Tail Sting - La coda dello scorpione

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.

This is a truly bad "creature feature". The Scorpions in this movie look so fake and laughable that it recalls old 1950's B monster movies. Why didn't they just didn't use cheap CGI effects? They most certainly couldn't have been any worse. I mean these things look like puppets on film!

The plotline could have been much more developed and half way possible for the viewer to suspend their disbelief. It's one of those times you think "WOW, i could have even made this plotline better".

Scientifically, this is clearly impossible for Scorpions in a jar to suddenly grow to be gigantic Scorpions within minutes. And they never even really look like Scorpions, they look more like Crabs...and very stupid looking Crabs at that! I thought those bad films died at the drive-in theaters decades ago!

This movie takes place 99% on a passenger plane, and i never could suspend my disbelief that this was simply a studio set. The lighting never looked right or believable.

The acting is a mixed bag, some of the actors were quite good while others were very bad. There are a few moments during the movie that are comedic and will cause you to chuckle but not really laugh. However, some scenes that obviously were meant to be funny are just plain idiotic.

This is yet another truly HORRIBLE movie that has been released by York Entertainment. I won't even mention "Ax'Em" which is probably the worst horror film ever made. When York started out they released some really good movies like "Kolobos" and "American Vampire", but lately they've been releasing some of the most pathetic movies I've ever seen. The bad thing is, they sound like they might be good...but nothing could be further from the truth.

Avoid this film unless you really want to see just how a bad picture is really made.

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.

Let's get something straight before properly beginning: If you rent a film about giant scorpions from your local video store, you had better not expect roundly excellent, Altmanesque ensemble acting; Malickian cinematography; or Wellsian direction. You probably shouldn't even expect special effects that are any good. (The most you can reasonably do is cross your fingers that the puppetry is better than that of a four-year-old with his hand up a stuffed Cookie Monster's bum, or that the CGI looks little like a first-generation Nintendo 64 title.)

On the other hand, if you possess any powers whatever of a little thing called deduction, you're likely not to be disappointed by TAIL STING. In fact, I have no reservations at all in proclaiming TS as some sort of masterpiece of its kind. The budget probably couldn't have covered the waiter's tip at a upscale restaurant, and yet somehow these film-makers made a movie about mutant scorpions on a airplane. MUTANT SCORPIONS ON A AIRPLANE. No simple feat!

What puts the movie over the top is the absence of the cynical indifference that is to be found in most recent pictures of this type. It's almost as if some people actually put some _care_ into this tiny little picture, where they could have relied soley on the MUTANT SCORPIONS ON AN AIRPLANE hook--which, incidentally, makes a great box cover and plot synopsis--and called it a day.

So, if you're a connoisseur of straight-to-video nonsense and/or have some beer left in the fridge and a night free of responsibilities, drop a 3.97 on TAIL STING and have some fun, and console yourself that you at least did not rent neither HOUSE OF THE DEAD nor KANGAROO JACK.

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.