What I'm Watching: Bloodmarsh Krackoon
Why not follow up one movie about hideously mutated creatures attacking people with *another* movie about hideously mutated creatures attacking people?? And because I can, I give you some choice pics of the puppets.
Unlike Zombeavers which had people going to the woods and finding the titular animals, this time it's all about urban wild critters coming after us in the big city.
And apparently, this is a sequel to just "Krackoon" which sets things up. The movie skims through the plot "Hellraiser 2" style with reused footage at the beginning, and the DVD handily includes the original as well.
See, the town of Locust Point is pretty crappy, with crime, corruption, and crack running rampant. A raccoon finds some crack, gets high, and goes a bit crazed, befriends a kid, kills his horrible parents, and the mayor, so the kid runs off with his new eye-bulging friend. As one does. And that's the plot, roughly, of the first movie.
The plot of Bloodmarsh is...not quite as focused.
You still got the kid and his raccoon friend running around, along with the krackoon's kids, which *also* stumble upon some radioactive waste. But never mind that, since that serves no plot purpose, besides making the baby krackoon's glow green. That's it.
The kid is homeless now after the murders, finds his way to an old folks home, where the residents take him in and feed him, until one of the employees finds him out and takes him home. Oh, and he tells her about the krackoon in his bag. And shows her.
"So, this raccoon with a bulging eye drooling over my carpet killed all those people...sure you can stay in my house!"
Yeah, okay.
Behind all that, we've got the new mayor, some hitmen, and mob bosses all floating around doing things, as well as the residents, making for an overly wacky cast of characters. In fact, they take up a large part of the first act, trying to figure out the deaths, one mob boss going to the old folks home instead of jail, the hitmen taking out the guy they work for. It's a weird bunch of happenings...and then there's suddenly a racoon killing people.
All this really comes down to is putting all these people in the same place for the final five minutes of the movie, as everyone ends up at the retirement home, with the krackoon, now evolved to human size and form, killing the mob boss, because he's a mob boss, and should be killed. Which brings the police and mayor hunting the creature, and everyone else is there.
That COULD have been something like Cockneys vs. Zombies, but noooo.
And much like Zombeavers, the critters in this are hilariously terrible as well. Probably moreso.
Yeah, definitely moreso. These are far less animatronic, and far more 'hands up the puppets' butts". They are silly, not believable at all, and just hilarious. And that's okay! I don't like them as much as the zombeavers, but they're still very entertaining and murderous.
There is added hilarity of when one of the critters are running around, they look like they're nothing more than those old wind up walking toys with the same clunky, loping gait.
Which, let's be honest, just makes them all the better and more hilarious.
All in all, the cast is pretty much forgettable, the plot is all over the place, and the creatures are silly. If they'd focused the story more, and pared down the wacky cast of characters, to focus on the hilarity of the krackoons, this would be a far stronger movie.
It's still worth catching, but it's not great, and is too all over the place to be great. It's still watchable and fun, but ultimately just too scattered and wacky. An amusing and entertaining affair, but it's missing some elements that would make it something special.
But man, those puppets come close.
