Category Archives: 80’s Movies

Blood Lake (1987)

Posted on October 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer stalks 6 teens.

Filmed on-location in Cedar Lake, Oklahoma by a bunch of young amateurs convinced they could make a horror movie just as good as the studios. Mike Berry, who stars as Mike, wrote the screenplay and then shopped around his script, but could find no takers until he bumped into Tim Boggs at a local retail store who agreed to take on the task of directing and even quit both of his jobs to do it. The shooting took place over a course of 10 days with the storyline revolving around 6 teens who go to the house of Becky (Angela Darter) whose parents are away, which will allow them to party for the whole weekend only to have it interrupted by a deranged killer (Tiny Frazier) upset because the house they’re in used to be owned by him.

When I hear about films like this I harken back to Harold P. Warren, who wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Manos: The Hands of Fate, which has become quite infamous as one of the worst movies ever made, but also started as a bet where Warren, being a local salesmen, bet famous screenwriter Stirling Stilliphant, who was in the El Paso, Texas area scouting for locations for an upcoming film, that he could direct a horror movie that could be just as good as anything Hollywood could churn out. Of course the results where abysmal, but you can’t help but feel that the cast and crew here were equally in over their heads.

On the positive side it starts out a heck of a lot better than the Warren film, which had extended shots focusing on the passing Texas countryside for no apparent reason and got visually boring quite fast. The excuse for this was that Warren had expected to shoot the opening credits over this, but for whatever reason it got botched leaving a lot extraneous and pointless footage. Here though they get it right with a nicely edited bit showing the kids driving in a car while the credits and music play over it. In fact the editing is quite good and helps equalize the cheap video look that was done via a VCR camera. The dialogue is also well done as director Boggs was smart enough to allow the teens to paraphrase their own lines to make it sound natural and thus the characters come-off as more believable than in most other bigger budgeted horror flicks, so we’ll score one for the Okies on that.

Unfortunately everything else is pretty bad. The big problem is that not enough happens. For a film with Blood in its title you end up seeing very little of it. There’s a quick killing at the beginning, which doesn’t show much gore, and then another 48 minutes before you see another one. There’s a teaser death where you see a body floating in a lake, but it turns out to being just a prank. I realize other 80’s slasher flicks would sometimes employ this, but when you’re a cheap production you can’t play with the audiences expectations like that and you got to get to the gore and violence pretty quick to hold their interest. Spending almost 20-minutes watching the kids go water skiing turns the whole thing into a snooze feast and it’s very unlikely anyone is going to want to stick with it after that.

Spoiler Alert!

The killings, once they finally get going, aren’t impressive and all done by a guy who doesn’t look frightening at all and has no distinguishing features to make him interesting. The knife he uses is quite small and having him use a sword, or ax, or something big and sharp would’ve elicited more terror. The reason for why he goes on a killing spree is that apparently he sold the house to the new owners, but they ended up ‘not paying for it’, but how does someone take possession of the home if no money transaction takes place? You can’t really ‘sell a home’ if no actual sale happens.

The ending is confusing too as the killer’s body disappears and then it gets intimated that he reappears inside the ambulance that’s taking the injured teens to the hospital though we don’t really see this as all that gets shown is the ambulance driving away with laughter in the background. The final sequence becomes almost surreal as the killer magically reappears at the home site only for him to see all the water in the lake drained out. Apparently this was, as the closing credits intimate, an ‘act of God’, but what does it have to do with the story?

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Runtime: 1 Hour 22 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Tim Boggs

Distributor: United Home Video

Available: DVD, Fandor, Plex, Tubi, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with a rural setting, Slasher/Gore

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Poltergeist III (1988)

Posted on October 8, 2023 | 2 comments

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Ghosts haunt a skyscraper.

Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) has been sent away by her parents to Chicago so that she can live with her Aunt Diane (Nancy Allen) and her husband Bruce (Tom Skerritt) along with Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) Bruce’s teen daughter from a previous marriage. Carol Ann is told that this is just a temporary set-up while she attends a school for gifted children. The school though is more of a therapy center for kids with emotional issues and run by Dr. Seaton (Richard Fire), who doesn’t believe Carol Ann’s stories about seeing ghosts and thinks she’s making it up to get attention and has some sort of ability to create mass hypnosis to get others to believe it too.  Soon after moving there the evil Reverend Kane (Nathan Davis) returns and begins terrorizing Carol Anne by appearing in mirrors as he continues his attempts to bring her back to the other side.

In another example of a sequel nobody asked for writer/director Gary Sherman, who had some success helming horror flicks early in his career that gained a cult following like Dead & Buried manages to inject an interesting vision. Moving the setting away from a suburban home and into a city skyscraper was a good idea as the story needed to progress somewhere and not just be a rehashing of things again and again in the same place, or one that looks just like it, would’ve give the whole thing a very redundant quality. Visually it looks sharp, I especially liked the scenes with frozen ice, with the special effects done live and not matted onto the film print later on like in the first two. The use of the mirrors, which are used as sort of window to the other dimension where the evil spirits reside, does offer a few jolts.

