Tonight I watched two newer monster movies. Love and Monsters is quite enjoyable. Ape vs. Monster is almost total crap. Allow me to rant for a while about this junk, and the company behind it. The Asylum has been making crappy science fiction / horror films ever since the Syfy channel arrived with a need for cheap programming. The Asylum makes a lot of awful shark attack films (I’ve seen ’em) and other junk; it is rare that any of their output rises even to mediocrity. This is just another of their godawful samples of cinematic sewage.
Daniel Lusko’s film has the chimpanzee subject of a super secret American-Russian space probe return to Earth years later, but with a coating of space sludge that causes the poor beast, named Abraham, to grow uncontrollably. The same sludge also infects a local unnamed gila monster in New Mexico, and both of them travel to the nation’s capital to battle it out — under alien control, no less. Of course, only one scientist, Dr. Linda Murphy (Arianna Scott), is able to comprehend what is actually happening. The Russians sabotage the situation trying to obtain the alien sludge for themselves, and another mysterious scientist arrives seemingly from the grave. To top it off, the head American honcho is portrayed by Eric Roberts, playing an official as casually as he would some guy in a bar on a lazy Tuesday night.
Eric Roberts is undoubtedly the hardest working guy in show business. Truly. You may remember him from the ’80s, when he was giving top-notch performances in Star 80, The Pope of Greenwich Village or Runaway Train, for which he received his one and only Oscar nomination. Well, you might think that John Wayne or Christopher Lee or John Carradine or Mickey Rooney might have the most acting credits, but you’d be wrong. It’s Eric Roberts. He has nearly six hundred completed acting credits, and he’s still going strong. He’s got more than fifty projects — right now — that are awaiting release, in post-production, currently filming, or in pre-production. The sheer volume of his work is astonishing, although I suspect a large selection of his performances, like the one in this movie, are sub-optimal. You know, crap.
Ape vs. Monster promises a Battle Royale, like Godzilla vs. Kong, but watching a guy in a giant gorilla suit punch and wrestle a guy in a giant gila monster suit is unworthy of anyone’s attention. Very little of this movie makes any sense at all, and much of it is deadly dull to boot. It isn’t dramatic, or funny, or campy. It’s crap, so don’t bother ever forcing yourself to try to sit through it. I’m glad I saw it, because one needs to experience the worst in order to appreciate the best, but I did it so you don’t have to. I’ve done my civic duty; now I’m going to give my brain a thorough washing. 1/2. 10 November 2021.