My official Lionsgate Region 1 DVD of Razortooth (© Patricia Harrington/Gravedigger Films/Capital Art
Entertainment (CAE)/PUSH/Lionsgate – reproduced here on a strictly
non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
Genetically-modified beasts, i.e. creatures
converted from the mundane into the monstrous by mad scientists of the kind beloved
by film audiences and directors alike for over a century now, have long been a
staple theme in science fiction movies, and the two examples reviewed and
mini-reviewed respectively here, both of which are of the piscean persuasion,
are definitely no exception to this trend. So as 2024 winds down on this, its final day,
why not wind down too by leisurely perusing these cinematic offerings originally
penned by me for my sister blog Shuker In MovieLand? Unless of course you're an
ichthyophobe, whereupon the time to look away is right now!
My movie watch almost exactly
a year ago, on 20 December 2023, was my long-owned but previously-unviewed Lionsgate
Region 1 DVD of Razortooth, in order
to find out at long last just how very far short this horror/monster movie
would fall in comparison to what I'd always naturally assumed was the extreme
visual hyperbole of its DVD's ultra-dramatic front cover illustration (which
opens this present ShukerNature blog article) – only to discover to my great
surprise that, if anything, the actual movie was even more OTT than said
illustration!!
Directed by Patricia
Harrington, and released in 2007 by CAE/PUSH, Razortooth is on the surface just another of those numerous
modern-day CGI-laden creature features in which a group of diverse people are
brought together in a shared spine-chilling experience of a horrific monster on
the rampage. The latter usually constitutes either a freakishly large or
genetically-altered mutant individual of a known present-day species or some
gargantuan prehistoric horror retrieved from the distant past either directly
via time-travel or once again via genetic manipulation.
Said monster then
systematically slaughters in a variety of different (but usually gory) means
virtually every human character in the movie, steadily devouring its way up the
cast list from bit-part players to supporting characters and then, finally,
confronting the leads in a grand do-or-die climactic battle before expiring
with just enough screen time left for the surviving leads to exchange some
light banter before the credits roll.
In Razortooth, the titular monster is a genetically-modified Asian
swamp eel (much more about which later) of huge size and voracious appetite
that has escaped into the Florida Everglades from the laboratory that
engineered it, and now is diligently decimating everything and everyone that it
encounters there – escaped convicts, Irish wolfhound, teenage canoeists, they
all suffer the same gruesome fate, albeit executed in an array of imaginative
splatter fests. Incidentally, I should warn you that this particular movie
contains far more blood and gore than is usual for a low-budget modern-day
creature feature of the Syfy-similar genre, which is why it holds an R rating
certificate in the States, so beware.
Normally at this point I'd
present my own précis of the plot, but in this case the latter is so generic,
and also because there is one particular aspect of the movie, a zoological
aspect, that I'd much prefer devoting the majority of this review to (especially
as it does not appear to have been covered by anyone else whose reviews I've
read), I've elected to save time and space by simply quoting instead a very succinct,
accurate summary of it penned by Brazilian viewer Claudio Carvalho that I
encountered on IMDb's Razortooth entry,
so here it is:
Two prisoners
escape through the swamp land in Everglades and the search party is attacked by
a giant mutant eel and is considered missing. The Animal Control agent Delmar
Coates is searching [for] a missing dog with his ex-wife Sheriff Ruth
Gainey-Coates and he discovers the remains of the animal. Meanwhile members of
a canoe club organize an expedition through the swamp. When Sheriff Ruth
organizes a manhunt to capture the criminals, Delmar informs that his former
friend, Dr. Soren Abramson, who is chasing the eel with a group of college
students, is the [person] responsible for [this] mutant species [sic –
specimen]. Sheriff Ruth organizes two teams to hunt the prisoners and the eel.
The two lead characters are
Delmar Coates (played by Doug Swander) and Sheriff Ruth Gainey-Coates (Kathleen
LaGue), so it will come as no surprise to learn that they are still standing,
just about, by the time that we reach this movie's big, explosive finish – and
I do mean big, and explosive!! What may indeed come as a surprise, conversely,
is spotting a familiar face playing one of the lesser characters – yes indeed,
Josh Gad (playing ill-fated Jay Wells), in one of his earliest big-screen roles
before going on to the likes of Pixels
with Adam Sandler, Disney's live-action Beauty
and the Beast, and the voice of Olaf the snowman in Frozen, among many others.
