Tag Archives: Movie A Day

A Movie A Day #296: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983, directed by Jack Clayton)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Something Wicked This Way Comes is one of my favorite films.

The place is Green Town, Illinois.  The time is the 1920s.  The carnival has come to town but this is no normal carnival.  Led by the sinister, Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce), this carnival promises to fulfill everyone’s dreams but at what cost?  Double amputee Ed (James Stacy) gets his arm and his leg back.  The lonely teacher, Miss Foley (Mary Grace Canfield), is young and beautiful once again.  Mr. Dark may bring people what they want but he gives nothing away for free.  Only two young boys, Will (Vidal Peterson) and Jim (Shawn Carson), realize the truth about the carnival but no one in town will listen to them.  Mr. Dark wants Jim to be his successor and Will’s only ally is his elderly father, the town librarian (Jason Robards).

As much a coming of age story as a horror film, Something Wicked This Way Comes takes the time to establish Green Town and to make it feel like a real place and its inhabitants seem like real people.  When Mr. Dark shows up, he is not just a supernatural trickster.  He is not just stealing the souls of Green Town.  He is also destroying the innocence of childhood.  Jonathan Pryce is both charismatic and menacing as Mr. Dark while Jason Robards matches him as the infirm librarian who must find the strength to save his son.  The confrontation between Pryce and Robards, where Pryce tears flaming pages out of a book, is the best part of the movie.  Along with Robards and Pryce, the entire cast is excellent.  Be sure to keep an eye out for familiar faces like Royal Dano, Jack Dodson, Angelo Rossitto, and especially Pam Grier, playing the “Dust Witch,” the most beautiful woman in the world.

Based on a classic novel by Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes is one of the only Bradbury adaptations to do justice to its source material.

A Movie A Day #295: Zombie Island Massacre (1984, directed by John N. Carter)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Zombie Island Massacre has got a massacre but it ain’t got no zombies.

Instead, it has a group of tourists who travel to Zombie Island so they can watch a voodoo ceremony.  Afterward, their tour bus breaks down.  The driver leaves to get help but never returns.  There is a deserted villa nearby so the tourists decide to take shelter there for the night.  Whenever anyone stumbles away from the main group, they are killed by someone wearing a costume made of leaves.  There ain’t no zombies or surprises in the glacially paced movie.  There might not even be an island.  It might actually be a peninsula.  I’m not sure.

The only reason that Zombie Island Massacre is remembered is because one of the tourists is played by Rita Jenrette.  Rita was the wife of John Johnrette, a South Carolina congressman who was taken down as a part of Abscam.  Rita got a divorce and wrote a book called My Capital Secrets, where she revealed that she and John had sex on the capital steps while the House was holding an all-night session.  Rita was not a bad actress, though the material only required her to scream and take a shower.

The main problem with Zombie Island Massacre is obvious.  There ain’t no zombies on that island.

A Movie A Day #294: Ghost In the Machine (1993, directed by Rachel Talaly)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Karl (Ted Marcoux) is a serial killer who works in an electronics store and who steals address books and uses them to pick his victims.  His latest stolen address book belongs to Terry (Karen Allen).  Before Karl can start killing Terry’s family and friends, he is killed in a car accident.  Because there is a lightning storm going on at the same time, the dead Karl is able to transfer his evil soul into the electrical grid.  Traveling from appliance to appliance, Karl starts to kill all of Terry’s friends and co-workers.  A microwave oven.  A hand dryer.  A dishwasher.  If it is electrical, Karl can use it to kill.  Fortunately, Terry knows a legendary hacker (Chris Mulkey) who can help her fight back.

Like Prison, Destroyer, and The Horror Show, Ghost in the Machine is another dumb movie about a psycho who gets his soul transformed into electricity.  Ghost In The Machine was also obviously influenced by The Lawnmower Man and the entire movie is full of early 90s paranoia about the internet and computers in general.  Rachel Talaly, who got her start with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and who has recently directed some of the best received episodes of Doctor Who, does a good job with the deaths but cannot do anything with the lousy script and unlikable characters.  Nearly everyone who dies is killed because they know Terry but that never seems to bother her.

