'Gothic' is an excursion into nightmaresthat's not for everyone

Gothic (1986)
Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Natasha Richardson, Julian Sands, Myriam Cyr, and Timothy Spall
Director: Ken Russell
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Eccentric poet Lord Byron (Byrne) invites a young prodigy Percy Shelly and his fiance Mary Wollstonecraft (Sands and Richardson), along with her halfsister Claire Claremont (Cyr) to spend a weekend with him and his personal doctor, Polidori (Spall), at his isolated estate. After an evening of reading ghost stories, drinking wine enhanced with Laudanum (a hallucinogenic), and an impromptu seance, these members of the cream of the Age of Enlightenment's intellectual crop find themselves trapped in an ever worsening spiral of confusion and terror. Is it just the drugs, or did the seance call forth an evil spirit which is now tormenting them?

"Gothic" is a stylish, extremely creepy movie. There are very few films I've seen that manage to transfer the dread and fear felt by the characters as the film unfolds to me, but this is one of them. Although it starts out feeling like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" set in a rambling castle and performed by effeminate people in puffy shirts and bad hairdos, this movie soon turns into one of the most bizarre and terrifying films I've ever seen. Much of it unfolds seemingly at random, with the threads occasionally coming briefly together but invariably separating into a chaotic mess again.

While I would usually find this to be a flaw, it is something that works with great effect here.

The film has an odd tone to it from the very first arrival of Shelly and the girls at Byron's estate, and that oddness kicks into full fledged horror movie mode when the characters start reading ghost stories to each other. At that point, the passage of time, and the very nature of reality, the house, and those in it start to change. As a thunderous rainstorm batters the manor house, Byron, Shelly, Polidori, Mary, and Claire all seem to be drawn into ghost stories, and singly or together, they all experience one of more hallmarks of such tales, ranging from apparent possessions to hallucinations of all kinds.

In fact, while "Gothic" is not a movie about a haunted house, it should serve as required viewing for anyone who is thinking about making a haunted house movie. The way the house becomes a character unto itself as the film unfolds, the various torments the character's experience, the possessions... they're all haunted-house standards, and they're all handled with far greater skill than in the vast majority of movies that deal specifically with hauntings.

A great deal of the film's success can be credited to Gabriel Byrne. He gives a wonderfully varied performance as the twisted poet Byron, but he is also portraying the one character who remains stable throughout the film. Byron stars out as an unbalanced character--swinging from capricious, to sensitive, to menacingly insane, sometimes all within the space of a few minutes--but as the other characters come increasingly unglued, Byron emerges as the closest thing there is to a stable hold on reality. Whether in the dying light of a spring afternoon, or in the deepest part of a nightmare-made-real, Byrne's Byron is unchanged... and this contributes to the viewer's sense of unease; the abnormal has become the closet thing to normal, anywhere. Byrne, however, is merely a point man for an excellent cast. All the principles are great (Cyr is genuinely creepy after she's possessed (?)), and given the length of some of the shots and the difficulty of the dialogue delivered during them, I don't think this was an easy movie to star in.

Although the amazing use of Byron can also be credited to the script, there are some issues with the script as well--mostly relating to where the line between what's a dream and what's reality in the film is--and this cost it a Tomato in my rating. However, I may be overcritical on this point, because once "Gothic" gets going, the terror and disorientation builds and builds to such a degree that reality and drug-soaked nightmare and which is which really doesn't matter. And the way you can see the works of Mary Wollstonecraft-Shelly and Percy Shelly (and almost certainly also that of Dr. Polidori, although I've not read his book "The Vampyre", so I can't say) echoed throughout in dialogue and situations

This film is one scary ride, featuring fine performances from all its actors, and led by a director that deploys every tool in his filmmaking arsenal with great skill and artistry. It's a film worth seeing if you enjoy well-made horror flicks and experimental films, but it does require some patience and tolerance of artsy-fartsy flourishes.





(Oh... I suppose I should touch on what many reviewers seem to think is a selling point. The film supposedly chronicles the one night that gave rise to Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein", Shelly's best poems, and Polidori's "The Vampyre". While this is an interesting aspect of the film--and it's one that raises even more questions about where the line between reality and nightmare exists in the movie, and if perhaps Byron and his guests did, in fact, rouse some evil spirit that night--it's not one that felt was so all-fire important to the movie. It helps to know who the characters are, but one doesn't need a BA in English to "get it.")

A film with better performances than it deserved

Double Exposure (1983)
Starring: Michael Callan, James Stacy, Joanna Pettet, and Seymour Cassel
Director: William Byron Hillman
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A photographer (Callan) on the verge of a mental breakdown starts having vivid nightmares in which he murders his beautiful models. When a mysterious serial killer starts making his dreams reality--by murdering his models in exactly the manner he dreamed--both he and the police become convinced that he is the killer.

"Double Exposure" is a fairly run-of-the-mill low-budget murder mystery/sexual thriller that features substandard dialogue but better-than-expected acting from the cast members. Time and again, Callan, Stacy, Pettet, Cassel, and the extensive supporting cast of suspects and victims prove the truism that a good actor can make even the worse lines sing.

Callan in particular is good. He presents a believable performance as a man who is coming apart at the seams, and manages to make a character who might come across as slimy likable--given that he's a guy in his forties rutting with women half his age--which makes the maybe-dream-sequences all the more effective and shocking when he turns from nice guy to killer. The violence during the kill sequences is also startling because it mostly comes with very little build-up.

There are two major flaws with this film that the actors can't overcome, however.

The first are the painfully boring stretches of padding, with the worst of these being a pointless sequence of the characters dancing the night away at a disco. If not for the shuttle feature on my DVD player, I may have given up on this movie at that point. Yes, there was a tiny bit of plot that unfolded during the long--oh so long!--disco scene, and it helped set up the twist ending a little, but it was nowhere near enough to justify the torture of sitting through that scene. Even with liberal application of the shuttle feature, it was too long.

