The Mummy (1932)

1932
Directed by Karl Freund
Starring Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward van Sloan and Arthur Byron

No Encino Man in sight, kids. (/obligatory Brendan Fraser joke)

One year in to the great Universal horror movie project, literary monsters were already pretty much a craze.  People couldn't get enough of Dracula and Frankenstein the previous year.  Off moderate investments, Universal was raking it in off the backs of characters that were created something like 870 years ago.  There are some things that never change regardless of what era we're talking about, and just like today when Paranormal Activity comes along and we get something like 1,481 found footage films within the next few years, Universal kept cranking out horror movies.  With the two main eventers out of the way, they had to go scrounging for some other stuff.  Undead vampires and scientifically-created monstrosities are hard to beat, but they tried by introducing mummies into the lexicon.

Unlike the last two flicks that I reviewed here on the ol' blog, this one was NOT based on a play.  Instead, it was a totally original creation of screenwriter John L. Balderston, with cues taken from the opening of King Tut's tomb in 1922 and basically nothing else save for a few VERY loose pulls from an Arthur Conan Doyle story.  This time around, the material wasn't QUITE as strong as the stuff they had with the stage plays.  What this movie did have, though, was Karloff.

Ah, yes, Karloff.  The man who was so important in 1932 that they didn't even need to give him a first name on the poster.  Seriously.  Christ himself could have come down from the heavens and implanted his likeness on that poster, and Karloff would have still gotten top billing over him.  After playing Frankenstein, Boris Karloff was like Jesus and John Lennon's collective fame combined, which would also ironically not be the only time that those two would be mentioned in the same breath together.  Wait, what?  All bad jokes aside, Karloff's star was riding high at this point, and this was his movie, baby.  He owns it, he's onscreen a lot, he gets a lot of DIALOGUE in a very refreshing turn, and by all accounts this was where the dude truly cemented himself as one of horror's all-time best leading guys. 

In The Mummy, Karloff is your title character.  The plot, as it is, is given to us essentially within the first five minutes, as a team of archaeologists is in some indeterminate area of Egypt doing the stuff that archaeologists do.  There's lots of dirt, maps, and years being tossed around in the conversation, so you know it's important.  The body of Egyptian priest Imhotep is soon unearthed, and in one of the true "derp" moments in all of horror history, is immediately resurrected when the main characters read from an ancient magical scroll. 

Flash forward 10 years to the present day of 1932, where the main plot of the film unspools.  Something that I wish to comment on, at this point, is the subject of the horror movie romance.  A lot of folks who aren't into this stuff would be surprised by this, but romance is actually a pretty big part of horror history.  King Kong, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the masterpiece that is The Return of Swamp Thing...the whole "monster in unrequited love with a woman" is one of my favorite tropes in this genre.  That's our story here, as Imhotep is now wandering around in Egypt under the assumed name of Ardath Bey to find his reincarnated long lost love.  Truly a realistic goal that anyone should aspire to.

Fortunately, this means that we get plenty of Karloff in this movie.  Whenever Ardath Bey is on screen, this movie is greatness.  Yeah, he gets to talk, unlike Frankenstein's monster.  But he's also very good at displaying emotion.  The whole movie hinges on audiences buying Imhotep's desire to find his bride, so Karloff nailing this character like he did was an absolute must. 

The subject of his affection: Helen Grosvenor, a young woman who bears a striking resemblance to his former bride Anck-es-en-Amon (forgive me if I'm wrong there; as of this writing, I just watched this movie a week ago and I'm not operating with Wikipedia benefits this time).  Zita Johann got the call to play Helen, and actually has fantastic chemistry with Karloff in their few scenes together.  Gotta say that I much prefer her to Fay Wray when it came to "romantic damsels in distress" from this period of horror history.  Thus, the whole tragic love plot of The Mummy is one that works very well, with the threat coming in the form of Imhotep/Ardath Bey's resurrection method.  How, you ask?  He has to kidnap Helen, kill her, mummify her and resurrect her with his dead wife's reincarnated soul.  Gruesome stuff, I must say.

What this movie DOESN'T deliver on as much as the previous Universal Monster epics was a well-rounded supporting cast.  The two main archaeologists are a couple of Keystone cops, and the heroine's good guy love interest, while he's a likable enough dude, isn't terribly interesting.  Whenever the movie has that "thrill of the chase" thing going on with the heroes, it loses a bit of steam.  Kind of like The Big Bang Theory whenever it's focused on anyone other than Sheldon.  Alas, there's no R.N. Renfield complete with amazingly creeply laugh equivalent in this film.

All things considered, though, The Mummy is still an effective, emotional little horror film.  Actually, "little" would be a pretty big misnomer, since this was another monster hit for Universal Studios in 1932.  The role that they were on with horror movies at this time was unlike anything that had ever been seen in the movie business at this point, and the public simply couldn't get enough gross-looking tragic monsters, unexpected romance and atmospheric settings.  That's something about this movie that I forgot to mention - the atmosphere is again off the charts, and the production designers on these films were John Matrix-esque commandos when it came to making these movies look ominous and uninviting. 

