Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Weekly Trailer Round-Up: Destroyer, The Aftermath, Escape Room, Monster Party

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In the upcoming film Destroyer, Nicole Kidman plays a detective who is haunted by her past.  This film, which is getting a lot of Oscar buzz for Kidman’s performance, will be released on December 25th and its trailer kicks off this week’s trailer round-up.

The Aftermath is the latest Keira Knightley historical drama.  This time, she’s the wife of a British colonel in post-war Germany and she is tempted to cheat with a German widower.  The Aftermath will be released on April 26th, 2019.

Escape Room is the upcoming movie based on the game that all the kids are talking about.  Can you find the clues and figure out how to escape from the room before you die?  Escape Room will be released in January, just in time for everyone to compare it to Saw.

Finally, Monster Party invites you to attend the dinner party from hell.  Despite being a horror movie, Monster Party will be released two days after Halloween, on November 2nd.

Dreaming of Linda Blair: Dead Sleep (1992, directed by Alec Mills)

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Maggie Healey (Linda Blair) is an American nurse in Australia.  Freshly separated from her drug addict boyfriend, Maggie gets a job working at a mental hospital.  Dr. Jonathan Heckett (Tony Bonner) is experimenting with “dead sleep therapy,” where the patients are kept drugged at night.  Maggie notices that the patients keep dying and that Dr. Heckett doesn’t care so she teams up with an annoying activist to investigate what dead sleep therapy is actually about.

This was on TCM at 3 a.m. last night, airing right after Dreamscape.  Dead Sleep might be disguised as a horror film but there’s nothing scary about it.  When the patients are in dead sleep, they don’t even have nightmares, which is a huge missed opportunity.  The movie is so sloppily put together that it doesn’t even reveal why Dr. Heckett is putting his patients in dead sleep, other than he’s just evil.  Linda Blair delivers her lines as if she is reading them off a cue card and the entire movie look like it was filmed at a community college.  The only amusing thing about the movie was that all of the male patients got to wear hospital gowns when they went under deep sleep while all the female patients slept topless.  Normally I wouldn’t complain but it was so blatant what the filmmakers were doing that it was hard not to laugh when the movie tried to pivot to being a serious drama.  A film starring Linda Blair has no right to be this boring.

Everyone’s Crazy: Committed (1991, directed by William A. Levey)

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After her lover and employer commits suicide, nurse Susan Manning (Jennifer O’Neill) needs a new job so she applies at an experimental mental hospital that is known as the Institute.  The director of the Institute, Dr. Magnus Quilly (William Windom), explains to her that he cures his patients by allowing them to live out their fantasies in a controlled environment.  He asks Susan is she’s prepared to “commit” herself to being a nurse.  Susan says that she is and signs the papers that Dr. Quilly hands to her.

Too late, Susan discovers that Dr. Quilly didn’t hand her an employment contract.  Instead, Susan has just signed her own commitment papers and is now a patient at the Institute!  Dr. Quilly tells her that, as he does with all of his patients, he will allow her to live out her fantasy of being a nurse.  After discovering than an electrified fence makes it impossible to escape, Susan starts working as a nurse but she soon discovers that she is not the first person to be tricked into working at the Institute and that almost all of her predecessors died under mysterious circumstances.

Committed is one of many films about what happens when the lunatics literally take over the asylum.  (This is a plot that was first used by Edgar Allan Poe in The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether.)  The film is hurt by its low-budget but veteran B-movie director William A. Levey does a good job playing up the claustrophobia of being trapped in one location and Committed features eccentric performances from actors like Robert Forster, Ron Pallilo, and Sidney Lassick.  Committed asks, “Who is actually sane in an insane world?” and answers, “Everyone’s crazy!”

The best thing about Committed is that it stars Jennifer O’Neill, a beautiful model-turned-actress who found brief stardom when she appeared as the war bride in Summer of ’42.  Though O’Neill’s career never lived up to the promise of her first film, she was a better-than-average actress and she’s pretty good in Committed.  Both she and the film keep it deliberately ambiguous about whether or not Susan is really a nurse or if her whole backstory is just something that she’s fantasized.

Committed is a well-made B-movie from the golden age of straight-to-video thrillers and late night HBO premieres.  Despite a low-budget, this movie shows the good work that a cast and a director can do when they’re fully committed.

