth a slot on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Post-script:
1. This movie is not as good as The Boogens.
2. Obviously "lazy Sunday afternoons" are when most low-budget Horror movies are getting watched in Wooley's world. Wait'll you see the next one.