Shakma

[00:00:00] Welcome to Movie Oubliette, the film review podcast for movies that most people have mercifully forgotten. I'm Dan and I'm Conrad, and in each episode we drag a forsaken film out of the Oubliette. Discuss it and judge it to decide whether it should be set free

[00:00:22] or whether it should be thrown back and consigned to oblivion forever. Movie Oubliette, movie Oubliette, movie review the film others tend to forget come with us and we'll run up the movie Oubliette. Hello listeners welcome to Movie Oubliette episode 143, the globe expanding inter-connecting podcast with me Dan

[00:00:50] chowing down on homegrown produce down here in Melbourne, Australia And me, Conrad, having a go at subscription recipe boxes in Cambridge UK. Yes, oh. In this podcast we discuss genre, cinema, horror, sci-fi and fantasy because why not

[00:01:07] spice up a live action role playing game with rabid monkey murder? Hello Conrad. It's my favourite. Hello Dan, how are you doing? Good, good. It's hot. It's been 32 degrees today, centigrade. Celsius I guess. And tomorrow it's going to be 38 degrees Celsius which for those Americans out there

[00:01:32] that's 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It's going to be hot. It's going to be hot. So how are you keeping your home produce properly watered in such conditions? Well, some things don't make it but yeah.

[00:01:49] We've got a few sort of covers and they do normally bounce back because it's only one hot day so I think it'll be all right. If you have a series of hot days, I think everything just dies but luckily just one.

[00:02:03] But we have had like a good yield of veggies this year. We've had lots of tomatoes, lots of zucchinis, like a lot. Like I think we counted maybe 10 or 11? No, I don't know. A lot of zucchinis and they're big.

[00:02:19] They're like this long, like a foot long or maybe even longer, a foot and a half long. Okay. Yeah. And they just seem to appear just overnight. Where they come from but yeah we've been eating a lot of zucchinis which tastes. Okay that's a courgette.

[00:02:36] That's what I would call a courgette. Yes. Okay, I was just checking. Ah yes, a courgette. We do call them courgettes as well but yeah normally zucchinis. I love a courgette. Yeah, so I've been learning all about making things through recipe boxes which I know is cheating.

[00:02:54] I've never tried it before but there are so many now and I thought hey this would be a fun way to spice up my evening meal because so often I'm cooking the same thing over and over again every week. Okay, yeah.

[00:03:06] Yeah we tried it out for a while. I think we worked out that it was just a little bit more expensive so we ended up just doing it ourselves but it is a good way to explore different meals or foods that you would not normally cook.

[00:03:22] Yeah exactly, so what I'm thinking is I'll make a note of all of these recipes as I go because I can buy the ingredients myself and do it later.

[00:03:31] So yeah I've been doing all sorts of things like pad Thai noodles, all sorts of stuff I've never done before. Yeah, wow. That's great, that's great. I also find it is handy. We are not sponsored by any of these boxes by the way.

[00:03:44] No, we're not but we are open to it so you know hello fresh if you're out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get in touch. I mean what I do like about them is like it's the exact amount of ingredient

[00:03:56] so you're not having to buy a bag of whatever that you just not going to use because it's only for one meal. So it is handy like that. It is, yeah just a little bag of sushi rice, one spring onion. Yeah, yeah. Your sort is great.

[00:04:13] Oh that's great. So anything in the mail bag today Conrad? Yes our listeners are still talking amongst themselves about the postman and its qualities and value. Yes. Our good listener Chazilla said I always thought the postman was an early draft of the Waterworld script adapted to dry land.

[00:04:36] Oh yeah, well I'm here very similar. It is, yeah both films are a post apocalyptic, Costner is the loner, ends up in a war he wants no part of and villagers are concerned with his seed. Yeah, they're good sperm, yeah.

[00:04:52] Overall I liked it but it was just too long. Feels like they should have left about 45 minutes on the editing room floor. Easily. Yeah, yeah. Or do what June did and just split it into two movies. That one's got time.

[00:05:08] I do like the discovery that Zoe made which was that there's an expedited edition of the postman. It's lovely, it's great. Ah fan edits. And finally of course we heard from Serge of Cold Crash Pictures. Hello Serge. Hello Serge.

[00:05:24] The postman is the kind of film I can defend but not really fight for. It's too long and it picks one of the more unremarkable characters for its lead but it's not like it's the worst film ever made.

[00:05:37] You could do a lot worse than valorizing the post office over the military. Yeah, that's true, that's true. Before we finish Mel back I did have a nice message on TikTok from someone called Neon Memories. I was talking about high fantasy movies or something and he said

[00:05:55] he just listened to the sword and sorcery episode yesterday. I love that movie listening to the space camp episode now. It's definitely a childhood favorite and yours theme song is stuck in my head. It's very catchy. I know we do reel them in with the theme song.

[00:06:15] Yeah, the theme song keeps it in, just implants it in their brains forever. Maybe you should just do a TikTok of the theme song. Maybe that will take off and there'll be kids dancing to it because they can't dance to Taylor Swift anymore, can they? Right, yeah.

[00:06:32] They've taken it all off. Yes. Fun times. So yeah, please do get in touch we love hearing from you. So I guess we should reveal the movie that we're doing today Conrad. What is it? Yes, I'll just pad on over to the Ubliette and find out.

[00:06:52] Oh, I seem to be in lots of corridors. Yeah, they're identical aren't they? Yeah, all beige are kind of lost and oh dear. What's that screaming? I don't know something behind that door is very angry. I'm not opening it. Oh, here's the movie. I'm coming back. Okay.

