Return of the Killer Shrews (film): Not "so bad it's good," it's just bad

So the last 2 movies I watched inspired me to seek out bad films in the hopes that they would fall into the "so bad it's good" category and this one looked like it would really fit the bill. Unfortunately, this one was made to be intentionally bad and therefore doesn't really fall into the charm that unintentionally bad films do. I can't say for sure but perhaps this was inspired by other bad films such as "Sharknado" and other such things.

The thing about this film is that most of the people in the movie actually CAN act, the script is just intentionally bad as is the CGI and basically overall story.


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I likely would have left this one alone but then I saw the name John Schneider in the cast and I remember this name from Dukes of Hazzard as well as Smallville. He isn't A-list by any means but he does have some clout. I can tell by the way that he acts in this film that he is completely taking the piss as is everyone else in the cast. It seems as though they had a budget of like a couple million and then went out to some island for a weekend and filmed all of this. They make fun of their own production as it is going on as this movies is about making a movie on an island and then the director will say like "we'll fix it in post.. we'll put up a green screen and fake the background and call it a day" and then the proceed to do exactly that in this movie.

The CGI on the actual shrews is extremely bad and I don't think they even tried to make it realistic.


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They also throw in 80's tropes like a douchbag rich guy that is traveling with a woman well out of his league who has about 4 brain cells left and for about the first 2 minutes this is funny. Then you actually are just kind of excited for them to both get killed. They hint at the possibility that she is going to take her top off at some point when she says "should we get busy?" in their tent but then when the shot comes back in she is just throwing money around the tent while making sexy sounds.


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I think this movie could have been better if they had taken the small budget that they had and actually tried to make this scary and serious but instead they intentionally made it a comedy and at least for me that was precisely why it wasn't funny... or scary.

I suppose it was fun to see John having some fun making something and I am guessing that he has just given up on being famous anymore and is just enjoying life. Lord knows he couldn't have possibly made very much money on this so he probably just did it for the hell of it.


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The entire film is shot on one set with some establishing shots on a boat that are done in such a shaking manner that they had to have done it that way intentionally, a toddler could have held that camera more stable than whoever was doing so.

Should I watch it?

I honestly wish I could suggest that you do but I fell asleep while it was on and had a dream that was far better than the movie was. I get that it is a specific type of film but seeing as how I am a fan of bad movies I still don't like them to be intentionally bad. This attempt at horror and comedy managed to accomplish neither and I'm afraid that it is just boring.

I suppose the only reason that you really need to at least watch a little bit of it is because it reunites the characters Bo Duke, Roscoe P Coltrane, and Cletus from Dukes of Hazzard. If those names don't mean anything to you then there is really no reason to even bother with this one at all.


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5 comments
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I am enjoying myself and laughing as well on those thoughts of yours about the movie, but can a toddler, really hold the camera than who was holding it?
Maybe, they were doing a frestyle kind of movie.

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well i was speaking in exaggeration of course about a kid with the camera. I think they were just having some fun making this very cheap movie look even cheaper than it actually was.

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You ae certainly mastering the art of finding the crap lol. It used to be easy by just popping into Blockbuster seeing what films never hit the theatres and went straight to video.

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yeah those were the days. I used to have a lot of fun scouring the horror section of Blockbuster and normally most of what was in there never went to cinemas or if they did it was a very limited release. Most of the 80's horror movies were really bad but some of them were quite fun because of how terrible they were. I think the horror genre is likely one of the toughest ones to turn a profit in because if you make it truly scary it is going to end up with an R rating and therefore they are limiting a lot of their potential audience. On the other side though if they tame it down to the point of achieiving PG-13 then it probably isn't going to be scary enough for adults to really enjoy it.

These days if films aren't rated R I normally presume it isn't going to be very entertaining kind of like they did with Borderlands when they made it bloodless despite the fact that thousands of people are dying in it. It doesn't make sense.