Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Music Video of the Day: Alien Nation by Scorpions (1993, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I know that I surely wasn’t the only one hoping this song and video would be about the movie and the television series about the aliens coming to Earth and becoming a part of the regular population.

Well, it’s not.

Instead, it’s about the reunification of Germany and the struggle of some to adjust to it.  (The name of the song has a double meaning, as it’s about both a new world and human alienation.)  It makes sense since Scorpions is a German band.  This song appeared on their 12th studio album, Face the Heat, and is one of the few directly political songs to be recorded by Scorpions.

Enjoy!

A Shock To The System (1990, directed by Jan Egleson)

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Graham Marshall (Michael Caine) has spent years toiling away as an executive at an advertising firm and being nagged by his wife (Swoosie Kurtz), who claims that Graham doesn’t have enough of a killer instinct to get ahead.  When Graham is passed over for a promotion that he felt was promised to him, Graham starts to reconsider everything that he once believed.  While Graham is waiting for the train to take him home, he is approached by an obnoxious panhandler who always asks him for money.  That night, instead of ignoring the panhandler, Graham shoves him in front of the train.  When no one notices that Graham has murdered the panhandler, Graham decides to get revenge on everyone who he blames for the sorry state of his life.

With each murder, Graham rises higher in the company and he feels better about his life.  But each murder brings to Graham a new set of complications that he has to clean up.  Lt. Laker (Will Patton) thinks that Graham is responsible for all of the deaths that have recently occurred but he doesn’t have the evidence to charge him.  His murder spree brings him a chance of romantic redemption with Stella (Elizabeth McGovern) but soon, even she suspects that Graham might actually be a killer.  Luckily for him, Graham learns that he can get away with his crimes because the system is set up to protect men like him.

A Shock To The System is a pitch-black comedy that benefits from the casting of Michael Caine in the lead role.  Caine is one of the few actors who can make a resentful and bitter sociopath likable and he does that in A Shock To The System.  Graham starts out beaten down by the world and being passed over for younger executives like Bob Benham (Peter Reigert) but, by the end of the film, he’s become as ruthless a killer as Jack Carter.  Just as in Get Carter, A Shock To The System features Michael Caine making evil very compelling.

Music Video of the Day: The Wild Boys by Duran Duran (1984, directed by Russell Mulcahy)

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Directed by Russell Mulcahy, the video for Wild Boys cost over a million pounds, which was considered to be an astronomical sum in 1984.  Both the video and the song is based on the William S. Burroughs novel, The Wild Boys.  Mulcahy had long-wanted to adapt the book into a film and the song was written to serve as a part of the soundtrack of the proposed film.  (The film itself was never made.)

The costumes in the video were left over from The Road Warrior.  The video, featuring all of the members of Duran Duran being tortured in different ways, was controversial but ultimately very popular.

Enjoy!

Billy The Kid Versus Dracula (1966, directed by William Beaudine)

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Dracula comes to the old west!

The count (John Carradine) has been traveling across the frontier, feasting on settlers and stagecoach riders.  When he comes to a town in the middle of nowhere, he poses as the uncle of saloon owner Betty Bentley (Melinda Plowman).  Using the name Mr. Underhill, Dracula hopes to make Betty into his latest bride.  Everything about Mr. Underhill indicates that he is a vampire but Betty refuses to believe it.  Even when she’s told that Mr. Underhill doesn’t cast a reflection, Betty dismisses it as just being “the old vampire test.”  Two German servants recognize her uncle as being a vampire and Betty again refuses to believe them.  Betty’s fiancé, Billy the Kid (Chuck Courtney), realizes that there is something wrong with Mr. Underhill but can he save his future wife?

The idea of vampires in the old west is one that has inspired a surprising number of movies, most of which are considerably better than Billy The Kid Versus Dracula.  In this movie, Chuck Courtney plays one of the old west’s most notorious outlaws but he’s portrayed as being one of the most upstanding members of his community.  John Carradine plays the world’s most notorious vampire but just comes across as being a grouchy old man.  Chuck Courtney is a convincing westerner but not a very interesting actor.  John Carradine sleepwalks through the role and later said Billy The Kid Versus Dracula was the only one of his many films that he actively disliked.  The movie was shot in 8 days and it looks like it.

