Tag Archives: Roddy McDowall

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 , , , , , , , ,

Class of 1984 (1982)

Posted on August 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

class3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Teacher battles teen gang.

Andrew Norris (Perry King) is the new teacher at Lincoln High, which is an inner-city school prone to a lot of violence and drugs. He’s been hired to teach a music class while replacing another teacher who left suddenly. Almost immediately he’s at odds with Peter Stegman (Timothy Van Patten) the leader of a school gang that constantly disrupts his class. He eventually is able to kick him out, but Peter continues to harass Norris in the off-hours where they vandalize his car and attack his wife (Merrie Lynn Ross). Norris eventually decides he’s had enough especially after the principal (David Gardner) and even the police detective (Al Waxman) show him little support, so he takes matter into his own hands by violently confronting Peter and refusing to back down.

The film, which was directed by Mark L. Lester, who as a B-movie director has done some compact, quality stuff, has definite shades to Teachers, which came out 2 years later, but with the same type of theme. This one though is harder edged, which makes it a bit better though it’s still weaker than Unman, Wittering, and Zigo, which it also has some similarities to, but without the intriguing mystery element. Lester has stated that he wanted to make an updated version of Blackboard Jungle, but with a grittier feel and while it may have succeeded in that respect it still comes-off as needing an updating. The school gangs dress in an over-the-top way and at times it’s hard to tell whether this wants to be taken seriously, or intended as camp. As violent as it sometimes gets it still doesn’t touch on school shootings, which was unheard of at the time, but would make a modern day high school movie that would deal with that subject more violent and scarier and making this stuff, as edgy as it tries to be, seem tame by comparison.

The ratio of black and white students doesn’t mesh. This was supposed to be an inner city school, so you’d think there would be more students of color than white, but instead it’s 98% white with only 1 or 2 black kids per class.  Norris’ roomy home in the plush suburbs seemed too nice for someone working off of a teacher’s salary, so unless his wife had a high income job, which is never confirmed, then the home he lives in wouldn’t be realistic. The reason for Stegman becoming a gang leader doesn’t make sense either. Normally kids get involved in gangs due to being stuck in poverty, but Stegman lives in the suburbs where gang life is quite rare. If he was from an abusive family then it might justify, but his mother (Linda Sorensen) takes his side on everything, so again his motivation for joining a gang isn’t believable and in a lot of ways quite absurd.

I did enjoy King n the lead. He’s played some creepy parts quite effectively in the past, so I wasn’t sure if he could pull-off a good-guy role, but he does it quite admirably. Roddy McDowall is great too in the last film he appeared in with brown hair as after this he began sporting an all gray look. The scene where he teaches a class while holding all the students at gunpoint is by far the best moment. It’s fun too seeing Michael J. Fox (billed without the ‘J’) as a high school student even though he was already 21 at the time of filming. He looks more pudgy and has a bowl haircut though ultimately other than getting stabbed doesn’t have much to do. The weakest link is Van Patten who’s not scuzzy enough to give the role the nastiness that it needed.

The table saw death deserves kudos and the gas fire one isn’t bad either. Having he teachers turn-the-tables on the students and violently fight back gives the movie a novel edge though I wished that King and McDowall had teamed-up together to take on the kids instead of doing it individually. The story though doesn’t get interesting until the violent third act. The theme has also been tackled many times before and this one doesn’t add anything unique to the mix and for the most part is painfully predictable.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: August 20, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Mark L. Lester

Studio: United Film Distribution Company

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Pluto, Tubi, Freevee, Amazon Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Cult, Movies with Nudity, Thrillers/Suspense

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Embryo (1976)

Posted on February 4, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Accelerating the growth cycle.

Late one night while driving home in raging thunderstorm Dr. Paul Holliston (Rock Hudson) accidentally hits a pregnant dog with his car. He takes the dog home to his lab and is able to save one of the embryos by placing it in an artificial uterus and then injecting it with an experimental hormone that speeds up its growth cycle. Paul is so excited about the results that he gets one of his colleagues (Jack Colvin) to agree to give him an unborn human baby from a mother who had committed suicide. Paul uses the drug on the fetus and finds that it grows at an even more accelerated rate, which leads to many unforeseen and horrifying scenarios.

