Pumpkinhead (1988)

1988
Directed by Stan Winston
Starring Lance Henriksen, Jeff East and John D'Aquino

It's unlikely that many people outside of the horror community have even heard of Pumpkinhead, the 1988 directorial debut from special effects wiz kid Stan Winston.  And that's a damn shame, because this is a pretty damn fun time at the movies.  Maybe the BEST thing about the flick is how it blends some of the various types of horror movies out there together - it's partly a revenge thriller, there's a substantial chunk of "creature feature" Frankenstein-esque stuff, and for a good portion of the second act it's a straight-up slasher as a group of attractive young kids get cut the hell up in ever-inventive and ever-gory ways.  Amazingly enough, it also never feels like overkill (hello, Cabin in the Woods).

And it's the only movie I've ever seen where a bizarre man-creature who looks like a cross between a scarecrow and a xenomorph gets to kill the holy dick out of a bunch of people.  There's some major victories to be had here, I tell ya.

PLOT:  Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen) owns a small store in the country and lives with his young son.  A group of hooligan-esque teens pass through and wind up mortally wounding Ed's son in a dirtbike accident.  Cue extremely angry Henriksen face  and dark, dreary music.  You see, there is an urban legend in this part of the country about a witch living in the sticks who has the power to get revenge against those who have wronged you.  Within short order, Ed tracks the witch down (in a very atmospheric, understated scene, by the way) and begs for revenge.  It's one of the more creative things I've seen in a horror movie, involving raising an unstoppable killing machine of a creature to do the deed - a creature that proves quite adept at its mission as the teens begin getting offed one by one at a nearby cabin.  Unexpectedly, Ed is able to see every kill that the creature completes, and as the movie reaches its crescendo, it's up to Ed (along with a couple of the more likable campers) to undo the damage and send the creature back to hell.  The script is very inventive, rarely strays into dorky territory, and has a very distinctive three-act structure that gives the Lick Ness Monster a monstrous boner.
PLOT RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  The movie starts with a scene set in the 1950s involving a very young Ed Harley witnessing his father denying help to a man begging for help at their door, only to be summarily killed by Pumpkinhead.  There's a very good shading of depth to the character of Ed Harley, and Henriksen - as he always does - plays the character masterfully.  Amazingly enough, several of the teen characters are also quite likable and engaging - they're very different from the typical group of pot-smoking sexmongers in most movies of this type, as they all feel a great deal of remorse about their act.  Return to Sleepaway Camp, this bunch ain't.  Watching the movie unfold, it is also clear that the writer made a very good choice, in particular, to leave Chris (Jeff East) and Tracy (Cynthia Bain) as the final two survivors along with Ed.   Good stuff all-around here.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.

COOL FACTOR:  Winston is a makeup master, and his talents are well-on-display in Pumpkinhead as he creates one of his more iconic...um...icons in the form of the Pumpkinhead monster.  As far as I'm concerned, the official goddamn gold seal of approval when it comes to movie monsters is if they have their own model kits associated with them, and this dude has plenty.  The "shit hits the fan" portion of the movie is very effectively done; it doesn't throw red stuff off the screen in some sort of menstrual Shining-esque geyser, it spreads them out to make an impact.  An impact, mind you, that is damn better than anything we get from Willow or the Bro-Mans.
COOL FACTOR: *** 1/2 out of ****.

OVERALL:  This flick was a moderate success at the box office, making its budget back with a little extra, but it has become a fairly substantial cult hit in the years since.  Having also seen the sequels, including two amazingly craptacular SyFy originals, it is also MILES above anything else that would come from this concept.  It really is amazing what you get from a horror movie when you have actors who are genuinely invested in what they're doing, and watching Henriksen in this movie in preparation for this review actually made me very sad considering just how uninspired and disengaged almost all of the vaguely hateable teens/college kids that populate horror movies these days.  Curmudgeonly old man syndrome rears his ugly head once again.  In summary, pick this one up if you haven't seen it, because Pumpkinhead is a scary, well-acted and even occasionally genuinely powerful horror flick that might just stick with you after you turn the lights off.
OVERALL RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.  Joe Bob makes the "Yes" gesture.

Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

1987
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Starring Lorraine Gary, Lance Guest, Mario Van Peebles, Karen Young, Judith Barsi and Michael Caine

Longtime readers of the blog are aware of my Halloween obsession/borderline psychosis.  One thing that I haven't shared, however, is the story of my last Halloween as an active trick-or-treater.  In my household, it stopped when you left grade school, which in my mind is the way it SHOULD be, and when it came time for my retirement tour I pulled out all the stops, inviting a bunch of friends over to tag along for my final voyage on the greatest street in the history of Halloweens.  The plan was to play videogames after school (check), hit the street at dusk (check), then head back to the home base and catch a horror flick to finish off the night.  Since my friends were decidedly less taken with all of this stuff than I was, they left the movie choice up to me.

The movie that I picked for public viewing that long ago October 31st of 1995? Jaws: The Revenge.

Of course, I'd already seen it.  For a lot of my sixth grade year I was an absolute Jaws fanatic, with the original movie getting constant airplay in the ol' VCR.  In addition to that, I read the Peter Benchley novel, which for my money was the first fully satisfying adult book that I'd ever read (although I definitely prefer the movie; a 45-minute subplot with Richard Dreyfuss macking it to Chief Brody's wife is just fine left on the cutting room floor, thank you very much).  And when TNT trotted this bad boy out, I was all over that shit.  At the time, I might not have known any better about the vast expanse of its suckness, and I don't think my friends did either.  Now, I'm fully aware of just how ridiculous the whole thing is and can vouch for how crappy it is.  That doesn't mean that I still don't have a lot of nostalgic fondness for it, however.  Hopefully that spirit comes through here.

PLOT:  The movie brings back Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody, wife of Police Chief Martin Brody in the first two films.  Early on, her son Sean is killed on his boat by a shark, and since Ellen had spent the film's introductory phase blathering on about how the "fear" of the shark returning is what was responsible for her husband's heart attack, the idea of this flick is indeed that the shark is coming back to stake a personal vendetta against the Brody family.  Hilariously preposterous, I know, but that's what we're working with here.  Anyway, after burying her son, Ellen heads down to the Bahamas to spend time with her older son Michael (Lance Guest), who works as a Marine Biologist.  Even better, one of his partners is played by Mario Van Peebles in full Rastafarian stoner mode.  So...yeah, this movie pretty much completely retcons the previous film in the series when it comes to the Brody offspring and their respective careers. 

Amazingly enough, the shark that killed Sean summarily shows up in the Bahamas, amping up the comedic value when attempting to make out the physics of this feat, all kinds of pissed off and ready to finish off the Brody famly once and for all.  There is also a strange romantic subplot as Ellen gets swept off her feet by Hoagie (Michael Caine), dashing pilot extraordinaire.  After a very short round of chaos involving the shark (the body count in this movie is criminally low - Sean Brody, a random girl on a beach, and maybe Mario Van Peebles - more on that later), Ellen takes to the sea for one final showdown with the shark.  So, in summary, all of this is laughable to the core, and no amount of jokes can quite convey the sheer stupidity of the plot contained above.
PLOT RATING: 1/2 * out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  This is actually a miniature saving grace of the film.  Despite the inane script and plot, almost everyone in this film really does give it their all, particularly Lorraine Gary as Ellen.  It takes a pretty committed performance to utter some of the things that she says in this film ("it was the FEAR...the FEAR of it killed him!!") without eliciting laughter, but she manages to pull it off.  Lance Guest and Michael Caine are also perfectly respectable in their roles, while Van Peebles is endearingly goofy as Michael Brody's Marione Biology running buddy.  Fun fact that's also kinda spoilerish that was hinted at earlier: in the original theatrical cut of this film, Van Peebles' character dies in the film's conclusion, but audiences liked his character to the point that they re-shot the ending for TV and had him survive, despite video evidence clearly showing him being bitten, chewed up, and dragged to the ocean bottom.  Nothing a little band-aid can't fix.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: *** out of ****.  It really can't be overstated enough; I have to applaud this bunch.  They could have mailed it in, but instead go all-out and by-and-large come across like they actually care about Jaws: The Revenge.

