Review – Alien 3

What is it about the number three sequel? The third time was definitely not the charm for either the Godfather films or the Jaws series. The third Halloween movie wasn’t even distantly related to the first two. And this third Alien movie is no exception to the rule. An under-exposed, grunge art director’s wet dream, the plot mopes on and on until I’m just about ready to root for the alien. Not that we get too many alternatives, inasmuch as the human characters range from mildly annoying to downright loathsome. Even the computer-modeled alien effects are pretty cheap by today’s standards. Maybe if the first two hadn’t been such genre classics, this one wouldn’t have been such a letdown. As it is, however, it comes across as an arrogant MTV-wannabe director’s attempt to make a film that amuses him rather than one that fans are likely to enjoy. The final irony: the filmmakers did their best to kill the series by incinerating the Sigourney Weaver character at the end. Well, I guess the studio had the last laugh on that one (see Alien Resurrection, or better yet don’t). Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Memoirs of an Invisible Man

Straying from his usual stomping grounds, John Carpenter comes up with what has to be his dullest movie to date. For openers, he casts the thoroughly un-charming Chevy Chase as an average guy who is rendered invisible by a freak accident. Naturally sinister government agents (led by Sam Neil) want to either use him as an assassin or do him in. Though the premise has potential, the plot plays out as a combination of cheap sitcom and B-grade action movie. Ultimately the film depends on special effects to provide what little entertainment value it has to offer. See if desperate

Review – Face/Off

What a surprise! John Woo makes yet another action movie pitting two men on opposite sides of the law against each other in a seemingly endless parade of gunfire and jump cuts. The only new twist here is that the cop and the criminal swap faces thanks to plastic surgery and plot twists, so John Travolta ends up playing Nicholas Cage and vice versa. If you’re not in the mood for a long string of action sequences occasionally punctuated by story fragments, you’re probably better off skipping this one. But Woo fans will get a kick out of his usual bag of tricks. Mildly amusing

Review – 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag

By the time you sit through half of this turkey you’ll wish that your own head (or at the very least the head of the screenwriter) could be number nine. Even decapitation would be a welcome relief from this moronic situation comedy. There’s an odd occasional bit of genuine humor (usually when either David Spade or Joe Pesci is on screen, much rarer occurrences than the ads implied), but such occasions are way too few and way too minor to justify the rest of the idiotic farce. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Death Curse of Tartu

This is one of those terrible old low-budget horror pictures from the 60s, the kind that actually stops the action at one point long enough to insert a highly contrived go-go number. Our tale focuses loosely on an ancient Native American mummy that comes back from the dead – and not in the best of moods – when disturbed by artifact hunters, teenagers, and artifact-hunting teenagers. Ol’ Chief Tartu can change himself into a variety of Everglades swamp denizens, using his shape-shifting prowess to make the red paint liberally flow. Despite all better judgment, I have a soft place in my heart (or maybe my head) for this stinker. Mildly amusing

Review – Samson and Delilah

Ah, there’s much to be said for the days when the only way Hollywood could saturate the silver screen with steamy sex was to hide it in the disguise of a Bible story. Cecil B. DeMille, Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr collaborate to slaughter a few verses of the Book of Judges, the actors chewing their way through plenty of lavish sets and bad dialogue. The truly astonishing part is that one of the most completely unbelievable lines, “if you had not plowed with my heifer you would not have guessed my riddle,” is actually taken from scripture. A young Angela Lansbury and an old lion also co-star. If you’re looking for only the finest in high, vintage camp, you’ve come to the right place. Worth seeing

Review – The House on Haunted Hill (1999)

Here’s an experience I haven’t had for awhile: seeing a movie in an almost completely deserted theater. Aside from two other people – one of whom was a moron with a cell phone – I pretty much got a private screening. Now, I did catch an afternoon show a few weeks after the opening, so it was probably a little more popular than I’m making it sound. Further, I was more than a little surprised by the film itself. I figured it would be a cheap attempt to cash in on what was supposed to have been the popularity of The Haunting. But if anything, this film surpassed the bigger-budget production. The stay-the-night-in-a-haunted-house-and-win-a-million plot was more than a bit hackneyed (not to mention that the whole thing is a remake of an old Vincent Price movie), even when mixed with the house-possessed-by-the-evil-of-deeds-done-therein. Much of the art direction was a little over-wrought (including exteriors that looked like they should have included a big neon sign that said “Mad Scientist, Boo!” on the side). However, the effects and editing more than make up for most of the film’s shortcomings. I genuinely admired the film-makers’ willingness to under-use effects to maximize the impact of some really creepy stuff, even if it did make the whole thing look a little like a heavy metal video. The DVD includes feature-length commentary by the director, but the really good bonuses are a quick documentary about the original and the remake and a couple of scenes deleted from the theatrical release (at least one of which would have supplied the female lead with some badly-needed character development). Mildly amusing