Review – The Phantom of the Opera (1962)

This time around, Hammer tries its hand at movie-izing Gaston Leroux’s classic tale. Herbert Lom dons a one-eyed phantom mask to star, but for the most part this is a cheap British reheat of the plot from the 1943 version. Mildly amusing

Review – The Brides of Dracula

No Dracula. Not really much in the way of brides. Instead Hammer serves up a muddled mess of a picture, one of those things that looks like it was torn apart at some point in the production process and never sewed back together quite right. Ingénue gets stranded at an inn and then taken in by a baroness who keeps her handsome-yet-creepy son chained in his room. Do I even have to say that he’s a vampire? When our gullible heroine unchains him a festival of sucking (literally and figuratively) commences. Even Peter Cushing can’t do much to save this one. See if desperate

Review – Stephen King’s Thinner

Are you a successful lawyer with a weight problem? Have you recently killed the daughter of a fortune teller in an auto accident? If so, better take your punishment rather than walking free with the aid of a friendly judge and police witness. Otherwise you might end up with a terrible curse that makes you lose weight until you waste away to nothing. The movie follows the “Richard Bachman” source novel fairly closely, making an occasional improvement here and there. Overall the most interesting thing about the story (aside from the novel nature of the curse) is the conflict between ancient magic and modern, non-magical viciousness. Mildly amusing

Review – Haunted Boat

Ghost stories are entertaining. Sea stories are entertaining. But this sea ghost story is so far from entertaining it isn’t even funny. It starts out as a simple story of a guy who inherits a haunted boat (hence the title) and takes a group of his friends out for a cruise. But it swiftly degenerates into a meandering mess of barely-related subplots that serve no function beyond providing a handful of very cheap thrills. Even if this ever had a chance to be good, it’s too ineptly produced to have any entertainment value at all. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Letters from Iwo Jima

Here we have the other half of Flags of Our Fathers, the story of the battle for Iwo Jima told from the Japanese perspective. Overall this one’s the better of the two. It’s a straightforward war-is-hell account of the doomed efforts of a small handful of soldiers to defend positions in the face of overwhelming odds. Of course we also get plenty of cliché hapless-soldiers-versus-cruel-officers stuff. But overall this is a reasonably touching production, a nice blend of big budget and personal storytelling. Mildly amusing

Mixed emotions about the ninth plan

Last week I watched Plan 9 from Outer Space for the first time. I’m not quite sure how I managed to escape the experience for 42 years. I’ve seen scenes from this classic in any number of “worst movie ever made” shows. And of course the behind-the-scenes story is extensively, lovingly re-created in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood biopic. But whole nine yards of the plan eluded me – or I eluded it – until now.

I was surprised at the range of emotions the movie inspired. The most obvious reaction to it is a sense of derisive mirth. It is, after all, one of the worst movies ever made. That’s a hard-earned distinction based on an impressive uniformity of terribleness. The script is as bad as the acting, which in turn is as bad as the editing and direction. Awfulness on this level can’t help but be funny.

But the joke gets old after awhile. I suppose 10 or 15 minutes of this kind of thing would have been hysterical, but after more than an hour of it the incompetence gag wears out its welcome like a late-in-the-show sketch on Saturday Night Live. Indeed, it becomes downright monotonous.

I suspect I’m not alone in my opinion about the short-lived nature of the amusement. I note that most of the quotes and clips I’ve seen elsewhere were taken from the first 20 minutes or so of the picture.

But more than anything else – even more than the hilarity of its awfulness – this is a sad movie. Most obviously, it’s sad that this was the end of Bela Lugosi’s career. The poor guy was legendary for playing Dracula in the Todd Browning production that set the standard for all Draculas to follow. But by this point in his career, all he can do is stumble around a bit. He died before Wood could get anything on film beyond a handful of shots of Lugosi leaving his house, going back into his house, and briefly strolling in a graveyard. Kids, don’t do heroin.

But more than that, it’s Wood’s sincerity that’s the real heart-breaker. He obviously means to make a good movie, yet has no idea how to go about it. He isn’t like the hundreds – no, thanks to digital production, make that thousands – of crap-slingers who blithely churn out the worst kind of garbage without the slightest regard for what they do. He obviously cares. Frankly, that takes most of the sport out of picking on him and his compatriots.

