Category Archives: 80’s Movies

The Grass is Singing (1981)

Posted on September 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

the grass is singing 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Farming isn’t her thing.

In memory of Karen Black who died on August 8th we will review on each Monday of this month an 80’s film that she starred in as well as a 70’s movie that she was in on Fridays. This film is based on the Doris Lessing novel and was filmed on-location in Zambia. The story centers on Mary a racist woman from South Africa who is bored with her job and lonely. She meets Richard (John Thaw) a simple man who becomes smitten with her. She is not as crazy about him but decides to accept his proposal of marriage simply as a way to escape her dreary existence and loneliness. He moves her to his farm where she finds the rigorous lifestyle difficult to adjust too. The isolation begins to wear on her already tightly wound temperament and eventually she begins to show erratic behaviors that become more disturbing and shocking.

The Zambia locations are captured in vivid style with a grainy film stock that makes it look like it were a documentary. The farm setting is indeed desolate and makes for great atmosphere. Director Michael Raeburn wisely refrains from using too much music and when he does he uses instrumentals from the native culture, which further elevates the film and gives it distinction.

The film stays pretty faithful to the novel and starts out in startling fashion with Mary being stabbed and bloodied on her backdoor step and then shifts back seven years where we see what lead up to it. The pace is slow, but involving and the characters are three-dimensional and believable. Mary’s breakdown happens in a deliberate and realistic fashion starting with little things that work into bigger ones. In the end you feel more sorry for her than frightened and thoroughly engulfed with her sad and pathetic circumstances.

This was Black’s last serious role before being quarantined in B-movie purgatory. This may also be one of her finest moments as she brings out the manipulative nature of the character quite well and I love the way she always seems to add quirky qualities to her parts. She also speaks with an authentic sounding South African accent.

Thaw is quite good in support and creates empathy from the viewer playing a very humble man looking for simple companionship with no idea what he was getting into.

There is some serious filmmaking going on here in a movie that makes some great points about life and human nature that is well worth checking out. The original theatrical release which is what I saw and able to obtain from a private collector runs a full 105 minutes. However, the American release which is available on DVD from Synergy Entertainment as well as Amazon Instant Video and goes under the title Killing Heat runs only 90 minutes and heavily edits out the explicit violence and nudity and has a narrative that is choppy and at times confusing.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Alternate Title: Killing Heat (U.S. version)

Released: September 18, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 45Minutes (Original Version)

Not Rated

Director: Michael Raeburn

Studio: Chibote

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video (as Killing Heat)

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Psychological

Tagged , , , , ,

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)

Posted on August 26, 2013 | 2 comments

sex lies and videotape

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Sex confessions on tape.

This movie was the critic’s darling when it was released 24 years ago and there didn’t seem to be anyone around that didn’t like it. I remember watching it back then and feeling like it was a bit overrated and although I liked it a little more the second time around I can’t say that my feelings about it have changed all that much. The story is about John (Peter Gallagher) who is married to Ann (Andie MacDowell) and who is having an affair with her sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo) due to Ann’s frigidity. In comes Graham (James Spader) an old college buddy of John’s who stays with the couple temporarily while he looks for a permanent residence. Graham has an unusual fetish of recording women confessing to some of their wild sexual moments to the camera to which he records and then gets off to later. Ann is initially attracted to Graham, but when she finds about his habit she is appalled only to later become keen to the idea and agree to do a taped confession herself, which sends everything spiraling out of control.

The movie seems excessively talky with scenes and conversations particularly the dinner one between John, Ann and Graham going on longer than it should. Not a lot really happens and there is little if any action. The production values are pretty basic and don’t seem much different than the ones Graham uses for his taped confessions. For a film that talks so much about sex, which seems to fill pretty much every conversation that the characters have it is not very erotic and the attempts at eroticism is pretty generic. I did like writer/director Steven Soderbergh’s use of editing where conversations from one scene between two characters will be heard overlapping over a shot featuring two different characters. However, the scene where Cynthia gives her confession to Graham is ruined by the sound of a train whistle going off in the background, which became distracting.

