Back in February of this year I reviewed a movie called, Mosquito-Man (2016), that was a fun monster movie/sci-fi/comedy/superhero-origin-story mashup that was about a man who was unwillingly put through an experiment whose unintentional side effect was that his DNA was intermingled with that of a common mosquito. If you’ve seen it, and found it lacking bloody monster movie violence and a more serious plot, then you’ll probably want to watch Mosquitoman (2004, aka Mansquito), a made-for-the-SyFy channel movie that predates the other mosquito man movie.
I’ve never been a fan of that channel’s movies, not the ones they acquire from independent studios, but the ones they make specifically for themselves. They are some of the most uninspired B-movie flicks I have ever come across, with some of the crudest CGI to ever grace the small screen. And I tell ya there’s nothing more that pulls me out of a movie than horrendous CGI. That’s just one of the problems I have with them. Shall I go on? Yes, I think I shall. They’re touted as monster movies, but sometimes the monster ends up being a supporting character in its own film. You get to see the monster right in the beginning, which leaves nothing for the rest of the movie but more of the same, and at some point during each movie (sometimes it’s even the focus) the monster will always run up against a trained group of military experts, or trained gunmen, that succeed in turning the movie into an action flick for a little while. The cinematography also leaves a lot to be desired, giving you the “basics.” If you didn’t know what the movie was and came in on the middle of it, you’d ask yourself what TV show is this? And if it was one of the movies where kids were the main characters, you’d wonder what CW show am I looking at?
I’ll admit SyFy does come up with some interesting and potentially great genre concepts, but they’re all marred by simply being SyFy movies. I can’t tell you how many I’ve started watching and then tuned out fifteen to twenty-minutes in because the monster is nothing more than shit CGI or the characters are just bland and/or unlikable.
Having said all that I suppose it was only a matter of time before they made a movie that would just, by pure accident, appeal to me. Sand Serpents (2009) ended up being that movie despite having everything I hate about their movies in it. What made it watchable was it was the first of their flicks where the monsters (giant worms in this case) were rendered competently in CGI and I can tell you exactly why that was. Their simple design. Most of the bad CGI in their flicks are of monsters that are mammalian, or reptile in nature, or simply bipedal. The “sand serpents” were cylindrical and that seemed to be the easiest on the animators to animate and make them look functional. Plot wasn’t too bad and unexpectedly I liked the characters and the actors portraying them. And, yes, I do own Sand Serpents on DVD.
When I’m perusing my movies and I occasionally set eyes on it I always shake my head at the fact that I own a SyFy channel monster movie. Will wonders never cease? Apparently not, because right in its vicinity is Mosquitoman (2005), and right next to that is Mosquito-Man (2016). Concerning Mosquitoman there are a couple of things it has going for it that set it apart from the average SyFy monster movie. First off, and probably most importantly, is who directed it and that was Tibor Takacs! Takacs took the film scene by storm with his The Gate (1987). I’m just kidding. I remember that flick tanked when it came out. I loved it, though. Since then he’s directed Gate 2 (1990) and I, Madman (1989), all three of these movies have become cult classics in their own right and favorites of mine. He also directed a giant spider movie called, Spiders 3D (2013).
Secondly, SyFy wisely chose to use practical effects (mostly) for their mansquito. There’s CGI in this, but for a good portion of the movie the monster is seen from the waist up and from the waist up he’s a mighty impressive man-in-a-suit/animatronic effect courtesy of Alterian, Inc.
For the downside the creature is a CGI effect from the waist down and seen in long shots the design seemed comical to me. They should have just kept the entire thing a man-in-a-suit. The worst effect is the wings, however. In flight they’re CG, but that’s only half the problem. Wings that small could never lift a body that big. The flight scenes are improbable to me. Plus the science is a bit inaccurate. Only female mosquitoes suck blood, and the lead scientist didn’t know this when she replies to a question, “do all mosquitoes suck blood?” She answered that they all do basically. Which means a movie about a half-man/half mosquito monster on a killing spree drinking people’s blood is also improbable but, come on, no one watches a movie about a monstrous mosquitoman to get educated on science or biology. I consciously acknowledged these “faux pas’,” but none of it detracted from my enjoyment of the flick this time around. I don’t know why, it just didn’t.
That’s right, I saw this movie back in 2005 when it first aired, and watched it on and off, but didn’t care for it. It was about time for a re-evaluation and the need to see it again just came out of the blue. It just popped into my head one day, I went looking for a copy of the DVD on Amazon and bought it, and here I am doing a review of a movie I once couldn’t care less for. A strange world we live in.
