Review: First Blood (dir. by Ted Kotcheff)

Posted on May 23, 2026 by Arleigh

“In the field we had a code of honor: you watch my back, I watch yours. Back here there’s nothing!” — John Rambo

You sit down expecting a brainless 80s action flick, and instead you get a meditation on trauma, bureaucracy, and the American wilderness. That’s First Blood for you. Directed by Ted Kotcheff and released in 1982, this is the movie that introduced the world to John Rambo, but don’t go in hoping for a body count or one-liners. What you actually get is a lean, gritty, and surprisingly sad drama about a guy who just wants to eat a hot meal and ends up accidentally declaring war on an entire small-town police force. And honestly? It holds up to this day. The film is adapted from David Morrell’s 1972 novel of the same name, but if you’ve read the book, you’ll notice some serious tonal differences right away. Morrell’s novel is bleak, brutal, and deeply nihilistic—a product of its era’s raw disillusionment with Vietnam. Kotcheff and Stallone sanded down some of those rougher edges, not to sell out, but to make Rambo a more sympathetic figure. The bones are the same, but the spirit is just a little warmer, and that choice changes everything.

Let’s break down the plot, because it’s deceptively simple. Sylvester Stallone plays John Rambo, a former Green Beret and Vietnam War hero who wanders into the town of Hope, Washington, looking for a fellow soldier he served with. He finds out the guy died of cancer from Agent Orange exposure. That’s the first gut punch. Rambo, already drifting and clearly struggling with PTSD, just wants to grab some food and keep moving. But the local sheriff, Will Teasle (a perfectly cast Brian Dennehy), takes one look at Rambo’s long hair, army jacket, and tired face and decides he’s a vagrant who needs to be run out of town. From a structural standpoint, Teasle isn’t a cartoon villain—he’s a classic dramatic antagonist: a rigid, small-town authoritarian who sees drifters as a threat to his orderly world. That realism makes the whole thing sting because you can almost see both sides. Almost.

When Teasle tries to escort Rambo to the city limits, Rambo walks back into town. That’s his big crime. He gets arrested, and at the station, the deputies start pushing him around. One of them, a veteran deputy named Galt (played with sneering menace by Jack Starrett), is the real problem here. Galt isn’t some young hothead. He’s an older, seasoned deputy who’s clearly been in his role for years, and he’s become entitled on the power of his badge. You can see it in the way he leans into the booking process, the casual cruelty in his eyes, the way he treats Rambo like a stray dog he’s finally allowed to kick. During the shaving scene, as deputies try to clean Rambo up after the arrest, Galt is the one who holds Rambo down, restraining him while another deputy wields the straight razor. He’s not waving the razor himself, but that almost makes it worse—he’s the enforcer, the guy who pins you in place while someone else does the dirty work. It’s a veteran cop who knows exactly how to exert control without getting his own hands bloody. That makes Galt far more chilling than some screaming bully. He represents the rot of unchecked authority, the way small-town power can curdle into casual sadism over time. And that whole humiliating process—being held down, having a straight razor brought to his face—triggers a full-blown flashback for Rambo. Then something clicks. Rambo explodes, beats down half the station, and escapes into the nearby mountains.

Now the hunt begins. Teasle calls in the State Patrol, the National Guard, and eventually his old mentor, Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna), who knows exactly what kind of animal they’re chasing. Trautman warns Teasle that Rambo isn’t just a drifter; he’s a trained killer with a “purple heart, a silver star, and a congressional Medal of Honor.” And here’s the core irony: Rambo doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He just wants to be left alone. But the chase escalates, people die, and by the end, you’re not cheering for the hero to win—you’re hoping he gets some peace.

From an analysis perspective, where First Blood really earns its stripes is its restraint. The action sequences are tense but never escalate into cartoon violence. Rambo uses the forest like a ghost, setting traps, crawling through mud, and surviving on raw squirrel meat. He doesn’t mow down dozens of cops with a machine gun. In fact, the only person he kills is Galt, who falls to his death while hanging off a helicopter because Rambo throws a rock at the chopper. And Rambo immediately looks horrified. That’s the key. Even Galt, as entitled and cruel as he is, isn’t a villain Rambo wants to execute. The kill is accidental, a desperate act of survival. The movie takes its time showing how the very skills that made Rambo a hero in Vietnam—his survival instincts, his aggression, his ability to turn anything into a weapon—now make him a monster in peacetime America. The local cops are out of their depth, but aside from Galt, they’re mostly just scared men doing a job. Nobody else is pure evil. Just broken systems and broken people.