I also had a hard time buying into the basic premise. I just couldn’t understand why so many women would freely divulge to a perfect stranger all of their deep dark fantasies and sexual excursions knowing full well that they were being recorded for his own personal gratification with no real assurance that these tapes wouldn’t one day get into the wrong hands and come back to haunt or humiliate them years later. There is also what I considered a glitch when Ann is vacuuming the rug and finds Cynthia’s earring underneath their bed, which was apparently left by her when she had sex with John in the bed a few days earlier, but I kept thinking that after a few days Cynthia would have realized that she was missing her earring and had John go back to retrieve it. It is possible that Cynthia may have intentionally planted the earring there for her sister to find since she seemed to really dislike her, but if that was the case the movie should have confirmed this, which it doesn’t.

MacDowell is great in the lead and looks beautiful. I enjoyed the character and felt her presence in the story made the movie more interesting. I did though have some issues with the opening scene where she is seen talking to a male therapist about her lack of sex drive, which to me wasn’t realistic. I would think that if a woman had sexual problems that she would be reluctant to discuss it with a male and would only talk about it with a female Dr. Also, she sits on his sofa Indian style with her shoes off, which seemed too relaxed a posture for a woman that otherwise is frigid and reserved.

Spader is also likable and conveys a surprisingly sensitive performance. However, I couldn’t understand what type of person in this day and age would leave their door always unlocked especially at night. Gallagher is just too much of a narcissist pretty boy philanderer to have much appeal although seeing how things unravel for him at the end and how he somehow feels morally superior to Graham is interesting.

I didn’t care for the Cynthia character at all. She dresses and behaves too much like a one-dimensional tramp and the only thing that ever comes out of her mouth is a barrage of sarcastic, snarky remarks and at no time ever shows even some remote sensitivity, which might have helped.

Although his part is brief Steven Brill is a hoot as a barfly constantly making feeble attempts to hit on Ann. He is the one amusing part of the movie, which I wished had infused more humor.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: August 18, 1989

Runtime: 1Hour 40Minutes

Rated R

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Studio: Miramax

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray

2 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Low Budget, Movies that take place in the South, Sex

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

The Handyman (1980)

Posted on August 22, 2013 | 2 comments

the handyman

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: He’s unlucky in love.

Armand (Jocelyn Berube) is a chump of the first order. Everything he plans or does never seems to work out. He writes a letter to his mother describing how he has finally gotten himself married and how ‘he won’t die a bachelor’ only to have her walk out on him after only a few months. He tells his best friend the secret place where he hides all of his money and then the next day the friend steals the money. He brings in a new roommate only to have that man listen in to his private phone calls and when he does meet an attractive woman who he thinks is interested he gets her a romantic gift only to have her and her friends laugh at him behind his back. “The world is made up of two types of people,” he states “Those that take and those that are taken and I tend to be the latter.”

Things seem to improve for him when he gets a job fixing up the house for bored and attractive housewife Therese (Andree Pelletier). She is unhappy with her marriage to Bernard (Gilles Renaud) who is indifferent to her feelings and more interested in his golf game than her. She considers Armand’s unpretentiousness refreshing and Armand of course becomes immediately smitten. The two make an attempt at an affair, but as usual Armand gets in over-his-head.

One of the things that really stands out in this movie is the way Armand and Therese’s relationship unfolds. In most movies it always seems like love at first sight and both people get animalistic urges that they can’t contain and impulsively jump into the sack, but here it is much different. For one thing their attraction for one another progresses at a much slower and more realistic pace and does not come to a head until after several months. Both parties are shown contemplating their next move and their desire for one another is constantly being balanced by their reluctance at knowing how much trouble and guilt they will have if they do go through with it. How they respond to each other after they have sex is equally revealing and the quirky relationship that Armand later has with Therese’s husband is also quite interesting.

