"Into the river we go and in the river we die. That's the river from Springsteen. I'm all outta Bible quotes." - Just one of many moronic things said in the movie HARD RAIN

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE HARD RAIN

SCHLOCKTOBERFEST 2004: THE SCHLOCKENING is coming October 2nd in Long Beach, MS. We're coming back for a second go around and we promise the show will be just as kick ass as SCHLOCK & AWE was. We're also hoping to get a bigger turnout this year as we learned the hard way that we need to do more to get the word out. Now that my college class is over with I can devote more time to putting together this year's fest. Two movies are already set and we're planning special tributes to Godzilla and Roger Corman on their 50th anniversaries. We won't be announcing any of the schedule until later in the summer but I assure you it's already shaping up nicely. I'm definitely digging deep into the void of cinematic obscurity to pluck a few winners. Oddly enough, I've noticed a trend looking at the short list of movies I want to program this year. I'm thinking maybe we should rename this year's show "That 70's Schlocktoberfest" since most of the movies on my short list come from that wonderful decade of polyester and malaise. More info on this the festival can be found in the Fest Info section and more info will be coming soon. And I swear I'll finally be getting that write-up of year one's fest online that I've been promising for the last six months. I swear.

 

10.5: THE QUAKENING

 

Disaster movies, they make for great spectacle but rarely do they make for great cinema. Quite often they don't even make for entertaining cinema. There are only so many ways you can do a disaster movie. Characters are either going to be trying to survive or trying to save others and you can expect a lot of annoying soap opera storylines. You can practically guarantee a romance between the two main characters and inevitably one of the important characters will have to sacrifice their life to save others. It is also legally required in disaster movies that they must destroy well known landmarks. At best, disaster movies can be really well made. Usually, they're either laughably bad or just plain bad. This is the tale of a just plain bad disaster movie miniseries with a few moments of unintentional laughter.

Just in time for May sweeps comes 10.5, NBC's blockbuster miniseries about a series of massive earthquakes threatening the West Coast, in particular Southern California. This isn't the first time NBC has done an earthquake movie but this is the most over hyped one. For weeks NBC has been running teasers for 10.5 featuring snippets of some of the miniseries' mass destruction hyping that "The Big One Is Coming!" Now bare in mind that this is NBC, the same network responsible for arguably the single worst disaster movie ever made - Y2K: THE MOVIE. I'll save that for another time and another review but take my word on it when I tell you that it, as Eric Cartman would put it, sucked donkey balls. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that the first time I looked 10.5 up on Google I came to learn that footage from the miniseries was shown at a television critics convention back in January where it was greeted with much uproarious laughter. After seeing 10.5 for myself I can see why. 10.5 is hardly the worst but it definitely takes the prize as one of the gimpiest.

It's a typical day in Seattle, Washington where a guy on a bicycle, not a normal guy on a bicycle but one of those extreme sports cyclists, is riding down the street. Cue earthquake. Our cyclist uses everything he's learned from watching Mountain Dew commercials to avoid falling victim to the earthquake's ravaging. However, he makes the mistake of stopping at the foot of Seattle Space Needle. Cue the collapsing Space Needle. Many of these extreme sports types are more than a little dimwitted, as evidenced by the movie GRIND, and therefore he doesn't try escaping to the right or left or even cycling behind the Space Needle. Nope, he takes off straight ahead putting himself right in the path of the collapsing structure. One of the tallest structures on the planet is falling down and Mr. Rad Racing thinks he's going to outrun it on a BMX bicycle? He doesn't make it and stupidity like that deserves death so good riddance. For a moment there I honestly thought the guy was going to get away as his escapes from the danger moments earlier were giving me really bad flashbacks to the dog outrunning the fireball in ID4. That's not a good thing when you're only 3 minutes in.

Suddenly the miniseries turns into an episode of the series 24. By that I mean they shamelessly copies 24's visual style of having multiple scenes from different locations on the screen at the same time, usually while the characters in those different scenes communicate to one another by phone. On 24 it works. In 10.5 it only proves to be annoying, very annoying. It just feels like a desperate technique to try to make things seem more suspenseful. Much of the movie consists of people looking at computer monitors with a great deal of concern or yelling out magnitudes as the readouts appear on screen. And since a lot of what happens involving the main characters takes place at this seismology field office or something like that, someone on the CHUD message board astutely suggested they should have called the place the C.E.U. (Counter Earthquake Unit) after 24's C.T.U. (Counter Terrorist Unit).

