Spring Breakdown: Deadly Excursion: Kidnapped From The Beach (dir by Brian Skiba)

Posted on March 27, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When last we checked in with the McCarthy family, Samantha (Samaire Armstrong) and her daughter Ellie (Alexandria DeBerry) were kidnapped while on vacation and ended up getting stranded on a remote beach. Fortunately, they were saved by the combined efforts of the FBI and Samantha’s husband, David (Corin Nemec). One of the kidnappers, Ian (Jonathan Bouvier), managed to escaped and a few people got shot but, fortunately, it appeared that everyone was safe.

That all occurred in the 2019 Lifetime film, Deadly Excursion.

Deadly Excursion: Kidnapped From The Beach checks in with the McCarthy family a year or two later and we discover that 1) David and Samantha’s marriage is now a lot stronger and 2) the family apparently didn’t learn much from their last time they got kidnapped while on vacation. This time, ignoring the warnings of the FBI, Samantha and David go to Florida to support Ellie as she leads her beach volleyball team to a national championship. Unfortunately, Samantha and David are also followed by Cesar Rodriguez (Matt Cedeno) and Cesar’s son, Miguel (David Meza). Cesar and Miguel have plans to kidnap the entire family. Meanwhile, Ian is still wandering about and looking for a chance to redeem himself, despite the fact that he’s currently #15 on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

Got all that?

The question is, “How many times can the same thing happen to the same family?” and the answer here seems to be “At least twice.” Indeed, it may require a certain suspension of disbelief to buy that the McCarthys could actually learn so little from their last vacation but, then again, suspension of disbelief is what Lifetime movies are all about. As I’ve said many times, you don’t necessarily watch a film like this because you’re looking for a realistic film about kidnapping. You watch a film like this for the beach scenery and the melodrama and for the familiar faces of the likable actors who play the film’s lead roles. Say what you will about David McCarthy and his decision-making abilities, it’s always fun to watch Corin Nemec play a role like this. Nemec always throws himself into it, delivering his lines with just the right mix of drama and humorous self-awareness. And, again, he’s a likable actor. You like David because it’s impossible not to like Corin. You hope that he’ll get back together with his family because the three of them just seem like they belong together.

Of course, there are a few differences between the first Deadly Excursion and the second. The first Deadly Excursion found the family being held hostage on an island. This time, they’re held hostage in a luxury hotel and I have to say that the hotel is really quite impressive. If I was going to be held hostage, I’d want to be held hostage there. It also leads to an interesting scene where one of the family members manages to briefly escape, just to discover that even the people who aren’t involved in her kidnapping don’t necessarily want to get involved. Sadly, that’s probably very true to life. You can be just as isolated in a city as you can be on a deserted island.

Deadly Excursion: Kidnapped From The Beach won’t take you by surprise but the beach scenery is gorgeous and the cast is likable and sometimes, that’s all you need.

Previous Spring Breakdown 2021 Entries:

The Unnominated: Auto Focus (dir by Paul Schrader)

Posted on March 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were,for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.

The 2002 film Auto Focus start out as almost breezy satire of the perfect all-American life and it ends with an act of shocking violence. It’s based on a real-life mystery, a murder that revealed a secret life.

When we first see Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear), he’s a disc jockey and a drummer living in the suburbs of Los Angeles in the mid-60s. He’s got what would appear to be the ideal life. He’s got a nice house. He and his wife (Rita Wilson) seem to be devoted to each other. His children are adorable. He goes to church. He tells corny Dad jokes. He’s got a quick smile and a friendly manner and it’s impossible not to like him. When he gets offered the lead in a sitcom, his happiness and enthusiasm feels so generous that it’s impossible not to be happy for him.

Of course, the show is a comedy that takes place in World War II POW camp, which doesn’t really sound like a surefire hit or really anything that should be put on the air. (“Funny Nazis?” Crane says in disbelief when he’s first told about the project.) Still, with Crane in the lead role, Hogan’s Heroes becomes a hit and, for a while, Bob Crane becomes a star and it seems like it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy.

The problem, of course, is that Crane seems like he’s too good to be true and we all know what they say about things like that. From the start, there are hints that Crane may be hiding another side of his personality. His wife, for instance, is not happy when she discovers his stash of pornographic magazines in their garage. (“They’re photography magazines!” Crane protests with a smile that’s a bit too quick.) Crane obviously enjoys the recognition that comes from being the star of a top-rated show. He starts hanging out at strip clubs, occasionally playing drums with the club’s band and watching the dancers with a leer that’s really not all that different from the smile that he flashes whenever he asks anyone if they want an autograph.