Cowboys and Zombies: Ghost Town (1988, directed by Richard Governor)

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When an abandoned car is found in the desert, Deputy Langely (Franc Luz) is dispatched to the scene.  While Langely investigates, a man suddenly rides by on horseback and takes a shot at him.  Searching for the man, Langely comes across an old ghost town.  After he passes out in a seemingly abandoned building, he wakes up and discovers that he’s surrounded by old-timey western folks.  There’s a barmaid and a blind gambler and a blacksmith.  They are all spirits who are being held hostage by an undead outlaw, Devlin (Jimmie Skaggs), who long ago made a pact with Satan that gave him control over the souls of all the people in the town.  Now, Devlin has kidnapped Kate (Catherine Hickland), a woman from the modern world, and it’s up to Langely to not only rescue her but also set free the spirits that are trapped in the ghost town.

There’s nothing unexpected about this hororr/western hybrid, which was produced by Charles Band’s Empire Productions.  The combination of two different genres leads to double the clichés but the film itself is still entertaining in its own cheesy way.  The town is atmospheric and spooky, Franc Luz is a passable lawman, Jimmy Skaggs is a devilish villain, and Catherine Hickland shows that she deserved to be known for more than just being David Hasselhoff’s first wife.  Despite a troubled production that went through three different directors, Ghost Town is a decent B-movie that should be enjoyed by anyone who ever played cowboys and zombies.

 

Under the Sea: Goliath Awaits (1981, directed by Kevin Connor)

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1939.  War is breaking out across Europe.  The British luxury liner Goliath is torpedoed by a German U-boat.  Presumed to be lost with the ship are a swashbuckling film star, Ronald Bentley (John Carradine), and U.S. Senator Oliver Barthowlemew (John McIntire), who may have been carrying a forged letter from Hitler to Roosevelt when the boat went down.

1981.  Oceanographer Peter Cabot (Mark Harmon, with a mustache) comes across the sunken wreck of the Goliath.  When he dives to check out his discovery, he is shocked to hear big band music coming from inside the ship.  He also thinks that he can hear someone tapping out an S.O.S. signal.  When he looks into a porthole, he is stunned to discover a beautiful young woman (Emma Samms) staring back at him.

Under the command of Admiral Sloan (Eddie Albert), who wants to retrieve the forged letter before it does any damage to the NATO alliance, Cabot and Command Jeff Selkirk (Robert Forster) are assigned to head an expedition to explore Goliath.  What they discover is that, for 40 years, the passengers and crew have survived within an air bubble.  Under the leadership of Captain John McKenzie (Christopher Lee), they have created a new, apparently perfect society within the sunken ship.  Cabot discovers that the woman that he saw was McKenzie’s daughter, Lea.

McKenzie is friendly to Cabot and his crew, explaining to them the scientific developments that have allowed the passengers and crew to not only survive but thrive underwater.  The only problems are a group of outcasts — the Bow People — who refuse to follow McKenzie’s orders and Palmer’s Disease, an infection that only seems to infect people who are no longer strong enough to perform the daily tasks necessary to keep McKenzie’s utopia functioning.   Even when people on the boat die, they continue to play their part by being cremated in Goliath’s engine room and helping to power the ship.

Everything seems perfect until Cabot announces that he has come to rescue the survivors of the Goliath.  Even though Goliath is starting to decay and will soon no longer be safe, McKenzie is not ready to give up the perfect society that he’s created.  McKenzie sets out to prevent anyone from escaping the Goliath.

Goliath Awaits is a massive, 3-hour production that was made for television and originally aired over two nights.  (The entire 200-minute production has been uploaded to YouTube.  Avoid the heavily edited, 91-minute version that was released on VHS in the 90s.)  It’s surprisingly good for a made-for-TV movie.  Because a large portion of the film was shot on the RMS Queen Mary, a retired cruise ship that was moored in Long Beach, California, Goliath looks luxurious enough that you understand why some of the passengers might want to stay there instead of returning to the surface.  Beyond that, Goliath Awaits takes the time to fully explore the society that McKenzie has created and what it’s like to live on the ship.  McKenzie may not be as benevolent as he first appears to be but neither is he a one-dimensional villain.

Mark Harmon is a dull lead but Robert Forster is just as cool as always and Christopher Lee is perfect for the role of misguided Capt. McKenzie.  The movie is really stolen by Frank Gorshin, who is coldly sinister as Dan Wesker, the Goliath’s head of security.  McKenzie may by Goliath’s leader but Wesker is the one who does the dirty work necessary to keep the society running.

