Hello Horrorthon readers! Here is another short film review because this is midterms season and I pressed for time, BUT I want to do right by my Glorious Leader – Lisa! I can’t write that I hated this. I must be getting soft. It’s really difficult to understand this particular short, but it began and ended.
A boy scout is selling Boy Scout cookies and a very aggressive woman wants to buy his cookies- if he comes inside her home. The boy runs away. It is a story. It turns out that she’s got man held captive and we don’t know why or care, but the story began, ended, and I laughed once. Considering how bad some shorts are- yes, I’m looking at you Alex – defiler of all physical laws – Magana, which I prove here:
Maybe this is all that I need or deserve? Maybe my life should be more simple? My life is subtracting now and I would give anything for addition, but I would need an interested lady for that and that’s hard to come by right now; so, I’m left with subtraction and this okay short……
Released this year, Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door tells the story of two neighbors in the 70s.
Bobby (Mason McNulty) is a typical 7os teenager, with long hair and a laid back attitude. He’s what my grandparents used to call a “good kid.” He helps out his neighbors and he only charges 50 cents an hour. When he sees someone new moving in, he immediately offers to help the man unload all of his furniture. He gets along with his parents. He’s popular with his friends. Bobby seems destined to grow up to become the type of guy who you would want living next door to you.
His new neighbor is named John (Mike Korich). John is a small businessman with local political ambitions. He entertains at parties under the name Pogo the Clown. He has a loud and, if we’re going to be honest, somewhat grating laugh. He’s a dorky guy but he seems to be super-friendly. In fact, he’s a bit too friendly. He’s very quick to invite young men like Bobby to come home with him. Bobby can’t help but notice that John’s new friends enter the house but they don’t ever seem to leave.
“I’ve never met anyone named John Wayne before,” Bobby says, when he first meets John.
“My mother named me after a cowboy,” John Wayne Gacy replies.
Soon, Bobby’s curiosity gets the better of him and he starts investigating Gacy on his own. He comes to believe that Gacy is murdering the men that he brings home and then keeping their bodies in the house. Unfortunately, no one wants to believe Bobby. John, a murderer? Friendly, clownish, buffoonish John? “He works for the Democrats!” Bobby’s mother says at one point, a line that genuinely made me laugh.
There’s a lot of laughter to be found in Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door. John Wayne Gacy loves to put on his clown makeup, kill people, and laugh. The laughing gets old pretty quickly, to be honest. The real-life John Wayne Gacy was executed after less than 20 years on Death Row. If his real-life laugh was anything like his laugh in the movie, I’m surprised that they weren’t any quicker about doing away with him.
The real-life John Wayne Gacy was one of the worst serial killers in American history. He killed dozens, so much so that he’s still considered to be a suspect in several unsolved murders. He tortured his victims in the worst ways imaginable. And he never even bothered to fake any sort of remorse for his crimes. Instead, after he was jailed, he sold Gacy merchandise to morbid collectors. His last words, before being put to death, were reportedly, “Kiss my ass.” John Wayne Gacy is the type of murderer who makes people like me, who are against the death penalty in general, seriously reconsider their feelings.
Considering how terrible Gacy and his crimes were, it’s a bit odd that Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door almost plays out like a comedy at time. The film portrays Gacy as being so openly evil that it’s hard not to smile whenever an adult refuses to believe Bobby’s claim that there might be something wrong with the man who enjoys wearing clown makeup and carrying around a set of handcuffs. A scene where Gacy comes over to Bobby’s house and asks if he can use the phone is pure cringe comedy. The problem is that I don’t think that the scene was meant to be comedic.
Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door is a bit of a misfire as a true crime film, as it gets the majority of the facts wrong. (That said, it was correct about John Wayne Gacy being a Democrat.) It works as a comedy but one could argue that a film about John Wayne Gacy should not be a comedy, even if it is largely unintentional on the part of the filmmakers. Mason McNulty gave a good and sympathetic performance as Bobby and Mike Korich was properly creepy as Gacy.
In the end, we should probably just be happy that John Wayne Gacy is dead.
Nine years after The Terror of Mechagodzilla, Godzilla finally returned to Japanese movie screens in The Return of Godzilla!
One year later, Raymond Burr joined him when The Return of Godzilla was released in the United States as Godzilla 1985.
