The Lightning Bug's Lair

Mental Health Awareness Month: The Eleventh Commandment (1986)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Tue, 22 May 2012 03:51:00 +0000

Ronald Reagan once said that The Eleventh Commandment was, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”, but he got shot by a crazy person with a Jodi Foster fetish so what did he know. I say The Eleventh Commandment is, “Thou shalt not pass up a TV movie from the 80s.”, and, totally coincidentally, today’s film is a TV movie called The Eleventh Commandment. I don’t know what it is about Made-for-TV fare from the 70s and 80s that holds such an appeal to me, but it was a time when stars slummed it, often in groups, television could get away with a lot more wackiness in prime time, and the sub-Hollywood scripts take bizarre turns. Just look at Pray for the Wildcats or Secrets of a Married Man, and everyone knows the infamous weird of Bad Ronald. Today’s addition to Mental Health Awareness Month has some of the best of everything that a TV movie should have. It’s got an oddball celebrity star, a script straight out of freaky town, and a thick shellac of 80s cheese to glue it all together.

Bernard White stars as Robert, an ex-priest and current mental patient. After his parents were mysteriously killed, he left his order and tried to take over the family business. Robert had lofty, virtuous goals for the corporation, but his scheming Uncle Charles (Dick Sargent!) has him locked away in a mental institution. Escaping from the psych ward, Robert goes on a killing rampage starting with the evil ward matron (Jennifer Rhodes) as his first victim. Picking up his cousin Deborah from school, he takes the girl on a adventure through the city, taking her to a mission founded by his Order to teach her about the plight of the poor and hungry. (Which don’t only exist in Ethiopia as the young “We Are The World” blinded lass thinks.) Of course, while he’s there he does a little killing, then they stop for the night at at a hotel, and he does a little killing, after reading a bedtime story to his cousin naturally. His Uncle Charles is too distracted by the scheming of his wife (Marilyn Hassett) and his lawyer (Greg Millavey) that he doesn’t notice the girl is gone or Robert cutting a bloody swath toward him. That is, until it’s too late.

Every character in The Eleventh Commandment is deeply flawed. There’s no one likeable outside of grade school age, and even Robert, who comes on like an avenging angel, lets his self righteous slaughter go so wildly astray from his traitorous family that he becomes another indefensible slasher. The question is, was Robert a dangerous psychopath when he was put in the asylum or did the experience and the desire for revenge drive him to it. Bernard White’s performance is what saves the character and imbues him with enough of the audience’s sympathy. The Eleventh Commandment 's script penned by William W. Norton (I Dismember Mama, White Lightning, Big Bad Mama) was determined to wallow in the worst natures of human behavior. If we are to believe that Robert was once a sane man, then, a priest, a loving cousin (in a surprisingly non-creepy way), and a man who seems like he once had a moral compass, went bonkers in the asylum. This is where the film shows its exploitation roots. The Eleventh Commandment aims to be sensationalistic, and coupled with a surprising amount of gore for network television and a bleak ending, it aims and hits.

Director Paul Leder, the visionary behind I Dismember Mama, shows off his low budget chops with The Eleventh Commandment, and if I hadn’t known it was a TV property, it would have seemed like more than decent drive-in fare. Leder squeezes a couple of good performances out of his actors which make the film. Bernard White (Quarantine, Matrix Reloaded) hams it up at times, but Robert is a larger than life figure. A man of the cloth and the knife, he shows every emotion from rage to childlike glee all regulated by a twisted piety. Dick Sargent, of Bewitched fame, really gets his teeth into the scenery. At one point Marilyn Hasstt’s character accuses him of being smug, and that is just it. Sargent has always come off as the embodiment of smug and it works perfectly here. While child actors are always a gamble, I found Lauren Woodland (Alien Nation) to be quite enjoyable as Robert’s only link to a non-violent world. Often listed as top billed in The Eleventh Commandment, Fresh Prince of Bel Air dad, James Avery, shows up as a sympathetic orderly in the beginning of the film, and then he promptly disappears.

When I talked about made-for-TV films up top, I talked about my expectations, and some people might say that I set the bar way too low. I say, hell no, who needs a bar. I killed the bar when I was only three. The Eleventh Commandment not only met my expectations; it far and away surpassed them. With a snappy rhythm, some daring moves, and some crazy people in the movie and writing the script, everything came together into a giant cheese ball of goodness. That about locks everything down for Mental Health Awareness Month this week, I’ll be back later on this week with more films and join me back here Mondays for more madness in May. And remember, if you start feeling like you're losing your mind, you're going crazy, and nothing makes sense, then face plate tuna slacks.

Bugg Rating

There seems to be no clip available so in its place... death metal.

Mental Health Awareness Month: Hour of the Wolf (1968)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:47:00 +0000

When Ryne from The Moon is a Dead World asked for folks to participate in Viewer Vomit for this month, I had no idea what movie he was going to choose. In a stroke of good fortune, well, fortune, he picked Ingmar Bergman’s 1968 film Hour of the Wolf. It’s honestly not a movie I would pick to watch on my own, but the themes of madness fit perfectly into Mental Health Awareness Month. My knowledge of Ingmar Bergman begins and ends with The Seventh Seal, and I hadn't watched that in over 20 years. And, yes, before you do the math, that means I watched it to try and get more out of Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. So I won’t claim or act like I’m an expert on the Swedish director or this type of art house fare. Frankly, it’s not really to my taste, but from what I‘ve read, Hour of the Wolf is the closest Bergman ever got to making a horror film. (I suppose chess playing with an embodiment of Death doesn’t count.) There’s no doubt that there is a lot of horrific ideals to be found in Hour of the Wolf, but there was a different kind of terror in store for me.

Johan (Max von Sydow) is a reclusive, agoraphobic artist who lives with his pregnant wife Alma (Liv Ullmann) on a small island. Over the years, he has become more reclusive, but now he begins to suffer from insomnia. As he and his wife stay up through the night, they keep especially wary of the point right between the dark and dawn where the spirit world is the closest. Johan refers to this time as the Hour of the Wolf. As he stays awake longer, he begins to recall mad tales. He believes people are stalking him, and complicating matters the aristocracy from the other side of the island begin poking around. They invite Johan and Alma for dinners where they lavish the artist with praise, but it leads Johan on a hallucinogenic journey where he is humiliated in front of the party. The artist’s tenuous grip on reality completely erodes leading the viewer to wonder how much of his tale existed only in his mind.

Hour of the Wolf begins with a statement from the director that the film is based on Johan’s diary and the recollections of Alma. While the credits play and this statement roll, the sounds of Bergman setting up his first scene run. This sets Hour of the Wolf on two tracks from the start. It claims to be reality, but it also underscores the fact that it is a movie, and thus not tied to the limitations of reality, from the first frame. This intrinsic doubt instills the viewer with a mistrust of Johan’s story from the start, but, due to the powerhouse performance by screen legend Max von Sydow the character seems capable of what he claims to have done. Sure, when he recalls a former girlfriend appearing to him I had my doubts, but when he said he killed a child and threw him in the ocean, I completely bought it. Hour of the Wolf portrays the decent into madness as not only decline of character, but also as a viewing experience.

Now that I sound like I’m lauding Bergman, let me say something that might be cinematic suicide, Hour of the Wolf is really, really hard going. I’ve known I had to watch this movie for three weeks. It took me one week to muster up the courage to watch the thing, then after two false starts over a week, it took me almost three days to finish watching a ninety minute movie. The problem was not that it was in another language or the way it was shot. In fact, I thought the cinematography by Sven Nykvist, who would go on to shoot Star 80, Chaplin, and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, was what gave Hour of the Wolf it’s greatest strength. Instead, I found the movie guilty of something I have often found in art films. I found it essentially too wordy with too much of the film’s inner life being laid out. While certainly there were stylistic choices that spoke to Johan’s madness, but they were dwarfed by the speeches he delivers. In space where his paranoia (which is ultimately kind of founded) could have been explored in his actions, Bergman chose to have von Sydow speak about his problems rather than show them. So many art house films have a difficulty with being heavy handed, and Bergman took that route as well spoon feeding the audience to follow an already easy line. It makes for boring viewing, and I’ll admit that even when watching it in chunks, the only thing that kept my mind from wandering was the need to read the next subtitle.

Von Sydow and Ullmann both deliver wonderful performances, but I think Ullmann is the real star here. While much of the film’s running time is spent focuses on von Sydow’s Johan gnashing his teeth against the unknown, Ullmann’s Alma gives a quieter understated turn, and, as the film shows us in the beginning, she survives Johan somehow. This is, after all, reportedly partially culled from her character’s recollection. How Johan’s madness effects Alma is essential, if not more important, than the man’s own degrading psyche. Ingrid Thulin played the object of Johan’s hallucinatory obsessions, Veronica, and her performance, dreamlike in quality but with nightmares hanging close to her, is the only member of the supporting players who made an impression. Her portions of Hour of the Wolf were what I wanted more of in the film. The rest of the castle dwelling aristocrats kind of bled together in a satirical grand guignol of the decadent rich.

While I would be completely thrilled to participate in The Moon is a Dead World’s Viewer Vomit again because it did get me outside of my comfort zone, I’m going to hope that the next choice isn’t another of Bergman’s greatest hits. While I can surely respect the man for all the art he gave to cinema, I can also be honest enough to admit that it’s really not my bag. So my rating on this one is kind of mixed. I took a couple days and stepped back from what was originally an arduous experience. From an artistic standpoint, I still think it fails by telling more than it shows. As a movie, Hour of the Wolf is a slow and steady build that leads into some hallucinatory imagery. The real test for me though is what the film is like as a viewing experience, and that’s where it really came up short for me. I’ve seen more interesting films cover the same ground (even in the same style) with better results, but I can also see the through line from a film like Kubrick’s The Shining to Hour of the Wolf. While Bergman’s film certainly didn’t make me howl, it did give me hours to think it over.

Bugg Rating

Hey Girl. Hauer You Doin’?: Spetters (1980)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

It’s Wednesday, and that means another edition of the hunkiest feature ever to grace the Lair, Hey Girl. Hauer You Doin’? This time we get into the way back machine with Rutger (and his pal Paul Verhoeven) for their breakthrough film, Spetters. This is a film that’s got everything, drama, violence, sports, comedy, tragedy, and a surprising amount of full frontal male nudity. If that doesn’t get you intrigued, then how about this. Remember ’Hunks’. People used to say that, and not just on TV or in movies, I was there. I heard it. Not to sound like Andy Rooney, but when did that stop? At any rate, imagine my delight when I found out that Spetters roughly translated means hunks. While the idea behind the title might make images of super buff dudes oiled up around a pool, the Dutch had another idea in mind. These hunks invoked images of another tormented group of teen boys, The Outsiders. So if you’ve ever wanted a teen drama with 100% more wooden shoes than you’ve ever seen in a film, then rev up your engines cause this if for you.

Rien (Hans van Tongeren) is an up and coming star in the burgeoning world of motocross racing, and he aspires to be like his hometown hero, new World Champion, Gerrit Witkamp (Rutger Hauer). Rien and his friends Eef and Hans (Toon Agterberg and Maarten Spanjer) are a rowdy, good natured lot (except the rampant homophobia) until Fientje (Renee Soutendijk) and her brother Jaap (Peter Tuinman) roll into town in their caravan/food truck. Fientje quickly spots an opportunity in Rien, and lands him a lucrative contract to race for Honda. She also splits him from his Joan Jett-ish girlfriend Maya (Marianne Boyer). It looks like Rien is on his way to being the next Gerrit Witkamp until he takes his new bike out for a ride. Crashing due to a careless driver, Rien is paralyzed from the waist down. From there, things get worse. Eef begins to roll homosexual prostitutes for money while struggling with his own sexuality. Hans deludes himself that he has the same talents as Rien and comes up empty. All the while, Fientje makes her way though the boys, disposing of them when their prospects run dry.

Oh yeah. And a Dong Measuring Contest.
That Happens too.

If the synopsis sounds a tad long, it’s because the movie itself runs slightly in excess of two hours. With as much setup as I’ve given, I haven’t begun to scratch the surface of what goes on in Verhoeven’s Spetters. I had to leave out the leather biker gang, the gang rape, the actual motorcycling, and I gave no time at all to people being kicked in the stomach by wooden clogs. Like Showgirls, and yes this is a favorable opinion, Spetters is an ambitious film that seeks to create a world that steps slightly outside reality. There is a great deal of foreshadowing in Spetters, and there is a direct line to follow through each of the characters. There are no threads left untied of plots left hanging. Though interestingly, like Showgirls, the film ends with a car on its way out of town. By no means is this the best Verhoeven film you could watch, but the quality of the film makes it easy to see why Hollywood took attention of Spetters.

This guy is like Eric Von Zipper's Dutch cousin.
(If you get that you've seen too many 'Beach' movies).

Spetters was deeply controversial in Holland, and I would imagine it remains so. The portrayal of the church, homosexuals, women, and violence has all been cited as criticisms of the movie. Personally, I found the religious sequences both incredibly funny and agonizingly heart rending. Both evangelists and puritans get their equal criticism, and make no mistake, they do get it. Clearly the characters in the film have a homophobic bent, and while Spetters does make some wild accusations about gay sex ( If there are roving bands of homosexuals raping repressed dudes until they like it, I would say that I have some names for them, but that wouldn’t be nice.), but taken on face value, it was all an essential part of one character’s growth. As for the women, surely Fientje is a trifling little mixer, but Maya provides an excellent counterpoint to Fientje’s schemes. As far as the violence goes, I was surprised how hard hitting the film was all around. While it didn’t seem “violent” in a traditional sense, Spetters did assault the emotions in the way that all good tragedy does.

An average day in the life of Rutger Hauer.

Now I know we’ve gotten very, very far in this review and I’ve said next to nothing about Rutger. Well, that’s because he’s barely in it. The motocross champ has a few scenes scattered about, but he’s not the focus of the film, he’s the fixation of the kids. It did provide Rutger with an outlet to America. Within a year, he faced off against Stallone in Nighthawks, and within two, Bladerunner’s Roy established Hauer fully. So why Spetters is not the splashy role fans of Rutger will hunger for, it is an important film in his career. Some of the other cast members went on to do more work in Dutch film and television, but sadly for Hans van Tongeren, who played paralyzed rider Rien, he made a scant few appearances on screen before committing suicide in 1982. Renee Soutendijk, who played the woman who broke up the three friends, has continued to work in Dutch television to this very day, and she had (Rutger excluded because he wasn’t in it enough) the most captivating performance in Spetters.

"Ya gang soon I want to do a film about a robot...
get this, who is also a cop. Can you
believe it?"

So what does Spetters have to say in the end? As bleak as things get, I’d have to say that there is still a message about following dreams and being true to one’s self. Without spoilers, I can’t get into the details of why, but I encourage everyone to check this film out. Sure, it is long. At points the running time was my enemy, but the deeper into the film I got, the more layers Verhoeven added to this dense film, the more intrigued I became. So if you want to know what a “hunk” is these days, it’s Spetters. Not just because of the translation, but because it was a hunk of a good film. That wraps it up for this week’s super long Hey Girl. Hauer You Don’? I’ll be back next week with more Hauer to get you out of the mid-week Rut (ger).

Bugg Rating

I should have also remembered to mention the great music in the film, but I forgot. Along with a pop soundtrack, the score was up there for me. Especially the main theme that you can hear in the trailer.

