CASE NUMBER: #111
One, important thing, I discovered among the grounds of the dead, are the films that no one cares enough to make properly on paper, its on a rare occasion that screenwriters find themselves unconcerned with a script, without any care for the plot or character development, meaningful dialogue, when one achieves a tedious, uneventful screenplay, that’s exactly what Scorpius Gigantus delivers, and unfortunate the cast seems to lack the proper equipment to drive themselves off the movie set. However this plunges deeper for writers, the plot concept lifted from Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996), scorpions replace the dinosaurs. OH Wow! Those writers responsibilities for this awful mess, Raly Radouloff (Black Scorpion [2001])) and Terence H. Winkless (The Howling [1981])). This movie (if you can call it that) comes from one-time director Tommy Withrow, who later acted in just one movie called Nightmare City 2035 (2007), otherwise his cinema resume is fairly blank. Roger Corman, also became attached to the project via executive producer and released through his company New Concorde, responsible for such films as Raptor (2001) and Slaughter Studios (2002), but this flick by far their worst ever.
AUTOPSY OF THE FILM:
Okay, here’s the plot if you can call it that, a cargo shipment, biological weapons, stolen by some terrorists and the military needs to find it. Really that’s it. But we here at The Horror Times dive further into the muck, the mission requirements come from Gen Miller (Ray Hartbarger (Phantom Force [2004])) who appears as a cross between Sam Elliott in We Were Soldiers (2002) and Dale Dye in Outbreak (1995) who orders Major Fahey (The Lawnmower Man [1992])) and his anti-terror special forces silly looking group to rescue the weapon; tagging along is always the ‘good doctor’ this time it’s a scientist named Dr. Jane Preston (Jo Bourne Taylor, in her only horror film to date) well-versed but struggles to speak evenly in tone. Fahey leads the gung-ho unit of carbon copy no bodies who all have no personalities to remember them clearly by, to storm a cold era warehouse, with a few synthwave meets disco beats playing in the background, stumbling upon where a bloodbath already occurred. Still hungry after feeding on the terrorists, Fahey’s men and others become another meal for the dumbest CGI created creatures ever, they appear as if from an arcade video game mixed with the most dreadful fighting action sequences and you clearly find yourself dull with the flick.
CAUSES OF DEATH:
Like many other things with this movie, is the copying of the stupid bug creatures, lame representations of the alien creatures from Starship Troopers (1997) and bunch of soldiers with varying accents trying to appear as Russian. The marketing of a cheap copied creature, fails to deliver any frights nor any laughs, rather just groans. So many other movies used super-size creatures and instill horror and fear, Tarantula (1955) and hell, The Crawling Eye (1958) generate better special effects than this Z-grade goofy mutant scorpion. Quite frankly, unsure if the SyFy channel would even put this dredge on their channel, perhaps, then again maybe they have standards too.
SUMMARY FROM INVESTIGATOR:
Simple skip this tragedy, complete nonsense from the moment it starts through the credits, nothing salvageable, dull characters, lazy dialogue, one could fast forward through movie and easily understand what’s occurring without any problems. Corman, a shrewd producer, who likely never lost a dime on a production and launched great careers of many talented individuals such as Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, and Jonathan Demme, but even he couldn’t save this wretch so-called movie, best it stays buried for 100-years.
Tagline: Your tax dollars at work.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443629/
IMDb Rating: 2.2/10
Baron’s Rating: 2.0/10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_WVFmICIVo