Creepshow 2 (1987)

1987
Directed by Michael Gornick
Starring Lois Chiles, George Kennedy, Dorothy Lamour and Tom Savini

For some mysterious reason, I never got around to watching Creepshow 2 until my college years.  The original flick is one of the most downright fun horror movies you'll ever see; all five stories in it are somewhat lesser degrees of each other, but the sum total is fantastic.  Coupled with enough genuinely WTF moments to have you and your friends giving it some good-natured chiding (Ed Harris' dance FTW) and we're talking one of the all-time great party movies, brought to you by your friends Stephen King and George Romero. 

Upon seeing the sequel for the first time, I actually liked it BETTER than the original.  After some repeat viewings, my rose-colored glasses/nostaligia for my college days have been tempered somewhat, because there are portions of this flick that qualify as downright dopey.  Fortunately, those portions are a little few and far between, peppered in between some pretty good atmospheric stuff.  Well, except for the first story.  That one is pretty dopey all around.  With that, let's get to the movie.  Much like the original, this movie is anthology to the core; three tales of terror, all held together with a wraparound story involving a kid reading a comic book that the stories come from.  Just like the original, we've also got Stephen King as the inspiration, with Romero (who directed the original) penning the screenplay.

If nothing else, I've got to hand it to this movie as far as the sequence goes, because they lead off with what is undoubtedly one of the more tedious segments in any anthology movie I've seen in "Old Chief Wood'nhead."  In it, we have George Kennedy as the proprietor of a general goods store in some nondescript Southwestern town that finds itself under siege from the local group of street hooligans, led by a man with the most luxurious mane of rock and roll hair I've ever seen.  And folks, this section of the story REALLY drags; we get a long, not terribly tense series of events with Kennedy and his wife dealing with the thieves followed by the murder of Kennedy.  Fortunately (or unfortunately), the store's resident cigar store statue has recently received a visit from a mystic Shaman, and I think you know where we're going from here.  Anyway, this segment isn't particularly scary or memorable, and you're much better off skipping ahead.

When I was in junior high, "The Raft" was one of my favorite Stephen King short stories, and the film version that follows in Creepshow 2 is only slightly less awesome.  The story this time concerns four college students who decide to go swimming in a lake that is far, far away from civilization.  Great idea alert.  Upon reaching the titular raft in the middle of the lake, they see a mysterious oil slick floating toward them.  It seems harmless enough...until it absorbs one of them in its gooey mass, never to be seen again.  This segment is everything that "Old Chief Wood'nhead" isn't, in that it ramps up the tension halfway through and never looks back, boasting this palpable sense of claustrophobia and entrapment at its core.  It's also got some very nice titshots and one of hell of an ending twist an added bonus, so sports fans of the world take note. 

The third segment isn't quite as strong.  Entitled "The Hitch-Hiker," it's about - you guessed it - Frank Stallone.  Nope, it's about a ghostly hitch-hiker, more specifically one who tails adulterous wife Annie Lansing (Chiles in a decent amoral protagonist performance) after being run off the road in a hit and run accident by Annie.  To be sure, this segment is a little predictable and repetitive, but it's also got a lot going for it in the atmosphere, the ungodly creepy look of the reappearing hitch-hiker itself, and a pretty fun little cameo from King in the process.  It's also got a line of dialogue that might just stick in your head long after the film's running time, but that's a different story altogether.

And...that' all folks, from there, we hit another segment of the wraparound story as Comic Kid's bullies get one hell of a comeuppance followed by the ending credits.  Longtime readers (and savvy horror fans) undoubtedly know that the original Creepshow contained five stories, while this one takes the "lean and mean" approach of three stories.  It turns out that the length cut was due to budgetary reasons, and I've got to believe that the powers-that-be were kicking themselves after this flick turned out to be a modest hit with a $14 million box office take from a mere $3.5 million investment.  Come on, guys.  Throw another $5 million at your movie and shoot for the moon.  One of the planned stories, "Cat From Hell," would eventually be filmed for Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, so not all was lost.  Still...man.  Just, man.
 
