FANTASY AND THE MACABRE - Glut of Brainless Horrors Geared for the Teen Set
THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - December 29, 1985
Author: JOHN STANLEY
It was a year typically dominated by science-fiction movies angled toward the youth market, and the summer saw a glut of brainless plots about teen-age inventors that left one wondering if some producers had compromised their art to attain a new level of ineptitude.
Especially awful within this short-lived subgenre were "Weird Science," an incomprehensible misfire from John Hughes in which a pair of nerds creates a sexy woman from the bowels of their computer, and "My Science Project," in which some wimpy teenagers misuse a force-field weapon from a flying saucer to enter other times and dimensions.
Of a slightly better quality, with director Joe Dante at the helm, was "Explorers," in which yet more teenagers invent a device that speeds them into space, where they meet some cutesy aliens who speak our language, all too well.
Evidence that a science-fiction or fantasy movie didn't have to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and didn't have to depict teenagers in any way, was Ron Howard's unusually mature and sensitive "Cocoon," which dealt with a group of senior citizens and their personal joys and dilemmas when they undergo a youth rejuvenation brought about by alien visitors. Its popularity indicated it was time for a re-evaluation of some of the cliches producers enjoy spouting about what makes a movie successful.
Steven Spielberg kept his crown as the leading producer of glossy, high-tech fantasy movies, hitting his popular stride in 1985 with a witty time-travel comedy, "Back to the Future," which was still one of the top grossers into December, and which is continuing to pull in audiences at the Regency III Theater.
SPIELBERG fared less well with "Goonies," a horribly bloated fairy tale-style search for a pirate's treasure that was such a slight, silly idea it couldn't possibly sustain its enormous, over-rich production. Spielberg ended 1985 on a happier note with "Young Sherlock Holmes," one of the best-crafted films of the year, a stylish tribute to the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective for the first half, a rousing Indiana Jones-style adventure for the second.
The sequel to "Alien" won't be here until next year, but for 1985 we were subjected to an Alien-look-alike in "Creature," a well-done low-budget space-horror adventure. Its craftsmanship would have warranted greater respect had the story been more original; instead, it was almost totally derivative of "Alien." "Life Force" was a Tobe Hooper fiasco about vampires from outer space that turned into a special effects sideshow with no other substance to support it; and "C.H.U.D.S." was an offbeat creatures-in- the -sewer tale photographed in slimy New York locations with a serious attempt to inject a socio-relevant plot into the mayhem; its cheapness ultimately pulled it down a manhole.
"Godzilla 1985" was the hardly awaited revival of the Japanese hulker, who had been off the screen for 10 years. Most critics, after seeing a man in a dinosaur suit crash through cardboard sets with the sleaziest special effects bursting around it, hoped the fire-breathing behemoth would stay away another 10.
Another dinosaur, Baby, in "Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend," rampaged through this Disney film that came and went so fast, even it is considered a lost legend. In fact, Disney had a terrible year: "Return to Oz" was a monumental $27 million disaster, depicting the dark side of Dorothy and her friends on the Yellow Brick Road - a misguided concept the public instantly ignored, and " The Black Cauldron," a long-awaited animated feature, emerged a routine sword-and-sorcery tale with the fire under the kettle fizzling out about halfway along.
Capturing a greater sense of excitement through animation was "Starmaster: The Legend of Orin," touted as the first 3-D cartoon feature. While it had its thrill-packed moments, and featured some imaginative secondary characters, it ultimately became a clone of "Star Wars" - George Lucas would surely have grounds for a lawsuit if he felt like pressing it.
Those who had hoped that Australian director George Miller would top his "Road Warrior" with "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" were mildly disappointed. While the new sequel to "Mad Max" was wall-to-wall action, enhanced by the presence of Mel Gibson, its sense of breathlessness was gone.
Political science-fiction remained a lukewarm box-office draw for "1984," a British version of George Orwell's novel of a totalitarian future ruled over by Big Brother. While it was distinguished as the last feature of Richard Burton, it was less distinguished as entertainment, being a bleak depiction of a society without love or hope. It was very very depressing.
A political flight-of-fancy of the worst kind, following on the heels of John Milius' "Red Dawn," was "Invasion U.S.A.," a farfetched proposal that the Russians would land a commando force on a Florida shore and then go around killing innocent Americans as a way of showing our government that we are a stupid lot of cattle being led to the slaughter. It was really just an excuse for Chuck Norris to blast several hundred invaders away, and, coming on the heels of "Code of Silence," it w as a terrible comedown for the box-office star.
In the vein of fantasy adventure there was "King Solomon's Mines," with Richard Chamberlain as H.R. Haggard's great white hunter, Quartermain, but this Golan and Globus movie had nothing to do with Haggard and everything to do with cloning Indiana Jones. While it was a breathless assault of nonstop action, and featured half the tribes of Africa as extras, one couldn't help but be offended by the direct swipes from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" right down to the line "Trust me."
In the mold of James Bond was "Remos Williams: The Adventure Begins," the farfetched premise about a New York cop who is turned into a super spy by a clandestine government agency and trained how to dodge bullets by an Oriental guru (Joel Grey in the oddest casting of the year). The action scenes were good, including a Statue of Liberty acrobatic act. The Golden Gate Bridge, on the other hand, was where Agent 007 found himself dangling from in "A View for a Kill," the weakest Bond film i n a long while, with Roger Moore looking too old for the role and delivering his lines in a bored, tired fashion as he pursued a madman bent on destroying the Bay Area with a devastating earthquake device.
