"RETURN OF THE KILLER SHREWS"!!!!

[AVERY GUERRA]

Yes, you read that right! The Killer Shrews are back! NO this is not some lame Hollywood remake slapped together with a teen cast to grab your ticket money. This is a sequel/reboot to he original 1959 flick and with the original leading actor James Best- a living legend- returning to reprise the same role some 52 years later for a new generation! To check out the goods see our exclusive article at "Undead Backbrain" for the first promotional artworks, images, and details on cast/crew:



Oh and guys, if you haven't ever seen the original film then what are you waiting for?! Watch it for free online now!!:

[Destroyer D]

[AVERY GUERRA]

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

Awesome news I just added the MST3K version as well as The Giant Gila Monster to my Netflix streaming list.

Save for the corny special effects I didn't think the movie was that bad.

[AVERY GUERRA]

The official website and FaceBook pages have just been launched and a new synopsis and piece of promo art have been released and can be found at our sister site "Undead Brainspasm":



The official website:



The official FaceBook page:

[Jinzo Ningen]

[Dagarah72]

[AVERY GUERRA]

Check "Undead Brainspasm" for the latest casting and details about the film as they've just gained an interesting new cast member!!:

[AVERY GUERRA]

Check our latest articles/blurbs at "Undead Backbrain" and "Undead Brainspasm" for an exclusive first rough/early fx pic of a "Killer Shrew" from the film plus some related and behind-the-scenes vids and images!!!!:

http://roberthood.net/blog/index.php/20 ... er-shrews/

http://undeadbrainspasm.blogspot.com/20 ... iller.html

A new poster art:

[AVERY GUERRA]

The film is nearly through post production and the first trailer is closing in upon us!! Check our latest blurb at "Undead Brainspasm" with pics, details, a batch of behind-the-scenes vids etc...:



The official poster art revealing the new look of the shrews!!:

[AVERY GUERRA]

The moment we've all been waiting for...the first teaser's premiere on "Undead Backbrain"!!:



I gotta say that this looks sooo cheesy and fun. Just the way I'd want a direct sequel to one of the best bad movies to be. I'm so glad that they didn't try to make this too serious and realistic. The fx really pay homage to the original's wonky old shrews but are ofcourse more updated. Can't wait to see the film!!

[MouthForWar]

The Killer Shrews is one of my all time favorite old sh*tty movies, so I look forward to this. It looks like ridiculous fun (Bruce Davison was amazing in that trailer). Kinda wish the creatures weren't CGI though... the "rug thrown on a dog" approach of the old movie was so much of its charm.

[AVERY GUERRA]

My exclusive interview with the film's director Steve Latshaw is now up at "Undead Backbrain". The director reveals that they are planning yet another sequel; "Revenge Of The Killer Shrews" among other interesting revelations!! Check it our here:

[AVERY GUERRA]

The film's making it's world premiere is Bristol, Tennessee to benefit childrens' charities with the stars on hand on July 27th.!:

http://www2.daytimetricities.com/entert ... -vi-38633/

More details here:

http://www.killershrewsmovie.com/

Also here:

http://www.foundationeventfacility.com/

[AVERY GUERRA]

The film will be screening at our fest "B-Movie Celebration" in Columbus, Indiana on September 14-16 and then in Montreal, Canada October 26-27 alongside "Gila!"['Giant Gila Monster' remake], "The God Of Clay", "Spores", "Bio-Slime", "Metamorphosis" and many other great titles!! Here's the brand new second trailer!!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcX6zWHy2pY

[AVERY GUERRA]

[Jinzo Ningen]

Ordered this on DVD a couple of days ago from Amazon for a little over $10. Looking forward to it arriving later this week or early next - just in time for Halloween! Plus they are including a digital transfer of the original Shrews, so I'll see how that stacks up to the bargin bin versions I've seen/owned/donated thus far. Sure would be nice to get a really crisp, clean copy of the '59 film. If it is, it'll be as awesome (perhaps more so) that the new sequel.

Anybody else picked this up yet???

[jellydonut25]

$22? For a DVD?
Never.

[Jinzo Ningen]

Sorry... fixed my post. That was for my total order. Whoops!

