The Bunker of the Last Gunshots (1981)

A group of soldiers are locked inside a concrete bunker and we see how they deal with the ensuing madness that follows from being locked there for an unspecified amount of time. (Imdb rating 6.1)

The Bunker of the Last Gunshots is not a short film that gives answers. While I was smart enough to figure out the general plot (that's a first for me) of this experimental steampunk French movie, there isn't much help, with a lack of any dialogue whatsoever. But really, the gaps don't need to be filled in.

I would hazard a guess that this movie is a microcosm of how humanity can deal with stress wrongly; as when a seemingly important counter starts to slowly reverse back down to 000000, the men start to kill each other with wild abandon. Before the countdown, they looked bored shitless, with one chap even collecting particularly good specimens from his nose and placing them in containers. Another guy electrocutes beetles. Another guy apparently uses masking tape and garbage bags to wrap up corpses.

Don't judge me!

The bunker society seems based around the two arch-principles of baldness and Nazism though, and after the discovery is made, it's open season for gunshots and strange tortures, like shooting electromagnetic waves into ears and what disgustingly looks like death by force feeding. The ending is great as well, as it shows the futility of all the abhorrent behaviour throughout the movie.

I was really impressed by this. It was strange, it was experimental, but it wasn't pretentious or unnecessarily confusing. The Bunker of the Last Gunshots stands on it's own.

Things I learnt:

• Going outside on a completely dead Earth/some other random planet requires you to dress as a sand person from Star Wars.
• You can feed severed hands in jars as you would a fish.
• In the future, everyone will be bald!

Mega Piranha (2010)

A mutant strain of giant ferocious piranha escape from the Amazon and eat their way toward Florida. (Imdb rating 2.7)

Syfy original movies are universally terrible. But they always seem to save the worst for their 'mutated versions of animals attack!' movies. Giant sharks, giant octopuses, alien mutant bears, all are just awful.

But strangely, I somewhat enjoyed Mega Piranha, even though it 'stars' 80's one hit wonder Tiffany. Oh, don't get me wrong, required to show any emotion at all, her acting makes me wish she'd go back to singing subtly sleazy songs in malls like she used to. The males lead is just there, with his muscles and two day stubble growth. Barry Williams, the eldest Brady Bunch son, is there as well, and at least he injects some type of personality into his character.

But you don't really want to hear about the rabble they hired to play actors, you want me to explain the piranhas. At the start, we see them eat some natives dumb enough to go swimming in the Amazon, or at least a weak CGI visual representation of it. That's fine. Then we get topless natives along with a fat guy partying on the same river, before noticing a half eaten crocodile corpse floating by. Still fine. Then the piranha's attack... wait, PIRANHA'S DON'T EAT BOATS! Apparently they do, and as they get bigger so do their prey. By the end, they are eating submarines and fucking battleships!

But don't worry! Our leading man has a method of beating them. It's called 'Lie on your back and bicycle kick the shit out of them'.

It's like they are trying to show how abysmal the piranhas look.

The piranhas confused even me, as I assumed they were like Aquaman; useless out of water. But I stood corrected, as they jumped out several times to snatch people, destroy buildings, and conveniently dispose of villains at the right times. They still look like something a cat regurgitates.

The actions moves pretty quickly, which is a positive, and there are several false endings. The actual ending, however, annoyed the shit out of me, because it made absolutely no sense. I thought maybe I'd missed something, except even the Wikipedia synopsis seems to have no idea what exactly happened either, not a good sign.

Mega Piranha is a pile of crap, but at least it's a fast moving one.

Things I learnt:

• You can beat a piranha in a knife fight.
• Or you can use rockets.
• You can make someone's head explode by shooting a flare into their open mouth.
• Topless natives have brown blood.