[00:07:11] Hey, I'm the gay master. Rack on red, what do you have today? Well, today I have a film that was picked for us by our patrons. Oh, yes. It is Shackma, the 1990 American natural horror film directed by Tom Logan and Hugh Parks, written

[00:07:29] by Roger Engel and starring Christopher Atkins, Amanda Wiss, Tina of An Unrecognisable Street fame, Ari Meyers and Roddy McDowell, he of the Planet of the Apes series. Yes. Amazing. And this was chosen for us by our long-term listener, Nick. Yeah, well thanks for the choice.

[00:07:51] So what happens in this movie? Well, Dan, welcome to Addison Polytechnic Medical College where Professor Sorensen divides his time between injecting baboons with mood-altering drugs and trapping his students in the building at night with the fire alarm switched off to play the world's

[00:08:10] first live action role play of Donkey Kong. Okay. Complete with a princess at the top level. When one of the students, Sam, fails to euthanize a baboon that's been driven to a homicidal rage by Sorensen's experiments, it gets loose and starts to pick off the unwitting

[00:08:34] lapers one by one. Sam becomes obsessed with moving dead bodies around. His girlfriend Tracy sets off flash bulbs while their friends alternate between walking slowly around the same two corridors in the dark and holding doors closed whilst the savage Shackma bangs on the other side.

[00:08:56] Will Kim, a student's younger sister, manage to raise the alarm by throwing spoons out of the window? Will anyone show any kind of reaction to discovering a mangled body on the floor? And will Sam survive his climactic head-to-head battle with a red-ass monkey with a crimped perm?

[00:09:18] Find out after the break. Wow, that's a lot to unpack, isn't it? Isn't it just? Back soon. And we are back to talk about Shackma, the 1990 American natural horror film with a mad monkey on the loose.

[00:09:49] And I believe Dan, this is something neither of us has seen before. Yes, yes, so this is a... Double blind. Yeah, no, I never heard of this movie. I have stumbled upon this movie through 2B though. It is on the 2B catalog.

[00:10:10] But I had not seen it before this episode of the podcast. No, me neither. And I'd never even heard of it. And it seems like it's a fairly low-budget affair. It's marked out as being $1.5 million, although I notice when somebody reports that to the director

[00:10:30] or one of the directors, Tom Logan, on the director's commentary, he laughs rather knowingly and says maybe that includes the marketing. Right. So I think perhaps it wasn't quite $1.5 million.

[00:10:44] It only had a limited theatrical release in the US on the 5th of October, so sort of Halloween season. It did not chart. There aren't any records of it grossing any box office. Right. For reference, what was topping the US box office for that week?

[00:10:59] It was number one, marked for death the Stephen Seagal actioner. Okay. Yeah. Number two was Disney's re-release of Fantasia. Oh, wow. And number three, Pacific Heights, Michael Keaton as the tenant from hell that whole. Okay. You know, white middle-class people in Danger series of thrillers. Yeah. Right.

[00:11:22] It didn't place in that fabulous lineup and was kind of shuffled straight onto video. And I get the sense that Quest, the company that produced this, was kind of one of those studios that sprung up during the director video craze. Right. Right. Yeah.

[00:11:39] I mean, when you look at the cast alone, the only person I recognise is Roddy McDowell and I'm not sure how he got convinced into doing this movie. Yeah. Well, they only had him for five days out of their 20-day shoot.

[00:11:52] So they did it in four weeks and they had Roddy for five days. Okay. And it was entirely shot at Universal Studios in Florida. Oh, right. And they had four sets, two hallways and two rooms, which they were constantly redressing supposedly to make them look different.

[00:12:10] Do you think they succeeded Dan? They didn't look any different. They looked like identical corridors. Like they would go up a floor and it would look exactly the same. Exactly the same as the floor they had just been on.

[00:12:24] And so it felt like I didn't know where anyone was because everything looked exactly the same and all the doors look like they made out of cardboard because they're very flimsy. Yeah. Visually, the movie is quite dull. I know that they did their best.

[00:12:42] The cinematographer is a guy called Andrew Bieber. There's a lot of use of shadow and coloured lights. There's a lot of blue for nighttime as was the craze back in those days.

[00:12:54] But a lot of it is just two people shot flat against a wall in a single take, which is probably a hallmark of them being on a 20 day shoot filming very complex scenes with an animal.

[00:13:08] I'd call it televisual, but I think even in the 90s, like the X-Files, television was a lot more interesting than this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't think it's visually a very compelling movie. Yeah.

[00:13:24] I mean, I guess just setting wise, they didn't have a lot to work with. So I don't know. But yeah, there's a lot of problems with this movie with how it just didn't quite work. And I'm sorry, Nick, if this is a beloved movie,

[00:13:40] but there are a few things that could have been done better. So repetition is one thing this movie suffers from, because it seems to be the same thing happening again and again. Yeah, and it's 100 minutes.

[00:13:56] And I really feel like this kind of should have been a 80 minutes and out or a movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like how you already mentioned the repetition with characters running away from the monkey or from the baboon, sorry, closing the door.

[00:14:13] The baboon just screeching very irritatingly loud and banging on the door incessantly. And then it goes away and then they go to another door and then open it and the baboon chases them again. And then you just repeat that ad infinitum for 90 minutes, I guess.

