Review – Empire of the Sun

Steven Spielberg works his special “magic” on the standard prison camp movie formula, centering the tale around a kid. Our hero – played by a very young Christian Bale in his first major movie role – gets stranded in Shanghai at the beginning of World War Two. After ending up in Japanese custody, he’s placed in a camp with other British and American civilian prisoners. It’s practically a light comedy compared to Schindler’s List, and it’s also a bit hard on the Asian characters (the Japanese might have had it coming, but the Chinese look bad as well). But they spent a lot of money on it, so it’s a good-looking if somewhat dull production. Mildly amusing

Review – Let the Right One In

Child vampires have been used to good effect in movies primarily about standard, adult bloodsuckers such as Salem’s Lot and Interview with the Vampire. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen one take the lead role. For the most part it worked really well. Or to be more precise, the parts with the vampire kid in it were excellent. The swimming pool sequence at the end deserves a spot on the list of the most effective uses of gore in horror movie history. On the other hand, the experience requires a little patience. Big chunks of the production – especially toward the beginning – are Swedish art movie boring. Further, here and there the plot will tiptoe up to the edge of disturbing pre-teen sexuality. But anyone willing to sit through some slow spots will find that when this production picks up speed it really takes off. Worth seeing

Eight movie monsters that couldn’t scare a fly

These eight creatures from the dark side demonstrate several of the reasons monsters can go bad. Sometimes they start out with some potential to be scary but fall flat. Maybe it’s some aspect of their physical appearance that doesn’t work. One of these examples was done in at least in part by its own name.

Sometimes a good monster just needs a better agent. Even a well-practiced denizen of hell can die the death of snickering audiences if everything around it is so cringe-worthy that it never gets the chance to spread its leathery wings, bare its fangs and give everyone a good scare.

On the other hand, a lot of monsters are just born lame. Some have no scare potential because they’re too cute to be frightening. But more often such monsters are everyday things transformed into agents of evil by plot twists so implausible that the movie can’t sustain the audience’s belief in them. “Okay, that’s just stupid” is pretty much automatic death for a horror picture.

Pazuzu in Exorcist 2: The Heretic – Before the original Exorcist launches into pea soup barfing and crucifix crotch stabbing, it opens with a genuinely eerie little sequence shot in Iraq. Here an elderly priest runs up against an unnamed demon that manifests itself in part through an ancient statue. The sculpture they used was of an actual Babylonian devil, and it worked pretty well.

So for the first sequel someone must have said “Hey, let’s get that Babylonian devil thing back. What was it called?” And therein lay the rub, because the real name of the critter – which the folks who made the first movie had the good sense to omit – was Pazuzu. That might have been quite terrifying indeed to the denizens of ancient Mesopotamia, but 4000 years later it’s the sound of a bike tire going flat, or maybe a variation on Jimmy Stewart’s daughter’s name in It’s a Wonderful Life. Quick hint to monsters everywhere: if your name sounds like it should be followed by “the Clown,” pick out a good pseudonym before you show up on screen.

Of course to be fair, our poor pal Pazuzu never really stood much of a chance to begin with. Even an exceptional horror with a terrifying name would have been hard pressed to overcome the Linda Blair tap dancing number or even to get its acting done in front of the scenery before Richard Burton ate it all. But even in the best of worlds, that name was a real deal breaker.

Evil puppy in Devil Dog, The Hound of Hell – The logic here is that evil is at its worst when it’s disguised as something innocent. That works in theory, but here it falls totally flat in practice. A German Shepherd puppy can set fire to all the maids it wants, and the audience response is still going to be “Aw, cute!” Even when he grows up and turns Mom and the kids into his zombified minions, he still looks like an adorable family pet.

Now, it’s certainly possible to make a German Shepherd – an adult one, anyway – look scary. Cujo him up a bit. Anyone who ever sat through that grade school health movie about rabies knows just how scary a rabid dog can be. But no, not in this movie. In the end the Devil Dog is transformed into its true self: a 20-foot-tall Pomeranian with a clown collar and a pair of stick-on horns. You can false-color that thing all you want, but it’s just not gonna frighten anyone.

Killer bunnies in Night of the Lepus – Many animals can be made scary if covered with the right makeup and shot from the right angle. But there is nothing, nada, zero, no way, no how, not a thing you can do to a fluffy bunny to make it look scary. These pet store refugees are going to draw a “Wook at the adowable wittle wabbit” no matter what. They can be as big as a Gweyhound bus, and they’re still going to look sweet and cuddly.

Of course it doesn’t help that the movie surrounding the Bunnies of Doom is one of the dumbest things ever distributed by a major studio. But sometimes even in a well-financed, carefully-assembled production, a cute animal falls flat. For instance, in Hannibal they spent a ton of money and carefully explained why the killer pigs were so dangerous. They did their level best to make them look menacing. Yeah, they’re not as cute as fuzzy bunnies, but their big scene is still a “Wow Hank, you’re really scared of them pigs, aintcha?” moment.

So horror movie makers take note: if you absolutely have to have a scary animal, start with something that’s actually scary. Snakes and spiders don’t always work, but they stand a better chance than puppies and bunnies.

Sentient garbage pile in Godzilla vs. Hedorah – Godzilla has taken on his share of lame monsters in his time. Of course that’s part of his job description. Defending the Earth against all attackers is sort of like being a Major League Baseball team. Sometimes you’re up against the evil Yankees (Ghidorah, Mechagodzilla), but for at least part of your schedule you have to host the Royals: giant caterpillars, giant roaches, and of course Hedorah.

In the movie’s original U.S. release, this thing was called The Smog Monster. The idea here is that if you get enough of the wrong kind of industrial waste together in one place, it undergoes garbage parthenogenesis and turns into a city-devouring beast. After Minimata Bay – or even just a hot, windless afternoon on the streets of Tokyo – the Japanese have every right to a particular dread of environmental disasters. But when the problem manifests itself as a Hefty Bag with a big, plastic eye? Godzilla must have come out of his trailer, got one look at this thing and thought, “Aw, c’mon! I’ve gotta fight that?”

Crab Monsters in Attack of the Crab Monsters – Giant crabs aren’t completely without shock value, as Ray Harryhausen proved in Mysterious Island. On the other hand, these things look like parade floats. It’s also their dumb luck to be stuck in one of Roger Corman’s “production speed is of the essence” monster movies. The plot is ridiculous, the script abysmal and the acting even worse.

Some might argue that the true king of this particular subsection of bad movie monsters is actually Ro-Man from Robot Monster. True, it’s hard to beat a guy in a gorilla suit with a half-baked space helmet head, especially when he menaces mankind with a bubble machine. But that’s exactly the problem. This isn’t an ineptly-made horror movie. This is a horror movie that’s so astoundingly ineptly made that it actually becomes a comedy. And as a comic character, Ro-Man does his job admirably.

Crab monsters, on the other hand, would only send you to bed with nightmares if you happened to have a dream about eating at Red Lobster and finding out that these things were the only items on the menu. That would have you waking up screaming “Yuck!”

Piñata in Piñata: Survival Island – Evil playthings are such a staple of the horror genre that they almost deserve a whole sub-genre all to themselves. And to be completely fair, sometimes they even kinda work. The first Chucky movie isn’t too terrible, and it seems like Rod Serling got a good Night Gallery sequence out of devil dolls once.

But more typical is a movie like Dolly Dearest. It starts with the same adorableness-of-evil premise as the demon-possessed puppy movie. And it falls just as flat.

