SEEKING THE SCIENCE BEHIND RAZORTOOTH AND FRANKENFISH!

 My official Lionsgate Region 1 DVD of Razortooth (© Patricia Harrington/Gravedigger Films/Capital ArtEntertainment (CAE)/PUSH/Lionsgate – reproduced here on a strictlynon-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Genetically-modified beasts, i.e. creaturesconverted from the mundane into the monstrous by mad scientists of the kind belovedby film audiences and directors alike for over a century now, have long been astaple theme in science fiction movies, and the two examples reviewed andmini-reviewed respectively here, both of which are of the piscean persuasion,are definitely no exception to this trend.  So as 2024 winds down on this, its final day,why not wind down too by leisurely perusing these cinematic offerings originallypenned by me for my sister blog Shuker In MovieLand? Unless of course you're anichthyophobe, whereupon the time to look away is right now!

My movie watch almost exactlya year ago, on 20 December 2023, was my long-owned but previously-unviewed LionsgateRegion 1 DVD of Razortooth, in orderto find out at long last just how very far short this horror/monster moviewould fall in comparison to what I'd always naturally assumed was the extremevisual hyperbole of its DVD's ultra-dramatic front cover illustration (whichopens this present ShukerNature blog article) – only to discover to my greatsurprise that, if anything, the actual movie was even more OTT than saidillustration!!

Directed by PatriciaHarrington, and released in 2007 by CAE/PUSH, Razortooth is on the surface just another of those numerousmodern-day CGI-laden creature features in which a group of diverse people arebrought together in a shared spine-chilling experience of a horrific monster onthe rampage. The latter usually constitutes either a freakishly large orgenetically-altered mutant individual of a known present-day species or somegargantuan prehistoric horror retrieved from the distant past either directlyvia time-travel or once again via genetic manipulation.

Said monster thensystematically slaughters in a variety of different (but usually gory) meansvirtually every human character in the movie, steadily devouring its way up thecast list from bit-part players to supporting characters and then, finally,confronting the leads in a grand do-or-die climactic battle before expiringwith just enough screen time left for the surviving leads to exchange somelight banter before the credits roll.

In Razortooth, the titular monster is a genetically-modified Asianswamp eel (much more about which later) of huge size and voracious appetitethat has escaped into the Florida Everglades from the laboratory thatengineered it, and now is diligently decimating everything and everyone that itencounters there – escaped convicts, Irish wolfhound, teenage canoeists, theyall suffer the same gruesome fate, albeit executed in an array of imaginativesplatter fests. Incidentally, I should warn you that this particular moviecontains far more blood and gore than is usual for a low-budget modern-daycreature feature of the Syfy-similar genre, which is why it holds an R ratingcertificate in the States, so beware.

Normally at this point I'dpresent my own précis of the plot, but in this case the latter is so generic,and also because there is one particular aspect of the movie, a zoologicalaspect, that I'd much prefer devoting the majority of this review to (especiallyas it does not appear to have been covered by anyone else whose reviews I'veread), I've elected to save time and space by simply quoting instead a very succinct,accurate summary of it penned by Brazilian viewer Claudio Carvalho that Iencountered on IMDb's Razortooth entry,so here it is:

Two prisonersescape through the swamp land in Everglades and the search party is attacked bya giant mutant eel and is considered missing. The Animal Control agent DelmarCoates is searching [for] a missing dog with his ex-wife Sheriff RuthGainey-Coates and he discovers the remains of the animal. Meanwhile members ofa canoe club organize an expedition through the swamp. When Sheriff Ruthorganizes a manhunt to capture the criminals, Delmar informs that his formerfriend, Dr. Soren Abramson, who is chasing the eel with a group of collegestudents, is the [person] responsible for [this] mutant species [sic –specimen]. Sheriff Ruth organizes two teams to hunt the prisoners and the eel.

The two lead characters areDelmar Coates (played by Doug Swander) and Sheriff Ruth Gainey-Coates (KathleenLaGue), so it will come as no surprise to learn that they are still standing,just about, by the time that we reach this movie's big, explosive finish – andI do mean big, and explosive!! What may indeed come as a surprise, conversely,is spotting a familiar face playing one of the lesser characters – yes indeed,Josh Gad (playing ill-fated Jay Wells), in one of his earliest big-screen rolesbefore going on to the likes of Pixelswith Adam Sandler, Disney's live-action Beautyand the Beast, and the voice of Olaf the snowman in Frozen, among many others.