[00:14:35] It just felt very, very repetitive. And as well as what you mentioned with Sam, just constantly moving dead bodies around. Yes. But no reason. Why does our main character want to move dead bodies around? This is Christopher Atkins. We've bumped into him slightly before mentioning his debut,

[00:14:58] the blue lagoon directed by Randall Cleiser, the director of Flight of the Navigator. Right, yes. I have not seen the infamous blue lagoon. No, me neither, but he's not wearing much in it for most of the movie. So he is your blonde, all-American hero, medical student

[00:15:16] with his girlfriend Amanda Wiss playing Tracy. And so they're kind of your central characters, but he seems to be just fixated on rescuing bodies and moving them from one place to another. I mean, initially you could think it's quite heroic of him

[00:15:35] because he's trying to find people who might still be alive. But the guy that splashed hydrochloric acid in his face and it's half melted, I mean, he is clearly dead. Yeah. But we're still mounting a rescue operation in which he even sets Tracy up as bait

[00:15:53] to distract the baboon while he rescues this dead body and moves it around from one corridor to another and I don't know what he's doing. I think they do check the pulse of that character as well. It's like, he is clearly dead. His face is not there.

[00:16:09] He is, that's a dead piece. Dead, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the characters as well, just the main lead, not very likable. He's not very heroic for one thing. He seems to just run off and leaves his girlfriend behind.

[00:16:26] And most of the characters are kind of your slasher type characters. You know they're going to be killed off because they're not that likable. But I guess what I'm saying is, like, they kill off two characters that I didn't expect

[00:16:39] and it kind of felt like they were more likable than the main character. And then you're kind of stuck with the main character for the end in this weird predator situation, I guess. Yeah. I don't know. He doesn't do any of the resourceful stuff

[00:16:55] that he does in the last 20 minutes in any of the rest of the film. They don't talk about the weaknesses or strengths of Shakma as a baboon, like, you know, as a creature. Like you compare it to Jurassic Park and you've got how they're trying to get away

[00:17:10] from the raptors and they can't go through doors, but then they figure out, like there's none of that sort of conversation which would have made it much more interesting in terms of like, how are they going to survive the night? No, it's interesting you mentioned Jurassic Park

[00:17:23] so I made a couple of notes that, you know, I'm wondering whether Colin Trevorrow and Steven Spielberg saw this movie. Yeah, the last scene, right? Yeah, there is a scene that looks very much like the scene in the kitchen in Jurassic Park

[00:17:36] where they manage to fool Shakma with a mirror, with a reflection, so he ends up charging that rather than the actual people. And there's even a scene where Sam does the Chris Pratt hands. Oh yeah. You can control wild animals that you've formed a relationship with before

[00:17:55] but just by holding out your hands in front of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's some sort of effect. But you're right, there's nothing that gives you a sense of them as scientists understanding the psychology of this animal even under whatever sort of mind-altering situation that he's in now.

[00:18:13] Yeah. There's nothing about that at all. It's just... Run away through a door, close door, repeat. Yes, exactly. And there is one point where Tracy uses the flash bulb, the strobe bulb to disorientate Shakma, which kind of works but then it stops working

[00:18:33] and then that's kind of pointless. Also, you don't really see it strobing. Like I feel like they didn't get lights bright enough to show up on film and it just kind of doesn't work. I didn't think it worked at all. Wow, that's true.

[00:18:49] So I mean, that's the only thing that they kind of came up with to at least combat Shakma. Everything else is just running away through doors. I know it's bad form to jump to the end but spoilers, does Sam die? He does. Yeah.

[00:19:12] Yeah, I think he sees Game Over, I think. I mean, I guess that's the reference to the game, the live action RPG that they're playing. But the sort of dynamics of how characters died in this movie just felt very unsatisfying. So I mean, you wanted Tracy and Kim

[00:19:30] to survive but they kill his girlfriend and they killed the child, which was like very shocking. And then you're left with this character that you don't really like, that wasn't helpful throughout the entire movie. No, he wasn't and the one moment when he could have been

[00:19:47] was when he gets through to the 911 operator. He can finally raise the alarm which is the thing that they couldn't do because Roddy McDowell's character, the professor has done such a good job of making this building impenetrable and impossible for anybody to navigate or communicate out of

[00:20:06] because it's always switching lights off at the fuse box and disabling the fire alarm. Locking doors, yeah. I can't see how this college is okay with this activity. It's like a massive disaster just waiting to happen and completely uninsurable. But anyway, he gets through to 911

[00:20:25] and finally can speak to someone and raise the alarm. You know, there's dead people in here, I need help. No, he just suddenly starts whispering about how it's all his fault because he injected Chukma with the wrong thing when he was distracted and didn't kill it.

[00:20:41] And so he seems determined to kill Chukma himself for some reason. And there wasn't a sense of, see, train Chukma, right? Yes. But there wasn't any sense of Chukma recognizing him or there being some sort of like showdown with them knowing each other.

[00:21:00] Like I don't know, there's a lot of opportunities to explore things with Sam and Chukma's relationship. But they just never went there. No, it's only sort of briefly hinted out with the Chris Pratt hand scene. That's pretty much all you get. I mean, even the drug though,

[00:21:18] he injects him Chukma with the wrong drug but he intentionally did that. Yeah. I mean, why? Why did you do that? Well, he couldn't bring himself to euthanize him, could he? Yeah. So, but I thought he got distracted and made a mistake. Oh really?

[00:21:33] Or did he deliberately do it to keep him alive? Yeah. My impression of that scene was he deliberately did it, but like why would you do that? So I guess maybe it makes more sense that he just mistook the drug for a different drug. I'm not sure. Yeah.

[00:21:48] I think he did. That was a very ambiguous kind of scene. It was. I mean, the other thing that they don't really make great use of is this whole framing narrative of their lapping in this building. It's a live action role play. Yes.