Still, most killer doll movies are a birthday present compared to Piñata: Survival Island. For starters, the damn thing isn’t even a piñata. Instead it’s some kind of ancient voodoo fetish that transforms into an Xbox-worthy piece of CGI. And that’s a crying shame. Experience tells us that voodoo fetishes typically take 90 minutes or so to kill (or 30 minutes if they’re just one segment of an anthology piece). A piñata, on the other hand, can be wrecked in a matter of seconds by a small child with a stick. That would have been a much shorter movie, and with productions of this quality shorter is certainly better.

Giant prunes in The Langoliers – The last two spots on this list belong to Stephen King. Or in this case, the spot belongs to the film-makers who made a royal hash out of a King story. As a quarter of Four Past Midnight, the original tale was a solid piece of horror writing. A small band of characters get stuck outside the normal flow of time and find themselves in danger of being devoured by The Langoliers, monsters that consume reality after time has passed on and left it behind.

But what does a Langolier look like? I don’t remember how King described them, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t “oil drill bits stuck into giant, flying prunes.” The only blessing with these beasts is that they’re only on screen for ten minutes or so, leaving the rest of this mini-series to stink of its own accord.

Runaway trucks in Maximum Overdrive and Trucks – This fiasco, on the other hand, actually is King’s fault. The premise here is that some alien force has turned our cars and trucks against us. That makes it extremely hard to get past the “how,” let alone the “why.” Further, the story almost immediately starts to sink under its own weight. Won’t we be okay as soon as the monsters run out of gas? So then the trucks have to find ways to force people to pump gas for them. And so on.

Throw in Emilio Estevez as the savior of the human race, and you’ve got a four-wheeled dog on your hands. And just to prove that it wasn’t somehow Estevez’s fault, they tried it again in a made-for-TV version a couple of decades later and surprise surprise, it failed a second time.

In King’s defense, this same general concept worked to better effect in Christine. But the demon-possessed vintage auto was a little easier to swallow. The idea that an object can be infested by an evil spirit is as old as religion itself. Further, the car is tied to its owner’s bullied desire for revenge, so it makes more sense (and also supplies a fuel source). Even so, the reader of the book or viewer of the movie can’t help but have at least a moment or two where credulity slips and a “Demonic car? Jeez this is dumb!” feeling sets in.

Evil vehicle productions also suffer from some inherent logistical problems. In addition to needing gas, cars and trucks have only a limited ability to get people indoors, in the woods and in other places where tires aren’t much of an advantage. Worst of all, however, is that we have plenty of proof that these things fail no matter what. In The Car and the pickup-from-hell sequence from Nightmares, the evil machines attack most of their victims in the open where there’s genuinely no escape. Even so, they somehow just never get past the “Jeez this is dumb” point. Perhaps the auto dealership should join the pet store on the list of inherently bad locations for horror movie casting calls.

Review – The Darwin Awards

If this had just been a movie about the Darwin Awards, it would have been a much better picture. The sequences that show people falling victim to their own stupidity are entertaining, but they should have left out the flimsy plot that strings them all together. Joseph Fiennes stars as an ex-cop trying to sell a theory about stuipd accidents to an insurance company, and Winona Ryder plays a claims investigator paired up with him while he proves his case. This is also one of those productions where just about everyone in California plays brief roles. And I do mean everyone, from Lawrence Ferlinghetti to Metallica to the guys from Mythbusters. Mildly amusing

Review – Goth Cruise

The subject seems self-contradictory. Why would a group of the most non-cruise-type people in the world want to board a liner for a week? Well, apparently they did. Oddly enough, the documentary doesn’t really amount to much. Most of it is devoted to interviews with the participants, and it ends up demonstrating only that goths aren’t really all that inherently interesting. The shots of them drinking in the ship’s clubs and hanging out in the hot tubs are somewhat incongruous, but the novelty wears off swiftly. Mildly amusing

Review – Gandhi

I can’t watch this movie without thinking about Eddie Izzard’s “You can’t claim us, we live here” line. Seriously, though, this is an epic biography of the title character. Ben Kingsley does a great job playing Gandhi from his early experiences in South Africa through his history-making work in India on to his death at the hands of an assassin. Though three hours worth of a guy insisting on nonviolence gets a bit repetitive after awhile, the story needs to show the full range of social problems Gandhi confronted and overcame. Worth seeing

My eight favorite kids shows (not animated)

Ah, sweet memories of childhood. Christmas. Birthdays. School (when it didn’t suck). And of course the idiot box.

I pity kids today. Sesame Street is still around (or at least it was the last time I checked), but most of the rest of these childhood favorites have long since fallen by the wayside, replaced by the likes of Boobah and the Teletubbies. Or worse, by dumbed-down, abortive attempts to re-create these classics.

Please note that these shows are all exclusively or primarily live action. I’ll do cartoons in another list.

Sesame Street – The immortal classic and the standard by which all other kids shows before and after are measured. Is there anyone out there (other than perhaps the Amish) for whom this show is not a cherished childhood memory? Sesame Street was such a success because it was a brilliant blend of entertainment and education. I’m of the opinion that the show slipped a bit over the years. For example, I like Oscar way better than Elmo. But of course I’m not exactly part of the target audience anymore so I’m not really in any position to judge.

Captain Kangaroo – This one wasn’t as teaching-heavy as Sesame Street; the Captain wasn’t there to get us to learn the alphabet or anything like that. But it was on par when it came to entertainment value. To this day I can’t look at a ping pong ball without being reminded of Mr. Moose. Captain Kangaroo is also noteworthy as one of the earliest examples of high-quality programming for children, getting its start way back in 1955 before much thought was being given to audiences with no disposable income. But more than that, creator and star Bob Keeshan genuinely seemed to care about his show and his viewers. Yes boys and girls, there actually was a time when kids shows had integrity.

Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood – I think I spent more time with Big Bird than with Fred Rogers, but the man and his make-believe neighborhood strike me as more of a kids show than anything by Children’s Television Workshop. Unlike the sometimes snarky and frequently manic Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers was always calm and comforting. He supplied the sort of gentle, repetitive material that young children crave. Older kids probably outgrow this pretty quickly, but for anyone of an appropriate age there’s no better show.

The Electric Company – As a show designed for kids who’d gotten too old for Sesame Street, this CTW production paved the way for less worthy bits of shameless marketing by Disney and the like. It started in 1971 and only lasted for six seasons, so by 21st century standards it looks pretty dated. Still, it’s hard to beat the cast. Morgan Freeman and Rita Moreno were both regulars. The Adventures of Letterman – one of the animated segments – was voiced by Joan Rivers, Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel. Mel Brooks also did some voice work. Tom Lehrer even did a couple of songs.

H.R. Pufnstuf – The first half of this list was devoted to the sorts of shows that a broadcaster could say – with a straight face, no less – were actually good for kids. The rest of the entries are more purely commercial. This particular show told the tale of a boy stranded on an island with a magic flute, a witch, a dragon (at least I think he was a dragon … when I was younger I thought that if his name was Pufnstuf that perhaps he was some kind of half-assed puffin) and a cast of the people-in-puppet-suits that became such a staple of Sid and Marty Krofft productions.

Land of the Lost – Speaking of the Kroffts, I’d trade just about everything else they ever did for this cheap, three-season series. Land of the Lost was about two kids and their dad who end up stranded in an underground land that time forgot. The T-rex puppets weren’t especially hard for them to avoid, but the Sleestak – a race of sinister, slow-moving lizard men – were a bigger threat. And of course it helped for them to befriend Chaka the Pakuni, a Neanderthal-looking kid. If only they could have unscrambled the trays full of colorful rocks that controlled the doorways to other dimensions, they might have gotten back home. Good times.

Ultraman – Of the two Japanese shows on the list, this one’s objectively better. Science Patrol member Hayata saves the earth time and time again by using a device that looks for all the world like a microphone to transform into Ultraman, a giant guy in a silver suit who could shoot energy beams out of his wrists. His size comes in handy, as the planet is constantly threatened by giant monsters.