COOL FACTOR:  It really is quite amazing to look at the evolution of the animatronic/mocked-up shark in the Jaws movies, and how the lifelike quality of the beast actually REGRESSES with time.  In the first movie, Spielberg and his wizards made it look fantastic.  By the third movie, we had 3D cardboard cutouts coming right at us.  And in this movie, we've got what you see above - a sad-sack piece of wood that has the ability to walk upright on its tail on top of the water for seconds at a time.  As already mentioned (aforementioned), this is also a movie that seems far more concerned with its maternal middle-aged love story between Ellen and Hoagie than with showing chaos.  Body count doesn't matter in a Jaws movie (the original movie had five deaths), but when they come, they have to count.  In this movie, they don't.
COOL FACTOR: * out of ****.

OVERALL:  How bad was this movie?  Despite turning a profit, despite horror going through a period now where every moderately attractive or even moderately cult-fanned film out there has received the remake bastardization in recent years, there still haven't been any Jaws movies since its release.  The flick is packed with inane touches.  In addition to the shark's heinous revenge plot and ability to travel at the speed of sound, there's also the incredibly baffling finale sequence where the shark eats its demise by...well, I'll just leave it up to you to seek that one out.  Suffice to say, the climax of this film deserves every bit of bad press and infamy that it has gotten.  Still, as bad as this movie is, it's one that actually manages to milk good performances out of its actors in bits that can be appreciated in between the truly inane stuff that happens every time the shark gets involved.
OVERALL RATING: * out of ****.  A pretty bad flick all things considered, but still worth checking out for a fascinating lesson about what truly shitty material actually looks like.

Jaws 3-D (1983)

1983
Directed by Joe Alves
Starring Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Lea Thompson, Louis Gossett Jr. and John Putch

And now we're getteing deeper and deeper into the abyss of my childhood.  Gremlins is the first movie that I actively remember watching, but the second and third Jaws flicks aren't far behind.  While they still pop up occasionally on the schedule, I'm fairly sure that these two movies singlehandedly kept TBS afloat.  They used to get played CONSTANTLY on the Turner stations, to the point where I could almost count on them getting me through the weekends.

Man, I'm a little more nostalgic about this movie than I thought.

Jaws 3-D was originally pitched by the producers as a spoof of the first two films in the franchise, with the early working title of Jaws 3, People 0.  Having seen this movie approximately 100 times and being well aware of the fact that it holds an 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it's always been my opinion that they made the right move switching to the campy yet SRS approach.  As for some more basic information that pretty much everybody already knows, the flick was released during the height of the early '80s 3D boom (which also included Friday the 13th Part III and Amityville 3D, the latter of which being so incredibly crappy that Uwe Boll would be damn jealous), a gimmick that is utilized to somewhat comedic effect since I've only ever seen this movie on cable television.  Oh, and it's got Lea Thompson at the peak of her '80s hotness.

