Category Archives: 80’s Movies

Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983)

Posted on November 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

smokey1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Where is the Bandit?

Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) announces his retirement as sheriff after more than 30 years of service. He decides to spend his time in Florida where he expects to get some rest and relaxation. However, once he becomes a part of the senior community he doesn’t enjoy it and feels the need to get back to what he liked doing most, which was chasing after the elusive Bandit. Big Enos (Pat McCormick) and Little Enos (Paul Williams) offer him a deal to get back into the swing of things. They bet that he can’t drive his police car from Miami, Florida to Austin, Texas, a total of 1,400 miles, in two days with a stuffed fish tied to the top of the car. If he’s able to succeed at the challenge he’ll make $250,000, which Buford readily accepts. To keep him from getting there the two Enos brothers set-up traps along the way in order to stymie his progress, but Buford and his dim-witted son Junior (Mike Henry) manage to get out of each predicament that gets thrown at them, so the Enos brothers decide to call-in Snowman (Jerry Reed) to help them. Snowman is a trucker, but in this instance he gets to pretend he’s the Bandit and even dress in his get-up and drive Bandit’s fancy black and gold Pontiac Trans Am. The new Bandit, who picks-up Dusty (Colleen Camp), a disgruntled used car sales woman along the way, soon catches up with Buford and son and steals their stuffed fish, which turns-the-tables and forces Buford to go after them.

By 1982 both Hal Needham, who had directed the first two installments, and Burt Reynolds, who had played the Bandit in the first two go-arounds, were no longer interested in getting involved in the project for another time as both were already busy working together on Stroker Ace. The studio though didn’t want to give up on the idea of a third installment since the first two had made a lot of money, so they signed-on Gleason to reprise his role as Buford with the promise that he’d have full script approval, which proved difficult as he didn’t like any of the scripts that were handed to him and at one point made the glib remark “with scripts like these who needs writers?’. After going through 11 rejections the writers finally hit on the idea of letting Gleason play dual roles of both the Bandit and the sheriff. Initially Gleason didn’t like this either, but the prospect of hamming up two different characters, which he had already done in Part 2 where he played Buford’s two cousins Gaylord and Reginald, got the better of his ego, so it received the green light.

In October of 1982 the script with Gleason in both roles was shot, but with no explanation for why he was playing the Bandit and everyone else in the story playing it straight like they didn’t see the difference. Eventually upon completion it was sent to a test audience in Pittsburgh where they gave the film unanimously negative feedback convincing the studio that the experimental novelty wasn’t going to work. They then hired Jerry Reed, who wasn’t even in the project before then, and asked him to reprise his role as Snowman who would then disguise himself as the Bandit. Then every scene that originally had Gleason in the role as Bandit was reshot with Reed now doing the part, but all the rest of the scenes that had already been filmed without the Bandit remained intact. The reshot Bandit segments were filmed in April of 1983 and the film eventually got its release in August of that year where the response of audiences and critics alike remained just as negative.

For years this was considered by many to be an urban myth as no footage with Gleason as the bandit was ever seen, but then in 2010 a promo of Gleason playing Buford, but talking about becoming the Bandit, or ‘his own worst enemy’ appeared on YouTube with the title of Smokey IS the Bandit Part 3 and Jerry Reed’s name not appearing anywhere on the cast list. Then in 2016 the actual shooting script that was shot in October of 1982 was downloaded to IMDb’s message board (back when they still had them), which plainly detailed Gleason as the Bandit, but had no written dialogue for those scenes since Gleason was routinely allowed to ad-lib his lines. The lost footage of Gleason in the Bandit scenes is purportedly in the control of the Gleason estate where it’s kept under wraps never to be shown to anyone again by apparently Gleason himself who felt humiliated by the test audiences negative reaction.

As it is the movie is not funny at all and unsurprisingly did not do well at the box office. Nothing much makes sense and the humor is highly strained including a drawn-out segment featuring the Klu Klux Klan, which I found downright offensive. Having a Blu-ray release of the lost footage of Gleason in dual roles would most likely be a big money maker as through the years it’s built up a lot of curiosity. It might be confusing and weird just like the original test audiences said it was, but it couldn’t be any worse than what we ultimately get here, which is as bottom-of-the-barrel as they come.

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My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: August 12, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Dick Lowry

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Crude Comedy, Cult, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Road Movies, Sequels

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The Woman Inside (1981)

Posted on November 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

woman2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: From man to woman.

