Following on from the screening of Creaturetonight’s selection provoked an argument five minutes in about who the hell selected it, and why. Liz having confessed to the deed, we moved on to speculating whether the entrails on-screen were real or especially good creature effects. Taking note of the quality of the entrails and the filming location (Spain) we decided they were real.

This is the first film by Deran Sarafian, who’s now chiefly known for his work on House, M.D. He’s come a long way. I learn from the credits that it was adapted from an original screenplay titled “Massacre at R.V. Park.” Aside from the lead characters (three American college students), everyone appears to be Spanish. Twenty minutes in as we watch a chicken meet its fate execution-style we suspect it was shot in Spain solely to get around American regulations. That or a tax dodge.

Anyway, what we’ve got here is a Spanish rip-off of The Andromeda Strain, but with an actual monster. On first glance this is a winning formula: enliven a portentous American film with additional action sequences and (one assumes) cheap exploitation. That’s what the Italians would have done. Instead the whole thing is weighed down by a badly-acted, badly-written subplot (main plot?) involving the three American students, including Lynn-Holly Johnson (as seen as James Bond’s spurned teenage love interest in For Your Eyes Only, another cringe-worthy performance). The other two are interchangeable brotards.

It has the same crazy-people village shtick as Gymkata, but it’s much less effective here. Since both films were shot in 84-85 it’s unclear to me whether one stole from the other or it’s just a case of parallel development. That, or there’s a village full of crazy people in Europe. There’s also no cheap exploitation. It’s not that I feel cheated. It’s just that if a film fails first as a science fiction film and then as a horror film as a viewer I start looking for a backend. There just isn’t one. All the characters are boring, loathsome, or one-shots, and none of their actions make any sense. Also most of them are dubbed incompetently. They talk in whispers when no one’s around and slowly during matters of urgency.

There’s a venerable tradition at B-Fest of shouting “WORDS!” at the screen during long, meaningless stretches of dialogue. We did a lot that watching this. It drags terribly. There’s a weird cross-narrative involving cars. Inexplicably cars repeatedly try to ram our main characters. We never see the drivers. These scenes aren’t really remarked on in-film and feel disconnected. Many scenes are shot in the characters’ RV. We get long, loving shots of it being driven from place to place.

It’s a pity that so much of the film is so awful–the creature effects are well done and used to good effect. The filmmakers are careful about revealing the creature. There’s one scene in particular where a sort of ground fog obscures it, but you see ripples in the fog. I liked that. I didn’t like much else. I don’t know why we finished it; possibly from a shared sense we might see it at B-Fest someday and it’s best to know what you’re in for.