(Tina: With Yancy Butler! In another archeology love story.)
Starring: Jeremy London, Wendy Carter, Cleavant Derricks, Griff Furst, Sarah Skeeters, Stephen Furst, Doug Dearth, Yancy Butler, and Bashar Rahal.
(Tina: Yancy Butler was the star of Witchblade until she got too drunk to function and the show was canceled. I guess we know what she’s doing now. Quality work for the Sci Fi Channel. She’s super bitchy in this one.)
(Jason: Yeah. I remember her being super hot in Witchblade, but she’s looking pretty haggard in this crapstravaganza. She does die after getting gruesomely bitten in half in a completely exploitative nudie scene, however, so I forgive her.)
Director: Griff Furst (Jason: Who knows a quality script, as he starred in Alien Abduction. He also plays an annoying sidekick in this one.)
Writers: Wil McCarthy, Chase Parker (Jason: Make that alleged writer. You can blame veteran Sci Fi alumnus Parker for the immortal Boa vs. Python, Reign of the Gargoyles, and Path of Destruction. OTOH, he’s no slacker. Parker must crap out a script a month.)
Release Year: 2004
Actual Tagline: An Eclipse Awakens An Ancient Monster Whose Gaze Turns Flesh To Stone...No One Knows How To Stop It...But One Woman Knows How To Control It!
Optional Tagline (Tina): Blindfolds? Check. Scepter? Check. Eclypse? Check. Weird Creepy Monster? Check. Yancy Butler? Check. Cleavant Derricks? Check? Which Stoned Relic Will Go Down First?
Optional Tagline (Jason): We Didn’t Have Much Of A Script. We Don’t Have Any Real Actors Except For Yancy Butler, Who’s Looking A Little Rough. We Do However Have Many Buckets of Blood And Pig Intestines To Pour On Our Bulgarian Extras.
Synopsis: After bringing back some relics from the desert, a young scientist and his oddball friends have to defend the city of Pueblo Springs from a reanimated, snake-like creature that turns people to stone at a glance. Unsexy romance, zany gore-spattered high jinx, spastic male bonding, and angry lectures from Cleavant Derricks result, only ending when the basilisk is finally drowned in the soothing waters of a filthy, Russian designed nuclear reactor. (Tina: In freaking Bulgaria… uh, Colorado!)
Rating: a solid -6
THE PLOT (SUCH AS IT IS)
The first couple minutes are just crap. There are a couple of the ancient “Libyans” that look like tan honkies, a la John Wayne as Genghis Khan. (Jason: By “tan honkies” I believe my wife means Bulgarians.) But I digress. It’s 112 AD and the ancients are going to kill the Serpent King.
Blindfolds… check
Scepter…check
Eclipse… check
Apparently, if you take the blindfold off, the serpent will find you and spray a venom on you that turns you to stone. Which presumably means that if you can’t see the Basilisk, it can’t hurt you. Unlike this film. Anyhow, one ancient is holding the scepter, and when the Basilisk looks into the gem, it turns into stone. We later find out the gem is the “Eye of Medusa,” though the whole Scepter pretty much looks like a leftover prop from a Moscow Film remake of the Ten Commandments.
Present Day: Middle East
Professor Cutie… check
Smart Girl… check
Wiseass Sidekick…check
Grad students from Pueblo Springs, Colorado (also known as Sophia, Bulgaria) are on an archeological dig. They get a pretty reasonable warning from locals not to continue the dig because the land is “cursed.” Of course they don’t listen and find the Eye of Medusa along with a few statues (stoned ancient dudes) and the “statue” of a giant serpent.
Museum of Natural History, Pueblo Springs Colorado (Tina: Phew. Man, it’s only been like 15 minutes of this crap and I’m already exhausted.) (Jason: My first beer is open at this point.)
The museum is having an exhibit/red carpet event. Enter Yancy Butler as Hannah. Let me just say Yancy: never, ever try and do a French accent again. I think she’s trying to be sexy, but it looks like she’s going to vomit. Maybe she’s been drinking again. (Jason: She’s definitely been drinking again. It’s a drunk, fake French accent.)
Sorry. Back to the party
Stone Basilisk... check
Eclipse... check
Eye of Medusa…check
Havoc!!! Screaming!!! The Basilisk comes alive! AHHHHHH!!!!! People are eaten, crushed, and turned into stone (Make up you mind, snake). Its actually pretty gory; the one true redeeming feature of this film. Abandoning her French accent for the remainder of the film, Yancy Butler and her idiot boyfriend steel the Eye of Medusa and escape into the subway tunnels under the museum. Jeremy London, Wendy Carter, and a really obnoxious extra follow – as does the Basilisk, who is considerate enough to eat the extra, but not the main characters.
London and Carter soon team up with Cleavant Derricks from Sliders, who appears to be in charge of a bunch of Bulgarians dressed up like US soldiers. They chase the creature into a fashionable, European-style mall, where it proceeds to eat soldiers, Bulgarians, and nachos with equal enthusiasm. (In one of Basilisk’s high points it does, however, skip over a group of three D&D geeks, who engage in a heated argument about what sort of dragon it is). Yancy Butler and Wendy Carter get involved in a catfight, during which Yancy’s idiot boyfriend gets turned to stone. She then rather convincingly smacks Carter silly, making of with the Scepter and a pair of stolen shoes.