Hollis (Gloria Manon) is a Vietnam Vet. whose suffers from gender dysphoria and decides to begin the process of gender transition with Dr. Rosner (Dane Clark). The first part of the procedure works perfectly as Hollis, who changes the name to Holly, resembles a woman physically and even takes voice lessons so that her voice is higher pitched. She still has a penis, but that doesn’t prevent her from beginning a relationship with Nolan (Michael Champion) though they don’t sleep together and she’s reluctant to tell him about her condition. Eventually she schedules the surgery while telling Nolan she’ll be gone for a couple of months, but when she returns they’ll be able to fully consummate their relationship. In the meantime she begins to question her decision when she joins a therapy group with other people who’ve had the procedure while also enduring verbal abuse from her Aunt (Joan Blondell) who doesn’t agree with the transition and openly mocks Holly for going ahead with it.

While on the surface this may seem like a groundbreaking film it really isn’t as two movies The Christine Jorgensen Story, which came out in 1970, and I Want What I Want, which starred Anne Heywood and released a year after the other one all preceded this movie by a good decade. It also suffers badly, much like with the Heywood film, where the protagonist doesn’t really resemble a guy even though technically that was what he was biologically born into. Instead Hollis looks much more like a woman with short hair and padded outfits and in a lot of ways kind of like Nancy Kulp the actress best known for starring in ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ TV-show. Her attempts to speak in a lower voice doesn’t sound authentic and I felt it would’ve worked better had a biological male actor been cast in the part as the scenes with Manon trying to come-off as a guy is awkward and not believable.

The scenes where she goes back to the gas station, where she once worked when she was still a guy, and trying to get-it-on with Marco (Michael Mancini), a man she had a confrontation with earlier while she was Hollis, is ridiculous as well. Marco apparently doesn’t recognize her as the person he knew when she was a man, which I just couldn’t buy into, as Holly’s face is essentially she same as it was when she was Hollis except her hair’s is longer and she has a very distinctive facial structure, so there’s just no way someone that knew her in the past wouldn’t at the very least jog some Deja vu if ultimately connecting the two at some point and for him to go to bed with her without a single inkling is just not plausible.

Holly’s relationship with Nolan, particularly the way it begins, is highly problematic too. She works as a taxi driver and literally picks him up on a street corner at random while he’s in a drunken state, but why on earth would she suddenly fall for a guy, especially in that condition? She also comes upon him right after having a very scary and violent confrontation with another male passenger (Louis Basile) making me think she’d be so traumatized that the last thing she’d want to do is allow another male stranger into her car. Their relationship moves too quickly as they’re already talking about ‘love’ and long term commitment by only the next day. Nolan also transforms from a bum to a well-spoken respectable member of society overnight. The scene where they try to ‘outrun an approaching storm’ is stupid too as we see them madly riding their bicycles in an attempt to escape while above them is sunshine and blue skies.

Things improve a bit by the third act particularly the scenes involving the therapy group, which the movie should’ve had more of. Some commenters on YouTube, where the film is currently streaming for free, that also suffered from gender dysphoria seemed to appreciate the movie more than others, so if you personally connect to the subject matter you’ll most likely like it better, but on a technical end it’s botched.

This too marks, at least in most reference sites, as being Joan Blondell’s final film appearance though that’s not completely true. While this was the final film to be released with her presence, in fact it came out after she had already passed away, it was filmed in March, 1978 while The Glove, another movie she was in, was shot in April of that year, so technically that was her last film appearance even though it got released before this one.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: September 15, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 34 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Joseph Van Winkle

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD-R (J4HI.com)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Drama, Movies with a Hospital setting, Obscure Movies

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Cat’s Eye (1985)

Posted on October 30, 2023 | 1 comment

cats

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Three stories involving feline.

With a screenplay written by Stephen King the film is made up of three of his short stories with two of them taken from his 1978 novel ‘Night Shift’ while the third one was penned directly for the screen. The only connecting thread is a stray cat and actress Drew Barrymore who appear in all three tales though only have major parts in the third one.

The first segment is called ‘Quitters, Inc.’ and involves James Wood playing the part of a man named Dick Morrison who is trying to quit smoking and enters an agency that boasts a high success rate of getting their clients to stop. It’s run by Vinny (Alan King) who tells Dick that if he doesn’t stop smoking instantly that they’ll kidnap his wife (Mary D’Arcy) and put her into a room where she’ll receive electrical shocks. To prove his point he puts the cat in the cage and then through a glass partition Dick witnesses the feline getting shocked, which is enough to scare him into quitting on the spot. Yet as the days progress Dick finds himself constantly getting the urge to light-up, but Vinny warns him that he has people who’ll be watching him and if he does dare to backtrack they’ll immediately grab his wife and bring her into the cage. Eventually though the compulsion to have a cigarette gets to be too much and he sneaks a puff only to then face the dire consequences.

