Category Archives: Thrillers/Suspense

Savage Harvest (1980)

Posted on December 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Hungry lions attack family.

Similar to Roar, which will be reviewed later this week and was released the same year, the plot centers on a family headed by Maggie (Michelle Phillips) who live in Kenya. Due the drought and famine in the area the lions have begun to attack the people. When a pride surrounds their home it’s up to them and Casey (Tom Skerrit), a friend of the family, to fight off the beasts and find a way out of the house and to safety.

Many fans of the film, particularly reviewers on IMDb, will tell you that it’s the footage of the lion attacks that they found riveting and was so scary and realistic looking that it would keep them up at night as kids. Initially though I found some of these attacks not to be all that impressive. In the first one we don’t even see the lion at all just a close-up of one of the frightened villager’s eyes. In the second one, which occurs when actor Arthur Malet gets trapped inside his broken down van, has potential if it had gotten played-out more, but ends up feeling a bit like a cop-out when we again don’t see the lions actually attack him, but instead just a big dent on the roof of his van apparently caused by the lion when he jumps on it and then there’s a quick cutaway only to come back to the scene later after the victim is already dead.

There are other segments that don’t make much sense for instance having a lion somehow crawl through the chimney of the home and into the fireplace, but no explanation for how he was able to get on the roof of the house, nor how a chimney could be wide enough to fit his large body. Later there’s a lion who pops into the living room like it was magic and nothing shown for how he got in.

The film is for the most part a low budget cheapie focused solely on the lion storyline and nothing else. While I did enjoy the moment when the family sings Beatles songs as the lions hungrily try to break into the home I felt the characterizations were too thin. A sub plot might’ve given it a little more depth, but none ever comes and when the lions aren’t on the screen it’s quite sterile.

However, it does get effectively tense if you’re patient and wade through some of the footage of victims looking, even with the quick editing, like mannequins filled with raw meat. The climactic sequence though had me on edge especially as they manage to create a caged contraption out of various household items and then make an attempt to escape while inside it. It’s a truly hold-your-breath moment that more than makes up for any of  the film’s other blemishes.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

May 1, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 27 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Robert L. Collins

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Movies with a rural setting, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Dark Room (1982)

Posted on December 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: A father/son rivalry.

Mike (Svet Kovich) works as a photographer who has a thing for his attractive co-worker Nicky (Anna Maria Monticelli). He quietly follows her around and takes pictures of her from afar only to learn that she’s been seeing his father Ray (Alan Cassell) who is still married to his mother (Diana Davidson). Mike becomes enraged by this and begins dating Nicky as well. This puts a damper on Ray who was planning on leaving his wife for Nicky, but who now seems to becoming more distant with him. Once Ray realizes his son is the other man the two share a fiery confrontation at an old cottage in the country with Nicky stuck in the middle.

To some degree this is a unique storyline that’s rarely been tackled before. Most films dealing with father/son relationships take a much different approach by focusing very much on the generational divide where the father is out-of-touch with the son’s interests and vice-versa. This film acts like the two men are pretty much the same, with one having been on this planet a little bit longer than the other, but overall still have common wants and needs and desires particularly when it comes to the attraction of younger women, which I believe secretly stays innate in men no matter how old or how married they become.

I also liked the casting of Svet Kovich, which to date this is the only movie he’s been in, as his hawkish face and beady eyes make him look menacing, which is what the part requires and in many ways he reminded me of character actor Anthony James who played quite a few psychos in his day as well. Unfortunately this hurts the story because in the film Nicky falls for Kovich and begins a relationship with him even though in realty I’d think most women would fear him due to his looks and odd introverted behavior and thus making the whole romantic angle between them come off as false and phony. It was never clear either why she’d want to have relationships with both men (she was not aware initially that the two were related) at the same time as she seemed happy seeing Ray, so why add another man into the mix? Most women tend to be either/or when it come to older men or younger ones, so it didn’t make sense her interest in both, or what she saw or didn’t see in one that made her desire the other.

