Bad Movie? You're soaking in it!

BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE - There had to be a morning after!

2006-05-15T21:17:00.000-05:00

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979) - Bilge Ahoy!

Let's face it; some movies don't need sequels, most movies in fact. When it comes to Irwin Allen disaster movies, sequels are not only not needed, but should be considered a crime of some sort or other.

In the original film, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972), a group of passengers trapped in a capsized ocean liner; struggle to escape the sinking vessel in a strange upside-down maze filled with danger and rapidly rising flood waters. In 1979's BEYOND THE POSEIDEN ADVENTURE, a group of what I can only call morons, tries to go back into the capsized ocean liner to steal whatever goodies they can find.

Perhaps, if B.T.P.A. had concentrated on just a second group of trapped passengers trying to get out of the ship, the film might have not been so intellectually insulting. However this movie is dumb, really, really dumb. The very notion that no rescue effort would be mounted, other than a lone helicopter which whisked away the six survivors from the first movie, is intellectual insult number one.

Intellectual insult two comes in the form of Michael Caine, Karl Malden and Sally Field as a group of privateers in a tug boat which somehow survives the tidal wave that dooms poor Poseidon. These three intrepid morons find Poseidon capsized and make the profoundly stupid decision to explore the flipped over ship for treasure. Other than the still smoldering corpse of Stella Stevens, no actors from the original film show up, although one character, the ship's nurse, last seen heading towards certain doom, does return for "Beyond", though she has been upgraded from producer Irwin Allen's wife Sheila to "Mrs. Partridge", Shirley Jones.

Intellectual insult three begins as a group of terrorists led by Telly Savalas shows up to reclaim their lost treasure of uranium from Poseidon's hold.

The next five thousand insults are every single wretched frame of this incredibly ill-conceived film, which also features; Slim Pickens, Jack Warden, Shirley Knight, Angela Cartwright, Mark Harmon, Veronica Hamel and Peter Boyle, all of whom have done better work.

Several truly stupid moments stand out, such as the old couple waiting in their unflooded stateroom for help to arrive. Another occurs in an unflooded galley, as Sally Field, at a low point in her career, gives a memorably bad performance as she breaks down and cries due to the fact that her companions continue to refer to her as "monkey". Later when the water that the filmmakers seem to have forgotten about begins to flood a cargo hold full of upside-down late-70's model cars, our "heroes" engage in a shootout with the terrorists.

The fact is, that if the film makers could have lured Leslie Neisen from the original Poseidon Adventure back for this movie, added a pie-fight and a few fart jokes, this could have been a really good spoof of a disaster movie, like AIRPLANE!, instead of just a disaster.

By the time the remaining survivors escape you no longer feel the encroaching sense of claustrophobic dread you felt in the original film, you'll feel something more of a lingering achy-nausea, kind of like a hangover. In fact I suggest that this film be redubbed, Poseidon Adventure: The Hangover. Because just like a night of binge drinking, with Poseidon, there had to be a morning after!

TITANIC - Ship of Cliches

2006-04-14T10:15:00.000-05:00

Titanic - Going Down Hard By The Bow.

Love, exciting and new, come aboard, we're expecting you!

No matter how you slice it, James's Cameron's big budget Special effects epic TITANIC is just a super-sized episode of TV's The Love Boat.

TITANIC is certainly one of the most successful and visually stunning bad movies of all time. The special effects used to recreate the ill-fated ship and it's sinking alone are worth the price. Unfortunately, Cameron chose to wrap all that around a tepid and predictable love story that even Doc and Gopher couldn't stomach.

It's 1997 and a group of explorers led by wide-faced Bill Paxton is trying to rob the graves of the Titanic victims looking for a gaudy bobble called the Heart of the Sea necklace or more precisely, the "Straight to QVC Cubic-Zirconium Product Placement Item #T645JC". While searching the wreck for this priceless jewel-encrusted goody, the pirates/explorers find a bunch of prehistoric etchings, nude drawings of a young woman, on paper that is in remarkably good condition considering how long they've been on the ocean floor.

Meanwhile in America, withered 157 year-old Rose (Gloria Stuart) recognizes herself from the old naked etchings found at the wreck and realizes that she must rush out to the pirate/explorer ship immediately, to bore the crew with her sad tale of lost love on Titanic. The next several hours involve Rose transforming into sultry, yet bulky Kate Winslet as she tells her tale of traveling on Titanic with nasty Cal Hockley (Billy Zane) and an all-star cast of extras including, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Bernard Fox and as is the case with all Titanic movies, David Warner, this time as an evil henchman. (aren't henchmen by definition always evil?)

A good portion of the pre-iceberg story revolves around Rose meeting with and exploring various parts of the ship with new friend, poor yet doomed Jack Dawson (Leonardo Dicaprio). They travel from bow to stern or more precisely from stern to bow and everything in between in search of that perfect spot to "do it", finally on the most opulent luxury liner of all time, they settle for the back seat of some old car in the cargo hold. Talk about going down hard by the bow! Ah and the say romance is dead. Along the way, Rose also allows Jack to sketch her nude and ample form in order to create the previously mentioned impervious to seawater and silt amateur porn. I suspect this scene was more to keep the guys awaiting the big sinking scene, watching.

Eventually, and mercifully, Titanic finally hits an iceberg and the promised sinking begins. The whole sinking sequence is well done, save for the numerous episodes of stupidity intertwined with the event. The major players all do remarkably non-smart things during the time that their ship is going down, including jumping off lifeboats, rushing towards the danger and generally taking far too much time doing non-escaping antics. David Warner's character answers the question; does Titanic break in half before sinking, the band plays on. Rose hops into and then out of a lifeboat, the band plays on. Cowardly Cal saves a child by using him to slink his way onto a lifeboat, the band plays on. Jack and Rose take the plunge and the band drowns. Once in the water, Titanic (the movie) stubbornly refuses to end and the audience is treated to one of the most unlikely conversations between two freezing lovers ever.

Finally, 17 hours into Titanic, "Old" Rose finishes her story, those pirate crew members who haven't committed suicide in the meantime all look stunned and amazed, and a tad horrified no doubt at the thought of ancient Rose and the details of her sexual history with Jack.

I suppose TITANIC could have been worse, the effects are pretty special and the music is pretty, if you don't count Celine Dion. I mean, at least James Cameron didn't cast Will Smith as the Captain or something like that.

So rather than ruin the ending, which you'll see coming far sooner and clearer than any iceberg, I'll just wind up by saying that the "Heart of the QVC necklace" was in the last place you'd want to look and there's a big reunion party on Titanic for Jack and Rose. And this movie just goes on and on....(cue Celine Dion)

The Rules of Attraction - This Rule Should Be Broken!

2005-11-04T13:52:00.000-05:00

The Rules of Attraction - Rule #1: Don't Watch It!

After taking a few months off from reviewing bad movies, I was all ready to dive back in with both feet into the endless sea of horrible films. Really, after forcing myself to view Cruel Intentions 2, I needed the time off. I had considered that movie to be the high-water mark for all bad movies, the rule which allows you to say of all others bad movies, "yes it was bad, but not as bad as...", you get the idea.

But that rule may not actually apply when one is viewing 2002's deplorable and utterly worthless "THE RULES OF ATTRACTION".

Why you may ask would I be viewing such an utter piece of filmatic flotsam? Well, it has to do with a general rule of finding bad movies, that rule being that if a DVD(VHS what?) is in a bin of some sort and is less than five dollars, there's a very good chance that it is a bad movie. And you have to figure that even if the movie reeks, which is often the result, you'll still have a really nice plastic DVD case to put a more deserving DVD into after having disposed of the bad movie. So at least the money spent won't be a total waste!

But speaking of total wastes, there is, THE RULES OF ATTRACTION, a film which was made using the rule: Confuse and disgust the audience.

The movie stars James Van Der Beek (Dawson's Creek's Dawson) as the thoroughly loathsome Sean Bateman, who is, as I have learned since, related to the main character of another movie I have not seen; American Psycho, but I digress. Dawson-Sean is a student at a high-priced Northeastern University of some type with lots of other white students. It seems that all of the students of Rich Northeastern U. are heavy drug users, abuse alcohol on a hourly basis and have lots of casual and very unsatisfying sex. Much of their college careers consists of throwing all-night coke-parties often courtesy of local drug-dealer Dawson, I mean Sean. The one thing these students don't seem to do much of, is go to class, or have any class themselves for that matter.