The film’s plot is a simple one, though it does have an interesting subtext. Godzilla is once again roaming the planet and, after spending the last few years as humanity’s champion, he is once again destroying everything in his path. (This is a rare later Godzilla film that features only Godzilla. Mothra, Rodan, Ghidorah, and that weird armadillo that always used to follow Godzilla around, none of them are present. The son of Godzilla is not mentioned, to the regret of no one.) Looking to prevent a mass panic, the Prime Minister of Japan tries to cover up the news of Godzilla’s return. But when a Russian submarine is destroyed by Godzilla and the Russians blame the Americans and bring the world to the verge of atomic war, the Prime Minister is forced to reveal the truth. The Super X, an experimental new airplane, is deployed to take Godzilla out but it turns out that Godzilla is not that easy to get rid of.
Now, as I said, there is an interesting subtext here. If the first Godzilla films were all about the trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this version of Godzilla is all about being trapped between the whims of two super powers. For the most part, Godzilla only attacks Japan. At the time this movie came out, he had been attacking Japan for nearly 30 years and the rest of the world was content to allow Japan to deal with the consequences alone. However, when Godzilla sinks that Russian sub, both the Russians and the Americans blame each other and bring the world to the brink of annihilation. Japan, like the rest of the world, finds itself caught in the middle. In the end, it’s up to Japan to not only defeat Godzilla but to keep the Americans and Russians from blowing up the rest of the world. Godzilla may be bad, this movie tells us, but he’s nowhere near as bad as the idiots with all of the atomic missiles.
Of course, when The Return of Godzilla came to America, extra scenes were shot to make it clear that America had Japan’s back. For that reason, Raymond Burr returns as journalist Steve Martin. Martin is called in to share his first-hand knowledge of what Godzilla is capable of. One has to wonder who thought that was a good idea as Martin basically comes across as being a grouchy crank who just wants to tell everyone to get off his lawn. As opposed to the first Americanized Godzilla film, which was edited to make it appear as if Burr was actually talking to characters from Gojira, Godzilla 1985 just features a lot of scenes of Burr staring at a screen in the Pentagon and making ominous comments about what Godzilla is capable of doing. It’s a wasted cameo but I guess the film’s American distributors didn’t have faith that Godzilla could pull in the audiences on his own.
Fortunately, Raymond Burr’s time-consuming cameo can’t keep this film from being a lot of fun. It’s a Godzilla film, after all. Godzilla stomps on a lot of buildings and breathes a lot of fire and wisely, the film doesn’t wait too long before allowing him to go on his rampage. After spending several films as an almost comic character, this film reminds audiences that Godzilla was always meant to be frightening. Of course, lest anyone take this film too seriously, the size of the Super X changes from scene to scene, depending on which miniature was being used. Godzilla loses his temper and falls into a volcano but there’s never any doubt that he’ll be back. You can’t stop Godzilla!
The 1984 film, Crimes of Passion, tells the story of three people and their adventures on the fringes of society. One is just visiting the fringes. One chooses to work there while living elsewhere. And the other is a viscous demon of repressed sexuality.
Bobby Grady (John Laughlin) has what would appear to be an ideal life. He has a nice house in the suburbs. He appears to have a good job. He has a lovely wife (Annie Potts) and he has friends who all remember what a wild guy Bobby used to be when he was younger. Bobby’s grown up and it appears that he’s matured into a life of comfort. In reality, though, Bobby is frustrated. He worries that he’s become a boring old suburbanite. He and his wife rarely have sex. The commercials on television, all inviting him to dive into the life of middle class ennui, seem to taunt him. In order to help pay the bills, he has a second job as a surveillance expert.
He’s hired to follow Joanna Crane (Kathleen Turner), an employee at a fashion house who is suspected of stealing her employer’s designs and selling them. Joanna is describe to Bobby as being cool, ambitious, and always professional. At work, she always keep her emotions to herself and no one seems to know anything about what she does outside of the office. There’s no real evidence that Joanna is stealing designs. Her employer just suspects her because Joanna always seem to be keeping a secret.