The film’s biggest issue is that it doesn’t delve into the father/son relationship enough. We needed a backstory between the two and flashbacks, none are shown, of when they were younger and how the son related to his dad as a child. At the very end the son does bring up issues that he had with his father, but they tended to be cliched problems and something the viewer needed to see play-out instead of just being told about them verbally. Without that context nothing else that we see means anything. The film is on a technical level adequate, but it’s never gripping or fully compelling and this is because the characters are not fleshed out enough for us to understand them or care.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: Never released to theaters.

Not Rated

Director: Paul Harmon

Studio: Filmco Limited

Available: None at this time.

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Movies from Australia, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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Fight for Your Life (1977)

Posted on November 24, 2020 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Racist thugs terrorize family.

Three escaped convicts (William Sanderson, Daniel Faraldo, Peter Yoshida) find an isolated home in a woodsy are of upstate New York where they barge in on a black family headed by Reverend Turner (Robert Judd).  Jessie, the gang’s leader, is quite racist and uses the opportunity to spew out his hateful side forcing the home’s occupants, particularly the father, to do all sorts of humiliating things all to the amusement of the three men, but the family remains stoic determined to turn-the-tables on their captors the moment they get their chance.

The film could best be described as a variation on the Last House on the Left theme and in some ways does it much better. There’s none of the campy ‘comic relief’ humor here that almost ruined that one and the film is unrelentingly violent and grim. So many exploitation flicks from the 70’s would usually sell-out and never be half as provocative as advertised, but on that regard this movie delivers in ways that would still be considered jaw-dropping today and most likely not have any chance in this modern PC-era of getting filmed.

However, with that said, it’s still quite obnoxious and even repulsive to watch. There seems to be no other reason to have made this then to shock and appall and I’m genuinely surprised why anyone would’ve agreed to act in this particularly the black performers, who get forced to go through some truly tasteless and degrading acts.

The directing at times comes off as amateurish. It’s supposed to take place in the fall with leaves having turned color and almost fully off the trees, which is what we see when the thug’s car pulls up to a toll booth on a cloudy day and yet when the camera cuts to show the car leaving the toll booth the sky is now sunny and full green foliage on all of the trees. The music is also too loud, gets in the way of the action where natural ambience would’ve created more tension, and seems like a soundtrack better suited for a blaxploitation flick.

I wasn’t real happy with Sanderson’s presence either. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a gifted character actor, who’s best known for having played Larry in the ‘Newhart’ TV-show where he’d enter every scene by introducing himself as well as his two brothers named Darryl. In the comic realm as a backwoods hick his accent and talents are perfect, but here I could never take him seriously. His voice is too high pitched to be menacing and his wiry physique isn’t imposing. This might’ve been the intention at showing how without a gun he wasn’t much of man, but for the film to be truly scary there needed to be someone with a very intimidating look running the show.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending just about destroys what little potential this production had as it features an entire police force coming to the home, but instead of rescuing the occupants they choose to instead just stand outside and do nothing even as two of the women get raped. Supposedly this wasn’t for racist reasons, but more because they feared the victims might accidently get killed should they rush in to save them, but what’s the use fitting a police department with weapons and training if they’re going to be too timid to use it when they need to?

The idea that the black family would become aware that the police where outside, but stall them simply so they could enact their own revenge on the bad guys was too much of an overreach. The ending would’ve worked better, and been more believable, had the police not arrived at all and thus forcing the victims to use their own wits and ingenuity to overtake the brutes and then allowing their anger to spill over causing them to become far more vindictive than anyone could’ve imagined.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: October 1, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 26 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Robert A. Endelson

Studio: William Mishkin Motion Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Exploitation, Movies with Nudity, Rape/Revenge, Thrillers/Suspense

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Thunder Run (1986)

Posted on November 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Aging trucker hauls plutonium.