The "plot" revolves and I do mean REVOLVES around this movie much like a swarm of flies revolve around a cow-patty. As near as I can make out, not having taken any drugs prior to viewing, the story has something to do with with drug-dealing Sean (Dawson) wanting to get into the pants of virgin Lauren (Shannyn Sossamon), who used to date Paul (Ian Somerhalder) who is now gay and wants to get into Sean-Dawson's pants, but somehow ends up not doing so. Meanwhile Sean ends up in the sack with local slut Lara (Jessica Biel) for some very disturbing sex scenes involving far too many close-ups of Van Der Beek's strange, strange face. Lauren all the while wants Victor (Kip Pardue) who recounts his whirlwind tour of Europe's dark back alleys, heroin dens and various close encounters of the Venereal Disease kind. For some reason, Faye Dunaway and Swoosie Kurtz show up briefly as two clueless moms, perhaps fulfilling some arcane filmdom rule or fulfilling a mandatory washed-up, has-been actress allotment. About two hours into the movie, the entire series of revolving storyline eddies collapse into what can only be considered a plot black hole, swirling and disappearing from sight, so it must be the end.

Confusion seems to have been filmaker Roger Avary's aim with THE RULES OF ATTRACTION and his aim was true. The film is made up of vignette pieces, some narrated, some not, some shifting time periods, some running in reverse. The credits don't begin until the second or third or forth act! Heck, my DVD player didn't even like it, as it began to malfunction and it could not finish playing the disc. I don’t blame the actors so much, as most of them did their parts well. Notable exceptions are Biel, who while a lovely piece of eye-candy, has all the screen presence of a soccer ball, and Van Der Beek who appears overly angry and perhaps a tad constipated throughout the movie.

THE RULES OF ATTRACTION features an ensemble cast of attractive actors, but all of the characters they play are as unattractive as can be. Every aspect of their lives is ugly and repulsive to all that is good. Even the ample use of nudity in this movie is depressing. As a viewer, I could not muster one bit of sympathy or empathy for any of these people, perhaps because I have never been a rich drug-abusing college student. But probably because I just don't believe that people in general live as ugly a life as any of those depicted in THE RULES OF ATTRACTION.

So, as for THE RULES OF ATTRACTION, my new rule #1 is: Don't watch it! This movie is one rule that should be broken,...I plan to use a hammer and a vice.

Cruel Intentions 2: Manchester Prep - Cruel and Unusual Punishment

2005-05-08T16:45:00.000-05:00

Cruel Intentions 2 - The Name Says It All.

If one could "unsee" and "unhear" a movie, indeed if such a thing were possible, if one could "unwatch" a movie, Cruel Intentions 2: Manchester Prep would be the movie I would most want to unsee and unhear.

This movie is a prequel to 1999's vastly better movie, Cruel Intentions and was created as a pilot for a FOX TV series. The words "prequel" and "created as a pilot for FOX" should probably tell you all you need to know about what kind of experience you're in for. More words like, putrid, vile, painful and vomit inducing will give you an even clearer picture of what you're getting into with this one.

The plot, if you want to call it that, revolves around teenager Sebastian Valmont (Robin Dunn) being whisked off to Manchester Prep School For Really Evil Rich White Kids, after his multi-Zillionaire father marries Tiffany Merteuil (Mimi Rogers). Once at school Seb meets his evil stepsister Kathryn Merteuil (Amy Adams). Kathryn bets Sebastian something about being able to deflower the headmaster's daughter Danielle Sherman (Sarah Thompson). There's some other characters of some sort, an attempt at a twist ending, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.... I promise, you won't care.

The acting is in a word, atrocious. The writing is juvenile. All the characters lack charm and appeal, there isn't one that the viewer can invest any interest in whatsoever. Dunne isn't sure whether he's doing comedy or drama, so he settles for a sort of bland goofiness that is difficult to watch. Adam's attempts to make Kathryn look all evil and bossy by staring off into space and sucking in her cheekbones to the point of nearly inverting her jaws. Most of the time she appears more constipated than evil. The rest of the cast just plods through the film trying to appear witty and devilish, but ending up looking either childish or some weird combination of constipated, bored and stupid, all the while trying not to look embarrassed.

The only thing that might make anyone want to watch this perfectly awful piece of dreck is the DVD version, which features a shower-scene of Sebastian with some naked twins (Alicia & Anne Sorell). Yet even this completely gratuitous nudity doesn't come across as sexy, it comes across as obvious and rather goofy thanks to Dunne's "ah shucks" Jethro antics during the scene. If you must watch Cruel Intentions 2, select the "pan and scan" rather than the widescreen version. At least this way you'll see slightly less of the movie.

The makers of this horrible film obviously had the intention of making something of a parody of rich white prep schools. Unfortunately, they ended up making a parody of their own work. Cruel Intentions 2: Manchester Prep, is never sexy, never interesting, rarely amusing and even then unintentionally so. But cruel? Most definitely!

The Amityville Horror (1979) - For God's Sake, GET OUT!

2005-04-05T11:24:00.000-05:00

The Amityville Horror - Horror? Bull!

The only thing worse than a lousy horror movie, is a lousy horror movie based on a "true story". One of the sure-fire ways to make sure that your horror movie based on a "true story" is lousy is to make all the characters stupid. As with any film "based on a true story", certain liberties have been taken with the facts. In this case, The Amityville Horror seems to be based on the fact that there are probably people living in houses somewhere at sometime, the rest is in question.

As the film opens, newlyweds George & Kathy Lutz (James Brolin and Margot Kidder) and her three children buy a house in Amityville on Long Island. Actually, I'm guessing at the number of children, there may have been seven or possibly two children. Suffice to say there were some children involved at some point in the Lutz family and I'm pretty sure they had a dog too. The family, children included, move into their dream house, a big scary looking old barn, complete with big scary eye-shaped windows and a creepy child-chorus soundtrack to boot.

In no time, the Lutz family begins to find that their dream house comes with some features the realtor didn't mention. For example, and in no particular order, they find a secret red-room in the basement. Now all horror movies require the viewers to suspend disbelief, but even that has its limits. What realtor isn't going to mention a "bonus room, good for storage or human sacrifice" in the listing? Also, the walls start to "bleed" black gunk, there are pigs in the attic, the toilets back-up, rooms tend to fill-up with flies, and so on. You might be asking, "Well why don't they call Orkin or better yet, just get out of the house?" Good question. Especially after a spooky disembodied Satan-voice tells them to "GET OUT". At this point, I'll tend to agree with comedian Eddie Murphy who had the following to say about stupid white people in horror movies.

Eddie Murphy: You know what I was wondering about movies? I was watching movies like...Amityville Horror. Why don't the people just get the hell out of the house? See, white people, you all sit on the toilet, see blood in the toilet, and you all go get Ajax. ... brothers won't sit on the toilet. ... Movie be just like this:
"Wow, baby, this is beautiful. We got chandelier hangin' up here, kids outside playin', it's a beautiful neighborhood, I really love - this is beaut--"
[demonic whisper] "Get out!"
"Too bad we can't stay."

Eddie Murphy is right. The number one thing that can ruin a horror movie is white people acting stupid. Keep in mind that demonic whispers aren't the only horror these stupid people encounter. Even after they invite their priest, Father Delaney (Rod Steiger) over to bless the house and even after he goes blind and becomes desperately urpy they still don’t leave. Hey Lutz family, do you get it yet? GET OUT! No, they don't get it. It still takes George Lutz getting possessed by the house's former mass murdering resident to drive them from the house. Oh, did I forget to mention the former resident murdered his entire family in the scary house? So did the realtor apparently!

So ultimately, after numerous weird, but not all that scary events, the Lutz's flee their dream house and the horror is ended. Of course, it isn't really ended, because as anyone who is familiar with bad horror movies knows, bad horror movies never end. They just get made into a series of ever increasingly bad sequels. In the case of The Amityville Horror, an even more demonic turn has been taken. The Amityville Horror has been remade with new actors and new effects to torment an all-new generation of moviegoers.

So, the only advice I can offer is this. If you happen to find yourself in a darkened theater and any version of The Amityville Horror is being shown, do the smart thing. For God's sake, GET OUT!

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. - If Adventure had a name, it would change it.

2005-03-11T21:31:00.000-05:00

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - Gross Encounters of the Third Kind.

I guess even Steven Spielberg can drop a bomb now and then, in fact, I know he can.

As much as it hurts me to be critical of a movie series I like, like a Star Wars or a Star Trek, it hurts me equally to criticize an Indiana Jones movie. Because Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were such good movies. What the hell happened to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which I will from this point on refer to as TOD for short?

TOD starts out well enough, with the typical "Indy gets into and out of a tight spot and escapes from the bad guys in a plane/train situation". Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and Nightclub singer, Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) must recover a diamond and an antidote for some poison that Indy has been slipped, all while be shot at with machine guns and attacked by various thugs and dancing girls and large gongs. They get away and are rescued by "Short Round" (Ke Huy Quan).

The opening danger/escape all works as well as it did in Raiders, however it's slightly after the escape that TOD goes terrible wrong. Because unlike in Raiders and Last Crusade where the danger/escape scene is simply a warm-up for the real story, in TOD, the story never really gets going and the characters just wander aimlessly looking for trouble. Such as when the escape plane Indy and gang choose just happens to belong to the bad guy they were escaping from. This leads to one of the most implausible and unlikely escapes in movie history, which involves a crashing plane, an inflatable raft, a snowy peak and a river. I won't bore you with the details, the movie can do that for you, suffice to say, it's about as ridiculous and unsurvivable a sequence as you are likely to see.