Bobby follows Joanna and he discovers that she’s not stealing designs. Instead, she’s leading a secret life as Chyna Blue, a high-priced prostitute who wears a platinum wig and who tends to talk to like a cynical femme fatale in a film noir. Bobby becomes obsessed with Chyna, following her as she deals with different johns, the majority of whom are middle class and respected members of society. Chyna has the ability to know exactly what the men who come to her are secretly looking for. A cop wants to be humiliated. A dying man needs someone to care about him. And one persistent and sweaty customer is obsessed with saving her.
The Reverend Peter Shayne (Anthony Perkins, in twitchy Psycho mode) hangs out on Sunset Strip and tries to save souls. Those who he can’t save, he kills. He carries the tools of his trade with him, a bible, a sex doll, and a sharpened dildo. After Chyna tells him that she doesn’t want anything to do with him or his money or his religion, Shayne grows increasingly more and more obsessed and unbalanced.
The plot is actually pretty simple and not that much different from what one might find in a straight-to-video neo-noir. What sets Crimes of Passion apart from other films of the genre is the fearless performance of Kathleen Turner and the over-the-top direction of Ken Russell. Never one to shy away from confusing and potentially offending his audience, Russell fills the film with shocking and frequently surreal imagery. Grady’s wife would rather watch insanely crass commercials than have sex with him. (“We just got the cable,” she explains.) When Shayne first approaches Chyna, the scene plays out in black-and-white and at a pace that would seem more appropriate for a screwball comedy than a graphic horror film. When Shayne commits one of his first murders, his victim is temporarily transformed into a blow-up doll. The sex-obsessed dialogue alternates between lines of surprising honesty and moments that are so crudely explicit that it’s clear they were meant to parody what Russell viewed as being America’s puritanical culture.
It’s not a film for everyone, which won’t shock anyone who has ever seen a Ken Russell film. The film works best when it focuses of Kathleen Turner and her performances as Chyna and Joanna. John Laughlin is a bit bland as the film’s male lead but that blandness actually provides some grounding for Russell’s more over-the-top impulses. As for Anthony Perkins, he was reportedly struggling with his own addictions when he appeared in this film and he plays Peter Shayne as being a junkie looking for his next fix. There’s nothing subtle about Perkins’s performance but then again, there’s nothing subtle about Ken Russell’s vision.
Crimes of Passion has some major pacing issues and, for all of Russell’s flamboyance, his visuals here are not as consistently interesting as they were in films like Altered Statesand The Devils. Still, Crimes of Passion is worth seeing for Kathleen Turner’s performance and as a portrait of life on the fringes. Even a minor Ken Russell film is worth watching at least once.
The second of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, 1961’s The Pit and The Pendulum opens in much the same way as The Fall of the House of Usher. A young Englishman (played by John Kerr) rides a horse across a colorful but desolate landscape. A castle sits in the distance.
Of course, as opposed to the 19th Century British setting of The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum takes place in 16th Century Spain, at a time when the country was still scarred by the horrors of the Inquisition. And Francis Barnard is not traveling to the castle to see his fiancée but instead, he’s searching for information about the disappearance of his sister, Elizabeth (played by the one and only, Barbara Steele). At the castle, Francis meets Elizabeth’s husband, Nicholas (Vincent Price) and Nicholas’s sister, Catherine (Luana Anders). Nicholas explains that Elizabeth died under mysterious circumstances, while suffering from a rare blood disorder that seemed to quickly sap away her will to live. Nicholas’s best friend, Dr. Leon (Anthony Carbone), explains that Elizabeth died of fright after she locked herself in one of the iron maidens in the castle’s torture chamber….
Oh yes, the castle has a torture chamber. Nicholas’s father was a leader of the Inquisition and he used the castle as a place to conduct his business. Nicholas’s father was a madman who suspected that his wife was cheating on him. One day, while young Nicholas was exploring the torture chamber, he witnessed his father murder both his wife and his brother. Nicholas watched as his mother was entombed alive and ever since, he’s been terrified of the idea of premature burial. In fact, his fear that he may have buried alive Elizabeth while she was still alive is driving him mad. The sudden arrival of the suspicious Francis doesn’t help matters….