I liked that O’Rourke reprised her role and she gives an excellent performance, though she’s not seen all that much as she gets kidnapped and taken to the other side, which forces others to go after her just like in the first two installments, but it’s fun seeing her grow into a more accomplished actress who can handle broader speaking lines and able to hold her own in a wider variety of dramatic situations. The only negative is her visible swollen cheeks, the result of cortisone treatment shots that she was getting due to a misdiagnosis of Crohn’s disease, which gives her a chipmunk type look.

Zelda Rubinstein also reprises her role as Tangina, but like in the second installment, isn’t seen enough and it’s disappointing when she goes away. Davis takes on the role of the Reverend when Julian Beck, who played the role in Part II, died, but the character is only seen sporadically and doesn’t have all that much of a presence and an effective horror film needs a villain, whether it’s in human, spirit, or monster form, with adequate screen time to build tension and here that’s just not the case.

The storyline starts to become derivative of other better known horror flicks especially the use of the possession theme where we have an evil Carol Anne running around tricking everyone that she’s the real one, but isn’t. Her transformation into a devilish ghoul resembles a cheap imitation of Linda Blair from The Exorcist. I admit the first time it’s done it caught me off guard and was good enough to elicit a minor jolt, but then they go back to it too often where it becomes boring and predictable. The shots showing Carol Anne being spotted running away around corners and through doorways while wearing a red pajama suit is too reminiscent of Don’t Look Now, a Nicholas Roeg directed classic that dealt with parents searching for their missing young daughter and would occasionally spot her, or what they thought was her, running around street corners and through doorways in Venice while also wearing a bright red piece of clothing.

The biggest mistake though was that the reins weren’t fully handed over to O’Rourke as she was the only real carryover from the first two. Rubenstein too should’ve been given more of a part, but in any case the action should’ve followed Carol Anne all the way through and having it instead cut over to Skerrit and Allen’s characters and making them the main stars isn’t interesting at all. They come-off as quite bland and benign and just thrown in because Craig T. Nelson and Jobeth Williams didn’t want to recreate their roles. O’Rourke by this stage had enough acting ability that she could’ve carried it and the audiences would’ve excitedly been there with her the whole way, but unfortunately during the second and third act she gets relegated to cameo status while Skerrit and Allen take over, which are people we care nothing about and makes it seem like a completely different type of movie entirely.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 10, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Gary Sherman

Studio: MGM/UA

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies that take place in Chicago, Sequels

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Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

Posted on October 7, 2023 | 1 comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Family gets terrorized again.

The Freeling family (Craig T. Nelson, Jobeth Williams, Heather O’Rourke, Oliver Robins) has abandoned their old neighborhood in Cuesta Vista where they were traumatized by ghosts and into the house of Diane’s elderly mother Jess (Geraldine Fitzgerald). They hope here their lives will return to normal, but at the site of where their old house once stood a ground crew digs up a cave filled with the skeletal remains of people that were lead by the Reverend Henry Kane (Julian Beck) an insane man who lead his followers to death many years prior because he proclaimed the world was going to end. His spirit though remains restless and he appears in human form to go after Carol Ann by calling her through her toy telephone. The Freeling parents realize they are no match for him, so Taylor (Will Sampson) an Indian shaman is brought in to protect their daughter as well as giving the father tips on how to fight-off the evil spirit.

As sequels go this one isn’t too bad. The script still has enough interesting twists to keep it intriguing and the special effects are greatly improved. I also liked here that we get to see the other world where the spirits live something that was woefully missing in the first. One of my favorite moments is when Steve swallows some Tequila that has a worm in it that is possessed by the spirit of the evil Kane. The worm then grows inside Steve’s body until he has to vomit it out where it continues to grow into large proportions, which is a genuinely freaky moment. Some other good scenes are when Diane gets swallowed up into the ground by skeletons reaching up from the dirt and pulling her in and watching Robbie, the son, get tied up by the metal of his braces is really cool too. It’s unlikely there would be enough metal from his braces to cover his whole body like it does here, but the segment still gets points for its creativity.

The characters though aren’t quite as interesting. The women had stood out in the first installment, but that all gets lost here. Jobeth Williams, who played this groovy, adult flower child who was open to new things and experimenting around, is much more of a subdued mom here behaving like a typical suburbanite mother would, which is boring. O’Rorke is still good and so is Rubenstein though her role is greatly diminished and I wasn’t sure why the Indian character needed to be brought in at all as I would’ve thought Zelda could’ve handled those duties. Sampson’s performance is good, but his role just seemed unnecessary. Domonique Dunne, who played the older daughter in the first one is nowhere to be seen due to her having died in real-life at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, but I still thought they should’ve mentioned something even if it was just in passing like she was away in college to help explain her absence.