The second is the way the story is executed. As mentioned above, the film has a twist ending in-so-far-as who the real murderer is. However, the lines between the main character's reality and dreams become so blurred that even the viewer can't keep track of what's what. At roughly the halfway point of the film, I decided that I was watching a really bad attempt at making a film like "Hatchet for the Honeymoon" where the hook of the story isn't who-dunnit but rather how the psycho killer will ultimately meet his end. The level of padding, though, was so severe that I almost didn't stick with the film to the end. The only thing that kept me watching was several inconsistencies in the timeline of the killings versus where the photographer seemed to be at the time... they seemed a little too deliberate to just be sloppy writing, so stuck with the film to see if I had been right in my assumption.

It turns out that I was not, but that this film follows the more standard path of having one of the characters framing/exploiting the main character's unstable mental state for his own twisted purposes, in addition to serial killing that is. While there are clues to whom the actual killer is sprinkled throughout the movie, the revelation of the identity, the how, and the why really don't make a whole lot of sense, nor do they seem terribly plausible if one applies a little bit of thought.

Then again, this movie really isn't worth your brain-power, and watching it may just make you feel sad for the actors who are giving this poorly conceived crap their best efforts.

Family fun with werewolves in suburbia

My Mom's a Werewolf (1989)
Starring: Susan Blakely, John Saxon, Katrina Caspary, Diana Barrows, and John Schuck
Director: Michael Fischa
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A suburban housewife (Blakely) is seduced by a handsome petshop owner (Saxon) into enjoying an afternoon fling... but soon afterwards she starts transforming into a werewolf. As she tries to conceal her condition, her teenaged daughter and her horror-movie loving friend (Caspary and Barrows) set out to save her before it's too late and she forever transforms from housewife to were-wife.

"My Mom's a Werewolf" is a cute horror comedy that's hampered by listless direction, uninspired camera-work, lame music score, a final monster showdown that is anything but impressive, and a script that is not quite as focused as it could be. However, like everything I've seen from Mark Pirro--who wrote the script here--I found myself chuckling at the film as it unfolded more than anyone else in the room with me.

I can't quite say what it is I like about Pirro's films; I was almost banned from bringing movies to Bad Movie Night after I subjected friends to "Nudist Colony of the Dead", but I love that picture. And I obviously enjoyed this picture more than any of the people I watched it with. Something about Pirro's jokes just appeal to me more than others, I suppose. His genius must be one that it takes a special level of intellect to appreciate.

And I mean that in a good way. And I'll keep telling myself that.

I still recommend this film as something to watch with 'tweens in the household who might be interested in horror, especially girls. There is some strong language here and there, and the film admits plainly that parents have sex lives, but it is free of gore and the main characters are a pair of smart, decent kids that manage to save the adults from certain disaster. It's the kind of film I enjoyed as a kid... are children really that different today?

Despite my friends' bored reaction to the film, I enjoyed seeing John Saxon getting an all-too-rare opportunity to show his comedic side, even if he didn't have enough to do in the film. He was still quite funny in the scene where he proves to the girls that werewolves are immune to garlic, holy water, crosses, and just about anything else they brought to confront him with. (For full-blown Funny Man John Saxon, we have to turn to "The Girl Who Knew Too Much".)

Saxon, along with the film's other stars, can be given a good deal of credit for overcoming the film's lackluster execution. They all give funny performances, and Caspary is even likable enough to make a fairly predictable final joke quite funny.

"My Mom is a Werewolf" is available in several different budget-priced DVD multi-packs. It adds value where-where it's found.

'Hands of Steel': Terminator for Girls

Hands of Steel (aka "Atomic Cyborg" and "Arms of Steel") (1986)
Starring: Daniel Greene, Janet Agren, George Eastman, Claudio Cassinelli, Luigi Montifori, Andrew Coppola, and John Saxon
Director: Martin Doleman (aka Sergio Martino)
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

In the near future, a powerful industrialist (Saxon) co-opts a U.S. Army super-soldier program for use as his own personal assassination squad. When the perfect cybernetic super-soldier (Greene) breaks his programming and heads home to Arizona in search of his true identity, ruthless assassins are put on his trail to silence him before he thinks to turn himself into the authorities.

Someone I used to watch crummy movies with referred to "Hands of Steel" as "Terminator for Girls."

I thought it was a funny and very accurate description. The cyborg in search of emotional peace and answers to who he is is played by a very handsome male specimen, and the "lonely woman finds true love and redeems a Bad Boy" is a chick fantasy if there ever was one.

Along the way, there's some violence courtesy of said cyborg bad boy and the assassins chasing him, as well as a subplot involving semi-pro arm-wrestlers that makes "Over the Top" look like a masterpiece, with the only positive thing about it being the contests are motivated by chivalry instead of an attempt to earn the love and respect of a 13 year-old boy. I wish I could say there was much hilarity and/or excitement in watching arm-wrestling battles of Man vs. Cyborg, but no; it's even dumber here than it was in the Stallone movie. But at least the arm-wrestling is motivated by chivalry and not an attempt to earn the love and respect of the cyborg's estranged son. (I realize arm wrestling is viewed as a sport in some of the more bizarre places of the world--like caber-tossing, curling, and, no doubt, pig catching--but was it really so popular in the 1980s that it warranted cinematic treatments?)

Aside from the arm wrestling sequences, the fight and chase scenes are fairly well done, considering what is usually found in films at this level. The Battle Royale from which the above screenshot is culled--when the assassins finally catch up with our hero--is one of the movie's high points. It comes as a near-complete surprise, which I may well have spoiled by mentioning it here. Whoops.

At any rate, that fight kicks off the movie's third act which is little more than chases, mayhem, and violence again goons in black suits and motorcycle helmets (that culminates in John Saxon wielding a weapon that shoots colorful cartoon lines--oh, sorry... laser beams). It's the point in the movie where there's "no plot to get in the way of the action," except for when the "redemption of the Bad Boy" is reintroduced and brought to its natural conclusion. Do we get a happy ending where Cyborg and Girl live happily ever after? Well, I'm not going to be that bad with spoilers, but it was the one point where the film had me guessing as to what was going to come next.