[00:22:02] They are very careful not to name what the thing is because obviously they didn't have the rights to Dungeons and Dragons. Yes. Although I really enjoyed Roddy McDowell calling himself the Game Master. Yeah. Because the way that he says it,

[00:22:16] it sounds like he's saying that he's the Game Master, which... I thought it was marvelous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. There were lots of rumors about Roddy McDowell during his lifetime, but he was a product of the Hollywood studio system

[00:22:31] so he kept his private life as private as he possibly could. But Roddy McDowell with his headset on saying he's the Game Master was a source of much delight to me. But don't ever use that. There's no point at which anybody thinks when they discover a body

[00:22:47] or there's no point at which they think maybe this is part of the game and somebody's tagged out or something. Yeah. It just gets lost after the first death, really, the whole game mechanic. Yeah, because I set it up as being such an important part of the film.

[00:23:02] Like, it's a good 20 minutes in before you get the first sort of shuck-ma-kill. And it's just the game unfolding and people, you know, being confused when they come across blood everywhere or like doors are supposed to be open when they're not.

[00:23:18] For me who has never played D&D or just general RPG role-playing games anyway, I was very confused of the sort of mechanics of what they were even doing. Because, yeah, I guess because all the corridors looked exactly the same as well. Like, I didn't...

[00:23:37] Like the fact that they had to ask the Game Master whether they could go into rooms. Yeah. That confused me. Yeah. So what was that kind of more similar to like like video games back then where you had to get the red key to go through

[00:23:53] like the red door and the green key kind of, I don't know, like that was confusing. No, I think you're right. It's something like that. They had to sort of solve riddles. It was a combination of like a treasure hunt and like a role-playing game.

[00:24:07] And I thought all of these mechanics are going to come up again. Yeah. Somebody's gonna be desperately trying to get the Game Master to open a door because they're being attacked by a crazy baboon and they can't or something. But no, that never happens.

[00:24:22] There's a whole lot of business at the beginning about tracking people with these transmitters. That's true, yes. And I thought, well, okay. It doesn't come up. This is going to turn into a scene. They're going to use this to track the baboon

[00:24:34] or you're going to see them tracking people around the building and trying to rescue. No, never comes up again. Yeah, it doesn't. There's a lot of setup of things for a 100-minute movie. There's a lot of setup of things that just do not pay off

[00:24:49] and a lot of opportunities for sort of tying ideas and themes together that don't pay off. And it's still a hundred minutes of people wandering around and teasing spoons out of windows. Yeah, I'll read that scene. That's great. Yeah, I'll talk about it in the movie, please.

[00:25:09] But yeah, there's a lot of scenes that come out of nowhere and they're just like, why would anyone do that? That's my impression of a lot of the scenes. Yeah. And how many times do you need to see an object

[00:25:24] sort of fly past somebody's window in a car without them noticing it? Yeah. It just goes on and on and it's not like it's a near miss or it hits and maybe it's going to work, but it doesn't. No, she just drives off. It just amounts to nothing.

[00:25:43] Yeah, another thing I wanted to talk about was, I mean, it is a horror. So you expect some good sort of gory effects and blood and stuff. And there are a couple, like the first two deaths I think were pretty good, especially the face melt.

[00:25:59] But then all the other ones, just nothing. Like it's just a body slumped over. It could be anyone just like pour some blood on the floor kind of thing. Yeah. And you never see any of the kills, I don't think, or maybe one. Yeah.

[00:26:13] And so there's not that sort of satisfying, oh yeah, we get to see people mauled by a baboon that you want to see in a kind of schlocky, like B grade horror film, but you just never get that. It's always just like, oh, we discovered another body.

[00:26:26] Here we go. Yeah. And then Sam carries it across the corridor again. It just didn't have the same satisfaction that you want out of a kind of silly horror movie. No scares really, ever. No. Just a lot of screeching. A lot of screeching. Yeah.

[00:26:42] I mean, there are a lot of fake scares which really started to take me off. There's a cat, there's a rat, there's Tracy backing into a skeleton. There's the person with mask on jumps out at some point. There's a lot of fake outs and you know,

[00:27:00] on the fifth one I was kind of, could you do some real ones maybe? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did feel like they relied on the score quite a lot for the scares. Like often they just weren't framed right. Like that's not how you frame a jumpscare.

[00:27:17] That's not how you edit it. But they just still threw in the big loud, you know, orchestral head or whatever. But it just didn't make any sense with what you were looking at. But the music, I don't know. It sounded cheap. It sounded like, you know, TV music.

[00:27:31] Like it sounded like someone had a synthesizer with strings, the string setting and just played all the chords. Yeah. It sounds very much like the midi keyboards of the time, Cork and One. It sounds very much like that kind of school. The composer is David C. Williams

[00:27:49] or David Williams. He's often credited as now. He did movies like The Prophecy, which I quite like. The Angel movie with Christopher Walken in 95. Phantom's with Ben Affleck in 98. And Supernova, the sci-fi in 2000. So he's done a few sort of on the fringes interesting culty movies.

[00:28:10] I did note as well that he's done a lot of sequels. So like he did Prophecy too. Also Wishmaster 2, Children of the Corn, The Gathering, which is the fourth one. Critters 3. So yeah, I don't know. Like he has some done some good things,

[00:28:27] but it's not so good things. No. And I don't think he has much to work with here. It's pretty noodling sort of synthy stringy voicey stuff. Yeah. It almost sounds quite fillery as well. Like there's not real, there's a few themes in there, but it's not strongly themed.