Rating time: I'll give this flick *** out of ****.  As sure as his name is Boris Karloff, this one is a Thriller.

Frankenstein (1931)

1931
Directed by James Whale
Starring Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff

Welcome back to the Lick Ness Monster October Universal MonsterFest.  Truly a title worthy of any marquee in in the universe!

Universal Studios expected Dracula to be profitable, but not the huge deal that it would become.  When it made enough in 1931 profits to buy a solid-gold island, it didn't take long for them to commission more horror films.  Thus was the beginning of movie studios viewing horror movies as a surefire, low-risk way to make some bucks and scare plenty of people doing it, but it really does stand out once again how much Universal really did seem to LIKE this stuff.  I don't sigh often, but this is truly one of those situations that is sigh-worthy, isn't it?  Can you imagine a movie studio thinking so much of literary horror monsters today that they would devote so much studio space to filming a bunch of them in a row?  Then again, movie studios these days are also pretty much extinct, since virtually nothing is actually filmed in California anymore, but I digress.  But while Dracula was a very successful flick, nothing could have prepared Universal for what was to come with the advent of the freakiest looking monster that cinematic audiences had ever seen in 1931.

Just like Dracula, this movie was based on a stage play rather than a strict adaptation of the original novel.  This move really was a stroke of genius by the Universal brain trust, because it meant that not only were things more filmable, it also meant that a limited number of sets needed to be built.  The basics of the Frankenstein story are here, and surely everyone knows this stuff: nutty, misguided doctor pieces together a human body out of dead people, brings it back to life, mayhem ensues, moral lesson at the end about tampering in God's domain or something. 

Yes, we've gotten movies that are much closer to the original novel.  1994's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is probably the closest, but all these years later, this is still the definitive film version of Frankenstein for many.  Myself included.  What can I say, a lot of people have screw fetishes.  Clearly, this was also true back in the early '30s as this flick made something in excess of $12 million (which was ASTRONOMICALLY HIGH back then) off of its $200,000-some production budget.  I don't throw this word out there often, but that...is scrum-tralascent. (/Will Ferrell)

Yes, this movie does look like a big deal, but it starts in decidedly smaller moments.  Within roughly a minute of screen time, we meet pretty much every main principal human character.  Doctor Victor Frankenstein himself is played by Colin Clive in one of those performances that truly encapsulates the whole "mad scientist" subgenre of characters.  The basics are left intact from the book, as Victor has an assistant (named "Fritz" here, and his hunchback is truly the stuff of legend) and a fiance, Elizabeth (Mae Clarke), who is worried that the guy she is marrying spends so much time in a creepy watch tower.  Eh, don't worry about it, honey.  I'm just...thinking up here.  It doesn't take long for the movie to give us a true laugh-out-loud moment as Fritz manages to steal the WRONG BRAIN to put in the beast that they're pasting together from MacGyver-style used parts, resulting in a creature that doesn't quite behave the way the good doctor wants.

So yeah, ol' Victor is obsessed with wringing death from life and actually manages to do it (complete with lots of nifty electrical set imagery, special effects and that legendary "It's alive!" scene that I knew well as a fan of Weird Science).  But the movie really kicks it up a notch when the creature himself makes his first appearance.  Played by Boris Karloff, with makeup coming straight out of the 1931 population's nightmares, the character is an icon for a reason.  It might not have been quite what Mary Shelley intended when she wrote the book, as director James Whale definitely went for the more "shock and awe" approach.  In this reporter's opinion, the move paid off big time.  How?  This flick is in the godforsaken Library of Congress Film Registry.  So suck on it, accuracy Nazis.

After a couple close calls and a couple notches in the movie's body count, the creature escapes.  This is where the movie really shows its true power, as both the script and Karloff do a phenomenal job getting us to care about the monster.  Now, I'm not going to give everyone a fourth-grade level English class lecture about what we're going for here with this story, but it is a tragedy.  The middle portion of Frankenstein consists largely of the monster wandering around in the countryside interacting with various town denizens.  The BEST sequence in the movie consists of his meeting with a little girl where he learns to skip rocks.  Only little girls don't skip like rocks.  Really, really awesome, powerful stuff, but this is also the incident that clues the rest of the world in on the existence of the beast.  Time for the angry mob to grab their pitchforks...

