GARGANTUA (1998) ** This film wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been led to believe, which is obviously something of a disappointment. It has a low-budget feel but within that limitation the special effects (giant salamanders, all kinds of exploding stuff, giant salamanders swimming, boats blowing up, snarling giant salamanders, people eaten by giant salamanders, giant salamanders jumping, etc.) are well done. Along the same lines the plot is fairly stupid, and dull enough given the necessity of including giant salamanders, but it lacks the memorable utterances necessary to gain entry into the classic realm of Ed Wood and Sidney Pink. There is a nice counterpoint of the good boy feeding the baby giant salamander cheese balls while the giant giant salamander battles the marines on the beachhead (where they blow up the gas station...hooray! Up with solar power!!). Stuck in that cinematic purgatory, too dumb to be great and too professionally done to be glorious, there's not much left for the audience to do by the end but hope that science will prevail so that the military won't blow up any more giant salamanders, or that they do, or perhaps that flying saucers or sea unicorns might suddenly appear. Incidentally, these giant salamanders are courtesy of toxic dumpers...was that an Exxon emblem on that leaky biohazard container?