However our heroes do survive somehow and set out aimlessly wandering about some continent, I suppose it could be Asia. All along the way Willie Scott screams at spiders and snakes and runs around like some sort of beta-version Jar-Jar Binks. They eventually meet up with some villagers who have had their magic rocks stolen, along with all their children, by a cult of Thuggees lead by spooky Mola Ram (Amrish Puri). Indy agrees to look for the magic rocks and sets out with his gang. They eventually stumble upon a palace and are invited in for some gross-out food. In fact, grossing out the audience is a recurring theme in TOD, lots of gross-outs. Lots of bugs and goat's eyes and monkey brains and extreme heartburn.

Indy is captured by the Thuggees and taken to the Temple of Doom, where Mola Ram performs some impromptu mystical heart surgery and breaks some child labor laws. Indy is eventually rescued by Jar-Jar and Anakin, I mean by Willie Scott and Short Round. Indy frees the villagers kids, snatches the magic rocks, there is a big mining car chase/roller-coaster, then another unlikely escape. Then it just goes on about 30 more minutes and ends. There is no big finish, no melting heads, just "here are your stupid rocks, now take better care of them this time."

TOD, by the way is a PREQUEL to Raiders of the Lost Ark, not a sequel, which was disappointing. But one thing I've learned is that "prequel" and "disappointment" kind of go hand-in-hand.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom seems rushed and hurried, without much of a plot and very little character development. Much of the film is just images meant to be gross/scary and Willie Scott screaming. Maybe Spielberg wanted to cash in on Raiders while he had his momentum going. Actually, since George Lucas is credited as the writer on TOD, I suppose he gets the blame for the lack of story. It's clear that he just didn't have his heart in it.

STAR TREK: INSURRECTION - This time, the crew of the Starship Enterprise is revolting!

2005-03-07T16:29:00.000-05:00

Star Trek (9): Insurrection - Nip/Tuck

They say there's a curse on odd numbered Star Trek motion pictures, so to break this curse, they stopped numbering the films after Star Trek 6, but the curse didn't lift.

Star Trek: Insurrection, the ninth in the series and the 3rd to feature the Next Generation crew certainly lives up to the curse of the odd numbers. Not that Insurrection is bad to the degree that Star Trek 5 is bad, God no, nothing in the series matches that stinker. It's bad in the sense that Insurrection is basically a run-of-the-mill hour-long episode plot dragged out to fill about two hours.

The crew of the Starship Enterprise is back and they seem restless and bored with their duties of greeting alien diplomats and sitting around the universe waiting for an even numbered film so that the Borg or the Romulans will attack. Just when it seems that things can’t get anymore boring, the crew is ordered to the planet of the Ba’ku a race of eternally young and white humanoids who are being threatened by the Son’a. The Son'a are a race of ugly, bad guys, who are addicted to botox and elective surgery and are lead by equally ugly and apostrophized Ru’afo (F. Murray Abraham).

Things really get bogged down as the Enterprise crew, lead by Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) arrive and have to sing Gilbert & Sullivan tunes in order to stop a malfunctioning Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner) from revealing the Federation's "duck-blind" outpost, from which they watch the boring day to day blandness of the Ba'ku village.

Eventually the crew discover that the planet is being bombarded by a specific form of radiation that causes the Ba'ku to remain young, healthy and white. They also discover that the Son'a, with the inexplicable assistance of Federation Vice Admiral Dougherty (Anthony Zerbe), are planning on stealing the radiation to feed their own quest for eternal youth. Of course the catch is that the Ba'ku will all be killed by the radiation collector in the process.

Apparently the Star Trek filmmakers were suffering under the delusions that we, the Star Trek audience, want them to funny-up the franchise along the way. It's all good and touching when blind Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton) temporarily regains his sight. But then the extreme silliness ensues as the crew begins to experience the effects of the de-aging radiation. Picard begins to chase after one of the local girls, Anij (Donna Murphy), Worf (Michael Dorn) experiences the heartbreak of Klingon acne, Crusher and Troi (Gates McFadden & Marina Sirtis) notice that their "boobs are firming up", and Riker (Jonathan Frakes) gets all hot and bothered and even starts to believe that he's a director. The crew finally discovers Ru'afo's plot, they begin the much hyped "insurrection" by revolting against Vice Admiral Dougherty's orders and trying to save the Ba'ku from the Son'a.

There's plenty of gross-out Son'a plastic surgery and Ba'ku pretentious pseudo-new-age feel-goodisms to fill out the gaps between the non-action. I won't spoil the big surprise about the Son'a and Ba'ku connection, since no one probably cares anyhow. But it did occur to me that since there only seem to be a few hundred Ba'ku and Son'a, that the Son'a could have just moved to the other side of the planet and gotten their radiation the old fashioned way, instead of being so greedy and icky.

To be fair, this isn't the worst Star Trek movie. That dubious honor will probably always belong to Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier. However Star Trek: Insurrection is about as interesting as you might imagine life in the quaint Ba’ku village might be, and it will make you long for much better Star Trek movies like First Contact and The Wrath of Khan. Plus the sight of Commander Riker in the bath tub, getting shaved by Troi will hurt you, not as much as Uhura's naked fan-dance from ST5, but there is pain involved, and it’s all pretty revolting.

HOME ALONE 2: Lost in New York - You can't go Home Alone again.

2005-02-28T13:11:00.000-05:00

HOME ALONE 2: Lost in New York - Alone again, naturally.

Ever get that feeling of deja vu while watching a movie? A feeling like, "I've seen this all before"? Well if not then you definitely have never seen Home Alone and it's highly unnecessary and oddly titled sequel, HOME ALONE 2: Lost in New York.

It's one year later after the events in Home Alone and little Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is still as alive, despite being saddled with the world's worst parents. To celebrate the anniversary of their previous year's disastrous Christmas mishap, the McCallisters (John Heard & Catherine O'Hara) decide to take their 27 children on a fun-filled Christmas family outing to sunny Florida. Twenty-seven children did I say? OOPS! KEVIN!

Yes, poor little Kevin has managed to slip through the cracks again and ends up in New York City before either of his clueless and irresponsible parental morons notice. Now at this point, any child raised by someone with even the slightest parenting skills, especially one that had previously been left home alone, would know to find a police officer or some person in authority and tell them, "Hi, my name is Kevin McCallister and my parents are idiots. They let me get on the wrong plane and now I'm lost, can you help me?" But of course this would take away from all the hijinks and fun to follow. So little Kevin does what any 9-year old lost in a city of 8 million strangers would do, he checks into a fancy Manhattan hotel using his dad's credit card and sets about recreating his antics from his previous home alone adventure.

So on the story goes. Little Kevin sets up shop in an expensive hotel room and goes about tormenting Hotel Concierge Tim Curry in the process. Later Kevin shows a glimmer of intelligence as he seeks out his uncle who lives in New York, unfortunately he runs afoul of the two bumbling crooks Marv and Harry from the first movie played by Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci. When Kevin does arrive at his uncle's home, he finds that the house is empty and being remodeled. So Kevin, in order to defend himself against the two hammer-bags, Marv and Harry, sets about a plan to defeat them and destroy most of his uncle’s home in the process. The dynamic dunderheads, Marv and Harry, follow little Kevin back to his uncle's house where he has prepared a funhouse of amusingly painful, not to mention borderline homicidal, traps and snares. The crooks, having been in, but apparently not having seen the first movie, fall into their old habit of getting their butts kicked. Kevin defeats the crooks through a series of wacky burns, funny flesh wounds, campy broken bones and looney head trauma. Eventually Kevin's numbskull family shows up and all is right with the world again. That is of course, if your definition of right is sending a neglected child back to live with his half-wit parents.

Nearly every scene of HOME ALONE 2: Lost in New York, including the jokes, the gags, even much of the dialogue, is lifted straight from the first film. It's pretty obvious that filmmakers John Hughes and Chris Columbus were just looking to cash in on the success of Home Alone by pumping out a hastily made and ill-conceived sequel. Whereas the first movie was fresh, novel and at times even cute, Home Alone 2 is stale and predictable at best. At times Home Alone 2 seems cruel especially during the "Kevin bests the dumb crooks again" scenes.

This film is a depressing, far less cute recap of Home Alone and should be avoided at all costs. Fortunately, or maybe not so much, it does seem at least that Home Alone 2: Lost in New York did apparently fulfill Culkin's contract with Satan thus freeing him to make far less successful films like Richie Rich and The Good Son. While other even less necessary sequels would be made, they would be made without Culkin, thus allowing him to become a drug abusing has-been by the age of 15! I blame the parents.

Star Wars - Episode One: The Phantom Menace - A Jar-Jarring Experience!

2005-02-22T14:00:00.000-05:00

The Phantom Menace - Every Journey has a misstep.

George Lucas is insane.