Crane also meets John Carpenter (Willem DaFoe), an electronics expert who introduces him to the then-expensive and exclusive world of home video. As opposed to the clean-cut and smoothly-spoken Crane, Carpenter is so awkward that it’s sometimes painful to watch him move or listen to him speak. He’s the epitome of the Hollywood hanger-on, the type who has deluded himself into thinking that his celebrity clients genuinely like him and enjoy his company. He and Crane become fast friends, though it’s always obvious that Crane considers himself to be better than Carpenter. However, Carpenter is the only person with whom Crane can share the details of his secret life.

The film covers several years, from the late 60s to the mid-70s. Crane goes from being so clean-cut that he neither drinks nor curses to being so addicted to sex that he can stop himself even when it starts to destroy his career and leads to him losing everything that he loves. Carpenter and Crane’s friendship becomes progressively more and more self-destructive until the film ends in violence and tragedy.

Auto Focus begins on a light and breezy note but, as Crane’s addiction grows, the film grows darker. By the time the movie enters the 70s, the camerawork becomes more jittery and the once soft-spoken Crane seems to be drowning in his own anxiety. He becomes the type who causally goes from talking to Carpenter about how he wants to direct the world’s greatest sex film to cheerfully announcing that Disney has decided to cast him in a film called SuperDad. Auto Focus‘s key scene comes towards the end, when Crane is a guest on a silly cooking show and shocks the audience by harassing a woman sitting in the front row. When the audience boos, Crane flashes his familiar smile and it becomes obvious just how much of Crane’s life has been spent hiding behind that smile. By the end of the film, not even Crane himself can keep track of whether or not he’s a wholesome comedy star or a self-destructive sex addict.

Both Greg Kinnear and Willem DaFoe gave Oscar-worthy performance in Auto Focus, performances that hold your interest even after their characters sink to some truly low depths. The film makes good use of Kinnear’s amiable screen presence and Kinnear convincingly creates a man who wishes that he could be the person that he’s fooled everyone into thinking that he is. By the time he’s reduced to begging his agent (well-played by Ron Leibman) to find him a game show so that he can finally stop doing dinner theater, it’s hard not to have a little sympathy for him, even if the majority of his problems are self-created. As Carpenter, DaFoe is convincingly creepy but, at times, he’s also so pathetic that, again, you can’t help but feel a little sorry for him. At his worst, Carpenter is the 70s equivalent of the twitter user who stans a celebrity by sending them adoring tweets and then picking fights with anyone who disagrees.

Unfortunately, the Academy nominated neither Kinnear for Best Actor nor DaFoe for Best Supporting Actor. The competition for Best Actor was fierce that year, with Nicolas Cage, Michael Caine, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Jack Nicholson all losing to Adrien Brody in The Pianist. While Kinnear deserved a nomination, it’s hard to say who I would drop from that line-up to make room for him. As for DaFoe, I would argue that he was more deserving of a supporting actor nomination than The Hours‘s Ed Harris or The Road To Perdition’s Paul Newman. Perhaps DaFoe was just too convincing as the type of clingy groupie that most members of the Academy probably dread having to deal with.

Nominated or not, Auto Focus is a disturbing and ultimately sad look at the darkness that often hides behind a perfect facade.

Spring Breakdown: Eureka (dir by Nicolas Roeg)

Posted on March 24, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 1983 film, Gene Hackman plays Jack McCann, a prospector who is determined to either get rich or freeze to death as he wanders around Alaska in the 1920s. When he’s not having sex and philosophical discussions with the local witch, Freida (Helena Kallianiotes), Jack desperately searches for gold. Jack is convinced that gold is all that he needs to be happy, though Freida counsels him that it’s also important to pursue more Earthly delights. Everywhere Jack looks, he sees people dying in the snow. In fact, Jack nearly dies himself until he stumbles across a mountain full of gold. As gold dust pours down on him, he celebrates while having flashbacks to Freida writhing in ecstasy. It’s just that type of film. When Jack tells Freida about his claim, he asks what’s going to happen next. Freida tells him that it’s both the end and the beginning. Once again, it’s just that type of film.