The Pit and the Pendulum opens with splashes of color spreading across the screen, a sign that Corman was once again in a pop art state of mind when he directed this film. The Pit and The Pendulum takes everything that worked (and didn’t work) about The Fall of the House of Usher and it turns it all up by a notch or two. The castle is even more gothic. Vincent Price’s Nicholas is even more mentally fragile than his Roderick Usher, though Nicholas is also a quite a bit more sympathetic. If Roderick was a control freak who used his family’s curse as an excuse to embrace his own authoritarian tendencies, Nicholas is just a frail man suffering from PTSD. He’s definitely more of a victim than a victimizer … or, at least, he is at first. Much like Mark Damon is The Fall of the House of the Usher, John Kerr is a bit of a stiff in the role of Francis but it doesn’t matter. Vincent Price is the main attraction here and Corman’s direction shows that he understood that.
And then there’s the Pendulum. It takes a while for the Pendulum and its swinging blade to make an appearance but when it does, it lives up to the hype. The Pendulum swings and Corman goes all out, zooming into Price’s crazed eyes while the Pendulum comes closer and closer to its latest victim. The images are tinted red and green and the Pendulum itself seems to swing in a slow motion, the cinematic equivalent of a nightmare come to life.
The Pit and the Pendulum is a wonderful work of gothic pop art. Featuring Vincent Price at his most wonderfully unhinged, this is a film we should all watch this Halloween.
Pit and the Pendulum (1961, dir by Roger Corman, DP: Floyd Crosby)
The Creation of the Humanoids (1962, dir by Wesley Barry)
What makes us human? What does it mean to have free will? What is love? What is freedom? The questions and more are asked in the low-budget (and rather odd) science fiction epic The Creation of the Humanoids, which you can view below!
Now, I should warn that Creation of the Humanoids is an extremely talky film. And the plot is occasionally difficult to follow. There’s a lot of ennui to be found in this particular film, both from the humans and those who have been built to serve them However, I find it impossible not to love this one because it’s just such a strange movie. I love it for the colorful set design, the contrast between the resentful robots and the paranoid humans, and the fact that the film — despite being made for next to nothing — actually has more ambition than anything ever made by several of the more successful directors working today. And, while it may not really be a horror film in the way that some of our other October films are, it still feels appropriate for the Halloween season. It just has the perfect holiday atmosphere.
First released in 1962, Creation of the Humanoids was reportedly one of Andy Warhol’s favorite films. Keep an eye out for Plan 9 From Outer Space‘s Dudley Manlove.
First released in 2007 and produced by The Asylum, The Apocalypse opens in much the same way as many Asylum films. An asteroid is hurtling towards the Earth. It crashes into our planet without warning, destroying the town of Monterey. (“And nothing of value was lost!” says the old timey Borscht Belt comedian.) Then more asteroids strike the planet, causing mass panic. The power goes out. People desperately try to reach their loved ones.
And then a tornado hits out of nowhere.
And then the state of California is suddenly hit by torrential rainfall.
And then….
Well, you get it. Things are not going well in California or in the rest of the world. As I said at the start of this review, the Earth being bombarded with asteroids is a pretty common theme when it comes to the Asylum. Indeed, anyone who has watched more than a handful of Asylum films is probably already picturing the stock footage of the asteroid hurtling through space with Earth in the distance. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen that rock start to burst into flames as it enters the atmosphere.
What sets The Apocalypse apart from other Asylum asteroid films is that, after the first asteroid hits, people start to vanish. They’re not crushed underneath an asteroid, or at least they aren’t as far as we can tell. Instead, they just seem to vanish into thin air, as if they’ve been taken to another place. Those who do not vanish can only stand around and wonder why they didn’t go to church more often….
“I’ve been left behind,” one character says and yes, this is indeed a mockbuster version of the Left Behind films. I guess it makes sense. The Asylum has produced mockbuster versions of every other genre out there. Why shouldn’t they also try to cash in on the end times. Really, one has to respect the fact that the Asylum managed to make its own Left Behind film without abandoning the idea of the world being bombarded by asteroids.
(And, if we’re going to be honest, the idea of God using asteroids to destroy humanity actually makes a lot more sense than the usual story that these films tend to tell. I mean, asteroids have to be good for something, right?)