  Eyeballing the razortooth: not a sight that you'd ever want tosee close-up – or from any distance, for that matter! Please click composite picture to enlarge individual photos in it for viewing (© PatriciaHarrington/Gravedigger Films/Capital Art Entertainment (CAE)/PUSH/Lionsgate –reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis foreducational/review purposes only)

But now, let's move on to whatfor me was the all-important feature of this monster movie – the specificzoological nature of the razortooth!! (Curiously, despite someone in theproduction company having specifically devised this memorable moniker for it, Idon't actually recall 'razortooth' being employed anywhere within the film,other than as its title). As I mentioned earlier, this creature is supposed tobe a genetically-modified, super-sized mutant specimen of a genuine speciesknown zoologically as the Asian swamp eel Monopterusalbus.

Native to shallow, muddyfreshwater wetlands across eastern and southeastern Asia, this air-breathing eel-shapedspecies (but a synbranchid rather than a true eel), measuring only a verymodest 3 ft or less, has indeed been introduced into the USA – beginning duringthe 1990s in Georgia, from where they themselves migrated into the FloridaEverglades (their air-breathing ability enabling them to move overland inlimited fashion if the land in question is water-saturated, but not if dry).

Due to the deleterious effectthat its presence is having upon various native crayfish species, however, theAsian swamp eel is nowadays deemed an invasive species in these States, withattempts being made to control its burgeoning numbers and physically removespecimens where possible.

Needless to say, however it doesnot exist in any kind of mutant, extra-large version, and in any case thisspecies confines itself to a diet of aquatic worms and insects, frogs, fishes,terrapin eggs, and crustaceans – as opposed to gorging itself upon humans andwolfhounds! But these are not the only major differences between the real Asianswamp eel and its monstrous movie counterpart.

Although much was made duringthe film regarding the disturbing nature of its true-life invasive presence inFlorida's Everglades, in terms of its morphology the Asian swamp eel is nothingremotely frightening or dangerous, possessing only small, inconspicuous jawsand a totally smooth, featureless body. So how was this innocuous creaturegoing to play the central role of a bloodthirsty terror? By not only greatlyincreasing its size but also appending to it some decidedly horrificcharacteristics purloined from various real but visually hideous pisceanpredators, that's how?

As a zoologist, moreover, Icould readily recognize which predators had been utilized, and they were allfrom a specific taxonomic family of deepsea marine fishes – Stomiidae, thebarbelled dragonfishes.

Totally unrelated to swampeels, but once again only a few feet long at most (usually a lot less), thesedragonfishes exist in several visibly different types, and it looks as if certainspecific characteristics sampled from three of these types were deftly combinedwith the elongate body of the Asian swamp eel to yield the murderous razortoothof this movie, as I duly demonstrate below via the following series ofcomparative illustrations:

  From top to bottom: the Asian swamp eel Monopterus albus; the viperfish Chauliodussp.; the black dragonfish Idiacanthusatlanticus; Alcock's boatfish Stomiasnebulosus; and the composite result, the razortooth; please click  picture to enlarge individual images for viewing purposes (top four pix publicdomain; razortooth composite pic © Dr Karl Shuker)

As can readily be seen fromthis comparison: if the viperfish's head and jaws brimming with javelinesqueteeth, the black dragonfish's nearly membrane-less spiny dorsal fin (butextended along the eel's entire dorsal surface, not just the posterior half ofit as in the dragonfish), and the boatfish's unusual arrowhead-like dorsal andventral pre-terminal fins are added to the Asian swamp eel, the result is therazortooth. Apparently, Jeff Farley, the special effects expert who worked on Babylon 5, created the razortooth, so hehad evidently conducted some sound ichthyological research during this process.

Moreover, there is no doubtthat for much of the time, whether in the water or on land, or even when itslithers up into trees, the razortooth is impressive enough to keep theviewer's eyes glued to the screen, but most especially when it is very rapidly undulatinghorizontally in dramatic whiplash manner as it pursues its human prey on land,thus adopting the same mode of movement that snakes utilize.

