Tag Archives: Review

Intruder (1989)

Posted on October 22, 2024 | Leave a comment

intruder2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer in grocery store.

Jennifer (Elizabeth Cox) and Linda (Renee Estevez) are two cashiers working the night shift at a grocery store. Just before closing Jennifer gets confronted by Craig (David Byrnes) a man she dated briefly who pressures her to get back together. When she refuses he becomes irate prompting Linda to alert the store owners (Dan Hicks, Eugene Robert Glazer). The police are eventually called in, but by then Craig has disappeared yet as the night progresses the night crew begins being stalked by some mysterious person that they can’t see. Eventually they start to turn-up dead having been killed in gruesome and novel ways. Is Craig the one behind it, or is it possibly someone else?

The concept is an interesting one as all the action takes place entirely on the grocery store premises with the majority done inside though there’s a few scenes that happen just outside of it. Scott Speigel, who co-wrote Evil Dead II with Sam Raimi, who appears as one of the store employees, got the idea for the film after working as part of the night crew at a Michigan grocery store and in fact ‘Night Crew’ was the movie’s original title, as well as the short film that was shot before they found funding to make a feature length version, but the distributors felt a more generic horror title would help it sell better. It was shot inside a former grocery store that was now empty in Bell, California where they hired a company to deliver two tons of damaged goods in order to use that to line the shelves.

The film is well directed with a lot of unique camera angles including a shot seen through a wine bottle another one where the point-of-view from inside a telephone looking-up and another showing someone from the outside turning a lock on a door and then having the camera shot rotate in tandem to it. The killings, once they finally get going, are adequately grisly and should suffice for gore fans.

While I enjoyed the store setting and felt they did an admirable job in making it appear like a real grocery market I was put-off with the lighting. All grocery stores that I’ve ever been to always are brightly lit in order to give-off this inviting feel and make people want to come inside. This store however was very dark and shadowy looking like no grocery place I’d ever been to and as a result it hurt the believability. Some may argue that this was the night shift and hence no need for all the lights to be on since only the overnight crew was in it, but it was very shadowy from the beginning even before it had closed and customers were still in it. I also didn’t care for the cameo appearances by Aly Moore and Tom Lester, two men who had been cast members in the old ‘Green Acres’ TV-show. Not sure what the relevance was for having them appear here, but they don’t really add much to the story and their bumbling ways don’t help add any tension and if anything detract from it.

The story moves a bit too slowly to the extent I started to worry if the killings were ever going to get going, or if it all was just one of those gimmicky horror flicks that ultimately isn’t very scary, or gory at all. The tension ebbs quite a bit and it would’ve worked better had the killer had some sort of identity, even if it was just wearing a goofy mask, versus having it be someone we never see. The idea that this killer would be able to single-handedly lift someone into the air simply by grabbing the victim’s hair and then proceed to shove them completely through store shelves, or hang them effortlessly on meat hooks, is absurd and makes the culprit seem more like a supernatural entity instead of the human that he is.

Spoiler Alert!

The ultimate reveal where the killer is exposed as being Bill the store’s co-owner was a bit of a surprise, but his motivations didn’t make sense. I could understand that he was upset about the store going out-of-business and would want to kill his partner for allowing it, but why kill all of the employees? If the idea is to ‘save’ the store this isn’t exactly a good way of going about doing it. His explanation that he simply got ‘carried away’ doesn’t suffice. If he really is just ‘crazy’ then elements of his insane personality should’ve come to the surface long before just that night.

Having Jennifer and her former boyfriend Craig, the only two survivors, get arrested for the crimes does have an ironic twist to it, but then leaving everything as a sort-of cliffhanger isn’t satisfying. The original ending was to have the camera go inside Jennifer’s screaming mouth, as she’s protesting her arrest, and down her throat until it got to her heart, which would then be shown as stop beating, but because it would be too complicated to shoot the idea got scrapped, but it would’ve been a cool final shot for sure.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: January 27, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes (Unrated Version)

Director: Scott Spiegel

Studio: Empire Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Tubi, Full Moon

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , , ,

Creepshow 2 (1987)

Posted on October 21, 2024 | Leave a comment

creepshow2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Three stories of terror.

Due to the success of the 1982 installment Stephen King and George Romero got together to write a second script based on three of King’s short stories and directing duties were turned over to Michael Gornick who had been the cinematographer on the first one. The budget was much lower than the first, which hampered the special effects and critical reception though it still made $14 million at the box office and has garnered a cult following amongst contemporary audiences.

The first, which is the weakest, stars George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour, in her last film appearance, as owners of a small-town general store that’s no longer making any profit. An Indian tribe elder (Frank Selsado) gives the couple a bag filled with jewelry as repayment for a debt and then later that night three hooligans lead by the long-haired Sam (Holt McCallany) rob the store and kill the couple. The three think they’ve gotten off scot-free, but then the cigar store Indian that stood in front of the store comes to life and avenges the couple’s deaths by murdering the three boys one-by-one.

This segment takes a while to get going and really doesn’t get interesting until the robbery happens, which should’ve occurred sooner. While the effects of showing the wooden Indian moving around is impressive as it really looks like he’s made of wood and not just somebody in a costume it would’ve been more intriguing had it not given away who the killer was. Simply shown the three being hacked by some mysterious, shadowy figure and then only at the very, very end alluded to it being the Indian.