[00:28:46] I did like the opening credits though, the music for that. It felt like, oh, what are we going to get into kind of thing? And that opening scene was well done. Like it looked like, wow, there's a brain injecting the brain.

[00:28:59] But then yeah, the rest of the movie. Not quite the same production. No. I mean also going back to the cast, like why is Kim there? So she's the younger sister of one of the other students that wasn't invited. Why is she invited? I don't really understand that.

[00:29:20] No, well that's why I made the gag about it being like Donkey Kong, because she's like the princess at the top that they're all going to rescue. And she's set up as a character that's interested in, she has a crush on Sam. Yeah. Who already has a girlfriend

[00:29:35] who's age-appropriate in Tracy. So yeah, I think that's her whole character and her surprise for him. She's got a sort of slightly revealing outfit that she's wearing as her character that she hopes to... Oh, super uncomfortable. Yeah, and then she dies. Yeah, and then she dies.

[00:29:52] It's quite similar to the scene in The Postman with his daughter trying to make moves on Kevin Costa. I don't know. That's so strange. Fortunately, Sam does not seem to be interested in her in the slightest. No, he's not. Like a friend or an older brother type situation.

[00:30:10] So that's fine. Now it's time for Random Trivia! Okay Conrad, what have you got for a surgically removed from a Beboun's brain today? So the lovely walls of this esteemed college they're all beige and they're stippled, which Tom Logan wanted to do

[00:30:32] to sort of give it a bit of texture, a bit of visual interest. Yeah, doesn't work. The way that they did it was to mix oatmeal with the paint when they were painting it. Oh wow, okay. Turned out this was a fatal mistake because Typhoon kept eating it.

[00:30:50] Oh my God! So they'd have to pause filming because Typhoon was like licking the wall. The Beboun's eating the wall again. So Typhoon was literally eating the sets. Wow, wow. That is ridiculous. Wow, there you go. That's our trivia. All right, so it's Chakma.

[00:31:22] What did you think of the Beboun as a, you know, rabid creature? Well, yes. Typhoon is the name of the Beboun in this movie. He's quite a famous Beboun. I don't think he's with us anymore, sadly. He worked on The Fly with Jeff Goldblum.

[00:31:41] Yeah, the Bebouns that are tested on in that movie that jump into Jeff Goldblum's manly arms. And apparently very dangerous animal. The director talked about they had to do like a chemistry test with him and the Beboun before they started filming. So slowly introduce him to Typhoon

[00:32:01] just to see whether he's the sort of human being that for some reason he just hates. Most of the time, the cast were not ever in the same room as The Beboun. All shots of him attacking people, either him play fighting with his trainer in a wig

[00:32:16] or beating on a dummy. Or he was attacking doors when they put somebody behind the door that he just did not like. So all of those scenes of him hammering on doors are him desperately trying to get to somebody that that Beboun just fucking hates.

[00:32:33] And wants to kill. So supposedly a very scary creature. I have to say, on screen, I just don't find him that scary. He's not that big. He's got a big red shiny ass and he's got this big mane of crimped fluffy hair.

[00:32:51] When he was in The Fly with Jeff Goldblum I thought he was kind of cute. So trying to set him up as this terrifying rabid monster, it didn't work for me. Did it work for you? No, no. The size just didn't work.

[00:33:08] And they could have leaned into humorous. They could have been like, yeah, this is like a rabid ridiculous thing and had like over the top gore effects and like obviously a puppet or whatever. They could have done that. Like some, you know, brain dead type sort of right.

[00:33:26] They didn't. They did it. It's very serious. And so you just, I couldn't take him serious. He did look very cute. He kind of reminded me of Rafiki from The Lion King. Right. Different Beboun. I think that's a mandrel. And this is a different type of Beboun.

[00:33:45] But anyway, yeah, he wasn't scary. They didn't dress him up at all. They didn't slap a whole bunch of fake blood on him. A few scenes with blood kind of dripping from his mouth, but not really. They could have made him, you know, like Kujo.

[00:34:00] That's sort of like really terrifying. Just put some crap all over him. Make him look a bit dirtier. He just looked very maintained. So it wasn't scary. No, I mean good for the animal because they're obviously treating him well. I know that the director talked about

[00:34:19] making sure that the American Humane Association that monitors filming of animals was there videoing every single scene that Typhoon was acting in to make sure that it was clearly recorded how well they'd followed all of the rules and treated him well and protected him and the cast.

[00:34:39] So yeah, they didn't take Typhoon in blood and frothy egg white around his mouth or anything. I mean, they use puppets sometimes. There's one really good shot where the camera is low to the ground and you've got Shuckma's jaws sort of looming

[00:34:54] over the top of the frame with blood dripping. Right, was that a puppet? That's a puppet. That's good. Yeah. That was the only kind of legitimately scary scene I found. Yes. And there's one scene I'll talk about at the Mubli Awards that I thought was very effective

[00:35:10] and reminded me a lot of Nope, the Jordan Peele movie. Ah, right, right, right. So yeah, there's a couple of moments where it's like, oh, okay, this is actually working, but for the most part, it's just banging on doors again and noise.