This is a fun, cheesy sci-fi flick that should appeal equally to fans of "Warriors of the Wasteland", "Robocop" and "Terminator". While it's squarely in the territory of Bad Movie Night fodder, it does have good action scenes and it features decent performances by Daniel Greene and Janet Agren. I recommend pairing it with Charles Band's "Crash and Burn" for the common themes of killer cyborgs and evil corporations bent on destroying the environment just for money and the hell of it. (In fact, I continue to be astonished that neither Band nor companies like Mill Creek hasn't taken advantage of the ongoing environmentalist hysteria to repackage and/or retitle some of these B-movies with environmentalist side themes in attempts to sponge a few dollars off the True Believers in the cult of man-made global warming. It might be a little late now, though, as the mass-media seems to be moving onto other topics.)





Trivia: This was the final screen appearance of Claudio Cassinelli, an Italian actor whose face is familiar to lovers of trashy cinema. He died in a helicopter crash during the production.

The Best of Halloween, Part Two

This is the second and final post presenting reviews of the best Halloween films... and the only Michael Myers slashers that are worth your time.



Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Starring: Donald Pleasance, Ellie Cornell, Danielle Harris, and Michael Pataki
Director: Dwight H. Little
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Ten years after Michael Myers brought real terror and bloodshed to Halloween night in the small town of Haddonfield, he escapes while being transferred between two asylums. He returns to his old stalking grounds, but finds that his sister, Laurie is now out of his reach. However, his young niece Jamie (Harris) is not so lucky. Soon, the bodies start to pile up, and Jamie and her teenaged protector (Cornell) may not survive the night, even though Dr. Loomis (Pleasance) is once again stalk Michael as he stalks them.

With “Halloween 4,” Myers joins the ranks (whether he is elevated or if he falls depends on your point of view) of all the other indestructible psycho-killers, since he was burned to a crisp on camera at the end of “Halloween II.” However, Dr. Loomis, is also back (and he didn’t fare much better than Myers in that fire), so he is probably the only slasher-flick hero who is as indestructible as killer himself!

Unfortunately, this film is another step down from the heights where it all began. Like “Halloween II” was an inferior film when compared to the original, so is “Halloween 4” weaker than both its predecessors. The greatest flaw is the setting of Haddonfield. Where Carpenter and his crew managed to infuse the town itself with a sense of dreadful anticipation, the director of this film just conveys that it is like any other little town. Because of this, the movie doesn’t seem quite as suspenseful as those that came before. Yes, there are plenty of shocks, and Myers is now conducting himself as we have come to expect from a man in his like of work (like Jason, and Freddy, and dozens and dozens of other cinema maniacs that appeared in the decade since Myer first cocked his head at Laurie Strode), but the same level of tension is never quite reached.

Acting-wise, however, the performances are as good as they were in the first pair of movies. Curtis isn’t in the film—her character reportedly died in a car accident shortly after she gave birth to a daughter—but instead we have Danielle Harris, a very talented child actress playing Jamie, Myers new target. Cornell also puts on a good show as the stubborn teenaged girl trying to keep herself and Jamie alive as Myers is killing people all around them. At first blush, Pleasance’s performance seems to be a bit much, but if one considers that Dr. Loomis has shot Myers in the chest six times, in the face twice, and burned him alive, and still the human monster fails to die, then it would make sense that the character has gone completely nuts. In that light, his performance is perfect.

Like “Halloween II”, this installment suffers from script problems. In this case, the script isn’t ponderous, but instead is burdened with some useless and annoying subplots (such as one involving brave rednecks hopping in their truck to go kick Michael-ass). I suppose the filmmakers sensed the other problem with the film’s storyline—that Myers was starting to no longer be scary. We saw all his tricks in the first two films, and all we had now was the same as before, except he was so monstrous that he would go after a very young child.

This problem with Michael Myers is what let to some truly stupid missteps in the three movies that followed. Someone, somewhere, decided to take Dr. Loomis at his word. Soon, the series was burdened with bizarre Satanic cultists. It's almost a shame that "Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers" marks the point at which the series tips over the edge of the abyss and plummets into the Bottomless Depths of Truly Crappy, because it has what I've always thought to be the most striking poster/home-video cover image of the entire series--Michael holding his trademarked butcher knife with the blade fading into an image of a young girl in a harlequin costume. Harris and Cornell are also both back with excellent performances. It’s a shame the overall movie isn’t have been better. (That's the illo at the tip of this post, by the way.)

The final word on “Halloween 4” is that it’s worth seeing if you like your slasher-flicks with some good acting. But you should avoid everything that follows it... with the exception of "Halloween: H20"


Halloween: H20 (1998)
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Adam Arkin, Michelle Williams, and LL Cool J
Director: Steve Miner
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Keri Tate (Curtis) has spent the past twenty years trying to put a single night horror behind her. Her successful career as an educator has helped, as has the love of her now-teenaged son (Hartnett) and the fact that she faked her death and changed her name when she became pregnant with him. But now, the past is coming back with a vengeance... Keri will no longer be able to deny that she is Laurie Strode. Michael Myers is back, and he still wants her.


"Halloween: H20" is the only entry in the series since "The Return of Michael Myers" that is worth your time. In fact, it's one of the best slasher movies to emerge from the late 1990s when the genre enjoyed a bit of a revival, because it doesn't engage in self-mockery and remains true to the tone and mood of the original "Halloween" films while presenting a slasher story with a slightly different structure than what we're used to.

Arkin), and likable innocents who are soon to run into the human killing machine that is Michael Myers.

Also like the original "Halloween", this film does not rely on body count and gory, creative butchering of characters. Instead, it relies on the fact that the audience actually cares about what happens to the characters in the film. With its well-written script, solid cast--Curtis in particular is fabulous as a broken Laurie Strode who suddenly finds the strength to fight not only for herself but for the life of her son--and a highly underrated director at the helm, the audience is drawn into the action and terror as it builds and unfolds.

(I feel Miner is underrated, because this and other horror films he's done shows that he understands that there needs to be a pay-off to any build-up of suspense, and that the key to making a horror movie truly scary is that the characters in the film need to be human and sympathetic. Both of these facts seem to be lost on many modern horror film directors who believe that one fake scare after another and flat characters surrounded by CGI monsters is all that's needed.)