Eyeballing the razortooth: not a sight that you'd ever want to
see close-up – or from any distance, for that matter! Please click composite picture to enlarge individual photos in it for viewing (© Patricia
Harrington/Gravedigger Films/Capital Art Entertainment (CAE)/PUSH/Lionsgate –
reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for
educational/review purposes only)
But now, let's move on to what
for me was the all-important feature of this monster movie – the specific
zoological nature of the razortooth!! (Curiously, despite someone in the
production company having specifically devised this memorable moniker for it, I
don't actually recall 'razortooth' being employed anywhere within the film,
other than as its title). As I mentioned earlier, this creature is supposed to
be a genetically-modified, super-sized mutant specimen of a genuine species
known zoologically as the Asian swamp eel Monopterus
albus.
Native to shallow, muddy
freshwater wetlands across eastern and southeastern Asia, this air-breathing eel-shaped
species (but a synbranchid rather than a true eel), measuring only a very
modest 3 ft or less, has indeed been introduced into the USA – beginning during
the 1990s in Georgia, from where they themselves migrated into the Florida
Everglades (their air-breathing ability enabling them to move overland in
limited fashion if the land in question is water-saturated, but not if dry).
Due to the deleterious effect
that its presence is having upon various native crayfish species, however, the
Asian swamp eel is nowadays deemed an invasive species in these States, with
attempts being made to control its burgeoning numbers and physically remove
specimens where possible.
Needless to say, however it does
not exist in any kind of mutant, extra-large version, and in any case this
species confines itself to a diet of aquatic worms and insects, frogs, fishes,
terrapin eggs, and crustaceans – as opposed to gorging itself upon humans and
wolfhounds! But these are not the only major differences between the real Asian
swamp eel and its monstrous movie counterpart.
Although much was made during
the film regarding the disturbing nature of its true-life invasive presence in
Florida's Everglades, in terms of its morphology the Asian swamp eel is nothing
remotely frightening or dangerous, possessing only small, inconspicuous jaws
and a totally smooth, featureless body. So how was this innocuous creature
going to play the central role of a bloodthirsty terror? By not only greatly
increasing its size but also appending to it some decidedly horrific
characteristics purloined from various real but visually hideous piscean
predators, that's how?
As a zoologist, moreover, I
could readily recognize which predators had been utilized, and they were all
from a specific taxonomic family of deepsea marine fishes – Stomiidae, the
barbelled dragonfishes.
Totally unrelated to swamp
eels, but once again only a few feet long at most (usually a lot less), these
dragonfishes exist in several visibly different types, and it looks as if certain
specific characteristics sampled from three of these types were deftly combined
with the elongate body of the Asian swamp eel to yield the murderous razortooth
of this movie, as I duly demonstrate below via the following series of
comparative illustrations:
From top to bottom: the Asian swamp eel Monopterus albus; the viperfish Chauliodus
sp.; the black dragonfish Idiacanthus
atlanticus; Alcock's boatfish Stomias
nebulosus; and the composite result, the razortooth; please click picture to enlarge individual images for viewing purposes (top four pix public
domain; razortooth composite pic © Dr Karl Shuker)
As can readily be seen from
this comparison: if the viperfish's head and jaws brimming with javelinesque
teeth, the black dragonfish's nearly membrane-less spiny dorsal fin (but
extended along the eel's entire dorsal surface, not just the posterior half of
it as in the dragonfish), and the boatfish's unusual arrowhead-like dorsal and
ventral pre-terminal fins are added to the Asian swamp eel, the result is the
razortooth. Apparently, Jeff Farley, the special effects expert who worked on Babylon 5, created the razortooth, so he
had evidently conducted some sound ichthyological research during this process.
Moreover, there is no doubt
that for much of the time, whether in the water or on land, or even when it
slithers up into trees, the razortooth is impressive enough to keep the
viewer's eyes glued to the screen, but most especially when it is very rapidly undulating
horizontally in dramatic whiplash manner as it pursues its human prey on land,
thus adopting the same mode of movement that snakes utilize.
The big problem comes from
this monster's body size, which is anything but constant. One moment the
razortooth is so huge that it rears vertically above the water like a
latter-day plesiosaur from those now-dated prehistoric animal books from the
1960s and 70s that habitually portrayed these aquatic reptiles as swan-necked.