Creepshow 2 is nowhere near the classic that it's original film is.  Very few movies can top that one, both for atmosphere and for impact.  Indeed, "Old Chief Wood'nhead" had this one limping out of the gate from the get go while the first film had us all wanting our damn cake already, but the movie manages to regain its footing pretty well in the latter chapters.  In addition, it's also the only movie that I've seen that contains the moral lesson to not fondle a hotty coed's tits when attempting to evade a murderous oil slick in the middle of a lake. 

*** out of ****.  Skip the first story and you should be alright from there; otherwise, stick to Creepshow 1.

D-Tox (2002)

2002
Directed by Jim Gillespie
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Tom Berenger, Charles S. Dutton, Robert Patrick, Polly Walker, Jeffrey Wright and Kris Kristofferson

Folks, the flick we're looking at today has to be nothing short of one of the most infamous flops in horror history.  Boasting an absolutely mammoth budget of $55 million and the star power listed above, D-Tox (perhaps better known by its video title Eye See You) qualified as a finished product that the studio quite simply had no idea what to do with or how to market, making it sit on the shelf for three years after completion before finally turning it loose on video shelves.  There, it died a quick death, and the only evidence that I have that anyone has ever seen the film is the one wintry night back in 2002 when myself and a couple friends spent 90 minutes chuckling at the TV screen. 

I'm not quite the research nut that I used to be with movies of this nature, but this is what I can gleam.  Stallone was in that VERY rough period of his career in 1999, long before the irrefutably awesome Rocky Balboa would resurrect his career and when he struggled to get his movies screened theatrically.  This script must have seemed like a good idea at the time.  Horror was still relatively hot in the wake of Scream, and Jim Gillespie, the director here, also did the duties for I Know What You Did Last Summer.  Big problems: all of the main characters were dudes and decidedly old, a clear lack of gratuitous nudity (which, given the aforementioned factoid, is a big plus), and a plot that qualifies as cliched and hackneyed to even the most seasoned slasher movie fan quickly ensure that Universal pictures saw the whole project as a big wash.  With that, the movie.

Stallone plays FBI agent Jake Malloy, a guy who has been tracking a serial killer who targets law enforcement officials.  The dude's method of operation is actually pretty cool, as he prefers to ring a doorbell, wait for his quarry to look through the peephole, and insert a drill through said peephole.  The killer has a grudge against Jake, as he informs the officer via the ever-popular late-'90s taunting phone call plot device that the agent pursued him several years back for some prostitute deaths, and he is out for revenge.  This results in the movie's first real money scene, as the killer does a lobotomy job on Jake's girlfriend Mary (the certifiably hot Dina Meyer).  Jake chases the killer down, finding him dead from an apparent suicide and setting us up for the rest of the movie.

The movie gets its title from the setting for the remainder of the movie.  Jake descends into alcoholism after these incidents and promptly tries suicide (preferably right after listening to Titanica's "Try Suicide"), making his supervising officer Chuck Hendricks (Charles S. Dutton) send him away to a rehab center specifically for law enforcement officials.  It's a nice little stronghold out in the wilderness, surrounded by snow and trees as far as the eye can see, and populated by what is admittedly a pretty damn good group of actors playing Jake's fellow rehabilitators.  Check that list above for proof.  They're actually all given fairly fleshed out backgrounds as well, with Robert Patrick's character standing out amongst them as one of the better red herring suspects.

Red herring, you ask?  Well, it isn't long before a snowstorm hits and bodies begin piling up.  Having just watched the movie again after more than a decade of forgetting its existence, I'm having trouble remembering any of them.  They aren't very creative deaths.  There also isn't much emotional weight going on here, because while the flick did do a decent job establishing character traits for all of its actors it was nowhere near as admirable when it came to making the characters sympathetic.  Jake actually is sympathetic, and Stallone did not appear to be mailing it in.  Not having a box office hit in many years will do that to you.  But the setup to D-Tox is just a lot more interesting than its payoff.

I will give the movie this - it has take on the "take group of characters and isolate them" slasher movie trope that, while not unique in the least bit, at least FEELS new with all of the characters being tough guy cops.  The movie's big budget also shows, as Gillespie shoots the movie with plenty of love and affection that $55 million can easily afford you.  But emotional bearing is a big deal with me, and that's where the movie is sorely lacking.  Coupled with the fact that it just feels as cookie-cutter as all get out for the vast majority of its second and third acts and we're talking criminal boredom.  Although it does have a scene at the end where Sylvester Stallone gorilla press slams the villain onto spikes, so +5 points to the movie there.