Enter our heroine, Dr. Samantha Hill, but everyone calls her Sam. That means her name is Sam Hill as in "Who in the Sam Hill got overly cute by giving her such a dopey name?" Amazingly, nobody ever makes a Sam Hill crack like the one I just did which only goes to demonstrate the miniseries' utter lack of humor. Well, lack of intentional humor that is. Believe me, there's quite a bit to laugh at.

Sam Hill is the Stephen Hawking of seismology. She knows everything. EVERYTHING!!! Do not doubt her or her unproven crackpot theories! If she tells you there are hidden fault lines so deep they can't be detected by modern scientific equipment then you better damn well just nod your head in agreement! If she says it will happen then you better believe it is going to happen! Do not dare to doubt Dr. Sam Hill for she is wiser than you!

So of course everyone doubts Dr. Sam Hill. Nobody else really takes her seriously until it's too late. It's hilarious how they have scenes where everyone gathers to try and formulate some sort of scientific hypothesis about what is going on and nobody contributes anything except for Sam and still the head of FEMA and the other seismologists dispute her claims due to lack of proof. Nobody else has jack squat to offer but jack squat is still considered more reliable than "Spooky" Hill and her X-Files seismology.

TV critic Tom Shales wrote in his scathing review that Kim Delaney might as well have played the part of Sam Hill wearing a cape and tights since she's such a superwoman of seismology. I think there already was such a character on that dreadful Black Scorpion TV series. The sole season of that terrible Sci-Fi Channel show actually got a DVD boxset release. Street Hawk can't get a boxset but Black Scorpion can? What's wrong with this world? Okay, I'm way, way off topic.

The President of the United States, played by Beau Bridges in a performance that should earn him an Emmy, I'll explain why later on, is informed of the massive earthquake that has devastated Seattle and immediately blames it on Saddam Hussein and orders the invasion of Ira… Ummm… wait a minute; I meant to say he calls for a commission. He puts his basketball buddy Roy Nolan, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in charge of the situation and then calls all of his top advisors to come hold his hand in the Oval Office while he stands around waiting for the next opportunity to stare off into space while talking to someone by speakerphone. The always reliable and usually underutilized Fred "Remo Williams" Ward is cast in the thankless role of Roy "God, I look bored!" Nolan.

One of the things I loved about 10.5 was the screwy use of time. Things seem to jump around from one scene to the next instantaneously. Sam needs to fly out to Northern California to get some soil samples and she manages to get there and back in seemingly no time flat. People go places in this movie that should take hours yet it feels like they accomplish it in mere minutes.

Also, this is one of those movies where when somebody says something could happen it usually does so almost immediately. Sam discovers some dead animals on a riverbank and says something about gas bubbling up from the earth poisoning the air. Next thing you know they're running for their lives because one of those gas pockets just passed some more gas. "I believe the next quake will strike San Francisco." Two minutes later, the next earthquake strikes San Francisco. Oh, how I love those uncanny, perfectly timed coincidences.

Oh, I neglected to mention that Sam Hill has to contend with one of her colleagues, I forget his name so I'll just call him The Beard since that his facial hair was his only defining trait. Well, that and a hint of sexism since he seemed to have issues taking orders from Sam. He also had issues buying into her theories but had no problem putting his neck on the line to help her prove them correct. Before it's all said and done Sam Hill and The Beard end up putting the figure four liplock on one another, thus proving conclusively that attractive women have lousy taste in men and boys tend to pick on girls they actually like.

The next quake soon strikes in Northern California. This provides us with what is probably the most laughable sequence of the entire miniseries as the fault line literally chases down a commuter train. Either these train tracks just happened to be built right on top of, perfectly symmetrical to this fault line or the planet earth really has it in for Amtrak. However, instead of it ending with the obvious model train collapsing into the cavernous fissure I think it would have been even more hilarious if suddenly a giant TREMORS graboid popped out and sucked the train down. Hmmm… TREMORS 10.5? Godzilla-sized graboids threaten to cause monster earthquakes? Hey, the movie already has Fred Ward so just call in Michael Gross and Kevin Bacon and we're good to go.

