BSFN 10 - Event Horizon

It's just over a year since the first Bad Science Film Night and we've made it to the dizzy heights of ten proper BSFN events, including one triumphant field trip on the day of the great lab power cut (not counting Piranha 3D as a field trip  due to its woeful attendance). That is only about three quarters of a film per month! Despite our infrequent showings Amazon has still learnt enough about my shopping habits since the start of BSFN to have sent me an email this week about the upcoming release of Mega Shark Of The Malibu - TERROR HAS NEW TEETH! I especially like the fact the Amazon's film title does not match the title on the cover, the more sensible sounding "Mega Shark in Malibu".

Anyhoo, Event Horizon.....

This was already in my DVD collection following a late night encounter with Event Horizon on ITV 4 (or another channel a long way down the freeview list). I had started watching it only to fall asleep and then suddenly wake up whenever there was a loud noise - this normally was accompanied by bad things happening on the television screen, like people with no eyes. This freaked me out enough to make me give up totally on the late night screening of Event Horizon and decide to watch through the film in a non-scary environment, with lights, a pause button and other people, so I ordered the DVD. I think my plan was to face my fears head on - it worked with Alien! Fortunately other BSFNight-ites had had similar scarring experiences with Event Horizon so there were more volunteers for this BSFN than our last foray into 18 certificate films (Piranha 3D *cough*).

"Their mission: find and salvage the state-of-the-art spacecraft. What they find is state-of-the-art terror."

Sam Neill has gone off into Neptune space (as in right by Neptune, that led to a bit of nerdiness in the room, discussing former planet Pluto's elliptical orbit) to look for a spaceship he designed, the "Event Horizon", which has reappeared after a decade of being LOST IN SPACE. Fortunately he has Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus) and lots of other recognisable faces to assist him in recovering the reappearing ship and any crew still left aboard. Unfortunately, there is no crew left on the "Event Horizon" which is now super creepy and menacing.  

This film was made in 1997 and directed by the man who went on to helm to Resident Evil franchise (incidentally, what is going on with the inexplicable sledgehammer/axe zombie in Resident Evil 4? Why is it so big? Why does it have a MASSIVE sledgehammer?!?). A lot of the effects in Event Horizon looked a little dated, but I imagine they were cool in 1997 (not being 18 in 1997 limits my ability to comment on 1997's point of view about the graphics). I especially liked the way that they showed a lot of liquid in zero-g stuff, which I guess was state-of-the-art then and which quickly got referred to as the "Alex Mack" effect, I think that's what we were watching in 1997 instead of Event Horizon - Nickelodeon.

I'm not going to go into any more detail on what actually happens to the crew in the course of the film, just in case any BSFNight-ites who didn't catch it change their minds. Suffice to say all the bad stuff which made us want to watch it with other people is still there, and still horrific (especially if you have a thing about eyes, or mutilation in general, and seriously, who doesn't? I'd also like to point out that Intestines is one of the IMDB keywords). However, with other people, especially people in a mood to criticise any thing (e.g., "there's no sound in space, why can we hear that explosion?","would you really put the failsafe circuit a long way down narrow bright green tunnels made of circuit boards, not right by the service panel?", "The ship's log is in a CD ROM drive in 2047!?! Surely in 1997 people could imagine a future without CDs!?!" etc. etc.), Event Horizon is just not as scary as it is in the middle of the night, in the dark, on your own - and the BSFNight-ites were very glad about that.

Bad Science Film Night 10 - Event Horizon 

• Favourite Tagline: Infinite Space - Infinite Terror
• Premise: Reckless use of particle physics leads to a ship which is kind of possessed by evil. Nasty stuff happens.
• Worst piece of science: The reckless particle physics bit. Also the impressive jet-packing through space was so impressive as to be a bit unlikely.
• Best quote: You break all the laws of physics and you seriously think there wouldn't be a price? 
• Overall review: Freaky film, but OK with people. Not a typical Bad Science choice, but still many things to pull apart.
• Total number of BSFNight-ites: 5, not bad considering the number of point blank refusals.

BSFN 9 - Deep Blue Sea

Deep Blue Sea was chosen for Bad Science Film Night because of this article on BBC News, which got all the BSFNight-ites excited. Happily Deep Blue Sea has all the things that a Bad Science Film needs, namely evil scientists corrupted by their hunger for scientific knowledge and thus taking crazy risks, a talking parrot and, of course, killer super-sized super-intelligent sharks - love it!

There are some scientists on an open water, but also underwater, research station trying to cure degenerative neurological conditions using the fluids extracted from the brains of mako sharks that live in the facility. Suspiciously big and clever sharks, so Samuel L. Jackson (who either is the richest man in the world or works for the richest man in the world, whatever) has come to investigate for the weekend. There is just a skeleton crew on the research station and there's also a hurricane coming, so he can just hunker down and watch the research in progress. The research team includes Saffron Burrows (British accent intact, which doesn't bode well for her character's personality...do we think that she might be very clever, but also a teensy bit evil?), the Punisher and Stellan Skarsgard, with LL Cool J as the facility's chef (accompanied by his talking parrot).