The second story is better and deals with four college friends (Paul Satterfield, Jeremy Green, Daniel Beer, Page Hannah) going for a swim on a remote lake. They leave their car running and then all dive into the water and swim out onto a wooden raft, but then notice a black, gooey substance that surrounds them. The four feel trapped and when one of the young ladies puts her hand into the water the blob sucks her in and drowns her. The blob then seeps its way through the cracks of the raft and kills another one leaving only two left.

This one is genuinely creepy and I liked how it’s shot under a bright sunny sky making the area appear inviting and no need for anyone to be guarded until it’s too late. The constant shots of the running car sitting on the beach not far from where the swimmers are on the raft, but still unable to get to it, heightens the tension as well as the fact that there’s never any answer to just what this substance is, which in this case accentuates the intrigue. The only thing that I didn’t like is that after being stuck on the raft for an entire day the guy holding the sleeping girl lays her down onto the raft floor, but then uses the opportunity to undress her and admire her breasts, but I’d think with the situation they were in he’d be too exhausted and frightened to think about sex. The ‘twist’ at the end, which shows a No Swimming sign posted in a grove of trees, which the young adults hadn’t spotted, doesn’t totally work because if there’s no swimming in that lake then why would there be a wooden raft in the middle of it and who put it there?

The third story is the best and features a middle-aged woman, played by Lois Chiles, who goes on a drive late one night and accidentally kills a hitchhiker (Tom Wright) when her car goes spinning out-of-control. Instead of offering aid to the man she just drives-off, but then becomes plagued by visions of him constantly reappearing during the rest of her trip making her panic as she attempts to ‘re-kill’ the man, so she can be rid of him once and for all.

Initially this one seemed like a redo of the classic ‘Twilight Zone’ episode that featured actress Inger Stevens who went on a car trip and kept seeing the same hitch-hiker at various intervals on her drive, but this one takes it a step further by having Chiles use her car to literally smash the guy again and again, which gives it a gruesome over-the-top quality that deftly mixes in gore and black humor perfectly.

The film was set to have two other stories, ‘Cat from Hell’ and ‘Pinfall’, but due to budgetary limitations it was decided not to proceed with those and they were never filmed. In the ‘Cat from Hell’ one a hitman gets paid $100,000 to kill a cat that’s supposedly killed three other people. The ‘Pinfall’ one deals with competing bowling teams where the one team kills the other one, by tinkering with the van they ride in, and then the dead team coming back to life as zombies and killing the other team in unique ways by using things only available in a bowling alley, which sounded really cool and it’s a shame this segment wasn’t made as it would’ve been the best of the bunch.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 1, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Gornick

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Plex, Pluto TV, Tubi, Roku, YouTube

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Movies Based on Short Stories, Movies with Nudity

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Fright Night Part 2 (1988)

Posted on October 20, 2024 | 1 comment

fright2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Vampire’s sister stalks teen.

Charley (William Ragsdale) is now in college and having been convinced by his therapist (Ernie Sabella) that the ordeal he went through when he was in high school with his next-door neighbor Jerry Dandridge really wasn’t about a vampire, but instead the man had simply been a serial killer. In order to celebrate his successful ‘conversion’ he takes his new girlfriend Alex (Traci Lind) over to visit Peter (Roddy McDowall) who had been instrumental in helping Charley defeat Jerry. While there Charley looks out a window and sees movers hauling in three giant crates that look similar in size to coffins and he begins to fear the old ordeal is starting all over again. He begins dreaming that beautiful woman named Regine (Julie Carmen) visits him in his apartment one night and bites him on his neck and soon he begins showing odd traits like having to wear dark glasses because he no longer likes the sunlight. After going to a party with Peter where Regine is also in attendance, he becomes convinced that she’s really just a performance artist and no longer fears her until Peter takes out his trusty hand-held mirror and notices that he can’t see her reflection. Once Regine realizes that Peter’s on to her she admits that she really is a vampire and out for revenge over what he and Charley did to Jerry who happened to be her brother.

As sequels go this one isn’t bad though there’s quite a few things that are different from the first one, which is mainly a who slew of new faces. Amanda Bearse, who had figured so prominently as Charley’s original girlfriend is nowhere to be seen as she was working on the TV-show ‘Married With Children’ and not able to reprise her role while Stephen Geoffreys, who played Charley’s friend Ed was busy starring in 976-Evil and thus not available.  Director Tom Holland and Chris Sarandon, who had played Jerry Dandridge in the first, were involved in Child’s Play, and thus unable to commit though purportedly Sarandon did visit the shoot in order to offer emotional support.

Tommy Lee Wallace, who was best known for having directed Halloween III: Season of the Witch, a film that was a critical and commercial failure when first released, but has through the years gained a cult following, got tabbed to direct this one and his background doing music videos can be clearly sensed here as it features a lot of quick edits and a moody vibe, which I really liked. Regine and her vampire clan that constantly surround her dress almost like a kitschy 80’s rock glam band, which is silly looking and campy, but also in a weird way creepy. Despite the low budget the special effects are still good particularly the monstrous transformations and the climactic sequence that takes place inside an elevator.

While Sarandon was highly impressive in the first version and there was simply no way that any other actor could’ve topped his performance Carmen is an adequate replacement. Too many times when producers can’t get a certain actor they then go out of their way to find someone similar, but here they wisely took the other route by finding someone who was quite the opposite. Instead of being verbally intimidating like with Jerry she does her stalking through being sexually alluring and the result is just as scary.