Johnny Socko and His Flying Robot – This is sort of a bargain-basement version of Ultraman. Being a kid, Johnny couldn’t be expected to transform into a robot himself. But he did possess a wristwatch with a hidden microphone that could be used to transmit orders (usually something useful like “Giant Robot, into action!”). The robot was a bit on the clunky side, especially compared to the sleek-suited Ultraman. But he could shoot missiles out of the tips of his fingers, so that partially made up for it. Master Socko and his grownup posse protected the world from the Gargoyle Gang and its slew of giant beasts.

Review – Metropolis

Every time I see this movie I’m amazed at how well a picture from the silent era can stand the tests of time. Use the words “state of the art visual effects” about a 21st-century movie, and you’re probably discussing a picture that’s going to be outdated and dull in less than ten years. But Fritz Lang uses effects so skillfully that his simple model and set work is still stunning in the age of big, noisy CGI. If anything, it’s the ham-handed moralizing of the story that comes across as clunky and dated. I’ve seen at least three different prints of this movie, and each uses a different strategy to cope with the missing footage. But the footage that we do still have, especially the robot transformation sequence, is breathtaking stuff. Buy the disc

Review – Mr. Brooks

The only way this movie sustains itself for two solid hours is to keep introducing plotlines. Without getting into an argument about what the main plot is and what’s a subplot, this thing has at least five going before it draws to a close. And more complicated isn’t better. Kevin Costner stars as a serial killer who talks to an imaginary friend (William Hurt). After he’s seen during a murder, he picks up an unwanted sidekick (Dane Cook). And to make matters worse, he’s got a savvy cop (Demi Moore) on his trail. Of course she has problems of her own, including a messy divorce and an escaped convict out for her blood. Meanwhile, our murdering hero’s daughter drops out of college and … well, I think you see what kind of mess this turns into. They spent a lot of money on this thing, but for every emotionally-satisfying moment (about which I can’t really write without spoiling the story) there are dozens that bemuse or actively annoy. See if desperate

Review – Obscene

Here we have a biography of Barney Rosset, the founder of Grove Press. Grove made a name for itself by publishing controversial novels such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer, then fighting the legal battles that ensued when authorities tried to ban the books. To be honest, I was a little disappointed by what the movie revealed. Rosset comes across as a spoiled rich kid who started the company with daddy’s money. His anti-union and anti-feminist stances also make him look more like a snobbish smut peddler than a champion of free speech and great literature. That notwithstanding, this is a good portrait of the man and his importance to the world. Mildly amusing

Review – The Abandoned

As is sadly typical with many ghost stories, this tale simply doesn’t have enough material for a feature-length production. A woman returns to Russia to search for some answers about her family history. At the abandoned homestead she meets her brother and their ghostly doppelgangers, and things just sort of go from there. The picture has a good, eerie moment or two early on, but then it just keeps using the same shocks over and over. Further, the plot doesn’t do much developing until the last few minutes. And by then I was so thoroughly bored that I didn’t care much about what the dark family secrets actually were. Perhaps I should have just taken a hint from the title. Verdict: see if desperate.

Review – Interview with the Assassin

Once again, three cheers for independent film-makers who can take a solid concept and a decent script and make a terrific movie without big Hollywood stars or expensive effects. The movie is Blair-Witch-style video of a cameraman’s neighbor who wants to confess a terrible secret: he was the Grassy Knoll shooter. As the old guy and his camcorder-toting companion search for some answers about the assassination, they start to notice that they’re being followed. Or are they? Throughout the whole picture the plot walks the narrow edge between “the guy is telling the truth” and “the guy is nuts,” taking some interesting twists and turns along the way. This is a must-see for Kennedy conspiracy buffs and should entertain general audiences as well. Worth seeing

Review – Two-Minute Warning

This is like an Irwin Allen disaster movie without Allen and without much of a disaster. It has the galaxy of stars, the dreadful script and implausible plot to rank right up there with pictures about burning buildings and flipping luxury liners. A sniper ensconces himself above the scoreboard at the L.A. Coliseum during a championship football game. Because he keeps peeking over the wall of his nest (someone needed to watch more Monty Python), he gets spotted. The cops (headed by the ever-assholish Charlton Heston) struggle to find a way to stop the guy before he opens fire, but then they pass up no end of obvious opportunities to stun, shoot or otherwise subdue him. As a result, he finally (guess when) caps a few spectators and spooks the rest of the crowd into a stampede. The production stubbornly refuses to be entertaining in any way, passing up chance after chance for the plot to take an interesting turn or even make sense. See if desperate

Review – Punisher: War Zone

This one’s more comic-bookish than the first two Punisher movies. That’s in part because it uses comic book stock characters such as sidekicks and super-villains. Further, the hero’s body armor functions as a bit of a super suit, though at least it didn’t come with a cape. Ray Stevenson does a solid job as mobster-slayer Frank Castle, and Dominic West is over the top as arch-criminal Jigsaw (though he falls short of a performance along similar lines: Heath Ledger as The Joker). I confess I didn’t care for some of the plot elements, particularly the dead FBI agent subplot. But overall it’s got enough graphic scumbag death to keep the target audience entertained. And if nothing else, it’s nice to see an action movie directed by a woman. Mildly amusing

Review – Waco: The Rules of Engagement

I find it hard to say exactly which aspect of this mess makes me the maddest. Start with some illegal gun-stockpiling, child-molesting religious nutjob and his compound of followers. Turn the racist, trigger-happy morons of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms loose on them. Then when the ATF bungles it up but good, haul in the FBI to harass the cultists until finally the whole affair disintegrates into a bloodbath. But no, I think the worst part has to be the rotten, lying arrogance of federal law enforcement officials and their cronies in Congress during hearings on the debacle. I was also saddened by just how little of this you have to believe before it starts to stink. Though the documentary struggles with questions about who really set fire to the compound, it doesn’t really matter. Even if we stick strictly to what the feds were caught on tape doing, their conduct was beneath contempt. To be sure, it’s impossible to present an exhaustive examination of all the evidence in two hours and 15 minutes. But this Oscar-nominated documentary does a fine job of covering the major holes in the government’s story. Worth seeing

Eight jump scares that actually work

Once upon a time there was a man whose wife had a golden arm. He was a greedy little man, and he hated his wife. So late one night he strangled her to death. Before she was buried, he sawed off her arm and kept it.

The night after her funeral, he lay awake, tossing and turning. Just before midnight, he thought he heard a voice from outside. It came from far in the distance, little more than a faint whisper. It sounded like a woman moaning “Who’s got my golden arm?”

A few minutes later he heard it again, much clearer this time, as if the source was in the street in front of his house. “Who’s got my golden arm?”

He hid under the covers, praying that whoever it was would go away and leave him in peace. But then he heard the voice again, close now, right outside the bedroom window where a cool wind blew in through the curtains. “Who’s got my golden arm?”

The man prayed even harder, swearing that he’d take the arm right away and bury it with his wife if only the owner of that terrible voice would return to the grave. For a moment everything was silent. Then right at the edge of the bed, so close he could feel its icy-cold breath on his cheek right through the thin covers, it spoke again. “Who’s got my golden arm?”

Then the kid telling the story grabs the arm of the person sitting next to him and yells “You’ve got it!”

I can still smell the mothballs. My family kept all our camping gear in a closet full of the things, and to this day my childhood memories of sleeping bag adventures – campouts and sleep-overs alike – smell like mothballs.

The other strong memories I have of sleep-overs are ghost stories. The Ghost of the Five Bloody Fingers. The Ghost of Able Mabel. And of course the ever-popular Golden Arm. Evidently I’m not the only one who remembers this moment – or one much like it – from childhood. Over the years, the sudden shock – the essence of the Golden Arm – has become a staple of horror movies.