** out of ****.  It has moments, but moments are just about it.  Good early-afternoon falling asleep fodder and little else.

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)

1990
Directed by John Harrison
Starring Deborah Harry, Christian Slater, David Johansen, William Hickey, James Remar and Rae Dawn Chong

I was a late bloomer to the charms of Tales from the Darkside, the 1980s TV series that spawned the movie in question today.  Most of my childhood was taken up with the Crypt Keeper and the Midnight Society, and trying to get the few classmates unlucky enough to share a room with me that gathering in the middle of the goddamn forest and telling scary stories wasn't a losery thing to do on Saturday night.  When I found it later in life, though, I made up for some lost time.  Rest assurred, it's an awesome series, and this flick that serves as the de facto climax of it is a pretty damn good movie.

While it was a modest success in theaters, this is definitely one of those movies that qualifies as a cult classic.  It has small pockets of fans, an those pockets run very deep.  So deep.  So deep, it could put her butt to sleep, but Ice Cube is putting it better than I ever could.  It's also got one of the more ingenious framing devices of any anthology film I've seen, with a young kid played by Matthew Lawrence (yes, folks, the brother of Joey "Whoa" Lawrence) reading three stories to a witch who is about to eat him, Hansel and Gretel style.  Remember, kids, if you're ever captured by a cannibal, reading stories is the ultimate weapon.  It worked for Shawn Hunter's older brother and it can work for you.

With that, let's get to the stories.  First up is "Lot 249," an adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle short story of the same name.  This segment has some cast, with Steve Buscemi playing a vengeful graduate student who utilizes a mummy to exact revenge on two other students (Julianne Moore and Robert Sedgwick) who framed him out of a scholarship.  The scares are few and far between in this segment, but the beauty of it is in the acting, with the name actors (plus Christian Slater in full Jack Nicholson mode as Moore's older brother) giving everything they've got to the proceedings and adding plenty of emotion to the admittedly pretty out there story.  It's also got one hell of an ending twist that is right up there with anything we would get on Tales from the Crypt, and that's never a bad thing.

Next up is "Cat From Hell," based on the story from Stephen King's collection Skeleton Crew.  Much like pretty much everything King wrote before...oh, 1991 or so, the whole story is filled with this amazing sense of foreboding.  The story concerns a rich pharmaceutical magnate (William Hickey) who hires a hit man (David Johansen) to kill a black cat that he believes to be evil incarnate.  The background of the hit is explained, and it is the stuff that campfire scary stories are made of with just the slightest bit of a modern touch.  And folks, if you thought the last segment had a good ending twist, wait until you see how this one kicks you in the nuts in the final third.  Both Hickey and Johansen are aces in their roles, and the material doesn't disappoint.  A home run of a segment for sure.

Finally, we've got "Lover's Vow," a story that felt very familiar as I had already seen the classic J-horror epic Kwaidan.  Lo and behold, the story is indeed based on the story of the Japanese yuki-onna ghost.  Instead of a spirit in the woods, it's once again back to the mean city streets, as down-on-his-luck artist Preston (James Remar) witnesses a hideous helldemon committing a brutal murder.  The monster agrees to let him live, just so long as he never speaks a word of what he saw to anyone.  And I think you know where this is going.  The segment may be predictable, but it doesn't matter, because this segment is all about the emotion.  Once again, the actors are more than game, with both Remar and Rae Dawn Chong owning it as a seemingly happy couple before a telegraphed-yet-effective final twist.

There were some talented people associated with this flick (Doyle, King and George Romero, who wrote the screenplay for the "Cat From Hell" segment), and it shows.  This is the kind of horror movie that we almost never get these days, one where the love of dark stuff, spectral boogeymen and all things paranormal is celebrated with no hint of cynicism.  All the stuffy trappings aside, this is just a really, really fun movie that every horror fan should seek out at some point in their life. 

