Sunday Night Movie: Locusts

Cafe Society
1

My girlfriend and I have taken to watching Sunday night made-for-TV movies, as they are often funnier than the best comedies, although usually not intentionally so. We started with 10.5, then moved on to Shark Attack. Last night it was Locusts, starring Lucy Lawless as the busty Department of Agriculture scientist. Mike Farrell played her father.

The basic plot: A subordinate scientist creates a hybrid species of locusts that are resistant to all pesticides. They also have the unfortunate additional attribute of being carniverous. His putative reason is to study how to make people resistant to disease. But he is secretly developing a WMD for the DOD. He is ordered to destroy all of his specimines, but of course, a few get out, and that is where the action begins.

This movie has it all. The protagonist who is having marital difficulties (and whose spouse just so happens to work in a related field, thus ensuring that they will spend a lot of time together, and thus reconcile by the end of the movie). The little girl who gets injured, so that we can say “I told you so” to her father, the evil scientist. The overzealous general who is eager to risk the lives of a few million Americans to stop the menace (“Saddam used this stuff on his own people!” “I don’t care! Proceed with Operation Bug Spray!”).

There were too many ridiculous plot points for one post, but if you saw this trash, feel free to post your favorites. Here are a couple of mine:

-Xena Warrior Scientist is in her bathroom looking at a home pregnancy test stick. The result window says “Pregnant.” She has a puzzled look on her face, then reads the directions on the box. She reads the result window again, then reads more directions. Then it dawns on her what it means. “Oh, great”, she says.

-Zealous General wants to crop dust the whole country with a chemical WMD. When Xena says “It’ll kill millions of people. It’ll kill the crops. And we have no idea what it’ll do to the ground soil, and you don’t even care!”, the General says “Hey, I care, I took a vow to protect American soil!” Um, do the writers even know what that phrase means?

-In an office building, several scantily clad secretaries are flirting with a hot office dude, and they talk about how hot he is. Minutes later, when the office is infested with millions of carnivorous mutant locusts, hot office dude is hiding under a desk with the secretaries. A few bugs land on him, and he runs away screaming “Eww, gross!” like a little girl. One disappointed secretary looks at the other and says “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

2

Just so you don’t feel so alone . . .

That last bit you mentioned was even better, as I remember it. As they’re huddled under the desk, Girl A says, "If he looks too good to be true . . . " and Girl B finishes, “He probably is!” Or something to that effect.

The giant bug zapper was inspired.

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This movie had many things to recommend it in just the first 10 minutes.
*Please note that through the magic of TiVo my husband and son were able to watch only after I had damn well finished watching Deadwood.

  1. In the first, oh, thirty seconds of the movie, Lucy Lawless walks into the room to answer the phone wearing nothing but a short pink silk robe and some very clean looking underwear. As she talks on the phone she moves her arms around so that her robe moves and you get to see more of her in her underwear. By the way, she’s a prominent scientist. She stands by the window talking on the phone in such as way that anyone on the street could see this six-foot tall** prominent scientist ** in her underwear.

  2. Her husband then walks into the room wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. He is a generic hottie with a **shaved chest. ** He’s not happy. He feels neglected. He’s pouting. He has needs too!

  3. Said prominent scientist puts on some clothes, and goes to investigate what’s going in in Lab C-12. She finds her old professor has developed a new species of locusts that
    Are immune to DDT and all other known pesticides,
    Reproduce ten times as fast as normal locusts,
    Live three times as long as normal locusts, and
    Can travel 300 miles in a single day

My son said he couldn’t watch any more once the locusts became carnivorous.

4

I only saw the second half, and then I wasn’t watching that closely. But when Xena Warrior Scientist was threatening to break the line which would release the nerve gas into the helicopter, did I not hear her say something to the effect of:

I am pregnant and my hormones are out of control! YOU DO NOT WANT TO MESS WITH ME!"

5

Damn it, there was a line that was completely ridiculous (but hilarious, too) that I knew I should have written down because, even being as entertaining as it was, this line (the whole movie, really) was entirely forgettable.

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As made-for-TV movies go, I never set my expectations too high. Still, I was surprised by some of the things shown in the movie:

[ul]
[li]Locusts penetrate plate glass office windows.[/li][li]An entire metal grain silo could be electrified to function as a giant bug zapper using only the power supplied by a small generator.[/li][li]All of the locusts were killed by using large power transmission lines and reflective streamers attached to weather balloons to attract them to the power lines. Conveniently, the ones that were not killed were all rendered sterile.[/li][/ul]

I hadn’t seen anything this ridiculous since “Asteroids.” I thought the movie might be more scary if if had been done with killer bees instead, but it probably would have been just as over-the-top, if not more.

7

Everyone has their weakness - mine is Disaster Movies. I don’t care how implausible, how poorly written, how poorly acted - I must watch. So of course I was drawn to this movie like a moth…er, a locust to electricty! And it was about on par with every other disaster movie, but I enjoyed it anyway. I can’t help myself.

