Review – Hellion

Darn those pesky demons. They get in your cellar. They get in your attic. And apparently now they even put in appearances in your kids’ playhouse. Of course to be fair to the hell-monsters, they did live there before a single mom from America moved to Australia and set up post-divorce housekeeping with her three kids. The oldest gets up to the usual teen antics while the younger pair are slowly drawn into Satanic rituals in the back yard. Though not a high-quality, big budget picture by any stretch of the imagination, this does feature at least slightly better production values than most other movies of its ilk. Of course now it’s possible to do with relatively inexpensive digital effects what would have at one time required an army of optical experts, so that helped. What might also have helped would have been a slightly better script. See if desperate

Review – How to Make a Monster

For your video rental dollar you get not only the lesson promised by the title but also an extra bonus: an hour and a half worth of “How to Make a Really Crappy Movie.” Honestly, I know Stan Winston is trying to remake the whole string of Arkoff camp horror classics, but some movies are just better off dead. Or if they really had to resurrect this particular opus, they ought really to have at least tried to come up with something that’s been done a bit less frequently than the evil video game that comes to life. The script is lame. The effects are lame. The gore is really lame. Even the lame nudity is lamer than usual. Video game geeks appear to be the only target audience in mind here, and I have to admit that I’m not precisely the best person to judge its effectiveness on that count. However, just about everyone else can safely steer clear. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Some Like It Hot

I guess if they’d called this “Some Like It in Drag” it probably would have put a damper on the box office back when this first came out. Nonetheless, the theme’s inescapable in this cross-dressing screwball comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Alternative sexuality aside, the story actually turned out to be a little more grim than I expected, particularly the scenes involving the mobsters our boys don drag to escape. However, my only real gripe is that after awhile the comedy of errors starts to get a little old (as comedies of errors frequently do), the gag wearing off a little before the plot actually winds down. Mildly amusing

Review – Hellraiser: Hellseeker

Okay, enough. For what I hope – but doubt – will be the last time, there is zip, zero, nada, goose egg, absolutely no entertainment value in the old protagonist-is-hallucinating-or-is-he crap. This has got to be the all-time lamest excuse ever for a plot device, and here’s why: it frees the writer from any need for craftsmanship beyond the ability to suggest a relentless, episodic set of quasi-interesting visuals that consistently disappoint any audience member not easily entertained by horror movie sight gags. Writers who have anything to do with such a cheap gimmick should be drummed out of the business in order to make way for new blood with fresh ideas. And speaking of stuff that’s growing a little stale, just how old is Doug Bradley by now? And how desperate for money did Ashley Laurence have to be to drag her back into the Hellraiser series? If there’s one thing I kinda hoped would fall by the wayside in the age of easily-available video porn, it’s the notion that flimsy excuses for soft-core kinky sex would somehow buoy up a sinking excuse for a horror movie. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Scorpion King

Though a somewhat unworthy successor to the Mummy sequel that gave rise to the character, this isn’t half bad for a sword and sorcery flick. In this one the Rock plays the same character he played in the last one, only this time he’s the good guy. He’s up against a ruthless tyrants whose conquests are made possible via the visions of his sorceress sidekick. The rest of the plot is little more than the library paste that sticks the action sequences together. But the budget’s big enough, the effects flashy enough, and the story entertaining enough to overcome the lame dialogue and often iffy acting. Mildly amusing

Review – Jason X

Here’s something for future generations to look forward to: apparently 450 years from now teenagers are just as horny and just as stupid as they are today. Thank goodness a spaceship full of them manage to revive cryo-frozen Jason Voorhees, who naturally picks up right where he left off. I’ll bet it shocks no one to learn that the result sits somewhere between Aliens and the original Friday the 13th series in terms of plot and production quality. For the most part this one’s for the usual slasher movie fans. However, the David Cronenberg cameo toward the beginning and the holographic parody of the earlier movies in the series toward the end do at least a little to justify the rental price. Mildly amusing

Review – Freaks

This Todd Browning classic is actually a little hard to review because it’s at least in part a creature of its time. Which is to say that when it first came out it upset people so much that the studio pulled it from distribution, a fate that thankfully has not continued to this day. Further, it suffers from many of the technical, script and acting defects endemic to the early days of “talkies.” However, its somewhat dated nature does little to diminish the impact of the better sequences. Browning’s decision to use actors with actual physical disabilities rather than employing makeup “monsters” is shocking even by contemporary standards. However, critics who complain of the exploitation and belittling of the physically differently abled miss the point of the picture. The movie, based on the short story “Spurs” by Tod Robins, tells the tale of a circus midget who, assisted by his fellow sideshow freaks, exacts a terrible revenge upon the “normal” woman who marries him for his money and then tries to poison him. Thus the moral at the end is an uplifting – albeit somewhat disturbing – vindication of the right to be different. And beyond all else, the famous “wedding feast” sequence and the final chase are worth the viewing for their visual impact alone. Buy the tape

Review – Scooby-Doo

Wow. It’s just as dumb as the TV series. That must really have taken a lot of work. If you’re a big fan of the cartoon you’ll like as not be plenty entertained by the live action (or to be more precise live action combined with plentiful computer graphics) version. Further, it helps to already be familiar with the characters and typical plots from the show, because otherwise you’re likely to be left behind by the long string of in-jokes (particularly those about Scrappy Doo) interspersed throughout the movie. In-jokes and a few adult-oriented references aside, however, this is an entertaining if somewhat brain-numbing juvenile comedy. Mildly amusing