Goliath Awaits also features several character actors in small roles, with John Carradine, Duncan Regehr, Jean Marsh, John McIntire, Jeanette Nolan, Alex Cord, Emma Samms, and John Ratzenberger all getting to make a good impression.  (Ignore, if you can, a very young Kirk Cameron as one of the children born on the Goliath.)

Goliath Awaits is far better than your average made-for-TV movie from the 80s.  With any luck, it will someday get the home video release that it deserves.

 

Dream On: After Midnight (1989, directed by Jim and Ken Wheat)

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Prof. Edward Derek (Ramy Zada) teaches a class called The Psychology Of Fear.  He claims that the things that most scare us are the things that we can believe in.  (To quote the observers from the peanut gallery, “No shit, Sherlock.”)  After Prof. Derek demonstrates fear by pulling out a fake gun and pretending to kill himself, a jock ends up pissing himself and the class is suspended.  Fortunately, Prof. Derek has a backup plan.  He invites his students to his house, where he tells them three horror stories that are all designed to prove that the scariest things are the things that could actually happen in real life.

What does Prof. Derek believe to be scary?

In the first story, it’s scary when your wife decides that the perfect way to throw a surprise party would be to trick you into thinking that you’re trapped in a haunted house and you’re going to die if you don’t start chopping off some heads.

In the second story, it’s scary when a group of girls take a wrong turn, piss off the wrong gas station attendant, and end up getting chased by pack of killer dogs.

In the third story, it’s scary with an answering service operator (played by a pre-CSI Marg Helgenberger) starts getting calls from a psycho.

None of the three stories are really that scary but the first story does have a twist ending that would have made EC Comics proud.  The third story is the best, if just because it focuses on one character and that character is played by Marg Helgenberger.  There’s also the wrap-around story involving the professor and his students.  Just when that story’s getting good, it cops out with an ending that you’ll see coming from a mile away.

With the exception of Marg Helgenberger’s segment, After Midnight is a largely forgettable horror anthology film that will be best appreciated by viewers who are nostalgic for 80s fashion and cheap special effects.

Satan’s Cop: Psycho Cop Returns (1993, directed by Adam Rifkin)

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 Psycho Cop is back!

The Psycho Cop is Officer Joe Vickers (Robert R. Schaffer), who upholds the law with the help of Satan and the occult.  When he overhears two office mates talking about a party that they’re going to be throwing for a friend, Officer Vickers decides to stop by and dispense a little Hellish justice.  After killing the security guard, the Psycho Cop spends the rest of the money stalking white-collar workers and strippers.  He’s an efficient killer with a police-related pun for nearly every occasion but he meets his match when he goes after an accountant.  As much as he tries, Psycho Cop cannot catch the accountant.  He can catch security guards.  He can catch strippers.  He can catch low-level executives.  But an accountant?  That’s just a bridge too far.

Psycho Cop seems like he should be a good horror villain and, for the first half of the movie, he seems like he’s unstoppable.  But then he easily gets outwitted by both the nerdiest of the office workers and an accountant and you end up losing respect for him.  The idea of a demonic policeman will always have possibilities but Psycho Cop Returns never reaches the heights of Maniac Cop or even Kevin Bacon’s crazed sheriff in Cop Car.  For everything that you could do with the character of a policeman who is in league with the devil, Psycho Cop Returns just turns him into a one-liner spouting maniac.  Robert R. Schaffer does okay as the title character and he has the right look to play a psycho cop but he’s still no Robert Z’Dar.

As you can tell from the title, this is a sequel.  I haven’t seen the first Psycho Cop so I don’t know if it does a better job at exploiting the whole killer cop angle.  Psycho Cop Returns has potential and a sense of humor but, ultimately, there’s little to distinguish it from the countless other manic-on-the loose films that went straight to video in the 90s.

Bubba’s Revenge: Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981, directed by Frank De Felitta)

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Dude, this movie.

Charles Durning plays Otis P. Hazelrigg, a postman in a small town who has an unhealthy interest in a ten year-old girl named Marylee (Tanya Crowe).  When Marylee is mauled and nearly killed by a dog, Otis decides that she was attacked by Bubba Ritter (Larry Drake), a mentally challenged man who has the mind of a child.  With Otis and his redneck friends looking to lynch him, Bubba’s mother disguises him as a scarecrow and tells him to stand out in a field and not move.  When Otis and his friends discover Bubba hiding, they all shoot him until he’s dead.  Otis puts a pitchfork in Bubba’s hands and tells the police that Bubba was attacking them and they didn’t have any choice but to shoot him.

