Before getting into my in depth review of Millennium Bug at this time I’d like to take the time to thank Jeffrey Long over at The B-Movie Shelf (check out his site via the recommended linkage section to the right of this review) as if I hadn’t listened to his wonderful podcast and seen the DVD release trailer I wouldn’t have known about this absolute gem of a find which could ultimately be one of the best exploitation monster B-Movies (Is there such a thing? Probably not this has to be the first of its kind) I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing. Thanks bro! Please keep up the great work.

Now if the opening paragraph didn’t give you enough of a low down on what The Millennium Bug encompasses here is the traditional plot synopsis – When the Haskin family seeks refuge from Y2K hysteria in the isolated forests of the Sierra Diablos mountains, madness and terror find them there. Abducted by a vicious hillbilly clan, the Haskins fight for survival, but neither they nor the hillbilly Crawfords can comprehend the monstrous nightmare about to erupt from the bowels of the earth.

Its not every day where a B-Movie this creative is spawned and all credit has to go towards writer/director Kenneth Cran as he stumbled on to a completely original/fresh idea. I really enjoyed watching the Texas Chainsaw influences being worked in the strongest ways where you have a set of normal people heading to a destination and then unfortunately come across a clan of raving hillbilly psychopaths. I’ve read a lot of mixed reaction in terms of the acting in The Millennium Bug being sub-par but I do have to ask how else would actors get into the mindset of playing a certain role? By just phoning in a performance or going completely over the top? It’s those performances that carry the better half of the first part of the film until the monster itself decides to come out and play and ultimately crash the party and once he does like the old saying goes – all bets are off. If there was any one thing I thoroughly enjoyed about The Millennium Bug its that there really isn’t any main plot or storyline to follow. I mean sure you could say that it does walk the line of any other horror film where people are abducted against their will and traditionally the payoff is seeing whether or not those people are going to walk away and live happily ever after yet throwing a giant monster into the mix is what makes this whole experience in general so unpredictably awesome because that ends up being one hell of a last hurdle to jump over.

Besides having a multitude of unique concepts being mashed together the other element that gives The Millennium Bug such a distinctive identity is having no use of CGI at all. In the state of the modern film industry this ends up being a breath of fresh air as going to the theater and predicting when a plethora of mind numbing explosions are going to envelop the entire screen while the audience ooohs and ahhhs sadly have become way too tedious and boring. For those of us who grew up in the 1980s we end up leaving after the final credits with a pit in the bottom of stomach. I mean come on now, what happened to the 4^th of July only coming once a year? When I sit and watch movies from the last two to three decades I still sit back in a state of awe taking in the art form of how special effects were done and when computers were still a novelty technically being in their infant forms. It’s the legendary special effect wizards the likes of Rick Baker, Rob Bottin, and the late great Stan Winston who were the bar in terms of making a practical effect look and feel real. How many digital artists/programmers can one name that have revolutionized the special effect industry the way Baker, Bottin, and Winston did? Not many, right? With the practical effects in The Millennium Bug they are not quite as good as the three big FX names above however one can’t deny the creativity that went into the final product so if No CGI Films (clever title for the company who made the film) continues to lovingly pay homage to the way effects were done in the past they’ll have no problems honing their craft and who knows maybe eventually somewhere down the road they’ll help redefine the industry.

The Final Verdict: An unexpected surprise The Millennium Bug hit DVD around the same time when doomsayers were embracing another end of the world scare (December 21st, 2012) which predictably didn’t happen. So with a lot of time now on everyoe’s hands this is the best roller coaster ride to start off 2013 with. The pure insanity of this movie is what makes it a perfect popcorn flick for gore hounds and giant monster fans alike. Genre fans have something special to celebrate here as the mood is eerie, the backgrounds are spectacular, and I can’t even remember the last time when I’ve seen some incredible suitmation incorporated into a modern film (apart from Godzilla and maybe the Muppets). In terms of popularity if a strong word of mouth gets out there The Millennium Bug would definitely have no problem becoming a future cult classic so if you’re now just discovering it pick up a copy ASAP and then help spread the word. The Millennium Bug needs to feed and grow stronger getting bigger and bigger until it unleashes pure chaos with nothing left standing in its way.