8

Didn’t watch it, but I sure am glad I don’t have to see any more commercials for this thing! I hadn’t realized, as pointed out in the OP, that this is standard fare for Sunday Night TV movies. Can’t wait for the next one…

9

Here’s a sneak peek into CBS’ next crop of Sunday night movies:

Bees

Wasps

Chickens

Slugs

Asparagus

Large Pebbles

Small Pebbles

Dirt

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If I weren’t deathly afraid of grasshoppers and locusts and their ilk, I would have watched.

So why would someone try to breed an extraordinarily deleterious pest to be even worse?

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One of the established conventions of scary science fiction movies is to have a scientist who pursues a dangerous line of study ‘in the name of science.’ This **Science for Science’s Sake Scientist ** **(SforS’sSS) ** will ignore the possibility of the results of his study wiping out the entire human race.

Examples of this are to be found in Alien, and The Thing. Sometimes the ** SforS’sSS ** will hide his work, or sneak back into the lab at night, or try to preserve the life of the deadly whatever-it-is so he can make further experiments on it and learn how it works. In *The Thing * the SforS’sSS said something like ‘But I could discover a new science!’

The SforS’sSS is thwarted by a character, The Humanist, who says things like ‘If these locusts get loose they could cause a global famine. They must be destroyed.’

12

This week must be Bug Week.

The SciFi channel was running Bug movies the other night, starting with the alian moths that turn people into aliens that look just like real people, except for the tentacles. The heroic humans wipe them out, of course, exceptfor a life preserver washing up on shore, carrying the last surviving dozen or so alien moths…

Imediately followed by a movie with an airliner full of Killer Bees, genetically modified (by a DOD scientist, of course) to enhance the killer instinct. Not only that, but they are carrying the genetically modified Ebola virus. THEN, a crazy American who has become the shaman for an Amazonian tribe who finds the cure for the disease (and the bees as well), just HAPPENS to be a Vietnam-era Medivac pilot, so he can fly the chopper stolen from the Bad Guys…

Followed by “Mansquito”(!) The title is all you need to know about THAT flick.

God, I love this stuff…

13

You forgot

There’s Brussel Sprouts on my plate!

I can’t afford to drive my SUV anymore!

Lost because of Mapquest!

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A friend of mine was in “Locusts.” In the scene where they were moving the locusts from Mad Scientist Lab Inc. to Secret Government Hideaway, the locusts are placed in the care of three army guys who have the awesome task of driving the locusts from an airplane to… somewhere… I don’t know 'cause the locusts didn’t make it.

Anyway, my friend is easily identified as to who he isn’t. He isn’t the guy driving, nor is he the one who drops the locusts. He just sits in the back and mugs for the camera.

No speaking lines so he’s still waiting for his SAG membership.

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I believe the actual quote was “I’m pregnant, I’m hormonal, you do not want to mess with this mother!”

Gold, Jerry. Gold!

The ending was the best. Xena goes to BJ’s farm and notices the sun glinting off the silo. Then the mutant locusts arrive. Xena the Scientist concludes that the locusts are attracted to shiny things. Couldn’t be that they’re attracted to, say, a silo full of grain, could it? Hell no. Shiny things.

So she suggests launching shiny weather balloons near the giant bug zappers, which are located along the Eastern Rockies and Mississippi. Naturally, this attracts every bug from San Jose to Hoboken in just a few hours.

When I grow up, I want to be a big-breasted scientist (who doesn’t know the meaning of “Pregnant”).

And how were the bug zappers powered? “My fellow Americans – I’m asking that each and every one of you to turn off everything that uses electricity – appliances, computers, radios, TVs. Do this right now. Stay tuned for updates.”

16

You got to figure anything on Sunday night that is shown in the same time slot as Deadwood (A+) and **Desperate Housewives ** (A) is going to suck.

At any rate, we have Locusts saved on TiVo right now, so if there are any finer points of dialogue or plot subtleties you need researched, let me know, and I’ll go to the videotape, so to speak.

Questions such as 'Did they really let the guy who was charged with destroying the locusts in the beginning of the movie walk out of the clean room carrying a briefcase? And was he *sneaking locusts * out in that briefcase? In a jar? That got dropped on the highway? From a Jeep carrying JohnT’s friend?
Answers: Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

I should start an ‘Ask the woman who has Locusts saved in High-Definition on TiVo’ thread.

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Lol Cbcd!

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Let’s not forget the Department of Energy lady who could reroute all power grids in the US from her laptop. Been watching a little too much 24, have we?

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How did he die? From a few bug bites to the face? Or did he just have high cholesterol and I missed that bit?

Oh yeah. They’re hybrids.

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I was tempted to watch the movie based on my standing as an old Xena fan, but I chose the better part of valor (since I’ve been burned by this sort of thing before). I’d like to thank you folks for validating my choice not to watch–and being hilarious about it in the process. Now I know what I didn’t miss.

Alas, poor Lucy…