Review – Die, Monster, Die!

Whom are we to pity more, erstwhile if decrepit star Boris Karloff or source story author H.P. Lovecraft? On the one hand, Lovecraft died years before they made this stinker, so at least he didn’t have to suffer through what became of his work. On the other hand, perhaps he was done the greater injustice. After all, Karloff could at least have declined the role; arguably he thus deserved what he got. Perhaps if this had been based on one of the author’s lesser stories this awful gothic mishmash mightn’t have been so bad. But “The Colour Out of Space” (or “The Color of Outer Space” if you prefer the AMC intro speech) is one of his best. To watch the elusive yet overpowering horror of the story turned into a cheap pageant of rubber monsters with run-of-the-mill, scientific explanations was almost too much to bear. Die, movie, die! See if desperate

Review – That’s Entertainment

With precious few exceptions, my general feeling about musicals (especially “classic” musicals from MGM’s heyday) is that the big, gaudy production numbers are kinda fun to watch but seldom justify the bad scripts, dreadful acting and less-effective songs. So this compilation was tailor-made for folks like me who want the spectacle but don’t want to sit through the rest of it. Even so, the collection features a couple of slow spots and a big chunk of narration by the stars (much of which isn’t all that interesting). Overall, however, this is an entertaining bit of fluff for a slow evening. Mildly amusing

Review – Island of Terror

Terrence Fisher directs yet another British sixties-era all-plot horror movie. Scientists working on a cure for cancer instead breed silicon-based monsters that look like mud pies with tentacles and have the nasty habit of grabbing people and animals and dissolving their bones. Thank goodness the lab was on a small island where a handful of villagers are the only folks immediately in harm’s way. Bad luck for them, though. Like many other movies from this era, if anything else in the picture measured up to the quality of the concept, it would have been a damn fine production. As it was, however, the monsters are too silly, the pace too uneven and the dialogue too terrible to support the story. Even Peter Cushing, normally quite the asset, appears to be phoning it in. I’d be first in line to see it if this ever got remade with better production values, but the original is at best vaguely entertaining. Mildly amusing

Review – What Dreams May Come

A big budget film based on a novel by Richard Matheson? I should have loved it. Certainly I was impressed by the art direction (very Pre-Raphaelite) and visual effects. This is one of the prettiest movies I’ve ever seen. Even Robin Williams wasn’t his usual, frantic self. And sure, the new-agey psycho-babble version of the afterlife is sometimes more than a little hard to swallow, especially when it starts to muddle the plot a bit. However, overall this is a technical wonder with copious literary allusions, and it could have been one of the most entertaining movies ever. The only problem – and unfortunately it’s a big one – is that the story is one huge, unending bummer from beginning to end. Kid death. Husband death. Wife death. Even the dog dies right at the outset, setting the tone for the rest of the show. I suppose it’s normal and healthy to be able to look the Grim Reaper in the face every now and again, but such an extensive wallow in grief tends to leave one a bit emotionally drained by the end. I won’t warn you off it entirely, but don’t expect to walk away from the experience in the sunniest of moods. Mildly amusing

Review – Collateral Damage

Not since the conflux of The China Syndrome and Three Mile Island has Hollywood found such serendipity between real-life awfulness and tinsel town tragedy. In retrospect, it’s almost hard to believe that this movie was slated to come out just as the Sept. 11 attack took place and was yanked off the tracks due to the similarity of theme if not of detail. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a fireman whose wife and son are bystander casualties of a terrorist bombing. When the well-meaning but flummoxed FBI and the creepy CIA prove to be of little help, our hero takes matters into his own hands and ventures to Colombia to find El Lobo (yeah, no kidding), his family’s slayer. At a couple of points the story dips ever so briefly into an honest examination of the geopolitical economics of drug-related terrorism. But fear not, it always snaps back in short order to the far simpler world of Arnold versus the Forces of Evil. A couple of good action sequences are pretty much all this movie has going for it. See if desperate

Review – Hiroshima

Despite the title, this extended, made-for-cable production spends very little time in the first city destroyed by an atomic bomb. Instead, the focus is on the political shenanigans on both sides of the Pacific in the months leading up to August 1945. American politicians dicker over strategy and timing while Japanese moderates wrestle with hard-line military fanatics while they try to strike a deal with the Soviets. Overall this is a fascinating portrait of a war drawing to a close and preparations beginning for a new conflict. I expect one should go in with at least a little pre-existing interest in the subject at hand, but if you have such an interest then you should thoroughly enjoy this production. Mildly amusing