Review – The Land that Time Forgot (1975)

It’s bad actors versus bad puppets in this low budget stinker. The plot is a muddled mess about a hodge-podge of macho men (plus the obligatory love interest) who pilot a U-Boat to a hyperborean world full of cheap rubber dinosaurs, cavemen and other typical denizens of prehistoric B-movies. There’s a lot of completely unnecessary dino death to be had, but the stupid things are so terribly fake that it’s hard to get too upset about it. If you’re a connoisseur of the cheap monster movies of the late 70s, this one’s a must-see; it spawned at least two sequels in a similar vein. Otherwise it’s missable. See if desperate

Review – Silver Bullet

With the combination of Stephen King and werewolves, I guess I should have liked this one a lot better than I did. The plot is based on King’s “Cycle of the Werewolf,” though in my opinion the book was better than the movie. For openers, the plot in the book stretched out over a year and just generally flowed a lot better than its big-screen adaptation. Further, King’s text was accompanied by illustrations by Bernie Wrightson, an outstanding illustrator who drew werewolves the way I’d always imagined werewolves should look. The effects in the movie compare unfavorably, making the lycanthropes look more like skinny bears. Still, I don’t imagine King can gripe much about the film adaptation, inasmuch as he wrote the screenplay himself. I’ve seen plenty of werewolf movies that were a lot worse than this one. But I’ve seen a couple of better ones, too. Mildly amusing

Review – Kiss of Evil

Stench of boredom is more like it. Honestly, when are these dashing but dim-witted Hammer heroes ever going to figure it out? When your car breaks down in an isolated part of central Europe and you get invited to be the guest of the local baron, you just know his castle is going to turn out to be chock-full of vampires and he’s going to go straight after your beautiful but ditzy wife. The only interesting wrinkle this time around is that after laughing boy loses his babe to the wily bloodsuckers and flees to the cranky old man in the village for help, the cranky old man enlists the aid of Satan to defeat the forces of darkness. That was a little brain-bending. Otherwise this predictable effort doesn’t even bother to offer the usual Hammer benefit of either Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing in the cast. Released on the other side of the Atlantic as The Kiss of the Vampire. See if desperate

Review – The Cell

Just what we’ve all been waiting for: a remake of Dreamscape for a more violent, art-direction-intensive world. Throw in dashes from a number of popular pictures (Silence of the Lambs, The Matrix, and several others) and you’ve got the makings of a boring Frankenstein’s monster of a movie. The story is about a woman (Jennifer Lopez) who uses a machine to link up to a comatose kid in an attempt to figure out what traumatized him. The FBI horns in on her project, asking her to link up with a catatonic serial killer (Vincent D’Onofrio) so they can locate his latest victim before she dies. Once inside his head, the whole show sort of becomes an extended music video for an annoying, pretentious band. Of course, it’s possible that I just resent the whole thing because it was hyped as being one of the goriest movies ever made, a promise not even vaguely kept in either quantity or quality. See if desperate

Review – They Live

John Carpenter gives us still more paranoid horror, this time in the guise of aliens that run our planet and can only be seen in their true form when one looks through special sunglasses. By the time you’re done throwing in Roddy Piper as the hero in a goes-on-forever fist fight with Keith David (seriously, this thing goes on so long as is ultimately so ancillary to the plot that I’m pretty much forced to conclude that it’s intended to be a parody of overlong fight scenes), it doesn’t sound like it would be all that good. Surprisingly enough, it’s just mean enough to overcome its shortcomings and turn out okay. Even Rowdy Roddy wasn’t too bad. Also for the record, one of the minor plot details supplied the name of the blog you’re currently reading. Buy the tape

Review – The General’s Daughter

Blah. Could there be a little more rape in this movie? Is there any way we could work in another assault or a little more stunted sexuality? Sakes. Buried somewhere in here is a flimsy excuse for a murder mystery, but even that turns out to be one of the stupid kind that keeps throwing in new wrinkles until additional twisting is cut short by the end credits. Just about the only thing that distinguishes this barker from every other suspense flick full of kinky sex and violent death is that this one takes place on an Army base. With a cast this good, a better film could have been made. See if desperate

Review – GalaxyQuest

This one-joke movie starts out as a refreshing change from Hollywood’s stale fare. The joke gets told, complete with punch line, in the first few minutes of the movie: real, honest-to-goodness space aliens mistake broadcasts of a Star-Trek-like TV series for documentaries and enlist the sci-fi-con-dwelling actors to aid them in a battle against evil. What’s unusual here is that even after the gag plays itself out there’s still enough physical comedy and the like to keep the movie moving until the end of the final reel. It even manages to avoid coming down too hard on the Trekkies, cleaning up the language in order to preserve a PG rating and a larger potential audience among the crowd that attends the very conventions lampooned in the film. Some of the jokes require a little genre knowledge to fully appreciate, but even “outsiders” should get a kick out of the effects-intensive slapstick. Mildly amusing