On the male end Nelson’s part is much more colorful as in the first one he was rather transparent, but he gets some good lines and manages to completely take over the proceedings though I wished it had been a little more balanced between him and Williams. Julian Beck though who plays the evil preacher stands-out the most. He had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and ended up dying before the production had wrapped, but the illness did help give him a gaunt appearance, which helped accentuate his creepiness.

Logic wise there were a few holes. Having the insurance company completely unaware that Freelings house had essentially gotten eaten-up by the spirits didn’t make sense. I know the idea was that they didn’t want any publicity, but their other neighbors had witnessed the house disappearing too and there’s just no way that someone wouldn’t have leaked that to the press and it becoming a major news story as houses evaporating into thin air in front of many witnesses just doesn’t happen everyday.

Having the boy and girl continue to sleep in the same bedroom looked very off. In the first one they also shared a room, but they were much younger and here the boy already has braces making it look like he’s ready to enter adolescents and he for sure then should be in his own room. The death of the grandmother gets handled in an equally awkward way as the kid wakes up and has no idea what the parents are crying about, but the old woman died in the house he was sleeping in and therefore he should’ve been awakened by the ambulance that came to take her away. In fact we never see the body being removed making it seem that they might’ve just left her there in her bed for all we know and a scene showing the family mourning at her gravesite would’ve been a far more seamless way to have explained (shown) her passing.

Spoiler Alert!

The wrap-up is a bit too lighthearted as it shows Will Sampson driving off with the family’s beaten up car and Nelson chasing after him as they have no other way to get home. The segment though is too comedic and a good horror film should still leave the viewer with a certain bit of unsettling mystery. After all this family had gone through a lot and what’s to say that things were finally really over. The family acts too relaxed when in reality all of them should be going through some form of post traumatic stress. The fact that they act so at ease didn’t ring true as most anyone else would be in a perpetual paranoid state looking over their shoulders every second for fear that the ghosts might have remanifested. A more somber image of them quietly walking away from the sight formerly known as their home with the sound of a wind howling would’ve been more appropriate for this type of story.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 23, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Brian Gibson

Studio: MGM

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Ghost Story, Horror, Sequels

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Poltergeist (1982)

Posted on October 6, 2023 | 3 comments

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

‘4-Word Review: Ghosts terrorize a family.

A suburbanite family of five find their idyllic existence suddenly turn frightening when odd, unexplained events begin occurring inside their house. First it’s voices that can be heard coming from their television that only their 6-year-old daughter Carol Ann (Heather O’Rourke) can seem to make out. Then it’s the movement of the kitchen chairs that can glide across the floor without any help. There’s even the shaking of their entire house that they initially attribute to being an earthquake. Things though grow more serious when Carol Ann goes missing after a violent thunderstorm where her voice can only be heard coming through the television. Parapsychologist Martha (Beatrice Straight) and her team of two men (Richard Lawson, Martin Casella) get called in, but they find the conditions too extreme even for them, so instead a short statured spiritual medium named Tangina (Zelda Rubenstein) is hired. She determines that the home is being haunted by spirits who are ‘not at rest’ and may have something to do with the place being built on top of what used to be a cemetery.

The film, which was based on an idea by Steven Spielberg, who also produced, is known more for its behind-the-scenes drama, including the violent and untimely deaths of some of the cast members, which has gotten the production labeled as ‘cursed’, and for supposedly the in-fighting that occurred between Spielberg and Tobe Hooper who was brought in to direct when Steven was contractually unable to due to also directing E.T. From my perspective I can see it going both ways. It certainly has the strong atmosphere of a Hooper flick, but also done in a way so that even children could watch it and still not be too traumatized. Spielberg, who did all the casting and also storyboarded each and every scene, was known to want to make movies that the whole family could see and always wanted to keep his films, even his thrillers, at a PG rated level.

For what it’s worth I found it gripping, despite the slow start, from beginning to end and refreshing that an old fashioned ghost story was being brought back into the mainstream as too many horror movies of that period were slasher flicks, which was hurting the genre. This film emphasizes story and uses both imaginative effects and plot twists to keep it fun and surprising throughout.

Intentional or not the female characters were some of the movie’s stronger elements. O’Rourke of course, who’s become the face of the franchise, is adorable and with her bright blue eyes and blonde hair a certain angelic quality amidst the dark undertones. Rubenstein is a delight as both her height, voice and glasses, which seem to envelope her entire face, makes her presence quite memorable. Straight though is effective too as an elderly woman who at times seems ready to take on the ghostly presence and at other moments quite shaken up by them. Jobeth Williams though I found surprisingly fun as the sort of hip wife/mother who smokes pot and initially finds the weird events that go on more fun than scary. Only the presence of Dominique Dunne seemed unnecessary as she’s not in it all that much and goes off to either her friend’s house, or boyfriend’s through most of it only to conveniently reappear right at the end. Her jet black hair clashes with O’Rourke’s bright blonde, which makes for an odd gene anomaly to have sisters with such contrasting looks though this later gets explained in the book version as Dunne being the father’s daughter from his first marriage.