Yeah, there's room to nitpick here with some of the script decisions.  The fact that Frankenstein escapes at the end has always sat at least a little wrong with me since his fate in the book seemed so much better and more poetic, but it really doesn't matter in the least bit.  This is a movie that's all about kinetic energy.  It starts off moving really fast and just keeps moving.  Not in the crappy way that Michael Bay likes to do it; this stuff actually makes sense.  It's refreshingly brisk at something like 75 minutes.  The horror stuff is all quick and relatively painless.  The emotional scenes hit just the right notes in that timeframe.  Even the performances have this really cool little sense of urgency, with everyone seeming to talk and move just a little faster than usual.  Karloff was so awesome here that he would parlay his fame from the movie into a career that lasted another 30 years, almost exclusively in the horror genre. 

In short, there's a reason why this movie has managed to stay popular for 70-odd years.  Yeah, it's a history lesson and you're not going to be pissing yourself in terror.  But in terms of history, you're not going to get much better than Frankenstein.  Oh, and I once carved a jack-o-lantern of Boris Karloff's creature face.  Yeah.  October. 

Without guilt, bah Gawd, I award this flick **** out of ****.  Everyone should check this movie out at least once in their life, because it's basically moviemaking 101.

Dracula (1931)

1931
Directed by Tod Browning
Starring Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye and Edward Van Sloan

Cue your Ozzy Osbourne song of choice.  October is finally here!

Yes, folks, Halloween season.  Samhain.  The celebration of the harvest, whatever you want to call it, the most glorious time of the year has arrived, and we're ringing it in with style here on the Lick Ness Monster blog.  I'm sure that all...eight of my subscribers will appreciate it.  Kidding aside, this month will always have a special place in my heart for reasons that I've waxed rhapsodic about endlessly already.  You all know about the Greatest Street in the History of Streets that I grew up on that still gets 1,000+ visitors every year on October 31st, my past with the Friday the 13th series and how it quite literally saved my life in 2007-08, my ten favorite horror villains, every movie in the freakin' Halloween franchise.  Yes, folks, we've had some good times here on the blog over the years.  And now, we're covering pretty much ground zero of American horror films - the Universal Monster Movies.

Now, I know some people who are just absolute connoisseurs of the Universal House of Horror.  For the uninitiated, this was pretty much IT when it came to horror in the golden era of Hollywood.  Universal Studios had the rights to do the movies to all of the big literary monsters at the time, and while they weren't quite as much of a factory as Britain's Hammer Studios would be in the '50s and beyond, they cranked these things out at a pretty impressive rate.  Sequels, spinoffs, crossovers, even parody movies, they did it all with these classic characters.  Thus, while the movies aren't all that scary today, they're worth watching for the history lesson alone.

Fortunately, they're worth watching for much more than that, because I highly doubt that anyone reading this besides myself watches these flicks for their historical context.  Hell, most people on Facebook seem to exclusively care about baby pictures and food selfies.  So if you're looking to have fun, these movies are also a good place to start.  Watching these films today, it immediately becomes clear just how PROUD Universal Studios was of this output.  It's not like back in the '80s, when Paramount was so embarrassed by Friday the 13th that a book was eventually released where just about everyone involved in it did nothing but trash the thing.  'Cus, you know, you're all such amazing actors that getting killed by Jason is what you're best known for.  Not so here.  These movies had big budgets, big promotion, big casts, slick scenery, you name it.  It was all in the presentation, and it would only get better with time.  But every dynasty has to start somewhere, and it started in 1931 with a director named Tod Browning and the first truly epic film version of Dracula.

There had been Dracula flicks before this one, but...well, they sucked.  They were either silent (color me uncultured, but I just can't get into silent movies) or bad.  Universal pulled out all the stops with this one, taking a script based on a 1924 stage play, trotting out character actor extraordinaire Bela Lugosi as a Svengali-esque titular vampire, and a whole lotta fog.  And that would make a hell of a Led Zeppelin song (/bad joke).  Pretty much any Dracula movie comes down to four elements: (1) The dude playing Dracula; (2) The way that the writers decide to interpret Bram Stoker's original novel; (3) The supporting characters; and (4) The atmosphere.  Having said that, let's look at how it played out on the big stage here.

You'd be hard-pressed to find to find many critics out there who express anything other than the utmost respect for Bela Lugosi here, and it's well-deserved.  The movie is far from a direct interpretation of the book; that much is established when the guy's all-powerful telepathic ability becomes his biggest superpower early in the film.  Simply put, Lugosi is money.  Every time the guy speaks, you believe every word he says.  That's another thing about watching old movies - the acting was much more theatrical and unrealistic, but it's infinitely more memorable.  Bela Lugosi is memorable, amazing, and projects just the right amount of menace.  If you've seen the movie Ed Wood, you know how the guy eventually turned out in real life, and it lends watching this movie a little sadness that actually ADDS to the poignancy.  +2 cool points for Bela Lugosi.