The best horror movie of the year from a standpoint of blood and gore, and downright nightmarish visuals, was "Re-Animator," an independent production that claimed to be based on H. P. Lovecraft short stories. The only similarity was the use of the name Herbert West for the science student who resurrects the dead with a green serum. What was remarkable about "Re-Animator" was its creation of a macabre night land of the starkest horrors - from its walking dead, its talking severed head (with an undying yen to kiss the heroine) and its final surrealistic moments that are right out of a mortician's worst nightmare.
If any one horror film disappointed it was George Romero's third and final part of his "walking dead" trilogy. "Day of the Dead" was nothing compared to "Night of the Living Dead," no matter how much better its scenes of ghouls munching on human flesh or tearing apart a human body piece by piece. It had none of the suspense or punch or restraint that made the 1968 film a cult favorite.
To everyone's surprise, the 1985 release that overtook "Day of the Dead" was "Return of the Living Dead," a delightful (but still occasionally scary) pastiche of the George Romero genre spoofing punk rock, teenage vapidity and Romero himself. Dan O'Bannon, author of "Alien," wrote and directed this unusually bright effort.
Another surprise delight of the year was "Fright Night," with Roddy MacDowall as an ex-"Creature Features" host who gets involved with a young couple stalking a vampire in modern suburbia. The wild and woolly climax was a visual delight of horrors but without being sickening or repulsive in the vein of "Re-Animator."
There were two Stephen King movies in 1985. First came "Cat's Eye," three original tales written by King that were quite literate and exciting, especially the tale of a demonic troll trying to kill a little girl in her bedroom, and scampering through the toys and litter on her floor.
The second King script was "Silver Bullet," based on his famous novella, which was basically a remake of " The Wolf Man" with the hairy beast closing in on Gary Busey and a crippled nephew. The film was handsomely produced, but ultimately, when the smoke from the silver bullet had cleared, the whole thing seemed too slight to be a Stephen King movie.
Werewolves were also busy in "Teen Wolf," an unusual teenage comedy that didn't have one murder - it was all about how Michael Fox adjusts to finding out he's a werewolf halfway through high school. And lycanthropy was the theme of a beautifully photographed English film, "Company of Wolves," an allegory enwrapped in a fairy tale that ultimately became the stomping grounds for Little Red Riding Hood. It was autumnal and lovely, but too esoteric for American horror audiences.
The slasher genre gave out its last gasps. "Final Terror," in which some park rangers and their girlfriends are terrorized by a crazy old lady during an outing, finally came to San Francisco after a couple of years on the shelf, but even exploiting Rachel Ward and Daryl Hannah in the cast couldn't help.
Paramount milked many millions more out of the masked killer named Jason in "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning," the fifth and worst in the series - but surely not the last. There's too many more millions waiting to be picked up.
Sword-and-sorcery waned in '85 without a new Conan movie, but Arnold Schwarzenegger was nevertheless on hand in "Red Sonja," playing swordsey with beautiful Brigitte Nielsen (Sylvester Stallone's new wife) and stopping a green talisman from blowing up the world. Far superior was "Ladyhawke," a medieval myth about two lovers who are cursed, she becoming a hawk by day, he becoming a wolf by night.
Charles Band cranked out a couple of cheapies this year: "Ghoulies," an unmitigated rip off of "Gremlins" but without the style and the sense of humor, and "Dungeonmaster," a spinoff on role-playing games that jumped around from incident to incident as a wicked wizard tried to put the whammy on a heroic guy and vulnerable, tied-to- the -stake gal.
Harry Ho, manager of the St. Francis, was still booking lesser known exploitation movies - grind-house fodder that would warm the heart of Joe Bob Briggs - in exclusive runs. The best exploitationer of the year was "Hellhole," a women-behind-bars genre flick with a twist: A Frankenstein subplot with mad doctor Marjoe Gortner and lustful lesbian Mary Woronov injecting beautiful women with a serum to achieve "liquid lobotomies." Woronov's intense performance was the strangest of a ny movie lesbian yet.
Ho also brought in " The Mutilator ," a Friday- the -13th clone that featured several chopped-up bodies and one cut exactly in half. He double-billed "Superstition" ( The Exorcist Meets the Shining) and "Seven Doors to Death" (haunted house thriller).
Across the street at the Electric Theater, owner George Lung and projectionist Pat Marsh were still priding themselves on finding obscure, little-known horrors that even Ho would probably turn his nose up at. The best for 1985 was " The Stuff," a brand new Larry Cohen science-fiction horror thriller that New World Pictures had refused to give a general release. The white substance of the title turned out to be a natural packaged dessert (resembling yogurt in texture) that took over the eater and turned him into a zombie if it wasn't crawling up the wall like The Blob.
There were two Italian terrors double-billed ("Autopsy" and "Eyeball" ) that were simply awful, and there was the biggest ripoff of the year, "Zombie Island Massacre," which didn't have a single real zombie in it, and which wasn't even a horror film. Italian gangsters and stuff like that.
There was "Sacrifice," a sequel to "Make Them Die Slowly," a sickening cannibal film that featured the on-camera deaths of several animals that were really sacrificed by the filmmakers, and a revival of two gore classics: "Blood Feast" and "2000 Maniacs."
The Electric's final special of the year was " The Deadly Spawn," a science-fiction horror exploitationer in which a toothsome alien monster comes to Earth aboard a meteor and terrorizes some boring teenagers in their home, with scads of little tadpolelike E.T.'s with big teeth swarming into the woodwork and the food. Watching it, as with so many of the year's gross-outs, was an ugly experience.
