MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE THE CAVE

Just a head's up for everyone; due to recent events (i.e. Hurricane Katrina obliterating most of the Mississippi Gulf Coast) Schlocktoberfest is on hold indefinately. The original plan was to not hold the fest this year but bring it back in the Summer of 2006. Even if we hadn't postponed it, Hurricane Katrina would have guaranteed cancellation. Now the question remains as to whether or not we'll even be able to hold the show next summer or ever again on the Gulf Coast. On the plus side, the auditorium on the campus of the USM-Long Beach campus is still standing but it clearly suffered some damage; how much so we still don't know. As I write this it has still only been a month since Hurricane Katrina hit and things down here are still a mess and so many issues are up in the air. Where anything stands on the future of the fest remains to be seen.

As for this website, plans had been in place prior to Katrina to give it a makeover. Those plans are currently on hold. In fact, updates on the site may be a bit sporadic for the foreseeable future. However, I will be updating BEWARE THE BLOG! as frequently as possible, although not nearly as frequently as I had been prior to the storm. And I'll still be doing new reviews for Dread Central, check the message board right now and you'll find some links to my first post-Katrina ones. As of this time, my internet access is more limited than it had been. Nonetheless, I have a new Foyeurism here for you, although you'll notice that it is virtually image free. That should change for the next one. In the meantime, I'll be popping up on the message board and updating my blog whenever I get the chance. Keep an eye out for news, reviews, and various other skews. Much like the rest of the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Katrina has dealt a mighty blow but we're not out. Speaking of things that blow...

 

 

The darndest thing happened this past Saturday night. I tuned in to the Sci-Fi Channel to watch their newest Saturday night original movie and saw a TBS Original movie instead. The movie I'm talking about is PATH OF DESTRUCTION and no amount of arguing otherwise will persuade me from my belief that this was in fact a holdover from Superstation TBS, even though they discontinued their original movies two years ago when the channel rebranded itself as more comedy centric. PATH OF DESTRUCTION thoroughly sucked from pillar to post but it didn't suck in the usual Sci-Fi Channel manner; it sucked in a TBS Original movie sort of way. I always joked that TBS was the worst movie studio on television and this movie would have been a perfect fit for that channel's cavalcade of crap. PATH OF DESTRUCTION just had too much maudlin melodrama and relied too much on conventional thriller clichés to the point that the main source of antagonism - in this case a cloud of all-consuming nanobots in the atmosphere that are devouring everything in their path and wreaking havoc with the weather in general - ends up getting downplayed, even reduced to being the background threat instead of the primary threat. TBS Original movies were aces at doing that sort of thing and PATH OF DESTRUCTION flounders its premise like a champ.

Did I say "flounders?" Well, PATH OF DESTRUCTION was directed Stephen Furst, best remembered - Ah hell, let's be honest, the only thing he's remember for is playing Flounder in ANIMAL HOUSE. Fat, drunk, stupid, and directing crummy Sci-Fi Channel movies is no way to go through life.

All one needs to know about the quality (or lack thereof) of PATH OF DESTRUCTION can be summed up with one scene that leads into the final act. The general wants to nuke the nanobot cloud. The heroic scientist suggests using an EMP (electro magnetic pulse) to disable the nanobots since they are machines and an EMP zaps the electrical circuits of machines. The general astutely states that any plane doing so would also be affected by the EMP meaning it would be a suicide mission. With little hesitation, the general declares the loss of a single plane's crew to be too great a sacrifice. Yes, this disagreeable for the sake of complicating the plot general considers nuking the stratosphere near Los Angeles and potentially irradiating millions of people a lesser sacrifice than the crew of a single plane. This is one of those scenes that is covered with the fingerprints of an idiot producer convinced the film needed an extra layer of convolution to the plot because he didn't have enough faith or imagination in the tension that the basic premise should be generating to begin with.

Then again, the producer might have a good reason for not having faith in the original premise. The following disclaimer appeared twice during the movie:

THIS FILM CONTAINS A FICTIONAL STORM AND VIOLENT CONTENT WHICH MAY BE DISTURBING TO VIEWERS. DUE TO RECENT EVENTS, VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

First off, what violent content are they speaking of because this was actually one of the least violent Sci-Fi Channel original movies in recent month. Nobody get cut in half, decapitated, or eaten alive. Heck, hardly anyone was even shown getting killed, at least by the storm. The only violent content comes from a third act gun battle with the human villain's henchmen.

Secondly, despite being called PATH OF DESTRUCTION, there is very little actual destruction. Some stealth bombers get destroyed, large hail lands on some Eskimos, and Seattle gets sacked leading to some buildings get trashed and the Space Needle collapsing. All I have to do is walk out the front door right now and I'll see worse devastation than anything I saw in this fictional film with a fictional storm that unlike Hurricane Katrina is supposed to be a potential threat to life as we know it and not just a particular section of the country. When the destruction in a disaster movie called PATH OF DESTRUCTION pales in comparison to what was caused by a real life force of nature just weeks earlier it's safe to officially declare that disaster movie a total dud.