I think Ed Wood has something to teach us about ourselves, the way we’ve become in the 21st century. But that will need to wait until a future entry.

Review – Night Creatures

Hammer serves up a little non-supernatural drama for a change. Peter Cushing stars as the parson of a small English coastal town. The locals make their living smuggling liquor in from France without paying the high taxes on it, a practice that catches the attention of the authorities, and a ship full of arrogant British Navy men show up to investigate. The plot twists and turns a bit before it’s done, making this an entertaining little picture but not much else. Mildly amusing

Review – The Evil of Frankenstein

Actually, if we really want to lay the blame at the proper doorstep, this movie should be called The Evil of the Guy Who Hypnotizes Frankenstein’s Monster and Orders Him to Commit Crimes. Freddie Francis directs and Peter Cushing stars in this Hammer production. The Baron returns to his old haunts and resumes his old habits, a task made easier when his original monster turns up frozen in a glacier. When the creature proves unruly, the doctor enlists the aid of Zoltan the carnival hypnotist (Peter Woodthorpe) to rein him in. Unfortunately, Zoltan is more interested in theft and revenge than in advancing the cause of science. Though this isn’t the worst Frankenstein movie I’ve ever seen, it’s a fair distance from the best. The monster makeup in particular stands out, looking like a cheap copy of the box-headed look that made Karloff famous, only layered on thickly enough to disguise the fact that Kiwi Kingston – whoever he might be – isn’t Christopher Lee. Mildly amusing

Review – Black Friday

This has to be one of the all-time weirdest explanations for the Jekyl-Hyde dual personality plot: when a surgeon’s friend is mortally wounded in a car crash, the doctor saves the man’s life by giving him a partial brain transplant from the other crash victim, a notorious gangster. Thus a mild-mannered professor by day is transformed into a brutal, vengeance-bent thug at night. The result is more boring than it has any right to be. Boris Karloff stars as the mad doctor, and Bela Lugosi puts in a brief appearance as one of the mobster’s double-crossing ex-cronies. Mildly amusing

Review – Plan 9 from Outer Space

This both is and isn’t as bad as I’d heard it was. Of course it’s plenty awful, a badness beyond Glen or Glenda? In an exploitation documentary a certain amount of terribleness is to be expected. But in a narrative drama, well, this is just pure incompetent silliness. It’s also more than a little sad, especially as the last movie Bela Lugosi ever made (to the extent that he can even be said to be in it, as he died fairly early in the production). And worst of all, the humor of the whole mess gets old long before the running time expires. Overall this is plenty awful, but I’ll take an earnest dreadfulness over an uncaring hack job any day of the week. See if desperate

Review – Diplomatic Courier

Though I Tivo’d this on a whim, it actually turned out to be kinda good. Tyrone Power stars as a courier assigned to pick up a secret document from a spy in Eastern Europe. But when the spy is killed before making the hand-off, suddenly our hero finds himself neck-deep in deadly intrigue. Though not as classy as The Third Man, this movie has some of the same look and feel of Carol Reed’s masterpiece. However, you’ll need to pay close attention when you watch this. The plot occasionally hinges on blink-and-you-miss-it moments. You’ll also want to keep an eye out for small parts played by future stars. In addition to supporting roles by Patricia Neal and Karl Malden, we also get brief appearances by Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin. Though this isn’t one of the eight best spy movies ever made, it’s nonetheless worth a look. Mildly amusing

Review – Death and the Maiden

This is one of those productions that was obviously a stage play before it became a movie. Director Roman Polanski decided to preserve the stiff theatricality of the drama, keeping almost the entire story in one location, sticking with the play-it-for-the-back-row dialogue, and so on. Sigourney Weaver turns in a nuance-free performance as a former political prisoner in an unnamed South American country. Fate brings a man (Ben Kingsley) to the country house she shares with her husband. Claiming to recognize his voice, she identifies him as her torturer, ties him up at gunpoint and conducts a half-baked trial with hubby as counsel for the defense. The script is an uneven mix of artificial power-jockeying and graphic descriptions of torture. Though the unrealistic feel of the picture provides some safe distance between the audience and the difficult subject at hand, that buffer zone is a detriment as well as a benefit. In particular, it makes the end merely convenient rather than thought-provoking. Mildly amusing