The story.  What sets this movie apart from everything that came before and after was how much of a focus it has on the Renfield character.  In this movie, he's played by the unreal Dwight Frye, and he has the greatest creepy laugh in the history of cinema.  People who have read the book know the basics of the Dracula story, so I won't reiterate it here, but it's Renfield who gets the focus instead of Harker in the early goings before setting up shop in a sanitorium that oh-so-conveniently adjoins Carfax Abbey, Dracula's new digs in London.  Mina is now Dr. Seward's daughter, she is still engaged to Jonathan Harker, and Lucy is still the family friend who becomes Dracula's first victim.  However, there's a big focus on the unsavory side of Victorian life in this go-round as the sanitorium becomes one of the movie's key locales.  It's different, but it works.  Oh, and in addition to Dracula turning into a bat and sucking blood, he constantly hypnotizes people with his creepy stare.  And the vampire killer himself, Dr. Van Helsing?  Yeah, he's here, and he's just as much of an ass-kicker as ever.

Moving on, we focus on the characters.  Personal opinion here, but I think there was a point in cinema history (probably sometime in the '50s) when the art of fleshing out characters truly hit its stride.  Thus, we have paper-thin cardboard cutouts here, but they're paper-thin cardboard cutouts that are played with plenty of energy and zeal.  Edward Van Sloan was especially good as Van Helsing  The only person who I didn't respond to strongly here was David Manners as Harker.  For some reason, I've never seen a truly good portrayal of Harker on film.  Ironically, the best might actually be Steven Weber in the freakin' Mel Brooks parody movie.  Other than Lugosi, though, I gotta go back and give more props to Dwight Frye's performance as Renfield.  So much focus is put on him, and he was totally up to it, not caring in the least about acting - and looking - like an ass.  Seriously, this guy cranks up the grease to Philip Seymour Hoffman levels, and he doesn't even care.  Can't give him enough 85-years-late kudos.

Finally, let's look at the atmosphere.  I've touched on it already, but we got glorious black-and-white darkness, fog, and visuals that just look like a funeral dirge.  It works really well with all of the stuff in the sanitorium, although, I'll confess, it doesn't hold a candle to the sheer Gothic madness of the Hammer Dracula films.  Personal preference, glandular condition, call it whatever you want.

Overall, this is a really fun, really QUICK (the running time is 70 minutes - I wish more modern movies would take this example) watch that you can pop in any ol' time and be entertained.  *** 1/2 out of ****, and it's nothing if not a very solid start to a very solid line-up of classic monsters.  And we're just getting started...

Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992)

1992
Directed by David Price
Starring Terence Knox, Paul Scherrer, Ryan Bollman, Christie Clark, Rosalind Allen and Ned Romero

So I had never seen any of the 17 sequels to Children of the Corn.  To make a short story even shorter, Netflix has every single one of these things available on demand.  Now, I have seen one.  And...it kinda sucks.

Ok, maybe that's a little harsh.  I distinctly remember when this movie hit theaters - I was a little bastard back then, but I had seen bits and pieces of the original movie on cable.  Remember 1992, people?  I do.  A truly grand time, when Hulk Hogan was just rapping up his first run in the WWF and hip hop was still in its golden age.  I'm sorry...allow me to wallow in nostalgia for a moment.  Ahhh, 1992.  I can't imagine that movie executives were exactly EAGER to start trotting out sequels to Children of the Corn.  The first movie made money, but it was definitely no gigantic hit.  Stephen King did everything but disown the movie.  Nevertheless, it had garnered quite the following on video over the years, which meant that we would eventually get THIS - a micro-budgeted cheapie of a sequel that was in and out of theaters quicker than a hiccup but, just like the original movie, made back its budget many times over.

Why have we gotten the aforementioned 16 follow-up movies AFTER this one?  That's why.

Since we're dealing with a movie that labored in development hell for a while and went through a bunch of rewrites, we've got a plenty disjointed setup when it comes to the first act of this flick.  For starters, we have to get the Kooky Kids' Kult (KKK?  That's not Good!) back into full swing.  The kids from Gatlin, Nebraska in the original film are just kind of milling around, and fortunately, the good folks at nearby Hemingford (a town that was also featured prominently in Stephen King's best novel ever, The Stand) are willing to adopt them.  Within short order, the children go out into a nearby cornfield where one of them, Micah, is possessed by the demon from the original movie and becomes your star villain.  He's played by Ryan Bollman.  He tries, but he's no Jacob or Malachi, that's for damn sure.

Meanwhile, we need a reason to care.  Therefore, the script gives us the classic "father and son who don't get along" dichotomy.  The dad is named John Garret, and he's a reporter who sees this story about a town of kids who KILLED THEIR PARENTS as his ticket to stardom.  Because in the the total history of horror movies, this sounds like one of the most genius plans of all time.  The movie tries to amp up its emotion with the son character Danny, played by Paul Scherrer and coming across as something like 50% less annoying than you'd expect a character like this to be.  If I sound a little salty in this review, it's because everybody in this movie really does kind of come across like a cardboard cutout.  With one exception.

