Fictional Date: Fall 1954

Score:

Following the Kurtzman family through one year, from Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year in the fall) to Rosh Hashanah, this embarrassing mess loses the thread on every level. Joe Mantegna, miscast as patriarch Nate, is a cheap crook and burlesque house owner who also runs numbers and is heading for the inevitable comeuppance. Older son Van is obsessed with an alcoholic shiksa (gentile girl) that he met at a party, who later turns up as the second blonde in the series to ride in on a horse and steal someone’s heart. Younger son Ben, the narrative voice of the movie, develops a close friendship with Sylvia, a black girl at school, yielding some of the film’s only warm moments and a look at how the changing landscape of residential Baltimore brought different cultures together in the mid-’50s.

This is not as profoundly drawn a change in Baltimore life as that which transformed the family unit in AVALON, and for the most part LIBERTY HEIGHTS gives us a series of disjointed sequences that reinforce disgusting stereotypes on both sides. This is just a parade of none-too-appealing characters, and it almost seems as if a non-Jewish outsider with no emotional connection to the material wrote this one instead of the Barry Levinson of the previous three movies. The interracial relationship is even transparently lifted from the far superior A BRONX TALE!

There are also some missed opportunities among a few minor gems. Although we meet some real Baltimoreans like Asian student Ping Der (my mother actually knew her), we never see any of the DINER guys or peripheral characters, even though the younger kids in this movie are roughly contemporary with them. There are of course the requisite diner conversation scenes (and even a similar mirror shot at one point), and again these are the only times when the film’s dialogue comes alive and threatens to entertain.

Otherwise it’s uncomfortable to watch at times, contrived (as with the sudden convenient paralysis of Trey), and very insulting to both the Jewish characters (who come off as underhanded swindlers) and the African-American characters as well (Orlando Jones, despite turning in a solid performance with what he’s been given, is just a two-bit patsy).

A few historical touches (the looming shadow of the Maryland lottery, the decline of the old Block before the modern adult theaters moved in) aren’t enough to give LIBERTY HEIGHTS as much “oomph” as the rest of the series, and the attempts at emotional resonance ring hollow.

In the final moments, Ben says that a relative of his once said “If I knew things would no longer be, I would have remembered better.” This is a direct quote from Sam’s final scene in AVALON, either suggesting that the Kurtzman family is linked to the Krichinskys of the previous movie, or that Levinson was desperately hoping to feed off that film’s strong sense of heart.

In the end, LIBERTY HEIGHTS is an overlong misfire from a guy who appeared to have this kind of movie down cold. How a man who grew up Jewish in Baltimore and reflected that experience so warmly and accurately in AVALON could turn around and produce something so skewed and unnecessarily unflattering is a mystery. LIBERTY HEIGHTS portrays unredeemable, sleazy characters in situations that they created for themselves, perpetuating awful stereotypes and adding little to the mythos built up in the previous three movies. While fans of the series might wish to see Levinson shoot another Baltimore film, LIBERTY HEIGHTS almost makes some of us wish that he leave the series alone from now on.

Cars: In one of the more insulting moments, Levinson has crooked patriarch Nate Kurtzman walk out of an Orthodox Rosh Hashanah synagogue service to look at the new Cadillacs at the local dealership, something he evidently does every year! It’s no wonder he has such a lousy fate. But it does show the ultimate power of the Cadillac, that icon of affluence and American success that Levinson celebrated before in such a central way in TIN MEN. Levinson just can’t get enough of that shot of a shiny new Caddy spinning on the display dais, and of course the car figures prominently in the Little Melvin subplot as well.

Music: Also taking center stage here, as Levinson explores the division between black and white Baltimore in the ’50s, is James Brown (or a reasonable facsimile) who performs at the Royal. One wonders if DINER’s Shrevie was in the crowd that night. The usual stripper music heavy on saxophone and soul also crops up in multiple drawn-out (and very boring) sequences set in Nate’s burlesque house, bringing us to Baltimore’s infamous Block repeatedly throughout the film. Sinatra is once again a god among men, and Ben even forces Sylvia’s father to sit in a car with him until Frank finishes a song on the radio. Now that’s commitment.

Baltimore Geography: Besides the aforementioned Block (a section of Baltimore Street famed for its, shall we say, “adult” entertainment), we see Forest Park quite a bit, which is naturally right off Liberty Heights. We return to the Washington Monument, see a streetcar like the one in AVALON that led to a minor disaster, and return to the Druid Hill Conservatory and zoo as in the previous movie. University of Baltimore Law School (remember Boog?) is a big player as Van’s little troupe are all students there.

That Tabakin Touch: Unfortunately, Ralph doesn’t do much here apart from operate the spotlight at Nate’s burlesque house. He whines almost incoherently when Nate orders him to kill the spot on a girl who’s threatening to go nude, thus putting them in danger of being arrested. A waste of Tabakin’s considerable talents, but at least he’s there.

Epilogue: And there we have it, the Baltimore films of Barry Levinson to date. They all have their charm - even LIBERTY HEIGHTS - and DINER is still one of the great viewing experiences of all time. So if you want to feel like you’re spending some quality time in the City That Reads, I suggest you rent the first movie, get some French Fries with gravy, and join Eddie, Billy, Shrevie, Fenwick, Boog and Modell, hon. I’ll see you all later at the diner!

ATB

Fictional Date: ranging from 1914 (briefly) to the 1960s; primarily late ’40s to ’50s

Score:

If DINER is the series’ heart in the way it captures the comfortable charm of friendship and camaraderie, AVALON is its spiritual center. In its depiction of the strong bonds of love and tradition that carry one Jewish family through generations, AVALON shows us how the forces of progress lead to the disintegration of that family and its necessary evolution into a more decentralized, less harmonious collection of individuals with different dreams and ideals.

While some of the movie feels a bit too real and honest in its portrayal of this family, it never seems unflattering or lacking in affection for the culture that shaped Sam Krichinsky and his relatives. In fact, of all the movies in the Baltimore series, this one eerily echoes a lot of similar details from my own family’s history, suggesting that the Baltimore Jewish experience of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations was much the same from one family to another.

There are, for example, the very familiar repetitive conversations around the dinner table that review old tales told so often they have spawned accompanying jokes for the younger members of the family. The family circle meetings (every Jewish family in Baltimore must have done this) are also too real, usually degenerating into arguments while trying to establish group activities and where to give to charity for that year.

The entire family lives in one big house as all European immigrant families seemed to do. The advent of television entrances the young (they’re willing to stare at the Indian chief on the test pattern for hours) and mystifies the old. In fact, most of the family dialogue and structure is so painfully real and close to home it’s hard to watch, but definitely not in a bad way.

There’s also a strong similarity between the young men of AVALON and the tin men of the previous movie. The recurring theme about salesmen who can sell anything and just move on to other gigs returns to the philosophy of BB’s partner Moe in TIN MEN. Levinson must have had quite a few salesmen in the family.

The joyous cacaophony of a huge family around the table at Thanksgiving is slowly contrasted with the silence of a small family huddled around a tiny kitchen table years later, the small TV (a huge symbol of progress and familial disintegration here) droning away in another room as the remains of the Krichinskys eat quietly.

AVALON is about the end of one generation and the beginning of another, and with beautifully simple shots that carry us through the years, we watch as an old world sensibility gives way to a modern independence.

The Krichinskys become the Kayes and the Kirks, and old Sam Krichinsky can only watch as the world, the Baltimore, and the family that he knew vanishes before his eyes as if it never was. The poignancy of Sam’s final scene is so acutely drawn that it’s tear-inducing, but some glimmer of memory remains, suggesting that future generations may retain the knowledge of what came before even if they don’t quite understand it.

Cars: While loving shots of period cars once more play a role in AVALON, there’s no real central theme to their appearance. They’re just set dressing for the story in this case.

Music: Sam owned a piano bar once, not quite the burlesque houses of the other films, but featuring some of the same bluesy music. A lousy lounge singer turns up again, and there’s even another awkward dancing scene echoing that of Shrevie and Beth at the close of DINER.

Baltimore Geography: Plenty of Baltimore to be seen here, including some (recreated) glimpses of the turn-of-the-century city that so captivated a young Sam Krichinsky upon his arrival in America. The Bromo Seltzer tower, the Washington Monument, and the cobblestone streets of Fells Point and elsewhere show up for some time in the spotlight. The rowhouses of the late ’40s sport the faddish painted screen doors that were all the rage then, and the marble steps are as distinctive a bit of Baltimore architecture as the houses themselves. We visit Frock’s Farm (a popular getaway and site of some of my own family’s circle meetings before I was born), and we spend some time at the Druid Hill conservatory and zoo with Sam and his grandkids. The Senator Theater (right near where I work in Towson) turns up briefly, but most importantly, the single most significant Baltimore landmark in the series makes a surprise cameo. Young Michael spies construction workers lowering THE diner itself into place as he watches from the back of the car!

That Tabakin Touch: Ralph is back, this time as the straight-laced principal who finds Michael outside his classroom, having been put in the hall to contemplate the nuances (heh heh) of the difference between “may” and “can.” When Sam arrives to defend his grandson, the back and forth between the unwavering Tabakin and Mueller-Stahl’s English-challenged Krichinsky verges on becoming a linguistic version of the “Who’s on First?” routine.

Next: We wrap it up with a look at LIBERTY HEIGHTS.

ATB

Fictional Date: 1963

Score:

When two “tin men,” salesmen pushing the then amazing innovation of aluminum siding for homeowners, find themselves engaged in a battle of wits that leads to one of them losing a wife and the other one taking her in (after using her in the fight in a rather sleazy and sadistic way), their misery is only beginning.

Levinson examines the historical period when Baltimore’s runaway fixation on home improvement spawned a group of hustlers more interested in the art of selling and acquiring money than doing business with any concern for ethics. The result: the rise of the Home Improvement Commission and the death of a generation of salesmen who put their hearts in their work and ignored their lives until it was almost too late.

Danny DeVito’s Tilley is one of many here, a guy who knows how to sell sell sell but can’t seem to make a go of it with wife Barbara Hershey. Their relationship echoes that of Shrevie and Beth from DINER, but unlike that happier, younger pairing, this one leads to divorce and Hershey’s Nora winds up in the arms of Tilley’s rival, the equally crooked Bill Babowsky (Richard Dreyfuss). There aren’t many redeemable characters here (even Nora’s situation is only created when she consciously chooses to cheat on her husband), but they come off as far more likeable than the scummier cast of LIBERTY HEIGHTS. Still, they are more disgusting than the DINER guys. While Boog never committed adultery with Beth, Bill sees no problem doing it with Nora for pure revenge!

DINER’s Bagel makes his second and final appearance here, and as before, he serves as peacemaker, trying to resolve the enmity between Bill and Tilley as he smoothed things over for Boog and his bet with Tank. He’s less successful here, however, As with DINER, the best character scenes are those that take us back to the diner.

This time we join the tin men on the other side for some typically mundane conversations, usually highlighted by Jackie Gayle’s riffs on BONANZA (yup, the Ponderosa again). While DeVito tries a bit too hard with his Baltimore accent, he usually sounds pretty good, and repeats a bit of wisdom first heard in DINER: that it’s rare, if not unheard of, to see a girl enter what is evidently a male fortress of chrome-edged solitude.

While TIN MEN doesn’t aspire to the level of philosophical introspection or even clever humor that makes DINER so enjoyable, it has its moments and showcases another aspect of life in Baltimore during a time of rapid change. It lacks the warmth (or attempt at such) that characterizes the other films, however, mainly because it moves so far away from the cultural aspects of family and community that typify the rest of the series.

Cars: Those Cadillacs are irresistable, symbolically lined up outside the tin men’s offices as examples of their financial and social status. But when one gets smashed in the opening of the movie, it’s the catalyst for an escalating psychological war between Bill and Ernest. Levinson has quite a thing for the Caddy, lovingly tracing its lines in multiple scenes and putting the power of its finned glory center stage through much of the movie. LIBERTY HEIGHTS would see the Caddy as an icon return to prominence in the series.

Music: It’s not as crucial a theme in this movie as in DINER or LIBERTY HEIGHTS, but period music is once more a backdrop to the action. Sinatra and Mathis are once more invoked as gods of the rhtyhmic muse, and another bad lounge singer rears his head.

Baltimore Geography: We see endless shots of rowhouses, the defining architecture of Baltimore, complete with their trademark marble steps. The Forest Park neighborhood, central to some of the other movies in the series, comes up here, as does the legendary Memorial Stadium. We may get a glimpse of Carlin’s Drive-In at one point. Tilley seems to live near Park Heights and the Pimlico race track. We even get a look at one of the downtown landmarks, the Domino’s Sugar sign.

That Tabakin Touch: As a gullible mark who buys Tilley’s latest scam to sell aluminum siding (Tilley signs him for a “free” job then sends Sam in to claim Tilley is insane and they should pay something to cover for him), Ralph doesn’t have as distinctive a scene as he did in DINER, but it’s always nice to see his timeworn face expressing the usual degree of confusion. His acting (if it can be called that) is so effortless, it’s as if Tabakin just shows up on the set and wanders into a scene - which by all accounts may be pretty close to the truth.

Next: We take a look at AVALON.

ATB

Violence/Gore: There’s some high-tech ray gun fire exchanged, and more sensitive types might be put off by the sparking hits visible on various human targets. Some kids try to attack Logan and Jessica, Logan and an unscrupulous doctor get lacerated by a laser beam, and we see a dead human body disintegrated into powder. Oh and Francis wields a tattered American flag in a knock-down drag-out battle with Logan.

Sex/Nudity: There’s some suggestive stuff in the city - particularly in the lust-filled Love Shop - and a fleeting glimpse of Logan and Jessica in the altogether as they change clothes in the icy lair of Box, but throughout the film Jessica (Jenny Agutter) is definitely wearing one of the hottest almost-there mini-dresses in the annals of sci-fi.

Best Line: “No one has to die at 30! You could live! LIVE!”

Score:

OK, sure, it has cutaway shots to a tabletop model of a domed city that isn’t fooling anyone. And yes, there are ’70s haircuts galore. But the truth is that only a while after 2001 and just before STAR WARS, the next to last step toward the modern era of science fiction film was taken by a Sandman named Logan and a really sexy British chick named Jessica.

Based on the novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, LOGAN’S RUN gives us the world of the 23rd century in which the youthful population lives in a really big mall and enjoys all manner of hedonistic pleasures like rolling around in mist and walking around in mist and milling around escalators. They must be controlled and pacified by something, and they are, but we never get a really direct answer as to who or what is behind this ignorant civilization (it’s a computer, I know, but I’m talking about something more defined). So the kids are all right in the mall and the world is just peachy.

Or not. There’s a bizarre ritual called Carousel in which anyone who reaches the age of 30 has to put on a hooded cloak and a hockey mask and get pulled up into the air by invisible harness wires until they burst into flame. The spectators believe these poor souls are trying for Renewal, but come on - they’re being executed. You see, in this world, no one lives past 30. And if you try to run, to change your fate, you’ll be stopped by one of the Gestapo-like police force known as the Sandmen. One quick blast of their gun and you’re toast. So much for “life begins at 40.”

Logan is a Sandman with a difference (no, not that kind of difference). While all the others seem content to live one day after the next in this pacified society, Logan wonders about…things. And when he finds a peculiar symbol called an Ankh on the body of a terminated Runner, the city computer sets him a task - find Sanctuary, the fabled destination of the Runners, and use the Ankh, which just might be the key to Sanctuary. The computer tells Logan the dark secret at the heart of this idyllic world - not all Runners are terminated. Some have escaped, and now it’s Logan’s duty to find them. And just to give Logan some extra incentive, the computer artificially sets his lifeclock to 30. Now he has to run.

Oh, lifeclock? It’s a blinky light in the palm of every city dweller that indicates your age. And now that Logan’s is blinking “Carousel time,” he has to betray his Sandman colleague and friend Francis, drag along a peculiar but really hot would-be Runner named Jessica, and get to the bottom of all this. Along the way he just might shatter the illusion that holds this world together and uncover the long-forgotten history of Earth. And they’ll also meet an old man with lots of kittens. True story.

My opinion of this quirky, desperate-to-be-epic sci-fi adventure has grown over the years. Some of the effects and set design are very nice, particularly some spectacular matte paintings of a PLANET OF THE APES-esque vine-ridden Washington DC. Jenny Agutter’s increasingly tattered and soaked dress deserves an Oscar all its own, and Peter Ustinov, though occasionally insufferable, nevertheless exudes just enough charm as the Old Man who shows Logan and Jessica what can happen if you just let someone blow out the candles on their 30th birthday.

Jerry Goldsmith’s score is also beautiful and eerily otherworldly, with some familiar motifs of his own that he revisits here and again in other films. And it says something for the nostalgic power of this pre-STAR WARS blockbuster that fans still buy replica ray guns and cavort around in Sandman outfits.

And of course, there’s Michael York. Not only does he manage the steady build-up from idle questioning citizen to manic Runner with a mission, he makes our Best Line choice simultaneously a dramatic high-point and an easy target for some snickering. “No one has to die at thirtyyyyyyyyy!” Brilliant.

There might be some who remember the follow-up TV series fondly, but nothing can beat the sight of a feathered Farrah Fawcett straining to remember her lines through a dense fog of confusion aided by God knows what sort of controlled substances. This is movie magic, folks.

DVD Extras: A fun behind the scenes documentary that was produced at the time of the film’s impending release not only offers a nice look at the making of the movie but a window into the world of cinema publicity circa the mid-’70s.

ATB

RUSS MEYER, Part 1  RUSS MEYER, Part 2

This column offers a no-holds barred look at the unsung heroes of modern cinema.

This column examines sci-fi films of the past that tried to predict a future that has now become the present…or perhaps the past (still with me?). We break down each film into categories (many of which recur from one installment to the next) and see how well or how poorly these prognosticating photoplays predicted those futures that were never meant to be. We’ll cover everything from the exceptional (A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY) to the excruciating (THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE, STRANGE DAYS), and much more besides. So here’s to the future…all of them!

Violence/Gore: All the actual deaths happen off-screen.

Sex/Nudity: There’s some disturbing Oedipal subtext with Chase picking up his mother and spinning her around on his shoulder in addition to a few other oddities, but it’s probably just a 21st century paranoid eye cast over a more innocent era. Or Chase is a perverted SOB.

Best Line: “And the Lord said, laugh, children, laugh…”

Score:

This movie has become one of my favorite ’50s monster-on-a-rampage flicks, on par with the admittedly far superior THEM!, principally because the MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 folks did such a great job with it that I’ve grown to love the film itself. I can’t really watch it without Joel and the ‘bots, but it’s really not at all bad and holds up well even without the relentless ribbing provided by the MST3K team.

Chase Winstead is a typical teenager. He likes hotrodding, going to the soda shop with his French girlfriend, encouraging his handicapped sister to walk, and sharing eerily intimate moments with his mother. He also apparently has a nigh-inexplicable bond with the local Sheriff, who consistently calls on Chase to help him with little things like murder investigations and mob control. Into this idyllic portrait of familiar ’50s middle America wanders a preternaturally enlarged gila monster, and the stage is set for some wacky rock ‘n’ roll adventure.

While not as tightly scripted or as well acted as THEM or many other well-known ’50s sci-fi romps, GILA MONSTER has an endearing quality aided by its distorted view of American teen culture and its heart-warming friendship between the almost inept aging sheriff and the hotrodder with a heart of gold. In fact, a fellow GILA fan and I have often commented that if we ever had the chance to remake the film, we’d add a subplot revealing that the sheriff is actually Chase’s father. It certainly makes things a bit easier to understand, but I also think we’re spending too much time thinking so deeply about this Ray Kellogg-directed quickie. Oh well.

Don Sullivan, our hero Chase, was also an aspiring singing star, and the movie gives him a chance to regale a crowd of dancing teenyboppers with a catchy Elvis-like tune. The movie also allows him to bring the entire party to a crashing halt with a gospel ode that involves repeating the line “And the Lord said laugh, children, laugh” over and over again. And don’t get me started on “My Baby She Rocks.” No therapy can eliminate the emotional scars, I guarantee you.

After a series of murders, car and train wrecks, and auto headlamp and tire thievery conducted by Chase with the sheriff’s blessing, our two unlikely partners eventually deduce that a giant gila monster is responsible for all the carnage. Logical enough. Chase then hatches a plan that involves driving a hotrod filled with nitroglycerin right into the offending creature.

By the end of the film, Chase’s sister can walk with braces, the sheriff keeps his badge, and Chase not only gets a job offer but looks set to become a rock ‘n’ roll recording star. And the French girl continues to speak unintelligibly. It’s a happy ending all around…except if you’re a giant gila monster.

Once you’ve seen this gripping film, you will know the true horror that can be unleashed when a large lizard walks over some Matchbox cars and causes a toy tanker truck to fall over and burst into flame. And you will want to put your knee up on everything in sight. Just forget the skid marks!

DVD Extras: Get the Image Entertainment version with good buddies Chase and the Sheriff on the cover. It’s in anamorphic widescreen and it’s the best edition of this public domain film available at the moment.

ATB

Fictional Date: December 1959

Score:

Well, this is the first and indisputably the best of the Baltimore films, the wellspring of quotability and one of the most rewatchable movies ever made. Introducing us to the Baltimore of Levinson’s youth, that wonderful place of camaraderie, comfortable conversation about the merits of Sinatra or Mathis, Cherry Coke, and french fries with gravy, DINER also provides us with an emotional focal point that, while it never plays such a huge role again, crops up in every subsequent film - the diner itself.

Although never stated in so many words, there’s a clear social division in this traditional chrome and neon time capsule of memories: the DINER guys (and the other twenty-somethings of the later movies) hang out on the right side of the diner (as seen from outside), while the tin men, like Bagel and the other home improvement salesmen of TIN MEN, hang out on the left. This is where the most important things are discussed, the deepest philosphies that are shared only between friends, like whether Boogie will nail Carol Heathrow on the second date, or if Modell really wants Eddie’s sandwich. This is also the escape that every one of the ensemble uses to flee from the changes that threaten to carry them from childhood headlong into an uncertain maturity. (One minor note: the diner wasn’t originally in Fells Point as seen in the movie, but had moved there before production on DINER began; later movies preserve the movie location of the diner rather than the historical reality).

While it would take a whole article just to discuss all the things that make DINER such a modern classic, we can try to touch on a few. The musical score is the perfect accompaniment to this love letter to the ’50s, matching the emotional swings of the characters with every scene. Even the conversations themselves, so much a part of what makes this movie memorable, have a musical rhythm all their own. We also see the birth of some character elements and even camera set-ups that will recur in the Baltimore series.

Boogie’s plans to attend law school at the University of Baltimore will be echoed by others in LIBERTY HEIGHTS, while a shot that simply tracks with a car pulling up to the diner will also return in that 1999 film thanks to digital compositing (due to the fact that the diner moved again before the later film was shot!). A few clever mirror shots that allow all the speakers in some diner booth scenes to be seen by the audience will also return in LIBERTY HEIGHTS. Michael Tucker’s Bagel, one of the tin men in the next movie, makes his debut here as a friend looking out for Boog’s best interests, even recruiting him (perhaps only temporarily) into the lucrative home improvement business. A deeper examination of the effects of progress would be central to AVALON, but here we see that color television just isn’t catching on with everybody (see “That Tabakin Touch").

Then there are the minor characters that just make the movie sing, like Methan, a lunatic kid who’s memorized every line in the film SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, or the famous Emerson television customer (yup, Tabakin). Jane Chisholm, Boog’s horse-riding blonde date, must embody either a fantasy ideal for Levinson or an actual person, but her image is another one that will be seen again later in the series. When Guttenberg’s Eddie picks a mock fight with his mother over the preparation of a fried baloney sandwich, Tim Daly’s apathetic expression lets us know in a heartbeat that Eddie’s been doing this since he was a kid. From Boog’s seasoned street wisdom to Shrev’s strained marriage woes, everyone is in top form. Of all the leads, however, it’s Paul Reiser (marginalized in the original posters and advertising) who really sets the tone for the entire movie. Reiser also provides some of the most delightful asides, such as his non-sequitur rumination about the unsuitability of the word “nuance,” which appears to mystify scene-mate Mickey Roarke, and his constant inability to ask Eddie for a ride without hedging.

The one thing that drags this movie down from a solid four-needle rating are the leaden scenes between Daly’s Billy and Barbara, the girl he loves who doesn’t want to marry him. Their subplot feels like the romantic thread that producers always used to think was necessary to “flesh out” a Marx Brothers movie; it’s unnecessary and maudlin. Besides, there’s plenty of emotional angst already, with Mickey Roarke’s conflicted Boogie and the ongoing trouble between Shrevie and Beth that resolves itself in the final sequence. But hey, even if there are parts of the movie that don’t work, “we always got the diner.”

Here are a few recurring elements seen in all Levinson Baltimore movies that make their debut here:

Cars: Levinson is clearly a gearhead, and although they don’t play a huge role here, the guys know their cars and respect them. Fenwick’s is particularly sporty and driving all night (and morning) long is clearly a beloved past-time, giving rise to the famous “might as well call it a night” line. I can vouch for the fact that a leisurely drive in the Maryland or Pennsylvania countryside is a slice of heaven: right, Andy?

Music: Levinson loves Sinatra, and the constant commentary about the make-out potential of Sinatra and Mathis brings this up for the first time in the series. Shrevie is obsessed with music to be sure (the lesson in record organization is a classic scene for all collectors), and clearly has an appreciation for R&B, James Brown and other genres that whitebread America may not have paid much attention to just yet. Also, as we will see later, Levinson must have spent a bit of time in the seedier side of Baltimore and grown to love the old burlesque houses. The bluesy strains of the sax accompany our first look at a Baltimore stripper in a scene with Eddie and Billy late in the film. Lousy lounge-style singers usually crop up too, and the guy who croons “Blue Moon” in the final wedding scene is definitely begging to be hooked off the stage.

Baltimore Geography: We visit a number of locations in the Fells Point area, distinguished by those brick-paved streets that still exist today. The Washington Monument (ours, not the one in DC) turns up during a scene near Boogie’s beauty salon; that picturesque area will be seen in the other movies as well. The guys also go to the Strand to see A SUMMER PLACE and observe Boog’s date with Carol Heathrow.

That Tabakin Touch: Levinson fans can spot him in every movie the director makes. With a face like burlap, bushy eyebrows masking eyes like slits, and a dry delivery that is the very definition of “deadpan,” Ralph Tabakin is the quintessential character actor and a Levinson institution. In arguably his most famous appearance, he tests Shrevie’s patience at the appliance store by requesting an “Emerson 21 inch cabinet style” television while complaining about the deleterious effect of color on the realism of BONANZA. “The Ponderosa looked fake,” Tabakin drones while Daniel Stern appears to hold back a giggle. “Hardly recognized Little Joe.” But we recognize you Ralph, and we’ll see you again in the next three Baltimore films…

Next: We take a look at TIN MEN.

ATB

DINER  TIN MEN  AVALON  LIBERTY HEIGHTS

by Arnold T. Blumberg

Around my house, you’re likely to hear lines like “You can take Elyse,” “Might as well call it a night,” and “We always got the diner” peppering casual conversation throughout the day. The vernacular of DINER, Barry Levinson’s first ode to Baltimore in what became a four film series to date, is an intrinsic part of our family discourse, as much for its humor as for its familiarity.

Levinson’s “Baltimore Trilogy Plus One” (DINER, TIN MEN, AVALON, and LIBERTY HEIGHTS) is one long love letter to his hometown, not only capturing much of the charm of Baltimore - and occasionally the dichotomy of growing up Jewish in Crab City - but tapping into certain fundamental truths about that experience that anyone can understand and appreciate. Together, Levinson’s Baltimore films stand as some of the most compelling dramatizations of a distinct American region and local culture in movie history.

This isn’t to say, of course, that there aren’t some missteps along the way. There are, for example, many locals who will tell you that for the sake of story and movie magic, the geography of our fair city can be a bit distorted from time to time - cries of “But you can’t get there from Fells Point!” will be heard in the audience every once in a while. Perhaps more importantly, there are some times - most often in LIBERTY HEIGHTS - when Levinson’s drive to tell his tales of a youth spent in ’50s Baltimore betray an ugly side to life in a Jewish family of that era that just doesn’t ring true. But all in all, these films are a treasure trove of wit, warmth and the kind of careful introspection that comes from a deep love of that fabled ’simpler time’ and the steps that led us inexorably away from it.

As a born and bred Baltimorean, raised in a moderately observant Jewish household, there’s a great deal of Levinson’s Baltimore films that ring even truer for me, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to take you on a brief tour of the series and point out some of the more intriguing thematic and visual elements that tie all of these movies together. We’ll also rate the entire series and tell you where to spot Levinson’s favorite character actor, the late great Ralph Tabakin - a guy so humble that he genuinely believed, despite the director’s own statements to the contrary, that he had to audition for every Levinson film he appeared in (and he appeared in every Levinson Baltimore film as well as YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES, WAG THE DOG, and many more, as well as having a recurring role on TV’s Homicide). So what are youse waiting for, hon? Click a film title above, and let’s go down the ocean! (Honestly, we don’t all talk like that.)

Violence/Gore: Tons and tons. More than can be detailed in this little line of text. Absolutely drenched.

Sex/Nudity: Pretty much just referential. Damn.

Best Line: “I’m going to be a naughty vampire god!”

Score:

I saw this movie in ‘98 when it first came out, with a bunch of friends at 1am after the theater closed (our friend was the manager), and it was a party. We had a blast, loved the movie, bought the soundtrack, etc., and then moved on to the next thing. I came back to the film recently in a reviewer’s capacity for Cinejunkie, and the reality doesn’t live up to the memory.

The opening scene is pretty much the plot in a nutshell: gore and violence set to techno. Now don’t get me wrong, I like gore and violence and techno, but as Man does not live by bread alone, neither does Movie survive without plot. Most of the expository scenes in BLADE seem to have mysteriously disappeared, presumably replaced with fight scenes, and there’s no background or any other reason why or who these vampires are and what they’ve been doing around for years (this info appears textually in the DVD special features, but it might have been nice to see it actually in the film). All we see by way of any sort of an explanation is a brief depiction of two factions of vampires fighting for supremacy: the corporate vampire ruling class led by Udo Kier, who believes in working undercover to control the world politically and financially, and the young-turk fashion model vampires led by Stephen Dorff, who basically want to look pretty, turn everyone into vampires, take over the world, and let chaos, in the form of ancient vampire gods, ensue.

That lame attempt at exposition really just serves as support for many blood-drenched fight scenes, none of which are very logical or interesting. These basically consist of evil vampire peons attacking Blade one at a time and attempting to out-martial-arts him, despite the fact that they have more weapons than many third-world countries.

The music, though, is great. I love techno. I just wish the soundtrack had been applied to a movie with an actual plot to speak of. Characterization is damn near nil, and we are only able to infer the characters’ goals and drives by the way they act (wooden) and what they say (mostly bad one-liners).

The special effects are truly sad; they date this movie so badly. At the time, I thought that they looked great, but on review, CG effects that looked amazing in ‘98 really look silly now.