This was also the final film of director William Beaudine, who had directed his first film 51 years earlier.  The film was released on a double feature with Beaudine’s Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.  Everyone ended up in the old west eventually.

Music Video Of The Day: Women by Def Leppard (1987, directed by Doug Freel and Jean Pellerin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This music video represents the fantasy of almost every 80s kid, skateboard wherever you want, read a comic book about your favorite hero having an amazing adventure, and doing it all while your favorite band performs behind you.

Depending on what part of the world you were living in, Women was either the first or the second single to be released off of Dep Leppard’s best-selling album, Hysteria.  Hysteria was a great album that was helped immeasurably by MTV.  Fans of the band already knew that Def Leppard rocked but MTV gave everyone the chance to watch them as they did so.

This was the first Dep Leppard video to be filmed after Rick Allen lost his left arm.  A good deal of the video’s popularity comes from Rick showing that he was still one of the best drummers in the business.

Enjoy!

Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence (1992, directed by William Lustig)

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Despite finally getting his burial with honors at the end of Maniac Cop 2, Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar) returns for one last outing.  Raised from the dead by a voodoo houngan (Julius Harris), Cordell invades a hospital to seek vengeance for a comatose policewoman named Katie Sullivan (Gretchen Baker).  In a coma due to the wounds she received while thwarting a convenience store robbery, Katie is being framed by unscrupulous reporters and attorneys who claim that Katie was a bad cop who killed a clerk in cold blood.  Cordell sees Katie as being a fellow victim of anti-cop bias and he is not going to let anyone treat her with disrespect, which is something that two doctors (Robert Forster and Doug Savant) are unfortunate enough to discover.  Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) and Dr. Susan Lowery (Caitlin Dulany) try to figure out how to bring peace to the souls of both Cordell and Katie.

As opposed to the first two films, Maniac Cop III had a troubled production.  Lustig and screenwriter Larry Cohen wanted to set the film in a Harlem hospital and bring in an African-American detective to investigate Cordell’s activities.  The film’s Japanese producers insisted that Robert Davi return as the lead, even though the script’s lead character had little in common with the way Sean McKinney was portrayed in Maniac Cop 2.  Larry Cohen then refused to do any rewrites on the script unless he was paid more.  William Lustig filmed what he could and ended up with a 51-minute movie.  Extra scenes were directed by one of the film’s producers and the film was also padded out with outtakes from Maniac Cop 2.

The film is disjointed and there’s too much time devoted to Jackie Earle Haley playing a character who has much in common Leo Rossi’s serial killer from the second film.  (Haley’s performance is fine but the character feels superfluous).  But the movie’s hospital setting leads to some interesting kill scenes and Z’Dar and Davi both give good performances as two different types of maniac cops.  The supporting cast is full of good character actors like Haley, Forster, Savant, Julius Harris, Bobby Di Cicco, and Paul Gleason.  Despite the film’s flaws, Maniac Cop III is a solid ending for the trilogy.

Music Video of the Day: Are You Ready For Freddy? by the Fat Boys (1988, directed by Harvey Keith)

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I always assumed that this song was specifically written for one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies but actually, the Fat Boys were just fans of the movies and they decided to put a song about them on one of their albums.  The song was included in The Freddy Krueger Special, which aired on CBS in 1988.  That’s amazing to think that Freddy got his own primetime special.

This video, which features several of Freddy’s victims and Robert Englund himself, was written by Wes Craven and directed by Harvey Keith.  Keith directed a few films, including 1988’s Mondo New York and 1990’s Jezebel’s Kiss.

Enjoy!

Maniac Cop 2 (1990, directed by William Lustig)

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Maniac Cop 2 picks up where the first Maniac Cop ended.