It’s also great seeing McDowall return as his presence in the first installment had been quite entertaining and his character here remains just as fun and I felt his hair looked better too. In the original the white in his hair appeared to have been sprayed on similar to how a white Christmas tree would look while in this one it’s a more natural looking gray with the white appearing on the edges, but the top part of his head still having a brownish color. I was though confused about how he was able to afford such a spacious pad in a ritzy apartment building that resembled a castle since in the first film he had been living in a cramped, dingy apartment that he was being evicted from and still working at the same job, so where he found the influx of cash to being able to move-up to a new swanky place is not explained.

The two things though that I didn’t care for was having Charley so easily convinced that what he had seen with his own eyes, Jerry being a vampire, was somehow not real, which made the character come-off as weak, easily influenced, and not reliable and like someone you really didn’t feel like rooting for if they could be brainwashed to that effective a degree. Also, having him slowly start to turn into a vampire wasn’t interesting in the least and having the bite mark continue to bleed even after it was bandaged didn’t make sense. Even if the puncture is created by a vampire the blood should still clot like it would with any other wound and not just turn the victim into a hemophiliac, which is what it kind of started to appear like.

The attempts at humor were misguided and genuinely got into the way of the scares and the whole thing would’ve been more effective had it been played straight. Overall though I felt was an effective follow-up and in certain ways even a bit better than the first. Finding a print of it though may be challenging as it’s never been released onto Blu-ray and the DVD issue, which came-out in 2003, is now out-of-print. It’s also not streamed anywhere. Even on its initial release it was only seen at select theaters for a brief time before falling off into obscurity. The main reason for this is that was produced by a production company run by Joseph Mendez, who while the movie was being filmed, was murdered along with his wife by their two teenage sons, which sent the company into bankruptcy and hampered the film from getting out. It also hurt the production of Part 3, which had already been in the planning stages. Infact both McDowall and Holland had a meeting with Mendez about moving forward with the third installment on the morning of his murder. That meeting though had proved to be a bit contentious, so when McDowall heard about the murder the next day he then immediately called Holland and said: “I didn’t do it, did you?”

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: December 8, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Studio: New Century/Vista

Available: DVD (out-of-print)

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Sequels

Tagged , , , , , ,

Fright Night (1985)

Posted on October 18, 2024 | 1 comment

fright1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Vampire moves next door.

Charley (William Ragsdale) is a teen making-out with his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) in his bedroom one night when he looks out his window and sees movers carrying a coffin into the home next door. Throughout the proceeding days he becomes convinced, after eyeing what’s going on over there, that his new neighbor, Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon), is a vampire. With the police refusing to believe him he feels his only option is to elicit the help of an actor named Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) who has starred in a lot of old movies about vampires and hosts a horror TV-show called ‘Fright Night’. Peter does not believe Charley at first, but when they go over to Jerry’s house for a visit he becomes convinced that Charley is telling the truth when he can’t see Jerry’s reflection in a mirror. Knowing that he’s now been found-out Jerry immediately goes on the offense by turning Charley’s friend Ed (Stephen Geoffreys) into a vampire and then setting his sights to do the same to Amy who closely resembles a woman he was once deeply in-love with.

The film became a surprise runaway hit despite the studio feeling it had no chance and pumped more money into the John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis film Perfect that was being shot at the same time. Because the execs were putting more focus on that one they left writer/director Tom Holland alone allowing him full directorial control and not forcing him to have to deal with the usual studio meddling. Holland, who had started out as an actor during the 50’s and 60’s before eventually moving into screenwriting during the late 70’s when his acting offers began to dry up, came up with the idea for this film while working on his Cloak & Dagger script and since he had won accolades for some of his earlier horror scripts that had gone onto success including Psycho II, he was offered the chance to make his directorial debut with this one.

The film has a wonderful tongue and cheek approach, which keeps it consistently entertaining and lively throughout. While it’s funny at times it also has some really impressive special effects done well before the advent of CGI, but in many ways better. The best one and possibly best moment of the whole movie is when Ed morphs into a wolf and attacks Peter and Peter is able to pierce the dogs heart with a broken chair leg forcing the injured and dying Ed to slowly return to human form, which is both gory and realistically handled and creepy visually. If there’s definitely one part to watch again and again and never get tired of it would be that one.

The acting is stellar particularly Sarandon who displays a casual and very frightening menacing quality that makes all of his scenes unnerving. Supposedly he attempted to try and humanize his character by adding in certain traits that were not in the script like him eating apples to show how he was using it to help ‘cleanse his pallet from all the blood he had sucked’, but to me he just came off as this constant evil presence and one of the scarier film villains in horror movie history. Bearse, who has become better known for her work in the TV-show ‘Married with Children’, is entertainingly feisty as the teen girlfriend despite being already 28 at the time of filming though you really couldn’t see it.  Though not as well known Dorothy Fielding is very amusing as Charley’s daffy mom and I wished she had been in it more and of McDowall is absolutely perfect in a role that was originally intended for Vincent Price.