One of the only other untarnished good things about BLADE is that it opened the door for so many other great comic book films. I think that it’s true to say that without BLADE, there wouldn’t have been a SPIDER-MAN…or a SPIDER-MAN 2 for that matter.

DVD Extras: ‘La Magra,’ a featurette which contains cut footage, including the movie’s original, more apocalyptic ending, and ‘Designing Blade,’ an interview with make-up artist Greg Cannom. Other extras include featurettes on vampire history and a piece on Blade’s origins in Marvel Comics; and a rundown on the various vampire families, which should have been incorporated into the film itself to actually explain stuff.

SS

Violence/Gore: Lots of battle scenes, and one nifty scene of the Baron Harkkonen exsanguinating a kid.

Sex/Nudity: None, unless you count Sting in those flying underpants.

Best Line: “Because he IS the Kwizatz Haderach!”

Score: (OK, so I’m biased)

Everyone has a movie or two that they remember from childhood - movies that can lift them up and take them back, not because they’re high art, or even particularly good, but because they’re your movies, and regardless of what other people think of them, you’ll love them no matter what. For me, David Lynch’s DUNE is one of those movies.

Frank Herbert’s DUNE books are second perhaps only to LORD OF THE RINGS as the most-loved sci-fi/fantasy series of all time. As such, any filmmaker who would attempt to commit such a sweeping work of fiction to film would be faced with two problems: one, that Herbert’s complex vision of a future universe would require an unconcionably vast budget to represent properly, and two, how does a screenwriter condense hundreds of pages full of plots, sub-plots, and dozens of primary and secondary characters into feature film length?

The twenty years it took to see DUNE brought to the big screen were unfortunately up in the ’80s, one of the most tawdry, faddish, and tacky decades ever to hit Hollywood…which is saying something. However, David Lynch’s vision and imagination make this movie different from other science fiction films within its limited sphere. The costumes and design give the movie the feel of high Victorian drama, and the music - although performed by the ’80s group Toto - has a New-Agey, mystical feel entirely unlike the soundtracks of the other big-budget sci-fi/fantasy films of the decade. Also, Lynch’s use of Herbert’s descriptions to fuel his bizarre visuals produced a spectacle relatively independent of special-effects wizardry. However, Lynch’s unconventional, self-congratulatory style was too polarizing, alienating Herbert fans by taking liberties with the material, and driving off mainstream audiences by being too ‘edgy’ to be a box-office success.

The film’s messianic themes can be easily viewed as having application in today’s world. Water shortages, commodities shortages (spice = oil, duh), government and corporate corruption, the imprudence of mixing religion and politics, the power of ancient grudges, and the need for society to preserve the value of individuality over that of the mob are all just as important now in 2004 as they were in 1984, and in 1965 as well.

Enough pseudo-intellectual bullshit, though. This movie rocks. Yeah, so they’re not in the book, but the weirding modules are great, and a really plausible extension of the Bene Gesserit Voice. Patrick Stewart (pre-Picard) makes an unbelievably wonderful Gurney Halleck, and Brad Dourif is awesome, as always, as the creepy Piter (even though every time I shut my eyes and listen to him, I open my eyes expecting to see Chucky). OK, so most people regard it as one of the biggest-budget flops in movie history, and Lynch himself sees it as a failure. So what? I love it, and you can’t stop me. So nyah.

DVD Extras: The new British Special Edition of DUNE released last year has many more extras than the one available here in the States, including a 40 minute ‘making of’ documentary, a BBC interview with Frank Herbert, the original promotional film for the movie, the trailer, and the movie itself in all its anamorphic widescreen glory. There’s a special edition finally on the way here as well.

SS

Violence/Gore: A lot more than your typical mainstream release, but the animatronic zombie puppets are more laughable than horrifying; some mildly understated use of CGI towards the end. The movie also seems to go out of its way to keep things under control, which is kind of a shame.

Sex/Nudity: A tame romp, and a topless scene played for equal parts laughter and nausea. Once again, they appear to be exercising remarkable restraint…but why?

Best Line: “She’s not getting any fresher.”

Score:

I was looking forward to the release of this, the first new RE-ANIMATOR installment in 13 years. After all, what fan could resist? The original from 1985 remains a classic of modern gross-out horror, with a career-defining performance by Jeffrey Combs as Dr. Herbert West. While many tend to discount the first sequel, BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR (1990), I found it a worthy follow-up that not only expanded the mythology of the first film but added a few choice West quips to the litany: “Make a note of it, Dan: tissue rejection!” And of course the ever-popular “My God, they’re using tools!”

But perhaps because of the less-than-stellar performance of that film, a third RE-ANIMATOR was often mooted but never produced…until now. It’s 13 years later, and Combs is back as a slightly older, slightly more guarded West. Languishing in prison following the events at Miskatonic and ‘beyond’ (the cemetery we see in this film’s opening flashback sequence is not the one from the end of BRIDE), West has become an even more distant individual, surprisingly capable of surviving in the harsh prison society but not at all deterred from his life’s work. To date, the major problem with his reagent has always been the violent and soulless behavior of his reanimated subjects. But now, West has discovered what he believes to be the scientific equivalent of the soul - nanoplasmic energy, lost at the moment of death, and carrying the spark that could transform a reanimated zombie into a living, thinking being once again.

With a method for collecting the nanoplasm and a fresh batch of reagent courtesy of the prison’s new doctor, whose childhood neatly dovetails with West’s own illustrious past and who desperately wants to work with the lunatic genius, West is back in action, and soon a predictable level of chaos is settling in at the prison. It’s carnage galore by the end, although even with the over-the-top make-up effects by Screaming Mad George, it’s perhaps not quite as bloody as the original - and there’s definitely no show-stopping moment on the order of the infamous Meg/Dr. Hill “head” scene. Ah, Barbara, where are you when we need you?

If you’re a RE-ANIMATOR fan and you like Combs’ work as West - and he is indeed in top form here - you’ll probably find BEYOND satisfying, if a bit disappointing. For me, much of the disappointment can be blamed on the excessive amount of time between movies and therefore the loss of the rest of the cast to career and health. Only Combs has returned, with erstwhile partner Bruce Abbott AWOL and villain David Gale long since passed away. West’s new partner, played by Jason Barry, is a fresh-faced actor who only has one expression - mildly puzzled. The main female lead, Elsa Pataky, is sexy and capable enough (she even gets to prance around somewhat incongruously in stillettos and garters in the climactic showdown) but she’s no Barbara Crampton, and Simon Andreu’s Warden Brando hardly matches the villainous charisma of the late Gale’s Dr. Hill. While the movie attempts to set up a similar sexually charged dynamic between the Warden and Pataky’s Laura along the lines of the Meg/Hill match-up from the first film, it just doesn’t come off as well. A few fan-pleasing references to the first movie (including a laughing severed head at movie’s end) may wind up reminding you a bit too much that the first RE-ANIMATOR is a true classic while this one is…well, a second attempt to recapture the magic. But it does the job for the most part.

Perhaps the best thing this movie does is put the hypo with glowing green goo back in Combs’ hand, giving him a chance to preen and peer suspiciously at others in true Herbert West style. Combs even manages to infuse this older and not much wiser West with a degree of endearing vulnerability that his younger self just never possessed. The movie also sets him up for a fourth go-round. Here’s hoping they don’t wait another 13 years to revisit the RE-ANIMATOR again.

…Oh, and make sure you stay through the end credits, or you’ll miss what might be the most insanely twisted little boxing match of an epilogue you’ve ever seen.

DVD Extras: No embarrassment of riches here, but a perfectly decent blend of the usual suspects: audio commentary by director Brian Yuzna, a trailer, a short but pleasant “making of” documentary, and even a peculiar dance music video that is infectiously catchy. I don’t know who the lead singer is, but he’s clearly patterned his image (and possibly his private lifestyle) on Wham-era George Michael. Move them dead bones bones bones!

ATB

Violence/Gore: Plenty, but all of it in an over-the-top “splatstick” style (Jackson’s term) that renders it laughably gross rather than dramatically disgusting. But boy, does he try to earn the title, with bits of brain falling everywhere, bisected bodies, a vomit sequence that has to be seen to be believed, and a scene in which Jackson’s heroic Derek literally crawls through an alien’s body from the mouth down. Must be what passes for a good time in New Zealand.

Sex/Nudity: Not unless you like bearded Kiwi hooligans drenched in blood and guts and/or pot-bellied aliens…and if you do, seek professional help.

Best Line: “There’s no glowing fingers on these bastards.”

Score:

When a contingent of aliens who fancy human brains as the next galactic fast food craze descend on the serene landscape of New Zealand to harvest some product, an intrepid band of gun-toting investigators are called out to protect mankind. Unfortunately, they’re a bumbling bunch of local yokels who manage to thwart the invasion in spite of their sheer ineptitude. Sounds like the recipe for a sci-fi comedy extravaganza? Try an uncomfortably awful romp that plays like a third-rate student film and you’d be closer to the mark.

Writer/director/fx guru Peter Jackson (yes, that one) saved money by casting himself in two roles - Robert the alien and Derek the (literally) brain-damaged hero - but his crooked-tooth mugging is so embarrassing, even for a low budget genre film, that he might have been better served by staying behind the camera for his first full-length feature. If Jackson is an unwelcome on-screen presence (OK, he’s not really all that bad), at least the scenery is something to gush about. There’s something appropriate about the fact that so many years before he was to helm the greatest fantasy epic in film history, Jackson’s home country still winds up emerging as the real star of his production. Just as it would in LORD OF THE RINGS, the New Zealand countryside fills the screen, steals every scene, and enthralls with its unspoiled beauty. Jackson and Co. work hard to spoil every inch of it with animal guts and copious amounts of stage blood, but NZ wins out easily.

I know this movie is a cult classic, and thanks to recent events we’re more inclined to view Jackson’s oeuvre with unwavering reverence, but let’s be honest here - this is a pretty lousy film. It’s an admirable achievement from a hobbyist point of view, and as a first feature-length effort by a young man just starting to discover what can be accomplished with film, it’s an impressive attempt to work out some special effects challenges in practical terms. But as my colleague Andy Hershberger pointed out, this movie plays more like a demo FX reel than a cohesive narrative. Some people might enjoy this slapstick-laden SF travesty, but as entertainment, BAD TASTE is just in…you know where I’m going with this. So why did I give it one needle at all? Read on…

DVD Extras: This is the reason for the one needle rating (otherwise, the movie itself would only rate a quarter needle). First: this two-disc special edition is anything but. Originally expected to feature commentary from Jackson among other things, this set was hampered by Jackson’s understandably busy RINGS schedule. So it puts the movie on one disc and a slight 25 minute “making of” featurette on an entire disc all its own(!). This obvious attempt to stretch the meager offerings to the two disc limit is rather shameful, but to be fair, the documentary is definitely enlightening.

The featurette gives us a glimpse of Jackson’s childhood as a budding film maker as well as some valuable lessons in how he rallies the troops to make a low-low budget sci-fi/horror movie. Jackson is as personable here as he would be years later discussing the making of his RINGS saga, and it’s fascinating to see how the man who would be Lord of Middle Earth began by making vomiting puppets. In one telling sequence, we see how Jackson’s meticulous nature and eye for detail led to the manufacture of two dead-on scale models of the movie’s signature house. This same mania for consistency and quality, honed by his experience on projects like BAD TASTE, was put to good use a decade later and clearly was always a part of his enthusiastic personality. As a RINGS fan, the BAD TASTE documentary serves as a nice little historical footnote.

So yes, ultimately this movie was important and necessary, because it set Jackson on the path to true cinema success. If BAD TASTE is the price we pay for LORD OF THE RINGS, then I’ll be the first to say it was worth it…just.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Pretty impressive for an R-rated “mainstream” release, but obviously not as excessive as the old days. Still, they try, with throat biting, a spike through the head, and a plethora of other blood-soaked moments. But where is all the flesh-eating stuff? We’re told that the zombies are eating people, but we don’t see any of it! Damn the MPAA anyway.

Sex/Nudity: There’s a bit of apocalyptic “we may never get out of this mall” action briefly, but hey, this movie is about zombies and the end of the world, not screwing around.

Best Line: “When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth.” (spoken by Ken Foree, original DAWN cast member, in a cameo)

Score:

We appear - thankfully - to be emerging from the ’90s era of self-parodying horror that kicked off with SCREAM and quickly infected every other similar project. While that was nice for a while, it’s good to know the straight-forward, no-holds-barred gory approach favored by the classics of the ’70s and early ’80s is on a comeback. With this remake of the original Romero epic, horror steps up to the plate in the mainstream movie stadium and knocks one out of the park. Anyone who remembers the old EC comic story about the baseball player who gets dismembered by his team and used in a playful night-time game should be able to picture exactly how I envisioned the otherwise awkward metaphor in that last sentence.

But no matter what the makers of this new zombie adventure will tell you, this is not strictly a remake of the original. Sure, the mall is there, and we have Ving Rhames standing in for Ken Foree as the big imposing African-American member of the team, and yes there are zombies all over the place and looking far more grotesque and realistic (if you can use that word here) than their ’70s predecessors. But there are several key alterations that, deliberate or not, clearly place this in a universe other than the one established by George & Co. In fact, a few surprising changes to the zombie “rules” suggest that this movie has been equally influenced by the sort-of-zombie hit 28 DAYS LATER from two years ago and the prevalent fears about bio-terrorism that now weigh heavily on us all in the early days of the 21st century.

To wit: In Romero’s oeuvre, the zombies shamble slowly. In the new DAWN, they run like a bat out of hell, something that you might see in any of a dozen Italian undead films of yore. But there’s a legitimate reason for that here, and it speaks to one of those major telling alterations I mentioned. In the new DAWN, the zombie “infection” (and it is called that several times, shades of 28 DAYS) is spread only by a bite. If you die any other way, you ain’t coming back. As all Romero fans know, this differs drastically from the old DEAD films, in which some supernatural or scientific switch was thrown on the first NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and after that any dead person is coming back - out of the grave, off the floor from a gunshot wound, and certainly if left relatively intact after a zombie attack. This seemingly minor change firmly establishes the new DAWN as a viral-themed film with an epidemic that might be manmade or bacterial in origin. And they don’t eat dogs! One vital sequence reveals that zombies don’t care about animals - they only want to eat human flesh. But again, Romero established in NIGHT that zombies want any living thing they can chew; not so the new breed. Now I don’t mean to point these out as flaws; they’re merely indicative of a new way of looking at the premise.

If that new way is the price we pay for movies like DAWN to make it into theaters, then roll on with the zombie apocalypse! The new DAWN is action-packed but not without a few intimate moments that help to delineate the otherwise opaque characters. Let’s face it, we’re not here for complex drama, but we do grow to know these people just enough to make their survival - or lack of it - meaningful. There are charming touches like the celebrity shootings (you’ll see), the friendship between Rhames’ cop and the gun shop owner across the street from the mall, and even a few tension-relieving quips from the requisite bitter comedy relief character who manages to be amusing without shattering the reality of the film. And rest assured, there are some scary moments too - my girlfriend nearly crushed my hand during the particularly disturbing baby scene.

Not that the movie doesn’t have its share of stupid people doing stupid things, such as people walking right up to doors that they know have zombies lurking just on the other side, or idiots literally putting their heads right next to the mouths of corpses that might jerk to unlife any second and take a chunk out of their brain. One bit with an airhead girl going after a dog in the midst of the end of the world has to be seen to be believed, but to be honest, I didn’t really fault any of it too much. After all, how do we know how we would react when faced with the total collapse of society, and who knows what strange emotional priorities might enable us to keep our sanity? Or am I just so happy to see zombies in the movie theater that I’m being too easy on them? Oh well.

There may not be as much gore as there used to be, but the movie does deliver on most expectations while freshening the rotting zombie concept with a few modern touches. The first ten minutes are relentless, the final escape in the armored trucks is powerful, and the last shot of the movie (literally) packs quite a punch. But for the love of all that’s unholy, don’t leave the theater right when the closing credits begin! The movie is not over. In fact, the final inter-credits sequence - a last-minute reshoot - is one of the film’s high points.

ATB

Violence/Gore: A couple of murdered hookers, and one memorable scene of a Stranger crushed between two buildings.

Sex/Nudity: Rufus Sewell’s bare ass, a dead hooker’s boobs, and another (soon-to-be-dead) hooker undressing. Very brief full frontal nudity.

Best Line: “When was the last time you remember doing something during the day? And I’m not talking about some half-forgotten childhood memory, I mean like yesterday. Last week.”

Score:

In the past several years, several movies have dealt with the subjectivity of the nature of reality. The Wachowski Brothers’ MATRIX trilogy, Josef Rusnak’s THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR, and David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ all deal with various virtual realities and how their characters act, react, and interact within them. In none of these movies, however, is this theme more powerfully presented than in Alex Proyas’ DARK CITY.

DARK CITY is a pastiche of sci-fi conventions and philosophy, calling to mind the classic OUTER LIMITS episode, “A Feasibility Study.” In this startling vision of a bleak alternate reality, the weighty issues of existentialism and memory blend with a visual homage to Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS - a blend of ’50s art deco seasoned with a heavy hand of Dark Romanticism (’Gothic,’ by the way, means in the style of the fall of Rome and the Early Middle Ages. Dark Romanticism describes the artsy boys in eyeliner and frilly shirts to a T. Sorry, but it’s a pet peeve). Thematically, Proyas also pays his respects to Franz Kafka - DARK CITY is very much an update and rethink of “The Trial,” the story of a man accused of crimes he can’t remember committing, and his pursuit by mysterious enemies with a sinister hidden agenda.

Richard O’Brien once again plays to his strengths, creating a memorably creepy Stranger to haunt the nightmares of viewers long after they watch the film. Rufus Sewell’s squinty-eyed sexuality is tangible in his portrayal of the tortured hero - the human who learns to tune - and Jennifer Connelly is perfect as his smouldering torch singer wife. Proyas’ brisk editing and dialogue leads to a fast-paced, rapid-fire machine gun of a film, both demanding and holding the audience’s attention for its entire runtime of just under two hours.

The visuals and stylistics shine in this city of dark skies, smoky-voiced torch singers, ’30s-style automats, and period fashions and architecture. The dark, claustrophobic atmosphere is shot in a way that almost simulates a colorized black and white photo of the time. Shades of black, white and grey predominate, punctuated with dashes of rich, lustrous color. The scenes of “the tuning” (the Strangers’ method of changing reality to control the minds of the humans in their experiment) are particularly effective, with the smooth warping, morphing and sliding of buildings one into another offering a neat visual metaphor to the mental trickery they perform in the memories of their human “pets.”

Symbolically, DARK CITY’s themes of memory, guilt, and innocence are brought to vivid life by its stunning visuals. The Dark City itself is a symbol of the “rat race” and of being controlled by forces larger than yourself - “man keeping you down,” if you will. Shell Beach is the foil for Dark City - a world of sunshine, innocence, and childhood. And it’s remarkably fitting that not only can no one remember how to get there, but that the lead character spends the entire movie trying to find his way back.

In this stunning world of darkness where past, present and future enmesh and intertwine, and the very nature of reality itself is subject to question, it’s easy to forget your own time and place. DARK CITY is time well spent - isn’t that what a virtual reality is all about?

DVD Extras: This is one of the more clever menu designs I’ve ever seen. Fully animated menus morph one character into another as you change sections. The DVD includes both wide and full-screen versions, and the chapter selection section offers animated previews of the chapter contents. Also included are cast and crew bios, a scavenger hunt game that reveals an Easter Egg, and two different commentary tracks - one by Roger Ebert and one by director Proyas and other members of the crew. Also included are an essay by comic great Neil Gaiman, a portfolio of set designs, critical comparisons to Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS, and star highlight clips for both Kiefer Sutherland and William Hurt.

SS

Violence/Gore: Lots of puking. A priest winds up mangled at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Furniture and other non-secured items fly about hazardously. An elderly priest expires. A young girl is subjected to painful examinations. A woman is hurtled across a floor.

Sex/Nudity: The possessed Regan swears sexual profanity like a sailor, makes sexual advances at several priests and masturbates with a crucifix.

Best Line: “Your mother’s in here, Karras. Would you like to leave a message? I’ll see that she gets it.” (The possessed Regan to Father Karras)

Score:

When you’re a washed up Hollywood hack like William Friedkin - or George Lucas for that matter - the bitterness of knowing all your talent lies in yesterday must be so great that if the opportunity arises to go back to your previous “watchable” films and “snip and cut,” your sole intent would be to castrate.

And sever the bologna is exactly what Friedkin does to THE EXORCIST, converting what was once a daring tale that wasn’t condescending to the audience into a “masturbating with digital effects” cheap thrill ride. Yet cheap thrill rides are what brings in today’s little glue sniffers, so maybe dumbing it down a bit is the right thing for kids who have trouble spelling “train,” locating North America on a globe, and putting jackets on properly, much less pronouncing a behemoth of a word like “exorcist.” Stop me before I embody the ghost of Steve Allen.

Well, for a person like me who was raised on quality horror like CAT IN THE BRAIN, DOCTOR BUTCHER MD, and NEW YORK RIPPER, horror is best achieved through a crescendo of assaults to our fear center, and the slower the better. For as we all know, a ten minute Indian burn from our pederast uncle is far more horrifying then being repeatedly stabbed in the eye or having our throat torn out. Why? Hell if I know, it just is.

THE EXORCIST centers on two individuals: Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) and Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller). Chris is a renowned actress who’s just gotten divorced from her cad husband. This of course leaves the daughter open for all sorts of psychological problems. Since Chris is so damn special, the only problem good enough for her prima donna daughter is possession by the dark lord himself - Satan.

Meanwhile, Father Karras (played by Miller as the most depressed priest in history) is having serious career doubts. Hell, why shouldn’t he? Thanks to going with the Catholic Church, he can’t afford to take care of his ailing mother, so she dies alone in her apartment and isn’t found for days. Folks, if you care for your mothers, I highly suggest not becoming a Catholic priest/psychologist. Anyway, he’s wracked with guilt and losing his faith. The only way somebody like that could regain his faith is to do battle with the devil. How could you not have faith after that?

So both parties get the best possible outcome. Chris gets to top the Joneses with her “well my daughter was possessed by Lucifer” comments, and Father Karras has his faith restored the only way possible, through a ludicrous miracle. All the other characters are just there to assist them in getting their rewards by taking up space and moving the plot forward.

The film wraps up with a dead Swede, a blood splattered priest and a very boring discussion between Lee J. Cobb and some other priest. All right, I confess there was more, like tight direction, subtle subliminal shots, a solid progression of horrors, genuine pathos, excellent cinematography, a splendid script, and an eye and ear for the unnerving.

But now this version comes along, and suddenly those two or three devil faces - so sparingly used in the original - are all over the place, like Pokemons at an elementary school picnic, and feel as useful as squid ice cream. Instead of letting the horror hit us, it’s thrown in our faces. We aren’t allowed, as in the original version, to grow into the horror. Instead, the film now jabs us in the ribs and screams “Hey buddy, something scary’s about to happen!”

However, on a positive note, the additional scenes up to and including the exorcism don’t detract from the film. Yet in the process of letting his heavy hands go too far, Friedkin adds a final CASABLANCA-esque shot in which Cobb and priest banter off into the sunset. This allows the audience to get real bored before the end credits hit.

Well, it seems such a shame that with all the money that went into cleaning up this print and remastering the sound that things weren’t just left at that. This is going to be THE EXORCIST that we’ll be stuck with for all time, which is a sin against God. However, I would like to say thank God that with all the digital additions, Jar Jar didn’t show up. (Meesa thinks theysa goona be da Devil… he scary!)

One last thing for the record, and if you know, please e-mail me at this publication and tell me: Who the hell takes a film out of the hands of an early 1970s William “THE FRENCH CONNECTION” Friedkin and passes it to the William “JADE” Friedkin?

DVD Extras: The DVD’s sound and picture are excellent in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and Surround. The two theatrical trailers are self-important and dull; the four TV spots are equally insipid, while the two radio spots drone on and on. The subtitles are in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. The commentary track is one of the most obnoxious things I’ve heard in a while - we get to hear Friedkin forget that he’s supposed to be talking about the movie and instead turn to the Learning Channel.

AH

Violence/Gore: There’s a decapitation with a sickle resulting in a hearty spray of blood splashing against a sign, a severed head falling out of a hat box, a body in a glass case crashing to the floor, a brain transplant, a janitor being stabbed to death, a brain transplant, a shaved head circled with crude stitches, and a face seared with flaming paper just to name a few. The corpses never seem to decay though.

Sex/Nudity: Frankenstein’s rape of Anna.

Best Line: “I’m afraid that stupidity always brings out the worst in me.” (Frankenstein to a bunch of know-it-all cads)

Score:

Frankenstein is alive and well and continuing his experiments in a secret laboratory in an abandoned mansion. Now that he’s killing people himself to provide the cadavers necessary for his work, all is going fine for the Baron, until a buffoonish thief of the broad comic variety decides to ransack the abandoned mansion. What he finds is a whole lot of corpses, a nasty shock and a very angry, disguised Baron. Of course he escapes, informs the police and forces the Baron to find a new place to hold his devilish experiments.

Meanwhile, cute couple Dr. Karl Holst and Anna Spengler are making ends meet by engaging in a little illegal drug trafficking, when lo and behold, they are blackmailed by the Baron into assisting him with his experiments. (If there is a stronger anti-drug message than “Just say no, otherwise Baron Frankenstein will be able to blackmail you into assisting him,” I can’t think of it at the moment.) This deal with the devil, so to speak, leads to the total destruction of Anna and Karl’s lives, with Karl becoming a murderer and Anna, in an extreme scene for a Hammer production, being raped by the Baron.

This time around, the Baron’s plan is to retrieve one Dr. Brandt from a mental institution, cure his insanity and then extract information from him on how to freeze a brain without resulting in any freezer burn (or to the layman, permanent damage). Naturally, this plan goes awry, and the Baron has to place the brain in some scrawny dork’s body with zero scare potential but big time pathos.

As a narrative film, FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED is the equivalent of a one of those crappy EC Comics rip-offs of the ’60s, like DC’s THE WITCHING HOUR or Gold Key’s abysmal TWILIGHT ZONE or RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT. The film promises this grand outcome, but instead only comes up with two old farts fighting to the death in a flaming house. It’s enough to make you want your money back.

But that would be the case if and only if Peter Cushing didn’t deliver the horror performance of his life. While most of the writing is weak, the Baron we get this time is just flat-out evil, totally obsessed with his own goals and willing to step on anybody to get them. He’s a murderer, a blackmailer, a rapist, and a bad house guest - which in Britain, I am sure, is the worst crime of all. Cushing relishes every moment, playing the Baron with such malevolent restraint that every moment he is on the screen is one to be savored. In its way, FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED is the prime example of a star vehicle and Cushing delivers with such aplomb that the film demands, and rewards, repeat viewings.

The film marks the fourth time that director Terence Fisher and actor Peter Cushing teamed up to do a Frankenstein film (previously there was CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN), and for the Cushing part the reward is obvious. Fisher manages to make a fair show of Bert Batt’s rote script, but every time he’s devoid of his central actor, the film drags.

It’s interesting to note that the Hammer Frankenstein films are not sequels per se, but reinventions, much like Sergio Leone’s “Man With No Name” trilogy, in which Clint Eastwood’s character is never functioning in the same universe as his previous incarnation. While the Baron was a bit unsavory in CURSE, in …CREATED WOMAN he was practically a paragon of decency, albeit with a few uncouth moments.

DVD Extras: Warner’s DVD is bare bones with the film presented widescreen and the only extra being the theatrical trailer.

AH

Violence/Gore: There are guillotine deaths, severed heads, a butcher knife to the head, stabbing, a scarred face, an old man beaten to death and chopped firewood.

Sex/Nudity: Doomed couple Hans and Christina share a moment of unclothed intimacy where you see nothing. Christina’s reconstructed body is shown off nicely in a cleavage-heaving dress. Christina poses as a prostitute to revenge Hans’ death.

Best Line: “To the best of my Knowledge, doctorates are not awarded for witchcraft, but in the event they are, no doubt I shall qualify for one.” (Frankenstein to a court room heckler)

Score:

Frankenstein is working on capturing the human soul (a more religious undercurrent here than usual) when tragedy fortunately rears its head to assist him in his cause. One of his assistants, a violent-tempered young man named Hans, is accused of a murder he did not commit. Rather than reveal that he was copulating with his girlfriend at the time of the crime, Hans decides he’d rather take the Guillotine. He does, and his girlfriend, a facially-scarred cripple named Christina, kills herself after Hans’ death.

Frankenstein takes this opportunity to put Hans’ soul in Christina’s reconstructed body, and Hans takes the opportunity of having his soul in Christina’s body to brutally murder the men responsible for the murder of which he was falsely accused. The victim, incidentally, had been Christina’s father.

The third Frankenstein movie from director Terence Fisher and actor Peter Cushing is generally considered the weakest of their pairings. For some reason, Baron Frankenstein is played with an unecessary warmth this time around. While Cushing is an excellent thespian adept at playing characters at opposing ends of the personality scale, the thematic undercurrent of the series always seemed to be that the true monster was Frankenstein, a cold calculating devil of a man. This time he’s a slightly less kindly variation of Cushing’s own Van Helsing character.

The film itself is basically a revenge story, with Hans’ ghost returning from the grave to dispatch his adversaries. Frankenstein’s inclusion seems rather secondary - he’s only here to remove the usual supernatural aspect of such tales, although the idea of the soul as the true life force of the body doesn’t exactly ring of hard science.

The movie maintains a fair level of atmosphere throughout, but the conclusion is cursed with the patented Hammer tendency of ending abruptly without coming to a satisfying resolution. Nevertheless, the film is enjoyable as a slight terror tale, boasting the low budget but earnest style of Britain’s best cinematic horror outfit - Hammer Films.

DVD Extras: The Anchor Bay DVD features some TV and theatrical spots in which the film is featured as a double bill along with THE MUMMY’S SHROUD. Included as well is a WORLD OF HAMMER episode, “The Curse Of Frankenstein,” which provides a nice overview of Hammer’s output in this area, even if it completely ignores FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED. This DVD is available from Anchor Bay either as a stand-alone disc or paired with the highly enjoyable THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES as part of their recent ‘The Hammer Collection: Double Feature’ series; Cinejunkie highly recommends the latter for purchase.

AH

Violence/Gore: Lots of miniatures destroyed. Facial scars on war-surviving scientist. Several boats explode, plenty of death. A newscaster reports on his own demise. A woman has apparently taken her children out to be killed by Godzilla. Fish are dissolved. There is a suicide. Godzilla is murdered.

Sex/Nudity: Godzilla doesn’t wear a stitch of clothing.

Best Line: “We’ll be with your father soon.” (A mother indicating to her children that they will all die during Godzilla’s rampage in the city)

Score:

After a series of boats mysteriously explode off the coast of Japan, the population starts to worry. On an island near where the incidents occurred, an elder of the community suggests that perhaps a mythological beast named Godzilla might be the cause of all this disruption. Unfortunately, this being the 1950s and not the olden days, the virgin sacrifice doesn’t work anymore.

