Review – Cocaine Fiends

This was the third entry in a triple feature of anti-drug movies from the 1930s recently run on Turner Classic Movies. And truth be told, by the time I got to the end they’d all started to blend together. So if I remember this correctly, it’s the tale of a girl living a wholesome life in small-town America until a smooth criminal gets her hooked on “headache powder.” From there it’s off to the big city to become a gangster’s moll and then a cast-aside former moll. Her brother comes to rescue her, but he too succumbs to the deadly lure of devil dust. My favorite part was when one of the urban temptresses was trying to seduce brother hick. She invites him to a snow-party with the snowbirds. “But it isn’t winter,” he protests. “Gosh, you really are dumb,” she replies. Yes he is. But then why should he be any different from anyone or anything else in this movie? Mildly amusing

Review – Marihuana

This one’s even worse than the better-known Reefer Madness. Actually in a way it’s better, because the portrayal of pot-heads is a bit more realistic in this one. It’s still wildly inaccurate, but at least this time around a single puff of the “devil’s weed” isn’t quite enough to turn a person into a rampaging lunatic. Instead, pot is cast as a gateway drug. On the other hand, the production values are so terrible that just watching this movie is a bit like being high. Many of the edits make no sense, and the plot follows little if any particular path. The random structure is so disjointed that it’s like trying to watch a movie after you’ve taken something (a few hits, perhaps) that have slowed your thought processes down to the point that you’re having trouble following what’s going on. Still, the most laughable part of the movie is the “heroine.” Burma (when she’s high does she go by Myanmar?) is transformed from a typical middle-class good girl with a mild case of teen angst into a dope-shooting crime queen who ends up kidnapping her own illegitimate daughter. Mildly amusing

Review – Reefer Madness

All these many years after first hearing about this cult classic, I finally got around to watching it. Eh. Obviously the bulk of this warning about the evils of marijuana is ridiculous. Anyone who’s ever known a pot-head is already aware that they’re generally incapable of much more than sitting on the couch, watching the tube and maybe microwaving a frozen burrito now and then. But apparently back in the 1930s some folks were of the opinion that pot was some kind of combination of LSD, PCP and meth. Its victims become spastic and hyperactive. They hallucinate. Soon their lust for crime and sexual depravity (including ladies who show their slips) knows no bounds. The problem with making up lies about something you don’t like is that it brands you as a liar and makes your opponents seem better by comparison. Mildly amusing

Review – The Deadly Mantis

While I think there might be a good horror story in the combination of monsters and the DEW Line, this isn’t it. A giant bug puppet is unfrozen from the polar ice cap and slowly chews its way south to Washington D.C., surviving multiple attempts to do it in. Though this might not have been so bad back in the 1950s, by 21st century standards the effects are too terrible and the characters too ridiculous for this to be worth much more than a laugh. The sexist treatment of the movie’s only female character is particularly ridiculous. See if desperate

Review – The Blob (1988)

The original was an entertaining movie, and I think it could provide a solid basis for a good sequel or remake. Unfortunately, this ain’t it. The effects are nothing to write home about, though they are better than the 50s version. The monster’s origin as an out-of-control bioweapons experiment wasn’t bad, certainly in keeping with the mid-80s milieu. But the time period that spawned this picture also supplied its downfall: the movie is stuck in the John-Hughes-esque mire of well-scrubbed teenagers who lead quirky little lives. It also doesn’t help that everyone who lives in this world looks like they’re fresh from the set of a Calvin Klein photo shoot (except for the soldiers, who are of course sporting the mandatory paranoid-fantasy bio-suits). If you collect movies about deadly goo from outer space, you’ll want to add this one. Otherwise there isn’t much to recommend it. Mildly amusing

Review – The Call of Cthulhu

Longtime readers of my thoughts on movies already know that I’m not easily impressed and even less so when the picture in question is an adaptation of a story by H.P. Lovecraft. But the folks who made this manage to pull it off. What they’ve done is genuinely innovative: the movie is put together as if it had been made at the time the source story came out. It’s silent and black and white. Further, they’re obviously well-versed in the conventions of the era, borrowing liberally from Haxan, Caligari and other masterpieces of silent horror. The use of models and stop-motion also give it a dream-like, period feel. Sticking to the story and using some of the tale’s actual locations also helped immensely. To date this is the truest and in many ways the best film adaptation of Lovecraft I’ve ever seen. Buy the disc

Review – Cloverfield

The scenes with monsters in them are actually pretty good. Too bad that’s a really small percentage of the total screen time. Part of me wants to applaud the risk taken here. A beast with no back story or logical modus operandi has a lot more scary potential than more conventional horror fare. Unfortunately the picture squanders the first 20 minutes of its less-than-90 total running time establishing the protagonists as vapid, New York yuppies. That might make them sympathetic to the film-makers’ fellow vapid, New York yuppies, but it leaves the rest of the world rooting for the monsters. If only the first quarter hadn’t worked so hard to wear out the movie’s welcome, this would have been a considerably better production. Mildly amusing