[Jinzo Ningen]

Well, I finally got around to watching this long-in-the-making sequel to The Killer Shrews last night. I can hardly begin to express how utterly, utterly disappointed I was. However, I have cobbled together my initial thoughts on the film, with a brief preface of my opinion regarding the 1959 original.

Granted, the original film isn't exactly Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet, but given its intentions (to turn a quick buck) and budget ($120,000 +/-), it is a competently made, entertaining little monster movie. IMHO, The Killer Shrews really only has a couple of major flaws. The most notorious being the "shrews" themselves; obviously a pack of dogs with hair extensions/wigs and body make up. Once again however, given the limited F/X budget and scope, the film makers did a decent job. The dogs in make-up used in long shot, combined with the articulated shrew puppet heads used in close-ups, make the shrew monsters fairly effective. They serve their purpose IF you suspend disbelief and accept the F/X limitations for what they are.

The other stumbling block is that Baruch Lumet & Ingrid Goude have fairly thick accents (Lumet especially) and it can make it difficult to understand all of what's being said. The fact that these two characters, Lumet’s Dr. Marlowe Cragis character in particular, have a LOT of exposition to deliver makes for an, at-times, pretty tough movie-going experience. Granted, the script resorts to the usual silly pseudo-science to rationalize the preposterous goings on and has its share of clunky dialog, but for the most part it's actually intelligent and well-written, offering some genuine tension and a few very effective visual jolts.

Even though the Captain Thorne Sherman character is rather thinly sketched, James Best plays the part dead-serious, turning in a solid performance. Thorne Sherman is a no-nonsense, self-made man who takes crap from no one, and he is every bit as clever as he is tough. Ken Curtis makes his Jerry Farrell a wonderfully whiny drunken coward. The other actors (Gordon McLendon, Henry Dupree and Alfred DeSoto) do the best with their smaller parts, but ouch! those accents can really make the dialog tough to understand if you haven't seen the film several times, as I have over the years. The film is played straight which, for me, makes it easier to take than if the cast had hammed it up.

Now finally comes this sequel ...some 50+ years later.

Really? After 5 decades, THIS is the best they could do? The movie starts out nicely enough, with a nice attempt to mimic the opening titles of the original film, then gives us a flashback/nightmare sequence showing us newly-shot footage re-creating the death scene of "Rook" the 1st mate character from the '59 film. This new actor vaguely resembles the original, but his dialog (and delivery of that dialog) has been changed quite a bit. I always thought that Harold Rook hailed from the New Orleans area and it was his dialect, not a fo' sho' Steppin Fetchit-esque type delivery, but what do I know? I am guessing that the new film's creative team likely opted to dial down the old school "Uncle Remus" speech to head-off any potential racist labeling. I never thought negatively of the character nor was he in any way portrayed as a comedy-relief type. He was Throne's reliable 1st mate & best friend, and a talented enough mechanic to keep that old charter boat's engines purring like a kitten. In another odd script choice, the new scene choses to re-work Rook's death scene so that he no longer defends himself with a pistol during the attack; he's simply jumped by the shrews and dies. Weird.

In what is a totally baffling character shift, Thorne Sherman is no longer a leathery, sea-toughened man of action. He acts like a clueless, money-hungry buffoon for the most part. James Best and/or director Steve Latrshaw have jettisoned the original concept and just gone for a re-tread of his bumbling, dim-witted Roscoe P. Coltrane from "The Dukes Of Hazzard" TV series. What a shame. In fact there's a scene wherein John Schneider, Rick Hurst and James Best stand around a tiki bar constructed in the middle of the woods (?) and get cutesy cute with the "don't I know you from somewhere" dialog. Best even stoops to saying yes he used to be a sheriff in Georgia about 30 years ago, chasin' moonshiners. Get it? Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, hardy har-har. *SIGH*

What’s particularly sad about this choice, (and in huge contrast to the rest of the film), is that there's a quiet moment about 2/3 of the way into the film where Best and the remaining cast are holed up in the compound. Capt. Sherman is recounting his original encounter with the shrews and confesses that he has nightmares most every day about leaving his best friend Rook, behind to die, instead of insuring that his 1st mate accompany him back to the compound with the other members of the Cragis scientific party when they first arrive on the island. James Best does a tremendous job here, keeping the scene very low-keyed and real. It's a really good, emotional piece of acting. Best tears up and his voice falters, cracking with emotion. How very sad that the script and acting throughout the rest of this film could not have been played as straight and as good. What a shame.