I think every 90s kid, or at least every 90s male, watched Ghost In The Machine on HBO and had a crush on Shevonne Durkin.

A Movie A Day #293: See No Evil (1971, directed by Richard Fleischer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

After a rain, a car drives through a puddle and splashes mud on a man’s designer boots.  The owner of the boots follows the car back to a country manor and murders everyone inside.  (Did he really kill everyone in the house because his boots get muddied?  It is never really clear.  Before his boots got splashed on, he was looking at violent comic books in a shop.  Maybe Wertham was right.)  Later, Sarah (Mia Farrow), the niece of the car’s driver, arrives at the house.  As the result of a recent horse riding accident, Sarah is blind.  She walks through the house, unaware that she is surrounded by dead bodies and unaware that the owner of the boots left behind a bracelet that he will soon be returning to retrieve.

Obviously inspired by Wait Until Dark, See No Evil is a well-done cat-and-mouse game between Sarah and her unseen stalker.  Mia Farrow is great as the blind woman and the scenes of her unknowingly walking past the dead bodies of her family while being followed are tense and suspenseful.  See No Evil has been overshadowed by Farrow’s other two horror films, Rosemary’s Baby and Full Circle, but it is definitely worth a look.

A Movie A Day #292: The Bride (1985, directed by Franc Roddam)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The Bride opens where most films about Frankenstein and his monster end.

The Baron (played by fucking Sting, of all people) has agreed to create a bride for his creation, who in this movie is named Viktor and played by Clancy Brown.  Jennifer Beals plays the Bride, who is named Eva.  Eva looks like a normal, beautiful wielder-turned-dancer so when she first sees Viktor, she screams.  Viktor gets upset and starts to trash the laboratory.  “Don’t be impertinent!’ snaps the Baron’s assistant (Quentin Crisp).  A fire breaks out.  Quentin Crisp dies and so does another assistant played by Timothy Spall.  The monster escapes.  The Baron takes Eva into his household.  The Baron is obsessed with controlling Eva, who wants her independence and who has fallen in love with Cary Elwes.  When Eva sees a cat, she screams.  “You never told me about cats,” she tells the Baron, “I thought it was a tiny lion!”

The rest of the movie is a bewildering collection of cameos from respected thespians forced to recite some of the worst dialogue in film history.  Viktor befriends Rinaldo the dwarf (David Rappaport), who tells Viktor about how much he dreams of one day seeing Venice.  After Rinaldo is murdered by Alexei Sayle, Viktor swears that he will go to Venice and he will take Eva with him.

(Timothy Spall,  Quentin Crisp, and Alexei Sayle are not the only British performers to be strangely miscast in The Bride.  Keep an eye out for Phil Daniels, Ken Campbell, and Tony Haygarth, all wasted in small roles.)

The Bride attempts to put a revisionist, feminist spin on the story of Frankenstein but it ultimately just looks like a two hour Duran Duran video, with a guest vocals provided by Sting.  The scenes with Clancy Brown and David Rappaport work but otherwise, every important role is miscast.  Jennifer Beals is monotonous as the Bride and Sting never comes close to suggesting that he is capable of the type of mad genius that would be necessary to create life.  When it comes to the Bride of Frankenstein, stick with the original.

One final note: Both Sting and Phil Daniels also appeared in a much better film from Franc Roddam, Quadrophenia.  I recommend seeing Quadrophenia almost as much as I recommend forgetting about The Bride.