This second quake leads to Sam exposing her crazy ass theory about phantom faults, a chain reaction, and the end of West Coast civilization as we know it. Everyone scoffs and Sam vows to prove them wrong. Having watched enough disaster films I instantly deduced that the Roy Nolan character's stubborn refusals to listen to Dr. Hill's theories would eventually lead to his character either getting killed by his own arrogance or dying a noble death in order to save others. Either way, this guy is a dead man.

Now would be a good time to mention our numerous subplots, all of which have already begun to play out, all of which amount to little more than filler. Let's just run them down in no particular order.

SUBPLOT #1 - John Schneider and Kaley Cuoco are an estranged father and daughter going on a weekend camping trip. They also happen to be the ex-husband and daughter of the Governor of California. They end up getting lost in the woods where they survive a few close encounters of the hopelessly contrived kind, all of which only serves to bring them closer together.

SUBPLOT #2 - ER surgeon Zach Nolan is the estranged son of FEMA head Roy Nolan. They've been distant ever since mom's death and whenever Zach sees dad on the TV he comments on how he's trying to get avoid the truth or something like that. Roy tells Zach to get out of Los Angeles for his own safety. Zach refuses because he wants to help the injured. Hey, do you think they'll make up before dad gets killed?

SUBPLOT #3 - Let me preface this by going on the record and declaring this the most worthless disaster movie subplot of all time! Zach's best friend and partner in latex gloves is estranged with his wife and kids because he's always at the hospital and crap like that. Even when the family evacuates he still stays behind to help the sick and injured. In the finale at the makeshift tent city, an incredibly unnecessary amount of time is devoted to him wandering around looking for his family, finding them, going back to work in the makeshift hospital, and then wandering around looking for them again. None of it amounts to anything substantial. The only thing of note about them is that despite a large amount of the movie being set in Southern California this black family are the only minorities in the flick. Where all the Hispanics in Southern California disappeared to is a mystery worthy of another miniseries altogether. Let me once again reiterate that entire subplot about Zach's doctor friend and his family is without question the single most worthless subplot in the entire history of disaster films!

SUBPLOT #4 - The Governor of California has to contend with the possibility of earthquakes destroying much of her beloved state and that her estranged ex-husband and daughter are up in the mountains with no way of communicating with them or even knowing if they are okay. She ends up getting caught in one of the quakes where she is badly injured and trapped in the rubble. There's also a subplot within a subplot involving Rachel, her personal assistant, who is estranged from her husband because he wants to start a family and she prefers to put work before marriage. Rachel ends up getting killed when she throws herself onto the Governor to shield her from a collapsing wall. That'll teach women to put their careers before staying home barefoot and pregnant!

Have you noticed the running theme? Yep, everyone's estranged and that means a lot of bitching and moaning. There's no shortage of scenes of people arguing over the telephone. Thank God for all those split screen scenes. Wouldn't want to miss a moment of that action. Hell, let me sum up part one of this two-part miniseries as simple as possible:

Earthquake.
Characters bicker.
Earthquake.
Characters bicker.
Earthquake.
To be continued…

That is part one in a nutshell. Part two is similar only the character's bickering is mostly replaced by character's panicking and eventually everyone makes up with one another before or after dying. The after dying forgiveness scene comes in the form of a tearful message a dying Rachel gave the Governor to give to her husband, who she calls up from her hospital bed. I'd love to know where the husband lived because the whole state is in a panic and yet he's still sitting on the same sofa he was earlier.

Hell, there's even a minor subplot involving a minor supporting player, a young female disciple of Sam Hill who is terrified about her brother's fate since he lives in San Francisco. We come to learn that her brother has taken refuge in Arizona and is all right. What makes it even worse is that this tiny subplot is the only real contribution of this minor character.

I swear you could do this entire miniseries in only two hours if they didn't have all those crappy soap opera storylines focusing on the all the supporting characters pissing and moaning. If they also ditched the entire John Schneider/Kaley Cuoco lost in the woods subplot the movie would probably last barely over an hour. Unlike the complete waste of time the black family story line is, what with all the standing around and bickering, walking around looking for one another, hugging one another, and then walking around looking for one another some more, the father/daughter camping trip from Hell story line is ludicrously bad in addition to being pointless.