But let’s talk about that novel, because the comparison is crucial for understanding the film’s choices. David Morrell’s First Blood is a much darker animal. In the book, Rambo is more feral, less a wounded hero and more a walking death sentence. He kills multiple cops, not by accident or in self-defense, but with cold, tactical efficiency. The novel has no Colonel Trautman to serve as a moral anchor—Trautman is there, but he’s just as ruthless. And the ending? Devastating. In Morrell’s version, Rambo and Teasle essentially murder each other in a final, bloody standoff. Trautman finishes Rambo off with a shotgun blast to the gut. There’s no catharsis, no plea for understanding. Just bodies and regret. The tone is nihilistic to the core: the system destroyed these men long before the first page, and there was never any hope. Kotcheff’s film pulls back from that abyss. It keeps the violence lean and mostly off-screen. It gives Rambo that famous final monologue where he sobs about his friend dying next to him, about protesters spitting on him, about not being able to turn off the war inside his head. That scene isn’t in the book—not like that. The movie says, “This man is suffering, and maybe he can still be saved.” The novel says, “This man is already dead, and he’s taking everyone with him.” Both are valid responses to Vietnam, but the film’s slightly toned-down approach is why Rambo became an icon instead of a footnote.

From a performance standpoint, Stallone gives the work of his career here. Forget the grunting one-liners of later sequels. In First Blood, he barely speaks, and when he does, his voice cracks. Watch his eyes during that final monologue. After Trautman finally talks him down, Rambo dissolves into a sob. “Nothing is over!” he screams at Trautman. “You don’t just turn it off!” It’s raw, uncomfortable, and genuinely moving. You realize that the whole movie has been one long panic attack for this character. The Rambo that pops up in Rambo: First Blood Part II is a cartoon superhero. The Rambo here is a guy who needed a therapist and a hug about thirty years ago. That vulnerability is the film’s great deviation from the source material. Morrell’s Rambo never asks for understanding. Kotcheff’s does. And that small shift in tone—from nihilism to wounded humanity—is what elevates the film from a grim exploitation picture to a legitimate character study.

On the technical side, Ted Kotcheff’s direction is patient and atmospheric. He shoots the Pacific Northwest like a character—vast, wet, dark, and full of hiding places. The chase scenes are grounded, with long takes and practical stunts. When Rambo jumps off a cliff into a tree and lands with a thud that sounds real, it hurts. There’s no CGI safety net. Jerry Goldsmith’s score is mournful, with lonely woodwinds and a simple, haunting main theme that never pumps you up for a fight. It just makes you sad. The movie even has the guts to end on a downer—but not as brutal as the book’s. Rambo surrenders, crying in Trautman’s arms, and the final shot is him walking away in handcuffs into the rain. No freeze-frame high five. No sequel tease. Just rain. And yet, compared to the novel’s blood-soaked finale, that rain feels almost like mercy. That’s tonal balancing at its finest: the film acknowledges the darkness without drowning in it.

Of course, the cultural memory of First Blood has been completely buried by its sequels. Most people under thirty know Rambo as the muscle-bound machine gun guy from memes and video games. But the original is closer to a western like The Deer Hunter meets a paranoid 70s thriller like The French Connection. It’s a movie about a country that used its soldiers and then discarded them. Teasle represents the willful ignorance of middle America—“I don’t care about your war” is basically his attitude. And Rambo represents the bill coming due. Galt, as that entitled veteran deputy, represents the everyday cruelty of those who’ve held power too long and forgotten what it’s for—the guy who doesn’t need to swing the blade because he’s the one holding you still. That theme hits even harder today, decades later, when veterans are still fighting for basic support and stories of badge-heavy misconduct still dominate headlines. The novel took that theme to its logical, horrific conclusion: no survivors, no lessons learned. The film pulls back just enough to let you breathe, and that one small change turned First Blood from a bleak cult artifact into a mainstream classic. You can argue which version is more honest. But you can’t argue that Stallone and Kotcheff made the right call for the screen.