Ladies and gentlemen, Christie Clark.  Now, I knew the name before I watched this movie.  She's the little girl who loved Fu Man Fingers in Nightmare on Elm Street 2.  Said fingers were also the best part of that abomination.  Here, though, she was all grown up, and man, she's something else, because she was doing a damn good job acting like she actually cared about Children of the Corn II.  She's Danny's love interest Lacey, and even though it's essentially her job to be Pauline in peril throughout the movie's money sequences, she's the only person in this movie who doesn't just go through the motions.  Lo and behold, I found out in my extensive research that she had a long run on Days of Our Lives that began in 1985 and wrapped in 2012.  So three gold stars for her.

The last thing I ever expected when I wrote a review of Children of the Corn II: the Christie Clark love fest.  End communication.

And back to our regularly scheduled programming.  That about wraps up all the main ingredients for what we're dealing with here.  Micah promptly starts using his newfound magical powers to start killing people.  One of the early deaths has him using a freakin' VOODOO DOLL on somebody.  I have to say, I didn't expect to see that when I watched this movie, either.  The script then introduces a kind of secondary hero character in Frank Red Bear, a University bigwig who believes that the corn itself is responsible for the increasing town body count (it has reached something like five or six by the time this dude gets involved in the story).  Something about its toxic properties...by this point, I had kind of stopped caring, I'm not gonna lie.  You know, when I spend an entire paragraph singing the pages of Fu Man Girl, we're in trouble, and that's what this movie is.  It's all just THERE.

The film DOES pick up in its third trimester, as the cult kidnaps both Angela and Lacey while troubled son Danny has to go and save them.  Wait, Angela?  I just realized that I completely left her out of this review.  Yeah, this movie ALSO has a love interest for John.  She runs the local bed and breakfast, and that's all you need to know.  Shits and giggles, a couple of fake-out deaths, and a pretty nifty little sequence where Micah actually transforms into a demon just before the movie comes to a close.  Somewhat mercifully.

If you get the impression that this movie wasn't good, then I've done my job successfully.  It's not offensively bad or anything.  You're not going to see a ton of stuff that should have belonged on MST3K here.  For its budget, it's competently done and even competently acted.  But that's just the problem.  Folks...this movie is boring.  That's the worst thing that you can say about anything, whether it's a movie or a TV show or a video game.  It's alright to watch if you're, I don't know, half-asleep and really don't feel like paying attention to what you're watching.  But if you watch it on a Saturday night like I did ready to have some solid riffing material, you're in for disappointment. * 1/2 out of ****.  And yes, sooner or later, I WILL get to the later sequels.

Alrighty then.  Now that this flick is out of the way, I can gear up for what is to come.  October.  Halloween season, Samhain time, the celebration of the harvest.  Whatever you want to call it, it's the best month of the year, and it's truly ground zero for horror watching.  Preferably in binges.  This year, I'm going to be reviewing the four classic Universal Monster movies - Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and the Wolf Man are comin' at ya next month, so get ready.  As it turns out, I DID review the original Boris Karloff Frankenstein back when I did the International Horror Registry thing.  But that review sucked, so it's getting a George Lucas-esque reboot. 

* cue lightning *

It's alive...alive!

The Kiss (1988)

1988
Directed by Pen Densham
Starring Joanna Pacula, Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus, Mimi Kuzyk and Jan Rubes

Last week, I reviewed The Hidden, a 1987 epic of weirdness featuring a group of cops following a parasite-like entity that could control the actions of others.  This week's movie, released a mere year after that one, is similar in a lot of ways but different in many others.  The Kiss also has the basic plot device of some sort of supernatural...thingy that passes from person to person.  Unlike that one, though, this one has a lot of hot women.  So +2 cool points to the movie there.  I'm actually legit surprised that there aren't more mainstream movies released like The Kiss these days.  Sex sells.  The early '90s in particular was absolutely rife with this stuff, as Joe Eszterhas' sex- and murder-laced epics graced the multiplexes and a few of them did monster business.

This flick has one of those true oxymorons of plotting - a simple setup with complicated execution.  Stick with me.  The action starts in 1963 deepest, darkest Africa (the Congo, to be precise), where a young girl named Felice has just been sent away with her Aunt on a train ride...to hell.  It's implied, I swear.  It doesn't take long for the movie to turn all kinds of weird as crazy Aunt attacks Felice, launching into a fierce makeout session (seriously) that passes the spirit from a cursed Talisman from the Aunt to the little girl.  So that's what we got - an ancient totem that goes from person to person, with the added twist that it has to be someone of the same bloodline.  Oh, one more thing - the kiss ritual was all kinds of bloody to the point that I had to actually turn away from the TV screen while watching it.  I can watch buckets of fake blood in these movies, but something about this scene got me.  Chalk it up to my one in 10,000,000 glandular condition.