At this point, Eureka jumps ahead 20 years. The year is 1945. World War II is coming to an end. Jack is no longer freezing and starving to death in Alaska. Now, he is one of the world’s richest men. He even owns his own island in the Caribbean. Jack has a huge house, a beautiful view of the ocean, and all the money in the world. One could even say that his life has become an exclusive beach vacation, an eternal Spring Break, if you will. And yet, even with all of his money, Jack has fallen victim to ennui. He was happier when he was poor and starving and seeking warmth from Freida. Now, he’s got an alcoholic wife (Jane LaPotaire) and his daughter, Tracy (Theresa Russell), is in love with a dissolute aristocrat named Claude (Rutger Hauer), to whom Jack takes an instant dislike. Claude claims that Jack has stolen his wealth from the Earth. Claude is the type who eats gold and then promises to return it to Jack as soon as he can. That’s something that actually happens. It’s kind of silly but Rutger Hauer is such a charmer that he nearly pulls it off.

Claude and Tracy aren’t the only thing that Jack has to worry about. An American gangster named Mayakofsky (Joe Pesci) wants to take over Jack’s island so that he can build a casino on it. However, despite the best efforts of Mayakofsky’s attorney (Mickey Rourke), Jack is still not willing to sell. When hitman Joe Spinell shows up outside the estate, are Jack’s days of ennui numbered?

Of course, they are! That’s not really a spoiler. Eureka is (loosely) based on the real-life murder of Sir Harry Oakes, an American-born prospector who was thought to be one of the world’s richest men when he was brutally murdered in the 40s. Jack is, of course, a stand-in for Oakes while Mayakofsky is based on Meyer Lansky, the mobster who many people suspect ordered Oakes’s murder. Lansky was never charged with the crime. Instead, Oakes’s son-in-law, Count Alfred de Marigny, was arrested and charged with the crime. After a trial that made international news and was described as being “the trial of the century,” de Marigny was acquitted and the murder of Harry Oakes remains officially unsolved.

It’s an interesting story and it seems like one that should perfectly translate to film. Surprisingly though, Eureka doesn’t really do it justice. The film was directed by one of the masters of cinematic surrealism, Nicolas Roeg. Roeg, of course, is probably best remembered for films like Performance, Don’t Look Now, Walkabout, and The Man Who Fell To Earth. As one might expect from a Roeg film, Eureka is visually stunning but, as a director, Roeg can’t seem to decide whether he’s more interested in Jack’s ennui or in all the soapy melodrama surrounding Jack’s murder. As such, neither element of the film gets explored with any particular depth and the resulting film, while always watchable, still feels rather shallow and disjointed. (After taking forever to reach the end of Jack’s story, Eureka then turns into a rather conventional courtroom drama. Theresa Russell does get to utter the immortal line, “Did you cut off my father’s head?” but otherwise, it’s kind of dry.) The film is at its strongest when Jack is just a prospector in Alaska. The harsh landscape and the crazed dialogue is perfect for Roeg’s dream-like style. Once the film moves to the Caribbean, it suffers the same fate that befell Jack when he become rich. It loses its spark.

That said, Eureka has its moments. Any film that features Gene Hackman, Mickey Rourke, Joe Pesci, Rutger Hauer, and Joe Spinell all acting opposite of each other is going to have at least a few scenes worth watching. I particularly liked Pesci’s surprisingly subdued performance as Mayakofsky. With everyone else in the film chewing every piece of scenery on the island, Pesci wisely underplays and is all the more menacing for it. While Eureka ultimately doesn’t add up too much, it’s worth watching at least once for the cast.

Finally, my personal theory is that Harry Oakes’s murder had more to do with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson) than it did with Meyer Lansky. (The Duke was the governor of the Bahamas at the time of Oakes’s murder.) But that’s just my opinion.

Spring Breakdown: Love In A Goldfish Bowl (dir by Jack Sher)

Posted on March 23, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1961 film, Love in a Goldfish Bowl, tells the story of two college students.

Gordon Slide (Tommy Sands) and Blythe Holloway (Toby Michaels) are best friends. Their relationship is strictly platonic, though everyone at the college assumes that they’re more than just friends. Gordon and Blythe both share the common bond of coming from broken but wealthy families and they both want to do something more with their lives than just following the rules. Blythe is a good student, the daughter of a senator. Gordon is styles himself as being a cynic, or at least what was considered to be a cynic by the standards of 1961. (James Dean would have probably called him a phony.) The school’s headmaster (John McGiver) suspects that 1) Gordon and Blythe are more than just friends and 2) that Gordon is a bad influence on Blythe. He even orders them to stop seeing each other, which I guess is something that headmasters could get away with in 1961.