Review – Glitter

Okay, I’ve got a problem here. There’s just no sport in reviewing this movie. I mean, I could write a bunch of snide remarks about the trite, predictable plot. I could ask how many more productions we have to sit through in which a poor but ultra-talented ingénue struggles from the streets to a recording contract and then all the way up to a sold-out performance at Madison Square Garden (or similar plot to the same general effect). I could also go directly after the principal defect in this particular go-around: superstar Mariah Carey. I might wonder what evil demons possessed her and made her think that her singing career would extend to equal success in the acting world. I might observe that her skills as a thespian appear to be limited to stiff delivery of lines punctuated by long, vacant stares. I might even speculate that if her performance had been any more wooden perhaps the Blue Fairy might have shown up and turned her into a real boy. But honestly, so many other critics have already beaten me to this far-too-easy game that all I feel like I need to say is: See if desperate

Review – The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

Yet again Hollywood drags out the count and gives him a fresh flogging. Plenty of swordfights. Plenty of intrigue. Plenty of frantic overacting. Plenty of frilly costumes. Production values and high, making this a reasonably good retelling of a long-familiar story of love, betrayal and ice-cold revenge. Mildly amusing

Review – Terror Toons

I think the box I got was mislabeled. The DVD case says “Terror Toons,” but what I’ll bet it was supposed to say was “Terrible Crap.” Yet again the whatever-they-are at Brain Damage serve up cheap video porn without the porn. So as ever, if you have the attention span of a gnat and the sense of humor of a prematurely sexually aware five-year-old boy, you’ve finally found someone who will cater to your niche. Otherwise this is nothing more than a thoroughly annoying bit of drivel about a pair of guys in rubber masks who escape from cartoon land to terrorize teenagers (or rather thirtysomethings pretending to be teenagers). If this was as funny as the guys who made it seemed to think it was, this would be one of the great classics of American comedy. However, what they managed to come up with ranks in film history only alongside “classics” like Glen or Glenda? Except, of course, that at least Ed Wood had a measure of sincerity rather than nothing nobler than a deliberate desire to churn out garbage. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Omen 4

I suppose if one sets out to re-make the original Omen plot with a girl cast as the Antichrist, it’s only natural – however disappointing – when the story starts to resemble the ol’ Bad Seed routine. Weird thing is, roughly two thirds of the way through the film-makers apparently decided to break out of the rut and try a few novel Satanic sight gags. If the first couple of movies in this series left you curious about what the evil visions Damien’s victims saw just before their deaths actually looked like, the mystery is somewhat resolved here. Unfortunately that’s about the coolest thing this flick has to offer (aside from a gnarly rattlesnake attack and an unintentionally funny sequence in which a psychic fair catches fire). By the time the picture lapses into a paper-thin explanation for the connection between this tale and its predecessors, it’s lost most of its already limited ability to entertain. Mildly amusing

Review – Monsters, Inc.

Now here’s something I haven’t seen for awhile: a kids’ movie that actually appears to have been made for kids. The story – a goofy farce about a factory in Monsteropolis that specializes in transporting monsters into kids’ closets – is simple and straightforward. The plot doesn’t get bogged down or complicated with a lot of musical numbers, romantic twists or off-color jokes that presumably only adults would get. Instead this is pretty pure Disney, executed with the usual digital aplomb of Pixar. I suppose I’ve laughed harder at other movies, but for family-safe viewing you could do a lot worse. Mildly amusing

Review – Blade 2

At least it wasn’t as boring as the first one, due for the most part to the wise decision to crank up the action and turn down the plot. The story – to the extent that there is one – has something to do with our intrepid swordsman hero joining forces with his sworn enemies the vampires in order to defeat a legion of some kind of super-vampire creatures. A lot of the comic book elements creep in at awkward moments, such as the presence of a vampire SWAT team where each member has their own weapon of choice and nerdy nickname. But let’s be honest. If you’re going to rent a movie like this, you’re doing it for the creepy bloodsuckers and the flying fists of kung fu death. And you get both of those in abundance. Mildly amusing

Review – The Great Dictator

Given the physical resemblance between Charlie Chaplin’s famous “Little Tramp” and Germany’s infamous tyrant – however dependent on the moustache the similarity may have been – this should have been a better film. The lion’s share of the blame must unfortunately be placed upon Chaplin himself; the profound comic genius of his silent movies translates poorly at best to the sound era. Indeed, this movie’s almost more entertaining if watched with the sound off. The slapstick still comes through, so you’re getting the highlights without concerning yourself with the finer points of the go-nowhere plot (a silly farce about a Jewish barber being mistaken for the Great Dictator himself). Of course with the volume down you’ll miss the bits where Chaplin lapses into side-splitting rants of mock-German. But on the up-side, you’ll also miss the ineptly preachy speech at the end. Chaplin fans owe this at least one viewing (for the globe sequence if nothing else), but otherwise most of the great artist’s other offerings make better choices. Mildly amusing