Category Archives: 80’s Movies

Elves (1989)

Posted on December 24, 2014 | Leave a comment

elves 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: This elf isn’t friendly.

Kirsten (Julie Austin) feels Christmas has become too commercialized and dreads the season only to find out something that will make her hate it even worse as her evil Grandfather (Borah Silver) who has Nazi ties has apparently selected her to breed with an elf in order to create a superior human race. Now she must work with Mike McGavin (Dan Haggerty) an out of work department store Santa to not only evade her grandfather and his men, but also the elf that now runs wild.

Despite the title there is actually only one elf and it’s not a very good looking one at that. Not only does his appearance resemble the character in Troll, but you never actually get to see an entire body shot of him. You will only see close-up shots from the chest up or close-ups of his tiny feet or hands that look to be that of a puppets. This was most likely because they didn’t have the budget or talent to create a full body suit for someone to wear, but the effect lessens the horror, which isn’t too high to begin with. His hands are so tiny that it would have been impossible for him to shoot a gun let alone hold one, which he does do in one scene anyways, and it also gave me the belief that with his small stature he couldn’t have been that threatening and one could’ve easily just have kicked him away and been done with it.

Haggerty, who most will remember from the 70’s TV-series Life and Times of Grizzly Adams actually does pretty good in an otherwise thankless part. I almost felt that if he would just do away with his trademark mountain man look more parts might open up for him and he wouldn’t be subjugated to having to do this crap, but in any event his presence is the only reason I’m giving this 1 point instead of 0. The rest of the cast flunks including the bad guys with their fake sounding German accents and the bland females with the only exception being Deanna Lund as the hateful mother who has a nude scene, which isn’t bad.

The story is farfetched, convoluted and ultimately boring. The special effects are unimpressive and the action poorly paced leaving way for long intervals where nothing seems to happen. It looks like it was shot on video and then transferred to film, which only accentuates its cheap production values. Outside of a pretty good bathtub death and a shot of an elf fetus inside the womb this film as little to offer or recommend and should not be put on anyone’s Christmas list unless they’ve been really, really bad.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released Date: December 10, 1989

Runtime: 1Hour 29Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Jeffrey Mandel

Studio: Action International Pictures

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Christmas Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Slasher/Gore

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Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

Posted on December 22, 2014 | 3 comments

adventures in babysitting 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: She’s got babysittin’ blues.

After being stood up on a date high school senior Chris Parker (Elisabeth Shue) decides to take one last babysitting job. It is for the Anderson family and their two children: 7-year-old Sara (Maia Brewton) and her 15-year-old brother Brad (Keith Coogan), who secretly has a crush on Chris. Things start out okay, but then her best friend Brenda (Penelope Ann Miller) calls stating that she is stranded at a rundown bus station and needs Chris’s help to get home. Despite her better judgment Chris decides to pack up the kids into her mother’s station wagon as well as Brad’s friend Darryl (Anthony Rapp) and takes them into the city to save her friend only to end up dealing with one disaster after another.

Shue’s presence, in her first starring role, is what really makes this movie work. She is not only beautiful, but shows perfect comic timing and despite the fact that she was already 24 at the time of filming still looks like a teen albeit on the very mature side. The kids though aren’t as good and although they do grow on you a bit as the movie progresses it would’ve worked better had she been babysitting a family of mutes. The Brad character is too bland and clean-cut, his friend Darryl is too obnoxious and the young Sara, who wears a stupid looking, winged, metal helmet for almost the entire movie comes off like an annoying little brat.

Miller’s Brenda character is the most irritating as she is ditzy and airheaded to the extreme and her scenes come off as forced humor at its worst. Since all the calamity starts when they get a flat tire I thought they could’ve used a different motivation for driving into the city, like going for ice cream or to a movie and cut the Brenda character out completely since it ends up being the film’s weakest part.

Although the setting is in Chicago and most of the scenes were filmed there a few of them weren’t including the frat house party, the restaurant scene and Anderson’s residence which were all done in Toronto. Either way it tends to paint Chicago in an unflattering light by playing up its urban stigma and for a film that seems squarely aimed at the preteen crowd it has some surprisingly edgy elements including 17-year-old prostitutes, a story thread dealing with a Playboy centerfold and even a few F-bombs.