Still, it’s going to take more than some stuffy authority figure to keep Gordon and Blythe for enjoying their Spring Break! Especially when Gordon’s mother happens to own a beach house, which would be the perfect place for the two of them to hang out. Despite knowing that each of their parent probably wouldn’t approve of them spending the break together, Gordon and Blythe decide to do just that. Blythe even gets permission for her father, albeit by duplicitous means. (Gordon imitates the headmaster on the phone. Wow, that wild and crazy Gordon.)

At first, the beach house seems like the perfect place for Gordon and Blythe to unwind. But when they meet Giuseppe La Barba (Fabian Forte), things start to change. A member of the Coast Guard, Giuseppe plots to steal Blythe away from Gordon, with his schemes causing Gordon and Blythe to reconsider their feelings for each other.

Considering that this film is 60 years old, it’s perhaps not surprising that Love In A Goldfish Bowl often feels like it’s a rusty time capsule that someone buried in the sand on a California beach. Everything from the intrusive headmaster to the scandal of divorce to the domestic routine that both Gordon and Blythe naturally slip into as soon as they arrive at the beach house makes this film feel almost as if it comes from another planet. While the film is critical of adults who don’t understand what it’s like to be young and idealistic, it also ultimately ends with the suggestion that the adults might not be so clueless themselves. It’s a bit of a wishy-washy approach to what little conflict the film has to offer up.

My point here is that Love In A Goldfish Bowl is an amazingly innocent little film, the type of Spring Break movie that would cause even your grandma to say, “Those kids really need to loosen up and live a little.” Usually, I kind of like time capsule films like this, just because I’m a history nerd and I’m always interested in seeing how people used to live and communicate. Unfortunately, Love In A Goldfish Bowl is a remarkably slow 88 minutes and neither Tommy Sands nor Toby Michaels have enough chemistry to be interesting as friends, let alone as a chaste couple waiting for their wedding night. Fabian has a little bit more screen presence than Tommy Sands but overall, this is a pretty bland affair.

Ultimately, this film is mostly interesting as an example of what beach movies were like before AIP reinvented the genre with the Frankie and Annette beach party films. Thank goodness people finally learned how to celebrate being young and on the beach.

Spring Breakdown: Hunk (dir by Lawrence Bassoff)

Posted on March 22, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Released in 1987, Hunk tells the story of Hunk Golden (John Allen Nelson).

At first glance, Hunk seems to have everything. He lives in a huge house on the beach and he’s good-looking and muscular enough that he can actually pull off the rainbow speedo look. Women want to be with Hunk and men want to be Hunk. He’s rich. He can eat all the food in the world without putting on a single pound. He’s got a great smile and wonderful tan and he even knows karate! Hunk drives a red convertible that has a personalized license plate, one that reads: HUNK. If anyone else did it, it would seem narcissistic but Hunk can pull it off.

However, Hunk is deeply dissatisfied with his life. As he explains to his psychiatrist, Dr. Sunny Graves (Rebecca Bush), he wasn’t always Hunk Golden. He used to be a nerdy writer named Brady Brinkman (played by Steve Levitt). After Brady’s girlfriend left him for an aerobics instructor, he somehow managed to write a guide to how to become rich. Brady’s wasn’t sure where his inspiration came from but he was still able to make a fortune off of it. After Brady moved to the beach to work on his next project, he discovered that being wealthy didn’t mean anything unless he also had the right look.

That’s when he was approached by O’Brien (Deborah Shelton), an emissary of the devil (James Coco). O’Brien turned Brady Brinkman into Hunk Golden and taught him how to be …. well, how to be a hunk. The only condition was that, after a number of months, Hunk would have to give up his soul to the devil. Hunk agreed but now, with the deadline approaching, Hunk isn’t so sure that he wants to condemn his soul to eternal damnation. Is being the hottest guy on the beach really worth an eternity of burning in fire and being poked with those little pitchfork things?

Now, it probably won’t come as a surprise to our regular readers to discover that this film was produced and distributed by Crown International Pictures. From the 70s through the 80s, Crown International specialized in low-budget exploitation films, with a surprisingly large number of them taking place on the beach. Nowadays, of course, the Crown International filmography can be found in countless Mill Creek boxsets. Hunk can be found in several. I own enough Mill Creek boxsets that I’ve probably got a dozen copies of Hunk in my DVD and Blu-ray collections.