First Blood rules. It’s a rainy, sad, surprisingly smart action movie that will stick with you longer than any explosion-fest. It’s also a masterclass in adaptation, showing how a slight shift in tone—from nihilistic to wounded—can transform a story without betraying its core. Brian Dennehy is perfect as the stubborn but not evil sheriff. Jack Starrett makes Galt a quietly terrifying portrait of bureaucratic sadism, a veteran deputy who’s learned to love the leash and the privilege of pinning a man down while someone else does the cutting. Richard Crenna brings real weight as Trautman, a father figure who knows he helped raise a weapon he can no longer control. And Stallone acts his soul out. When he whispers “I could have killed them all” in the final scene, he’s not bragging. He’s confessing. That’s why First Blood is a classic. It’s not a recruitment poster. It’s a eulogy—just a little less hopeless than the novel that birthed it. Four stars, easily. Just don’t go in expecting explosions every five minutes. Go in expecting to feel bad, and you’ll leave feeling like you watched something real.

Review: Platoon (dir. by Oliver Stone)

Posted on April 7, 2026 by Arleigh

“We been kicking other peoples asses for so long, I figured it’s time we got ours kicked.” — Sgt. Elias

Platoon is one of those war movies that still feels raw, mean, and strangely alive decades later. It is not just a Vietnam movie about combat; it is a movie about confusion, fear, moral collapse, and what happens when young people are dropped into a nightmare with no real sense of why they are there.

What makes Platoon hit so hard is that it never feels polished in a comforting way. Oliver Stone keeps the film close to the mud, sweat, and panic of the battlefield, but he also spends plenty of time on the uglier stuff that happens between firefights: the resentment, the paranoia, the bullying, and the way men start forming little kingdoms inside a war zone. That is where the movie gets its power. The bullets matter, but so do the silences and side glances, because those moments show how war breaks people down before it even kills them.

Charlie Sheen’s Chris Taylor is a smart choice for the center of the film because he starts out as a kind of blank witness. He is young, idealistic in a vague way, and clearly not prepared for what he has walked into. That makes him easy to identify with, but it also makes him useful as a lens for everything around him. We learn the rules of this miserable little ecosystem as he does. Through Chris, the audience is pulled into the same sense of helpless observation that seems to define the whole experience of the platoon.

Stone’s screenplay makes that connection even stronger because he wrote it himself, drawing on his own experience as a young man who volunteered to go to Vietnam instead of being drafted. That detail gives Chris Taylor’s story a personal charge, since Chris feels less like a fictional stand-in and more like Stone working through his own memory and guilt. It adds another layer to the film’s emotional weight, because the perspective feels lived-in rather than invented for dramatic effect.

The film’s real muscle comes from the conflict between Sergeant Elias and Sergeant Barnes, played with complete commitment by Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger. Elias feels like the last thread of conscience in a collapsing world. Barnes, by contrast, is the kind of man war can easily turn into a weapon: hard, cold, frightening, and convinced that brutality is just realism with the sentiment stripped out. Their conflict gives the movie a mythic quality without draining away its grit. It is not subtle in the usual sense, but it does not need to be. Stone wants these figures to feel bigger than life because that is how they register to a terrified kid in the jungle.

One of the best things about Platoon is how it balances chaos with purpose. A lot of war films either try to turn combat into spectacle or turn it into a lecture. Platoon mostly avoids both traps. The action is ugly, disorienting, and often difficult to follow in exactly the right way. You do not watch these battles and admire the choreography as much as you feel the confusion of everyone inside them. The filmmaking keeps you from getting too comfortable, which is exactly the point. War here is not heroic; it is exhausting, degrading, and terrifying.

That sense of exhaustion matters because the movie understands that war is not made up of only the big moments people remember. It is made up of waiting, heat, boredom, fear, and the slow erosion of judgment. Platoon is at its best when it lingers on that middle ground. The soldiers are not always in immediate danger, but they are always under pressure. That constant tension is what makes the movie feel so oppressive. Even when nothing explodes, it still feels like something bad is about to happen.

Stone also deserves credit for making a Vietnam movie that feels personal without becoming self-congratulatory. You can feel that this comes from experience, but the film never becomes some smug “I was there” statement. Instead, it channels memory into mood, character, and atmosphere. That gives the movie a lived-in authenticity that a lot of war films chase but never quite reach. It feels like a film made by someone trying to tell the truth about a memory that never stopped hurting.