This segment tries for black comedy, but doesn’t go far enough with it. While Woods, who usually excels as the twisted types, is quite good as the straight man, I couldn’t understand why he didn’t go the police when his wife gets taken, or why any of the other clients didn’t either, which should’ve gotten the business quickly shut down and the owners prosecuted for running an unethical operation. Famously brash comedian Alan King isn’t given enough leeway to allow his cantankerous persona to go full throttle though watching him wearing a white leisure suit and lip synch the words to the song ‘Every Breath You Take’ makes it almost worth it. It’s interesting seeing James Rebhorn in a bit part as a drunken business man at a party as he later had a prominent role in the movie The Game, which had a very similar storyline to this one involving a business that overtakes their client’s lives and is constantly watching them.

The second segment called ‘The Ledge’ involves a man named Johnny (Robert Hays) who must walk across a thin, outdoor ledge along a penthouse wall many feet above a busy street. If he succeeds then the penthouse owner, Cressner (Kenneth McMillan), will grant his wife a divorce and allow her to marry Johnny whom she’s been dating.

This story is the best one mainly because it has McMillan who is one of the finest character actors of all time and supplies his role with an amazing amount of energy and dark campiness. The scenes of watching Hays trying to maneuver his way on the ledge while being simultaneously attacked by a pigeon and at times McMillan who throws things at him out his window, is really terrifying. You feel like you’re on the ledge with him and I cringed all the way through this one, but in a good way as I really got swept up in it though the twist ending is a letdown.

The third and final segment called ‘The General’ involves a young girl living in North Carolina, named Amanda (Drew Barrymore) who takes in a stray cat much to her nagging mother’s (Candy  Clark) chagrin as she feels the animal may attack Amanda’s pet bird named Polly whom she keeps in a cage in her room. Amanda though likes the cat, whom she’s named General, because he scares away the evil troll, who’s the size of a rat and sneaks into her bedroom at night through a small opening in the wall to steal away her breath while also attacking Polly.

This segment has some interesting special effects, but it’s hard to tell if this is intended to be scary, or comical. It’s probably supposed to be a mixture of both, but I wished it went more for the scares since the movie, which gets billed as being a ‘horror’ doesn’t really have much of them otherwise. This segment also doesn’t really have any twist to it other than the parents finally believing that a troll really does exist in their daughter’s bedroom, but then telling her not to tell anyone about it, but why? It seems like if there’s one of them there could be others and the whole home should be inspected and fumigated and if I were the homeowner I wouldn’t want to spend another minute in there until it was, so having this family just forget about it and go back to normal didn’t seem like a normal response. The troll is also too reminiscent of the devil doll in Trilogy of Terror, which was far more frightening.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: April 12, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 34 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Lewis Teague

Studio: MGM/UA

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Movies Based on Short Stories, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies that take place in the South

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Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989)

Posted on October 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

sleepaway3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Angela commits more murders.

When Maria (Kashina Kessler), who has the words ‘milk’ and ‘shake’ tattooed to her breasts, goes off to camp, she is impeded by a truck driven by Angela (Pamela Springsteen) that runs her over and allows Angela to take on her identity. Angela then returns to the same campsite where she committed her atrocities from the last film, but which is now run by husband and wife Herman (Michael J. Pollard) and Lilly (Sandra Dorsey), who have turned it into a place to help reform teens with a criminal record and renamed Camp New Horizons. It doesn’t take long though for Angela to revert to her old ways and soon both campers and counselors begin disappearing with a frightening regularity.

While Part II was filming producer Jerry Silva was so impressed with what he was seeing that he immediately authorized another sequel with a script for this one being written while that one was still being shot and then only one weekend for pre-production. This also pushed the filming date back into October where not only were the leaves already changing, but in one segment you can see the breaths of the actors when they speak, which certainly does not give the viewer a summery feel.

The second installment had an okay balance between the black comedy and horror, but this one goes overboard into silly season. The initial killing is especially problematic as it has the victim chased down by a big truck in broad daylight. Yes, she eventually gets run over when she runs into a back alley, but the semi starts barreling down on her when she’s walking on an busy road with other cars, so other people would’ve witnessed what was happening and reported it making the odds of Angela getting away with it quite slim. Also, where does a woman, who was 13 when she got locked up into a mental hospital and been there most of the time until her recent release, find the time and money to learn how to drive a big rig and how was she able to steal one?

While Springsteen’s performance was slightly tolerable in the second installment I felt it got plain annoying here. She isn’t scary and even though this is meant as a dark comedy the villain should still have some frightening presence and she has none making for no suspense at all. She also has her hair dyed blonde, in order to resemble Maria, which has her looking even less like Felissa Rose who played the character in the first one and further way from the original concept making this seem like its own little movie with name-only connections to the other two.

