CRAWL (2019)

Moron dad ignores warnings to evacuate ahead of a Category 5 hurricane. Moron daughter goes off in search of her moron dad. Good news is she finds him. Bad news is he’s injured and trapped in the crawl space beneath his crib with multiple large ill-tempered alligators. All with nasty, big, pointy teeth.

The most surprising thing about CRAWL is it isn’t surprising at all. I usually enjoy killer animal movies and I love disaster movies, so I mistakenly thought that if you combine those two things with the director of the gnarly HIGH TENSION, that CRAWL would be an awesome bloodbath of alligators ripping people to shreds. Flinging intestines and bloody limbs into the air with gleeful abandon. Nope. The cinematography by Maxime Alexandre looks nice, but, outside of that, CRAWL is strictly by-the-numbers. Quick set-up of character backstories, put characters in dangerous situation, have characters scamper around as various side characters run up the low body count, have main characters learn lessons about family.

I remember seeing CRAWL in the theater and being mildly entertained, but disappointed by the final act. I had hoped that once it was released on home media that it would get a longer cut with added brutal violence, but that didn’t happen. It’s just the same old movie. Zero nudity, very little blood, forgettable looking sets that look like sets, unimaginative script, boring cast, disappointing ending.

Overall, CRAWL is watchable and mildly entertaining. I did like the dog though. She was super cute. I loved when she was swimming. Those back legs were kicking! They should make an alien invasion movie, but just make it about the dog from CRAWL and the cat from that boring ass A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE.  (Literally, the best minutes of that movie are when the cat ran off by itself.) No human main characters at all, just a cat and a dog’s journey across a Robert McCammon-style post-apocalyptic wasteland. Then they both die at the end.

After many harrowing adventures together, our two heroes are on the side of a hill that overlooks a large dead city. The sky is grey and the clouds low. The cat and dog walk together in silence, breathing out ghosts in the bitter cold. The dog misjudges a step and breaks one of his back legs on a loose rock. Before the dog even falls to the ground, the cat knows that they are doomed. Still, she does what she can to comfort her best friend. She brings him a small mouse to eat and nuzzles him. Then, as night settles and the deeper cold moves in, she cuddles up to him to keep him as warm as her little body can. He dies in the night. She feels his body cool next to her. In the morning, she knows that she is healthy enough to move on. But, she also knows that life is not worth living when one is truly alone.

FIRENADO (2023)

Not to be confused with ABBA’s Fernando, FIRENADO is the Satan awful tale of a group of scientists who claim to be able to control the weather.  But, in reality, when they fly their fancy drone into a small tornado it cranks that overgrown dust devil into a full-blown tornado.  Which then bursts into flames and becomes a dreaded firenado.  D’oh!  So now, with no back-up plan, the scientists drive around the countryside in their illuminated science van warning people that if they would just look up, you might notice a gigantic thousand foot tall spinning inferno heading in our direction.  Some people pay attention, some don’t.  An example of the ones who don’t are the three masked bad guys who are using the firenado as a cover for a home invasion heist.

If any of that sounds appealing and you have zero discern about storytelling, acting skill or filmmaking technique…then FIRENADO shouldn’t be too torturous for you to watch.  Below average acting, terrible special effects, nice cinematography, a tornado that changes size often, zero police or emergency services, below average pace, multiple pointless talking scenes, zero nudity, zero tension, shit ending.

FIRENADO is definitely watchable, but that’s kinda like saying repeatedly slamming your clit in the door of an orange 1986 Ford Escort is “doable”.  I just don’t know why you would want to.  Unless, of course, that sort of thing is your bag, baby.  Skip it with a vengeance and never look back.  Or just watch TWISTER again instead.

EARTHQUAKE (1974)

[Note: For this review I watched both the 122-minute Theatrical Cut and the 142-minute Television Cut. Screenshots are from both versions, but mostly the Theatrical Cut.]

At the California Seismological Institute, a lowly graduate assistant comes up with some computations showing that a major earthquake is going to hit Los Angeles...today. He tells his superiors, but they just won't listen. They just won’t listen! Oh god why? Why!? Oh, the humanity! Across town, construction engineer Charlton Heston is rumbling and grumbling about buildings not being built beyond the current codes. He’s also rumbling and grumbling on top a single mom while his old bag wife is at home faking suicide attempts and crying to her father…who’s also Charlton’s boss. Yikes. At the same time, there are multiple other pre-disaster stories going on, including Shaft riding a motorcycle; ex-child preacher Marjoe Gortner as a peeping tom stalking a pre-Dallas Victoria Principal; two nerds in an airplane having a boring conversation; George Kennedy as a LAPD cop getting shitfaced in a bar while Walter Matthau mumbles nearby.

For a mid-1970's disaster flick, EARTHQUAKE is mildly entertaining. I enjoyed the buildup and seeing what was going on in everybody lives. I especially enjoyed seeing Los Angeles in 1974. The earthquake itself looked great, but for whatever reason, the post-earthquake scenes were mostly snoozers. They sound promising on paper (flooding due to a busted dam, psycho soldier gunning down innocent civilians, workers trying to escape a wrecked skyscraper, etc.), but none of them really clicked with me.

Solid acting by a strong cast, good pace that slows as the film moves along, disappointing ending, impressive stunts, truly impressive matte paintings and models, animated blood, tons of vintage cars and fashions, Heston topless, Zsa Zsa Gabor’s hedge, an accidental motorcycle accident and a really weird set decoration where Victoria Principal has a photograph of her brother on her apartment wall…but the picture is a still from a previous scene in the movie! It brought to mind that brain-melting photograph in LADY TERMINATOR.

EARTHQUAKE is totally worth watching for vintage disaster movie fans, but others will probably find it dated and goofy.

Fun fact: you might be asking yourself how is the Theatrical Version 122 minutes and the TV Version 142 minutes long? Good question. EARTHQUAKE was originally released in the theaters in 1974 and then broadcast on NBC in 1976. They wanted to make it into a two-night “event”, but the film wasn’t long enough, so they added a few scenes that were previously deleted and then, in a truly bizarre turn of events, they filmed new scenes and added them into the movie to pad the runtime! Not only does this included new characters, but they even called back some of the original actors to film more scenes!

I’ve also read that in some television markets, the audio to the film was simulcast on a local radio station so you could really crank up the scenes of Ava Gardner and Charlton Heston fighting. And, I guess, the earthquake also.