Although I felt that actor Berube’s bushy mustache and 70’s hairstyle seemed a little overdone I still found the character to be highly amiable. You tend to feel for the guy even after he makes one blunder after another. Actress Pelletier is certainly attractive, but her thick Nordic accent was a bit of a turn-off although probably realistic for the region.

My only complaint from this otherwise widely hailed low budget obscurity is the fact that the Armand character doesn’t grow or evolve at all. This is a man that knows he has a weakness for being taken advantage of, but doesn’t do anything about it. Watching him perpetually self-destruct to the point that he finds himself living out of his car and even contemplating jumping off a bridge is frustrating and depressing. Showing him having just one defining uncharacteristic moment where he somehow manages to transcend himself would have been much more satisfying and in some ways more realistic.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: March 14, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 39Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Micheline Lanctot

Studio: Les Films Reno Malo

Not Available at this Time.

2 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Dry Humor, Foreign Films, Low Budget, Movies from Canada, Obscure Movies, Romance

Tagged , , ,

Casual Sex? (1988)

Posted on August 19, 2013 | Leave a comment

casual sex

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Sex in the 80’s

Stacy (Lea Thompson) and Melissa (Victoria Jackson) are lifelong friends with very different sexual pasts. Stacy has slept with a lot of guys including some one-night-stands while Melissa has had sex with only a few and never achieved an orgasm at least ‘not when someone else was in the room’.  Because of the AIDS epidemic they decide to reanalyze their sexual mores and join a singles resort where they hope to meet their Mr. Right and settle down.

The film is based on the stage play that was originally produced for The Groundlings Theater in Los Angeles. You can tell this right away at the start where the two women stand on an empty stage and talk about some of their past sexual encounters. This proves to be the funniest part of the film with a lot of keen observations on human behavior. Unfortunately after the first five minutes of this the film digresses into a more conventional narrative by having the girls go to a single’s resort and the attempts at satire get either over-played or not played up enough. What is even worse is that it throws in a romance angle by having Stacy fall for an irritatingly perfect looking heartthrob named Nick (Stephen Shellen) who is an aspiring rock star. The two quickly move in together and then all of sudden he becomes completely clueless and harbors a lot of annoying habits that leads to a drawn-out, boring break-up session.

There are still a few funny moments including an amusing dream sequence where Stacy imagines making love to Nick while her boyfriends from the past start to pop up all around her, but overall the film fails to gain any traction, is filled with clumsy characterizations and falls flat. A much better approach would have been to structure it around a collection of vignettes with a sexual theme much like Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex, but Were Afraid to Ask, which is far more original and funnier than anything you will see here.

Lea is really cute and gives a good performance. Normally ditzy blondes get on my nerves, but somehow I have always found Victoria’s cute-as-a-button face and squeaky voice appealing. Her acting skills aren’t up to Lea’s level, but her more natural delivery makes for a nice contrast. Skin hounds will be happy to know that both women appear nude from the backside.

However, it’s Andrew ‘Dice’ Clay who steals the film with an engaging performance as the proverbial lounge lizard. Every scene he is in is funny and he tells a lot of lame jokes, but the way he says them is hilarious ‘they can’t all be golden’. In his attempt to get more connected to women he reads a book entitled ‘How to Pretend Your Sensitive’, which is amusing as well. My only complaint is that in the end Lea marries him and he becomes more ‘normal’, which takes away from the goofy caricature.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: April 22, 1988

Runtime: 1Hour 37Minutes

Rated R

Director: Genevieve Robert

Studio: Universal

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Buddy Movies, Campy Comedy, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with Nudity, Romance, Sex

Tagged , , , , ,

A Little Sex (1982)

Posted on August 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

a little sex 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: He can’t stay faithful.