However, on the whole it’s quite funny and entertaining; much funnier than I was expecting. I even found myself sitting on the edge of my seat in a few places including the scene where they have to walk across some ceiling rafters to escape from the bad guys as well as a tense, well-filmed climatic segment done on the glass roof of a skyscraper. The segment where Chris narrates her babysitting adventures to the background music of a blues band is great and her line “Don’t fuck with the babysitter!” which she states to an intimidating gang leader is classic.

In many ways this is quite similar to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but better. The comic scenarios aren’t quite as over-the-top, the adults aren’t so painfully stupid and the main character is thankfully not as smug. Like in Ferris there is also an amusing moment shown after the end credits, which I found to be just as funny.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 1, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 42Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Chris Columbus

Studio: Buena Vista Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Farce, Movies that take place in Chicago

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The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

Posted on December 16, 2014 | 2 comments

adventures of buckaro banzai 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: This thing is weird.

Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is part-time rock band singer who has invented a mechanism that he calls the oscillation overthruster that allows him to travel through rocks and other solid matter. He is somehow able to do this by tapping into the realms of the 8th dimension, but upon doing so he also attracts the attention of some aliens lead by Lord John Whorfin (Jon Lithgow) who wants to steal the device and use it for their own nefarious needs. Buckaroo, who is able to recognize these aliens who otherwise look human to everyone else after being zapped by some electronic component through a telephone receiver by a group of other aliens, gets a group of fellow geeks together to help fight the evil Whorfin and his men before it is too late.

In a lot of ways this film is a refreshing change-of-pace and it is not surprising that it has attained such a strong cult following. Most films with such an offbeat concept end up selling out and becoming quite formulaic and conventional with only a few odd elements thrown in for good measure, but this movie is completely weird in all facets and truly lives up to its campy over-the-top title. I loved the off-the-wall banter, ridiculously silly, but still quite entertaining special effects and characters that are uniformly warped. The comic book look is great and the story gets increasingly more absurd as it goes along. You have to tune out your logic and conventional movie mode to get into this and enjoy it, but the humor and chuckles are there if you let it.

Unfortunately the pace as well as the beginning become a bit too off. I found things to be completely confusing at the start that I really couldn’t understand what was going on for the whole first half-hour. The film seemed to jump from one outlandish scene and character to the next without any cohesion and the result was quite off-putting. It wasn’t until about 45 minutes in that I was able to finally get into the groove with it, but more of a background to the characters and a set-up would have helped greatly. There are still enough memorably unique moments to make it worth it including my favorite the Banzai Team March, which was filmed at the Sepulveda Dam in the San Fernando Valley and shown over the closing credits.

Weller is in fine form in the lead and seems much more at ease with this role than he was in Robocop where he came off as being miscast. Lithgow is a hoot as an over-the-top villain speaking with a heavy Russian/German accent. I also enjoyed Matt Clark as the Secretary of Defense who acts as if he is above all rules of protocol until finally being put into his place by a little kid with a rifle.

The closing credits listed a follow-up title that was supposedly going to be a sequel that unfortunately was never made due to the film’s production company going out of business, which is a shame as this thing had strong potential of becoming a major franchise. W.D. Richter who has an impressive screenwriting resume does well in his directorial debut and it’s an equal shame that he only helmed one other movie at this point as he shows potential to being uniquely talented in that position.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: August 10, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 43Minutes

Rated PG

Director: W.D. Richter

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Cult, Offbeat, Sci-Fi

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Cruising (1980)

Posted on December 8, 2014 | 1 comment

cruising2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cop infiltrates gay underground.

A serial killer is attacking gay men who frequent New York’s S&M bars and young cop Steve Burns (Al Pacino) is chosen to go undercover as a gay and infiltrate these ‘leather clubs’ in order to bring out the killer. However, the job requirements demand that he must be completely isolated from the rest of the force and not carry a gun, which eventually causes a strain on his personal life particularly in his relationship with his girlfriend Nancy (Karen Allen).