The Dead Want Women (2012): The Living Want Chicken and a Nap

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Mars might need ‘em, Mel Gibson might claim to know what they want, and Neil Diamond might know that a girl will be one soon, but when it comes to women, the dead want ‘em. That is if you take the title of the newest Full Moon feature at its word, and if you cant trust a paragon of virtue like Charles Band, then I don’t know what this world is coming to. I suppose it's coming to be the kind of place where you can go out on a sidewalk and rent Full Moon’s newest feature, The Dead Want Women, exclusively from a movie vending machine with a rather color specific name. I’m still not completely sold on the concept of DVD vending, but striking an exclusive deal with a rental company like this is exactly the kind of forward thinking that has kept Charles Band making and producing movies for years. Are they all good? Rarely. For every Parasite Band has directed or Re-Animator he’s produced, there’s three Evil Bong films (seriously three?), a Leapin’ Leprechauns, and a Beach Babes 2: Cave Girl Island waiting to fill the void. What I had to know, on this week where we’ve all been watched over by the “super moon”, was if Full Moon had done something super or if this moon was waning.

In the late 20’s, just as talkies were making their entrance into the film world, silent movie star Rose Pettigrew (Jean Louise O’Sullivan) hosts a party in her home to celebrate the opening of her newest film. (Read “have a party” as “host a private pervy orgy in her basement dungeon”) When it turns out her movie is a box office bomb and the studio drops her contract, Rose goes on a killing spree murdering cowboy star Sonny Barnes (Eric Roberts), Tubby Fitzgerald (J. Scott), and Erik Burke (Robert Zahar) before committing suicide. Flash forward to modern times, and best friends and real estate partners Reese (Jessica Morris) and Dani (Ariana Madix) land the rights to sell the an unwanted Hollywood mansion. I bet you can guess which one. The girls spend the night there waiting on a prospective buyer, but they never show. What does show is Sonny, Tubby, Erik, and Rose who are back for a little decadent fun (read: sex) and murder (read: murder).

The Dead Want Women. Well, let me tell you something, the dead have plenty of competition. I know a ton of single guys who would like at least one as well. Personally, I already have one I like very much, and the dead will do well to keep their hands off her. The film starts off interestingly enough cutting snippets of classic silent horror movies such as The Cabinet of Dr, Calagari, The Man Who Laughs, and Nosferatu into the opening credits along with footage of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. Fatty was at one time the biggest box office draw in the nation, but he got caught up in a rape charge (which is still debated to this day), disgraced (despite the fact that he was found innocent), and blackballed from Hollywood. All of this got me in the mood for some old Hollywood, but then a Full Moon film continued to run instead. The first half hour is the set-up to the murder-suicide, and I enjoyed this part very much. Scott, Roberts, Zahar, and O’Sullivan ham it up, and it looks like they’re having quite a laugh filming. At least I hope they’re having a laugh, because if that was Eric Roberts' real technique for lovemaking, I bet the world is full of disappointed ex-lovers of Eric Roberts.

The problem comes in the The Dead Want Women's second half when the realtors are introduced. While both girls are rather nubile and fetching (especially Ariana Madrix… rawr), they are both spectacularly bad in comparison to the foursome in the film’s opening. Being dropped on those characters directly after the climax of the film’s first act was kind of a let down. I’m not exaggerating when I say I felt like the first half hour was five minutes and the next five minutes was a half hour. It got dreadfully painful until the ghost-zombie things of Hollywood past come back to liven things up. As to why and how they come back, or even what they might be or intend to do, even by the film’s end none of it is clear. They look like zombies, act like ghosts, and are ready to get real freaky. As far as I can tell, they came back to misogynisticly menace a couple of Re/Max agents and ghost-zombie rape them. Honestly, by the film’s end (at a spare 69 minutes), if it wasn’t for my absolute adoration of Eric Roberts in full ham mode and the strangely entertaining performance by J. Scott as Tubby Fitzgerald (the name a spoof of Fatty, the performance, pure Curly from The Three Stooges), I would have probably turned it off.

For some reason, despite the many Evil Bong movies he’s directed in the recent past, I really had high hopes for Charles Band’s The Dead Want Women. The title is so evocative of both early science fiction and horror, and the presence of Eric Roberts makes everything more tempting. However, I should learn that if it’s not Best of the Best I’d be better off leaving Julia’s older brother alone. The real problem with The Dead Want Women is that it feels like half an idea. Somehow it should have been fleshed out. Not only to provide a decent running time (How glad am I that I only spent a buck on this?), but to provide a satisfying conclusion. Or better yet, any kind of conclusion that doesn’t make me say aloud as the credits start to roll, “Was that it? Hmm. Well, then.” If my viewing experience ends with that kind of sentiment, it never leaves a good taste in my mouth. (Just ask High Tension if you don’t believe me.) Yet still, I have some kind of twisted faith in Charles Band. Sure, his films aren’t all that, but he’s still out there making them. There’s a hackneyed expression that says, “After the end of the world, the only things that will remain are cockroaches and Keith Richards.” I want to amend that to say at the end, “and Charles Band who will still be making movies, figuring a way to make a buck, and they will still not be all that good, and I mean seriously all he has to do is entertain post-apocalypse freaks that Lloyd Kaufman wouldn’t take in. How hard could it be?” If The Dead Want Women is any indication, the answer to that question is, “moderately”.

Bugg Rating

Mental Health Awareness Month: Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile (1974)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:22:00 +0000

If there was such a thing as a poster boy for Mental Health Awareness Month here at The Lair, I think that Ed Gein might be in the running for the job. Not only was he a cannibal and ruthless killer with a flair for home décor that included human skin, Gein has served as the inspiration for a host of horror titles throughout the years. The most famous flicks inspired by the Butcher of Plainfield are, of course, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Psycho turns Gein into a cross dressing mama’s boy while TCM spins the killer into a whole family of miscreants with strange thoughts about interior design. Today’s film, released the same year as Texas Chainsaw, took a more straightforward approach to the subject, and presents a documentary style that is reminiscent of The Legend of Boggy Creek. However, with Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and Popcorn director Alan Ormsby behind the camera, the movie throws out more than a few crazy moments.

Ezra Cobb's favorite band is the Small Faces.
No wait, small faces are just his favorite.

Gein is renamed here as Ezra Cobb, and played by Roberts Blossom (Close Encounters, Home Alone), he is a shut in warped by his mother's views of the world and women. When mom passes away, she warns Ezra not to trust women, except perhaps the fat ones. Using knowledge of taxidermy and parts looted from graves, he preserves his mother and talks to her daily, but that is only the beginning. Ezra decides that Mom needs some company, and he ramps up a killing spree, filling a room with friends for his Mother. He also gets innovative with his home decorating, and he heads down a path that the Firefly family would emulate many years later in The Devil’s Rejects. Continuing to collect a corpse camaraderie, Ezra sets his sites on the last thing missing from his life, a bride.

Would you buy a Christmas Tree from
this man?

Up front, I mentioned Alan Ormsby, and there’s good reason for that. Anyone who has seen Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (a movie I don’t care for, but respect) can tell you that Ormsby’s first film, made in conjunction with Christmas Story/Black Christmas director Bob Clark, takes the basics of horror down a strange hippie path. Deranged also cut its own way in the world. While the scenes with Ezra Cobb play out like a fiction movie, the action is set up, and occasionally interrupted, by a narrator played by Leslie Carlson. These bits were my favorite part. Not only did it give the film the flavor of classic exploitation shock cinema, it also provided some excellent comic moments which served to play with the tone of this surprisingly gory film. I’d also like to mention two links to Bob Clark’s The Christmas Story. Leslie Carlson appeared as the Christmas Tress Salesman, and co-director of Deranged, Jeff Gillen, played the Santa that warns Ralphie that “You’ll shoot your eye out.” Clark himself served as producer for Deranged.

And you thought meeting your boyfriends
parents was uncomfortable.

While Deranged benefits from some nifty stylistic choices, a fair smattering of gore, and possibly more explicit violence than the relatively unbloody Texas Chainsaw, the real gem on display is the performance of Roberts Blossom. The actor completely embodies Cobb/Gein in such an incredible way that the character actor, who many will recognize, completely disappears into the role of the cuckold killer. The other performance that captured my attention was Marian Waldman as Marueen Shelby, the fat woman who Ezra’s Mom says he can trust. Waldman, who many will know as Mrs. Mac in Clark’s Black Christmas, fusses over Ezra like a mother hen, and there are several scenes where this is well played for comic effect.

Ma, you haven't been the same since
Diagnosis: Murder went off the air,

While Deranged might be the most straight shooting Ed Gein movie that I’ve seen, it still remains campy, kitchy, and silly enough to not give Tobe Hooper or Leatherface anything to worry about. Since then, there have been several more versions of the Ed Gein story. Everything from a musical to a Kane Hodder powered flick has tried to capture the insanity of the notorious cannibal, taxidermist, and mama’s boy. However, I don’t know that any other actor will single-handedly nail the particular slant of crazy that Roberts Blossoms fires up in Deranged. In his first movie, Alan Ormsby warned about tots having play dates with the past away, but this time, he’s got a more important message. No one should mess with a nutty little bugger with mommy issues. No one. Well, that brings to a close the first installment of Mental Health Awareness Month. Join me back here each Monday in May for more Spring Insanity.

Bugg Rating

Hey, Girl. Hauer You Doin'?: The Osterman Weekend (1983)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:00:00 +0000

I can hardly believe this month is nearly over and this should be the last of Hey, Girl. Hauer You Doin'? I’ve had a great time with Rutger, and we've seen him ride across fantasy landscape with a bad case of ornithophilia, be menaced by a brat packer turned cyber bully, and hunt a rapper in Oregon while accompanied by Ghandi. If there's one thing that can certainly be said about Mr. Hauer, his career has been as varied as the scope of cinema. This week's selection is no exception. Not only is it the last film of a great.... or once great director; The Osterman Weekend is a prescient film that missed its audience during its original release but speaks to today's society awash with surveillance. It was also Rutger's big stab for mainstream leading man credibility. Coming out directly after his well received performance in Bladerunner, the adaptation of spy writer Robert Ludlum's novel seemed a perfect choice for the star. However, just like the world his character enters, the mechanizations behind the scenes proved to be his undoing.

John Tanner (Hauer) is a hard hitting journalist who isn't afraid to ask the tough questions on his show ‘Face to Face‘. The trouble comes when he's faced by a series of tough looking facts. Tanner is approached by Lawrence Fassett of the CIA with surveillance video proving that his closest friends are actually moles for the KGB involved in bioterrorism. On the coming weekend, Tanner is hosting them for an annual gathering of friends called Osterman's after the original benefactor of the event, TV writer Bernard Osterman (Craig T. Nelson). Fassett wants Tanner to assist in turning one of his friends into a double agent, but as the others arrive (Dennis Hopper and Chris Sarandon), tensions begin to mount leading the weekend down a steadily more violent path. To protect his wife (Meg Foster) and child, Tanner tries to pull the plug on the operation, but the facts that he's seen may not be the whole truth of it all.

John Hurt setting up the casual pick.

When The Osterman Weekend was released, it was criticized as being a meandering, confusing mess, both before and after the producers re-cut the version turned in by the irascible director. The once great director I mentioned earlier is Sam Peckinpah, and The Osterman Weekend would be the last film in a career that broke ground before hitting the skids. Without a doubt, it is a better film than his previous effort, Convoy, but it is not without many problems. The version I watched was the director's cut, culled from the only known print, a dingy full screen VHS, and I would have liked to see the producer's cut for comparison. Peckinpah's version starts unsettlingly, and in a very Italian way, with a beautiful naked girl being killed. Let me say that naked blondes are a large part of this film, and the only woman who doesn't doff her top is brunette Meg Foster. These events, shown to us on grainy video being watched by the CIA chief (screen legend Burt Lancaster), are the crux of what the film is really about.

In the original version of Coach, the part of
Dauber was played by Dennis Hopper.
True story.

On the surface, The Osterman Weekend is a film about a man who finds out that his closest friends are not who they seem. In and of itself, it is a classic plot mined by everything from Body Snatchers to Mean Girls. The real meat in Ludlum's story is the reality that unfolds though the lens of a surveillance camera. (For those of you wondering, the boring preachy part is probably on its way, so skip down to the next paragraph if you're not in for that.) In 1983, the technology was in its infancy, and looking at it now, we all see better equipment being used in gas stations every day. Given that, a slightly paranoid mind, and the fact that there are such things as traffic cameras, drone planes, and we all basically carry around a GPS in our pocket with a camera right in it, it's not a long leap to assume that the government is still well ahead on the technological curve when it comes to finding out exactly what you're up to. Now, I say you because obviously they don't want me, you're the one that kept reading the boring, preachy part which got a little bit Unabombery somewhere along the way. More importantly than the video itself, the film wants us to think about how that information can be manipulated. Not with trickery of computers, but merely by bending reality with the use of context, a person’s life can be completely turned around. So, hopefully, there’s not footage of you reading this out of context.

"I thought you were a football coach!"

Though the story falters and is full of plot holes, if you spend time to unravel every nuance, like last week's Surviving the Game, the cast pulls the film through its shortcomings. Hauer was certainly making a bid for leading man (though I think he could have kicked a bit more ass, more on that later), and he does so convincingly nailing both the emotional portions of the film and the suspenseful moments with equal ease. Craig T. Nelson, who I honestly mostly know from his days on Coach, is amazing as the supposed ringleader of the KGB pals, and his hipster handlebar mustache adds an extra layer of suspected evil to the character. I kept waiting for him to tie someone to the train tracks, but sadly, it never happened.

"They Live? Not When I get done with them."

Chris Sarandon is one of those actors that I love to see no matter if it's Fright Night or Princess Bride. He always delivers, and his hothead provided some great early conflict. The only actor who seemed really reserved was Hopper who is nearly lost in the film's events. Standing out, as she always does with those icy blue eyes, They Live's Meg Foster both does a great job and gets the biggest action oriented scene in the film. In fact, it graced many versions of The Osterman Weekend's posters rather than a picture of star Rutger Hauer. While I waited for Rutger to unleash his inner badass, what I didn’t expect was for Foster to settle the score.

Not cool, Rutger. We want them to
stay around, leave a comment,
and tell us if they want more.
See, Coach knows that's not cool.

There is very little in The Osterman Weekend to let you know that this is a Sam Peckinpah film. Sure, there's one awkwardly placed bit of slow motion during the film's singular car chase. It's one of the most disconnected pieces of cinema I've ever seen. It appears as if it was expected, but its usage is as empty as the car that slowly, repeatedly slams into a sewage pipe. It made me wonder, even of this director's cut, how much of the film did Sam actually show up for? Due to drink or illness, I suspect, in spirit at least, the Peckinpah of old was gone. While The Osterman Weekend marks the end of one career, it surely changed another. While Hauer didn't become a matinee idol, Ladyhawke, Flesh + Blood, and The Hitcher, all starring roles, lay right on his horizon. So don't worry your heads about how Rutger would do, the real question is this, Hauer You Doin'?

That wraps it up for the month, but if you want more Rutger in your life, leave me a comment, and who knows, there might just be more Hauer where that came from! Thanks to everyone who read and commented all month long!

