Mosquito

I consider myself fortunate to have caught "Mosquito" on a Sunday matinee. The opening scene depicts a huge mosquito smashing against a car windshield and the acting only gets worse from there. We get to see the "deputy" with a full beard in one scene lose the beard when the camera cuts back to him (stellar editing). We also get to see the main character who is the human incarnation of South Park's "Chef." My sides split when Gunnar Hansen (a.k.a. Letherface) picks up a chainsaw and says: "I haven't handled one of these things in 20 years....feels good." A commonly-used, extremely cheesy line is also: "..if I wasn't having such a bad day, I'd kill you." Anyway, go rent this, but you might have some trouble finding it (try a mom 'n pop video store).

This is a film for people who, like me, have seen the art in really poor film-making. Some films really do make an art form of the tacky storyline and cheesy script....this is a classic of the genre. It is full of humorous references for the true horror junkie and doesn't pretend to be anything it isn't. A film like this could go two ways...it could either try to take itself seriously and unless masterfully achieved it'll fall flat on its face, or it can step back and take a good, long, honest look at what its really got going for it and try to pull it off with its tongue firmly in its cheek. With a little more audacity some of the deaths could have achieved cult status (one certainly springs to mind)...but hey, with such a vast array of acting talent (Gunnar Hansen of Texas Chainsaw fame being the shining light, and Steve Dixon as Parks also doing an admirable job) and plenty of hillbilly gags, the obligatory pervert-cum-hero this is a must watch for the truly awful film fan...if you liked this watch mutator; awful film, great deaths.

"Mosquito" is a perfect example of a movie that's so bad it's good. I can't in all honesty give it any higher than a 5 because of the "so bad" issues, but the "so good" parts prop it up. Low budget, dire acting, ridiculous script. But with the exception of the flying skeeters, the low budget special effects are actually not that bad. And in spite of the low budget, you get the feeling that everyone involved gave it the old college try and threw everything they could into it. As a result, I literally applauded at a couple of scenes for their over-the-topness, and laughed my butt off through most of the film.

So yeah, as far as movie making goes, it was bad. But I enjoyed the dumb thing and was thoroughly entertained and movies are meant to entertain so in that, it succeeded. So, it's not so bad.

...it's just that Americans are so used to these cookie-cutter mainstream slasher, CGI-Alien invasion and "psychological" new horror movies. It's a movie about giant freakin' mosquitos, did you expect it to be a blockbuster hit? It's about a UFO that lands in a park in Colorado and the aliens get bit by some mosquitos in the forest. The alien blood makes them grow to the size of a small dog and they begin wreaking havoc on the park and it's workers. The only complaint and the movie's one HUGE weakness that makes it seem bad is the ACTING. Good god, i've never seen acting this bad, not even in the voices in a dubbed movie. It's like the actors are shooting for fun and they won't take their roles seriously. Once you watch it for about a half an hour, you'll get used to it though, and it even seems better after a while. The special effects, while they may not be Alien Resurrection-caliber, are still okay for the budget that the crew probably had. There's a lot of stop-motion photography with the flying mosquitos, but each one is hand-crafted and in my opinion, looks a whole hell of a lot better than this new CGI crap nowadays. One part was so over the top that I'm surprised nobody mentioned it. A giant mosquito impales Junior (redneck character) through the chest and begins sucking his blood. Junior's face begins to shrivel, snot starts to gush from his nostrils, then his eyes, twice as large as they were before the camera panned away and resembling softballs, pop out of their sockets a few inches, and then explode. What?!? Anyway, this was an extremely funny, ridiculously bad-acted, and blood-drenched sci-fi mutant bug epic. If you liked this, then I would recommend a few others that rivaled Mosquito in acting, special effects, and violence. These are Slugs, Ticks, and The Nest, being probably the nastiest and scariest killer bug flick I've ever seen.

What a tremendous achievement in American cinema! Did any of y'all know that you can hammer boards over windows without nails? Did you know that facial hair can disappear and reappear at random moments? Did you realize the safe haven that can be had in a bathtub? A perfect way to spend the day.