Review – Alone in the Dark (1982)

That’s what you’ll be if you’re waiting in a movie theater for me to join you and watch this barking dog again. One would think that with the likes of Donald Pleasance, Jack Palance and Martin Landau that a considerably better movie would be in the offing. I guess they must have blown the budget getting these guys to appear and thus couldn’t afford a script or even much of a plot. The story here is a trite tale of a handful of psychopaths who escape from an asylum during a blackout and go to their doctor’s house to torment him and his family. Even by slasher movie standards, this one’s pretty boring. See if desperate

Review – Hitler’s SS: A Portrait in Evil

Portrait of boredom is a little closer to the truth. If the real SS had been this petty and banal they couldn’t have organized a book discussion group, let alone war and genocide. This made-for-TV effort from the mid-80s is more soap opera than historical narrative, dwelling on the thoroughly trite and uninteresting tale of two brothers – in love with the same woman, naturally – who end up on different sides of the Nazi party in prewar Germany. A few interesting elements can be found here and there, particularly toward the end when the movie starts to focus less on the characters’ individual woes and more on the collective misery of the German people. Overall, however, it’s a cheap history lesson spread out over a couple of hours’ worth of melodrama. See if desperate

Review – Final Fantasy

This movie’s claim to fame is that it’s supposed to be the first feature-length computer animation with realistic characters and settings. And though it’s clearly a step in the right direction, it’s probably still going to be awhile before producers are going to be able to get rid of human actors altogether. The character animation is the highlight, but it ranges from some cool, realistic stuff down to stiff, jerky junk that looks like an expensive, sophisticated version of the Thunderbirds puppets. Further, beyond the wow-‘em computer graphics, there’s just about nothing here. The story is as dumb as any other movie based on a video game, made even worse by the oh-so-Japanese tendency to stuff a lot of moony philosophizing into the mix. To top it all off, the plot depends heavily on belief in the Gaia theory, something I thought had fallen by the wayside back in the 1980s. Guess I was wrong. See if desperate

Review – Dr. Phibes Rises Again

Not only is the good Doctor implausibly once again among the living, but he’s brought back his wife’s corpse, his silent assistant and the general gist from the first one along with him. Vincent Price seems to be enjoying himself as he blithely and bizarrely slaughters all those who stand between him and his wife’s resurrection. In other words, second verse same as the first. The only material difference this time around is that somehow, ever so subtly, the humorous kitsch of the original has been replaced by meandering silliness. This isn’t a bad movie. It’s just not as entertaining as chapter one. Mildly amusing

Review – Little Nicky

This is the movie that Dogma might have been if it hadn’t been so damn pretentious. Now, that isn’t to say that this is necessarily a better movie. There are more than a few disadvantages to trying to make a film fly based only on an endless parade of crude sight gags. But if you’re going to make a movie that reeks of frat boy theology, it’s nice to at least do your audience the courtesy of having fun with it rather than taking it seriously. The plot is a silly bit of business about two of Satan’s sons escaping from Hell and spreading havoc on Earth while their father (Harvey Keitel) wastes away back home. This leaves it up to the Beastmaster’s third son, an inept moron (Adam Sandler), to bring his brothers back. Resulting high jinks involve a seemingly endless parade of sophomoric humor and Saturday Night Live alums. I felt the joke start to wear off around midway through, but maybe if you’re in the mood for this kind of thing you could go the distance with it. Mildly amusing

Review – Paper Moon

Despite not especially caring for either Ryan O’Neal or his daughter, I sincerely enjoyed this movie. Perhaps it was the depression-era look, sound and feel, skillfully accented by costuming, soundtrack and director Peter Bogdanovich’s use of black and white film stock. Perhaps it was the Kansas backdrops. Perhaps it was just that large parts of the movie were genuinely funny. And yeah, it goes downhill a bit after Madeline Kahn’s character makes her unseemly exit, trailing off into grimness and excessive sentimentality by the end. But overall this is still a solid piece of entertainment. Worth seeing

Review – High Noon

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when men were men in the face of all logic, odds, love and anything and everything else to the contrary. This classic western tells the tale of Marshal Kane, a lawman who forsakes his Quaker wife to defend an ungrateful town against outlaws who have sworn to kill him. The bulk of the movie plays in more-or-less “real time” as the marshal spends the hour before “high noon” fruitlessly trying to get the townfolk to lend a hand. Thus the gunfight at the end is almost anti-climactic, going against the usual grain for westerns that tend to emphasize violence over plot. I think I might have liked this film a little better if Gary “Mr. HUAC” Cooper hadn’t played the stick-to-your-morals-no-matter-what protagonist. See if desperate

Review – Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3: Leatherface

Apparently the folks who made this one would just as soon pretend that Leatherface didn’t die with a chainsaw in his gut in #2 (I wish I found it so easy to pretend I’d never seen the first sequel). For the most part this is leftovers for the second straight day in a row. Splatterpunk god David Schow supplies the script for this wretched stinker. Further, this turd is inexcusably hard on the animals, featuring an especially brutal killing of an armadillo. And poor Ken Foree! He was so good in Dawn of the Dead, but he just doesn’t seem to have been able to catch a break since then. Overall this just strikes me as a terrible thing to do to what started out to be a novel, entertaining series. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Severed Ties

As near as I can tell, this movie’s only raison d’etre probably involved a bar bet about how many clichés can be packed into a single production. We’ve got severed limbs growing back (as detachable, reptilian versions of their former selves) thanks to a serum made from rubber lizards and dead serial killers. The scientist who creates it wants to give it away free to the world in general and in particular the bums who befriend him after his lab catches fire. His mother (Elke Sommer slumming) and her boyfriend (Oliver Reed, slumming if he ever can truly be said to be doing so) want to sell it to some evil corporation (the box said something about neo-Nazis, but if that was part of the plot I must have missed it). And poor, poor Garrett Morris. What gambling debts, drug dependency or other financial catastrophe must have befallen this talented man to compel him to appear in garbage like this? See if desperate