[00:35:26] You know, there are a couple of shots too where they've got him running directly towards the camera and leaping at the lens where the director and the camera operator sort of terrified behind a piece of perspex. So I mean, there's a few bits that are quite good,

[00:35:41] but generally, no. I mean, it's a wild edible. I don't think baboons are very trainable. So they kind of had to just use what they could get in terms of shots. So I mean, it's challenging. They had the challenge to set off with,

[00:35:59] but yeah, it just didn't work. I don't know. Maybe they could have used more animatronics, more puppetry, but yeah, it just felt very repetitive and just not scary. No, in the same way that most of the kill scenes happen offscreen and you just see the results

[00:36:16] and the effects on the results are good. Yeah. But yeah, most of it happens offscreen. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm sorry, Nick. I'm really sorry. Yeah. Hello. It's a special time of the pod, the Moobly Awards where we nominate our favorite screaming door bashing parts of the film

[00:36:46] in the number of Game Master curated categories. Yes. I love that Game Master. Yeah. Best quote. The only quote I noted that I thought was quite funny came from Tracy and it was as Sam was caressing her and she says,

[00:37:05] I'm glad to see you have such a firm grasp of the rules. Yeah, okay, okay. Yeah, I do agree. Quotes weren't great, but there is one that I found funny. So it's during the sort of predator slash home alone booby trap sort of last final act with Sam.

[00:37:28] He's trying to figure out how to get back at Shackmar and then he just comes to his realization and he just kind of whispers, no, you come to me. And he's got so much conviction and it was just hilarious. I don't know. I found that incredibly funny. Yes.

[00:37:45] Best hair or costume? My favorite costume has to go to Kim as the princess in her surprise outfit here. Woo Sam. It has a midriff revealing embroidered flowery. I think it's called a Bollaro jacket. Oh, right. Yeah. And her diaphanous skirt revealing her legs

[00:38:08] and these massive pink plastic hoop earrings. Yeah. She looks quite the picture. Yeah, it's floral everywhere. She's even wearing like a garland of flowers. Most 90s moment. Yeah, so most 90s is Kim. They're just the character of Kim in all the outfits that she wears.

[00:38:31] They're the most 90s for me. For me it was the font review, REVUE, for a sci-fi or horror films opening credits. Oh, right. Yeah. Very typical of the 90s. Originally designed by British photographer and font designer Colin Brignal in 1969 for the Letraset Dry Transfer Lettering Company.

[00:38:56] Do you remember those little plastic sheets that we dropped the letters off one by one? Yeah. So he designed REVUE for that. Right. And it was also famously used for the poster for The Room in 2003. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Font nerd. Yeah, well, yes you were.

[00:39:18] Favourite scene! My favourite scene is probably what I think I found the most shocking and horrifying part of the movie, which was Tracy's death. Mmm. You saw a shot of the baboon getting underneath the stall of the toilet cubicle that she's in

[00:39:34] and she is trying to get to an air vent to escape. Yeah. And you just see her being dragged out of shot and you hear but do not see a savage attack on her. And then it's silent. The shot just holds on that for a second.

[00:39:51] And then suddenly she emerges again, looking weak, trying to get back up to the air vent again and she's not saying anything or screaming and she just gets dragged out of shot again. And it's like, oh my god, that's actually really quite disturbing. Yeah.

[00:40:09] And it reminded me so much of Jordan Peele's Nope where there is a... Oh, well the chimpanzee. The chimpanzee attack in that which is just sort of you know, not sort of exploitative and melodramatic. It's just sort of weirdly functional and perfunctious. It's like, I don't know,

[00:40:28] savage in an unpredictable and disturbing way. And yeah, I found that scene really effective. Yeah, yeah, it definitely was. It was, yeah, a terrifying scene and quite heart-frenching as well because I just did not expect the girlfriend to die. No. Like that's not what you do. No. No.

[00:40:49] This type of movie. The girlfriend and the child must live normally. Yes. But not in this movie. No. Most cliche moment. Oh, well I spotted one of your favourite cliches, Dan. Oh yes. Early on when Shuckma first has his freak out and starts attacking people,

[00:41:08] Tracy throws a weapon to Sam. Oh yes, of course, because the woman can't save the day. And Sam has to hand the weapon to the hero. Yes, well done for participating, Tracy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good pick. I mean, the movie does have a lot of cliches.

[00:41:29] We already mentioned all the poorly set up jump scares, just so many of them. But the fake scare with the mouse was just... Like why is that there? Like it felt like they're building up. It was like a big climax A mouse? What is this?

[00:41:47] I know, it was very disappointing. And then they use the mouse as bait for the finale. Yeah, he does, doesn't he? Like the hero is not likeable at all. He's a horrible human being. Really? Best special effect. So the face melt. So I think it's the character Richard.

[00:42:09] Yeah, his face is melted. You could see it melting off. Like it's a pretty amazing effect. I don't know how they did it, but it's very gory as well. It is, yeah. It's really brutal. The only really, really gory effect. Yeah, it's disgusting. It's self-inflicted too,

[00:42:25] because he obviously had the asset to throw at Shakma, but didn't manage it somehow, which is a shame. Yeah, I don't know. That whole scene set up is quite ridiculous. Because he's like holding the door shut while trying to unscrew a lid to some acid

[00:42:46] and pour it into a glass. Like why not just use the bottle? Like, well, why do you have to pour it into another vessel? And then he opens it and then he's just walking around with this open glass of acid and then he wonders why,

[00:43:03] like ends up spilling all over himself when Shakma attacks him. I don't know. I thought the whole scene set up was bonkers. It was bonkers. I also love the fact that hydrochloric acid seems to give off

[00:43:15] like a foamy steam, like dry ice, which I don't think it does. Wow, how else are we supposed to know it's acid, Conrad? It has to fume a little bit. Yeah. Well, Shakma, I guess is the winner for sound.

[00:43:35] Like in terms of how many different animals did they use for his attacks? I did wonder. Yeah, big cats, I heard some sort of big cat. There's a lot of things that aren't baboons. Yes, no, I think so as well.

