Review – The Unknown Trilogy

For an amateur horror production, this should get at least an E for effort. It’s cheap and inept, but its heart is in the right place. Using an awkward bracket, the production weaves together three stories of vaguely Twilight Zone-ish quality. In the first, a gambling-addicted loser makes a deal with the devil to improve his luck. The second segment stars a trio of child actors who actually aren’t too terrible by amateur standards. In this episode, a boy tries to overcome his fear of the neighborhood funeral home. Rounding it off we get a stale tale of a grieving father who suddenly finds himself quite literally alone in the world (and the end here is telegraphed at least a mile away). The picture features walk-ons by Abe Vigoda and several other actors of a similar “hey, isn’t he that guy from that other thing?” ilk. Mildly amusing

Review – Man in the Attic

This is the only time I’m aware of – other than the “Saucy Jack” routine from This Is Spinal Tap – that the story of Jack the Ripper has ever included musical numbers. Jack Palance stars as the killer, and here he’s so young that initially it’s a little hard to tell whether it’s really him or not (though as soon as he starts speaking all doubt disappears). The script is weak, paying little attention to the details of the actual murders and offering no significant plot or character development in exchange for our tolerance of historical inaccuracy. Palance does a solid-if-hammy job, but otherwise this is mediocre fare. Mildly amusing. [And it turns out I was wrong about the musical number thing, inasmuch as this is a remake of The Lodger, which itself had a song-and-dance or two]

Review – Black Swarm

So here’s where Robert Englund’s career went to die, stung to death by killer CGI wasps. The local exterminator tries to rekindle a relationship with the widow of his dead twin brother while her daughter eats a peach grown by a mad scientist who works on genetically modifying bugs for bioweapons use, and the fruit transforms her into the queen of killer CGI wasps, and then … well, you get the idea. They might even have been able to pull this off in a limited way if only the wasps’ stings hadn’t transformed their victims into homicidal zombies. I don’t know why the zombie thing was the ridiculous twist that finally pushed it too far, but it did the trick. See if desperate

Review – Harakiri

Most of my serious-samurai-movie-watching experience up to this point has been Kurosawa, but if the rest of Kobayashi’s stuff is as good as this, I need to broaden my horizons a bit. The set-up is elegantly simple: a ronin shows up at the doorstep of a wealthy samurai clan house requesting the privilege of ending his life of poverty and disgrace by committing suicide in the courtyard. Suspecting that the guy is a beggar just looking for a handout, they attempt to force him to go through with it. From there it’s hard to say much without spoiling the story, so suffice it to say that things don’t go at all the way the landowner planned. This ends up being an anti-samurai samurai movie, employing the genre’s conventions to criticize authoritarianism and dishonest dedication to duty. Impressive. Buy the disc

Review – Perfect

If this was the movie it wanted to be, I would make my Reporting I students watch it. The capsule-description of the story makes it sound like perfect viewing for young journalists-to-be: a reporter for Rolling Stone becomes intimately involved with one of the interview subjects for a story he’s doing about health clubs. Along the way the picture touches on several important points about objectivity, damage to people in news stories, and even the legal issues surrounding the protection of confidential sources. Unfortunately, this solid framework supports nothing but crap. John Travolta is radically miscast as the reporter; I don’t buy the notion that this guy can read stories, let alone write them. Jamie Lee Curtis is also disappointing as the aerobics instructor slash love interest. She’s done better work. But the major downfall here is that this “gem” from 1985 surfs the mid-80s trend for making movies that transform even the most important of subjects into cheap excuses for witless dialogue, artless sex and soap-opera goofiness. See if desperate

Review – Return of the Vampire

Bela Lugosi stars in this dreadful Dracula knock-off. The film-makers assume (fairly, I suppose) that we’re all familiar with the vampire sub-genre conventions, so most of the plot is a rapid march-through on par with Danny Kaye’s knighthood ceremony in The Court Jester. Indeed, the innovations here are few. The villain’s sidekick is a werewolf (and a terrier-looking creature at that). The drama takes place during the Blitz, with the vampire unearthed by an air raid and de-staked by a pair of comic relief civil defense workers. And that of course raises a question about whether folks had bigger evils than a bloodsucker and his hairy companion to worry about back in 1944. See if desperate

