Tail Sting |
  • USA • 2001 • 93m •   • Directed by: Paul Wynne. • Starring: Laura Putney, Robert Merrill, Shirly Brener, Gulshan Grover, Tara Price, Jean Carol, Elizabeth Perry, Joe Boony, Guy Bracca, Conroe Brooks, Jager Dan, Ray Davis, Tony Dimond. • Music by: Ray Colcord.      Prepared for a routine flight across the Pacific, lonely widower and pilot Jack Russell maneuvers his jet into the sky and unknowingly tightens the gap between his passengers and doom. Lying dormant in the craft's hull is a secret shipment of genetically engineered Scorpion fetuses, the creation of Dr. Jennifer Ryan and her team of biochemists for the purpose of discovering a vaccine. At the same time, Yaffi and his brother Sudan sneak onto the airplane speaking in hushed tones about a conspiracy of their own; to smuggle themselves into America. One of Jennifer's most trusted colleagues uses this opportunity to break into the cargo hold and steal the Scorpions. Each fetus sleeps submerged in a jell liquid inside its own glass container. While transferring the fetuses from their secure metal unit the scientist is discovered by security. A desperate fight ensues, containers break, and the Scorpions open their ugly black eyes.
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The budget was obviously quite low as the production values are of Cinemax After Dark quality. The monster scorpions themselves are brought to life through the use of old-fashioned puppetry, which while totally unrealistic, still possesses a hokey charm that is sorely lacking in modern monster movies that rely so heavily on CGI. In fact, I'm not sure there's a single computer effect in the whole film. The footage of the plane taking off, flying, and landing were all accomplished using actual footage of jumbo jets just as the atomic age sci-fi films would do.
While I would never dare to say that TAIL STING was well written or well acted, the banter between the characters does elicit some chuckles occasionally and everyone in the movie seems to be having a good time. Unlike most other films of this genre, especially the ones on a very limited budget, it doesn't make the fatal mistake of being all doom and gloom and played totally straight. The other thing that makes some of the humor work is that it's more about how the characters play off of one another and the situations they're in than instead of desperately trying to be hip in an overly self-conscious SCREAM sort of way.
And then there are the true scene-stealers, the Muslim duo and the scheming scientist. The two Muslim men, who the film at first leads you to believe could be terrorists as a red herring, are these MacGuyver-like mechanics who constantly insist that, `We can fix anything!' Not only can they rewire a 747, in a matter of minutes they manage to build a communication system out a megaphone and boombox as well as a makeshift battle suit out of a wet suit attached with defibrillators that they've supercharged. Seriously, these two are like the Professor from Gilligan's Island. I kept waiting for them to build a radio out of coconuts or a bamboo car. And then there's the scheming scientist who is responsible for freeing scorpions while trying to steal the embryos. He starts out playing the standard greedy villain, but by the midway point, he turns into an over-the-top madman with a Daffy Duck complex. It's performances like these that help make a bad movie into a fun bad movie.
Granted, everything doesn't work. The wisecracking black guy is just as annoying and unfunny as always, the stuff with the FAA isn't really needed, some scenes just fall flat, and the film is constantly at the mercy of it's very low budget. None the less, I kinda enjoyed it. So if you've got 90 minutes to kill and a few bucks to blow and you're in the mood for a campy, low budget monster movie, then you could do a hell of a lot worse than TAIL STING.
Review by Scott Foy from the Internet Movie Database.
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