Dad is played by John Schneider, who will forever haunt the hallowed halls of television history for having been one of the Dukes of Hazzard. Schneider is no stranger to disaster films. He previously appeared in the Family Channel's NIGHT OF THE TWISTERS where he played a guy who taught his stepson the importance of family and hard work even while everyone flees for their lives from an outbreak of poorly computer generated tornadoes. Sure they leveled the town and killed many of their neighbors but the important thing was that the stepson learned a valuable life lesson that day.

However, Schneider's greatest disaster would most certainly be a very short-lived syndicated series from the mid-90's called Heaven Help Us, a title that's equally befitting anyone watching this dreck at home. Schneider and Melinda Clarke, the zombie chick from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3, played a newlywed couple killed when their small airplane crashed into a San Antonio skyscraper. No, seriously. But they didn't die. Well, actually they did but they became angels; angels that were just like regular living people except they could turn invisible when needed. They suddenly found themselves living in the luxury suite of a high rise complex and were given assignments by a kindly angel named Mr. Shepherd, the only angel in history with a Corinthian leather fetish. Of course that might have been because Ricardo Montalban played Mr. Shepherd. Each week he'd give them a person or persons whose life needed divine meddling and they'd have to go out and play Touched By An Angel, only they did so with far less subtlety. Basically they'd stalk people and nag them into doing the right thing. San Antonio was their base of operations and despite the city being their hometown when they were living they never seemed to bump into anyone they knew. Even stranger was that Schneider's character was a modestly well-known ball player and yet no one ever recognized him on the street. It just occurred to me that I've spent way too much time reminiscing about this awful program instead of the awful program I'm supposed to be reminiscing about.

Schneider's whiny, puffy faced daughter is portrayed (badly) by Kaley Cuoco, who also plays the late John Ritter's daughter on the sitcom 8 Simple Rules, and she may very well be the worst young actress on television not currently a cast member of The O.C. I swear John Ritter in his current state could still out act his TV daughter. Watching this girl try to emote would even make Steven Seagal go "God, this girl sucks!" Words cannot describe how painful on the ears she is in this movie. If you missed 10.5 then consider yourself lucky because you didn't have to experience her, ahem, performance.

Unfortunately, she has a few overly dramatic moments in particular the scene where she and daddy are trying to escape their truck as it sinks into the dirt. First they get lost in the woods, then they find what appears to be an entire town that has been swallowed up by the earth, and finally they drive off in the other direction only to nearly get swallowed up themselves. No real explanation is given for why exactly dry soil is suddenly acting like quicksand but then no explanation is given for why John Schneider doesn't just immediately open up the sunroof and climb out. Oh, I forgot, if he did that then we wouldn't have had a commercial break cliffhanger and Kaley Cuoco wouldn't had the chance to overact badly while she clawed through the dirt like a madwoman.

Speaking of the commercial breaks, every time they went to commercial there was a 10.5 bumper that gave away a major plot point still to come as if NBC was terrified you'd finally have enough and change the channel. Of course, if you didn't have enough and change the channel you now knew what was coming next so the element of surprise is now completely out the window.

And I know Friends was a hugely popular show but did they really have to put one of those overly solemn Friends finale commercials in every freakin' commercial break? They did this both nights. It's a good thing I never cared for the show to begin with otherwise these constant commercial reminders would have really made me hate it. News Flash: The end of Friends is not a national tragedy! Flags were not flown at half mass and Congress will not declare May 6th a national day of mourning!

Getting back to 10.5, let's not forget the important plot point about the daughter having really bad asthma and how when they lost the truck the daughter also lost her asthma medicine. This fact is played up as a big deal for a few moments and then never comes into play again. Yet another totally pointless aspect of a movie with no shortage of totally pointless aspects.