Review – Atlantis, The Lost Continent

If there had been a Sci Fi Channel in the 1960s, I’m sure it would have produced this movie. This is the meandering tale of a Greek fisherman who gets conned into helping an Atlantean princess return to her homeland. Once they get there, the bad guy enslaves our hero, plots the conquest of the earth, and ignores the warning signs from the island’s volcano. Though it has a moment or two, overall this is George Pal corny and dated without being George Pal clever and interesting. See if desperate

Review – The Nazi Officer’s Wife

A&E serves up the story of Edith Hahn, a Jewish woman who managed to escape Austria shortly after the annexation using the identity of an “Aryan” friend. Through a series of twists of fate, she ends up marrying a factory supervisor who in turn ends up drafted into the German Army. Though the story resembles the plot lines from movies such as Europa Europa and The Black Book, there’s a subtlety here that’s more intriguing than fictional and semi-fictional tales. For example, the film-makers interview Hahn’s daughter about what it was like to have a father who felt ashamed that he had a Jewish child. But the best parts are the interviews with Hahn herself, adding a real personality to the floating photographs and archive footage. Overall this is one of the better documentaries I’ve seen on the subject, quite a surprise coming from a channel with a reputation for producing “documentaries” about pseudo-archaeology, Nostradamus and the like. Worth seeing

Review – October

Ten years after the October Revolution, Sergei Eisenstein directed this classic of the silent era, a retelling of the events that swept the Bolsheviks into power. To be sure, the picture has some problems. By modern standards – or even by the standards of silent movies from Hollywood – the production is rough around the edges and strangely experimental in spots. It’s also strangely similar to Nazi propaganda pictures in its characterization of the enemies of the revolution as dark, sinister, Semitic stereotypes. Oh, and it’s pretty hard on the horses. Otherwise, however, this is an important moment in the development of propaganda film-making, worthy of the attention of any serious student of the subject. Mildly amusing

Review – The Gorgon

For a crappy old Hammer horror movie, this one isn’t all that bad. It helps that I think the Gorgon sisters are among the cooler members of the monster family, and here we get “Megara” rather than the more famous Medusa (according to Ovid, Medusa’s sisters were names Stheno and Euryale, but then again Ovid says only Medusa had snake hair, so we’ll need to avoid strict adherence in order to get our movie made). The head of a mental hospital (Peter Cushing) aids townspeople in hushing up the circumstances surrounding the deaths of a local girl and her wealthy artist boyfriend. But the boy’s family digs deeper into the mystery, enlisting the aid of a college professor (Christopher Lee) willing to believe that an ancient Greek monster might be lurking in a nearby castle. I guess the fact that the victims were turned to stone was a big clue. We even get a side-point or two about the ability of a totalitarian society to sweep great evil under the carpet. To be sure, the plot’s a little threadbare in points, and 21st century computer graphics would probably have been able to conjure hair snakes more convincing than the rubber appliances used here. Overall, however, this is one of the better entries in the Hammer catalogue. Mildly amusing

Review – The Last Winter

Every time I’m just about ready to swear off indie horror movies for good, something like this comes along and temporarily restores my faith in the potential of the sub-genre. On the surface this comes across as a blend of The Thing and An Inconvenient Truth. But it’s more than that, to the point where some parts are actually scary. The story posits that the damage humanity has done to the environment has provoked the earth into a supernatural counter-attack, which begins at a small outpost of oil company explorers in the Alaskan wilderness. The picture has a plot, multi-dimensional characters, and special effects that are employed subtly to much greater effect than if they’d been constantly in-your-face. This was a total impulse rent at Blockbuster. If only I could be so lucky every time I pick a movie this way! Worth seeing

Review – Doomsday

It’s a bit unfair to fault this production for including excessive, pointless violence against animals, because in truth the entire movie was excessive and pointless. Almost the whole thing was “lovingly borrowed” from other pictures. The set-up is 28 Days Later, but once the plot gets going it turns into Escape from New York with a female protagonist. Along the way we get a hefty dose of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, some Aliens, and a handful of other horror/action movies sprinkled in for good measure. What we don’t get is a coherent plot of any kind or even interesting characters. If you can endure a couple of hours of nothing but witless, visceral nonsense, then you’re welcome to it. Wish I’d skipped it