LARVA
This is our blog's first exclusive review. Not bad for only being up a few weeks, huh? Anyways, this flick is a made-for-Sci-Fi Channel telemovie directed by an old buddy of mine from film school. Since I revealed that, you might think I am biased but I will do my best to keep things objective...
Larva is the tale of a company town called Host, Missouri - it's a farm town, primarily cattle ranchers, that all exclusively sell their cattle to Host Tender Meats in exchange for free feed. What they don't know is the feed in question has been spiked with non-FDA-approved growth hormones. The feed is not only making the cattle beefier, it's also making the parasites attracted to the cattle bigger - and hungrier. Thus, it is soon a matter of 'intrepid veterinarian vs. corrupt cattle baron' as people and cattle alike find themselves literally bursting with overgrown parasites. It's worth noting that said parasites look like a perfect, jumbo size gene-splicing of bats, stingrays and leeches.
So does it work? Yes. The script follows a familar formula but achieves its modest ambitions with a surprising bit of style. The refreshing thing about LARVA is that it knows it is the television equivalent of an exploitation quickie so it makes no pretenses and concentrates on delivering the goods. Director Tim Cox maintains a tight pace that ensures the story hits the right mark at the right time while still delivering as much goo, gore and monsters as cable-tv rules (and the budget) will allow. By the end, you've gotten your money's worth and seen something that is far beyond the direct-to-video dreck clogging the genre shelves at video stores these days.
The biggest surprise with Larva is how good the performances are. It has the usual odd-assortment b-movie cast - t.v. actor Vincent Ventresca, reliable character thesps William Forsythe and David Selby plus model-turned-actress Rachel Hunter - but they cohere into a solid ensemble. Cox and his actors obviously knew the best way to sell such far-out material is to judiciously underplay it so everybody delivers naturalistic performances. Ventresca does effective work by playing his hero role with a stoic cynicism that bypasses the usual bogus machismo and Forsythe gets bonus points for managing to play a slightly paranoid gun-nut of a rancher without ever going over the top.
T.V. movies are a problematic proposition today - most of them either play like underfunded and underrealized theatrical efforts or just plain ol' t.v. episodes limply padded out to feature length. LARVA manages to avoid such pitfalls and succeeds as a tidy, skillfully-paced genre programmer. You can't ask for more from genre-minded cable t.v. fare.
Larva is the tale of a company town called Host, Missouri - it's a farm town, primarily cattle ranchers, that all exclusively sell their cattle to Host Tender Meats in exchange for free feed. What they don't know is the feed in question has been spiked with non-FDA-approved growth hormones. The feed is not only making the cattle beefier, it's also making the parasites attracted to the cattle bigger - and hungrier. Thus, it is soon a matter of 'intrepid veterinarian vs. corrupt cattle baron' as people and cattle alike find themselves literally bursting with overgrown parasites. It's worth noting that said parasites look like a perfect, jumbo size gene-splicing of bats, stingrays and leeches.
So does it work? Yes. The script follows a familar formula but achieves its modest ambitions with a surprising bit of style. The refreshing thing about LARVA is that it knows it is the television equivalent of an exploitation quickie so it makes no pretenses and concentrates on delivering the goods. Director Tim Cox maintains a tight pace that ensures the story hits the right mark at the right time while still delivering as much goo, gore and monsters as cable-tv rules (and the budget) will allow. By the end, you've gotten your money's worth and seen something that is far beyond the direct-to-video dreck clogging the genre shelves at video stores these days.
The biggest surprise with Larva is how good the performances are. It has the usual odd-assortment b-movie cast - t.v. actor Vincent Ventresca, reliable character thesps William Forsythe and David Selby plus model-turned-actress Rachel Hunter - but they cohere into a solid ensemble. Cox and his actors obviously knew the best way to sell such far-out material is to judiciously underplay it so everybody delivers naturalistic performances. Ventresca does effective work by playing his hero role with a stoic cynicism that bypasses the usual bogus machismo and Forsythe gets bonus points for managing to play a slightly paranoid gun-nut of a rancher without ever going over the top.
T.V. movies are a problematic proposition today - most of them either play like underfunded and underrealized theatrical efforts or just plain ol' t.v. episodes limply padded out to feature length. LARVA manages to avoid such pitfalls and succeeds as a tidy, skillfully-paced genre programmer. You can't ask for more from genre-minded cable t.v. fare.
posted by Don Guarisco @ 9:58 PM
1 Comments:
At 6:29 PM,
Ray said…
I live in Springfield Missouri where this was shot. In fact, my neighbor is Richard Pille, the art director of LARVA. He says he was never paid for his work. Was your director buddy paid? Because Richard says lots of other crew members got ripped off.
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