CREATURE TRIPLE FEATURE BOX SET

Its time for the monsters to be let out of their box to cause a little mayhem thanks to genre specialists Anchor Bay and their latest foray into the horror collection scene. The Creature Triple Feature Boxed set is a trio of dastardly DVD’s featuring three mixed quality horror films including killer wasps in Deadly Swarm, savage giant fish in Snakehead Terror and a wicked winged beast in Gargoyles’ Revenge.

Deadly Swarm is the first monster movie out of the box and its time to take a trip to deepest darkest Mexico to do the cinema equivalent of throwing stones at a hornets nest. This particular nest is filled with vicious wasps known locally to the natives as ‘Black Fire’ and seemingly hold a true medical miracle, the cure to cancer. For Jacob Schroeder, a pharmaceutical bio-prospector, nothing is more important to the health of the planet then what lies within this jungle nest, so he removes it from its resting place with the unwise intension of transporting it across the board and on to American soil. As most seasoned horror historians will tell you, this is simply an awful idea and ultimately ends with the transportation truck crashing off the road, releasing a swarm of pissed off wasps into the surrounding Mexican countryside where much stingey mayhem ensues. It’s ironic that back in the 1980’s, people would say that a film looked cheap because of its rubbery monster effects, so filmmakers started to use computers to enhance their creature creations. Nowadays, people see a swarming mass of computer generated wasps and long for the days of latex and string. Not to say that the Deadly Swarm has bad effects, it’s just that a single wasp isn’t all that frightening, it’s when they mass together that the real threat is apparent, but by doing this, the filmmaker’s create something that looks, well, pants. On the whole though, it’s a fun effort that totters along nicely and also has a likable cast including entomologist Shane Brolly, Mexican police Commandante Pepe Serna and sexy reporter Kaarina Aufranc.
Snakehead Terror is a pure and simple Jaws wannabe with more than a passing resemblance to the original shark classic and its first sequel, Jaws 2. Instead of the ocean, our story is confined to a small town fishing village with a major monster fish problem in the local lake. Still reeling from the effects of a previous infestation of Snakeheads which decimated the economics of the village fishing, the poor town’s folk now face another batch of pesky piscine who, thanks to a heavy dose of human growth hormones poured into the lake by a frustrated bait shop owner, return bigger and meaner than ever before. Now I’m no fisherman so the Snakehead breed, which apparently can walk on dry land using its fins, is a species which itself (even without the monstrous proportions) sounds a little fare fetched. But you know what they say; “reality is stranger than fiction”, so here we are with a film about monstrous man eating fish. If you look past the awful premise, clichéd characters and ridiculous computer effects, there’s a reasonable amount of fun to be squeeze out of this lemon. It’s pacing is spot on and the non-CGI monster effects are pretty decent. The younger cast members are instantly forgettable but Bruce Boxleitner, Carol Alt and William B Davis do a good job of elevating this to a mid-quality standard.

Last but not least comes Gargoyles’ Revenge (otherwise known simply as Gargoyle), a tale of vanquished evil returning for a second helping of chaos. We start our tale in Bucharest, Romania circa 1532, with a spot of bother with a particularly nasty winged demon. As it rampages through the night, it finds itself on the receiving end of a rather nasty crossbow bolt blessed with the blood of a local priest. This is enough to halt the creature which is quickly sealed into a subterranean catacomb by the battle weary townsfolk. Now in modern day Bucharest, a pair of CIA agents are called upon to investigate the kidnapping of the ambassador's son, but the case takes a terrifying turn when the kidnapper becomes the first victim of a giant flesh-eating gargoyle. Now how’s that for rough justice! As in the previous two films, fun can be got from this movie provided that you are happy to live with a certain amount of imperfection. For a start the films flying protagonist looks poor thanks to an over-reliance on computer effects which never truly deliver. Thankfully a lot of these scenes are shot at night which does go some way to mask the struggling technicals, but it’s still a distraction from the film proper. On the plus side, there is enough action to help the film along to its ultimate conclusion and never gets overly complicate along the way.
You certainly can’t argue with the value of this package. Amazon currently has it listed at £14.99 and even with the less than outstanding films included in the set, its still a decent enough buy for that price. Anchor Bay have packaged the 3 disks into a cardboard box affair which seems a little flimsy but have thankfully included each film in its own standard case complete with special ‘Creature Triple Feature’ inlay. For a value box set, it would be a little too much to ask for the films to come fully loaded with behind the scenes documentaries and the like, so not to disappoint, all we get is the main feature presentation and optional subtitles for the hard of hearing. Each film is presented in enhanced 1.78:1 aspect ration and comes with 3 choices of sound track including DD2.0 Stereo, DD5.1 or DTS. The image quality of each film have various moments of poor contrast and graininess but it’s fair to say that Anchor Bay’s usually solid transfer isn’t to blame, but rather the lack of funding during the films original production. Thankfully nothing is ever so bad that you will feel the need to switch off and I’m sure that true b-movie monster fans will have witness much worse.

I think it’s fair to say that none of the films included with this package will ever be classed as classic horror fodder, but they are all very accessible and have a fun quality about them which can only truly be understood by lovers of the monster genre. Low budget schlock they may appear to some, but to the b-movie fanatic who gets pleasure in seeing creature’s torment and slaughter stupid humans, this box set represents the perfect way to get a quick fix of mayhem.