A Movie A Day #291: Pale Blood (1990, directed by V.V. Dachin Hsu and Michael W. Leighton)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Someone is murdering women in Los Angeles and draining them of their blood.  A mysterious detective named Michael Fury (George Chakiris) arrives from London and starts to investigate.  Fury is a vampire but he is a thoroughly modern vampire.  He even has his own special travel coffin that he takes with him on trips.  To help him with his investigation, he hires a researcher named Lori (Pamela Ludwig).  Lori is convinced that the killings are being committed by a real vampire but Michael believes that they are actually the work of a human who is only pretending to be one of the undead.  Michael is worried that this fake vampire will make real vampires look bad.  Meanwhile, a crazy photographer (Wings Hauser) stalks Michael, determined to capture a vampire of his very own.

Pale Blood went straight-to-video and does not have the budget to match its ambitions but it is still a fairly good, if overlooked, vampire movie.  George Chakiris, who is best known for his role in West Side Story, had the right look to play a brooding vampire and he and Pamela Ludwig made a good team.  Not surprisingly, the best thing about Pale Blood was Wings Hauser.  In this movie, Wings Hauser gave a performance that was demented even by the standards of Wings Haauser.  Hauser is so crazy in this movie that Pale Blood sets the standard by which all other crazy Wing Hauser performances must be judged.

One final note: the vhs cover art, which is pictured above, features a shot of Wings Hauser that was apparently lifted from a different movie.

 

A Movie A Day #290: The Granny (1995, directed by Luca Bercovici)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Granny Gargoli (Stella Stevens) is an old, wealthy, and dying.  With the exception of her niece, Kelly (Shannon Whirry, wearing glasses so it’s clear that she is not a gold digger), Granny hates her entire family.  When they come by for Thanksgiving dinner and start arguing about who is going to inherit Granny’s money, Granny snaps at her oldest son, “You’re the load that I should’ve swallowed!”

Since Granny does not want anyone to inherit her money, she decides that the best course of action would be to never die.  She buys a magic elixir that will grant immortality to whoever drinks it.  The salesman (played by director Luca Bercovici) tells her that it is very important to keep the elixir out of direct sunlight.  Of course, that gets screwed up faster than a mogwai turning into a gremlin.  When her family poisons her, the corrupted elixir does not keep Granny from dying.  Instead, it allows Granny to return as a demon who hunts down her greedy relatives one at a time.  One son is castrated.  A daughter-in-law is attacked when her mink stole comes to life.  Even after being killed, the members of the family return as wisecracking members of the living dead.

A mix of comedy and horror, The Granny used to show up regularly on late night Cinemax.  It may not be scary (though the castration scene is the reason why I get nervous whenever I see scissors) but, with the exception of Kelly, everyone in the family is so hateful that it is still fun to watch all of the get what they deserve.  Stella Stevens and Shannon Whirry are the main reasons to watch The Granny.  Stella gets all the best lines while Shannon Whirry shows why those who grew up watching late night Cinema still debate which Shannon was the best, Whirry or Tweed?

 

A Movie A Day #289: Night Visitor (1989, directed by Rupert Hitzig)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Billy Colton (Derek Rydall) is a teenager who has a reputation for exaggeration.  Lisa Grace (Shannon Tweed) is his next door neighbor, a high-priced prostitute who does not mind if Billy spies on her.  When Billy tries to tell everyone about his wild new neighbor, no one believes him.  Billy decides to prove his story by grabbing his camera and sneaking next door.  Instead of getting proof that she’s a prostitute, Billy witnesses his neighbor being murdered by a robed Satanist, who just happens to be Zachary Willard (Allen Garfield), Billy’s hated science teacher!  Billy goes to the police with his camera but Captain Crane (Richard Roundtree) points out that Billy forgot to take off the lens cap.

What can Billy do?  He knows that Zachary and his strange brother, Stanley (Michael J. Pollard), are sacrificing prostitutes to Satan but he can’t get anyone to believe him.  Working with his best friend (Teresa Van der Woude) and a burned out ex-cop (Elliott Gould), Billy sets out to stop the Willard Brothers.

