Harbinger Down

Well here we are again, "we" being Christine & myself. Once upon a time, Christine and I wrote horror movie reviews for pseudo-big deal websites. Now we're just embittered old bitches, yelling at kids to get off our lawns and griping about our back pain. But dammit, we still love horror movies. so we decided to close the distance between us and "hang out" via Facebook messenger. We can't share popcorn, or do each others hair, or swap nail polish, but we can still watch a movie and talk at the same time.


We had originally planned to do Deathgasm this time around, but ultimately decided to pick something that neither of us had seen yet. Besides, everyone knows that Deathgasm is flawlessly awesome, so what's the point?


So we scrolled through the possibilities on Netflix, sneered at the slim pickings and finally settled on Harbinger Down, mostly because Lance Henriksen. Notice I didn't say "because Lance Henriksen is in this movie." No, Lance Henriksen is his own stand-alone explanation. Lance Henriksen exists and existed in front of the camera while this movie was being filmed, thus shall we watch it, amen.

Me: wtf is Harbinger Down? Sounds familiar.

Christine: Is Lance Henriksen in that?

Me: yep

Christine: It's in my queue somewhere but I haven't watched it yet. Is it like Leviathan maybe? Deep Rising?

Me: Something about tentacles and sea monster mutants.

Christine: Want to try it?

Me: Sure! I'm always up for sea creatures.

Christine: Me too! And I like Lance. He probably dies in the first scene.



Fortunately, Lance does not die in the first scene. He's not even in the first scene. Instead, the film begins with a crippled spacecraft entering Earth's atmosphere, clearly in distress and helpless to stop as it zooms towards the frozen tundra below and splashes down into the icy waters of the Bering Sea. Hmmm, why does that sound familiar?


Oh yeah...


Turns out that this spacecraft is Russian, and is returning from...uh, somewhere, where they were fucking around with, uh, something. Something bad. Which they are now returning to Earth with. Oopski. Hey, did you know that the Russian word for "thing" is "вещь?" Somehow, "The Bewb" just doesn't carry the same amount of unknown menace as "The Thing." And there are no bewbs on display in either flick, so this is a moot point.


Heh. bewbs.

Anyway, at this point we jump ahead 30+ years and meet our present day cast. Sadie, a pouty little milkweed pod who is also the granddaughter of Harbinger Captain Lance Henriksen, whose actual name I forget because Sadie has an annoying habit of referring to him throughout the entire film as "Pop Pop." Seriously, how many girls over the age of 12 continue to refer to their grandfathers as "pop pop?" Along for the ride is Sadie's dickweed professor from an unnamed Ivy League University, who is determined to undermine Sadie's master thesis by taking all the credit and glory for himself. On board the Harbinger are the Inuit guy, the black guy, the ruggedly handsome guy, the tough and sexy Russian chick, the Really Big Guy and two tons of frozen crabmeat. Oh, and Sadie has brought along a Black Girl, so our minority buffet is set up and ready to go.



Sadie is supposed to be studying a pod of beluga whales, but she immediately discovers the remains of the long lost Russian spacecraft and convinces Pop Pop to let her haul it up onto the deck. Token Black Guy opines that this could be from Fuck You Shima. Dickweed Professor - who states that his name is Stephen Lick Me (well that's what it sounded like!) immediately takes over, filming the whole thing like Geraldo fucking Rivera. However, Pop Pop points out the universal "Finders Keepers" rule and Sadie claims the wreckage as her own, much to the miffiness of Dr. Lick Me, who is of the opinion that such things should not be approached all "hickety pickety." No really, he says "hickety pickety." I don't even know what the fuck that means. I've heard of "scattershot" and "haphazard" but "hickety pickety?" Maybe he meant "higgledy piggledy?" Oh who cares. Bottom line: Dr. Lick Me is a jerk and will undoubtedly die soon.

Me: Is that even a saying?
Christine: Hickety pickety? It's sweeping the nation as we speak.

Me: It's the new "bomb diggity."


Meanwhile, back in the mess hall (or, in this case, "mess shoebox") The Big Guy and the Ruggedly Handsome guy spend some time running interference on Dr. Lick Me so that Sadie and Tough Russian Girl can go take a look at the wreckage before anyone else can. And behind the guys, on a shelf, just hanging out, is a novelty drinking bird. And we have confirmed Alien reference sighting, I repeat: confirmed Alien reference. Miss Tough Sexy Russian makes a joke about being able to see Alaska from her house. Sarah Palin slam complete.


Christine: Is this awful or is it just me?

Me: It's...meh so far. I'll judge it by its monsters.

Christine: WHEN AND IF WE EVER SEE THEM!

Tissue from dead frozen astronaut is collected and examined. Sadie discovers something called "tardigrades" and Russian Girl translates something in Russian as water bears. Oh, they're the same thing. Wait, are we about to be attacked by water bears? But they're so cute! Look!