Charlie (Forrest Tucker) is a former trucker who spends his retirement working an old cobalt mine, but finds few prospects. He’s then given an offer by George (John Ireland) an old friend of his to haul some plutonium from Nevada to a top secret installation in Arizona. George warns Charlie that it could be dangerous as they’re terrorists after the cargo and willing to resort to violent means to steal it, but the $200,000 payout is too much for Charlie to refuse. With the help of his grandson Chris (John Shepherd) and his other teen friends the truck gets fitted with high tech gadgetry in order to fight off the bad guys when they attack.

The film starts out okay although it has all the signs of being a low budget direct-to-video 80’s venture complete with stock characters and generic music. The presence of Tucker, whose last movie this was, really helps. He’s the kind of actor who can give a performance that seems effortless and like he’s not acting at all just being himself and his persona is quite engaging allowing the viewer to become attached to him quite quickly and rooting him on in his challenge. There is some nifty stunt work too with my favorite moment being when a backhoe loader crushes a car that it literally runs right over and then also a trailer office. The scene has little to do with the main plot, but it’s still fun to see visually.

The film though starts to falter when it gets out onto the open-road. What should’ve been excited actually isn’t. There’s just too much high tech nonsense with rig equipped with stuff no other 18-wheeler has ever had. There’s very little intrigue at seeing the bad guys chase the truck when Tucker is able to just blow them all away with a press of a button. The truck seems almost indestructible as the villains aim a flame thrower right at the tires, which should’ve easily melted the rubber, but instead it doesn’t. The film is famous for a stunt that has the truck jumping over a train, but when it came back down onto the pavement it should’ve jostled the intricate parts of the rig in a way that would’ve most likely disabled it and the fact that the truck is able to continue on just fine starts to make the whole thing too ridiculous to be believed.

Having Tucker paired with Shepherd, who was 24 at the time, but looked more like he was only 18, is not interesting. Initially I thought this would allow the story to take advantage of the generation gap, but Shepherd is so squeaky clean and All-American that his presence allows for no nuance. I realize that in order to attract teen viewers a younger actor needed to be cast in a co-starring role, but the film would’ve been far better had Tucker been the sole driver, manning a rig that was just a regular truck without any of the techie jazz and forced to use his wits and cunning to fight off the terrorists instead of stuff dreamed up by a special effects wiz with an over active imagination.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 30, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Gary Hudson

Studio: Cannon Film Distributors

Available: DVD (Region 2), VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Cult, Obscure Movies, Road Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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End Play (1976)

Posted on November 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Reviews: Feuding brothers hold secret.

Mark (John Waters) picks up a hitchhiker (Delvene Delaney) on a lonely road and then promptly kills her. He then travels to his brother Robert’s (George Mallaby) house for a visit. When Robert leaves to go target practicing Mark brings the dead hitchhiker’s body inside and dresses her up to make it appear that she is still alive. He then disguises himself while taking the corpse to the local movie theater and once there he sneaks leaving the dead body to be discovered by others. Once the news of the grisly discovery hits the airwaves Robert immediately suspects Mark, but decides not to go to the authorities since he is already a paraplegic and at risk, due to lesions on his neck, of losing the movement of his arms, which will ultimately render him under the care of Mark. He also dislikes the police due to a childhood issue that he had with them, so for these reasons he covers for Mark’s actions, but when he realizes that his girlfriend (Belinda Giblin) has cheated on him with Mark he decides to carry out a stern revenge of his own.

The film, which is based on the novel of the same name by Russell Braddon, takes a unique spin on the mystery angle. Instead of delving into the action we get treated to the psychological interplay of the two leads and the many twists and turns their relationship takes where one minute they seem like comrades and the next enemies. Mallaby, who ironically ended up wheelchair bound in real-life after suffering a series of strokes in 1994, gives an edgy performance where his personality is so strong and aggressive that you really don’t notice the handicap at all. I liked the soundtrack by Peter Best too as it has a nice subtle quality that accentuates the creepiness without ever calling attention to itself.