The Apocalypse follows Jason (Rhett Giles) and Ashley (Jill Stapley), a divorced couple who are trying to make their way through the state of California so that they can see their daughter Lindsay (Kristen Quintrall) before the world ends. Along the way, Jason and Ashley discuss their own failed marriage and their guilt over the death of their son. Though Jason and Ashley do have to deal with some unexpected weather and asteroid events, the film itself is surprisingly somber for an Asylum film. There’s far less self-referential humor than in the usual Asylum film. The pace is deliberate, thoughtful, and, to be honest, a bit too reverential for its own good. The world ends but it ends very slowly. This is probably the talkiest film that the Asylum has ever produced.
That said, the film does create a believable portrait of the type of desperation that would accompany the end of the world, with the various characters all attempting to find some sort of peace before everything ends. The special effects may be a bit cheap but the images of deserted streets and desolate countryside are far more effective than what one might expect from an Asylum film. This is a case where the mockbuster, flaws and all, is still superior to the original.
A young woman has been murdered and her friends, who are all kind of in mourning but not really, have retreated to a villa near London. The villa is owned by one of their mothers, who is very Italian. She is also very protective of her son and hopeful that she can teach him and his friend some proper etiquette lessons. To accomplish this, she has invited a TikTok etiquette expert to come lecture the group. (The expert turns out to be an alcoholic.)
Needless to say, the majority of the group is not interested in learning about etiquette. They want to drink. They want to party. Some of them want to have sex. Lily (Eleanora Bindi) is interested in the villa’s reputation for being haunted and she especially has an eye for Charles (Christian Vit), the enigmatic and taciturn groundskeeper. Mostly, everyone just wants to have a wild weekend …. including the stranger in the mask who not only killed their friend but who has apparently followed them to the villa!
Released this year, Behave is one of the most mind-numbingly boring films that I’ve ever seen. For a slasher film that doesn’t even run for longer than 80 minute, it’s an amazingly talky film. Being talky is not necessarily a bad thing for a horror film, as long as the characters are interesting and the dialogue is witty. It also helps if the cast is talented enough to hold your interest even when they’re just sitting around and shooting the breeze. Unfortunately, Behave doesn’t have any of that. The characters are all so thinly drawn and their conversations are so entirely devoid of wit that listening to them try to communicate is the equivalent of torture. One gets the feeling that this movie could be used to force people to confess to committing crimes that they didn’t actually commit because it would be preferable to go to prison than to listen to another line of the film’s dialogue.
What’s behind the talkiness that seems to have infected so many recent low-budget horror films? Personally, I blame the drawn-out television shows and miniseries that dominate the streaming era. People have become so used to shows that are full of filler and which take forever to actually go anywhere that the pleasure of a well-paced story is in danger of becoming a distant memory. When even a 79-minute film like this one features scenes of people talking about things that have nothing to do with the overall plot, it’s obvious that there’s a problem.
The killer shows up throughout the film, though mostly mostly just so it can stand outside of a window and look …. well, not really menacing. We don’t actually see the killer in action until about 65 minutes into the film. For a slasher film, that’s way too long to wait. If the filmmakers wanted to make an indie comedy-drama about a bunch of friends spending the weekend at a villa, that’s what they should have done. If you’re going to make a horror movie, you have an obligation to work in some scares before your movie is nearly over.
Filmed in 1982 but not released until 1984, Boogeyman II is — as the name implies — the sequel to 1980’s The Boogeyman.
What’s that, you say? You don’t remember anything about The Boogeyman and you don’t want to take the time to read my review of it? Well, don’t worry. It’s not necessary to have seen the original Boogeyman to follow the sequel, largely because the sequel is full of flashbacks to the first film. Boogeyman II is only 79 minutes long and 30 minutes of that running time is taken up with footage from the first Boogeyman. Indeed, if you want to see the good parts of Boogeyman without having to deal with any of the filler, I would recommend just watching the first 30 minutes of Boogeyman II.
There is a plot to Boogeyman II, kind of. Having survived the massacre of her family at the farm, the now-divorced Lacey (played by Suzanna Love, the then-wife of director Ulli Lommel) goes out to California to visit her friends, actress Bonnie (Shannah Hall) and her husband, director Mickey (Lommel). How is it that Lacey, who was portrayed as being a simple and not particularly worldly farm wife in the first film, happens to be friends with a wealthy actress and director? It’s never really explained.