The other actors are just gawd AWFUL. The sole exception being Jason-Shane Scott. His performance is the most grounded and understated, which allows him to come off looking light years more professional than the rest of the young cast. These other hams give textbook examples of over-acting; running around mugging and camping their performances up, apparently thinking that it's all great fun because the original was stupid crap, so acting over-the-top just makes this new film equally as dumb and funny too, right? WRONG. The actors are PAINFUL to watch. I was honestly tempted multiple times to turn off this steaming pile, especially during the first act. The three vetean actors (Best, Hurst and Schneider) know better, so I can only guess that the director just told everybody to go as far off the board as possible and it would be awesome. How could ANYONE have watched dailies while shooting this and actually thought for even a second that this pap could even be considered competent, let alone good??? It’s not even fun to watch on a so-bad-it’s-good level. The acting quality is equivelant to a 3rd grade Christmas play. Bruce Davison does his usual professional job. Yes, he chews more scenery than the shrews, but his character is written that way, so I honestly can't fault the man.

The script itself is an insulting, thoughtless mess, taking HUGE liberties with the '59 film: changing or ignoring original events for the sake of convenience. Most notably is that Jerry Farrell has somehow survived the attack at the end of the original picture. Here it's indicated he was last seen up on the compound rooftop and was never actually attacked, even though we clearly saw (implied) that he was ripped to pieces in the '59 film. The Sherman character also strangely miss-quotes one of the most famous lines from the original. Here he states that the shrews must eat 10 times their body weight every 24 hours or starve, while in the original film the ratio is 3 times their body weight every 24 hours. Nitpicking? Perhaps, but if you're gonna do a sequel then at least be more than just vaguely familiar with the source material.

Also, for reasons left unexplained, Jerry chooses to live in a dank cave on the island when the house/lab compound is, mysteriously, in perfectly good shape, which is damned odd since no one has apparently lived in it for over 50 years, so by all rights it should have fallen into total disrepair and collapsed in on itself. And while I'm at it, there hasn't been much in the way of food supplies except some WWII era army rations according to Jerry, but he looks just fine. In fact, he's not only slightly overweight, but his clothes are clean, showing zero signs of wear & tear AND he’s perfectly clean-shaven! Umm… where'd those razors come from, Jerry??? But hey, don't worry about it... it's just a movie, right? Also, no explanation is given as to how the shrews now enjoy running about in broad daylight when they previously only foraged in the dark of night, unless starving. Strangely, the plot point of the shrews being deadly poisonous has also been dropped. And sadly too, the eerie shrew vocals used in the '59 film have been replaced with a more traditional (and therefore decidedly boring) dog-type howling/keening.

As to the shrew F/X themselves, they are horrid. Just unbelievably awful. With the exception of a handful of shots using puppet mock-ups that somehow manage to be even less convincing then the ones made & used in 1959, the full body footage of the shrews are entirely done with CGI. And it is ghastly beyond belief. It's about on par with the pre-vis computer graphics footage you see in most modern CG F/X-heavy films. I kid you not. Both the shrews and the gore/blood F/X look to have been generated with a Commodore 64. I can only guess that the creative team thought that this would be acceptable because the original F/X were so primitive. The original was bad, so if this looks bad it'll be a clever, and FUNNY! Ha! NOT. I'm all for cheesy movies and so bad its funny. This film is none of that. It's just putrid & wretched in every respect. Shame on the film makers that foisted this travesty on fans of the original.

I am sorely tempted to try and get my money back after choking through this cinematic turd. Unfortunately, I cannot have that 90 minutes of my life back. The ONLY bright spot was a flashback sequence using footage from the original film that has been remastered in Hi-Def. God, it would be awesome to see the complete '59 looking like this! The parties responsible for this horrid sequel would have been far better served to have spent their budget on digitally remastering the original movie frame-by-frame from original film elements and releasing it on Blu-ray.

But perhaps the worst part of all this is that the end credits of this sequel threaten us with another entry, entitled Revenge of the Killer Shrews. God, please. No.

[Henry88]

just as I thought.

[AVERY GUERRA]

Get the dvd and poster autographed[by living legend actor James Best] combo!!!!:



http://killershrewsmovie.com/BUY_DVD.html



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