While the film manages to hold interest it is somewhat slow. With the exception of a violent confrontation between the two brothers that occurs near the end there’s no action to speak of, so unless the viewer is really into the psychological aspect they may find the pace to be a bit boring. The two leads aren’t likable either. Normally the tension is created because you care about the protagonist and don’t want to see them harmed or in trouble, but in this case that’s all missing.

Spoiler Alert!

The biggest letdown though comes with its twist ending in which we find that Mark wasn’t the killer after all, but instead it was Robbie. However, director Tim Burstall completely botches this by showing the back of Mark’s head during the opening scene when the hitchhiker enters the vehicle. The two have completely different hair color with Mark’s being brown and Robbie’s being blonde and I even went back to the scene to make sure and there’s no mistaking it, it’s Mark’s head. This could’ve been completely avoided by simply having the camera act as the killer’s point-of-view where we only see the face of the hitchhiker as she enters the vehicle and is then killed. The fact that this wasn’t done was a big mistake and nullifies the intended surprise.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: January 1, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 48 Minutes

Director: Tim Burstall

Studio: Hexagon Productions

Available: None at this time.

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Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Australia, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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Fright (1971)

Posted on October 17, 2020 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Psycho torments a babysitter.

Amanda (Susan George) is a college student who earns money part-time by working as a babysitter. One night she takes a job with the Lloyds (Honor Blackman, George Cole) who assign her to watch after their sleeping toddler (Tara Collinson) at their isolated wooded estate while they go off to a dinner party. Once the couple leaves Amanda begins hearing strange noises and becomes convinced that someone outside is watching her unaware that Mrs. Lloyd’s ex-husband (Ian Bannen) has escaped from the nearby insane asylum and now looking to attack anyone inside.

While the babysitter-terrorized-by-a-psycho theme may now be considered a cliché with such popular films as Halloween and When a Stranger Calls having successfully done it it’s important to realize that this film did it first and to some extent does pretty well although it does veer off from the formula. I did like the creepy set-up where an extended amount of time is given to building up the atmosphere. Some of the best moments are seeing the shadowy images on the other side of the window and not knowing who it is. The film is most effective when it’s seen from Amanda’s point-of-view making the viewer feel trapped inside the home alongside her, but weakens when it cuts away to the outside, which lessens the tension.

Having Amanda’s boyfriend Chris (Dennis Waterman) arrive doesn’t help. The fear hinges on Amanda feeling that she is all alone in this big strange house in the middle-of-nowhere and entering more people into the mix takes that element away.

The film is unusual in that unlike the other thrillers with a similar plotline the parents here figure heavily into the story. Instead of just focusing exclusively on the babysitter the films consistently cuts between her scenes and the scenes of the couple at the party. In many ways its the mother that becomes the real star, which is fine to an extent, but the part is played by Honor Blackman, a very gifted actress, but at age 46 was looking way too old to be the mother of such a young child.

The film is also unusual in that when the police arrive it doesn’t just end in fact that’s when it starts to get going with the entire third act filled with this long protracted stand-off. To some degree I felt this made it more realistic as real-life hostage situations can happen with long ‘negotiating’ session between the police and the person inside. Police aren’t always able to immediately take control of a situation either and can sometimes be just as helpless as the victim, but in the process this approach takes away the confrontational element between Amanda and the psycho, which would’ve been more interesting at seeing how she could use her wits to outsmart the bad guy that never really gels.

Susan George really doesn’t figuring in as much of the action as you’d initially expect spends most of the time just crying and looking scared. The 3-year-old child, which was played by the daughter of the film’s director Peter Collinson, doesn’t help matters either. I found it very hard to believe that any child could remain asleep such as this one when Amanda and the psycho stood over her crib talking and at certain points even shouting. The child never screams or cries either even when a sharp piece of a broken-off mirror is put to her throat.