"Halloween: H20" was a great way to celebrate twenty years of Michael Myers striking fear into the hearts of audiences around the world--it almost managed to reach the great heights achieved by Carpenter and Company in the original film. It remains the last worthwhile entry in the series.

The Best of Halloween, Part One

When John Carpenter crystalized the tropes of the slasher genre in the first two "Halloween" movies, the horror genre was changed forever, for better or worse. This is the first of two posts that take a look at the better of the "Halloween" series.


Halloween (1978)
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance
Director: John Carpenter
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Michael Myer, who has been confined to a mental institution since committing several brutal murders as a young child, escapes and returns to his hometown to kill his last remaining relative, his sister. While his psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (Pleasance) tries to get the local sheriff to clear the streets of Halloween trick-or-treaters to protect them from a killer who the doctor believes to literally be possessed by evil spirits, Michael is cutting his way through the population of Haddonfield, getting ever closer to his actual goal, his sister, Laurie (Curtis).

"Halloween" was the first of this type of movie--an unspeakably violent, hands-on killer butchers his way through hapless victims until one girl faces him alone--and it still remains the best. The gore may be mild compared to the countless slasher flicks that follow, but the tension and terror flowing from the screen remains unmatched.

All actors featured in “Halloween” turn in great performances, with Curtis’ portrayal of the terror-stricken, yet scrappy, Laurie being particularly impressive. Horror movie veteran Pleasance also turns in a great performance as the stressed-beyond-stressed-out, gun-toting mental health professional bent on stopping a man who is “pure evil” before he murders again. Even the actor playing the masked, silent Michael Myer is wonderful—he has an animal-like way of cocking his head that is very creepy.

Other strong aspects that really make “Halloween” stand out is the camera-work, lighting, and set-dressing. All of these combine to turn typical small-town America into a creepy and threatening environment that is as much a character in the film as the principle actors. Much of the tension that is built in the early parts of the film grows from the curiously unsettling aura throughout the town of Haddonfield.

Finally, the soundtrack score of "Halloween" needs to be singled out for praise. Performed completely on synthesizers by director Carpenter, it stands as not only one of the creepiest horror movie scores but also as one of the best works of electronica ever composed. Plus, no other horror movie has a theme as memorable as "Halloween." (Only "The Exorcist" comes close, and the theme from it wasn't originally composed for the movie.)


Halloween II (1981)
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance
Director: Rick Rosenthal
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

'Halloween II" is a direct sequel to the original movie, picking up pretty much exactly where it left off. After narrowly escaping death at the knife-wielding hands of her insane brother, Laurie is taken to the local hospital while an apparently dead Michael Myers is taken to the morgue in its basement. It quickly becomes apparent that someone was a bit hasty in declaring Myers dead—a natural mistake since Dr. Loomis had shot him six times in the chest--and soon he is stalking through the darkened hospital and sending everyone on the graveyard shift to the graveyard. Maybe Laurie won’t live to see the sun come up on November 1st after all.


The film takes place almost entirely within the Haddonfield hospital. Director Rick Rosenthal. Rosenthal successfully uses the empty, darkened hallways to evoke suspense and horror, and to eventually emphasize the isolation of Laurie as she for the second time in one night is the object of her brother’s murderous intentions.

On the acting front, we’ve got Curtis and Pleasance reprising their roles from the original “Halloween”, and they are just as good as they were before. Curtis once again strikes a perfect balance between strength and terror, and Pleasance once again excels as a man obsessed with putting an end to what he views as evil given form on Earth.

The only weakness that prevents this film from being as good as the original “Halloween” is, curiously, the script. Although Carpenter and Hill wrote both, the story for “Halloween II” never really seems to build up quite the same momentum as the original movie. The middle is actually downright dull at times.

“Halloween II” is still worth watching, but a tighter script would have made it so much better.

'Kiss Daddy Goodnight' is a movie to sleep through

Kiss Daddy Goodnight (1987)
Starring: Uma Thurman, Paul Dillon, and Paul Richards
Director: Peter Ily Huemer
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Laura (Thurman) is a teenaged model who augments her meager earnings by picking up wealthy men at gigs and art galleries, drugging them, and then stealing and selling valuable art objects from their homes. It's a nice living until she becomes the love object of a crazy old man (Richards) who will stop at nothing to make her his and his alone.

"Kiss Daddy Goodnight" is one of the dullest movies I've ever sat through. While the characters and acting are appropriate for the film-noir movie the filmmakers were trying to make, the glacial pace and unfocused story is not. It's not until about the halway point that any sort of menace or threat to Laura starts to develope, but what little tension and excietment this generates in the film quickly evaporates when the attention is shifted to the go-nowhere storyline of Laura's small-time thief, wanna-be musician friend's efforts to start a new band. The film would have been slow-moving enough without that pointless, plot, amd it becomes downright glacial in pace when it gets added to the mix.

By the time the film gets focused and gets interesting--in the last 15 or so minutes--most viewers will already have noddded off.

"Kiss Daddy Goodnight" is a film that can safely be ignored by everyone but Uma Thurman fans on the magnitude of the stalker who persues her character in the film; it marks Thurman's first film appearance. I promise you, watching the shadows creep across the sidewalk as the sun moves in the sky is more interesting than this film. It's obscurity is well deserved.

'Re-Animator' is a gory trip into movie madness

Re-Animator (1985)
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale and Robert Sampson
Director: Stuart Gordon
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Dan's new roommate and fellow third-year med student, Herbert West (Combs) draws him into his bizarre (and successful) experiments with re-animating dead bodies.

"Re-Animator" is one of the craziest movies ever made, and it ranks up there with "Dead Alive" as one of the funniest creepy movies ever made. While it is nowhere near as gory as "Dead Alive" and the slapstick isn't quite as sharp, it features a cleverer script and a superior cast.