GORE AND VIOLENCE IN THE OFF-SEASON by Lou Lumenick
GORE AND VIOLENCE IN THE OFF-SEASON
The Record (New Jersey) - January 28, 1985
Author: By Lou Lumenick, Movie Critic: The Record
April may be the cruellest month, but January is when exploitation pictures fill the nation's theaters. Low-budget independent quickies have long filled the vacuum between quick-expiring Christmas flops and the next wave of major studio offerings in February.
So many 1984 holiday movies have folded so rapidly ("Dune," "Protocol," etc.) that this month has brought a bumper crop of B movies. These films invariably combine a maximum of nudity, violence, and gore with a minimum of writing, directing, and acting talent. If they're rated at all, they get an R, and their running times are usually under 90 minutes. Most are not even reviewed by critics.
" The Mutilator ," "Emmanuelle 4," and "Surf II: The Nerds Strike Back" (there was no "Surf I," in case you were wondering) already have come and gone in North Jersey theaters during the last three weeks. "Avenging Angel" and "Walking the Edge" are still playing (but probably not for long). This last weekend they were joined by " The Perils of Gwendoline" and "Superstition."
" The Perils of Gwendoline" is unusually ambitious for its ilk, an English-language French production with a reported budget of $4.5 million. (Most exploitationers cost less than $1 million). It's based on a comic strip by John Willie, helpfully identified in the film's press notes as "one of the most recognized, durable, and unique practitioners of the art of bondage illustration. "
Sounds pretty racy, and the TV commercials for "Gwendoline" promise some fairly kinky adventures along the lines of ( the preliberation Jane Fonda's) "Barbarella. " So you can imagine the disappointment at the Hyway Theater in Fair Lawn Friday night when an audience of 32 souls ranging in age from about 10 to 60 discovered a tame, slow-moving knockoff of "Raiders of the Lost Ark. "
Disappointed crowd
Gwendoline (played by Tawny Kitane, the improbably-named heroine of "Bachelor Party") is a wide-eyed American novitiate manquee who's searching for her missing father, a butterfly collector, in 1930's Macao. Accompanied by her friend Beth (Zabou, who speaks dubbed English) and a reluctant mercenary named Willard (Brent Huff, "raised in a backwoods community in the Ozarks," say the press notes), Gwendoline sets out for the land of the Yik Yak (don't ask), where her father was last seen. They meet up with alligators, cannibals in blackface, pirates, and a campy mad queen (Bernadette Lafont) attended by 60 scantily clad gladiator girls.
Although writer-director Just Jaeckin ("Emmanuelle," " The Story of O") contrives to present Gwendoline, Willard, and Beth in various stages of dishabille ("Take your clothes off quick! " is a typical line of dialogue) and some nifty leather gear, there really isn't anything going on to qualify "Gwendoline" as even a soft-core romp. Only the scene where some gladiator girls pulled a chariot got much of a rise out of the Fair Lawn crowd.
Not so "Superstition," a schlocky slasher film that inspired a great deal of audience participation during its near-sellout showing at the Route 17 Triplex a bit later Friday evening. Mostly high-schoolers on a date, they cheered when one guy's head exploded in a microwave oven; applauded when an elderly minister (Stacy Keach Sr.) bought it at the business end of a runaway electric saw; and roared at the awful dialogue ("I thought you loved me," says a libidinous young man when his date balks at some back seat action).
Not that the audience was unaware of James Roberson's absent-minded direction or the film's less-than-taut editing. When, at the end of an endless series of suspenseless tracking shots down the corridors of a deserted house, a character says, "let's get out of here," the audience shouted its agreement.
Hilariously awful
"Superstition" is essentially a slasher film incorporating elements of "Poltergeist," represented by an orgy of modestly spooky special effects in the final reel. There is also a hilariously awful flashback sequence of a witch being executed in 1692. The witch apparently is played by Lynn Carlin ("Taking Off"), who also turns up as a madwoman who advises a detective (Albert Salmi) and a young minister (James Houghton) investigating the bizarre murders that their problem is "you have 20th-Century minds. "
They were lining up, too, for a Saturday matinee of "Superstition" in the downstairs auditorium of the National Twin in Times Square. Upstairs, only half a dozen brave souls (in a 1,000-seat theater) turned up to catch "Walking the Edge," a woozy revenge melodrama featuring Nancy Kwan, who was a big star in in " The World of Suzy Wong" and "Flower Drum Song" a quarter of a century ago.
Kwan still looks smashing at 46, but she and Robert Forster ("Stunts," "Alligator"), a B-movie veteran of above-average talent, fight a losing battle against Norbert Meisel's lame direction and Curt Allen's inane script. The latter concerns a cabdriver (Forster), a former Triple A baseball pitcher ("a right-handed Sandy Koufax") who's now a runner for a bookie. He inadvertently becomes involved with Kwan, whose husband a drug dealer and young son have been brutally executed by mobsters in the film's opening scene.
She wants to get even, of course, and in the course of 93 minutes Kwan and Forster brutally eliminate half a dozen villains of various ethnic persuasions without so much as a visit from the Los Angeles Police Department. Between killings, they fall in love.
"What do we do now? " Kwan asks as they literally ride off into the sunset in Forster's cab.
"Got me," he replies as the movie ends.
Revenge is obviously the theme of "Avenging Angel," which managed
to fill only about a dozen of the 1,127 seats at the RKO Warner later Saturday afternoon. It's a sequel to "An 772077gel," last January's biggest exploitation hit.
The earlier movie concerned a Los Angeles high school honors student by day who was a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard by night. "Avenging Angel" takes place four years later, and our heroine (now played by Betsy Russell, star of "Private School" and the well-stacked granddaughter of political columnist Max Lerner) is studying law. When the police officer who got her off the streets is murdered, she returns to her old precincts to settle the score.