The way things do turn out, the culprit does turn out to be Godzilla, a gigantic aquatic dinosaur equipped with the frivolous ability to breath fire. This Godzilla is more bold and brazen then ever before, likely due to an uncomfortable H-bomb wake-up call that has left him with a nasty radioactive glow. As they say, this is one hot dinosaur.

It has been scientifically proven again and again that if you are awakened from your daily tasks by a nuclear explosion, you would become impervious to all known weapons (guns, tanks, planes, electricity, etc.) except for some wacky fantasy weapon. So it is no surprise that those are the conditions Godzilla exists under.

So, as buildings tumble, fires abound, radioactive trilobites appear and the entire defense system of Japan is constantly humiliated by a giant lizard that looks like the Cookie Monster with stegosaurus plates glued on its back, we wait for that lone gunman scientist to unleash that wacky weapon. And since the attractive female lead has no interest in him, we know it’s only a matter of time before he does the deed.

For subplots, there is the father scientist (Takashi Shimura of THE SEVEN SAMURAI and IKIRU fame, in a rare by-the-numbers performance), who wants to study Godzilla rather than destroy it; and the scientist’s daughter and her handsome but dull romantic interest, who have to convince an angst-ridden eyepatch-wearing scientist - who also appears to have a flame for the daughter - that he should unleash his terrifying new weapon in order to destroy Godzilla.

In spite of over twenty laughable sequels, the original GODZILLA has taken on the reputation of being something special, something impressive. Heck, it was nominated for Best Picture in Japan. Unfortunately, here in the US and in most other parts of the world, we didn’t get the original GODZILLA - we got GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS, a cheap reworking of the film with forty minutes cut out and twenty minutes of Raymond Burr cut in. This version has been the one available stateside until now.

Finally, somebody had the brilliant idea to re-release the film in its original Japanese version, so one could see what all the fuss is about. As expected, the film is more explicit in its references to the World War II bombings, but what comes as a real shock is that for the most part it’s no less dull than the Raymond Burr version.

There are a few choice moments in the film: a villager screaming in the rain before Godzilla’s first land strike; a newscaster broadcasting his own death over the radio; and a woman who has seemingly taken her children deliberately into Godzilla’s path of destruction. But none of this hides the fact that at its core, GODZILLA is just another ‘giant critter unleashed by nuclear energy’ flick, and a rather talky one at that. As is typical with the genre, there’s the cliché moment where the kindly elder spokesman has to decry nuclear testing under the guise of ‘if you blow up nuclear bombs, giant critters will cause substantial property damage.’ This is all well and good, but considering this film has over twenty sequels, one can’t help but think that the producers couldn’t wait to set off twenty-plus nuclear bombs.

The fearful, original Godzilla has an ill-fitted costume and silly eyes that resemble the aforementioned Cookie Monster. The audience I saw this with burst into hysterics every time this King of the Monsters reared its goofy head - not exactly terror at its most sublime.

The film was directed by Inoshiro Hondo, who directs with generic competence, stumbling out an effective moment every now and then but not really bringing Godzilla up to the level of, say, THEM! Hondo would later go on to direct such beloved entries in the series as KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA, GHIDRAH THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS and GODZILLA’S REVENGE. He would also churn out such fun flicks as ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE, FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD, and KING KONG ESCAPES. In a way, by progressing past the seriousness of this first Godzilla entry and delving into pure rubber monster movie-making, he improved upon himself entertainment-wise.

NOTE: This review was based on the 2004 theatrical re-release.

AH

Violence/Gore: There’s some raw leg injury footage, unappealing green greasepaint makeup, mutations that result in the ability to stretch the neck out like plastic man, and Jay Thomas.

Sex/Nudity: There’s a chaste shower scene in the film, and the Anchor Bay DVD features a racy Kim Griest body double outtake.

Best Line: “She says some monster came out of the sewer and ate her grandfather.” (one of New York’s finest)

Score:

When it comes to the finest in cinematic horror, one need look no further than C.H.U.D., a movie that takes our nation’s greatest fear - that down in the subterranean tunnels of New York, the homeless are evolving into flesh hungry mutants with glowing eyes - and proves it real. And it is real, because the back of the DVD states that this was “filmed on (and below) the streets of New York City where hundreds of tourists every year are still devoured by actual C.H.U.D.,” which must be the God’s honest truth, because no one has ever lied in print. Also, as a resident of New York, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve narrowly averted death by C.H.U.D.s - must be a billion or so.

This film - this masterpiece that transcends time, the movie that set Douglas Cheek on the path to becoming Hollywood’s most successful director of all time - is so ripe with relevant social commentary that its viewing is essential to every man, woman and child in this great nation. It’s like CITIZEN KANE, only better.

The story is brilliant in its simplicity. There has been a rash of disappearances and the police are baffled. “What could it be?” Well, duh, of course it’s C.H.U.D.s, Cannibal Humanoid Underground Dwellers. Apparently, the Morlocks were sick that week. Anyway, the C.H.U.D.s do what they do best - eat humans. Of course the argument could be made that the they aren’t really cannibals, because even though essentially they started as humans, they have mutated into C.H.U.D.s, and as C.H.U.D.s they don’t eat each other. And there is a government cover-up - just one of the many unique plot devices utilized in the film - which results in the C.H.U.D.s getting out of control. Will the day be saved? Will the C.H.U.D.s kill Jay Thomas? Does C.H.U.D. really stand for Cannibal Humanoid Underground Dweller, or does that acronym actually mean something more sinister, like Contamination Hazard Underground Disposal? Beats me, I was drunk when I watched this.

The DVD is from Anchor Bay and continues their stellar plan of releasing crap in the best possible presentation. However, there is a major problem with this release - this cut of C.H.U.D. is not the original cut I’ve been used to from many, many nights of drunk video viewing. It’s a new director’s cut (I assume) and this is not mentioned at all on the box. I liked my C.H.U.D. the way I remember it, and was disappointed to find that after waiting for what seemed like centuries for its DVD release that it’s an alternate version. Shame, Anchor Bay, shame.

Besides this tremendous letdown, the other aspects of the DVD are great. The film is presented in letterbox format with a crisp picture and fair sound, which is key for hearing every nuance of modern day bard writer Shepard Abbott expertly crafted. Abbott has a good feel for New York, because the people in this film talk and act almost exactly like the people in other movies I’ve seen about New York.

Rent C.H.U.D. today! For if only more films like C.H.U.D. were made, we wouldn’t be a nation of girly men who cry at movies like THE MEXICAN. We’d be Olympian Gods ready to rest our foot firmly on the throats of all those who oppose us.

DVD Extras: There are three perks on the DVD - the trailer, a photo gallery (wow), and a commentary track featuring Abbott, Douglas Cheek (director, superstar), John Heard (SOPRANOS bit player), Daniel Stern (the tall crook in HOME ALONE 1 & 2) and Christopher Curry (today’s answer to Jimmy Stewart) - all of whom sound embarrassed by the film.

AH

Violence/Gore: A bank is robbed. A girl is held hostage against her will. Abbott smacks Costello quite a bit. Guns are fired. A gangster punches through a closed door, hitting Costello square in the face. Costello stumbles while trying to skate, eventually causing minor destruction. Costello is engulfed in a snowball. Costello is sprayed by a skunk.

Sex/Nudity: Costello courts a bandleader’s girl, who isn’t shy about kissing Abbott.

Best Line: “Unpack that grip.” “Pack that grip.” (Abbott to Costello, repeatedly changing his mind on whether or not they should flee town.)

Score:

Bud plays Flash Fulton and Lou plays Weejie McCoy, a couple of nickel-and-dime photographers trying to get newspaper jobs. Along the way, they run into their old pal Dr. Elliot, who works at the local hospital and happens to be in charge of a patient who’s faking an illness in order to provide an alibi for a planned bank robbery. As things work out, the feigning crook mistakes the boys for a couple of big-time hit men, and as a result, the boys become an innocent party to the robbery.

Now afraid of both the cops and the criminals, they flee to a ski resort, where - thanks to old pal Johnny Long - they get jobs at the resort. Naturally the criminals wind up there as well, the boys get the opportunity to clear their name, and a romantic subplot of minor interest plays out between the funny bits.

HIT THE ICE finds the boys in good form, with several laugh-out-loud skits, particularly the visual ones. This time, there’s the “alright” sketch, in which Costello clues Abbott in on when to play a record by saying “alright,” which degenerates into a delightful display of cruelty from Abbott; there’s the pack/unpack scene, where Abbott - unable to make up his mind - forces Costello to pack and unpack a grip; and there’s a belly-bursting scene involving Costello and a train window that closes at inopportune times. Of course there’s more, but why spoil all the fun?

Charles Lamont of ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY and FRANCIS IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE, not to mention several episodes in the “Ma and Pa Kettle” series, directs the proceedings with an eye for decent visual comedy. The film doesn’t have the occasional stylish flourishes that Erle C. Kenton brought to his few pictures with the boys, but it is more consistent with its presentation. The boys produce their bits in rationed-out intervals, punctuated by intriguing to exceptional songs from Johnny Long and his orchestra and a rote romance.

Costello is reigned in and Abbott shines as always as the outrageously intolerant counterpoint to Lou’s lovable simpleton. The way Abbott smacks Costello around is pure art. We’d give the film more stars, but on an intellectual level it doesn’t warrant it, as overall the plot functions in the same way as a porn flick - it’s only there to get to the action.

DVD Extras: The film has been released on DVD as part of Universal’s excellent “The Best of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello” Volume 2. The set consists of eight films spread out over two double-sided discs. This film’s extras include subtitles in English, French and Spanish, and production notes.

AH

Violence/Gore: Very little, although bloody corn, some CGI maggots, and a very plastic-looking severed head might qualify for minor gross-out potential. There’s also a zombie-like apparation that seems to have dropped in from another movie. Tiffany’s death by corn stalks in the tub isn’t exactly gory, but the strange choice to intersperse her death with shots of her wheelchair-bound neighbor pounding on the wall and telling the “whore” to shut up while she screams in her death throes is a bit of unnecessary misogyny that makes one cringe.

Sex/Nudity: There’s a half-hearted attempt to up the skin quotient with some underwear shots featuring Tiffany, the stripper with a heart of gold, but it doesn’t go any farther.

Best Line: “Cornfield’s back.” (another massive understatement)

Score:

In this, the seventh (!) installment in this inexplicably profitable horror series (hey, they wouldn’t keep churning them out if they weren’t making money for somebody), the lazy pacing and uneventful plotting that made the first COTC such a classic has been lovingly preserved. Unfortunately, the makers of this chapter in the saga seem to have slipped up, because they cast a genuinely decent actress as the main lead, thus raising the bar just a tad above the original forgettable outing. Oh well, better luck next time.

Jamie is a resourceful young woman who discovers that her grandmother, the only survivor of a religious revival tent fire 60 years ago, has vanished from the bizarre little tenement building in which she was living. As it turns out, the tenement was built on the very ground where the fire occurred decades before…and there’s a strange cornfield growing all around it as well. Can’t be good. Add to this subtle set-up another batch of creepy kids over-acting with vacant stares and pasty make-up, and you have the ingredients for a truly mediocre horror film. Just to be sure we know how eerie it all is, the entire thing is shot through a bright green filter. Nice touch.

With just a bit more coherence in the plot than the original CORN, this seventh outing tries hard but can’t rise above its direct-to-video origins. Armbrister, Jamie’s cop-on-the-make sidekick, is just another pretty boy would-be actor who thinks he’s doing a really good job pretending to be a police officer. Although he shows up at the end to save Jamie from the clutches of the evil corn - yup, evil corn - he’s otherwise a fairly useless addition to the cast. And there’s someone else who looks like he could’ve given the whole project a miss too…

Perhaps to make this movie more attractive to video distributors, the film-makers hired genre vet Michael Ironside to turn up for about five minutes’ total screen time as a weird priest who spouts exposition and then disappears from the proceedings when his day’s shooting is over. He’s the only character to utter the names of “He Who Walks Behind the Rows” and Gatlin, Nebraska, thus providing the paper-thin connection between this movie and its progenitor. But he’s wasted in this meaningless role, and besides, since when does Ironside guarantee a larger number of Blockbuster rentals anyway?

The kids aren’t scary at all, the preacher boy Abel makes you yearn for the subtlety of Isaac, and once again everything ends with a lousy effects sequence featuring lots of CGI corn stalks and some admittedly decent moaning faces floating up to the heavens in wisps of smoke as the tenement burns. Earlier in the movie, Ironside tells Jamie that “evil walks this place, and it wants you.” Well…it can have her.

DVD Extras: None…whew.

ATB

Violence/Gore: After a somewhat shocking opening sequence in which every adult is slaughtered in the coffee shop with poison, knives and a sickle or two, things settle down. There’s a ritualistic bloodletting later on, but apart from a brief spatter here and there, that’s about it. And Isaac’s lame zombie-esque resurrection make-up is too funny to be grotesque.

Sex/Nudity: N/A

Best Line: “There’s something very strange about this town.” (massive understatement)

Score:

Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton were never exactly A-list thespians, but what sad, desperate turn of events could have led them to think that CHILDREN OF THE CORN was a savvy career move? Based (loosely from what I understand, never having read the short story) on yet another Stephen King tale, this movie is shot on film and occupies both time and space. I’ve now exhausted every positive thing I can say about it. Oh wait, there is one more thing. The musical score by Jonathan Elias doesn’t deserve to be attached to this lethargic would-be thriller; it’s rather good. Now I’m done.

The plot? An unknown entity called He Who Walks Behind the Rows (of corn, get it) has enthralled a creepy pituitary case who directs the children of Gatlin, Nebraska to slaughter all the adults in town and then engage in various corn-based blood rituals that look as if they all wish they were acting in THE WICKER MAN instead. The entity has evidently watched LOGAN’S RUN too, since he imposes an age limit on the community. In this case, however, when you’re 19, you’re out of luck.

Into this idyllic image of youthful exuberance wander Burt (Horton) and Vicky (Hamilton), one of those movie couples where you just can’t fathom how they became a couple in the first place. While Vicky seems like a decent enough young woman - if a bit vapid - Burt is a Grade A asshole. Ducking questions about commitment like they burn his skin, Burt is such an unredeemable jerk that even when he behaves like a total moron, plunging the two of them deeper and deeper into a situation they could have easily avoided (and I do mean easily; the choices Burt makes are nothing short of mind-numbingly stupid), you can’t help but hope that He Who Walks Behind the Rows decrees that Burt be ripped apart by rabid wolves. Burt even spends a good portion of the film chatting it up with a couple friendlier Corn kids while the girl he ostensibly loves is missing and clearly in the clutches of these killer cultists. And he doesn’t even seem to care. What a catch he is.

Watching CHILDREN OF THE CORN is an empty experience. I felt much the same way the first time I saw JAWS 2, a movie so utterly lacking in a reason to exist that your brain can’t even acknowledge the fact that it’s viewing anything at all (which is why there will never be a review of JAWS 2 on this site, but I digress). CORN is very similar, and doesn’t even deliver on the scares beyond the admittedly promising opening sequence. In fact, the movie is so lacking in genuine scary moments that it even invents a brief non-sequitur dream sequence in which Vicky sees a dead kid leap up from the street to grasp at her - right up there with the “random cat leaping into the frame” so beloved by schlock horror-meisters.

Perhaps one of the worst things about the movie is that it has quite a bit of potential. Children turning on adults can be very terrifying - think VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED or the classic Ray Bradbury short story, “The Veldt” - but thanks to poor casting and lackluster direction, to say nothing of the completely ineffectual John Franklin as Isaac, the Children of the Corn are not only not frightening but also apparently very easily swayed. When Burt is surrounded by the horde, brandishing all manner of sharp implements and commanded by their leader to kill, they just stand there while Burt launches into a laughably simplistic diatribe about the dangers of blind devotion to a religious cult. Way to be a demonic band of blood-thirsty rugrats, guys. Did I mention Burt is an asshole and a moron? Good.

And while rural America has been effectively portrayed as a haven for chop-happy clans and grotesque rites - TEXAS CHAINSAW, anyone? - the town of Gatlin is so awash in sunlight that it never achieves an air of menace. The direction is flat, overlit, and relies too much on a few amateurish animated video effects at the end to deliver a climactic punch. The moaning He Who Walks apparition in the smoke and flames reminded me of the anguished Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man at the end of GHOSTBUSTERS. I’m fairly confident that this was not an association the CORN makers intended.

About halfway through the movie’s running time, Horton utters the kind of line that makes a reviewer’s day: “Things just aren’t happening fast enough.” Amen, brother.

DVD Extras: Let’s see, you get the trailer, and…that’s it. But really, did you want any more of this? For shame. Oh, there is a new special edition out, but I haven’t had the heart to look at it yet.

ATB

Violence/Gore: No blood, but Doc Ock and his arms do murder quite a few people, including an entire room filled with hospital staff. And Spidey’s suit goes through some wear and tear again too, as does Peter himself.

Sex/Nudity: They do manage to get Kirsten Dunst’s dress wet again, only this time she’s tied up in Doc Ock’s riverside lair…if that’s your idea of a good time.

Best Line: “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

Score:

(Originally published on the
Scoop e-newsletter website)

I was so ambivalent about the first Spider-Man movie that at times I wondered what might be wrong with me. After all, Spidey was my number one childhood hero, and I’d waited a lifetime to see a theatrical version of the web-slinger. Here at last was the film I’d wanted to see for so long…and it just didn’t grab me. I thought it was well made; it captured so much about the character and his universe with accuracy and style; and it had an epic quality that definitely ensured its place in history as one of the finest comic book adaptations ever filmed. But when I walked out of the theater, I just felt…nothing in particular.

I eventually came to accept the fact that perhaps for me, it was just too late. My Spider-Man movie should have been made years ago. I was just too old now to really appreciate the leap to the big screen in that deeply emotional way that I always anticipated. Although I could recognize intellectually that it was a great movie, it didn’t reach my heart.

And then I saw the first trailer for Spider-Man 2. In the space of a few short minutes, I felt the old affection for the character’s glory days rekindled, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was it - this was the Spider-Man movie I’d waited a lifetime to see. Maybe it was because the first film had to spend too much time dealing with his origin and setting up the characters and locales that mainstream audiences wouldn’t know but with which I was very familiar. What I wanted most was to join Pete in the middle of that glorious early Romita era when everything was already in place - job, school, Aunt May, girlfriend, cheap motorbike, and lots of the ol’ Parker luck running true to form - and this movie looked like it was going to deliver. So despite years of writing about comics and movies and trying to develop a resistance to emotionally influenced high expectations, I went to Spider-Man 2 with the highest expectations I’ve ever had for a feature film experience.

It met every one of them - and then it surpassed them. And no one could have been more surprised and delighted than I.

Spider-Man 2 is a tour de force of comic book adventure storytelling, but most especially it is a two-hour-plus love letter to the greatest period in Spider-Man’s comic book career. It has the continuing strength of the love story and realistically portrayed characters that made the first film less a fanboy actionfest and more a gender-crossing half-a-billion history-making hit. In addition to that powerful grounding, however, the sequel isn’t afraid to veer into over-the-top theatrics when it suits the story, because every time it does, the moment still grows out of a genuinely human emotion. How many people would expect to watch a climactic Bondian fight sequence in which the villain proclaims that nothing can stop him now, and completely understand the heartache and passion that has led the man to that otherwise laughably melodramatic exclamation?

Rest assured, no one in the audience was laughing when Doc Ock was savagely killing hospital staff (in a scene that director Sam Raimi stages as a direct homage to his classic Evil Dead series - fans will love this bit) or threatening the life of Mary Jane in a fashion so akin to Snidely Whiplash villainy (a role Alfred “Doc Ock” Molina himself essayed in 1999’s Dudley Do-Right) that it should have provoked a giggle or two. But everybody let loose when a temporarily powerless Peter Parker decided to give up the Spider-suit and walked briskly and happily through a sunlit New York to the strains of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.” Clearly, Raimi and company knew exactly when and how to balance the drama and humor, and the results are extremely satisfying. Oh, and watch for an incredibly post-modern real-world in-joke about Maguire’s infamous back trouble prior to the start of shooting on this sequel.

Comic book fans are notoriously meticulous in their examination of a film adaptation. Has it accurately presented the material? What did they change? Why did they change it? The first film drew ire early on for the decision to make Parker’s webbing organic rather than an artificially formulated compound, but you don’t hear much complaining about that anymore because the change was just so logical. In Spider-Man 2, there are so many loving visual and verbal touches to classic Spider-lore that it’s almost dizzying, and when alterations are made - such as in the absolutely brilliant redesign, both conceptually and physically, of Doc Ock’s tentacles - they are so in the spirit of the original material’s intentions that you wonder why Stan, Steve and Johnny didn’t do it that way in the first place. There’s even a segment of the film that pays homage to several famous story arcs in which stress and/or illness robbed Peter of his powers, leading to two supremely gratifying visual tributes that recapture the final page of Amazing Spider-Man #50 and the cover of #113 (a Doc Ock story). For a short time in this film, Peter decides he will be “Spider-Man No More!” You just gotta love it, True Believers.

But one of the most overt ways in which the movies depart from their comic book source material has also become one of the film series’ greatest strengths. In the “classic” period of the Ditko/early Romita years, Spider-Man was largely vilified by the entire city of New York, from the police to the average man in the street. Jameson hadn’t just labeled the man a menace and a monster - he’d succeeded in embedding that image of Spidey in the minds of almost every city dweller, even his Aunt May!

Flash forward to the release of Spider-Man, the first enormous superhero blockbuster to arrive post-9/11. As many fans know, at least one scene was altered to reflect the unity and brotherhood Americans felt for each other and particularly toward the city of New York following the tragic events of that date. When the Goblin attacks Spidey as he dangles from the bridge, New Yorkers throw things at the villain and proclaim that “you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!” From the start, it’s clear that Spider-Man has not been rejected by the city but embraced by it. Spider-Man is no monster to them; he’s just another New Yorker and a beloved hero to boot.

That alteration, a true bit of fannish wish fulfillment distilled through our country’s renewed patriotic bond, is given an even more moving showcase in the sequel. When Spidey is left without his mask and knocked unconscious after a harrowing sequence involving a runaway train, the passengers bring him inside and smile at their unmasked (!) savior. But no worries. They tell him they won’t reveal his secret; they’re just glad to have him back after his stress-induced sabbatical. Any old Spider-fan who doesn’t start bawling at this point just isn’t human, and it also speaks to the power that this movie series will continue to hold for all the moviegoers who have reinvested in Spider-Man as a 21st century hero for the “new” America. Stan’s ‘Everyman’ soldiers on.

The people on the train may promise to keep Peter’s secret, but it’s already out big-time in the last third of this film. Almost everyone close to him learns the truth, and what took four decades in the comics is accomplished beautifully in just four hours of film time (counting both movies). MJ and Peter are going to try to make it work, superhero gig or no superhero gig. And while I waited in vain for Mary Jane to say the immortal “Face it tiger…” line in that last scene, a slightly less effective “Go get ‘em tiger” was almost as satisfying.

As with all middle chapters, the conclusion of this film sets up a number of plot developments that clearly point the way to the conflicts our happy hero will face in the third installment. A surprise cameo in one last scene provides a strong link to the first film and suggests that a dark destiny lies ahead for Harry Osborn (something Spider-fans know only too well). Aunt May intimates very strongly that even she knows about Pete’s double life. And even as MJ watches Pete swing back into action as Spider-Man at the end - a moment that had the fanboy in me tearing up for a second time - the music subtly changes from triumphant to foreboding. Will this relationship face its greatest challenge in two years’ time when Spider-Man 3 hits theaters?

You better believe it, bunky! And guess who’ll be first in line on opening night?

ATB

Violence/Gore: No real blood to speak of, and the only on-screen gore you get are two obviously fake severed heads.

Sex/Nudity: I have two words for you - Ingrid Pitt. The voluptuous star sheds no clothing but still manages to make the final segment (and by extension, the entire movie) somewhat more bearable.

Best Line: “The one with Bela Lugosi, of course, not this new fellow.” (Jon Pertwee as horror actor Paul Henderson, poking fun at fellow HOUSE cast member Christopher Lee, Hammer Films’ Dracula, by expressing a preference for the Universal DRACULA)

Score:

I have a fondness for all these ’70s UK horror anthologies, but the actual experience of watching them usually pales in comparison to the memory or general mood of the movie. HOUSE is a perfect example of this phenomenon. It has all the ingredients for success: an amazing cast with the likes of Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Denholm Elliott and Geoffrey Bayldon; atmospheric settings; an atypical and engaging musical score; and writer Robert Bloch, the PSYCHO scribe himself. So why does it fall so flat?

These anthology films usually require only the thinnest justification for stringing together a series of goofy EC Comics-inspired vignettes, but this one is so thin it’s transparent. In fact, it simply doesn’t hold up. While we’re told that everything happens due to the influence of the “evil” house, there’s rarely any connection to the house at all. In fact, much of the malevolence takes place in town, at a wax museum, in the forest - anywhere but in the eponymous house. I know I shouldn’t be looking for logic here, but if you’re going to build to a surprise revelation, shouldn’t it have a sporting chance of actually making sense in relation to the rest of the movie?

As it is, the film’s non-sequitur conclusion is just one of many unfortunate weaknesses. The charmingly low budget production values are also a bit jarring, making it difficult to suspend disbelief long enough to be spooked by anything happening on screen. From the lousy make-up on the strangler in the first segment (yes, yes, possibly intentional if you know the twist, but still), to Ingrid Pitt’s heavy black harness wires to the terrible dummy severed heads, there are plenty of cringe-worthy production flaws on display.

Elliott plays a tormented horror writer, Charles Hillyer, in the first segment. It’s a bit early for everyone in the movie to behave like an idiot, but despite the fact that Hillyer’s wife specifically did not want to move into the house in the beginning, she apparently never hits upon the simple solution of leaving when Hillyer starts having murderous visions. The twist, such as it is, is also nonsensical and lacks punch.

In segment two, Cushing and Joss Ackland clearly think they’re in a better movie, because they act their hearts out as two old friends who share a lost love. Both drawn to a wax museum that features a figure with an uncanny similarity to the girl they left behind, the two men face a fate so obvious and trite that you’ll be wishing you could take care of business sooner than the eerie museum owner does. Wax museums are usually inherently creepy - note that I said “usually.”

Arguably the best written piece in the movie, segment three features Christopher Lee in a stern role as the father of a troubled little girl with an aversion to fire. He hires a governess to take care of the girl, and once again you’ll be about twelve steps ahead of the lackluster script. But what saves the day here are the superb performances and chilling final scene. The whole movie is virtually stolen by little Chloe Franks, who plays the daughter of Lee’s John Reid. Her performance is suitably creepy, and definitely the best part of the film.

For Doctor Who fans, this movie holds a particular fascination in that the last segment features none other than Jon Pertwee, the Third Doctor himself, in a vampire-themed story that pairs him with Pitt. The two would work together again in the 1972 Doctor Who adventure, “The Time Monster,” but here they’re a couple of hammy horror actors who find themselves in a brush with the occult. Paul Henderson is an egocentric thespian (Pertwee in a role that doesn’t exactly strain credulity) who happens into a curio shop on the hunt for an authentic bit of vampire wardrobe and acquires a cloak that has the power to transform him into a real bloodsucker. With Pertwee pulling faces and Pitt displaying her assets, this last chapter has a light-hearted quality that amuses but caps things off oddly.

This is hardly writer Robert Bloch’s finest hour. His EC-style stories are sledgehammer subtle and lazily paced, and the whole balance of the movie is strangely off kilter, with the first two stories lacking any supernatural element and playing as straightforward thrillers, while the second half of the movie definitely moves into fantasy territory. And another thing - the house never drips blood once! I feel robbed.

DVD Extras: Producer Max Rosenberg is an adorable little old man who speaks in such bewildering contradictions that you just can’t help but smile appreciatively that he’s able to speak at all. In a brief interview party filmed at a 2003 screening of the movie, Rosenberg reveals some behind the scenes anecdotes and seems to have a genuine fondness for the glory days of Amicus Productions. And why not? Even when re-evaluated years later with a more jaded eye, these movies forever remain childhood icons that burned their images into our brains and left us remembering them as far scarier and more imposing than perhaps they really were. So they did their job. But really, the house should have dripped blood at least once…

ATB

Violence/Gore: At one point the priest’s face is smeared with what may be blood-saturated vomit. Another scene graphically displays the end of a wine bottle as it smashes onto the floor.

Sex/Nudity: Nope - note the title is DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST and not CONFESSIONS OF A COUNTRY PRIEST.

Best Line: “All is grace.” (the priest on his death bed)

Score:

A young priest is assigned a parish in a small community, and in spite of his consistent good will, his meek manner and outsider status prevail in making him one of the least liked priests in the area. As time goes on, his popularity continues to diminish even as his subtle acts of good will have a slight but powerful effect on a few - albeit very few - people. Eventually a persistent stomach malady proves to be the priest’s final undoing.

Robert Bresson is one of the driest directors you could ever hope to force upon a reluctant film class. For a conventional film enthusiast, being subjected to DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST is the cinematic equivalent of Chinese water torture, only superseded by Bresson’s own subsequent works, AU HASARD BALTHAZAR and LANCELOT OF THE LAKE. Generally a film maker will expect the audience to fill in a few narrative gaps here and there - essentially a sentence’s worth of information - but Bresson expects the audience to fill in whole volumes of text. Naturally - and this may sound condescending but I assure you it is not meant to be - if your idea of a good time with a film is ‘turn your brain off and go with the flow,’ avoid this movie at all costs.

The film has nary an action sequence - most of the drama comes from the audience’s interpretations of the doe-eyed priest’s consistently forlorn expression. Perhaps they view it as the external representation of a soul under extreme duress, and his quiet nature - in the face of constant criticism - as one who is always ready to accept a confession without judgment. They might just as well read his face as that of a man constantly suffering from flatulence and his quiet nature as just another aspect of his sissy-girl personality. Who really knows what they think?

This is a film, depending on your perspective, of either sublime subtlety or hack crap where some director throws a crybaby in our face for two hours and expects us to weep about it; I’m in the former camp. Personally I believe DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST is a brilliant piece of work about human nobility and strength surviving in the face of extreme adversity. As our hero’s physical condition weakens and his soul suffers its own torments, including an inability to pray and a loss of faith, his outward actions remain consistently in tune with the responsibilities of his profession. He refuses to shut his door to those who mock him, he helps a distraught woman overcome her grief and find solace in her final days, and while his accomplishments are small he never once asks or attempts to receive any sort of reward or accolade. This is in direct contrast to his elders, who expect a priest to be more of a social butterfly or stern taskmaster.

In many of the reviews I’ve come across, including Criterion’s own liner notes, the film is touted as the story of a failure, in that the priest never accomplishes anything. I couldn’t disagree more. If a priest who constantly turns the other cheek, stands fast at his post even when doubt and illness rot his body, and goes out on a limb to help those in need is a failure, well we need a few more of those.

DVD Extras: The Criterion DVD is equipped with a theatrical trailer and a commentary track by Peter Cowie, a film historian and not somebody directly involved with the film’s production. He’s British and possesses one of those commanding voices that hold one enthralled while he compares the film to his favorite martini.

