Our sponsor today is fellow New Yorker Mondo Vulgare! Please visit his website Mondo Vulgare for fun stuff to know and tell about the horror genre, and be sure to follow him on Twitter at @mondovulgare!
Mondo is representing the Massachusetts-based Black Cat Rescue, a No-Kill Animal Shelter specializing in black cats. Remember during this spooky time that black cats are half as likely to be adopted than other cats, so why not consider a sleek fur-riend of ebon and ravenswing for your home?
There were two reason I was actually pumped to watch this--it stars Corin Nemec, who first came to prominence as the lead of the made-before-its-time Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, one of my favorite comedies ever made. I had heard Corin had been sucked into the Syfy Movie Hell of late, so I thought visiting him as a middle aged man would be interesting. More importantly, it was directed by Tibor Takacs, the Hungarian born director responsible for The Gate and I, Madman which was one of the few starring roles for one of my Top Five Super Crushes, Jenny Wright. I like his work (I may be one of the few people who can claim to have seen The Gate II: The Trespassers at the much-mourned Ridgewood Fiveplex late one night), and he’s been working mainly in television ever since, so I was intrigued to see how his skills developed.
Oh. My. God. This was brutal.
I think CGI killed a lot of what made low budget grindhouse films so fun. Yes, you can do loads with it you would have problems doing with practical effects....but CGI on the budget of a Syfy movie (Five million in this case) always looks generic and, well, fake, and it tends to age extremely rapidly so it ends up looking faker. The moments where that cool monsta suit is switched out for a CGI monsta ‘flying’ through the ‘Baltimore’ skies are painfully apparent and kick you right out of the film. The CGI here is just awful, especially the ‘explosion’ that rocks the hospital Tom tracks the mansquito in.
I would still be able to forgive these shoddy effects if the practical stuff didn’t work as well as it did, or if Takacs leaned into the silliness of this film. At its core, Mansquito is a 50‘s ‘science gone mad’ monsta movie with weird elements of what will become superhero films in the slow transformation of Jennifer and her ability to ‘sense’ her worse half hanging around. It should have at least a lil’ bit of fun with the concept--but the script and the actors, many of whom are natives of Bulgaria, where ‘Baltimore’ is set actually treat this super-seriously, as if this was a Super-Serious Crisis. And, quite frankly, as much as I love Corin Nemec, he’s not a good enough actor to be The Serious Lead in a Serious Horror Film. There are moments, especially when he starts slipping into what sounds like a Bronx accent, where the gravitas of his pontificating is unintentionally hilarious. I would like to point particularly a scene at the mouth of an abandoned subway tunnel where Corin is trying to tell his partner that he just saw a MuthaF’in Giant Bug Man and threatens one of the police officers looking at him funny where his rage and toughness is...almost adorable. Considering this film is populated by actors with comic experience, they should have given it a sense of humor....not the broad-ass winking-at-an-accelerated-speed humor of those Asylum flicks, but a sense that this is meant to be not so much scary, but entertaining.
As this film crawled towards it climax (a crawl made doubly slow by the ‘You Will Watch Our Ads’ algorithm utilized by Crackle), I became profoundly annoyed with it. By the time Tom and Jennifer are struggling with the mansquito in the catacombs under the pharmaceutical lab, I was seriously checked out. I didn’t care whether Jennifer would turn into a Shequito, whether Tom would make an interspecies romance work, or whether the mutated mosquitos Jenn releases (remember those? The ones that would cure that pandemic that’s raging?) would save the people of ‘Baltimore.’ I cared about finishing up this film and moving on. I cannot recommend this at all.
Our sponsor tomorrow is one of my dear Patreons, Jeremy Crowder! Everyone who signs up to my Patreon gets to choose a movie for me to watch during this annual Festival of Filmic Fear, and Jeremy has picked the last film to date of the great Frank Hennelotter, 2008‘s Bad Biology. It’s got a sentient ‘roided out penis and a vagina with multiple clitori....and it’s a love story. He represents the New York Times Neediest Case Fund.
Other ways you can end up sponsoring a day during this Halloween Horrorfest:
1) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi. Suggested donation is $3
2) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter. Suggested donation is $10. Please forward your receipt to me as proof.
3) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.
As with last year, if I end up with more sponsors than there are days in October, I will go into Horrorfest Overtime, which means Halloween goes into November for me--and you!
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