While there are a couple of rousing shoot-outs, the new "Angel" (Robert Vincent O'Neil returns as director) suffers from an overabundance of comic relief. Returning from the first film are Rory Calhoun as a demented drugstore cowboy, and Susan Tyrell as Angel's old cigar-smoking lesbian landlady. Joining them are a gaggle of eccentric street performers, a pair of transvestites, and a baby whose kidnapping becomes a key point of the plot.
"Avenging Angel" did garoer a few laughs from the sparse audience, although it was sad to see poor Ossie Davis as a police captain who gets a lecture on criminal rights from law-student Angel.
Such is justice on the exploitation movie circuit.
The Record (New Jersey) - January 28, 1985
Author: By Lou Lumenick, Movie Critic: The Record
April may be the cruellest month, but January is when exploitation pictures fill the nation's theaters. Low-budget independent quickies have long filled the vacuum between quick-expiring Christmas flops and the next wave of major studio offerings in February.
So many 1984 holiday movies have folded so rapidly ("Dune," "Protocol," etc.) that this month has brought a bumper crop of B movies. These films invariably combine a maximum of nudity, violence, and gore with a minimum of writing, directing, and acting talent. If they're rated at all, they get an R, and their running times are usually under 90 minutes. Most are not even reviewed by critics.
" The Mutilator ," "Emmanuelle 4," and "Surf II: The Nerds Strike Back" (there was no "Surf I," in case you were wondering) already have come and gone in North Jersey theaters during the last three weeks. "Avenging Angel" and "Walking the Edge" are still playing (but probably not for long). This last weekend they were joined by " The Perils of Gwendoline" and "Superstition."
" The Perils of Gwendoline" is unusually ambitious for its ilk, an English-language French production with a reported budget of $4.5 million. (Most exploitationers cost less than $1 million). It's based on a comic strip by John Willie, helpfully identified in the film's press notes as "one of the most recognized, durable, and unique practitioners of the art of bondage illustration. "
Sounds pretty racy, and the TV commercials for "Gwendoline" promise some fairly kinky adventures along the lines of ( the preliberation Jane Fonda's) "Barbarella. " So you can imagine the disappointment at the Hyway Theater in Fair Lawn Friday night when an audience of 32 souls ranging in age from about 10 to 60 discovered a tame, slow-moving knockoff of "Raiders of the Lost Ark. "
Disappointed crowd
Gwendoline (played by Tawny Kitane, the improbably-named heroine of "Bachelor Party") is a wide-eyed American novitiate manquee who's searching for her missing father, a butterfly collector, in 1930's Macao. Accompanied by her friend Beth (Zabou, who speaks dubbed English) and a reluctant mercenary named Willard (Brent Huff, "raised in a backwoods community in the Ozarks," say the press notes), Gwendoline sets out for the land of the Yik Yak (don't ask), where her father was last seen. They meet up with alligators, cannibals in blackface, pirates, and a campy mad queen (Bernadette Lafont) attended by 60 scantily clad gladiator girls.
Although writer-director Just Jaeckin ("Emmanuelle," " The Story of O") contrives to present Gwendoline, Willard, and Beth in various stages of dishabille ("Take your clothes off quick! " is a typical line of dialogue) and some nifty leather gear, there really isn't anything going on to qualify "Gwendoline" as even a soft-core romp. Only the scene where some gladiator girls pulled a chariot got much of a rise out of the Fair Lawn crowd.
Not so "Superstition," a schlocky slasher film that inspired a great deal of audience participation during its near-sellout showing at the Route 17 Triplex a bit later Friday evening. Mostly high-schoolers on a date, they cheered when one guy's head exploded in a microwave oven; applauded when an elderly minister (Stacy Keach Sr.) bought it at the business end of a runaway electric saw; and roared at the awful dialogue ("I thought you loved me," says a libidinous young man when his date balks at some back seat action).
Not that the audience was unaware of James Roberson's absent-minded direction or the film's less-than-taut editing. When, at the end of an endless series of suspenseless tracking shots down the corridors of a deserted house, a character says, "let's get out of here," the audience shouted its agreement.
Hilariously awful
"Superstition" is essentially a slasher film incorporating elements of "Poltergeist," represented by an orgy of modestly spooky special effects in the final reel. There is also a hilariously awful flashback sequence of a witch being executed in 1692. The witch apparently is played by Lynn Carlin ("Taking Off"), who also turns up as a madwoman who advises a detective (Albert Salmi) and a young minister (James Houghton) investigating the bizarre murders that their problem is "you have 20th-Century minds. "
They were lining up, too, for a Saturday matinee of "Superstition" in the downstairs auditorium of the National Twin in Times Square. Upstairs, only half a dozen brave souls (in a 1,000-seat theater) turned up to catch "Walking the Edge," a woozy revenge melodrama featuring Nancy Kwan, who was a big star in in " The World of Suzy Wong" and "Flower Drum Song" a quarter of a century ago.
Kwan still looks smashing at 46, but she and Robert Forster ("Stunts," "Alligator"), a B-movie veteran of above-average talent, fight a losing battle against Norbert Meisel's lame direction and Curt Allen's inane script. The latter concerns a cabdriver (Forster), a former Triple A baseball pitcher ("a right-handed Sandy Koufax") who's now a runner for a bookie. He inadvertently becomes involved with Kwan, whose husband a drug dealer and young son have been brutally executed by mobsters in the film's opening scene.
She wants to get even, of course, and in the course of 93 minutes Kwan and Forster brutally eliminate half a dozen villains of various ethnic persuasions without so much as a visit from the Los Angeles Police Department. Between killings, they fall in love.