Michael (Tim Matheson) gets married to Katherine (Kate Capshaw) after living with her for a year. He had a habit of sleeping around and having a lot of one-night-stands, but makes a pledge to change. However, the temptations are too strong and he ends up cheating on her and getting caught and then spends the rest of the film trying desperately to win her back.

Bruce Paltrow, who was the father of Gwenyth and the husband of Blythe Danner directs this very minor production that is generic and predictable throughout. The story and production values seem better suited for television and this doesn’t even seem like an 80’s movie, but more a remnant from the touchy, feely 70’s. The plot is empty and fails to gain any momentum with dialogue that is stale and boring.

Although billed as a comedy there really isn’t much that is funny and few moments that become heavy-handed and melodramatic. One scene has the couple pretending to make love while under the covers of a bed that is in the middle of a storeroom with the other customers and a very nervous saleslady looking on that had potential, but doesn’t go on long enough. Another segment has some first grade school girls that Katherine teaches intently listening to a video tape of Michael telling them a story. I was amazed at how enraptured the children were because I found the tale to be dull and vapid, but then having all the girls become teary-eyed at the end of it goes overboard.

Capshaw, who has been married to Steven Spielberg for over twenty years and has five children with him, is vivacious in her film debut. She looks beautiful and far better looking than any of the other women that Michael fools around with. Matheson is liable enough, but his character is bland and no ability to carry the film.

The supporting cast comes off better although John Glover and Wallace Shawn are essentially wasted. Edward Herrmann is a delight as Michael’s friend Tommy and has the best lines in the whole movie. Joan Copland is amusing as Katherine’s mother especially when she compares marriage to death in one conversation and then later compares it to war. It is also great to see Wendie Malick playing a sultry clarinetist who is now starring in the ‘Hot in Cleveland’ TV-show and looks like she hasn’t aged a day since appearing in this.

I am a big fan of Melissa Manchester and she has done a lot of great songs, but her opening song here ‘Your Place or Mine’ has to be one of her worst although I did like the extreme close-up of a cigarette being lit and then watching it slowly burn, which is the film’s one and only interesting cinematic moment.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: April 2, 1982

Runtime: 1Hour 35Minutes

Rated R

Director: Bruce Paltrow

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video, Netflix streaming

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Romance, Sex

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Joy of Sex (1984)

Posted on August 5, 2013 | 2 comments

joy of sex 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Teens can’t get laid.

This film will kick off a month long theme where every Monday we’ll review an 80’s film that has the word sex in the title. The title to this one was purchased by Paramount from a sex manual written by Alex Comfort. The studio was so convinced that the title alone would create a box office buzz that they hired two writers to write a story around it only after the rights to the title had been secured. The plot deals with Leslie (Michelle Meyrink) a teen that reads an article about skin cancer and is convinced that the mole on her chest is a melanoma. Despite the fact that her Dr. says it isn’t she still believes that she is dying and goes on a crusade to lose her virginity before she does, but with little luck.

Although the movie has received almost unanimously negative reviews including a ‘bomb’ rating by Leonard Maltin I was surprised to find that the first 20 minutes or so is actually quite engaging. Some of the humor is kind of funny including the running joke of a ‘krazy glue bandit’ who terrorizes the administrators of the school by gluing all sorts of weird things on objects including coffee cups on the breasts of an outside statue, Mr. Potato heads to trophies inside a trophy case and a dildo inside the mouth of a fish that is the school mascot. There is also Farouk (Danton Stone) an early version of Borat who misunderstands American customs for instance when someone asks him to ‘give me five’ he hands him a five dollar bill and some of the thoughts that Leslie has while she makes out with a guy in a car are also pretty funny.

Where the film goes wrong is that it is just too damn innocuous. There is no tension, edge, or conflict. The majority of the movie deals more with Allen (Cameron Dye) and his inability to get laid instead of Leslie. The teen characters are one-dimensional and their adult counterparts come-off as staid, stiff, and out-of-touch. What is worse is that the film spends the entire time talking about sex, much of which is not very clever or interesting, but then never shows any of it. There isn’t even any nudity, which may be because the film was directed by a woman which may please the feminists, but as a guy if I’m expected to sit through something as vapid as this I would at least like a little T&A to help carry me through.