Neither serious student of film, casual viewer, nor movie fan can deny this simple fact. Many artists throughout history have been lunatics AND geniuses. Even a lunatic can create a great work. However that is not the case with STAR WARS - Episode One: The Phantom Menace, the long awaited follow-up to Lucas’s wildly popular and infinitely better Original Star Wars Trilogy.

What’s wrong with The Phantom Menace? Well, in a word; everything, or almost everything.

The first and most obvious flaw with this movie is the fact that it is a PREQUEL, which means it’s the back story for characters and situations that we the viewers already know from the Original Trilogy. That fact alone drives the interest factor way down. We already know that 10-year old Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) will become Darth Vader, sorry if that spoils the surprise for you. We already know the fate of Obi-Wan Kenobi,(Ewan McGregor) Yoda (Frank Oz), and Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), as well as what will become of R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and C-3P0 (Anthony Daniels). So there isn’t a lot of suspense about these characters. The characters which are new to the Star Wars Galaxy, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), Darth Maul (Ray Park), Queen Amidala/Padme’ (Natalie Portman), Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) and Shmi Skywalker (Pernilla August) are just not very interesting. They do just enough to keep us watching, but not enough to make us care about them.

Secondly, there are too many special effects in TPM, way too many, an odd complaint for a sci-fi movie. But in TPM, there are hundreds of thousand of computer generated effects per second. So many effects in fact, that they actually distract the viewer who is constantly trying to assimilate the massive amounts of CGI going on in front of them. This fact was driven home to me during one particularly forgettable moment near the film’s end as thousands of battle-droids spring to life in one of the film’s most computer generated sequences. I recall drifting off from the action on the screen to stare up at the darkened theater ceiling and wondering how many tiles were up there and whether the management had been able to stop all the leaks that made those water marks...oh yeah, look, an effect...oooh, is that gum on my shoe?

But thirdly, and most importantly, the one thing that absolutely ruined TPM and confirmed George Lucas as insane and possibly evil, is the combination of a bad character and CGI. You know what I’m leading up to...JAR-JAR BINKS! Yes, Jar-Jar Binks, the computer-generated Gungan voiced by poor Ahmed Best, who probably thought Lucas was doing him a favor by giving him this part. Jar-Jar Binks, the most hideous computer creation since Spam.

Why is Jar-Jar hated? Mainly because he’s an annoying cross between an overgrown frog and Daffy Duck, without the quiet dignity of either. He’s also in every scene, from the moment he’s introduced up until the credits roll, he’s in every frikkin’ scene! He doesn’t do anything important mind you, doesn’t add one thing to the picture with his scenery-chewing presence. Yet every word that comes from his mouth is an insult to the audience’s collective intellect, and his every move is a knife in the back of every fan. So what exactly is Jar-Jar doing while everyone else is going about the business of saving the galaxy? Why Jar-Jar is running around stealing food, sticking out his tongue, stepping in piles of excrement, getting farted on, getting knocked down, tripping over furniture, getting electrocuted, shrieking, hollering and generally being an all around nuisance! Why? Because Lucas thought his film needed some comedy relief, from all of the intense drama no doubt.

George Lucas, in his madness, probably believed that children would love his CGI-clown, Jar-Jar. That they would flock to the stores demanding that their parents buy them Jar-Jar dolls, Jar-Jar books, Jar-Jar underoos and Jar-Jar crazy-straws, but he was wrong. To this day, more children have been injured by firecrackers while trying to blow up Jar-Jar Binks, than with any other action figure. Star Wars loyalists have written fan-fiction of Jar-Jar’s gruesome and extremely painful death, still others have done re-edits of TPM, which cut out nearly all of Jar-Jar’s scenes and dialogue.

The same mental illness that created Ewoks, festered for 16 years, to bring us Jar-Jar Binks and a 10-year old Darth Vader shouting "Yippee"! STAR WARS - Episode One - The Phantom Menace, is the weakest and least rewatchable of the series. A movie which almost makes THE STARS WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL look slightly less putrid, and makes the viewer long for Bea Arthur’s bar room sing-a-long.

SPACE MUTINY - When Stock Footage Goes Really Bad.

2001-11-09T19:05:00.000-05:00

SPACE MUTINY - Rated PG for Preposterous & Goofy! - Originally published 11/9/01

I have to admit that I would never have seen this movie had it not appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I expect that NO ONE would have seen it had it not appeared there in fact.

Sometime, somewhere, probably in the future, there's a big colony spaceship called strangely enough "The Southern Sun", it's actually the Battlestar Galactica, but we're not supposed to notice. Some elderly teenagers in disturbingly ill-fitting spandex, man the vessel. They're all lead by bloated Captain Alex Jansen (think Santa Claus), the captain's daughter Leah (or is it Leia), Evil security chief Kalgon and a big chunk of beef named Dave Ryder, our "hero".

The plot revolves around a scheme by Kalgon's security enforcers to take over the ship and land it somewhere so that they can be free, which doesn't seem all that bad to me. But it's up to Bag-of-Hammers, I mean Ryder to stop their foul plot to be free. Anyway, not much happens, a Stevie Nicks cult shows up via a Battlestar Galactica shuttle (again don't notice that). Our "hero" bails out on, thereby killing, a famous scientist in his Battlestar Galactica-style fighter ship (shhhh!). We later visit the ship's Buck Rogers style disco, then the morgue/dentist office. There's an epic golf cart chase, some people fall over the many handrails placed all around this futuristic starship and our "hero" deliberately sets fire to an unarmed crippled bad guy, HURRAY!

Aside from the atrocious writing, ridiculous plot and stilted acting, this movie has other certain flaws. For example it features very poor editing which allows a murdered crewman to return to bridge duty in the very next scene after her body is discovered outside the ship`s disco. It's also painfully obvious that the bulk of this movie was filmed in a warehouse, The handrails, cement floors and foldout windows are a dead giveaway. There's also the brick lined trench in which our "hero" incinerates a bad guy. Bricks and cement just don't seem like real good starship building material to me.

The movie stars Cameron Mitchell as Captain Santa Claus, Cisse Cameron (no relation) as his elderly young daughter and Reb Brown a.k.a. Big McLarge Huge as Ryder, also starring John Phillip Law as Kalgon, who never once takes anyone away. If you must see "Space Mutiny", get your hands on the MST3K version of it; I can't imagine watching it any other way.

STAR TREK V: The Final Frontier - Cap'tin!, I canna take much more!

2001-11-08T19:00:00.000-05:00

STAR TREK 5 - The Final Frontier - "God"-Awful! Originally published 11/8/01

So much potential, wasted.

This could've been a really good film, if only. If only they'd thrown out everything, or at least almost everything. Here's a few of things that will take away from your enjoyment of Star Trek 5, LAMBADA, I mean "The Final Frontier"

The special effects are sub par. There's a few shots of the Enterprise near the beginning that aren't bad, particularly the beauty shot of the ship and the moon, nice touch. But unfortunately, it's one of the few actual shots of the Enterprise you will see in ST5. Here's a hint for the producers of Trek. Fans like the ship, we like to see the ship, please include exterior shots of the ship in your films whenever possible. Other effects include the horrible "planet" beyond the "great effects barrier" that looks more like a visual depiction of Vicks Vapor-action than a planet. Really all the effects seem quite crude in comparison to other trek films; maybe they blew the budget getting Shatner to direct.

The story lacks a villain. Sybok, the happy Vulcan, is about as close as you'll get to one here. The problem with Sybok is, he really isn't dangerous and you'll find his laugh intoxicating. There's also a stupid sub-plot with a rogue Klingon; Captain Krunch or something like that. He's about as threatening as a french poodle with the hairstyle to match. Cap'n Krunch's main purpose in this movie seems to be to blast an ancient Voyager-style space probe(like V'Ger from ST:TMP) into bits. Maybe in a future film a Voyager-style probe will be kind enough to blast an ancient copy of ST5 into dust. There's an even more stupid sub, sub-plot involving the Klingon William Conrad, the henchman from Titanic(David Warner) and some Romulan Babe on planet Nimrod-3 which looks a lot like Tatooine. It's all pretty lame!

And just who are these people? This movie was made in 1989, which means the original series had been out of production for 20 YEARS when this came out. Did the writers never watch this show? Hardly any of the characters in Star Trek 5 even remotely resemble the original series characters. Examples:

A) - Capt. Kirk is now into rock climbing (something never before mentioned). He's annoyed that Starfleet would call him to deal with an alien threat, completely contradicting already established movies where Kirk couldn't wait to get out there and kick some alien can! Kirk's relationship to Spock and Bones seems more like Moe's relationship to Larry and Curly in this movie.

B) - Spock now has a brother, Sybok, who he never saw fit to mention before. Spock chooses not to shoot Sybok and save the ship. So what happened? Did the emotionless Mr. Spock have a bad feeling about shooting an intruder? Is this the same Spock that would have let his own father die (in "Journey to Babel") rather than relinquish the helm to Scotty for a few hours? I guess we could blame this on that "being dead and brought back to life thing." I choose to blame Shatner instead.