Bannen can be amazingly creepy, I enjoyed his work in The Offence where he played a suspected child killer being interrogated by Sean Connery, but here he’s given a bit too much latitude and becomes a caricature. Having him seesaw between being child-like to behaving aggressively comes off as manufactured and more strained than frightening.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending, in which Amanda shoots and kills the psycho, does not work. For one thing Bannen had already handed over the child to the mother and at that point was completed surrounded by the police with nowhere to run, so killing him wasn’t needed. It’s questionable how and where Amanda got the gun, supposedly it was the one that an officer had put down earlier, but how she was able to sneak up and get it from him is never explained. Also, she had most likely never shot a gun before, in Great Britain most people don’t own guns, so she’d probably not have been able to hit him, especially in her shaky emotional state, at a long distance, which makes this scene dumb and unnecessary.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: September 18, 1971

Runtime: 1 Hour 27 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Peter Collinson

Studio: British Lion Film Corporation

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Foreign Films, Movies with a rural setting, Thrillers/Suspense

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Road Games (1981)

Posted on October 4, 2020 | Leave a comment

road games 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Truck driver pursues killer.

Quid (Stacy Keach) is an American working as a trucker in Australia and hauling a frozen shipment of pigs through the outback and into Perth. Along the way he becomes menaced by a strange man (Grant Page) driving a black van who has a penchant for picking-up prostitutes who then end up dying. Quid is convinced that the man is the serial killer that is being reported about on the news, but before he can go to the police he gets tabbed as the killer himself forcing him, with the help of Pamela (Jamie Lee Curtis) a hitch-hiker he picks up along the way, to find the real killer before he gets arrested for crimes that he did not do.

One of the coolest aspects of this film is its voyeuristic quality where visual clues are a requirement for the viewer to pick up on to figure out what’s going on.  Too many other movies don’t take enough advantage of this idea and usually sell-out by having everything explained through dialogue, but here director Richard Franklin, a major devotee of Alfred Hitchcock, who tried to model the story after Rear Window, keeps the viewer feeling like they’re an active participant.

The film’s drawback, and most likely one of the main reasons it didn’t do well at the box office, is that the tension  ebbs and flows. Too much labor gets put into dressing up the plot with a lot of quirky side stories. This includes having Quid  coming into contact with the same motorists through his travels, which I didn’t think was realistic that these same drivers would be taking the exact same route as him while maintaining the same speeds as he over a several day period, so that no matter where he went they were never far away. I have traveled extensively by car on long road trips similar to this one and have never kept passing the same motorists like Quid does here.

The film also lacks, with the exception of a surprise double ending that comes at the very end,  any type of actual scares. There is a running build-up making you believe that a shock is just around-the-corner, but ultimately it’s a letdown. People watch these things with the anticipation they’ll be jumping-out-of-their-seats at some point, but this is too tame and at certain points it’s almost more like a comedy.

The killer, who was played by a stuntmen and not a professional actor, lacks any type of presence to distinction. For things to get really intense, which it never does, the bad guy has to stand out and make the viewer feel on edge every time they see him, which this transparent guy is unable to do. It would have also been more interesting had his face not been shown until the very end instead of Quid seeing what he looks like early on when he spots him through his binoculars.

I was surprised why the two lead characters were played by Americans since the setting is the down-under and the story better served by performers who were native born. That’s not to say that Keach or Curtis don’t give engaging performances because they do, but I don’t believe there’s too many American truck drivers working in Australia, so there needed to be some explanation for why Keach was there and why, being that he was not from the region, he was so educated about the history of the area, as evidenced when the two camp-out overnight and he tells her the back story of an abandoned telegraph station that sits nearby.

The romantic undertones that are lightly introduced does nothing but sap away the tension. I also found it curious why Curtis would be trusting of Quid upfront as she’d have no idea whether the serial killer could’ve been him and therefore she should’ve been more guarded, which she isn’t.

