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Director: Reinhart 'Rayteam' Peschke
Screenplay: Mark J. Gordon and
Eric Spudic
Cast: Laura Nativo as Vanessa;
Rhoda Jordan as Christina; Edwin Craig as Frank Walsh; Ike Gingrich as Clint Jefferson;
Laurence Hobbs as Jackson; Suzan Spann as Courtney McClure; Robert Kimmel as Stanze;
Christopher Irwin as Bruce; David Clark as James; Doug Martin as Dr. Remsen
Synopsis: In the coastal town of Babylon Bay, a history of tragic
deaths taking place in the summer of 1987 are soon to repeat when similar one
take place in the modern day. The major wishes to cover up the truth for business
reasons, that as heroine Vanessa (Laura
Nativo) believes these deaths are the cause of a man-eating fish-humanoid
who has returned for more.
Here's an idea to chew upon -
what are the best time capsules in terms of cinema? Arguably, ephemeral cinema,
the kind that in the United Kingdom the likes of the Central Office of Information (COI) made that has been preserved
for historical prosperity. As well? Consider that even "timeless"
classics aesthetically, whilst made from their eras, don't necessarily cover
the culture around them as they carefully choose what clothes the cast wore,
what was shot (especially for early Hollywood which used sets rather than many
real locations) etc. They still show their eras, their attitudes and trends,
but there's areas where one is forced to work on a tight schedule or with only
what's around you thus leaving the result to absorb the environments the movies
were made in. Exploitation, low budget work, TV and infomercial material, and
no or very low budget work in this review's case has a surprising historical
richness that, barring from cult film fans, rarely gets preserved or at least
prodded at even morbidly for their depictions of the time they were made in.
A great example of cultural
document, by accident, is no-budget cinema which has been with us fully since
the 1980s, when shot-on-video work started to be released on video shelves,
gaining a fond cult in the 2010s. Mainly this cult is in the US as, naturally,
mainly US shot work were available on American video shelves; many of their
fans as much appreciate them from the perspective that many depict the times
they were made in as much as were in many cases amateur productions which took
advantage of the need for product on VHS. From my perspective though, outside
this, these types of films are more familiar for me from the early to mid 2000s
when digital cameras became available and, in Britain, these later films were
found in the early DVD era in horror compilations, DVD rental stores or cheap
releases a lot. Aquanoids hilariously
was part of a store tie-in Hardgore,
a DVD series of horror films which, with Lucio
Fulci and Jesus Franco were sandwiched
next to these later works, were sold through Poundland, a chain store which naturally sold a lot for a pound. As
with the older SOV works, since they had to work with what resources it had, what
clothes the cast had etc., something like Aquanoids
even in the type of digital camera it used and title typeface is probably more
apt in showing you what the early 2000s was probably like rather than [insert
famous 2003 film here].
The starkness of the films in
their lack of budget and the un-glossy eye of digital cameras has a lot of
influence, influencing Aquanoids as
one part Creature from the Black Lagoon,
part Humanoids from the Deep, about a
rampaging fish humanoid eating locals at a coastal town. The inherent obsolete digital
filmmaking was shown to have an effecting mood when David Lynch deliberately used it for INLAND EMPIRE (2006) with its stark flatness, producing a flat
lighting and moments of muddiness. In a film like Aquanoids it gives the b-movie material strangeness even if the
film isn't one of the most memorable of non-budget cinema. When abruptly a
character becomes pregnant and conceives dead on the autopsy table a fish-human
baby hybrid, with squelchy practical effects and puke green lighting, it would
have been once something to dismiss for its cheapness and schlockiness for me
once ago, but now has an inherently weird vibe to as a scene, when the veneer
of manufactured high resourced Hollywood cinema is stripped away, a film this
low budget with instead an odd vibe when bringing in the unnatural by way of a
lot of rubber, and surprisingly realistic and anatomically correct body parts.
The look of the film also immediately
evokes, for good and bad, early 2000s softcore which was also released in DVD
rental stores at the time. This is more so as almost every actress has a nude scene;
the one exception, playing a news reporter, still has a sex scene when the
corrupt major's henchman tries to seduce her for compromising footage, balanced
thankfully out for her leaving him unsatisfied and throwing him some lotion to
finish it off for himself. That weirdly minimalistic, stark look even looks
different from 2010 ultra low budget films just from the lighting and the set
decoration, and whilst it does feel sleazy as hell, it's still a style that
stands out.