Meyrink is terrific and the one good thing about the movie. She is the only character that comes off as a real person and her nerdette caricature is a delight. Christopher Lloyd who plays her high school coach father over does it by delivering all of his lines in a drill sergeant-like manner that eventually becomes annoying. I also didn’t care for Colleen Camp who plays an undercover cop posing as a student. She was thirty at the time and looked it and I think the other students would have realistically thought the same thing. She also has a protruding mole on her right cheek that looks like a big pimple.

I did like Paul Tulley as Ted Vinson a crusading news reporter who expounds on all of society’s ills. Leslie meets with him because she thinks he can use his influence to get her friend Sharon (Cristen Kauffman) back in school after being kicked out for being pregnant, but instead finds that he simply is interested in having sex with her. This reminded me of former Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene who would write a lot of whiny, sappy, overwrought columns about society’s perceived moral decay only to end up being caught in a sex scandal himself.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: August 3, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 33Minutes

Rated R

Director: Martha Coolidge

Studio: Paramount

Available: VHS, Amazon Instant Video

2 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Campy Comedy, Obscure Movies, Sex

Tagged , , , , , ,

A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987)

Posted on July 29, 2013 | Leave a comment

return to salems lot

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Town full of vampires

Joe Webber (Michael Moriarty) is a documentary filmmaker who is always looking to tackle the next shocking topic if it will help advance him and his film career. While vacationing in a small New England town of Jerusalem’s Lot with his teenage son Jeremy (Ricky Addison Reed) he becomes aware that the entire town is made up of a population of vampires led by elderly Judge Axel (Andrew Duggan). They are aware of Joe’s film career and give him an offer to film a documentary on them so as to give future generations a better understanding of the vampire lifestyle. Initially Joe is intrigued with the idea, but when he finds out that they want to turn his son into one of them he refuses and spends the rest of the time trying to escape and with the help of elderly but tenacious vampire hunter Van Meer (Samuel Fuller) save his son.

This flick is complete disaster from the beginning. It opens with Joe filming a documentary on a jungle cannibal tribe that looks like a real tacky rip-off of Cannibal Holocaust. The gore and special effects are abysmal and the story and characters have nothing to do with the Stephan King novel to which it is based nor the 1979 TV-Movie. Had the plot gone more with Joe filming a documentary on the populace it might have been interesting in an offbeat way, but the script brings up the idea and then never follows through with it.  There are shades of dry humor here and there and had it been more consistent with it the film could have been viewed and possibly enjoyed as a parody, but as it is it is nothing more than cheap straight-to-video fare.

The characters are poorly defined and at times even contradictory. Joe starts out as this callus man who puts his directing career first and has no concern for his son and hasn’t seen him for years, or even mentioned him to his friends. Then suddenly they get to this town and he will stop at nothing to save him. The son also does not like the father when he first sees him and yet magically and quickly bonds with him the minute they get to town. He is also described to be deeply troubled psychologically, but shows no sign of it during the course of the movie.

There is also the issue of Van Meer shooting Judge Axel in the head twice with a gun, but even as bullet holes spew out blood from his forehead he still goes on walking and talking like nothing happened. Supposedly this is to signify that the only way to kill a vampire is to stick a wooden stake through their heart and if you try to kill them any other way it won’t work, but this still doesn’t make sense. For instance if you break a vampires kneecap wouldn’t that effect the way they walk? If so then the same logic should hold true if you put two bullet holes into their brain. It would more than likely turn them into a complete vegetable a vegetable that may go on living forever until you drive a wooden stake through its heart, but a vegetable nonetheless.