Review – One Missed Call

This is mostly just a cheap casserole of leftovers from other movies. It has a strong flavor of The Ring, only the cell phone address book element gives it a taste of an old horror movie from the 80s called Ghost in the Machine. For awhile the apparently-accidental deaths suggest Final Destination, but then the boogeyman (or boogeyperson, as the case may be) comes out into the open. Overall this has a good visual or two, but the story’s just too much of a dull reheat to keep things interesting. The child abuse angle is also more icky than it is intriguing. See if desperate

Review – Unrest

Despite some rough spots, overall I liked this entry in the 2006 Horrorfest set. First year med students end up with an evil-spirit-possessed corpse in anatomy class. Though the screenwriters have a poor grasp of character development and motivation, they do tell a reasonably good story. Likewise the effects aren’t spectacular but more than do the job required of them. Overall this wasn’t the best horror movie I’ve ever seen, but it was a long way from the worst. Mildly amusing

Review – Shutter

Once again Asian ghosts show up in a Hollywood production. Actually, if you like this sort of thing, this one isn’t too bad. A fashion photographer and his wife start to notice spooky images showing up in their photos. Eventually the phantom blurs resolve themselves into the ghost of a woman wronged by hubby on a previous trip to Japan. I liked the unusually downbeat ending. Beyond that, however, this only proves once again that while Asian ghosts don’t pack as much in the violence department, no vengeful spirits in the world can match them for sheer dogged determination. Mildly amusing

Review – Trapped Ashes

One nice thing about horror anthology pieces like this is that if one sequence sucks you can still hold out hope for the next one. Unfortunately, here the best sequences are front-loaded, thus building up expectations that never pay off. The  wraparound was directed by Joe Dante, and it was fun to see his usual visual tricks and a tried-and-true cast member or two even though the story was a stiff re-heat of the wrap from Tales from the Crypt. The lead-off spot is occupied by “The Girl with the Golden Breasts” directed by Ken Russell (who I honestly thought was dead). This tale of a woman who gets vampire breast implants made a good starter because it took the “oooh, boobies” edge off the usual cheap horror movie obsessive treatment of female partial frontal nudity. Next comes “Jibaku” directed by Friday the 13th’s Sean S. Cunningham. It was spooky in an icky Japanese horror porn sort of way. From there, however, the production went sharply downhill. “Stanley’s Girlfriend” is entertaining only for the only-somewhat-oblique hints that the Stanley in question is Stanley Kubrick. And “My Twin, The Worm” is a flat-out dull story of a woman who once shared a womb with a tapeworm. If Stanley and the worm had been replaced with something more in keeping with the first two tales, this would have been a much better picture. Mildly amusing

Review – The Ruins

This is better than the book only in that it isn’t as long. And that is an actual improvement, because if the only thing a story has to offer the world is the agonizing deaths of characters the audience doesn’t care about, then such an experience is more pleasant when it ends after 90 minutes rather than stretching out over more than 300 pages. The truncation of Scott Smith’s story also eliminates some of the annoying elements from the book. For example, here the plants only imitate sounds they’ve actually heard. But just because this is a smaller turd than the source novel doesn’t make it any more appetizing of a meal. See if desperate

Review – The Birds 2: Land's End

Following the general trend in sequels made decades after popular originals, this is both dumb and largely unrelated to the Hitchcock classic (other than large flocks of angry birds and a brief appearance by Tippi Hedren). It also pretty much goes without saying that the picture is pretty hard on the birds. The family dog, too, though at least he gets a decent funeral (one of the few expressions of compassion for an animal I’ve ever seen in a horror movie). Further, the deadly birds don’t seem to supply enough of a plot to sustain the whole 90 minutes, so as filler we get the lead couple’s lame marital woes. Then the whole thing ends abruptly with nothing but set-up for an as-yet-blissfully-unrealized Birds 3. See if desperate

