The Bone Eater is a Sci-Fi Channel gem that I strolled upon on a lonesome sober Saturday night. It starts out with three construction guys uncovering some Indian ruins. The newly uncovered ruins formulate into an awesomely cheesy skeleton warrior and the warrior promptly destroys the three shocked construction workers for their troubles. When the Bone Eater hits you with his sword, or whatever it is, you immediately disintegrate. It’s a pretty awesome weapon. He can jump really high and summon a spectral horse at will too. Pretty bad dude.

Anyway, he fucks up a bunch of guys in this movie. Our hero is a small town sheriff who is trying to mend his rocky relationship with his estranged daughter who is with him for the summer, all the while trying to stop this evil minion. A pretty tall order. Throw in you prerequisite Indian chief, Indian hotty, a Vision Quest or two, and an evil land developer and you have……The Bone Eater!

I’m a sucker for the Sci-Fi channel. They feed me Ice Spiders, Blood Monkeys, and giant alligators and I keep coming back for more. The Bone Eater is no different.

I was especially intrigued since this movie starred two of my childhood heroes in Gil Gerard (Buck Rogers) and William Katt (The Greatest American Hero). Gil had a pretty big role, but I didn’t even see William Katt. He might have been one of the doctors though. It’s been 25 years since I fired up the Greatest American Hero and a person’s looks can change an awful lot in that length of time. Anyway, the movie was good regardless. Sci-Fi may be getting the hang of this movie-making biz. Of course I may be an idiot.

The movie had a lot of kills, which is good. No real gore though, since the victims disintegrated. Not a big deal. It’s cable tv, so I wasn’t expecting Fulci-like violence. An interesting sidebar was the fact that this was one of those movies where anybody could be killed at random at any time. It wasn’t so bad that it made the movie directionless, but a couple people bit the dust that I didn’t expect. Main characters and fringe characters alike felt the vorpal blade of the Bone Eater. Random violence? I’ll take it!

To summarize, this was a good movie. Surprising, since it was a Sci-Fi exclusive and was called The Bone Eater. It had numerous kills, cheesy special effects, good acting (for the most part) and a decent storyline. It flowed well. There were a couple minor WTF’s, but it’s Sci-Fi Saturday Night baby. Kinda par for the course. The characters were developed well and the movie never got boring, even when heads weren’t rolling. I’m sure it will be on again, perhaps very soon. Check it out. I give it 6 out of 10 coincidental solar eclipses that may or may not have had anything to do with the movie.

This review was fueled by No Fear energy drink and the sweet, soft sounds of Winds of Plague’s latest album “Decimate the Weak”. Check it out because it fucking rocks.