The climactic sequence features a unique car chase where three vehicles follow each other around the back alleys of Perth late at night, but at very slow speeds, which surprisingly is effective. However, the script should’ve been tighter and the editing quicker. The film’s leisurely pace and colorful supporting characters works against it. There needed to be more shocks, more of a confrontation between Quid and the killer, and basically just more of a conventional thriller-like approach.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: June 26, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Richard Franklin

Studio: Embassy Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Dry Humor, Foreign Films, Movies from Australia, Mystery, Road Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

Posted on August 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

 

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Shark holds a grudge.

It’s been 9 years since the last shark attack in Amity. Since that time Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) has died from a heart-attack, but the rest of his family continue to live in the area and carry on his legacy. His son Sean (Mitchell Anderson) like his father, works in the police department and one chilly night gets assigned to repair a disabled buoy out in the harbor. It’s there that he’s attacked and killed by a great white shark, making his mother Ellen (Lorraine Gary) believe that the shark is intentionally hunting down the members of her family, she even has nightmares about it. She warns her other son Mike (Lance Guest) to stay out of the water, but since he’s an underwater research scientist this is not possible, which starts to create friction between the two.

Just when the public thought it was safe to go back to the theaters again another formuliac shark movie got propped-up. This one was the brainchild of Universal CEO Sidney Sheinberg, (who was also the husband of the film’s star Lorraine Gary) who wanted to promote the new Jaws ride at Universal Studios theme park. In order to keep the story ‘fresh’ they decided to add-in a mystical element to it, but it’s not thought out enough to make any sense. I would think a shark would view people the same way people view sharks in that they would all look alike. How would a shark know when a Brody family member was in the water? Better yet how would the shark know when the Brodys move from New York all the way down to the Caribbean?

In the early versions of the screenplay, as well as the novel version of the film, the mystical factor gets explained as having been caused by a witch doctor named Papa Jacques who has an ongoing feud with the Brody’s and uses voodoo to compel the shark to kill them, but this idea got nixed in the final draft as it veered too much away from the actual shark. In some ways this was probably a good thing because in the novel there are several chapters done from the shark’s point-of-view where he becomes confused about why he’s killing the Brodys, which would’ve been too ludicrous had that been put into the movie.

The film sorely misses Roy Scheider, who’s only seen in brief flashbacks, and Richard Dreyfuss, who both refused to do the sequel. Had they been the elements of the shark’s revenge and having the nightmares only to decide to go out together on a boat ride to conquer those fears, this might’ve been worth catching.

Lorraie Gary’s presence is not interesting as she had been only a minor supporting player in the first two. She’s not the only one to reprise her role as Lee Fiero, who played Mrs. Kinter the mother of the young boy who gets killed by the shark in the first film, can be seen very briefly. Fritzi Jane Courtney, who played Mrs. Taft in the first two movies, is also on hand reprising the same character, but by this time her hair had turned all white and I didn’t immediately recognize her.

The presence of Michael Caine has to be the biggest head-scratchier. Granted he was notorious for doing what became known as ‘paycheck movies’ where no matter what the quality of the script he’d take the offer if the money was good, but his part here is quite minor and there’s long stretches where he isn’t seen at all. He later admitted that he has never seen the film and is well aware that it’s a flop, but the house it helped build with the money he made is ‘really nice’.

In fact the only performance that I was really impressed with was that of Judith Barsi, who plays the daughter of the Mike character. She’s perky and precocious when it’s required, but also believably frightened when it’s necessary making her untimely death, at the hands of her own father just a year after this film was released, all the more tragic.

Spoiler Alert!

The film’s most controversial moment has to do with the ending in which too variations were filmed. One has Gary ramming the shark with her boat and killing it while the other one has the beast exploding. Both versions show the cast jumping into the water as the boat they’re on breaks apart, but no explanation for how they ended up finding their way back to land, which is a big cop-out.

