DVD
Creature Triple Feature Boxed Set

Starring: Michael Paré, Shane Brolly and Bruce Boxleitner
Anchor Bay Entertainment UK
RRP: £19.99
ABD4445
Certificate: 15
Available 24 January 2006


In
Gargoyles' Revenge, 16th century Romanian villagers go after the last gargoyle. A priest shoots it with a crossbow arrow anointed with the blood of Christ (from the priest), and it's sealed beneath the ground with a huge boulder and an incantation. We then jump forward to the present as two American FBI agents (Ty "Griff" Griffin and Christina Durant) are making a kidnap exchange. A gunman is chased to a rooftop where he simply disappears leaving only blood and money. Meanwhile a church is undergoing study and modernisation. An ancient painting depicting the gargoyle hunt is discovered hidden behind another. A recent earthquake has revealed a giant cavern beneath the graveyard. Inside are dozens of eggs waiting to hatch. The gargoyle is free and it wants the crossbow...

I must say, I expected the worst here... and didn't get it. It's not exactly Shakespeare, and it's leagues below the likes of The Exorcist and Halloween in terms of style and content, but it is a fun fantasy-horror (very much in the vein of Hammer) which rattles along at a fair pace. Just don't expect too much from it.

The cavern of eggs is straight out of Alien (even the same design), and the expression on the faces of those using machine guns against the newly hatched gargoyles is completely blank (no determination, no fear, nothing) making it all too plain to the viewer that the special effects were added later.

The male FBI agent is somewhat smarmy and self-assured (what do you mean, no wonder he's got my name!?), but maybe that's just how the character is written. One other point of interest: I wonder how many people have noticed that most of the character names are connected with horror or fantasy - Griffin, Soren, Durant, Lex, Aslan, Gogol, Gregor, Boris and Yuri.


In
Deadly Swarm, Jacob Schroeder, a bio-prospector working for an American pharmaceutical company, tracks a medical breakthrough to a small Indian village deep in the Mexican jungle. Forcing the locals to reveal its location, he comes away with a huge nest of deadly wasps known as "black fire". He pays a truck driver to smuggle the cargo over the border, but when the vehicle turns over the massive cloud of killers is freed. In a nearby Mexican town entomologist Daniel Lang is working to reduce an outbreak of malaria. The mayor tells him his work is done, but he is recruited by the sheriff to examine the body of the truck driver. A series of deaths and the knowledge that human hosts can be used to lay eggs, means the race is on to track the swarm and kill the queen. But Lang and the sheriff haven't reckoned on the ruthless determination of Schroeder...

Before watching this film I was immediately reminded of my review of The Swarm (people still occasionally mention it to me now). So I was expecting a lot of running around, screaming and windmilling of arms. Thankfully it didn't happen. Yes, it was mainly cheap effects-driven, with lots of black dots whizzing around in the air, but at least they tried to build a believable story around the b-movie scenario.

I would say that the character of the female reporter is completely superfluous to events, and seems to exist only to look good; and like many horror stories this one reduces its effectiveness by eluding to the past, in this case with the ancient journal kept by the priest which is a centuries old hand-written account of the swarm.


In Snakehead Terror, we are told over the opening credits about a new species of fish discovered called Snakehead. It is viscous and has no predator. Eventually the authorities were forced to poison Cultus Lake and kill them all to prevent the possibility of any spreading elsewhere. Now, when a few mutilated bodies turn up (including his daughter's boyfriend) the sheriff tries to get the lake closed to tourists. But local business is bad, culminating in human growth hormones being dumped in the lake to increase the size of the fish. The surviving Snakeheads are multiplying at a phenomenal rate and are mutating into monsters which leave the lake to look for prey...

Fans of Babylon 5 and The X-Files might recognise Bruce Boxleitner and William B. Davis, and there's no prizes for guessing who plays the hero and who the villain. Judging by the synopsis above (pretty much Piranha/Alligator/Lake Placid) this one has got to be cringeworthy, yes. You might think so but it's rather fun in its own way.

Unfortunately, these people will always step over the line. There's the Jaws-like music, and then one depiction of a Snakehead. I have to tell you first that the fish creatures are very well realised... all except one. A glove puppet fish has hold of the daughter's arm and instead of chewing it off like you might expect, simply hangs on long enough for the girl to dangle it in front of a boat's propeller. There's no ill after-affects, not even a bite mark.


Anchor Bay, who always seem to care about their releases, have made a shrewd move here. What do you do when you have three average creature flicks to put out? Why, you simply package them together as a box set to make it a more attractive purchase. None of these films will rock the genre, but together they're worth twenty quid of anyone's money.

Ty Power

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