PLOT:  While the first two movies in the franchise focused on a giant killer shark at large in the great, vast expanse of ocean (/Jacques Cousteau), the theme is switched up in this movie to take place in a more confined area.  This time around, the locale is SeaWorld in Florida, where Michael Brody (Dennis Motherfuckin' Quaid) and Kay Morgan (Bess Armstrong) ply their trade as marine biologists/dolphin trainers.  And yeah, the former is indeed Roy Scheider's son, all growed up.  And I think you know where we're going from here.  A juvenile shark makes its way inside the SeaWorld gates coinciding with the opening of the park's in-ocean tunnels, meaning that instead of waiting for the sporadic few morons to go swimming and come to the shark, this time there's a bunch of potential snacks trapped with him.  Only, in a swerve that Vince Russo himself would be damn proud of, there's not one but two big fish terrorizing the sea(ish) this time around.  After two movies, in many respects this film is a bit of a step down in the plot department.  Paint-by-numbers is the best cliche that I can come up with to sum it up.
PLOT RATING: ** out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  In addition to Michael Brody, this movie also includes little brother Sean in the proceedings.  Played by John Putch, he's got all kinds of water-fear issues, understandable considering what he went through in the last film.  Most of the other characters in this film are related to SeaWorld in some way - you've got Lou Gossett as park manager Calvin Bouchard, the aforementioned Thompson as a hottie water skier who Sean woos the shit out of...and then FitzRoyce (Simon MacCorkindale), the most hilariously inept big-game fish hunter in the history of cinema.  Robert Shaw, this guy ain't.  Thompson is loads of fun to look at run around in her panties, and Gossett is aces in pretty much everything he's in.  This movie is no different, as Calvin Bouchard takes over the Mayor Vaughan role in this film as the guy who denies every nasty shark rumor that comes up.  Since this movie revolves mainly around Michael and Kay, however, the film falls a little flat in this regard, mainly due to the fact that Dennis Quaid was just as charismatic in this film as he would be in his later years (read: not very much).
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: ** 1/2 out of ****.

COOL FACTOR:  Fortunately for Jaws 3, this is one part of the movie that the screenwriter definitely got right.  I'm a huge fan of the locale in this movie.  As the movie ticks by, the switch is pulled on us where the shark that we've seen for much of the first act is revealed to be the baby; the mama is much bigger and nastier.  In addition to that, it's got some pretty nifty atmosphere-style suspense tricks as the shark causes the tunnels to flood, trapping a whole bunch of SeaWorld patrons inside to fend for themselves.  When it comes to the money scenes, this is also a movie that has its fair share of memorable stuff, most notably the dead body that shows up in the Lagoon and the death of FitzRoyce.  To say nothing about some of the LOL moments to be had sitting on a couch with buddies watching the 2D version of this very early '80s 3D flick.  See above picture for proof.
COOL FACTOR: *** 1/2 out of ****.

OVERALL:  The law of diminishing returns for the franchise had already begun to creep in by the time the flick was released; on a budget of $20 million, Jaws 3-D grossed a hundred million dollars less than Jaws 2.  Critical reception was also very lukewarm.  But much like the previous movie in the franchise, this is a movie that holds a lot of nostalgic value for this guy.  Yeah, I know that Mr. Stuffy Film Critic Guy will be able to tell you all of the reasons why this movie is subpar in pretty much every way, but I don't care.  It's a giant killer shark movie that doesn't intentionally shoot for the "so bad it's good" value that all of those downright unwatchable SyFy original films do, and there are precious few of those to go around anymore.  

OVERALL RATING: *** out of ****.  A decent-enough movie to watch by youself, but another horror flick that can lead to a very good time with a small group of riffers to bite back with.   

Jaws 2 (1978)

1978
Directed by Jeannot Szwarc
Starring Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary and Murray Hamilton

A long, long time ago, I reviewed the original Jaws back when this here blog was still called the International Horror Registry.  The short version for anyone who doesn't feel like browsing the history for it: it's a truly great film, that rare horror movie where the scary stuff is matched by the sheer lovability of its characters.  And it's for that reason, kids, why I pray that a remake never comes to fruition.  You can make a good scary shark movie; there have been a few of those since the release of Jaws.  But what you CAN'T do is replace the people in that flick.  More than anybody else, I actually feel sorry for the poor bastard who draws the Robert Shaw role.  Good luck with that one, boyo.

