Tail Sting

A truly awful movie with laughable special effects, plot holes big enough to fly a 747 through (excuse me, but just how does a 7' long scorpion crawl the length of a charter plane, from rear to cockpit, without anyone noticing?), a script written by a 6th grader and acting that wouldn't win an audition for dinner theater.

Best thing in the film is the line "Talk to the elbow, because the hand wants to slap you." This was obviously targeted to the director of this tripe. One or two comic moments, but not worth paying money to rent. This one crashes on take-off.

Oh my goodness. I rented this movie with a one dollar coupon and was sad to find that it was the only time in my life I was upset about wasting a dollar.

The Good.

1. The movie ended.

The Bad

1. The movie started.

2. In one scene a boom mic operator can clearly be seen in the back of the shot behind a cargo net moving the mic up and down and hither and yon.

3. In another scene a man is sucked out of the plane - past the plane door onto a sound stage and through a trap door - I was unaware planes had sound stages and trap doors - even the big ones.

4. In the same scene as above a gaggle of debris is being blown (in the classic "stuff gets sucked out the open door shot") yet the oxygen masks are hanging straight down.

5. The scorpions grow from about a foot in length to about six feet in length in about two minutes for no apparent reason.

6. Scorpions - like ants and bees and England - have queens . . . apparently.

7. The scientists who genetically engineered the scorpions continually refer to them as insects while I, admittedly not a scientist, am pretty sure they are arachnids.

8. The "queen" scorpion, without aid of a trap door or opposable thumbs and without any reasonable explanation whatsoever (even a simple explanation like "because") becomes locked in the cockpit and the pilot needs only to close the door to trap it inside - it remains here for a long time.

9. The shot of the plane landing at LAX is the same shot of the plane leaving Australia leading one to believe LAX is surrounded by Victorian style homes and an 18 hole golf course.

10. The autopilot is simply a little metal box with a switch and a light titled "Auto Pilot" and it is activated without consideration of other flying wackiness like coordinates or destination - even The Langoliers had that.

11. No Rutger Hauer - sad, it is a movie of his finesse and caliber.

12. The cockpit windows are completely black despite repeated shots that the plane is flying during the day.

The Somewhat acceptable.

1. The "hackers" look like real hackers should - pale, overweight and not prone to things like human contact or socializing.

Overall - a bad movie. So bad it makes a movie like "Turbulence III: Heavy Metal" look like an Academy Award winner for Best Picture. The script was bad, the actors and actresses and boom mic operator even worse and the plot and character development was nowhere to be found. The special effects were atrocious - sure there were no CGI effects but the puppet effects were so horrific it would have been scarier with Gonzo, Grover, Professor Honeydew and Beaker as the queen.

Save yourself the sorrow of wallet victimization. See "Turbulence III: Heavy Metal", see "The Dead Next Door", see "Left Behind II: Tribulation Force" - don't see this . . . please . . . for the children.

A truly bad movie, similar to what happens when someone takes a porno film and takes out the sex scenes. This film has all the positive attributes of a bad high school drama club production, minus the "family appeal".

Laura Putney does a passable acting job with little support from her overacting and mostly unlikeable supporting cast. Gulshan Grover and Guy Bracca as brothers Yaffi and Sudan do a reasonable acting job as well. Everyone else involved in the cast and crew should look into selling real estate.

Some of the "lowlights": Monster parts on-screen with visible human operators and supporting structures; the underlying plywood scenery construction visible when the cockpit panels get shot (clue to effects people: airliner cockpits have very little plywood built into them), the FAA "experts" are all unbelievable and insulting, Tara Price's character can't decide on an accent (Australian? New Jersy? Midwestern? what the Hell, new scene, new accent!), Rick Kelly, as "baddy" Scott takes the ham-handed overacting skill to new extremes.

I have a sick weakness for cheesy budget Air Disaster/Mishap/Hijack type scenarios. Tail sting however is just too much. I only paid £0.99 from Tesco Extra (UK supermarket) and even after a further 10% staff discount was applied I consider myself robbed. The movie is too stupid to be serious but doesn't seem to be an attempt at humour either. I can only assume it was made as some kind of straight face challenge. Hard to believe that Amazon are charging £15.99 for it. I was considering listing it on eBay but I don't need any more negative feedback. The best thing about is the case it came in, as I can reuse it for something else.

With so many people reviewing this rarely seen film, I had to check it out. And I am not sorry that I did. While the movie was generally unbelievable, stupid and full of plot holes, the script was pretty decent and maintained interest to the end. The only level on which this movie worked was the generous use of humor and the absurd. Thus, on the boring scale Tail Sting passed, but unless you don't mind laughing at a film, you better look elsewhere. I would like to say that with a little bit more film making expertise, budget and cast, Tail Sting could have been decent, but a major overhaul is needed. Had that been done, we would have just another movie with far fewer reviews.