C) - Scotty, what the hell is your deal. You can repair the transporter when the damn Doomsday Machine is blastin' chunks outta the hull, but you can't fix it in dry-dock? What about all the other malfunctions on board? Mr. Scott is supposed to be the "miracle worker", yet he can't even keep the Captain's palm pilot from self-destructing. Scotty! Quit sniffin' around Uhura and get to work!

D) - Sulu, Uhura and Chekov seem a bit different too, but maybe that's because they actually get to do something in this film. Which I guess is good except there is a weird and disturbing Scotty/Uhura romance hinted at and possibly an even more disturbing one between Sulu and Chekov! (Just what are they doing out in the woods alone?) Uhura also performs a disturbing and hurtful naked fan-dance to distract some aliens on Nimbus-3. Meanwhile, Dr. McCoy seems cranky, which is at least normal behavior for him.

E) - The U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-A: WHAT THE HELL? Somehow the whole ship undergoes a facelift from the last movie, the bridge is completely changed and somebody has added like a hundred extra decks and steering wheel, and nothing works right. To quote Kirk "Starfleet has a lot of nerve sending us out in this condition..." Damn straight! What happened? Did they buy the parts from some Ferengi huckster?

Finally the whole plot is just bloody dull! Sybok the happy Vulcan is looking for the Supreme Being (God) on planet Shakaree, the previously mentioned Vicks Vapor-Action planet of heavenly lint. Sybok and his followers take over the Enterprise with relative ease, then sets a course for the "great big effect barrier" Kirk, Spock, and McCoy eventually make nice with him, they all go down to planet Vapor-rub, they find out that "God" is really a hairy thunderer in a Santa suit, Sybok croaks everybody is happy, the end. SNORE!

It's just all really sad. It's as though no one making Star Trek 5 had ever seen Star Trek before! There's no clever new gadgets, no socially relevant commentary, no sir, NO NOTHING! No vision of the future to make us gasp in awe, even the heavenly lint ball planet looks nasty. This place is supposed to look like Heaven, but it looks more like Death Valley shot through a pair of Ray-Bans. Fortunately, this film can be missed without missing anything. It adds nothing to the Star Trek mythos and should be written off as Kirk's fever dream.

I'm a trekkie, and I even own a copy of this movie, but Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier is neither final, nor frontier. It's just bad.

THE BLACK HOLE - Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

1999-12-13T00:25:00.000-05:00

Disney's THE BLACK HOLE - Down the Drain - Originally published 12/13/99

A black hole is a gravitational phenomenon so dense that nothing -- including light -- can escape it. Disney's 1979 sci-fi offering The Black Hole is much the same thing.

Hoping to cash in on Star Wars mania, Walt Disney must have thawed out for a few minutes and instructed his studio to make a really big budget sci-fi movie.

Unfortunately he went back into the freezer before giving anyone the slightest idea of how to go about it. So they therefore proceeded anyhow and made The Black Hole.

Of course, they knew they'd need a really young fresh cast for such a movie to succeed, but they never really got around to it, so they just rounded up the ones that were hanging around that day and came up with Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster, Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux, (pronounced Muuumuuux), Joseph Bottoms, and of course the swirling deadly gravity mass itself... That's right, Ernest Borgnine!

Basically it's the story of a madman, Dr Reinhardt (Schell), who lives on his giant spaceship with only some robots for companions. Some meddling kids show up and upset his plans for evil. There's a lot of talking, some menacing robots, talking, then talking, a big rolling fireball, some more talking and then nothing happens. Oh and there's something about a black hole, which actually looks more like a teal-blue bathtub drain.

The special effects aren't all that special and Dr. Reinhardt's spaceship looks like a giant greenhouse. The heroes' robot V.I.N.CENT, voiced by Roddy McDowell, looks like it's made of Tinkertoys and Tupperware pans...not that there's anything wrong with that. The movie also features a musical score that with give you motion sickness. Like most poorly conceived sci-fi movies, the ending is aggressively vague.

Real black holes suck in all matter which falls into their gravitational pull. Disney's, The Black Hole sucked up about 90 minutes of my life, in fact it just plain sucked!

WING COMMANDER - Some movies should have a reset button.

1999-12-06T00:19:00.000-05:00

WING COMMANDER (the movie, not the game) Originally published 12/6/99

Video games based on movies are nothing new. I'd venture to say that nearly every successful sci-fi or action movie of the last 20 years has had a video game of some sort based on it. But in this case the game came first, which is a bad idea to say the least.

You see video games are basically point, shoot, score. Wing Commander, the movie, has less plot than that.

Wing Commander is the story of Lt. Christopher "Maverick" Blair (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and Lt. Thomas "Maniac" Marshall (Matthew Lillard) who are both fighter pilots in a war against the Kilrathi, an alien race of big ugly cat-people. Blair is something of an outcast because he is half "pilgrim", a race of unpopular outcasts. There are of course the predictable clashes between Blair and everyone else due to this fact as everyone questions his loyalties. Also as in most films, David Warner shows up and then not much happens.

The special effects aren't bad, but they can't make up for the utter lack of interest you'll have in all the characters in this movie. The ending is predictable as Blair must prove himself to everyone in order to save the earth from the cat-people.

By the way, Wing Commander the video game starred Mark "Luke Skywalker" Hamill, guess he was too busy to star in the movie version.

To make matters worse I returned the tape late to BLOCKBUSTER, which means I had to pay extra to view it. BAH!

The STAR WARS Holiday Special - Let's blow this thing and go home!

1999-11-22T00:12:00.000-05:00

THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL! - A Long Time Ago...on CBS. - Originally published 11/22/99

The Year: 1978 A.D.
The Date: November 17th, a Friday
The Event: The eagerly anticipated "STAR WARS Holiday Special"
The result: Cheese

Time passes...

The Year: 1999 A.D.
The Date: November 17th, a Wednesday
The Event: The discovery of a bootleg video copy of the "STAR WARS
Holiday Special" in a second hand book and video store.
The result: This article...and of course, more CHEESE!

It may have been fate, karma, or just plain dumb luck that I happened upon a tape of this curious, odd bit of sci-fi history. A bit of history that the actors, studio and George Lucas would just as soon forget about, and who can blame them?

The STAR WARS Holiday Special is bad, really bad.

Produced to coincide with Thanksgiving, there is little to be thankful for in this turkey. I remember as a teenager being excited about this special. After all, I was then and remain still a big fan of Star Wars, so what could have been better than a TV special featuring almost all the original cast members? Well, I should have known better.

The story revolves around Chewbacca's family, his wife Malla, father Itchy and son Lumpy. The special begins with Han Solo and Chewbacca trying to get away from some stock footage of Imperial Star Destroyers so that Chewie can get home to celebrate "Life Day", a wookiee Holiday with his family. A lot of the first fifteen minutes consists of Chewie's family grunting and braying at each other, without the benefit of subtitles for the non-wookiee speaking audience members.

There are also several guest stars in addition to the Star Wars cast who wander in and out of the story. Art Carney appears as an annoying human friend of the Chewbacca family. Harvey "will work for food" Korman shows up as several characters, including an alien Julia Child. Dianne Carroll performs in a holographic music video, and Jefferson Starship performs a song (I suspect they were the only ones on the show spaced out enough to understand the wookiee language). There's also a scene set in a Tatooine cantina, which is run by TV's Maude, Bea Arthur. She performs a room-clearing drinking song to send her patrons on their way when the Empire shuts her down.

But as for the Star Wars cast, Harrison Ford and Peter Mayhew as Han and Chewbacca manage to at least have one action scene, but Han seems a bit embarrassed by it all. The rest of the stars don't fair well either. Carrie Fisher appears glassy-eyed as Princess Leia and even has to perform an ear-piecing rendition of the "Life Day" song to the tune of the Star Wars Theme. C-3P0 and R2-D2 appear briefly and manage to hold their own, and the voice of James Earl Jones also makes a cameo appearance but only as a dubbing over some stock footage. But by far the worst is poor Mark Hamill who ends up looking like a department store mannequin due to some heavy handed make-up "artist" trying to cover the scars from Mark's unfortunate 1978 encounter with a windshield.

The single high point in the special is the animated cartoon that Lumpy watches, it features the Star Wars cast in an adventure that introduces the bounty hunter Boba Fett. The rest of the special seems to be just filler for the cartoon.

For me the most interesting part of the bootleg tape is that it includes all the 1978 commercials shown during the special, so we know whom to blame for it. Just in case you're interested in a boycott, the major sponsors were Kenner Toys (big surprise) and GM, so buy a Toyota, won't you?

But we do have something to be thankful for: The STAR WARS Holiday Special will never air again. In fact, it's been reported that George Lucas had stated that he would personally like to hunt down every bootleg copy of it and destroy them. But I say, "Hands off Lucas! I still haven't forgiven you for Jar-Jar Binks yet! So back off man, I'll cut ya!"