The special effects are a letdown. The ghostly hand reaching out of the TV-set looked too much like animation as did the very fake looking tornado, which appeared almost like it had been drawn in via black magic marker directly onto the film negative. The flying toys in the children’s room had a bit of an animated quality and the scary tree that sat outside the boy’s window looked too odd and not like any typical tree I’ve ever seen. It’s also disappointing that we never see this other dimension that Carol Ann gets trapped in we observe objects going in and out of it, returning with some sort of weird red substance that resembled raspberry jello, but the viewer really should’ve experienced this unique other world with the characters that go through it.

The TV stations signing off for the night while playing the National Anthem is something today’s audiences won’t understand as everything is 24-hours, but in the old days stations only broadcast during the day, but even here it’s a bit questionable. I was around in the early 80’s where most stations, especially in the big cities, were already running programs 24 hours a day making the sign-off angle, which is very prominently featured, dated even for then. Also, when stations did sign-off as I remember it would be a black screen that you’d see and not just static like it gets portrayed here. There was also such thing as cable back then making the prospect of static even less likely and you’d think a family that could afford a nice house like that would also have enough for a cable box.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending is a bit problematic as it has the two young kids returning to sleep in the bedroom that was once haunted. This is because Tangia states that the home has been ‘cleaned’ of the ghosts, but turns out not to be true. In either event I can’t imagine an adult let alone a kid being able to relax, or even step one foot in a room that had so many freaky things happen in it. I’d think the parents would be too nervous to even let them go in, so seeing the kids back in there like what occurred before was ‘no big deal’ proves unrealistic to say the least.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: June 4, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 54 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Tobe Hooper

Studio: MGM

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Ghost Story, Horror

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Haunted Honeymoon (1986)

Posted on September 28, 2023 | 1 comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Boyhood home is haunted.

Larry (Gene Wilder) and Vickie (Gilda Radner) are performers on a popular radio show who are also engaged to be married. Ever since the wedding date has been set Larry has been going through a variety of odd behaviors including flubbing his lines and even making incoherent statements during the production that go over the air. Vickie thinks it’s just his nerves about getting married, but Dr. Paul Abbott (Paul L. Smith), who also happens to be Larry’s uncle, thinks it’s much more than that. He feels the only way to cure him will be shock therapy, or in this case to ‘scare him to death’. Since Larry plans on having his wedding at his boyhood home, which is an old rural castle, the doctor feels this will be the perfect spot to engage with the frights. Everyone on the premises is in on the plan, eventually even including Vickie, but as the make believe haunting commences it soon becomes obvious that there’s some real scares too that frightens everyone.

Gene grew up as a child reportedly scared of horror movies and tried to avoid them, but did enjoy what he called ‘comedy chillers’, which were movies that had some scares, but also balanced with laughs and sought out to create one of his own. He started writing the script while he was starring in Silver Streak, but then lost interest and put it away. While he was filming Hanky Panky, in which he met Radner whom he later married, he got interested in continuing with the script especially at her insistence as she felt it would make a great vehicle for the two.

The problem with it is that he created something completely out of touch with the times. Haunted houses, werewolves and other elements from 1930’s movies had all been parodied for decades to the point it had almost become a cliche in itself. This film adds nothing fresh to the mix and feeds off of gags and stunts that had been done hundreds of times making it lame right from the start. Had it been more updated to add in elements from modern day horror movies, or changed the setting so it wasn’t just the predictable rural castle complete with thunder and lightning outside, then maybe it might’ve had a chance, or at least piqued people’s interests, but as it is here the stuff is routine and lacking in originality.

The biggest shock is that you have Dom DeLuise in full drag and yet he isn’t funny at all. Wilder got the idea to use him for the part when he saw him impersonate Ethel Barrymore years earlier at a dinner theater he attended, but the mistake was that Gene wanted him to literally play it straight, but why put a guy in full female get-up if you’re not going to give it any type of payoff? It’s a shame too because I’ve found Dom to sometimes be quite hilarious and even be the scene stealer in some of his other films. Jonathan Pryce, who was also in the movie, stated how the entire cast and crew would sit around and let Dom entertain them between takes, but whatever he said and did off camera was missing onscreen and even the duet that he sings with Gilda fails to elicit even a chuckle.

The story creates this big set-up and then goes nowhere with it. Gene gives himself a few amusing bits and I suppose Bryan Pringle, who plays the aging butler named Pfister, and even Ann Way with her distinctive hawk-like facial features, have a couple of funny moments, but everything else falls flat including Radner who isn’t funny at all and overall given a very thankless part by no less than her own husband.