AH

Violence/Gore: Relatively restrained in the new conservative America, although there are a couple skewerings that almost recall the glory days of the ’80s slasher era. Tyra Banks’ demise, regrettably, happens off-screen.

Sex/Nudity: Some wisecracking innuendo from the movie’s archetypal asshole, but no action. Have they forgotten why people go to see these movies?

Best Line: “Trick or treat, motherfucker!”

Score:

I instantly won the scorn of my editors at a certain genre entertainment magazine when I confessed that I, classic HALLOWEEN series fan that I am, actually enjoyed this 2002 installment in the seemingly never-ending slasher franchise. Yes, the Michael Myers seen here is a pale shadow of the Shape we once knew; yes, it almost makes Busta Rhymes a more imposing presence than Michael himself, to the detriment of Michael’s stature as the series’ indestructible juggernaut; and yes, it won’t exactly win any awards for plotting or performance quality. It’s a less than ambitious entry in the series and middle-of-the-road horror fare for our more conservative era.

But hell, it’s also a pretty decent HALLOWEEN sequel when your expectations are suitably lowered, and sometimes you have to evaluate a film within its own narrow category rather than relative to the vast universe of cinema in general. Particularly when compared with the lethargic 20th anniversary entry, HALLOWEEN: H20, RESURRECTION at least gets down to business with some old-style Myers murders, a decent level of suspense, and even some welcome continuity touches that have been absent from the series for a long time. Anyone remember the sudden reality shift in HALLOWEEN 5 when the old Myers house became a Gothic-style cathedral-like edifice? No worries - in this movie, the Myers home not only serves as the central location for most of the action, but it looks almost exactly as it did back in 1978. Good show, set designers.

I also found the premise at least marginally clever as well. After a prologue that provides a final, almost epic farewell to Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode, we move on to Haddonfield, where Busta is about to present a new Internet-based reality program dubbed “Dangertainment.” Lock the usual assortment of attractive young people in the Myers house, strap webcams to their heads, and let the fun begin. Oh, did I mention Michael has come home again? Oops. Bet nobody had him sign off on this production.

Some fans might question why Michael is driven to continue his rampage at all now that his last remaining relative is gone in the first fifteen minutes, but to hell with logic. For a series with two distinct continuity threads, who needs consistency? At least Michael, played here by Brad Loree, recaptures a bit of his trademark body language, and the mask is not at all bad. Michael even shows a wry sense of humor by presenting a mental patient obsessed with serial killers with his bloody knife as a collectible trophy. What a nice Shape he is sometimes.

Our new Laurie stand-in, Bianca Kajlich’s Sara, is pretty flat, but then so was Laurie. Come on now - the HALLOWEEN movies were never about brilliant acting anyway. The rest of the cast dies well enough, and Busta emerges as one half of a heroic team - the other being Sara’s Internet and Palm Pilot chat pal, ‘Deckard,’ played by Ryan Merriman - that gives Michael a definite run for his money. The famously re-edited ending lets Busta wipe up the floor with the Shape, but we know damn well that this isn’t the end of the road. Evil never dies…

DVD Extras: Probably the best bit here is the original ending with Merriman’s character arriving to save the day instead of Busta. Test audiences demanded that Busta survive and save the damsel in distress instead. Judge for yourself. By the way, this is director Rick Rosenthal’s second shot at a HALLOWEEN film after the legendary near-disaster that was HALLOWEEN II, and once again he was subject to some last-minute tinkering in the editing room. Get his take on things with the requisite director’s audio commentary (he’s joined by editor Robert A. Ferretti), or explore other alternate and deleted scenes, storyboards, the typically boring photo gallery, and featurettes on the webcams and Jamie Lee Curtis.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Kept to a minimum in line with a more mainstream approach to the series, but while the killings aren’t as gory this time around, they do seem more tragic and almost unbearably sad, in particular when one girl is savagely stabbed multiple times while pinned to the ground, and in another when a really nice guy gets the knife-in-the-back-elevator-ride that Michael once gave a nurse in HALLOWEEN II.

Sex/Nudity: If you’ve ever wanted to see a long-in-the-tooth and fully clothed Jamie Lee Curtis making out with every woman’s fantasy, Adam Arkin, here’s your chance.

Best Line: Norma: “It’s Halloween. I guess everyone’s entitled to one good scare.” Keri: “I’ve had my share.” (Jamie Lee Curtis’ mother, Janet Leigh, echoing a line first spoken by Charles Cyphers in the original HALLOWEEN, now followed by Curtis’ ironic reply.)

Score:

Wow. We never thought it would happen, but then sudddenly, it did. Jamie Lee Curtis - screamer turned star - returned to the series that made her an icon of modern horror. After years of avoiding the issue, she was ready to bite the bullet just in time for the anniversary and revisit her scream queen character of Laurie Strode to see what might have happened to this poor girl twenty years after her first traumatic encounter with her brother-turned-demonic killer. Perhaps it was fate that Curtis would be back - yes, fate definitely caught up with her here. Fate never changes (fans of the original film will know what I’m blathering about).

Anyway, H20 was a laudable attempt to bring some mainstream gloss to the B-movie slasher series, and Curtis’ return garnered this seventh sequel (!) some considerable coverage on shows like Entertainment Tonight. Sadly, Donald Pleasence had since departed this mortal realm, so Curtis’ rematch with Michael would happen without the sorely missed presence of Dr. Sam Loomis. Still, this was pretty cool stuff for a dedicated Myers fan. Laurie was back!

Of course, the previous three movies had established Laurie as dead and mired themselves in a convoluted continuity of their own that had nearly buried the series. This time around, the creators wisely decided to take a chance with fan sensibilities and jettison everything that happened in HALLOWEEN 4-6, picking up the story twenty years after HALLOWEEN II. Out goes Jamie and the Thorn cult, in comes Keri Tate, alcoholic school marm and a dead ringer for a girl who was once terrorized one horrible Haddonfield Halloween night. Could Keri be Laurie incognito? Duh.

Although the movie often plays like a love letter to fans of the original two films, there are problems. I still don’t understand why the opening voice-over, a word-for-word re-enactment of a speech first performed by the late, lamented Pleasence, was re-recorded with a younger man trying to replicate Pleasence’s distinctive tones. Surely they could have extracted the audio. Rights issues? For whatever reason, it grates on the nerves of this old-time HALLOWEEN fan, but wait…it gets better.

Some might get a bit of a rush out of hearing the classic Carpenter-penned HALLOWEEN theme rendered with a full orchestral sound, but after the initial excitement of the mass media-supported anniversary sequel dies down, rewatching this film just exposes all the flaws. In a move towards broader audience acceptance, the gorier aspects of the earlier films are toned down, but so too went much of the suspense and dark tone. In many ways, the attitude of this sequel feels more like a typical action thriller than a horror/slasher movie. At best, it’s an uncomfortable marriage of two approaches, but everyone does what they can with the uneven material. While none of the new kids are particularly impressive, they scream when they need to and run when they have to. But you might stifle a giggle when Curtis stands menacingly in shadow and screams Michael’s name at the top of her lungs in challenge as the theme kicks into high gear. It’s all just a bit too over the top at times. In fact, Curtis’ overwrought performance as the alcoholic Strode has its charm but also grates on the nerves after a while, and by the end you may be hard-pressed to decide which sibling you want to root for. Let’s see - who’s the likeliest one to come back in several more HALLOWEEN movies? Right, well I know where I’m putting my money then…

As for the eternal mask issue, it was well publicized that the film makers were unhappy with the new mask - why oh why is there always another damned mask resculpt in every installment - after shooting had already begun. The replacement design, while an improvement that comes as close to the original as we’ve seen so far, still shares some screen time with the crappy first version due to some horrendously ham-fisted editing.

Finally, there’s that ending calculated to elicit a huge audience cheer. But it only holds up if this is truly the final HALLOWEEN movie. Since we know it’s not, it just becomes a matter of figuring out how they plan to get around the seemingly inescapable conclusion. Fans who had read an earlier script for that last scene, circulated around the ‘net, were already way ahead of the game. We all knew the Shape would return…but would Laurie be back to face him again? Read on…

DVD Extras: Isn’t the anniversary enough for you? Sheesh.

ATB

Violence/Gore: The more fan-friendly “Producer’s Cut” tones down the gore in favor of more classic-style HALLOWEEN murders, while the theatrical one adds exploding heads, a gruesome thresher death and other assorted nastiness.

Sex/Nudity: None, but the plot and editing is so stupefying, you won’t notice.

Best Line: “Dr. Wynn, you should know it isn’t wise to play Halloween pranks on me.”

Theatrical Cut:    Producer’s Cut:

Although the film makers didn’t know it at the time, this installment is the end of the road for the increasingly convoluted but occasionally intriguing mythology built into the series beginning with HALLOWEEN 4. When this movie finally limped into theaters after a savage editing, even the most die-hard fans had to agree that Michael desperately needed a very long rest, perhaps even a permanent one. He had already been absent from the silver screen for six years while the producers wrestled with the problem of digging themselves out of the hole they’d dug with HALLOWEEN 5, but trust me - this wasn’t the solution. And yet, oddly enough, even as this represents the absolute nadir of the HALLOWEEN series, CURSE also contains some of the most touching tributes to the original film and a poignant though ultimately squandered final performance by Donald Pleasence.

We’re told that the night the Shape was busted out of the Haddonfield police station by the Man in Black, he also took Jamie with him. When she turns up again, she’s older, pregnant - by her uncle Michael (!) - and on the run from a sinister cult that may or may not have been behind Michael’s rampage since the very beginning. As the movie continues to implode before your very eyes, an aging Dr. Loomis meets Laurie stand-in Kara Strode and the original HALLOWEEN’s Tommy Doyle, now played by on-the-cusp-of-CLUELESS-stardom Paul Rudd. The Thorn tattoos are explained - sort of - and the origins of the Shape and the Celtic cult that apparently controls him are laid out in confusing partial detail. When the Man in Black is finally revealed to be a character from the original film but with absolutely no logic to back it up, even the most die-hard fans will be hoping for another sequel to wipe away this hopelessly labyrinthine story and get back to basics. Fortunately…

As a fan, I was looking forward to learning the secret of Michael’s evil, but sometimes you shouldn’t get what you want, and CURSE is a perfect case in point. While there are some affectionate nods to earlier films, including a beautiful bit with Tommy reliving a ’smashing pumpkin’ moment from his childhood and even a monologue from the elderly Mrs. Blankenship that recalls similar material from the distaff HALLOWEEN III, the scientific basis for Michael Myers’ escapades rings hollow and cheapens everything that came before. Ultimately, the Thorn cult is an intriguing but woefully misguided addition to the mythos. By the end, viewers are left with a plethora of unanswered questions and an ending so vague, surreal, and poorly edited that “ambiguous” doesn’t begin to cover the level of exasperation and rage audiences felt - oh alright, me - when Loomis moans in agony and the closing credits rolled.

As for our Shape-specific critique, George Wilbur makes history as the only actor to date to play Michael more than once, following up his stint under the mask in HALLOWEEN 4. Wilbur seems to have packed on a few pounds since 1988, however, and since Myers almost becomes an afterthought in his own series while everyone else in the cast runs around playing X-FILES with the insane conspiracy plotline, he gets very little to do. As for the mask - eh, not the worst it’s been, but not exactly a stunning re-creation either.

Shortly after the film’s release, a “Producer’s Cut” alternate version surfaced via bootleg VHS copies circulated by fans, and while this curio was by no means a masterpiece, it was a much improved cut that not only enhanced the movie’s ties to the older installments but featured an entirely different final fifteen minutes that set up an even more bizarre cliffhanger that would never be resolved. It did manage to illuminate some of the theatrical cut’s ambiguity by pushing the conspiracy storyline toward a slightly more satisfying Celtic/magic explanation for the Shape and the cult’s activities rather than an X-FILES-style scientific one, and it also replaced Paul Rudd’s opening narration with a more pleasing (for fans) version recorded by Pleasence. The “Producer’s Cut” also clearly came down on the side of “less is more” by featuring far less gruesome murders than those seen in the theatrical version.

But no matter what version you watch, HALLOWEEN 6 is a frustrating experience that promises much but delivers little. Most tragically, it serves as our less than dignified farewell encounter with the great Donald Pleasence’s Dr. Loomis. And soon, even this last desperate attempt to make sense of it all would be written out of existence by a sequel that would go back to the series’ beginnings just in time for its 20th anniversary…

DVD Extras: The movie is enough, trust me.

ATB

Violence/Gore: The gore quotient goes up a notch as people are skewered, slashed, and stabbed in the face with a farm implement. And for the second time in as many years, the entire local police force is massacred! Recruitment is going to get pretty tough around there.

Sex/Nudity: Surprisingly none except for a bit of suggestive interplay. Things are getting a bit sanitized in slasher world.

Best Line: “I prayed that he would burn in hell, but in my heart I knew that hell would not have him.”

Score:

In case you’re wondering where it started to go horribly wrong, here it is. Only one year after the successful resurrection of Michael Myers and the HALLOWEEN series with HALLOWEEN 4, a follow-up was quickly cobbled together to keep the story rolling. Unfortunately, an ill-conceived attempt to expand the story by turning Michael’s rampage into a far more complex conspiracy of some sort with shadowy mystery figures and continuity references to things we never heard of or saw before left many a HALLOWEEN fan shaking their heads as much as non-devotees and leaving the theater with one thought: “What the hell was that all about? And just wait until the sixth movie! Join me now for those heady days of Thorn tattoos and men in steel-toed boots…

Jamie is in an institution after the events of the last movie, and for some reason Loomis is now fixated on the fact that she is in firect psychic contact with her uncle Michael. There were very minor clues to this in the final moments of the fourth movie, but it still seems like quite a leap, but then again Loomis is never crazier than he is in this installment, so let’s give him some leeway. Michael has been resting up since last Halloween with an old man who apparently took him in, cared for him, and was then repaid with a horrific death. This sequence, by the way, is one of several that were discussed at length in various magazines prior to the movie’s release but appeared to undergo massive editing before the movie was completed. As a result, Michael’s situation in the year before 4 and 5 is vague to say the least. But we haven’t even begun to confuse you yet.

Soon we meet the latest horde of oversexed Haddonfield “high school kids” in their late 20s, including new heroine Tina, whose goofy, bubbly Jennifer Tilly impression actually sets her apart as a character with a bit of energy for a change. She’s not your typical virginal slasher heroine, and she gets to participate in what is arguably one of the best confrontations with the Shape ever seen in the series. If only she knew that the guy behind the wheel wasn’t her boyfriend, coincidentally also named “Michael!”

But this is still Jamie’s story. This film was critically blasted for depicting such relentless violence and emotional torment directed at a little girl, but it’s to actress Danielle Harris’ credit that she really makes it work. It’s just a pity she’s trapped in a story that doesn’t know which way to turn next. While Myers prepares to hunt down his niece and ruin another Haddonfield Halloween, a strange Man in Black arrives in town on a bus. A few insert shots establish that both he and Myers are sporting identical triangular tattoos on their wrists. Funny how we never heard about any of that before in all these years. Who the hell is this guy?

One of the most talked-about scenes involves Jamie convincing Michael to remove his mask, at which point she notices a tear running down his shadowed face. Are we now to believe that trapped inside this demonic engine of destruction, this soulless immortal monster, is a trapped little boy who just wants to be loved? As with most of this movie, this attempt to add “depth” to our favorite psychotic slasher didn’t exactly elicit any interest from audiences, but it did generate a bit of nervous laughter.

Protected only by a distraught sheriff still reeling from the events of the last movie and two moronic deputies who are evidently supposed to be so unebearably funny that their every action is accompanied by goofy cartoon sound effects and bumbling music, the kids of Haddonfield are understandably doomed. But then Loomis stages an elaborate trap for the Shape, revealing knowledge of what drives Myers despite specifically stating in past films that he had no idea what was going on behind those black eyes. When did he come by this knowledge? The confusion is only marginally relieved by the fannish satisfaction of finally watching Loomis let loose and beat the crap out of Myers with a board with a nail in it. And then there’s the ending.

Ah, the ending. At the time, we were all left with your basic “What the fuck?” reaction when the Man in Black does something other than stand around or walk through a shot. Myers is caught by Loomis and the cops, the police station is instantly turned into an explosive inferno by the machine gun-wielding Man in Black, and a blood-soaked Jamie tearfully observes that the Shape is gone, apparently “rescued” by the Man in Black.

HALLOWEEN 5 posed many questions and introduced a number of complications that failed to enrich the saga; they only served to weigh it down. And they would remain unanswered for years due to the poor performance of this lackluster follow-up to 4. When the answers finally did come, they wouldn’t satisfy anybody…

…Oh and I almost forgot, this is possibly the worst mask in the history of the series, made even more annoying by the fact that it’s supposed to be the same mask as the one he was wearing in 4 and yet couldn’t look more unlike that one if it tried.

DVD Extras: There’s a “making-of” documentary and an intro clip.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Closer to the original HALLOWEEN than later entries, with a surprisingly small amount of actual blood or gore. A girl being impaled by a rifle is gruesome but shown bloodlessly, while arguably the most violent sequence involves a rowdy bunch of Haddonfield redneck vigilantes incorrectly identifying a fellow gun-toter as Myers in the movie’s funniest scene.

Sex/Nudity: Kathleen Kinmont goes topless briefly.

Best Line: “You can’t kill damnation, Mister. It don’t die like a man dies!”

Score:

One of the greatest fanboy thrills of my later teen years was sitting in a darkened movie theater and seeing two doomed paramedics moving the dormant body of Michael Myers. On a rainy night in 1988, the Shape is about to be moved from the medical facility where he lay comatose for ten years ever since the concluding moments of HALLOWEEN II (which was released in 1981 but took place on the same night in 1978 as the original film). One medic signs for the bandaged Myers while another checks his blood pressure. They’re ready to move him.

And then the music blasted from the screen - the theme! HALLOWEEN was back. Michael Myers was back. It was just like going home again.

HALLOWEEN III, while a fun experiment, was almost the death of this film series. Carpenter and Co. tried to steer the franchise away from the Shape and into an anthology structure, but the fans wouldn’t have it. Although SEASON OF THE WITCH is a fun little creepy concoction, no Myers was a no go at the box office. But it wasn’t until 1988 that producer Moustapha Akkad made the move to resurrect the Shape and reunite him with at least one of his major co-stars - his tireless pursuer, Dr. Sam Loomis, once more played by Donald Pleasence. There was no chance that Jamie Lee Curtis would return to the series - her career had to take a few more downturns before that would happen - but Loomis would find allies in a new town sheriff and a new array of young Haddonfield natives led by Ellie Cornell’s Rachel and her foster sister, Jamie, played by Danielle Harris. Oh, and did I mention that Jamie is in fact the late Laurie Strode’s daughter and Michael Myers’ niece? Yes, Michael has a new family member to kill! The stage is set for good old-fashioned Halloween mayhem. (By the way, in case you’re wondering, Laurie and husband Jimmy Lloyd from II were supposedly killed in a car accident. But Laurie will be back one day…)

With the passing years, HALLOWEEN 4 ages pretty well. It manages to re-create much of the mood of the first film, introduces some very likable characters in Rachel and Jamie, and gives Loomis - now considerably more deranged in his obsession with Myers and bearing the scars from the hospital explosion at the end of HALLOWEEN II - a chance to grow into a more complex and magnetic foe for the Shape, almost like a Gerard to Myer’s Fugitive. Musically, the theme tune is used frequently and well, as is ‘Laurie’s Theme,’ further tying this new installment into the HALLOWEEN universe. George Wilbur is a decent enough Myers, though he lacks the distinctive body language created by Nick Castle and Dick Warlock.

The worst part? That mask! So begins what HALLOWEEN fans often consider the ultimate cross they must bear through every new sequel - enduring an endless parade of completely inaccurate mask sculpts that for the most part utterly fail to recapture the simple terror of the William Shatner white-face from the first film, reasonably re-created in the first sequel. The expressionless, way-too-clean version seen here lacks the scowl and twisted mouth of the original, robbing Myers of his trademark demonic visage…and what’s with the friggin’ ’70s sideburns? Now that’s pure evil! (And yes, I know he acquires this new mask in town early in this movie, but with an icon like the Shape, there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. If Haddonfield can keep stocking the damn things despite all the history that builds up around them - surely residents must cringe to see the face of their own local Boogeyman in stores every Halloween - they can at least stock the right style!) By the way, I’ve never been able to figure out why Michael inexplicably shows up at the school wearing a platinum blonde version of the mask, painfully visible as he throws Loomis through the doorway. Was this some weird, poorly executed tribute to Ben Tramer’s blonde Shape-on-fire in HALLOWEEN II?

The movie’s ending is a brilliant parallel of events at the start of the very first HALLOWEEN, and Loomis’ tortured screaming should send a chill down any HALLOWEEN fan’s spine. Unfortunately, the concluding scene also promises an all-new direction for the series that might have been fascinating but was never meant to be. Moviegoers were quite happy with HALLOWEEN 4, but they definitely wanted Michael Myers back at fighting strength for 5. There was no room for a new Shape, and Akkad wasn’t about to disappoint his audience. But soon enough, fans would rue the day they clamored for the revenge of Michael Myers…

DVD Extras: There’s a nice “making-of” documentary on the disc.

ATB

Violence/Gore: This installment ratchets up the gore and the level of viciousness as well, with both adults and children stricken with electronically-enhanced magic and turned into exploding bags of flesh filled with bugs and snakes and all sorts of creepy crawlies. Eww! There’s also a drill to the temple and other assorted mayhem, including a few androids leaking yellow ichor, but nothing beats that early scene of Ellie’s father having his skull crushed. Classic.

Sex/Nudity: There’s a surprisingly chaste sex scene between buxom Stacy Nelkin and the supremely unappealing Tom Atkins, who nevertheless gets to put his beefy hands all over her in a sequence that will give you more chills than any horrific Halloween trick that Cochran cooks up.

Best Line: “Oh and…happy Halloween.” (Jolly old Conal Cochran wishing Dr. BLAH a happy holiday before proceeding to exterminate children across America)

Score:

Wait a minute! Where’s Dr. Loomis? Where’s Laurie? No MICHAEL MYERS?! What the f***!

Ah, the distaff entry in the series. This one has suffered so much over the years, and I admit that even I - Michael Myers fan that I am - have savaged this film in the past for committing the heinous crime of carrying the HALLOWEEN title and numbering system but leaving out the beloved horror icon himself. But with age comes maturity, and I can now evaluate this for what it is - an attempt to tell a completely self-contained Halloween-themed tale while taking the series into anthology territory. It didn’t work, but it was an admirable effort. And it’s actually a damned nifty little chiller with a creepy Carpenter electronic score and a simply superb hammy turn by Dan O’Herlihy as the evil warlock, Conal Cochran. At times, Cochran is so giddy and gleeful at the prospect of murdering millions of children that you just can’t help but root for the guy (well, OK, maybe not), and that’s largely due to O’Herlihy’s delightful performance.

The petite but chest-heavy Ellie Grimbridge, played by Stacy Nelkin, teams up with troubled alcoholic physician Dr. Dan Challis, as played by the very meaty block of wood named Tom Atkins, to investigate the disappearance of her father. There’s a peculiar little toy factory called Silver Shamrock that’s churning out the coolest masks this Halloween, and every kid in America wants one. So why do the strangely emotionless minions of Silver Shamrock founder Conal Cochran seem so hellbent on murdering anyone who tries to uncover the secret behind their special Halloween promotion? And why does a kindly Irishman like Cochran have a full-size piece of Stonehenge circle sitting in a warehouse in his company town of Santa Mira (the name being a nice in-joke reference to the classic ’50s paranoid sci-fi tale, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS)? What demonic fusion of modern electronics and ancient Druidic rites will enable Cochran to resurrect the “true meaning” of Halloween and have a last laugh on the giggling trick-or-treating children of this great land of ours? Ooh, that Cochran! He’s one nasty warlock!

As long as you’re willing to forget that this is part of a series at all, which it really isn’t, then you can enjoy SEASON OF THE WITCH on its own terms. It’s a great homage to some UK-style horrorfests of the sort you might see on an old DOCTOR WHO (which regularly featured small towns controlled by ancient evil back in the 1970s, as did much of British fantasy television), not least because it was actually written by QUATERMASS creator Nigel Kneale, who had his name removed from the project when he realized that the finished film would be too in-your-face with the grue. It also makes good use of Carpenter’s repertory group, musical skills, and talent for staging suspenseful sequences capped by sickening, bloody deaths.

Everything leads up to a surprisingly Bondian final confrontation in Cochran’s factory, and while the warlock’s grand plan for revenge against the modern world crumbles around him, Challis escapes to discover that sometimes saving the world isn’t as easy as the movie heroes make it seem. But then again, he has only three networks to call in the final tense sequence as he struggles to get the deadly Silver Shamrock commercials off the air. Just imagine if Cochran had access to cable or the Internet. And although Carpenter has often been quoted as listing THE THING, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, and IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS as his three “End of the World” movies, the conclusion of this dark fairy tale comes damn close to apocalypse itself. Can you imagine the clean-up on November 1st? Ugh. Now let’s all sing along: “One more day to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween! One more day to Halloween, Silver Shamrock!” Watch the magic pumpkin…watch…

DVD Extras: Nothing. Shame.

ATB

Violence/Gore: The blood factor goes up as the slasher genre demands a bit more carnage. Michael skewers a nurse in the back and lifts her up to show off his handywork, strangles one man and burns a girl alive in a hot tub, buries a hammer in another man’s head, and more. He’s a busy guy tonight.

Sex/Nudity: Ah, Pamela Susan Shoop. Before her face is boiled off, she’s pretty hot in all her topless glory.

Best Line: “I shot him six times!”

Score:

I remember seeing the image of Michael Myers, AKA the Shape, descending a staircase in a television trailer for this movie when I was only about ten or eleven years old. It was an extreme upward-angled shot, with Michael’s Shatner mask in half-shadow, hair sticking out in every direction. This demonic image grabbed me, and I had to see the movie. Strangely enough, it was HALLOWEEN II, not the first film, that introduced me to the saga of Haddonfield’s unstoppable killer and his tireless pursuer, Dr. Sam Loomis. I finally found a VHS copy of the movie a while later at the very first video store we ever visited, back when video rental was inexplicably presented with all the trappings of an exclusive elite club. But there he was on the shelf of new releases at Barry’s Video Station - Michael Myers. And that night, he was coming home.

Seen in context, however, HALLOWEEN II is an often odd but mostly satisfying follow-up to a movie that had already achieved near-legendary status by 1981. The first good move was the opening, which stepped back to the last few minutes of the first film and then allowed us to follow Dr. Loomis out of the house and outside to discover Michael’s body missing. With a great little dialogue sting launching us into the best title sequence in the entire HALLOWEEN series, HALLOWEEN II picks up on the same night and moment, extending the experience and following Michael’s rampage through the rest of that 1978 Halloween night. While Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie spends a surprising amount of the running time asleep, drugged, or otherwise incoherent - and wearing a truly horrific wig that doesn’t begin to match her ‘78 hairstyle and color - Donald Pleasence picks up the slack by hunting Michael through Haddonfield. His dawning realization that Michael is inhuman is only enhanced by his third act discovery of the true connection between Michael and Laurie. An enticing scene set in a local school, suggesting that Michael is capable of more expression than we knew and has some unknown connection to or awareness of ancient Celtic rites, is given no further attention but sets up a sufficiently chilling monologue by Pleasence on the unwavering primitivism of human nature.

But despite the nostalgic fun, and the truly explosive finale that not only showcases Loomis as one of the coolest horror heroes of all time but reveals Laurie’s inexplicable sharpshooting skills, there’s a lot wrong with HALLOWEEN II. For one thing, it’s surprisingly boring in long stretches, with most of it taking place in the most underpopulated hospital on the planet. When Michael shows up to kill, things definitely pick up, but the entire movie has a disjointed sensibility that sometimes leaves you wondering just how much post-production doctoring had to be done to save the film from total incoherence.

In fact, if you watch the version usually aired on TV, you’ll be treated to a few extra bits that should surprise any fan who has only seen the theatrical cut. In fact, the ‘new’ last scene in the film is a shocking revelation about the survival of another key cast member that illuminates the entire post-HALLOWEEN II Myers family continuity. Why the hell wasn’t that scene in the ‘official’ release? Best to just turn on the TV version for the ending, though, as the rest of it is a bizarre recut that shifts entire scenes back and forth in the running time until the whole mess of celluloid is literally tangled up in itself. I mean it - you will count yourself lucky if you can figure out why any one scene follows another in the TV cut. It’s truly mystifying in its sheer unwillingness to embrace the linearity of time. The theatrical cut may have its editing flaws, and there are quite a few, but at least you can follow the story…such as it is.

But I come to praise HALLOWEEN II, not to bury it. Plot holes, editing snafus, odd scene structure and all, I still have a lot of affection for this first HALLOWEEN sequel. It heroically attempted to continue the saga in a seamless transition from the first movie to the second, and it added a crucial bit of history between Laurie and Michael - he’s her brother (come on, you knew that already) - that may have been a little gratuitous but ultimately enabled future films to extend the saga in a number of intriguing directions. This is no GODFATHER PART II or BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, but it is a good rematch between the Shape, Laurie and Dr. Loomis, and the last we would see of all three of them for years to come. But despite all evidence to the contrary, this would not be the end of the Shape…

DVD Extras: Nothing special.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Surprisingly little on-screen blood, although some classic slasher movie kills are accomplished in full view of the audience, like a backseat car strangling, a phone cord strangling, and a stabbing attack that pins the victim to the wall.

Sex/Nudity: There’s a brief glimpse of Michael’s dear departed sister sitting in her bedroom topless in the opening sequence, but the rest of the film’s limited waist-up only nudity belongs to the almost annoyingly cute and perky P.J. Soles.

Best Line: “…the blackest eyes…the Devil’s eyes…” (the best part of a speech by Dr. Loomis about Michael Myers)

Score:

It’s always difficult to go back to the beginning of a long-running franchise and evaluate the original film with any degree of objectivity. Ultimately, we’re doomed to interpret that viewing experience through the lens of everything that followed, and that makes writing an honest appraisal of a movie like HALLOWEEN so difficult. The fact that it’s universally hailed as a modern horror masterpiece and a watershed moment in independent cinema does nothing to ease the pressure.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember in watching HALLOWEEN all these years later is just how little the movie really provides in the way of an explanation for the sheer terror we’re witnessing. At this point we don’t know Michael is Laurie’s brother; we have no inkling of the insane Thorn cult connection that would be grafted on a decade later; in fact, until the final moments of the film, there’s no real evidence to suggest that the Shape is at all supernatural, inhuman, or immortal. He’s just a cold, methodical killer driven by an unknown psychological impulse to murder babysitters and anyone else who gets in his way. Why did he crack that night in 1963? Why did he kill his sister? Why did he wait fifteen years and then escape to cause more mayhem? There is no explanation, no reason - and that is why we still find HALLOWEEN so scary three decades after its release.

