3/10
"When a sting tipped tail starts growing out of my a*s what ya gonna call that then?!"
18 August 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Scorpius Gigantus starts somewhere in Eastern Europe where an incognito U.S. military convoy is ambushed by the Russian mafia in the hope that one of the trucks contains uranium, they slaughter the American soldiers & steal the truck. They drive it to a disused warehouse & open the doors only to discover a genetically created creature that is a cross between a scorpion, water-bug & cockroach, it kills them. Major Nick Reynolds (Jeff Fahey) is informed by his boss Colonel Miller (Ray Hartbarger) that he & his team will be responsible for going in & sorting the whole mess out, unfortunately Miller doesn't tell Reynolds about the giant bug & some of his team are killed. The Government call in the scientist who created the creature Dr. Jane Preston (Jo Bourne-Taylor) to oversee the capture of the bug but as she insists on a live specimen for study Miller tells Reynolds neither he nor his team can use ammo, however the Scorpius gigantus hasn't read the script & kills anyone it comes across & to add to Reynold's problems it seems to be giving birth...

Directed by Tommy Withrow I can't quite get my head around Scorpius Gigantus, for a start what a cool title but ultimately what a poor film. As I was watching Scorpius Gigantus last night the script by Raly Radouloff & Terence H. Winkless reminded me of another film called Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996) also made by the same production company New Horizon Pictures & both were executive produced by the king of the rip-offs Roger Corman. It is amazing just how similar the two films are, from individual scenes & sequences which are almost exactly the same apart from the cast & instead of a dinosaur this time it's a mutant insect bug. The arm wrestling scene, the bit when they are examining a dead specimen on a table & it comes back to life with the same revelation that the creatures cells repair themselves, from the ambushing of an American convoy by bad guys who think they're stealing uranium but instead find a dodgy genetic experiment which kills them, the female scientist who wants them alive, the run down warehouse setting to the fact both share exactly the same ending aboard a ship. The thing is I only saw Carnosaur 3: Primal Species two & a half weeks ago (My IMDb comment for it is dated 30th July) so it's still quite fresh & both films really are virtually the same, in fact I'd say this is more of a remake of Carnosaur 3: Primal Species & follows it more closely than the recent Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake was to the original Dawn of the Dead (1978) & looking at the other comments for it I see I'm not the only one whose noticed this. As a film in it's own right it's poor, it's clichéd & extremely predictable, it's far too long at 100 odd minutes, the dialogue is bad, the character's are cardboard cutouts & there isn't an original idea within the whole film. Having said that it moves along at a reasonable pace, some of the dialogue is hilariously bad & there's one or two decent gore scenes, that's still not enough to save it though.

Director Withrow doesn't distinguish the film from any-other low budget sci-fi/horror & as a whole it's pretty forgettable stuff. There's little excitement, no scares or atmosphere & serious lapses of logic within the story. The CGI effects are really bad, the creature looks awful & at times just seems an ugly mass of shapes. There's some decent gore though, people are cut in half, someone has their throat slit, there's severed arms, peoples guts are sucked out, someone gets infected & their face & neck swell up which then explode, there are various body parts flying about & a fair amount of blood.

Technically Scorpius Gigantus is average looking made-for-TV stuff & won't impress anyone. The special CGI effects are poor although some of the gore effects are OK. The acting is bad, Jeff Fahey looks embarrassed & has every reason to.

Scorpius Gigantus is a poor film in it's own right but I'm simply amazed at how closely it resembles Carnosaur 3: Primal Species, why remake a film which in probability hardly anyone has ever heard of let alone seen. In this respect it might not actually be a big problem because many people haven't seen or heard of Carnosaur 3: Primal Species, still a terrible film though.
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