Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Kylo, Rey, Leia, and Luke: The Trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi

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“I need someone to show me my place in all this.”

After watching this trailer ten times and seeing everything from Luke’s robot hand to Kylo apparently about to open fire on his mother’s ship to the new pilot of the Millennium Falcon and finally, to Kylo extending his hand to Rey, all I can say is take my money now!

Is Rey a Kenobi?  Supporters of this theory have been pointing out that Rey and Ben Kenobi both have the same fighting stance:

It would make sense.  Star Wars has always been the story of the Skywalkers and a Kenobi.  With Kylo being a Skywalker and a Solo, Ben Kenobi is the only major Star Wars character to not have a descendant involved in the sequels, unless it is Rey.  Just as a Kenobi once taught a Skywalker will a Skywalker now teach a Kenobi?

Will Luke survive The Last Jedi?  Up until two years ago, I would have said there was no way that a Star Wars film would kill off a major character like Luke Skywalker,  Then Han Solo died and the universe no longer made sense.

December 15th can not get here soon enough.

A Movie A Day #274: The Dentist (1996, directed by Brian Yuzna)

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Alan (Corbin Bernsen) may be a wealthy dentist in Malibu but he still has problems.  He has got an IRS agent (Earl Boen) breathing down his neck.  His assistant, Jessica (Molly Hagan), has no respect for him.  His demanding patients don’t take care of their teeth.  His wife (Linda Hoffman) is fucking the pool guy (Michael Stadvec).  When Alan feels up a beauty queen while she’s passed out from the nitrous oxide, her manager (Mark “yes, the Hulk” Ruffalo) punches him and then goes to the police.  Under pressure from all sides, Alan loses his mind and a crazy dentist with a drill means a lot of missing teeth.

“You’re a rabid anti-dentite!” Kramer once yelled at Jerry Seinfeld and even people who were not already uneasy about going to dentist will be after watching Corbin Bernsen stick his drill in Earl Boen’s mouth.  The scene where Alan tells a group of dental students to yank out their patients’ teeth represents everyone’s worst fear of what dentists talk about when there aren’t any innocent bystanders around.  The Dentist may be predictable but Corbin Bernsen gives the performance of his career, playing the nightmare of anyone who has ever had a toothache.

Of course, good health begins with healthy teeth and real-life dentists provide a valuable service.  Take it from Robert Wagner:

A Movie A Day #273: Zombie High (1987, directed by Ron Link)

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Andrea (Virginia Madsen) is a small town teenager who has just received a scholarship to attend the Ettinger Academy, a formelyr all-male boarding school.  Andrea is excited because some of the most powerful and wealthy people in the country have graduated from Ettinger.  Her boyfriend (James Wilder) is less excited because he worries that Ettinger is going to change Andrea.  He might be right because all of the students at Ettinger are emotionless robots who read the Wall Street Journal and listen to classic music.  Even Andrea’s new friends, who all seem normal, soon change into mindless preppies who wear sweaters over their shoulders.

A high school version of The Stepford Wives, Zombie High features no zombies and is more of a comedy than a straight up horror film.  The movie’s original title was the far cooler The School That Ate My Brain.  Zombie High is nothing special but it does feature Sherilyn Fenn in a small role, as one of the students who goes from being vampy to preppy in just one day.  Virginia Madsen and Sherilyn Fenn in the same movie?  What 80s or 90s kid could resist that?  Also, Zombie High wins points by proving that heavy metal music is the key to reversing brainwashing.

Jedadiah Leland’s Horrific Adventures in The Internet Archive #6: The Dark Half (1992, Capstone Software)

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For my latest trip into the most horrific section of the Internet Archive, I played The Dark Half (1992, Capstone Software).

The Dark Half was released as a tie-in with the movie version of Stephen King’s novel of the same name. I have read that some people consider The Dark Half to be one of the worst games of all time.  If I can ever figure out how to get out of the cemetery, I will tell you if they are right.