Combine Rear Window with late 80s Satanic conspiracy theories and this is the result.  Not as bad as it sounds, Night Visitor is an unfairly obscure movie about Satanism in suburbia. While it has its share of dumb moments (like when Billy uses a watermelon to end a car chase), it also has enough good moments that suggest that Night Visitor is deliberately satirizing the excesses of the Satanic panic that, at the time of filming, was sweeping across the nation.  It also has a once in a lifetime cast.  Along with those already mentioned, keep an eye out for character actor extraordinaire Henry Gibson and future adult film star Teri Weigel.  Allen Garfield is especially good as the evil Mr. Willard.  Any actor can say, “I sacrifice you in the name of Satan.”  It takes a good actor like Allen Garfield to say it without making anyone laugh.

One final note: this movie was originally called Never Cry Devil, which is a much better title than Night Visitor.

A Movie A Day #288: Bikini Island (1991, directed by Tony Markes)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This is another one that can be best described as being dumb.  Just dumb.

With a title like Bikini Island, you might think that this movie is about the atomic bomb tests of 1946.  No such luck.  Instead, Bikini Island is about five models who are competing to be the next covergirl for Swimwear Illustrated.  They have gathered on an island off the coast of California, along with a makeup artist, a photographer, an assistant, and the publisher of SI.  The competition is fierce but it gets even fiercer once someone starts murdering the models and the magazine staff.  Since the killer forges goodbye notes, no one suspects the truth until a random arrow attack, much like the one that took out Albert Hall in Apocalypse Now, is launched towards the end of the movie.

In the 90s, Bikini Island was a staple of late night Cinemax.  No one will admit to having watched it but every male who grew up in the 90s did.  It pretends to be a slasher film but mostly it’s just concerned with getting the cast in their bikinis as quickly as possible.  The movie tries to generate suspense over who the murderer is but eventually gives up and just keeps killing people until there’s only one suspect left.  If Bikini Island is remembered for anything, it is the scene where the killer uses a toilet plunger to suffocate a victim.  That’s about as imaginative as things get.

Usually, when I don’t have much to say about a movie, I’ll find an excuse to share that picture of Burt Reynolds giving the thumbs up at the end of Shattered: If Your Kid’s On Drugs.  Bikini Island is not worth even that much effort.

Dumb.  Just dumb.

A Movie A Day #287: Leviathan (1989, directed by George Pan Cosmatos)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

A group of miners are sent into a dangerous environment by an evil corporation.  When they explore an abandoned ship, they unknowingly bring a hostile creature onto their own vessel.  One of the crewman is killed when the creature mutates inside of his body.  The rest of the crew includes a scientist, one strong woman, one woman who cries, and a strong, silent captain.

Sound familiar?

No, it’s not Alien.  

Instead, it’s Leviathan, which could best be described as being Alien underwater with a dash of The Thing tossed in.  The main difference between Leviathan and the films that inspired it is that people are still watching Alien and The Thing while Leviathan is one of the most forgettable films that I have ever seen.  Peter Weller is the captain.  Richard Crenna is the scientist.  Amanda Pays has the Ripley role and Ernie Hudson fills in for Yaphet Kotto.  Daniel Stern plays Sixpack, who turns into a monster after he drinks contaminated Russian vodka.  (It happens to the best of us.)  Meg Foster, with her translucent eyes, represents the corporation.

That’s a good cast and the script was written by David Peoples (who also wrote Blade Runner, Unforgiven, and 12 Monkeys) and Jeb Stuart (who wrote Die Hard and The Fugitive).  The above average special effects were designed by Stan Winston.  Why, with all of these talented people involved in the production, is Leviathan so by the numbers and forgettable?  It probably had something to do with the presence of George Pan Cosmatos in the directing chair.  Cosmatos is also credited with directing Rambo: First Blood II, Cobra, and Tombstone.  The first two films starred Sylvester Stallone, who was known for directing all of his 80s films in every way but name only and everyone knows that Kurt Russell was in charge on Tombstone.

If you want to see Alien underwater done right, watch Deepstar Six.