Bonnie and Mickey ask Lacey whether or not the people who killed her family were ever caught. Lacey replies that they can’t be caught because they’re spirits. Over dinner, Lacey tells Bonnie and Mickey the story of the shattered mirror and the killer whose spirit was trapped in the broken glass. Bonnie and Mickey listen sympathetically, though they both think that Lacey’s crazy. (Perhaps they noticed that Lacey’s flashbacks include scenes in which she wasn’t even present. Or maybe they’re wondering why Lacey would take the time to apparently describe a lengthy, bondage-themed nightmare that she had during the first film. Or maybe they’re just amazed by the presence of John Carradine in the flashbacks.) Bonnie and Mickey also think that Lacey’s story would make a great movie!
For some reason, Lacey is still carrying around a piece of the haunted mirror. This is the mirror that contains the spirit that possessed her during the first film and which killed the majority of her family. I would throw that piece of the mirror away but I guess Lacey’s more sentimental than I am. A creepy butler named Joseph (Sholto von Douglas, a rather stiff actor who still had a fascinatingly menacing screen presence) steals the piece of the mirror and soon, Hollywood phonies are dying.
Boogeyman II was directed by the late Ulli Lommel, a German director who got his start as an associate of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s and who eventually came to America, where he hung out with Andy Warhol, directed some documentaries about the American punk scene, and married heiress Suzanna Love. Love bankrolled Lommel’s early films, including The Boogeyman. With Lommel, it was always a challenge to figure out how seriously he took any of his films. In interviews, he would joke about being an exploitation filmmaker while, at the same time, claiming that his films were designed to expose the hypocrisy of American society. Boogeyman II is full of phony Hollywood types and there’s a scene where Mickey comments that, in America, “exploitation is a genre.” It’s probably not a coincidence that it’s the servant, Joseph, who uses the mirror to take out the film’s wealthy victims. The opening credits of Boogeyman II appear to literally be written in magic marker. Is Lommel mocking expensive Hollywood productions or could Lommel only afford a box of magic markers? I suppose both could be true.
The best parts of Boogeyman II are the flashback to the first film, which was a genuinely atmospheric horror film with some serious pacing issues. The rest of Boogeyman II is dull, though you do have to appreciate the sense of ennui that Lommel brings to the proceedings. Was the ennui intentional? That’s the mystery of Ulli Lommel.
As for Lommel, he and Love eventually divorced and Lommel ended his career making trashy true crime films that went direct-to-video. As usual, Lommel claimed that his crime films were meant to be a serious critique of everything that was wrong with America. Lommel’s true crime films have none of the atmosphere or occasional flashes of wit that distinguished Lommel’s earlier films. Was Lommel an incompetent director or was he a subversive artist? Again, both could be true. Lommel died in 2017, bringing to close an enigmatic career.
After someone is obviously meant to be Henry Kissinger (played by Ron Moody) is assassinated when he loses his diary and extends the wrong greeting to a welcoming party in the Middle East, someone claiming to be a direct descendant of the infamous Prof. Moriarty sends a letter to the U.S. President (Joss Ackland) taking responsibility and claiming that it’s the first step in a plan to control the world.
Who better to stop the descendant of Moriarty than the descendant of Moriarty’s greatest enemy? Arthur Sherlock Holmes (John Cleese) operates out of Baker Street with Dr. Watson (Arthur Lowe), who is bionic, and their housekeeper, Miss Hudson (Connie Booth). Holmes solution to bringing out Moriarty is to host a gathering of the world’s greatest detectives and to dare Moriarty to try to take them out with one fell swoop. Soon, everyone from Sam Spade to Columbo to McCloud is showing up at Baker Street.
This is a joke-a-minute comedy. The jokes that work are funny but, unfortunately, there aren’t many of them. Some bits, like Joss Ackland’s impersonation of Gerald Ford, start off well and then go on for too long. Other bits, like the famous TV detectives showing up at Baker Street, have potential but fail due to poor execution. Unfortunately, much of the humor is just not that clever to begin with, which is not something that anyone would expect from a script co-written by John Cleese. As an actor, John Cleese is funny but underused, playing Sherlock Holmes as being an even denser version of Basil Fawlty. Arthur Lowe’s comedic befuddlement is consistently amusing but I wish the script has done more with the idea of him being bionic. Connie Booth is both funny and sexy and the best reason to watch this misfire.