From here, we flash forward 25 years to the present day world of 1988 Albany, New York.  Felice's sister Hilary (Talya Rubin) lives in a bigass house with her husband Jack (Nicholas Kilbertus) and teenage daughter Amy (Meredith Salenger).  Felice is busy living it up as a globe-trotting model of a truly unique nature.  In the movie, we see her representing a vitamin company based out of South Africa.  'Cus when you think modeling, you think South African vitamin companies.  But then again, Hardees trots out insanely hot chicks eating burgers and I don't complain, so maybe I'm just a moron.  Soon enough, tragedy erupts as the pivotal character of Hilary is offed in a car accident.

Where we're headed from here should be fairly obvious to everyone.  Felice shows up at the Halloran household with the intention of passing the talisman from herself to Amy.  We get all of the usual things we expect to happen in the process, as Jack falls in love with Felice and invites her to stay at the house.  'Cus let me tell you something (brother), when you're deceased wife's sister looks like Joanna Pacula, this is totally something that you should be all about.  It's all pretty predictable stuff, sprinkled in some glorious bits of nudity from Pacula that ups the rewatchability quotient on The Kiss by approximately 73%.  Couple this in with the fact that the director seems to have this creepy-ish interest in slow-motion shots of Meredith Salenger swiming in a white bathing suit, and you've got the makings of a movie that could have gotten you through some lonely nights back in the day.

Wow, this review really did take a detour, didn't it?  Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

In between the hot women, however, we've got a movie that manages to deliver despite its predictability.  It's mostly due to the performances of the two female leads.  Pacula and Salenger had excellent chemistry as the proverbial Wicked Aunt and Virtuous One characters.  This was absolutely a MUST for this movie.  If the relationship between Felice and Amy didn't work, nothing else in the movie did.  Fortunately, it works fantastically.  So much so that we're easily able to forget all of the scenes that Amy shares with her friends and dip boyfriend that repeatedly go nowhere.  Folks, these teenage characters are your "cannon fodder" of the film that up our body count above the government-mandated minimum.  They're here to do nothing more than die and/or be in peril, and nothing more.  I AM, however, pleasantly surprised at how well the romance plot between Felice and father Jack came off.  While Kilbertus wasn't quite up to par with his two female costars, he does manage to come off as a sympathetic widower who is just unfortunate to learn that his sister-in-law looks like Joanna Pacula.  It's not that hard to forgive him.

Oh, and Felice also has otherworldly telekinetic powers and a killer demon cat that she uses to kill people.  I just realized that I completely left that out of this review up until this point.  So that's where our element of danger comes from in the script and nobody can say that I left it out.  Everything builds up to a finale that is nothing else if not batshit insane in the good way.  Much like The Hidden, it's some pretty damn cool stuff that gives us a satisfying conclusion. 

To be fair, I don't think this flick was quite as good as The Hidden.  It's just as out-there, but for whatever reason I didn't respond to this story emotionally quite as much as I did to the stuff between Michael Nouri and Kyle MacLachlan in that film.  It's probably dudebro bias, so take that for what it's worth.  Still, this is a horror flick that manages to be both emotional and occasionally pretty tense.  The acting is good, the plot is well laid-out, and it's got two incredibly hot women to gawk at.  For that alone, I gotta give my recommendation.  *** out of ****.

The Hidden (1987)

1987
Directed by Jack Sholder
Starring Michael Nouri, Kyle MacLachlan, Clu Gulager, Chris Mulkey, Ed O'Ross, Claudia Christian and Larry Ceder

By the time 2009 rolled around, I'd watched Friday the 13th Part II something like 50 times.  And I'm not exaggerating.  For the better part of a year, the discs in that much-maligned "Crystal Lake to Manhattan" box set got heavy repeats in my DVD player, playing over and over while I slept (don't look at me like that) and helping me get through a very difficult period in my life.  Thus, much like all eight original Jason classics, I know that movie like the back of my hand.  So imagine my surprise when I see the Mario Bava classic Twitch of the Death Nerve and realize that one of my favorite movies ripped off pretty much all of its kills from a movie that came out eight years earlier.

Amazingly enough, it wouldn't be the only time that the greatest movie series in the history of ever would shamelessly crib from another movie.  Jason Goes to Hell was the flick where original series creator Sean Cunningham told his director to do whatever he wanted as he long as he got Jason out of that damn hockey mask.  So...what we got was The Hidden.  The Hidden, you ask?  Glad you did.  This was a nifty thriller released in 1987, back when New Line Cinema was still in its "House that Freddy Built" phase and proud to trot out low-budget flicks with well-known 1970s TV stars.  What's more, it had Jack Sholder, the director of Nightmare on Elm Street 2, and it brought back one of the stars of that film, Clu Gulager, in a minor role.  What's more, it's also very fun.  Yeah.  Film criticism.