The murders though are an improvement and the only thing that saves it. Part II put no creativity or imagination into the killings, but here we get a couple of memorable ones including Angela roasting marshmallows on a fire that’s burning two of her victims. Killing one of the campers via tying them up to a flagpole and then allowing them to drop many feet to the hard cement below was my favorite though the death by lawnmower, which apparently made some of the women members on the MPAA board, who were hired to give the movie its rating, physically sick, deserves honorable mention. Even here though there’s problems like when Angela stands over the body of a man and swings an ax on him, but then returns to the campsite wearing the same clothes she had, which would’ve been highly doubtful as they would’ve most assuredly been covered with blood splatter.

The only element I found interesting was the appearance of Michael J. Pollard who was at one time starring in Hollywood classics like Bonnie and Clyde and was even given a couple of leading man roles in  studio produced films, but here relegated to low budget direct-to-video fare. He isn’t even in it all that much as his character is one of the first to be killed though he does at least get to make-out with a hot young chick (Stacie Lambert), which may have made it worth it.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: August 4, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 20 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael A. Simpson

Studio: Double Helix Films

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Freevee, Pluto TV, Tubi, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

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Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)

Posted on October 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

sleepaway2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Angela returns to camp.

Angela (Pamela Springsteen), the teen killer in the first film, has now been ‘reformed’ after going through years of shock therapy and sexual reassignment surgery. She gets a job as a counselor at a camp named Rolling Hills, which is 60 miles away from Camp Arawak, the site where she had previously killed all those people. The campers and other counselors have no idea about her past and have a hard time getting along with her and she’s quite strict with no tolerance for anyone who breaks the rules. If someone does draw her ire she quickly dispenses with them by reverting to her old habits and after they’re offed she goes and tells the camp leader, Uncle John (Walter Gotell), that she ‘sent them home’, but when she starts doing this to too many kids everyone’s suspicions begin to rise.

While on the technical end the production is decent the storyline is ridiculous even when taken into context of a black comedy, which is what the filmmakers were hoping for, it doesn’t work. The idea that Angela would be let out of a mental hospital in such a short period of time, just 5 years, after killing so many people is absolutely absurd and would create a national, media uproar. Since the murders were all deliberate and plotted out she most likely would be considered sane and stood trial and sent to a regular prison anyways. Why would any campsite hire her? Don’t these people do background checks? A way to have resolved this would’ve been to shown her at the beginning escaping from the mental hospital, and possibly killing a few orderlies along the way, which would’ve helped the story make more sense and also been an excuse to show blood and guts, which is what audiences for these types of films pretty just want anyways.

While Pamela Springsteen, who’s the younger sister of Bruce Springsteen, may be a quality actress in her other films she does not play the role here in a convincing way. What made Angela so memorable in the first was her penetrating stare, which we don’t see any of. Angela’s inner angst came from her gender issue and not that she was some old-fashioned prude, like in this one, that kills people who don’t live up to her high moral standard. It’s like a completely different person who’s connection to the other one is in name only. Apparently Felissa Rose, who played the role in the original, auditioned for the part, but because she couldn’t convey the one-liners in a humorous way that they wanted they decided to go with Pamela. Personally I feel they shouldn’t have even bothered to make it if Felissa couldn’t have recreated the role, which I felt she had earned the right to.

The killings are not as creative either and in fact look downright pathetic. I’ll give some credit to the death in the outhouse where a victim is shoved into the hole were people relieve themselves and then she struggles several times to come up, with more and more waste appearing on her as she does, but otherwise it’s tacky fare especially the end where they come into an abandoned home featuring all the dead victims that looks too obvious as being mannequins with red paint.  I also didn’t care for the nightmare segment, apparently done to help pad the runtime, that rehashes the killing scenes we’ve already seen and is highly redundant.

Fans of the film say it’s the humor that sells it. Yes, some of it is kind of funny like when the male counselor (Brian Patrick Clarke) smells underneath his arm pits after Angela walks away thinking that the reason she was so cold to him wasn’t because she’s a psycho, but more because of his possibly bad body odor. My favorite though is when Ally (Valerie Hartman) has sex with a man and then only after it’s over does she bother to ask him if he has ‘AIDS’. Yet outside of this it’s a letdown. As sequels go it’s not the worst of its kind, but I would’ve preferred more of a straight horror approach that tried to stay faithful to the first one, both in tone and with the cast.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: February 28, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 20 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael A. Simpson

Studio: Double Helix Films

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Pluto, Tubi, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

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Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Posted on October 19, 2023 | Leave a comment

sleepaway

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Somebody’s killing the campers.