That said, while the film’s low budget is obvious in every frame, Hunk is actually slightly better than the typical Crown International beach film. While it seems to take forever for Brady to become Hunk, the film has got a likable cast and it actually delivers its message about self-acceptance with a surprising amount of sincerity. This is the rare Crown International Film with a heart and, for every joke that falls flat (and there’s several), there’s at least a few unexpectedly clever moments. The film takes an especially strange turn once Hunk becomes a celebrity and starts to wonder if he should accept the devil’s invitation to become a demon and help start a world war. Steve Levitt and John Allen Nelson both do a good job playing Brady and his alter ego, though all of Nelson’s dialogue appears to have been dubbed. James Coco delivers his evil lines with a properly devilish glee. Incidently, this was also Brad Pitt’s first movie. While he had no dialogue and went uncredited, he can be easily spotted as an extra in one of the beach scenes.

See him?

If you’re looking for silly and occasionally strange 80s beach movie, you could do worse than to check your Mill Creek boxsets for a copy of Hunk.

Spring Beakdown: The Thirsty Dead (dir by Terry Becker)

Posted on March 20, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, imagine this.

You’re on vacation in a tropical paradise. (Maybe you’re even there on Spring Break, just so we can justify including this review in my series of Spring Break film reviews.) One night, while wandering around the city, you get grabbed by a bunch of robe-wearing monks. The monks proceed to tie you up and then force you to take a canoe ride from the sewer to the middle of the jungle. Once you reach the jungle, you’re informed that you’ve been kidnapped by a cult that worships a shrunken head in a box. The members of the cult have been around for centuries but they’ve managed to retain their youth by drinking the blood of the women who they kidnap off the streets of the city. Like you, for example.

That would probably freak most people out. That would certainly freak me out. Not only do I not particularly care for the jungle but I’m also pretty attached to my blood. However, when this exact same thing happens in the 1974 film The Thirsty Dead, no one seems to be particularly shocked to hear about it. Instead, the kidnapped women all kind of shrug and accept their fate as if it all makes total sense.

In fact, Claire (Judith McConnell) appears to develop Stockholm Syndrome within record time. She’s a dancer in Manila who, within hours of being kidnapped, is soon joking with her abductors. She makes it clear that she’s apparently fine with being kidnapped and donating her blood to a good cause. It’s never really clear why she’s okay with that but Claire is so determined to do what she wants to do (even if that means being subservient to a bunch of 100 year-old cultists) that it’s hard not admire her stubbornness.

On the other hand, Laura (Jennifer Billingsley) is determined to escape. Even though the members of the cult believe that she’s the reincarnation of one of their goddesses, Laura wants to get back to civilization. She thinks that one of the cultists, Baru (John Considine), might be willing to help her. However, as Baru explains, if he goes too far into the jungle, he’ll lose his youth and basically just waste away.

(Just in case there’s any doubt on the part of anyone reading this review, the cult is right about the whole eternal youth thing. One cultist makes the mistake of venturing too far out into the jungle and transforms from 49 to 50 right in front of our eyes!)

The Thirsty Dead is an odd film. On the one hand, the first few minutes of the film is undeniably sordid. Claire dances in a cage. Laura gets knocked over the head by a cultist and ends up with her hands tied behind her back. The camera lingers on a doll of a baby floating in a sewer. When the women first find themselves in the jungle, Claire jokes about being sold into prostitution and the whole film, up until that point, has had a rather icky feel to it. However, once the cult shows up, The Thirsty Dead suddenly becomes a rather tame film, one that’s almost totally free of graphic gore and sexual innuendo. The Thirsty Dead ultimately feels less like a film and more like an extended episode of some 70s sci-fi show. For a film about a blood-sucking cult, there’s surprisingly little blood. It feels a bit off and, to be honest, it’s a little boring. This is the type of film that calls out for a sleazier approach.

Despite being rather forgettable, The Thirsty Dead has achieved the dubious immortality of being included in several Mill Creek box sets, the ones with names like 100 Horror Classics or 50 Chilling Thrillers. So, in all probability, you’ve got The Thirsty Dead on DVD or Blu-ray without even realizing it. If you somehow don’t already have The Thirsty Dead in your film collection, you can always watch it on YouTube or Prime or probably a hundred other streaming sites. The Thirsty Dead will never die.

