Rise of the Gargoyles (2009)
Studio: RHI Entertainment.
Release Date: September 8, 2009
Directed By: Bill Corcoran
Cast: Eric Balfour, Tanya Clarke, Nick Mancuso, Caroline Neron & Justin Salinger.
Review By: Annie Riordan

Despite the title of this made for Sci-Fi horror flick, there’s only one gargoyle, and she’s already risen. And once the pre-credit sequence is finished ripping off the opening scene from 1983’s The Keep, our rather silly story gets under way.

Enter Professor Jack Randall, the American Asshole in Paris who, along with his friend Carol, unwisely decides to go poking around inside of an ancient Parisian church scheduled for demolition. According to Carol, the church was built over the remains of a pre-Christian church, and has all kinds of neato stuff tucked away in its bowels that Jack could write a book about and make a gazillion dollars. Jack does find some cool looking statues down below, but also almost gets his face ripped off by a big beastie, glimpsed briefly through the thick shadows that envelop the whole of this film. Meanwhile, Carol has stuffed some goodies in her purse, including something that looks like a cross between an avocado and the Bloodstone prop from the Subspecies films.

Of course, the thing that Carol has stolen is a gargoyle egg, and mama gargoyle is pissed. After cleanly decapitating a panicked Carol, who has scrambled out of a window to escape and given us all a good look at her underpants in the process, Jack finds himself suspect numero uno. Teaming up with a busty tabloid reporter and her cartoonish sidekick, Jack returns to the church, determined to pull a Ripley from Aliens and destroy both the hellish creature and its cache of eggs!

Silly? Yes. Cheap? Yes. Fun? Yes, in the guiltiest sense of the word. Rise of the Gargoyles is a fine creature feature with a spiffy CGI winged monster who brings back fond memories of the old Harryhausen flicks. My main beef with the film is that it was too dark. I couldn’t see half of what the characters were talking about and so simply had to take their word for it that whatever it was that I was supposed to be seeing was, in fact, there. It also drags on about twenty minutes too long, but other than that it was charmingly, childishly amusing. There’s plenty of blood and guts and the setting of the ancient chu rch is very cool, even if the streets above are very obviously not Paris. Caroline Neron is hawt in a cigaretty MILF kinda way, and tries to make up for the lack of nudity by wearing tight, low-cut T-shirts. Eric Balfour is way too smug for my taste, and his resemblance to David Naughton is disconcerting to say the least. I kept waiting for a dead Carol to show up and start whining about what boring conversationalists dead people are.

Okay, so, Rise of the Gargoyles didn’t inspire any fear for my own collection of stone gargoyles, but it wasn’t a bad way to waste an hour and a half.

Brutal As Hell Rating: 2 & 1/2 out of 5