Lizard Boy

Released by: Cinema Epoch
Released on: 8/16/2011
Director: Paul Della Pelle
Cast: Pete Punito, Steven Zeigler, Mark Strano, Rachel (Miranda Allgood
Year: 2011
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The Movie:
A geneticist named Gino (Pete Punito) works in a top-secret lab performing gene-splicing experiments on animals. After learning that his little Gino soldiers don't swim very well, his finance Rachel (Miranda Allgood) leaves him in a huff. Crushed, he decides to experiment with his fertility with the help of a reptile hybrid. He fertilizes her with his useless seed and the result is a homicidal lizard boy, capable of human emotion. Carlo (Steven Zeigler) lives with Gino and in three years he/it has become the size of a man with the strength of many. With the help of his lab partner Frankie (Mark Strano), Gino manages to keep Carlo out of the eyes of the population and trouble by turning him into a stoner, but his urges and killer instincts cannot be kept under the smoke of the chronic for much longer.

Meanwhile a douche bag government creep wants to know what's going on with the experiments and knows something is going on with Gino. He kidnaps the scientist and that unleashes Carlo the Lizard Boy to use his self-taught martial arts to get his daddy out of torture and captivity.

The idea of a vengeful lizard man kicking ass with kung fu sounds pretty interesting, but here it's only marginally ok. First time director Paul Della Pelle does a decent job with the constraints he is surely under, but at the hands of someone more experienced perhaps this could have been something more than it turned out to be. The pacing is pretty slow, there's too much use of crooked camera positioning (like in the old BatmanTV show), and the lizard boy is shown way too much. That last part is a real an issue based on the fact that the makeup is pretty goofy. It's not horrible, just goofy. At some points the use of shadow is well executed to show the lizard boy in action, which was much more effective than him running around with his clunky tail (which disappears at times). Less would definitely been more in this movie. And the pot smoking part of it was kind of dumb. Made the whole think just silly. This could have been a cool throw back to 50s and 60s monster movies, like the box copy says it is, but instead it can be seen more as a movie influenced by films of that era, but certainly not paying homage to them.

There are some attempts at humor that work and should get a snicker or two, and the blood letting is pretty decent. There are some CG effects here and there, and those are pretty bad. The acting is up and down, with some being more comfortable reciting lines than others, but there's no standout here. As with the cinematography, the acting tends to be pretty inconsistent and sometimes just bad. There are some okay moments though, and while this movie isn't a stinker by genre standards, it certainly isn't something that will be talked about in 25 years, for good or bad. It's a piece of independent movie making that doesn't have any teeth, pardon the pun.

Video/Audio/Extras:
The film is presented with a 16:9 anamorphic widescreen picture ratio, and a 5.1 Dolby Digital track. The picture quality is of the average DVD output, with decent colors and blacks levels are pretty consistent, although sometimes the clarity is a little fuzzy. Not to the point of distraction though and overall it's a decent image. The sound really only embraces the 5.1 technology when the music plays. Most of the dialogue and sounds seem to be coming from the front. For the most part it sounds fine and there are no authoring issues noticed.

The extras fall short of being anything interesting. A trailer for the movie, a minute and-a-half slideshow (mixing movie stills and production photos) and a six-minute “Also Available” from Cinema Epoch makes up the supplemental material. Doesn't add any value to the disc.

The Final Word:
A movie that tries to be too many things and it just doesn't work well. Is it supposed to be horror? Camp? The mood of the movie throughout is all over the place and with a downer ending that just doesn't fit. If this one had a better idea of what it was supposed to be, it may have been something more worthy remembrance. It's not.