End of Spoiler Alert!

Probably the most amusing thing about this mess is the interview director Joseph Sargent gives on American Archives in which he mockingly laughs at his own film. He goes on to muse about Caine taking the part and shocked that he would think it was a ‘good script’. He then ponders about how ‘grown, intelligent men’ could ever work on a project that is so  stupid and admits that it was the money and power, as he acted as the film’s producer, that lead him to make the fatal mistake of doing it, which he knew was a really bad idea from the very beginning.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: July 17, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Joseph Sargent

Studio: Universal

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Drama on the High Seas, Sequels, Thrillers/Suspense

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Best Friends (1975)

Posted on August 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Road trip turns nightmarish.

Jesse (Richard Hatch) and Pat (Doug Chapin) have been best friends since childhood. Now both are ready to enter into young adulthood. To celebrate they decide to take a road trip via a camper across the American southwest along with their two girlfriends: Kathy (Susanne Benton) and Jo Ella (Ann Noland). As the trip progresses the differences between the two men become more pronounced. Jesse is ready to settle down and get married while Pat remains a free-spirit wanting to party with no limits. Pat also resents the presence of Kathy who he feels is getting in the way of his friendship with Jesse. He tries different tactics to get them to break-up and when that doesn’t work he resorts to a more drastic measures.

The film is interesting to a degree and goes against most other road pictures that usually show the bond between two people growing as the trip progresses while here it devolves. The low key approach allows for a certain diversion including a wonderfully majestic bird’s eye shot of the camper driving along the highway with a beautiful mountain range seen in the background. The pace is slow and the scenes could’ve been trimmed, but first-time director Noel Nosseck manages to at least have some drama flowing in each segment and thus enough to hold a modicum of interest.

Most will be intrigued to see Hatch in his film debut and while his performance is adequate it’s actually Chapin, who’s last film this was to date, that comes off better in a portrayal of a ticking time bomb ready to go off. Although I couldn’t help but notice his severely scarred right hand, which is not a part of the story and only seen briefly in one shot, that looks like the pinkie finger was severed off at some point in an accident and then surgically reattached.

The film’s downfall comes with Pat’s dissent into psychosis, which  needed more context. Friendships ebb and flow and a person could be best friends with a certain individual at one point in their life, but not in another one. When one friend gets married and the other one doesn’t then the single person finds other friends whose lifestyles remain more similar to his. Rarely if ever does it resort to the friend trying to kill the other’s girlfriend. To simply write this all off as being Pat’s inability to adapt to change or his jealousy is not enough. His behavior is too extreme and more of a background on his life and upbringing needed to be shown for us to make sense of it.

It would’ve worked better had it started with the two friends meeting in childhood and showing the good times they had throughout the years before even getting to the road trip, which should’ve been pushed back to the second act instead of right at the beginning. The two talk about their past, but in film it’s better for the viewer to see this for themselves instead of only being told about it. There should’ve also been some explanation for why Jesse didn’t see any red flags to Pat’s psychotic tendencies years earlier as they were so close you’d think he would’ve noticed the imbalanced much sooner instead of it all becoming a shock to him like everyone else at the end.

The ending is weak and offers no resolution. Jesse’s response to Pat’s behavior becomes almost as bizarre making it seem like he’s just as crazy as his friend, but since the characters are so poorly fleshed-out it’s hard to tell if that was the intention or not.

The film’s promotional poster seen above is quite misleading as it implies that’s it’s all about a confrontation between the 4 and a group of Native Americans. It is true there is a scene where a fight breaks-out between them at a bar, but it is brief and does not have anything to do with the main story.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 29, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 23 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Noel Nosseck

Studio: Crown International Pictures

Available: DVD (Savage Cinema 12-Movie Collection)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Road Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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Jaws 3 (1983)

Posted on August 4, 2020 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer shark attacks Seaworld.