Spring Breakdown: Jaws: The Revenge (dir by Joseph Sargent)

Posted on March 19, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1987 film, Jaws: The Revenge, opens with Amity Island (last seen in Jaws 2) preparing to celebrate Christmas. Longtime police chief and veteran shark hunter Martin Brody has died but his widow, Ellen (Lorraine Gary), still lives on the island. Also living on the island is Ellen’s youngest son, Sean (Mitchell Anderson). Sean is now a deputy and he spends a lot of time patrolling the ocean. This worries Ellen because the Brodys don’t exactly have the best luck when it come to the water….

Or continuity for that matter! Anyone who has seen Jaws 3-D knows that Sean Brody moves down to Florida, became a cowboy, hooked up with Lea Thompson, and worked with his older brother at Sea World. And yet, as Jaws: The Revenge opens, Sean is suddenly back in Amity, he’s not a cowboy, and he’s engaged to someone who is not Lea Thompson. Throughout the film, no mention is made of Sean having ever gone to Florida or going through a cowboy phase. Basically, this film ignores the entire existence of Jaws 3-D. That would be okay if Jaws: The Revenge was actually a better film than Jaws 3-D but it’s not. That’s right, Jaws The Revenge fails to even improve on Jaws 3-D.

Anyway, Sean goes out on patrol and promptly gets eaten by a shark. Ellen loses her mind at the funeral and announces that she doesn’t want her oldest son, Michael (Lance Guest), going anywhere near the water. Unfortunately, Michael is working in the Bahamas as a marine biologist so …. well, sorry, grandma.

Perhaps to try to help Ellen get over her fear of water, Michael brings Ellen back to the Bahamas with him. Ellen gets a chance to spend some time with her daughter-in-law, Carla (Karen Young) and her granddaughter, Thea (Judith Barsi). Ellen also pursues a tentative romance with the local pilot, Hoagie (Michael Caine, who gives a likable performance but who also has absolutely zero romantic chemistry with Lorraine Gary). However, Ellen still has nightmares about the ocean and she suspects that the shark that killed Sean might be on its way to the Bahamas. Why? Because this time it’s personal!

Actually, as crazy as that sounds, it turns out that Ellen’s right. Unfortunately, it takes the shark a while to get down there and, as such, the audience spends a lot of time watching Ellen, who was always the least interesting character in all of the Jaws films, wander around the Bahamas. The island scenery is lovely but when you’re watching a Jaws movie, you’re watching for the shark action. Jaws: The Revenge is only a 90-minute film and the shark doesn’t make its second appearance until the 50 minute mark.

Once the shark does show up, of course, it gets right down business. It eats a swimmer. It eats an airplane. It sinks a boat. At one point the shark bites someone in half and someone off-screen is heard to shout, “Get a doctor!” as if a doctor is going to be able to do much in that situation. Ellen sets out to get some revenge of her own, which would be a thrilling moment if Ellen was as iconic a character as Jaws: The Revenge seems to think that she is. My favorite moment is when Michael Caine reveals that, despite the odds, he somehow managed to avoid getting eaten by the shark. When someone asks him how he did it, he replies, “It wasn’t easy …. bloody Hell,” and that’s pretty much all that’s said about it.

Ultimately, though, this is the least of the four Jaws films, duplicating neither the suspense of the first two films nor the camp silliness of the third film. Fortunately, though this film may have been the last official sequel to Jaws, the legacy of the classic original will live forever.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Sound of Metal (dir by Darius Marder)

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s it like to lose the thing that you felt was the most important part of your life? That’s one of the many questions that Sound of Metal left me considering.

The story opens with Ruben (Riz Ahmed) and Lou (Olivia Cooke) traveling the country in a cluttered RV. Lou is a singer. Ruben is a drummer. They perform under the name Blackgammon. Their life is about traveling from gig to gig, playing their own unique music. It’s not exactly a glamorous life but, as the first few minutes of Sound of Metal makes clear, it’s a life that they both love.

Or, at least, they do until Ruben starts to lose his hearing. (When Ruben goes to see a doctor, he’s told that he’s basically only picking up on 20% of the sounds around him and that it’s only going to get worse.) At first, Ruben tries to keep Lou from discovering what’s happening but it doesn’t take long for Lou to realize that something’s wrong. Ruben argues that he can still play the drums by memory, even if he can no longer hear what he’s playing. Lou is more concerned that Ruben is going to slip back into his previous bad habits and once again start using heroin.

