Review – Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Watching this movie is like riding around with a driver who has one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brakes. First he stomps hard on one. Then he stomps hard on the other. One minute this production is hysterically funny, and the next it’s so annoying that it borders on unwatchable. Still, after Anchorman I expected a lot worse from Will Ferrell. Of course the subject helps a little. NASCAR pretty much serves as its own parody, though it gets a boost from just a touch of Ferrell’s George W. Bush character styling thrown in for good measure. My only gripe – other than the host of dead spots distributed throughout the picture – was the love interest. Leslie Bibb does an acceptable job, but if a role is clearly written for Jamie Presley then go ahead and spend the money to get Jamie Presley. Mildly amusing

Review – Buffy the Vampire Slayer

To this day it completely astounds me that this later became a successful television series. I never saw the TV show, but the movie that spawned it is pure sitcom. We’re given a 50 / 50 mix of valley girl high school comedy and vampire picture. The surprising thing is that the mix works fairly well. Perhaps it’s just that both of the spawning sub-genres are so dumb that their collective lack of wit blends easily together. In any event, despite a clever line or two and a handful of appearances by actors who would later become famous for other roles (not to mention two or three folks whose careers were headed in the opposite direction), for the most part this is just as terrible as the title makes it sound. See if desperate

Review – The Mummy’s Ghost

Mummies are scary. Ghosts are scary. So a mummy’s ghost should be double scary, right? Apparently not. Perhaps the two cancelled each other out rather than doubling up. Or perhaps the problem was that there’s a mummy here, but he doesn’t really seem to be a ghost of any kind. In any event, at this point I’ve lost track of which 40s-era mummy movie is a sequel to which other 40s-era mummy movie. I think this is a sequel to something, but it’s hard to be sure exactly to what without checking the timeline. And I’m too lazy to do research on a movie that isn’t any better than this. Once again Lon Chaney Jr. shambles about in search of tomb-defiling archaeologists, his mummy makeup sporting an especially inappropriate haircut. Just about the only notable feature of this episode is John Carradine’s entry into the White Guys Who Don’t Look Ethnic Just Because They’re Slathered With Makeup Hall of Fame. Beyond that, however, this is distinguished from every other cheap, black-and-white mummy movie ever made is the usual downer of an ending. See if desperate

Review – Trilogy of Terror

Richard Matheson supplies the short story sources and William F. Nolan writes the screenplays (except for the third, which Matheson scripted) for this trio of made-for-TV horror segments. Karen Black stars in all three sequences, playing an odd variety of protagonists. But of course the real star of the show is the now-famous Zuni Warrior Fetish Doll, the often-imitated-yet-never-equaled monster from the final third. Perhaps if it had been a little less cute or made a slightly less ridiculous noise, it might have stood a chance to not end up as high camp. But hey, at least it was welcome relief after the thoroughly-predictable course of the second sequence. And the very end supplies at least a bit of a genuine chill. Mildly amusing

Review – Post Impact

The Sci Fi Channel serves up another snoozefest about the end of the world. This time around Dean Cain stars as an ex-military guy trying to get back to Paris to look for his wife and child in a post-apocalyptic world in which half the planet has been obliterated by a giant snowstorm (not unlike the earlier and much more expensive The Day After Tomorrow). If stuff freezing over charms you, wait until it happens to Hell and then see this picture. See if desperate

Review – Caved In: Prehistoric Terror

Less thugs, more bugs. Jewel thieves in pursuit of a lode of giant emeralds kidnap a cave guide (a badly-aging Christopher Atkins, looking like a desiccated blend of Mark Hamil and Tommy Shaw). Sadly for all concerned, the abandoned mine they’re prowling is infested by giant beetles. When the monsters start attacking in waves and their intended victims fight back with lasers, the whole thing takes on the distinct look-and-feel of “Centipede: The Motion Picture.” However, we do get lines like “Your plans aren’t just coming apart. They’re being torn to shreds by giant bugs.” See if desperate