Bugg Rating

Deadly Doll's Choice Baltimore Edition: Step Up 2: The Streets (2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:53:00 +0000

In only a few short days, I, along with several other bloggers, podcasters, and other assorted ne’er-do-wells, will descend upon Baltimore for a weekend of conversation, BBQ, and assorted silliness at the home of a generous (though possibly foolish) friend. One of those attending the weekend is none other than Emily of The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense. So for this month's movie swap, we decided to swap movies set in our destination, Baltimore, Maryland. The easy way would have been to trade a couple of movies from Baltimore's sleaziest son, John Waters, but who wants to do it the easy way. Instead, we swapped a couple of lesser known Charm City based titles. For my pick, I selected the dramady Tin Men, starring Richard Dreyfus and Danny DeVito as rival aluminum siding salesmen in 60's Baltimore. So head over to The Deadly Doll's to check that out.For Emily's selection, she picked a movie I never thought there would be any set of circumstances in which I would need to view it. She chose for me Step Up Number Two Colon The Streets. I know the filmmaker chose a briefer name than I have given it, but I think my version may well be more accurate.

As the film begins, we're introduced to Andie (Briana Evigan), an orphan whose hard knock life on the streets of Baltimore haven't lead her to a fate worse than The Wire, but rather into a dance crew called the 410. After pulling off a stunt in the subway in order to gain entry to an underground dance tournament called, you guessed it, "The Streets", Andie's godmother, who has been raising her, threatens to send her off to Texas to live with her Aunt. However, Andie gets one more chance, and after bucking the odds at the audition, she begins school at the Maryland School for the Arts. When her schooling comes between her and the 410, the dance crew kicks her out. So Andie recruits a gang of art school misfits to form a new dance crew and battle her old pals at "The Streets". Her two lives soon cross, and Andie gets kicked out of art school dashing her dancing dreams, but a last minute miracle on "The Streets" might just fix it all.

If the plot of Step Up Number Two Colon The Streets sounds like every teen, urban dance movie you've ever heard, then congratulations, you can imagine practically every twist and turn that the break neck world of break dancing can throw at you. Perhaps I'm just an old fogie. All this film made me do is long for Beat Street and Breakin', and I will be the first to tell you that those are not good movies. They're nostalgic, funny, entertaining, but not good. That makes Step Up Number 2 Colon The Streets exactly the same, minus the nostalgia factor, but I could see The Streets being someone half my age's Electric Boogaloo. The dancing, which should be the film's best feature, was cool at points, but it was hard to tell where skill ended and movie magic began. I've seen dance crews on TV and live which have impressed me, but the movie routines didn't really get me going.

So that left me with the story, a wrong side of the tracks tale with the possibility of krumping. Granted I did end up liking some of the characters. Briana Evigan, as the lead Andie, reminded me of Rashida Jones, and remained likable enough that her inspiring speech at the movie's end got the strange split reaction of pride and uncontrollable laughter. I can't say that's ever happened before. Her romantic beau, Robert Hoffman, I found to be insufferable, and I wasn’t surprised his first two credits were in Gigli and From Justin to Kelly. Adam G. Sevani, who plays Moose, is the best surprise as I found him affable and entertaining in the kind of way Shia LaBeef was before he became a Michael Bay product. So it was disappointing to see that all he's done is continued playing Moose in Step Up flicks. The rest of the art school dance crew all entertained, but none of them had a performance that stood out. What really stood out is one of the worst performances I’ve seem just about anywhere, Will Kemp as headmaster Blake Collins. He's not been in anything else before or since, and honestly, that's for the best. Mr. Kemp, if you're out there, whatever career you chose is doing the world more good than ever trodding the boards again. Thank you.

Here's the thing about Step Up Number Two Colon The Streets that has me shaking in my boots, director Jon M. Chu. Before helming Step Up Number 2, Chu directed an indie called Silent Beats, which sounds like Spike Lee lite, a kid’s movie, and a "musical celebration of mothers" before his gritty portrayal of dancing on the mean streets of Baltimore. Now that's all well and good, but now it turns out that he's pirouetted his way away from lightning fast feet to Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow. While the first G.I. Joe film was a massive letdown, I have real hopes for G.I. Joe: Retaliation. The trailer gets me pumped every time I see it, but that was before I knew Jon Chu was directing it. My only solace is to believe that, while the story of Step Up Number Two Colon The Streets was mediocre, there were a number of very well filmed scenes, particularly the dance numbers. So here's hoping that he treated G.I Joe right and it doesn't all boil down to a dance battle between Duke and Destro for world domination.

Sadly, the city of Baltimore didn't appear quite as much as I would have hoped. I love the architecture there. The rows of brownstones and streets that wind around the bay got no play, but the Maryland School of the Arts was an impressive structure and featured some of the classic urban style the city is known for. Charm City also has a reputation for being awash with violent crime, and while statistics show the city has struggled with a crime rate above the national average, some of that reputation can surely be attributed to a certain HBO show. The people of Jersey and Deadwood feel their pain. From the brief time I've spent in Baltimore so far, I loved what I saw of the city, and I can't wait to see more of it. Since Emily and I are going to be there together, we decided to do something special for May. So two weeks from now, on May 8, The Lightning Bug's Lair and Deadly Doll's House will present a special 2 part series of our adventures in Baltimore. Join us back here then, and I promise there will be at least 50% less dancing. Don't forget to go to the Deadly Doll's today for her review of the Baltimore-centric flick Tin Men. For now I think it's time I step down from Step Up 2: The Streets.

Bugg Rating

Hey, Girl. Hauer You Doin'?: Surviving the Game (1994)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:11:00 +0000

Survival, it's for the fittest they say, and no where has this been more frequently illustrated then in the myriad of retellings of 'The Most Dangerous Game'. There have been countless film versions of the classic 1924 tale such as Woman Hunt, Bloodlust!, and Hard Target just to name a few among hundreds if not thousands. Today, I'm taking a look at Rutger getting his hunt on in Ernest R. Dickerson's Surviving the Game. Unlike the past two features in Hey, Girl. Hauer You Doin'?, New World Disorder and Ladyhawke, this one finds Rutger in the role of the bad guy as he pairs up with Charles F. Dutton to hunt Ice-T. Not only is Hauer on the opposite side of the law, dare I say, he doesn't appear quite as dashing as normal. With his straggly whiskers and shoulder length hair, he looks a bit like Colonel Sanders' L.A cousin who favors ill fitting suits in the office, but on the weekend, breaks out the camo hunting gear for a little homeless hunting.

As Surviving the Game opens, the action is split between a group of hunters in the woods chasing a man, and introducing the audience to our hero, Mason (Ice-T), and his type of survival. While the homeless Mason digs through garbage cans looking for a bite to eat, out in the woods, the hunt ends with deadly results. Mason is man who has lost it all, and then we watch him lose the little that's left. After his dog gets hit by a car and his pal, a cranky WWII vet, dies, Mason just wants to end it all. Walter Cole (Charles F. Dutton) saves Mason from being hit by a truck, the homeless man accepts Cole's offer to meet with his business parter about becoming a wilderness guide. Cole's partner, Burns (Hauer) talks Mason into taking the job, and soon they're off to a secluded canyon in Oregon. After a very strange dinner with the other hunters, CIA shrink (Gary Busey), grieving husband (John C. McGinley), and father and son pair (F. Murray Abraham and William McNamara), Mason awakes to find out that the intended quarry isn't wildlife at all.

Hugs from Busey are not the most gentle.

That's right. This is a movie where Roy from Bladerunner, Ghandi, the jerky doctor from Scrubs, Buddy Holly, and Roc chase down a future Law & Order star and groundbreaking gangsta rapper. Plus, all of this happens under the careful gaze of the director of Juice and Demon Knight, two of my personal favorite films. The cast and crew involved in Surviving the Game are reason enough to give this flick a watch, and better yet, there are a few more decent reasons to give it a go. Dickerson doesn't dwell on the films set up for very long and gets right to the action. The only lengthy period of dialog comes at the dinner before the hunt, and it's so heavily dominated by Gary Busey that time really flies. He spins a story about a rite of passage into manhood which must be heard to be believed, and even when heard, it's a little hard to believe the crazy eyed actor is running dialog and not telling a real story of his upbringing.

The Mason Jar in question.

While Ice-T handles the action portions of the film with great style, his acting is probably the most shaky though he is given the only heavily emotional moments to play. My real criticism of Ice-T's character isn't even his fault at all. I thought the name Mason seemed odd for the character, but, when it was revealed that the hunters kept their prey's head in trophy jars and there was a long lingering shot of a jar that said Mason on it..... a Mason jar, I shook my head for a full two minutes in disbelief of that terrible and intentional gag. Charles Dutton's nice guy charm is put to good use as the hunter's prey finder, and when he turns the bad on, there's a great gleeful glimmer in his eyes. Scrubs' John McGinley has a couple of great scenes, but sadly his character was put to abrupt a resolution. The same can be said of Gary Busey, but his throw down with Ice-T is worth the price of admission to hear him spout Busey-isms as they rumble. F. Murray Abraham is the least fun to watch, but I got drawn into his story because his movie son, William McNamara, is one of the only actors I've ever ever soon filming a movie when I saw him do part of a stunt for Chasers (1994) while on vacation in Myrtle Beach.

Hauer hopes this gets a good Bugg Rating.

Of course, I didn't come here to talk about called Oscar winners, sitcom actors, or whatever Gary Busey is classified (diagnosed?) as these days. We came here to talk about about Rutger. Mr. Hauer is delightfully evil, and he's a lot of fun to watch anytime he's onscreen. Surviving the Game might have given top billing to Ice-T for his heroic role, but the real star is Hauer. As he slimes his way through the flick, and there's really no other way to put it, he delights with witty banter with Ice, some movie badassary, and possibly the worst comfort for the dying that there's ever been. He also, and I won't spoil why, gets to have an action sequence while dressed as a priest, and that scene near the film's end makes for a satisfying conclusion. Overall, while Hauer can play a baddie with the best of them, there's something about him as a hero I just enjoy more.

"I said it would be nice to have some Iced Tea out here. Not
I'd like to hunt Ice-T out here."

I didn't have much to say about director Ernest Dickerson, and I have to admit that while I like many of his other firms very much, this barely rates above a made for TV level effort. If it wasn't for the stacked cast and classic, easy to tell storyline, Surviving the Game wouldn't survive many viewings. The film contains some quality action scenes, but it is an editing nightmare with even a lazy eyed viewer picking up characters in the background of scenes after that are supposed to be dead. Sadly, this doesn't hint to a zombie subplot, but rather to the subbasement production values that haunt the whole film. Thankfully, for most of the film's running time, the actors seems to have free reign over how far over-the-top with their acting they go, and the combination of the manic styles and sloppy production gives the film a real seat of the pants type of feeling. It also makes it a quality slice of cult cinema. Surviving the Game is not going to be for everyone. Not all Hauer fans or action junkies are even likely to enjoy, but if you can accept the movie, warts and all, it's a really good time. However, I think many of you out there who are loyal Lair-ers will do a better than surviving this game; you'll feel like you've won.

Bugg Rating

Hey, Girl. Hauer You Doin'?: Ladyhawke (1985)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:20:00 +0000

Welcome back to the second week of Rutger lovin' that I'm calling Hey Girl. Hauer You Doin'? If you missed last week, go back and catch up on our man Mr. Hauer in New World Disorder.as he struggles as an out of step gumshoe in a technical world This week whisks Rutger off to another time and place, a land of mystery and wonder, a place where you might meet a lady who is also, get this, a hawk. I have a very distinct memory of being at one of the first science fiction conventions I had ever attended and sitting around a hotel room, with a bunch of strangers, watching Ladyhawke. This was around 1991 or so folks, and I have to admit that while I liked Ladyhawke okay, I had another thought in my teenage mind. Chicks dug Ladyhawke, and the room was packed with a gaggle of girls, most of whom would have shared the last name Half-Elven. Now I was about as cool as a Halfling back then, so I didn't even get half-way to talking to any of the gals in cloaks and fringed boots. However, it was the last time I remembered watching Ladyhawke before this week, and while I thought back on the film fondly, my memory might have run more toward young ladies in poets blouses with daggers on their hips than the actual flick.

Matthew Broderick stars as Phillipe "The Mouse" Gaston, a cunning young theirs who escapes from the dungeons of the evil Bishop of Aquilia (John Wood). The Mouse almost gets captured again, but the returning of Captain of the Guard, Etienne Navarre (Hauer) intercedes on his behalf and helps the young thief get away. Captain Navarre needs Gaston's special skills. Seeing as The Mouse is the only man to scape the Bishop's dungeons, he certainly could get back in again. The Mouse is tasked with planning their break in, and by day, he travels with Navarre and his pet hawk. By night The Mouse finds himself menaced by a fearsome wolf and dazzled by the company of the fair maiden Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer). He soon learns that Etienne and Isabeau are lovers, curse by the Bishop to spend night and day apart, trading animal forms. Only with the help of The Mouse can Etienne confront the Bishop and break the curse and bring true love together.

While Ladyhawke carried with it the cache of medieval fantasy in the sword and sorcery vein, at its core, Ladyhawke has more in common with bodice ripping romance than The Lord of the Rings. While there are a number of action sequences and sword fights, Hauer's most pivotal moments are spent spitting out emo, introspective bon mots rather then swinging steel. Ladyhawke bogs down the most when it tries to force more action into the film with a hunter on the trail of Etienne in wolf form. All in all, my memory wasn't as faulty as I thought it might be. This was still fantasy geared toward lovers of Anne McCaffrey rather than Robert Jordan, but that's not to say that I didn't enjoy it as well. While Ladyhawke never could strike the right balance of romance and action, it provided enough of each to keep me interested in the inter-species relationship in spite of the maudlin or mundane moments.

A lot of the credit for this could go to the three lead actors. Matthew Broderick plays The Mouse like a more cowardly Ferris Bueller in a jerkin. His asides to God keep the character endearing, and even add a bit of edgy humor to a rather bland, straightforward tale. Some have criticized Rutger Hauer of being campy or cartoonish in his portrayal of Etienne Navarre, but I didn't see it. For my money, he gave a sensitive performance that shone through the tough guy exterior. The real money here is Michelle Pfeiffer . As the alluring Isabeau, her scenes with Broderick were a highlight. Her character, even while in hawk form, is the emotional core of Ladyhawke, and even when she's not onscreen her presence is felt in every moment. English actor John Wood is perhaps the weakest link in the film, but I'm not sure it's entirely his fault. With rather limited screen time, and no real cruelty on display, the Bishop comes off a toothless villain whose menace is almost consequential to the plot.

So did Ladyhawke allow the young Bugg to swoop down and pick up one of those fantasy lovin' ladies at the Sci-Fi convention? Of course not, but it was one of the first times I recall really appreciating Rutger as an actor outside of his Bladerunner performance. In the end, I guess I left that hotel room screening with someone after all. It was Rutger on my arm, and it's been a beautiful friendship ever since. Well, that wraps it up for the first of two Hey, Girl. Hauer You Doin'? entries you'll be seeing this week. Coming up tomorrow, join me back here again to check out Rutger, Busey, Ice-T, and John C. McGinley in the Hard Target-esque Surviving the Game.

Bugg Rating

Assassination Games (2011): The Bugg and JCVD Dodge a Bullet

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 04:06:00 +0000

I had so much more planned for Action April. I really did, but instead my body decided to take action against me. So this week you're gonna get this review and one more, 2, count them, 2 Hauer You Doin'? action treats to anround out the week. I know it sounds like lofty goals, but I’m just the Bugg for the job. So what's been happening to me, well, the title of today's film is Assassination Games, and over the last week my body tried to assassinate me.... At least it felt like it. It seems the ever lovin' blue eyed Bugg had gone and got himself a pair of matching kidney stones. Those wee buggers, a.k.a 4mm of the worst pair you'd ever want in your life, brought me to my knees, and while I watched a good many movies through the pain killer induced haze, I didn't think my thoughts on them would be particularly cogent. Or less cogent than normal I should say. At any rate, I'm all healed up, and nothing gets me back into the action like a little JCVD.

