Monstry (1993)

Just when I thought I've seen everything, this Russian creature feature falls down in my virtual lap. Monstry is made just a few years after the breakdown after Soviet Union and seem to be a serious, but very cheap, attempt to both make a monster movie and a message-movie about the dangers of nuclear power - much like Chernobyl I guess. I saw it with out subtitles, but the actors acted so straight and serious I don't think it's a comedy.

Something has happen at a nuclear plant. The city around it, and the plant itself of course, has been evacuated and a team of scientists is sent there to investigate. But the first days a couple strange disappearances and deaths occur, and soon they found out that the radioactivity has made giants of the animals! The team stays put in the area to try to get some samples and see why all this is happening, but more and more animals shows up and soon they have to escape from this place. Huge rats, lizards, crows, crayfish... and yes, even a turtle, stands in their way to freedom!

Wow. Really. Come on. Alright. First of all, I was very entertained by it. Nothing that bored me, some okey actors and lots of animal attacks. But yes, it was very, very, very, very bad. In a good way, and it's rarely I see a movie like that. Obviously Sergei Kuchkov and his team had some ambitions with the story, and the movie is filled with sequences that most of they time would need hundred times the budget. There's a lot of real military vehicles and equipment, and the location is nice - but there's rarely anything that works. The effects are VERY cheap, and consists mostly of real animals and simple miniature environments or just someone holding the animal closer to the camera to make it looks big. One classic moment is when one of the scientist is being dragged out the window by a tentacle! I guess it was a tentacle, but thats the only thing we see of that monster!

But I think many will agree that the highlight of the movie is when a turtle very slowly hunts down and crushes a armored tank, and they chases (again, very slow) our heroes into a building! It's like a parody. Talking about parody, in the end we'll also get a chance to see a "falling in love"-montage which is so god damn cheesy that I can't believe it! You'll have to see it to understand how cheesetastic it is.

The movie ends with the credits machine written on paper scroll by over the screen. Amazing. I would love to know more about the making and purpose of this movie, because it's so out of touch with the typical Russian quality. This was the land of Mosfilm, which is among my favorite companies, so it's weird to see something so totally opposite.

See it if you have a chance, but don't blame it on me.