Heebie
Jeebies is now the fifth Syfy Channel Original Movie I've watched
since I decided to do this little impromptu retrospective on the
network's recent releases, and while I might be giving it more credit
than it deserves just in the wake of the lackluster affair that was
Flying Monkeys, I found it to be fairly entertaining. The look and
concept of the monster was a bit better than most, and while it
started off pretty slow, it eventually descended into that special
kind of crazy that I always hope for with movies like this. While not
as inspired or as well put together as Tasmanian Devils or BattleDogs, it easily beats out Chupacabra Vs. The Alamo for the number
three spot on my Syfy top list so far, if that even matters.
The
story follows a hyper phobic sheriff's deputy prone to panic attacks
who goes up against an ancient supernatural creature that literally
exudes fear, paralyzing its victims with the titular heebie jeebies
so it can take its time killing them. Despite the link in the title,
this is the first monster so far out of the five movies I've watched
that isn't playing the typical Syfy game of seemingly starting with a
title referencing an absurd sort of beast and then writing the script
around it, and for what its worth I appreciated the relative
originality. In this instance, its basically a golem made of corpses,
specifically of five Chinese gold miners buried alive over a hundred
years prior, that now eats and bleeds gold and kills anyone that gets
in the way of its vengeance.
Its
probably the coolest looking of the monsters in this first batch of
five films, even if the tendency to constantly shoot it in daylight
against all established rules of horror movies means we see far too
much of the chintzy CGI used to create it. Come to think of it, I'm
noticing this in a lot of these Syfy movies, a lot more daylight
action than you would think, especially considering they would have
more incentive with the budget limitations to want to hide their
creatures in shadow. The only one to break this trend so far was
Flying Monkeys, and that was only because they were explicitly noted
as being nocturnal. Also, there were points where it almost seemed
like the monster had the ability to turn invisible, or only appear to
certain people, but by the end I have to assume this was just the
result of shooting too wide on a scene a few times, just enough to
see that its not actually right off screen.
Slightly
better than average premise aside, this movie would have most likely
been mediocre or worse if not for the efforts of its primary human
antagonist, the increasingly psychotic mine owner/cash for gold
pitchman played my Michael Badalucco. When he first pops up, I had to
laugh at his failed attempt at sustaining what I think is supposed to
be a southern accent, which just barely filters through his natural
New York brogue, but as the movie goes on, he quickly becomes the
standout character not made of CGI zombie parts. After seeing the
creature and going slightly mad, he eventually evolves into this
weird hillbilly version of the Bond villain Goldfinger, throwing
dynamite out of cars and brandishing a golden gun, which it suddenly
occurs to me is from an entirely different Bond movie, which just
seems really strange in retrospect.
This
installment's Cheesy Line award goes to a snippet of dialogue towards
the beginning of the film where two teenagers are about to have sex
in a jeep, only for one of them to feel uncomfortable with being so
public. He asks “Can we just put the top up?” to which his
amorous girlfriend replies, “Maybe you should pull my top down.”
Overall, Heebie Jeebies easily gets my stamp of approval for a
relatively worthwhile Syfy Original. It has a few flaws that pull it
down, but never loses its sense of fun and only gets better as it
goes along. Being better than the average Syfy movie might not be a
great accomplishment in the abstract, but seeing as how I'm the one
taking it upon myself to sit through all of them, I'm thankful
whenever I get one that shoots for it, and this one does that at
least.
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