Keep reading or I will make you eat Brussels Sprouts
from Muscles Shoals

The post JCVD Jean-Claude Van Damme unfortunately did not suddenly become an actor making toney choices and doing bit parts on Downton Abby. Instead, he went back to doing what he's done for the last 25 years, namely, kicking ass. After rebooting Universal Soldier, going up The Eagle Path, and voicing a crocodile martial arts master in Kung Fu Panda, he might just have stumbled into a film that brought story, action, and heart all together around Jean Claude's elegantly lined face. Assassination Games stars Van Damme as Vincent Brazil, an assassin who will take any work as long as it pays his fee, 50 grand in South African diamonds. British actor Scott Adkins, looking like a buffer version of Matthew Fox, co-stars as rival assassin Roland Flint. Only where Vincent wants the money, Flint is out for revenge.

I'm gonna shoot the crap out of those
numbers if you bother me with them again Hurley.

The pair comes to odds over one target, Polo (Ivan Kaye). Some crooked INTERPOL cops (Does anyone know what INTERPOL does beside bring tons of different law enforcement accents under one roof in the movies?) hire Vincent to off Polo while Flint gets word of the gangsters release from jail. Flint, who wants revenge on Polo for putting his wife in a coma, messes up Vincent's hit attempt and instead Polo's brother is killed. Now Polo is after the man who killed his brother while the assassins play cat and mouse trying to kill him. Soon enough the skeezy INTERPOL guys want everyone dead, and they align with Polo to kill both men. I'm sure future double and triple crosses ensue, but there's got to be some surprises.

Is he covering her up or checking out her ass?
You decide.

The biggest surprise is that even for a movie about a couple of hired killers there's actually a ton of heart in his picture. Who among us would not want to tack down and kill the man who raped our wife/husband and put them in a coma? If you say you wouldn't, then you're lying. Or perhaps the person you're married to should be more concerned, but I digress. While Adkins' Flint is the film's 'B' story, it makes for an emotional counterpoint to Van Damme's steely brooding. Originally, Adkins part was to be played by Vinnie Jones (Snatch, Midnight Meat Train), but the actor dropped out before shooting. While Adkins was a tad too pretty boy for my action star taste, Jones would have changed the movie's tone considerably. When Jean-Claude is not fighting or scowling, he's making emotional headway thanks to hooker with a heart of gold, October (Marija Karan, The Rite). Well, he learns how to pet a turtle.... And how not to be a total dick.

Nothing brings dudes together like
crouching.

When JCVD was young, his over the top performances in films like Bloodsport and Kickboxer are fun to watch because the heavily accented actor was fumbling his way into becoming an action star. Now, on the other end of his career, his craggy, line-worn face reads like the superstardom that has faded, but it also means that Van Damme can play characters that are a little more introspective, and silent moments where the viewer must read the actor's expression are among the film's strongest. Director Ernie Barbarash, who took over when Highlander director Russell Mulcahy dropped out, doesn't have a good track record as director or producer with films such as Cube Zero, The First Nine and a Half Weeks, and American Psycho..... 2, the one with Mila Kunis and Shatner to his credit. However Barbarash hit loan dirt here. (I can’t give him pay dirt; it's still not all that.) Assassination Games starts off with an action sequence, and then it keeps a nice pace throughout while remembering to take time and make the two killers something more than cutout characters.

"I am Jean Claude's cousin Jon Clod Van-Damme. My
sideburns are made of Chia. Do you have any chips?"

That's not to say that the film doesn't have its flaws. It is rife with plot holes, and the foreshadowing is handled about as gently as JCVD starts off petting that turtle. The double crosses only serve to confuse for the most part and never drive the story anywhere other than the expected and slightly anticlimactic ending. Thankfully the performances of the lead actors, as well as Ivan Kaye as the nefarious Polo, bring the film up a notch. The well shot action sequences, the appearance of some striking gore, and several deadly one liners slipping from the lips of the Muscles from Brussels all serve to bring the film up to the level of many of Van Damme's earlier features. That being said, "It's better than Legionnaire." and "Almost as good as Sudden Death" don't look good on a poster. Assassination Games is the kind of film that you've just got to take a chance in checking out..... if you’re got the stones for it, and as you all now know, I've got plenty to spare.

Bug Rating

Hey, Girl. Hauer You Doin'?: New World Disorder (1999)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 02:44:00 +0000

Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new feature here on The Lair as part of April Action, Hey, Girl. Hauer You Doin'? For the next four weeks, I'll be looking at the films of every gal's biggest dreamboat, Rutger Hauer. I had the good fortune to meet Mr. Hauer a couple of weeks back at Mad Monster Party in Charlotte, and he is just as you might imagine him. With his blonde hair swept back, black unstructured jacket, paisley patterned scarf draped around his neck, and elastic waist banded track pants, he practically oozed the essence of a European actor. Apart from looking like a dashing adventurer in his way to a marathon, he was a lovely fellow, and I found it quite wonderful that he donated all the proceeds from his signing to charity. Rutger has his own organization, The Rutger Hauer Starfish Association, tasked with helping children in Africa infected with AIDS. Not only did it ease the pain if shelling out money to meet a celebrity, it also gave me even more respect for an actor I've loved ever since I first met him as Roy in Bladerunner. Today's movie is also about the future, but less of a visionary masterpiece than a half hacked miasma with a tacked on title that carried cultural cachet in the late 90s. This is New World Disorder, and the future is now... Or then... Or, what the hell is Andrew McCarthy doing here... The future is sometime, the review starts now.

In Silicon Valley (I know, when's the last time someone said that instead of referring to a companies' "campus"), a gang of techie thugs breaks into a computer firm late at night interrupting programmer Mark Ohai (Hari Dhillon) and is buddy who are working on a strictly off the books project. The thugs get away with half of Ohai's super secret security program, and the other half becomes the MacGuffin around which the rest of the film flies. FBI Cyber Division Agent Kris Paddock (Tara Fitzgerald) is heading up the investigation, but when old school detective David Marx (Hauer) butts his way into the case he ruffles feathers and uncovers leads. As the unlikely duo of cops grow closer, the case grows more and more dangerous with gang leader Bishop (Andrew McCarthy) killing everyone in his path to get the program.

Despite the title New World Disorder, which sounds like a mid-90s Wrestling promotion, the film actually manages to be silly entertainment as long as you aren't looking to drive busses through plot holes. If you're looking for that, I have good news for you; this is the film for you too. It's got wide open expressways at every turn just ready for those who would like to rip it a new one. Personally, I took it for what it was, a "turn off your brain" film. Rutger is utterly charming in a smart alecky kind of way, and his movie wardrobe, consisting of bowties, a vintage jacket, and at least a couple cardigans and scarves, would be the envy of many a hipster fashion plate. His whole look is designed to focus the audience in how out of touch Rutger's detective really is. The character is made a Luddite in style and expression, and even his few cultural references, such as when he tells Agent Paddock that she must be good at Space Invaders, are hopelessly dated.

New World Disorder rings quite a few gags out of the detective's technophobia, but the problem is that this interplay comes between himself and Agent Paddock played by Tara Fitzgerald. I don't think I've seem a more unconvincing FBI agent in my life. There was nary a moment whan I could take Fitzgerald seriously especially when she paired her serious FBI suit with quirky, tween level barrettes. I will give it up for her cramped hair in the dance cub scenes, but seriously, if my high point of the performance was crimped haired then something didn't go right. Speaking of hair, rocking a mess of facial hair and enough piercings to qualify for the Hot Topic training program, Andrew McCarthy chews up the scenery as the leader of the nerdy thugs. With their black trench coats and keffiyeh hiding their faces like high fashion bank robbers, the entire group comes off looking like a cut rate version of Neo's pals in The Matrix.

While director Richard Spense has dabbled in the same thematic waters as Rutger, directing a 1994 Armand Assante TV movie called Blind Justice, spiritual brethren of Rutger's Blind Fury, this was only Spense's second feature film debut. For most of his career, he has worked in low budget television, and his roots show. Without the charismatic performances of Hauer and McCarthy, there wouldn't really be much here to talk about. New World Disorder spends much of the running time warning Hauer's character that he's hopelessly out of date, but without the 80s throwbacks in the lead roles, the movie's craving to be hip and current would have been completely intolerable. That brings us to the just an honorable conclusion to this first installment of Hauer You Doin'? Join us back here all month for more action goodness, and every Wednesday for more with Rutger.

Bug Rating

Stunt Rock (1980): The Evel Knievel Of Wizard Inspired Rock Band Films

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:49:00 +0000

When the word 'Rock' is contained in a movie title, one can often tell a lot about what the flick is going to be like by judging the other words around it. If it's paired with 'murder', things probably won't go well. With 'around the clock', then you best be ready for a wholesomely rebellious experience. If it's coupled with 'jailhouse' then a hip swivelin' good time is in your near future. However, I really didn't know what to think about 'rock' being placed so close to 'stunt'. The synopsis on TCM, where I caught this as a weekly Underground selection, said simply this, "The movie features a stunt man and a rock band." in what I thought must be one of the vaguest descriptions ever. After all, I knew Stunt Rock was a Brian Trenchard-Smith joint, and I ha always enjoy Trenchard-Smith films such as The Man from Hong Kong, Escape 2000, Dead End Drive-In, and that Criterion worthy classic BMX Bandits. Merely boiling down a concept like Stunt Rock to 10 completely undescriptive words that capture nothing of what the film was sure to contain. I sat down one Sunday evening, along with my wife and out good pal Fran Goria, to watch Stunt Rock in order to write this review and do the film the justice that TCM's synopsis denied it.

It's not on fire. It's filled with years of Carrot Top's collected pubes.

Stunt Rock is a film which features a stunt man (Grant Page, real life stuntman for Gone in 60 Seconds, Mad Dog Morgan, and The Man From Hong Kong) and a rock band (L.A. Based band Sorcery whose stage show involved a fight between a wizard and the "Prince of Darkness"). See, look, what an improvement that is as a synopsis already. Ok, there's a bit more. Grant is working on a new TV show called Undercover Girls, and he spends much of his time hanging out with star Monique van de Ven (who appears here "as herself" at the behest of a Swedish producer) and a journalist played by Margaret Gerard, taking on one of the few fictional character roles, who is writing an article about Grant's daredevil lifestyle. Meanwhile, the band rocks out in outfits that appear to have been bought during yard sales at Queen and Fleetwood Mac's houses. Well, except for the female keyboard player whose style can only be referred to as Santo meets Cobra Commander. Then Grant does a stunt. Then some rocking. Then stunt. Then rock. Stunt. Rock. Stunt. Rock. You get the idea.

The live action version of Speed Buggy that we all deserve.

What I didn't know before watching Stunt Rock is that Trenchard -Smith has been quoted as saying this was his worst film, and while I haven't seen his whole catalog, I'm inclined to believe it is down there. That's not to say it isn't entertaining in the right circumstances. You might have wondered earlier why I would have mentioned who I watched the film with, and there's a simple reason for that. However, one would see Stunt Rock, it needs to come with 2 warnings. The first comes onscreen as the film warns to not to try these stunts at home. The second, which I believe should be inserted into all future copies of Stunt Rock, should say "To be viewed with friends under influence of your favorite inebriant. DO NOT WATCH ALONE" Watching Stunt Rock with my wife and pal, we had a great time poking fun of the movie and marveling at how somehow Sorcery existed before Spinal Tap and didn't receive some kind of co-writing credit.

Sorcery proves that, apart from knowing Wizards and Devils,
they also hang with Dorian Grey.

It was a fabulous party movie because with no plot, it was easy and fun to get sidetracked into other conversations, or have the burning desire to know more about Sorcery's discography. In case you wondered, they do have a Wikipedia entry and a couple of home pages. One looks like it belongs in the 3rd ring of GeoCities hell while the other is a spiritual companion to the still kickin' Space Jam site. A number of Sorcery's songs were enjoyable in a classic metal way, and I had spaced on their connection to another cult classic, the Metal powered horror of Rocktober Blood. Title track 'Stunt Man' outpaces them all for my money, but perhaps because it is the only one I didn't feel was almost totally dependent on the stage show to make it work. I'd like to say I'd go right now to see a band that had a Wizard and Devil sparring in a duel of stage magic during their show, and as I write this, it's 10 A.M and I'm in my jockey shorts. Yet still, I would leave right this second to see a show like that. I mean no one should notice how I look. They ought to have their eyes focused on that stage beholding the wonder.

Grant Page a.k.a the fifth Gibb brother.

So far I've mostly talked about 'Rock' and not much 'Stunt'. At one point, Monique van de Ven complains that she can't do her own stunts to which Grant replies, "Well, it takes a lot of training, you know. They don't put me in front of the camera saying long soliloquies." That sentence is just about the longest piece of uninterrupted dialog that comes from Grant. Most of the time it only stays with him long enough to set up a throw to footage of Grant driving a dune buggy, diving off a cliff, or being set on fire at least a half dozen different ways. There is no doubt that Page is a talented stuntman, but both topics of the film would have been better served by separate documentary treatment rather than forcing them both into a single piece of cinematic oddness. While I will definitely continue to admire Grant Page's work, he was surely much better not playing himself when he appeared in Richard Franklin's Rear Window on wheels, Roadgames, as the nefarious, and non-speaking, baddie Smith or Jones. Stunt Rock also features an early screen appearance of dearly departed comedian Phil Hartman, but I'll be damned if I can find him. Judging from the lack of photos on the net, I'd say I'm not the only one that's stumped.

"I'm a real Wizard, man. You can shove that 20 sided die
right up your muggle."

In summation, here's what we've learned today. I'd go to a spectacle rock show in my underpants before noon if necessary as long as it contained a correct quotient of stage magic coupled with hair metal. Don't watch Stunt Rock alone or you will not have as much fun. Also, be under the influence of something when watching Stunt Rock. (Editor's note: The Lightning Bug's Lair in no way is encouraging illegal drug use or alcohol abuse. We're just saying it helps.) If you're a little known rock band, make sure you keep your eyes on bigger known rockers looking to cast off unwanted fashions. Personally, I think dressing more like members of Queen and Fleetwood Mac is something we should all look into. Mark my words, it'll be the biggest thing on the runways of Paris within 3 years. Finally, we learned that 'Rock' is a word that can be connected to 'Stunt', but it would really be more descriptive of this film if it had an 'and' hanging out between them.

Bug Rating

(if viewed as advised)

(if viewed while sober and lonesome)

Deadly Doll's Choice: And God Spoke (1993)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:47:00 +0000

So often in life, it's always Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, but for this month's movie swap, Emily and I have turned that all around. It's about to get all Jan, Jan, Jan. Quite accidentally on both our parts, we each chose a movie that featured everyone's flea powder allergic Brady, Eve Plumb in my case and Jennifer Cox, who played Jan in the Brady movie, for the Doll. In a way, they couldn't have been more different films, but they had more in common than just the middle child of Carol and Mike. For my pick, I chose the action farce Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury, a delightfully silly film starring Kevin Sorbo as the titular character. Head on over to The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense to find out if Emily thought the Poolboy's waters were just fine or if it went off the deep end. For her choice, Emily picked a mockumentary from 1993 of Biblical proportions, ...And God Spoke. So in this beginning, let me say that this film might not movie heaven and Earth, but I saw it... And it was good...well, pretty good.