Jeffrey Combs is particularly excellent as Herbert West. We get the sense that he's a bit weird early in the film and highly strung; Combs performance puts the viewer in mind of Peter Cushing's Victor Frankenstein in the first couple of Hammer Frankenstein films... coldblooded, arrogant and probably sociopathic but not necessarily completely bonkers. When West calmly a bone saw through the chest of a zombie and then immediately sets about reanimating its recently deceased victim, it's clear not just from his actions but from Combs performance that he more than a little off. And when he later animates the severed head of an obnoxious rival (likewise brilliantly played by David Gale), it's clear that he is completely unhinged.

Speaking of the severed head, it gives rise to some of the most unnerving moments in the film, as well some of the funniest. I don't want to go into too much details, because I'd ruin the shock value. Suffice to say, it's something that needs to be seen.

Credit also needs to be go to Bruce Abbott and Barbara Crampton. While Combs and Gale are giving performances that seem like they just teleported in from a Hammer Films set in 1960, they play their characters mostly low-key. This, combined with the fact that their characters are nice and normal people, give the audience someone to identify with as the film unfolds and provide an island of calm in the middle of the evermore turbulent sea of madness that is this movie.


"Re-Animator" elevates Herbert West among the great movie mad doctors, even if, according to the very informative interview included on the Achor Bay edition of the film, he was actually a minor character in the script and through most of the filming. It wasn't until "Re-Animator" was crafted into a releasable movie that the emphasis shifted to Herbert. (Comments in the interviews on the DVD even make me wonder if the filmmakers knew they were making a comedy until late in the process....)

Whether intentional or accidental art, this is one of those movies that gets everything right, from the mood-setting prologue, through its score (which spoofs Bernard Hermann's famous music for "Psycho") to its chilling end. It's also feels as fresh as when it first released in 1985. This is one of those very rare horror movies that actually deserves the label "classic."

If you are inclined to add this film to your personal library, make sure you get the limited edition "unrated" version from Anchor Bay. The cut presented there may be shorter than the R-rated version, but the humor and shocks are more outrageous than its tamer and slightly bloated counterpart. The disc full of extras is also something that you'll find extremely interesting if you have any interest at all in the filmmaking process. (The same is true of the commentary tracks.)

Japanese demons run wild in 'Ninja Wars'

Ninja Wars (aka "Death of a Ninja", "Iga Magic Story" and "Black Magic Story") (1982)
Starring: Hiroyuki Sanada, Noriko Watanabe, Akira Nakao, Jun Miho, Mikio Narita, Noboru Matsuhashi, and Sonny Chiba
Director: Mitsumasa Saito
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A feudal warlord (Nakao) allies with a demon (Narita) and the five monks in his service after it is prophesied that if he wins the heart of a beautiful princess (Watanabe), he will someday rule the world. To ensure their success, the demon monks kidnap the princess's virginal twin sister (also Watanabe) who was being secretly raised as a ninja, and from whose tears they hope to brew a love potion. But they didn't take her fellow ninja and sweetheart Jotaro (Sanada) into account, nor the ferocity with which he would attempt to rescue his love.
 

"Ninja Wars" is a big-budget, epic fantasy movie set during the Warring States period of Japan's history. It's got a wild, twisting and turning plot that the above-summary only touches on part of, because to say more would ruin some of the film's surprises. It's got romance, spectacular battles, and black magic applied in bizarre ways. It's got pure-hearted virgins, brave ninjas, honorless nobles, and Samurai who are more than what they seem. It's a film that will surprise you, because scene after scene will have you saying, "No... they didn't just do THAT, did they?!"

The version I watched (which was titled "Death of a Ninja") featured some dodgy dubbing--with weak acting and clearly mistranslated dialogues--but the superior quality of the film still shined through that hobbling. It's nearly perfectly paced, and it keeps the viewers attention through fast action and a steady stream of unexpected developments. The only two things that annoyed me about the film was a flashback sequence that flashed back to things we had just seen on screen some ten minutes earlier, and the somewhat unsatisfying ending. (It's a fitting end, but it wasn't strong enough for my tastes.)

Fans of tales set in 15th through 17th century Japan, fans of Samurai epics, and fans of quirky martial arts and fantasy movies should find much to enjoy here. And horror fans will certainly enjoy the bizarre demonic machinations and certain shocking scenes I don't want to detail, because I will spoil their impact.

The deadliest of blogathons....

Those wacky Ninja and their wackiness!

Ninja Champion (1980)
Starring: Nancy Chang, Bruce Baron, Jack Lam, Richard Harrison, and Pierre Tremblay
Director: Godfrey Ho
Rating: One of Ten Stars

A rape victim, Rose (Chang), infiltrates a diamond smuggling ring so she can more effectively stalk and kill the three men who raped her (as well as uncover who ordered them to do it). Meanwhile, the Good Ninja (Baron), who also happens to be an Interpol agent, is attacking and killing the followers of the Evil Ninja (Tremblay) because... um... well, just because. It might have something to do with the diamond smuggling, but, then again, it might not. Who can tell with these cazy ninjas?


"Ninja Champion" is one of the most inane, muddled martial arts movies I've ever seen. The plot with rape victim is fairly trite, but comprehensible in and of itself, even if the whole diamond smuggling bit is rather farfetched and rediculous. The ninja stuff, however, is so stupid that it doesn't make any sense even after the Evil Ninja (who is named Maurice, so it was obviously the cruelty of his parents that made him choose a life of crime and evil) explains his plot the the Good Ninja. It understandable the Good Ninja wants to kick his ass... I wanted to do the same to the writer/director who came up with this crap.

This is a One Tomato movie that I'm nonetheless awarding Two Tomatoes for, due to much unintended hiariity in the bad dubbing and the bizarre final battle between the Good Ninja and the Bad Ninja.

I can't really recommend this movie to anyone, because I think I felt the braincells dying as I was watching it. However, it might be good for a Bad Movie Night if you've got someone in your crowd that's good at quipping while a film unfolds.

When Movie Buffs Attack!

Fanatic (aka "The Last Horror Film") (1982)
Starring: Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro
Director: David Winters
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A delusional would-be filmmaker, Vinnie, (Spinell) follows his favorite horror movie star, Jana Bates (Munro), to the Cannes Film Festival where he proceeds to stalk her and her collegues while making the ultimate, true-to-life slasher-movie.