While the film has a lot going for it I did find its logic to be problematic. I found the fact that Amy so closely resembles Jerry’s past love from long ago to be too much of a coincidence and felt there should’ve been more of a backstory. The idea that these kids would choose some two-bit actor in their quest to defeat this vampire made no sense as an actor is just reading words off of a script and would have no more insight into vampires than your local junkman. Having Peter be some self-promoting vampire hunter and advertise his ‘vampire eradicator services’ in TV-ads, even if he was just a huckster, would’ve at least been a better choice than expecting someone starring in low budget movies from years ago to be the solution that will ‘save them’. Also, him bringing along a gun that he used in a past movie, in order to deploy it to shoot Jerry’s bodyguard, played by Jonathan Stark, is another head-scratcher because movie guns are props that shoot blanks instead of real bullets.

The use of the cross to ward off vampires gets confusing. When Peter attempts to use it on Jerry it isn’t effective and yet when Charley tries it it works. Jerry says this is because ‘you have to have faith’, but what type of faith? Faith that it will work, or faith in a deity? To help clarify this Charley should’ve been shown earlier, even briefly, as having some spiritual leanings, or just a quick shot showing the Holy Bible in his room would’ve been enough. Also, when Peter uses the cross against the vampire Ed it’ works, so why is this, or does Peter’s ‘faith’ go flip-flopping back-and-forth?

Spoiler Alert!

Having Amy transform into a vampire and to be advised by Peter that if Jerry gets destroyed before dawn  the process will reverse seems like its making up rules as most vampire movies I’ve seen seem to say the opposite like once they’re bitten there’s no going back. Having the two then go back just a few nights later after the big ordeal is over and be snuggling together in his room didn’t seem believable to me. Personally if I were Charley I don’t care how deep my feelings were for her I’d still be frightened to be alone with her especially after seeing her face turn into such a scary bloodthirsty monster. In the back of my mind I’d be paranoid it could happen again and who’s to say it wouldn’t. I realize American audiences are conditioned to expect everything to ‘work-out’ in the end and if it doesn’t they get cranky, but having things here go back to normal was too quick and seamless. Psychologically there would’ve been post traumatic stress by all and this overly smooth resolution is phony.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: August 2, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tom Holland

Studio: Columbia Pictures

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

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Vampire Movies

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Brainwaves (1982)

Posted on October 16, 2024 | Leave a comment

brainwaves

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Transferred brainwaves cause nightmares.

Kaylie (Suzanna Love) is a married mother of a young child living in San Francisco. One day while running out to the grocery store she gets the heel of her shoe caught in a trolley car track and this causes her to get hit by a car and suffer severe brain damage. Dr. Clavius (Tony Curtis) is heading experimental surgery that can transfer brainwaves from one victim to another. Kaylie’s husband Julian (Kier Dullea) agrees to the procedure in an effort to bring his wife back to her former state. Unbeknownst to him the other victim was a woman named Leila (Corinne Wahl) who was murdered in her bathtub by an unknown assailant. When Kaylie receives the brain transfer she begins having nightmares about the murderous incident. They then go on a search to try and unravel the mystery, but inadvertently get the attention of the killer who now begins stalking Kaylie in order to silence her before anymore oppressed memories come to light, which could identify him.

The film was directed by Ulli Lommel with a script that he had co-written with Love, who was also his real-life wife. The two had success a couple of years earlier with The Boogeyman and thus it inspired them to attempt another horror film. The concept is great and could’ve created an excellent plot, but the second-half labors too much in the recovery phase inside the hospital, which losses all the tension. The killer, whom we only see from the back, disappears from the story completely during the middle-half to the point you forget about him only to have him finally return by the third act, but by then it’s too late.

Dullea, as the concerned husband, is excellent even though acting here was a major comedown as he was getting leading man roles in major studio productions back in the 60’s, but now was relegated to low budget horror films though with that said he still makes the most of it. The same unfortunately can’t be stated for Tony Curtis, who only got the role because John Huston, who was the original choice, was too ill. Curtis had been a leading man in the 50’s and 60’s, so having to accept a part in such a minor production where he wasn’t even the star was certainly taxing on his ego and it shows as he appears grouchy and irritable throughout and seems like he wanted to be anywhere else, but in this movie.

Spoiler Alert!

The opening murder is okay though you know once she walks into the bathroom and turns on a portable radio that it’s most likely going to end up in an electrocution, so when it does finally occur it’s no surprise. The trolly car incident is nicely shot as well, but the ‘big reveal’ of who the killer is, which turns out to be non other than the victim’s boyfriend, which is the first person you would’ve suspected and thus is a complete letdown. The film should’ve had a wider array of suspects to choose from and played this part out more. The climactic sequence, done near the Golden Gate Bridge, gets shot in slow motion, which gives the proceedings a really tacky look.

The final twist features the dead body of the killer being wheeled into the doctor’s lab where it will apparently be used as a brain donor to another crash victim is cool, but the film then ends when it should’ve continued on with the psycho now chasing after Kaylie inside whatever body his brainwaves got transferred to. By having writer/director Lommel not take full advantage of the myriad plot twists as it could’ve is what really hurts it making it no wonder that it’s box office proceeds was a disastrous $3,111 out of a budget that had been $2.5 million.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: November 19. 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 20 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ulli Lommel

Studio: Motion Picture Marketing

Available: VHS, DVD-R (out-of-print)

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies

Tagged , , , , , ,

Psycho III (1986)

Posted on October 15, 2024 | 1 comment

psycho3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Norman gets a girlfriend.

