Halcyon’s Amphibious Attack
Monster movies have been a hard sell at the box office in recent years. Even Peter Jackson’s mega-hyped, mega-budget King Kong wasn’t quite the slam dunk most expected it to be – though that might have had more to do with it being a bloated three-hour remake of a movie everyone already knew the ending to. But perhaps with Benicio Del Toro set to star in a big budget remake of Universal’s The Wolf Man, an Americanized remake of The Host in the works, and a certain yet-to-be-titled JJ Abrams-produced movie about a giant monster attacking New York City suddenly all the rage, perhaps the big screen is on the verge of seeing a resurgence in monster flicks that don’t just revolve around vampires, zombies, mutant cannibals, and undead slashers.
In the meantime monster movie are alive and well in the low budget cinema world of made-for-DVD and cable (primarily the Sci-Fi Channel – sigh). Alas, these monster movies are often hindered by their lack of budget and, more often than not, their lack of imagination. Then again, for the most part monster movies have always been relegated to the realm of B-filmdom.
Case in point: Brian Yuzna’s Halcyon International Pictures, a company that already has a killer Bigfoot flick in the can called Primal that I reported on a few weeks back (“Bigfoot Goes Primal” – July 2007), now has a new monster movie being teased on its official website. Though saddled with the iffy working title Amphibious, it’s about a prehistoric sea scorpion that rises from the depths of the “Ring of Fire” (a section of the Pacific Ocean brimming with underwater volcanoes and deep trenches) to begin terrorizing a Southeast Asian city. I don’t know if the sea scorpion will be of the giant atomic age insect variety, but the artwork sure would seem to indicate so. The only details being provided at this time are the title, artwork, and a one-sentence plot description. I’m assuming this one is still in the early stages and isn’t even guaranteed to get made. I’ll see what else I can dig up on it in the days to come.
I’ve personally been wondering when someone was finally going to get around to making a creature feature about prehistoric sea scorpions ever since I saw that “Chased by Sea Monsters” special on the Discovery Channel a while back. Nasty little buggers begging for a movie of their own if you ask me. Check out this YouTube clip from the special and see for yourself.
Wait for the imminent attack of our forums by regular scorpions!
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