The Bone Snatcher

I encountered a small hiccup in my original movie list. I couldn’t find a way to watch Dismal, some horror movie. So I went to my random movie site and picked another movie from the same era, same genre. The problem is that there are a shit ton of movies. Every single movie that popped up was some obscure “C” horror movie. Not on netflix, amazon, hulu – not available on download or any of my usual “privateering” websites. 

So, out of frustration that I was wasting too much time, I randomly selected “The Bone Snatcher” from Amazon. Same era, same genre. So let’s get to the snatching of bones.

I hope you’re scared out of your skull already. 

The movie starts off with a few Austrailian guys dicking around with some surveying work. It’s all fun and games while you’re an Aussie in the desert, until your buddy sees some sort of anomaly that you need to get a sample of. So he takes a hammer to what is clearly not a natural phenomena, and oh guess what? He gets sucked inside it by some big ‘ol beastie. To be fair, I wouldn’t have expected it either.

They really kill suspense in this movie. I mean, we see flashes of Mr. Snatcher right from the start. They do this “freeze” mechanic too, where they slow the picture down for several frames and shake it around a bit to create tension I guess. Just don’t show the monster in the first 15 seconds man, you’ll build the tension naturally. If you go out on a first date, you (whatever your preferred gender is) don’t just whip “it” out 30 seconds in.  Using that same logic, there should be some sort of buildup in the movie. 

Like this gem, right after Mr. Snatchington kills the guys. 

If a poorly made foam prop won’t scare me out of my skull, I don’t know what else would. Oh wait, yes I do. 

The absolutely terrifying “super vision” of Mr. Snatchel would. Take a look at this – the military will want to get their hands on this technology, can you see how it isn’t normal colors? That means that it’s working. 

Oh yeah, those are the intro credits on the screen. They blow this secret like 4 minutes into the movie as well. I mean, what’s the point of watching at this point? We’ve literally seen the Snatcher, we’ve seen his secret vision power, and we know he’s gunna kill a bunch of people. Come on. 

Alright, so then the movie switches over to come Arctic station where a genius scientist guy is working – you know he’s a genius because he’s wearing a Hawaiian T-shirt. It’s basically a uniform for socially awkward geniuses. There’s a huge problem in some distant station he’s helping manage, they’re all gunna die, oh no. His assistent says that nothing can be done, she can’t unhack the system or whatever.

“Quick, destabalize the turblenerds” says Hawaiian.

“No, don’t do that, it will destabalize the turdosphere, and they’ll all die!”  Assistant cries. 

Hawaiian smirks. “I know. Do it anyway.”

And then all the people are saved, and the boss comes out and says “Hey wow, you’re cool and you’re going to Australia. 

Hawaiian (remember, he just had the shirt) arrives and gets a menacing Omen from some bushman on the side of the rode, then goes to some sort of station…like a police station? A company security  station? I don’t know, all the people there have uniforms and have guns, but I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention, other than that the guys were “badass” pricks and there was this hot chick who found Hawaiian’s condoms and it was embarrassing for him. But they totally banged later on.

While driving out to some other base, they take a detour to find the knuckleheads who smacked some rocks with a hammer, and DUN DUN DUN!!!!!!

THEY FIND SOME SNATCHED BONES. Actually, they’re just picked clean and red. Remember, these nerds just thought they were driving to another base or something, look at their weapons…Why? TO FIGHT SNATCHERS!

So after hottie and Hawaiian bang each other, almost immediately the Snatcher comes for them all. We also find out an even bigger secret. The Snatcher is not a snatcher. It is…a SNATCH…ES! That’s right, plural. The Snatcher is actually ants or something. They eat up one guy and everyone shoots the ants but…I mean, you know how shooting ants would go. So the biggest asshole douses everything in gasoline (doesn’t light it) and all the ants run away. They don’t like gasoline. Or PETROL as the Aussies call it. 

The truck malfunctions of course, some people die and almost die, everyone splits up and they run out of gasoline to scare the ants away. Then we see the double secret. The ants are not just ants. They’re doppelganger ants. Doppelgants who use bones to walk  around and snatch more bones.

More shitty drama, and eventually they chase the ants down into a mine and blow some up – until Hawaiian finds the queen, and can’t kill it. He’s a scientist, remember? Scientists don’t kill sciencey stuff, they do science, god damnit! 

Well, he does kill it with a knife and all the ants run away and then the movie goes fast forward.  The hottie is now out of her Outback gear and in her sexiest red dress, and they’re saying goodbye to each other. There’s one line that says “oh yeah, they quarantined the whole area. It’ll be safe now” and she heads off.  As she drives off into the desert, the Bushman (from the beginning) gets a crazy eye and says “ASHLOBO” (or whatever the word was they used for the ants) and we see that there is another queen in the car with the girl. 

I don’t know if she was in on it? Was Hawaiian in on it? Was it just an accident? I mean, it looked pretty well packed in a box, all nice and snug, so someone was in on it. Just not really clear who.

So the movie was pretty terrible. I’m actually kind of pissed I end up watching all of these movies by myself, because they’d be great to watch and make fun of with someone.

Duty is heavier than a mountain.