The story begins a month after the one in the second installment ended with police searching for the whereabouts of Emma Spool (Claudia Bryar) whom Norman (Anthony Perkins) killed and now keeps her preserved body in his home and yet curiously the police don’t suspect him. Meanwhile a roving journalist named Tracy Venable (Roberta Maxell) does and she keeps trying to get interviews with Norman in an effort to weed-out the truth while also snooping around his property any chance she gets. Maureen (Diana Scarwid) is a nun who’s lost her faith and thus left the convent and rents a room at the Bates Hotel. She closely resembles Marion Crane, one of Norman’s earlier victims, which sets off his desire to kill again, but when he goes into her room in an attempt to stab her he finds that she’s already slit her wrists and bleeding profusely, which sets off his emotional senses to help her and thus he takes her to the nearest hospital, which in-turn gets her to fall for him and the two begin a romantic relationship once she gets out. Norman also hires a wanna-be music artist named Duane (Jeff Fahey) to help out around the hotel as an assistant manager, but Duane becomes aware of Norman’s mother fixation and tries to use it against him just as an assortment of strange murders reoccur on the premises.

The third installment of the franchise is by far the weakest and it’s no surprise that it didn’t do as well at the box office and pretty much nixed anymore sequels getting released with the Part IV one, which came out 4 years later, being made as a TV-movie instead of a theatrical one. Perkins, who made his directorial debut here, starts things off with some intriguing segues and a good death scene of showing a nun falling off of a high ledge, but the storyline itself is getting quite old. Watching the ‘mother’ committing murders is no longer scary, interesting, or even remotely shocking. The script offers no new intriguing angles and things become quite predictable and boring very quickly.

Perkins gives another fun performance, which is pretty much the only entertaining element of the film, and Scarwid is compelling as a young emotionally fragile woman trying to find her way in a cold, cruel world. Maxwell though as the snooping reporter is unlikable and thus if she is meant to be the protagonist it doesn’t work. Fahey’s character is also a turn-off as his sleazebag persona is too much of a caricature and having him predictable do sleazy things as you’d expect from the start is not interesting at all.

The whole mystery angle has very little teeth and the way the reporter figures out her the clues comes way too easily. For instance she goes to Spool’s old apartment and sees a phone number scrawled out several times on a magazine cover sitting on the coffee table, so she calls it and finds out it’s for the Bates Motel and thus connects that Norman most likely had something to do with her disappearance, but wouldn’t you think the police would’ve searched the apartment before and seen that same number and made the same connection much earlier? Also, what kind of landlord would leave a place intact months later after the former tenant fails to ever come back? Most landlords are in the business to make money and would’ve had the place cleaned-out long ago and rented it to someone new.

The fact that the police don’t ever suspect Norman particularly the town’s sheriff, played by Hugh Gillin, is equally absurd. Cops by their very nature suspect everybody sometimes even when the person is innocent. It’s just part of their job to be suspicious and constantly prepare for the worst, so having a sheriff not even get an inkling that these disappearances could have something to do with Norman, a man with a very hefty and well known homicidal past, is too goofy to make any sense and starts to turn the whole thing especially the scene where a dead corpse sits right in front of him in a ice machine, but he doesn’t spot it, into a misguided campiness that doesn’t work at all.

I didn’t like the whole ‘party scene’ that takes place at the hotel, which occurs when a bunch of drunken football fans decide to stay there. I get that in an effort to be realistic there needed to be some other customers that would stay there for the place to remain open, though you’d think with the hotel’s well-known history most people would be too afraid to. Either way the constant noise, running around and racket that these people put-on takes away from the creepiness and starts to make the thing resemble more of a wild frat party than a horror movie.

Spoiler Alert!

The death by drowning scene is pretty cool, but everything else falls unfortunately flat. The final twist where it’s explained that Spool really wasn’t his mother after all sets the whole narrative back and makes the storyline look like it’s just going in circles and not moving forward with any revealing new information making this third installment feel pointless and like it shouldn’t have even been made. Screenwriter’s Charles Edward Pogue’s original script had Duane being the real killer while the Maureen character would be a psychologist who would come to visit Norman and who would be played by Janet Leigh, who had played Marion Crane in the first film. Her uncanny resemblance to one his earlier victims would then set Norman’s shaky mental state to go spiraling out-of-control, which all seemed like a really cool concept, certainly far better than what we eventually got here, but of course the studio execs considered this idea to be ‘too far out’ and insisted he should reel it back in with a more conventional storyline, which is a real shame.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: July 2, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Anthony Perkins

Studio: Universal

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

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Movies with a Hotel setting, Movies with Nudity, Sequels

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Psycho II (1983)

Posted on October 13, 2024 | 2 comments

psycho2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Norman Bates comes home.

After 22 years of being confined to a mental institution over the murders of 5 people Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is now deemed to be no longer a menace to society much to the protest of Lila Crane (Vera Miles) whose sister Marion was one of his victims. With nowhere else to go Norman returns to the old house that he shared with his mother and tries to restart his hotel business that had been run while he was incarcerated by Warren (Dennis Franz) who had allowed the place to be turned into a flophouse for drug users and is immediately fired. To help bring in an income he gets a job at a nearby cafe as a cook where he meets Mary (Meg Tilly) who works there as a waitress. The two quickly start-up a friendship and when Norman learns that she’s broken-up with her boyfriend and no place to stay he offers a bedroom in his house for her to sleepover, but soon Norman starts receiving notes and even phone calls from someone perpetuating to be his mother and then murders begin occurring by someone dressed as an old lady. Has Norman gone back to his old homicidal ways, or is it someone else trying to make it look like it’s him, so that he’ll be rearrested and sent back to prison?