The sense of the resources being
used is felt positively, in bedrooms and public buildings like bars that feel
like they are as they were when filmed it, and in aspects that show the
difficulties making such a film, meant to be set on the 4th of July and clearly
"borrowing" footage of other peoples' celebrations whilst then
cutting to a shot of actors in an isolated garden with celebration sound
effects added over. No budget cinema fascinates me in details like this as,
without a lot to work on, a film like Aquanoids
has an unexpected distinction in how it was made; more so now its considerably
more difficult in major productions to shot in certain locations due to cost,
having to disguise Toronto as an American city usually, these films have
unexpected naturalism to them. There is no ability to dictate costumes beyond
what was available, no ability to dictate props unless available or already
there, and here having to shot on Santa Catalina Island in California, using
the location more than even Steven
Spielberg's Jaws (1975), where
it was only used (if IMDB was accurate)
for underwater shots. That's an even more ironic connection as Aquanoids, in among scenes in its quiet
shopping district, riffs on Jaws'
plot too as the major, corrupt and openly in the street informing his minion
they need to hush the conspiracy up, is concerned panic about a fish-man will
kill off business deals. Strangely, you can, if patient with the schlockiness
of Aquanoids, combine psycho
geographic recordings of a lot of coastal shore and boardwalk alongside the
history of aquatic horror films.
Which isn't just implicit but, in
a charmingly naive scene, the least likely people to talk about them, the
major's daughter and her friends, before they're attacked by the fish-men,
weighing the merits between films like Alligator
2: The Mutations and Italian production Tentacles, Aquanoids'
even having the decency to reflect on its own place in the annuals of this sub
genre by having this scene. Now Aquanoids
itself is a pop cultural artefact of just the early 2000s, arguably for myself
having grown up within it vastly different from either the nineties or the late
2000s. As our female leads, our heroine and her female friend Christina (Rhoda Jordan) ride on scooters, and
early digital film making is making its baby steps, it does offer a safety net
to how utterly cheesy and ridiculous Aquanoids
actually is whilst allowed one to gawk at what people were like at the time
whilst play acting here. Back then, I would've dismissed a film like this as
many others, but now they've become over ten years old, there's a curiosity to
this lurid film for all its nudity and gore in other details. How the
production managed to splash out for an actual fish-man costume only to depict
the attacks in shonky, shambolic editing, or the curiosity, even in lieu of its
coastal town setting, to how bright the fashion is.
The batty bits of earnest and
tacky oddness are few but significant for me too - a shootout that splits the
screen into three to represent the three participants; the aforementioned
softcore vibe, not necessarily a virtue but a real sense of weird atmosphere
where everything feels like its shot in someone's bedroom and a place shut off
for a sex scene; a morgue attendant, bribed by the major to cover up fish-man
attacks, who is so desensitised to his work that the cliché of him eating a
sandwich is not enough, instead going one further with this one eating a
sandwich in one hand, performing a gory autopsy with a tool in the other; and
all the ridiculous details which are cringe worthy but part of the charm. Like
random beachgoers going into the most unlikely a conversations, as mentioned, and
the equivalent of Quint from Jaws
being a sad older man here in his t-shirt and trousers drinking in the bar.
The sense of weirdness, if
anything, should've been more pronounced but the issue is that, for a film like
this, unless the creators have the knack to accomplish it well, it has to come
from the accidental which makes the criticism a paradox. But it still stands,
and moments still have this and were more desperately needed. It tries its
damnedest in an inherently failed mission, to try to ape films even from the
eighties era of Roger Corman New World Picture releases, by being
completely obsessed with recreating their plots with significant lacking of
resources rather than going their own direction. When you are sympathetic to
these films instead of denouncing them, it leaves a more interesting viewing
experience where the interest, and fun, comes from a film like this strays from
that flaw. In a larger budgeted production, the scene when a cop is hired to
bump off the heroine could be interesting or even bland, here its two actors in
a boat and a near slapstick farce where an incredibly dump cop gets his groin
twisted and then thrown into the sea to be eaten by a fish-man played by a
camera in first person. The fact they even have the camera underwater numerous
times adds to the fascinating schism between the creativity and cheese.
Honestly the only disappointment
which Aquanoids in terms of this
pleasure, not a guilt and also not any description that would be personally
nasty to the creators, is that ultimately that misguided creative decision is
what you for all the funny or interesting moments. Like a lot of these films
and b-movies in general, they have to always end films on predictable plotting
and spectacle when you wish they took more esoteric and peculiar risks. Here
you are trying to have dramatic weight to an exploding barrel, a la Jaws, and a CGI explosion which was
cheap looking even in 2003 which was the wrong creative decision completely. That's
always been the greater sin of films like this rather than amateur acting or
fault technical production, that so many do not embrace their curious place
between genre, documentation and sense of being a sideshow cavalcade of
schlock, instead always going for the predictable rather than the inventive or extravagant
on a tight budget. As many look down on these films for being inadequate,
others like myself feel a need to admire the underdogs, here the director never
making another film, from still trying and steeping it in these curious
details; there is still the fact, though, that many of them are cursed even
with our little fan base for not fully transforming into weird artefacts and being
mired in predictability that schisms with the technical issues.
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