Review - A Few Good Men

On the surface this is an empty-headed military courtroom drama, a picture well suited for the “talents” of Tom Cruise and Demi Moore. It’s packed with the sort of dialogue and plot progression that clearly reveals its origin as a stage play. Further, it’s a stiff exploration of the nature of duty and honor, concepts apparently best understood in terms of platitude-laden barbs tossed back and forth between the characters. But to get more out of the viewing experience, carefully count up the sides. Almost all the protagonists are Navy, and almost all the antagonists are Marines. The result turns into a strange bit of class warfare in which the ruling elite eventually prevails over even a high-ranking member of the “grunts.” Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it, and there’s really nothing more here than Jack Nicholson’s high-ham insistence that Cruise “can’t handle the truth.” Mildly amusing

Review – The Tomb of Ligeia

I believe this was the last of the Poe pictures Roger Corman and Vincent Price did for American International. Though in the past I’ve griped about the inclusion of too much humor in horror pictures, this one actually might have benefited from a little levity here and there. The basic story is pure Poe: the vengeful spirit of a man’s first wife returns to torment his second. As that doesn’t really supply enough plot for a whole movie, we end up with a lot of go-nowhere embroidery such as strange dream sequences and weird legal complications. The result is a good deal duller than I’d expected. The picture also loses a point for the particularly brutal treatment of a cat. That the creature was the avatar of the departed spouse did little to add enjoyment to the experience of watching Price threaten, hit, and ultimately strangle her. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Tideland

Terry Gilliam continues his pursuit of the perfectly unmarketable movie, this time coming darn close to his goal. The plot summary actually makes it sound like this would have been a good movie for him: an imaginative pre-teen girl is isolated in a run-down farmhouse after both her junkie parents die. She befriends a mentally-ill woman and her brain-damaged brother. I figured such a trio of reality-challenged characters would give Gilliam no end of opportunities to employ his gift for unusual visuals. To be sure, he does so from time to time. But far more prevalent is his use of a meandering script that gives the girl and her crazy companions no end of opportunities to rattle on at length about nothing in particular. Thus overall the production didn’t make much of an impression on me. It had some good moments, but finding them requires a good deal of patience. Mildly amusing

Review – Blackwater Valley Exorcism

Imagine a bizarre combination of exorcism movie, religious message piece, and soap opera. Now try to imagine why anyone would want to make such a production. The movie leads off with a solemn assurance that the exorcism scenes were put together under the close supervision of a Catholic priest to assure authenticity, and then we’re told that this is based on a true story. Lord, I hope not. I’d like to think that God and Satan both have better things to do than this. See if desperate

Review – Tales of Terror

Roger Corman and Vincent Price team up once again to take on some classics from Edgar Allan Poe. This one differs from previous and subsequent efforts in that it’s an “anthology” piece rather than a single story. We get sequences based on three of Poe’s better-known tales: “Morella,” “The Black Cat” and “The Case of M. Valdemar.” But when writing the screenplay Richard Matheson by no means limited himself to the stories at hand. For example, the “Black Cat” sequence included hefty doses of “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (which at least provided some respite from the awful cat hatred of the main story). Price stars in all three sequences, backed by other horror veterans including Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone. Overall I thought the Valdemar bit was the best, in part because I like the original story and in part because they add some fun new twists to it. Mildly amusing

Review – Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill

Members of a high school debate team (and honestly, these actors are high school kids like the cast of Grease was) are waylaid by a carjacker and end up in a ghost town full of flesh-eating zombies led by the evil reanimated corpse of a Confederate raider. I don’t know what’s more frightening, the vengeful spirit of a 19th century criminal who thinks black people should be slaves or a 21st century film-maker who portrays the only black male character as a criminal. Further assaults on the audience include the script, the acting (honestly, is it that hard to play a zombie?), and the editing. But my personal favorite was the contrivance that the town itself is literally a “twilight zone” permanently locked just at sunset, allowing the director to use an obnoxious orange filter on almost every shot in the picture. At least that saved him from worrying about lighting continuity. See if desperate

Review – Tales of the Rat Fink

As the title suggests, this is a documentary about Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, legendary cartoonist and car customizer. The film-makers make this easy to watch by throwing in a lot of animated sequences and telling part of the story by having celebrities provide voices for some of the actual cars (Roth’s and otherwise) used in the movie. It’s a soft, clever little way to make a documentary, a style that wouldn’t work with a lot of subjects but seems to fit this one rather well. Of course they fall into the usual trap of making the subject sound like he invented American popular culture all by himself, but in light of the important contributions Roth actually did make, a little hyperbole can be excused. Mildly amusing