*** 1/2 out of ****.  The first segment might be a bit below the others, but the sum total of Tales from the Darkside can't be ignored.  Check it out.

Nail Gun Massacre (1985)

1985
Directed by Bill Leslie and Terry Lofton
Starring Ron Queen, Beau Leland, Michelle Meyer and Rocky Patterson

I've mentioned this flick a few times in passing here on the blog, but never launched into the full-fledged review for one simple purpose.  No amount of typing can possibly do this movie justice.  You might have seen some bad movies before, but almost nothing that I've seen before or since has managed to achieve the sheer levels of ineptitude that Nail Gun Massacre aspires to be.  For that reason only, this is a movie that everyone should see before they die.

Watching this movie today actually makes me a little sad, because they don't make movies like this anymore.  Most modern horror films tend to shoot for "passable at best, mind-numbingly boring at worst" as a benchmark, and that's a damn shame, because movies along the order of Nail Gun Massacre are infinitely fun to watch.  We don't get train wrecks of this caliber hitting the Netflix queue, and I doubt we'll ever get anything remotely like it again.  And no folks, I don't count the SyFy original pictures and their ilk, because those things are so soul-free that they might qualify as some sort of nightmarish bizarro-James Brown clone.  Horrible metaphor alert, launch.

All I've got to say is that if you're a fan of literal titles, this is the movie for you.  It delivers the goods when it comes to nail guns and then some.  The movie starts with a dingily-shot gang rape scene at a construction site and never looks back, promptly launching into a series of murder scenes involving the various perpetrators of said crime.  People, for years, I never dreamed that it was possible for a movie to have more disposable stock characters than Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, but this has it beat by a long shot.  Even more amazingly, it came out the SAME YEAR.  Freaky.  Our star character, if you want to call him that, is the local doctor (Patterson), who along with the Sheriff (Queen) put together a very Keystone Cops-esque effort to stop the murderer.  No, you will not remember the faces or names of anybody that eats the nails in this movie, but it doesn't matter.  Because the beauty of Nail Gun Massacre lies in the things they do.

For starters, there's plenty of female nudity to be had.  Unfortunately, it's also accompanied by plenty of male nudity, usually with large, hairy-backed men who look like they would likely own any prison that they ventured into.  And then there is the star character himself...the killer.  The various murder segments that make up the film all star this dude, a leather-jacket-wearing psycho wearing a motorcycle helmet and utilizing a voice that sounds like a cross between Cookie Monster and the Black Scorpion.  Every time he's onscreen, it prompts nothing short of hilarity that make a group viewing of the film nothing short of Eddie Murphy early years spectacular.  Combined with the finest score that a ten dollar Casio keyboard could grant and we're talking Richard Pryor quality.

What else is there to know?  Not much.  This really is just your standard revenge movie with a heavy slathering of slasher.  The identity of the killer isn't even really that much a mystery; once we know the background of the woman who was raped in the prologue, tracing the breadcrumbs together is fairly straightforward.  It all just kind of comes together in the third act after the movie gives us essentially 70 minutes of "introduce characters and then promptly kill them off, likely just after doing something annoying" followed by the exposition and the big mystery reveal.  And...that's all folks.  There's no depth, no scares, and no real joy to be had in Nail Gun Massacre.  But then again, why would you expect it?

I suppose I should wrap this review up into a nice little bow.  I've said in the past that people watch horror movies for different reasons.  Generally, I watch them because I enjoy being scared.  This one won't scare you in the least bit, nor will its characters compel you to follow their story.  If you get the impression that this movie is bad from this review, I've done my job, because this is some bad movie.  Still, you can't appreciate just HOW bad until you take it in, its gamut of bad qualities running a gauntlet so long and tough that it somehow becomes watchable as a test of endurance and a test of just how loud you can laugh in the company of others. 

1/2 * out of ****.  This is an EXCELLENT movie for some MST3K-style riffing, but by yourself...yikes.  Stay away.  Stay FAR away.

Final Destination (2000)

2000
Directed by James Wong
Starring Devon Sara, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith and Tony Todd

Looks like we're headed back to school for this week's review.  High school, that is - the high school years of one Mr. Lick Ness Monster.