A terrible, horrible staple.

Of the many problems with jump scares – also known as booga booga shots – the worst is that it takes skill and planning to make them actually scary. That’s way more than most filmmakers are willing or able to devote to horror movies in the 21st century. As a result, what we almost always end up with is some witless teenager wandering around in the woods, and just as the minor-key soundtrack revs up to a crescendo out pops the killer with some damn gardening tool or another and we’re off to the races. Snore.

On the other hand, every once in a great while someone will come up with a booga-booga shot that works. Usually they succeed by adhering to two simple principles: come up with something genuinely frightening, and don’t over-use it. Take these eight, for example.

The face reveal in The Phantom of the Opera – The great-granddaddy of them all, and still one of the best. As Mary Philbin reaches for the Phantom’s mask, everyone in the audience is screaming (in their hearts if not out loud) “don’t do it!” But of course she does. Lon Chaney’s corpse face created with little more than greasepaint and tape more than measures up to the following century’s worth of latex, CGI and other more expensive tricks.

The fangy face from Fright Night – The vampire has bitten our hero’s girlfriend, and he’s trying to ward her off with a cross without killing her with a stake. She turns her back on the holy object, crying into her hands “Charlie, I thought you loved me!” But the moment he lowers the cross she uncovers her face, and suddenly she’s all devil eyes and mouthful of razor-sharp teeth. It’s a great moment the first time one sees this movie. Unfortunately they keep right on using the same mouth appliance, and after the initial shock wears off the thing turns cheap and dull. Way to run a solid booga-booga into the ground, guys.

The nightmare boat from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – The great thing about Willy Wonka (and here we’re discussing Gene Wilder’s “old school” Wonka, not Johnny Depp’s creepy Michael Jackson version) was that he came across as a genial, somewhat-nuts-but-generally-pleasant kind of kid-friendly candy maker. But the dude had a serious dark side, demonstrated most graphically after the chocolate river boat leaves the “world of pure imagination” room and enters a dark tunnel. The sequence that follows includes a vaguely seasick poem recital and a montage of disturbing images, including crawly bugs, a chicken beheading, and spooky Mr. Slugworth. By the end of it, we’re all thoroughly booga’d.

Tom Skerrit bites it in Alien – Of all the moments on the list, this one’s the closest to the Hollywood standard something-jumps-out-and-gets-someone booga-booga shot. We know Skerrit’s going to get got. After all, he’s crawling around in ventilation shafts trying to find a fast-moving, powerful, teeth-intensive monster. And his compatriots have just lost the tracking signal they were using to keep him posted about the beast’s location. Even though we couldn’t be more prepared for it to happen, it’s still a good shock when it finally does. Heck, the scene even worked pretty well in the comic book version.

The no-mouth girl from Twilight Zone: The Movie – The “Little Dude with the Gnarly Powers” sequence from this anthology piece features several solid shocks cooked up by director Joe Dante and effects wizard Rob Bottin. But the best of the lot is a brief shot of one of the kid’s “sisters.” This unfortunate girl sits and watches TV all day. And does she ever complain about her fate? No way. A quick shock shot reveals why she remains reticent.

The sliding door in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – It’s nothing short of miraculous that such a parade of mistimed nonsense actually includes one killing that qualifies as a decent booga-booga moment. When the guy bites it – the one who’s not in the wheelchair, whose name escapes me at the moment – the death isn’t long, drawn-out or especially noisy. Leatherface appears suddenly, smacks him with a hammer (an eerie choice of weapon given how mundane it was), drags the still-flopping body down the hall and slams the door behind him. It happens so quickly that we don’t get the chance to think about it until it’s already over. It also seems strangely like an animal slaughtering, which was most likely the point.

The beheading in Exorcist 3 – We know Nurse Amy’s going to get it. We know when, and we’ve got a pretty good idea of where. But the sequence is so quiet, so drawn-out and so otherwise ordinary that it proves to be the ideal set-up. The killer’s choice of outfit and implement also do wonders for the booga-booga value.

Large Marge – That last one is probably the best of all time. But let’s finish this list up with something lighter: a comedy moment making fun of jump scares. In Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Pee-wee Herman hitches a ride with a trucker named Large Marge. She proceeds to tell him the story of a terrible truck wreck. And when she gets to the booga-booga, well, suffice it to say that it’s a very Tim Burton moment. I must have seen this dozens of times, and it still cracks me up every time I see it. Reminds me a little of mothballs, too.

Review – Room 205

If it’s a choice between this and Room 101, I’d rather take my chances with the Thought Police. I guess it pays to pick your living arrangements carefully if you’re going to college in Copenhagen. Select the wrong dorm and apparently you can end up sandwiched between a clique of obnoxious jerks and the vengeful spirit of a rape victim. I wonder if all Danish horror movies are this boring. See if desperate

Review – Pin

Ick. The premise goes a bit beyond the usual killer-with-DID-and-a-ventriloquist’s-dummy routine. A small-town doctor uses his voice-throwing skills to entertain his son and daughter by making his anatomy dummy appear to talk. Unfortunately the boy takes it a bit too seriously. Of course it doesn’t help that he accidentally sees his mom using the dummy as a masturbation aid. And later Dad has Pin (the dummy) deliver a lecture on sex ed. Do I even have to tell you that the kid grows up to have some serious problems? As I said, ick. Mildly amusing

Eight Movies that Scared the Crap Out of Me When I Was a Kid

In defense of my youthful self – gone lo these many years – a couple of these entries actually are scary. For example, the Child Snatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was specifically designed to freak kids out. So I don’t feel too bad for falling victim to something reasonably crafted to do exactly what it did.

On the other hand, for every moment that really should have scared a little kid, there’s at least one more that in retrospect now seems a little dumb.

Five Million Miles to Earth – One of my earliest memories is of being scared by this movie. I was doing the “can I have a drink of water?” thing in the middle of the night when my dad was watching this on TV. I remember seeing the demon-thing in the flames getting the guy on the crane in the end. It freaked me out at the time. Of course now I prefer some of the other parts of the movie, but I still recall the childhood scare I got.

The Legend of Boggy Creek – This was one of those Sun Classic movies that served as a babysitter for a vanload of kids for an hour and a half. This particular effort was about a bigfoot-like creature that lived in the backwoods around the Texas-Arkansas border. The thing mostly specialized in harassing trailer-dwellers, which for some reason got me to thinking “yeah, if you were in a trailer out in the woods a monster like that could really mess with you.” It was stupid and scary in equal measure, the perfect campfire ghost story for the children of the 70s.

Cruise into Terror – I watched this on Friday Fright Night, a venue for which it was particularly well suited. This was in the early days of having my own TV in my room and staying up late on weekends. For the most part Fright Night was a realm of creaky old “classics” that could be had for cheap. This one was a bit different. The plot was plenty dumb, some crap about divers in the Gulf of Mexico dredging up an Egyptian mummy that radiates pure evil. But it had a shock or two that stuck with me for some time.

Garden of the Dead – The only way the zombies in this thing would ever scare you is if you’d never seen a zombie movie before. But when my dad took me to see this at a drive-in double feature, I honestly hadn’t ever seen another zombie movie before. Now of course I know better, but at the time it spooked me good.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – To this day the Child Snatcher sends a chill down my spine. He’s every “stranger danger” moment we were ever warned about as kids, from his narrow, pinched face to his handful of lollipops to his ice cream wagon that’s secretly a child-snatching cage. The only part I don’t get is why any child, even tykes as guileless as the moppets in this thing, would ever fall for such an obvious creep.