The film, which is loosely based on actual events that occurred during the late 70’s and captured in Gerald Walker’s novel of the same name, was considered quite controversial at the time of its production. Protestors who felt the film accentuated the gay stereotype tried to create loud noises during filming and even shine reflective lights on the actors in an attempt to mess up the scenes. In retrospect it is hard to imagine that director William Friedkin is in anyway homophobic as just ten years earlier he did the brilliant adaptation of The Boys in the Band, which remains to this day one of the better films dealing with gay issues. The story certainly does wallow in ugly elements, but also makes the point to describe this as an extreme subculture and  not reflective of the gay lifestyle as a whole, which in my opinion made the film seem more enlightening to New York’s gay underground of a bygone era and less propaganda as its critics ascertained.

To some degree I liked the explicit uncompromising approach, but after a while it became one-dimensional and predictable. The scenes of the killings are unnecessarily prolonged and some of the segments showing large groups of men having sex at a bar come off as overly-stylized and looking reminiscent of a homoerotic scene from a Fassbinder film.

Friedkin does manage to add a few unique touches including having a well-built black man wearing nothing but a jock strap enter the room during police interrogations and violently slap suspects who he felt weren’t telling the truth, which according to one of the film’s advisors was an actual technique used by police at the time.  The way the movie captures the monotony and frustrations of investigating a complex case such as this and leaving open that there may have been more than one killer is also well done and helps elevate this a bit from the usual formulaic cop thriller.

Pacino gives a gutsy performance including one scene showing him tied up in bed naked during some kinky S&M play, but the character’s motivations are confusing particularly the way he so quickly accepts this difficult assignment that most others would be very reluctant to do. The fact that his experiences ends up affecting him psychologically isn’t compelling since that becomes a foregone conclusion right from the start.

Paul Sorvino is perfect as the police captain. His gray hair dye was a little overdone, but his limp was great. Allen has a good moment at the end when she tries on Pacino’s leather hat and coat that he brought home with him and Joe Spinell makes the most of his small role as a corrupt cop who harasses gays only to end up patronizing gay bars on his off hours. You can also spot Powers Boothe in an early role as a hankie salesman and Ed O’Neil as a police detective.

The idea of exposing the dark side of police life is no longer original or interesting and the film’s shock value has lessened through the years and thus failing to leave any type of lasting impression or message.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: February 15, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 42Minutes

Rated R

Director: William Friedkin

Studio: United Artists

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Gay/Lesbian, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Police Drama

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Scream for Help (1984)

Posted on December 3, 2014 | Leave a comment

scream for help 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Her Stepfather plots murder.

Christie (Rachael Kelly) is a teen convinced that her new stepfather (Paul Fox) is out to kill her mother (Marie Masters). The problem is that no one believes her. Eventually she is able to take a picture of him having sex with another woman, which is enough to get her mother to throw him out of their house, but then he returns with two of his cohorts and traps Christie and her mother in the basement were they plan to kill them and make it look like a robbery.

This film, which was written by Tom Holland, might have been better received had it not been put into the hands of sub-par director Michael Winner. Winner who is probably best known for his close association to Charles Bronson of which he directed 7 films with him and then later when his film career waned became a famous restaurant critic, shows no feeling for the material and directs with such a sloppy style that it almost seemed like he was intentionally trying to make a bad movie. The sweeping orchestral score would have been better suited for a romance or epic adventure and is completely out of place here. The dialogue is corny and the overall acting by the supporting cast is wooden. The pace is awkward and at times becomes unintentionally funny.

However, the second half improves greatly particularly when the two find themselves trapped in the cellar and must use their ingenuity to get out. The twists are clever and unpredictable and the atmosphere becomes genuinely taut and exciting. The musical score also improves becoming much more intense and darker. I actually started to get really into it and afterwards felt like I had watched two different movies with the second part being good enough to overshadow its otherwise many flaws.

Brooks as the bad guy has a male model face, but his performance is as generic as the film’s title and it would have been better had a veteran character actor been cast in the part instead. The mother character with the way she refuses to believe the obvious until it is much too late seems unreasonably and annoyingly stupid. I did though like Kelly in the lead. Not only is she cute, but her acting is good enough to compel the viewer to keep watching when they otherwise might have turned it off and I was surprised to see that this was her only film as she showed enough promise to have had a solid career.