There have been a few horror movies in my lifetime that set off a huge wave in the teen crowd.  Scream was that way a few years before this, and The Ring would do the same a short time after.  But in the spring and summer of 2000, if you hadn't seen the movie with the plane crash, creepy shadow-stalking death, the whipped-cream bikini girl and the chick who got hit by the bus...you were out of it, man.  And you can rest assured that I was there on opening Friday.

My reasoning was probably a bit different than most at that time.  Originally written as an X-Files spec script, it was ironically enough picked up as the directorial debut for one James Wong - the same James Wong who, along with writing partner Glen Morgan, was one of the early season featured writers for The X-Files.  The same show that long-time readers of the blog will recognize as my favorite TV show of all time, regardless of how much of a Vince Russo-esque clusterfuck it turned into during its later seasons.  That connection was enough to sell me on the idea, and it's a decision that I never regretted, as the flick was a big success and spawned a franchise that - even at its worst - has managed to stay fun and relevant throughout a few goofy incarnations.  In that regard, this really is the Friday the 13th for the 21st century that  could never, ever dream of being.  With that, let's get to the movie.

Of course, most people know the basics of Final Destination by now, and this movie that started the trends doesn't do much different.  It begins with slightly squirrelly high school student Alex Browning (Sawa, a guy that I'm truly surprised never made it bigger, because he had loads of charisma and acting chops) anticipating a class trip to Paris, France when a premonition involving the entire plane being engulfed in flames.  Lo and behold, a series of events starts once on board the plane that seems eerily familiar to his premonition, leading to himself and a group of mismatched classmates being led off the plane to await a following flight.  When the plane actually does explode, that sets our plot in motion.

Quick, spoilerific information for those who haven't seen any of these movies.  The flick doesn't have an out-and-out villain in the way that most horror movies do.  Instead, what we have here as the kids start getting picked off one by one is a sort of "world at large" villain where everyday objects, particularly things that are as sharp and nasty as posssible, suddenly become evil.  It seems that death has been cheated by Alex's vision, and now it's snapback time to correct the mistake.  Having said that, this flick DOES differ from later movies in the franchise in a couple key ways.  For starters, the Goldberg Variation-esque methods that death employs aren't quite as intricate as they would be almost immediately after this one.  Secondly, death itself seems to be a smart, sentient thing in this film that does its best to cover its tracks, a plot device that was completely forgotten starting with the first sequel when it became clear that it would be a bit more fun to have massive, gory set pieces filled with lots of weird, wild stuff. (/Dana Carvey as Johnny Carson). 

Anyway, that's what we've got from Final Destination at this point onward, and it more than delivers the goods on a visceral level.  Which brings me to element #2 when it comes to my horror movie scale - emotional involvement.  To be sure, this movie has some collection of actors.  In addition to Sawa, there's Ali Larter (she of the aforementioned whipped cream bikini, which sadly did not occur in this movie), Kristen Cloke, Daniel "Samson Tollet" Roebuck, Seann William Scott as the requisite douchy jock character in the role that he has down to absolute perfection and Amanda Detmer of Saving Silverman relative fame.  Oh, and Tony Todd as the creepiest coroner in the history of film.  Really, with the exception of Scott and Todd, though, every character is pretty disposable - up to and including our main protagonist in Alex.  From an emotional standpoint, this movie is a bit of a letdown, and this is one aspect where I actually really do wonder what this movie would have been like as an X-Files episode, with Mulder and Scully investigating these deaths and the high school students serving as the B-story.

In the end, that doesn't really matter.  This is a flick that proves that a great concept and solid execution can cover up some pretty substantial flaws.  The excellent atmosphere that Wong manages to serve up doesn't hurt, either.  Since this movie gets pretty regular airplay on lazy Saturday afternoons, there's definitely much worse ways that you can spend wasting away in Margaritaville.  That, and there are some deaths in this thing that are still just outright cringeworthy a full decade-and-a-half removed.