Review – The Gravedancers

Though I can’t go quite all the way to actually recommending this picture, it’s a good deal better than I thought it would be. Lured by bad greeting card poetry, three drunken friends decide to go dance on graves in a cemetery. Misfortune number one: dancing on a grave summons the spirit of the occupant in search of revenge. Misfortune number two: the graves the trio danced on all belonged to psycho-killers. Oddly enough, the story stays interesting most of the way through. Add a few solid, spooky effects, and you’ve got as much as you can reasonably ask from a mid-budget horror movie. After Mulberry Street and Nightmare Man, I was about ready to take the Horrorfest series out of my Netflix queue. Now I may stick with it a bit longer. Mildly amusing

Review – Amityville 2: The Possession

This picture takes a worst-of-both-worlds approach to combining the original Amityville Horror with The Exorcist. Of course by the time this one went into production the whole “true story” gag had fallen through, so it was either come up with something new or fall back on demonic possession clichés. Guess which path got chosen. The first half of the movie is okay despite inept film-making and an especially icky incest subplot. However, the inevitable family massacre occurs with a considerable amount of the movie still to go, and most everything after that is a dull battle between a latex-slathered teenager and James Olson as a lackluster priest. See if desperate

Review – Wicked Little Things

As proven by The Brood, Children of the Corn, and several other productions, if you’re going to make children into the monsters in a horror movie, you have to really work at it. And this one doesn’t put in anywhere near the required effort. The evil kids in question are the restless zombies of children killed in a coal mine, a theme that might have been used to good advantage. The woody, hilly locations are occasionally kinda cool. Ben “Chariots of Fire” Cross turns in a lackluster performance as the old hillbilly who keeps the beasts at bay by serving up live pigs for them to munch on. But nothing in the production overcomes the fact that the monsters here are zombie kids, and they’re just flat out not that scary. Mildly amusing

Review – Ghouls

Once again “Sci Fi Channel original” and “uninspired crap” turn out to be synonymous. In this effort our heroine joins her father in Eastern Europe only to discover that she’s the heir to evil dominion over flying clouds of black visual effects that on occasion resolve themselves into guys in terrible rubber make-up. Sometimes these inept productions will take a good concept and ruin it with a bad script and terrible acting. Though the script and acting stink, at least here they aren’t spoiling what otherwise would have been a good story. This one sucked from the get-go. See if desperate

Review – Internal Affairs

An hour or so in, I had to back up to the opening credits to see if Joe Eszterhas wrote the screenplay. He didn’t, but he might as well have. This is an endless parade of the kind of mindless violence, brutal sex and half-baked dialogue that made him famous. Richard Gere stars as a crooked cop under investigation by the LAPD’s internal affairs division. By the end – actually sometime before the end – Gere’s character’s behavior becomes so completely outlandish that he seems merely to be trying to commit suicide by forcing the investigator on his trail (Andy Garcia) to kill him. As usual with movies like this, the payoff at the end is vastly inadequate considering how much misery and death the villain inflicts before getting his come-uppance. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Madman

I know the slasher sub-genre was still fairly new back in 1982, but even back then there were enough examples of how to do it (and how not to do it) that there’s really no excuse for a movie that makes as many mistakes as this one does. A summer camp full of horny twenty-somethings is menaced by the zombie-ghost of an axe-murdering farmer named Madman Marz. I suppose at the time it had enough cheap gore and boob shots to get it on Cinemax, but by 21st century standards it’s clunky and dull. See if desperate

Review – Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple

Unlike most of the other things I’ve seen about Jim Jones – mostly crap on high-band cable – this is a serious documentary rather than cheap sensationalism. That’s no big surprise, considering this is part of the PBS American Experience series. Overall it’s an excellent blend of interviews – really good interviews – and old footage from various points in the cult’s history. The thing I liked the most about this was the insight into the ordinary people and everyday operations of the cult. Jones himself aptly comes across as a dull blend of charismatic preacher and garden-variety psychopath. The interesting part of the story is the positive effects the Peoples Temple had on the lives of its members and how that beneficial influence was twisted by the cult’s leader. If you’re watching this on DVD, be sure to watch the deleted scenes as well. Worth seeing

