myeck

This show became my definition of Showtime "original" series in the early 1980s. Ultra low budget, terrible production values, a guarantee of nudity in every episode, and Canadian content, adding up to a cheesy, slightly surreal show.

Although set in Chicago, it was made in Canada under the notorious Canadian Content rules of the time - any show made in Canada had to include a certain amount that was explicitly Canadian. On SCTV they lampooned it by doing Bob & Doug McKenzie's "Great White North". On this show, a female character was from Kitchener Ontario, and every episode somehow she would have to explain about being from Kitchener Ontario. Later on her younger sister joined her, and then SHE would explain about being from Kitchener Ontario.

Their sets were uniformly cheap and obviously fake, and in any room with a window they'd use the worst green screen technology ever to slap in some outdoor view or other.

Since the alleged big draw of the show was the nudity, every episode would have a few nude scenes, and not surprisingly they generally had little purpose other than showing skin.

Possibly the greatest single achievement ever in the history of crappy cable programming was an episode where one of the characters was house-sitting for a rich family in a ritzy suburb, and hey! They had a hot tub, so she invited her two roommates to come join her. The hot tub was surrounded on three sides by glass, diving us the unbeatable combination of a completely gratuitous and pointless nude scene, a cheesy fake set, and outdoor scenery really badly green-screened behind the actors.

Why this show disappeared as soon as it aired is a mystery to me.

This is a low-budget fantasy flick. It doesn't try to be anything other than a stock genre picture. It's let down by the very cheap CGI, and worse, by a director who doesn't know how to work with budget FX.

I decided to check this out due to the presence of Amber Benson, whose character on Buffy, Tara, was specifically someone who was not good at physical combat, while she appeared to be an action heroine in the promos I saw for Gryphon. So I was curious. And actually, I've seen far worse action work by female leads in sword-and-sandal fantasies.

Larry Drake is also in it. It's always fun to see him, and he still chews a mean backdrop.

The male lead in Jonathon LaPaglia. He looks and sounds a lot like his brother Anthony, but is really muscular. And he can't act to save his life.

But the big problem is that the director didn't know how to deal with a limited effects budget. They repeatedly violate the first rule of cheap FX, which is to show them from far away, or only fleetingly, or moving quickly. What you don't do, when you only have the money for a very cheesy CGI gryphon, is have a long shot in which the gryphon is PETTED by its master front and center on screen.

(edited to fix a couple of stupid typos)

This is a pretty terrible movie, but it's a must-see for two wonderful scenes.

Joe Piscopo almost single-handedly ruins the film with his annoying non-acting and his unfunny comedy. It's like he never got the memo that he was in a movie, not another SNL sketch. And it's sad to see Treat Wiliiams, a talented actor, in what must be the low point of his career.

However, there are two scenes in the film that make it worth your time. One, when the meat in a butcher's shop comes to life, and another when two nearly indestructible zombies square off for a shootout, only they're standing about ten feet apart and using automatic weapons. Hilarious.