HALLOWEEN - The Long Halloween

1999-10-24T23:07:00.000-05:00

HALLOWEEN: Seven, the hard way. - Originally published 10/25/99

BOO! Scared ya, didn't I? Well if you're not scared yet, you will be after watching John Carpenter's 1978 classic HALLOWEEN!

HALLOWEEN (1978)

Chapter 1: The Boogie-Woogie Boogey-Man!

I'm not accustomed to writing reviews of good movies, but Halloween is one, a good scary movie. Not that it's an Oscar award type of good, it's more of a cult-film kind of good. The kind of movie you can watch over and over without ever getting bored, in other words, a classic! Not that this movie isn't without it's flaws, but in a time before Multi-plex theaters and massive movie marketing campaigns, HALLOWEEN proved that you don't need a Ga-Zillion dollars to make a movie that endures the test of time.

It's the story of a troubled boy named Michael Myers of Haddonfield, Illinois, who at the age of six takes a really big sharp kitchen knife and kills his sister Judith on Halloween in 1963. And then it's off to the mental hospital for him!The story picks up again 15 years later the day before Halloween 1978. Myers is now in the care of Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance at the peak of his baldness). The pistol packing Dr. Loomis is determined to keep the evil of Michael Myers institutionalized forever, but Mikey has other plans as he escapes on Halloween-eve. First attacking, but not killing, Nurse Marion (Nancy Stephens) and then stealing her station wagon. Next, to celebrate the Halloween season Michael dons a scary mask and goes on a killing spree.

Preying mainly on the sex-crazed teen friends of Haddonfield's Laurie Strode (a fresh faced Jamie Lee Curtis). Eventually Myers sets his evil sites on Laurie who is baby sitting little Tommy Doyle, who is taunted by friends who claim that "the Boogey-man is gonna get ya!" Laurie also ends up sitting for little Lindsey from across the street so that Lindsey's sitter Annie can be killed by Myers. After planning a full evening of Halloween-related activities for her young charges, Laurie must spend the rest of the night worrying about getting a date with Ben Tramer her high school sweetie and fighting off a knife-wielding maniac in a white mask and blue jumpsuit named Mike! (Blue jumpsuit? Mike? Hmmm?) Although she fights valiantly to save herself, it appears that Michael will have the day. Then when things seem their darkest...THANK GOD! ITS DONALD PLEASANCE! With guns ablaze, Dr. Loomis shows up at the last second and empties his revolver into Myers who takes a tumble to the ground. Then comes the classic line of the film...

Laurie: "...was it the Boogey-Man?"

Loomis: "As a matter of fact, it was."

Finally at last the evil has ended, Michael Myers is fatally wounded...or is he? THE END?

HALLOWEEN II (1981)

Chapter 2: "To baldly go where we've been before!" or "Brother can you spare a KNIFE?"

Picking up from the last few minutes of the original is the unnecessary and unoriginally titled sequel to Halloween, HALLOWEEN II. Michael Myers is up and at 'em despite being riddled with bullets in the first movie. Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance return as Laurie Strode and Dr. Loomis. And several bit players return, including Nancy Stephens as Nurse Marion and remarkably enough Nancy Loomis who reprises her role as the corpse of Laurie's friend Annie, who was dispatched in the first movie.

Some might argue that the second film completes the story from the first. But H2 never really packs the wallop that the original does. For one thing the Laurie character is wasted in this sequel, as she lays around mostly drugged up in the Haddonfield Hospital and then later hobbling around the corridors in a stupor. Also the victims in this film begin to show signs of what I like to call the "I'll just wait here while you murder me" syndrome.

One glaring example of this is the cop near the end of the film that lingers just a little too long near Michael Myers "lifeless" body. Also the sequel is far gorier and bloodier than the original. While HALLOWEEN showed very little blood and showed Myers usually in shadows or from a distance, HALLOWEEN 2 is splattered in blood and Michael is seen quite a lot.

Anyway, the story is pretty much rehash of the first movie. Escaped mental patient wanders through the hospital offing anyone unlucky enough to be in the scene. Also we find out in this movie why it is that Myers is so determined to kill Laurie Strode. Seems that Laurie is actually Michael Myer's long-lost younger sister who was adopted by the Strodes after her parent's unfortunate car accident. A fact that Nurse Marion reveals to Dr. Loomis who shows up again to save the day and winds up incinerating both himself and Myers in a huge gas explosion. But the good news is Laurie won't have to worry anymore about winning the heart of young Ben Tramer since he is also incinerated early in the movie, by accident of course...whoops! So young Laurie is carted off in an ambulance and all is right with the world. Michael Myers is at last, dead...or is he? THE END??

HALLOWEEN III: Season of the Witch (1982)

Chapter 3: Who was that masked man?

Michael Myers? Sorry, never heard of him! That's the feeling you get watching "Halloween 3, Season of the Witch". The big question here is why the filmmakers felt it was necessary to make this movie a sequel to H1 and H2? Could it be that possibly because it would trick a bunch of fans into seeing a movie that they might have instead passed by! Hmmm, ya think?

This is the story of and evil Irish toy maker (aren't they all?) named Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy), leader of an evil Celtic cult, who markets a line of Halloween masks called "Silver Shamrock". The masks come in three styles, Jack-O-Lantern, Skull and Witch, and are being heavily promoted by a slick and highly annoying TV ad campaign to the tune of London Bridge is falling down. ("8-more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween! 8-more days to Halloween, SILVER SHAMROCK!...") It'll get into your head man! You'll start hearing it in your sleep even more than the Michael Myers theme from the first two flicks! Anyway the evil Cochran has stolen a 50-ton rock from Stone-Henge and is using a little piece of it in each mask along with some 80's technology. On Halloween night while watching the Silver Shamrock ad all the kid's heads will melt and snakes and bugs will come out and kill everybody. Why is he doing this? Well...um, 'cause he's evil I guess. Fortunately for us, the beefy Doctor Challis (Tom Atkins) and sprightly Ellie (Stacey Nelkin), who looks like an early beta-test version of SHOWGIRL's Elizabeth Berkley, catch on to Cochran's evil scheme and nearly foil it entirely except for...well I won't spoil the end, the filmmaker's have already done that for you. Suffice to say the ending is one of those that leave you saying, "it's over"... isn't it? THE END???

Let's hope so.

Halloween 3 has as much to do with the first two movies, as an eggplant has to do with a chicken! We do see Michael Myers and Laurie Strode in this movie but only on a TV that is showing "Halloween", and if there's one thing to be learned it's this. "Don't use scenes from a classic movie in your crappy movie, it will only emphasize just how crappy your movie is.

HALLOWEEN IV: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Chapter 4: Return to sender.

Poor Laurie Strode.

To survive all those close calls with her homicidal brother just to be killed in a car wreck. Well at least she has a young daughter, Jamie Lloyd, living in the cursed little town of Haddonfield. And at least little Jamie is safe because Michael Myers was killed in the giant explosion at the end of HALLOWEEN 2 right? Well not exactly. Its 10 years later and it seems that Mikey is still pretty hard to kill. Everyone's favorite homicidal maniac now in custody, is being transferred back to the Smith's Grove Mental Hospital for the Criminally Insane Who Can Easily Escape Mental Institutions...Institute. And he escapes, right after a big-mouthed paramedic mentions that Michael has a young niece living in Haddonfield.

Enter Donald Pleasance, who is apparently pretty hard kill as it is hastily explained that Dr. Loomis (Pleasance) survived the fiery explosion at the end of H2 with just a few burns and a limp (burns cause limps?). Dr. Loomis realizes that Myers will return to Haddonfield, 'cause that's just where homicidal mental patients go. Makes you wonder why anyone even remotely related to the Myers family would live there.

When we first meet Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) we see that she is indeed a very troubled child with visions of her murderous uncle dancing in her head. She's now the foster child of some family whose name I forget, but she has a "sister" named Rachel (Ellie Corbie) who is basically be the Laurie Strode of this picture. Michael shows up, hacking folks all the way, the main characters end up barricaded in the Sheriff's house. Myers of course gets in anyway, kills some townsfolk. Then the redneck gang from movies like "Giant Spider Invasion" shows up, Michael kills some more, Dr. Loomis shows up shoots at Michael. Everyone goes for a ride and Michael ends up getting riddled with bullets (again) and falls down an abandoned well with lots of earth and wood tumbling down with him. Of course as usual no one bothers to check if the remarkably resilient killer is indeed really dead. Well of course, although bullets and falls have failed to kill him in the past, he has to be dead this time...doesn't he? THE END????

Don't even think about it! And to make matters worse, it looks like little Jamie has been driven over the edge and will be following in her uncle's footsteps! I smell sequel! As Dr. Loomis quite correctly observes at the end of this film..."Nooooo! NOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

HALLOWEEN V: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

Chapter 5: Revenge is a dish best served cold...with dip.

