Well…

…maybe more like “Frisson in the Foliage”…

Movie night!

Picture this.

A divorced father puts his 6-year-old son and his stuffed tiger (I’m already confusing this with Calvin and Hobbs – this can’t auger well) alone on a plane bound for Brazil and bound for the boy’s mother. (You don’t need to keep track of the personnel here, this is the last we hear of the mom from Ipanema.)

The dutiful dad then heads for the airport bar – I kid you not. Maybe instead of “Terror in the Jungle,” it should be; “Mai-Tai’s in the Tiki Bar.”

The plane is populated (infested?) with a tawdry, middle-aged. purple-puffy-shirt-wearing, Beatles knock-off band (oh yes, complete with mop-top wigs in shades of color God never intended).

They play one of their “hits” in the back of the airplane cabin (oh yes, with full drum kit) as the plane crashes on the Amazon and everyone is eaten by crocodiles except the kid. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.

The child drifts down the river in a coffin (it’s too complicated to go into right now) until he’s captured by descendants of the Incas who have the same crummy wigs as the doomed band on the plane. They also wear those same feathered Indian headdresses I used buy in the gift shop at the old Bird and Animal Forest on Highway 27 when I was a kid. The tribe decides first to dance on stone steps to entertain the child (frankly, the best part of the show) and then to sacrifice him to their god. Talk about yer mood swings!

Meanwhile, dutiful dad has sobered up, heard about the crash, and races grimly by plane to Brazil, then by hotel shuttle to check in (I KID YOU NOT), then to a church, and then to a riverside mission in his coat and tie to rescue his son. Will he make it in time?

This is truly one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.

Oh yeah, there’s piranhas, boa constrictors, jaguars, and quicksand too. The only vital ingredient missing was an inexplicable yeti.

I loved it.