"What do we do now? " Kwan asks as they literally ride off into the sunset in Forster's cab.
"Got me," he replies as the movie ends.
Revenge is obviously the theme of "Avenging Angel," which managed
to fill only about a dozen of the 1,127 seats at the RKO Warner later Saturday afternoon. It's a sequel to "An 772077gel," last January's biggest exploitation hit.
The earlier movie concerned a Los Angeles high school honors student by day who was a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard by night. "Avenging Angel" takes place four years later, and our heroine (now played by Betsy Russell, star of "Private School" and the well-stacked granddaughter of political columnist Max Lerner) is studying law. When the police officer who got her off the streets is murdered, she returns to her old precincts to settle the score.
While there are a couple of rousing shoot-outs, the new "Angel" (Robert Vincent O'Neil returns as director) suffers from an overabundance of comic relief. Returning from the first film are Rory Calhoun as a demented drugstore cowboy, and Susan Tyrell as Angel's old cigar-smoking lesbian landlady. Joining them are a gaggle of eccentric street performers, a pair of transvestites, and a baby whose kidnapping becomes a key point of the plot.
"Avenging Angel" did garoer a few laughs from the sparse audience, although it was sad to see poor Ossie Davis as a police captain who gets a lecture on criminal rights from law-student Angel.
Such is justice on the exploitation movie circuit.
THE MUTILATOR aka FALL BREAK (1985)
APPALLING GORE FAILS TO DAUNT FILM AUDIENCES
Miami Herald, The (FL) - October 16, 1985
Author: CARL HIAASEN Herald Columnist
Imagine this: It's a sunny holiday afternoon in autumn. Birds sing. Teen-agers lounge on Haulover beach. Joggers trot through the Grove.
Yet in a dark downtown theater, redolent of foul hot dogs, more than 40 people are watching one of the most abominable movies of all time.
The film is called The Mutilator . Its profoundly repugnant newspaper advertisement features a gleaming marlin gaff and promises: "By sword. By ax. By pick. Bye bye."
I have not come to review this motion picture, but rather the audience. I anticipate a cavalcade of geeks, troglodytes and sociopaths -- who else would pay $2.50 to watch a bunch of dumb white college kids get hacked into corned beef?
But a quick survey before the action starts offers these demographics: A well-dressed young couple, sharing Polaroid snapshots; a moody guy in a dingy tank top, girlfriend on his lap; several teen-agers, slightly rowdy but too muscular to rebuke; up front, an entire family, including a 6-year-old, a toddler and a nursing infant.
And, of course, sitting by himself: the obligatory strange pale man with the baggy pants and bucket of popcorn. You know the one.
The film begins, and even before the opening credits there is a gruesome killing that would send most normal folks scurrying for the door or the restrooms. Not this bunch -- a true gore corps.
The titles flash: The Mutilator . "Written and directed by Buddy Cooper." Enough said.
Then the actors, none of whose names are remotely familiar (aliases, no doubt).
Then: "Special appearance by Ben Moore."
Who the heck is Ben Moore? No one seems to know, but instinct suggests that he plays the title role.
The plot unfolds:
A group of boisterous, beer-guzzling college kids talks a pal into crashing Dad's beachfront townhouse for the weekend. The father happens to be a demented lunatic who sleeps under some gardening tools in the garage and has a respiratory disorder so severe that his breathing can be heard all the way to Seattle.
Beyond this, The Mutilator follows the identical script of Friday the Thirteenth, Halloween and all other teen slasher movies:
1. The Trampy Co-Ed is the first to die, but only after the mandatory semi-nude swimming scene.
2. The Dumb Blond Jock is the next to be mangled.
3. The Goofy Comic-Relief Guy is third on the menu (and the only character whose mutilation seems to sadden the audience).
4. Next is the Concerned Cop, who gets beheaded.
5. Then there's quite a tedious Stalking Sequence, with lots of bad camera work and bass violas.
6. The climax is the tired old Car-Won't-Start-Scene, with Mr. Mutilator clumsily hacking his way through the convertible top.
7. Finally the killer is gored, stabbed, burned and run over by the young collegiate heroine, who is (I swear) a self- proclaimed virgin and proud of it. She also is a master of Kung- Fu, as any Southern California virgin must be.
During all this carnage I expect raucous outbursts from the crowd, but the theater is reverently quiet, as if we are watching Olivier do Hamlet.
According to my notes, the only audible exclamation comes during the decapitation scene when a man in the back row cries, "Oh s---!" Which pretty much sums up my sentiments, too.
Sitting one row ahead of me is a handsome gray-haired woman with an embroidered shopping bag. She watches the entire film silently, without a murmur or a flinch. In fact, she is sitting so still that I begin to worry that she might have passed away during the marlin-gaff scene.
But, moments after the final mutilation, the old woman bolts for the exit, understandably eager to escape before the house lights come on. I catch up with her and ask what she thought of The Mutilator .
She smiles and says, "It's incredible, yes?"
Oh yes.
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GORY ' MUTILATOR ' JUST ANOTHER CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK
Boston Globe - March 9, 1985
Author: Michael Blowen, Globe Staff
The modus operandi for this gory story is the same as countless other slaughterhouse pictures.
The weapons include a battle ax, a fishing gaff, a machete, a cigarette lighter, a knife, a pitchfork and a chainsaw. The motive is money for writer- producer-director Buddy Cooper. The victim is the audience.
As one of the faceless murderees says, early in this putrid excuse for a motion picture, "I've got a bad feeling about this." Me too.
The film is unrated because the producer is not a member of the Motion Picture Association of America and was not obligated to submit it. It would most likely have been given an R.