The NYPD thinks that the undead maniac cop Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar) has been destroyed but he is actually still alive and killing civilians and cops in New York.  He has even teamed up with a serial killer named Steven Turkell (Leo Rossi, ranting and raving like a pro).  Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell) and Theresa Malloy (Laurene Landon) both return from the first film but both of them are killed by Cordell before the movie is even halfway over.  Maniac Cop 2 is not playing around.

With Jack and Theresa gone, it falls to Detective Sean McKinney (Robert  Davi) and Officer Susan Riley (Claudia Christian) to discover what the rest of the audience already knows, that Cordell is seeking revenge against the system that abandoned him in prison.  The new police commissioner, Ed Doyle (Michael Lerner), is determined to cover up what happened but Cordell is even more determined to have his vengeance.  Working with Turkell, Cordell heads to the prison where he was unjustly incarcerated and murdered.

Maniac Cop 2 is a marked improvement on the first film.  Cordell is no longer a lumbering and slow monster.  He is now a ruthless, Terminator-style executioner who, in the film’s best-known scene, wipes out an entire police precinct in a matter of minutes.  Cordell is so ruthless that he won’t even stop when he’s on fire.  His partnership with Turkell adds a new twist to the Maniac Cop saga.  Turkell views Cordell as his partner-in-crime but Cordell is only interested in getting his revenge.  (Turkell was originally meant to be Frank Zito, the main character from Lustig’s Maniac.  When Maniac star Joe Spinell died before shooting began, the role was changed to Leo Rossi’s Steven Turkell.)

Stepping into the shoes of the main investigation, Robert Davi gives one of his best performances.  As opposed to the boring heroes of the first film (sorry, Bruce!), Davi’s Sean McKinney is just as obsessive and ruthless as Cordell.  Cordell sets fire and McKinney uses those fires to light his cigarettes.

William Lustig has described Maniac Cop 2 as being his best film and he’s probably right.  It is definitely the best of the Maniac Cop films and the only one to fully take advantage of its premise.

Music Video of the Day: Can I Play with Madness by Iron Maiden (1988, directed by Julian Doyle)

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Director Julian Doyle also directed videos for Kate Bush but he may be best known for working as an editor on several Monty Python and Terry Gilliam films, including Life of Brian, Time Bandits, The Meaning of Life, Brazil, and Terry Jones’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

Enjoy!

Maniac Cop (1988, directed by William Lustig)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In New York City, murders are being committed by a hulking man dressed in a policeman’s uniform.  The NYPD brass (led by William Smith and Richard Roundtree) want to cover up the fact that the murders are being committed by an apparent maniac cop but Lt. Frank McRae (Tom Atkins) leaks the news to the press.  With the citizens taking up arms against cops, the brass is eager to frame adulterous cop Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell) for not only murdering his wife but also committing all of the murders.  Lt. McRae believes that Jack is innocent.

Why is the brass so eager to frame Jack?  Maybe it’s because they know that the Maniac Cop is actually Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar), a formerly good cop who was sent to Sing Sing on  trumped up brutality charges.  Cordell was killed in prison but he has now come back to life and is seeking revenge on the police force that he feels betrayed him.

Written by Larry Cohen and directed by William Lustig, Maniac Cop is the first of three Maniac Cop films.  While the other two Maniac Cop movies largely work and hold up well, the first Maniac Cop is undoubtedly the worst of the trilogy, with most of the kills occurring offscreen and the action moving very slowly.  The film is full of genre vets and Tom Atkins gives another one of this good tough guy performances.  Bruce Campbell disappointingly plays his role straight and Robert Z’Dar, as intimidating as he is, is actually underused in this film.

As with most films written by Cohen, Maniac Cop has an interesting political subtext.  It focuses on cop brutality and corruption with Cordell becoming a symbol of most people’s mixed feelings about the police.  But the Maniac Cop trilogy wouldn’t really come to life until the second film.  The first spends a lot of time setting Cordell up as a relentless avenger but there’s not much of pay-off.