There was great potential in this movie, but it fails to reach it because of excessive padding and bad scripting. The story only functions because its characters behave stupidly--Jana is being stalked by a crazed killer who has gone after her twice, and yet she doesn't even hire any bodyguards, and gets no police protection?--and because the killer manages to pull off the impossible--such as making a corpse and all the blood vanish in a matter of moments, gets his hands on a police uniform in a city he doesn't know, and gets in and out of a backstage area during an ongoing production without being seen by anyone. The twist ending helps explain some of these plot problems (and twist-on-the-twist helps further), but these also feel like cop-outs on the part of the filmmakerrs who must have known their script had problems and were trying to do an easy fix.

"Fanatic" was a movie I really wanted to like, but it was just too flawed to be good. Maybe with about ten minutes shaved from the running time, and a little more care taken with the plotting and the twist-endings, this would have been an excellent little flick. It's one that could do with a remake. (In the 2010 version, Vinnie would be updating his Rotten Tomatoes blog on a thrice-daily basis and would have been ejected from the Horror Bloggers Alliance for trolling.)

(Amusing trivia: The movie that Jana Bates is in Cannes to promote is "Scream", which eventually became a real-life self-referential horror movie directed by Wes Craven.)

Jackie Chan battles for 'The Armour of God'

Operation Condor 2: The Armour of the Gods
(aka "The Armour of God") (1987)
Starring: Jackie Chan, Alan Tam, Lola Forner, Rosamund Kwan, Ken Boyle, and Bozidar Smiljanic
Director: Jackie Chan and Eric Tsang
Rating: Eight of Seven Stars

A former girlfriend of treasure hunter Jackie "Asian Hawk" Chan (Chan) is kidnapped and held for ransom by a Satanic cult who hope to force him to bring them the missing pieces of "the armor of god", so they may unleash its powers in the name of Ultimate Evil. He teams with her goofy fiancee (Tam) and the beautiful-but-deadly daughter of the owner of the artifacts (Forner) to turn the tables on the cultists and rescue their captive without giving them what they want. However, everything than can go wrong DOES go wrong.

"Operation Condor 2: The Armour of the Gods" was originally titled "The Armour of God" (and the collection of mideveal artifacts that are at the heart of this Indiana Jones-esque adventure tale is referred collectively as a singular "armor," not "armors) which is a much better title. It's an even better title when one considers that "Operation Condor" was the sequel to this movie, not the other way around, despite the order they were released in here in the United States.

Title shenanigans and weird distributor choices aside, this is a fun adventure romp that features Jackie Chan at the height of his martial arts comedy stylings and on the cusp of perfecting his "prop fu" techniques.

Featuring excellent stunts, a fantastic car chase, and a fine supporting cast of both (with the gorgeous Lola Forner serving both as foil and love interest for Chan's character), this is a movie unlike anything they make anymore... including Jackie Chan. CGI is non-existent and I don't think many wires were used for the stunts either. (Oh, and while the plot of the film might not be anything unique, the heroes background certainly is. How many action heroes started public life as a teenage popstar? :) )

If you like your action/adventure with plenty of mirth, or your Kung Fu flicks with plenty of action, then you can't go wrong with "Operation Condor 2: The Amour of the Gods".

'Sudden Impact' is weakest Dirty Harry film

Sudden Impact (1983)
Starring: Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke
Director: Clint Eastwood
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A rape victim (Locke) is taking brutal revenge on her attackers, and SFPD's most rebellious police inspector, Harry Callahan (Eastwood) is trying to catch her.


I once wrote that "Magnum Force" is the weakest link in the "Dirty Harry" cycle. I take it back. That dubious distiction properly goes to "Sudden Impact", a film without any likable characters (with the possible exception of Meathead the Dog); flat performances from most of the actors (even Eastwood); a story that relies waaay too much on coincidence to keep moving (yes, there always needs to be some sort of coincidental convergence of events and characters, but "Sudden Impact" features so many that it's just plain bad writing); and the end is out of step with the way Callahan has been portrayed in previous films, how he is portrayed in the final film in the series... and it's just a bad ending all-around. (Without providing too many spoilers, Harry pretty much abandons any moral high-ground he once may have been able to claim, because as the end credits roll in "Sudden Impact", he's no longer a good cop by any stretch of the imagination.)

To make the experience even worse, Sandra Locke appears to have received a talent-ectomy before filming on "Sudden Impact" began.

I remember liking this movie alot when I saw it as a kid some two decades ago. All I really remembered was the startling final shot of the main bad guy, and the scenes with Meathead. I really should have watched all the "Dirty Harry" movies again before condemning "Magnum Force." It's interesting how tastes change as we grow older.

Xtro: One of the creepiest monster flicks

Xtro (1983)
Starring: Bernice Steger, Phillip Seyer, Maryam D'Abo, and Simon Nash
Director: Harry Bromley Davenport
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Three years after being abducted by aliens, Sam (Seyer) returns a very different man, and he passes his gooey, gory alien powers onto his young son (Nash).



When I first saw this movie as a kid, it freaked the heck out of me. The father coming back and spreading alien corruption throughout the household, the way the son was transformed, and the way he in turn went after the horny au-paire (D'Abo)... even the creepy way he made deadly things appear with his mental powers. It all seemed very, very scary.

I suspect someone watching the film with less jaded eyes than mine could still find "Xtro" scary. At this point, I find still find some of the movie quite disturbing--Sam's method of returning to human form was not something I recalled, and it is definately creepy; the alien egg-laying scene; and the final scene with the mother... well, up to a point with that one--but in general, I now view this film mostly with a sense of frustration because there are two fundamental things that spoil it for me.

First, there's the fact that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason to what the characters do, alien or otherwise. In fact, some of the things that happen are pure "Stupid Character Syndrom"--a character does something just to make sure the plot doesn't come to screeching halt, even if a vaguely intelligent person would take any one of numerous different options.