Proving that you just can't keep a good bad guy down, Michael Myers is back (yet again), and he's pissed, so what's new? Michael is out for revenge which, when you think about it, is pretty inappropriate considering that HE'S the one that's been on the 10-year killing spree.

Halloween 5 picks up right where H4 left off with Michael down a well and poor Jamie Lloyd quite nuts. One year passes and it's Halloween once again. Jamie is now unable to speak due to her frightening experiences and has somehow developed a weird kind of espn with her killer Uncle Mike. Donald Pleasance is back again as the always bald and well-armed Dr. Loomis. And little Danielle Harris returns as 9 year old Jamie Lloyd, also returning is Ellie Corbie as Rachel who is an early casualty of H5. I always hate it when a character that has survived so much gets killed, I feel cheated, like what was the point of surviving the other movie just to get killed in the next one? It's like Ripley at the end of "ALIEN 3", except that Ripley was a better character.

So anyway, Michael Myers is back in Haddonfield for Halloween 1989 and guess what he's doing this year to celebrate? Killing people you say? Now how'd you guess that! The big difference this time is, the new characters are all so unappealing that we really want them to die! Especially the new girl Tina and her Fonzie-wanna-be boyfriend Mike. There are also two goofball cops who come complete with Oompa music everytime they appear. There is some new ground covered though, for one thing we almost see Michael Myers face and there is also a mysterious Johnny Cash-like figure that appears to help Myers escape at the end. The old Myers house has also been transformed from a average tract house into a much larger Munster-type haunted house.

Dr. Loomis appears to die after subduing the mad killer but does he? THE END????? Ummmm....

(By the way "the revenge" mentioned in the title, is apparently aimed at the audience since this is by far the worst of the series.)

HALLOWEEN VI: The Curse of Michael Myers (1996)

Chapter 6: Curses foiled again!

Boy those Haddonfield girls grow up fast! As we see little Jamie Lloyd again we find out shes grown up and been captured by some weirdoes and she's pregnant and about to give birth! WOW! That's a lot for a 16-year-old!

Jamie is being held hostage in a hospital by some kind of Celtic cult (Maybe the Silver Shamrock folks from H3?) and they want her baby. Michael Myers is also there but before he can get his hands on his niece, she and her newborn son escape. But not for long, Michael finally catches up to poor Jamie and does her in, but not before she calls an annoying radio DJ and tells the listeners that she's being chased by Michael Myers. And not before she manages to hide her baby boy at the bus station. Re-enter Tommy Doyle (Paul Rudd); the kid that Laurie Strode was babysitting all those years ago. Tommy hears Jamie on the radio and realizes that she has hidden her baby and goes to find him and find him he does and names him Stephen. Also re-enter Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance), who didn't die in H5, has heard of Jamie's demise and has come to warn the Haddonfield police that Myers is on the loose again.

And just a personal observation here, why haven't these cops learned to listen to Loomis yet? It's almost like they're saying "yeah sure he's been right every time so far...but not this time!". Next we catch up with the good old Strode family, or at least a branch of the good old Strode family, Mr. & Mrs. Strode and their son and daughter, Kara Strode and her little son Danny. Now all living in the old Myers house, which has magically been transformed back into the rather unremarkable house it was in the first film. Seems that realtor Strode can't seem to interest anyone in buying the death house so he shows remarkably poor judgement as he moves his family into it. As expected Michael comes home, finds the Strode's and one by one begins eliminating them. He is especially thorough with the verbally and physically abusive Mr. Strode who you just know is gonna die from the moment you meet him.

The whole plot of HALLOWEEN 6, revolves around the "curse" of this Celtic Cult that apparently has been helping Myers since H5 and now wants not only little baby Stephen, who is in the care of Tommy Doyle, but also little Danny, the unwed Kara Strode's little bas.er, boy, BOY I mean. Lots and LOTS of people die including almost all the Strodes and the annoying DJ and the entire cult as well it seems. Dr. Loomis shows up at the end again, still packing heat and helps Tommy, Kara, Danny and little Stephen escape then excuses himself saying he has something left to do, then the scene cuts to a close-up of Michael Myer's empty mask lying on the floor. What happened? Did he die? Was he taken off by Dr. Loomis? We don't know as the movie ends and we'll never know. THE END?????? Well it is at least for Donald Pleasance as the movie is dedicated to his memory.

My guess is that Pleasance who looks none too good throughout this film must have died before he could finish the final scene, so the producer's just did the best they could with what they had...which wasn't much. But you have to hand it to Donald Pleasance, despite the bad scripts and inevitable bald jokes, he never quit and he never lost the passion in his portrayal of Loomis. God bless you Donald Pleasance!

HALLOWEEN H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

Chapter 7: Water, Water...anywhere? or " Halloween 3, as it should have been done!"

Trick or Treat! Well this time it's a treat! Looks life someone finally had the good sense to make a GOOD sequel to HALLOWEEN and HALLOWEEN 2. The oddly titled HALLOWEEN H20, which stands for 20 years later. The only disappointing part for me is that it didn't take place in Haddonfield. I thought that would have made it seem more like closure, but heck! What do I know?

Returning for this one is Nurse Marion (Nancy Stephens) who is now living in Langdon Illinios in Dr. Loomis's old house. Guess who shows up? You got it, it's Joseph Gordon-Levitt who makes a cameo in this movie much like Drew Barrymore did in SCREAM, in fact it's a WHOLE LOT like Drew's cameo if you take my meaning. Michael Myers has come to Langdon and ransacks Dr. Loomis's office finding a file marked "Laurie Strode". Leaving a few bodies behind, the credits begin and from the moment they do you know that this isn't going to be just another crappy Halloween movie. With the voice of Donald Pleasance speaking from beyond the grave we learn that Laurie Strode did apparently die in an auto accident but this seems to be the only plotline saved from the string of films that followed H2. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is now living in Summer's Glen California as "Keri Tate" the headmistress of an exclusive private school. Rounding out the cast are Josh Hartnett as Keri/Laurie's son John, Adam Arkin as her love interest, Janet Leigh (Jamie Lee's mother) as secretary Norma, who inspires several nods to Alfred Hitchcock's PHYSCHO, also Michelle "Dawson's Creek" Williams and LL Cool J as this film's resident bald guy.

We find out that Laurie faked her death to escape the wrath of Myers and is haunted by her past. Now that it's Halloween again she is seeing Michael Myer's everywhere. Myers does find Laurie/Keri and the killing spree begins. Michael then sets his sites on his nephew John before finally coming Face-to-Mask with his sister. Initially Laurie flees but then decides that enough is enough and goes on the offensive against her maniac brother. A battle of the titans ensues that makes up the climatic scenes of H20, with Michael Myers apparently being killed. But knowing better than to believe that (probably from having seen the past 3 movies) Laurie has one more ax to grind with Michael. Stealing the "body" of her brother Laurie leaves the scene of the killings and goes for a little ride, sure enough Michael comes back to life there is a final consfrontation and this time it's Michael that looses his head. It's looks like this time; finally the world is safe from the terror of Michael Myers. THE END??????? Yeah, I really think so this time.

This movie is also dedicated to the late Donald Pleasance and it's a far more fitting tribute than the stinky H6 was.

EPILOGUE

What was I thinking?!?!?!?!

Good question! What was I thinking? I guess no one can say that I not committed! I've spent close to 14 hour working on this one article. Some might say that I should be committed for doing that, what can I say? They're right, if I had to watch one more slasher flick this week; I would surely go nuts. So if they ever do make HALLOWEEN 8...you guys are ON YOUR OWN!*

Oh yeah, one more thing...BOO!

* - They did make Halloween 8, "Halloween: Resurrection", but I've yet to review it, maybe some day.

Urban Legend - A bloody hook too far.

1999-10-18T22:35:00.000-05:00

"URBAN LEGEND" - It was a dark & stormy night - Originally published 10/18/99

Stop me if you've heard this one....

It was a dark and stormy night, and some attractive teen stars decide to get together and make a scary, highly predictable teen/slasher/flick! So in the tradition of Scream, Scream 2, I Know What You Did Last Summer, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and I Still Can't Believe It's Not Butter!, I give you 1998's Urban Legend.

To understand the movie Urban Legend I guess you first have to know what an urban legend is. Urban legends are those scary stories that get passed around by teens such as, the bloody hook on the door handle, the babysitter and the psycho, the fingernails on the car roof, etc. Sure we've all told them, and I admit it I have. I know what urban legends are, I just didn't know that's what they were called. I always just called them B***S***!

Urban Legend the movie, follows the perils of Natalie (Alicia Witt) who is the target of a serial killer who is using the urban legends as a guide for murdering college students, and Paul (Jared Leto), who looks like a male Courtney Cox. Good casting as Leto basically plays the Courtney Cox role from SCREAM as a reporter determined to uncover not only the identity of the killer, but the college's dark past as well.