Filmed on-location in New Rochelle, New York this is the type of low budget flick that proves how a good script can sometimes overcome other production inadequacies. Had it been better directed this could have been a snappy thriller and it’s a shame that Hitchcock disciple Richard Franklin who was the original choice as director hadn’t helmed it although a film school dropout or even your local garbage man could have done a better job than Winner or certainly no worse.

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My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: July 16, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 29Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Winner

Studio: Lorimar

Available: VHS, DVD (Region 2)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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Partners (1982)

Posted on December 1, 2014 | 1 comment

partners

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Pretending to be gay.

A serial killer targeting gay men is on the prowl. When one of his victims turns out to be the son of an influential politician pressure is put on the police force to find the culprit. The police chief (Kenneth McMillan) feels he has no choice but to pair Sgt. Benson (Ryan O’Neal) a straight cop with Kerwin (John Hurt) who is a gay desk clerk at the station. They are to masquerade as a gay couple in hopes of infiltrating the gay underground and find clues to the elusive killer, but their contrasting personalities and lifestyles threaten to blow their cover before they can make headway.

This film was controversial at the time of its release for its overuse of gay stereotypes and there are indeed some especially at the beginning, but the film’s biggest offense is that it is just plain boring. The idea that two cops could be forced to pretend to be a gay couple or have one of them pose naked for the cover of a gay men’s magazine as part of their investigation is dubious enough, but had it been funny I might have forgiven it. Unfortunately this thing can’t even elicit a few chuckles.

The idea that Kerwin would automatically fall in love with Benson while working together simply because he is another man is absurd and makes about as much sense as a heterosexual male falling for every woman that he meets, which of course doesn’t happen. The Benson character is also quite callous and disrespectful to Kerwin while showing blatant homophobic tendencies and being a confirmed ladies’ man, so I didn’t see what there was about him that Kerwin would have fallen in love with anyways.

Benson’s transformation to being more sensitive to gays and their issues during the course of the story might have been more compelling had it been better written. However, his liberal use of the word ‘faggot’ makes the film seem quite dated and wouldn’t be heard in a movie today especially from a character that is supposedly a protagonist.

Hurt plays the gay caricature well, but the idea of placing someone on such a dangerous mission without having any undercover experience of even knowing how to use a gun seemed stupid and unrealistic. Out of all the characters McMillan’s comes off best and he even manages to be slightly amusing, but unfortunately isn’t seen enough. Character actors Jay Robinson and Sydney Lassick can be spotted very briefly.

This was intended to be a parody of Cruising, which was released 2 years earlier and was a much more serious and graphic look at a true life killer of gay men. That film starred Al Pacino and will be reviewed next Monday.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: April 30, 1982

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Rated R

Director: James Burrows

Studio: Paramount

Available: VHS, DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Buddy Movies, Comedy/Drama, Gay/Lesbian, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Police Drama

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Foolin’ Around (1980)

Posted on November 25, 2014 | Leave a comment

foolin around 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Redneck falls for hottie.

Wes (Gary Busey) is a college student who has moved from Oklahoma to Minnesota to attend the university. Desperate for some extra cash he takes part in a program run by the student science department where he gets strapped to a chair and given an electrical shock every time he gives a ‘right’ answer. The procedure is facilitated by Susan (Annette O’Toole) who’s an attractive coed there. Wes is immediately smitten, but finds himself in an uphill battle as she is already engaged to Whitley (John Calvin) an obnoxious stuck-up social climbing man whose equally arrogant mother (Cloris Leachman) wants her to have nothing to do with Wes and tries to completely shut him out of her life.

Although far from a critic darling this obscurity still manages to have a few funny scenes. The best are Wes’s encounters with Whitley particularly when Whitley tries parking his car in wet cement or trying to subdue an out-of-control carpet cleaner in his office. Wes’s conversation with Susan’s grandfather (Eddie Albert) high up on the edge of a skyscraper under construction is nerve-wracking particularly when Albert walks out to the end of a beam hundreds of feet up and then challenges Busey to do the same. The film also has a unique car chase that features an automobile made to look like a giant hot dog as well as a hang gliding segment through the Minneapolis skyline that is downright exhilarating.

Busey does well as an amiable doofus in a part that seems best suited for his acting ability. O’Toole is at the peak of her beauty and Leachman manages to get a few choice moments as the meddling mother. Tony Randall is fun as a snooty butler with a French accent and it’s great to see William H. Macy in an early, but brief part near the beginning.