The next moment it is small enough and narrow enough to swim up through the
exit pipe of a toilet or shower unit in order to seize hold of the
unsuspecting, hapless human utilizing said facility. Then suddenly it's big
enough again to bite a man in half, or to be wrestled with by the redoubtable
Delmar, and so on…
By way of mitigation for such
morphological inconstancy, at one point scientist Dr Abramson (Simon Page) tells
his students about how flexible the muscular bodies of eels are, enabling them
to squeeze through holes and crevices ostensibly too small for this to be
possible. That is true, but there are limits, even for a mutant eel ('mutant'
being another oft-utilised get-out-of-jail card in monster movies for
explaining seemingly impossible feats performed by the monster in question!).
Anyway, such quibbles aside,
and if you're not hoping for any in-depth characterization of the mega-eel's
numerous victims either, Razortooth
is certainly an enjoyable creature feature (unless you're not only
ichthyophobic but also haemophobic!). And unlike many of its oh-so-serious
contemporaries in this genre, it even purposefully includes a blacker shade of
black vein of tongue-in-cheek humour running through it, but without descending
to spoof or parody levels. Monster movie purists may well hate this flick, of
course, but at least its choice of animal antagonist makes an interesting,
diverting change from the more usual giant invertebrates, prehistoric
survivors, and belligerent ape-men that tend to dominate this cinematic
category.
Razortooth is currently available to
watch free of charge on YouTube, so if you'd like to do so, just click here. Or click here
if you'd simply like to watch an official trailer for it.
No escape from the razortooth – whether in the water, out of the
water, on dry land, or even up a tree, it's gonna get ya! Please click composite picture to enlarge individual photos in it for viewing (© Patricia
Harrington/Gravedigger Films/Capital Art Entertainment (CAE)/PUSH/Lionsgate –
reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for
educational/review purposes only)
Several months after viewing Razortooth, I purchased and watched in
quick succession another monster movie with genetically-engineered mega-fishes
as its animal antagonists. This movie was the aptly-entitled Frankenfish, and here is the mini-review
that I wrote about it afterwards:
FRANKENFISH
My official UK DVD of Frankenfish (© Mark A.Z. Dippé/Columbia
TriStar/Syfy – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for
educational/review purposes only)
On 16
May 2024, I watched my recently-purchased DVD of the 20-year-old TV monster
movie Frankenfish.
Directed
by Mark A.Z. Dippé, and released in 2004 by Columbia TriStar for the TV channel
Syfy), Frankenfish is a very generic
MM, and is all about some huge, voracious, genetically-modified Chinese (aka
northern) snakehead fishes Channa argus
that have been let loose into a Louisiana bayou where they wreak bloodthirsty
havoc upon its alligators and human inhabitants alike. (In real life conversely,
this gourami-related species does not exceed 5 ft long at most, and is usually
less than 4 ft.)
Consequently,
the appropriately-named Sam Rivers (played by Tory Kittle), a medical examiner,
is dispatched to the besieged bayou, together with biologist Mary Callaghan
(China Chow), only to discover that they have as big a battle on their hands
with the locals' firmly-ingrained superstitions and faith in black magic
solutions to the situation as they do with the monsters themselves – which lose
no time in picking off the humans, one by one...
A real Chinese (northern) snakehead
(public domain)
Amusingly,
whoever wrote the DVD's back-cover blurb presumably had no idea what a
snakehead is and was therefore led badly astray by its name (and had apparently
not even watched the movie itself, in which snakeheads are accurately
described).
For
the blurb writer described the movie's monsters as being not only "massive,
genetically-engineered, flesh-eating fish" but also as having been
"scientifically bred with a deadly snake"! Now that's a monster movie
I'd definitely pay good money to watch!!
As
for this one, the monster fishes when seen briefly out of the water are ok, but
as the main storyline takes place almost entirely at night, I didn't see as
much of them as I'd like to have done. But in compensation, there is a very
unexpected and entertainingly chilling closing scene to look out for, featuring
the ever-troublesome character Dan (Matthew Rauch).
If you'd like to watch an official
Frankenfish trailer, please click here to view one on YouTube.
Finally:
to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand
blog's film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct
clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a
complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
The official American DVD
for Frankenfish (© Mark A.Z.
Dippé/Columbia TriStar/Syfy – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair
Use basis for educational/review purposes only)