Michael Riley and Stephen Rappaport star as director Clive Walton and producer Marvin Handleman, a film making duo responsible for such cinematic greats as Nude Ninjas, Dial 'S' for Sex, and The Airport (not to be confused with Airport). Now they've set their sites on the movie adaptation to end all movie adaptations, the complete Bible. Never mind the fact that the script is 2000 pages, never mind that the film makers have no particular religious leanings. and certainly never mind accuracy. As the film progresses, everything goes wrong on the set as the production spins out of control. From the cinematographer that thinks he's making high art to the craft services person with his themed food and the actress playing Eve whose body is home to a chest to toe snake tattoo,

And God Spoke is chock full of quirky characters and zany antics. The problem is that And God Spoke desperately wants to be cut from the same cloth as Best in Show and Spinal Tap, but where the characters in those films feel bizarre, yet realistic, those performances in And God Spoke were far less subtle and had a tendency to feel Ike hey were trying too hard. And God Spoke does get a leg up in a couple of departments. With a cast of mostly unknown actors, it was easier to accept the primary cast in their roles even when they went too broad. Mixing these actors with the occasional cameo from Even Plumb, Chris Kattan, or, in my favorite scene, Andy Dick and Lou Ferrigno as Abel and Cain, gives the film a real low rent Hollywood feeling. As much as I loved Cain and Abel's fight, the best moments in this film, for my money, come from classic comedian Soupy Sales. Not only does he get to play Moses, complete with plastic commandments and a 6pack of Coke, but he riffs though his entire screen theme with a series of off-the-cuff remarks that I really enjoyed.

At the film’s end (spoiler alert), the financial disaster of the movie gets a second life as a midnight movie, and I think that this might have highlighted my biggest problem with the film. Instead of a mockumentary about the making of And God Spoke, I wanted to see the film within the film, And God Spoke. As the film's production values plummeted, stunt casting continued, and stock footage assembled, all I could think about is what a wonderfully funny time it would be to check out that flick. And God Spoke is a decent fast paced comedy, but it falls short of doing to many things as well as easily comparable films. It doesn't do Hollywood as well as The Player, the unwinding of a film shoot like Living in Oblivion, or the single camera mockumentary style like Waiting for Guffman.

That being said, I did like And God Spoke enough, and if you enjoy the mockumentary style, as I do, then this film will be a fun watch. While it certainly isn't the top choice in the genre, gags like the over-sized Noah's Arc or the debate over how many apostles thee were are sure to amuse. Now that I got through that slice of heavenly film selected by Emily, go and check out what she said about Poolboy: Drowning out the Fury. Next month the Deadly Doll and The Lightning Bug will be meeting up for some fun in Baltimore so I'm sure we'll come up with something completely divine to celebrate the occasion!

Bugg Rating

You Don't Know Shat !?!: Naked City: Portrait Of A Painter (1962)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:52:00 +0000

It's the last week of You Don't Know Shat !?!, and that means it's also a very special day, the birthday of William Alan Shatner. Born in Montreal in 1931, The Shat has reached his 81st birthday and is still growing strong. In the last year Shat has appeared on USA's Psych, his own sitcom (the failed Shit My Dad Says), and killed off his popular Priceline Negotiator making for the first time, I know of, that a commercial character died as part of their plot. I expect in years to come there will still be plenty of Shat to look forward to, and there's still so many of his films that I haven't got to go back and watch. In case you missed the other entries this month, go back and check out Shatner as a worried Dad in Broken Angel, a hepcat teacher in The Explosive Generation, and a cheating cad in Secrets of a Married Man, and of course, all the previous years' Shat-tastic goodness. For the last entry, I chose to look at an early Shatner TV role. William was already a veteran actor by the early Sixties, with ten years of experience under his belt, when he was cast as a troubled painter who just might have killed his wife. There's eight million stories in The Naked City. This is just Shatner's.

The once and future Kirk stars as Roger Barmer, a struggling artist, who wakes to find his wife dead on the floor of his studio. Running to his shrink (Theodore Bickel, the once and future father of Worf), Roger has no clue if he committed the crime or not. His shrink thinks he might be guilty and previously advised Roger that he would kill a woman he loved. Police Investigator Adam Flint (Paul Burke) isn't so sure. After seeing a man put to death last year, he's not comfortable charging Barmer until he's positive the man is guilty. As all the facts start pointing the artist's way, including an analysis of his work by an art critic (Barry Morse), Barmer's memory begins to clear up revealing just what happened that fateful night.

Naked City was a long running crime show from the Fifties and Sixties, and watching it, I have to consider it the thematic forebearer of Law & Order. If I had to guess, Dick Wolf was a big fan in his youth. The show revolves around a pair of cops, but each week a guest star was brought in for some criminal hijinx. In other shows I watched, the guests were Walter Mattheau, Jack Klugman, and, in his first role, Jon Voight. Of course, we're here to talk about Shatner. Wearing tight paint splattered jeans, Converse hi tops, and a manky shirt, Shatner looks the part of Greenwich Village hep cat, well, save for his perfectly coifed hair. Playing the emotionally messed up Roger, Shatner gets a chance to over-emote to such a degree that it still hangs heavy over the air of New York even today.While later roles show that The Shat learned how to edit his tendencies, in this case, it's pure unadulterated Shat in your face.

The show itself was well made even by today's standards. The script, by writing duo Rodman and Goldberg, keeps the viewer guessing by throwing out some decent red herrings, giving the story an emotional core, and keeping the police business to a minimum. It also contained some strange scenes such as when Detective Flint stops by his gal pal's house and talks on the phone while she does an interpretive dance detailing the life cycle of a flower. It perfectly fit in with the beatnik themes going on in the episode, but having never have seen the program before, I had no idea she was Flint's girlfriend or an aspiring actress so it just seemed like a strange choice. I also have to wonder who did the art credited to Shatner's character because they're all described as cold and unfeeling, except for one the "art critic" says was painted by a murderer. In either case, it doesn't seem like a high compliment.

Director David Lowell Rich would continue to work in TV for years, and eventually he would become another Made-for-TV Movie arteur bringing us classics such as Satan's School for Girls, Death Race, and Horror at 37,000 Feet as well as the feature film Concord: Airport '79. Rich handles the Isolde well, and quite a number of the shots were artfully shot for early Sixties TV. The show also benefits from Shatner's co-stars. Character actor Theodore Bickel, who as I mentioned would go on to portray Worf's father on ST:TNG, give s a great performance as Roger's shrink and became my personal choice for the guilty party. If you haven't seen Bickel in The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming, I highly recommend folks add it to their watch list. Peter Morse makes the most of his scene as an art critic a few years before he would start chasing the wrongfully accused as The Fugitive's Lt. Gerard. Paul Burke might not be a household name, but if you're a fan of Valley of the Dolls surely you will recall his performance as Lyon Burke, one of the film's few grounded roles. It was Burke that really drew me into the show, and for his performances, I could see myself watching more of Naked City.

Naked City: Portrait of a Painter was the perfect way to close out this month's celebration of all things Shatner. In the show, Shat showed off all the skills that make me love him so. With his hammy over-acting, his panache and style, and the fact that you can always see the emotional core of his performances, it encompassed an unadulterated version of Shatner. While The Shat is consistently the butt of jokes for his staccato acting style, he's an actor who wears his heart on his sleeve and he's willing to bear himself emotionally even at the risk of looking foolish. In the modern era that presents so many leading men as untouchable, immobile forces, it's easy to see why Captain Kirk hit a chord with folks. It's easy to see why T.J. Hooker and Boston Legal were such successes. For me, it's easy to see why I love The Shat and I always will . I hope everyone enjoyed this month long celebration of all things Shatner, and I'm already looking forward to movies to watch for next year. Until then, may the Shat be with you, and Happy 81st to the man himself.

Bugg Rating

RIP Peter Bergman (1939-2012) or There's One Less Bozo on This Bus

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 20:49:00 +0000

Yesterday, while listening to Penn's Sunday School, a podcast from the very opinionated Penn Gilette, I learned some very tragic news. It seems one of my personal heroes had succumbed to a long battle with leukemia and he was no longer with us. The man I'm talking about is Peter Bergman, a founding member of The Firesign Theater. If you're of a certain age (read older than me), you might remember Firesign from their series of surreal, award winning albums from the 70s such as Were All Bozos on this Bus, Waiting on the Electrician or Somebody Like Him, Don't Crush that Dwarf Hand Me the Pliers, Dear Friends, and How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All. Each of these albums pioneered a style of improvisational comedy, took stoner humor to an intellectual level, and proved that comedy records could be as relistenable as your favorite rock record.

Bergman was the foundation of the group, though he often played supporting characters such as Lt. Bradshaw in their many Nick Danger sketches. In a way, Bergman was the focal point for the whole group. In Bergman's words, "I started July 24th, 1966 on [sic. Radio station] KPFK ... I had some very interesting people around me, which those folks became The Firesign Theatre: David Ossman was connected with the station, Phil Austin was connected with the station, and Phil Proctor came out to do a show and we connected in LA and that was really the genesis of that whole happening." The group would continue with the original lineup for years though Bergman and Phillip Proctor would branch out on their own for many projects, including one that is near and dear to my heart.

In 1979, Proctor and Bergman released J-men Forever, a film made of old movie serials redubbed á la Woody Allen's What's Up, Tigerllly? It was the second feature in the genre they had worked on, the other, Firesign Theater's Hot Shorts, is a rarely seen gem unto itself. However, what I want to talk about is J-men. Hitting Night Flight in the early 80s, my folks recorded it off TV, and by the tender age of six or seven, I was drawn into the fantastic, comedic, superhero world they created. It was only as I got older that the themes of sex, drugs, and rock and roll really dawned on me. In many ways, it was my first cult film. I held it special, and to this day, I've only met a handful of people who have seen it. In fact the movie is so special to me that when I created this site I named it after J-men Forever's baddie, The Lightning Bug.

The two constants in my life have always been movies and comedy for as far back as I can remember. Strangely enough, that's almost the same length of time I've been watching J-men. I credit the film with not only instilling in me a silly, slightly offensive, yet erudite sense of humor as well as a love for the strange and unusual in cinema. Many times I wonder if I would have become such a part of the cult movie culture if I hadn't been exposed to J-men Forever at such a formative age. I always wanted to meet Mr. Bergman and thank him for everything his movie did for me and how much it, as well as his work with Firesign, continues to inspire me to have fun, dig deep, and enjoy the ride. So to Peter Bergman, I bid you a fond farewell, and all hail Lennon and Marx.

Below I've put together a selection of some of my favorite Firesign moments featuring Mr. Bergman. I hope that some of you take time to check these out, and maybe there's still a future Firesign fan out there waiting to happen.

First up is Peter in a commercial parody for Rat in a Box. This appeared in one of Firesign's other film Nick Danger and The Case of the Missing Yolk.

.

Here's the whole 12 minutes of Nick Danger and the Case of the Missing Shoe. If you can get past Bergman saying 'Baby Shoes' at the beginning of the second segment then you're a better man than I.

Here's the movie that launched 100 Lairs. Ok, just one, but anyhow, here's J-Men Forever in it's entirety. Go to about 20 minutes in to get to the point with Agent Spike and Bergman the Chief.

Last but not least the classic album How Can You Be at Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere At All.

You Don't Know Shat !?! : Secrets of a Married Man (1984)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:28:00 +0000

Over the last few weeks of the Shatner celebration, we've seen the Shat as a crusading father rescuing his daughter from gang life in Broken Angel and talking turkey about the birds and the bees is The Explosive Generation. This week finds Shatner on the other side of the ethical coin as a cad gone mad in Secrets of a Married Man. This made for TV film feels like prehistoric version of a Lifetime offering, but spun on it's head in a fever of Iron John induced melodrama. It becomes a tale of middle class male ennui where Shatner, playing for sympathy, comes up well short. Secrets of a Married Man is a slice of of 80s yuppsterism that shows off just how flawed the free love generation became as they moved into the self centered, costumer driven decade. Plus, you get to see Captain Kirk picking up hookers on the corner.

The Shat stars here as Chris Jordan, an aeronautics engineer who is tired of the hum drum wife with his wife and three kids. He doesn't want to have an affair, but that doesn't preclude him from thinking about getting some strange on the side. When his work sends him off to a trade show, he orders a call girl to his hotel room and captures a brief moment of passion. When next he tries to be intimate with his wife (Michelle Phillips), she won't even let him keep the lights on while they're doing the vertical Watusi. Thus begins a cycle of Chris frequenting prostitutes unto he finally works his way up to high class hooker Elaine (Cybil Shepherd) who picks him up in a lingerie store. Elaine captures Chris' imagination (after all she's working her way through nursing school), and soon he's taking her out to Andy dinners and buying her presents. Ultimately, he tries to break it off, but that's when Elaine's pimp Jesse (Glynn Turman) starts to blackmail the engineer for cash. Drawing his family into danger due to his monetarily driven affair, Chris must make some dangerous choices to set things right.

The problem with Secrets of a Married Man is twofold. One, Shatner's Chris decides to start frequenting prostitutes due to the encouragement of an old cowboy in a bar. Now I fully understand how mystical cowboys are an all, but for every Sam Elliot watching the Dude abide, there's a dozen pseudo cowpokes ready to advise city slickers that getting a hooker is not the same as cheating. Surely they sometimes branch out into other ill advice, but it's an old cowboy tradition to lead dummies away from their women. After all, who would't want to rustle up some Michelle Phillips with the lights on or off. Secondly, the movie fails to ever put Chris in the midst of any real danger. Even at the movie's climax when Shatner had a knife held to is throat, I felt no kind of tension to speak of at all. Glynn Turman's pimp is so sanitized for television consumption all the bite is gone from the much needed heavy. The real conflict in he film, of course, goes on inside of Chris. However, the lesson he learns is somewhat middling. Sure, he eventually, and reluctantly, tries to stop seeing Elaine, but without the threat of danger to his family, he planned to go back to his everyday life.

Shatner has never played such an unlikable, slimy little weasel for my money, and Shatner's typical broad style only played into his smarmy demeanor. If Shatner intended for Chris to come off as a troubled industrialist, he missed the mark and instead shows a sad little man looking for a fantasy world for his escape. Cybil Shepard, who was always a beauty, strikes an impressive allure as the object of Chris' affections, and she really plays the con scenes perfectly, her innocent disposition hiding the steady vacuum of funds from Chris' wallet. Turman, as I mentioned earlier, had no chance as the tame, tan suited pimp, but he did what he could with fangless material. Michelle Phillips was the most underused cast member as the story really only looked at how one man's transgressions effected himself and glossed over the impact on the family unit.

Director William A. Graham was a television stalwart with a career than spanned back to an episode of Pond's Theater in 1956. In the late 60s and early 70s, he became one of the kings of the TV movie with titles like Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, Return to Blue Lagoon, Calendar Girl Murders, and The Last Ninja. Based on a screenplay by Dennis Nemec, whose telling last screenplay was called Secret Cutting (2000), Secrets of a Married Man runs too wildly into the melodramatic to be that much fun to watch. Even Shatner, usually able to elevate any material with gleeful hamminess, is so downright miserable that it made me want to leave this movie and go pay another to let me watch it. For hardcore Shatner-ites like myself who are going to watch anything and everything he's been in, then this is a movie you're going to watch..... For everyone else, take it from this married man who wishes he had kept Secrets of a Married Man a secret, some things are better left unknown.

