Monday, December 5, 2011

Bio-Art: Lizard Boy.

I missed out on doing mind control for this week's Bio-Art column. Shame; it was supposed to go nicely with 'A Wizard Did It," but it slipped my mind and will be done tomorrow instead. I have found something slightly less scarring at my local video store: A movie called Lizard Boy.



The plot of Lizard Boy is simple: In an attempt to spread his inept sperm, a scientist named Gino engineers a lizard-human hybrid named Carlo. Carlo grows up quickly into a highly intelligent reptoid guard dog with a preference for human blood. It is not long before he goes on a killing spree. Making reptilian-human killing machine was the whole point of the government-funded lizard hybridization project all along, and it fails miserably in the end (when Carlo kills both FBI agents and himself. Spoiler). 

My own personal love of reptiles aside, what grabbed me was a quote on the back of the cover saying that the movie questioned modern science and the future of genetic engineering. Despite all that I will say about this movie from this point on, I have to give it some credit for doing significant research into its subject matter. Everything about the glowing pigs and Komodo dragons being capable of virgin birth is 100% true, guys. It's not meant to scare you. Really.

Despite being advertised as a Jurassic Park-ish flick, this movie will not scare anybody beyond those stunned stupid by how silly it is. JP made us get the point by making us wet our pants. Lizard Boy is so silly it's hard to believe it's making a point at all. Don't let the cover fool you.

First of all, watch this movie while stoned. Or drunk. Or under the influence of something. There are enough pot scenes in this flick that it was clearly written and produced while stoned off of one's ass. Hell, the main character's wife even ditches him because smoking pot ruined his chances of making babies with her. So, yeah, don't watch this sober. It clearly wasn't intended to be seen that way. Being under the influence of friends also counts. Watch this to laugh at it with people.

The lizard gets stoned. Yes, really.


If you happen to be sober, however, you will notice the acting fail (although they're trying!) and, well, general stupidity of most of the characters. Unless they were trying to make a killing machine, they would not have a giant, spliced Komodo dragon (which is RARE in a lab setting, by the way) waiting to be unleashed. The only guy who realizes this decides to make a hyper-intelligent human hybrid that *GASP!* reads the more obscure works of Shakespeare. They make the people in Sotoba look smart, and the doctor there thought that fang marks looked like bug bites. This cannot be taken seriously at all. The bad SFX and makeup do not help its case.

THIS is scarier.
 

If these people are being serious, they have failed miserably. If, however, they were trying to make a perfectly silly movie about how perfectly silly science can be, they've succeeded. Rent/download it for a night when you will have friends over to crack jokes about it with. It deserves to be put on the same pedestal as Birdemic and The Room for being so bad it's good.

No comments:

Post a Comment