The two main characters are LAPD detective Thomas Beck (Michael Nouri) and FBI Special Agent Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle MacLachlan), and their search for a very elusive set of killers.  And I must say...these two actors have really good chemistry.  Now, it's not exactly Lethal Weapon, but you get the sense that there was a lot of fun being had on the set of this flick, and a lot of it had to do with Nouri and MacLachlan.  Movies with that quality are hard to find, so if you're in for a resounding round of non-pretentiousness, look no further. 

The plot wastes absolutely no time getting going, as a team of cops overseen by Beck have just captured Jack DeVries (Chris Mulkey).  Jack is a model citizen, no previous arrests, and has thus stunned the authorities by going on an Oliver Stone-level crime and murder wave across Los Angeles.  Seriously.  Had this character's name been A Guy, no one would have known any different.  Upon his capture, Beck meets Gallagher, setting in forth the relationship that would define the rest of the sweeping story of The Hidden.  Meanwhile, DeVries wakes up in the hospital and regurgitates the slug-like symbiote controlling his actions into another patient's mouth.  Wait, what?

Yup.  You know how Jason Goes to Hell was about body swapping?  That's also what we get here.  But while that film featured Jason Voorhees' soul moving from person to person, this one has this disgusting snail-type alien doing the same thing.  The general idea is that this thing does whatever feels good, and when it takes the form of a human being, it's murder, mayhem and debauchery, baby.  So...this alien essentially is Human Bender.  From here, there's a bunch of insanity that happens as the patient robs a liquor store, heads to a strip club, swaps bodies with one of the friendly dancing girls, flashes some tit, you name it.  Said stripper, by the way, is played by Claudia Christian, best known as Commander Ivanova in Babylon 5.  If you ever wanted to see a Sci-Fi queen parade around wearing next to nothing, this is your movie.

The flick is very different from the movie that ripped it off in one important regard, though - while it's goofy, it actually does a decent job hooking you in emotionally.  Screenplay-wise, it's pretty much spot-on.  The first ten pages do an excellent job creating intrigue, but it's the middle section of the movie that really shines as virtually every character is given a decent amount of time to develop.  Beck invites Gallagher over to share dinner with his family, and it's here where e learn that the younger FBI jackass once had a run-in with the creature that they're tailing and has a personal stake in the case.  A truly amazing character arc, if I say so myself.  We also get to know Beck's former partner and a bunch of the cops at the station, and while they're mostly caricatures, they're well-constructed and acted caricatures.  Especially Clu Gulager as the requisite bitchy Lieutenant guy, but that guy is always amazing.

Oh, and the movie has a giant swerve that I never in a million years saw coming.  Now, I am fairly easily fooled when it comes to movies, so take that for what it's worth.  I've never guessed a single Dario Argento mystery killer correctly despite everyone and their mother telling me that they were able to call them from a mile off...but I'm fairly confident that The Hidden will pull the rug out from under you in a pretty big way in regards to one particular thing.  See for yourself.

As the movie gears up for its final trimester, the stakes are also on the rise - another plus in the screenplay department!  The creature is targeting presidential hopeful Senator Holt (John McCann) in the hopes that it can CONQUER THE WORLD...or something.  This leads to shootouts, a fair bit of political intrigue, and a climactic fight scene that satisfies as well as a can of 1980s Coke.  Which, I'm fairly sure pretty much all of the actors in this movie were on at the time.  Suffice to say, the movie has an escalating threat and an equally escalating counter-threat.  As a result, I can't say enough good about writer Bob Hunt, who made very few mistakes when plotting out this film.

I don't know what else to say about The Hidden, other than it really is one of those one-of-a-kind type films.  It's that rare example of a project that came along with the right director, the right people in front of the camera, and at EXACTLY the right point in time.  I'm actually somewhat surprised that it wasn't a bigger hit - it grossed $9.7 million, and while I can't find the budget information on the interwebz, I'm guessing that it cost somewhere in the $5 million neighborhood to shoot, which would have put it right in line with Nightmare on Elm Street 3.  The special effects are impressive and practical, the actors are right on point, and the action/sci-fi stuff is pretty damn epic. 

*** 1/2 out of ****.  Yeah, this movie ain't gonna win any hoity-toity awards.  But it has enough going for it that I can call it a must-see without any guilt.  Check it out, you won't be disappointed.

Subspecies (1991)

1991
Directed by Ted Nicolaou
Starring Anders Hove, Irina Movila, Laura Tate, Michelle McBride, Ivan J. Rado, Michael Watson and Angus Scrimm

Are you ready, kids?  Are you ready for Radu?

