Don’t you just hate it when an unscrupulous pharmaceutical company continues experimenting with DNA and create some super-hybrid beast? Transgentec have been meddling with nature and have ˜accidentally’ created a species of giant, fire-breathing insects that look basically like big wasps (hence Dragon Wasps). A scientific expedition enters the jungles of Belize and find said colony and some bad stuff happens, although not nearly as much as you’d expect.
Like many Best Worst Film contenders a lot of the modern B-Movies rely heavily on a great premise and not a lot else. Dragon Wasps, the wonderfully named horror/adventure released in 2012 falls neatly into this category and then promptly forgets not only the standard monster film tropes, but its own internal logic.
Sure we get the ˜Dragon Wasps’ in question, although they represent the poorest elements of this less-than-thrilling story. Poorly realised, they appear to be big, blurry, buzzing things that only resemble a wasp when stationary. By the time we reach the third act of the film, they are present, but do very little. So little in fact, that you don’t actually need them. There’s even a teased ˜Queen Wasp’ who appears as little more than a background feature. Why promise a super-giant dragon wasp and not deliver?
The real fun of Dragon Wasps comes watching the cast desperately struggling with their robotic dialogue, while trying to keep a straight face. Whether it’s the long-legged, bleach-blonde haired, perfectly made-up scientist tottering around claiming I’m a scientist, I believe in empirical evidence or any number of hilariously over-the-top death scenes, Dragon Wasps delivers in the most basic of promises, i.e. this is a monster film.
While it never reaches the heights of the great monster films, it does contain one truly awesome moment. The gruff army leader guy (can’t even remember his name) is planning to destroy the cave housing the dragon wasps, only to lift a white brick in the air and exclaim this isn’t C4, it’s cocaine. Once you’ve finished laughing at that doozy, you’re really surprised when he promptly uses the illegal class A drugs to actually blow up their lair. Now that’s a soldier.
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