Dirty Harry – To this day Andrew Robinson’s portrayal of the Scorpio killer gives me the creeps. This was another drive-in movie experience, one of my earliest exposures to media portrayal of realistic violence.

Night of the Hunter – As with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Dirty Harry, part of the scare here is that menace can be directed at kids. Getting kidnapped or randomly shot would have been bad enough. But in this one the menace – in the form of a psychotic preacher – worms its way into the children’s lives by marrying – and later murdering – their mother. Robert Mitchum is chilling as the danger that cannot be escaped.

Dawn of the Dead trailer – I didn’t get to see the actual movie until I was old enough to not be unduly upset by such things. But I was still young and impressionable the first time I saw a preview for this Romero zombie classic. The shot that stood out in my mind was the one where the elevator doors open up and a pack of flesh-hungry zombies comes rushing in. I’m not naturally afraid of elevators, but this shock got to me a bit. Think about it and maybe you’ll agree. An elevator is an enclosed space, not bad enough to trigger outright claustrophobia but likewise at the spur of the moment inescapable except through the door in one side. And once that door starts to open, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Try the “close door” button on one of these things sometime. I honestly don’t think they’re even connected to anything. So if there’s something on the other side of that sliding door waiting to take a bite out of you, it’s gonna get you no matter what you try.

Review – Hallettsville

After leading off with multiple brutal child murders, this thing drops off the plot map for half an hour or so. By the time it came back and tried to turn itself into some kind of ghost slasher movie, what little give-a-crap I brought into the picture had long since evaporated. There was a semi-cool goat-demon guy at the end, but he was small compensation for the ordeal of the rest of the movie, including the brutal axe slaying of a cute dog by one of the production’s teen-ish “heroes.” Oh, and the endocrine-ripping, zombified remains of Gary Busey drift in and out every once in awhile. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – War & Truth

For the first three quarters or so this is a reasonably good documentary about war correspondents. Through interviews and archive footage, the filmmakers tell some fascinating tales about how combat journalism worked in World War Two, Vietnam and the Iraq Wars. Unfortunately they just can’t stop themselves, and the last 15 minutes turn into a lament about the death of democracy in the post-journalism world. Preachiness aside, this is worth a look for anyone interested in the subject. Mildly amusing

Review – Samurai: The Last Warriors

How far can a butter of old clips from Ran and Shogun be spread across documentary bread before it becomes flavor-free? I also suspect that the title is supposed to be somehow evocative of The Last Samurai, though there’s no footage from that one in here. To be fair, there’s some good content here. The kendo and iaido footage is fun, and some of the information presented by the talking heads is interesting. Overall, however, this is one of those high-band-cable-ish jobs that doesn’t amount to much. Mildly amusing

Review – Skinwalkers

It’s good werewolves versus bad werewolves, which accurately augurs that the best parts of this picture have a vague Howling flavor. Unfortunately, it also tastes a lot like the flood of recent vampire movies that come across as an awkward blend of MTV and relationship counseling. The most disappointing aspect of the production, however, is that Stan Winston’s name is attached to a picture with effects this uninspiring. Mildly amusing

Review – Burnt Offerings

The only thing getting burnt around here is the amount of weed you’d have to smoke to make this into an entertaining experience. Oh, and also whatever you spent renting it, money going up in smoke. This isn’t a finest moment for anyone involved. And while “finest moment” for Oliver Reed may be strictly relative, just about everyone else has done better work elsewhere. This is particularly disappointing coming from Dan Curtis. The guy who came up with Trilogy of Terror and the Kolchak series has a much better idea about what’s scary than he shows anywhere in this boring stinker. Honestly, when the biggest shocks in the whole thing are achieved by agitating water in a swimming pool and lighting Reed with an orange spot, you know you’re in for a dull experience. See if desperate

Review – The Midnight Meat Train

The short story was better, at least in part because the short story was shorter. The print version also benefitted from Clive Barker’s writing style, particularly the lack of need to explain every little detail. The movie takes a different approach, reducing a chilling tale down to a garden-variety serial killer picture. The result is a slicker version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the slickness is not an improvement. Mildly amusing

Review – Religulous

Bill Maher brings his personal brand of unfunny comedy to bear on the subject of religion, ultimately concluding that anyone who has a faith of any kind is at best an idiot and at worst downright dangerous. Just as Ben Stein’s Expelled is a recklessly irresponsible attack on science, this is a dishonest salvo fired from the opposite side of the field. Most of Maher’s jokes aren’t funny, and for the most part he manages to select obvious fanatics rather than calmer, more sensible people of faith. Further, just about every interview has obviously been cut to make the subject look bad (or look worse in the case of the interviewees who would have looked nuts under the best of circumstances). Overall this once again proves that propaganda defeats its own purpose by making even a partially true argument look like a total lie. See if desperate

Review – Max Payne

No, Mark Wahlberg, the generation that came to know you as Marky Mark has not passed away. You’re going to have to keep doing serious roles – not crap like this – if you want to be taken seriously. This starts out as a video game, but then it wants to be The Punisher done with Frank Miller art direction and a bunch of total bullshit Norse myth references. See if desperate

Review – Eagle Eye

The evil conspiracies are at it again. This time they’re blackmailing two innocent people into carrying out a plot to blow up the majority of the leadership in the Legislative and Executive branches of the U.S. government. The only vaguely interesting twist here is that the plot involves a massive DOD computer system that can hack into all other machines (traffic controls, electronic billboards, the TVs in fast food joints) and use them to manipulate the protagonists. Beyond that, this is a standard parade of car chases, gunfights and general illogic. Mildly amusing

Farewell to the Girls

I’m doubly ashamed to be writing this entry. First, as ever, I’m embarrassed about how long it’s been since I came up with a Lens. But far worse than that, the only thing I have to say for myself is that I miss The Girls Next Door.

For those of you fortunate enough to have escaped this pop culture phenomenette, The Girls Next Door is – or rather was – a reality series on the E! network. Once a week viewers got a marginally-candid look at the daily lives of Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends. During the show’s four-season run, we got to see Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson do just about everything from travel to exotic places to pose for Playboy to just bum around the mansion.

In truth I ought never to have gotten started watching it. The first two seasons went by without capturing my attention at all. Then somebody at The Soup noticed that Kendra had a really obnoxious laugh, so the show started running clips of her braying in order to make fun of her. Somehow or another that managed to pique my curiosity, and the rest is history. I figured the show would be nothing but a cheap excuse to show some nudie chicks with their good parts blurred out, cheap amusement for the pubescent boy crowd and a lure for lonely men to check out the un-blurred version on DVD. And to an extent of course that’s exactly what it was.

And in a sideways way, that cuts to the heart of the attraction. Back in the 50s and 60s, Hugh Hefner represented everything that was wrong with society. Playboy preached a gospel of sexism and materialism, and he sold it to the masses (well, half of the masses anyway) by sugar-coating it with titillation.

But Hefner’s brand of pornography was rendered dull by his more explicit competitors decades ago. In a world where footage of anybody doing anything to anyone else is instantly available at the click of a button, Playboy’s playmates and bunnies are at best quaint and at worst downright boring. That’s a big part of the charm here. Compared to Jenna Jameson and Russian sex slaves pretending to be horny housewives, Hefner’s girlfriends really are cute, old-fashioned girls next door.

I’m certain The Osbournes came up at the pitch meeting for this show, because it’s the same general idea. Here’s a guy who’s been demonized – largely at his own behest – in the mainstream media. But when the curtain is lifted and we’re admitted to his private life (however carefully orchestrated it might be), we find out that he’s actually a harmless old guy with a family and everyday problems just like the rest of us. Well, just like the rest of us if we all had enough money to indulge our every whim, but still given the circumstances fairly normal. In any event far more normal than one would expect.

