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mchalup
Reviews
Battledogs (2013)
SyFy improves their production quality for Battledogs
Battledogs is your standard Saturday Night SyFy New Release, Made for TV fare. Plot development/acting average to above average for this category of film. Ditto for silly (i.e, you laugh when it's supposed to be highly dramatic or bad gore)content.
What did impress me is that SyFy was willing to spend some more money on production. All locations were not shot in Vancouver/British Columbia, trying to pass itself off as one of innumerable cities/areas in the US. The 'Ward Island' scenes were filmed in Buffalo's abandoned (but now being restored) train station. A car wreck scene actually included wrecking vehicles. The identifiable New York City location were mostly all stock shots with CGI additions. However, there was one scene that really appeared to be filmed in front of the New York Stock Exchange.
Bravo to SyFy for willing to up the quality of their productions.
Alien Express (2005)
So bad, its was actually good
There is a threshold in any theatrical work, when the technical/dramatic flaws become so bad (or distracting), that the effort actually become far more entertaining as a comedy, rather than viewed as a serious drama. "Dead Rail" (or as it was billed on SciFi as "Alien Express") definitely makes that transition. With a combination of eco-terrorist takeover/runaway train disaster/alien invasion (with a critter very similar to the chest burster's from Alien)/re-found love genre, everyone is guaranteed to find something humorous in this made-for-TV movie. The acting is mainly forgettable, but with such a outrageously unbelievable plot line who cares? Really fake looking special effects further enhance the shlock nature of this production. Did anybody in the production group have even a vague clue how a real train runs? If you like train movies just for their own sake, you'll need oxygen to be revived after passing out from laughing too long at the absolute nonsense in this film. Watch Dead Rail/Alien Express for some unchallenging entertainment; just don't take it seriously.