Review – Frankenstein Reborn

Audience re-bored. Funny how they can take a classic story, update it for the 21st century, toss in a load of gore and boob shots, and come out with something vastly inferior to the original. Of course part of the problem with both the Whale version and this stinker is that they’re plagued with technical problems. Back in the 30s that could be excused; in the early days of sound, nobody was exactly sure what they were doing. Now, however, folks really ought to know better than to pepper the soundtrack with noises so annoying that they send the home audience scrambling for the mute button. And the tank of green fluid the good doctor uses to reanimate corpses? It looks like they stole it from the set of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The overall result is yet another haphazardly-produced parade of misogynist violence. Snore. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Blood of Dracula (1957)

This thing’s got almost no blood and even less Dracula (unless you count the fact that some of the characters refer to vampires as “Draculas”). Instead what we get is the bizarre tale of a rebellious teenage girl who gets sent to a boarding school. There she falls under the hypnotic influence of a twisted chemistry teacher who tries some kind of bizarre mind control experiment on her. As a result she’s transformed into a bloodsucking fiend, and things go downhill from there. The script and acting are awful in equal measures, making this play out like an old John Waters movie (only Waters was parodying productions like this, whereas I’m pretty sure these folks are serious). It also sports a parade of JD movie clichés, including a dreadful musical number. Though film students in the 1950s might have been able to consult this production as an example of how not to make a movie, by now even that small value is gone, making this little more than a relic of an age that has fortunately passed away. See if desperate

Review – Terror in the Aisles

If horror movies needed a clip show, this production supplies it. Overall it’s not bad, but there are some drawbacks here and there. First, the narration by Donald Pleasance and Nancy Allen can be a bit stiff. The movie also seems to assume that you’ve seen the movies being clipped. For example, the ending of Psycho is totally revealed, so if you haven’t already seen it this will ruin the experience but good. Nor is Psycho the only picture that gets “spoiled.” Further, they seem to be messing with the soundtracks of some of the clips, and of course the edited-for-TV version is missing some gore, some language and some nudity. Also, this was made in 1984, and obviously a lot of water has flowed under the horror bridge since then. But the one major problem here is inherent to the very concept: really good horror depends on a story. Isolated moments – no matter how inspired – just don’t work as well alone as they do in their proper contexts. Drawbacks aside, however, there are some real classic moments here, and reliving them is fun. Mildly amusing

Review – It Came from Outer Space

Elsewhere I’ve suggested pairing up The Thing from Another World with The Day the Earth Stood Still in order to provide some contrast between different views of aliens (and perhaps the Communists they were at least in some ways intended to stand in for). But I wonder now if perhaps this same-era piece based on a short story by Ray Bradbury wouldn’t make a better compare-and-contrast. For starters, like the Howard Hawks Thing, this one’s told from the perspective of the humans, not the alien. In the face of ugly monsters kidnapping random townspeople, the only reason we have to trust them – aside from their own say-so – is that the hero trusts them. As it turns out, he’s right. Thus this becomes a valuable lesson in avoiding the temptation to give in to our prejudices, more so than when Michael Rennie fails to evoke those prejudices to begin with. Mildly amusing

Review – Dolly Dearest

“I’m not going to lose my daughter to some damn 900-year-old goat head!” Actual dialogue from the movie. And fairly indicative of the overall experience, too. As the title makes plain, what we’ve got here is yet another attack-of-the-evil-dolls, sort of a Chucky meets The Exorcist with only the worst elements of each included. When the evil side of the dolls finally comes to the surface, they end up looking like Andy Rooney in a wig. And as potentially scary as Andy Rooney in a wig might be … well, it just doesn’t work. Denise Crosby, Sam Bottoms and Rip Torn all lend their talents to this production, suggesting that this thing must have been intended to do at least a little business at the box office. Why then did they decide to call it “Dolly Dearest”? Even “900-Year-Old Goat Head” would have been a more appealing title. See if desperate