Bugg Rating

You Don't Know Shat !?! : The Explosive Generation (1961)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:50:00 +0000

Last week I talked about Shatner in the '80s "teens out of control" flick Broken Angel where he played a concerned Dad who wondered what was the matter with kids today. Today's film put The Shat on the other side of that equation. The early Sixties may well have been more of a time of chance than the latter part of the decade. With the rise of Rock and Roll (even in this pre-Beatles era) and "race" records, the conformity of the 50s was beginning to wane in the youth of the nation. As we all know by the mid to late 60s the pendulum had swung in favor of the hippie free love movement and anti-war protests. The makers of The Explosive Generation fashioned a movie that was prescient of the changes in youth culture, and even though the actions the teens take might not seem so "explosive" to us now, these were the kind of events that lit the fuse of the cultural explosion. Of course, as always, and I'm sure he'd be the first to say, William Shatner created that spark of revolution.

After winning a basketball game, some of the kids pile out to a beach house for a night of dancing and partying, but for one young couple, Janet and Dan (Patty McCormack and Lee Kinsolving), it kicks off a moral dilemma that balloons into a culture clash. Dan convinces Janet to stay the night, and clearly the insinuation is that he wants her to go all the way. The next day at school teacher Peter Gifford (William Shatner) is supposed to prep his class of seniors for college admission and the job market, but instead, at the students urging, they plan to talk about the issues that really matter to them. At the top of the list is sex. When word gets out about what Gifford is up to, the parents freak out and demand his dismissal. He is given one more chance, but unable to let the kids down, Gifford is suspended for his non-conventional lesson plan. Taking matters into their own hands, Dan organizes a protest to get Gifford reinstated.

While none of what the kids in the film talk about would seem very scandalous today, it is still the kind of thing that is still frowned upon in schools. Frank discussions of matters such as "how far should a girl go to keep her boyfriend" are not di rigeur in today's sex education classes, which still focus on anatomy, venereal disease, and in some cases contraception. In addition, the students of The Explosive Generation also share their concerns about being drafted into the Vietnam war, fear of the Nuclear Bomb, and other hot button issues of the time. The film illustrates the sea change between the innocence of middle America during the 50s to the more wide eyed, youth based radicalism of the 60s. Near the films end, after seeing his students effect change with peaceful protest, Shatner's teacher comments, "That's our future down there, standing up for what they believe in." Little did Shatner or anyone involved in the film know how true that statement would become in only a few years.

While the kids are the main focus of the film, all the events revolve around Shatner's Peter Gifford. The Canadian actor is hailed as a classic over-emoter, and while that is certainly on display here, Shatner gives a deeply sensitive performance with some really nuanced moments. It is apparent that Shatner believes the same things that his character does, and it enhances the role to see how impassioned the actor was with the role. Patty McCormack is probably best known to horror fans for her role as the evil child in 1956's The Bad Seed, but she is one of the few child stars to continue working through her teenage years and into adulthood where she would appear on The Sopranos and in the movie Frost/Nixon. McCormack gives a great performance which forms the emotional core of the film. I wish I could say the same about Lee Kinsolving's Dan. While he spearheads the protest, Kinsolving only has moments where real passion comes through. The best male performance comes from Billy Grey (perhaps best known as Bud on the classic sitcom Father Knows Best) as Dan's friend Bobby. Not only does his character shift most dramatically, he exhibits a quiet cool that brings to mind another rebel, James Dean. Also be on the lookout for Beau Bridges in an early role and cult as well as exploitation film producer Arch Hall, Sr. in a rare acting performance as Janet's dad.

The Explosive Generation marked the feature film directing debut of Buzz Kulick who would go on to helm classic films such as The Hunter with Steve McQueen, Brian's Song with James Caan, and the infamously weird TV movie Bad Ronald. Looking over Kulick's career, there is a thread that runs throughout, a predilection for films about the oppressed, underdogs, and youths achieving beyond expectations. Certainly, The Explosive Generation kicked off a career focussing on those issues, and Kulick, who had previously only worked in television, did a good job making the leap to the big screen. Apart from the film's subject matter, the other notable portion of The Explosive Generation is the jazzy score by composer Hal Borne. It sets the film apart from other similar features like The Blackboard Jungle which latched onto the emerging rock music trend.

I went into The Explosive Generation expecting a teens gone wild exploitation style flick, but instead it seemed aimed at the teens rather than warning adults about the perils of high schoolers. The message seemed to be one of inspiration for teens to be vocal in matters that traditional repressive values excluded from them. By 1966, the traditional values were being challenged harder than they have before or since by the very generation that the film sought to portray. By modern standards, when sex, politics, and religion seemed to be endlessly discussed on television, it is a little hard to imagine kids just starting to think outside the box about these important issues. However, many young people, even today, stay uninformed and garner any knowledge about those subjects from what their parents feel comfortable teaching them. While the 60s might have been an "explosive generation", the film shows that given proper inspiration youth culture can radically change society, and that is something that is true for every generation.

Bugg Rating

No trailer was available, but here's a nice clip. Netflix users can also find this on Instant Watch.

Big Money Rustlas (2010) F***king Westerns, How Do They Work?

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:44:00 +0000

Historically I love a Western, but also historically (and yes historians have written about it because it is so vast), I can't stand Insane Clown Posse. You might ask why that is, and there are so many good reasons. First and foremost, as a fan of rap and hip hop in general, I have to say that their music is horrid. Lacking any real skills on the mic, they make up for it with so called "shocking" lyrics full of violence, misogyny, and general stupidity. I should point out that these are the guys who wondered in their 2010 song ”Miracles" how magnets worked, but couldn't muster up the wits to find out. Then there's the fact that these are grown men in their 40s wearing black and white clown makeup without a sense of irony. I know lots of people have clown issues, but the only Psycho Clown that will get me creeped out is Shivers the Clown. So I will never be convinced that Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J are hard mofos. Instead, I will assume they they are opportunistic entrepreneurs who somehow stumbled on a crazy rapping clown angle and made that work for them, and not just for a while, ICP have been doing their thing since 1989.

In 2000, they released their first film, Big Money Hustlas, a Dolomite homage marked with all the traditional un-PC earmarks of a ICP project. Then, ten years later, they came back to the screen with a prequel of sorts, 2010's Big Money Rustlas. When it appeared on Netflix Instant, my inner cinematic masochist could not resist checking it out. Violent J (the larger of the two rapping clowns) stars as Big Baby Chips, the head outlaw in the little town of Mud Bug. Along with his goofus sidekicks Dirty Poot (Monoxide) and Raw Stank (Jamie Madrox), Chips rules the town and all the illegal activity. That is until Sheriff Sugar Wolf (Shaggy 2 Dope) rides into town. He begins cleaning up the streets, but ends up facing Chip's trio of assassins, the heat vision wielding Ghost (Boondox), the smelly mess known as The Foot (2 Tough Tony), and a crossdressing midget who plugs him through his shooting hand. If Sugar Wolf is going to rid Mud Bug of Big Baby Chips, he's going to have to learn to shoot with his left hand, and with the help of his pal Dirty Sanchez (Mark Jury) he sets out to do just that and reclaim the town in the name of his father Grizzly Wolf (Ron Jeremy).

As you might be able to tell, Big Money Rustlas is chock full of ICP's pals, but what really keeps the movie going, and gave me some enjoyment out of the experience, were the many cameos from their famous friends. Wrestler Scott Hall (who was originally supposed to play Dirty Sanchez) is very amusing as a guy charged with changing Mud Bug's population sign, and legendary wresting manger Jimmy ”Mouth of the South" Hart shows us as a card sharp. Jason Mewes, best known as Jay from the Kevin Smith films, plays a deputy who doesn't want to get shot while J.J.Walker and Bridgette Nilsson appear as a pair of concerned townsfolk. Midget pornstar Bridget Powers has a large sized role as Shaggy 2 Dope's love interest (as apparently she did in Big Money Hustlas as well), and in one of my favorite moments Tom Sizemore appears as Tom Sizemore because, you know, that makes good sense in a Western. This doesn't even begin to cover appearances by Todd Bridges, Vanilla Ice, Tech 9ine, and Saved by the Bell's Dustin Diamond as well as many others that your favorite Juggalo could point out. While none of them add anything to the film, it did make the entire experience much more palatable than I expected.

Big Money Rustlas hinges in the performances of Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J, and that's some rather squeaky hinges to be hanging on. Shaggy 2 Dope is the better of the two, and he had some great comic timing at points. It's clear that his performance was somewhat drawn from Dolomite with a fair amount Pootie Tang thrown in for good measure (Shaggy's pimp hand standing in for Pootie's belt). What could have been an interesting comic performance is instead derailed by low humor and the inexorable, unexplained clown makeup. Violent J on the other hand is as hamfisted with his acting as he is with his rhymes. Generally his dialog consisted of a few bad-ass lines coupled with exhortations of his "motherfucking money", and he did little else. While he made a believable heavy, it seemed without menace which even a comedic bad guy needs. All his scenes are stole by his henchmen, Raw Stank and Dirty Poot, Jamie Madrox and Monoxide respectively. Every scene they appear in is actually hilarious, and apart from the celebrity cameos, they made for the best part of the film.

I haven't talked any about director Paul Andresen, and there's really not much to say. The former ICP, Metallica, and Van Halen video director made his non-documentary film debut with Big Money Rustlas, and while the film is cleanly shot and features a number of impressive crane shots, it has no real visual style. Not that it was needed or expected. Like the rest of the film, it was serviceable. I really wanted Big Money Rustlas to be more than terrible, but in the end I found my reaction to be some light laughter that was immediately coupled with head shaking. It was hard to believe that I was being entertained by ICP, but it was happening right in front of my eyes no matter if I liked it or not. Now, I'm not saying that I'll be running out, buying cases of face paint and Faygo or getting a Hatchetman tattoo on my rump. I won't be changing my name to Lighninz 4 Bugz, and there's little chance you'll ever hear me give a "whoop whoop" about anything. However, I would watch another ICP film. For all its faults, Big Money Rustlas makes up for them by being entertaining, and out of all the things I might have expected from this movie, that was never one of them. So a Psycho Clown can be fun to watch, but they still don't understand fucking magnets.

Bugg Rating

You Don't Know Shat?!? :Broken Angel (1988)

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:47:00 +0000

Today March officially begins and with it brings a longstanding tradition here at The Lair, the celebrations of the works of William Shatner that I like to call " You Don't Know Shat!?!". This is a feature I've run for the last two years, and I've been eagerly awaiting March for it to swing around again. Shatner, while often belittled and denigrated, is really an acting treasure with roles that spans over 50 years and include iconic performances, side trips into other cultures and languages, documentaries, dramas, and comedies. Even saying all that barely begins to recognize the vastness of the body of work that Bill Shatner has amassed by 2012, the year of his 81st birthday. Today I' m going to start with one of his lesser known features. During the 70s and 80s, while Bill was running around as Kirk on the big screen and T.J. Hooker on the small one, he also made more than his fair share of made-for-TV films. In the past I've looked at Disaster on a Coastliner and Pray for the Wildcats, but today's film, Broken Angel, is a far cry from either of those action oriented movies. Instead it melded Shatner's over-the-top performance with a story that was equal parts Afterschool Special and proto-Lifetime movie.

Shatner stars as family man Chuck Coburn, who actually doesn't have time for his family due to the duties involved in running his dry cleaning business. Meanwhile his wife Catherine (Susan Blakely) keeps herself out of the home selling real estate. This leads their kids, Jamie (Erika Eleniak) and Drew (Jason Horst) to fend for themselves. For Drew this means sitting in his room, playing punk music, and being terribly worried that the nuclear bomb is imminent at any moment. Jamie take s a more proactive route, getting herself mixed up with a gang of privileged white kids who call themselves L.F.N. (Live For Now, supposedly a gang into drugs, guns, and satanism.) At the prom, rival gang The Red Dragons take a few shots at Jamie her gang, killing off her closest friend. When the smoke cleared, Jamie was no where to be found. With no clues and little help from the police, Clark takes matters into his own hands and with the help of L.A gang counselor Shakti (Roxann Dawson) he begins to uncover the second life he never knew his straight A getting daughter hid from him.

The best way to describe this movie in cinematic shorthand would be to say that is is Hardcore gone softcore. In Paul Schader's masterpiece, George C. Scott hits up the city's underbelly as he searches for his daughter in the world of porn. Along the way, he participates in a few shady things to get him closer to his goal. In Broken Angel, Shatner, wrapped in a series of oatmeal colored sweaters, remains concerned, hits the streets in a television approved kind of way, and generally listens to educators and street violence specialists pontificate on the woeful sate of kids today, in order to get closer to finding his daughter. I kept waiting for Chuck to show some real balls and whip out a gun and go Death Wish on things until he found his kid. Sadly that never happens and, if anything, Shatner's character seems even more like a weenie by the film's spectacularly anticlimactic ending. Though I do have to say that seeing William get cruised by a gay teen prostitute was pretty great, and possibly my favorite moment in the entire film.

Playing a Dad who has lost his beloved daughter definitely gave The Shat plenty of opportunity to chew the scenery. In nearly every scene Shatner appears in, he goes for the full out, no stops, no holds barred version of whatever emotion he's trying to get across. There are a couple of occasions where Shatner throws himself against a window or wall due to the overwhelming emotion that he's feeling. These scenes, designed to drive home his character's grief, only stoke the extremely silly fire of Shatner's extreme touches. Movie actress Susan Blakely puts in a more reserved performance, but the mother character is really not the film's focus, though there is an infidelity subplot thrown in haphazardly. Broken Angel marked the first major appearance of future Baywatch star Erika Eleniak, and while she only really appears briefly, the movie's events revolve around her and her extremely dark, extremely thick eyebrow. Roxann Dawson, who plays the gang counselor, deserves a special mention, not because of her performance, but because she provides the second of three Star Trek connections in Broken Angel. Dawson would go on to play Klingon engineer B'lana Torres on Star Trek:Voyager while the third connection comes by way of veteran actor Brock Peters as the unhelpful cop assigned Jamie's case. He would appear as a Starfleet Admiral in Star Trek 4 and 6 as well as appear as Commander Ben Sisko's New Orleans chef father on Deep Space Nine.

Director Richard T. Heffron started off his career in episodic television during the early 70s before branching out into feature films such as the wobbling sequel Futureworld. Along the same time, he began directing a large amount of TV films which lead to jobs on North and South and V: The Final Battle. Broken Angel feels like there is a journeyman director behind the camera, and while the film is chock full of styles of the 80s (Fans of punks in film will not want to miss Shatner's search through a L.A dive filled to the top the rafters with mohawks.), it has a visual style and pace that I would associate more with 70s television. The whole concept feels dated. If there had been a tad more salaciousness to Jamie's disappearance or more wildly inaccurate information, then this could have fit nicely into the world of the exploitation films of the 40's and 50's which preyed on fears of drug use, sexual promiscuity, and the loosening of the moral fiber of America. There is an underlying current to Broken Angel that reads like, "What's the matter with these kids today with their hair and their clothes and their rock and roll music?"

In a way, it lends a lot of charm to this late Reagan era offering. Somewhere in between the peon to the perils of latchkey keys, there's a degree of campiness that lies squarely the feet of one William Shatner. If you're a child of the 80s and you enjoy seeing the Once and Future Kirk take on other roles, then Broken Angel is not a bad way to spend ninety minutes. Go in with the mind that you're seeing the descendent of classic exploitation films, and you're bound to have a good time. Shatner was no stranger to this kind of film though, and next week I'm going to look into one of his earliest roles, as a teacher grappling with sex education in 1961's The Explosive Generation. So join me back here next Thursday and every Thursday this month for more Shatner as I look at more films from an incredible career. Don't forget, you can go back and check in on entries from the past anytime. So check them out and get to really know your Shat.