There is also something brutally effective about the way Platoon presents morality as unstable rather than cleanly divided. The movie does not really pretend that everyone is either noble or evil. Instead, it shows how stress, fear, resentment, and power can shove people toward terrible choices. That is a big reason the film still works. It understands that war does not just expose character; it distorts it. Men do things they would never do anywhere else, and the movie keeps asking what is left of a person after that kind of damage.

Still, Platoon is not perfect, and part of its reputation comes from how forcefully it makes its points. Some viewers may find it a little heavy-handed at times, especially in the way it frames innocence, corruption, and betrayal. It is not exactly a subtle film, and it does occasionally aim for emotional impact with both fists. But honestly, that intensity is part of its identity. The movie is not trying to be cool or detached. It wants to wound you a little, and for this material, that approach makes sense.

The performances help keep the film from tipping over into empty grandstanding. Dafoe brings a wounded humanity to Elias that makes him feel like more than just a symbol. Berenger gives Barnes a dangerous stillness that is often more frightening than outright aggression. Sheen, meanwhile, does the important work of holding the center without overpowering the film. He is not the flashiest presence, but he does not need to be. His job is to absorb the madness, and that gives the audience a place to stand inside it.

What lingers most after Platoon is not any single battle scene, but the feeling that the whole movie is about a collapse of trust. Trust in leaders, trust in comrades, trust in the idea that there is some larger meaning to all this suffering. The film strips those things away layer by layer until all that is left is survival and the hope that maybe, somehow, the nightmare will end. That is a bleak place to sit for two hours, but it is also why the film remains so effective. It does not romanticize the experience. It forces you to sit with its mess.

The movie also has a strong visual identity. The jungle is not just background; it feels like an active pressure on every scene. The humidity, the darkness, the mud, and the smoke all help create a world that seems hostile even when nobody is shooting. That physical texture is a huge part of the movie’s success. You can almost feel the environment draining the people inside it. It is less like watching a battle than like watching human beings slowly get swallowed by a swamp of fear and violence.

If there is a reason Platoon still gets talked about so often, it is because it captures a very specific kind of war movie truth: the enemy is not only out there. Sometimes the real damage comes from within the unit, within the chain of command, within the soldier’s own mind. That is a grim idea, but Platoon never feels empty or cynical for saying it. It feels honest. And honesty, in a movie like this, goes a long way.

In the end, Platoon is powerful because it refuses to let war look clean, noble, or emotionally tidy. It is messy, relentless, and often hard to watch, but that is exactly why it matters. It is one of the defining Vietnam films for a reason, and even with its blunt edges, it earns that status through sheer force of feeling, strong performances, and a bleak sense of truth that never really lets up.

Brains, Laughs, and Decline: The Uneven Legacy of Return of the Living Dead

Posted on October 3, 2025 by Arleigh

Subverting the Zombie Canon: Satire, Genre-Bending, and Decay in the Return of the Living Dead Series

When talking about cult horror films, the Return of the Living Dead series holds a special place—not only as a spin-off from George A. Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead, but as a unique creative force in its own right. Thanks to a legal split between Romero and co-writer John Russo over rights to the “Living Dead” name, Russo and director Dan O’Bannon got to imagine a parallel zombie universe. This franchise quickly carved out its own identity, mixing horror, black comedy, and punk spirit in a way that both paid tribute to and upended zombie tropes.

Reinventing Zombie Lore with a Wink

The original Return of the Living Dead (1985) starts with a clever “what if” twist: what if Romero’s Night wasn’t just a movie, but a dramatized cover-up of a real government disaster? This meta idea instantly frames the film as self-referential and playful, setting a tone unlike anything out at the time.

Central to the film’s identity is the invention of 2-4-5 Trioxin, a fictional military chemical designed to clear marijuana crops which instead raises the dead—zombies with surprising new abilities. Unlike the slow, drooling zombies Romero popularized, these ghouls sprint, talk, and set traps. Their hunger is peculiar as well: they crave brains exclusively, as it eases the pain of being undead. And the old rules of zombie combat? Forget shooting them in the head. These zombies resist it, raising the stakes and scare factor.

This refreshing rewrite of zombie rules allowed the movie to be both frightening and fun. The zombies were smart but still monstrous, turning classic horror expectations on their head in a way that invited both laughter and fear—a tricky balance that few horror comedies manage.