The attempt to make a sequel to the Hitchcock classic had been discussed for years and apparently even the master himself had considered it, but the studios generally nixed the idea figuring there was just no way to upstage the first one. Then Robert Bloch, who written the novel that the first one was based on, came out with a second installment also called ‘Psycho II’ that was published in 1982 that helped spark new interest in the franchise. However, the book’s plot was far different than this one. In the novel version Norman escapes from the mental institution while dressed in a nun’s outfit and then hitches a ride with another nun whom he kills and then rapes. After absconding with her van he then picks up a males hitch-hiker whom he plans to kill and then use his body to fake his own death. Police later find the burning van and charred remains, but are unable to identify who it is. Meanwhile across town a movie is being made about Norman’s life and Norman’s psychiatrist fears that Norman is going to go there to kill everyone in the production, so he decides to become a ‘technical advisor’ to the film to help watch out for the crew, but while there he starts to become more worried about the film’s director who’s a spitting image of Norman from 20 years earlier and he reveals an unhealthy infatuation with the actress playing Marion Crane.

While I found the book to be highly creative the studio execs disliked its satirical elements regarding the movie business and discarded it while hiring Tom Holland, who had some success with the 1978 horror TV-Movie ‘The Initiation of Sarah’ and also the screen adaptation of The Beast Within to write a script with a more conventional storyline. While this story isn’t bad, I personally liked the Bloch version better, this one does have some logic holes mainly around releasing someone who’s killed several people from well published crimes and clearly suffering from a severe mentally ill state and yet somehow convincing the parole board and public at-large that he’s now ‘cured’, which really pushes the plausibility meter. The film also portrays Norman as being a likable guy just trying to find his way, which is awkward since the viewer is technically supposed to be fearing him, but half the time ends up sympathizing with him instead and this dueling dichotomy doesn’t work.

The acting though is terrific especially Perkins who makes his portrayal of Norman into an almost art form and the most enjoyable element of the movie though he initially was reluctant to recreate the role complaining that it hurt his career playing the part in the first one and it had caused him to become typecast, but when he found out that they were planning to cast Christopher Walken in the part if he rejected it he then decided to come-on board. Dennis Franz is also a delight as nobody can play a brash, blue-collar out-of-shape ‘tough guy’ quite like him and his taunting, loud-mouth ways help bring an element of dark humor to the proceedings.

Spoiler Alert!

My favorite though was Meg Tilly who helps tie all the of the craziness around her together by being the one normal person of the whole bunch. Reportedly she and Perkins did not get along and she refused to attend the film’s premiere though the frostiness of their relationship doesn’t show on the screen and the two end-up working well together. The only thing that I didn’t like was the misguided twist of her turning out to being the daughter of the Vera Miles character and in cahoots with her in her attempt to drive Norman crazy. For one thing if this were true then it should’ve been Meg instigating the idea of her moving into the house with him versus Norman coming up with the idea and her seeming reluctant.

The film has some good creepy camera angles of the home, which seems even more frightening here especially with the way it’s isolated desert setting gets played-up. There’s also a couple of gory killings, which I liked, but the second-half does drag and the movie could’ve been shortened by a good 20-minutes. However, the film’s conclusion where Norman learns the his mother’s sister, played by Claudia Bryar, is actually his real mother and she was behind the recent murders was a perfect ironic angle that took me by surprise and I loved it. Why he would then proceed to kill her with a shovel I didn’t really get as it seemed they could’ve started-up some weird bond and became a homicidal couple, which would’ve been more frightening, but still it’s a cool twist either way and helps make this a decent sequel.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: June 3, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 53 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Richard Franklin

Studio: Universal

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

2 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Movies with a Hotel setting, Sequels

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Psycho (1960)

Posted on October 11, 2024 | 3 comments

psycho

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: Don’t take a shower.

Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), who works as a secretary at a real estate firm, steals $40,000 in cash from her boss (Vaughn Taylor), who trusted her to take the money to the bank, in order to help her boyfriend Sam (John Gavin) pay off his debts. As she’s traveling to where he lives she encounters a rainstorm causing her to take the nearest exit. There she drives into the lot of a isolated lodge called Bates Motel, run by a young man named Norman (Anthony Perkins) who’s still living with his mother in an old rundown house that sits ominously on a hill behind the hotel rooms.  Norman becomes immediately smitten to the woman, who signs the hotel ledger under an assumed name, and invites her to have dinner with him in the hotel office. Marion, who sees him as a awkward, but otherwise harmless guy who’s still dominated by his mother, agrees. After they eat she departs back to her room and takes a shower when what appears to be his mother, who considers all women to be ‘whores’, stabs and kills her. Norman then cleans-up the evidence by submerging the dead body and her car in a nearby swamp. Soon a private detective named Arbogast (Martin Balsam) begins investigating the case and what he finds out leads Marion’s boyfriend Sam and her sister Lila (Vera Miles) to the property where they’ll unravel a shocking secret.