The film lost money at the box office and despite a month of promotions and ads it only managed to remain in theaters for week before it was pulled. It polled poorly amongst critics and audiences alike, which is probably the only real funny thing is what occurred behind-the-scense as the studio, Orion Pictures, refused to screen it for critics before giving it a general release. Usually when this happens it’s a sign that the studio heads know they have a stinker on their hands, but they denied this saying they were ‘very comfortable’ with the movie and ‘behind it 100 percent’ and only avoided the advance screening because there had been a ‘tendency lately by critics to be quite vicious about films’ in general and they didn’t want to ‘cater’ to that, but you’d think if they really knew they had a great movie their fear of ‘vicious reviews’ wouldn’t have been a factor.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: July 25, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 22 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Gene Wilder

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Parody, Remakes

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Stardust Memories (1980)

Posted on September 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Director unhappy with career.

Sandy Bates (Woody Allen) is going through a lull in his career. While he’s had success in the past at making comedies he’d like to now move into more serious material that’s dramatic in nature though his many fans and studio heads insist he should stick with what made him famous and what the public wants. While attending a film retrospective of his movies at the Stardust Hotel he ponders about his life. He remembers a fling that he had with a beautiful actress named Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling) that didn’t work out due to her insecurities about herself and her career. He also meets up with a young woman named Daisy (Jessica Harper) whom he’s attracted to and openly flirts with even as his current lover Isobel (Marie-Christine Barrault) flies into town and announces that she’s left her husband and wishes to commence with a committed relationship with Sandy whom she expects will also help with raising her two children. As Sandy ponders what to do next he finds out that the studio has reshot a different ending to his latest movie, which further sours him on the business.

Many critics at the time gave this negative reviews feeling it was too self-indulgent and more like a personal diary than a movie. I did though like the black and white photography by Gordon Willis, which is so pristine that just watching the characters walking into an empty room with sunlight pouring through the windows looks dazzling. Allen’s comments on the film business are honest and relatable and it’s interesting to see that even when one becomes a proven commodity he can still be pressured by producers to change his films into something he’s not happy with simply for the sake of having more of a commercial appeal, which proves no matter how successful, or ‘big-name’ you get that’s one obstacle that seemingly will hamper everyone. Allen’s constant run-ins with his fans, which becomes the film’s running joke, and their odd requests as they pander to him in hopes of making it big in the business themselves are quite funny and true to form.

The story though is structured in such a fragmented way that it’s hard to get into. Sandy’s relationship with Dorrie is especially confusing. For one thing he comes onto her while she’s on a film set by telling her how beautiful she is, which seem to be the oldest and corniest come-on lines in the book and yet she’s fully taken aback with his compliments and this immediately turns into a relationship though in reality most women would likely give the guy the eye-roll and a quick rebuff. This though may be part of the joke by showing that because Sandy is a well-known director he’s able to get away with the corny lines that other guys wouldn’t, but even so these scenes are strained and annoying.

I felt Sandy’s conversations with Daisy was far more interesting and his budding relationship with her should’ve been explored much more, but isn’t, which wastes away a fabulous performance by Harper who plays the one character in the movie that I found relatable. Barrault is engaging as well particularly the scene where she does her facial exercises and having the story focus on his on-going relationship with her while also seeing Daisy on the side would’ve created the intriguing juxtaposition that was needed, but otherwise missing. Dorrie on the other hand comes-off like a caricature of just about every Hollywood starlet out there making her moments contrived and unnecessary.

While there are a few funny moments with the best one being Sandy’s close encounter with a group of space aliens it’s never enough to carry the picture. Having a more conventional storyline instead of the dream-like tone would’ve allowed the viewer to get more into what was going on emotionally versus sitting through what seems like an experimental movie that never quite catches its stride. Having Allen play somebody that wasn’t so much like himself would’ve helped too as it’s almost a joke to think he’s playing anyone else and should’ve just called himself Woody and made it more like a pseudo-documentary, which is what it ultimately is anyways.

I was though struck by the one part where Dorrie comes home furious with Woody for staring at her 13-year-old cousin the whole night they were at dinner and implying that he may have unhealthy feelings for her and thus essentially at least mentally ‘cheating on her’. Woody doesn’t really put up much of a defense, which I found even more amusing since 30 years later in real-life he got accused of improper behavior. Now, I wasn’t there and don’t know what happened and don’t want to make it sound like I’m trying to make conclusions, or taking sides. In the eyes of the law he’s innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but I still couldn’t help seeing the irony. Maybe it was just a coincidence, or maybe he was subconsciously revealing through the Sandy character something he may harbor. Hard to say, but given the hindsight it’s difficult to walk away and not have that moment stand out.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: September 26, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Woody Allen

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black & White, Black Comedy, Drama

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Hollywood Vice Squad (1986)

Posted on September 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Trying to stop prostitution.

Based supposedly on actual police cases the film consists of three different scenarios that get interwoven throughout. The main one deals with a distraught mother (Trish Van Devere) who comes from the Midwest to Hollywood in search of her teen daughter (Robin Wright) who’s run away. Police Captain Jensen (Ronny Cox) informs her that her child may have slipped into prostitution, which she refuses to believe. The other two stories deals with a small town racketeer (Julius Harris) who runs a shady hustle out of his home and finds himself being harassed by both the cops and the mob. The third segment focuses on two bickering cops (Evan C. Kim, Joey Travolta) who try to stop various prostitution situations from occurring by implementing stings, which mostly prove to be inept.