Bugg Rating

There's no trailer for this Made for TV flick, but here's a clip in German. Netflix subscribers can check it out streaming now!

Deadly Doll's Choice: The Children (2008): The Kids Aren't Alright

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 20:27:00 +0000

Small things are creepy, and all manner of tiny terrors have been unleashed over at The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense during this entire month of February, the shortest of the year. So for our film swap this month, we also kept things small. For my pick, I gave her the James Bond meets Lucky Charms lunacy of Darby O'Gill and the Little People, one of the most liquor soaked kid’s films of all time. In exchange, the Deadly Doll chose for me the 2008 British horror flick The Children. Kids, as we all know, are little innocent faced killers laying in wait to kill adults with unabashed glee if given half the chance. That's why I don't have any Bugg-lets running around. While others may be willing to take the chance and willingly bring a potential murderer into their home, films like The Omen, Who Can Kill a Child, The Bad Seed, and Village of the Damned have taught me how to play it safe. (For this same reason, I've never seen Cujo because I want to keep my dog.) The Children is just another reason in a long line of reasons to advocate a childless existence as a form of self preservation.

It all starts when a group of friends all retreat to a countryside mansion with their families for the holidays. Teenage daughter Casey (Hannah Tointon), by far the oldest of the kids, has no interest in going along, but her mother Elaine (Eva Birthistle) forces her to go instead of to the cool party she wanted to attend. Pretty much right off the bat the kids start acting fussy and soon fussy leads to irritable, which leads to light violence, which leads to killing the hell out of anyone who is not still in grammar school. The adults for their part seem so taken aback by the sudden turn in their kids behavior that the find themselves defenseless against their oncoming progeny. One by one the kids turn evil after contracting some kind of virus that makes them go mad, and pretty soon the whole place turns into an area that even Spongebob Squarepants would be hard pressed to find solace.

Lately, one certain Republican candidate, whose name remained un-Googleable, has been advocating an end to contraception. That's right. No rubbers, no pill, no sponges, no rings, no nothing. Just tons and tons of unwanted children being born day after day and waiting for the right moment to kill a mess of folks. I think maybe that candidate, who has a brood of like 26, ought to take a look at Tom Shankland's picture and realize what a vulnerable it is in which he lives. With the many kids around, it doesn't matter if you have a Kevlar sweater vest; you're going down with extreme prejudice if they turn on you. Granted, most kids don't turn on their parents and kill them outright. Instead, like I did, most children merely eat way at their parents with disappointment, emotional distance, and abject neglect. You know, the traditional way that it's been done for years.

As a film, The Children has quite a few great things going for it. Right off, I have to mention the titular “children”. While none of them were terribly great actors (primarily they were called upon to do a lot of blank staring), they were one of the creepiest groups of kids ever assembled at one place at one time ever. If there was ever a group of kids who were going to kick off a plague of homicidal primary schoolers, this is the group. The film also gets a boost from the snowy setting, always interesting when blood gets in the mix, the speedy pacing, keeping the film under the ninety minute mark, and deliberate camera work that amped up the tension of the kills considerably. There was also a fair amount of gore which remained realistic for the most part and added to the kiddos menace by not being too far over the top. However, there are a few things that keep me from loving these kids unconditionally.

First, they're all crazy killers. I feel like I've covered that pretty well. Secondly, while much of the film making is solid, Shankland felt the need to include some quick music video style cuts that neither enhanced the film nor did anything other than remove me from the moment. He also did a poor job of making anyone into a character. A normal readers will notice, I eschewed my usual breakdown of the actors because I could easily just divide them into two roles, kids with little to no lines and adult dummies, blended together. On the whole, they didn't seem like the best parents, and while I certainly didn't wish for their kids to turn on them, they put themselves into that particular risk group when they had babies as I mentioned earlier.

The Children (2008) has an appeal to it as a straight up horror romp, but it lacks a real overall character to the film that many other killer kid films, including The Children (1980), seem to have. Without adult characters that are interesting and sympathetic, the adults become meat bags for their half pint slashers to go to town on, and while I enjoyed the effects of the slayings, they left me feeling like nonplussed. Tom Shankland is clearly another horror director on the rise, but he needs to learn how to balance the human with the gore driven. Without it, all that he gives us is a beautifully dressed film with little contained inside. That about wraps it for me today, but don't forget to go over to The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense and see what Emily thought of Terrance Trent D'arby O'Gill and the Little People. Okay, it stars Sean Connery and not the late 80's R&B singer, but what a film that would have made, right?

Bugg Rating

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012): Nic Cage is el Fuego

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:23:00 +0000

The last time we saw Nic Cage here at The Lair, everyone's favorite over-actor (that's not William Shatner) was on the run from the devil after escaping Hell in 2010's Drive Angry. What a difference a couple of years makes.... And a sequel for that matter. This time instead of avoiding Old Scratch, he's pursuing a headlong course right at him in the surprising sequel to 2007's Ghost Rider. After the fist film flopped, and for good reason, there was little hope that Cage could spin the character into a franchise, but with a pile of taxes to be paid, Cage has taken to appearing in a lot of unexpected films in the last few years. Somehow, he got Marvel Comics to go along with the idea for a second go at Johnny Blaze, enlisted the directors of Crank, signed on the scenarist of the Chris Nolan Batman films, and, perhaps most shockingly, made a movie that is pretty dang fun. I know this kind of tips my hand, but Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is the type of film that is going to divide people right down the middle. One group will love the over-the-top acting and action, and the other might feel a little pissed. Hopefully not flaming pissed, but more on that later.

After the events of the first film, which I hardly recall beyond the presence of Peter Fonda and the Rider's bright white skull, Johnny Blaze (Cage) fled to Eastern Europe where, I suppose, he could let the Ghost Rider collect evil souls without all that pesky pleading in English. Blaze is tracked down by Moreau (Idris Elba), a follower of an ancient religious sect. He believes that only the Rider can help protect a young boy who is being pursued by Rourke (Ciaràn Hinds) a.k.a Satan, and in return, he promises to free Johnny from his deal with the Devil. So flaming skull alight, Johnny takes off into the night to save the young boy, Danny (Fergus Riordin), from the grips of Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth), the devil's errand boy. That turns out to be the easy part. To protect Danny, Johnny must face missiles, treacherous monks, Carrigan pumped up by the spirit of decay, and Blaze finds that the Rider may not be as easy to let go as he hoped.

The first thing to consider if you're thinking about seeing Ghost Rider: SOV is if you're prepared to just let go and let the movie be what it is. I entered with minimal expectations and left with a grin on my face from ear to ear. The entire film, from the retooled look of Ghost Rider to the frenetic action sequences and the peppy dialog full of one liners, hit the right balance of genre movie tropes while keeping it all firmly planted in comic book land. Clearly, screenwriter-scenarist David Goyer (Nolan's Batman, the upcoming Man of Steel, Blade) knows his comic books and together with writers Scott Gimple and Seth Hoffman created a world where the supernatural action could thrive. Don't go in expecting the realism of Batman Begins or the glossiness of Captain America because that's not what you're going to get. Instead you'll receive a lot of silly, silly fun that feels an awful lot like the classic 70's adventures of Johnny Blaze that unfolded in the pages of comics.

The one real sticking point in an accurate translation of Johnny Blaze from the page to screen has to be the man playing him. In the books, Blaze is a young blond haired motorcycle daredevil. Meanwhile, Nic Cage is.... well, he's past middle aged, paunchy, balding, and manic. In other words, while he doesn't make a good fit for the character, he makes a hell of a a good time onscreen. Dialing back the insanity of his Port of Call: New Orleans performance by a single notch, Cage fills Ghost Rider:SOV with inspired moments that delighted the audience I saw the film with. Cage, like all the other actors, seems to be having a great time, and his intense mugging as he turns from Johnny to the Rider is delightfully over-the-top. There's even a scene that has to be a nod to Cage's performance in The Wicker Man remake. I don't want to spoil that moment for anyone, but I will say that it has to do with bees. Cage's performance gives Ghost Rider a larger than life feeling, and what is a comic book hero (or anti-hero as the case may be) than a being that is larger than life. Sort of like the man playing him with wild abandon.

Leading the charge in the supporting cast is Idris Elba. Best known as Stringer Bell from HBO's The Wire (though he should be known for the criminally unseen BBC show Luther), British actor Elba plays French here, and he's the only actor who matches Cage's crazed intensity note for note. Also chewing up the scenery was Johnny Whitworth, co-star of the procedural CSI : Miami, as the villainous Carrigan who later gets imbued with the power of decay which makes for some interesting effects later in the film. Fergus Riordin doesn't have much to do in the film other than be the endangered Danny, but his character does make the much talked about flaming pee scene make sense. I won't spoil how, but suffice it to say I was pleasantly surprised that it became one of the film's big laughs instead of its worst moment. Character actor Ciaràn Hinds succeeds here where Peter Fonda failed in the first film. he gives the devil a quiet menace that just works with the film's style. I haven't mentioned Italian actress Violante Placido who plays Danny's mother because apart from looking stunning she's given little to do, but she impresses both with her beauty and in her acting ability during her few scenes. Also look out for appearances by the Highlander, Christopher Lambert, and Buffy's Watcher, Anthony Stewart Head, in small roles.

Ghost Rider: SOV scores in both the writing and acting departments, but for my money the real saviors of this franchise are the directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. The pair has helmed both of the ludicrous action films Crank and Crank 2, and Ghost Rider: SOV follows in the same formula, everything is pumped to the extreme and the pace should be at a breakneck speed. The short ninety minute running time felt extremely slight in the face of the frenetic pace, but it also kept attention away from glaring plot holes, some middling motorcycle effects, and jokes that fell flat. Their whole approach to Ghost Rider makes the character pop, and like their writers and the cast, clearly Neveldine and Taylor have read a few comics in their time. I should also mention that I saw Ghost Rider: SOV in 3-D, something I rarely do, and I felt like it paid off. The short running time kept me from getting a headache, and many of the scenes were advanced by the extra depth that the film garnered from the effect. I also saw it in a Regal Theater boasting the Regal Premium Experience, and the sound was so good that I could feel it in the seats.

I'm rarely impressed with a movie going experience so this was nice for a change. What was also nice was having fun while seeing a film. Sure, there are plenty of flaws to be picked apart. I didn't even get into the narration, the animated moments, or the poorly chosen Jerry Springer appearance, but none of it took me too far out of the film at the time. I go to movies like Ghost Rider, and Nic Cage movies in general, to have a good time, and that's exactly what happened here. So if this is how Ghost Rider comes back with the Spirit of Vengeance, I hope people wrong him again and again. (The Rotten Tomatoes score ought be be enough to bring him back for revenge at least once more.) Sadly, I won't be able to add fuel to his head fire because this is the type of film that gets my motor running while I head back out onto the highway.

Bugg Rating

Yellowbrickroad (2010): Where The Dogs of Horror Howl

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 04:04:00 +0000

I'd been thinking about seeing Yellowbrickroad for some time now. After all, The Wizard Of Oz is one of my favorite movies of all time. So I couldn't pass up a chance to check out a horror film based out of L. Frank Baum's magical world. The 1938 classic film is not without it's own share of eeriness, and don't even get me started on how freaky The Wiz is. While I had no idea which direction Yellowbrickroad might take with the film, I was seriously hoping for some flying monkey action. Sadly, there's no wildlife on display, winged or otherwise, but there is scarecrow and a group of travelers on a journey to seek a legendary place. While none of it amounts to a horse of a different color, Yellowbrickroad still manages to shine in the dull world of modern horror.

In 1940, the residents of Friar, New Hampshire disappeared into the woods surrounding their tiny hamlet. Their bodies were later found frozen to death or mutilated along the trail. In 2008, the government finally declassified the location of the trail. So writer Daryl Lugar (Clark Freeman) and his sister Erin (Cassidy Freeman) lead an expedition into the woods to discover what drove the ill fated citizens of Friar to walk to their own doom. Along with a behavioral psychiatrist, a representative from the National Parks services, and local girl Liv (Laura Heisler), their trek starts peacefully enough. As they go deeper into the woods, their GPS fails, compasses become useless, and they are taunted by strange music coming from the woods. Pressing on, each of the party become affected by their surroundings, and soon tragedy strikes the group. Without a doubt, they're well beyond the rainbow, and no amount of heel clicks is going to save them.

In a simplistic way, Yellowbrickroad has much in common with the trips not insanity helmed by Werner Herzog. Much like the characters in Herzog's Agguire, Wrath of God, the group in Yellowbrickroad are explorers of sorts, but the deeper they get into unraveling the truth of their situation, the closer they come to unraveling into total insanity. However, unlike Herzog, it's done without a delicate touch. Directors Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton are both first timers behind the lens, but even with an ambitious character study as their debut, they don't entirely falter. They do a fine job of distinguishing the characters, providing suspense, and keeping the action moving. They also impressed me by not choosing to make their film in the found footage style. While it could have fit the story, as we all know, the style is played out and overdone at this point. Yellowbrickroad takes its biggest stumble in the film's last few minutes as it veers sharply out of Werner's wheelhouse and into David Lynch territory. I didn't hate the ending or love it either, but I feel it will be the most debated part of the film, and many will feel that it sullies what came before.

Casting real life brother and sister Clark and Cassidy Freeman as film siblings Daryl and Erin was a risk and could have felt like a stunt. The Freemans thankfully nail their roles and provide the grounding force in the film. Cassidy, who was a regular on Smallville and the short lived series The Playboy Club, and Clark's real life relationship brings gravity to both of their roles. Character actor Alex Draper has a few good scenes as the Behavioral Psychologist, and his moments monitoring the group's sanity are essential for the film. Actress Laura Heisler, who plays small town contact Liv, gives my favorite performance of the film. She brings a real dynamic to the role, and her character takes the most dramatic and surprising turn of the film. The rest of the supporting cast do well, but their characters tended to blend together, and at points it was hard to figure out which character was doing what thing.

While I began this piece comparing Yellowbrickroad to a low rent Werner Herzog film, perhaps the film it should be compared to is the 2003 French film High Tension. Not because of any thematic or style connection, but rather because the film's last few minutes could completely change someone's opinion on the film. While it didn't feel as much like a pulled rug as High Tension, Yellowbrickroad leaves the audience baffled and still with many, many questions. For me, it worked, but I can definitely see how some people will be put off by it. Placing even more footage well after 3 minutes of credits also doesn't add anything for those with the fortitude to stay around and watch them. I was hoping that Yellowbrickroad would take me somewhere to a magical land where original horror ideas are perfectly executed. Instead, it's a Kansas feature with its eye out for a twister to take it to the next level. However, I will definitely be looking out for what Holland and Mitton get up to next time.

Bugg Rating

Les Adventures Extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010) : Rollin In the Deep with Luc Besson

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:30:00 +0000

If you're like me, and I assume you are because you're reading this, then you didn't care for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). Apart from nuking the fridge and making Indy's adventures an interstellar affair, Spielberg made a film that lacked heart, a surprise from a director who is usually all heart. Between Indy's adventures, trials, and foibles, I needed something more to connect the series of action sequences. What I never would have thought was to look to France, and Luc Besson, for a film to sate my appetite for an adventurous blockbuster with as much introspection as explosions. Les Adventures Extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (a.k.a The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sac for the French impaired) features a woman who is no wan Indiana Jayne, but rather it paints a portrait of a strong, independently minded woman who is educated, sexy, and clever, in the era directly after World War I, not a time renowned for advances in feminism. She doesn't explore for science or greed or even the discovery, but rather to save her sister's life. .