I’m going to miss this show, just as I missed Ozzy when they took him off. If nothing else, The Girls Next Door had become part of the Sunday ritual around the Lens house, part of the mopey transition between the weekend and another working day.

Now, I understand that E! may try to keep the series alive with Hefner’s new squad of paramours. But I’m not going there with them. For starters, two of the replacement droids are twin sisters. I don’t know what that’s called in sunny California, but around here that’s incest. But even if the “ick” factor wasn’t there, the new girls just wouldn’t be the old girls. In fact, I’m still waffling about whether to try the new Kendra solo series. Though I may give it a look, I’ve got to be prepared for disappointment. There was a gestalt to the trio, an entertaining whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Review – Body of Lies

Looks like Ridley Scott blew most of the money for this one on Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe and Crowe’s dialogue coach. Okay, maybe he saved a buck or two for some location shoots. Otherwise this is a mediocre potboiler about CIA meddling in Iraq, Jordan and Syria. Mildly amusing

Review – Miracle at St. Anna

Normally I don’t like to pick on the film-making skills of a director as gifted as Spike Lee, but I honestly think this picture could have been cut down a bit into a much better production. However, I’d hate to see him lose any of the impact of the story. The main plot concerns a quartet of black soldiers in a small Italian village in 1944. One of the group adopts an injured child, and things just sort of twist and turn from there. Lee’s editing is laconic, which is part of why he takes three hours to tell a two-hour tale. He also makes odd use of the cast, with the main characters played by newcomers and more famous actors putting in only brief appearances. Overall, however, this is a new look at an old war from perspectives previously left largely unexplored. To be sure, it’s a bit of a downer. But for the most part it’s a well-crafted, thought-provoking downer. Worth seeing

Review – Australia

After Luhrmann-izing Shakespeare and the musical, the erstwhile director takes on epic drama. Nicole Kidman stars as an English aristocrat who journeys to the Outback to save her late husband’s ranch. With the help of a man known only as The Drover (Hugh Jackman), she manages to save the operation from rival ranchers while rescuing indigenous people from cruel racists. The story plays like The African Queen if you took it out, got it drunk, and then took it around back and beat it with a brick for awhile. And nearly three hours later the picture decides that it actually isn’t going to go anywhere. Mildly amusing

Review – Milk

Sean Penn stars in Gus Van Sant’s biopic of gay rights leader Harvey Milk, and oddly enough it doesn’t turn out to be as terrible as it sounds like it would be. Penn does a good job in the role, and he’s got a reasonably good script to work with. I was a little disappointed that the back half of the movie dwelled as constantly as it did on the animosity between Milk and Dan White. The bizarre murders were interesting, but Milk’s death was such a small part of his life that I would have appreciated more time on his accomplishments and less on his end. Though The Times of Harvey Milk is still a much better movie, people with no patience for documentaries might find this a reasonable substitute. Mildly amusing

Review – Horror Planet

This craptacular production starts out as a low-budget rip-off of Alien and goes downhill from there. A group of humans working on a distant planet uncover an alien presence that proceeds to massacre them in cheap, uninteresting ways. Though it must have required at least some kind of financing back in the early 80s when it was made, this is the sort of picture any dope with a video camera can make today. See if desperate

Review – The One

Imagine Time Cop and Double Impact mashed together. Swap Jet Li for Jean Claude Van Damme, and you’ve got a pretty good idea what’s in store for you here. Sure, it’s travel between dimensions rather than through time. And rather than twins, our hero is also his own evil doppelganger from an alternate universe. Still, the whole thing tastes suspiciously like leftovers. To his credit, Li does some snazzy fight choreography. If only the action sequences hadn’t been burdened with so much sci fi nonsense, this might have been a better movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Quarantine (2008)

This movie started out okay. In fact, the premise had potential. A reality show camera/announcer duo doing a ride-along with the fire department ends up stuck in an apartment building full of tenants infected with a fast-acting, 28 Days Later-ish case of rabies. But then they stuck with the single-camera perspective, which needless to say Blair Witched the production in fairly short order. Furthermore, by the halfway point they’d effectively run out of script, and the rest of the movie was a lot of jerky camera thrashing and screaming. As the end approached, I actually had to mute the damn thing, and I still walked away with a splitting headache. Add the terrible production decisions to the relentless cruelty to old people, animals and children, and there’s just nothing that redeems this stinker. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Osterman Weekend

For an espionage picture with a fair amount of action in it, this sure is a boring movie. A journalist (Rutger Hauer) is recruited by the CIA to set up a trio of his old pals (played by various late-70s-early-80s semi-luminaries) who may be connected to a Soviet conspiracy. Though some of the gunfights are vaguely entertaining, most of the movie is devoted to petty intrigue with often-implausible twists and turns. Mildly amusing

Review – Gacy

After all the griping I’ve done about torture porn, I feel like an idiot for writing this. But the observation must nonetheless be made: this picture simply isn’t violent enough. John Wayne Gacy was a stand-out even in the despicable realm of serial killers. In real life, Gacy tortured his victims slowly while raping them and reading them Bible verses. The movie version is much more mundane, portraying the guy as a garden-variety loser who just happens to kill young men. It doesn’t help that the title character is played by the actor who played Francis Buxton in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Overall the guys who made this seemed far more interested in the smell of Gacy’s crawl-space burial ground than in the horrors he perpetrated upstairs in his suburban home. Mildly amusing

Review – Death Row

Some low-budget horror movies set in abandoned prisons pit inmate ghosts against a gang of thieves running from the law. Others have college students working on a film project for protagonists. But here we get double our money’s worth: fugitives and film students. Some of the ghost effects are kinda cool in a cheap sort of way. Other than that, the only attraction this picture offers is that some of the cast is vaguely recognizable in a “hey, isn’t that the bloated corpse of Jake Busey?” sort of way. See if desperate

Our Eight Favorite Horror Movies

Generating this list was hard. If I were trying to come up with a list of my eight favorite westerns or musicals, I’d be working with genres with which I have little experience. As a result, I could cobble together a set of eight merely by selecting movies that met two criteria: I’d seen it and it didn’t suck too bad.

With horror I have to be a bit more selective. I’ve reviewed hundreds of these things, and I’ve seen a few more in the years before I started writing reviews. With that many to pick from, the selections have to be good. When filling the slots, I also kept an eye out for pictures that actually had some influence on other movies I enjoyed.

When working on the list, I swiftly had to abandon standards that might have made the process easier. For example, in general I don’t care for strident misogyny in movies. But try to make that a standard for selecting good horror movies. Go on, I dare you. The Thing was the only example I could think of that didn’t have a single screaming woman anywhere in the picture (due at least in part to the fact that the cast includes no female characters).

Most other elements that would otherwise make for a good movie-going experience likewise fail in this genre. Smart horror movies often end up dull. Expensive horror movies seem to be in constant danger of turning into clothes horses for their own special effects. Classic horror movies are often too rough around the edges or too stifled by production codes. Newer horror movies tend to rely on sophisticated booga-booga shots rather than plot or character.

So I ended up mostly just going with my gut. The following eight pictures are things I’ve seen dozens of times and could watch dozens more. The only real criteria I used were variety and entertainment value. Oh, and I looked for movies that were at least a little bit genuinely scary.

 

The Thing – John Carpenter’s version of John W. Campbell Jr’s “Who Goes There?” is a darn near perfect horror movie. It blends physical and psychological terror in an even balance unmatched before or since. The script is good and the acting up to the task. And best of all, it features some of the best uses to which mechanical effects have ever been put. This is truly an if-you-see-only-one-horror-movie moment.