Playing with Comedy, Panic, and Punk Rock

One of the greatest strengths of the original film is how it embraces horror-comedy so naturally. It doesn’t shy away from being funny while still delivering tension. James Karen and Thom Mathews excel as the main pair—Karen’s frantic, over-the-top panicked man paired with Mathews’ straight, slowly succumbing counterpart create a perfect comedic rhythm. Their slow transformation into zombies adds a tragic dimension to what could have been simple slapstick. Meanwhile, Don Calfa’s mortician character and Clu Gulager’s warehouse owner provide a grounded center amidst chaos.

The punk subculture flavor adds another unique texture. Linnea Quigley’s famous graveyard striptease encapsulates the 1980s’ blend of irreverence, sexuality, and horror obsession. The scene is shocking, hilarious, and iconic—one of those moments that encapsulates everything this film is about: having fun with taboos while not losing the darker undercurrents of mortality and decay.

Beyond laughs, there’s biting satire here. The film skewers the government and military’s hubris—scientists create a superweapon they can’t control, leading to chaos and destruction. This reflects 1980s American anxieties about bioweapons, government cover-ups, and nuclear fears. Horror and comedy collide to reflect cultural distrust and paranoia.

The Problem of the Sequel: Part II’s Familiar Ground

When Return of the Living Dead Part II came out in 1988, it felt like the franchise was stuck in a loop. With much of the original cast returning in near-identical roles, and lines and situations seemingly recycled, the film circles back to the same story. This self-copying invites a mix of amusement and disappointment: it seems the filmmakers didn’t believe they could improve on the original and decided to replicate it instead.

While it has its moments—good practical effects and a rollicking tone reminiscent of the first film—it leans harder into comedy, sometimes at the expense of the horror. The suburban setting and clearer military lockdown raise the action stakes, but the humor feels broader and less sharp, which can make the movie seem a bit cartoonish.

In a way, Part II comments on the pitfalls of horror franchises: once you’ve struck gold with an unexpected idea, sequels often struggle to regain that freshness. This installment is entertaining, but signals the beginning of the franchise’s creative plateau.

Much Darker Territory: Part III’s Horror and Romance

With Return of the Living Dead 3 in 1993, things take a major tonal shift. Brian Yuzna’s direction removes much of the comedy and replaces it with body horror, gore, and a genuinely tragic romance. The story centers on Curt and Julie, two teenagers tragically pulled into the military’s secret zombie experiments. After Julie is accidentally killed and resurrected, she becomes a zombie who feeds on brains but manages her hunger through extreme self-inflicted pain.

This grim take pushes the franchise into more serious, intense horror territory, with heavy themes of love, loss, and bodily autonomy threaded throughout. Julie’s tortured transformation is both tragic and unsettling, symbolizing not only the loss of life but also the torment of trying to hold onto humanity while losing it from within.

Yuzna’s effects are grisly in the finest tradition of ‘90s practical SFX. The film revives the franchise’s sense of danger and stakes by mixing romance with horror, delivering something emotionally resonant and viscerally impactful. While it diverges sharply from the earlier comedic tone, Part III proves the series’ flexibility and capacity for reinvention.

Creative Collapse: Parts IV and V’s Direct-to-Cable Downfall

Sadly, the wheels come off with Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis and 5: Rave to the Grave, both made in 2005 and directed by Ellory Elkayem. Shot back-to-back and released direct-to-cable, these films are pale shadows of the earlier entries.

They ditch the original’s clever mix of horror and humor entirely. Instead, we get generic corporate conspiracies, confusing Eastern European settings, weak scripts, and inconsistent zombie characterizations. The zombies lose their unique “brains only” horror and instead act like run-of-the-mill undead. Even the acting is amateurish, with only Peter Coyote standing out briefly as a sinister scientist.

Part 5 further muddies continuity by introducing Trioxin as a rave drug, leading to a chaotic rave/zombie apocalypse scenario that is both baffling and poorly paced. The low-budget effects and uneven pacing betray the exhaustion and lack of passion behind these entries.

These final two films underscore a common fate for franchises that outlive their creative spark—once inventive mythology becomes shallow cliché, and attempts to cash in feel uninspired. Instead of honoring their roots, they become muddled and forgettable.

Why the Series Matters

Despite its uneven legacy, Return of the Living Dead remains important for what it dared to do in horror cinema. The first film’s originality influenced countless horror comedies and redefined how zombies could be portrayed. Its self-awareness and invention paved the way for postmodern horror, where genre is as much about commentary as it is fear.