Last week, I took an in-depth look at Full Moon Features' storied (ok, by me) [i]Puppet Master[/i] franchise.  That series is pretty much Charles Band's combined meal ticket and his kids' college tuitions, but it would surprise some of you normals out there to learn that Blade, Tunneler, Leech Woman etc. weren't the only bona-fide franchise that Full Moon boasted to its name.  Subspecies is a very different kind of vampire flick, one that combines Tolkien-esque sword and cheesy horror into something wholly unique.  It's also got Greenland-born-and-bred Anders Hove as a way-out-there vampire that had to have been a welcome change back in 1991 when this movie was released...to say nothing of now, now that we're just starting to exit the Twilight school of sparkly romantic vampires.  And, by proxy, the True Blood school of slightly edgier sparkly vampire stories with tits and gore.  Alas, this movie was quite successful on video store shelves upon its release, and much like those wacky killer puppets, Charles Band and company started pumping out sequels.

Today, though, we're just looking at the first film in the series.  I saw it way back in 1998 on some lonely Saturday afternoon, and remember thinking that it was awesome.  Upon revisiting it, I can safely say that 15-year-old Me was correct.  And that is what you call grade-A reporting.

One thing about Subspecies and its sequels is that these flicks have a very distinctive look.  They were all directed by Ted Nicolaou, and he chose to shoot the films in Romania.  This was nothing less than a stroke of genius, because (a) it lent the movie great atmosphere, what with all the ruined castles, leafy greens and fog that was present in the countryside, and (b) it was cheap, because they didn't have to build any of this stuff.  We're quickly introduced to everything we need to know as far as the back story goes.  The vampire king Vladislas (played by the incomparable Angus Scrimm of Tall Man fame) has some convoluted affairs that result in two sons: virtuous Stefan (Michael Watson) and Radu (the aforementioned Anders Hove).  We have a struggle for power between good and evil that has gone on for centuries, and we're also gifted with the presence of Hove whose combination of overacting and occasionally incomprehensible accent gives us some fantastically funny material to work with.  Trust me - MST3K this one with your friends and you're in for a great time.

Flash forward to the present day, where three young college friends are traveling to Romania to study...stuff.  Lo and behold, one of the first people they meet is Stefan, and we get the opening bouts of romantic tension between Michelle (Laura Tate), the leader of the students, and Stefan the leader of wooden actors.  Unfortunately, this guy is kind of the weak point of the flick, as he has about as much raw naked charisma as my left pinky finger.  Fortunately, Tate is pretty good, although she was recast as the series wore on.  More on that later.

Anyway, time for this King Arthur-esque plot to truly get rolling.  See, there is this ancient artifact called the Bloodstone that Radu is after that holds the key to conquering the entire cosmos, or something.  In order to gain control of it, he kills his father (presumably not before said father chastised his murderous son by yelling "BOYYYYYYYYYYY!"), and then makes it his mission to make Stefan's life miserable.  As the college kids thumb around the Romanian countryside, Radu manages to turn two of them into vampires while Michelle becomes the focal point of the story.  There's a broad sweeping romance between Stefan and Michelle, an epic climax, and a truly awesome side character in the vampire hunter Karl played by Ivan J. Rado who gives us the amazing gift of SHOTGUN SHELLS FILLED WITH ROSARY BEADS.  That was some creative thinking, right there, and I award 10 cool points to the screenwriter who came up with it.

When you rented a movie like Subspecies in the early '90s, you knew what you were getting.  But with the Full Moon name attached to it, you also knew that you were getting just a little bit more than that.  For starters, the setting - much like the Bodega Bay Inn in the Puppet Master films - is a masterpiece of atmosphere.  Again, every Full Moon movie was made on a Filet-o-Fish budget, but this movie definitely doesn't look it.  But the thing about this flick, like all of Charles Band's pet projects, is that there's this tangible sense of FUN to the whole thing.  I know that I harp on the differences between "THEN" and "NOW" in entertainment a lot, but that's the thing that's missing from, like, 95% of modern movies and television shows to me.  Entertainment these days seems to be about anything but fun, and it's so refreshing to revisit these movies where everything was unapologetically simple with no hints of "well, yeah, this guy is KIND OF a dick, but he's got SOME endearing qualities even though he does all of these illegal things..."  F**K that noise.  Give me thickly accented vampires and rosary-loaded shotgun shells.

The other reason to see this movie lies in the people in front of and behind the camera.  Yeah, you're not getting any Academy Award-winning performances, but everyone involved (especially Hove) went way above and beyond considering the kind of script we're dealing with here.  Even Michael Watson as Stefan.  I can't say that he didn't try; he's just as human black void of personality.  As for the other side of film-making, this really was just a textbook example of A-B-C screenwriting, where everything made sense and escalated.  For a goofy 1991 movie about vampires and ancient artifacts, that's an impressive feat.

*** 1/2 out of ****.  It's a fun start to a fun series, and speaking of...it's easy to see why the Full Moon audience responded so strongly to this one and made Charles Band bankroll more of them.  Seek out this box set if you've got the budget.