Surely we all know the various bits of the legend, from the launching of Jamie Lee Curtis’ career as the Leader of the Scream Queens, to the brilliant choice of a pasty white William Shatner mask for the killer’s emotionless face, to the inclusion of famed character actor Donald Pleasence as the somber voice of doom and relentless pursuer of his one-time patient. Haddonfield comes alive in this movie as well; its leaf-lined streets and party-minded high schoolers feel real, genuine, not at all ‘Hollywood’ choices in casting or performance. And when the murders begin - for the most part bloodlessly and with more suspense than gore - they shock and sicken because of the normality of the community we’ve come to know. In a strange way, Haddonfield invites us by its very warmth and reality to come home with Michael and watch this nightmarish reign of terror descend on that familiar middle American town again and again.

Then too, there is no denying the incredible power behind John Carpenter’s unmatched musical score. Most fans know the story about the advance screenings that omitted the music and fell flat with audiences before the score was completed, turning a run-of-the-mill indie suspense film into a box office juggernaut as unstoppable as Michael Myers himself. The HALLOWEEN title theme and related themes are burned into the brains of generations of horror fans, and are as elemental in their effect on our psyche as Bernard Herrmann’s legendary PSYCHO shower scene score.

HALLOWEEN is justly considered a modern classic, and Michael Myers quickly took his place in the pantheon of undying slasher stars, but we all know that his subsequent appearances never lived up to the power and promise of this first great film. As soon as the story moved forward, we demanded to know why he killed and what he truly was. And just like comedy, true horror can never be explained. Its power is in a direct, visceral attack on our senses, and in this way the Shape calmly stepped forward and advanced on us with unwavering determination. Michael Myers is the embodiment of pure evil, and evil knows no reason…nor does it need one.

DVD Extras: Thank Anchor Bay for releasing about five million editions of this film, each one with different extras and packaging until no one can figure out which one to buy. I bought the anniversary edition with the lenticular “flicker” cover, but there are countless others, many with documentaries, commentary, trailers, radio spots, etc. Do some comparison shopping and find what works for you - but be warned that another edition is doubtless on the drawing boards even as we speak. Gosh, thanks, Anchor Bay. Hard to believe they have time to even think about HALLOWEEN when they’re so busy re-releasing the EVIL DEAD films every other month. Sigh. Oh, and make sure you get a version that includes all the extra footage shot for television airings of HALLOWEEN during the production of HALLOWEEN II. While they slow down the pace a bit, they add a few very exciting bits for Loomis and Myers continuity fans - just fast-forward through the useless “P.J. Soles borrows clothes from Laurie” scene.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Despite the subject matter, most - in fact, pretty much all - of the actual violence is kept offscreen.

Sex/Nudity: Nada.

Best Line: “It’s not fair! All I get to see are demons and Fenton gets to see God!”

Score:

Some of my favorite movie-viewing experiences happen when I just fall into a film on cable. You know how it works: you’re flipping around the channels for what feels like the millionth time - no agenda, no special plans - and suddenly you just fall into something. Maybe it’s a movie you recognize but never got around to watching, or maybe it’s something completely unfamiliar. Or maybe you catch a glimpse of an actor you enjoy in just about anything - like prolific ’80s and ’90s genre character actor Bill Paxton - and settle in to see what he’s up to in a creepy little movie about a God-fearing, axe-wielding dad and his two sons.

Life for Fenton and Adam Meiks is not too bad over all. Even without their mother, they have a loving father and a decent relationship as brothers. Then one day their dad reveals a horrifying secret - he’s been contacted by God and given a list of people to capture and kill. It seems these aren’t really humans, but demons that must be “destroyed.” Outwardly, it appears as if their father has suddenly snapped, and while younger brother Adam blindly believes in his father and the mission, older brother Fenton is severely troubled by the fact that their father may be a budding serial killer. When Dad kidnaps a woman and chops her to pieces with an axe in full view of both boys, the audience can’t help but agree.

The tale is actually told in flashback, with Matthew McConaughey as Fenton relating the story to an FBI agent played by Powers Boothe. There’s a rash of murders similar to those Fenton’s dad committed all those years ago, and now the truth will be revealed. But is there more to the story than Fenton is telling? Be prepared for at least two or three mind-bending twists that not only throw everything that precedes them into a different light but that also change your understanding of the very genre in which the film should be placed. With touches that pay homage to classic film noir, modern slasher horror, and even psychological character study, FRAILTY rewards careful viewing and reviewing.

Whenever an actor takes on the directorial role in a project in which he himself appears, there’s always the danger of too much self-indulgence, or at the very least not enough external control over the performance side (let’s not go back to Shatner in STAR TREK V, shall we?). But Paxton is exceptional here as a tormented man who may be slipping into insanity but genuinely believes he’s on a mission from God. Impressively, he also comes across as a truly caring father even at his most maniacal. Paxton is well known for playing fringe personalities teetering on the verge of losing it in countless sci-fi flicks, but here he wisely dials back his usual wild-eyed mugging and plays the madness a bit more internally. It’s a wise move, and it only serves to deepen the film’s suspenseful mood.

Perhaps the movie’s greatest feat is that it leaves you thinking at the end, and not in a confused, “What the hell was all that about?” way either. FRAILTY leaves you questioning the very intentions of God Himself - in the context of the story anyway. Is there truly a God at work here? Or is there another force playing with our fates and engaging in a bit of bloody social engineering? There are no easy answers, even when the film takes a few sudden turns and provides a bit more concrete evidence of paranormal influence that the rest of the movie might prepare you to expect. There’s still plenty of healthy ambiguity when the credits roll, and you’ll be sorting out the metaphysical and philosophical ramifications of the film’s conclusion for days afterward. That’s the hallmark of great cinema, and for Paxton a sign that wonderful things might lie ahead for fans of this actor/director.

DVD Extras: (Not yet reviewed) Includes multiple commentaries, featurettes, deleted scenes, and a photo gallery.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Nothing visible, everything implied, and the film is all the more effective for that restraint.

Sex/Nudity: Similarly, there is a very subtle but unmistakable sexual component to the vampirism seen here, but nothing especially racy is seen on screen.

Best Line: “I never drink…wine.” (although “To die. To be really dead. That must be glorious.” was a close second)

Score:

I have long been a less than enthusiastic fan of the original Universal DRACULA, the launching point for one of our most beloved horror film series and the foundation of Bela Lugosi’s eternal fame as an iconic cult cinema figure (bookended by his final feature, the delightfully awful PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE). But I have always loved the Universal series (except the Mummy movies, they’re painfully dull), and even though this languid exsanguination epic ranked low on my list after such cherished childhood adventures as FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN and HOUSE OF DRACULA, I still recognized its right to a certain level of prestige amongst those of us who value our cultural history.

But then I watched it again recently with the intention of reviewing it for Cinejunkie, courtesy of the superb Universal DVD box set (the over-packaged one with the collectible busts). Really watched it, and I mean intently. It wasn’t just background atmosphere, a role the early Universals have so often fulfilled for me while I’m concentrating on other things. And I rediscovered the movie in all its (still somewhat stilted) glory, so I’m here to say that DRACULA is indeed an enduring piece of true horror film making. It magically transforms the moral restrictions of the day into cinematic virtues like men metamorphosizing (off-screen) into bats, and it captures an all-consuming melancholy, mind-chilling mood that would guide all of the future Universal installments and even later attempts to adapt the original Bram Stoker novel that inspired this stage production-turned-film.

The crux of the movie for most is of course Lugosi, masterfully mesmerizing movie-watchers with the same magnetism that lures Mina to almost certain damnation. But it would be criminal not to acknowledge that this is really a double act, with Edward Van Sloan’s Van Helsing matching Lugosi’s charm despite his more subtle professorial demeanor. The scene with Van Helsing almost falling into Dracula’s hypnotic thrall and then regaining his composure is a beautiful bit of acting that leaps off the screen some seventy years after its first appearance. While the rest of the cast languishes in over-enunciated melodrama, a hallmark of early sound productions - even Dwight Frye’s well-remembered Renfield is little more than a hammy, over-the-top caricature - Lugosi and Sloan’s performances could anchor a film today and probably still emerge as the charismatic centerpiece of a truly epic horror showdown.

Despite its short running time of 75 minutes, the movie feels longer, the result not only of the film’s methodical pacing - almost a sin in today’s world of explosive summer cinema - but also of the almost total absence of a musical score. True, the movie was desecrated several years back by adding a newly composed score by atonal megahack Philip Glass, but although that score is on this disc, you can watch the movie without it. Whew. In any event, the moments of almost unbearable silence only add to the foreboding scenes of Dracula or Renfield poised on the brink of sullying the purity of some helpless damsel in distress. Perhaps the most effective sequence of silent stalking occurs when Mina herself - now under Dracula’s control - stares at Harker like a side of beef ready for the grill and slowly, leans toward him, smiling enigmatically…

I still maintain that just by virtue of the era in which it was produced, DRACULA comes across as just a bit too quiet and plodding for a modern sensibility. But put it on in a dark room on some rainswept Halloween night, and you’ll feel the tingles running up and down your spine before you can finish saying, “Oh, turn this boring thing off and put on HALLOWEEN 4.” As a horror classic, its power is eternal; as a document of early movie making, it’s an indispensable glimpse into an era as long-lost as the days when Dracula walked alive and free under the rays of the morning sun.

DVD Extras: As part of the complete Universal LEGACY box set or the more specific DRACULA - THE LEGACY COLLECTION box, this release comes with a second disc that features the superior Spanish version of this film (famously shot on the same sets at night), and the follow-ups DRACULA’S DAUGHTER, SON OF DRACULA, and the final Universal horror bash, HOUSE OF DRACULA (Abbott and Costello’s monster romp notwithstanding). If you can stand commentary recorded long after the fact by a “film historian,” there’s a track with David J. Skal. The documentary, “The Road to Dracula,” fills you in on the basics, and that much debated Philip Glass score is on an alternate audio track.

ATB

Violence/Gore: People (including important characters) get killed. Minimal blood.

Sex/Nudity: None. Not so much as a tongue in sight.

Best Line: “You’re in a big puddle of shit, Pamela, and you don’t have the shoes for it.”

Score:

One of the hardest tricks to pull off when filming a sequel is getting back the familiar faces that people want to see while also showing new characters and situations without the whole thing seeming like two kludgy plots shoehorned together. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY achieves this, and does it admirably, extending the plot of the first film, but deepening and broadening it, telling a much more complex and dark tale.

The acting in this movie is impeccable, even in the smaller roles. Karl Urban and Marton Czokas from LORD OF THE RINGS (Eomer and Celeborn, respectively) are outstanding in their roles as assassins, and I am in awe of Brian Cox’s ability to do a perfect American accent with nary a syllable out of place. Joan Allen’s agent is hard-edged yet proves sympathetic in the end. I am still perplexed as to exactly what Julia Stiles is doing in her role as Nicky, but I suspect she will have a larger role in the third entry in the series, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM.

The film score, by returning composer John Powell, is absolutely superb, with deep, full-bodied strings punctuating the Berlin bridge chase scene. The score is much more noticeable than it was in the first movie, but not at all overpowering, and serves to punctuate the action and heighten the mood as a good score should without interrupting suspension of disbelief.

Characterization takes on new depth in this movie, as the characters of Abbott and Nicky are more fully fleshed out. Bourne also gains a greater understanding of himself as he begins to regain more of his memory. His relationship with Marie, one which in the first film helped to bring him back and re-orient him with society, affects him here even in her absence. His need for her has gone past sex and shared trauma; her humanity has helped him regain his, at least in part. It drives his actions and colors his world view, causing him to react to situations as a man rather than as a cold-blooded killer.  

Bourne has been compared with Bond to a great degree, but in a way I feel that Bourne is a superior character. While Bond has the weight of MI-6 and all of Q (and R)’s gadgets behind him, Bourne has only himself, his innate abilities, and any pens that happen to be lying around. His split-second analysis, internalization, and cold decision making defy all competing planning and strategy. Bourne also has a greater opportunity to grow as a character, because while the Bond movies usually reset at the end, returning the characters to status quo, Bourne is genuinely growing (regrowing?) as a human being, and his character thus develops hand in hand with the franchise. He has nowhere to go - hopefully - but up.

DVD Extras: This DVD has a lot of cool stuff! All the standard audio tracks (Dolby 5.1) and subtitles (Spanish, French and English), 10 minutes of deleted scenes (all of which are connective tissue that can easily be excised, except for one third act exposition scene which I strongly feel should have been left in but pared down), various featurettes regarding the car stunts (watch the go-mobile feature!), blowing stuff up, and fight training, a dissection of the bridge chase scene, a casting featurette, and some eye candy - a photo shoot and a travelogue.

SS

Violence/Gore: A lot of peril and violence, some graphic, and characters are killed. Depressingly little actual gore though.

Sex/Nudity: A very mild sex scene. Nothing you’d be embarrassed to watch with your mom.

Best Line: “What is the French word for ’stakeout,’ huh? May as well hang out a sign that says ‘Don’t come back.’”

Score:

Not being a fan of the political/spy/assassin-type thriller (Bond notwithstanding), I let this movie pass me by when it first appeared in theatres and on video. Then, one night, alone in my apartment, I happened to catch it on cable. I was mesmerized, entirely caught up in this story of a man with a bad case of amnesia who, in trying to recover his identity, discovers that he is a black-ops government assassin.

Jason Bourne (who only knows his name because he saw it on one of many passports that all contain his photo) is sent on a mission to assassinate an exiled African leader and fails. Shot twice, left adrift in the Mediterranean, and rescued by Italian fishermen, Bourne suffers acute memory loss and thus fails to report back to his superiors, leaving them with two things to believe - he’s either dead or gone rogue. When he is spotted in the American consulate in Zurich, they’re convinced of the latter.

Despite the fact that this is a modern film with very up-to-date technology and story line, THE BOURNE IDENTITY is very much a ‘retro’ film, a throwback to ’70s Cold War paranoia. Its lean, taut style is reminiscent of THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, and not since THE FRENCH CONNECTION has there been a better car chase (in a Mini no less!). The fight scenes alone are refreshingly realistic-looking. After seeing so damn much wire-fu these days, it’s good to see something lean and spare and minimalistic. It’s basically a lesson in how to seriously mess someone up with the least amount of show and effort.

The movie has less character study than I would prefer, but considering the theme it’s rather difficult to deeply probe into the psyche of a man who doesn’t even know himself. The movie doesn’t really spend time with anyone other than Jason and Marie, and because of the movie’s very immediate plotline, no in-depth characterization really occurs. However, in THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, the character of Bourne is explored more thoroughly…but that’s another review.

Despite its somewhat formulaic elements, THE BOURNE IDENTITY is never trite or boring. The middle of the film moves a bit slowly and with some fairly pointless plot twists, but comes up strong in the end. The DVD contains an alternate ending, but after viewing both, I wholeheartedly prefer the ending of the theatrical release. After seeing Damon’s strong debut as a lead in GOOD WILL HUNTING, I was disappointed by his follow-up films until now. Although I have been guilty of calling HUNTING a fluke, it appears I may have been a bit unfair. Damon seems to have found his niche with Jason Bourne, and I look forward to the third film in the series.

DVD Extras: Extras include an Alternate Opening and Ending; Deleted Scenes; The Birth of the Bourne Identity feature; Moby’s “Extreme Ways” music video; Extended Farmhouse Scene; Audio Commentary by director Doug Liman; the theatrical trailer; production notes; and profiles of Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, Brian Cox, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Tony Gilroy, William Blake Herron, Robert Ludlum, and Doug Liman.

SS

Violence/Gore: Oh you’ll get your fair measure of blood and guts here, my friend. As we all should know, re-animated corpses spew blood at every turn, and there’s plenty of head-chopping, bone saw-churning, finger-biting, eye-popping, head-crushing action throughout. The question is, when isn’t there gore on screen? Very rarely, and that’s why we like it so much. Hey, there’s even a writhing undead kitty. Now that’s entertainment.

Sex/Nudity: Ah yes, the reason this film became the modern classic that it is. Not for the over-the-top special effects or the superb performance by Jeffrey Combs or even the macabre cinematography and roller coaster ride plot - no it’s all about the one scene where a deranged re-animated head goes down on the lovely Barbara Crampton (who happens to be starkers at the time and strapped to a morgue table). And isn’t this why we all fell in love with the magic of cinema? Hell yes it is!

Best Line: “Parts. I’ve never done whole…parts.”

Score:

The true power of this film begins and ends with Jeffrey Combs and his uncanny portrayal of modern horror’s most compelling mad scientist - the Re-Animator himself, Herbert West. Combs’ West is almost an anti-hero in a literary sense, desperately striving to find the secret of eternal life - a laudable goal, surely - but utilizing methods that clearly mark him as a dangerous man of questionable morals and even less empathy for other human beings. His re-agent (actually luminol, but let’s not quibble) does indeed bring back the dead, but only as mindless, enraged, blood-spitting zombies. Still, West soldiers on, secure in the knowledge that his “work” is serving the Great God Science even if the path to enlightenment is strewn with the gory remains of his failed experiments. It’ll all be worth it in the end.

Remember the scene in GODFATHER when Michael helps a nervous Enzo light his cigarette after the two stare down a car filled with hitmen? Enzo is shaking like a leaf, but Michael looks down at his hands holding the lighter and flips it closed with nary a tremor; he’s cold as ice. West has a similar defining moment when he calmly takes up the bone saw and brings down a raging zombie, his steady hand and quiet controlled voice speaking volumes about his character. Michael Corleone is a cold-blooded murderer, but we somehow sympathize with him. So is it any wonder RE-ANIMATOR fans tend to harbor some small bit of affection for Herbert West

Every hero - even a demented amoral one - needs a foil, and West finds one in Dan Cain, as played by the somewhat wooden Bruce Abbott. Cain loves the dean’s daughter Megan (Barbara Crampton), has a rival in the evil Dr. Hill (who harbors a sexual obsession for Meg and an abiding hatred for West), and now finds himself inexplicably drawn into West’s private crusade to unlock the secrets of life and death. And he thought he was just getting a medical degree and a hot future wife.

Inevitably, things go horribly awry, and soon lots of people are dead and brought back to life, and what will come to be known as the Miskatonic Massacre is in full swing at a sleepy little New England hospital. Hill tries to steal West’s re-agent, West cuts Hill’s head off with a shovel, but that insatiable curiosity brings a telltale twinkle to West’s eye. And soon enough, the now two-part Dr. Hill is shuffling around and planning to kidnap Meg and engage in the most perverted oral sex scene ever seen in cinema. And there’s something that much more twisted about Hill using the hypnotized re-animated corpses of Meg’s father to assist in stripping her naked. Ew.

While not strictly faithful to the Re-Animator tales written by H.P. Lovecraft, the movie does pick and choose some elements and manages to mold them into what stands as one of the most memorable excursions into gross-out film-making ever made (and the climactic massacre sequence does feature an intestine-tentacle creature that offers a brief nod to its Lovecraftian roots). But it’s also more than that. RE-ANIMATOR is a superb exploration of the classic Frankenstein scenario, enhanced by performances that each sketch a complete personality despite the potential for two-dimensional characterization. From the start, everyone in the cast is bouncing off one another in a series of overlapping relationships that define their needs and determine their fates. And I still maintain that in certain respects, you can interpret West’s need for Cain as a sort of sublimated love. Just look at how he bristles when Meg is around. We’ll talk more about this in the review of the sequel, BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR.

But while everyone is drenched in blood and seriously discussing the location of the will in the brain and their supremacy over the forces of life, there’s still room for humor too. Hill’s body doesn’t always obey his mental control all that well, and West’s solution for how to keep Hill’s severed head propped up is an inspired bit of invention from Combs himself.

But despite the fact that most of us really enjoy this movie, there’s no denying that at its core, it’s a horribly tragic dark fable in which the real hero of the film in a literary sense - Dan Cain - loses everything he holds dear all due to his unfortunate proximity to a clever but narrow-minded madman. And at the very end, when the hospital is a bloody ruin and his future lies dead in his arms, he loses one last thing - his grip on sanity - and turns instead to the glowing elixir to take away his pain. Of course, as the audience knows too well, this decision only seals his doom. Poor bastard. But it does give us one of the more powerful final shots in genre film, so it’s a trade-off, isn’t it?

DVD Extras: No question about it, if you’re a RE-ANIMATOR fan, you owe it to yourself to get the “Millennium Edition.” This two-disc set features a plethora of extras, including: two (count ‘em) audio commentaries (the one with the full cast is the one that really delivers on the exuberant reunion factor, and Combs proves he still remembers all of his lines, but the director’s commentary reveals that one of the zombies was nicknamed “Gesundheit"); trailer and TV spots (do you have a weak heart?); the usual bios and photo galleries; a section in which composer Richard Band explains the shaping of the score in several key sequences (though he doesn’t deal with the whole cribbing PSYCHO thing); and a number of enlightening crew interviews (but…Fangoria editor Tony Timpone?). There’s a fairly neat multi-angle storyboard section where you can compare the original boards to the finished footage (I suspect most people will select the Megan/Hill head scene more often than not), but the angle function just isn’t fast enough to really make use of the idea - it would have worked better if they were presented side by side or top to bottom instead. The best extras, however, are all the deleted scenes, which fans will mostly recognize from the television edit of the film, which sacrificed the gorier stuff for deeper character moments that definitely improve the film. Would that there were a branching feature that would enable you to watch a cut complete with gore and the additional scenes, but alas. As it is, you learn that Hill has powers of hypnosis only hinted at in the final cut, and a scene revealing Herbert’s own addiction to a weak solution of the re-agent adds a lot of dimension to West and his somewhat dependent relationship with Dan.

As if all that wasn’t enough, we even get more naked Barbara Crampton (and you can never have enough) via a deleted dream sequence that also features a subtle but clever color saturation effect. So when are they going to release her leather-clad turn in FROM BEYOND on Region 1 DVD already?

ATB

Violence/Gore: Abbott convinces Costello he should blow his brains out. A corrupt individual uses a gun on our romantic leads. A group of thugs is beaten by Abbott and Costello with coconuts, sticks and other assorted items. Abbott smacks Costello around. Costello falls a lot. An angry native slips Costello a mickey.

Sex/Nudity: The romantic hero initially surrounds himself with a busload of beauties. The boys’ excursion to a tropical island leads to a cornucopia of shapely ladies who are fond of the dancing and revealing (for 1942) outerwear.

Best Line: Costello: “Oh! Look, mister, tell the head man, would you please, tell him I’d like to die my own way.” L. Atwill: “How do you want to die?” Costello: “Of old age.”

Score:

This go-round, Bud plays Algy Shaw and Costello is Wellington Phlug, ugly monikers worthy of a W.C. Fields flick. They’re a pair of Chicago bus drivers who break regulations to drive a rich playboy to California. The bus company doesn’t take kindly to this concession to wealth and sends a detective out to serve them with a writ. After shrugging off that guy, the boys wind up as hired hands on the rich playboy’s yacht and promptly steer him off course, nearly causing the deaths of all involved. Fortunately, in the nick of time, a beautiful tropical island is sighted and the starving crew go off to find a land containing politically incorrect natives (aka California actors in tan face), sexy sirens and former romantic lead, and frequent classic Universal horror actor Lionel Atwill, who naturally is evil. During this part of the picture, Costello gets courted by a very attractive native girl (and a good singer/dancer to boot), the boys run into temple-raiding thugs, and a very tepid romantic subplot works its way out weakly. PARDON MY SARONG features Abbott and Costello at the height of their first wave of popularity. This was their most successful picture to date and the second highest grossing film of 1942…which begs the question, why have we never heard of it?

The first half of this film goes a long way in answering that. For thirty excruciating minutes, the film lumbers about with the boys on auto-pilot, rehashing the same time-killing antics that lost their freshness half way through their first film some six pictures back. Even Preston Sturges regular, the perennially cranky and usually hilarious William Demarest, can’t give this film a jolt during this painful period. The only thing that makes this part of the film worth slogging through are two phenomenal musical numbers by the tremendously talented The Four Ink Spots, which features some top-notch dancing by the Tip, Tap and Toe dancers. Besides these all-too-brief musical interludes (easily accessed through the chapter stops), it’s all groans and pulling teeth.

Then the boys get lost at sea and Abbott convinces Costello he should kill himself so that the rest of the crew can survive. This dark moment in the A&C catalogue marks the turning point, and the film does a 180 and suddenly becomes one of the boys’ more endearing works.

Once on the island, the humor and the pace picks up. Lionel Atwill may have been at the end of his career, but he was always a treat to watch (as fans of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, MARK OF THE VAMPIRE, and Josef von Sternberg’s THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN will attest). His role as the evil villain lends the proceedings an out-of-place sense of prestige.

But it’s the boys who drive the second half. The tropical island filled with politically incorrect tan-faced natives is a great setting for some their best moments, including a ‘blow the whistle’ piece, a ‘tree of truth’ sequence, and most amusingly, a bit involving the word ’stinker’ that Monty Python would be proud of. There’s also a great dance number to a tune called “Vingo Jingo” to sweeten the second half pot.

The film is directed by Erle C. Kenton of THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN, HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (an early version of H.G. Wells’ THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, featuring a youngish Charles Laughton) fame. He also directed the boys’ next picture, WHO DONE IT?

DVD Extras: The film has been released on DVD as part of Universal’s excellent “The Best of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.” The set consists of eight films spread out over two double-sided discs. This film’s extras include subtitles in English, French and Spanish, and production notes.

AH

Violence/Gore: Lots of pratfalls, including old men pointing guns at young men, old men kicking so high they fall, and Norval Jones either being smacked around or falling of his own accord.

Sex/Nudity: Trudy Kockenlocker gets knocked up after a highly suspect marriage.

Best Line: “I’m not so crazy about uniforms.” “You’re not. Gee, I’d give anything to wear one.” “That’s because you’re a man.” “Oh, lots of women wear them too, like those wackos.” (Trudy Kockenlocker and Norval Jones on the porch)

Score:

It’s war time and Trudy Kockenlocker is a small town girl with a thing for the military boys. After an all-night dance and some serious alcohol consumption, she discovers the next morning that not only has she gotten married to a man she can’t remember, but she’s pregnant. Enter Norval Jones, the boy who’s been madly in love with Trudy from the get go. When he finds out about Trudy’s predicament, he does his best to help her and in the process the two fall madly in love.

Preston Sturges’ World War II comedy focused on the ‘war bride’ problem of the time, where women would marry GIs - or get knocked up by GIs - in the heat of the frantic doom-tinged environment of those good old days. This sort of social commentary may only appeal to historians in the audience, but what about the six billion other people who may come across this film? What does it offer them?

Preston Sturges offers a fast-paced, intermittently funny, dated and heart-wrenching film that can still be enjoyed by those who appreciate the human comedy (people who enjoy robot comedies, however, will not be as impressed). The film’s tale of a young dope proving his love to the girl of his dreams and subsequently getting her is a time-worn fantasy for almost half the population.

Nevertheless, paradigms do not a good film make, and Sturges also inflects his film with a slow-building kinetic pace that is sure to produce a smile. Under this current of comedy is a humane social drama that holds one’s interest so there’s never a dry patch. On top of all this are the two star performances from Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton. Betty Hutton’s Trudy Kockenlocker is the personification of the idealized girl next door. Her bubbly performance is a delight, and this is a rare actress who is not afraid of making a fool of herself.

But the film belongs to Eddie Bracken as Norval Jones. As orphaned earnest young Norval, Bracken injects the character with all the pathos and quiet dignity you’d expect of a man whose whole life has been devoted to one far-fetched dream - a dream only the most extreme of circumstances has finally enabled him to achieve.

By the way, Preston Sturges and Eddie Bracken teamed up again for HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO, a wonderful film about the nature of heroism and lying about being a hero.

VHS Note: There is no DVD of THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK available at this time, but Paramount has a VHS tape out. Note the film’s ratio, 1.33:1, is the same as a standard TV screen, so you will not lose any of the image.

AH

Violence/Gore: None really. Even the Martians who die do so with your standard sci-fi fade-out - no muss, no fuss.

Sex/Nudity: Nah, this is too cerebral for that.

Best Line: “Life is its own answer. Accept it and enjoy it day by day. Live as well as possible. Expect no more. Destroy nothing. Humble nothing. Look for fault in nothing. Leave unsullied and untouched all that is beautiful. Hold that which lives in all reverence. For life is given by the sovereign of our Universe. Given to be savored. To be luxuriated in. To be respected.” (Ray Bradbury’s original text left largely alone)

Score:

No one is saying this is the greatest science fiction live-action literary adaptation ever, although there was a time in my youth when I foolishly believed it to be so. I was a huge fan of the novel and even more taken with the notion that I was able to sit it come alive on the small screen. So I looked past the awful effects, the chintzy wah-wah pedal-enhanced score and cardboard acting to the meaning behind the story. And I loved it. Age has mellowed my opinion, but it still ranks right up there, flaws and all. It’s a damn good attempt to bring Ray Bradbury’s epic saga of Martian colonization to life, and later attempts to do so in episodic form via the long-running RAY BRADBURY THEATER were equally as good but never as charming.

Episode 1 details the first three expeditions to Mars, a series of tragedies that surprisingly do not deter us from continuing to send more men into danger until that red planet is ours. Amurrican tenacity, huh? The first falls victim to a jealous Martian husband in an eerie setpiece that sets the perfect mood for the Martian setting and the rest of the series. The second, led by ’70s TV Spider-Man Nicholas Hammond, stands as one of the best individual story adaptations as the crew of Zeus 2 falls victim to a cunning telepathic trap that you might find equally moving and chilling. Finally, star Rock Hudson himself takes Darren McGavin, Bernie Casey and some no-name extras that you know won’t be long for this world or any other to the Martian frontier. There, Casey’s Spender becomes so enraptured with the now nearly-dead Martian culture that he snaps and begins executing the crew. His final exchange with Hudson’s Colonel Wilder establishes themes that will play out through the rest of the series, and you might even find yourself wondering - was that really Spender? Was it a Martian? And would it really matter either way?

In Episode 2, the story shifts to the colonizing period, and while Wilder does what he can to fulfill a promise to Spender to preserve the Martian culture, humanity has its way of washing over a place and absorbing it - but on Mars, that effect seems to run both ways. In one of many intercutting storylines, Fathers Peregrine and Stone discover an ancient Martian race that has long since abandoned its physical form (yep, they’re the Old Ones, as any die-hard SF fan could already have guessed), and this discovery causes Peregrine to contemplate some pretty bizarre permutations of the traditional faith. Fritz Weaver and Roddy McDowall shine in their roles, but the story is pretty hard to swallow even in this framework. The real gem of the episode is the tale of the Lustig family and the hapless Martian who decides to take on the appearance of their long-lost son. It’s a wrenching story, but watch for Hudson’s often bizarre facial expressions. Sometimes it looks like he isn’t sure whether he should look astonished or amused. The episode ends with a poorly executed encounter between Sam (Darren McGavin) Parkhill and some few surviving Martians, who have apparently decided to chase him in their little miniature tabletop sandships and give him half of the planet just before Earth is incinerated in a global nuclear fireball that looks suspiciously like a very bad painting. I love McGavin, but he plays his whole role as if he’s in a children’s TV show - and he might be right. Sigh

In the final episode, Earth is finished, and Mars has become a planetwide ghost town with few humans left to to preserve the race. Without a doubt one of the two most embarrassing chapters in the original novel (the other being an extremely dated racial tract) is adapted here with major modifications, rendering it even more insufferable and ridiculous. Even Bernadette Peters and her porcelain figure can’t save this one. A favorite chapter of mine involving a dying man and his strangely attentive family also suffers with the casting of Barry Morse as the enthusiastic hermit. Morse’s overacting is painful next to Rock Hudson’s lethargy and Roddy McDowall’s always reliable realism. Things pick up when a superbly cast British actor appears as a Martian ghost who finally gives Colonel Wilder a chance to learn about the Martian way of life. But then it all wraps up with a very poorly adapted “Million Year Picnic,” Bradbury’s final chapter in the novel, with uncomfortable British child actors clumsily speaking with American accents and trying desperately not to laugh at Hudson’s ’50s-style fishing hat and somnambulistic line readings.