The on-location shooting done in the state of Minnesota adds some verve particularly the segment done on the sidelines of an actual Vikings-Rams football game. Unfortunately the script is threadbare with certain gags that become labored and lame and a romantic angle that is sappy and contrived. It is also hard to believe that Susan would for even a remote second consider marrying the Whitley character who is a one-dimensional arrogant asshole to the extreme. It is even more absurd that she would fall in-love with Wes as she is clearly out of his league both physically and intellectually and it’s about as farfetched as Busey ever one day winning the Academy Award.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: October 17, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 40Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Richard T. Heffron

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, College Life, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies for the Whole Family, Obscure Movies, Romance, Slapstick

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Loving Couples (1980)

Posted on November 17, 2014 | Leave a comment

loving couples

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Everybody is fooling around.

The marriage between Evelyn and Walter (Shirley MacLaine, James Coburn) has grown stale. When dashing womanizer Greg (Stephen Collins) sets his sights on Evelyn and makes a play for her she is all too happy to take him up on it. Then Greg’s girlfriend Stephanie (Susan Sarandon) finds out about the affair and tries to put a stop to it by informing Walter only to find that they have a special chemistry and soon they are in a relationship as well, but the more time the couples spend with their new mates the more they end up longing for their old ones.

The flat, unoriginal script was written by famed TV-show writer Martin Donovan and is not worthy for even a second-rate sitcom. Outside of a brief amusing segment where Walter demonstrates to Stephanie how to perform brain surgery by using a hamburger bun as a patient’s cranium there is nothing much that is funny. The plot itself is dull and placid and becomes increasingly more boring as it goes along.

The Greg character and how the women respond to him is a big issue. His methods at seduction could easily get him charged with harassment or stalking these days, but he is also an obvious player and yet Shirley MacLaine’s character still gets into a relationship with him despite the fact that she is old enough to know better and then ends up stung and shocked when he starts fooling around with another woman even though anyone else with half-a-brain could have easily predicted it.

Stephanie’s attempts to somehow ‘win him back’ when she finds out that he is cheating on her is equally absurd since by her own admission he has already done it several times before with other woman, so why waste time trying to stop this latest fling when he’ll most likely start it up with another woman regardless?

The film lacks any quarreling, which could have spiced things up. Instead when they find out about their partner’s transgressions the conversations are civil to a sterile degree, which is not only uninteresting, but unrealistic. Let’s face it all couples fight and if you can’t get into a shouting match with your spouse when you find out they’ve been cheating then when can you?

Coburn manages to be engaging despite the weak material, but his curly silver haired mop-top looks better suited for a male gigolo than an otherwise staid and conservative middle-aged doctor. Helena Carroll has a few witty lines as the couple’s maid and she should’ve been given more screen time, but it was actually Sarandon that I liked the best as she plays a shy, slightly naïve character that was unusual for her.

This is quite similar to A Change of Seasons, which came out later that same year and also starred MacLaine and although that film was certainly no classic it is still far superior to this one.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: October 24, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 40Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Jack Smight

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy, Romance

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A Change of Seasons (1980)

Posted on November 11, 2014 | 1 comment

a change of seasons 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Everybody has a fling.

Adam (Anthony Hopkins) a middle-aged college professor who starts having an affair with a beautiful young student of his named Lindsey (Bo Derek). When his wife Karyn (Shirley MacLaine) finds out about it she decides to get her revenge by having an affair of her own with a handyman named Pete (Michael Brandon). All four decided to take a ski trip together while staying in the same house with each spouse sleeping with their new found lover. Despite a few hiccups things go surprisingly well until their college-aged daughter Kasey (Mary Beth Hurt) shows up who is none too thrilled with her parent’s new arrangement. Then Lindsey’s father (Edward Winter) appears who, after initially being shocked at the tawdry set-up, eventually adjusts and then makes a play for Karyn as well.