Eventually, the two of them go their separate ways. Lou returns to her family in Belgium and reinvents herself as an artist. Meanwhile, Ruben ends up at a center specifically for deaf recovering addicts. The center is run by Joe (Paul Raci), a kind but no-nonsense man who lost his hearing in Vietnam and who is a recovering alcoholic. At first, Ruben is bitter and angry and refuses to accept that his old life is over. When Joe order Ruben to spend hours sitting in a room and writing down whatever pops into his head, it takes Ruben a while to see that Joe is helping him to come to terms with living in a world without sound. Even as Ruben starts to accept his new reality, he still finds himself wanting to reunite with Lou. He finds himself tempted to get a cochlear implant, despite Joe explaining that doing so will mean that Ruben will have to leave his new home.

In the hands of a lesser director and a lesser cast, Sound of Metal could have become mawkish or overly sentimental, the type of film that tries so hard to be uplifting that it ends up condescending instead. However, director Darius Marder emphasizes the gritty details of his story, showcasing Ruben’s emotional growth while also acknowledging that Ruben will never truly be at peace with his hearing loss. This is a film that acknowledges what Ruben’s gained from his new circumstances while never ignoring the pain of losing his former life. The film’s soundtrack is designed so that we hear exactly as much or as little as Ruben can hear. We feel his frustration and his fear as sound fades away while, at the same time, we also come to appreciate everything that he finds in the silence.

The Academy has rightfully nominated Riz Ahmed for best actor for his performance in Sound of Metal. That was expected as Ahmed’s been honored by several critics groups and probably the only thing that will keep Ahmed from winning thr Oscar is the Academy’s understandable desire to honor the legacy of Chadwick Boseman. Ahmed does a wonderful job capturing all of Ruben’s emotions, from his fear to his anger to finally his reluctant acceptance.

Olivia Cooke was not nominated for her role, though I think she should have been. It’s perhaps understandable why Cooke wasn’t nominated as she’s actually off-screen for a good deal of the film but she still does a great job capturing both Lou’s love for Ruben and also portraying the way the Lou grows as both a person and an artist in his absence.

That said, the best performance in the film comes from Paul Raci. I have to admit that I cheered a little when I heard that the Academy had nominated Raci for Best Supporting Actor. The previously unknown Raci, who has been acting for years but who had never had a film role as big or as important as this one, is the son of deaf parents and he brings a tough but heartfelt authenticity to the role of Joe. As played by Raci, Joe sincerely cares about Ruben but, at the same time, he’s also not going to let Ruben get away with self-pity. Raci gives a quietly authoritative performance as Joe, rarely raising his voice but still turning the character into the film’s moral center.

Sound of Metal was one of my favorite films of 2020. It was nominated for Best Picture, along with 5 other nominations. Personally, while I know the film probably won’t beat Nomadland for the main prize, I’m still hoping that Paul Raci will be able to pull off an upset and take home the Oscar that he definitely deserves.

Spring Breakdown: Top Secret! (dir by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker)

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“How silly can you get?” Val Kilmer sings in the 1984 film Top Secret! and the answer would appear to be very silly. Extremely silly. Nonsensically silly. Unbelievable silly. So silly that it transcends all formerly known types of silliness. In other words, this is a very silly film but that’s okay because it’s meant to be silly.

Some people, I know, would probably argue that Top Secret! doesn’t really qualify as a Spring Break film but I have to disagree. Like any good Spring Break film, a good deal of Top Secret! takes place on the beach and Val Kilmer plays Nick Rivers, a singer who is obviously meant to be a parody of the type of singers who used to regularly appear in the beach party movies of the 60s. Nick’s number one hit song is Skeet Surfin, which celebrates the sport of skeet shooting while on a surf board. The movie opens with hundreds of handsome young men jumping on surf boards while holding rifles. I honestly don’t know whether skeet surfing was every an actual sport but I certainly hope that it was because it looks like it would have been a lot of fun. Certainly, it would perk up the Olympics.

Of course, Nick is not the only person in the film whose life is connected to the beach. Hillary Flammond (Lucy Gutteridge) spent much of her youth shipwrecked on a beach with Nigel (Christopher Villiers). Unfortunately, one day, Nigel went out to sea to search for help and he never returned. Hillary was eventually rescued. That’s certainly a sadder trip to the beach than Nick’s but still, a beach is a beach.