So yes, there are flaws, and plenty of them. This is a late ’70s production attempting to adapt a sweeping epic in the annals of classic science fiction literature, and it trips up on a number of challenges that it must inevitably try to tackle. For one thing, the special effects are largely hideous, largely composed of very poorly scaled model shots of rockets that wouldn’t look out of place in an old ’50s Flash Gordon serial or an early ’70s DOCTOR WHO episode - appropriate enough since this was co-produced by Milton Subotsky, who also oversaw the two ’60s WHO films, and by the BBC as well. But even there the series manages to rise above its budgetary limitations with set, costume and make-up design that is almost masterful in its elegance, rough edges or no. And although I think Rock Hudson did a fine job, he is a tad, shall we say, uninvolved. At times, his face is a virtual mask of ambivalence.

It has often been said that Ray Bradbury stories are difficult to adapt faithfully since his prose is so poetic and his dialogue too flowery or elusive for an actor to perform with the same emotion captured on the printed page. If that were true, all those seasons of RAY BRADBURY THEATER must be an illusion. True, at times his work might irk those who try to bring it to the screen, but when they succeed the results can be magical. This is not to say that every line rings true here, but there are moments. Perhaps the two defining scenes for this miniseries, both of which focus on attempts to articulate just what it is that made Martian life so beautiful, are the exchange between Spender and Col. Wilder in Episode 1 and the one between Wilder and the Martian ghost in Episode 3. Even if the rest of this series does nothing for you, I guarantee you will hear those words echoing in your head for a long time after the final credits roll. And perhaps you might even learn something from them as well. This is Bradbury’s - and this production’s - greatest lasting achievement.

DVD Extras: None at all, and it’s a major disappointment.

ATB

Violence/Gore: A man has his head blown off while his girlfriend watches. A woman is abducted. A scantily clad girl is whipped. The girls are heroin addicts. A gardener is shot in the head and impaled on a garden gnome. The nurses are cannibals. Bloody bags are disposed of. A gagged woman has her throat slit and her innards played with, while later her corpse is disemboweled with a chainsaw. A woman skewers herself on a branch before being shot by a machine gun. An old man is mercilessly whipped. A camping family is attacked with machine guns. A woman is shorn of her shirt and then taunted with a knife before having her throat slit. Two women engage in a catfight, and after one is killed, the other molests the corpse with a sharpened staff. A young man has his feet ripped off by trip wire. A girl gets her head blown off with a shotgun. A young man is blown away after sex, like with a shotgun. A girl goes on a killing spree with a machine gun.

Sex/Nudity: Breasts popping out of nightgowns. Nurses wear outfits more fitting for fetishists than a hospital. Lots of flimsy lingerie wearing. Long, dull topless dances. Light fondling among the scantily clad women folk. A mother tries to sleep with her daughter.

Best Line: “Her obsession with violence is crystallized in the contents of her comic books, most of all in the adventures of her hero, Natchell Burkman - a super-strong mercenary who shoots before thinking, whose gun does the talking, who knows every possible killing technique. A man who can’t be stopped by anything. A man who single-handedly destroyed whole armies.” (part of a narrator’s analysis of Sabrina’s obsession with violence, told while Sabrina reads a poorly drawn comic as names like “Mao” and “Ed Gein” flash around her.

Score:

When not watching the cinematic antics of Misty Mundae in the latest Bill Hellfire release or pondering how Tina Krause and Mia Copia can exist in the same universe and yet neither sports a goatee, I’m sure to be watching MANIAC NURSES FIND ECSTASY. “Why,” you may ask? Simple, MANIAC NURSES FIND ECSTASY is stuck in my DVD player. Of course, to most this would be the definition of hell, but I’ve decided to concoct some insipid philosophy on viewing film so as to save a trip to the repair shop. This philosophy is that to truly know a film you must make it your life’s viewing. There’s some other crap I wrote, but I seem to have spilled coffee all over my notes.

Although I haven’t been able to verify this for sure, MANIAC NURSES FIND ECSTASY is apparently a Hungarian porno film that’s been edited into one of the most delirious Dada delights you’ll ever see, I’m talking about you, not the other guy who reads this review. Taking a page out of the “if you show skin, you don’t need a coherent plot” handbook, the folks at Troma (the greatest film studio ever for those who don’t know, aka morons) have given us this marvel of absurdity. Here’s the (tee hee) plot: A wicked warden, Ilsa, has a love interest, Sabrina, that is also her daughter. Ilsa’s past lover is jealous and…oh Christ, I give up. And you will too.

MANIAC NURSES FIND ECSTASY is a journey that will hold you transfixed like a deer caught in headlights. Your jaw will drop within the first few seconds. Never have you seen such shameless disregard for coherency in your life…Hollywood blockbusters excluded, of course. To attempt to describe this journey in any more detail is futile. You must experience the event first-hand in order to truly know the world of MANIAC NURSES FIND ECSTASY.

However, there are some interesting items I would like to mention. First is the inclusion of the Ilsa character - here a wicked nurse. Is this then the fifth ‘Ilsa’ movie? My answer is yes. Secondly, in one of the numerous segments featuring a voiceover, the nurses are described as living the life of the undead because there aren’t any thrills for those who’ve dipped so deep into deviant desires. If this is true, then why the hell is the film called MANIAC NURSES FIND ECSTASY? Shouldn’t it be called MANIAC NURSES ATTEMPTED TO FIND ECSTASY BUT FAILED AND NOW LIVE IN DESPAIR, or MANIAC YET BUMMED OUT NURSES? Finally, in the blood bath ending, why whenever the visual scorecard comes up does it keep track of points with plus symbols instead of numbers?

Of course, by asking these questions, I’m revealing that I don’t get it - ‘it’ being that there’s nothing to get. My regards to Harry M. Love for both a stunning directorial job and nom de plume.

WARNING: Don’t be fooled by the cover, fellas - this film ain’t got Tiffany Shepis in it.

DVD Extras: The DVD release from Troma is but a skeleton of what that label offered before. There is no Tour of Troma, No T.I.T. test, no tongue-in-cheek trailer for the feature, no Tempting Tromabilia, No informative intro by Lloyd Kaufman…stop me before I start crying. All we get is the feature digitally remastered, the trailer, a smattering of trailers for other Troma features, interactive scene access and the Radiation March commercial, which has been proven to cause cerebral aneurysms! The presentation is 1:33:1. The sound is fine, the picture clear, no subtitles. The disc plays when you put it in your player. What more can be said? Well, I’m off to write hate mail to Alec Baldwin, so take care.

AH

Violence/Gore: Does yellow alien ooze count? If so, then watching the Tall Man lose some fingers and spew goo might qualify. But surely the show-stopper is the silver sphere attack on the caretaker. And watch for a - dare I say - realistic touch at the end of that scene, when the caretaker falls to the ground and apparently loses control of a little more than just his blood.

Sex/Nudity: There are a couple completely unappealing topless scenes, especially if you consider that the lady in lavender is apparently the Tall Man…ugh.

Best Line: “Boyyyyyy!” (This was too easy)

Score:

Forget for a moment that this film went on to spawn three sequels (and counting), and that it led to further elaboration on the history of the Tall Man (although not much and all of it ambiguous). Just think of it as a one-off experience, which indeed it was when it first came out. In that case, evaluating it purely on its own terms, it’s one of the most effective dramatizations of a grief-induced nightmare ever made. Nothing that happens in the movie is necessarily real, but all of it is certainly creepy and a superb example of low-budget horror cinema.

By picking through the clues strewn throughout the movie, we can gather that Mike’s older brother Jody has just died. Suffering from the immense loss, Mike descends into a convoluted series of feverish dreams that mix elements evidently drawn from reality - the graveside service, the funeral parlor, life with Jody and their friend Reggie before the accident - and throws in a few bizarre additions - the dwarves, the dimensional gateway, the flying bug-thing - to create a dark landscape of the mind in which Mike and the audience are trapped. It’s a nifty piece of work when interpreted in that light, but even if you want to watch it as a straight-forward (if surreal) story about an alien posing as a funeral director and ensnaring a local boy in a web of intrigue and mind-bending horror - and who wouldn’t when you put it that way? - then by all means feel free. It works on both levels. But really - crushing down and re-animating human corpses, canning them, and then sending them through a dimensional rip in order to provide slave labor for a distant desert world? Doesn’t really sound too cost effective, does it? And don’t you love how quickly our heroes just accept the sheer insanity of the premise with little more than a shrug?

The Tall Man himself, Angus Scrimm, is one of those men whose physical presence is so innately unsettling that he could only have been put on this Earth to become one of our undying icons of sheer terror. The rest of the cast tries very hard, but it may be to Scrimm’s benefit that he has little dialogue and only has to glower menacingly. The others have to tackle actually speaking, and occasionally their acting is rough around the edges. But earnestness counts, and everyone is doing their best to be “in the moment.”

While the acting may not be top-notch, what makes this movie a classic is its suitably languid pace and visual style, enveloping you in the nightmare world of the Tall Man while one of the eeriest musical scores ever written chills your very bones. The otherworldly hum of the gateway hidden in the funeral parlor is also cause for goose bumps, and there are numerous inexplicable bits and pieces that enhance the dreamscape, like the Jawa-esque dwarf zombies and the cackling psychic lady in shades. But surely the most horrific sequence ever filmed features Jody and Reggie in an interminably long “jam session” that involves the two ‘musicians’ using guitars to produce a sound that even the Tall Man might find soul-numbing. Thankfully, the sequels don’t bother to delve too deeply into this part of their sad little lives.

Despite its flaws, PHANTASM is an indispensable example of modern horror with tableaux that stay with you forever, particularly if you saw it first as a child. Could there be anything more terrifying than the sight of the Tall Man standing menacingly at the end of a long corridor with the whine of a silver sphere close behind? After all, you can run all you like, but the game is over boy, and now you die!

DVD Extras: A really great package here, celebrating the film’s 20th anniversary at the time of the DVD release in 1999. The feature-length audio commentary by creator Don Coscarelli and all three lead actors is one of those laid-back reunion experiences that make a ‘commentrak’ worthwhile. While fans would later see a lot of chopped footage from this movie in the fourth installment, there’s plenty deleted material here to examine, including a sequence that reveals what happens when you spray the Tall Man with cold fire extinguisher foam (which would also up the gore quotient if it had been left in). There’s an extensive collection of behind-the-scenes footage with commentary by Coscarelli and Reggie Bannister, trailers, TV and radio spots ("If this one doesn’t scare you, you’re already dead"), tons and tons of stills - does anybody ever really look at that stuff? - and much more. Perhaps most interesting from a fan perspective, however, will be the very strange Australian promo film that Scrimm performs partly in character; the 1979 interview on some godforsaken local public access show with Coscarelli and Scrimm - again hamming it up partly in character - talking with a very ’70s mustachioed interviewer about the movie and the nature of horror film-making; and finally the raw video footage of a Fangoria-sponsored convention showcasing Scrimm entertaining fans with a very uncomfortable yet appropriately surreal act in which he slips in and out of the Tall Man persona and recites all of his lines from the first two films verbatim. He must not get out much. And if you want to subject friends to the kind of nightmare that Mike is having in this movie, have them listen to the disco version of the theme tune, or play them the complete 1995 recording of Bill “Jody” Thornbury’s composition, “Sittin’ Here at Midnight.” Yup, the jam session song…brr.

ATB

Violence/Gore: There’s a hanging, a severed head, dripping blood stains, and the show-stopping finale - a re-animated skeleton stalking a victim toward a vat of bubbling acid.

Sex/Nudity: None.

Best Line: “Darling, the only ghoul in the house is you.”

Score:

An eccentric millionaire has given six people a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Stay overnight in a house reputed to be haunted by the ghosts of restless murdered souls, with only a loaded handgun for protection from the specters…and perhaps each other, and each will receive the princely sum of $10,000 (it’s 1959, remember) in the morning. But will all six survive the night? And are they really strangers to one another, or is there something more sinister happening in the HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL?

I don’t know what it is about this little curio of a film - a William Castle production starring Vincent Price that doesn’t feature a single fantasy element yet manages to get by on pure mood. It’s one of my all-time favorite movies, and there have been times when I’ve literally watched it to the end and then put it on all over again and watched it a second time all the way through. It’s probably inexplicable, but I’ll try to explain why HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL has such a hold on me and always will.

First and foremost, of course, there’s Vincent Price. This isn’t his most flamboyant performance, not by a long shot. In fact, at times he’s positively sedate, hanging back and letting the rest of the small cast carry the weight of a scene. He’s also not even strictly a dastardly villain, a type of role with which Price has become inextricably and somewhat inaccurately linked in the minds of most genre fans. He’s a morally ambiguous fellow - a millionaire named Frederick Loren who uses his money and name to manipulate other people’s lives for his own needs - but he’s not a monster. Or is he? There’s a melancholy about him - a sense of inevitability that drives him through the film and gives him the conviction to do what he believes is right. But he’s still Vincent Price, and whenever he’s on the screen, his magnetism and pitch-perfect delivery are nothing short of mesmerizing. And by the end of the movie, you do want to see him win out against his conspiratorial foes no matter what the means.

There’s the house. In one of Castle’s delightful low-budget incongruities, the exteriors not only fail to match the wonderful, atmospheric interior sets but completely contradict the very style of the story being told. With the setup about the house having a dark history of murder and betrayal, you would expect an historic gothic mansion or at least something architecturally traditional. Instead, the eponymous house is an artsy concrete pillbox that couldn’t be less of a haunted house if it tried. A Frank Lloyd Wright creation from 1924, the Samuel Freeman House in LA has turned up in a number of productions and now merits a spot on the National Historic Register…but it just ain’t a haunted house, folks. That sort of quirkiness pervades the movie, and it’s a good thing in the end.

There’s the cast. Staying overnight with Price are frequent Twilight Zone guest star Richard Long as the dashing pilot and nominal love interest for mousy heroine Carolyn Craig, dependable character actor Elisha Cook Jr. (who also appeared with Price in the superb Cormanfest, THE HAUNTED PALACE), and the alluring Carol Ohmart as Loren’s scheming wife. They and the rest of the cast are well suited to their roles and never overact..well, except for Craig, who seems on the verge of a psychotic fit from the moment she arrives. Then again, the entire point is that she’s being driven insane for a reason, so she should be forgiven her excesses.

There’s the plot. Packing in a plethora of tried-and-true haunted house scares along with a dash of murder mystery and a touch of sardonic wit, HOUSE has a quiet, methodical pace that allows you to get comfortable with the idea of spending the night in this house with these people. It’s definitely one of those movies that, as you grow more familiar with it, invites you in as part of the story. Sometimes I watch the movie not to admire Price’s suave posturing or Cook’s trademark drunk routine but merely to spend some time with old friends. Odd, isn’t it?

And there’s “Emergo.” As most movie buffs know, Castle used to like to ‘involve’ the audience by coming up with some sort of ridiculous gimmick to go along with his movies. Since a walking skeleton (played expertly by itself, as the closing credits reveal) figures in the film’s conclusion, Castle hit upon the idea of terrifying audiences by releasing a wire-bound skeleton into theaters at a crucial moment. “Emergo” didn’t always perform as planned and sometimes fell into the crowd or just dangled comically, but he became a part of Hollywood lore and earned HOUSE a place in the annals of movie marketing history.

There’s some talk that Alfred Hitchcock, hearing of this film’s box office performance, conceived PSYCHO to cash in on the low budget horror craze. Could be; I wouldn’t doubt it. Anyway, maybe none of this explains why I love this movie so much. Oh well, think I’ll go and watch it again. After all, the ghosts are moving. They’re coming for me now…and then they’ll come for you! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

DVD Extras: Our recommended release (there have been several) comes paired with a less than pristine print of Price’s LAST MAN ON EARTH, but don’t let that dissuade you - the HOUSE print on this disc is very good indeed.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Oh yeah baby! This movie revels in brutality, such as dragging a guy behind a car through numerous fiery explosions, ripping out all the rings from a heavily-pierced guy’s face, an arrow through the neck, and let’s not forget the savage slaying of an entire family, children included. No punches pulled here.

Sex/Nudity: The movie is much more concerned with keeping its characters immersed in blood and gore, thank you.

Best Line: “God’s going to sit this one out.”

Score:

In this adaptation of the classic ’70s and ’80s Marvel character, Frank Castle (well cast with Thomas Jane in the lead role, effectively burying the sad memories of that other Dolph Lundgren-led production…ugh) is an ex-CIA agent - not a Marine as in the comic - whose old foe, Howard Saint (played with equal parts gusto and restraint by John Travolta of all people), decides to wreak vengeance by quite literally murdering every single damned member of Castle’s family and then offing Castle himself. But wouldn’t you know it, Frank is a pretty resilient guy, and after he spends some quality time cradling his dead wife and son in his arms, he picks up some hair-trigger weaponry (personally modified by his now dead dad, JAWS’ Roy Scheider in a cameo) and rides off to punish the guilty. Woe to anyone who gets in the way of his steely stare and equally steely knives. This guy means business, and we get to sit back and watch the carnage unfold.

While Castle’s revenge is elaborate, it’s also brilliantly conceived. Rather than simply kill Howard Saint, he undermines everything Saint relies on first, turning Saint - incorrectly - against his best friend and wife before finally delivering the killing blow. It’s the way in which Castle first crushes Saint’s spirit before he does the same to his body that really ratchets up the cruelty factor here, but I would argue that given what Saint does to Castle in the opening of the film, virtually everything Frank does from that point on is, if not completely justified, then at least understandable. To put it succinctly, I’m with ya, Punisher!

The more mindless aspects of the plot are bolstered by the presence of a lovable supporting cast of characters who serve as Frank’s last remaining connections to humanity. Frank’s lost everything, including his soul, but in the apartment building where he plans his revenge, he becomes the unlikely “friend” of three losers who wallow in obscurity but prove to be far nicer people than most. Fat guy Bumpo, quirky punk Spacker Dave and the plain jane Joan (played by Rebecca Romijn-Stamos in the film’s only major casting misstep) try to draw out the man in the cold machine-like Castle, and while he can never be what he once was, he does develop attachments to them that are at once a weakness and a strength. There’s also a nifty pay-off to those relationships - quite literally - at the end of the film. For those who might not know, these characters and some other story elements were lifted from Garth Ennis’ superb revival of the Punisher in the Marvel Comics story arc, “Welcome Back, Frank.” Credit where it’s due. And watch out for the Russian!

This movie got a bad rap in its initial release - it was never going to be another SPIDER-MAN - but it’s good old-fashioned action film making as pure catharsis, and I say there’s a place for it if you walk into the experience with your eyes and mind wide open. This isn’t Oscar material and it doesn’t pretend to be, but it sure as hell delivers on the blood-soaked high-octane excitement. The movie’s called THE PUNISHER, so what did you expect, lots of cuddly bunnies and feel-good life lessons? We’re here to watch a guy get revenge, pure and simple. I’m actually hoping Frank gets a chance to riddle the silver screen with another spray of bullets real soon. Vaya con Dios, Castle!

DVD Extras: A smattering of deleted scenes, commentary by director Jonathan Hensleigh, and some nice behind-the-scenes featurettes cover the typical DVD basics well enough, but you’ll also find some neat comic book-based perqs as well.

ATB

Violence/Gore: A few largely off-screen stakings, some wrestling around, and one last impalement, all virtually bloodless.

Sex/Nudity: Nope, not a bit of it.

Best Line: “There was a time when I shopped for a car. Now I’m looking for a hearse.”

Score:

Vincent Price is one of those reliable classic horror actors who can carry you through just about any schlock imaginable - see countless Corman Poe films from AIP, for example, almost all of which are a sheer delight if not the apex of modern cinema - and his presence does help save this occasionally lifeless (heh heh) adaptation of Richard Matheson’s apocalyptic novel, I Am Legend. As all true horror fans know, the book was also adapted with Charlton Heston leading the battle in THE OMEGA MAN, but while this earlier version is only slightly more faithful to the original material, it’s a more lackluster production that often feels like a student film that managed to convince Price to show up for a few days shooting.

Shot in Rome with an Italian cast but for Price, virtually all of the movie is dubbed in post-production, adding to the movie’s rough-hewn ultra-low budget feel. As to plot: Price is Robert Morgan, apparently the last healthy man left alive on Earth after a mysterious plague carried by the wind sweeps around the globe, blinding and killing everyone. Ah, but that’s only the first step - most of the victims rise again as zombie-like vampiric creatures that shuffle about and moan for Morgan’s blood. The majority of the film follows Morgan as he sleepwalks through an empty existence, hunting the vampires by day, executing them with home-made wooden stakes, and then returning to fortify his house at night with garlic and mirrors. A lengthy flashback sequence shows the pre-apocalyptic events that led to this nightmarish vision, with Morgan - a scientist seeking a cure for the plague - watching helplessly as his daughter and wife succumb to the disease. Watching his little girl grope blindly in her bed and cry out for her mother may make you cringe, but the movie’s most powerful moment is undoubtedly the after-death visit paid on Morgan by his wife. Brr.

In the last act, Morgan meets another apparent survivor, a woman named Ruth who conceals a secret that may offer salvation for the human race or death for Morgan…or perhaps both. The story concludes somewhat limply in a church. Fans of Heston’s OMEGA MAN will probably guess where things are heading, although they’ll be spared the heavy-handed religious symbology utilized by that oh-so-’70s romp. LAST MAN ON EARTH does rather handily capture a sense of desolation, affording us a glimpse at a bleak future in which the human race must evolve or die. You might have to make it past a few plodding, B-movie level sequences to get there, but there are rewards.

Of course, the movie’s real claim to fame may be its undeniable influence on the landmark zombie film, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, which would come along only four years later. As for Matheson’s novel, the book has never had its true day in the cinematic sun, and plans to mount a third adaptation have so far yielded nothing but periodic industry buzz.

For Vincent Price fans, this is a must-see; for zombie movie enthusiasts, it might be worth taking a peek to see where Romero might have come up with the initial look and modus operandi of his shambling undead; for everyone else, it’ll make for a nice feature in a late-night double bill with NIGHT or something else suitably black and white and bleak.

DVD Extras: Since we first wrote this review, a really nice edition of this film was released by Madacy (pictured above) that not only sports a really crisp, clean print but evidently restores the correct widescreen aspect ratio for the film. Nice job.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Light, campy, and extremely fake. Nothing really.

Sex/Nudity: Aside from some sexy dances, none of that either.

Best Line: “We take our horrible mutilations seriously around
these parts.”

Score:

The drive-ins of the 1950s were filled with movies designed to frighten, shock, and entertain with concepts popular at the time - giant atomic mutant bugs, space aliens, and other bugaboos - and filmmakers like Ed Wood, William Castle, and Roger Corman built careers (if they could be called that) on the sci-fi craze.

THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA is more than an homage to these gems - it is a loving re-creation of sci-fi classics right down to the strangely stilted dialogue, wooden acting, not-so-special effects (the skeleton is controlled by painfully visible fishing line), and logical gaps through which one could steer a Plymouth. But it’s all OK, because anyone with the smallest grasp of satire knows that it’s not meant to be perfect; that would defeat the point entirely. It’s a spoof, and if you have no connection to or appreciation for the ’50s sci-fi gems, you may not get the joke this movie so lovingly perpetrates.

The movie begins as a scientist (this is subtly mentioned about…oh, 20 times in the first 3 minutes), Dr. Paul Armstrong, and his adorably dingy wife Betty (playing a cross between Donna Reed and every shrieking, fainting ’50s heroine), travel to a deserted cabin in the woods (cunningly filmed in Bronson Canyon, location of many B-movies and Westerns) to locate a meteor Paul has detected - a meteor that just happens to be “lousy with atmospherium,” the new, rare element that “Earth can benefit from in many ways, many of them good.” Add to the mix an evil scientist; his master, the titular Lost Skeleton (a cranky, anachronistically-dialogued ex-med school skeleton hilariously controlled by fishing line); Animala, a half-woman, half-four-different-forest-animals dancing beatnik; and two crash-landed aliens, Kro-Bar and Lattis (not to mention their rubber-suited pet mutant…there are no words), all of whom want the atmospherium for themselves. Stir well, and let the side-splitting mayhem begin!

One of the funniest things about LOST SKELETON are the props, like the Transmutatron - the ray gun the aliens bring to subdue the mutant (and which is used by the “evil” scientist to create Animala). It’s quite obviously a disguised caulking gun, while the “spaceship” is a toilet roll covered in silver paint and foil. The inside of the space ship is made of pegboard with random gizmos stuck on, and the part of the spaceship that’s broken is played by a bicycle bell.

Despite the occasional viewer complaint that “camp isn’t created, it becomes,” director/actor/writer Blamire’s intelligent and lovingly respectful way of paying homage to the low-budget sci-fi era radiates from the film. Nothing misses, from the sexy, seductive Animala’s beatnik dancing to the classic scene of the DOCTOR WHO-esque rubber-suited monster dragging off the heroine (who, naturally, has fainted dead away). THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA is a darling re-creation of every ’50s drive-in flick you ever saw late at night on cable. Although it plays well alone, CADAVRA is best watched with a group of your cinema-geek friends and the sophisticated adult beverages of your choice.

DVD Extras: The DVD has a lot of additional release material, including: A making-of featurette that’s surprisingly free of spoilers and gives the viewer insight into Blamire’s mindset while creating this adoring homage to sci-fi mayhem; “Obey The Lost Skeleton,” the story of the skeleton in all his cranky glory; commentary tracks from director, cast and crew; a blooper reel (the outtakes are in color, as the color was stripped from the finished film); an AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE Q&A featurette from an LA screening; “Virtual Skelectibles,” a look at LOST SKELETON merchandise that ‘might have been;’ a photo gallery; and finally (and perhaps most charmingly) an original 1937 Ub Iwerks-animated color cartoon short feature called “Skeleton Frolic,” in which a skeleton band plays a dead gig (the cemetery, hee hee).

SS

Violence/Gore: A horse gets chopped up by a boat propeller, and there are a couple of gruesome death scenes, but no real gore per se.

Sex/Nudity: Absolutely none, other than a couple of shots of Naomi Watts in her skivvies.

Best Line: “You weren’t supposed to help her!”

Score:

Everyone has their favorite urban legend - the one about the rattlesnakes in the ball pit at Wendy’s, the one about the unfortunate woman and the lobster, or even the chicken head in the chicken nuggets at McDonald’s. They’re all simple, harmless, fictional stories. However, in Gore Verbinski’s thriller, THE RING, an urban legend about a videotape that kills in seven days after watching it proves to be all too horrifyingly real.

After her niece’s mysterious death, investigative reporter Rachel Keller was skeptical of the story told by her niece’s friends about a videotape that kills you seven days after you watch it - until research reveals that her niece and three of her friends all died at exactly the same time on the same night, exactly one week after allegedly watching The Videotape. Rachel tracks down the video…and watches it. Now, Rachel’s time is running out, and she has only seven days to solve the mystery of The Ring.

Gore Verbinski’s remake of the Japanese horror masterpiece, RINGU, is a delicately-balanced combination of suspense and horror. Other than a tendency to lag a bit in places, the film rarely hits a wrong note, and proves to be both frightening and engrossing, even after multiple viewings. The screenplay, adapted by Ehren Krueger from the original Kôji Suzuki novel and Hiroshi Takahashi’s RINGU screenplay, is reminiscent of THE SIXTH SENSE, but an out-of-nowhere third act shocker twist takes the movie from the realm of the so-so into a dark hinterland of stark horror.

Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli effectively parallels the images in the tape with the images in Rachel’s life after she views it. He uses murky lighting and eliminates nearly all of the blue tones in the picture, bathing the scenes in a grim greenish-grey light to match the film’s stark mood and suicidally rainy Pacific Northwest setting. The images of The Videotape itself are a dark, grainy, disturbing homage to such seminal film classics as Luis Bunuel’s UN CHIEN ANDALOU and THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI.

THE RING is one of the most genuinely scary movies I’ve seen in years, and its stylish look is actually underlaid with substance so often missing from American films. Verbinski takes some potentially ridiculous subject matter and creates something disturbing, without the traditional ‘gore, sex, and giggles’ American approach to horror. The movie is virtally sexless, something that I feel adds to its strength in that the film can hold its own without it. Of course, the visuals contained in The Videotape are a big part of the events and clues that make the story click, and fall into place as Rachel begins to solve the mystery. Watching the story come together is unsettling, with the film’s moderate pace mimicking the inexorable stalking of a zombie. It’s a truly horrifying minuet of menace.

DVD Extras: This DVD has some of the nicest looking, most cleverly executed menus I’ve ever seen. The ‘Don’t Look Here’ segment contains deleted scenes cut together with images from The Videotape, making a nifty little short film. There’s no commentary, but arrowing up from the ‘Play Movie’ option reveals an easter egg that plays The Videotape. Simple, spare, clean and classic - like the rest of the film.

SS

Violence/Gore: The boys play paddy-cake before getting into a series of fights, which - while not WWF-style - do get a bit rougher than one might expect. Anthony Quinn and Dorothy Lamour do a dance involving some pretty close whip interplay (perhaps I should have put this in the sex/nudity category). Quinn also displays a violent temper.

Sex/Nudity: Dorothy Lamour wears alluring clothing. Bob Hope’s character, Ace Lannigan, has apparently knocked up a girl (suggested strongly).

Best Line: Costello: “Oh! Look, mister, tell the head man, would you please, tell him I’d like to die my own way.” L. Atwill: “How do you want to die?” Costello: “Of old age.”

Score:

Josh Mallon (Crosby), heir to a shipping empire, has just come into port after slumming on a freighter with his low class pal, Ace Lannigan (Bob Hope). After the boys make some cracks about the cons of marriage, the plot moves to where Ace is subjected to the prospect of a shotgun marriage for something he’s done with one of the local girls. After a violent brawl, the film shifts to Josh’s family; his stern father; Josh’s desire to be free to roam; Josh’s unpleasant, self-obsessed fiancée; and more of the same old same old ‘rich kid who wants to slum’ jazz (at the time of this film, Crosby’s ‘rich kid’ was 37 in real life).

