Tag Archives: Steven Hilliard Stern

Horror On The Lens: Mazes and Monsters (dir by Steven Hilliard Stern)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there and welcome to October!  This is our favorite time of the year here at the Shattered Lens because October is our annual horrorthon!  For the past several years (seriously, we’ve been doing this for a while), we have celebrated every October by reviewing and showing some of our favorite horror movies, shows, books, and music.  That’s a tradition that I’m looking forward to helping to continue this year!

Let’s get things started with 1982’s Mazes and Monsters!

Based on a best-seller by Rona Jaffe, Mazes and Monsters tell the story of some college students who enjoy playing a game called Mazes and Monsters.  Now, I realize that Mazes and Monsters may sound a lot like Dungeons and Dragons but they are actually two separate games.  One game takes place in a dungeon.  The other takes place in maze, got it?

When the players decide to play the game in some nearby caves, it causes the newest member of the group (Tom Hanks — yes, Tom Hanks) to snap and become his character.  Convinced that he’s living in a world full of monsters and wizard, Hanks runs away to New York.  How does that go?  During a moment of clarity, Hanks calls his friends and wails, “There’s blood on my knife!”

It’s all fairly silly.  There was a moral panic going on about role playing games when this film was made and this film definitely leans into the panic.  But, in its own over-the-top way, it works.  If you’ve ever wanted to see Tom Hanks battle a big green lizard, this is the film for you.  And I defy anyone not to tear up a little during the final scene!

From 1982, here is Mazes and Monsters!  Happy Horrorthon!

Miracle On Ice (1981, directed by Steven Hilliard Stern)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On February 22nd, 1980, the U.S. Olympic Hockey team pulled off one of the greatest upsets in sports history when they defeated the Soviet team during the Winter Olympics.  At a time when America was struggling under Jimmy Carter and the Soviet Union appeared to be winning the propaganda war, a group of unheralded college students brought the U.S. together in celebration as they defeated the Soviets and then went on to defeat Finland for the gold medal.

Everyone knows that the Miracle On Ice, as it was called, served as the basis of the Disney film Miracle, with Kurt Russell playing coach Herb Brooks.  What is now forgotten is that the story was first recreated in 1981, with a made-for-tv movie called Miracle On Ice.  Who played Herb Brooks in that movie?

Karl Malden.

Keep in mind, Herb Brooks was 42 years-old when the U.S. team defeated the Soviets and he was a former player himself.  Malden was 69 when he starred in Miracle On Ice and didn’t look like he had ever worn skates in his life.  Malden is convincingly grumpy and hard-nosed as Brooks but he’s still very miscast and the movie misses the point that one of the reasons why Brooks could coach the young American team was because he was still relatively young himself.  The actors playing the members of the team are better cast, with Andrew Stevens playing team leader Mike Eruzione and Steve Guttenberg cast as goalie Jim Craig.  A lot of time is devoted to Craig’s financial difficulties and his fear that remaining an amateur for the Olympics, instead of going pro, will continue to make life difficult for his family.  On the one hand, it is messed up that the U.S., at the time, did not allow its Olympians to turn professional.  On the other hand, the fact all of the players were considered to be “amateurs’ made their victory over the Soviets all the more special.

It takes a while for Miracle on Ice to get to the main event.  There’s a lot of scenes of Brooks dealing with everyone’s skepticism and Eurozione trying to keep the players from giving up in the face of the Soviet Union’s previous domination of the game.  Once the movie does finally reach the Winter Olympics, it relies on actual footage from the game, which is actually pretty cool.  Watching the real footage, you can still feel the growing excitement in both the stadium and the broadcast booth as people started to realize that the American team was going to pull it off and defeat the Soviets.  It’s impossible not to be inspired by the Soviet Union getting humiliated by a bunch of American college players.  The Soviets may have had the performance enhancing drugs but the Americans had the spirit!

Of the two films about America’s victory, Miracle is definitely the one to see but Miracle On Ice still pays tribute to a great moment.

Draw! (1984, directed by Steven Hilliard Stern)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Harry Holland (Kirk Douglas) is an aging cowboy who used to be one of the old west’s more fearsome outlaws.  When the newly reformed Harry wins $200 in a poker game, local weasel Reggie Bell (Derek McGrath) tries to get out of paying him by accusing Harry of cheating.  A gunfight leads to Harry getting wounded, the sheriff accidentally getting killed, and Harry locking himself away in a hotel room with a Shakespearean actress, Bess (Alexandra Bastedo).

Unsure of how to get Harry to leave the hotel room and surrender himself, the townspeople send meek Deputy Wally Boldgett (Graham Jarvis) to track down the legendary lawman Sam Sterrett (James Coburn).  Like Harry, Sam is a veteran gunfighter and if anyone can face down Harry Holland, it’s him!  Unfortunately, as Wally soon discovers, Sam is now an alcoholic who no longer has much interest in enforcing the law on the frontier.

While Wally tries to sober up Sam and deliver him to the town, Harry and Bess remain in the hotel room and fall in love.