*** out of ****.  A very solid start to a solid series.  Recommended.

Child's Play 2 (1990)

1990
Directed by John Lafia
Starring Alex Vincent, Jenny Agutter, Gerrit Graham, Christine Elise and Brad Dourif

When the original Child's Play was released, I don't think that ANY of the wizards of smart could have predicted exactly how successful it would be.  By horror movie standards, it was an absolute blockbuster, with both the character of Chucky and the concept proving quite formidable with the public at large.  Thus, while the original flick had a budget that was marginally higher than a #7 value meal, it didn't take long for Universal to order up some sequels.  It ALSO didn't take long for writer Don Mancini to crank out what I consider to be the best movie in the entire series.

Moreso than any of the other films in the franchise, this flick really is all about yin and yang.  It's got its serious moments, sure, but it also brings in the humor that the later entries would crank up to the nth and sometimes annoying degree.  The balancing act that Mancini scripted out here, however, is pretty close to ideal.  Once again, it was a big hit with the public, making its budget back in the opening weekend alone and making those very same aforementioned later sequels possible.  With that, let's get to it.

I'll be the first person to admit that most horror movies that bring back characters from earlier installments are asking for trouble.  The Nightmare on Elm Street series managed to pull it off with Kristen Parker and Alice Johnson, but others...not so much.  Andy Barclay, the little kid whose body Chucky was trying to possess in the first film, is back here as your star character.  He's still played by Alex Vincent, and the kid still does an admirable enough acting job.  This time around, he's in foster care, his mother having been taken away from him due to her lack of deductive reasoning skills in not going against her kid's story that the doll that killed babysitters, teachers and other assorted characters was alive.  Quick word of advice to all mothers who find themselves in this situation: lie.  You'll be doing yourself a favor.

Before the end of the first act, we meet Andy's new foster parents, played by Gerrit Graham and Jenny Agutter (she of many tasty nude scenes back in the day - Google it, kids).  Also present in his new home is Kyle (Christine Elise of 90210 relative fame), requisite "bad girl" teenage character who serves as your veritable final girl in this entry.  The character isn't exactly a classic, but Elise does anything but phone it in, managing to make the semi-big-sisterly bond that she forms with Andy semi-believable.  Three hyphens in one sentence.  I'm really starting to suck.

ANYWAY...the fine folks at the Good Guys toy company have taken a big hit due to all the bad publicity that Andy's possessed doll story gave them.  In a plot that screams "great idea" to anyone who happened to be in this board room, they decide to reconstruct the burnt-up doll to prove that the story was untrue, and it isn't long until Chucky is back, once again voiced by Brad Dourif and headed for Andy's home in an effort to claim his soul.  A few words on the C-man in this flick: my review of the first film had a long bitching paragraph about just how cheesy the doll looked whenever it was moving around in that film, but that problem has been more than rectified here.  He might be shown a lot in close-up, but the animatronics had come along nicely by this point.  Combined with what is nothing short of a HUGE by time period and horror movie standards $13 million budget and we've got a pretty cool Chucky. 

The "rule" of the series, as it goes, is that Chucky has to claim the soul of whoever was the first to learn his true identity, meaning that Andy is still his prime target.  The parents have bought Andy a brand-new Chucky doll in the process, but the REAL Chucky (confused yet) promptly buries it when he reaches their household and swaps himself out.  What follows is a second act consisting of some pretty damn suspenseful stuff as Andy barely averts certain disaster and having no penis in doll form for the remainder of his life, combined with a couple of classic death scenes.  My favorite is the bit involving Andy's teacher and the ruler, although it IS a little unclear just how Chucky manages to get around everyone's neighborhoods so easily.  Maybe the dude is just really, really good at speed-walking.

As the film goes on, eventually we get down to Andy and Kyle.  As opposed to the first film, this one has done a much better job making its climactic scenes seem like a big deal.  The budget doesn't disappoint, either, giving us a finale in the Good Guys toy factory itself that drives firmly into silly territory at times but manages to stay suspenseful.  That, and it might have one of the longest "NOOOOOOOO"-s in cinematic history at the moment Chucky realizes that it's too late to escape his doll form.

No closing words for this flick are needed.  Everything spelled out above should make it pretty clear what to expect from Child's Play 2, and it's a pretty damn fun time in front of the TV.  If you're up for a taste of the ol' Chucky series before it went full-on spoof, look no further.

*** 1/2 out of ****.  Recommended, brutha.