Tag Archives: John Carpenter

Black Moon Rising (1986)

Posted on November 26, 2021 | 1 comment

black moon

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Stolen disk in car.

Earl Windom (Richard Jaeckel) has created an experimental automobile that can go up to 325 mph while running on nothing but tap water. He’s testing out the vehicle in the remote desert when he comes into contact with Quint (Tommy Lee Jones) a thief working for the F.B.I. who’s stolen a disk with incriminating evidence. To avoid others who are chasing after him he hides the disk inside the car’s back bumper. When Earl and his team drive away with the prototype vehicle on a truck bed Quint follows them to L.A. in order to retrieve the disk, but gets thwarted when the group stops off at a posh restaurant where the car is stolen by professional car thieves led by Nina (Linda Hamilton). Nina takes the car to a high-rise building owned by Ed (Robert Vaughan) where it’s stored in an underground parking garage that’s inaccessible to the public at large. Quint then teams up with Earl and eventually Nina to find a way to get to the car and ultimately the disk despite Ed using every maneuver he can to stop them.

The film was produced by New World Pictures, which delivered some good movies, but also some low budget ones that were devoid of anything original and completely dependent on mindless action to make it work. This one starts out like it’s part of the latter ones by appearing to have been filmed on video and then transferred to film, but the script, written by John Carpenter, is well paced and has enough twists to keep it engaging. Director Harley Cokeliss captures the wintertime desert landscape of eastern California well and the film does feature an interesting climax where Sam and Nina are unable to drive the car out of the building, which culminates with them being forced to drive it at high speeds inside a limited space, which is something you don’t see too often.

The supporting cast helps, which includes former punk rocker Lee Ving as a bad guy and retired football player Bubba Smith as a federal agent who shares a love-hate partnership with Quint. It’s also fun to see William Sanderson, best known for playing Larry, the talking-half of the Darryl brothers in the ‘Newhart’ TV-show, playing a deaf mute though he exits too early and his death scene, where he gets hit by a car which causes his body to spring up high in the air, looked cartoonish. It was also disappointing seeing talented character actor Keenan Wynn, in his final film appearance, strapped to a hospital bed with nothing much to say or do.

As for the leading actors I really liked Linda Hamilton, in some ways better than in Terminator, though the black wig that she wears at the beginning, which she thankfully gets rid of, was close to unbearable. Jones on the other-hand is an acquired taste. Some people love him though to me he seems too detached and not emotionally into his part enough to make it entertaining, or for the viewer to particularly care what happens to him.

Many fans of this film will list the car chase that occurs in downtown L.A. at night as their favorite scene, but I felt this was a letdown as the prototype vehicle, driven by Hamilton, is able to drive through the busy streets at high speeds, but manages somehow not to hit anyone. Someone not used to driving a car at such speeds would most likely lose control of it, or been hit by another car when it continuously goes through one red light after another.

The finale is contrived as Jones and Hamilton are seen care-freely walking away from the damage and chaos that they caused without having to answer to the police even though I’d think they’d have a lot of explaining to do before they’d be allowed to leave the scene. The film though as a whole is well done for what it’s worth. It’s nothing profound, or intellectual, but as a basic action flick it adequately delivers.

black moon 2

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: January 10, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Harley Cokeliss

Studio: New World Pictures

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

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Fast Cars/Car Chase

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Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

Posted on October 26, 2019 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Photographer sees killer’s perspective.

Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway) is a successful fashion photographer who enjoys putting a level of stylized violence into her photos, which makes her work controversial to some, but evocatively edgy to others. One day she starts seeing visions of people that she knows being murdered from the killer’s perspective. Later, when she finds out that her friends are being killed she goes to the police where the lead investigator John Neville (Tommy Lee Jones) tries to work with her in unmasking the killer’s identity.

Despite having John Carpenter’s name in the credits he never actually wrote the screenplay, but instead did an 11-page treatment that got rewritten by the studio with a completely different ending, which helps to explain why it gets so stupid from the very beginning. What annoyed me most were the segments showing the killings, which aren’t fully the killer’s perspective since they have cutaways showing a hand in the air with a knife in it, which is technically the point-of-view of the victim.

I also thought it was goofy that she sees these visions of the killings as they occur with one happening to her friend Elaine (Rose Gregorio) when Laura is just a few blocks away. When Laura arrives at the scene of the crime, which takes her less than a minute to do, the police are already there investigating, which has to be the fastest response time by any police force in the history of the universe.

Dunaway’s presence unfortunately just makes it worse. I’ve been a big fan of hers for years and in a good dramatic role with competent direction she can be fabulous, but here she overacts making her performance come-off as affected and even laughable. Many believe it was her starring role in Mommie Dearest, which came out three years after this one, that ushered in the downfall of her career, but I actually believe it started with this one.

Critic Leonard Maltin, in his review of the film, complained about Dunaway’s ‘kinky colleagues and their lifestyles’, which he deemed as being ‘ a real turn-off’, but I failed to see anything that was all that shocking or outrageous unless he was referring to the lesbian relationship between the two sexy models (Lisa Taylor, Darlanne Fluegel) that I quite frankly wouldn’t have minded seeing more of. As for the provocative artwork it is by today’s standards quite tame and certainly not something that I or most other people would pay good money to see, which made it hard to believe how Ms. Mars was able to afford such a snazzy luxury apartment, which looks like a place more suitable for a corporate businesswoman than a pad for an artist anyways.

The relationship between Dunaway and Jones is equally ridiculous especially since he gets into a relationship with her while the investigation is still ongoing, which breaks all professional and ethical boundaries. A more intelligent script would’ve had the police dismiss Ms. Mars’s claims upfront and consider her to be total loon, or investigate her as the prime suspect. The film also fails to answer the most pressing question, which is what great cosmic force caused her to have these visions in the first place?