For a grainy looking, low budget production (the DVD transfer is horrible) the plot isn’t too bad and had me guessing all the way up to the end at how it was going to turn out. The story has a lot of holes and most likely won’t be plausible to a science purist, but Ralph Nelson’s competent direction keeps the drama moving at a brisk pace, so you never dwell on the absurdities for too long and for the undemanding viewer it may come off as believable enough. The film also has a unintentionally funny moment that may not have floored audiences back in the 70’s as it did with me and features Barbra Carrera reading the Bible, which she finds ‘illogical’ only to have Hudson a supposed scientist tell her that it’s an ‘accurate account of how life began’, which blew me away as I’m sure there are few scientists who would say that today.

Carrera does surprisingly well in a difficult role, but her ability to retain knowledge and learn things happens a little too quickly and isn’t interesting. I realize she’s supposed to be super smart, which is fine, but even a smart person needs to be taught how to read and the meaning of words to communicate, which is something that the film just glosses right over.

I was glad that there was a big age difference between the two stars and that a romantic angle wasn’t forced into the proceedings that would’ve just bogged everything down, but having the two end up going to bed together was almost as bad. Hudson had taken a very paternal approach to Carrera almost like she were his daughter, so when she asks him to have sex with her, so she can feel what it’s like, I would’ve thought it would be too uncomfortable and too awkward a situation for him to go through with.

Roddy McDowall has a great cameo as an arrogant chauvinistic chess player. There’s also an interesting car chase, a neat twist ending, and some good aging make-up effects, but Carrera’s dilemma of suddenly going from being healthy and vibrant to on the brink of death is jarring. It’s almost like the writers wrote themselves into a hole and couldn’t think of any way out of it except to insert having the character die from some mysterious illness even though the dog, who went through the same treatment, is not affected, which is a shame as the premise is intriguing and works for most of the way.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 21, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 44 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Ralph Nelson

Studio: Cine Artists Pictures

Available: DVD-R, Amazon Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Movies with Nudity, Sci-Fi, Thrillers/Suspense

Tagged , , , , , ,

The Black Hole (1979)

Posted on May 21, 2019 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Area of gravitational acceleration.

On their return trip to earth a crew of 5-people (Robert Forster, Yvette Mimieux, Joseph Bottoms, Anthony Perkins, Ernest Borgnine) on board the USS Palomino spot a large spaceship and are baffled at its ability to withstand the gravitational force of the nearby black hole. They decide to investigate the ship and find that it is being run by Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell) who has been for the past 20 years the sole human survivor after the rest of the crew supposedly returned to earth, the members of the Palomino though are suspicious about this explanation since the robed android drones seem to strangely have human-like qualities. They become further alarmed when they learn that Reinhardt plans on taking the ship through the black hole, which they feel will lead to a sure death to all those on board.

For the most part the special effects look awesome  and one gets a true feeling of the vastness of space in this one with Reinhardt’s ship getting captured in a way that makes it look large and impressive. Even the interiors give off a sort-of mansion-like feel and that the characters are inside of a large scale vessel with many rooms as opposed to simply being sets on a soundstage.

Unfortunately the script lacks imagination and becomes just another formulaic madman in space scenario that offers no new twists to the genre. The tone is extremely downbeat and despite being produced by Disney doesn’t seem to be something aimed for kids. The story is also devoid of action and when there finally is some it’s short and fleeting and comes off like a second-rate laser shoot-out.

The characters don’t show enough contrasting personalities and are too old. Usually pre-teens relate better to movies with performers around their same age range, but here everyone is middle-aged and in Borgnine’s case even well past that. Bottoms is the youngest and should’ve carried the film, but his acting is so transparent you end up wishing he hadn’t even been in it.

