Cast: Christian Malcolm, Bruce J. Mitchell, Shane Marceau
Director:
Tjardus Greidanus
Genre:
Adventure, Fantasy, Horror
The
next movie on our list has also featured on MST3K, although
unfortunately for us, we have managed to find a copy of the original!
In
saying that, I thought this was an average episode of MST3K, which
relied too heavily on one joke; that the main character’s dad looks
a bit like Larry Csonka. ‘Who?’, I hear most of my UK
friends shout, ‘Exactly’, I reply! Well apparently he
was the MVP of Super Bowl VIII, a reference so obscure to me that
Mike may as well have said he looks like his cousin, Martin. I
actually think he looks more like Ron Jeremy…….
Anyway,
in terms of the story, I don’t remember much, other than it looked
very cheap. Having now done a bit of research I’m not
surprised as it cost Can$1,500 to make!
The
director, Tjardus Greidanus, was a student who made this movie on a
shoestring and basically employed his mates to dick around in front
of the camera, a camera, incidentally which they borrowed from their
college!
So
I actually go into this movie with a bit of an open mind and some
sympathy. A movie which costs so little, is hardly going
to compete with multi-million dollar movies such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
Or
is it?
Thomas
McGreggor, (Randy Vasseur), an archaeologist, decides he doesn't want
to stay in the movie for long and promptly gets shot. His
killer is the leader of a bunch of cults called Satoris, (Shane Marceau).
7
years later, his son, Troy McGreggor, (Christian Malcolm), finds a
map which Thomas drew and supposedly shows the whereabouts of a
mysterious lost city which time forgot, (Hull). Despite
the fact it looks like it was scribbled by a toddler, Troy decides to
follow it in a bid to find out why his dad was killed, (it looks
crap, but it's probably more reliable than Apple maps).
The
cultists find out that this map exists and desperate to get their
hands on it, pay Troy a visit. When they ring the door
bell using a chainsaw, Troy realises all is not well and scarpers
using his bicycle. The cultists give chase in an American
muscle car, but they can not reach the dizzy heights of 8mph and Troy
starts to pull away.
Troy
jumps into the back of a moving pick-up truck and manages to escape
the cultists. When the truck stops and the driver,
Rowsdower, (Bruce J. Mitchell), discovers Troy, instead of telling
him to do one, he actually ends up trying to help him.
They
somehow follow the map, (seriously, it just looks like a phone pad
doodle!), and it leads them to Mike Pipper, a man who has a beard you
could lose a fortnight in. Mike then gives us the back
story; the cultists descend from the Ziox, an advanced civilisation
who built a great city, but who were wiped out by a vengeful
God. Satoris is trying to raise the city once more in the
hope it will restore power to the Ziox, thus making Satoris ruler of
the world!
He
also casually mentions that it was probably Rowsdower who killed
Troy’s father, (awkward!).
Things
go from bad to worse as Troy is then captured by Satoris who intends
to use Troy as The Final Sacrifice to their God. Meanwhile,
Rowsdower leads a successful mission to rescue Troy by promptly
getting captured by Satoris as well!
Will
Troy escape? Will Rowsdower escape? Will I am?
Watch
The Final Sacrifice to find out!
Make
no mistake, this is a bad movie and it fully deserves it’s place on
our list. The acting is as wooden as the woods which the
movie seems to be stuck in. The sound is so poor you’d
think it had contracted tinnitus and the storyline is so
scarce, that you would need a second badly drawn map to find it!
But
all of this does not mean that I did not enjoy it. It’s
another movie that’s so bad, it’s good.
The
characters, for example, are the funniest exaggerated, clichéd,
one-dimensional characters ever assembled for a movie.
The
lead character, Troy, looks like a cross between Toby Macguire and a
rat and spends most of the movie looking for something, (probably the
script for Spiderman 3). Rowsdower looks a lot like Pops
from League of Gentleman and I half expected him to open a
confectionery outlet and to start calling Troy ‘A Mary Queen’.
Pipper
is an odd character who, apart from his wonderfully scruffy grizzly
look, appears to have stolen the voice of Rawlf from The Muppet
Show. Satoris, meanwhile, has a voice which runs through
auto-pitch and is made a few hundred octaves lower. However,
I believe he won 3rd place in the Alvin Stardust
lookalike contest, (topical!), so all is not lost.
But
it’s the unintentionally funny moments throughout which holds my
interest and which makes me warm to the movie.
There’s
silly little things like when Satoris and Rowsdower are having a
fight towards the end of the movie. Close up, it is most
definitely the actors who are playing Satoris and Rowdower, but when
the camera pulls out to a long shot, 2 completely different blokes
appear to carry on the fight for them.
Then
there’s the scene in which one of the cultists uses a chainsaw to
cut into the front the door. I say use, the door has quite
clearly already been pre-cut and the chainsaw is merely being pushed
through the already made gap. They could have used a fresh
halibut and the effect would have been much the same!
But
my favourite unintentionally funny moment is the car chase near the
beginning of the movie. I say car chase, it’s actually
an American muscle car chasing Troy on his push bike. Now,
Troy is young and I’m sure fairly fit, but how on earth he manages
to continuously out run the American muscle car is beyond me. Either
the car is stuck in 1st and can’t go over 10mph or
Troy has been involved in the kind of cycling program that only Lance
Armstrong can be proud off!
So
can it compete with multi-million dollar movies such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? Of course it can’t, that’s a silly thing for me to
suggest.
The
low budget is there for all to see, but like I said originally, this
was not designed to be a movie blockbuster, this was just a movie
made by students in their early film making careers. For
this reason, I can not be too harsh.
I
will say one thing, I enjoyed this a lot more than Michael Bay’s multi-million dollar yawnfest! And yeah, maybe not for
the reasons the movie makers intended, but it was enjoyable
nevertheless.
Perhaps
we’ve been a bit silly and too hard on films made with no
money. Maybe we just need to be sensible and mature adults
about movies which have a low budget and appreciate the efforts they
make in producing something with nothing. I’m sure
that’s what student directors like Greidanus would want from us, so
let’s all grow up.
Tee-Hee
his name’s got the word anus in it!
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