Bacterium (Brett Piper, 2006)
Ever wonder what would happen if someone with a real affection for fifties nuclear-powered B movies decided to try and make one in modern times? Not a parody, like the brilliant Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, but a real, honest-to-pete straight-up monster movie? The result would be Bacterium, Brett Piper's squidgy, but quite fun, amorphic-goo movie about a genetically-engineered pathogen gone wild. Piper is best-remembered for A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell, the best-named movie of 1991, but this one definitely delivers the goods better than that one did.
Plot: a group of paintballers stumble upon a remote house in the woods that contains a scientist who's hiding out from his government handlers. I'd written more here, but really, even that constitutes minor spoilers. Still, you can probably guess where everything's going as long as you've seen a handful of B movies in the course of your existence.
Piper obviously has a deep affection for the low-budget B movies of the fifties (you'd pretty much have to to have made a movie called A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell, am I wrong?), and he sticks pretty close to formula here. This is not a bad thing, especially given that we're now more than far enough away from the time when the formula was cool that this comes off as a nostalgia trip. It's a no-brainer that if you're a fellow fan, this is going to be right up your alley. If, on the other hand, you see giant nuclear ants and wonder what all the fuss is about, pass this one up. ***