It’s also ridiculous that Mimieux could communicate with the ship’s robot via ESP even though mental telepathy cannot be substantiated by the scientific community and therefore should not be introduced into a sci-fi flick that is supposedly trying to be taken seriously.  I did enjoy Perkins in his part, but he should not have been the one to turn around one of the drones and unmask them to expose a shriveled face underneath, which for trivia purposes was the film’s director Gary Nelson, since it will remind viewers too much of a similar reveal scene near the end of Psycho of which he famously starred in.

Schell as the resident nutcase is a complete bore in a performance that is so pathetically cliched that it borders on camp. He reminded me of James Mason’s character from 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, which was also produced by Disney and should’ve been enough to have Mason invited back to play the part here as he would’ve been far more interesting.

The robots outshine the humans particularly Roddy McDowell and Slim Pickens, who strangely go uncredited, as the voices of the  ‘good guy’ droids. However, the army of villainous androids that try to stop the crew from escaping walk too stiffly almost like mimes playing into the cliche of how people perceive robots to move, but by the year 2132, which is when this story takes place, you’d think technology would’ve improved enough to have created androids that would’ve had more fluid-like motions. They’re also too easy to pick-off almost like sitting ducks in a shooting gallery, which saps the shoot-outs of any tension.

The ending is the biggest disappointment as it never clearly explains what happens to the crew when they go through the black hole. There’s a lot of heavy-handed imagery including a cool hell-like visual, but nothing conclusive, which makes the whole thing a big buildup to nothing.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: December 21, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Gary Nelson

Studio: Buena Vista

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

2 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, Sci-Fi

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Angel, Angel, Down We Go (1969)

Posted on May 19, 2016 | 2 comments

angel angel 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Singer manipulates rich family.

Tara (Holly Near) is an overweight teen who feels like a social outcast. Her family is rich, but empty on love. Her mother (Jennifer Jones) is a former star of stag films and boozes it up on the bottle, but still manages to look quite attractive, even better than her daughter, which she constantly reminds her of. Her father (Charles Aidman) is a closet homosexual who routinely brings in male lovers for entertainment. When a rock group with a dashing lead singer (Jordan Christopher) arrives at her sprawling family home to help host a party Tara doesn’t hesitate to fall into his open arms. At first he seems to be the answer to her loneliness, but after a while she realizes he has a plan of his own as he not only seduces the mother, but her father as well before manipulating his way into the family fortune.

The main reason to watch this film, if not the only one, is for the performance of Jones in this her second-to-last cinematic appearance. She gives an incredibly strong, multi-faceted portrayal of a middle-aged woman on the emotional edge who realizes she’s being used, but allows it to happen simply so she can still feel desirable. Her presence lifts the sleazy material to watchable heights and comes just a year after she herself tried to commit suicide after hearing of the death of a close friend in real-life.

Near, who has later become a well-known folk singer, gives an effectively sensitive portrayal of a troubled teen, which allows her to be the one character that the viewer has any sympathy for. The rest of the cast though, which includes Roddy McDowall and Lou Rawls as Christopher’s band mates, are essentially wasted although you will get a full view of McDowall’s bare bottom for those few who are interested.

The garishly colorful collages done by Shirley Kaplan are visually alluring, but writer/director Robert Thom goes back to them too often. The aerial skydiving footage is excellent, even breathtaking, but the script as a whole, despite its lurid and even groundbreaking subject matter, falls flat. A lot of the reason for this is the fact that it’s poorly paced with too much time given to Christopher who sings a total of five songs, which does nothing but slow the proceedings down to a screeching halt. The ending is vague and aloof, which only helps to cements this as a misfire and good only as a curio.

