Komodo (1999)

''Now,  where is that damned remote?''If there’s a tag-line less appealing than “from writer of Anaconda,” it would have to be “from the writer of Batman and Robin.” But we’ll talk about Lost in Space later. This right here is Komodo, which not only boasts the writers of Anaconda, Hans Bauer and Craig Mitchell, but Michael Lantieri, one of Jurassic Park‘s many, many special effects designers. My theory: the producers hired Lantieri out of some last ditch effort to balance out the lukewarmth of Bauer’s and Mitchell’s script. Or perhaps I overanalyize. Perhaps it was as simple as finding Lantieri in a gutter somewhere, clutching his Oscar. “Hey, buddy, wanna job?” “Sure, man. You pay in cash or weed?”

I kid, Mike. I do. I love the stuff you did in JP. And I love the fact that you conned Phil Tippett (who’s far from extinct) into helping out on this little piece of crap. Without the smooth-as-silk CGI lizards, Komodo would be absolutely unbearable. As it is, Komodo won’t cause cancer in lab rats, but human subjects should beware of the early stages of narcolepsy, which set in sometime around the end of our prologue. {More}

Willard (1971)

For some reason I can’t possibly fathom, people hate rats. I mean, sure, they spread the Black Plague through Europe casing a famine that wiped out thirty millions people over the course of several centuries, but come on! Were those peasants really all that important to history? I ask you…Never had a problem with rats myself. Not as long as they’re relatively clean. (Those big brown ones that crawl around in industrial waste can just stay the hell away from me, thank you very much.) Thankfully, rats in today’s movie are some of the cleanest vermin I’ve ever seen.

Willard centers around a boy named (did you guess?) Willard (Bruce “Senator Kelly” Davison in his second feature role). Willard is, in technical, psychological terminology, about ready to fucking snap. Willard’s Evil Boss, Mr. Martin (Ernest Borgnine) stole the shipping company Willard works for from Willard’s father…somehow. Consequently, he hates the Willard with a passion. Also, Willard’s mother (Elsa Lanchester) is a dotting leech who (gladly) dies before the halfway mark. {More}