The third film’s daring shift to tragic body horror further demonstrated the potential for zombie films to explore complex emotional and societal themes beyond gore or giggles.

While the later sequels falter, their failure serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of diluting distinct voices and creative risks in franchise filmmaking.

Ultimately, Return of the Living Dead survives in cultural memory as a zombie series that captured the spirit of its time—punk rebellion, Cold War paranoia, and genre self-mockery—with flashes of brilliance that continue to entertain and inspire.

Guilty Pleasure No. 76: Code of Silence (dir. by Andrew Davis)

Posted on March 10, 2025 by Arleigh

The 1980’s saw the what film enthusiasts saw as the death of the grindhouse experience. Major cities had begun to clean up their skid rows and the $1 all-day matinee theaters were closing down left and right. By the late 80’s gone were the buckets of stale popcorn, watered down sodas, carpets so sticky that one didn’t even want to think was made them that way and, of course, the sketchy individuals who always seemed to in every showing no matter the time.

Yet, the grindhouse never truly left the cinema, but became a bit more “mainstream” under the many independent studios that came about during the early 80’s. You had Cannon, Carolco, United Film and Orion to name a few. It was with Orion that we get the latest guilty pleasure of mine and that was the one really good film that Chuck Norris ever made: Code of Silence.

Chuck Norris was the Jason Statham and Scott Adkins of the 1980’s action scene. He was cranking out action flicks almost on a yearly basis trying to cash in on not just the Bruce Lee martial arts phase, but also the action hero phase that was beginning to be dominated by Schwarzenneger and Stallone. While Norris never reached the heights of those two action stars, his list of action films from the 80’s and into the early 90’s were decent and, dare I say, very workmanlike.

Code of Silence was the one film that had a decent story of the lone good cop that has to fight not just the criminals but also the corrupt cops and system that allows crime to run rampart. Norris as Sgt. Eddie Cusack of the Chicago PD has become the template for the loner hero cop who ends up not just fighting the mob (of differently nationalities) but also a corrupt partner and, they always have one or two, a couple of retired cops who help him but also die in the process.

Norris doesn’t lean heavily on the martials arts of his previous action films. Code of Silence was the film that helped transition him to the gunplay of the action flicks that the public couldn’t get enough of. While the film could and never truly escape it’s grindhouse influence it was very good enough both in characters, plot and direction (director Andrew Davis would later film later classics with The Fugitive and Under Siege).

The film really gets its grindhouse bonafides with the addition of Henry Silva as the main antagonist. Silva would make a career out of being the villain in many 80’s action flicks and in Code of Silence he steals the limelight with his over the top performance as Colombian drug trafficker Luis Camacho. Where Jack Palance got more praise for being the preeminent villain and tough guy of from the 70’s and 80’s, I do believe that Silva was the more sinister of the pair when it came to their performance.

Code of Silence shows that Chuck Norris can carry a film with minimal dialogue and on the power of his silent, seething stares. He was never one for quippy one-liners and Code of Silence is all the better because of it.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Guilty Pleasure No. 22: Battle Beyond the Stars (dir. by Jimmy T. Murakami)

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Arleigh

Two of my favorite films of all-time happen to be very similar. In fact, one could say that they’re pretty much the same films. I’m talking about Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and it’s Western-remake by John Sturges, The Magnificent Seven. Kurosawa’s film is one of the greatest films of all-time and it’s no wonder that many have taken the film’s story of the downtrodden hiring a band of misfits, rogues, but still honorable men to help them fight against huge odds.

One such film that tries to add onto Kurosawa film’s legacy was the Roger Corman-produced scifi-adventure film Battle Beyond the Stars. This 1980 film was one of Corman’s many attempts to cash-in on the Star Wars phenomena, but in his usual low-budget style.

For a low-budget scifi film, Battle Beyond the Stars happened to have quite a cast one doesn’t usually see in such productions. While it had such grindhouse and exploitation regulars as John Saxon and Sybil Danning, it also starred the wholesome Richard Thomas from The Waltons and George Peppard (who would later become famous with a new generation as Hannibal Smith of The A-Team). The film would be directed by Jimmy T. Murakami, but from watching the film one could see Corman’s fingerprints all over the production from the script which was pretty lean and cut to the basic outline of Kurosawa’s original film. There’s not much fluff to bog down the pacing of the film.