The film did quite poorly upon its initial release, so it was reissued under another a title called Cult of the Damned in hopes that it could cash in on the hysteria of the Manson murders that had occurred around the same time, even though the story doesn’t have anything to do with a religious cult and the movie still fared no better at the box office.

angel angel 2

Alternate Title: Cult of the Damned

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: August 19, 1969

Runtime: 1Hour 29Minutes

Rated R

Director: Robert Thom

Studio: American International Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

2 Comments

Posted in 60's Movies, Drama, Gay/Lesbian, Movies with Nudity, Musical, Offbeat

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Dead of Winter (1987)

Posted on February 11, 2014 | 1 comment

dead of winter

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Trapped in a house.

Being that this has been one of the coldest and snowiest winters in Indianapolis history, which is the current headquarters of Scopophilia, as well as much of the rest of the nation I decided it would be a good time to review a film with cold weather as its theme. After all misery loves company and if we got to suffer through this crap it’s always nice to see film characters have to deal with it as well.

The film is a loose remake of My Name is Julia Ross, which came out in 1945 and starred Nina Foch, which in turn was based on the novel ‘The Woman in Red’ by Anthony Gilbert. Here the title character is Katie McGovern (Mary Steenbugen) a fledgling actress who answers an ad in a paper for an audition to a role in a low budget movie. There she meets a man by the name of Mr. Murray (Roddy McDowell) who hires her on the spot based on her resemblance to their last leading lady who walked out on the production before it was finished. He takes her to an isolated mansion that is owned by Dr. Joseph Lewis (Jan Rubes) to supposedly finish the project by playing a character named Julie Rose, but slowly she realizes this is no movie at all, but instead an elaborate blackmail scheme. Her attempts at escape are futile due to a raging snowstorm outside forcing her to try and come up with a scheme of her own in order to turn-the-tables on her captors before it is too late.

This was director Arthur Penn’s second to last theatrical feature. He had been slumming through the 80’s with movies that never quite hit-the-mark and this one proves no exception. He makes a few attempts to liven it up with my favorite being when they drug Katie and then show things from her point-of-view where everyone talks in an extremely slow way like a tape player running at a very slow speed. There are a few other touches added including some obvious Hitchcock references, which I felt really weren’t needed. Overall though the film seems pretty slow at least through the first hour with only a minimum of tension.

Part of the problem is the casting of the bad guys. While I like the novelty of two elderly men cast as the villains it really doesn’t work overall. Rubes whose character is bound to a wheelchair and speaks in a heavy Czechoslovakian accent seems almost like a cuddly grandfather for most of the way. McDowell has too much of a small frame to be intimidating and there is never any gun or other weapon used against her making me believe that since she was much younger than both of them that had she acted even slightly more aggressively than she does she probably could have overpowered them.

The characters also act pretty stupid at points. Katie goes to this very isolated place, but then when she finally is able to call the police doesn’t have the simple fortitude to know what the name of the nearest town is. She also becomes very aware that these guys are up to no good and even lets them know it only to foolishly take some hot chocolate that they serve her, which not so surprisingly is laced with a sleeping drug.  The bad guys also act dumb by disposing of her driver’s license by sloppily throwing it into the fireplace and then make no attempts to keep her away from it were she eventually spots it.

The wintry atmosphere by-and-large is well handled as cinematographer Jan Weincke deftly captures the gray unrelenting bleakness of the season. It was filmed on-location in Ontario, Canada and there is actual snow on the ground, but the snowstorm itself is fake using artificial snowflakes that they blow in front of the camera that doesn’t look quite right when compared to a real storm.

Things spice up during the final half-hour and features a few interesting twists. However the Rubes character who was stuck in a wheelchair for the entire duration of the film suddenly becomes amazingly agile and nimble using only a fireplace poker to pull himself from the chair and then uses it to balance himself as he chases Katie all around the place and even manages to somehow push himself up a long and winding staircase, which became a bit farfetched. It got to the point where I felt the writers shouldn’t have even bothered to make the character paralyzed in the first place if they were just going to completely sell-out on the concept at the end.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: February 6, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 40Minutes

Rated R

Director: Arthur Penn

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Remakes, Thrillers/Suspense

Tagged , , , , , , ,