In 1975 two children are out on a lake with their father when the boat they’re in capsizes. As they are swimming in the water another boat that is being recklessly driven rams into them killing both the father and one of the children. Fast forward to 1982 one of the surviving children, Angela (Felissa Rose), is now living with her eccentric Aunt Martha (Desiree Gold) and Martha’s son Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten). Because Angela is very shy Martha has decided to send her off with Ricky to summer camp so that she can learn to socialize better. Once there Angela’s quiet nature causes her to be bullied by the other kids, which soon leads to all sorts of violent deaths amongst both the campers and counselors. The camp owner, Mel (Mike Kellin), wants to keep the deaths out of the press and insists they’re all just been accidents, but while he does this he becomes convinced that it’s Ricky who’s behind it and resolves to teach the kid a very brutal and violent lesson.

Initially this was a low budget film made near the end of the golden age of slasher flicks that was not intended to do all that well as most studios had considered this type of horror film to have gone out of style. The critics at the time savaged it, but since then it has gained a strong cult following and considered even ground breaking for its gay subtext and gender identity roles. Writer/director Robert Hiltzik shot it at a camp in upstate New York that he used to attend when he was growing up. The camp atmosphere is very authentic and I was impressed with how many kids they were able to bring on to make it seem like a genuine camp day with tons of kids running around everywhere and all of them age appropriate to the role versus having older kids over the age of 18 trying to look younger than they are, which is what you get in most other teen flicks. The only caveat is that it was filmed in September/October of ’82 and seeing some of the trees in the background changing colors does not help give off much of a summer time feel.

The film is noted amongst slasher aficionados for its grisly deaths. When I first saw this movie back in the 90’s I hadn’t seen as many slasher movie so I wasn’t aware of how the killings here are much different  than what you usually see. In most other films of this nature the victim dies usually by a quick slash of a knife, or strangulation, which isn’t either creative or memorable, but here you get all sorts of novel deaths. Two of the best is when an overweight man (Owen Hughes) has his entire body doused with scalding water and the throbbing blisters on his skin look realistic. He also doesn’t die, which is unusual because usually the victim passes away without that much of a struggle. The death by bee hive in which the victim has his face covered by hundreds of stinging bees is equally vivid and well played-out.

The acting is impressive too as not only do you get to see Christopher Collet in his film debut, and witness his bare behind in a brief bit, but also Felissa Rose, whose quiet stare is quite penetrating and becomes the film’s most lasting impression. She apparently got the part because during the audition they were asked not to convey any lines, but to simply stare off in space while pretending to eat some candy. Prolific character actor Mike Kellin, this was his last film and he was already dying of lung cancer when he did this, is fun particularly his incredibly unfashionable choice of clothes that bring out the worst styles of the 70’s and are reminiscent of a what a middle aged suburban dad of that era might wear when attending a neighborhood backyard BBQ.

Spoiler Alert!

On the negative end I didn’t find Angela, who we learn at the very end is really a boy, to be able to realistically pull-off the murders that she does. I don’t believe she (he) would’ve had the strength to pull out the chair from underneath a heavy-set man, nor dunk the head of a bigger boy under the water, or be able to force a knife through a metal wall of a shower stall. The argument that she’s really a boy doesn’t work as her (his) body type is quite small no matter the sex and the arms are scrawny. The film does well in coming up with novel deaths, but they should’ve worked harder at thinking up killings that a small fame teen could accomplish and still be in the realm of reality, which I don’t feel these are.

With that said it’s still a cool ending. I enjoyed the weird facial expression that Angela gives off once she’s caught and the camera freezes on it while morphing into a green backdrop. The final song that gets played is creepy too, so all in all the film succeeds though it will require some suspension of belief in order to be fully enjoyable.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 18, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 24 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Robert Hiltzik

Studio: United Film Distributors

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Freeve, Pluto, Tubi, Amazon Video, 

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

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Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

Posted on October 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

hellbound

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: The cenobites come back.

The story begins immediately where the first installment ended with Kristy (Ashley Laurence) in the hospital recovering from her injuries while she pleads with Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham) and his assistant Kyle (William Hope) to destroy the bloody mattress that her stepmother Julia (Clare Higgins) died on for fear that it might bring the woman back to life. Dr. Channard finds this possibility intriguing, so he brings the mattress back to his home and then has one of his mentally ill patients bleed on it, which brings Julia, minus her skin, back from the other dimension. She feeds on the patient, which gives her strength and Dr. Channard supplies her with more of them until she is able to take human form. Kristy finds out about it and travels to Channard’s home along with Tiffany (Imogen Boorman), a mental patient at the hospital whom she meets that cannot speak, but has a gift for solving puzzles. When they confront Julia and Channard all four get taken to the other dimension known as the labyrinth that houses the cenobites.