Review – The King and I (1999)

I’m sure I don’t see the point here. Usually when a classic movie (or musical or book or whatever) gets an animated makeover, it’s to make it more palatable for family viewing. But the original, live-action King and I makes wonderful family viewing. The only thing that might make this rework more suitable for children is the happy ending awkwardly grafted on. Sure, a few of the original’s less desirable moments (such as the exasperating “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” sequence) have been cut out. And sure, it’s not fair to expect a cartoon to live up to the likes of Yul Brynner. But even with those credits duly given, this outing has little to recommend it. The animation quality is dreadful. At least one character steps way too far into the realm of offensive, racist stereotype. Assuming (possibly correctly) that children won’t sit still for musical numbers, the animators clog almost all the songs with annoying, distracting antics of one kind or another. So if you want The King and I, rent the real one and skip the animated remake. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Shadow Hours

I don’t think anyone got what they wanted out of this one. The box made it look like an erotic thriller, which it didn’t really turn out to be. So I felt sort of ripped off (despite the fact that I should have known better than to try to rent an erotic thriller from Blockbuster). The folks who made the movie appeared to be shooting for a tale of a mephistophelean, enigmatic antagonist/helper (Peter Weller) who lures a former junkie back into a world of seamy excess. But thanks to a lackluster script and mailed-in performances from the cast, the movie played more like a morality play turned movie of the week with a little extra kinky sex built in just to get the R rating. Kids, just say no to crap. See if desperate

Review – Cat People (1982)

This film and the Val Lewton original make an interesting comparison and contrast showing some of the differences between low-budget, black and white genre movies that rely on plot, script and innuendo to portray sex, violence and horror and big-budget, color productions that make more extensive use of nudity and special effects. Further, fans of the original should enjoy keeping an eye out for allusions to the old version in this go-around. Comparisons aside, however, this is a fairly good shape-shifter movie on its own merits. It’s also a good example of early 80s film-making in general, with Paul Schrader in the director’s chair and Giorgio Moroder and David Bowie working on the soundtrack. It might easily have scored a slightly higher rating if not for all the animal violence, which at least for the most part was actually integral to the plot. Mildly amusing

Review – Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings

It’s just so hard to pick the most attractive feature of this movie. Roger “my brother’s the President” Clinton as a character named “Mayor Bubba”? Nah, too dated. The scene where chickens peck out a yokel’s eyes? Too short. The leftover locations from Motel Hell? The leftover rubber monster from the first Pumpkinhead? Decisions, decisions. This time around our gourd-craniumed baddie’s got a whole lotta vengeance to take on two generations’ worth of rotten teenagers. Sadly, the gore’s neither convincing nor imaginative enough to keep this turkey rolling all the way to its “heartwarming” conclusion. See if desperate

Review – Key Largo

Here’s a rarity: a movie that was actually better at home on video than it was in the theater. Of course, my theater experience with it came many years ago when one of my favorite local revival houses (back when there were such things) screened it. This was right around the time that stupid soft-rock ballad with the Key Largo theme came out, so the theater was lousy with date-yuppies who figured the movie would be as “romantic” as the song. Urp. When I watched it at home, I got to spend a lot more time enjoying the dialogue from the movie and a lot less time enduring the pretentious film chat from the next row over. For the most part, the second experience was worth it. When it comes to Bogart and Bacall, I have a slight preference for To Have and Have Not. But this one will do in a pinch. Edward G. Robinson plays a gangster who walks the fine line between cliché thug and epitome of evil. However, he does make a nice foil for Bogart’s subtly heroic vet trying to keep mobsters from killing a hotel owner and his daughter-in-law while the group is hurricane-bound on the title island. Worth seeing

Review – Bringing Out the Dead

Martin Scorcese returns to the mean streets of New York to follow a Travis Bickle-esque EMT down the road to madness. The plot also borrows heavily from other angry-young-men classics, including Catch 22. Despite the occasionally effortful direction and a chemistry-free, go-nowhere romance between the protagonist (Nicolas Cage) and the love interest (Patricia Arquette), Scorcese manages to recapture enough of the look and feel of Taxi Driver to keep the production rolling. Odd bits of quirky humor, particularly in the scenes Cage shares with Ving Rhames, round out the show nicely. Mildly amusing

Review – The Empty Mirror

Adolph Hitler sits around a gloomy room in Hell. He dictates his memoirs. He watches home movies. He chats with his old buddies and cherubic German tykes. He fantasizes about women. He rambles on and on. And on. Every once in awhile Sigmund Freud drops in for a little psychoanalysis. I don’t know what’s more amazing: that someone got the budget to commit this to celluloid, or that they actually thought it would keep going for nearly two hours. See if desperate