The film, which at the time was considered ‘too tawdry and salacious’ to be made into a movie and thus the studio refused to give director Alfred Hitchcock the required funding and forcing him to use his own funds and crew to produce it, was based on the novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. Bloch began writing it in 1957 when coincidentally in the neighboring town not more than 35 miles from his came to the light the criminal activities of Ed Gein who killed two people while also digging up dead bodies and then skinning them in an effort to create a ‘woman suit’ he could wear so he’d ‘become his dead mother’ who had dominated him for the majority of his life. Rumors were that Gein’s crimes had inspired the book, but Bloch insisted that he had almost finished with the manuscript before he became aware of the real-life case and then became shocked with how closely it resided with his story.

While the film follows the book pretty closely there are a few differences. In the book the Marion character dies from decapitation while in the movie it’s from stab wounds. The Norman character is described as an overweight man in his 40’s while in the movie he’s thin and in his 20’s, which I felt was an improvement as it made more sense why Marion would feel less guarded around him and put herself in a more vulnerable position than she might otherwise as she still viewed him as a ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ kid. It also helps explain why Norman blunders his interview with the detective and virtually incriminates himself because he was too sheltered and not worldly-wise enough to handle pressure situations.

The film is full of a lot of firsts. It was the first to show a toilet or use the word transvestite, but what I really liked though is that it takes a different spin on the character of the victim. Typically, even today, victims are portrayed as being virginal and angelic beings particularly women, but here it works against that. Right away with the opening scene in the hotel room we see she’s definitely no virgin and what’s more she’s having sex outside of wedlock in an era where ‘good girls saved themselves for marriage’. Having her then be susceptible to corruption by stealing from her employer, or not feel frightened initially by Norman and even superior to him further works against the grain of the ‘sweet, fragile damsel in distress’ cliche and makes her seem more human since she’s not perfect and vulnerable to the same vices as everyone else, which in-turn gives the more an added darker dimension.

The film’s hallmark though is its memorable camera work from a close-up of the victim’s unblinking eye, still not sure how Leigh could’ve kept her eyes open for as long as she does, to the interesting way the house gets captured from the ground looking upward on a hill towards the sky with the creepy night clouds floating behind it.  My favorite one though is the tracking shot showing Norman walking into his mother’s room and then having the camera stop right at the top of the door frame and then spin around towards the hallway as he then leaves the room and carries his mother down the stairs. The only shot that I didn’t care for is when the Martin Balsam character gets stabbed at the top of the stairs, but instead of immediately falling over backwards and then rolling down the stairs, which is what would happen 99% of the time, he instead somehow ‘glides’ down an entire flight of stairs backwards while remaining upright and only finally falling to the floor once he hits the bottom, which goes against the basic laws of physics and to me looks fake and goofy, but other than that it’s a classic and still holds-up amongst the best horror movies made.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: June 16, 1960

Runtime: 1 Hour 49 Minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Studio: Paramount

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

3 Comments

Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Classic, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a Hotel setting

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

What Have You Done to Solange? (1972)

Posted on October 7, 2024 | Leave a comment

solange

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Bearded priest murders schoolgirls.

Enrico (Fabio Testi) is a high school teacher who’s having an affair with Elizabeth (Cristina Galbo) who’s one of his students. While making-out with her on a boat at a park Elizabeth spots a shadowy figure murdering a young girl in a nearby wooded area. The girl turns-out to be one of her classmates, but Enrico convinces her not to tell anyone for fear that it could jeopardize his job. Once the murder gets discovered and reported on the news Enrico goes back to the scene to check for clues only to be photographed by the police who are there doing the investigation. Inspector Barth (Joachim Fuchsberger) spots Enrico in the photo and brings him in for questioning. Enrico denies any knowledge of the killing, but comes under suspicion especially after Elizabeth is later found murdered in her bath tub. Enrico then reconciles with his frigid wife Herta (Karin Baal) in order to have her help him do their own investigation, so they can unmask who the real killer is before the police are able to close in on him.

The film is a unique partnership between a West German production company and an Italian one that was filmed on-location in London. While there are many German actors in the cast the film as a whole is modeled after an Italian giallo and has many of the mystery, gore, and sleaze elements that you’d expect from those. The direction, by Massimo Dallamano, who was a cinematographer of Spaghetti westerns during the 60’s, approaches the material with a visual elegance. The photography is crisp and detailed with some evocative camera work and angles as well as a few graphic shots including the murderers modus operandi, which is shoving a large knife up his victim’s vaginas, which not only gets revealed on the corpses, but also in x-ray version, but also a drowning death in a bath tub that gets played-out moderately well. In most slasher flicks the victim goes down easily when they’re attacked by surprise by their killer, but here this one struggles quite a bit making the killing more drawn-out and thus more realistic.

The plot though, particularly the second act, gets stretched too thin. We have an intriguing set-up and a zesty conclusion, but in-between it meanders. The biggest reason for this is that the protagonist and his quandary becomes neutered and thus all the potential drama from his situation evaporates. Having the inspector tell him upfront that he doesn’t think he did it hurts the tension and would’ve been intriguing if they thought he did, or he even became their prime suspect. Having Enrico make amends with his wife, at the beginning they’re at extreme odds and even close to fully hating each other, further moderates things as the wife could’ve been an interesting possible suspect too, killing the school girls and trying to make the hubby look like he did it in order to get back at him for cheating on her, but then having the two team-up just fizzles away a potentially dark undercurrent to their relationship. Showing Enrico working with the inspector ultimately makes him seem more like a side character in his own movie and by the end like he’s not really the star at all as the inspector completely takes over.