[00:43:52] I thought I heard a puma at one point. It sounded like any scary animal noise. Let's put it on there. Yeah, and often not even matching up with what you're looking at. Yeah, like he doesn't look angry in a lot of those shots. No. Yeah.

[00:44:12] My favorite, apart from the computer noises in general in that early scene with Bradley when he's setting up the illegal air tagging on Tracy. But there is this fabulous scene where, moment sorry in that scene where Bradley says that there's this sort of thing that picks up

[00:44:32] the signal from the tracker in every room or something like that and he gestures towards this sort of thing that's spinning like a big area in the corner. And there's this massive pulsating synth noise for it. It's like, wow, that must be really deafening

[00:44:47] and distracting in every room when you walk in. But it's gone as soon as they look away from it. So obviously it's the sort of noise that you only hear when you look at it. Yeah, that's true. And it's quite small, this weird antenna thing. Well, exactly.

[00:45:01] That's why I thought, wow, if it's emitting that kind of noise I'd be backing away from it gently. So surely it's going to either explode or cause cancer or both. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. Most funniest moment. For me by far and yet another thing

[00:45:17] that undermined Shackma's terrifying presence on screen was any of the shots in which fake puppet hands of Shackma were being prodded into door cracks or the gaps between slats in the furniture and things. And these fake hands prodding around. Yeah.

[00:45:36] It's kind of like the legend of Hell House where there were those cat paws underneath the bathroom door. Oh, yes, that's true. This is something about small fake paws prodding under things that just make me giggle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It threw me out of the movie a bit.

[00:45:52] You can definitely tell every time when they weren't the baboons' hands. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Funniest moment for me. We have already mentioned it, but it's the ridiculous scene with them trying to get the attention of Richard's girlfriend who's parked outside and they, yeah, first throw spoons.

[00:46:14] No, no, is it forks? They throw forks out these little slat vents in the window and then Kim finds the amulets that were for the game. Yeah. So she's like pushing these little marbles out the window. I know. What I really wanted as she drove away

[00:46:35] was like an exterior shot of a car with just this massive pile of cutlery and marbles in the middle of the road because it must have been there, but no. And that's our booblies. And that's our booblies. Yeah. Hi, my name's Serge Banarjak of Cold Crash Pictures

[00:47:00] and you're listening to Movie Ooblie yet. Okay, it's final verdict time, short Chakma from 1990, but released from its lab testing cage to rampage the world and be celebrated by all or should it be trapped in an incinerator after everyone is killed, fried to a crisp

[00:47:21] and then dumped back into the depths of the ooblie it never to be spoken of again. Conrad, this was presented to us by our patron Nick. Yes. What's your final verdict about Chakma? Well, I mean, Nick, you're a great listener.

[00:47:41] You've been such a great supporter of the show and always had great insights into the movies and that we've covered. And I'm thrilled that we finally got to do a movie that you've chosen. I hope it isn't like a secret favorite of yours from your teenage years. Yeah.

[00:48:00] I'd love to hear your thoughts on this movie. I thought it was clearly showed the restraints of its budget. I thought it was visually quite dull. I thought it was too long. I thought it failed to generate any kind of horror

[00:48:15] or tension around the kills or its nemesis. It's sort of central antagonist character. The baboon wasn't scary. I found it mostly nonsensical. I didn't like any other characters and the music was cheap synthesizer rubbish from the 90s and yeah, honestly, I couldn't find a single thing about it

[00:48:39] that would make me recommend it and say, hey, you've missed this really great animal on the loose movie. I couldn't find any redeeming feature at all. So this is another one where I'm just going to toss it back with no guilty conscience apart from being worried

[00:48:55] that we might upset one of our favorite listeners. Yeah. I mean, the premise of Sharkbust is pretty good. Like the whole medical building, these medical students doing this live action role-playing game and then you've got a rabid baboon on the loose and the poster for Sharkma looks amazing.

[00:49:18] It makes me want to watch that movie. The movie itself, just everything that Conrad said and especially just the main character was not a likeable guy and not very heroic and it just didn't have the satisfaction of him defeating his nemesis, Sharkma that he trained.

[00:49:42] No, there wasn't a sense of like all these traps and things that they tried throughout the film to overcome Sharkma and eventually, you know, he succeeds. There was none of that. So there was no sense of achievement. It just kind of just happened and then he dies anyway.

[00:50:02] So it's like, I guess everyone dies. It's like, well, what are the police going to think when they walk into the building? What happened here? I don't know. And there's no evidence as well. So the baboons just ash in the incinerator. There's no evidence.

[00:50:20] It's just a whole bunch of dead bodies. Yeah. And a pile of cutlery outside. Yeah. It's going to be really confusing. Very confusing. It's going to be a mystery for the ages. Yeah. But I'm, yeah, very, very sorry to say that I, yeah, I would agree with Conrad.

[00:50:39] I would not recommend this movie. It has some interesting ideas and whether maybe a bigger budget, maybe it could have been a good movie. But yeah, not quite. Not quite. No. Well, it might have been influential. I mean, there are clearly some scenes in here

[00:50:55] that could have inspired Spielberg and the makers of the new Jurassic Park movies with the hands. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. I wish I could ask Roddy McDowell, like what was your experience? Like, you know, working on Planet of the Apes

[00:51:13] with all these monkeys and then working on a Shuck Mud. Like, was there anything redeeming about that movie to him? I don't know. No, it's quite fun to see him. And he's only in it for five days. He gave him a good fee, I'm sure for that. Yeah.

[00:51:29] One fun thing about it was apparently some of the other cast were quite nervous around Roddy McDowell because he's like, you know, he's Roddy McDowell. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the director actually asked him if he could flub a take or two just to put them at ease.