Adèle Blanc-Sec (Louise Bourgoin) is a writer turned adventurer-journalist, and having returned from her latest trip to the Antarctic, her publisher dispatches her to Peru to uncover the secrets of Machu Picchu. Unbeknownst to them, Adèle has instead traveled to Egypt where she is tracking down the personal physician of Ramses II, in mummified form, and bringing him back to France where physicist and Egyptologist, Professor Espérandieu (Jacky Nercessian), intends to bring him back to life to help Adèle's ailing sister.However, while Adèle was away, the Professor decided to test his skills by bringing back a 135 million year old pterodactyl which has proceeded to terrorize Paris and incur the wrath of the President (who thinks it may be an anarchist plot). Dispatched to track the prehistoric bird down are the forever famished policeman Inspector Caponi (Gilles Lellouche) and the over-the-top Great White Hunter Justin de Saint-Hubert (Jean-Paul Rouve), but if they off the pterodactyl then the Professor might die with it. It's up to Adèle to use all her wits, charm, guile, and determination if she is to bring her catatonic sister back to the land of the living.

Luc Besson is a film maker/ writer/ producer behind such films as Leon: The Professional, The Fifth Element, and La Femme Nikita, so there is no doubt he can do drama,lavishly appointed sci-fi comedy, and craft a film with a memorable strong female lead. To do this under the auspices of what (almost) amounts to a family friendly film is quite a feat unto itself. (I say almost because quite unexpectedly the heroine gets nude for a bath scene. While certainly acceptable in France, by puritanical American standards it would get this otherwise PG film a R.) While the film starts off a bit shaky and needs narration to bring the opening moments together, once the characters are all set, the film moves at a breakneck pace, and it keeps the action and comedy coming at a steady pace. However, Besson never lets us forget that Adèle's quest is not one born of greed or academics, but rather a mission of mercy. By the time the cause of Adèle 's sister's mysterious malady is revealed, it packs a punch that is both darkly comic and actually informs everything we know of Ms. Blanc-Sec. Clearly Besson took a slice of inspiration from the Indiana Jones films (including more than a few screen-wipes), but he really stayed true to the tone of the French comics by artist-writer Tardi. I read a number of them after watching the film, and I can only hope that the proposed trilogy of films happens and Besson continues to draw from Tardi's magical, steampunky world.

Louise Bourgoin is the linchpin that pulls all the elements of the film together. Not only does she cut an impressive character as the determined adventuress, she shows a tender side and maintains a restrained sexuality (that, as mentioned above, is briefly unleashed). Bourgoin's performance brings together a different kind of heroine that just isn't seen in films nearly enough. Her supporting cast also delivers. Gilles Lellouche is the highlight of the film's comic moments as the ever suffering Inspector Caponi. While he doesn't go overboard (unlike the much needed zanyness of Jean-Paul Rouve's hunter), his reserved slapstick kept me eagerly awaiting his next scene. Nicolas Giraud, who had a small role in 2008's Taken, is also infectious as Adèle's stalkerish fan, and Les Adventures Extraordinaires should be commended in its ability to bring together the myriad of characters into an intersecting story line without feeling forced. Jacky Nercessian, Serge Bagdassarian, and Jean-Paul Rouve lend interesting textures to the film especially Nercessian's scenes with the pterodactyl. I would say there's no wasted characters, but the villainous Dieuleveult, played by Matthieu Amalric, a scientist clearly molded from Paul Freeman's Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Arc, seems to be there for little reason. I assume his role would be expanded in a sequel, but it felt kind of unnecessary. Once his early scene is over, the character is all but dropped until the film's last moments.

In my wildest dreams, Les Adventures Extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec would inspire Hollywood film makers to take more care with their blockbuster offerings. It would prove that there can be more to a bloated action epic than just explosions, and that they could star a character that was more than a thick necked lug, a box office titan, or a snugly attired young lady. Seeing as Les Adventures Extraordinaires made its way to theater screens all over the world, but not the United States, I assume that this will remain a dream. Besson created a film that is intrinsically French, but it captures the kind of movie magic that delights people everywhere. They don't need to even think about remaking this one for American audiences either. I can't think of a single State-side star who could do justice to the role nearly as well as Bourgoin. Except perhaps Audrey Hepburn in her prime, but one would need a time machine and all manner of planning to make that happen. With shades of Indiana Jones, a splash of Night at the Museum, and a heaping helping of classic French broadness, Les Adventures Extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec doesn't nuke the fridge, it stocks it full of tasty goodness.

Bugg Rating

Graveyard Disturbance (1986): Lamburto Bava Cracks a High Life with the Low Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:11:00 +0000

I was a teenager once. I did lots of stupid things. However, if you base what teens like to do on what their movie counterparts take part in, then its logical to think that there's a point in every one's life where hanging out in a graveyard sounds like an incredible idea. There are so many films that start out with that premise, but I don't think even in an adolescent state any amount of booze, loose women, or desire to prove myself non-chicken would get me to hang out in a cemetery all night. I'm not saying I would expect anything to happen, but there's no reason to tempt fate. Almost as scary as a night in a graveyard is the idea of horror on television. While there have been a number of successes like Masters of Horror and American Horror Story, often horror feels de-fanged on the tube like the series Fear Itself. So when I heard that today's cemetery themed film by Lamburto Bava had been made for an Italian TV series called "Brivido giallo" (literally translated as "Thrilling Yellow"), I wasn't sure what to expect. What I got was a mixture of Bava's Demons, Scooby Doo, and, sadly, much of the reserve you would expect from a television terror.

Are you sure Lonely Planet said this place was great?

Robin (Gregory Lech Thaddeus), Mikki (Beatrice Ring), her brother David (Karl Zinny), brainy Tina (Lea Martino) and driver Johnny (Gianmarco Tognazzi) stage a daring daylight robbery of a store where they steal a few candy bars. Taking off across the city, they run through a police roadblock and disappear into a heavy fog as they escape into the countryside. After getting their van stuck in a river, the kids decide to hike to the nearest town. On their way, they find a rundown church and begin to explore the grounds discovering a tavern built into the side of the ruins (complete with entirely incongruous "Miller High Life" hanging outside). Once inside, the kids are threatened by a glowing eyed bartender (Lino Salemme) with terrifying tales of a cursed crypt under the church. If the gang is brave enough to stay inside for a night, they could win a barrel full of gold and treasures. David takes the barkeep up on the bet, and the others soon join him. Dodging a number of traps, spiders, zombies, vampires, and possibly a werewolf, the gang of petty thieves will even face Death itself before the night is over.

Every so often a car comes along and sets a personal goal
for my life, this is such a car.

Lamburto Bava has never been able to exist outside of the giant shadow of his father Mario. It's nearly impossible to watch a Lamburto film without thinking about what his dear old Dad would have done or not done with the same material. In the case of Graveyard Disturbance (Original title: Una notte al cimitero [Eng.- A Night in the Cemetery]), there's definitely a bit of both happening. Working with cinematographer Gianlorenzo Battaglia, who Lamburto has already collaborated with four times since 1984's Blade in the Dark, Bava created a visual tone that carried the film a long way past the sketchy premise and stabs at humor. With liberal use of fog and colored gels, the the director gives the sets the maze-like quality they need to carry the film's premise. However, he undercut much of what he was doing with stupid jokes (a male zombie waking up a female zombie by grabbing her boob and getting slapped for his trouble) or visual asides that don't get anywhere (a demon family eating dinner including a youngster in a KISS shirt). Bava also riffs on the garbage compactor scene from Star Wars, fills Graveyard Disturbance with wall to wall glowing eyes, and teases a werewolf but sadly never pays it off. I do have to tip my hat to whoever found or painted the kid's van. With images of Madonna, Argento's Inferno, and much more, it's just incredible.

Seriously, no one mention the puffy shirt. I'm sure he's
heard it before.

There's not an incredible lot to say about the acting on display in Graveyard Disturbance. If you ever wonder what the Scooby gang would be like if they were populated by a group of Italian hooligans, then this is your chance. Gregory Lech Thaddeus made his one and only film appearance as the heroic looking (and he'd be the first to tell you) Robin. My favorite moment of his performance, when he does push-ups shirtless in a graveyard then has a hissyfit about a missing statue which the classy fellow had written his name upon. When this is the macho leading man, then you know your group is in trouble. Gianmarco Tognazzi provides some of the films funnier moment, and he is still a working actor today. Karl Zinny, who appeared in Demons as Ken, is the best actor among the cast, and his wild eyed performance kept me in the film when it went off the rails. Beatrice Ring looks awful lovely as Micky, but, as with Lea Marino's Tina, she is saddled with a hilariously bad dubbing job. Ring's Micky sounds more like Minnie Mouse by way of a Valley Girl. Tina's voice is not nearly as bad, but Marino's performance was noticeably broad.

The Champagne of Beers, now available in taverns
located atop deconsecrated burial grounds near you!

Now it's going to get a little spoilery here at the end because otherwise it would be hard to talk about where this film really falters. So, fair warning. Graveyard Disturbance really has some things going for it. Some of the jokes work, and the way it swings between horror and comedy often works jarringly well. The creature makeup is enjoyable to look at, and the film's incongruities, such as the tavern's "High Life" sign, give a particular flavor to the proceedings. However, there's no real danger. None at all. While a couple of people take some nasty falls, no one gets hurt, dies, is dismembered, dissolved, or disemboweled. Once I realized that the film was going to be bloodless, I held out hope for a "we're already dead" switch. Which I got. That is until they stabbed the Grim Reaper, escaped from the catacombs, and were promptly arrested for their candy bar crime spree. The ending of this film would have incurred my wrath for being a terrible lame piece of crap, but I've recently seen The Devil Inside so I'm inclined to let it slide this time. What I can't let go is the lack of danger in Graveyard Disturbance. If a horror film lacks the element of danger, then I'm not sure what you're left with unless you go full on comedy which did not seem to be Bava's intention. So the most disturbing thing about this graveyard might be that no one ever moves in.

Bugg Rating

Ritual (2002): Nobody Voodoos Baby in a Corner

noreply@blogger.com (Zachary Kelley) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:47:00 +0000

Let's take a moment to talk about Jennifer Grey. Alright, who am I kidding? I mostly watched this film to get to talk about Jennifer Grey. Sure there's a Tales from the Crypt connection I could have played up to make myself look cooler, but let's be honest here, Ms. Grey was an extremely important part of my youth. When Dirty Dancing came out, I was eleven years old, and Jennifer's scene in the water with Patrick Swayze practicing lifts, well, it holds a special place in my heart... or my loins. It wasn't my sexual awakening, I can thank Bryan Adams' 'Cuts Like a Knife' video from 1984 for that particular milestone, for Raquel Pena (who also appeared in Micheal Jackson's Billie Jean) and not the Master of the Canadian Power Ballad. Now that we've got the first over-share out of the way, there was something magical about watching Frances 'Baby' Houseman rise from the water in her extremely wet, skimpy, tight, white tank top. Yes, entirely magical... Sorry, got distracted there. Since then, I've been a fan of Ms. Grey's despite the fact that she literally cut her own nose off to spite her face. So when Netflix rolled out Ritual on Instant Watch, the almost final installment of the Tales from the Crypt trilogy, and I noticed that Jennifer carried top billing, I knew I was going to have to check it out. (And folks, the tank-top.... it's back!)

Grey stars as Dr. Alice Dodgson, a physician whose licence has been suspended for dangerous medical practices. Unable to practice in the United States, she takes a job working in Jamaica for Paul Claybourne (Craig Sheffer) who needs a caregiver for his younger brother Wesley (Daniel Lapaine). Wesley has a breathing problem, but that might not the most pressing issue. He also thinks that he's been turned into a zombie by a native priest of Obeah, a kind of Jamaican Voodoo. As people begin to mysteriously die around the Claybourne estate, Alice begins to believe something supernatural might be going on. With the help of a beautiful, mysterious artist named Caro Lamb (Kristen Wilson), Alice begins to unravel the island's secrets which might not be so paranormal after all.It seems Paul is looking for sell the Jamaican estate, and the only ting that stands in his way is his addled brother.

Also Tim Curry appears as a horn-dog veterinarian. I couldn't figure out how to get that into the synopsis, as it is not important to the plot, but it might be important in deciding if you want to watch this film. Sure, Tim was there to pick up a paycheck, but earning it by ogling boobs and fondling derrieres (all the while setting up a pivotal back-end for your character) seems like an honest day's wage. Plus, Tim doesn't hold back, and he's full of all the campy glory that he brought to his roles in Oscar and Clue. The rest of the male ensemble in the cast seemed readily replaceable, and if they did replace one of them mid-film, It's a shame too because I quite liked Craig Shaffer in Nightbreed, but he has so little to do he's almost forgotten until his character takes a turn in the third act. Lapaine has cut a long career appearing in films like Brokedown Palace and Last Chance Harvey along the way. In the role of Dr. Dodgson's tormented patient cum paramour, he actually came across less leading man and more Ted Raimi on a particularly testosterone fueled day.

Luckily, the film is buoyed by the two female leads. Jennifer Grey puts in a solid performance and looks astoundingly lovely while doing so. If anyone else has good memories of tank-tops of yesteryear, Ms. Grey spends a good portion of the film in one, and her sweaty, spirited churchgoing experience is not to be missed. The role is no more than stock, but Grey tries to give the part some degree of soul. I think other mean may have more of a reaction to Kristin Wilson. Not only does she doff her clothes completely at one point in the film, she has an alluring manner that was perfect for the exotic sculptor. Wilson also has the most dynamic part in the film, and she really sells her character's story line. After this film, Wilson landed a role on the short lived series The District and a role in Walking Tall (2004), but her last feature was the SyFy vehicle Mega Python vs. Gatoroid... so, I hope things are going alright for her. She is an actress whose billing ought be going up and not falling far behind former pop princesses.

Director Avi Nesher was not someone I was familiar with at all, and after consulting his IMDB resume, I'm still not familiar with him at all. Nesher helmed a string of B grade thrillers and action films during the early 90s, and was a journeyman director like the men behind the previous two Tales from the Crypt films. However, unlike them, his film didn't get released with all the Tales thunder attached. After Bordello of Blood faltered, Ritual was shelved for five years before being released without fanfare to video. The release was devoid of any Cryptkeeper silliness beyond a picture in the upper corner, and most folks, myself included, didn't even register that a third film in the series had been released. On HBO, Tales from the Crypt was a powerhouse and they struck gold with Ernest Dickenson's Demon Knight, but they needed to bring in some of the high profile talent from behind the camera on the television show to the big screen.

I've saved my biggest qualm about Ritual for the last, and many of you who are ardent horrorphiles might have picked up on it after the synopsis. Ritual is a loose adaptation of the Val Lewton film I Walked with the Zombie. Where the Lewton's classic featured moody lighting and eerie performances, Nesher's film had boobs. There's really no comparing the two flicks without becoming entirely incensed with the sad state of low budget trash so I won't go into it. I think most of you who are six paragraphs into a review of a Jennifer Grey film, you already know how that rant goes. Ritual is not a good-bad film. It's mostly just bad-bad, but there's traces in between where the film tried something. It just didn't really work. However, will I watch Ritual again? Yeah, probably. It's not the time of my life, but it's a few good moments.... and a couple nice tank tops.

Bugg Rating

No trailer was to be found so here's a selection to whet your appetite.