The finale of part one is the big San Francisco earthquake where the Golden Gate Bridge collapses and city hall virtually implodes. Nothing else in San Francisco appears to get damaged but everyone insists the 9.something earthquake decimated the city. Well, if they say so. Governor Mom, as Tom Shales called her, was at city hall holding a press conference assuring everyone that everything would be all right. Afterwards she went to use the ladies room just as the quake began causing the mirrors to explode. I think she's now guaranteed 28 years worth of bad luck because of that. The Mayor of San Francisco gets squished and her personal assistant 'til death Rachel gives her life playing human shield for the Governor. This never would have happened with Schwarzenegger in power. He'd have walked out of the rubble unscathed, saved everyone including the people on the Golden Gate Bridge, and then gone and kicked the San Andreas Fault's ass for some payback.

Okay, now everyone finally decides to listen to Dr. Hill. So a series of hidden fault lines are affecting the unhidden fault lines and are causing a chain reaction that will eventually cause an earthquake so massive it will change the geography of that West Coast. What do you do? How do you stop it? If you answered "nuke'em" then give yourself a cookie. Her solution is to set off a series of underground nuclear blasts that will cause the fault lines to melt together or something like that thus preventing them from separating or something like that? I don't know. But what matters is that Sam Hill knows and God bless that seismowhiz because she already knows exactly how many nukes are needed, where to set them, and how deep in the ground they need to be. I'm not a man of science but even I can smell the bullshit coming from this solution and my bullshit detector hasn't gone this off the charts haywire since I saw THE CORE.

GOD BLESS NUKES!

Despite the absurdity of it all, the President authorizes the plan. This is why we need more Beau Bridges' in the White House and fewer Martin Sheen's. You think President Bartlett would have the stones to use nukes as geological welding devices?

This concludes part one. Truth be told, even though most of the soap opera crap happened in part one it still managed to be more eventful than part two. Sam and The Beard continue to enact the wacky nuclear fault-smelting plan. The head of FEMA actually goes out into the field to oversee the placement of the nukes. The President orders the evacuation of the West Coast but it becomes obvious they can't get everyone out in time. How much time they have is unknown but I'm guessing an hour and forty-five minutes because you know they're going to save "the big one" for the very end of the movie. And everyone else gathers at the massive tent city in Barstow, California, which makes virtually no sense. It's like finding out the New Orleans is going to fall into the ocean so everyone gets evacuated to Slidell. You're just moving people slightly out of harm's way but not completely.

All of our supporting characters are now in Barstow where young Dr. Zack Nolan continues to operate on people in the makeshift hospital. I've neglected to mention that Zach Nolan is to surgical procedures what Sam Hill is to seismology. What takes some surgeon four hours he can do in 30 minutes and if you don't believe it don't worry because he'll eventually tell you this himself. What's that? Need a heart transplant that takes at least 10 hours of surgery? Bring in Dr. Zack Nolan and he'll have your new heart in place in 30 minutes or your next heart is free!

Again, everyone eventually finds himself or herself in Barstow, except for Governor Mom who was rescued from the rubble and flown to a hospital in Carson City, Nevada. Don't worry, she gets to talk to her ex-husband and daughter on the telephone where, well, they don't really resolve anything other than being happy they are all still alive.

Finally, after three and a half hours of idiocy the movie finally reaches its apex of lunacy. The final nuke is being lowered into the ground when suddenly another earthquake begins. Not a major earthquake but a minor one, but still strong enough to cause the nuclear bomb to break free as it was being lowered into the hole. The nuke is at the wrong depth and even worse the cable that allows Sam Hill to detonate them, yes, the President has ordered that Dr. Hill be given the job of actually setting off the nukes, has been severed meaning someone is going to have to sacrifice their life by going down and manually switching control of the bomb to Sam Hill. Without blinking an eye, Fred Ward decides he's ready to get the hell out of this movie and volunteers himself. So Tom Nolan gets to reenact Bruce Willis' final moments from ARMAGEDDON only he's sacrificing his life to make sure someone well out of harm's way can remote control the thing. Good grief!