A new theme park has opened up in Orlando, Florida. This one has been designed by Calvin Bouchard (Louis Gossett Jr.) and will feature underwater tunnels and an aquatic pool with dolphins and whales. However, just before the grand opening a great white shark and its offspring sneak in through the park’s closing gates. It’s now up to Mike Brody (Dennis Quaid) the son of Chief Brody from the first two Jaws movies, and marine biologist Kathryn (Bess Armstrong) to stop the shark from attacking the people as they venture into the water and tunnels.

This sequel was originally conceived as being a spoof and the title of it was going to be Jaws 3, People 0. John Hughes was commissioned to write the screenplay and Joe Dante was slated to direct. It was even going to have the author of the ‘Jaws’ novel, Peter Benchley getting eaten by a shark right at the beginning in his very own backyard pool, but Steven Spielberg became aware of the idea and threatened to pull out of the deal he had with Universal if they went through with it, so it was nixed, which is a shame because even if the humor had been lame it would still have been better than anything you’ll see here.

Like with most sequels there aren’t enough new elements entered into the mix to make what we see interesting. It just replays on the same tired formula including the scene where Quaid frantically warns everyone to get out of the water much like Roy Scheider did in the first one, which comes off as derivative and uninspired. The idea of having the two male characters be the sons of Chief Brody, in an apparent desperate attempt to tie this one in with the first two, is really dumb. The odds that the Brody offspring would continue to get into situations that would involve killer sharks are quite low and the fact that they do makes the family seem like they’re affected by some sort of curse.

The storyline dealing with Brody’s younger brother Sean (John Putch) who comes to visit and his extreme fear of going into the water, due to is childhood trauma of the shark attack years earlier, is stupid too especially since he immediately goes into the water with the coaxing of bikini clad Lea Thompson. If his fear was that severe no woman, no matter how beautiful, would get him to go against it. Why even enter in this plot element if they’re just going to have him get over the problem right away? Why not put it to good use by creating a scene where Quaid is trapped in the water and relying on his younger brother to overcome his fear so he can jump in to save him and thus create tension with the viewer wondering whether he’ll be able to do it or not?

The shark attacks take too long to get going and then when they do they happen too quickly. The 3D effects, like having a severed arm floating towards the viewer, are cheesy and not scary at all. Although with that said, the brief sequence showing a man being eaten by the shark from inside the shark’s mouth is pretty cool and the only reason that I’m giving this film any points at all.

I also found the entire cast, and their benign side-story issues, to be completely boring. The viewer is supposed to have some concern for the welfare for these individuals, but I had none. Simon MacCorkindale is semi-colorful and gets thrown in to act as a potential jerk to the rest, but this doesn’t get played-up enough.

Spoiler Alert!

I had a lot of issues with the climactic sequence too. For one thing it features the cast standing inside an underwater control room watching the shark coming at them through the glass window causing them to simultaneously scream at the same time, but it’s shown in slow-motion making it come off as corny and unintentionally funny. My biggest beef though is that the shark is able to burst through the glass without any problem. I’ve been to underwater aquariums and the glass that is used is of a much thicker variety than ordinary windows in order to withstand the water pressure and yet here the shark shatters it away in seconds like it was the same type of glass used for your living room window.

End of Spoiler Alert!

While a small cult in recent years has taken to this film it was lambasted quite justifiably by the critics upon its initial release with one calling it: “a cheese soaked ocean thriller with no evident reason to exist.” The film’s opening weekend did quite well, but once the bad word-of-mouth got going the box office receipts dropped sharply. Don’t be fooled by seeing Richard Matheson’s name listed on the screenwriting credits either. All he did was supply an outline, which he insisted got heavily revised later on by script doctors. He also labeled the final product, once he finally saw it, as a “waste of time”.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: July 22, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 39 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Joe Alves

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Movies that take place in Florida, Sequels, Thrillers/Suspense

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