Customer Reviews

Bacterium

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Another scientific experiment goes wrong due to military involvement. A group of paintballers find themselves trapped in an old house being used as a laboratory to test and find a cure for a new form of germ warfare. The germ has different ideas and mutates again so it can escape. Our cast is trapped with the mutated germ while the military prevents them from escaping. Meanwhile, a committee responsible for the problem works on a way of eliminating the problem. The ending is rather original and refreshing.
Brett Piper did a good job with this one. I have enjoyed a number of his other films. This film is rated PG-13 but has a rather large amount of nudity for the rating. Acting is reasonable for the budget and far from horrible. In one scene it was nice to see that they did not fake the helicopter like in so many other recent films. All in all a good effort a monster/suspense film. Check it out.

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. ***

I love Brett Piper's films! The guy knows how to make the best of a tiny budget. BACTERIUM is no exception. With it's experiment-gone-horribly-wrong idea used to usher in a nice, biological blob-monster. If you enjoy THE BLOB (50s or 80s version), BEWARE THE BLOB!, CALTIKI, THE CRAWLING EYE, or other such films, then you can't go wrong here. Piper works wonders w/ his non-CGI creature, culminating in an oozing, explosive (implosive?) finale. Unfortunately, there is a distinct lack of Misty Mundae, but she can't be in everything...

Brett Piper is probably seduction cinema's best film directors around. Bacterium is kinda a rip off of The Blob, but different. I have been a fan of Piper since I saw SHOCK-O-RAMA, another one of his films as well as Screaming Dead and Bite Me! All in all see films by Brett Piper and be surprised.