Although the film’s trailer and poster makes this thing look like a madcap farce it really isn’t and despite a comical set-up veers surprisingly towards the dramatic most of the way. To some extent it kind of works and I enjoyed some of the dialogue that tries to dig a bit deeper than most of the other mid-life crisis films as it analyzes why otherwise happily married men would jeopardize their union by having a mindless fling and somehow expecting to successfully juggle both relationships. However, it would have worked much better had it stayed with the comical route. Some of the funny scenarios don’t get played out enough and with such goofy characters and situations it’s hard to take it seriously even when it wants to culminating in an uneven mix of a movie that never quite hits its stride.

There are also certain scenes that don’t make much sense in either the comical or dramatic vein. One involves Adam admitting to Karyn about his affair and instead of her becoming enraged and either throwing him out or leaving they spend the rest of the night calmly discussing it and even going to bed together, which seemed highly unlikely to occur in real-life. The way Karyn hooks-up with Pete is equally stupid as he waltzes into her house unannounced and starts making himself some coffee and breakfeast. When Karyn comes downstairs to find this stranger in her home she doesn’t panic and call the police like a normal person would, but instead after a very brief conversation invites him upstairs for sex.

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Hopkins gives and excellent performance and the main reason the film stays afloat and is passable to watch. The way his character is forced to face his own contradictions and flaws is good and the scene where he catches Karyn with Pete is well acted on his part and makes the segment more interesting than it otherwise would have been. Winter is great as well and gives the best performance of his career where his initial shock at discovering their living arrangement is genuinely funny.

The only weak link of the cast is Derek. Yes, she certainly looks great naked and the opening sequence featuring her and Hopkins in the hot tub is okay on the erotic level, but her acting is overall quite poor and her monotone delivery eventually becomes annoying.

Overall the theme is too derivative from many other films that have tackled the same subject making this one hardly worth the effort to seek out. In fact MacLaine starred in another film that very same year entitled Loving Couples that has pretty much the exact same storyline and that one will be reviewed next week.

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My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: December 1, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 42Minutes

Rated R

Director: Richard Lang

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies with Nudity, Romance

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Wacko (1982)

Posted on November 4, 2014 | Leave a comment

wacko

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Spoof of horror movies.

On Halloween night the infamous pumpkin head lawnmower killer murders Mary’s (Julia Duffy) older sister. Now, 13 years later, the killer has returned and this time he has his sights set on Mary, but who could he be? Is it her surgeon father (George Kennedy) who tries any chance he can to catch his own daughter disrobing, or maybe it’s her boyfriend Norman (Scott McGinnis) who makes lawnmower sounds every time he is aroused. Either way dogged detective Dick Harbinger (Joe Don Baker) is hot on the trail determined to end the mystery that has been haunting him and the town ever since it began.

This is one of several horror spoofs that came out around the same time and although it is far from excellent it still manages to rise above the rest. The main reason is Baker who’s overacting and mugging is perfect for the part. Just watching him roll out of bed and get ready for the day is a hoot. His funniest moments though are during the flashback sequence where he is seen wearing a dress while being tied up during bondage. The part where he arrives at Mary’s parent’s house to give them the sad news of their daughter’s death while dressed as a clown and then afterwards in an attempt to ‘lift their spirits’ makes a balloon dog for them is absolutely hilarious.

Stella Stevens, sporting a brunette wig and playing Mary’s mother has some amusing moments as well particularly when she recreates an obscene phone call for her daughter as well as when she and Kennedy sniff some laughing gas. Andrew Clay, who’s billed here without the ‘Dice’ is engaging in his film debut as a Fonzie-type high school student and his conversation at the dinner table of his girlfriend’s parents is good.

The segment involving a parody of Psycho with Norman Bates’ skeletal mother being used as a ventriloquist dummy was goofy enough to elicit a few chuckles, but overall there are more misses than hits. The production values are sloppy and the film, particularly during a car chase segment, veers too much into the cartoonish and nonsensical. They could’ve also had a more original soundtrack than simply playing or having a character hum the Alfred Hitchcock TV-show theme, which isn’t all that clever.

Some of the most successful horror parodies like Scream and Shaun of the Dead are ones that manage to have an interesting story of their own as well as a nice amount of gore and scares, but here there is no special effects or horror to speak of and the limp plot makes this whole thing seem more like one long, unending gag reel than a movie.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: November 12, 1982

Runtime: 1Hour 34Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Greydon Clark

Studio: Jensen Farley Pictures

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Low Budget, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Parody

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