PATH OF DESTRUCTION casts squeaky voiced Danica McKellar (the former Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years) as wannabe big time TV reporter Katherine Stern, who in terms of unconvincing motion picture female journalists is only slightly more believable in her role than the mousey blonde from the Tri-Star GODZILLA. I know it's not Miss McKellar's fault but every word out of her mouth sounds like its being spoken by a 14 year old girl. Being from the Deep South, one thing I learned a long time ago is that even if you say the most sensible, intelligent thing possible, if you say it with any hint of a Southern drawl other people will still think of you sleeping with your cousin and tending to your dirt farm. Say the stupidest thing imaginable with a British accent and the person still at least sounds intelligent saying it. By that same token, it's hard to take Danica McKellar seriously as wanting to be a hard nosed journalist when her voice sounds like it should be singing the Mickey Mouse Club theme.

As the film opens, Katherine is undercover on an Arctic oilrig trying to pass for an oilrig worker (I'll buy that for a dollar!) in order to investigate possible environmental violations. She really sucks at both of her jobs, especially the reporting one; bemoaning the fact that the biggest story of her career so far was covering the opening of Iran's first Hooters.

Iran's first Hooters? I believe all the waitresses wear skin-tight veils and every Tuesday is Honor Killing Night.

Fortunately, Katherine's token black best friend is also working undercover with her and he somehow manages to steal a disc containing some top secret data the oil company doesn't want anyone to know about. It keeps referring to something being stored on the rig called "SERENA."

No sooner does she start reading about whatever SERENA is, whatever SERENA is malfunctions, gets loose, and the rig bursts into flames. Correction, stunt men keep bursting into flames then the CGI oilrig bursts into CGI flames. As the rig topples into Arctic waters, Danica somehow survives by jumping off the into the frozen, iceberg infested waters. How she survived being unconscious in the subzero waters we'll never now because the movie cheats and has her wake up in a hospital with people telling her how lucky she was to be alive. Watching Danica McKellar clutch that portable IV drip and slowly slump to the ground while weeping in an overly dramatic fashion after learning that her token black best friend didn't make it, it's apparent that she's been watching an awful lot of Lifetime Network movies and taking notes. Katherine will continue to blubber about her token black friend's death throughout the film. How much of that grief is over the loss of a friend and how much is because now she knows she's going to have to do all investigative legwork herself now is anyone's guess.

In order to save time and not turn this into one of those monstrously long, point-by-point reviews I often do, let me just go over a few things that get revealed along the way. SERENA stands for SElf REplicating Nano Agents or something along those lines. I forget exactly what the "A" stood for. The "disassemblers" as they are called can devour organic and inorganic material. In fact, the visual presentation of the disassemblers in the sky is almost identical to how killer bees were portrayed in THE SWARM - just a big black swirling mass consisting of zillions of tiny black dots. The only difference is they swirl about big ominous storm clouds and they can affect the weather. I never really understood the whole weather altering part myself and it didn't really matter because pretty much all they did was cause big black clouds to appear in the sky accompanied by thunder, lightning, and the occasional flurry of hail big enough to send Alaskan Eskimos running for cover.

As the film progresses, the whole nanobots in the sky consuming everything in their path will be described in such simpler terms as "robots that eat things," "The Great Goo Theory," "robogerm," and "like Pac-Man on steroids." Had I had a hand in the writing of the screenplay I would have added, "Did you ever see that episode of The X-Files about the swarm of killer forest mites?" and, "It's sort of like that Michael Crichton novel PREY only made into a crappy Sci-Fi Channel movie."

SERENA was originally conceived to be a means by which to clean up oil spills but the evil oil company executive… Come on, you knew there was going to be either an evil corporate or military type in here somewhere. In this film, you get an evil exec and an inept military type. A nice double whammy of crap clichés, wouldn't you say? Anyway, the evil oil company executive has turned SERENA into a weapon and is secretly planning to sell it to the Chinese.

And that evil oil exec is David Keith, playing Roy Stark, this week's source of made-for-television corporate villainy. I guess David Keith finally told the Sci-Fi Channel people that he was sick of being the good guy in crappy films like DEEP SHOCK and wanted to be the bad guy for a change. Looking to cover his ass over the oilrig catastrophe and not reveal its connection to SERENA, he and his henchmen decide to blame it all on eco-terrorists. Katherine sees Stark on TV and knows he's lying and Stark decides Katherine would make the perfect patsy. It's now innocent fugitive on the run time. Forget about that pesky cloud of world destroying nanites wreaking havoc; what you and I and the rest of the world really wants to see are foot and car chases, right?