The project is a misguided attempt to take Vice Squad, which was written by the same screenwriter that did this one, Kenneth Peters, and turn it into a comedy, or at least throw in humorous elements in between the action. While I was no fan of the first one, as I found the topic in general to be uninteresting, it at least gave off a gritty feel, but this thing can’t even do that. The humor is sporadic and while some of the car stunts are okay everything else is a bore and the film offers no new insight into what is otherwise a very tired and cliche subject.

Frank Gorshin was only one of two things that I liked. Gorshin of course is best known as an impressionist and for his Emmy Award winning performance as the Riddler on the ‘Batman’ TV-show from the 60’s, but he’s also done a lot of acting roles outside of that, which were quite compelling. This one required a lot of sliminess, which he’s more than able to provide with some of it ad-libbed that makes it all the better. He even during a couple of segments offers his trademark, spontaneous Riddler laugh, which is great. The only problem with his presence is that supposedly the police are unable to find him in order to bring him in for questioning in regards to the mother’s missing teen daughter, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense since he works and lives out of a giant, gaudy mansion that most anyone should’ve been able to easily spot.

I also really enjoyed Carrie Fisher who ended up satirizing her experiences filming this in her novel and screenplay Postcards from the Edge. She had just gotten out of drug rehab when she was offered the part, but studios were reluctant to give her work and director Penelope Spheeris really had to go to bat for her, but the effort was worth it. She plays the only character that’s likable and she should’ve been given the lead and had the whole thing revolve around her exclusively. With that said though the case that she’s on, trying to put a halt to a porn production that’s supposedly employing a minor, doesn’t totally work as the kid they’re trying to save has a boyish face, but a body that made it seemed he was most likely over 18 and I was fully expecting the cops, who raid the production without a search warrant, to learn this lesson the hard way, but we’re never shown any finality to it, so the viewer doesn’t know. Also the scene where she sneaks into the sleazy producer’s garage and gazes at adult magazine covers that he has stored in a box, which features no nudity and simply depicts models wearing generic leather bondage outfits and she grimaces like she’s looking at something ‘extreme’ seemed rather silly.

The storyline dealing with Van Devere’s quest for find her daughter are unintentionally laughable. What baffled me was the way she would walk through these really trashy areas filled with dangerous looking people and appear completely content and at ease. If she’s from a sheltered small town then seeing these seedy areas should make her quite shocked and frightened and these are the reactions we should be seeing on her face. Also, she’s a good-looking milf and I was surprised some of the creepy men didn’t attempt to accost her as she ambled by them. The casting of Robin Wright as her runaway daughter, in her film debut, is problematic too as she looks to be over 20 and for shock value you really need to cast someone who’s 16 or 17 and looking it in order to create that true loss of innocence image.

I’ve always been curious why people who get into the vice squad work feel it’s worth it. The characters in the film even admit that these hookers and pimps will be right back out on the streets the next day even if they manage to make a few arrests, so why keep on spending so much time and effort if it’s really not making a difference? Have one of the police agents ponder this would’ve given the story an extra dimension that it needed.

It seemed to be almost cruel that they would stop a goofy old man, amusingly played by Marvin Kaplan, from having sex with a streetwalker who was willing. Clearly this was the only way the old guy was going to find any action, so if he’s going to pay and the sex worker, who is of age of course, is willing to perform then why not consider it a basic capitalist business transaction and be done with it? Spending so much effort trying to stop things like this when so many worse things are going on in is what makes the whole thing come-off as petty and trivial.

If anything the storyline involving Fisher’s attempts at putting a halt to what appeared to be a child porn racket should’ve been the central plot. This is something most if not all viewers could get behind and it’s a shame that it gets watered down here and then lumped in with other stuff, which isn’t compelling at all.

hollywood1

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: February 28, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Penelope Spheeris

Studio: Cinema Group

Available: DVD, Tubi, Plex, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies with Nudity

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Stewardess School (1986)

Posted on September 14, 2023 | Leave a comment

stewardess

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: They become flight attendants.

Philo (Brett Cullen) and George (Don Most) are training to become airline pilots, but an unexpected calamity during the flight stimulator test causes them to flunk out. Without a job, or money they decide to enter into a school that trains people to become flight attendants. They feel this way they’ll still be able to be up in the air and can also hit-on all the hot women. They’re class is full of misfits, but somehow they all manage to graduate despite the presence of Miss Grummet (Vicki Frederick) who runs the school and tries to make each of their lives a living hell. After graduation the students get a job with Stromboli airlines, but Miss Grummet is onboard and wants to make sure things do not go as planned while a mad bomber (Alan Rosenberg) wants to blow the aircraft up.

