Review – Phantasm

From deep in the 70s (well, 1979) it’s the ultimate lower class horror movie! Bad script. Bad acting. Black Sabbath little people. Hemicudas. What else could your average trailer-dwelling, cheap horror movie buff possibly want? The plot’s some kind of muddled mess about an alien from another dimension who runs a funeral home days and spends his evenings transporting the bodies of the dead back to his home planet (a bleak place that looks like it ought to be a Pink Floyd album cover) to be shrunk and turned into slaves. Apparently the corpse supply isn’t adequate, so the villain goes out in search of no-job-havin’, bad music playin’, muscle car drivin’ innocents to kill. As bad guys go, The Tall Man is kinda cool. He’s understated, which is a real oddity in movies like this. Further, he’s backed up by the now-infamous flying metal balls that stick into peoples’ heads, drill in and pump blood. Otherwise this is silly and not much more. Mildly amusing

Review – Screamtime

Three bad British horror vignettes don't become good just because they're sewn together with an American bracket. The lead-off story – schizophrenic puppeteer takes revenge on street punks – is the best of the three. Given that even this brief description clearly pegs it as a cliché fest, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the movie. See if desperate

Review – The Queen of the Damned

Believe it or not, I think they’re on to something here. The whole rock star / vampire, groupie / victim thing seems to have some natural parallels. The neuroses involved are so similar that drawing them together into a single thread should have worked quite well. However, the execution falls a little short. The script is mediocre, the acting sub-par, and even some of the effects fall flat. The result is a pretty but vacuous movie that may charm the goth crowd but will probably bore anyone outside the circle of Anne Rice devotees. See if desperate

Review – Gahan Wilson's The Kid

Though normally I’m not all that big a fan of the whole bylined-title thing, in this case it’s an important element. I probably would have flipped right past this thing were it not for Wilson’s name on it, and I almost certainly would have abandoned it after a few minutes if not for the respect I have for the author/illustrator. Overall this appears to be an attempt to market a slightly stranger and considerably more vulgar version of The Simpsons. The story is a set of three animated vignettes about the terrors of being a child, including the foul-mouthed ghost of a dissected cat, an awkward sexual awakening and the ever-popular trick-or-treat anxiety. From someone else this might have been merely a tedious bit of drivel punctuated by occasional entertaining moments, but from Wilson I expected much better. See if desperate

Review – The Time Machine (2002)

When I was a kid I had a record of this H.G. Wells classic. I listened to it over and over and over again. So it kinda goes without saying that I was impressed enough with the original tale that any movie version has some measuring up to do. What I’ll never understand is why film-makers insist on introducing all sorts of bizarre twists and other unwelcome extras. Just follow Wells’ story, for cryin’ out loud. But once again we’ve got more filler than substance in store for us. Some of the effects are kinda cool, but otherwise the story is inferior and the performances sub-par. It should tell you something that I went to see this a couple of weeks after it was released, and the only people in the place besides me were a couple of theater-hopping kids. See if desperate

Review – Jumanji

The special effects are the clear star of this odd tale of a board game with the power to spread havoc whenever it’s played. A boy who plays the game in 1969 ends up sucked into its bizarre jungle world, re-emerging 26 years later as Robin Williams when next the game is played. Every time a player rolls the dice, some new kind of animal or other jungle-related peril escapes into the real world. The result is a lot of cute, computer-animated animals, a lot of amusing if implausible situations and not a lot of anything else. Mildly amusing

Review – Crimson Tide

Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman square off in this movie about a bright, young executive officer aboard a missile sub captained by a crabby, old-school skipper (I expect you can figure out who played whom). Unrest in the former Soviet Union takes the world to the brink of nuclear war, and our heroes end up pitted against each other when a garbled message creates confusion about whether or not the sub has been ordered to launch an attack against a Russian base. Though I admit to being a big fan of sub movies, this one pushed the limit of the good will I automatically extend to representatives of the genre. The macho posturing was excessive, even for a war movie. The bickering back and forth between the two leads – which eventually devolves into mutinies, counter-mutinies and the like – simply takes up too much screen time, leaving little room for action sequences or character development that might have helped make this a better movie. Verdict: mildly amusing