You play writer Thad Beaumont, who used to write under the pen name of George Stark.  As a publicity stunt, Thad and his wife hold a mock funeral for George Stark in the local cemetery.  When the game starts, Thad has just discovered that someone has dug up George’s grave.

The game uses a standard point-and-click interface, the type that was once very popular but which seems clunky by today’s standards.  By clicking on right side of the screen, you can walk over the groundskeeper and have a conversation with him.

The groundskeeper does not have much to say about “them Yankees” but he will unlock the shed for you.  Going into the shed, you can get tools that I think will help you later in the game.  The problem is that they do not help you get out of the cemetery which is where I’m running into trouble.

As soon as you leave the shed, this happens:

At first, I thought that was George Stark killing Thad but, according to a walk-through that I found, that is actually George killing the reporter who was sent to cover his “burial.”

This scene is followed by this:

That is a blank screen.  Creepy music plays in the background while you get to stare at the blank screen and it just keeps on playing.  I have literally counted the minutes that I have spent staring at the screen and listening to the music before getting annoyed and ending the game.  The longest that I’ve gone is 8 minutes.  There is no text nor pictures, just the most droning and repetitive music imaginable.  Is this a glitch that only effects the Archive version of the game or did The Dark Half really come with an 8 minute-plus musical interlude?  I’m hoping that someone reading this post can tell me.  I would like to play the game but there’s only so much time that I can devote to staring at a blank screen.

A Movie A Day #272: Mirror Mirror (1990, directed by Marina Sargenti)

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Following the death of her husband, Susan Gordon (Karen Black) relocates to Los Angeles with her teenage daughter, Megan (Rainbow Harvest).  An angry goth girl who always wears black and bears a superficial resemblance to Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, Megan struggles to fit in at her new school and quickly attracts the unwanted attention of the school’s main mean girl, Charlene Kane (Charlie Spradling).  Fortunately, Megan has an old and haunted mirror in her room that can not only bring her rotting father back to life but which Megan can also use to kill all of her tormentors.

Of the many rip-offs of Carrie, Mirror Mirror is one of the best and I am surprised that it is not better known.  The plot, with a teenage girl using paranormal powers to get revenge on all of the bullies at her school, may be familiar but Mirror Mirror is better executed than most of the other films of its ilk.  The script is full of snappy dialogue and, despite the low budget, the special effects are effectively grisly.  There’s a scene that does for garbage disposals what Jaws did for the water.  One thing that sets Mirror Mirror apart from similar films is that Megan is sometimes not a very sympathetic character.  Unlike Carrie, who was scared of her powers and only used them once she was pushed over the edge, Megan is initially very enthusiastic about using the mirror to get revenge for every slight, real and perceived.

The cast also does a good job, with Karen Black giving one of her least restrained performances.  Keep an eye out for Yvonne DeCarlo playing a realtor and William Sanderson as Susan’s strange new boyfriend.  The best performance comes from Rainbow Harvest, a talented actress who appeared in a handful of movies in the 80s and 90s and then appears to have vanished from the face of the Earth.  Believe it or not, Rainbow Harvest was her real name.

A Movie A Day #271: Spellbinder (1988, directed by Janet Greek)

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Jeff Mills (Tim Daly) is an attorney who might be unlucky in love but who still owns a copy of every movie that Frank Capra has ever directed. (There is even a scene where two of his friends are seen looking at his movie collection and saying, “He’s got every movie Capra ever made!”)  Miranda (Kelly Preston) is the beautiful and mysterious woman who Jeff saves from an abusive boyfriend.  Within minutes of meeting her, Jeff invites Miranda to say with him in his apartment.  For Jeff, it is love at first sight but his friends (Rick Rossovich and Diana Bellamy) worry that Jeff is getting in over his head with a woman about whom he knows nothing.  Weird things start to happen in Jeff’s apartment and a woman (Audra Lindley) shows up in his office, taunting him about how she dug up his mother’s bones and used them in a black magic ceremony.  Eventually, Miranda confesses that she is on the run from a Satanic coven that was planning on sacrificing her but is she telling the whole truth?