Second, the director and/or scriptwriter simply doesn't know when enough is enough, and this spoils a number of what otherwise would have been excellent, very scary moments. The movie's ending is the ultimate example of this. I won't go into details, because I would spoil it, but suffice to say, the filmmakers ruin a perfectly good ending. If they had been smart, the film would be about 5-10 seconds shorter.

On the upside, we do get to see D'Abo prance around in absolutely nothing, and the acting is uniformly bland (not quite bad... just flat) so no one stands out as good or bad. Gorehounds might also be impressed with a number of scenes in film. The "Return of Sam" scene is a standout in that sense. "Xtro" also features a well-done electronic score, and those are few and far between.

Nonethless, this is a film that clocks in at the low end of average... although I admit my reaction may partially be due to it not living up to my memories of it. (Maybe I'll get the courage to watch "The Exorcist" again. It's the only movie I walked out because it scared me too badly.)

'Pieces' is lots of gory fun

Pieces (1981)
Starring: Christopher George, Frank Brana, Lynda Day George, Edmund Purdom, Paul Smith, Jack Taylor, and Ian Sera
Director: Juan Piquer Simon
Rating: SPLIT--4/10 if viewed as a straight slasher film; 7/10 if viewed as a comedy)

Someone is cutting up beautiful college girls with a chainsaw and carrying off pieces of their bodies to create the world's first full-sized, flesh-and-blood person puzzle. The police (George and Brana) are stumped, so rather than conduct a full investigation, they recruit random faculty members to help with investigation and ask a random student to keep an eye on an officer who is sent in under cover as the school's new tennis instructor (Day). Who is the killer? The effeminate anatomy professor (Taylor)? The brutish groundskeeper (Smith)? The randy Big Man On Campus (Sera)? Or the quirky University Dean (Purdom)? Who's got bodyparts and a chainsaw hidden in their closet?


Some films are so bad they become unintentionally funny, and they end up being more funny than supposed comedies. "Pieces" may be an awful horror movie--hence the Four Tomato rating--but if it had been a slasher movie spoof, it would rate Seven Tomatoes. From the most incompetent cops ever put on film (not only do they recruite a possible suspect to watch their undercover officer, but they give him access to police files), to the least subtle serial killer to ever roam a heavily populated area (it's a residential campus, and he uses a chainsaw to kill people), to the Kung Fu fighter who shows up out of no where to attack the undercover cop for no reason what so ever, to the date-rape drug-fueled climax, "Pieces" gets funnier and funnier as it progresses. The lame, wanna-be "Goblin"-style electronica score only heightens the fun. (I'll grant the filmmakers one good scare, though. There's a bit near the end that I didn't see coming at all, and it made me jump.)

'Diary of a Big Man' is a funny tale of bigamy

Diary of a Big Man (1988)
Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Sally Yeh, and Joey Wang
Director: Chor Yun
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

In something of a change of pace, action star Chow Yun-Fat takes the lead in a romantic comedy as a stockbroker who stumbles his way into marriage with two different women after he can't bring himself to break either's heart. With the help of a loyal friend, he attempts to balance both marriages, but eventually something has to give....


This film takes all the twists and turns that one expects a romantic comedy to take, but it does it with a certain style and flair, and it explodes into completely unexpected over-the-top and hilarious insanity. The performances by Chow Yun Fat and Sally Yeh are particularly fun to watch as the antics unfold.

One complaint I have is that the subtitles are... well, brittle. They are more difficult to read than average, something which is frustrating in a film where the patter is flying fast and furious. On the upside, there aren't many examples of the bizarre literal translations that are so common in Hong Kong flicks. Another subtitle complaint is that the featured song in the film is subtitled in Cantonese but not in English.

Despite these technical gripes, this is a fun little movie that's worth watching.

Magnificent Warriors kick Imperial Jap ass

It's exactly 65 years this month since the United States of America dropped two atom bombs on Japan to bring us victory in World War II's Pacific Theater. This review is one of several posts I'm making to mark that occasion.

Magnificent Warriors (aka "Dynamite Fighters") (1987)
Starring: Michele Yeoh, Tung-Shing Yee, and Richard Ng
Director: David Chung
Steve's Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Michele Yeoh stars as a confident, self-reliant bush pilot who is cashing in on the resistence to the Japanese invaders in 1930s China. The plot really gets going when she is recruited to assist a spy deep within Japanese held land and ends up becoming embroiled in the resistance efforts whole-hog when her Chinese patriotism can't allow her to stand by and let a city of innocent people be gassed to death by the nefarious Japanese Imperial Army.


The film features excellent cinematography, fine performances by all actors, and well-choreographed martial arts sequences. There were some silly sound effects related to those fight scenes, but that's to be expected in an older film like this one.

The only dissapointment I felt was that I would have liked to see some of the plot and characterzation touches explained a bit more. (For example, was the drifter related to our heroine or not?)

This was one of Michele Yeoh's very first films--and she looks VERY young in it!--and the DVD version contains a really interesting interview with her about its making.

'Invisible Strangler' is not worth spotting

Invisible Strangler (aka "The Astral Factor")
(1976, re-released in 1984)
Starring: Robert Foxworth, Mark Slade, Elke Sommer, Stefanie Powers, Frank Ashmore, and Marianna Hill
Director: John Florea
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A serial killer who targets beautiful women celebrities (Ashmore) learns how to make himself invisible using methods from Mew Age books on psychic powers. After escape from the insane asylum, he sets about stalking and killing women he had previously failed to kill.


"Invisible Strangler" is a mediocre crime drama and a complete failure as a horror movie. Yes, an invisible killer can be disconcerting--and its used to great effect in the scene where he stalks and kills his first victim (played by Sue Lyon) after escaping from the asylum--but most of the murders take too long to happen and when they do, they are hardly worth the wait because they are unartfully and badly staged.

The film might have been a little less dull if the number of victims had been cut down, or if the filmmakers had spent more time with the main victim, played by Elke Sommer, and a little less time on ones the audience has no emotional investment in whatsoever. Or better yet, if one or two victims should have been left out entirely, the film would have been more concentrated and far more watchable.

