The latest collaboration between Brett Piper and Shock-O-Rama is a riff on The Blob with a little bit of Outbreak thrown in for good measure and it makes for a pretty pleasing low-budget monster flick even if it didn't give me quite enough creature mayhem. But Piper's effects are pretty decent, star Alison Whitney looks good out of her clothes, and it only runs 79 minutes so you never get too bored with it. I went into this one wanting some creature feature mayhem and, for the most part, Bacterium delivered about what I expected it to.

Piper has a knack for kicking his movies off to a quick start and this is no exception as a helicopter inhabited by some gas mask sporting Government agents are tracking down a car along the highway which contains a man who's obviously melting down and has stolen a vial of green goo so his pursuers can't get up to no good with it. He eventually crashes his car and dies while one of the agents ends up tasting flamethrower after coming into contact with the vial. Cue credits.

Not long afterwards a group of twenty-something's playing paintball in the nearby woods decide to hide out in a seemingly abandoned house. Notice I said "seemingly" as not too long after Beth (Whitney) and Jiggs (Benjamin Kanes) enter the place a hazmat suited wacko bursts out of an upstairs room, shoots Jiggs and steals away with Beth. After he's given us our nudity fix by having Beth strip down and enter a room to be de-contaminated we soon learn that he's a scientist called Boskovic (Chuck McMahon) and he was partly responsible for creating the thing our agents want so badly.

He's been hiding out conducting experiments to try and control his creation but all he manages to do is let loose our super virus, which is looks like a big gob of yellowish snot and is mutating at a quick pace. So while McMahon and our paintballers have to try and stay alive inside the house the military is surrounding them outside and time is running out.

Bacterium definitely looks like the largest scale Shock-O-Rama production to date and proves that Piper is nothing if not a steady low-budget filmmaker. He's injected his usual dry humour into the proceedings, managed to draw half-decent performances from a cast that actually doesn't contain all of the "regulars" that show-up in POPcinema's movies (though A.J. Khan, Michael R. Thomas and John Fedele each have small parts), and packed in just enough monster moments to please. It's pretty hard to dislike a movie in which a viscous blob enjoys sliming it's way into the facemasks of containment suits, bursting out of chests and attacking a helicopter with its tentacles.

As I mentioned earlier, star Whitney doffs her duds for us but she also gives a pretty good performance as the bitchy, yet tough, Beth. Also making a good impression is Shelley Dague playing military Captain, Rayburn with just the right amount of calm. Things just wouldn't be complete without Piper stand-by Rob Monkiewicz showing his face in a minor role as the leader of a motorbike gang who appear in the finale - and almost wreck the movie's flow.

Despite the fact that Bacterium's limited budget probably resulted in their being less monster goodness, a few weak moments in the editing, and some so-so CGI in the finale I'm willing to proclaim this as the best of Piper's four efforts for Michael Raso and his POPcinema. It might not be as outright fun as the previous Shock-O-Rama was but it does its job as a campy creature feature and is enjoyable while it lasts.

On a final note, don't be fooled by the PG-13 rating on the box as there's just enough bare skin, deaths, and effects moments to make this equivalent to a soft R-rating. (Chris Hartley, 1/29/08)

Directed By: Brett Piper.
Written By: Brett Piper.

Starring: Alison Whitney, Benjamin Kanes, Miya Sagara, Chuck McMahon.

Picture Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: I'm not quite sure if this was shot digitally or on film but the transfer here looks decent either way and despite a few soft moments it holds up quite well with no noticeable flaws to report.

Extras: This is truly a case of quality over quantity in the special features department as they haven't loaded this disc with pointless crap instead offering things fans of the movie might want to see.

The twenty-three-minute "making of" featurette included here is a heck of a lot better than a majority of them tend to be as it offers a good, compact look at making a low-budget feature and makes a good complimentary piece to the commentary track with Piper, producer Michael Raso and host David Fine (who is the poorest thing about it).

Rounding out the features is a brief blooper reel and trailers for other Shock-O-Rama releases such as Skin Crawl and Chainsaw Sally.

Visit Shock-O-Rama for more info.