Dawn of the Dead – In addition to making this list, this picture is also in the “eight favorite movies” line-up. Working with a medium-sized budget and a cast of unknowns, George Romero produces a picture that is simultaneously thought-provoking and viscerally entertaining. Though it lacks the sophisticated scare tactics employed by later zombie pictures (including the 2004 remake), it has more than enough brains to make up for the technical rough spots. On top of the zombies from Night of the Living Dead we also get the ultimate survivalist fantasy: what if you had the world all to yourself? Setting this scenario in a shopping mall was pure late-70s genius that still stands up decades later.

Creepshow – Speaking of George Romero, here he teams up with Stephen King to movie-ize the kind of scares made famous by EC horror comics. Though I came along after the forces of truth and justice (also known as the forces of ignorance and prudery) did away with Bill Gaines, I still grew up with a considerable affection for the horror comics published by mainstream Marvel and DC. King’s tales lend themselves well to this sub-genre, oddly enough working better than most of the movies based more directly on his novels and short stories. The bracket and transitions also help to preserve the comic book look and feel without making it so intrusive that the “graphic novel” thing takes over the entire movie. Overall this is a solid blend of style and storytelling.

Halloween – The classics never die. If I’m being honest, I have to admit that part of me wishes this movie had never been made. The picture itself is excellent, but it helped spawn so many other dreadful movies (sequels, remakes and legions of rip-off nieces and nephews) that I sometimes think that even for a movie this good the price we paid was too high. Still, now that we’ve got it we might as well watch it. John Carpenter really does make excellent use of the whole Boogeyman thing. It’s easy to see just how good it is by comparing it to the imitators that never come close to pulling it off.

Freaks – Though the so-called “golden age” produced no end of really good horror movies (especially Universal classics such as Dracula and Frankenstein), few are as bone-chilling as this oft-censored offering from Todd Browning. His use of actual side show performers got the picture banned when it came out for being too shocking and slammed in subsequent decades for exploiting people with physical deformities. The latter criticism is unjustified, given that the picture is about how so-called “freaks” are actually people with normal human emotions such as love, sadness and rage. Gripping stuff.

The Exorcist 3 – The original has a moment or two. I’m crazy about the opening sequence in Iraq, and of course “The Face” is a legendary moment in horror cinema. Unfortunately a lot of the rest of the picture is gross mistreatment – sometimes sexual – of a pubescent girl. No such “ick” moments invade the third installment in the series. After the second one turned into such a wretched flop, the studio brass finally just let author William Peter Blatty do what he wanted with number three. The result has a weak spot or two, but it also has some of the most chilling moments ever included in a mainstream horror picture.

Hellraiser – I like Clive Barker’s writing, and this is the picture that first introduced me to his unique brand of horror. The cenobites are innovative both in how they find you and what they do to you once they get their hooks into you. At the time Barker was a newbie director, and his inexperience certainly shows. But the rough patches are more than smoothed over by the creepy blend of fictional theology, imaginative violence and ambiguous sexuality. Too bad most of the sequels sucked eggs.

A Nightmare on Elm Street – Speaking of movies that shouldn’t have had as many sequels as they did, here’s another one that started out creepy and then changed to crappy. One of the big keys that made the original so much better than most of the sequels is that Freddy doesn’t do a lot of talking here. As a result, he’s a scary dream monster in an atmospheric horror picture, not a wise-cracking comic book character in just another teenager-eating slasher flick. Just about everyone involved – from director Wes Craven to actor Robert Englund (though obviously not newcomer Johnny Depp) – hits a career high at just the right moment.

Review – The Food of the Gods

I remember when I was 10 I begged and pleaded to be taken to this movie. Turns out my folks were far wiser than I when they refused. I have no trouble imagining the source novel by H.G. Wells actually making some good points about nature taking revenge on humanity. And the basic premise – animals grow to enormous size and turn carnivorous after eating a mysterious substance – might have been put to better use. But whatever chance this might have had to turn into a decent picture quickly smothers under the inept film-making “skills” of writer/producer/director Bert I. Gordon. Within the first 15 minutes we’re called upon to witness a fight between Marjoe Gortner and a giant rubber chicken head, and things go downhill from there. Actually, this might have eked out a point or so if not for one thing: when the humans start gunning down giant rats, the regular-sized rats on miniature sets are pretty obviously actually being shot (either that or Gordon’s using special effects well beyond his apparent budget and proclivities). Cute rat snuff movie equals sub-zero rating. Avoid at all costs

Review – Meeting Resistance

Following the start of the war in Iraq, a couple of documentary film-makers obtained extraordinary access to members of the resistance fighting against the United States and its allies. The portrait that emerges is of something nowhere near as monolithic as the word “resistance” might imply. Instead, a vast variety of motivations seem to be sparking acts of violence and terror against coalition forces. The genuinely astounding thing about almost everyone interviewed is that their bigotry and stupidity match the Bush administration almost point for point. I was hoping for the face of an enemy that would at least be noble in a Frank-Castle, you-killed-my-family-now-suffer-my-vengeance way. Instead what we seem to be up against is a gaggle of foreign nationals with no direct stake in the conflict other than their own pseudo-religious fanaticism and former Ba’athists and soldiers unable or merely unwilling to imagine a life that doesn’t involve endless acts of brutality. If this movie is any indication, the leaderships on both sides richly deserve each other. It’s just a heartbreaking shame that so many Iraqis and Americans are caught between them. If they could just kill one another directly, then the world would be rid of the lot of them and not a moment too soon. See if desperate

Review – The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

All these years later – and all the technical innovations that weren’t available in the silent era – and this still holds up as one of the best horror movies ever made. To be sure, it isn’t without a problem or two. But Lon Chaney’s brilliant make-up more than makes up for the rough spots. To this day I find myself urging Mary Pickford not to yank his mask off, and yet she still does it every time. This picture is visually excellent and emotionally rich in ways that few if any subsequent movie versions of Gaston Leroux’s novel even vaguely approach. The version showing on TCM also includes restoration of the color Bal Masque footage. Buy the disc (or watch it on TCM as the case may be)

Review – Lagerfeld Confidentiel

West of the Atlantic this goes by “Lagerfeld Confidential,” but judging by the content of the picture, “confidential” isn’t an accurate translation from the French. Or maybe it’s just misnamed in both languages. The problem here is that brilliant fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld is so obviously uncomfortable being filmed that this turns out to be an exceptionally superficial portrait of an artist who should have been a lot more interesting. It doesn’t help that the film-making is inept. For example, during one sit-down the interviewer hems and haws over a question about homosexuality for so long that Lagerfeld finally says, “Either ask your question or change the subject.” In the rare spots that capture something genuinely candid, this is an entertaining picture. Otherwise it’s mostly just dull. Mildly amusing

Review – Night Watch

“Don’t watch” is more like it. Nearly a century after the ground-breaking work of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, Russian film-makers are still producing pictures that are both technically brilliant and extremely boring. The first half hour or so of this movie is full of fascinating, expensive and sometimes even innovative visual effects. But once the director exhausts his bag of tricks, the production stagnates into yet another dull vampire movie with characters and plotlines evocative of role-playing games. Further, in the dubbed version the dialogue sounds like it was recorded in the same studio that did the audio for the first Mad Max movie. Though this is the first installment of a trilogy, I think I’m going to pass on the rest of the set. See if desperate

Review – The King of Kong

Subtitled “A Fistful of Quarters,” this picture tells the tale of the rivalry between the world’s two best Donkey Kong players. This would be yet another average documentary about people with obsessions except for one thing: it turns out to be a fascinating portrait of competitive spirit unfettered by normal human mores and social constraints. Professional athletes spend years learning to work with teammates, coaches, fans and the media. But not these guys. They hone their skills all by themselves, huddled over arcade machines in their garages. Given that few of them are real long on social skills to begin with, the vicious jealousies and petty intrigues of their “sport” float immediately to the surface. The result is a sad portrait of how weird we all could be if our lives consisted of trying to save princesses from barrel-tossing gorillas. Mildly amusing