The big problem comes fromthis monster's body size, which is anything but constant. One moment therazortooth is so huge that it rears vertically above the water like alatter-day plesiosaur from those now-dated prehistoric animal books from the1960s and 70s that habitually portrayed these aquatic reptiles as swan-necked.The next moment it is small enough and narrow enough to swim up through theexit pipe of a toilet or shower unit in order to seize hold of theunsuspecting, hapless human utilizing said facility. Then suddenly it's bigenough again to bite a man in half, or to be wrestled with by the redoubtableDelmar, and so on…

By way of mitigation for suchmorphological inconstancy, at one point scientist Dr Abramson (Simon Page) tellshis students about how flexible the muscular bodies of eels are, enabling themto squeeze through holes and crevices ostensibly too small for this to bepossible. That is true, but there are limits, even for a mutant eel ('mutant'being another oft-utilised get-out-of-jail card in monster movies forexplaining seemingly impossible feats performed by the monster in question!).

Anyway, such quibbles aside,and if you're not hoping for any in-depth characterization of the mega-eel'snumerous victims either, Razortoothis certainly an enjoyable creature feature (unless you're not onlyichthyophobic but also haemophobic!). And unlike many of its oh-so-seriouscontemporaries in this genre, it even purposefully includes a blacker shade ofblack vein of tongue-in-cheek humour running through it, but without descendingto spoof or parody levels. Monster movie purists may well hate this flick, ofcourse, but at least its choice of animal antagonist makes an interesting,diverting change from the more usual giant invertebrates, prehistoricsurvivors, and belligerent ape-men that tend to dominate this cinematiccategory.

Razortooth is currently available towatch free of charge on YouTube, so if you'd like to do so, just click here. Or click hereif you'd simply like to watch an official trailer for it.

  No escape from the razortooth – whether in the water, out of thewater, on dry land, or even up a tree, it's gonna get ya! Please click composite picture to enlarge individual photos in it for viewing (© PatriciaHarrington/Gravedigger Films/Capital Art Entertainment (CAE)/PUSH/Lionsgate –reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis foreducational/review purposes only)

Several months after viewing Razortooth, I purchased and watched inquick succession another monster movie with genetically-engineered mega-fishesas its animal antagonists. This movie was the aptly-entitled Frankenfish, and here is the mini-reviewthat I wrote about it afterwards:

 

FRANKENFISH

  My official UK DVD of Frankenfish (© Mark A.Z. Dippé/ColumbiaTriStar/Syfy – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis foreducational/review purposes only)

On 16May 2024, I watched my recently-purchased DVD of the 20-year-old TV monstermovie Frankenfish.

Directedby Mark A.Z. Dippé, and released in 2004 by Columbia TriStar for the TV channelSyfy), Frankenfish is a very genericMM, and is all about some huge, voracious, genetically-modified Chinese (akanorthern) snakehead fishes Channa argusthat have been let loose into a Louisiana bayou where they wreak bloodthirstyhavoc upon its alligators and human inhabitants alike. (In real life conversely,this gourami-related species does not exceed 5 ft long at most, and is usuallyless than 4 ft.)

Consequently,the appropriately-named Sam Rivers (played by Tory Kittle), a medical examiner,is dispatched to the besieged bayou, together with biologist Mary Callaghan(China Chow), only to discover that they have as big a battle on their handswith the locals' firmly-ingrained superstitions and faith in black magicsolutions to the situation as they do with the monsters themselves – which loseno time in picking off the humans, one by one...

  A real Chinese (northern) snakehead(public domain)

Amusingly,whoever wrote the DVD's back-cover blurb presumably had no idea what asnakehead is and was therefore led badly astray by its name (and had apparentlynot even watched the movie itself, in which snakeheads are accuratelydescribed).

Forthe blurb writer described the movie's monsters as being not only "massive,genetically-engineered, flesh-eating fish" but also as having been"scientifically bred with a deadly snake"! Now that's a monster movieI'd definitely pay good money to watch!!

Asfor this one, the monster fishes when seen briefly out of the water are ok, butas the main storyline takes place almost entirely at night, I didn't see asmuch of them as I'd like to have done. But in compensation, there is a veryunexpected and entertainingly chilling closing scene to look out for, featuringthe ever-troublesome character Dan (Matthew Rauch).

If you'd like to watch an officialFrankenfish trailer, please click here to view one on YouTube.

 

Finally:to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLandblog's film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a directclickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view acomplete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

  The official American DVDfor Frankenfish (© Mark A.Z.Dippé/Columbia TriStar/Syfy – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial FairUse basis for educational/review purposes only)