This was another in a long line of Police Academy imitators that did nothing but make that one, which wasn’t too great to begin with, seem like a masterpiece. The film, which per later interviews with star Sandahl Bergman where she attests the cast and crew including the director were snorting cocaine during the production, is nothing but a barrage of lame jokes and uninspired storyline making it pretty much dead on arrival from the first frame in. It doesn’t even have all that much nudity and what little it does comes from gals looking well over 30. The women cast in the leads keep their clothes on even though they’re far more attractive. Judy Landers, who plays a hooker who speaks in the most annoying Flossie-like accent, in order to conform to the caricature of a NY streetwalker, I found to be the most perplexing. She’s clearly sexy and yet is never seen naked even though she goes to a Dr.’s office for a medical exam, but just as she’s set to remove her bra the camera cuts away, which will frustrate certain viewers as the only point for watching this vapid thing is to see some good-looking flesh and if it can’t even succeed with that then it’s pointless to sit through.

I found the characters to be the most irritating as everything gets approached from a 13-year-old perspective with no inkling of nuance. Star Cullen is a prime example as he plays this pilot who can’t see without his glasses even though most people who use them can still make out things when they’re not on but they’re just real fuzzy and yet here this guy doesn’t know when he’s in a shower room full of naked women. The thick coke bottle type of glasses that he does wear was severely dated as by the 80’s the technology had improved that people with bad eyesight could wear lenses that weren’t so thick and obvious.

Wendi Jo Sperber, who is slightly overweight though the film acts like she’s ‘obese’, gets stuck with a part that’s genuinely insulting as it does nothing but make fun of her few extra pounds the whole way through. At one point it even has her spotting a cheese cake in a refrigerator and going ‘oink, oink’, which I found to be quite shallow as they’re can be many reasons for why someone as a bigger body type than others that has nothing to do with overeating.

I did enjoy Mary Cadorette who’s probably best known for playing in the short-lived ‘Three’s a Company’ spin-off ‘Three’s a Crowd’. She definitely gives a likable performance of a terminal klutz. While her clumsiness does get overplayed, with none of the pratfalls ever being funny, I felt the way she overcame her problem by going through hypnosis was a cop-out. A good story should have a character grow and succeed through their own initiative versus having it all go away with the literal snap-of-a-finger.

The worst part may be the ending where the film inadvertently turns into a airplane disaster flick, which has been done better in many other parodies. The mad bomber is too obvious and everyone should’ve been eyeing him suspiciously from the get-go instead of having him being ignored until it was too late. The film should’ve played against type with this part by having the nut turn-out to being what initially seemed like a sweet old lady, or someone else you wouldn’t expect, but of course that would’ve required creativity, which filmmakers here were clearly lacking. The film does stand out in one way as it holds the record for being the most played movie on the Comedy Central cable network, which says more about their subgrade level of programming than anything else.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: August 20, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ken Blancato

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD-R, Amazon Video, Tubi

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Crude Comedy, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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Square DANCE (1987)

Posted on September 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

square

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Moving to the city.

Gemma (Winona Ryder) is a country girl whose never known life beyond the small Texas farm that she lives on with her grandfather (Jason Robards). She at times though does think about her mother (Jane Alexander) who lives in Dallas and what city living would be like. One day her mother takes a rare trip to the farm and invites Gemma to come live with her. Gemma is turning 13 and intrigued to spreading-her-wings. While she loves her grandfather she’d be interested in trying something new, so she agrees to go with her while promising to write home to her grandfather regularly. Once there she finds the jaded lifestyle of her mother and the people around her not to be to her liking as Gemma is quite religious and reads her Bible often. She does though meet-up with Rory (Rob Lowe) a young man who is mentally handicapped, but professes to love her and the two plan to one day get married despite the opposition by her mother and those around her.

This was a film produced by Michael Nesmith better known for being a part of the Monkees rock band in the 60’s. Some of the other films he produced were of a comical/surreal nature, but this is one of the few dramas that he did (the film was also co-produced by co-star Jane Alexander and actor Charles Haid) and while some of his comedies weren’t so great this thing could’ve used some laughs to help liven it up. While the intentions may have been laudable the result is mostly tedium as its attempts to reflect the slow lifestyle of country living backfires creating a movie that’s too methodically paced to ever become interesting and the fact that it managed to only recoup $225,000 at the box office out of its initial $4 million budget is no surprise.

If you watch this movie for any reason do it for the acting, which is exemplary. Ryder, in only her second film appearance, crafts a shy, awkward and sheltered teen quite well and her performance helps guide the viewer through the lulls. Robards and Alexander are equally fine, which is to be expected, but Lowe is probably the most impressive playing against type. Usually he played cocky, worldly-wise types, but here shines as a kind, but dim-witted soul though his delivery, in retrospect, comes-off too much like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. Granted this one came out 6 years before that one, but since that film is more famous than this one you can’t help but compare the two and come away feeling, despite Lowe’s best efforts, that his acting here is a bit affected.

