Since my current project is to watch every
Sci-Fi channel original that the channel has ever aired,
invariably the subset of this goal is to watch every movie
that film Canadian filmmaker Paul Ziller has ever made, at
least in the last six or seven years since Mr. Ziller
apparently owns stock in the Sci-Fi network considering how
often they lean on my man to deliver product. Admittedly
a more constructive goal would be cleaning out the garage or
finishing the restoration of that old 80286 PC I've been
working on, but here we are pursuing this pointless goal since
SyFy and Mr. Ziller make movies more frequently than I have
the ability to watch. Which is impressive. What is
less impressive and almost stupid is that today's Sci-Fi
original 'Beyond Loch Ness' makes 134 Sci-Fi originals, this
being the twelfth Ziller, with a120 more Sci-Fi's to go.
Like Sisyphus trapped in hell pushing that rock up the
mountain, we soldier on.
Back in '76 some scientists have made the most awesome
discovery, that being a pleistasaur or a palenatosaur of
something-o-saur. I can't remember. It's the Loch
Ness monster. Actually the monster found these
scientists after one of the scientists found one of Nessie's
eggs. I mean when Nessie emerged from the sea looking
all angry and stuff they tried to give it back but we will
learn that while Nessie might be a good mom, she's kind of a
dick and she eats these guys, while the young son of one of
these scientists hides away in fear like a bitch ass
sissy. Note that one of these decimated scientists was
played by actor David Lewis who dies so often in these low
budget horror movies that we have bequeathed the title of
Honorary Black Guy upon him. Wear it with pride,
David.
Fast forward to the present day where we meet
young Josh Riley (Naill Matter), a young loser running a boat
shop who routinely gets picked on by his ex-girlfriends rich
boyfriend. Chances are the rich boyfriend is going to
get eaten. One day Josh gets a mysterious visitor, the
strange cryptozoologist Dr. James Murphy (Brian Krause).
We must question Dr. Murphy's credentials if only because
Cryptozoology is the study of 'hidden animals', or basically
stuff that doesn't exist, which means he's the doctor of
nothing, and not too many accredited institutions that I'm
aware of issue degrees based on nothing, but we will roll with
it for the sake of this movie. Dr. Murphy is looking for
something… that something being the Loch Ness monster… though
he's being all secretive and stuff about it. It won't be
a secret long because Nessie is busy eating folks like Josh's
uncle, the Chief of Police's sister, the hottie that's on that
show Breakout Kings, the asshole rich boyfriends best friend
who is a real Black guy and we won't even get into the folks
Nessie's kids are eating.
In case you haven't guessed, our Dr. of Nothing is the little
bitch ass sissy that was hiding away all those years ago and
he's come to seek his vengeance! To make this happen he
has a boat load of James Bond type weaponry, he's got Josh,
he's got Josh's mom (Carrie Genzel) whose a cop and has a gun,
he's got the Chief (the late Don S. Davis) whose already upset
that Nessie ate his sister and also has a gun, not that he and
his sister will be apart long, and he has Josh's ex-girlfriend
who is really good at being motionless. This might be
the reason Josh broke up with her in the first place.
Don't concern yourself about the asshole rich boyfriend.
Nessie and her spoiled kids don't stand a chance going up
against that kind of crew.
In my most humble opinion, 'Beyond Loch Ness' is the blueprint
of what most of these generally awful SyFy Channel original
monster movies should aspire to be. No, it's not a great
movie and we probably can't even call it a good movie with a
completely clean conscious all things considered, but this was
a movie that extracted the most out of the little it had to
work with, it slid along at a nice pace, it was ridiculous, it
was delightfully stupid and ultimately delightfully
entertaining.
The key to any decent monster movie is the monster and Nessie
over here was a decent one. She wasn't animated too
badly, integrated well into the surroundings, and seemed only
to exist to eat Canadians. The lesson being, keep your
monster simple and focused on the task at hand. Since
Brian Krause is the lead, we're good there because Mr. Krause
is about as solid a B-Movie actor as they come. He's not
Albert Pujols, to use a baseball analogy, but he is like the
sixth hitter in your line-up, bats .280, gets you 75 RBI's,
and rarely strikes out in the clutch. I decided to
eschew the usual football analogies as I'm trying to grow as a
person.
Some of the more delightfully stupid stuff included the
Indiana Jones-esque Cryptozoologists microwave ray gun which
cooked stuff from the inside out and was so awesome that we
have to wonder why he didn't use it all the time.
Basically he only used it boil water. We also dug how
the asshole boyfriend eventually got eaten, which should've
made the girlfriend sad, but then she and her ex-boyfriend
were locking lips when the danger had ended, noting that her
current boyfriend had been dead all of ten minutes. I'm
all for a sister moving on, but maybe a 24-hour mourning
period is in order here. And while the Chief was a real
solid dude, again, nobody seemed to care that he died saving
everybody else's ass. In fact, I'm not even sure he's
dead, just injured and in need of assistance. Somebody
check on the Chief, or at least how about a moment of silence
for the man, even though I suspect he's still alive.
Not a great movie 'Beyond Loch Ness', but certainly an
enjoyable one, especially when taken in consideration where it
spawned from.