The one performer that does stand-out is Camille Keaton. She’s better known for her starring role in the cult hit I Spit On Your Grave, but here in one of her first performances in the front of the camera she’s quite impressive and she does so without uttering a single line of dialogue. She comes-in real late too to the extent I was starting to think she’d have some minor part and be spotted for only a few seconds, but her character comes-on strong despite not saying anything and is an integral component to the whole mystery. What I liked most about her was her trance-like demeanor and glazed over look in her eyes that’s both effective, creepy, and disturbing at the same time.

Spoiler Alert!

The film’s wrap-up could’ve been better done as it elaborates about the motives of the killer and the elements of the case too much saying things that the viewer should’ve been able to pick-up on during the course of the movie. For instance it describes the sex parties that these teen girls attended, but snippets of these orgies should’ve been shown and not just discussed. The film had no qualms with the violence, so why not have a little explicit sex as well. Also, Keaton’s character going in to have an abortion like it’s going to be some ‘fun activity’ didn’t seem believable. The attempt was to show that she was naive about how rough the procedure would be and thus became ‘traumatized’ by it afterwards, but she still should’ve shown some trepidation upfront as just about anybody else would.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: March 9, 1972

Runtime: 1 Hour 47 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Massimo Dallamano

Studio: Italian International Films

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

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , ,

Herbie Rides Again (1974)

Posted on September 30, 2024 | Leave a comment

herbie1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Saving home from demolition.

Alonzo Hawk (Keenan Wynn) is a rich man who wants to build the world’s tallest sky scrapper on land that is currently occupied by a little firehouse built in 1892 and owned by an old lady named Mrs. Steinmetz (Helen Hayes). So far she’s refused all offers by Alonzo’s lawyers to sell, so Alonzo decides to have his nephew Willoughby (Ken Berry) go visit her as he has a very clean-cut image and hopes his nice-guy approach may be what it takes to persuade her. However, once he’s there he gets introduced by Mrs. Steinmetz former neighbor Nicole (Stefanie Powers) who’s now living with the old day due her place being demolished by Alonzo. When Nicole realizes Willoughby is related to Alonzo she immediately takes a disliking to him and even punches him in the face. Her feelings towards him though begin to change when she gives him a ride in the Volkswagen beetle that Steinmetz is taking care of for its owner while he’s away in Europe racing. Willoughby at first doesn’t believe that the car, who’s named Herbie, has a mind of its own, but soon realizes it does after his trip in it and this eventually gets him to side with Nicole and Steinmetz on the issue they’re having with his uncle and he begins fighting with the other two and Herbie to stop Alonzo from tearing the place down.

This was a rather odd idea for a sequel to the Love Bug that came-out 6 years earlier and had the VW Beetle involved in racing, but now apparently was ‘retired’ and no longer able to race effectively even though in the third entry to the series, which came-out 3 years later he does go back to racing.  The plot here though doesn’t really need the car involved to help propel it, yes the vehicle does ‘come to the rescue’ a few times, but the story could’ve easily worked with just the humans fighting Alonzo in various ways and would’ve been just as funny. To make-up for this the film does show archived footage, which goes on for several minutes, of the car ‘dreaming’ about it’s racing days though some of his race ‘victories’ could be called into question like when it decides to go off the racing track in one and cut through a forest and then back onto the track where it’s now at the front line of the other cars, which most would deem as cheating and not really an honorable win.

Overall though I really didn’t find any of the scenes with the car to be all that interesting. It’s hard to get emotionally attached to some machine that doesn’t speak, or show any expression and the only sign that it’s ‘alive’ is through its car stunts. The fact that it has seemingly no limits to what it can do, at least driving wise, I felt worked against it. To create even the modicum of suspense, or believability, there needs to be some rules to what it can and cannot do and yet here it defies all probability like driving on the side of cliffs without falling off, or being able to somehow pull vehicles, that are much bigger and weigh more, around like it does during a ‘tug-of-war’ scene with a cop car that’s attempting to tow it. It’s even able to smash through walls without receiving any damage to its front-end. I’m okay with the car having a certain ‘personality’, but when the car is able to get out of any predicament in a seeming magical way then there really isn’t any intrigue at all.

The acting by Hayes, Powers, and Wynn are good and I was especially impressed with Wynn’s ability to essentially shout out all of his lines in a consistently snarly way and yet never get any laryngitis and he certainly adds energy to all of his moments. Berry though is so vanilla that he’s just plain boring. It might’ve worked better had he remained loyal to his uncle longer, but he sides with the two ladies so easily that his character quickly becomes quite benign to the point that it would’ve been more interesting to have just the two women, and the car of course, fighting the bad guys and his presence excised from the script completely.

The nightmare segment where Alonzo dreams of being attacked by not only Herbie, but several clones of Herbie whose front hood opens up to reveal a mouth with giant teeth, which also includes a take-off of King Kong, where Alonzo is on top of the Empire State Building as he fights off the Herbie’s that are flying in a circle around him is genuinely inspired and the best part of the movie. Everything else though falls painfully flat including the cheap special effects where the exterior of the firehouse looks like it’s a painting on a back-drop, which I’m sure it was, or the scene where Herbie goes up the Golden Gate Bridge, which you can plainly tell was a miniature model matted onto a picture because as the car goes back down it starts to lose its pixelation and fade-out and disappear into thin air.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 6, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes

Rated G

Director: Robert Stevenson

Studio: Buena Vista

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

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Farce, Movies for the Whole Family, Sequels

Tagged , , , , , ,