I also think the film could have been stronger if more had been done with the head detective's girlfriend. While I can't imagine anyone feeling out of sorts over watching Stefanie Powers walking around with no pants on, I think everyone can agree that it would have been so much better if her character had served a purpose other than just walking around with no pants on.

A poor script with very little character development, weak acting, weak cinematography and weaker directing makes "Invisible Strangler" makes the film barely worth watching, despite an interesting idea at its core and a couple of nice moments.





Please check back tomorrow when this blog takes part in "Elke Sommer Day" by placing the Saturday Scream Queens spotlight on Ms. Sommer, and reviews of a movie she made for Mario Bava that died a horrible box office death, and the film it reincarnated as.

'The House by the Cemetery' isn't worth visiting

The House by the Cemetery (1984)
Starring: Katherine MacColl, Paolo Malco, Giovanni Frezza, and Ania Pieroni
Director: Lucio Fulci
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A researcher (Malco) moves with his family to Boston to complete the work started by a collegue who committed suicide. Through a flurry of coincidences (or Fate, or maybe the researcher's specific manipulation, take your pick), they end up in a creepy house that is tied to the subject of the research. Ghosts, unkillable bats, and weird murders then drive the young family toward doom.

If you like your horror flicks with a high level of well-done gore but don't care whether the story hangs together well, then this is a film for you.

One part haunted house movie, one part slasher flick, and with a dash of mad science thrown in out of left field for good measure, " House by the Cemetery" exhibits all the strength and weaknesses that were the hallmarks of Italian horror movie makers in the Seventies and Eighties; the gore is appropriately disgusting--although the highmark in this film is definately the maggot-infested insides of the film's monster!--but there are characters who behave inconsistently or incomprehsibly and the script writers seem more concerned with getting from plot contrievance to plot contrievance, or providing excuses for the special efffects crew to go to work than they are with providing a story that hands together sensibly by the time the End Credits roll.

I know Fulci has his strong admirers, and I'm sure they will find much to like in this movie, but I was too annoyed with the coincidences, pointless ambiguities, and just plain random junk that pass for the story to get much enjoyment from it. It wasn't even fun nonsense, like you get in the Monogram and PRC horror movies from the 1930s and 1940s; it was just nonsense. (And if you are an admirer of this film, can you explain the behavior of the creepy babysitter [played by Ania Pieroni] to me? That annoyed me more than anything else in the picture.)

Oh... and that picture I used to illustrate this review? It appeared on a German poster for the flick, It's a cool painting, even if it has little do to with what actually happens.

'Unhinged' is nearly unwatchable

Unhinged (1982)
Starring: Laurel Munson and Sarah Ansley
Director: Don Gronquist
Rating: One of Ten Stars

Three girlfriends are heading to a rock concert (to be followed by some camping) during a servere rainstorm. They run off the road, sure they're dead... but then they wake up in a creepy old mansion, filled with creepy old characters. And just what is hiding in the toolshed?!


"Unhinged" is a horror movie that gets just about eveything wrong.

*The movie STARTS with the shower-scene even before there's anyone to menace the nubile young thing (oh... and it's a badly acted AND badly staged shower-scene. Yes, "Unhinged" is one of those movies that proves it's possible to do a bad shower scene.

* The story (what little there is of it) only works, because the characters spend too much time doing things that no rational (or able to wipe themselves after taking a dump) person would do. If the characters took one or two simple, obvious actions, the whole movie would cease to be. Likewise, the ending only happens because the lead character's only guiding light is how to make the badly plotted story work. She is as close to the Platonic Ideal of Stupid Character Syndrome as we will ever see in this imperfect world.

*Of the two girls playing the leads, only one shows a glimmer of acting ability in her final scene. However, it's far too little and far too late to save the picture.

*There are multiple occassions where there seems to be a build-up to something dire or scary or startling is about to happen, but then there's no pay-off. Heed my words, young would-be filmmaker: Repeated "oooh, let's trick 'em by making things seem all spooky and then not do anything" isn't laying a foundation for the real scares... it's just makes the audience annoyed and irritated.

I stuck with this entirely too-slow-film until the end, because I kept thinking that it would get better. Then, it started getting worse... with it getting progressively more unbelievable and just plain dumb. I do grant director/co-writer Gronquist kudos for giving the the movie an ending so stupid that it took me completely by surprise, thus giving the film a tiny bit of merit. Even better, the ending had been set up earlier in the film, so as far as that goes, Gronquist showed himself to have a little bit more storytelling ability than most directors and screenwriters working in horror movies today where they idea of a "twist-ending" mostly seems to be "random shit that has nothing to do with anything previously presented in the film."

The DVD version of "Unhinged" that I watched had a 'comedy commentary track' as one of the audio options by a group of writers and film reviewers who've dubbed themselves 'The Distractors'. It was almost as badly done as the film they were commenting on, because the actual soundtrack was completely inaudible (one of the group even at one point says that they can't even hear the sound of the film and they are uncertain what is being discussed). It's a shame, because I had hopes when I saw that Shannon Wheeler (the creator of "Too Much Coffee Man") was one of the viewers. There were enough off-color comments about breasts, discussion of why the girls on their way to a concert and some camping would have nightgowns and three or four changes of not-very-outdoorsey clothes to make the commentary amusing, but it could have been better. The highpoint om the commentary hi-jinx was the attempt to look up those involved in making "Unhinged" in the phone book and calling them for their take on the film.

Another bonus feature on the DVD I viewed was a television interview with the director and one of the actresses featured in the film that was recorded back in 1982 to promote the film's release. If I'd watched the interview first, I probably would have known to bother with "Unhinged" itself. I've never seen someone so inept at selling his movie as Gronquist was--it was as if he knew he'd made a piece of trash and didn't really want to talk about it. The actress did a better, though.

There's really nothing to recommend watching "Unhinged", unless you want to see a compact collection of what NOT do to whether you're a screenwriter, an actor, or a director.





(Trivia: This film was banned in Great Britain as one of the "Video Nasties" until 2005. One wonders what caused the British censors to develop such hatred for movie watchers that they would cause them to be exposed to this film.)