Bottom Feeder (2007)

Simply Perfect

Please don't spend money on this.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I guess they could have shown something far worse than this, and for that I'll give it an extra credit. But bare in mind, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to watch Bottom Feeder.So, if you're into creature movies, look elsewhere, if you're into low budgets, or indie projects, again, nothing to see here, try elsewhere, you are bound to find something, anything, better than this. But if you do decide to play it, just lower your expectations, as much as you can, and watch it at your own peril. Some moments you will have to question your decision, others, perhaps acknowledge that you did a bad thing and probably there is no way out. I mean if you do get halfway, I guess there is nothing more to do but endure.Cheers!

Bottom Feeder starts as scientist Dr. Nathaniel Leech (James Binkley) meets up with his rich billionaire benefactor Charles Deaver (Richard Fitzpatrick) who has been funding his experiments into a serum called A12 which is supposed to regenerate dead cells. Deaver is desperate for the miracle serum since he was badly burnt in a car accident & is dying, Leech wants the serum to work because his wife Miranda is dying of leukaemia. Leech says he has perfected it but Deaver wants proof & gets his people to beat him badly while his ruthless female associate (Wendy Anderson) breaks his hand under her foot & shoots him in the legs. She then locks Leech in some underground tunnels after injecting him with the A12 serum to see whether it works & his body regenerates. Unfortunately Leech mutates into a mutant deformed half man half rat creature that has an appetite for human flesh...This Canadian production was written & directed by Randy Daudlin & one has to say I rather enjoyed Bottom Feeder in a simple run of the mill Creature Feature sort of way. I mean it's not original in any way, anyone who is familiar with the Creature Feature sub genre will be able to predict what happens fairly easily, it's clichéd & generally speaking it feels rather unadventurous but for what it is & what it tries to be it's an entertaining example of a Creature Feature. The basic storyline is the usual 21st Century genetic & scientific experiments gone wrong & some sort of monster is created which then decides to kill & eat every human being it comes across, there's the dark isolated location where a group of people are trapped & stalked by the monster, the whole thing about the US military wanting it as some sort of ultimate soldier/weapon is here & there's even the obligatory twist ending which leaves things wide open for a sequel. Once Bottom Feeder gets going it's an enjoyable Creature Feature, the character's are better than usual with some decent dialogue & I especially liked the way that no-one split up & their main priority was to stick together until they escape to safety although the self sacrificing villain at the end who decides to give up their life to rectify a wrong is the only time I felt the character's went into groan inducing cliché. It takes a while to get started but once it does it's a good solid horror flick that I enjoyed much, much more than I had expected.Director Daudlin does alright, he keeps things moving along & it actually looks like a proper film rather. A lot of low budget horror films look like they were shot on camcorders with shaky hand held cinematography but Bottom Feeder is really well shot where you can see whats going on & whats happening at all times. It's also edited properly as well with no 'blink & you'll miss it' quick fire cuts. A lot of low budget horror films these days use horrible CGI computer effects which look awful but Bottom Feeder uses good old fashioned on set special effects, fake blood, prosthetics & an impressive rubber monster suit. The creature looks good but it's long sticking out ears do look a little silly & to my eyes with it's humanoid shape, pointed ears & snout it looked more like a Werewolf than a rat but that doesn't really matter. There's some decent gore, heads are pulled off, jaws ripped off, ripped apart bodies are seen & there's a pleasing amount of blood splatter.Technically the film is very good & seems to have had high production values. Shot in Hamilton in Ontario in Canada. According to the 'Trivia' section on the IMDb for Bottom Feeder star Tom Sizemore quit the film after two days but eventually returned & finished it with the entire situation covered in Sizemore's reality show Shooting Sizemore (2007) which I would actually be interested in seeing but have no means to do so. It's very surprising that a quality well known actor like Sizemore would appear in such a film as Bottom Feeder but he could have picked worse films to be in that's for sure. The acting is fine with decent performances from all involved.Bottom Feeder is maybe the best Creature Feature I have seen in a while, it's not Shakespeare or Oscar worthy but for most horror fans it'll pass 90 odd minutes. Not to be confused with another film called Bottom Feeder (2006) which is a comedy made the same year, it's just typical isn't it? You wait a lifetime for a film called Bottom Feeder to be made & then two come along at once!

A maintenance crew headed by Tom Sizemore goes into an abandoned hospital to look for old equipment to sell to collectors. But a multi-millionaire has a scientist in the catacombs under the hospital, who has developed a serum to cause rapid regeneration and cellular growth. The scientist, who has taken the serum, is finding the results to be a bit more extreme than expected.For my beef with 235 films (who produced this), see my review for "The Mad". This film's selling point was easy to identify as soon as I picked it up: it has Tom Sizemore in it. And, hey, I like Tom Sizemore (rent "Lock Up" with Sylvester Stallone) so this seems like something worth checking out.That selling point is about as far as you can get with this one. You have a very one-dimensional millionaire who survives a fire. A creature in a tunnel who becomes part rat and part dog. A bum who is apparently a Rastafarian. These things mix well, surprisingly, but only in the most absurd sense of the word "well". It's just a lot of strange things going on.The crew's background is in makeup, and it shows. There is a scene where they chop off a guy's fingers that was alright, and the creature is especially slimy. But the creature is just poorly conceived: in horror, there needs to be a balance of how much you do and do not show a monster. Here, they couldn't decide to show him too little (much of the film is almost pitch black) or too much (making him seem somewhat dumb).I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this film. I did. But the actors were nothing special, I didn't care about the characters, and Sizemore is either doped up or washed up in this film. Maybe he's not doped up. But whatever the case, he just looked old and tired. I can't have my hero looking like he wants to drink a six-pack of Coors Original (the Banquet Beer), smear Dorito orangeness on his chest and pass out watching NASCAR. This Sizemore didn't even have enough energy in him to pass gas.I guess this isn't really telling you what you need to know, but there's really nothing to know: bad hero, weak monster, fake secondary characters. Unless your goal is to just get drunk or high and need something on the screen to move every so often, this isn't going to thrill you. If you want a good underground monster, rent "Tremors" or "CHUD".

Like most (heck, virtually all) mutant-monster films, Bottom Feeder doesn't bring anything new to the table, but, thanks to some decent acting, good chemistry, and plenty of monster cheese, it's quite an enjoyable romp. The plot follows a team of maintenance workers who run afoul of a crazy, burn-scarred billionaire's attempt to test an experimental super-healing serum, which of course creates a man-eating Rat Monster, as such ill-advised experiments invariably do. We're then treated to a three-way dungeon crawl involving the workers, the billionaire and his bodyguards, and a guy in a rubber suit. Very old-school, but still lots of fun.Best of all are the scenes between the head of the maintenance team, Vince (Tom Sizemore), and the billionaire's nasty henchwoman, Krendal (Wendy Anderson). They start as antagonists (she's working for the bad guys, after all), but after she throws in with our heroes in order to escape the monster, she becomes much more appealing, to the point where she and Vince seem to be flirting by the end of the film. And the bit where Vince grabs her cell phone to chew out the Burned Billionaire is just priceless.It's not Shakespeare, but if you want to spend an evening with a good, old-fashioned monster flick, grab some popcorn, pull up a seat, and enjoy.