Moriarty gives another great performance that completely exceeds the quality of the material. This one is even more impressive because he actually plays a normal person here and does so effectively, which is interesting given the nature of his sometimes offbeat behavior off-camera. The person though that really steals it is famed film director Fuller as the elderly vampire hunter. The guy shows an amazing amount of charisma and energy and plays up the character to an amazingly amusing degree and helps save what is otherwise a disaster.

Veteran actresses June Havoc and Evelyn Keyes appear as two of the elderly women vampires. Keyes really plays-it-up and the way she sucks the blood from one of the victims off her fingers looks down right erotic. The scene where Havoc, Keyes and writer/director Larry Cohen’s then real-life wife Janelle Webb chew on the dead body of Cohen’s real-life daughter Jill Gatsby gets a few points for audaciousness. This is also a great chance to see Tara Reid in her film debut as one of the vampire children.

The final thirty minutes is an improvement namely because of Fuller’s presence, but it does nothing to hide the film’s many other flaws, which is a perfect example of bad 80’s horror.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 18, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 41Minutes

Rated R

Director: Larry Cohen

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: VHS, DVD (Warner Archive), Amazon Instant Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Low Budget, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Vampire Movies

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Perfect Strangers (1984)

Posted on July 22, 2013 | Leave a comment

perfect strangers

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Kid witnesses a murder.

Johnny (Brad Rijn) is a local hit-man who knifes someone to death in a back alley. Little does he know that behind a nearby fence is a 2-year-old toddler peeking out through a small opening and witnessing the whole thing.  As Johnny is about to leave he suddenly becomes aware of the child, but as the police are coming he runs. He is connected to the mob and when he tells them of the incident they advise him that he must kill the child simply to be extra cautious. Johnny then decides to get in a relationship with the boy’s attractive single mother Sally (Anne Carlisle) with the idea that he will get close enough to her that she will trust him to be alone with the kid where he will then off him and make it look like an accident.

The child who is played by a very young actor named Matthew Stockley is extremely cute to the point of being adorable. The idea of any harm coming to him is almost unthinkable, which helps create some tension and the climatic sequence where he is chased by Johnny though an abandoned, shadowy warehouse is well done.

However, the film’s biggest weakness is the Johnny character who is too damn nice to the point that I even started to like him as the film progressed. The guy is great with the kid and shows a definite sensitive side and is reluctant to harm the child and only considers it because the rest of the mob pushes him to. This then pretty much mutes the tension and the film would have been more exciting had the character been portrayed as a cold-hearted psycho. I also found it a bit contradicting that this otherwise nice guy could so easily kill other people. The extremes in the personality didn’t connect although at one point he does at least say ‘sorry’ to one of his victims as he drags the dead body away after viciously killing him.

Carlisle is excellent. She is probably best known for starring in as well as writing the screenplay for the cult hit Liquid Sky. There she played a teenage punk, but here filmed only 2 years later she comes off as a mature full-grown woman and her effective performance helps carry the film. Otto von Wernherr who was also in that movie appears as a private eye hired to follow Johnny around.

Stephan Lack who was in Scanners and just about ruined the film with his terrible performance is surprisingly good here as an aggressive police detective who hounds Sally for answers and won’t leave her alone. Ann Magnuson is somewhat amusing as a man-hating feminist Nazi.

If writer/director Larry Cohen scores anywhere it is in his ability to vividly show the street culture and eclectic, busy atmosphere of New York City life. One bit has hundreds of woman marching down the street in an anti-rape parade and when Johnny tries to get involved in it the woman aggressively pushes him back out. Things flow enough to make it mildly entertaining, but the film lacks distinction and is ultimately forgettable.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 24, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes

Rated R

Director: Larry Cohen

Studio: Larco Productions

Available: DVD

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Gangster Movies, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Thrillers/Suspense

Tagged , , , , , ,

The Stuff (1985)