Spellbinder is an enjoyably daft movie, especially if you are a fan of Kelly Preston.  It’s not that the rest of the cast isn’t good but this really is Preston’s show and her mix of All-American beauty and otherworldly sexiness is put to good use as the enigmatic Miranda.  It is easy to believe that Jeff would fall in love with her despite not knowing much about her.  The movie also has a few good scare scenes, like one in which the faces of all the members of the coven suddenly appear crowded around a window, staring in.  A slickly made example of how Hollywood made money off of the Satanic panic of the 1980s, Spellbinder is essentially The Wicker Man set in Los Angeles and is more entertaining than Neil LaBute’s actual remake.  (Even if it doesn’t have any bees.)

Jedadiah Leland’s Horrific Adventures In The Internet Archive #5: Baal (1989, Psygnosis Limited)

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For my next adventure in the horror section of the Internet Archive, I played Baal (1989, Psygnosis Limited).

In Baal, you are a leader of something called The Time Warriors.  A demon named Baal has stolen a super weapon and it is up to you to infiltrate Baal’s underground lair, kill Baal’s warriors, get the weapon, and destroy Baal.  It sounds simple but this game is biased against people like me who aren’t any good at games like this.

The game starts with you materializing in Baal’s lair.  I think the blue contraption is a transporter.

Yes, there are ladders and multiple levels.  The controls are simple.  Use the arrow keys to move.  Press the space bar to fire our weapon.  If you want jump, press the space bar and an arrow key at the same time.

That serpent is one of Baal’s minions.  You can destroy the serpent by shooting it several times but don’t make my mistake and get too close.  Touching the serpent kills you.

After it kills you, the serpent flies away.  That was cool.

After getting killed by the serpent, I was given a second chance.  This time, instead of running forward, I ran up the ladder.  I discovered that, much like the serpents, you do not want to touch that blue force field.  I also discovered what happens when you fall off a level.

Eventually, I figured out how to jump and I also managed to kill the serpent before it killed me.  This is what I discovered at the other end of the cave.

Another force field!  I decided to test my theory that running into the force field would cause me to die.

It did.

That was it for me.  Baal can have the super weapon.  Hopefully, Baal’s next opponent will be better at games like this than I am.

 

A Movie A Day #270: Prison (1987, directed by Renny Harlin)

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In 1964, the state of Wyoming executed Charles Forsythe (Viggo Mortensen) for killing another inmate at Creedmore State Prison.  Forsythe was innocent of the crime but the only other two people who knew, a prisoner named Cresus (Lincoln Kilpatrick) and a guard named Eaton Sharpe (Lane Smith), kept silent.  Twenty-three years later, Cresus is still an inmate and Sharpe has been named the new warden of Creedmore.  When a group of prisoner open up the old execution chamber, Forsythe’s electrified spirit escapes into the prison and starts to kill the prisoners and the guards, one-by-one.  A convict named Burke (also played by Mortensen) understands what is going on but can he get anyone to believe him?

If the idea of an executed murderer turning into an electrified spirit sounds familiar, that’s because the exact same idea was used in Destroyer, The Horror Show, and Wes Craven’s Shocker, all of which went into production and were released at roughly the same time.  Why did the late 80s see so many director making movies about convicts coming back to life after being sent to the electric chair?  We may never know.

Of the four electric ghosts movies, Prison is the best.  Lane Smith is a great villain and Prison makes good use of its claustrophobic setting.  Since Charlie is stalking inmates instead of horny teenagers, there literally is no way for anyone to escape him.  (It never makes sense, though, why Charlie is killing “innocent” prisoners when Sharpe, who hates all of this prisoners, is the one that Charlie is targeting for revenge.)  The best scenes are the ones where the warden desperately tries to force the inmates to confess to the murders so he won’t have to confront the truth about Charlie’s revenge.  Lane Smith, who would later be best known for playing Richard Nixon in The Final Days, acts the hell out of those scenes.