[00:51:41] Wow, interesting. Yeah, so Roddy McDowell actually deliberately forgot his lines and stuff. Wow. Just put everybody else at ease. But yeah, it's nice to see him in the movie. It's ironic that the guy who's so synonymous with Planet of the Apes

[00:51:56] should be beaten to death by a bad person in an elevator. I mean, that still just makes it a trivia question rather than a film that you want to watch for 100 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I guess we should chicken with our patrons just in case. We should.

[00:52:13] So hello, Hal. Yes? How are you doing? What have you been up to? I've been generating fake Johnny Cash covers of Taylor Swift songs. Great. Could we have the result of the patrons vote, please? Holy moly, they want to throw it back. Oh, OK.

[00:52:32] Well, there were some mixed feelings on it. So film aficionado said, lame deaths, frustratingly stupid characters and an obnoxiously long run time. Throw it back, throw it back on fire. Yep. I can empathize with that film aficionado. Eddie Coulter said, ah, Shackma,

[00:52:55] I remember when this first came to home video and I was excited to see it because the trailer looked wild. Plus it had the great Roddy McDowell. There's a few things I like about the movie like Typhoon's performance as Shackma. He was pretty scary,

[00:53:09] but unfortunately that's not enough to rescue it from the obliquette. But on the other side, Jasmine said, I very much enjoy this movie. Every time the rampaging baboon was on the screen, my heart was pounding. I found myself yelling at the characters. No, so many times.

[00:53:27] Because I could see how the characters could have done just one slight thing differently to save everyone. But I could understand why the characters were making their mistakes. So I was yelling in that rare good way where I was having a good time rather than scoffing.

[00:53:43] That's what a horror movie should be. I say set Shackma free to tear out more nerdy role playing throats. Well, I'm quite that. Jasmine, you had a good time with this. Yeah, no, that's great. I mean, it's a schlocky horror movie from the 90s

[00:54:00] that you might not have seen. If you're a fan of that kind of stuff and love this nature's revenge sort of genre. Yeah, it could well be fun. But yeah, Chazilla said just like dirt world, Shackma was just too long. The best performance in the film was Typhoons.

[00:54:19] He was really going Kokomo, Bocomo trying to break those doors down. Anyone else see the irony of Roddy McDowell getting killed by a baboon? What was the square thing they pulled out of his brain before injecting him with the mystery serum? Was it some kind of microchip?

[00:54:36] Oh, yeah. He probably got so pissed because they removed his Wi-Fi. No more monkey porn. Stack those bodies deep in the ooblieth and return Typhoon to the jungle. Oh, wow. That's brilliant. Thanks for that. I love all of these write ups, everyone. This is great.

[00:54:55] And yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's fairly unanimous. Sorry, Typhoon. You've got to get back. All right. Well, Conrad, what is the next film that we'll be covering? Well, we're heading back into the 70s and it's going to be on Home Turf.

[00:55:17] It's going to be the 1977 British fantasy comedy film Jabbawocky. Oh, I have not seen this movie. This is Terry Gilliam, right? It is. I think it's Terry Gilliam's first movie as a lone director. So I think he co-directed Holy Grail with Terry Jones in 75.

[00:55:38] So this was him going it alone on a fantasy comedy for the first time with Michael Palin, Harry H Corbett, John LeMessurer and John Byrd and Bernard Breslau. Terry Jones in the cast says, yes, a few Python connections, but it's not full Python. Right, right, right.

[00:55:59] Well, I mean, Terry Gilliam is one of my favourite directors. It's actually quite surprising I haven't seen this film. So looking forward to it. Yeah, me too. And we should be joined by a guest who, yeah, I'm excited to talk to you. Yes, yes, yes.

[00:56:18] So listeners, if you want to follow us and keep up to date with our episodes, we are on all socials as MovieUbliate and you can also email us at movie.ubliate at gmail.com and yeah, we're on TikTok now.

[00:56:33] If you're on TikTok, you know, send us a message. But yeah, it's interesting as well because I've been posting all our socials from all of our episodes sort of out of order. So kind of listening back on all these episodes is kind of, oh wow. Yeah, that's good.

[00:56:50] Trip down memory lane from five years ago. It's funny as well because I'm laughing at myself laughing often as well. That's not Eric at all. I don't know. No, laughing at your own jokes from five years ago. Wow, it was funny there. Yeah, yeah.

[00:57:11] And if you want to support the show, head on over to Patreon where for a dollar you can get access to extended portions of the show and nominate films for us to cover in future episodes as Nick did with Shuckma.

[00:57:23] $5 gets you the opportunity to vote on the final verdict and give you access to our monthly Minnesota chats. This month we're talking about non-English language movies that we love that we've seen over the years. That was a good chat that went up today.

[00:57:41] And for $10 you can become an executive producer of the show and get exclusive behind the scenes info like Chazilla, Eddie Coulter, Isaac Sutton, Dr. Doggie, Serge of Cold Crash Pictures and Iconographer. Yes, yes. Thank you for all the support.

[00:57:58] We also have merchandise on Redbubble and a YouTube channel with some interesting videos. And if you haven't already given us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple Podcast or whatever platform you're listening us to does help us out a lot. It does. Well, that's it for now.

[00:58:17] Top tip for the day. If there's somebody banging on the door, check that it's not a baboo. Yeah, and make sure your walls are made of oatmeal. All right, that's those until Nick's episode. Goodbye. Bye for now. ["Movie Who Be It"] Is this part of the game, Sam?