After Josh’s engagement party, the boys take off/flee for Singapore, where they decide to shun women and live like slobs. Enter Mima (Dorothy Lamour), a beautiful native who both the boys fall in love with and who they take in to their abode - a little saucy undertone for 1940, don’t you think? Anyway, it’s all ‘who will get the girl’ after that, and since Bing Crosby gets top billing, your guess is as good as mine who will win Lamour’s heart.

Now you may be asking why Cinejunkie would delve into the world of the ROAD pictures. What makes a review of ROAD TO SINGAPORE essential for posting on an ostensibly sci-fi, horror and exploitation film site? Well the answer is simple:

Dorothy Lamour was one of the stars of CREEPSHOW 2.

As you can see, ROAD TO SINGAPORE has earned its place here, as have all the ROAD pictures, THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, MY FAVORITE BRUNETTE and, hell, STAR SPANGLED RHYTHM for that matter.

It’s just a shame the thing couldn’t have been more entertaining. As the first of the ROAD pictures, this is the movie that set the tone for all future offerings, and apparently at this point the tone was mild comedy with an odd tendency toward dramatic flourishes. For a series that degenerated into seemingly spontaneous ad-libs, winks at the audience and topical in-jokes, one doesn’t quite know how to react to the “acted” scene where Bob and Bing force Dorothy to decide between them. Nor does one feel exactly comfortable watching Anthony Quinn manhandle Lamour in one sequence, even if he gets his comeuppance via the patented paddy-cake routine - that apparently no potential victim could figure out, in spite of the fact that it appeared to be the pair’s one and only way to lead into a fight.

These bizarre human moments aren’t the only jarring thing about the film. The leads haven’t quite developed their rapport either, and Hope’s mugging is second only to Mickey Rooney’s in becoming more obnoxious with each passing second. Fans of politically incorrect sequences involving generic white people donning tan makeup and going “native” will be suitably pleased/offended as well by the native feast sequence towards the end, where Bing and Bob smear themselves with mud and go to what turns out to be the local spousefinder.com ceremony.

Don’t expect to be enlightened about any of Singapore’s culture or customs in this picture. Heck, the film might as well be called ROAD TO NONDESCRIPT TROPICAL ISLAND.

The movie was directed by Victor Schertzinger, who was also a composer (he did the music for THE LOVE PARADE, remember that one?) and the man behind ROAD TO ZANZIBAR, PARAMOUNT ON PARADE and THE FLEET’S IN - an early vehicle for Eddie Bracken (Wally of ‘Wally World’ fame in NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION) and Betty Hutton (ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK).

DVD Extras: The film is included on Universal’s “On The Road With Bob Hope and Bing Crosby” set, part of their “The Franchise Collection.” The DVD includes a bonus documentary, “Entertaining the Troops,” and a sing-along for the moderately amusing song “Sweet Potato Piper.” An earlier stand-alone version of this film was released on DVD as part of the “Bob Hope Collection” and featured more extras.

AH

Violence/Gore: Some stakings and an ignominious end for the erstwhile king of the vampires as he is entangled in a hawthorn bush and dispatched by Van Helsing, presumably once and for all…at least as far as Lee is concerned. And a guy dies graphically of plague too.

Sex/Nudity: A naked blonde is utilized in a satanic ritual, but you’re not missing much.

Best Line: “My revenge has spread over centuries and has only just begun!”

Score:

Oh, Hammer’s beloved Dracula series, how far you’ve fallen. First they steered you out of the historical period in which you were best suited to provide atmospheric thrills and chills and into the incongruously “mod” ’70s instead (with a movie that I still like for various reasons, two of them being Caroline Munro), and now they’ve turned you into a pseudo-Bondian romp involving corporations and viruses and a prince of darkness who now feels he has to hide behind a ridiculous fake accent while wearing a suit and tie! This is making me long for Gary Oldman’s lunatic rendition of the Count, and that’s not a good thing.

Van Helsing (the modern incarnation first introduced in DRACULA AD 1972, not the ancestor seen in the rest of the series, but both played by Peter Cushing) is called in to assist when a mysterious CEO named D.D. Denham is revealed to be planning the release of a deadly new strain of bubonic plague. It’s our old pal Dracula (Christopher Lee just picking up a check) up to his not-so-usual evil tricks, so Van Helsing has to do battle with the fanged one yet again, with his daughter still in tow (this time played by Joanna Lumley as opposed to 1972’s far more appealing Stephanie Beacham). Dracula plans to destroy the world, but for some reason he also intends to make Van Helsing’s daughter into his bride - what he expects to do when the rest of the planet is an infected mass of rotting flesh is another matter.

There is one pretty effective sequence in the film, that being the somewhat creepy basement scene in which we encounter a bevy of chained vampire wives. If ever there was a solid recruitment campaign for ditching your soul and giving in to the dark side, it’s a bunch of buxom Hammer vampire babes baring their fangs - and other assets - and calling you into their web of corruption. Mmm…sorry, I was miles away.

There is also something to be said for the rather original twist on the old premise - that Dracula has now decided he’s so tired of his eternal existence that he wants to eradicate himself and the rest of the world in one final vengeful act. Presaging similar terrorist-themed tales of viral outbreaks by a decade or two, SATANIC RITES certainly can boast one of the most unique plotlines of any Dracula movie, but that doesn’t mean it accomplishes anything all that well. And apart from one last distaff installment with another actor taking over the vampire role, this would be the last time that Hammer resurrected Lee’s Dracula for another showdown with his long-time nemesis, Cushing’s unflappable Van Helsing. It’s a shame the Lee series had to end with such an uncharacteristically ‘modern’ and disappointingly flat adventure.

NOTE: Believe it or not, this is one of many horror classics now in the public domain, which basically means that any idiot with a DVD burner can try to release an edition of this film - and apparently quite a few fly-by-night outfits have done just that. For the sake of quality and a decent viewing experience, stick with a known quantity like Anchor Bay. The edition pictured above is a double-movie set that also includes the far superior 1966 entry in the series, DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS.

DVD Extras: A brief documentary on Hammer vampire films.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Some people get chomped by the chicken…and no, that isn’t a euphemism.

Sex/Nudity: 1957, what part of that didn’t you get? Well OK, there is a brief bit of repartee involving spanking, but that’s it.

Best Line: “A bird - a bird as big as a battleship.”

Score:

There’s such a comfortable mood to most ’50s sci-fi “monster on the loose” movies. They just make me want to settle in with some popcorn (plain only - no butter “flavoring,” no insipid “kettle corn” sweetness please) and revel in the fluffy fun. Naturally, some are better than others. Some are, in fact, masterful (THEM), while others are so lame, so completely insane that the joy comes not from believing in the story but from mocking the movie relentlessly like some ersatz Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. Such a train wreck of a film is THE GIANT CLAW, which has built a lasting reputation on its laughable central creature, ridiculous ‘plot,’ and the presence of sci-fi stalwart Jeff Morrow.

It seems some folks are seeing a UFO in the skies that might resemble a battleship - if a battleship had huge wings, a preternaturally long, stiff neck, and a beaked, scowling face with a thready topknot. All right, they only mean it’s as big as a battleship. In fact, Morrow gamely states that he saw a “flying battleship” about five million times, assisted by every other cast member in reiterating this fact until they learn it’s a giant alien bird, at which point they simply switch to calling it “a bird as big as a battleship.” So it’s pretty big then, huh? Could this repetition have anything to do with the fact that the filmmakers might have felt a bit defensive about their rather lame, stiff-looking ‘giant’ chicken puppet on a wire? Hmm, could be.

But wait, it gets better. Given the clues that mount up in the first twenty minutes or so, it’s inevitable that any viewer will come to the same conclusion: a giant extraterrestrial chicken with a self-generated anti-matter shield has arrived on Earth to build a nest. Why, it’s so obvious, so frightening in its stark simplicity! You’ll bust a gut laughing, no question, and by the time this thing has savaged some teenaged hotrodders (who were supplied in bulk to all ’50s SF films) and perched on top of a styrofoam Empire State Building, your eyes will be too clouded with tears to see anymore. Which is a good thing, believe me. But try to recover just long enough to glimpse the poorly disguised effects footage lifted from the far superior EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (one of the craft even makes an inadvertent cameo appearance - maybe that’s the chicken’s ride home?).

Many genre fans recall THE GIANT CLAW with affection. Maybe it’s the stilted narration, the thick wire sticking out of the top of the chicken’s head, the constant reappearance of the same two minutes of chicken model footage to represent every attack by the bird as big as a battleship, the thinly disguised vintage sexism, the extensive use of hair products by the entire cast…or perhaps it’s that final fleeting shot of a grasping chicken claw sinking beneath the waves of a small tabletop tank, I mean ocean. It’s an indelible image of this era’s cheap-ass creature feature entertainment, and it is indeed delightful. So whatever you do, keep watching the skies for a bird…a bird as big as a…yeah, OK.

DVD Extras: Not on DVD yet, but by God, don’t you think it ought to be?

ATB

Violence/Gore: Massive destruction but not much blood.

Sex/Nudity: None to speak of.

Best Line: “Look on the bright side… we’ll all have high schools named after us.”

Score:

Every so often, a disaster movie so cosmic, so pivotal, so huge will come along, it will make 12-year-old boys run from the theater to buy action figures and comic book novelizations and trading cards from their local purveyor of such things. It will star all the hot young actors, have a flag waving somewhere in the background (if Michael Bay’s involved), and have a score by one of the big three: James Horner, or if he’s busy, John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith. And despite the mayhem, destruction, and stale popcorn, audiences will cheer, somehow everything will be miraculously rescued in the third act, and the movie will gross millions worldwide.

DEEP IMPACT is not that movie…well, except for the music by James Horner. But that’s not a bad thing. In fact, compared to the other big disaster movie of 1998, it’s actually intelligent, caring, thought-provoking, complex, and not at all the jingoistic steaming piece of tripe served up by ARMAGEDDON. And to tell the truth, I wasn’t expecting it. I was expecting something along the lines of INDEPENDENCE DAY or THE TOWERING INFERNO, but what I got was a moving drama with good special effects. Aiding this, perhaps, was the fact that I originally saw it on the big screen in Clayton, Missouri’s stunning Esquire theatre, one of the finest movie houses in the country. If you’re ever in St. Louis, I highly suggest you give it a try.

Emmy-winning ER director Mimi Leder directs a cast of strong talents (ok, Tea Leoni notwithstanding) in a movie that actually achieves some genuine emotional moments and is - surprisingly - convincingly scripted. Leder’s methodical, detailed constructions are the exact opposite of the Michael Bay tight-camera-wave-flag-clever-sound-bite school of directing. She allows a scene to develop, taking the time to focus on and comprehend the human situation in the midst of all the chaos. This results in an assortment of character vignettes that strike the heart in just the right way, without overwrought drama or pathos, but solely with the overwhelming gravity of the situation and the human condition.

That’s not to say that she skimps on the special effects, however. The comet scenes are fantastic, and the scenes with the tidal wave - particularly the scenes of the destruction of New York - are memorable and believable. The CGI doesn’t have that half-finished, rough look seen in so many movies lately. It looks smooth and perfect, allowing the suspension of disbelief to go off without a hitch.

This is not the kind of movie that ever had or ever will have action figures (although if you wanted to put Frodo on a pile of dirt next to a big puddle and heave a rock at it, that’s your business), nor is it the sort of movie that action-movie jocks will flock to see on DVD. It is what it is: an almost anti-action movie that offers a realistic spin on how humanity would react to a literally Earth-shattering event.

DVD Extras: This is the only bad thing about this movie - it deserves a better DVD. This edition is widescreen; it’s captioned; and it has a couple of trailers. Woo boy.

SS

Violence/Gore: Decapitation, slit throats, arrows in horses’ heads, lances pushing men off horses, swords to the crotch, abdominal injuries, skewered chests, and rotted corpses hanging from trees, all delivered in a washed out “realistic” style that will have many a film viewer recalling the style of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL.

Sex/Nudity: Guinevere’s unclothed posterior.

Best Line: “You are stupid and will never understand anything.” (peasant woman to Lancelot as he armors up for battle after she has tended his wounds)

Score:

Arthur’s knights have failed in their quest to find the Holy Grail. Lancelot has returned and awaiting him is Guinevere, who wants to rekindle their love affair. Lancelot believes that God has commanded him to end this adulterous relationship and begs Guinevere to set him free, but she refuses and Lancelot’s will weakens. Only tragedy can result.

For many, this film is the cinematic equivalent of having their eyes rubbed with sandpaper. Robert Bresson’s take on the Arthurian legend is devoid of the romanticism prevalent in most cinematic adaptations. The actors are plain; the color scheme is drab; Arthur’s knights, with few exceptions, are portrayed as selfish and opportunistic; the violence is brutal but homely; and the general mood is one of persistent melancholy. For fans of renaissance festivals, this film is like having your dreams pissed on.

Imagine MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL free of laughs but with more violence, more explorations of the human animal and a pace that makes 80 minutes feel like 12 hours, and you’ll have a fair idea of what LANCELOT OF THE LAKE is like. Many people who have seen this film have found it extraordinarily tedious. I, however, loved it.

Robert Bresson has a slow, steady pace that allows the action to unfold in its own time. He does not condescend to use devices that will help “move it on a bit” - even if, for the most part, it would be damn nice if he did - and so LANCELOT moves on in its way like a slug with a Ford Escort on its back.

For people who find such deliberate pacing annoying - and really, who can blame you? - please pass. For those who tend to throw around words such as “lyrical,” “stylish,” “profound,” and “realistic unreality,” rent the movie this very second.

Bresson is a (get your ‘ugh’ ready) cinematic poet who expects the audience to fill in the gaps. Many of his scenes feel like fragments of a larger piece, and he is fond of throwing in quaint “truisms” - at one point, Lancelot’s self-control is noted as a virtue often mistaken for a weakness, or something along those lines. I’m sure you get the drift. If that kind of stuff makes you nauseous, walk on by.

Personally, I enjoyed Bresson’s film. The Arthurian legend is freed from the romantic notions of nobility and heroism, and instead it presents the characters as flawed beings whose human weaknesses could result in grave consequences. I’ll be returning to this film again.

DVD Extras: This was viewed on VHS and was devoid of extras. The movie will be released on DVD on May 25, 2004 on New Yorker Video. It will boast a widescreen transfer and the theatrical trailer.

AH

Violence/Gore: Even the most brutal battle sequences show no hint of blood. Many knights and Picts are killed with the tried and true school play method of thrusting a large wooden prop sword between their arm and chest. It’s so innocent, you can’t help but smile.

Sex/Nudity: The tension between Guinevere and Lancelot is palpable but extremely chaste in its presentation.

Best Line: “Without you, I endure life. With you, I rejoice in it.” (Merlin to Arthur)

Score:

Stagy without being static, melodramatic without tipping over into laughable theatrics, and colorful without indulging in the excesses of, say, an Errol Flynn Robin Hood adventure, KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE is a delightful exploration of the Arthurian legend as seen through the lens of MGM’s Golden Age style of filmmaking. But while it attempts to take advantage of the new aspect ratio of Cinemascope (this was MGM’s first widescreen production in fact), the movie never seems to achieve the full level of epic grandeur implied by either the subject matter or the behind-the-scenes aspirations of the film studio.

Still, it’s a successful spectacle all the same, making do with an occasionally awkward mix of location shooting and stage-bound backdrop settings to cover the familiar King Arthur stories. It’s all here: the sword in the stone; the treachery of Morgan Le Fay and Modred; the wisdom of Merlin; the love triangle between Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur that ultimately dooms the utopia of Camelot; and even a bit of the quest for the Holy Grail.

There’s a rushed quality to some of it, but the cast give it their all. Robert Taylor’s stilted performance, precision-coiffed looks and lack of a British accent are overcome by the fierce conviction with which he plays Lancelot, and although Ava Gardner never really gets a chance to break out of a limited role, her Guinevere is nevertheless sufficiently regal and believeable as a woman torn between duty to her king and her love for the dashing knight who once saved her life. Mel Ferrer’s King Arthur is similarly convincing as a leader around which a nation would rally. Bit players like an uncredited Desmond Llewelyn ("Q” from the Bond films) and Dana Wynter of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS fame fill out the large cast.

Interestingly, this version eschews any of the fantasy elements often included in other interpretations, so Merlin and Morgan are both cunning manipulators but otherwise normal human beings with no magical powers. Even the significance of Excalibur and the divine calling that sends Percival to seek the Grail are downplayed…at least until the admittedly cheesy ending when God’s light shines down on an empty Round Table and the kneeling forms of Percival and Lancelot. But minor flaws aside, it’s pretty hard not to like this enthusiastic romp through the Arthurian tales. KNIGHTS is good old classic Hollywood entertainment, and if it feels just a bit flat at times, it still serves as a very satisfying rendition of one of our culture’s most enduring legends.

Some modern film makers pretend that they’re telling the “true” story of a king who never really existed (in 2004’s KING ARTHUR), while other adaptations have offered their own gritty take on the saga (see our review of LANCELOT OF THE LAKE for example), but KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE embraces the pageantry of Camelot by capturing the spirit of the story and not worrying about exacting historical accuracy. The results are undeniably charming.

DVD Extras: (Not yet reviewed) Includes a brief introduction by Mel Ferrer, the original trailer, a newsreel of the premiere, and some additional factual info about Arthurian film.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Not too excessive for a Hammer horror movie. There’s a bit of blood, some gruesome aging effects that are pretty effective, and a fleeting glimpse of a severed arm.

Sex/Nudity: Caroline Munro’s seeming nudity is cleverly hidden in shadow, and the rest of the risque content is couched in metaphor or suggestive dialogue, from some apparent rough sex to the usual Hammer metaphor of puritanical English types impaling women with phallic wooden stakes. Ouch.

Best Line: “What he doesn’t know about vampirism wouldn’t fill a flea’s codpiece.”

Score:

In the sleepy English countryside, where families huddle close in small cottages and cleave to their mutual faith in God and the security of England, an evil scourge is at work in the forests, attacking buxom young girls and draining them of their life force. The innocent ladies assaulted by this vampiric monster are left unnaturally aged and with blood on their lips. This looks like a job for…no, not Van Helsing, but Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter!

Late of the Imperial Guard, Kronos is a mysterious, chiseled blond presence who travels with a hunchbacked sidekick named Professor Grost and a newly acquired female companion, Carla, played by ’70s genre pinup Caroline Munro (of THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, STELLA STARCRASH, and THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD). Kronos is actually a pretty cool guy - he’s damn quick with a sword (he can take out three men before they’ve even noticed that they’ve been slashed to ribbons), he’s confident with the ladies (when Carla says that she’ll travel with him if he’ll have her, he quickly and smoothly replies, “Oh, I’ll have you"), he sounds suspiciously as if his voice has been looped by another actor (which it has), and he has a dark past that drives him to rid the world of evil.

One of the clever and refreshing elements of this fun departure from the Hammer norm is its assertion that there are many different species of vampire and thus many varied ways of dispatching them. In this case, it takes a while for Kronos and Co. to figure out how to kill this life-draining breed (the discovery of which takes place during a tragi-comic scene involving an old friend of Kronos’), but before that they have to find out who it is. The movie sets up a number of convincing red herring characters, and the final twists that accompany the revelation of the vampire’s identity are a satisfying pay-off after an enjoyable, atmospheric tale that makes you really grow to like the pot-smoking hero named Kronos.

Yes, that’s right, our vampire hunting friend partakes of mysterious “Chinese herbs,” and pretty often too. Putting the lie to all-those bible-thumping conservatives who scream about pot eroding the minds of youth,
Kronos certainly seems sharp enough - even under the influence - to deal with the deadly creatures who lurk in the shadows. Groovy, man. Of course, Kronos is no stranger to the demon bottle either, but hey, a hero needs some relaxation time too. And with Munro around…well, fill in your own racy joke here.

There’s a comfortable feeling about KRONOS that makes you feel as if it’s already been on for several hours when you first start watching. In fact, watching KRONOS is very much like switching on a TV series in mid-season. There are tantalizing hints about Kronos’ past, but only enough to whet your appetite for future episodes…which of course do not exist. The opening credits even list some actors as “guest stars,” making one wonder what might have been if KRONOS had indeed soldiered on into other movies.

There is also, as with many Hammer horror movies, a somewhat disturbing but fascinating subtext of sexual and gender politics at work. After one roll in the hay - and I mean that literally - Carla touches her bleeding lip and comments, with a hint of a smile no less, that Kronos was “rough” with her. He responds by grabbing her and revealing that upon his return home from war, he discovered that his mother and sister had become vampires. As the embrace intensifies, he yells that he had to drive stakes through both their hearts…and then he’s off with Carla again for another romp. Besides the obvious metaphorical implications, it seems our hero has quite a few issues when it comes to women. But Carla doesn’t seem to mind - it must be love.

Religious iconography abounds as well - at one point, Grost says “What could be more improbable than God? But I believe in him.” - and there’s even a subtle spoken link to Hammer’s lesbian vampire movie series often starring Ingrid Pitt. All in all, this is a fun romp that mixes some by-then tried and true Hammer motifs with the more whimsical style of a comic book adventure. By the way, look for bald and eyebrow-less John Hollis as the bartender. Genre film fans may remember him as Lobot, Lando Calrissian’s right-hand man in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, while DOCTOR WHO aficionados will recognize him as Dr. Sondergard from the Jon Pertwee era story, “The Mutants.” And don’t forget the ol’ “toad in a hole” trick!

DVD Extras: There’s a nice commentary provided by writer/director/producer Brian Clemens, Munro and genre historian (?) Jonathan Southcott. So who’s the odd man out here?

ATB

Violence/Gore: Surprisingly little actual blood, but Van Helsing does pump a lot of crossbow-propelled stakes into the vampire brides, wolfmen kill a few people and do a lot of human-tossing against walls and furniture, and the Frankenstein monster loses his head (or at least a piece of it) for a minute. The most disgusting (and slightly incongruous) part of the movie involves the vampire offspring, which are cocooned in goopy eggs a la Alien and explode in a shower of the same goop.

Sex/Nudity: A little steamy suggestive vampire bride activity, and Dracula works his magic on Anna for a moment or two.

Best Line: “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s not to be the first one to stick his hand into any viscous material.” (a very rough paraphrasing - I only saw the film once - of David Wenham’s Carl when confronted by…a viscous material)

Score:

It’s so difficult for me to say anything bad about this summer’s first big genre blockbuster, VAN HELSING. It tries so hard to pay homage to all the old monsterfests that we grew up with and love so much, and for the most part, it does the job so well that I was willing to forgive it whatever minor indulgences and excesses it had. True, there are a few scenes during which I almost cringed with slight embarrassment - the absolute height of stupidity has to be the sequence where the horses leap the chasm, freezing in mid-gallop like reindeer from an old Rankin & Bass holiday special - but as I said, I was willing to give them one or two hiccups. It’s just so obvious what’s going on here - director Stephen (THE MUMMY) Sommers and crew were making a love letter to the horror films of old, and this movie just drips with nostalgia and affection in every single frame. They even throw in homages to other movies just for the hell of it, like a familiar equipment/weaponry scene that’s a pastiche of all the Q/007 match-ups from the James Bond series.

Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman in an odd parallel to his other big franchise role as the X-MEN’s Wolverine - here he’s another ‘loose cannon’ with amnesia and, eventually, claws) is a dark fellow who works as the Vatican’s secret monster hunter and troubleshooter, protecting the innocent from the forces of evil. He seems to have lived a long time, but he can’t remember his past. Nevertheless, he gets the job done, even if he is a bit of a maverick (you might even call him a lethal weapon). After mopping up Mr. Hyde in Paris, Van Helsing is sent to Transylvania, where some serious monster mojo is brewing. With sidekick, comic relief, and competent scholar Carl (David Wenham, Faramir of LORD OF THE RINGS in a very different role) at his side, and with the initially reluctant aid of Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale sporting a “so hot I steam when rain hits me” look), Van Helsing has to stop Dracula and his vampire brides from spawning an army of vicious demonic winged offspring. Dracula uses wolfmen as his lackeys…so why does he keep a cure for lycanthropy under strict lock and key? And why does he want to locate Frankenstein’s monster? And why does he keep calling Van Helsing “Gabriel?” Rest assured, everything pays off in the end.

The movie does a nice job of incorporating some of the old stand-by monster “rules” (sunlight keeps vampires away, wolfmen transform under the light of the full moon), but manages to freshen them up a bit with some intriguing twists (only the bite of a werewolf can kill Dracula, when the moon is obscured by clouds a wolfman turns back into human form…and what are those little homunculus things working for Dracula?). And if you ever loved the old Universal films, you’ll go nuts for the opening alone - a lavish black and white sequence in which townsfolk wielding torches and pitchforks storm Frankenstein’s castle, driving the doctor and his monster to a windmill that’s just begging to be burned down. Ah, memories.

It would be a serious oversight, however, to merely call this an homage to Universal’s classic monster cycle from the 1930s and ’40s, because there’s no way that a horror fan of today can have grown up without also being exposed to the more lush and lurid monster tales of the UK’s Hammer Films. It’s quite clear that even if Sommers intended this to be a tribute to the Universal material, he also crafted a superb re-creation of the Hammer era, filling this film with seductive vampire women (subtle Hammer-esque lesbian overtones intact), elaborate masquerade balls (the revelation in that sequence is one of many genuine shock surprises that cause moviegoers to leap from their seats - this movie doesn’t lack for scary jolts), and rich, colorful set designs that manage to harmoniously evoke both traditions.

In fact, anyone in the know will probably notice that this movie is less a return to the Universal cycle and more a direct remake of Hammer’s classic action-adventure vampire film, CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER (go read my review to refresh your memory). It follows the same pattern, with a mysterious monster-slaying hero with a murky past, a knowledgeable but physically less gifted sidekick, and a sultry female companion traveling through the countryside vanquishing evil. Both films also make liberal use of religious iconography and indulge in the odd sexual metaphor. I wouldn’t call it a rip-off by any means, but VAN HELSING certainly owes its basic structure to that well-remembered Hammer romp.

This is not to say, of course, that the movie doesn’t have plenty of affectionate touches recalling the old Universal days as well. Wenham’s unexpected recitation of screenwriter Curt Siodmak’s “Even a man” poem from THE WOLFMAN is a joy to hear in a modern film, and the moon itself does a good job of recalling the good old days. For many years now, whenever I’ve seen a bright (often full) moon enveloped in wispy clouds, I’ve called it a “Universal moon.” It seems I’m not the only one who remembers that potent image, because not only does the “Universal moon” effect get a lot of play here, but it winds up being an important plot point!

So I can’t say anything bad about this genuinely atmospheric and satisfying film. It accomplishes everything it sets out to do, and as much as we grew up identifying Dracula with actors like Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee, a new generation might now always associate the Prince of Darkness with Richard Roxburgh. And that’s just fine with me.

Now here’s hoping that unlike the one-off CAPTAIN KRONOS, which also ended with our heroes riding off into the sunset, VAN HELSING will return for another dark and enthralling adventure. I’ll be there, and the 12-year-old in me will be there too.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Nothing overt, although some people do die at the hands (and mouth) of the rhedosaur, including a valiant New York cop who gets chewed and gulped in one memorable scene - but it’s all very tasteful, honest.

Sex/Nudity: Are you kidding? It’s 1953! All right, there’s a mildly flirtatious scene between our hero and the attractive assistant to the old scientist, but that’s as far as it goes.

Best Line: “But the most astonishing thing about it is that…” (Prof. Elson’s last words before the rhedosaur swallows his diving bell)

Score:

This is one of five or six movies I’ve watched a millions times over and over again throughout my life, and I’m sure I’ll still be watching it when I’m old and grey. It’s quite simply one of the best ’50s sci-fi films ever made, a landmark achievement in the “monster on a rampage” subgenre, and filled with enough genuine character and breath-taking special effects (yes, even fifty years later) to keep even the most jaded viewer enthralled. And there are fleeting appearances by Lee Van Cleef and Dukes of Hazzard’s James “Rosco” Best, so how can you go wrong?

After a laughably stilted opening narration (that never comes back for the rest of the film), we’re introduced to a project that apparently involves setting off atomic explosions in the Arctic. And wouldn’t you know it, they awaken a prehistoric beast (from 20,000 fathoms, presumably) with one of their blasts, sending him off pretty pissed and eager to show it to whatever humans get in his way. Our hero, the interestingly accented Tom Nesbitt, struggles to convince the authorities that he’s seen this big dinosaur walking around. He allies himself with a pretty scientist’s assistant, Lee Hunter, and her mentor, the genial Professor Elton. Elton isn’t quick to believe Nesbitt, but he’s willing to listen. Soon, however, the creature has come ashore and taken a stroll through Manhattan, and the whole thing is rendered academic. Add to this a bit of martial law and an inventive subplot in which the beast’s blood is giving off toxic levels of radioactivity, and you just know we’re set for a fun climax at an amusement park. And just look at Lee’s lapels! She could put an eye out with those!

This movie also adheres to long-standing movie conventions like “spot the character who will die before movie’s end because he mentions retirement.” Cecil Kellaway’s delightful Prof. Elton comments that he’s about to take his first vacation in years, so we pretty much know the clock is ticking on the poor fellow. And when he finally does meet his maker below the depths in the mouth of the monster, he’s cut off just before making one last scientific observation. So what was the “most astonishing thing” he sees about the rhedosaur? His bicuspids? I guess we’ll never know.

The monster sports a few distinctive Harryhausen personality touches, like its cute way of lightly brushing a car out of the way after crushing it underfoot, or the way it tilts its head back to knock the screaming, struggling cop in its teeth right back down its gullet. Sure, he’s a man-eating, car-mangling creature from the depths, but he’s just so cute! He’s undeniably one of Harryhausen’s most memorable designs.

And let’s not forget, this is the movie that served as the direct template for the otherwise pathetic big-budget would-be blockbuster, 1998’s Americanized Godzilla. An odd project, that, in that apart from the title, virtually everything in that film, from the design of the creature to the shot-for-shot re-creation of the arrival in New York, was clearly patterned after Beast and not Godzilla. Actually, if watched as a Beast remake, that movie is almost endurable…almost. But enough about that.

What else can I say? I never tire of watching this movie - from the rhedosaur romps to the quieter character moments with Tom, Lee and Prof. Elson, everything about this film screams sincerity. Not as overtly preachy as some of the other atomic monster mashes of the decade, BEAST succeeds by telling a tidy action tale and backing it up with actors who aren’t afraid to put their all into it. You might even find yourself shedding a tear for the poor old rhedosaur in the end (another Harryhausen trademark, playing the sympathy card for the monster).

Oh yes, and don’t miss genre stalwart Kenneth Tobey as yet another in a series of military officials.

DVD Extras: There are a few Harryhausen-themed trailers, but the real gems are two featurettes that offer at least a bit of an insight into one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time. The first is an interview with Harryhausen and a few gushing fanboy ILM techies about the making of the movie and its impact on modern-day fantasy film-making. But the real joy is an on-stage reunion/interview taped in 2003 featuring the two Rays - Harryhausen and Bradbury - gleefully reminiscing about their youth and long-time friendship. Bradbury has been through some tough medical challenges lately, and appears sitting in a wheelchair, but while his body may be failing him, his mind and recall are as sharp as ever.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Lots of blood-vomiting zombies-on-crack, or ‘Infected,’ dying in various ways, as well as some pretty brutal fight scenes.

