Aquanoids (2003)

Directed by Ray Peschke
Written by Mark J. Gordon and Eric Spudic
Starring
- Laura Nativo
- Rhoda Jordan
- Edwin Craig
- Ike Gingrich
- Hugh L. Hobbs
Produced by Mark J. Gordon

Producer Mark Gordon is trying to position himself as the next Charles Band, it seems. His company, Cinemacabre (a division of his Wildcat Entertainment), is cranking out knowingly-cheesy genre flicks on the cheap for the video market. The latest (or, at least, the latest that’s shown up in my mailbox for review) is Aquanoids, which can best be described as a completely unnecessary movie, ripping off Roger Corman’s Humanoids From the Deep with shameless abandon, and filling in the cracks with winking references to Jaws and its own bevy of imitators. But at least it’s not another slasher flick.

Stop! School Crossing! (Get it? School? Fish? Eh…)

Things start off with a prologue set waaaay back in 1987 (listen as the weight of age settles in on your reviewer’s shoulders); a man whom we’ll later know as Jackson (Hugh L. Hobbs) watches from the top of a cliff as a couple gets frisky on the beach of Lover’s Cove. They dash playfully into the surf, she pops her top, and then… A hideous humanoid seamonster drags them both down and fills the water with cloud of blood, while Jackson can only look on in helpless horror! (Because, hey, rushing down the cliff and breaking his neck isn’t going to help anyone.)

Cut to the present day, July 4th to be exact, and a young couple rolling out of bed. Vanessa DuMont (Laura Nativo) and Bruce Amity — ha! get it? (Christopher Irwin) have very plot-convenient occupations: He’s a police officer, and she’s an environmentalist. Actually, in her case, I’m not sure if that’s her occupation or her, you know, “calling”; there are some indications that she might be an employee of the seaside town of Babylon, but it’s never clear.

The character’s name is Vanessa DuMont. And sometimes the jokes are too easy.

Anyway. While he goes off for parade duty, she goes on an exploratory snorkel dive, looking for signs of pollution, and is almost grabbed by — a hideous humanoid seamonster! Fortunately, a human in clumsy flippers can actually outdistance a natively-aquatic creature, and she makes it back to her jetski intact. But shaken; what she just encountered was an aquanoid!

As we helpfully learn when Vanessa runs first to her boyfriend and then to the city building, “aquanoid” is the name given to the rumored creatures credited with a string of 17 deaths in the summer of 1987. No one much believes in them except for Jackson, still around and trying to get people to believe him. (Maybe because someone saddled the nasty beastie with a completely goombah name. I mean, could you ever tremble in fear at an “aquanoid”?) But Vanessa certainly believes, and runs to the mayor with her news.

And right here we dive full into Jaws territory — or rather, bad Jaws ripoff territory. Vanessa finds Mayor Walsh (Edwin Craig) and his buddy, developer Clinton Jefferson — ha! get it? (Ike Gingrich) in the city building, poring over blueprints of their planned shopping center. (Is it just me, or are there way too many people working their normal jobs on Independence Day?) She launches right into the requisite “Close the beaches!” rant; he answers with as much self-serving venality as we’ve come to expect from all of the imitations of Jaws‘ Mayor Vaughn. But it’s not just the normal anxieties about commercial tourism motivating him; Mayor Walsh and Jefferson have a fortune sunk into the development of this new shopping center, which might be leaking mercury poisoning into the water, and reports of sea monsters and brutal killings could sour the whole thing. Wow! The venal mayor and the callous developer! It’s two great cliches that taste great together! (Although can someone please tell me when multiple monster killings have ever been anything but a boon to tourism?)

“Aaagh! Rouge! Too much rouge!!”

But Vanessa’s determined, so she grabs galpal Christina (Rhoda Jordan) from the middle of some too-early afternoon delight to go diving again. They get some murky photos of an accomodating aquanoid and make it out barely unscathed. (Soon thereafter, two of the mayor’s pet policemen go out to shoot the problem that the mayor officially says doesn’t exist; one one comes back alive. Oh, and I forgot to mention the surfer who got slaughtered using his cellphone on his board, but since he was just random body fodder, it doesn’t really matter where I note his passing.)

Since they can’t get officials to close the beaches (and since mentioning “aquanoids” generates giggles), the girls just start passing out flyers declaring that the waters are “dangerous.” Meanwhile, the mayor and developer attend the autopsy of the surfer by the same doctor/coroner/generic medical guy Dr. Remsen (Doug Martin) who presided over similar autopsies back in 1987. He declares it definitely an aquanoid attack, but the mayor has enough dirt on him to force the old standard “boating accident” explanation onto the official report.

Boy, the things you find in Crackerjack boxes these days…

But wait, there’s more! Courtney McLure — ha! get it? (Susan Spann), reporter for the TV-tabloid Hardboiled News, comes to town to muckrake over the latest reports. She really impacts the plot very little; her main contribution is the scene in which she, ah, pumps Jefferson for the truth.

And really, that’s your basic setup right there. Everything moves from here to a collision course: Mayor Walsh being so secure in his corruption that he actually sends his remaining pet police officer out to kill Vanessa; Jefferson tries to shoot Jackson as he and the girls load up his impressive firearms collection to do a little fishing; and Vanessa’s boyfriend (remember him?) plays catch-up so’s he can arrive just in time for a last-minute save.

There’s absolutely nothing here that you haven’t seen better before, and the movie knows it; in fact, it revels in it. A group of scoffing beachgoer teens, including the mayor’s daughter Debra (Kari Betzler), lists off their favorite bad aquatic horror films, mentioning Tentacles and Up From the Depths by name, along with Italian Jaws knockoffs in general. (And boy, has there ever been a better cue for a gory monster attack?) There’s even a scene in which Debra, having been raped by an aquanoid (off-screen, mercifully), gives birth to a wriggly hybrid before dying. (The attending physician is Dr. Remsen, naturally.) The scene obviously echoes the similar one in Humanoids From the Deep, but without any of the pseudo-biological babble about the monsters trying to enhance their genetic heritage that justified the original scene; it’s more along the lines of, “Hey, remember that scene in Humanoids? Well, so do we!” (Point in favor of the aquanoids: At least they don’t have that maladaptive exposed cerebrum.)

Check it out — a fishkabob!

The very real danger of referencing so many previous movies is, of course, that the viewer will compare the old titles with what they’re watching now and find the current feature wanting. Hey, I’m sure even the filmmakers would agree that Humanoids From the Deep, which is by no means a great film, is a far superior film to this one. For some audiences, specifically those versed in B-movies and appreciative of any movie that speaks to that education, the intentional “homages” may prove to be enough of a valentine to make the movie seem better than it is. But I’m guessing that there are plenty of viewers not willing to credit Aquanoids for being a dumbed-down play on movies that were themselves dumbed down, and find it wanting on its own merits.