Review – The Pirate Movie

This does for Gilbert and Sullivan what Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band did for The Beatles. And given that The Pirates of Penzance was a goofy farce to begin with, 80s-izing it brings the show to the very brink of intolerability. Kristy McNicholl and Christopher Atkins star as the beautiful-as-they-are-stupid, star-crossed young lovers caught between the British establishment and a band of slapstick pirates. Part of the excuse for the dreadfulness of this picture might be provided by the studio’s need to rush it through production in order to “scoop” a competitor’s more-true-to-the-original release. Regardless of excuse, however, the result is so terrible that it actually manages to become entertaining in a comedic car wreck sort of way. See if desperate

Review – Mothman

At least this one actually had a Mothman. A simple vengeance-seeking haint rather than a spooky alien presence, but still a Mothman. A well-designed but in places poorly executed bit of CGI, but still a Mothman. A reporter (Serenity’s Jewell Staite) returns to her home town to write a puff piece about the annual Point Pleasant Mothman Festival and finds herself dragged into the path of an evil spirit out for revenge for a drowning that happened a decade earlier. Mildly amusing

Review – Flatliners

A quintet of hot-at-the-time stars (Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin and Oliver Platt) play med students who decide to play around with near-death experiences by stopping each others’ hearts and then brining each other back. This could have led in some interesting directions, particularly if the story had followed the implication of the previews (that they go to the “other side” and end up bringing something evil back with them). But even with no bigger boogeyman than the characters’ own subconscious guilt, in more competent hands this still could have been a more entertaining production. What we end up with is a three-way competition for “most awful element of the whole movie.” Though the acting and the script are strong contenders, I think the prize has to go to the visuals. Almost every shot in the whole picture is cartoonishly colored by primary-color lighting, and the art direction constantly borders on the absurd. An anatomy class in what looks like a poorly-lit gallery at an art museum? And that’s just one example. Overall something way better could have been done with all this money. See if desperate

Review – Pharaoh’s Curse

Watching this movie was like volunteering for some kind of cruel sleep deprivation experiment. The story is sooooo boring that in fairly short order it started to put me out like a swig of NyQuil. But every time I started to nod off, some new bogey would spook the love interest and she’d go into a top-volume screeching fit. Or some equally pointless noise-making would occur. I wish if film-makers set about the task of putting me to sleep that they’d at least have the courtesy to not wake me up. To the extent that this production even had a story, it seemed to be about some archaeologists and soldiers defiling an ancient tomb and awakening its guardian mummy (a monster that from most angles looks like an old guy in a nightshirt). So at least if I’d managed to sleep through it I could have made it up later by watching any other mummy movie ever made. See if desperate

Review – The Beast of Bray Road

Another perfectly serviceable urban legend dies a protracted, painful death at the hands of a crew of inept film-makers. Start with the usual mix of bad acting, bad writing, and bad technical quality. Stir in a werewolf that looks like a big, rabid teddy bear. Then limit the monster’s diet to rednecks, making it pretty well impossible to care whether or not the rampage of death and destruction ever comes to an end. Indeed, this picture commanded so little of my interest that I actually forgot to wonder who would end up being the beast. So when the “mystery” was finally solved it caught me by surprise, not because it was actually surprising but because it hadn’t occurred to me that there was a mystery to begin with. See if desperate

Review – Modern Times

I suppose most folks who like Charlie Chaplin’s work (and if you don’t, you have a hole in your soul) probably have a favorite. With all the considerable respect due to The Gold Rush, this one is mine. Sure, it’s a bit of a cheat. Modern Times came later in Chaplin’s career, after most everyone else had switched to “talkies.” So by 1936 he’d had plenty of time to develop his routines, and he could also stir in some soundtrack stuff here and there (including a hysterical musical number). However, beyond the technical details lies an excellent story. This tale of a ne’er-do-well struggling to find a place in modern society is sentimental without being as overwhelmingly sappy as City Lights, political without being as pedantic as The Great Dictator. I have no idea how many times I’ve seen this (the first was in an art house back in the days before VCRs), but I still laugh out loud every time despite knowing exactly what’s going to happen. Buy the disc