After Stark goes public naming Katherine as the fall girl, she sees a TV report declaring her a wanted fugitive. She just happens to see this on a TV in a train station and does so just in time for unidentified bad guys in black suits to show up and go after her. Watching the cat and mouse game they play at the train station that employs pretty much every cliché a scene like this could, I again become convinced that I'm watching a TBS Original movie and not a Sci-Fi Channel original movie. For those that care, she escaped capture was by disguising herself as Devon Aoki and slipping right past them all.

Having gotten his name and address off of that data disc, Katherine makes her way to the Alaskan home of Nathan McCain, played by an actor I've never heard of and who's name I cannot recall but I do believe he may have been the clone of the guy that played Courtney Cox's boyfriend in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. Nathan is a "climatological theorist," which I do believe means he's a weatherman that spends most of his time thinking about the weather. Nathan forecasts the weather for the Alaskan military bases, in particular Colonel North, the good military type in this film, which guarantees he's a goner before the film's end.

I suppose I should mention Nathan's sidekick, the film's potential comic relief that I do believe was played by director Stephen Furst. I forget this character's name and frankly I wish I could forget this character's existence. He's an annoying doofus that constantly makes woefully unfunny wisecracks that usually pertains to sex, mostly Nathan's lackluster sex life. We're given the impression later on that he's been killed by the nano-storm but then he shows up in a hospital at the end of the film still alive and still making lame comments. All I can say about this character is "Boo!" And I don't mean that in a Halloween sort of manner either.

Katherine shows Nathan the data she has on SERENA as he originally helped work on the project back before it was turned into a potential weapon and got loose threatening our very existence. And yes, the seeds of a potential romance between the two are also planted. Their petty bickering is done in far too playful a manner for this relationship to remain platonic.

And then those unidentified guys in black suits show up yet again. This time we get a really lame car chase as the potential lovebirds make their escape driving Herbie, The Love Bug. Much like the "disguised as Devon Aoki" comment, I 'm not kidding about this one either. Still, this movie is called PATH OF DESTRUCTION and up to this point we hadn't got much by way of destruction? I guess a chase involving a Volkswagen Beetle is much cheaper to produce than CGI devastation?

Nathan meets with Colonel North, briefs him on the situation, and calls for the immediate evacuation of the state of Washington. We all saw what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; could you imagine trying to evacuate a whole state? Hell, people adversely affected by the storm here on the Gulf Coast are still having major hassles with FEMA over a variety of issues. As a co-worker of mine put it, FEMA actually stands for "Fuck Every Mississippian Alive." But that's another disaster tale that I'm sure will be making its way to telefilm land soon enough. I've been keeping count of the number of potential TV movies they could make from various stories reported in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I'm currently up to thirteen.

So it's now time for the semi-destruction of Seattle where we learn that this cloud of all-consuming nanobots can collapse the Seattle Space Needle but the military chopper the lead characters are in proves to be more resilient. It does eventually fall from the sky but Katherine and Nathan survive and even get to run away and jump in front of a big ball of fire. Let no cliché go untouched.

Half of Seattle gets destroyed in less than spectacular fashion, albeit mostly off-screen. Then we're told that the storm has moved on to ravage the Pacific Northwest. If something bad happened to Bigfoot I'll be heartbroken.

Meanwhile, Stark wants to exchange the remaining under control SERENA samples to the Chinese in exchange for millions and political asylum, and we're subjected to yet another drawn out subplot involving two of Stark's lackeys trying to cover their own butts. And then comes the big scene I described at the beginning about the plan to nuke the nano-cloud and Nathan's idea of blasting it with an EMP.

Just when it looks like the Def Con One solution is going to be the only way to go, Colonel North brings up something called Icarus, which turns out to be some fancy 20-year old stealth bomber-like plane that was part of a scrapped military project, but thank goodness they kept it in a nearby hanger where all it would need is a little dusting to get it ready for flight. And thank goodness they had a large EMP device on hand too. For some reason the Icarus would be impervious to an EMP. I missed the how and the why part because I really had to use the bathroom. And, of course, Nathan, Katherine, and Colonel North end up being the pilots.

Can they destroy the cloud with the EMP before the general is forced to launch a tactical nuke? Which one of them will go kamikaze with the plane and the EMP after the other two eject to safety? Will the evil Roy Stark get his comeuppance as well, preferably in a fiery explosion? What do you think?

In the end, the bad guys are all killed, a noble sacrifice is made, the nano-cloud is destroyed, the actually truth is covered up, Katherine gets the big story and a sweet big city TV anchor gig, Nathan gets the girl, and I get the satisfaction of knowing that I have yet again wasted two hours of my life watching a terrible Sci-Fi Channel original movie. After the events of the last month, I guess in a strange way that last part proves that my world is slowly returning to normal.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE THE AVENGERS