Posted on July 15, 2013 | 1 comment

the stuff

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Ice cream can kill

An old man comes upon some white stuff bubbling up from the ground and when he tries it he becomes addicted to its delicious taste. Soon everybody in the small town he is in becomes hooked to it as well. Some businessmen, who would never touch the stuff themselves, decide to market it as the next new variation of ice cream and call it The Stuff. It becomes a national craze, but when 11-year-old Jason (Scott Bloom) finds it crawling around in his refrigerator late one night he becomes convinced that there is something wrong with it, but he can’t get his family to stop eating it. Mo Rutherford (Michael Moriarty) begins to get his suspicions as well when he is hired by a competing company to find out what the secret ingredients are only to come at a dead-end with people he talks to. When everyone starts to display odd zombie-like behavior the two join forces to shut down the company that produces.

It is really hard to figure out what genre to put this thing into. Most movie sites list it under the horror category, but there really isn’t anything that scary in it. I might actually put it as sci-fi, but it is a bit vapid at that level. If anything I would say the true category would be as a parody of all those old sci-fi movies from the 50’s as well as a satire on mass consumerism.

The film does feature some goofy commercials advertising the product that is spread throughout the story and features famous B-celebrities as the spokes people. My favorite was the one with Abe Vigoda and Clara Peller. Peller was famous for doing a Wendy’s commercial in the 80’s where she asked “Where’s the beef?” and in the ad here she asks “Where’s The Stuff?”

The special effects are hit and miss. The best ones feature the white liquid that looks like a cross between marshmallow topping, shaving cream and the white foamy stuff that comes out of a fire extinguisher. The best moment is when it starts to spew out of a pillow in a hotel room with such force that it completely covers a man with it and sticks him onto the ceiling. I also liked the part where actor Garret Morris has his mouth opened to an extreme size before he spits it out and then has his head explode.

Moriarty with his unique acting style scores again as a sort of anti-hero. His presence gives the movie an interesting edge. His bowl haircut, Cheshire grin and beady eyes make him almost look like some loner psycho killer from the sticks and allow for one funny exchange between him and actor Alexander Scourby’s character:

Scourby: You’re not as dumb as you look.

Moriarty: Nobody could be as dumb as I look.

As much as I love Andrea Marcovicci who is a truly beautiful woman to look at as well as a great actress I felt her character was not needed. She plays a woman who also teams up with Mo and Jason in their crusade to stop the Stuff. The romantic interplay between Mo and her character didn’t work and takes away from the quirkiness and edge that the Mo character had at the beginning. Having the heroes exclusively been between a kid and a middle-aged man would have been much more of a fun novelty.

The film does not have the schlocky, low budget production values that are a characteristic of most Larry Cohen movies. The lighting, variety of locales and reproduction of an Ice Cream factory are actually quite impressive. This is also one of the few films where you get to see the inside of a liquid storage truck. However, it lacks any type of interesting twist or payoff. There is never any explanation about what this white stuff is, or how it got there. There is also hundreds of potentially interesting scenarios and story threads that it could have taken, but doesn’t. In the end I felt this thing was just tapping the surface and the final result is rather empty and forgettable.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: June 14, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 26Minutes

Rated R

Director: Larry Cohen

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video, Netflix streaming

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Parody

Tagged , , , , , ,

Special Effects (1984)

Posted on July 8, 2013 | 2 comments

special effects

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Murder her on film.

Snuff movies have become the thing of urban legends and apparently tapped into society’s morbid curiosity. It is really surprising how many movies and TV-shows have dealt with the topic especially recently. It all started in 1971 with the film Snuff that purportedly dealt with an actual murder of an actress done in front of the camera even though it was faked and not very good, but the film’s tagline ‘Filmed in South America where life is CHEAP’ is at least amusing. There have been films that have tried to make it look very convincing particularly the disturbing ‘Guinea Pig’ series from Japan as well as Cannibal Holocaust that got director Rogero Deodato taken to court to prove that he didn’t actually kill his cast. Although there have been executions, assassinations and suicides that have been recorded and sometimes put into documentaries there has yet to be a performer murdered in front of the camera for commercial purposes.