Draw! is a light-hearted western comedy.  Though it deals with the classic western theme of aging outlaws trying to find their place in a changing society, Draw! is more interested in laughs than pathos.  Reggie Bell, for instance, is such a weasel that he’s never a credible villain, despite all of the times that he tries to be.  Even once he’s trapped in the hotel room, Harry is never really worried.  Even when the gallows start to go up in the towns square, it’s mostly played for laughs.

The main appeal of this film is to watch two genre vets act opposite of each other and both Kirk Douglas and James Coburn deliver.  The film is split almost evenly between the two actors, with Coburn especially digging into his role.  When he’s first introduced, Sam is so drunk that he can barely see straight and it’s not until he actually reaches the town and pins on his old sheriff’s badge that he starts to straighten up and become the cool and confident James Coburn that we all know.  Coburn does a great job of showing Sam gradually starting to once again care about things like justice and doing the right thing (regardless of what the law says).  Coburn’s laid back style compliments Douglas’s natural intensity.  When Sam and Harry finally speak to each other, their shared history as friends and competitors comes across naturally.

Draw! is both a good western and a showcase for two iconic actors.

More Pure 80s Hokum: The Park Is Mine (1985, directed by Steven Hilliard Stern)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The_Park_Is_Mine_VideoCoverTommy Lee Jones is Mitch, a troubled Vietnam veteran who has just lost his job and who can not convince his ex-wife to let him spend any time with his kids.  One day, Mitch receives a letter from Mike, a friend who has recently committed suicide.  In the letter, Mike explains that he has been stashing weapons and explosives in Central Park.  Before he discovered that he had cancer, Mike had been planning to take over the park as a symbolic protest against government bureaucracy.  Now that Mike is dead, it is now Mitch’s job to declare, “The park is mine!”

When Mitch takes over the park, he announces that he does not want to hurt anyone.  Instead, he wants everyone in New York to spend some time to thinking about their lives.  “There’s a lot of people like me, who don’t feel like they have any control over their lives,” he says, “Think about how you treat people and how you want to be treated.”  Meanwhile, he will be camping out in the park for 72 hours and anyone who tries to come after him runs the risk of getting shot or blown up.   Then he orders everyone to vote for Bernie Sanders and make America great again.  Or at least he would if this film had been made today, instead of in 1985.

Deputy Mayor Dix (Peter Dvorsky) is so evil that he makes Ghostbusters‘s Walter Peck look reasonable.  Dix is personally offended that Mitch has taken over Central Park.  He is so offended that he is even willing to first call out the National Guard and then hire foreign mercenaries to sneak into the park and track Mitch down.

Reporter Valerie Weaver (Helen Shaver) also sneaks into the park so that she can interview Mitch.  When Mitch captures her, he shouts at her, “GET NEKKID!”  No, it’s not that type of movie.  Mitch just wants to make sure that she’s not carrying any weapons on her.  (The Park Is Mine was made for HBO.  Even in the 80s, HBO understood the importance of getting nekkid.)

One of my favorite things about The Park Is Mine is that, after he goes to all the trouble to paint his face and dress up in camouflage, Mitch still spends the entire movie wearing a blue Yankees cap that would make him an easy target for anyone with a scope.

The Park Is Still Mine

My other favorite thing is that, after Mitch asks everyone to think about how they treat people, a crowd of people gathers outside the park.  When a reporter interviews them, a burly man with a hockey mullet and dressed in denim steps up and says, in a perfect Canadian accent, “My name is Elton Costanza.  I’m from Queens!”

theparkismine_frame11-970x728

I’m not sure if Elton Costanza is meant to be related to George Costanza.  He does look like he could be a distant cousin.

The rest of the film’s depiction of New York City is about as plausible as Elton’s accent.  For a film taking place in New York in the 80s, the streets are too clean and the people are too friendly.  Even when that crowd shows up to support Mitch, they are the most polite crowd that anyone could hope for.  That may be because. though The Park Is Mine takes place in New York, it was filmed in Toronto.

The Park is Mine is both thoroughly implausible, totally heavy handed, and stupidly entertaining. Tommy Lee Jones is one of the few actors who can actually sell a line like, “The park is mine!” and Yaphet Kotto provides good support as a policeman who is sympathetic to Mitch.  Peter Dvorsky is all too believable as the ultimate example of heartless bureaucracy.  The most interesting thing about The Park Is Mine is that it comes down, without a hint of ambiguity, on the side of a domestic terrorist.  That probably would not be allowed to happen today.  In fact, the entire film feels like a relic of a past age, a celebration of an individualistic philosophy that America once embraced but, ever since the trauma of 911, has been in the process of abandoning.  If Mitch was unhappy with America in the 80s, imagine how he would feel about the Patriot Act, NSA spying, too big to fail bailouts, and campus safe spaces.

Like Let’s Get Harry, The Park Is Mine is pure 80s hokum that deserves a nostalgic DVD release.

Hopefully, one with Tommy Lee Jones providing commentary.

The Park Is Definitely Mine