Review – Legend of Ogre

After all these years of sitting through crappy, low-budget knock-offs of popular U.S. horror movies, it’s oddly comforting to know that the “idiot with a video camera” school of film-making isn’t confined by national borders. This Japanese video production has some of the standard ghost story elements, but it’s so cheap and ineptly put together that it’s impossible to take seriously. Of course it doesn’t help that the “ogre” turns out to be the ghost of a small girl in a pink wig. Perhaps it would be really spooky in its native land, but around these parts the common reaction to such a thing would be to snatch its wig off and punt it over the hedge. Even the translation is bad. Whatever the Japanese word for the monster is, it isn’t accurate to translate it as “ogre.” And much of the rest of the conversion to English is similarly awkward. At least the stiffness fit well with the overall quality of the production. See if desperate

Review – The Cars that Ate Paris

In the last ten minutes or so of this movie, a small Australian town is attacked by vicious art cars led by a spiny VW Beetle. Though the cars were sort of fun, they did little to justify the first 80 minutes of the production. Almost all of the rest of the thing is an excessively boring tale of a guy who suffers from a phobia of cars. He interacts with the locals in many spectacularly dull ways, all involving speech so thickly accented that it’s sometimes hard to understand. So basically if you’re going to watch this at all, go ahead and fast-forward to the end. See if desperate

Review – Garden of the Dead

My dad took me to a drive-in showing of this “masterpiece” when it was first released or thereabouts, making it the first zombie movie I ever saw. Inmates escape from a prison camp only to be gunned down by the ruthless warden and his staff. Little do the forces of law and order know that these guys have secretly been getting high on formaldehyde fumes, pre-pickling them into the walking dead. I remembered it as being both longer and scarier than it turned out to be, but then I was only six or so when I saw it the first time. Also note: this viewing was via a DVD released by Troma, which included a long introduction that couldn’t be skipped or even fast-forwarded. The disc also included two other movies I didn’t have the stomach to even try watching. See if desperate

Review – The Eye (2008)

The Asian original was the first movie I ever saw from Netflix, and that’s been awhile. So sadly I don’t recall enough about the Chinese version to make much of a direct comparison, but I remember liking the first round better than this remake. Jessica Alba does an okay job as a blind violinist who has surgery to restore the sight she lost when she was a kid. Unfortunately for her, her donor was a psychic who could see ghosts and predict disasters. The set-up is good enough, if a bit cliché. Unfortunately the picture itself is riddled with questionable logic and depends far too heavily on booga-booga moments. And that’s a real shame. On the rare occasions when it masters a bit of subtlety, it’s not a bad movie. See if desperate

Review – The Onion Movie

Not since Kentucky Fried Movie has random silliness worked this well. Indeed, it’s even better than previous efforts because it has The Onion’s great sense of humor rather than the distinctly dated material from movies gone by. To be sure, it’s somewhat uneven. In particular, I thought the Network-esque story that cropped up from time to time didn’t really add much to the experience. But otherwise the range it ran was from side-splitting to “that’s kinda cute,” with almost no “eech, that sucked” moments. Comedy producers should do more of this sort of thing. Worth seeing

Review – National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets

For the most part this is another batch of the same recipe they used to make the first one. Nicolas Cage resumes the lead of a coterie of treasure-hunting history nerds, this time in pursuit of the lost gold city of Cibola (and the opportunity to clear his family’s name from a recently-unearthed connection to the Lincoln assassination). Some of the twists and turns are entertaining, particularly the notion that buried somewhere in the Library of Congress is a President’s-eyes-only notebook with the answers to every conspiracy riddle from the Kennedy assassination to Area 51. On the other hand, most of the thrills are more video game than movie, frequently failing the “why would anyone set it up that way?” plausibility test. Overall this follows the formula but not much else. Mildly amusing

Review – Jumper

Here we have another attempt to sustain an hour and a half of screen time with a “what if?” premise. So we start by asking “what if you could transport yourself instantly to anyplace in the world?” That stays interesting long enough for the protagonist to get a grip on his power and use it to steal a few things and generally live the good life. But as that’s worth 15 minutes tops, we have to have a love interest and a squad of religious fanatics trying to track down and murder anyone who can “jump.” Some of the special effects are entertaining enough, but otherwise this is dim-witted and boring. See if desperate