THE MUTILATOR - Written, produced and directed by Buddy
Cooper, starring Matt Mitler, Ruth Martinez, Bill
Hitchcock and a cast of other unknowns, at the Beacon Hill
and suburbs, no rating.
GREAT WHITE aka THE LAST SHARK (1982)
REVIEW MOVIE\ A GREAT WHITE ' PUSSYCAT\ GREAT WHITE - DIRECTED BY ENZO G. CASTELLARI, WRITTEN BY MARK PRINCI,\ STARRING JAMES FRANCISCUS, VIC MORROW AND MICKY PIGNATELLI, AT THE\ PI ALLEY AND SUBURBS, RATED PG.
Boston Globe - April 20, 1982
Author: Michael Blowen Globe Staff
Because of its "substantial similarity" to Universal Pictures' "Jaws," a federal court in Hollywood ruled April 6 that " Great White " should be barred
from release. Last Wednesday, the distributor, Film Ventures International, and Universal reached an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed amount of cash that allowed " Great White " to open. Unfortunately.
On one level, Judge David V. Kenyon, in his initial decision, was right. There are similarities between the two films - a shark, an ocean, a selfish politician, a veteran fisherman with an Irish accent and a massive marketing campaign.
However, that's where the resemblance ends. "Jaws" succeeded through Steven Spielberg's gripping direction, fine performances by Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw and Roy Scheider, punchy editing, excellent special effects and a riveting music score.
" Great White " is a shoddily constructed, poorly acted, ridiculous ripoff.
From the out-of-synch dialogue to the phony accents, director Enzo G. Castellari's fishy movie is a completely unconvincing sharksploitation film that deserves to be blown out of the water.
In one sequence, when Vic Morrow is explaining the vicious habits of the shark, Castellari cuts to a grainy shot of a great white that's obviously in an aquarium tank. In fact, the scenes between the actors and the "shark" are so horribly matched that I would be surprised if the actors even saw one shark during the filming.
The plot is the same as its predecessor. Marine author Peter Benton (James Franciscus) and fisherman Ron Hammer ( Morrow ) team up to capture a giant white shark that has killed a surfer, disrupted a windsurfing championship, lunched on a teenager's leg and yanked a helicopter into the sea. Naturally, these two intrepid sailors eventually win out. But it's hard to understand what they are afraid of.
"Bruce," the mechanical shark from "Jaws," has been replaced by a beast that looks like a balloon left over from Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Consequently, when Franciscus and Morrow set sail to kill the fish there is no fear or tension. They look like what they are - two guys trying to kill a balloon.
The only real sharks in " Great White " are the people who made it.
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A Laughable ' Great White '
Washington Post, The (DC) - April 23, 1982
Author: FRANK SANELLO
Universal failed to stop the U.S. release of a small-budget Italian movie called " Great White " because of the film's similarity to "Jaws," its mighty moneymaker, but the studio shouldn't worry: " Great White " probably will be laughed out of the U.S.
Starring James Franciscus and Vic Morrow , it compulsively yet superficially imitates the original, whose scariest elements don't bear repeating on the cheap.
The phoniest thing about the production is its "star," a bargain-basement version of Bruce the Shark. Whenever the creature appears you can almost see the taxidermist inside, still trying to make it look fierce.
The underwater stock footage has a shark that doesn't even appear to belong to the same species as a big white , and doesn't match the lighting or graininess of the rest of the film.
See if the story sounds familiar: The mayor of a coastal resort in Georgia (much of the film was actually shot in Malta) is running for governor and refuses to cancel the city's annual windsurfing regatta even though a shark has already noshed on one contestant. The shark enters the regatta and makes mincemeat of many, rather than taking his victims serially a la "Jaws."
Chastened, the mayor calls in an experienced shark-hunter, Vic Morrow , who has a Scottish accent (Robert Shaw's was Irish in "Jaws." James Franciscus has Roy Scheider's role, but instead of a logical occupation like Scheider's chief of police he is cast as a shark-hunting novelist.
The remainder, interspersed with leaden, irrelevant exposition, consists of the shark taking on various challenges and winning handily, including chomping a helicopter, which is the only original and riveting moment of the 90 minutes.
Your neighborhood seafood restaurant has more drama and marine realism.
GREAT WHITE -- At 17 area theaters.
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' Great White ' Rip-Off
Washington Post, The (DC) - April 24, 1982
Author: Richard Harrington
"I've never seen anything like it in my life!" says Vic Morrow halfway through " Great White ." Of course, after 45 minutes of de'ja viewed shark mayhem, he must be kidding.
And the filmmakers must feel it's been long enough since the visceral shock of "Jaws," because " Great White " is now on 17 area screens . . . and just when you thought it was safe to go back in the theaters.
(Actually, it may not be on those screens for long. Universal Pictures, distributors of "Jaws," succeeded Thursday in getting a preliminary injunction against Film Ventures International, requiring withdrawal of " Great White " from exhibiting theaters, cancellation of all advertising and a recall of all prints. Universal has sued Film Ventures over the new film and a trial is pending.)
Most of the elements are familiar: the Centennial Windsurfing Regatta that's vital to a coastal resort's business; an ambitious mayor (Joshua Sinclair) who's manipulating the local media in a bid for the governorship and refuses to close the beach down; a taciturn shark hunter ( Morrow ) and a likable shark-author (James Franciscus) who've settled in a town where a shark hasn't been seen in 30 years; juicy young kids (mostly with Italian names) who don't seem to grasp the fact that they're being eaten up.