Otis thinks that he’s gotten away with murder but he’s wrong.  After Marylee sings a song in the same field where Bubba was killed, Otis’s friends start dying.  One is suffocated in a grain silo.  Another falls into a thresher.  Before each one dies, they report seeing a scarecrow on their property.  Otis thinks that Bubba’s mother is behind the murders but what if Bubba has actually come back to life?

Dark Night of the Scarecrow will mess up your mind, give you bad dreams, and leave you with a lifelong phobia o scarecrows.  It’s that scary.  I remember that they used to frequently show this movie on TV when I was  growing up and even the commercials were scary.  (The part of the movie that always messed with me were the shots of Bubba’s frightened eyes darting around underneath the scarecrow mask.)  Scarecrows are naturally creepy and the movie’s atmosphere is unsettling but the most frightening thing about Dark Night of the Scarecrow is Otis and the redneck lynch mob that he puts together.  Otis is a thoroughly loathsome character and Charles Durning goes all out playing him.  Otis is a civil servant, which gives him some prestige in the town but he uses that prestige to bully Bubba and harass Marylee.  His concern with Marylee especially feels wrong and the movie does not shy away from the subtext of his interest.  The scarecrow might frighten you but you will absolutely loathe Otis and everyone who follows him.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow was made for television but it’s just as good as any theatrical release.   It is also might be the first movie to feature a killer scarecrow.  Several have been made in the years since but Dark Night of the Scarecrow was the first and it’s still the best.

Weekly Trailer Round-Up: Aladdin, Shoplifters, Jonathan, The Best of Enemies

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On May 24th, 2019, Disney will be releasing their live action remake of Aladdin.  Earlier this week, they released this brief but intriguing teaser.  It leads off this week’s trailer round-up.

Shoplifters is Japan’s official submission for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.  The film, about a poverty-stricken family in Japan, won the Palme D’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and will be released into theaters on November 23rd.

Starring Ansel Elgort, Jonathan is a science fiction film about two minds sharing one body.  Jonathan is in control during the day while Jon is in control during the night.  This movie is set to be released on November 16th.

The Best of Enemies tells the true story of the unlikely friendship between civil rights activist Ann Atwater (Taraji P. Henson) and KKK leader, C.P. Ellis (Sam Rockwell).  This film is set to be released on April 5th, 2019.

Other Trailers Released This Week:

 

Bad Medicine: Dr. Giggles (1992, directed by Manny Coto)

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In 1957, the citizens of the town of Moorheigh discovered that their local doctor was doing experiments on his patients, removing their hearts and using them to try to bring his dead wife back to life.  The townspeople responded by executing Dr. Rendell and chanting a poem that goes, “This town has a doctor named Rendell/Stay away from his house because he’s the doctor from Hell.”  They would have killed Dr. Rendell’s son too, except that Evan, Jr. escaped by sewing himself up in his mother’s corpse and then later using a scalpel to cut his way out.

Thirty-five years later, Evan, Jr. (Larry Drake) returns to Moorheigh, looking to get revenge on the town.  Because of his evil laugh, he is now known as Dr. Giggles and he has a medical-related one liner for every occasion.  When Dr. Giggles learns that Jennifer (Holly Marie Combs) needs a heart monitor, Dr. Giggles decides to stalk her while killing all of her interchangeable friends.  Dr. Giggles says that he wants to give her a new heart, preferably one that he’s ripped out of someone else’s body.  Jennifer is not very appreciative.

Dr. Giggles was meant to be a franchise started, in the fashion of the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th films.  It was a franchise that would never be because there wasn’t much that could be done with Dr. Giggles that wasn’t done during the first film.   Larry Drake was a good actor but, other than the scene where he used a scalpel to cut himself out of a dead body, there was nothing about Dr. Giggles that distinguished from all the other horror movie slasher.  He wasn’t a dream weaver like Freddy or indestructible like Jason.  He was just a dude dressed like a doctor who giggled too much.

For a better film featuring Larry Drake as a villain, do yourself a favor and watch Sam Raimi’s Darkman.