Bone voyage A couple of diamond prospectors are tapping around on hard places when one actually caves in. Naturally he has to look inside and you can guess who disappears.
Mean time Dr. Zack Straker (Scott Bairstow) shows up and has fun learning the culture and different quirks of the employees of a local mine consortium.
They run into the empty pit and signs of the missing prospectors. We also are reminded that on Zack arrival we see a mysterious native with a strange fetish. Evidently there is more to the story than some missing people. To add to the mix is the beautiful Mikki (Rachel Shelley) to add to the potential love angle.
There may be something ancient that snatches bones for nefarious purposes or is it all one big bugaboo?
Call it the Bone Snatcher or the Sandmother, the results are still uninspiring Dr. Zack Straker (Scott Bairstow, "Party of Five") shows up from Canada to do some research at a mining camp in South Africa, but that becomes pretty irrelevant when a group of geologists searching for a diamond mine in the desert of Nambia disappear. So Straker heads out to do search and rescue with the rest of the film's potential victims, Karl (Warrick Grier), Mikki (Rachel Shelley), Titus (Patrick Shai), Kurt (Andre Weidermen), and Magda (Adrienne Pearce). They find the corpses of the three missing men and are stunned to discover the bodies have been reduced to virtual skeletons in just six hours. Since we caught the title of the movie, we know that the culprit is "The Bone Snatcher." Of course, this would make more sense if the creature took the bones and left the flesh, but do you want to sit through a film called "The Flesh Snatcher"?
Actually, the South African title for this film, which also had backing from the UK and Canada, was "Sandmother," which actually fits the plot better than "The Bone Snatcher." I did not know that diamond mines were found in the desert, but the Nambia Desert is the home of some infamous diamond mines discovered in 1908. But the titular creature of this 2003 is found beneath the beneath the sands and not in mine caves, although is she were expecting the relationship between the monster here and the sand to be similar to that between the shark and the water in "Jaws," you will be sadly mistaken. This is one of those horror movies where the mysterious monster shows up, people die, and the star of the movie explains the unexplainable before they kill the monster and he kisses the girl right before the fadeout.
The cinematography is pretty good for this film, which has an unusual problem in that it spends half the time trying to create a sense of horror in blinding bright light on the hot sands of a desert, which, you have to admit, stacks the odds against you. But there are night sequences where things get more conventional. Director Jason Wulfsohn does a more than competent job as long as you are not paying attention to the uninspiring acting by the cast playing out their stereotypical roles and the less than stellar CGI special effects. This DVD has the trailer for the film but nothing else in terms of special features, which makes sense because this film is nothing special. I never really got into it, not even to get some pleasure from taking it apart, although I did entertain rewriting the lyrics to the Monkees' song "Star Collector" to do the plot, but it was just not worth the effort. However, if you know the song and like the idea, go ahead and knock yourself out.yeech and double-yeech! Is this the dumbest movie ever made? No, that dubious distinction would have to go to "Superman III," with Richard Pryor.
However, this film cetainly gives that one a run for its money, so unbelievably dumb, poorly directed, atrociously acted, idiotically scripted, and inanely conceived is it.
The only good thing I can manage to say about this thing is that the production actually did pack up and head out to a real desert to film it, so the setting at least comes across as visually convincing.