The super-sharks are smarter than the clever science people have realised so they are able to take advantage of the storm to do some serious damage to facility, although they got a bit of a lucky break with the helicopter wire breaking - perhaps sharks have a network of marine creatures and seagulls they can convince to sabotage helicopter winches? Clever shark cross species telepathy? Had the wire in the helicopter not jammed the sharks wouldn't have been able to cause the chopper to crash and use the unfortunate medical emergency who necessitated the medical evacuation to break through glass (would you not make glass for use at depth that could withstand a man's nose? Even if that nose were covered in an oxygen mask and being propelled by a super-shark? The richest man in the world should not have cut any corners on his marine research fortress)

Generally the film proceeds as you'd expect, with super clever sharks pursuing people down corridors and up elevator shafts. There are some deaths which are surprising, but it's not exactly an unpredictable film. Naturally Saffrom Burrows has a pretty skimpy wetsuit on for most of the film, except for when she needs to be stripped to her underwear. In conclusion, all good B-movie fun!

Bad Science Film Night 9 - Deep Blue Sea

• Favourite Tagline: Bigger. Smarter. Faster. Meaner.
• Premise: Genetically engineered super big, super clever sharks attempt to flee the open ocean facility they are held in during a freak storm, eating many of the skeleton crew in the process.
  
• Best DVD extras: Nope, not the interactive menus, despite their prominent place at the top of the extras list, but the deleted scenes! They threw quite a lot of light onto the film making process.... The deleted scenes had a commentary on from the director, who also did Die Hard 2: Die Harder (the Christmas airport one) and Cliffhanger. I may be paraphrasing a bit here, but he appeared to say over every deleted scene, which always involved people talking quietly and never had sharks, how the character development felt like it slowed the story and he wanted to get to the sharks. On the bright side, after watching the deleted scenes we understood why one character seemed inexplicably devastated by the death of another character - they were lovers!
• Worst piece of science: The dead/sick human brain tissue re-animating (sadly not due to to luminous green fluid) because of mysterious shark brain fluid stuff. According to the resident biologist neurons do not look like that when they fire - disappointing. There should also be a special mention for the bit when the shark turned on the oven to cook the chef!
• Most exciting thing Google has to say: Look at, presumably, the official website! Can you tell this film was made in 1999? Do you remember your geocities days? If you feel nostalgic, may I direct you to this.
• Total number of BSFNight-ites: 9, near capacity!

Piranha 3D *Field trip!*

So this was a very, very poorly attended field trip - despite my constant email pestering of the "film club" all mentions of Piranha 3D were politely ignored. In fact, Piranha 3D probably shouldn't count towards Bad Science Film Night. Basically I (Lizzie) went and dragged Mat with me. Sorry Mat, you can definitely add this to the list of films that prove I should never be allowed to choose what we see at the cinema!

The original Piranha was a Saturday Night Shock on Film 4 a few years ago, and from what I remember (and wikipedia and imdb have to say) that featured many piranha being released into a river from some kind of military experiment and eating a summer camp. The schools of piranha (piranhas?) mostly looked like they were cardboard cutouts on a stick, which I kind of liked. If you're interested there is a lot more about the Piranha films and the role they played in James "Terminator, Alien, Titanic, Avatar etc. etc." Cameron's career over here on EW.

This version of Piranha was in 3D, which I am still kind of torn on. It means I have to pay for my cinema trips, which is something I am not used to thanks to Cineworld's unlimited card. On the other hand, horror films can work well in 3D, what with all the stuff jumping out of the screen, like toothy piranhas!

Piranha 3D starts with a small earthquake opening a cavern in a lake, which causes a whirlpool, that sucks Richard Dreyfuss' fishing boat into the lake (after a few Jaws references), where there are now deadly piranha!!!! Scientists show up, some get eaten and the survivors figure out that the lake is now infested with DEADLY PREHISTORIC PIRANHA (Christopher Lloyd tells us about them - that was fun). This piranha infestation coincides with spring break, so the lake is totally packed with loads of party boats - omigosh, the piranhas will eat the scantily clad college kids and porn stars! People are then eaten in a variety of ways too numerous, gross and spoilertastic to list here. I'm bored with recapping, suffice to say there is just a lot of nudity and blood for 90 minutes, which is what it promises you (look at the poster, which is via Bloody-Disgusting)

On the bright side, the studio that brought us the Bad Science classic "Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus" has released "MEGA PIRANHA", starring Tiffany "♫ I think we're alone now... ♪", which is a pretty good contender for a future Bad Science Film Night, I'm just waiting for the price of the DVD to go below £5.......

Bad Science Film Night 8 - Field trip to Piranha 3D

• Favourite Tagline: Don't Scream...Just Swim!
• Worst piece of science: The underground cavern with prehistoric piranha which had survived for a very long time by eating each other. For this to even slightly work wouldn't there have to have been a LOT of piranhas initially?
• Most exciting piece of science: There were "seismology divers" from the USGS! Future career plan? Probably not as there weren't seismology divers for very long.....
• Bad Science Rating? 3 severed limbs of a possible 5 (Piranha 3D has some suggestions for your fifth limb)
• Enjoyment Rating? 2/5, I don't think I can stomach the gore. However, I also am not really the target audience...
• Total number of Bad Science Film-ites: 2, only 1 willing