SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

PodBill Just what I expected

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Aaron1375 I had heard this film was awful, but I did not take heed of this warning. Instead, I thought, it might be a 'it's so bad it's good' movie. I had also heard that this film was also packaged as "Troll 3", which had me perplexed as I knew the film was about killer trees so how could they tie this film to that one...well I found out! The acting is on par with that scene in "Troll 2" where the guy goes, "There eating her, and then they are going to eat me...oh my god!" Except, the horrific acting is all through this film, there are no good effects aside from one okay kill and most insane is that there is no nudity! I mean, these girls are nobodies, how can a movie maker not get a bunch of nobody actresses to get naked? Not that I wanted to see the mousy lead girl, but the girl they tease as the star was attractive and the hooker had nice cleavage. This film was made by MGM, the same company that brought us the superbly entertaining "Return of the Living Dead" which featured actors of note and they got Linnea Quigley to not only go topless, but full nude and she is an incredible actress compared to the idiots in this film! So you get nothing! Most of the kills are off screen, the sex is off screen and what we get on screen are a bunch of people you will want dead by the film's end. I will be honest, I was pulling for the roots to kill the entire town, and especially that annoying kid! All they did was tease though...The story has a couple of girls coming to a small town. At first, they make it out that this one girl who was rather attractive was going to be the lead one, but that was just a tease. No, our main girl is this mousy looking girl coming home is the lead one. It's a shame, because not only was the other girl more attractive, but she was probably the best actress in the film...of course, that is not saying much at all. Well seems a guy at the local power plant has been detecting radiation outside the plant and there is something shady going on. People start turning up dead as there is one off screen kill after another. Finally, we learn that the plant is illegally dumping waste into the woods which causes the roots, not the trees mind you, to come alive and kill people and if you think there is a scene that is as hot as the DVD cover of this film, then you are going to be sorely disappointed.This film was just bad on so many levels. I do not see how MST3K missed this one, except perhaps it is because it was made by a major distributor in MGM and was fairly new (1993). Granted, I thought the film was from the 80's as I cannot believe this one was made the same year as Jurassic Park, heck, I cannot believe it was made the same year as Super Mario Brothers! The effects of the roots were ripped straight from Evil Dead and at times it looked somewhat okay, but even when it looks good it gets totally undone by the bad acting going on. I also love the scene where they describe the girl from the beginning who got killed and people say she was blond when she was clearly a brunette.So bad, bad and bad. I did not enjoy it as it gave me nothing. Had they given me some more gore and nudity it would have been more watchable with a shortening of the run time as well. As is, it seemed to take forever to get to the kills and then you think it is going to wrap up and the whole town comes in and they start preparing for their counter attack on the roots. How MGM, who made good horror films, came out with this crap I will never know. I have seen adult movies with better acting and effects than this, I have seen straight to DVD horror films shot with a video camera that are better than this! Heck, this is a film that Manos is better than! Not a good film, fails miserably on almost every front.

Woodyanders Radioactive waste from a nearby nuclear power plant that's been illegally dumped in the woods causes the trees in said forest to mutate into lethal man-eating plants. Sounds like a good deal of incredibly silly and kitschy fun, right? Well, it sure ain't remotely amusing or entertaining, thanks to flat (non)direction, a painfully plodding pace, terrible acting from a lame no-name cast, a meandering narrative, cruddy (far from) special effects (the killer tree roots look like dirt-caked garden hoses!), precious little in the way of graphic gore, zero tension or creepy atmosphere, insipid characters, laughable attack scenes, plain cinematography, a drab and uneventful script, and a generic brooding hum'n'shiver synthesizer score. Worst of all, this excruciatingly tedious clinker proves to be way too limp and lifeless to even qualify as enjoyable in a so wretched it's weirdly wondrous sort of way. Only the positively ludicrous solution that the imperiled townspeople come up with for fighting back against the trees manages to achieve a certain jaw-dropping campy hilarity. That aide, this one overall sizes up as one pitifully dull'n'dismal yawner.

Michael_Elliott Contamination .7 (1990) * 1/2 (out of 4) D'Amato was a director with many different genres attached to his name and here he once again steps into the horror field but the end results are less than stellar. In the film, a woman (Mary Sellers) returns home to her small town and sees that nothing much has changed. The only thing going on is a nuclear plant in town that is dumping toxic waste in the woods, which is making the tree roots come to life and start attacking people. If you remember, in THE EVIL DEAD there was a pretty graphic and tense scene where a tree comes to life. If you're expecting that same quality here then you're going to be disappointed because this is a pretty poor film from start to finish with very little to recommend. Also released as THE CRAWLERS (its U.S. title) and TROLL III, this movie really seems lost as to what it's trying to do as it's clearly meant for horror fans but it delivers no scares, no violence, no gore and not even any nudity, at least for the first hour. The movie features your typical bad performances but thankfully most are so bad that you're bound to get several laughs out of them including an old man who is constantly throwing out one or two words at bad times just to say he agrees or disagrees with someone. The film contains just about every bad thing you'd expect from a movie like this and that includes (but is not limited to) the score, the cinematography, the editing and the special effects. The one bit of blood is a scene where a man gets a root through the mouth and then eye. The effect is incredibly bad but at least there was some blood. The final thirty-minutes of this movie is where things finally pick up as the redneck town decides to fight back and try to destroy the roots. There are so many logical issues with what happens but at least the entertainment value picks up as there's just one dumb scene after another. I love the fact that they're dealing with toxic waste yet everyone is just rolling around in it and even letting their children mess around with it. We get some incredibly silly stock footage as well as a helicopter crash using the worst toy I've seen in any movie. The final ten-minutes also feature a lot more root attacks than the previous eighty so that is a good thing. Fans of the genre would be best advised to skip this turkey but fans of bad cinema might want to check it out just for the end. I'm really not sure how much D'Amato director or if Laurenti took most of the shots but TROLL 2 looks rather smart compared to this thing. D'Amato's ex leading lady Laura Gemser did the Costume Design here (which is basically just jeans and t-shirts).

Fanon They say lightening doesn't strike twice but check out Crawlers. This film is produced by the people who brought you that masterpiece known as Troll 2. Honestly this film doesn't match the pure genius of Troll 2 but it sure comes close. First, check out the Alaskan setting. Everyone knows that Alaska is beautiful and scenic but who knew it was so freaking hot! That Alaskan summer will kill you. At least five characters complain about the ungodly Alaskan heat. Second, the boss at the nuclear power plant might be the greatest actor I've ever seen on film. His tone of voice never changes. Its an amazing feat of line reading and I do mean line reading. This man deserved an award for this performance. No one can be that horrible. I believe its a commentary on the robotic nature of our everyday lives. This man deserves our respect. Third, look out for those flying roots. Tremendous special effects work permeates this film. Check out that helicopter crash. Was that a fisher price model? I do believe it was. And how about the tonka truck bulldozer. I guess they only had enough money to rent the real deal for a very brief time. All in all this film isn't quite as good as Troll 2 but it come pretty close. Watch and learn about the true art of filmmaking.