But low and behold even this can't go off without a hitch. Another earthquake and Nolan finds himself down in the hole pinned underneath the nuke, just one button away from activating it. Normally this is the kind of thing that would be more than enough to kill a mere mortal instantly but this is Remo Williams we're talking about and he's not going to disgrace the house of Shinanju by letting a 50+ ton piece of steel landing on his chest kill him. Chiun taught him well and not only does it not kill him instantly, he even gets to talk to his son on the phone and patch things up just before the big one hits. As the final earthquake begins, Sam is left with no choice but to begin detonating the nukes even though the plan may not work because the last one is at the wrong depth and they can't activate it but Tom "Pull That Miracle Out Your Ass" Nolan manages to press the final button so she can set off the nuke. Suddenly the rapidly rising Richter scale begins lowering all the way back down to zero. President Beau Bridges sheds a tear for his heroic dead friend and makes an annoying basketball analogy. He and Nolan really over did the sports analogies.

But it's not over! Sam begins deducing bad things from her computer monitor and so she and The Beard hop into a helicopter to the San Andreas Fault where they find a river running backwards. Actually, there's a massive whirlpool where the river is draining into the fault. That last nuke wasn't deep enough and so the plan was not a complete success and now there's still going to be a cataclysmic earthquake any moment now so screw you, Tom Nolan, you died for jack squat!

THE PLOT HOLES ARE SO HUGE THE FILM LITERALLY IMPLODES!

Sam and The Beard realize there's nothing more than they can do so they head for Barstow. I don't know about you but I'd have stayed in the helicopter. Seems like up in the air would be a lot safer than on the ground at this point. Cue the 10.5 quake. We see a few buildings crumble and the Hollywood sign tumbles and then its back to Barstow where the real action is. Everyone there begins running around like madmen while the shaky cam goes into hyper overdrive.

I do believe 10.5 marks the most overuse of the shaky cam technique ever used in a single movie. I know earthquakes cause everything to shake but I found it hilarious that the violent shaking of the camera was not equaled by the events on screen. This thing is shaking so hard there's no way you could possibly get your bearings yet characters are still able to run all over the place and type on a computer with little difficulty. Hell, even when the big one starts tearing things up at the end Zack and the other surgeons continue performing surgery. You'd think the violent shaking of the earth below them would make that job impossible? In one scene soldiers are shown falling out of their vehicles due to a quake but even that is laughably executed. Apparently military trucks are tricked out with side ejector seats.

Things collapse and people fall down while flailing their arms about. The President watches via satellite as Southern California begins to breakaway from the mainland. The ocean comes roaring in. People in Barstow continue to run around like madmen flailing their arms about as things collapse. Then suddenly the director tries to get serious by ditching the sound and replacing the score with a solemn choir while all the madmen run around flailing their arms in slow motion. This attempt at drama fails miserably. Seconds later everything goes back to being full speed chaos. The President continues to watch in horror. A massive crevice splits Barstow open and water comes rushing through it. People run some more and the ocean begins to overtake the land and then, poof, it's over.

AND THANK GOD SOMEONE RESCUED MAYIM BIALIK!

Everyone looks at the new scenic Barstow, California beach where across the way lays the new island of Southern California. In the end, the big 10.5 quake didn't annihilate the West Coast, it just moved Los Angeles offshore and can anyone honestly say we wouldn't all be better off that way? Beau Bridges' voiceover prattles on with some inane speech about man realizing he is not the master of his domain as the camera pulls back into orbit revealing the new West Coast topography. His final words make no sense because if the last nuke hadn't been knocked out of place we would have defeated the earthquake. The end and not a moment too soon.

So now that Los Angeles is an island off the California coast does that mean that 10.5 was actually a prequel to JOHN CARPENTER'S ESCAPE FROM L.A.?

Now I did promise that I'd explain why Beau Bridges deserves an Emmy for his performance in this movie. I'll tell you why. Because they need to create a brand new Emmy category for Best Staring In A Miniseries just to give it to Beau Bridges for his work in 10.5. Most of his scenes as President of the United States consists of him standing in the oval office and staring, staring into space, staring a TV screens, staring at computer monitors, staring into nothing as he talks to someone by speakerphone, and staring at others when they give him the latest bad news. By God, the man makes staring into an artform. Most actors wouldn't even attempt this level of staring but Beau Bridges does and it's a thing of beauty. This man can stare just about any emotion, but sadness, horror, and shock are his bread and butter. I want to conclude this article with a special tribute to the incredible staring prowess of 10.5's Beau Bridges. Behold!

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE DANTE'S PEAK