The Bone Snatcher
DVD
From Overseas Entertainment, a relative unknown in the industry, comes a picture eerily reminiscent of 1950s horror.
"The
Bone Snatcher" comes with subtitles and a set of three trailers,
including its own, and two others: "Hollywood North" and "Between
Strangers." Neither is even vaguely related to the movie, or to horror
in general, or even horror's bastard son, science fiction. It's really
rather strange that they'd add these two trailers onto a movie about
giant ants.
Set in South Africa, FILMED in South Africa, and
subtitled only in Spanish for some reason (I admit I was half-expecting
Afrikaans), this is a vaguely familiar story of geologists as
superheroes.
Boy, bet you never thought you'd hear THAT one, eh? Eh?
We
open on a nuclear reactor in crisis - a meltdown narrowly averted by
the quick thinking of scientists. And the reward for their leader's
quick thinking? A posting in scenic, far-off Africa!
African
DESERT, too. Nothing around for miles and miles and kilometers, too.
The stark emptiness of the desert is truly striking in an era where
just about every movie playing takes place somewhere picturesque. And
of course the people are a pleasure to work with - within five minutes
we're treated to an almost loving description of how human urine can be
distilled into water so pure that it rivals Himalayan snow melt. I
found my own sentiments echoed from one of the crustier charactersyou
can leave me the snow melt, thanks.
And then we're treated to
one of my least favorite film conventions, a dolly shot. That is, a
camera moving forward rapidly with a filtered lens to make it seem as
though something is moving forward in a hurry, and we're "seeing
through their eyes." I give it the generic name of
"He-Who-Walks-Behind-The-Rows-Vision," after the "Children of the Corn"
series, the first place I encountered it. It is, needless to say, an
old convention, and old conventions are TIRED conventions.
[BB]
Several
minutes later, our party arrives at its destination, to search for
water in the desert. Our party arrives to find the sight of several
flesh-stripped corpses. Some of which have their heads detached. Of
course, our party is understandably alarmed and begins trying to piece
together what happened.
People start disappearing.
Strange things begin shambling through the desert.
Mechanical
failures plague the team, removing their one major advantage. Their
truck breaks down in the middle of the desert, and their radio begins
to fail. Now, with their supplies running low and their lifelines cut,
the team must race against time to figure out what's going on in the
African desertand how they can survive it.
And indeed, what do we find? It's a kind of ANT that's responsible for the whole thing!
Which
leaves our scientist friends with one central purpose - eliminate the
colony of giant ants who only appear to be harming scientists who get
too close to their colony in the desert. Yeah, boy that could be a real
threat, couldn't it? But if they were to get out of the desert there
could be some real problems. So, there needs to be some explosion that
turns some giant ants into some giant ant bits.
Now, let's
digress for a moment here to talk about a movie called "Them!" "Them!"
is also about giant ants in the middle of the desert that terrorize
human populations. Of course, here, the difference is the population is
much smaller, especially in the beginning. We find that in "The Bone
Snatchers," things could be much worse for human populations if these
ants get out of the desert in one piece, whereas in "Them!", the harm
is already about to come to pass. But the basic thematic elements are
the same. Giant ants, risk to humans, scientists standing in the gap.
It's interesting when you think about it.
Why would South Africa
decide to revive the "giant ant" genre? Did they think it would be best
for them with their environment and resources available? Or did they
just think it would be a quick way to cash in on Americans' insatiable
desire for pure blood-n-guts horror?
Is this a statement on the
world's environmental leanings - a cautionary tale in the making about
chemicals and nuclear materials?
"The Bone Snatcher," while eerily derivative, is also pretty eery, so enjoy what you can.
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