Review – Sands of Oblivion

I think I’m starting to develop a tolerance for Sci Fi Channel movies. To be sure, this is stupid stuff. The thesis is that when Cecil B. DeMille made his silent version of The Ten Commandments he used some actual Egyptian stuff in the set he built in the California sand dunes. And apparently the stuff had some kind of curse on it (go figure). So when preservationists try to rescue the old shooting location before it’s wrecked by an oil company, they manage to wake up a big, burly guy with a horse skull for a head. Cheap as the villain is, it actually isn’t the worst monster I’ve ever seen. Ditto for the script and the acting. Indeed, aside from a dune buggy race that seems to go on forever, this actually manages to stay fairly entertaining. It’s not going to go down in history as a great moment in the cinema art, but then it wasn’t really trying to be a historic moment. And it wasn’t the dumbest thing I’ve seen so far this year (or so far this weekend, for that matter). Mildly amusing

Review – Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula

For awhile now I’ve been convinced that the real story of Vlad the Impaler – or at least as close to the real story as history will let us come – would make a better tale than the gothic potboiler cooked up by Bram Stoker more than a hundred years ago. This made-for-TV production only partially proves my point. Though its heart is in the right place, the story wavers between interesting 15th century history and cartoonish attempts to incorporate the vampire legends into the matter-of-fact drama (such as suggesting that the “sunlight kills him” thing might have had something to do with a genetic condition that made him sensitive to light). Though this is better than most vampire stories of similar ilk, it’s still too low rent to really impress. Mildly amusing

Review – Sorry, Haters

Sorry movie. Robin Wright Penn stars as a crazy woman who hauls a hapless cab driver and his family into her bizarre web of dangerous self-delusion. From beginning to end this production is stupid and mean, and contrary to IFC’s apparent expectation this stupidity and meanness does not become art merely because of an inept, low-budget presentation. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

No amount of slick production values can turn this mean little sow’s ear into a silk purse. Here we have the dark “comedic” tale of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a young man who is apparently the Mozart of odors. His superhuman ability to smell things leads him into a quest to make a perfume with the essence of murdered women. After much trial and error, he finally figures out the trick of getting their scent from them, after which he goes on quite a killing spree. Though the production values are solid enough, the script is awful and the cast behind the antihero more than a little weak. Dustin Hoffman in particular turns in a performance so wretched that I was genuinely glad when his house collapsed on top of him (and if that’s a spoiler, it isn’t much of one). Unless one is particularly fond of arty slasher movies with morally-ambiguous endings, the only fun to be had here is the contribution the actors make to the pursuit of the answer to the question, “How many different ways are there to pronounce ‘Grenouille’?” See if desperate

Review – Trucks

Of all the stories Stephen King ever wrote, why did anyone think the one about trucks coming to life and attacking humans would make a good movie? And even more astounding, after Maximum Overdrive proved that it didn’t make a good movie, why oh why oh why did anyone decide to try it again? I’m almost impressed that the folks this time around managed to produce something even more dull and stupid than the first one. See if desperate

Review – Larva

I spend a lot of time griping about how bad horror movies suck at least in part because they don’t have enough plot. This one seems to have come down with the opposite malady. A big agribusiness concern has done something to the cattle in a small farming community. They’re producing more meat, but apparently they’re also producing giant, mutant liver flukes (that for some reason look like flightless bats). And the closer we get to the end the more obscure the characters’ motivations become. And just as the Kansas of The Wizard of Oz is sepia-toned black and white, the Missouri of this effort is orange-filtered. Despite its many shortcomings, I liked it at least a little because one of the characters wore a KC Royals cap. Hey, when it comes to my team I’m easy to please (a character trait that comes in handy if you’re a Royals fan). Mildly amusing

Review – The Number 23

This comes across as a grim version of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a comparison invited by the film-makers’ decision to make an arty production full of memory-twisting high jinks and cast Jim Carrey in the starring role. This time around he’s a dog catcher who starts reading a novel about a guy whose life was ruined by a lattice of intersections with the title digits. Our hero becomes more and more certain that he’s in the same boat as the hero of the book, and more I can’t really say without giving away too much of the plot. It’s a self-consciously pretty movie, well put-together but in the end not especially interesting. And that’s a shame, because the tie between numerology and craziness could have been exploited to better effect. Mildly amusing