IMDB Rating: 5.4/10

Direct 2 Video Dungeon Rating: 7.5/10

Writer/Director Kenneth Cran makes adjustments to the Bug puppet.

Anyway, one of the executive dudes on the other side of the table (there’s always a long conference table where these meetings take place) said something like, “Yeah, we totally get it. It’s Jim Henson meets THE EVIL DEAD!” Holy (insert expletive here… mine was a word beginning with “F”, but it wasn’t “fulcrum”)! The father of all modern notions of puppetry meets Sam Raimi’s first blood-fest! I couldn’t have said it better. He reminded me of what I saw after the finished Millennium Bug monster suit sat posed before me. It reminded me of THE DARK CRYSTAL. It reminded me of a really ferocious Muppet. I went home that night and thought, “I’ve designed a giant man-eating, toothy Muppet!” I was pleased.

Now, don’t get me wrong. In NO WAY am I saying our work was/is better than the work of the masterful Jim Henson. I’m just saying without Henson and THE DARK CRYSTAL, LABYRINTH, THE STORYTELLER series, etc., our Bug may never have been made. All modern puppet effects, from the Carpenter’s Thing to Winston’s raptors and t-rex, owe a nod to Jim Henson. So, a special thanks to that one executive for reminding me of the Bug’s (sublime) genesis, and for reminding all of us that Jim Henson did it without pixels.

To support THE MILLENNIUM BUG, reserve your copy of the DVD!

Please go to www.indiegogo.com/noCGI and contribute to our finishing fund. We’re rewarding our supporters with DVDs, shirts, original production art, and custom-sculpted models of THE BUG. Thanks!

We decided to shoot the effects according to the script order. First up then was the miniature forest, and we needed trees. Building 1/6th scale redwood trees turned out to be a relatively simple, straightforward process. Various diameters and lengths of pvc pipe were purchased at Lowe’s and Home Depot, then cut to the appropriate length. Although it was not established in the script, I had always imagined the forest as a redwood forest. That helped us, because with redwoods, there is more trunk and very little foliage at ground level. To produce two dozen trees, I laid out a ten foot sheet of clay that was about six inches wide and two inches thick. I then sculpted “tree texture” into the clay, cast it in Ultracal, and painted-in black pigmented liquid latex. When the latex dried, the skin was pulled and glued around the pvc pipe. Instant tree trunk. We later made runs to Michael’s craft stores and bought lots of plastic evergreen foliage. Scale was always a challenge, but I think we got away with it.

The tree trunks were painted and the plastic foliage wired-in. Small L-brackets at the bottom of the trees were attached and then screwed into the stage, while the trees were supported from above by a 2×4 grid attached to the warehouse’s ceiling support beams. For the ground level foliage, more plastic and nylon plants of the appropriate scale were purchased at Michael’s, and then arranged and glued onto lengths of two-inch wide by one inch thick pine lumber. For the ferns, we enlisted help from our mom, who arranged and glued the mini-fern clusters to small blocks of foam for the sake of portability.

Next up for construction were the various buildings. The script called for a hillbilly cabin, a crypt and graveyard, and a ghost town.  Again, 1/6th scale was required for these buildings, too, as the size of the monster had been established. Jim and I had begun the process of miniature construction immediately after securing the warehouse. We relied on the storyboards, determining which buildings needed to be built with full detail, and which ones we could get away with only one or two sides of detail. We also needed to take into account which buildings were going to be damaged or destroyed.

The Crawford clan’s cabin was started first, and would be featured prominently throughout the film. The entire structure was built from half-inch plywood on a one inch thick particle board base. Strips of luan were ripped on a table saw, then glued over the plywood shell. The front of the cabin was left mostly open, because it needed to be destroyed. Balsa wood was what we relied on for destructible buildings and parts of buildings. For the cabin, I built a balsa wood front, which turned out to be an unnecessary expenditure of time and money because the cabin was never seen being destroyed from the outside. We filmed it, but the destructive action was weak. Ironically, the storyboards never revealed the cabin being destroyed as an exterior shot. It was the one time that we strayed from the boards, and it proved an important lesson.