While Clive Barker wrote the script and produced he did not direct and instead handed over the reins to his friend Tony Randel. Randel wanted to turn into more of a dark fantasy and the transitions works making it visually arresting. The mazes that make up the other dimension, which are captured from a bird’s-eye view as we see tiny dots, which represent the characters running, are amazing and I enjoyed Tiffany’s brief foray into a circus like freak show that had a giant fetus with its lips sewn shut, that was creepy and I wished extended further. The scene where Julia bursts out of the mattress to attack the patient I found genuinely horrifying and a dare say one of the scarier moments in horror film history. I also liked the backstory revealing how pinhead (Doug Bradley) came into being. Supposedly this backstory was supposed to take up a major part of the runtime, but due to budget limitations it had to be scrapped and we only see a brief snippet of it through quickly edited segments, which to me was probably best.

The script though does seem a little weak in the way it sets up the premise as it’s way too convenient that the patient in the neighboring room to Kristy’s would have this fixation to solving puzzle boxes, which just makes it highly predictable where its going to go. Have her Dr. show an equal fascination with the puzzles and the cenobite world is again betting long odds and having someone with this dark obsession from outside the hospital track Kristy down would’ve been more believable. The way the mental patients are housed looks dated like we’re seeing an asylum from the 16th century though it still works, if you suspend your belief a bit, with the film’s over the top style.

I was glad that at least Andrew Robinson’s character from the first one doesn’t appear here. He was asked to reprise his role, but refused, which was good because if he had returned the script would’ve had a scene where he and Frank where together in the same body like Siamese twins, which sounded ridiculous. I also don’t like movies that have a character die-off, like Robinson’s did in the first one, and then magically come back to life later, which seems to defeat the purpose. If someone dies then they should stay dead otherwise it’s really not that horrifying seeing anyone get killed if we know that somehow they can still find a way to exist.

Spoiler Alert!

The Julia character, which was already poorly defined in the first installment, gets worse here. Supposedly, she was so madly in-love with Frank that she was willing to kill for him, which meant they must have some sort of special and perverse bond, but in this one she gleefully rips his heart out, literally. In the first one she showed signs of being conflicted over what she was doing, but here she becomes one-dimensionally evil and very boring.

The only cool thing about her is the way she sheds her skin off, but this proves problematic when Kristy puts on the skin in order to disguise herself. The women had different body types and heights, so the skin should not be able to fit her. Also, the inside of the skin was lined with blood from Julia, so putting it on should make Kristy suffocate and quite frankly gag at the grossness of having someone else’s blood seep all over her and thus not be able to wear it for more than a few seconds, or at least that’s how I would respond if I were in that situation, which makes the ending here a bit problematic.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Release: December 23, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 37 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tony Randel

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Plex, Pluto, Tubi, YouTube

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Hellraiser (1987)

Posted on October 16, 2023 | Leave a comment

hellraiser

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Former lover needs blood.

Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) purchases a puzzle box and brings it home to solve it. When he does he finds that it brings out demons known as Cenobites who enjoy inflicting pain on others for their own pleasure. After tearing Frank apart they reset the box and return to their own dimension. Larry (Andrew Robinson), Frank’s brother, moves into the house along with his wife Julia (Clare Higgins), who at one time, unbeknownst to Larry, had a brief affair with Frank. While moving in some boxes Larry cuts his finger and bleeds onto the attic floor where Frank was killed. Pieces of Frank still exist under the floor boards and the blood allows him to regain life though his body still needs more blood to regain its full form. He convinces Julia to bring in strangers from the bar home, so that she can kill them and allow Frank to drink their blood and regain more strength. Julia agrees to do this, but then Kristy (Ashley Laurence) becomes aware of what Julia is doing and is determined to put a stop to it by confronting Frank and taking away his puzzle box.

This was the first movie directed by Clive Barker and is based on his 1986 novel ‘The Hellbound Heart’. After being dissatisfied with how Rawhead Rex, based on another novel Barker had written, he became determined to direct the next feature in order to give it, in his words, some ‘directorial oomph’, which he had felt was missing in the previous film. Special effects wise the film hits all marks and is a precursor to what’s called Horror Porn today with a lot focus put on the effects that are both realistic and cruel. Watching Frank’s body slowly take form by growing out of the floorboards is quite impressive, but my only complaint are the close-ups of the skin particularly when a hook slices it open, which to me resembled more silly putty.