This film has always been a guilty pleasure of mine because it so resemble Seven Samurai and The Magificent Seven, but adds in it’s own unique style and look to a well-worn and well-trodden plot. It was much later that I found out that James Cameron had a major hand in the special effects work in the film. Think about that for a moment. The self-proclaimed “King of the World” who literally breaks film budget records every time he begins work on a film did FX work on battle Beyond the Stars whose effects budget probably wouldn’t buy a day’s worth of crafts table eating for his most modestly budgeted films.

Lisa Marie always loved to say that grindhouse and exploitation films are some of most honest films out there. There’s no bullshit to what we see on the screen. It’s filmmakers forced to be daring and inventive because the lack of resources forces them to think outside the box. Battle Beyond the Stars might be seen as a mediocre attempt to cash-in on a scifi cultural phenomena, but it does so with a go for broke mentality that makes it such a fun film to watch. It’s not the greatest thing Corman has ever produced and some would even call it a very bad film, but once one looked past it’s rough and flawed surface then one could see a gem in the rough hidden beneath.

Oh, this remake of the remake of the original also happened to star one Robert Vaughn who was one of original Magnificent Seven.

Quickie Review: Return of the Living Dead (dir. by Dan O’Bannon)

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Arleigh

Return of the Living Dead has to go down as one of the funniest and inventive take on the zombie subgenre that began after the release of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Due to a dispute between Romero and John Russo (co-producer of the original NOTLD), the sequels to Night of the Living Dead that were produced and directed by Romero dropped the “Living Dead” part in their titles. Russo retained the rights to create sequels using those words while Romero just kept the word “Dead” in the follow-up films to Night. It took Russo awhile, but he finally got to use those naming rights with 1985’s Return of the Living Dead.

Even though there were some acrimony between Romero and Russo, the screenplay for Return of the Living Dead makes several complimentary nods to Night of the Living Dead. The film’s premise was what if Romero’s first film was actually based on a true event and that the government and the military covered it up before people got a wind of it. The film takes that simple premise and creates an action-packed horror-comedy that still stands the test of time.

Unlike Romero’s films, Return of the Living Dead actually gives an explanation as to what causes the dead to return to life with a singular purpose of attacking the living. The cause of all this undead mayhem was due to a bioweapon nerve toxin called 2-4-5 Trioxin which was originally designed by the military to defoliate marijuana crops. To say that the side-effects of the gas had some interesting effects was an understatement. The zombies created by Trioxin do attack the living but they’re also much more livelier and smarter (retaining agility, strength and mental capacity of their previous life) than the traditional Romero-zombies. They also do not feed on just humans. They also feed on other animals. The last major difference between the Romero-zombies and the Trioxin-zombies was that the latter only wanted to feed on live brains to end the pain of being dead. These differences made for a much faster-paced horror movie. As much as I consider the Romero zombie films as the best out there, I hold a special place in my horror-fan heart for these Trioxin dudes.

The story by John Russo would be turned into a screenplay and directed by Dan O’Bannon also made Return of the Living Dead behave more as a horror-comedy than just a straight-up horror. The dialogue between the characters were full of great one-liners that would’ve sounded cheesy if not for the great and game performances from the cast. Clu Gulager as Burt Wilson (owner of the medical supplies warehouse where the lost canister of Trioxin was being stored in) did a great job being incredulous at the events happening around him. His back and forth with his friend Ernie (played with Peter Lorre eyes by Don Calfa), the local mortuary’s gun-toting mortician, keep the film lively and hilarious in-between scenes of horror.

The scene stealers in the film must go to a bumbling pair of Burt’s employees who inadvertently release the toxic and reanimating gas from the warehouse’s inventory of Trioxin canister. James Karen as the worldly and cynical Frank was a riot from start to end. His over-the-top performance had me in stitches. He played Frank with such a manic, panicky style that it was difficult not to get caught up in his hysterics. To balance out Frank’s Hardy with his more subdued, but no less panicked Laurel, was Thom Mathews as Freddy. Mathews would later appear in other horror movies in the decade and even reprise a similar role in this film’s sequel. His performance as the straight man to Karen’s fool was also very good. His slow decline into becoming one of the zombies after the initial inhalation of the Trioxin gas in the film’s introduction was funny and sad. Of all the zombies in the film he gets the brunt of the slapstick sequences, especially once he starts hunting his girlfriend for her brains. His professing of his love for her and at the same time wanting her to give up her brain was hilarious, if not creepy as well.