Prison was the first American film to be directed by Finnish director Renny Harlin and it is a hundred times better than many of the overproduced action films that Harlin would later be best known for.  Of course, it’s no Die Hard 2 but I would gladly watch Prison over Cutthroat Island.

A Movie A Day #269: The Horror Show (1989, directed by James Isaac and David Blyth)

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For the crime of having murdered over a 100 people, “Meat Cleaver Max” Jenke (Brion James) is sentenced to death and sent to the electric chair.  Even though everyone thinks that Max was electrocuted, his electricity-fueled spirit is still alive and pissed off.  If this sounds familiar, that is because it is the exact same premise that was used in Destroyer.  The only difference is that Max is not haunting a prison and killing a film crew.  Instead, he is living in a basement and seeking revenge on Lucas McCarthy (Lance Henriksen), the cop who arrested him.

Lucas is already tightly wound.  There is a scene where Lucas is watching as his family laughs uproariously at a late night comic who is telling a not very funny joke about then-Vice President Dan Quayle.  When Lucas thinks that he sees Max on TV, he pulls out his gun and shoots the screen.  His wife, son, and daughter will probably never laugh at another joke about any vice president.  Soon, Lucas is seeing and hearing Max everywhere.  Max says that he is going to tear Lucas’s world apart and he means it.

That The Horror Show is going to be a mess is obvious from the opening credits, where the screenplay is credited to Alan Smithee.  The credited director is visual effects specialist James Isaac but most of the film was reportedly directed by David Blythe.  Isaac stepped in when Blythe was fired by producer Sean S. Cunningham.  Full of false scares and scenes where people go down into the basement for no reason other than to become Max’s latest victim, The Horror Show is usually boring, except for when it is violent, gory, and mean-spirited.  There are moments of strange attempts at humor that do not seem to belong.  In the middle of all the carnage, there is a subplot about McCarthy’s son (Aron Eisenberg) ordering case after case of Nestle Quick.  Did Nestle pay for the product placement?  Were they happy to be associated with a movie where Lance Henriksen has a nightmare that his daughter (played by DeeDee “sister of Michelle” Pfieffer) is pregnant with Max Jenke’s baby?

The Horror Show provided both Lance Henriksen and Brion James with rare starring roles and they did their best what they had to work with.  Also keep an eye out for veteran tough guy Lawrence Tierney as the warden who supervises Max’s execution.

Jedadiah Leland’s Horrific Adventures In The Internet Archive #4: The Horror of Rylvania (1993, Adventions)

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For today’s adventure in the Internet Archive, I played The Horror of Rylvania (1993, Adventions).

The Horror of Rylvania is a text-only adventure.  You and your best friend from college, Carolyn, are backpacking across Europe.  When the two of you cross into the backwards country of Rylvania, you are both attacked by wolves.  Carolyn is gravely injured and you have no choice but to leave her behind and go to a nearby village for help.

The Horror of Rylvania was written by D.A. Leary, who provides concise and vivid descriptions of each location in the game.  Go to the Inn and you can listen to villagers talk about wolves and vampires.  Find the doctor’s office and you can lead him back to Carolyn.  You can even stop and pray, with different results for different locations.

What you cannot do, at least on the Internet Archive, is solve the Horror of Rylvania.  The version on the Internet Archive is just a demo.  Once you have done everything that you can do in the village, there is a cliffhanger and a suggestion that, if you enjoyed the demo, you should send $20.00 to a post office box in Maryland to get the full version.  Since the message was written in 1993, I am going to guess it would not do me any good to mail the money.

If this was 1993, I would gladly send the twenty and I would probably add another ten just to make sure that the game arrived on time.  That is how good the demo was.  Instead, I guess I will just have to make up my own ending to The Horror of Rylvania.