Review – I Like Killing Flies

A documentary maker with some genuinely dreadful equipment decided to make a picture about one of thousands of local eateries in New York City. The production focuses on Kenny Shopsin, the diner’s irascible owner and chief cook. Though he’s a bit of a “character,” I imagine the big city is full of restaurateurs who spout crazy aphorisms and routinely eject anyone who tries to come in with more than three companions. What makes this place remarkable is the menu, a document spanning page after endless page of tight-set type describing a vast array of dishes that can all be prepared whenever they’re ordered. That makes Shopsin’s remarkable, but it plays only a minor part in the picture compared to Kenny-isms and some drama associated with a change in the diner’s location. This might also have been easier to watch if it looked a little less as if it had been shot with a cell phone. Mildly amusing

Review – Cool Air (1999)

This isn’t exactly one of my favorite Lovecraft stories. It always struck me as kind of like Poe’s “M. Valdemar” only with a broken air conditioner instead of hypnotism gone wrong. Nonetheless, this turns into a vaguely entertaining 45 minutes or so. However, I think it could easily have been cut down a bit. The disc also includes four short subjects: a passable interpretation of “Nyarlathotep,” a re-work of “Herbert West” that was at least a bit shorter than Stuart Gordon’s, an adaptation of “The Hound” even more boring than the source story (though it did have a cool amulet in it), and an Edward Gorey pastiche called “The Hapless Antiquarian.” Mildly amusing

Review – The Quick and the Undead

If Sergio Leone and George A. Romero were both lobotomized and then handed a video camera, they might have collaborated to produce something like this. After the zombie apocalypse, a gunslinger makes a living on the bounty someone or another is paying for the fingers of the undead. His former gang robs him and leaves him for dead, sending him off on a long, boring quest for revenge. The concept wasn’t completely without merit, but the execution is too weak to be worthy of it. See if desperate

Review – Mary Reilly

This has got to be one of the all-time most unfortunate proportions of money spent to crappiness of production. The studio must have shelled out the big bucks to get the likes of Julia Roberts, John Malkovich, Glenn Close and several other recognizable faces to star in this dreary filming of Valerie Martin’s retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the perspective of one of Jekyll’s maids. Nobody is exactly at the top of his or her game, but Roberts is particularly bad. She seems to be trying to pass off a look of constant pale terror for depth of character, and her coming-and-going accent makes her sound like she suffered brain damage after being clubbed over the head repeatedly with an IPA guidebook. Overall this appears to be an attempt to re-create the feeling of serving as a 19th century domestic worker in England by subjecting the audience to nearly two hours of cinematic drudgery. Too bad, too. The concept had potential. See if desperate

Review – XChange

In the future people will be able to travel by having their personalities zapped into other people’s bodies. Need to be on the opposite coast in 15 minutes? No problem. The company finds someone who needs to be where you are, and the two of you swap bodies. Of course this can go wrong in oh so many ways. For example, once a business executive swaps bodies with an international assassin who has already swapped bodies with … well, you can see where this is headed. By the end of the picture our hero has been played by at least three different actors, including one of the minor Baldwins. The concept showed promise, but the execution came up well short. Mildly amusing

Review – Hearts in Atlantis

This starts going wrong with the title, taken from the name of the book in which the source story – “Low Men in Yellow Coats” – appears, despite the fact that it doesn’t make much sense when tied to this tale. That alone wouldn’t have sunk it, but then the production aims for Stand by Me and falls short. Stephen King’s story does a passable job of blending horror and nostalgia, but the movie version doesn’t have the screen time to do both so it ends up doing neither effectively. Mildly amusing

Our Eight Favorite Movies

This was a hard list to put together. For starters, way more than eight movies could have gone on this list. It was also hard not to get bogged down in selection criteria. Note that this isn’t a list of “the eight best movies ever made” or “eight crucial moments in film history.” I don't consider myself qualified to make judgments like that, and even if I had the credentials I wouldn't have any idea where to begin.

To the extent that I’ve got criteria at all, the movies in this set have in common only that I own well-worn copies of all of them. I’ve watched them over and over again because of a particular way they make me feel. The emotion isn’t always happy, but it is uniformly strong.

 

Local Hero – Here’s the deal with this movie: as I said in the original review, you either get this picture or you don’t. It isn’t about story or character or special effects or anything most people expect from a movie. The plug on the poster says “A beautiful coastline … A rich oil man wants to develop it. A poor beach bum wants to live on it. An entire town wants to profit by it. And a real-live mermaid wants to save it … Only one of them will get their way.” Grammar and punctuation errors aside, that’s an accurate summary of the plot. But it’s by no means an adequate description of the experience. If you aren't able to sit back, watch, and appreciate it without demanding that it teach you something (or even expecting it to make sense all the time), it’s probably going to be an unpleasant experience for you. But accept it on its own terms, and it’s one of the best times you can have with a movie.

Dr. Strangelove – I don’t have a lot of comedies on this list, at least in part because jokes in general tend not to be as funny once you’ve heard them a time or two. And if that’s the standard, this shouldn’t amuse me at all. I’ve seen it so many times that I can do most of the dialogue along with the movie. Further, it’s a satire mocking a war that ended decades ago. But each time I see it is like the first time. The humor endures, aided in no small part by the quality of Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant visual work.

Blade Runner – I like – but do not love – both science fiction and film noir. However, there’s something about this combination of the two that works for me in a big way. It’s too sentimental by far, but Syd Mead’s design work and Ridley Scott’s skill at putting the visuals to work more than make up for the maudlin plot. I have a slight preference for the cut that doesn’t include the voiceovers, because I think they’re a little too self-consciously hard-boiled. But I’ll watch this picture in whatever form I can get it.

The Mission – Speaking of sentimental, this one’s a real tear-jerker. On the other hand, it’s visually stunning, featuring some of the most beautiful location work I’ve ever seen. I also feel comfortable with the dichotomy of theme. When faced with vile injustice, I find myself conflicted between belief in direct (even violent) resistance and nonviolence. Here the two protagonists approach the problem of slavery from different perspectives. The resolution, however tragic, has a lot to teach us.

The Seven Samurai – In general I’ve got only limited tolerance for subtitles. Though I prefer them to dubbing, I also don’t like to have to “read a movie.” But I was hooked on this one from the first time I saw it. Though I’d like to say that you can love this movie even if you don’t care for martial arts or Japanese feudal society, I can’t say that as an objective analysis. However, there is more to this picture than well-crafted visuals and flying swords of samurai death.

Dawn of the Dead – Several horror movies could have occupied this spot, but I ended up going with this one for several reasons. It’s the ultimate indie movie, proving that you can make a damn fine picture without a gazillion-dollar budget. All you need is a decent script and some talented actors. Even movies with much better special effects, editing, soundtracks and the like (including the 21st-century remake) aren’t anywhere near as good. And better yet, tucked neatly inside the zombie stuff are some valuable messages about class, race and gender.

Do the Right Thing – Speaking of race, here’s a movie that openly confronts social issues that most film-makers either ignore completely or smooth over for the sake of keeping audiences comfortable. Spike Lee’s direction is clever and innovative, expertly blending humor and grim seriousness in just the right doses.

Fargo – The list rounds out with another picture that blends humor and drama, this time from the Coen brothers. Movies packed with kidnapping, murder and other criminal shenanigans tend to be staffed with larger-than-life characters, but not here. Everyone in this picture could be someone you know (provided you live in a “fly-over state”), and it’s hard not to sympathize with them even when they’re being heinous. Like the first movie on this list, this is further proof that movies can be simple, quiet and great.