Review – Darkman 3: Die Darkman Die

The Darkman set should have followed this title’s advice at the end of the first one. If the series had died before it even became a series, it would have finished on a high note and spared us all a pair of unnecessary sequels. I’ve already accused the second one of being leftovers, and by the time they serve this one the reheated plot is getting pretty skimpy (and maybe a little moldy around the edges). While our hero (Arnold Vosloo in a repeat performance) continues to slave away on his synthetic skin formula, Jeff Fahey steps into the villain role as a crime boss seeking a extra-strengh steroid formula in order to produce super street thugs. Like the first sequel, this one takes some visual tricks from the original and uses them to mostly mediocre ends. See if desperate

Review – The Tattooist

I liked this one better than I thought I would. The premise – tattooist’s work ends up cursing his subjects – has some potential that I assumed the production would squander. But not necessarily so. The out-of-control, fatal designs work well – as does the restless spirit behind them – because they’re sufficiently understated to actually be spooky. I also liked the ethnic-sensitivity thread that runs throughout: the protagonist’s problems are due at least in part to his decision to steal from Samoan artists. We even get an entertaining murder mystery thrown in for good measure. Though this isn’t going to walk away with any Oscars, for a medium-budget horror movie it’s not half bad. Worth seeing

Review – Lions for Lambs

Okay, I get it. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are being mishandled. A lot of good people are losing their lives in the field while incompetent bunglers in Washington play their stupid games and academics click their tongues about how awful it is. It isn’t that I disagree with the message here. I just didn’t care for the way it was presented. Robert Redford helms this cavalcade of Hollywood hand-wringing so obviously grinding a liberal axe that it’s automatically untrustworthy, no matter how sincere or even accurate I’d like it to be. The Afghanistan sequences were good in a casualty-statistics-have-names-and-faces sort of way, but the rest of it was stiff and preachy. See if desperate

Review – The Bourne Ultimatum

Third verse, same as the second. Honestly, I’m surprised this was ever a novel. The whole thing seemed to be one chase scene and/or gun battle after another. Occasionally a minor plot twist would get stirred in here and there, but for the most part it’s wall-to-wall action and not much else. If number two floated your boat, this one will keep you sailing merrily along. Mildly amusing

Review – Vantage Point

Though several critics compared this to Rashomon, that isn’t exactly correct. We don’t really get different, subjective perspectives on a crime as much as we get the same story told over and over from different objective angles, following different characters. And each time the story is told, we get a bit more of it until at last the tale is complete. The assassination conspiracy stuff is entertaining, particularly the “lone gunman” joke at the end. The effects were good, competent without drawing undue attention to themselves. And the Hollywood stars fit fairly well into the whole ensemble cast thing. On the other hand, it featured more car chasing than was strictly necessary, and some of the subplots were too contrived. Overall this made for good summer DVD junk food. Mildly amusing

Review – Nightmare Man

Here we have yet another movie that banks a lot on the premise that the viewer has the sexual maturity of a 13-year-old boy. Actually, this isn’t really all that great a movie even for teens who can’t rent porn yet, as a lot of the sex involves women being raped by a monster. Other than the occasional cheap sex, this is a forgettable tale of a woman pursued by a monster with a tribal mask and a cabin-load of annoying 20-somethings who get dragged into the whole mess when the monster chases the woman to their doorstep. See if desperate

Review – Organizm

Despite the meaningless name, this is actually a reasonably good horror movie. A horrible bio-weapon locked in a tank in the basement of an Army base in the 50s is unleashed and spreads its tentacles rapidly. The plot itself is no great shakes, but the fine details are especially solid for a low-budget picture. The tank of floating medical waste is a nice touch, as are the infrared images of the thing spreading across the desert. Mildly amusing

Review – Shapeshifter

If your life depends on escaping from a giant, bloodthirsty teddy bear with a devil head, it’s just your bad luck if you’re locked up in the county jail with the thing. Though the budget is low, some of the set-up isn’t too terrible in a stupid movie sort of way. Once the characters and the basic premise are established, however, the production swiftly shape-shifts into a moronic chase picture occasionally punctuated by cheap gore. See if desperate