The West Nile Virus has mutated and created a much worse disease coined the Gillen Virus, and all fifty states have been ravaged by it. Bellion Pharmaceuticals has been working feverishly on a cure and of course it involves radiation and mosquitoes. Musetta Vander plays scientist Dr. Jennifer Allen, and this isn’t the first time Vander has played a scientist in a monster movie. She also played one in the werewolf-scifier, Project: Metalbeast (1995), which sorely needs a disc release, (preferably blu) since it’s never gotten one before.
Allen doesn’t think the cure they’re on the brink of perfecting is ready yet to release, but her asshole boss, Dr. Aaron Michaels (Jay Benedict) thinks it is, they just have to go into the human testing phase. Allen knows nothing of these plans yet, but they’re underway this evening and they plan to use death row inmate, Ray Erikson (Matt Jordan), as their guinea pig. This is where the problems start. Erikson is in the process of escaping, all he needs is a window to execute it and predictably that window opens up in the lobby of Bellion Pharmaceuticals. Prison and security guards are killed and a hostage is taken as he seeks a way out. This leads him into Allen’s lab where his desperation and eventual murder of their assistant, Liz (Christa Campbell), sets off an explosion of the irradiated goop that is BP’s cure. Erikson and Allen are caught in the blast with Erikson getting fully gooped while Allen is only partially gooped. Both are “infected” and since they haven’t tested this shit on any person yet, they have no idea what it’ll do to them. Well, that’s easily solved once we follow Erikson down into an air vent and into the outside world where he mutates into the title beast. Allen on the other hand—her metamorphosis is much slower.
She has a detective boyfriend, Lt. Thomas Randall (Corin Nemec of Parker Lewis Can’t Lose fame) and he’s next to enter the movie as our hero. He actually was the one who put Erikson away so many years ago and now he has to do it again. Erikson isn’t content to just stalk the city and suck blood from anyone he encounters, he has a mission, to mate with Allen once she fully turns into a chicksquito, so he doesn’t venture too far from the lab, or from Allen as she moves from lab to Randall’s place to hospital and then back to the lab again in the final moments of the film.
The film is quite bloody, but not too bloody where they can frequently show victims being stabbed by a mosquito’s proboscis and sucked of their blood, there’s only two or three shots of this happening with some poor cop getting stabbed and sucked on right in his face! The only other shocking kill is a hospital security guard getting half his skull sliced off by the creature’s claw during the requisite action scene where mansquito takes on a bunch of armed men, a SWAT team, local cops and the aforementioned hospital security. That whole part of the movie culminates in Randall shooting the thing with one of them grenade launchers hooked under an M-16 rifle! Actually he shot a row of explosive cylinders next to the creature and blew the entire fuckin’ floor up. In his defense he kind of had to since the creature’s hide was impenetrable to handgun ammo. I don’t know . . . taking out an entire floor may have been a touch much. I’m still on the fence about that.
As you can see there are shades of The Fly here, and if you’ve seen the ’58 original and/or the ’86 remake you know how that all ends. Mosquitoman gets the same tragic ending as Allen and Randall fight the mansquito in the lab and then eventually down in the tunnels underneath the building. I have to say at least they didn’t blow the monster up like they tend to do in movies. A bit of a twist on the tragedy this time as Allen dies too, sacrificing herself as she terminally electrocutes mutated Erikson. This movie also gets another point for not ending right after the monster is killed, we get a very short epilogue of Randall typing up the report the next day and still working as a cop as he does a voice-over for the scene.
Even though it’s out-of-print you can still buy it affordably from third-party sellers on Amazon!
VIDEO/AUDIO/SUBTITLES: 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen—2.0 English Stereo, 5.1 English Surround, 5.1 English DTS—Spanish subs only.
EXTRAS INCLUDED . . .
- Previews
I feel Mansquito is a better title. It’s even credited in the end credits and Corin Nemec hollers it to get the creature’s attention. No idea why they changed it for the DVD release.
If you’re curious why, perhaps, these movies end being so shitty, take a gander at this article here. While reading this I was also shocked they were behind The Bone Snatcher (2003), another favorite of mine that I didn’t think was a SyFy original. I thought it was an outside acquisition. It’s so much better than their average line-up of creature crap. I even have plans one day to review it for this site. Wow, so, that makes three of their movies I own then.
MEMORY MOVIES 