Sex/Nudity: Full frontal male nudity at the beginning (in a non-sexual way), intended rape, otherwise nada.

Best Line: “That was longer than a heartbeat.” (spoken by Jim after not being killed by Selena)

Score:

Apocalyptic movies disturb me. Throw a few zombies into the mix, and I’m entertained as well as disturbed. 28 DAYS LATER held my attention from its gruesome beginning to its ambiguously hopeful end. It’s a thrill ride that didn’t let up for its full running time of 108 minutes.

The movie features a very intellectual approach to zombies, survivors, and the end of the world as we know it. Beginning with an initial statement about animal research when some activists are very violently killed by the ‘rage’-infected primates they liberate, the movie then comments on our violence-filled modern culture, the ubiquity of advertising, the military-industrial complex, and the current communicable disease paranoia that, after anthrax and mad cow disease, is pervading our day-to-day thoughts and fears. It is very much a film for today, and communicates very effectively to its post-9/11 audience.

The film also inspires stimulating discussions over coffee and pie at your favorite late-night hangout. What would you do if you woke up tomorrow and the world was filled with zombies? How would you survive? How would you react? Would you lock yourself away to try and weather the situation alone, or would you set out and risk death to find other survivors?

Director Danny Boyle’s stylistic decisions make a genuinely frightening movie even more frightening. The decision, for instance, to avoid the use of music during the ‘deserted London’ scenes at the beginning makes the desolation seem all that more complete, and it also makes the shock of the car alarm, still functioning long after its owner departed, that much more jump-worthy. Boyle’s minimalist approach to scoring and dialogue allows the visuals to really pop, and the not-so-subtle unsettling tone set by the desolation of London and the sheer numbers of the ‘infected’ makes this movie linger in your mind long after viewing.

Boyle is also masterful at giving all of his characters, even the smaller players, a chance to shine. The movie succeeds in taking a group of unlikely comrades, developing the ties between them, and evolving genuinely likeable characters that stay with you and inspire you to care about them and their troubles even after the movie is over. The ideas presented by the script are genuinely thought-provoking, and the underlying theme of who the monsters really are is a surprising subtext in a film that could have gone several different ways.

The ending of the film is not what I expected; it was surprisingly hopeful. I was expecting something much more bleak, and I might have had more respect for the movie and given it a higher syringe rating had it gone for the ‘downer’ ending. Although these alternate endings are included on the DVD, to me that doesn’t count. The cop-out of the theatrical happy ending is clearly intended to market the film to the average American moviegoer that doesn’t want to have to think about anything that might put them off their popcorn. After the recent release of the new DAWN OF THE DEAD, however, this trend may be changing.

28 DAYS LATER boasts an excellent cast of players, solid direction, disturbingly beautiful visuals, and a thought-provoking script that make it worthy of its critical acclaim. It’s an excellent addition to any zombie film festivals you may be planning for some dark night in the near future.

DVD Extras: Pretty basic stuff really. There’s an audio commentary by Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland, three alternate endings (although the quality is really weak, these are the best extras), deleted scenes with commentary, “Pure Rage: The Making of 28 DAYS LATER” featurette (pretty much just raw footage shot behind the scenes), a Jacknife Lee music video, storyboards, still galleries, and a theatrical trailer.

SS

Violence/Gore: None at all really; most of the damage done to and by the creature is pretty bloodless.

Sex/Nudity: Look at the date and ask that again.

Best Line: “Why is it always - always so costly for Man to move from the present into the future?”

Score:

After a cheesy opening speech about the dawn of the “atomic age,” we quickly move to a rousing spaceship crash. The eerie image of an enormous rocket sinking in the Mediterranean sea while a rowboat nearby provides scale reminded me of the painted comic book art of a classic UK sci-fi strip called “The Trigan Empire.” But as that’s a pretty arcane reference, we’ll move on. While the locals dutifully contact the US to let them know that one of their own experimental craft has come down with only two survivors (one of whom perishes quickly), a resourceful little thief named Pepe nabs a strange sample canister, inexplicably opens the damned thing, handles the creepy gelatinous thing inside it (because of course strange alien or unknown material sealed in canisters with warning labels are never harmful when held against human skin), and then promptly sells it to a nearby zoologist. Between the embarrassing stock accents and generally simple-minded behavior of the locals, and of course the avaricious narrow-mindedness of little Pepe, it’s a wonder 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH didn’t set back US/Italian relations by decades. And enough with the damn Texas cowboys already! Somebody give that kid a smack.

While the sole survivor of the crash proves himself to be a real bastard when it comes to professional women (he persists in calling the progressive female doctor and colleague of the zoologist “nurse"), the gelatinous thing reveals itself to be an egg containing a Venusian life form. That’s right, folks - in total secrecy and with only a year or so of travel time, a gargantuan American spacecraft traveled to and from Venus and brought back one egg while losing every crew member aboard - well, every crew member except the misogynist with the tobacco addiction (more on that later).

The movie boasts some amusing back projection work, and not just when the creature is on screen - despite location work, there are lots of studio-bound shots on the water and elsewhere. There are also familiar elements that Harryhausen and producer/partner Charles Schneer would return to in numerous other movies. In fact, the young Italian huckster Pepe is trotted out again many years later and renamed Lope for VALLEY OF GWANGI, thus allowing Harryhausen and Schneer to re-use the reliable “li’l troublemaker” concept and offend another ethnicity at the same time.

And as with many other monster rampage epics of the ’50s, the role of the military/government is often laugh out loud funny. While the entire Venusian operation was carried out in total secrecy, they’re all too happy to spill the beans to some nobody local police chief just to get a salvage team together. Of course, we also have the tried and true cigarette-laden press conference scene, in which the army helpfully provides all the Joe Reporters from Central Casting with sensitive information about the trip and the evil monster here to destroy us all. And when the local police vow to hunt the creature down and destroy him, our forces just stand around helplessly and hope that they can find the creature before the Italian authorities do. Does anyone really believe that the US military would just let some cops gun down the single most important discovery in human history just because they claim local jurisdiction? Ah, the naive 1950s.

20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH is fondly regarded as a classic - many recall the elephant fight scene in particular, or the conclusion atop the Coliseum - but it’s often slow and occasionally uncomfortable to watch such a shameless persecution of another living thing just because he’s “the other;” of course, that was one of America’s favorite ’50s film themes. The real triumph of this somewhat flat sci-fi romp, however, is the creature itself, certainly one of Ray Harryhausen’s greatest character designs, and a clear influence on much of his later work. One scene in which the creature stalks toward the camera in a dimly lit barn can give a sufficiently sensitive viewer goose bumps, but ultimately the creature comes across more as a pathetic victim of human fear than as a dangerous marauder. His birth from the gelatin egg and subsequent eye rubbing when the lights are turned on introduces him to us as a helpless, dare I say ‘cute’ little critter. Although he grows to quite a size and causes a lot of property damage, it’s only after he’s been pushed into it by a number of insensitive, barbaric humans.

The creature (often referred to by fans by its off-camera name, the Ymir) is an even more tragic figure than King Kong, who admittedly kills a lot of people. This creature is born into an environment in which he does not belong, is hounded and hunted from day one, attacked without reason, and tortured until he can’t take anymore. The poor creature is confused, frightened, and even under extreme duress injures other living things but does not kill them. At the very end of the movie, he appears to deliberately cause the death of two soldiers with a hurled stone, but given everything he’s been through, I think that shows remarkable restraint. You don’t see the phalanx of troops with the bazookas and flamethrowers holding back at all. At one point, an official notes that if he isn’t caught, the creature will kill hundreds, perhaps thousands. Um…how exactly is he going to manage that? All he really seems to want to do is chew on sulfur - his preferred cuisine. Hell, he doesn’t even eat any animals!

There’s a completely ludicrous and inexplicable romantic subplot that doesn’t even belong in the film - our ‘nurse’ friend must be one of those women attracted to the ‘bad boy’ abusive types, as a life with the Walking Chimney could only result in endless verbal and emotional abuse and eventual suicide or massive drug use. But that’s a story for another B picture, perhaps shot by Ed Wood or Roger Corman.

DVD Extras: Besides the trailer, the DVD features two small documentaries: “The Harryhausen Chronicles” and “This is Dynamation.” As with other recent Harryhausen DVD releases, the featurettes are not over-long but pleasant supplements to the film.

ATB

Violence/Gore: An ape goes on a rampage. Margaret Dumont is shot out of a cannon. Chico is hit on the head several times in one gag. Groucho and Chico hit their heads several times while in a midget’s house. Harpo catches a dumbbell and the weight drives him into the ground.

Sex/Nudity: Eve Arden (one of the old ladies in GREASE) is in a gag that draws attention to her chest. Chico has sex with all the women in the film… but that happens off-screen, or so it’s been said.

Best Line: “No, you’re not a regular coward. You’re a brave coward.” (Chico’s attempt to save Harpo from killing himself after he has called him a coward)

Score:

The Marx brothers are back, and this time the circus is their backdrop. Lending support to the wacky shenanigans is the sixth Marx brother, Margaret Dumont (and sister is that one ugly brother), Eve Arden, Florence Rice and Kenny Baker. That’s Kenny Baker, the ’30s and ’40s actor of such fine films as MR. DODD TAKES THE AIR and 52ND STREET, not Kenny Baker the dwarf actor featured in a variety of costumed roles in the STAR WARS saga.

Harpo (as “Punchy") and Chico (as “Antonio") are working at a circus. When they find out their boss, Kenny Baker, dressed as one of the dwarf characters from the 1980 version of FLASH GORDON, needs to complete a financial transaction in order to keep the circus, Chico suggests they bring in Groucho (as J. Cheever Loophole) as their lawyer. Baker, dressed in full R2-D2 garb, responds with “be boop dink click.”

As things turn out, the person owed this money is corrupt and wants to keep the circus to himself. He has nefarious plans to keep Baker, dressed as an Ewok, from being able to perform this monetary transaction. Late in the night, as Baker, dressed as Fidgit from TIME BANDITS, goes to retrieve his money, he is knocked unconscious and robbed by the circus strongman and a midget named the Professor - who is not played by Kenny Baker, the dwarf performer who frequently appears as costumed characters in the STAR WARS saga. That actor does not appear in this film.

Now Baker, dressed one of the Goblin Corps characters from the film LABYRINTH, is in trouble, and only Chico and Harpo and Groucho can help, badly.

Fortunately Baker, dressed as Dufflepud from the 1989 TV version of PRINCE CASPIAN AND THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, has a rich aunt, played by Margaret Dumont. Naturally, Groucho can con her into giving Baker, dressed as one of the Nelwyn band members from the film WILLOW, the amount of money that was stolen from him. This third act introduction of wealth allows Groucho to engage in his patented harassment of the upper echelons.

The whole thing ends in celebration with Kenny Baker, dressed as Brighton Busker from 1986’s MONA LISA, leading the gang in a rousing version of “Lapti Nek.”

As far as general critical appraisal goes, AT THE CIRCUS is usually considered two drops away from a bucket of piss, which is why we at Cinejunkie recommend that you attack all film critics with rusty nails, screwdrivers, and if your money’s still good at the bar, tequila. This opinion seems to be spouted by people who haven’t recently seen the film, or worse, by those who just assume that the first five Marx Brothers films are the only ones that are worthwhile. Folks, one quick look at COCONUTS - and quick is long enough - and you’ll see the folly of uninformed memory.

As it stands, AT THE CIRCUS is a more than amiable romp with the boys. Their antics are grounded by a solid narrative structure, the circus location allows for some interesting set pieces, and the jokes are cracker jack. Chico and Harpo have excellent interplay in some choice skits, highlighted in the scene where they try to find money in a sleeping strongman’s room. Chico and Groucho work well together, with a classic comedy of frustration bit where Chico can’t let Groucho on a train because he doesn’t have a badge. Topping it all though is the brutally hysterical scene where all three enter a midget’s house in an effort to get evidence, and Chico and Harpo thwart all of Groucho’s attempts. It’s a surreal scene that Dali would be proud of.

There’s also the expected, and as usual delightful, musical numbers from Chico and Harpo. Chico tosses off a fine novelty number that makes it easy to see why he went home, or to his trailer, with half the female cast. Harpo has the politically incorrect number where he dances and plays harp as the black circus workers sing a song extolling his virtues as a kind-hearted soul. It’s rather touching, and likely offensive only to those who have no sense of historical perspective.

This film is non-stop hysterical from start to finish, and I beg you to watch it, for no doubt you’ll say to yourself, “Why, this is brilliant! What kind of a dolt couldn’t give this film four stars?” And the answer to that question is me. I’m only giving it three and a half due to a boring romantic subplot and the absence of Zeppo.

The film was directed by Edward Buzzell, who directed the brothers in their next feature, GO WEST - which is considered by many critics to be three drops away from a bucket of piss - and SONG OF THE THIN MAN - one of the later entries in the “Thin Man” series, which is considered by many critics to be two turds away from a bucket of poo.

Critics…phooey.

(Note to readers: Our horror/sci-fi/exploitation connection for this film is Florence Rice, one of the stars of 1943’s THE GHOST AND THE GUEST - a connection that took a damn long time to find.)

DVD Extras: The DVD was included as part of the Marx Brothers Collection, which features seven of the brothers’ flicks, including this one. According to the box, this film is available only as part of this collection, and is featured on a double-sided disc along with ROOM SERVICE. The AT THE CIRCUS side features a particularly hostile cartoon called “Jitterbug Follies” and a nice Our Gang short, “Dog Daze.” The trailer is included as well.

AH

Violence/Gore: A man is electrocuted. A doctor is stabbed to death. Costello hangs his hat on a knife protruding from a dead man’s corpse. Costello nearly falls to his death. A man is knocked flat with a gun. Abbott and Costello take turns smacking a handcuffed police officer. Costello falls a lot. Abbott smacks Costello quite a bit. Costello believes himself shot and stabbed and a sufferer of halitosis.

Sex/Nudity: Costello courts an ugly woman. A young usher takes two girls to a radio show - what a player.

Best Line: Mary Wickes: “Aren’t you two soda jerks?” Bud: “Oh no. We just took this job yesterday.” Lou: “Yeah. We don’t even know what we put in your malted milk.”

Score:

Bud plays Chick Larkin and Lou plays Mervin Q. Milgrim, a couple of soda jerks with aspirations of becoming great radio actors/writers. In order to achieve this dream, Bud forces Lou to court an unappealing woman (the good-spirited Mary Wickes), who happens to be the secretary to the head of the radio networks. Meanwhile, the boys discover a murder has been committed inside a radio studio they’ve been loitering in front of, and in a moment of idiotic brilliance, Bud decides that if he and Lou can solve the crime, they’ll work a radio gimmick where they can sell their pitch as the only show with real detectives playing detectives. Naturally, the boys make a mess of things and break more than a few laws, but in the end they inadvertently solve the case, capture the villain, Lou falls in love with the unattractive woman, and Bud meanders out of the way so the portly Lou can get more screen time.

One of the better A&C vehicles, this ain’t Shakespeare, but it’s more than a pleasant time-killer. The radio setting allows for some intriguing if fairly incidental looks behind the scenes at what now is a dead art - the radio dramatic program.

HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN director Erle C. Kenton shoots some sections of the film with askew angles and mood lighting that creates a tense atmosphere, but in other segments shoots the material as flat as a generic ’50s sitcom. Then again, what’s the point of critiquing the style of the man who brought the world PETTICOAT POLITICS and LITTLE TOUGH GUYS IN SOCIETY?

Actually, Kenton does well with the boys, providing an interesting quasi-plot of a murder that acts as light dressing for a few choice skits. And there are a few humdingers this time, including Lou making a limburger sandwich, Lou dealing with a hostile operator while trying to call a radio station, and Lou’s attempt to get Bud to smack around a police officer he thinks is handcuffed, all while never allowing the Lou to over-mug. Bud, as usual, is brilliant - one of the best jerks in the history of B-picture comedies. Just watching him smack Lou delivers a thousand laughs.

As usual the supporting players are mostly fluff, but William Bendix of THE BABE RUTH STORY and THE LIFE OF RILEY has a bit part as a particularly dim cop, and Mary Wickes proves a good foil for the cherubic Lou.

DVD Extras: The film has been released on DVD as part of Universal’s excellent “The Best of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.” The set consists of eight films spread out over two double-sided discs. This film’s extras include subtitles in English, French and Spanish, production notes, and a trailer from a later re-release.

AH

Violence/Gore: Where to begin? As you might expect, this one covers the full range of Italian horror hallmarks like eye gouging injuries, flesh-eating corpses tearing chunks out of the necks of victims and plenty of grotesque-looking maggot-infested zombies shambling (not running) into action.

Sex/Nudity: Early on there’s plenty of skin on display from a nearly nude scuba diving sequence to a somewhat voyeuristic shower scene.

Best Line: “The boat can leave now. Tell the crew.” (an innocuous line that basically signals the beginning of the end of the world)

Score:

It took me years to finally get it all straight in my head, so here it is in a nutshell. George Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD was released in Italy (in a different edit presided over by Dario Argento) under the title ZOMBI. Its success sparked a wave of unofficial sequels that virtually established the entire subgenre of the modern Italian zombie film. The most direct non-sequel was this Lucio Fulci effort, known as ZOMBIE here but called ZOMBI 2 there to capitalize on the success of the first ZOMBI…which was actually DAWN OF THE DEAD. Still with me?

Eons ago, when we bought our first VCR - a humongous Panasonic monster with fake wood detailing and a top-loading tape drawer that closed with a satisfying “ka-CHUNK” - we used to go to one of the earliest video rental stores in the area, a wonderful place called Barry’s Video Station. Back when video was new, there was a plethora of weird, obscure, and just plain bizarre horror movies on display in the furthest corner of the store (a shadowy place usually reserved for horror and porn), but alas, I was still too young to really press the point and see a few of the more intense-looking offerings. But I will never forget seeing the cover image of a skull-like ghoul almost grinning with a few jagged teeth and covered with mud and maggots. The sight was burned into my brain, along with the huge one word title: ZOMBIE. One day, I thought…one day I will know the glory and terror that is ZOMBIE.

I guess some things really do suffer when labored with the excessive expectations of enthusiastic youth. It’s no masterpiece (although some horror fans do indeed think of it that way), but ZOMBIE does have enough of a creep factor with its shambling, realistic-looking corpses and unsettling music to linger in your mind for weeks afterward. The movie sets up a nice sense of scale by opening in New York harbor, but soon our heroes have tracked the zombie infestation that begins on a derelict yacht in the Big Apple to a Caribbean island where strange things are afoot. Soon, what remains of the cast is barricading itself in a delapidated church while trying to fend off the zombie onslaught.

Fulci builds suspense pretty nicely, but rest assured, when it’s time to unleash the gore, he isn’t squeamish. The blood flows freely, and you see as much if not more flesh-chewing here than in Romero’s first two DEAD movies. The specific lighting used for the zombies in the climactic attack is especially well done. ZOMBIE may not be the distillation of pure horror that I envisioned way back when, but it’s still a classic in its own right and well worth a peek, if only for that final creepy shot of the zombie horde advancing on New York…even if the effect is undercut by all the leisurely-paced traffic visible in the same shot.

…Oh and yes, Tisa Farrow is Mia’s sister.

DVD Extras: Not many, but what’s here is worth it. The late ’70s and early ’80s wasn’t just a Golden Age for movie horror but for effective promotion of same. A few television and radio spots accompany the theatrical trailer and give a great idea of how minimalist graphics and chilling music can sell a film. There’s also a feature commentary with star Ian McCulloch and Jason J. Slater of Diabolik Magazine that offers some interesting insights into the production of the film and McCulloch’s own take on the validity of mature horror entertainment. There’s also a very amusing observation by McCulloch, obviously recorded several years ago, in which he notes that his work in this movie has been seen worldwide and therefore seen by more people than all the work ever done by his “more important” namesake, Ian McKellen. What a difference a few years and a massive fantasy film series make, eh?

ATB

Violence/Gore: While most of it is just goofy enough to prevent gorehounds from taking it too seriously, there is plenty of over-the-top blood, guts, re-animated assembled corpses and strange new creatures to make any mainstream moviegoer lose their lunch. Watch out for the orgy of hybrids at the end and the stunning disintegration of the Bride. Oh, and the three-legged dog - another classic.

Sex/Nudity: Cain and his new girlfriend roll in the sheets once, but it’s very demure. And unless watching Kathleen Kinmont topless as either a terminal pasty-skinned patient or a bloody, patched-up corpse is your idea of a good time, you’ll just have to be satisfied with green goo and gore galore.

Best Line: What else? “My God, they’re using tools!”

Score:

As a big fan of the original RE-ANIMATOR, I was happy with the follow-up way back when, but I think it suffers a bit with age. Granted, it does have most of the hallmarks of a potentially good sequel: pick up the threads where you left off, reunite as much of the original cast as possible, and carry the story forward in some sort of logical progression. BRIDE manages to do all of that - just. But the results fall short.

Months after the massacre that didn’t quite finish off Dr. Hill’s head and West (depending on what cut of the first movie you watch), West and Cain are working in Peru, where West has discovered a way to enhance his reagent. Put simply, rather than simply bringing the dead back to life, he can now re-animate separate pieces, assemble them, and create new life. Dr. Frankenstein would be so proud. The two mad scientists then head home, take up their old Miskatonic hospital gigs (but just how did they get their jobs back when everyone knows they were the only two survivors - and possibly the instigators - of a major massacre at the same hospital?) and set up house right next to a cemetery. Mmm, you can just smell the upcoming carnage, can’t you?

With a title like that, the sequel had to have some nods to the Frankenstein mythos, and indeed much of this movie plays more like a RE-ANIMATOR version of that old literary/film saga than a follow-up to its own progenitor. West makes lots of grand speeches about the creation of life, leading to his immortal classic: “I will not be shackled by the failures of your God!” Meanwhile, Dan flails around like a lovesick moron, grieving about Meg one minute, falling in love with replacement girlfriend Francesca the next and then succumbing to despair once again. You have to wonder why West keeps the milquetoast around when there’s so much amoral work to be done, but more on that later. Oh yes, and Dr. Hill rears his ugly…well you know…again.

Of the newcomers to the saga, Claude Earl Jones plays his police detective Chapham like a real idiot, grimacing through every line and offering his badge with all the grace of a…thing that doesn’t have any grace. As for Mel Stewart as Dr. Graves, he walks through his role in a constant state of childish bemusement, as if he’s stoned out of his mind and still can’t believe he’s in this movie. As for David Gale’s Hill, director Brian Yuzna has admitted Hill was not originally part of this sequel, but when Gale asked what sort of part they had for him, they evidently scrambled to shoehorn the ol’ severed head in… and it shows. Hill plays no direct role, his bat-wing retro-fit is extremely silly, and his final confrontation with West has none of the gravitas of their previous encounters. He’s quite simply wasted.

Naturally, there’s nothing negative you can say about Jeffrey Combs and his portrayal of Herbert West, and his relationship with Bruce Abbott’s Dan Cain picks up right where they left off. He still employs his trademark tilt of the head when West suddenly comes up with another truly grotesque idea for an experiment, and you can’t help but smile every time he does it. In fact, there’s also a subtle undercurrent here. West seems to have grown even more dependent on Cain and reluctant to let him go, and spends much of this movie’s running time either consoling Cain during one of several nervous breakdowns or begging him to continue “the work” with him. He even goes so far as to fashion their Frankensteinian creation around Meg’s heart (one of many Miskatonic Massacre relics that West finds stored at the hospital). But the question is: Why does he go to such extraordinary lengths to keep Dan on the hook? The fact that West reacts with barely disguised jealousy when Francesca enters the picture suggests he might almost harbor some sense of genuine affection for Dan. I’m not suggesting anything prurient, just that Dan may be the only person on Earth that West has grown to truly care about. Or is he just a pawn in West’s game? We may never know.

It all leads to a gorefest climax and a very rushed ending. The final shots of Hill in the crypt and Meg’s heart on the table also feel amateur and hurried.

One last thing: Whatever you do, don’t buy the lame-ass vanilla edition currently gracing store shelves. You might have to dig deeper to find this early DVD treasure, but if you care about the movie at all, you’ll want the double-sided special edition. Just read on to find out why…

DVD Extras: A joy for any RE-ANIMATOR fan, although not nearly as polished as the extras on the original RE-ANIMATOR special edition. This one comes with both R-rated and unrated cuts of the film. Why would you want to watch an R-rated edit? Simple: That’s the one with the audio commentary, but don’t ask me why (the liner notes offer a thin explanation). Actually, there are two commentary tracks, but the real fun can be had with the one pairing Combs and Abbott as they watch the movie with barely disguised disdain at certain points. There’s a behind-the-scenes featurette composed of raw backstage footage, an assembly of raw material for the infamous jettisoned opening sequence that would have picked up the moment the first film left off, with Dan re-animating Meg (here played by a far less appealing actress), as well as a short still gallery and commentary on the missing carnival/Dr. Hill’s head opening. Some stills and a trailer round out the extras.

ATB

Fictional Date: 1997

Temporal Displacement: 16 years

The Set-Up: Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is a former war hero recruited by a militaristic police state to find and rescue the President (Donald Pleasance in one of his least effective Carpenter collaborations) after Air Force One is forced down into New York City by terrorists (where’s Harrison Ford when you need him?). Simple enough? Not quite. You see, New York has been a maximum-security prison for incorrigibles since 1988, when a massive 50-foot wall was erected around Manhattan island. After the crime rate in the U.S. doubled 400%, the United States Police Force was assigned to contain the criminal element in the confines of the city. “Once you go in,” the sign says at Liberty Island Security Control, “you don’t come out.”

The rest of the film takes us on a journey through the ruins of a once-proud city as Snake searches for and eventually rescues the President. During the course of this adventure, we glean a bit more information about this 1997, meet the Duke of New York (played with considerable understatement by Isaac “Chef” Hayes), and learn the true power behind Adrienne Barbeau’s cleavage (she was married to Carpenter at the time). But just how different is this vision of the ’90s from the one we lived through?

The Politics of Prediction: As we are told in the film, Snake flew successful missions over Leningrad and Siberia. In this 1997, America is involved in a long-running conflict with China and the Soviet Union. The President’s rescue is vital since he must attend a crucial peace summit in Hartford to determine the future of this world’s stability. Obviously no one in 1981, in the peak of our Reagan-era nuclear phobia, could ever dream that by 1997 the Soviet Union would be a memory. Similarly, whatever we may think of the government, the United States is not the repressive imperialist police state portrayed here, with its admonitions against talking and smoking and other forms of freedom. Thankfully, they were way off on this one…weren’t they? Hmm, maybe we should ask smokers about that one…

Technological Timing: Here, as we will soon see with many films that try to project the future, is where ESCAPE shows its age. Granted, this 1997 has been at war, so technological advancement may have frozen earlier in the 1980s (see how I try to give them a way out?). Still, ESCAPE gives us officials “tel-ex"ing Washington while walls of yellow bulbs blink in sequence (you know, those ubiquitous computer banks of colored lights that appeared in WONDER WOMAN and every other ’70s TV series). Snake is even given a red LED display to wear on his wrist (when was the last time anybody used one of those?)! There are a few interesting innovations, from the capsule bombs implanted in Snake’s neck (vulnerable to X-rays) to the tiny Gulf Fire plane, a one-man craft with a decidedly dated push-button, red and green raster graphics read-out. Meanwhile, in New York, prisoners have made the most unbelievable leap yet - they’ve successfully retrofitted 1970s cars to operate on steam.

Perhaps the most glaring omission, however, is the Internet. Back then, absolutely no one but the most die-hard techies could have predicted the escalation in use let alone the existence of the ‘net, and the myriad ways in which it affects everything in our daily life. From the simplest forms of communication to the most complex search and control functions, virtually everything seen in this film might have been completely different.

Fashion Flash-Forward: The totalitarian black worn by the United States Police Force (adorned with their omnipresent logo, a stylized eagle) is similar to 1960s and ’70s police riot gear. Perhaps the most obvious examples of extremely dated fashion appearing in this 1997 are the mohawk-wearing ’80s punks that litter the streets of New York. I doubt even the most down-and-out crook in Manhattan would have been caught dead wearing spandex and a spiky hairdo in our late ’90s, although today, thanks to VH1’s “I Love the ’80s” specials, who knows? In Russell’s case, his outfit doesn’t exactly contradict any ’90s realities, and it is one of the more memorable “cool” ensembles worn by an action hero (Russell was proud of the fact that he could still wear the identical sprayed-on gear in the sequel).

In Conclusion: As we can see from just a few examples, predicting the future is a tricky business, and it’s the job of science fiction to speculate about what the years ahead hold for us, good or bad. ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is a rather bleak view of where our country may be heading as freedom is slowly curtailed and crime spins wildly out of control. There are the cliched images certain to place any film firmly in the post-apocalyptic genre, such as the ever-present ‘car-b-ques,’ and the mobs of disheveled wanderers pelting newcomers with rocks (a scene that takes place on Broadway, so it’s fairly accurate) and prowling the night looking for food (incidentally, these night raiders are referred to as “crazies;” together with characters named “Cronenberg” and “Romero,” Carpenter continues his tradition of paying homage to friends and fellow filmmakers).

Most importantly, we see a blend of a possible future mixed with the fears and sensibilities of the time in which that future was conceived. In this case, our 1997 was worlds better than the one seen in ESCAPE, which is merely John Carpenter’s twisted view of 1981. Oh yes, and there’s the little matter of New York being portrayed as a filthy, infested slag heap populated by the dregs of humanity and left to rot by the rest of the country as an example of the worst America has to offer…OK, so they weren’t so far off on everything after all. And put out that cigarette.

ATB

(Contributing Editor) Born in 1515 to a sheep inseminator named Phil and a street walker named Clarice, Stephanie learned to appreciate the more peculiar things in life. One day she tripped, catching her shoelace on the controls of her home-made time machine and accidentally stranded herself in the early 21st century. In between practicing colloquial American English and rescuing kittens from trees, she enjoys partaking of the more particularly rancid offerings of genre cinema. She also has a lucrative hen-teasing business on the side.

(Co-Editor/Webmaster) Arnold has a real bio up at his website , but you probably want a weird one, so here it is: Robert Jonathan Venderbrook was born in a small shed in 1629 and quickly rose to prominence as one of France’s most insufferable mimes. Fleeing an angry mob in 1662, he changed his name and moved to Baltimore, where he soon found work reading comics for money. He’s also an obsessive collector of movies and spends more money on DVDs than the gross national product of Finland.

(Co-Editor) Andy was born Andrewe Selwyn Ansleigh in 1494 in a small village just outside London. With his wife and six children, he pioneered a method for keeping cheese warm in the summer, which did little to increase his financial stability. Falling through a wormhole into early 21st century America, Andy mourned the loss of his family and the world he knew but discovered that he enjoyed crappy old horror movies and settled in to watch an endless string of them while boarding with the generous but confused Arnold T. Blumberg.

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