The story is too minimalistic as not enough happens to justify sitting through 90-minutes of it. I had a hard time buying into Gemma believing she could marry a mentally handicapped man and having it work out. Granted she’s not worldly-wise and lacks sophistication, but I felt this type of thinking was too naïve even for someone with her background. Wanting to help the man and take care of him possibly as a guardian of some kind would be fine, but the love aspect gets overblown and makes the film come-off as overly idealized and not realistic.

None of the characters, with the exception of maybe Lowe’s, goes through much of a transition. I was expecting Gemma to become corrupted by the jaded ways of the people she meets and possibly even becoming less religious, or even beginning to question her faith, but none of that happens. Gemma basically remains the same, even after a few tussles, and returns back to the farm like nothing happened, which made me wonder what was the point. There’s way too many loose ends that are left open like the grandfather’s lingering racism and his inability to get along with a black friend he used to play with when he was a kid. Gemma invites the black man over for dinner, but the film fails to show us whether the two men begin talking, or remain silent. A good drama should give us some conclusion to things and see the characters grow, which in this case it doesn’t do making the whole thing seem half-baked and not worth the effort or time.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: January 16, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 52 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Daniel Petrie

Studio: Island Pictures

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Movies that take place in Texas, Obscure Movies

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The Squeeze (1987)

Posted on September 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

squeeze

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: They rig the lottery.

When struggling artist and conman Harry (Michael Keaton) goes back to his ex-wife’s apartment to retrieve a mysterious package she had forgotten he finds a dead body and immediately becomes entangled in a complex mystery as well as a target of a secret organization. He enlists the help of private investigator Rachel (Rae Dawn Chong) and together they come to realize that the package that everyone is after is a large magnet that can be used to rig the lottery as it can manipulate the ping pong balls that display the winning numbers since those numbers are painted using a metallic substance. They proceed to try and stop the live broadcast of the lottery, which is being held onboard a naval ship and being hosted by the secretly nefarious Honest Tom T. Murray (John Davidson).

The film has come to have a notorious reputation on many levels. Not only did it sink at the box office where it managed to recoup a paltry $2 million from its $22 million budget, but the film’s promotional poster has star Keaton being squeezed between the World Trade Center buildings, which ultimately went down on 9-11. Even worse is that behind-the-scenes stunt driver Victor Magnotta, the movie is dedicated in his memory, died when the car he was driving went into the Hudson river on its side instead of flat, which trapped him inside the vehicle and unable to get out before he drowned though the stunt itself is left in.

While many critics and even commenters on IMDb have very little to say that’s nice about it I kind of felt that the movie was misunderstood as I saw it more as a parody of spy espionage stories and in that vein I think it works well, but since American audiences aren’t all that adept to satire and many times don’t get it, or take it seriously when they shouldn’t, it’s easy to see why this thing fell through the cracks. It does though have a few memorable moments including an unusual car chase where instead of having the hero speeding away from the bad guys they instead play a game of chicken where they intentionally crash their vehicles into the other one until both cars are left almost inoperable. I also thought the giant sized bull that Keaton created inside his apartment and made-up of a bunch of television sets was pretty cool too.

Keaton is certainly quite likable and without him the movie would’ve done far worse than it does. His engaging ability to make a joke, or even an insult, to someone, but always able to get away with it, by displaying his boyish trademark smile, is what makes his screentime entertaining though I felt the running conversation involving the old TV-show ‘Bonanza’ was a mistake. Young people of today won’t even know what that show was and even back then during the 80’s many teens would have only a vague idea of the series was as it had already been off the air since 1972 and didn’t do well in syndication and thus making the humor and inside jokes about it as out-of-touch and dated even for its own time period.

Chong is miscast, the part was intended for Mariel Hemingway who unfortunately got fired early on. While Chong can be great playing strong minded, outspoken characters she’s not as adept as a romantic lead and I failed to see much chemistry between the two. She falls-in-love with the guy a bit too quickly especially since they don’t get off to a good start. Having her come back to Keaton’s place and become outraged at seeing him in bed with another woman was out of place as no relationship had been established at that point. If anything she would’ve masked the feelings she had for him when seeing him with another lady and played it cool in order to avoid embarrassing herself when it became painfully obvious, at least at that point, that she was more into him than he was in her.

Ronald Guttman as the chief villain is a total bore and with his greased back hair looks more like a model for an Italian chick flick romance than a bad guy and his collection of shrunken heads doesn’t get played-up enough to be interesting. Meat Loaf though as his henchman is great. He has no lines of dialogue until he gets killed, via the pointy needle of a giant sized replica of the Empire State Building, which is pretty cool, though what he does say is very funny.

The film does at least give one a vivid feeling of what living in New York is like as it captures all the different levels of the city from its skyline, to the river, to its neighborhood shops and even the skid row area. Even this though does get botched as there are segments done late at night where there appears to be no other cars on the street, or pedestrians giving it a surreal look that isn’t realistic as New York is known as the city that never sleeps and thus portraying it as being virtually empty just because the action takes place in the wee hours of the morning isn’t authentic.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: July 10, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Roger Young

Studio: TriStar Pictures

Available: Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Black Comedy, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

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