TREES and TREES 2: THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

OK, you ladies must be wondering: what could a couple of poverty-row horror movies about trees run amok possibly have to do with anything, let alone THE WORLD TAKEOVER OF DRY LAND by YOU AND ME, the ARMY OF FED-UP AQUATIC LIFEFORMS? The answer is: PLENTY. Let me tell you why.

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Trees, the brainchild of some feller named Michael Pleckaitis, is a direct spoof on ripoff of homage to Jaws, the Holy of Holies. The film, which looks like it cost about a buck ninety-eight to make, is a scene-by-scene reprise of the recruitment epic, with one major change: the menace is a great white PINE.

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Wait, there's another major change: this movie sucks. It does help show you just how great Jaws is, by showing you how bad it could have been in less skilled hands. The acting in Trees is perfunctory. The camera work is uninspired. The special effects are disappointing. The incidental music, which sounded almost exactly like that in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, got me all revved up expecting some serious splatter, but nothing ever happened.

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And LET'S BE REAL: Pine trees are not scary. Seriously, can you imagine a tree chasing you down and eating you? NEITHER COULD THE FILMMAKING CREW. They didn't come anywhere near giving me the impression that this was the point of the movie, because it never happened on screen, no matter how long the story went on -- and it seemed to go on practically forever.

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Again: WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH US?

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Again: PLENTY.

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There is a powerful message in this film, one that you can't miss if you've ever seen or heard of Jaws: Sharks get the job done. Spielberg somehow made a simple, "see-Bruce-munch" type of story into a horror movie -- only Cod knows why -- but you could not miss the fact that what the Shark wanted in this story, the Shark got. He lay in wait as long as he needed to, and from there he got it done quickly, with minimum fuss -- A SHARK SPECIALTY. The Naked Apes in the story created plenty of fuss, of course. CALL IT A TRADEMARK. There are no drama queens in the Shark world, however, and somehow, if you are a human, THAT IS THE MOST TERRIFYING THING OF ALL.

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And here's the cleverly-concealed genius of the Pleckaitis film: A White Pine is also a terribly undramatic species. It pretty much stands there shedding needles. As Matt Hooper might put it, it's a miracle of Nature. It sucks up water, exhales oxgygen, and makes little Pines. It even does a little recruiting of unsuspecting Shaved Monkeys here and there, infiltrating human coffins to slurp up the contents and occasionally crashing down on the living specimens in a droll manner. But basically, there is not a tree out there that gives a rip about humans. Trying to make it look as if a tree were on the rampage against the good townspeople is...just laughable.

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One has to ask whether that's what Pleckaitis and Company intended all along. It's really hard to tell if they're kidding or not.

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When you actually sit down and watch this movie -- painful as it is -- you can't help but notice some nuggets of well-thought-out commentary in there about, not Jaws, but its hundreds of rip-offs. Most elegant was the fact that the killer tree used in the attack scenes was NOT a White Pine, reminding me irresistably of all the Blue, Lemon, and Nurse sharks used in post-Jaws films and described by worried-looking actors as Great Whites. There was even a priceless shot in Trees in which the terrified Hazelville campers fled what was obviously a ravening Douglas Fir: one woman ducked behind an actual White Pine in the attempt to conceal herself. It was a great moment. The filmmakers were also careful to make sure that none of the GIANT KILLER TREES were any taller than the humans they were eating. Most of them only came up to the hero's shoulder. Brrr, terrifying!

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An example of this movie's embarrassing lameness: remember the scene in Jaws that has Sheriff Brody freaking himself out by reading books on Sharks? Here's the Trees equivalent: Ranger Cody is paging in disbelief through a book on trees. He asks his wife in horror: "Did you know you can tell how old a tree is by sawing it in half and counting the rings!?" She shuts the book firmly, saying "That's enough of that. You won't sleep a wink as it is." Yeah, right. Again, the message here is clear: NEVER MIND THE TREES. IT'S THE FISH YOU NEED TO BE WORRIED ABOUT.

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Let us not forsake the subject of the sequel. Trees: The Root Of All Evil is a big improvement on the original, but I have to say Jaws has NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. This film combines the best features of Eight-Legged Freaks, Starship Troopers and every other crap sci-fi film you ever watched in your life, as the heroes struggle to find a weakness in the killer trees. Naturally, the menace proves to be the result of a National Forest Service genetic experiment, loosed on an unsuspecting town by Christmas-tree poachers. The ravening pines have learned to uproot themselves and scuttle after their prey, and they actually show you the trees in this movie -- the usual ridiculous computer-generated cartoons of course. Again, they only reach shoulder height. It's a riot. The wounded survivors, who have been sprayed with sap, needled, and scraped by the bark of the killer trees, are being treated in the high-school gym, while the bad guys come to a deservedly bad end and the good guys save the day.

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There are a lot of bewildering, but hilarious moments X-actoed out of other films and thrown into the sausage grinder that is the filmmaking mechanism of Trees. For instance, a burly lumberjack in a Santa suit whips a crowd of fellow loggers into a frenzy by announcing "I AM FANG!" and going on to paraphrase the speech William Wallace delivered to the troops before the Battle of Stirling in Braveheart. ("They can take our trees -- but they'll never take our AXES!") The loggers take heart and charge the trees, hollering like a hundred angry Scotsmen -- and indeed, being loggers, they're even wearing plaid shirts. A lot of the film is like that, just nutty, but in a fun way that the first film never got cl0se to.

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Again, the message here is clear: All this human drama is going on around the trees. When the characters aren't all upset about the Great White Pines, they'e worked up about the marital infidelity, bed-wetting, government cover-ups and child endangerment that make up the gritty stuff of everyday Naked Ape life. In every case, THEY'RE MISSING THE POINT. IT'S THE FISH THEY NEED TO WATCH OUT FOR.

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The second film, at least, is a delight that I learned about just in time for the Squidmas holiday season. Both movies come on the same video disc, so I suggest you buy it for someone you love and hate equally. You'll understand what I mean when you see them.