Another thing that Return of the Living Dead had that made it different from Romero’s zombie movies were the scenes of gratuitious nudity throughout the film. A majority of the nude scenes were courtesy of scream queen Linnea Quigley as the punk rock Trash whose morbid obsession with all things death made her an early victim for the zombies and later on as one of their leaders. I know that kids my age at that time replayed over and over the scene of her strip-tease down to nothing atop a graveyard headstone. Even now many fans of the film consider that sequence as one of their favorite.

Return of the Living Dead still counts as one of the best zombie movies out there and preceded the UK’s Shaun of the Dead by two decades as a great horror-comedy. There was a sequel a few years later to capitalize on the popularity of the first film. It tried to capture the hilarity and horror of the first one but did not measure up in the end.

Quickie Review: Wolfen (dir. by Michael Wadleigh)

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Arleigh

1981 was a great year for wolf movies. There was the excellent An American Werewolf in London by John Landis and Joe Dante’s equally creepy The Howling. To finish off the trifecta of werewolf films for the year there’s Michael Wadleigh’s Wolfen. Wadleigh’s film was a very good werewolf tale that added a bit of Native American folklore to the typical lycanthrope story, but it’s slightly overlong running time keeps it from being as great as Landis’ and Dante’ contributions.

Wolfen takes place in the city of New York and its growing urban jungle of decaying and condemned buildings in the city’s ghettos. One has to remember that the late 70’s and through on the mid-80’s the inner-cities of most of the major metropolitan cities in the US have turned into rundown ghettos rife with drug problems, high-crime rates and unemployment. It is in this setting that Wolfen takes place in. The film used the screenplay co-written by horror veteran novelist Whitley Strieber and his quirky style heavily influences this werewolf story. Strieber’s screenplay mixes together a police procedural, political intrigue, business corruption, race and class relations, Native American lycanthrope folklore and horror. Wolfen tries to combine all these different elements together as well as possible and it mostly succeeds, but there’s times when the film gets dragged down a bit trying to accomplish this.

The cast was made up of mostly new actors (well young and new at that time) with a few veteran actors holding things together. Albert Finney gets the choice role of NYPD Detective Dewey Wilson who begins investigating a series of brutal murders of three individuals whose race, class and personal status brings no discernible clues that ties them together. Joining him in his investigation — which Wilson gradually suspects has some sort of supernatural angle to it — were the very young Diane Venora and Gregory Hines. Edward James Olmos plays a Native American whose knowledge ties to who or what was involved in the killings might be closer than everyone thinks. The performances from all involved were pretty good though Hines comic relief performance was a bit too blackface in its tone and execution. 1981 Hollywood was still not ready to discount such racial stereotypes and it gives Wolfen a certain sense of creepiness and insensitivity. Maybe the screenplay was written just that way to highlight one of the film’s themes of racial and class inequality. If it was then Strieber sure did an excellent job of hammering home the point.

There’s a point in the film where we find out the nature of these wolfen and it does stretch the usual definition of the typical werewolf story. But looking back on it now this version told by Strieber and Wadleigh does lend credence to native folklore about wolves who were cunning as men and who preyed not just on the animals in their territory but hunted men as well. Whether they’re wolves or men in the shape of wolves really is left to the audience’s imagination even after the brief explanation of the wolfen and it’s role in the legends and myths of Native Americans.

The film had very creepy moments whenever the story switches over to be told through the viewpoint of the wolfen. The skewed perspective the camera takes on to signify that we were seeing things through the eyes of the wolfen was disorienting and creepily well-done. Wolfen never really has pure horror moments in the film though in the hands of a director like Carpenter these sequences definitely would’ve raised the level of dread and horror. Wadleigh does a good enough job, but it seemed like he was treating the horror aspect of the story with less attention than it was its due.

Wolfen marks the weakest of the werewolf trilogy of 1981, but thats not to say that it was a bad film. The finished product was a well-done film and its attempt to be very ambitious in its storytelling has to be commended. The fact that the filmmakers and all involved were able to keep all the different themes and genres together without having the film spiral into utter confusion makes it a worthwhile werewolf film. It may have been the weakest of the three films mentioned but it wasn’t by much.