While the effects are great the characters aren’t. All of them come-off as dark and mean and there’s really no one to cheer for, or side with. Supposedly it’s Kristy the viewer is intended to get behind, but she came-off looking older than college aged and more like she was in her late 20’s. She’s also worldy-wise and seems able to handle herself, as is seen when she comes into contact with a couple of lecherous movers, quite effortlessly, so there’s no real character arch. Having her start-off as shy and sheltered and then grow stronger and confident as she learns to take on the cenobites would’ve been much more interesting and would’ve allowed for tension as you would initially question whether she had to guts to confront the evil like she eventually does.

The Julia character is weak too. I didn’t understand what drew her to Frank. Maybe in the novel this gets better explained, but in the movie it’s nebulous. Her brief fling with Frank, in the few backstory scenes that get shown, makes it seem like it was rather cold and distant and Frank doesn’t necessarily treat her all that well, so why would she bother helping to bring him back to life? Maybe she had a sadomaschistic bent, but if that was the case why would she marry Larry who treats her differently almost like he’s the passive and she’s more in control. If the woman prefers the man to be in control then that’s what she looks for in her next relationship not the opposite.

Spoiler Alert!

The twist near the end where Frank kills Larry and then begins to wear his skin gets botched too. It’s intended to be a surprise reveal for the viewer who, like with Kristy, initially think it’s the real Larry though it’s pretty obvious something isn’t right as blood is seeping out on the edges of his face, which Kristy should notice, but apparently because she’s so upset she doesn’t. It would’ve been better though to have the killing played-out and shown the final shocked expression on Larry’s face when he realizes he’s been betrayed by not only his brother, but wife too, which would’ve been priceless.

What’s even more perplexing though is why is Frank speaking in Larry’s voice? He may have his skin, but not the voice box. Even if he had tried to disguise it, in an effort to trick Kristy, I don’t think it would’ve come-off so convincingly. Then, once the gig is up and Kristy realizes it’s Frank, he still continues speak with Larry’s voice by why bother at that point since he no longer needed to fool her?

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: September 11, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 34 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Clive Barker

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Pluto TV, Tubi, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, British Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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Slugs (1988)

Posted on October 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

slugs

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Town overrun by mollusca.

Mike Brady (Michael Garfield) is a health inspector of a small town who’s finding its residents being killed and skinned by some sort of mysterious entity and the only clue are trails of slime that it leaves behind. Later, Mike and his friend Don (Philip MacHale), who works for the sanitation department, along with high school science teacher John Foley (Santiago Alvarez) determine that the culprit are slugs whose unusual aggressiveness may be tied to leakage from an abandoned chemical waste dump.

Based on the 1980 novel of the same name by Shaun Hutson the script follows the book version closely. Director Juan Piquer Simon is best known for the gory cult hit Pieces, but this movie fares a bit better on the technical end. I liked that it was shot on-location in the US, Lyons, New York, where the fall setting helps accentuate a spooky Halloween feel as Simon’s other horror film was done in Spain, but pretended to be Boston though it was easy to see the difference. The tone is a bit more playful, particularly the bouncy score, and seems to be trying for a light tongue-and-cheek approach though it could’ve used more humor and worked better had it went full into a comedy-horror versus trying to play it completely straight, which doesn’t work.

A lot of the problem is buying into these slugs being that dangerous. They’re small, slow, and squishy and can be easily smooshed with any type of hard object. Having people getting overrun and attacked by them just doesn’t seem believable. The film tries to compensate for this by showing the victims after they’ve been devoured, but a person would have to be awfully slow and inept not to be able to get away as all they’d have to do is just step on the things to eradicate them, which makes the whole concept of them being this threatening aggressor rather lame. I did though like the segment where a couple is busy making love and thus don’t notice the slugs coming into their room and ultimately have their nude bodies covered by them when they fall onto the floor, which has a provocavtive quality and I might give some credit to the final scene where Don gets attacked by them while underwater, but the rest of the slug killings come-off as exaggerated and more unintentionally comical than scary.

The fact that the town’s mayor (Manuel de Blas) refuses to listen to Mike and won’t cut-off the town’s water supply in an attempt to keep the slug infestation (they travel through the pipes) under control is too reminiscent of Jaws. In Jaws seeing an elected official refusing to heed the warnings was interesting as it showed how greedy politicians can be just as much a threat to the people as a monstrous shark and maybe even more so, but here the confrontation comes-off as derivative and the actor playing the mayor isn’t as talented as Murray Hamilton who was able to make his character, as slimy as he was, fun and engaging.

