The horror icons of our youth have faded into oblivion and in order to prefabricate another one in modern times is an onerous task. “Trick” Weaver is the latest in the trend alongside Victor Crowley, Adam Green’s sinewy backwoods demon. The X-factor here is that Weaver was a mundane, albeit polymathic high schooler who wasn’t bullied and without a history of sicarian mental illness.
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Yet another Godzilla movie in this Halloween marathon and like much of the Millenium series by Toho, Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. doesn’t dither away. Within the span of two minutes, Mechagodzilla is undergoing a restoration and Godzilla himself is awoken from his abyssal slumber to clobber his opponents again.
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With the toothless animated film in the theaters right now, I thought it would only be appropriate to peer back into the live-action Addams Family duology. Firstly impressions from the beginning is how darkly hilarious the film pushes the envelope (the opening gag is the gothic family pouring boiling liquid onto cheerfully jolly Christmas carolers) and how instantly unforgettable Marc Shaiman’s tango-infused music is.
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In a direct address to the camera, Fred Williamson vehemently rallies against the crimes within the community and how the “books don’t balance”. Without the context of Nick (Williamson) as a gun-range instructor, his words are wildly sensationalistic and inflammatory for a classroom environment.
Continue readingOne thing I wouldn’t anticipate from a sordid exploitation guilty pleasure like Vice Squad is a disclaimer that the film was produced with the contributions and cooperation of the Los Angeles law enforcement. Gary Sherman bedraggles and tarnishes the West Coast boulevards until they rival the prostitution rings and narcotics parade that was 42nd Street in New York.
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Before Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and after Hulk Hogan, Rowdy Roddy Piper was a WWF wrestler on the precipice of crossover stardom. Honestly, his husky screen presence and luxurious blonde locks in both They Live (spawning Duke Nukem catchphrase “I’ve come to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”) and Hell Comes to Frogtown should’ve ossified his transition.
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A spurious bat on a string flaps into Dracula’s castle and expectorates blood onto the Count’s desiccated ashes. Voila, the baron has risen again but the low budget restrictions are definitely evident this time around. When the irate townspeople cordially knock on the door to the cliffside manor for Dracula’s servant to open the barricade, the scene is such a falsely polite and ingratiating bluff (“I promise I’m alone”), it should’ve been the droll parody that Dracula Dead and Loving It was proclaimed as.
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Movie buffs are often portrayed as cloistered introverts whose only prism through life is a silver screen. I, for one, can occasionally become fixated upon an era or filmography of an auteur to the point of insalubrious mania. Fade to Black is a pathologically brackish, remarkably egalitarian thriller that tackles the sun-starved isolation of Eric Binford (Dennis Christopher), a malcontent cinephile who can quote and collate listless trivia about James Cagney in White Heat and his other idols.
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On the heels of Zombieland 2: Double Tap, another undead farce could be an insurmountable stretch for viewers to rekindle for. Haven’t we lampooned, spoofed and tar-and-feathered the whole sect of flesh-eaters yet? Could there possibly be another oblique angle for Little Monsters to capitalize on? As it turns out, this Australian romp doesn’t warrant its accessibility with the wanton annoyance of a bickering couple finally separating from each other.
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With Victorian pictures of canines throughout the centuries, Man’s Best Friend is already laughably pretentious. The insistently obtrusive and downright ear-ravaging score from Joel Goldsmith is another misstep. Writer-director of the equally underwhelming Child’s Play 2, John Lafia is utterly tone-deaf and the film teeters uncomfortably near spoof territory if only it wasn’t so staggeringly lumpen.
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