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: August 2, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Irvin Kershner

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

2 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Fog (1980)

Posted on October 4, 2018 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Ghostly fog haunts town.

As the town of Antonio Bay gets ready to celebrate its 100th year of existence a mysterious fog creeps into the area at midnight and then strange unexplained events begin to occur. The town’s priest Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) finds a secret diary detailing how 6 of the town’s founders intentionally sank a ship 100 years earlier. Now the ship’s ghostly victims have returned seeking revenge by insisting that 6 people from the community must die in order to make-up for the 6 that originally killed them.

John Carpenter’s follow-up to his highly successful Halloween has gained a fervent following, but in the end it really doesn’t amount to much. Maybe my expectations were too high as I had a friend who talked this up as being great, but the scares are lacking despite a good first act that nicely builds the atmosphere and has some effective visuals particularly the shots of the fog rolling in.

The interesting premise though gets ruined by having things explained too quickly. Sometimes a little mystery can go a long way and not knowing what’s causing the strange occurrences and only having it answered at the very end, or possibly not at all, would’ve made it scarier and more intriguing. The backstory makes the ghosts come off like sympathetic victims looking for justice and therefore less threatening. Instead of being this entity with no known boundaries they become logical, emotional beings that makes the scenario too contained and civilized and less intense than it could’ve been.

You wait for things to finally gel, but it never really does. The victims get attacked in a matter of seconds and the camera then quickly cuts away before any blood or violence is shown. The ghosts aren’t seen much either and amount to shadowy figures from a distance when they are with occasional glowing red eyes, but otherwise they lack visual flair.

Having three heroines was a mistake especially since Jamie Lee Curtis seems bored in her role and almost like she didn’t even want to be there. Her real-life mother Janet Leigh conveys far more energy and she could’ve easily been the star with Curtis cut out completely. The two do share a few scenes together, but frustratingly never any lines of dialogue.

Adrienne Barbeau, who at the time was Carpenter’s wife, is okay as a late night DJ working out of a lighthouse, but her over-the-air pleas to her young son Andy (Ty Mitchell) to get out of his house to escape from the ghosts came off as unintentionally funny. The simultaneous climaxes that occur at two different locations with some cast members fighting off the ghosts inside a church while Barbeau does the same inside the lighthouse doesn’t work and if anything the finale should’ve happened completely inside the lighthouse since that was a more unique setting.

The direction is competent and it’s not like this film, which was remade in 2005, is a bad one it’s just not particularly exciting or interesting. The horror needed to be amped up and the pacing quicker particularly as it got into the second act. The only moment in the film that impressed me had nothing to do with the horror, but instead was the shot showing Barbeau walking down a long, winding outside stairwell to get to the lighthouse, which was filmed on-location at the historic Point Reyes Lighthouse in Marin County, California.

 

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: February 8, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Carpenter

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

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

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Ghost Story, Horror, Moody/Stylish, Movies with a rural setting

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Dark Star (1974)

Posted on May 13, 2018 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Four guys in space.

Dark Star is a scout ship used to destroy planets in the galaxy that are considered unstable. Its crew consists of four men: Pingback (Dan O’Bannon) who keeps a pet alien resembling a beach ball in the back storage room, Talby (Dre Pahlich) who spends all his time sitting alone in the ship’s observation deck, Boiler (Cal Kuniholm) who enjoys playing around with the ship’s emergency laser rifle, and Doolittle (Brian Narelle) who spends his time dreaming about being able to water surf again. The men have all spent 20 years on the ship and its begun to take a toll on their mental state as well as the ship’s mechanical framework, which ultimately challenges their survival.

This started as a student project while director John Carpenter and O’Bannon were attending USC’s film school back in 1970 and it was met with such enthusiasm that they decided to lengthen it into a feature film. Although critics at the time loved it the public didn’t, which caused the film to be shown to virtually empty theaters only to finally find a second life on the DVD market where it has now achieved a strong cult following.

Despite being an obvious parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey it doesn’t just play it up for cheap laughs, which why it works. Too many times parodies overplay the comedy elements by using an Airplane-like structure that is just one slapstick gag after another. Here there’s an actual story with character’s motivations that make sense given their circumstances and coming off more like a quirky observation of the psychological effects of space isolation instead of just a cheesy comedy.

The special effects are impressive especially given its limited budget. Sure some of it is tacky including having the ship’s console board made up of ice cube trays turned upside down, or space suits made of muffin tins and helmets worn by the crew that were actually designed for children. Yet there’s a share of cool moments too like the flashing lights used to represent a meteor storm in space or a scene involving a former commander (John Carpenter) kept in cryogenic suspension and even a nerve-wracking moment inside an empty elevator shaft.

The most memorable segment involves an alien that resembles a beach ball with little feet. Initially this looks absurd and makes the film seem too silly, but when the alien manages to escape from its holding cell and begins creating havoc on the ship it starts to seem, as surprising as this may sound, creepy and gives the film a certain chilling edge that was later used as the basis for Alien.

There are enough original moments here for it to be appreciated by just about any sci-fi fan with a funnybone. The fact that the story focuses on the crew’s mental deterioration and the ship’s eroding structure is not all that far off from reality either. Many other big budget sci-fi flicks, in their quest to bombard the viewer with the latest overblown special effects, usually ignore the psychological angle of being trapped on a spaceship for long periods of time would have, which thus gives this movie, as campy as it ultimately is, a certain insightful edge.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: March 30, 1974

Runtime: 1Hour 23Minutes

Rated G

Director: John Carpenter

Studio: Jack H. Harris Enterprises

Available: DVD

1 Comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Low Budget, Parody, Sci-Fi

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