The two actors who play the leads are especially bland and it’s no surprise that neither of them had much of a career in front of the camera. Both look like they’d be better suited on a soap opera, and MacHale was a cast member on both ‘Somerset’ and ‘One Life to Live’ as they have chiseled good looks, but a benign presence. In some ways it was refreshing not having teens cast in the lead as so many other horror movies do that, but there still needed to be adult characters that were interesting and multi-dimensional and these guys certainly are not. The lead guy needed some sort of fatal flaw, or some inner weakness he had to overcome that would make him unique, but instead it’s just John Suburbia going through the motions, which for me wasn’t captivating at all. A viewer needs to actually care about these people to get into it and since that doesn’t happen I found the whole thing to get pretty boring the more it went on though the movie poster is cool.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: February 5, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Juan Piquer Simon

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Tubi, YouTube

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Ghost Story (1981)

Posted on October 13, 2023 | 1 comment

ghost1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Four men carry secret.

Four elderly men, Ricky (Fred Astaire), John (Melvyn Douglas), Edward (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), and Sears (John Houseman), who all live in the same small Vermont town and are lifelong friends who call themselves the Chowder Society, get together each week to tell each other ghosts stories. Then Edward’s son Don (Craig Wasson) dies after falling out his apartment window. The men begin having reoccurring nightmares focusing on Eva Galli (Alice Krige) a woman they once knew 50 years earlier. Has she come back from the dead to haunt them and their family members? And just exactly what happened to her as she seemed to have left town without a trace? Only the four men seem to know the answer to this and all of them guard this secret quite closely, but once David (Craig Wasson) comes to town, who is Edward’s other son, he becomes determined to break their silence.

The film is based on Peter Straub’s epic novel, which was released in 1978 and was 483 pages long. Many fans of the book complained that the movie overly simplified the plot, but there is just no way you can condense a long book into a two hour screenplay and for what it’s worth I think both director John Irvin and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen did the best they could and if anything this might’ve worked better as a TV-miniseries where many of the story’s dramatic angles could’ve been played out more. My main complaint is that in the novel Eve Galli character was portrayed as being a manitou who could change shape being a small child at one point and a wasp at another and the film would’ve been scarier had it taken that approach.

I also didn’t like Wasson, who’s great for giving a deer-in-headlights-look, but not much else, playing both the brothers. I can’t remember if they were twins in the book, or not, but having them be twins here wasn’t integral to the plot and makes it a bit confusing. For instance when the brother falls out the window, where he is naked and full frontal nudity showing, which was bit daring at the time for males, the next shot shows Wasson, as the twin, waking out of deep sleep making it seem incorrectly that it had all just been a dream.

The film’s main selling point is seeing four legendary actors, who were all either in their 80’s, or nearing it, still able to carry a film, which they do quite well and if anything it would’ve been nice seeing them in more of it. Astaire’s presence is especially interesting, he apparently threaten to quit the movie several times during the shooting, as he had mostly done musicals and light fare before this one. The females are strong here too particularly Krige in her film debut, who gets shown nude from both the back and the front, who has a very creepy presence. Jacqueline Brookes as Melvyn Douglas’ wife has a few key moments, but Patricia Neal, as Astaire’s wife, gets barely any speaking parts at all and is entirely wasted.

The recreation of the 1930’s was my favorite part and quite well done with the characters behaving in believable ways and making it seem like they weren’t just caricatures of their era, but real people that could exist today. Finding actors to play the roles of the older men in their younger years and come off closely resembling them is amazing and much credit should go to the casting director Mike Fenton for hiring young men with just the right characteristics of their older counterparts. The only caveat is that it has the incident occurring 50 years earlier, just like in the book, but with all the actors clearly looking like they’re in their 80’s a more accurate time period would’ve been 60 years when these guys would’ve realistically been college aged.

Spoiler Alert!

The effects are good though much of the scares hinges off of sporadic close-ups of ghostly Eva’s decomposed face, which gets a bit redundant. The story leaves open a lot of questions like why does Eva’s ghost wait 50 years to haunt the men; why not begin terrorizing them 10  years later or even 20? Also, why does Eva go after the son’s of one of the culprits who wasn’t even born yet when the incident happened instead of going directly after the old guys who were responsible? Also, how does a ghost take humor form enough so that the Wasson character is able to make love to her, he complains that she’s ‘cold to the touch’, but a spirit should be trapped into being just that, or at best possessing someone else’s body, but here we have Eva literally recreated to modern day and am not sure in ghostly logic terms how that gets done though despite these issues it’s still a fun ride.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 15, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 51 Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Irvin

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Ghost Story, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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