Ultimately, the overall cabin design was pretty basic, although I designed it with a steeply peaked roof because I thought  it would give it a more fairytale appearance, which fit our aesthetic.  The cabin was painted with thinned-out wood stain and detailed with balsa wood pieces and model railroad moss.

It’s probably important to note that unlike a big budget film, the miniatures were constructed primarily by just two people: Jim and me. Others came in to help when they could- Jim’s wife Mehri glued shingles on the cabin roof for what felt like months, my girlfriend and casting director Susan painted some of the buildings, and even Michael Goedecke, one of the executive producers, came in for a few days to make little bricks out of clay. But for three months, it was mostly just the two of us, and then later, just me.

Next, the script called for a crypt. I had taken a bunch of photos of crypts in the old cemetery in downtown Cleveland during a family visit to Ohio. The crypts were of the appropriate age… not that I was too concerned about historic accuracy. I built the crypt from individual clay bricks, which were sculpted individually from water based clay, then laid out on small sheets of plywood to dry in the sun. Once, after spending the morning making bricks, Jim and I needed to make a run to Lowe’s for some supplies, and so we jumped into my car and drove off. As we cruised down Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank, we heard this odd crashing sound.  I looked into the rearview mirror and what should I see but clay bricks flying everywhere! Apparently, a sheet of bricks had been laid on the roof of my car to dry out, but neither Jim nor I had noticed when we got in. Needless to say, we picked up every undamaged brick while traffic obliterated the others.

Because of the delicacy of the crypt, and the fact that it had to be destroyed, I was not able to build it until a few days before shooting. I built it on a small base which was screwed into the stage floor. Brick by brick, I hot glued that crypt together. Once again, the advantage of the storyboards meant that only two sides of the crypt had to be built. I will always use storyboards for effects sequences, because why build what you don’t need?

The most challenging of the models to build were the various structures comprising the ghost town of Mason’s Grove.  I love ghost towns, so I was really looking forward to building Mason’s Grove. I had done some research while visiting the ghost town of Rhyolite in Nevada, taking lots of photos and reallyabsorbing the atmosphere. Mostly, though, I relied on a picture book of ghost towns I had given my girlfriend as a Christmas present (yes, I’m a romantic) and research from the internet. The challenge really was that there are very few ghost towns in the kind of climate in which the movie takes place. Desert ghost towns are well-preserved because of the lack of moisture in the air. Ours was in a mountain pine forest, and had to look decayed and grown-in, which we accomplished through the judicious use of various mosses and lots of artificial plants. We also had gotten good results with various colors of wood stain, which we thinned with turpentine and painted onto the various buildings.

The jail was the most involved of the buildings and the only one made of stone. I had gone to Foam Mart in Burbank to find some sculpture foam, but the price for it was way out of our budget for the amount we would need. Instead, I went back to Michael’s and discovered that the foam blocks used for dry flower arrangements would work for our needs. Best of all, five blocks cost only about six dollars!

The foam blocks were sliced into thirds, glued to the wood shell of the jail, and then carved. I used a steel dental tool to carve out the individual blocks, which was relatively easy, since the foam was so soft. That softness, of course, meant that it was easy to damage, so we had to take extra care when moving it into place.

There was a lot of whimsy in that town, and the level of detail we were able to achieve is, in my opinion, pretty impressive. Their are miniature election posters that proclaim “Vote Mason for Mayor!” all over the place, as well as some “Circus Coming!” bills. There are also piles of lumber outside the general store, little pieces of furniture here and there (the hotel has a porch swing courtesy of suitmation actor Benjamin Watts’ impressive miniature-building skills!), flower pots, crates, trunks, barrels, etc. I doubt viewers will ever see them, but that’s okay because no one is watching The Millennium Bug for such things. But I wanted them there, if for no other reason than the atmospheric verisimilitude they provided.

There were a slew of other miniatures that were built, including a gallows, an abandoned well, a monster “nest,” a TNT shack, and a living room interior. With one small exception, the miniatures did their jobs and held up well. That one exception? I’ll reserve the story of its utter failure for another time…