Bottom Feeder

A maintenance crew headed by Tom Sizemore goes into an abandoned hospital to look for old equipment to sell to collectors. But a multi-millionaire has a scientist in the catacombs under the hospital, who has developed a serum to cause rapid regeneration and cellular growth. The scientist, who has taken the serum, is finding the results to be a bit more extreme than expected.

For my beef with 235 films (who produced this), see my review for "The Mad". This film's selling point was easy to identify as soon as I picked it up: it has Tom Sizemore in it. And, hey, I like Tom Sizemore (rent "Lock Up" with Sylvester Stallone) so this seems like something worth checking out.

That selling point is about as far as you can get with this one. You have a very one-dimensional millionaire who survives a fire. A creature in a tunnel who becomes part rat and part dog. A bum who is apparently a Rastafarian. These things mix well, surprisingly, but only in the most absurd sense of the word "well". It's just a lot of strange things going on.

The crew's background is in makeup, and it shows. There is a scene where they chop off a guy's fingers that was alright, and the creature is especially slimy. But the creature is just poorly conceived: in horror, there needs to be a balance of how much you do and do not show a monster. Here, they couldn't decide to show him too little (much of the film is almost pitch black) or too much (making him seem somewhat dumb).

I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this film. I did. But the actors were nothing special, I didn't care about the characters, and Sizemore is either doped up or washed up in this film. Maybe he's not doped up. But whatever the case, he just looked old and tired. I can't have my hero looking like he wants to drink a six-pack of Coors Original (the Banquet Beer), smear Dorito orangeness on his chest and pass out watching NASCAR. This Sizemore didn't even have enough energy in him to pass gas.

I guess this isn't really telling you what you need to know, but there's really nothing to know: bad hero, weak monster, fake secondary characters. Unless your goal is to just get drunk or high and need something on the screen to move every so often, this isn't going to thrill you. If you want a good underground monster, rent "Tremors" or "CHUD".

Tom Sizemore lends his name to a schlocky, midnight-monster movie that is exactly as good as it looks and sounds. Not to say it is necessarily a GOOD movie, far from it, but take it for what its worth and you will enjoy it.

A group of utility workers are trapped in a series of tunnels which, unfortunately, contain a scientist mutated by his own creation. The creature feeds instantly on a rat, becoming what it has eaten.

The effects leave something to be desired, although it IS refreshing to see them returning to the monster in the suit instead of leaning on shoddy CGI. The entire film has a cheesy, low-budget horror/sci-fi feel to it. So if you're a fan of monster movies, you could do worse. See it for free but I would hesitate to recommend spending cash on it.

I guess they could have shown something far worse than this, and for that I'll give it an extra credit. But bare in mind, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to watch Bottom Feeder.

So, if you're into creature movies, look elsewhere, if you're into low budgets, or indie projects, again, nothing to see here, try elsewhere, you are bound to find something, anything, better than this.

But if you do decide to play it, just lower your expectations, as much as you can, and watch it at your own peril. Some moments you will have to question your decision, others, perhaps acknowledge that you did a bad thing and probably there is no way out. I mean if you do get halfway, I guess there is nothing more to do but endure.

Cheers!

It's amazing to me that Tom Sizemore has been in two of the best movies in recent history and then ends up being in crap like this. (Heat, Saving Private Ryan)

But this movie, is not very good at all. Reminds me of Mimic , underground tunnel thing going on, but no where near as good. 3/10

I watched this movie a while back and when it came to an end I was puzzled. Usually, I have a pretty strong reaction to a movie: I know if I've liked it or not, or if I've been bored with it, or if I've been bothered by it. I know something about my reaction to it. When I watched this a while back, I had - honestly - no reaction. I didn't know if I had liked it or not. So it faded into the distant past and I moved on, until the opportunity came up to watch it again. I decided to watch it again. Sometimes a movie that doesn't really strike a chord with you will do so on a second viewing. So I watched it again. And I have exactly the same reaction - I'm not really sure if I liked it or not.

It's a schlocky monster story, where a scientist invents some sort of cure for a disease that a multi-millionaire wants, but he forces the scientist to try it out first - with really bad results. The mutated scientist then encounters a maintenance crew in underground tunnels where he was forced to try the cure, there's a lot of blood and gore and death. What else is there? Really - not much.

It wasn't horrible. I'll say that. It's a basic, run of the mill monster story - and those can be OK as time wasters. Aside from Tom Sizemore, who played the head of the maintenance crew, the cast was pretty anonymous. And, as far as Vince (played by Sizemore) was concerned - how in the world could he have been a POW in Vietnam? Sizemore is nowhere near old enough to play a guy who would have been a POW in Vietnam. That grated on me a bit, even though it's a throwaway part of the story.

I guess I'll give it a 5. Right in the middle. Because I honestly don't know if I liked it or not.