Review – 9 1/2 Weeks

I’ve heard from several different sources that this is one of the sexiest movies ever made. Well, if your idea of a hot time is an extended relationship with a psychotic creep played by Mickey Rourke, then this picture ought to get your motor working. Sure, it’s got some legendary scenes, such as the famous refrigerator sequence. But somewhere around midway through it turns into a polished but crass glorification of abusive relationships. Maybe this stuff was popular back in the 80s (where the Sharper Image-intensive art direction clearly came from), but I’d like to think that as a society we’ve outgrown at least some of this. I’m probably wrong, but I’d still like to think it. See if desperate

Review – Psycho

Here we have one of the great classics of the silver screen, one of the key moments in the genesis of the slasher genre. A lot of this movie has become cliché, particularly the famous, oft-mimicked shower sequence. And of course Anthony Perkins did such a masterful job as the deeply disturbed Norman Bates that he ended up typecast for most of the rest of his career (including recreations of the role in several inept sequels). Overall this film is such a wonderful example of how much can be accomplished without recourse to gore (or color, for that matter) that it’s a wonder the genre ever advanced much beyond this stage. Arguably director Alfred Hitchcock’s finest moment, this one is not to be missed. Buy the tape

Review – Zorro, The Gay Blade

Ah, once upon a time portrayal of stereotypical, effeminate male characters was a much less dicey affair. The interesting thing about this particular parade of “poof” jokes is that it still kinda holds up. To be sure, this isn’t a great masterpiece of intellectual comedy. George Hamilton plays not one but two roles, and that alone should give you some idea of the caliber of humor you can expect. He plays both a traditional Latin Lothario who inherits the mantle of Zorro, defender of the poor, and his twin brother, a character named Bunny Wigglesworth who has apparently spent too many years in the English Navy. The latter must step flamboyantly into the Zorro role when the former injures his ankle. Most – well, okay, all – of the jokes are sophomoric at best, and one might expect that such a broad caricature of a homosexual character would prove uncomfortably offensive by more modern standards. But Bunny isn’t just a fop, he’s also the hero. The message – to the extent that such a piece of brain candy can be said to have one at all – seems to be that it’s possible to be heroic without conforming to the usual social expectations of ultra-masculine heroes. That may seem like kind of a given now, but back then it was at least a small-scale breakthrough. Mildly amusing

Review – Empire of the Ants

“Have you ever taken a good, close look at what the ant is all about?” Joan Collins has, thanks to American International Pictures and director Bert I. Gordon. Of course ants are a lot harder to ignore when they’re the size of Buicks and they’re trying to tear you in half. For the most part this is yet another reheat of the old giant ant story, with an odd bit of Invasion of the Body Snatchers thrown in for good measure. Mildly amusing

Review – Boys Don’t Cry

The forces of the independent film world come together to tell this grim story about a trans man who falls in love in rural Nebraska, not exactly an environment famous for its tolerance of alternative sexuality. The acting is good, the script well-crafted, and the production values high for an indie (managing to avoid most of the arty conceits that frequently dog such productions). If the film suffers from a serious fault (aside from the extremely graphic depiction of rape, which I guess was integral to the plot), it’s the obvious tension that infects the entire story. Will the other characters discover the protagonist’s secret? If and when they do, how will they react? Further, those who know a little about the true story that served as the basis for the film go into it with the knowledge that it isn’t likely to have a happy ending. Tension aside, however, this is a good if more than a little depressing morality tale. Worth seeing

Review – From Russia with Love

Though not necessarily the dullest Bond movie ever made, this outing is definitely in the running for the title. The story involves 007’s attempts to steal a Soviet decoding device and get it out of Turkey and back to England. Compared to subsequent thwarted evils, this one’s banal to the point of seeming downright bureaucratic (which might make this the most realistic espionage story in the entire Bond series). Robert Shaw does a good job as the SPECTRE hit man, though it’s almost hard to believe now that he was ever this young. Other than Shaw, however, the plot drags, barely buoyed up by a seemingly endless parade of cold war clichés and pre-feminist male sexuality. See if desperate

Review – The Keep

Nazis invading Romania unleash an evil even worse than themselves, if such a thing can be imagined. Before all the killing ends, Scott Glenn (in funky blue contact lenses) must battle a big, beefy demon that’s sort of a combination of a golem and the Devil, with the fate of the world naturally hanging in the balance. Jurgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne and Ian McKellen round out the ensemble of under-cast, craggy, stone-faced men. What should have been a better film is set back a bit by an unlikely source of trouble: the director. Michael Mann defined a lot of the “Eighties Look,” and he’s up to his usual visual and musical tricks here. But somehow the stuff that worked so well in 1980s Miami seems a little out of place in Eastern Europe in 1941. Mildly amusing