London and Carter only survive by pretending to be – wait for it – display dummies!
Fortunately, our heroes drive the monster out of the mall using bluegrass and confront it with mirrors and liquid nitrogen sprayers! Which works not at all, though Director Griff does treat us to some incredibly inventive and gruesome violence, including a scene in which a soldier is flung through the air and shatters into chunks against a wall! Unfortunately, Carter suddenly remembers that there is this treasure map that Yancy keeps going on about, and that there must be a plot or something. Griff (in his role as Wiseass Sidekick) calls them and tells them that the creature needs to be drowned in a nuclear reactor. Or something. Then Yancy kidnaps him to make him translate the map, but the creature shows up, strips off her evening dress, puts up with her yelling at it for a few moments so that we can see that yes, Yancy Butler’s still got a pretty nice body, and finally bites her in half, leaving her shapely legs in a pool of blood and intestines.
In response, some Bulgarian… er, “American” soldiers dress Jeremy London up in an orange Evil Kenevil outfit so that he can do battle with the Basilisk in the containment pool of a reactor using a giant version of one of those stuffed-toy-cranes I used to have to maintenance when I worked at Chuck E. Cheese back in the 80s. He actually manages to grab the creature (Jason: Which is better than I could ever do.) and dumps it into the containment pool, where it shatters. London, Carter, and Griff return the Scepter to that mysterious tribe of tan honkies in Libya, freeing Griff up to make Alien Abduction II.
JASON’S COMMENTS
At the beginning of this film Arabia seems to be a little short on Arabs, but long on underemployed Bulgarian actors. Tina say’s its like when John Wayne played Genghis Khan in The Conqueror, but I think its more of a Chuck Conners is a long back wig as Geronimo thing. Or maybe when Marlin Brando played that gay Japanese guy in Tea House of the August Moon. Anyhow, that quality of acting.
The monster turns people into crudely made cubist sculptures. And splatter marks. I’ve got to hand it to old Griff: he doesn’t stint on the gore factor. He can’t direct, act, or write, but the constant bloodshed is almost the only thing that makes this stinker bearable. Once the damn Basilisk wakes up the actors switch from being all over he place to… well, all over the place. The monster is reasonably cool looking as well, at least by Sci Fi Pictures standards. And I love the CG nuclear power plant they corner and destroy the Basilisk in! It looks like a cross between Chernobyl and the place where Homer Simpson works.
To say that his film is overacted is an understatement. Almost every actor chews on the scenery with utter abandon. Amusingly, part of the shtick of this of this film is that Jeremy London plays an idiotic archeologist. At one point the character even saves his life by hiding from the creature in plain sight using a line of dummies. The basilisk can’t tell the difference; and neither can we.
Everybody in Bulgaria must be waiting for a chance to do some ham acting. I mean the extras in Basilisk are something special: Home Alone screams, bad physical comedy. It’s like they found overacting extras to match the overacting actors. It only took me one beer to get though this film, though, so I guess it couldn’t have been that bad.
TINA’S COMMENTS
Basilisk mostly takes place in “Pueblo Springs, Colorado.” I guess no town in Colorado wanted to be associated with this film. (it was actually filmed in Sofia, Bulgaria!) It’s amazing how everyone in Colorado looks eastern European. I do love how quickly the Pueblo Springs Fire Department shows up. And the Colorado National Guard. They even bring along an actual actor: Cleavant Derricks from Sliders. At least he got a free vacation to Bulgaria.
Why do all of the actors keep changing clothing in the middle of their scenes?
The Basilisk can’t help but follow the Eye of Medusa. An alchemist designed it to be the most beautiful thin on earth. -They really should have pick something better from Props.
Come on Sci-Fi channel. I’ve seen you make GOOD movies like Dog Soldiers and that Frank Herbert’s Dune miniseries. What happened? I guess it’s just easier to make BAD movies. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here right now.
Tina’s Favorite Lines:
“National Guard. We’re here to get you out.”
“You guy’s didn’t happen to bring any howitzer’s with you, did you?
“Son, the 88th is engineering, artillery, and public affairs. We’ve got the military police and a few Huwey units based out of Denver. We even have an army band.”
“No Howitzers?”
“And then, when the light hits the ancient bling bling, it does its reflection refraction thing thing and…
“You sure this can work?”
“Doc, trust me. I did not spend the last five years at this university not getting laid to not be sure about something like this.”
Jason’s Favorite Lines:
“Biological is my middle name! Well, it’s Herman, but…”
“Doc, this think is like the perfect animal!”
“There is no such thing as a perfect animal. Any animal can be killed.”
(Jason: Personally, I’ve always felt that the Cornish game hen is the perfect animal.)
“The moment that thing clears the downtown area, I’m going to hit him with the big guns!”
“It’s a her.”
“Right. The big problems usually are.”