They look like microscopic Tusken Raiders mated with microscopic walruses and produced microscopic Hoover hand vacs! They're fucking adorable! I refuse to accept water bears as the enemy!


So anyway...Russian Girl has a wicked scar running down the side of her face and decides to bond with Black Girl, who has helpfully brought all of her cosmetics on board. See, she used to be a make-up artist but now she's a marine biologist so why the fuck would you bring all of your cosmetics onto the ship when you're studying beluga whales?! What does covering Russian Girl's scar have to do with anything? Who cares? And I call absolute bullshit here: ain't no way, no how that a black girl's foundation is going to conceal a scar on the face of the whitest white girl ever to blend in with a blizzard. Unless Maybelline turns out to be a mutated water bear deterrent, why are we watching this?!?!?!


Christine: This is kind of a rip off of The Thaw.

Me: Was The Thaw that Larry Fessenden flick?

Christine: No, you're thinking of The Last Winter, which is also very similar to this. All this global warming horror.


Suddenly, and for some reason, Dr. Lick Me gets infected. I'm not sure how, or when, maybe I blacked out when it happened and I missed it, but he suddenly starts wigging out, tearing his clothes off and turning red and spotty. Finally, the crew manages to wrestle him into a cabin before he can get his pants off, cuz nobody wants to see that. What we do see is the bad doctor's back suddenly sprouting three pus spewing appendages which proves my theory: Dr. Lick Me has become The Drizzle.

And Sadie's brilliant conclusion? "There seems to be an organism on this ship."

No shit, REALLY?!

So everyone has been exposed, no one is allowed to leave the ship and they risk contaminating the entire population if they return to the mainland. Is there an echo in here?


Christine: Soon they will tie someone to the fucking couch.

The cast then decides to reenact The X-Files episode "Ice" (Season 1, Episode 8, 1993, you're welcome) and the dog cage scene from The Thing, decide that liquid nitrogen worked in The Entity so why shouldn't it work here too, and finally Pop Pop Henriksen stumbles out into the hallway after watching a giant Red Lobster main course consume the Inuit and grimly announces: "We're gonna need a bigger bucket." Thank you, Chief Brody. Now show me the way to go home. 



The Scooby Doo gang heads in to confront the slithering hellspawn and HOLY SHIT THERE'S A CHESS MASTER VIDEO GAME IN THE RIGHT HAND CORNER!! I SAW THAT OH YES I DID! I couldn't grab a screen shot of it because my doohickey is done screwed up, but seriously! Go FFW through Harbinger Down on Netflix right now and check it out. Don't blink, or sneeze, or you'll miss it, but it is there. I shit you not.


And the black guy dies. Wow, sure didn't see that one coming. *eyeroll


Okay, so Tough Russian turns out to be Double Agent Russian and she's bound and determined to make beeg traable for Moose und Sqvuirrel. She was in on it the whole time, you see. Going undercover as a crabber...or maybe she had crabs and got confused about the assignment, I don't know. Anyway, she's blowing this popsicle stand and, oh yeah, by the way, she left bombs in the bilge, seeya! Wouldn't wanna be ya! Except oops, the monster sneaks up behind her and...


Me: Did she just get bum rushed by a mushroom?

Christine: OMFG


The monster sprouts a meat blossom, just like The Thing. It also has a very long lunchmeat like tongue appendage. Or - as Christine opined - a really big dick. It kills everybody, infects Lance and lolls about all slithery, looking like a cross between the Kothoga from The Relic and that giant maggot in Galaxy Of Terror. Except it doesn't rape anyone.

This is from Harbinger Down, right?

Christine: Of course it's a Xenomorph. Wait, no...
Me: GET TO THE CHOPPA! Oh wait...

Christine: You gotta be fucking kidding me.
Me: If the head comes off and grows legs, I will spank this movie. Hey, where's the black girl?

Christine: She died. It ate her head.

Me: She did? How the fuck did I miss that?



Another minority down. Sad dramatic reveals, final heroic gestures, schmaltzy inspirational pronouncements, yadda yadda, Sadie decides to crash the Harbinger into some stock footage of The Titanic, hence the title, and despite the fact that it's the middle of the night and she's dressed in all black, in the middle of a stormy ocean, a rescue helicopter manages to find her within 2 minutes of the crash. Yeah right.


Me: And her hair and makeup is still perfect.
Christine: Of course.
Me: Yeah yeah, and call her Ishmael.
Christine: And she freezes to death like Jack Torrance. But it's not dead! Harbinger Down 2!

Me: Harbinger Up?
Christine: Yes! There were a lot of film influences in there. Not much original.

Me: But Lance makes anything worth watching.
Christine: You are correct. If he hadn't been in it, it would be forgettable. It still might be! haha!

"Dude, what else is on?"