Review – The 6th Day

Second only to time travel plots on the “brain-bending” scale are clone stories. Who’s real? Who’s synthetic? Who cares? However, I think Arnold Schwarzenegger’s handlers must have learned their lessons from Last Action Hero, because the plot here is as simple and straightforward as a clone story could possibly be. The film-makers manage to avoid even the most obvious of plot complications, sticking instead to an action-intensive tale of a man who accidentally discovers that he’s been duplicated. As one might expect for a flick with this big a budget, the effects are top-drawer and the chases, gunfights and explosions plentiful. Throw in a dash of Total Recall, a pinch of Blade Runner, and a smattering of other “borrowed” devices, and you’ve got a tasty if less than filling dish. Mildly amusing

Review – Zulu

Three cheers for English imperialism. Hurrah. Hur ... oh, please. Here’s yet another production of the spectacle of Roarke’s Drift, and once again the odds alone apparently justify the outcome. To be sure, the battle had a certain Conan-esque few-against-many quality only slightly compromised by Her Majesty’s forces’ use of superior firepower. But gone are the days when film-makers could reasonably expect that audiences will automatically side with the white European guys over the savage heathen “natives.” Sadly, this movie was made back in those days. Racism aside, this isn’t the worst period war piece I’ve ever seen. At least the title began with a Z. Mildly amusing

Review – Dirty Work

Imagine an entire movie with nothing more than Norm McDonald’s sense of humor – or what passes for a sense of humor – to carry it. The word “sophomoric” doesn’t quite do it justice. If you’re a big fan of the kind of stuff McDonald used to do on Saturday Night Live, then you should get a real kick out of the shtick here. Otherwise you’re in for an hour and a half of dumb gags that come off as snide without being clever or witty and McDonald’s hallmark technique of doing the same joke over and over in the futile, Letterman-esque hope that repetition will somehow produce amusement. McDonald aside, this is a silly story of a couple of losers who decide to start a business that plays stupid tricks on its clients’ enemies. The highlight of the show are the supporting roles and cameos provided by McDonald’s fellow SNL alums (Chris Farley as a deranged Vietnam vet, Adam Sandler as Satan, and so on). See if desperate

Review – License to Kill

License to Stink is more like it. Here but for the grace of Octopussy goes the worst Bond movie ever. I was initially willing to accept Timothy Dalton as a reasonable substitute for the aging Roger Moore, but the new guy’s second (and last) appearance as Ian Fleming’s super-spy is lackluster at best. To be fair, however, he didn’t really have much to work with. In this effort, Bond abandons Her Majesty’s Secret Service and strikes out on his own to seek revenge against a cartoonish drug lord for a deadly attack on series-regular-never-played-by-the-same-actor-twice Felix Leiter and his newly-wed wife. The result is a disappointing blend of the worst elements of the Bond series with some of the dumber clichés from the whole “just say no to drugs” campaign that was hot at the time this hunk of junk was first released. Even the end credits reek; they include an admonition that smoking is a potentially dangerous activity. Nothing about the health hazards inherent in gun battles or shark attacks, however. And to top it all off: Wayne Newton as a televangelist. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Legally Blonde

The world of Grisham-esque legal drama meets Clueless in a movie that spends most of its time banking on its own quirkiness. The story’s simple enough: an airhead (Reese Witherspoon) who gets dumped by her snobby boyfriend decides to get even with him by getting into his law school. The fact that he goes to Harvard shouldn’t stretch credulity too much, I guess. As usual with such comedies, this outing’s at its most amusing when it abandons pretense at plot (not to mention subplot after subplot) and sticks with one-liners and sight gags. And sure, even the amusing parts depend fairly heavily on clichés long familiar to most moviegoers. But if you’re looking for a little brain-dead entertainment at the end of a long week you could do a lot worse. Mildly amusing

Review – Servants of Twilight

This has the look and feel of one of those movies that was probably at least a little better as a book. The story, supplied by Dean Koontz, follows a bizarre cult’s attempts to murder a small boy because their messianic wacko leader is convinced that the tot is the Antichrist. Unfortunately, the script meanders so much that starting around halfway through it starts getting hard to muster much interest in the goings-on. Further, before the floundering is finished they’ve managed to brutally slaughtered not one but two big, fluffy dogs. And to top it all off, the last battle with the cultists comes in the form of a rubber bat attack. Not good. Not good at all. I won’t ruin the final twist for you, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s so feeble and so obvious that it pretty much ruins itself. See if desperate

Review – Young Guns

Ostensibly this is a western about a group of juvenile outlaws, led by Billy the Kid, who have no end of really thrilling adventures. In reality, however, it appears to be little more than a cheap vehicle for twenty-something Hollywood hunks to parade around in settings that I suppose are supposed to make them look tough and rugged yet sensitive and vulnerable. Honestly, it’s like some terrible Breakfast Club version of a spaghetti western. Inasmuch as this movie’s old enough that the youthful studs have all long since been put out to pasture, the whole affair has outlived whatever usefulness it might at one time have had. See if desperate

Review – Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years

Director Penelope Spheeris strikes again, this time documenting the L.A. heavy metal scene in the late 80s. Spheeris lets the members of several metal bands speak for themselves, expressing their obsessions with sex and money, their adolescent hatred of authority, and their grim determination to make it big or die trying. The show includes a number of interviews with wannabes, old-timers and even a couple of bands that were riding the crest of success at the time. The final product is a rare combination: a movie that is as interesting as it is amusing. Worth seeing