Hillary and Nick’s paths cross when Nick is invited to perform at a cultural festival in what, in 1984, was known was East Germany. Hillary is a member of the Resistance while her father, Dr. Paul Flammond (Michael Gough), is being held prisoner by the government and is being forced to design the type of secret weapons that are always at the heart of espionage adventures like this one. When Nick and Hillary meet, it’s love at first sight. Nick gets involved in the plan to save Hillary’s father and to thwart the insidious plans of the East German government. He also finds the time to sing a lot of songs.

The plot of Top Secret! isn’t really easy to describe. That’s largely because there really isn’t a plot in a conventional sense. Instead, there’s just one joke after another. The dialogue is purposefully nonsensical. The visuals are full of odd details. The jokes are frequently hilarious and, because they’re so fast and relentless, they’re also next to impossible to adequately describe. Much of the visual humor simply has to be seen to be understood and appreciated. For instance, it may sound slightly humorous to say that a scene features a stern-looking army officer answering a giant phone but you have to actually see the film to truly understand just how brilliantly Top Secret! pulls off the gag.

Of course, what really makes the film is work is Val Kilmer, who is young, handsome, and incredibly likable in the role of Nick. Kilmer delivers every bizarre line with a straight face and an enthusiastic earnestness that makes him the perfect center for all the craziness raging around him.

How silly can you get? Watch Top Secret! and find out!

Spring Breakdown: The Beach Girls and the Monster (dir by Jon Hall)

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy Spring Break!

Spring Break is one of the things that I really miss about high school and college. Despite the fact that I don’t drink, I don’t swim, and I generally hate crowds, I always made it a point to celebrate Spring Break by going to the beach. Spring Break was more than just a week’s vacation from “preparing for the future” and everything else that I occasionally pretended college was about. Spring Break was a ritual. It was a tradition. Celebrating Spring Break was as much a required activity as dressing up for Halloween or going to fireworks on the 4th.

For the next two weeks, we’re going to celebrate Spring Break on the Shattered Lens. I know that some people are saying that no one should be celebrating the Spring Break this year. To be honest, there were people saying that before the pandemic broke out and there were be people saying that once the pandemic is under control. Wear your mask indoors. Social distance. Do whatever needs to be done and yes, definitely make sure that you know what’s going on in the world. But don’t ever let the professional killjoys tell you that you don’t have a right to enjoy your life.

If you want to check out a professional killjoy, just check out the scientist who is at the heart of the 1965 film, The Beach Girls and the Monster. Dr. Otto Lindsay (Jon Hall, who also directed) is an oceanographer who totally resents the fact that teenagers are partying on the beach. I mean, he’s even more obnoxious than that jackass lawyer who spent last year wandering around the beach of Florida while dressed up as the Grim Reaper. Obviously, some of Otto’s bad attitude can be explained by the fact that he’s old but it’s hard not to feel that there’s something bigger fueling his resentment. Maybe he’s angry that his young wife, Vicky (Sue Casey), doesn’t seem to be particularly happy with their marriage. Maybe he’s annoyed that there’s a sculptor named Mark (Waler Edmonston) living in his house. Mark is a friend of Otto’s son, Richard (Arnold Lessing). Richard was planning on following his father into the field of oceanography but then he discovered surfing. Now, the only thing that Richard wants to do is surf and hang out on the beach.

It’s a popular beach, though perhaps a little bit less popular now that people are being randomly killed on the sand. Who is killing off of all of the surfers and the beach girls? Richard thinks that it’s a maniac but Otto believes that it’s a prehistoric sea creature, come back to life and seeking revenge on all of the irresponsible young people who ruining the beach. Judging from the fact that the killer looks like some sort of humanoid-fish hybrid, we can only assume that Otto is right. But is he?

You’ll have to watch the film to find out and, fortunately, it’ll be pretty easy for you to do just that. The Beach Girls and The Monster is in the public domain and it’s been uploaded to YouTube about a dozen times. And you know what? You should watch it because this is an entertainingly dumb little movie. It’s not exactly a good movie, of course. The acting is …. not impressive. The killer fish is …. less impressive. But so what? This is a fast-paced and fun movie with a silly monster, a lot of beach parties, and just enough dancing to hold my attention. It’s nonsense but, in the best tradition of Spring Break, it’s entertaining nonsense.