The friends/victims are played by various and sundry young stars including Damon (Dawson's Creek's own Joshua Jackson) and Brenda (Rebecca Gayheart). The film also features Loretta Devine as Reese, the trash-talkin' tough as nails, Jackie Brown-style security guard and Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund as a slightly warped professor.

The movie is pretty much standard fare as slasher flicks go. It includes lots of "running towards the danger" scenes and dead friends whose bodies vanish and reappear as needed. The audience is jerked around a several times and the writer tries to fool us into thinking that the murderer is the boyfriend, the dean, the creepy janitor, the professor and Mary-Ann. They also throw red herrings our way in the form of a student massacre that the school tries to keep hush-hush, that has evolved into an "Urban Legend" all it's own. Of course anyone who doesn't figure out the real killer's identity by at least halfway isn't really paying attention and should be punished.

Urban Legend isn't a bad movie. But it is very predictable, from the killer's identity, to the "surprising" double-twist ending. You're probably asking, "But, DON'T YOU LIKE SCARY MOVIES?" My answer is yes, but why do they all have to be so much alike? So why do I watch them? I guess I'm HOOKED!

Jaws 4: The Revenge - Bad Movie? You're Soaking In It!

1999-10-11T21:32:00.000-05:00

Jaws 4: The Revenge: This time, it's personal - Originally published 10/11/99

Jaws was a great movie. Jaws 2 was an O.K. movie, Jaws 3 was a bad movie.

Jaws 4: The Revenge, defies description. Words like "sucks", "bites", "crap" and "sewer" all come to mind, but none truly express the foulness of this motion picture. They come close, as close as mere words can at least.

Here's the, what I guess we'll have to call, PLOT.

Many years after the original JAWS, good old Amity police chief Martin Brody has been killed by a shark and it's not long before his widow Ellen Brody, played by human stick figure Lorraine Gary decides to get on with her life.

But this is complicated after her youngest son Sean (Mitchell Anderson) becomes a midnight snack on Christmas Eve for the shark (looks like Santa Jaws was coming to town, ahhahaha...sorry).

So Ellen goes to the Bahamas to stay with her other son Mike (Lance Guest). Soon she meets her love interest for the movie "Hoagie" played by Michael Caine. Meanwhile the shark has followed Ellen from New York to the Bahamas. Although it is never explained exactly how the shark did this, I suspect the shark used a sophisticated satellite-tracking device developed by Flipper.

Jaws the shark is determined to destroy his mortal enemy, the Brody family and begins attacking tourists in a vain attempt to get at various Brody grandchildren. So Ellen enlists the help of her son Mike, local shark expert Jake, played by Mario Van Peebles, and Hoagie to hunt down the enormous fish and wipe it out.

I won't bore you with all the little details (since I can't really recall them). But I will describe the BIG FINISH for you. Basically, all the stars end up on a big boat hunting Jaws the shark (sound familiar?) The Shark eats Hoagie's airplane (sort of a "plane" Hoagie I guess Ah hahaha, ahem), then sets his sites on the boat. The shark rears up out of the ocean several times and roars (with a voice that sounds strangely like Spot, the Munster's pet). Finally as all hope looks lost, Ellen steers the big boat at the shark which as luck might have it, jumps out of the water and is impaled on the ship's yardarm and is killed. Huzzah!

Jaws 4: The Revenge, is a painful film, it's idiotic premise is more laughable than exciting, and it's made even more painful by the fact that the stars must have thought that they were making a good movie. In the end "the revenge" does feel personal, but what did the audience do to deserve this!?

IDLE HANDS - The Devil gives you the finger!

1999-09-20T21:28:00.000-05:00

"IDLE HANDS" of fate. Originally published 9/20/99

They say, "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." Well if that's true then 'ol Satan was really making the wood chips fly when he created the teen-horror-comedy, "Idle Hands".

Ah the teen years! The magical time in life when boys become men. The time when their thoughts naturally turn to cars, sex, career, sex, money, sex, sex and of course HOMICIDE. Such is the plight of the teen stars of "Idle Hands".

While starring no one in particular, the film does feature the guy from the 10-10-345 commercials, fortunately he gets killed very early in the film, probably for forgetting that Jupiter and not Saturn, is the 5th planet.

Anyway it's not long before we learn that the 10-10 guy's son; Anton played by Devon Sawa, is possessed by something evil that only affects his right hand. Somehow this hand can drag Anton around forcing him to kill people and also cause him to spaz around like Jerry Lewis on acid. And speaking of acid, there's plenty of casual drug use depicted, which is always fun for the kiddies. Anyway, the evil hand causes Anton to kill his parents and two best friends, who reanimate from the dead to "hang" with their homicidal bud. There's also plenty of profanity and hip 90's teen lingo such as, "That's messed up man" and "No f...'way!" and surprisingly very little sex.

Well to make a long movie short, Anton ends up chopping off the offending member (his hand that is) for which he seeks no medical attention, yet somehow he neglects to bleed to death. The hand meanwhile continues on it's killing spree, setting it's sights on Anton's girlfriend (shades of 'The Crawling Hand'). Vivica A. Fox eventually shows up and kills the hand, the girlfriend is saved, the dead guys go to heaven, and Anton gets crushed by a car but will still end up "getting some" which is good since he lost his hand. But first he'll have to wait until the body-cast comes off.

So the moral of "Idle Hands" seems to be that, despite stacks of dead bodies, rampant use of marijuana and the deaths of close friends and family members, everybody lives happily ever after...you know, except for the dead guys...

"Idle Hands", a "horror-comedy" with a curious lack of humor and only a general feeling of gassiness, which might possibly be confused with fear. Unless of course you find it frightening that the producers apparently thought that there was an audience out there that would find humor in mass murder and scenes of bloody gore.

So if your idea of a good time includes beheadings, stabbings, dismemberment, lots of drug references, profanity, and a plot that insults your intelligence from start to finish, then "Idle Hands" is the film for you!

STARSHIP TROOPERS - This Bug bugs me, he really bugs me!

1999-09-06T21:15:00.000-05:00

STARSHIP TROOPERS - I don't want to know more! - Originally published 9/6/99

Starship Troopers is a movie that escaped from Hollywood a few years back. It's based on the book by Robert Heinlein, whose work I respected until now. Although to blame the author for this mess is probably unfair. But, I DON'T CARE! Here's the scoop:

In the not too distant future a lot of very attractive, and strangely caucasian South American Ubermensch will be forced to fight a war against giant computer animated bugs called Arachnids, from the planet Klendathu.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? Good.

It seems these giant bugs have developed a way of transporting asteroids through space millions of miles to crash land with pinpoint accuracy on Earth. The extremely good looking cast must find a way of stopping the bugs before all life on Earth is destroyed. Enter Johnny Rico played by a very white Casper Van Dien, he's a grunt in the Mobile Infantry. Along with fellow troopers; perky dolphin-nosed Denise Richards as Carmen Ibanez, Neil Patrick (Doogie Howser) Harris as Carl Jenkins, and Dina Meyer as "Dizzy", they must fight against giant flesh-ripping, flame-breathing and brain-sucking insects. Ugly Michael "Show Destroyer" Ironside, who has single-handedly presided over the demise of more than one sci-fi franchise, joins them.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? No? Well tough! I had to sit through it, and so do you!

The main story is wedged in between futuristic newsreel type propaganda recruitment films for the Futuristic Hilter-like Earth Forces. Each framing sequence ends with the question "Would you like to know more?" But unfortunately, you can't hit the "NO" option.

Director Paul Verhoeven takes us on this ultra-violent, ultra gory ride into the future of pest control. Heads are torn off, soldiers are scissored in half, giant spider-like insects are riddled with bullets, and that's just the first two minutes, no really! The bloodfest continues almost uninterrupted for the next two hours. There is an attempt at a love story of some sort and a few non-killing scenes. But most of the time its kill, bleed, die! Ah fun! The killing gets pretty graphic too. In a particularly icky scene, a soldier is burned alive by flame-breathing bug. In another, a sharp-pointy bug impales a female soldier. Another soldier has his brains sucked out by big squishy brain-sucker bug. Yet another soldier has his head blown off in training. And who can forget the tender, soldier being torn in half by bugs, then being shot by his own troops, scene? Delightful! Yet during all of this, the cast manages to stay oddly clean and well groomed.

Anyway, there are also a couple of nude scenes, a little something for the ladies and the guys too. I believe this was probably the director's way of saying "Sorry about the movie, here are some breasts."

WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? Annoying isn't it?

Finally the most truly bizarre part of Starship Troopers has got to be the fact that this ultra violent, ultra graphic, ultra bloody, adult language-filled, nude scene-laden R-rated gore fest had a kid's TOY LINE based on it!

I can see it now...

SANTA: "Little Billy, do you want an 'ARACHNID' action-figure for Christmas?"

LITTLE BILLY: "NOOOOOO! WAAAAAH! MOMMIE!!!GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF!!"

Starship Troopers... The movie that had so many computer generated effects that it made George Lucas say, "I'D LIKE TO KNOW MORE!"