| Cover Art |
 |
| Credits |
Director: James D.R.
Hickox
Starring: David Keith,
Vanessa Angel, John Rhys-Davies
Screenplay: Tom Woolsey
Music: Igor
Tagline: Be prepared
to be ripped apart!
Country: USA |
Yes, I rented Sabretooth. And
yes, I did enjoy it. And yes, I know I'm a
retard.
Sabretooth doesn't
waste any time before revelling in its own preposterousness.
A janitor is cleaning the kitty's room,
and drops a can. The can rolls RIGHT next to the
interior door that's supposed to be closed
to keep the kitty locked up while the guy cleans.
Does he go "Oh, crap!" when he realises
the door's open and leave? No, he goes to
retrieve the can! This guy's so stupid,
he can't even bleed right, with blood coming
out of the top of his completely unrupptured skull.
Then the kitty begins to maul or eat the guy,
and the door to its cell rattles away quite flimsily.
How is this door keeping a 500-pound animal in????
From there the viewer is introduced to the walking
clichés that make up about half the cast.
There's the Hoo-Ha boy; the "ice queen;"
the naïve young girl; the wishy-washy nerd;
and, worst yet, a black guy who thinks he's
Chris Rock. This crew of non-thespians have neglected
some much needed acting lessons to instead train
to be junior guides for underprivileged kids,
all the while grinning inanely and trying desperately
to be cool.
They're out getting ready to explore the
beauty of Mother Nature and play Truth or Dare,
but a guy transporting the kitty goes night-night
behind the wheel of his rig. The kitty gets out,
and attacks him while he's in the cab of
his truck. The kitty's claws cut through
the metal roof of the truck, which begs the question,
again, why does that flimsy door hold the kitty
in during the first scene?
Anyway, Jonathan Rhys-Davies, stepping up from
the Lord of the Rings trilogy,
is a mogul that helped finance the clone of the
sabretooth. Actually, it wasn't cloned from
a sabretooth necessarily, just something "very
close" to one. I don't know where
the original came from that got cloned, or why
Rhys and co. thought the kitty also needed a cellular
growth hormone, but that's what happened.
Rhys calls in Keith David, or was it David Keith…I
always get those two confused. I think it's
'cause they look so much alike. Anyway,
Rhys calls in one of the Keiths to hunt the kitty.
Sabretooth goes for extremely
obvious jokes and dialogue, though it does occasionally
hit a mark with the humour, as in a truly funny
"no bullet" scene. When Rhys and Keith
are introduced into the film, it becomes much
harder to watch the amateur youths traipse about
the woods, because the professionals naturally
do much better with the humour elements Sabretooth strives for.
Along with the bad humour come some bad decisions
made by characters. One person assumes that a
loud scream will have scared the kitty away, despite
a fresh track being found in their campsite the
next morning. A couple appear to enjoy combining
beer and coffee. Keith does what he can with the
script, but even he can't cover up the character's
idiocy. Keith claims he will kill the kitty no
matter what, then follows the youths' tracks
and not the kitty's. He's an expert
hunter that just leaves his weapons during a tense
confrontation. But his stupidity must make him
stronger, 'cause he's hit by the 500-pound
beast and not hurt at all. All the human mongoloid
behaviour even confuses a feline member of the
cast: A puma that forgets that its species doesn't
generally just wander up to people.
The CG sabretooth doesn't look too bad,
but it seems a bit small. Considering the budget
and the fact that the creature has hair, it's
pretty good computer work. The kitty also appears
as a mechanical mask, and stock footage of a mountain
lion or perhaps a regular lioness. I was pretty
impressed with this low budget film's bringing
the kitty to the screen, until the end where the
mechanical kitty is shown way too much and ultimately
makes the kitty look like a stuffed, angry mall-animatronic.
The climax also shows too much of the CG kitty,
with varying levels of success. The biggest problem
with all the kitty stuff is that the mix of effects
styles results in the kitty really fluctuating
size, especially evident in the scene where Not-Chris-Rock
gets in a knife fight with the kitty. No, you
didn't misread that, he gets in a knife
fight with the kitty…and not only that,
he turns his back on it for a long time while
telling the others to flee. This is quite possibly
the stupidest thing I've ever seen! EVER!!!
Who would do that????!!! I've heard it's
an homage to the bridge fight in Predator,
but even then…COME ON!!! Knife-fighting
a fucking sabretooth? And just when I'd
definitely resolved that this was indeed the stupidest
thing I'd ever seen a character do, one
of the other cast members decides to enter the
running for that prestige by simply telling the
kitty to go away. Yeah, because fucking mammals
from the ice age speak English…YOU RETARDS! |