One thing I have yet to do on the ol' blog is review the sequels.  So that's where we're at now.  For the uninitiated, Jaws was such a phenomenal success in the summer of 1975 that it actually MADE summer movie season.  Before it came along, summer was typically the dumping ground where studios dumped exploitation films that weren't expected to give great returns.  The first-ever $100 million box office gross later, and summer movie season now begins in May, arguably April.  It didn't take long for the brain trust at Universal to commission a sequel, with a bigger, (supposedly) more impressive shark, the same lead star, and veteran TV director Jeannot Szwarc calling the shots.  Hence, Jaws 2.  Is it any good?  Read on.

PLOT:  The beauty of this type of film is the simplicity of its setup, and Jaws 2 is no exception.  It's four years following the events of the first movie, and another giant, decidedly ill-tempered shark has made its way into Amity Island's coastal waters.  Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) is still the man in charge of Amity's police force, and spends a good portion of the first act of the film going through the familiar motions of the original film to convince the still-endearingly-dickish Mayor Vaughan (Murray Hamilton) of the threat and close the beaches.  After a series of horrific opening attacks by the shark (one of which leaves it with a somewhat hokey looking burn on its head), the personal stakes are raised when Brody's 17-year-old son, along with his little brother Sean and several of his teenage happy-go-lucker friends, find their sailing caravan trapped at sea by the shark.  In this respect, this flick really does kind of turn into Jaws the 13th, in that it is a monster versus a group of kids just interested in having a good time before tragedy strikes.  Anyway, the story occasionally becomes a little too familiar when it comes to the first movie, but there are enough new wrinkles (most notably Brody's lead deputy undermining him in order to curry favor with the Mayor) to make it pop fairly well. 
PLOT RATING:  *** out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  Once again, Scheider does a really good job in the average joe with the heart of gold role.  He isn't given quite as much to work with in this movie, most notably the absence of Richard Dreyfuss and the aforementioned Shaw to play off of.  The other two returnees from the first movie are Hamilton and Lorraine Gary, and both do an admirable job going at it in a slightly different way.  Since a good portion of the second half of the film takes place with the teenagers at sea, however, this aspect of the movie takes a slight hit.  Other than Mike and Sean Brody, I have problems remembering the names of any of the characters, instead referring to them as Nice Girl, Hot Blonde, etc.  I guess this movie is Jaws the 13th in more ways than one, but at least none of the characters are as much of a nonentity as, say, Ethel and Junior.  Then again, I remember those losers' names, so it's kind of a Catch-22.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  ** 1/2 out of ****.

COOL FACTOR:  Of course, the key element in a Jaws movie is the shark itself.  In the first movie, it looked fantastic, but the "less is more" approach that Spielberg utilized in that flick was really the kicker.  I don't quite know what the ratio is when it comes to how much the fish is onscreen this time around, but the animatronic monstrosity isn't quite as lifelike and fluid.  That's not to say that it looks like crap.  It's serviceable.  When it comes to the kill scenes, this movie definitely has its more visceral moments although nothing approaching the leg slowly falling to the ocena floor in the lagoon or that shocking geyser of blood shooting from Alex Kintner.  Still, since the first movie is almost impossible to top in virtually every way, it's hard to fault this flick for failing on a horror level.  The scene pictured above (for my money, it's THE scene in this flick) should do a more than commendable job fulfilling this film's scare quotient.
COOL FACTOR: *** out of ****.

OVERALL:  For a brief period of time, this was the highest-grossing sequel of all time.  It was definitely worthy of that distinction, because this is a movie that manages to replicate the atmosphere of the original movie without fucking up too much of what it decided to add in the form of its teenybopper-heavy story.  This is both a blessing and a curse.  I can appreciate Jaws 2 for its obvious reverence for the original film and its desire to entertain in much of the same ways, but at other times, it feels like a simple retread.  What are you going to do?  I don't know.  All I know is that this is the first Jaws movie I ever saw, so for that reason alone, this film is getting a thumbs up from me.

OVERALL RATING: *** out of ****.  Get some friends over and pop this one in after watching the original movie for a guaranteed double-shot of fun.  As for the next one?  Well, we'll be getting to that in due time.