In today’s movie writer/director Larry Cohen takes this concept and gives it an intriguing spin. Neville (Eric Bogosian) is a down-and-out filmmaker. His last picture bombed at the box office and he is looking to make a buzz with his next project. He is fascinated with the capturing of the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald and how movies can never quite recreate death in the same way. Struggling actress Andrea (Zoe Tamerlis) answers an ad and shows up in his apartment/studio for an audition. Neville uses the allure of potential fame to get the women into bed with him, which he usually films with a camera hidden behind a two-way mirror. During the sex Andrea begins to belittle him, which angers him enough that he strangles her. Realizing that he has the murder captured on film he decides to use it to his advantage. He disposes of the dead body and then hires another woman named Elaine (also played by Tamerlis) who looks just like Andrea to star in his next film. He will then incorporate the scene of the murder into the movie. Audiences will think it was done with special effects and be so impressed with how realistic it looks that it will give Neville numerous accolades for his film making skill and bring him back to the top of the directing world.

Cohen uses the story as an excuse to expose the seedy, unglamorous side of low budget filmmaking many of which based on his own observations from working in the business. One of the more startling revelations that he shows is how the movie world is such an allure to some people that they will completely sell-out to get into it even if it means losing their dignity. This comes to a head in what is probably the film’s strongest scene when Neville is very rude and brash with Elaine when he first meets her. He shouts at her like she is sub-human and simply a piece of property, but the prospect of starring in a movie is so strong that she doesn’t walk out of there like most people would probably want to do. What is worse is the fact that Neville is aware of this and realizes he can get away with it.

The movie also looks how demeaning it can sometimes be being a filmmaker as well. Having to work and deal with various personalities and egos as well as fighting to remain in control of the project and vision. He also shows how exhausting the research phase of a production can be and how breakthroughs and inspirations usually come about by complete accident. The extended scene dealing with them trying to find an actress who resembles Andrea and auditioning hundreds of different women without any luck only to come upon Elaine by complete accident when they go to a Salvation Army store is a good example of this.

Cohen also infuses some creative camera work and directorial flair. The opening sequence showing Andrea prancing around topless in what looks to be the Oval Office of The White House has panache. The shot showing rows upon rows of hundreds of headshots of young and aspiring actresses, which includes an amusing one of Dustin Hoffman in his Tootsie character, lining the floor is impressive. I also liked the way Neville’s apartment is captured when Andrea first walks into it as well as extreme close-ups of circuit breakers being put back into a circuit box, which is really cool.

Tamerlis is fantastic in the lead. She shows a great awareness and natural acting ability in front of the camera. She plays the dual roles with two very distinct personalities and accents both of which are good. Her presence makes the film more interesting and the scenes that she is not in lack the same energy.

Bogosian easily conveys the obnoxious sarcastic personality of his character, but at times his facial expressions seem to be either lacking or over-exaggerated. Brad Rijn who plays Andrea’s husband who later gets involved in Neville’s project is weak and annoying. In some ways he seems to be the right pick for someone playing a country hick, but he has no charisma and looks too scrawny especially with his clothes off.

For a low budget 80’s flick the film has enough twists and a good enough pace to be marginally entertaining. The only thing that I really didn’t like was the synthesized electronic music score that drones on endlessly like in one of those 80’s porn flicks. I think the reason I liked the scene where Andrea’s dead body is shown inside a parked car in a lonely area of Coney Island is because it didn’t have any music and instead used the natural ambience of the location, which helped make it distinct and should’ve been done with the rest of the movie.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: November 16, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 33Minutes

Rated R

Director: Larry Cohen

Studio: New Line Cinema

Available: VHS, DVD

2 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Low Budget, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Thrillers/Suspense

Tagged , , , , ,