Reviewed by
Christopher Armsted
Now this is a little more like it. Just the other day I’d watched a film from RHI’s Man-eater series titled ‘Hybrid’, one of a series of movies which I thought were supposed to feature angry beasts of nature eating people. This was nothing of the case with that movie as it was some kind of attempt at lyrical drama or something, but with this movie ‘Hydra’ from our friends at Cinetel films, a company that itself is harnessing quite the sawbuck making SciFi Originals, at least does feature a creature eating people. That’s all I want. Oh, and for the movie to be good. Well, one out of two ain’t bad.
A group of scientists have landed on an uncharted desert isle after what I’m guessing was a three hour tour. Heading deep into a cave is Dr. Valerie Cammon (Polly Shannon), who has to be the worlds greatest anthropologist because she picks up a piece of broken pottery and knows almost immediately that she and her crew have stumbled across the find of the century. Unfortunately something is guarding this find and that would be The Hydra. The three headed beast proceeds to rip three of the four scientist to glorious CGI shreds and it would’ve gotten to Dr. Cammon, but girlfriend has the survival instincts of a seasoned Navy seal trapped behind Enemy Lines.
A couple of months later we are aboard a big freight ship piloted by one Captain Sweet (Michael Shamus Wiles) and lorded over by the scurrilous Vincent Camden (Alex McArthur). It seems that Mr. Camden has a little business in which he unearths some of societies dregs, place them on a deserted island and then charges his filthy rich clients a healthy sum to hunt them. But he’s not as evil as you would think you see as his hunters have all lost somebody close to them in some tragic criminal way and these future victims of Camden’s have somehow skirted their proper justice. Our future huntees would include Gwen the husband murderer (Dawn Olivieri), Ronnie the drunk driving vehicular homicidal dude (Texas Battle), Crick the rapist (James Wleck) and the wildcard would be Tim Nolan (George Stults). We don’t know what Nolan did but he and Capt. Sweet have some kind history together. Hmmm…..
So the island that Mr. Camden was dropping these cats off at to do their murderous hunting has somehow disappeared off the map but fortunately for us a new island has showed up, the island of The Hydra! The hunted are released to a 24 hour head start and the hunters follow but it’s not long before it becomes painfully obvious to all involved that everybody’s being hunted on this island by the invincible three headed… four headed… five headed… damn, stop shooting those heads y’all. Everybody’s being hunted by the six headed Hydra, and I don’t know how well you know your mythology, but there’s only one way to stop this thing… and the last time I checked Hercules wasn’t a real person. But then I thought a head replicating Hydra wasn’t real either.
To be honest with you I enjoyed this movie way much more than it probably has any right to be enjoyed. Sure the CGI monster looked pretty terrible but he, or she as it were, still messed up people really bad ripping folks in two, biting their heads off, swallowing them whole… whatever had to be done to kill them, and we like watching people getting eaten by mythical beasts. Can’t apologize for that. This was a movie that was at its best when the monster was straight wrecking stuff, but for the times that it was off screen, well, I’m not too sure about all of that.
We have nothing but mad love for our man George Stults since his bio has him has being born right here in Detroit but as far as playing a badass special forces operative who can kill with ‘leaves and acorns’ as a character so deftly pointed out, I’m not so sure. Then there was Texas Battle who I thought was going be the Black Guy destined to die in this movie, but this movie had already slaughtered plenty of minorities before punching his clock so he got to be the ‘We All Gonna Die’ guy, and he played that part so irritatingly well that we secretly hoped he’d be the initial Black Guy to Die. There’s also plenty of wackiness in this flick, one that was filled with goo-gobs of head scratching weirdness. SPOILERS!!! Our lovely Dr. survives for months on Hydra Isle, and really all she just wants is to see the monster die because it has eaten her friends and ruined her career. To do this you need Hercules sword which she darn well knows where it is, but is apparently too much of a chicken shit to go get it. But yet she’s not too scared to worthlessly sacrifice herself to the hydra so that the husband killer, Hercules reborn and the mortally wounded black guy can live. This while waiting for our ‘hero’ to put his hand in some hot lava and pull the sword out. What a sissy because if he’d just pulled the sword out girlfriend had a chance. And about that dead black guy. I think he was still alive when the hero killed the Hydra because he was like blinking his eyes and moaning and stuff, but apparently our hero and his newfound love could’ve cared about less about his still blinking eyes because they abandoned his ass and went back to get on the boat, leaving the brother to bleed out in the cave. Not good looking out. And finally there was the music score which sounded like a rejected composition from a James Bond spoof.
I tell you what, folks have got to start making better movies and fast because I’m starting to watch and enjoy too much of this stuff.