Then there's a 30-foot shark who seems to enjoy playing with his food and who likes to knock all the windsurfers off their boards in a game of underwater pinball; he doesn't even eat them! This is a smart shark who traps a couple of guys in an underwater cave by piling up rocks at the entrance. This is a bold shark who seems unafraid to bite off more than he can chew, whether it be a boat, helicopter or a pier with half a dozen people on it. This is an agile shark with a bit of dolphin blood in him; like an Ivory bar in the bathtub, he spends a lot of time popping up halfway out of the water, begging for food. This is a nasty shark who, just before he sinks his teeth into someone, actually seems to gloat.
Add the obligatory underwater footage as Great White heads for his meals; every time someone steps into the water, there's little guessing about who's coming to dinner. Throw in a quick slide show about Great Whites . Mix up stock footage of a real Great White with a mighty mediocre mechanical Great White (trying unsucessfully to make them look alike). Enhance the muddy picture with a sound track that sounds like it was recorded underwater and, voila , you have, not a shark, but a turkey.
Selected dialogue: "She's gone surfing with the boys . . . must be a hell of a specimen . . . they found something . . . there's something funny here, I don't like it . . . there was nobody in the boat . . . Couldn't it have been something else . . . Good God . . . No explosion did this . . . there's too much at stake . . . No damn shark's going to ruin a whole year's work . . . I'm going for a swim. Who's coming? . . . nothing's going to happen . . . there's nothing to worry about . . . that's a mighty big fish down there . . . what if we don't find him . . . did we get him . . . it's my fault, I should have known . . . he's down there, I can feel it . . . Do you think this thing's going to work? . . . It's my shark! . . . Don't worry,it's just a fish . . . Damn you! . . . BOOOOOM!"
Admitedly, we've come a long way from "The Old Man and the Sea," but it seems a shorter distance between "Jaws" and " Great White ." Unfortunately, it's all underwater.
REVENGE OF THE DEAD aka ZEDER (1983)
REVIEW MOVIE\ DEADLY REVENGE'\ REVENGE OF THE DEAD - DIRECTED BY PUPI AVATI. AT THE PI ALLEY AND SUBURBS,\ UNRATED. MENACING ATMOSPHERE AND OCCASIONAL GORE .
Boston Globe - June 16, 1984
Author: MARK MURO
Heard of any bartending jobs?
Know anyone looking for a gardener?
How about a garage that needs a mechanic?
If so, please call.
"Revenge of the Dead," dubbed with semi-hilarious consequences into English from the Italian, is a prohibitively dull zombie flick and, friends, we must - repeat must - find a new line of work for Pupi Avati, its director. We better hurry, too.
This movie, you see, is deadly. Involving a mysterious typewriter, a lot of mumbo-jumbo about undead personages and a murderous priest named Don Luigi Costa, the plot follows a mousy-looking novelist's attempts to figure out why everything is so weird in Bologna, Italy, in Chartres, France, and everywhere else he goes. Clues accumulate, strange old ladies administer the evil eye, but very little happens. Though our hero - a cut-rate ringer for the young Humphrey Bogart - wanders around constantly in dark crypts and houses full of inexplicable heavy breathing, what we wind up with is a thriller totally devoid of thrills. Six rather routine maimings are not nearly enough to sustain so witless and incomprehensible a little movie.
There is, however, one fun snort of idiocy. This occurs late, with the score standing Undeads 4, Good Guys 0. "I have to understand what it's all about," snivels our hero to his cheap cutie of a girlfriend. "Too many things don't make sense." That said, he almost cries. You know how he feels.
MARTIN (1977)
Four Excuses in Search of Some Gore
Washington Post, The (DC) - May 12, 1978
Author: Judith Martin
Blood may be replacing sex at the movies. The number of films that are excuses to watch people copulate seems to have leveled off, so to speak, but there's a boom on movies that are excuses to watch people bleed to death.
The newest, and one of the most pretentious, is "Martin," a film by George Romero, whose "Night of the Living Dead" in 1970 attained the high distinction, in the genre, of being called "a cult movie."
"Martin" is pretentious in a way that pornography is when it is dressed up for people who don't want to admit to their taste. We're not really coming for that , it seems to say; that is just there because it is an integral part of the story.
Sure it is.
"Martin" is a film about a punk who goes around killing people in the messiest possible way. Blood in all over the screen most of the time. But no fewer than four different excuses have been supplied, to disguise the fact that it's designed for people who like bleeding.
Excuse 1: This is really a literary movie, the concept of the Vampire being a mythology that explains allegorically the human predicament. The film is full of references of Vampire lore, with the repeated assertion that this is adding to a long literary tradition with new information.
Excuse 2: This is really a historical film , showing us our roots. Each scene in the present reminds Martin of something that happened to him in the previous century. However, this is kept to a minimum because of course the past took place in black-and-white, and blood doesn't show up as well as in our colorful present.
Excuse 3: This is really a psychological film , expressing the alienation of modern youth. The Vampire looks like the other rotten kids on the block, and is constantly throwing out clues for the analyst: "It's just that I'm shy . . . "In real life, you can't get people to do what you want them to do."
Excuse 4: This is really a satirical movie, making fun of all those other movies that cater to people who really like horror movies. There are several references to how "It's not really like the way they did it int 'The Exorcist,'" and the Vampire's confidant is the host on a call-in radio show.
Of all the excuses offered No. 4 is probably the lowest. If people want to enjoy pornography, or blood, they shouldn't claim to be doing it out of superior feelings based on putting down people who admit enjoying it.
But then, nobody really enjoys watching others bleed to death - and the people who buy pornographic magazines do it only because they enjoy the articles about the economy that separate in pictures.
MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981)
REVIEW / MOVIE\ FROM CANADA COMES A VALENTINE WE CAN ALL DO WITHOUT\ "MY BLOODY VALENTINE" - A FILM DIRECTED BY GEORGE MIHALKA. WRITTEN\ BY JOHN BEAIRD. STARRING PAUL KELMAN, LORI HALLIER AND NEIL AFFLECK.\ A PARAMOUNT PICTURES RELEASE. AT THE CINEMA\ 57 AND SUBURBS. RATED R.
Boston Globe - February 17, 1981
Author: Michael Blowen Globe Staff
"My Bloody Valentine," a Canadian import, should be wrapped in red crepe paper, tied with a big red bow and marked return to sender. It's a gruesome greeting card for which the sentiment might read:
Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
In movies like this
there's nothing new.
The story takes place in Valentine Bluffs, the little town with a big heart. It's a pleasant mining village on the Atlantic seacoast. The residents are conventional citizens who drink beer on Friday night and go to church on Sunday. They live a simple life. But Valentine Bluff, like every other hamlet in these slice and dice movies, is steeped in gore lore.
It seems that 20 years earlier, two mine superintendents decided to head off to the St. Valentine's Day Dance without checking the gas level in the shafts. Five men were asphyxiated and the survivor, Harry Warden, subsisted on their remains. Poor Harry. After a year in the state mental hospital, this reluctant cannibal returns to Valentine Bluff and, with the skill of a veteran miner, hacks out the hearts of the two superintendents with a pick axe. He places the hearts in a frilly, heart-shaped box and delivers them to the townspeople with a warning to stop the St. Valentine's Day Dance.
After 19 years, the townspeople decide to bury the past and hold the dance again. Shame, shame. Obviously, these country folk haven't seen "Prom Night," "Terror Train," "Friday, the 13th," "Silent Scream" or " Halloween ." They don't realize that slice-and-dice vengeance has a longer half-life than nuclear fallout.
They begin to get the message when the mayor receives a box of candy with a real heart inside and the owner of the town's laundromat is found spun dry in one of her own machines.
Film fans who relish the sight of blood dripping from the sides of a candy box; who delight in being "grossed out" by rib cages pried open with an axe or, for some unimaginable reason, rejoice in seeing a human heart boiling in water with a dozen hot dogs, might like receiving "My Bloody Valentine."
However, the direction, acting and production values are so inept that you begin rooting for the killer. Valentine Bluffs would be a much nicer town without the vile little teenagers that the killer bludgeons to death.
This Valentine's Day massacre is one that we could do without.
BLOOD BEACH (1981)
REVIEW / MOVIE\ THE BEACH PARTY FILM, 1981\ BLOOD BEACH - WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY JEFFREY BLOOM, STARRING DAVID\ HUFFMAN, MARIANA HILL, JOHN SAXON AND BURT YOUNG. AT THE SAXON AND\ SUBURBS. RATED R.
Boston Globe - January 24, 1981
Author: Michael Blowen Globe Staff
During the late '50s and early '60s, Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon played Beach Blanket Bingo and Jan & Dean sang "Surfin' Safari" beneath the Santa Monica Pier. They drank Coke instead of sniffing cocaine. But things have changed. The golden sands that beckoned the California girls have turned into "Blood Beach," a few acres of prime real estate with one major drawback - a tenant who lives under the sand and devours the sun worshippers. Is it a mysterious force? A sea monster? The bag lady? While the answer to this question will not keep you riveted to your seat, it does provide enough of a central theme to keep you from making trips to the concession stand.
The film opens, a la "Jaws," with Harry (David Huffman) taking a swim while his neighbor strolls along the beach with her dog, Feiffer. The closeups of Harry's strokes with the boom-boom, boom-boom of the soundtrack resurrect images from Steven Spielberg's thriller. But, instead of Harry being yanked into the briny deep, his neighbor is sucked under the sand.
This flip-flop idea is hardly original, but it's effective. The film is pure exploitation and any fan of "Friday the 13th" and " Halloween " will probably delight in the camp humor and occassional thrills of "Blood Beach."
In one scene, the surviving wife of a victim is asked to describe her husband to the investigating officer. "He was wearing blue and red bleeding madras Bermuda shorts," she says. "I didn't like them very much, but he was attached to them." There is very little sympathy for the victims. In fact, the police department can't get any extra men assigned to the case until Feiffer, the mangy mutt, bites the dust and the city council is flooded with complaints
from animal lovers.
The performances by David Huffman, Burt Young and John Saxon are appropriately one-dimensional. Saxon looks as if he had a furrowed brow implantation; Young chews cigars and eats hamburgers better than any of his contemporaries and David Huffman, if he plays his cards right, could become the Tab Hunter of the '80s.
It would be unfair to reveal the ending, but writer-director Jeffrey Bloom left plenty of room for a sequel. Bloom may not have a focused directorial eye but he certainly has a sharp eye for the box office.
THE BOOGEY MAN (1980)
REVIEW / MOVIE\ BOOGEY MAN' DEEP IN GRATUITOUS GORE\ THE BOOGEY MAN - WRITTEN, DIRECTED AND PRODUCED BY ULLI LOMMEL. STARRING\ SUZANNA LOVE, RON JAMES, AND JOHN CARRADINE. AT THE SACK CINEMA 57\ AND SUBURBS. RATED R.
Boston Globe - November 27, 1980
Author: MICHAEL BLOWEN
People are easily frightened. A flight of dark stairs leading to a musty basement or the creak of a door will send our hearts fluttering and perk up our ears. It's an automatic, primal response.
Filmmakers, more than any other show businessmen, realize that we're cowards and that fear is an emotion that can be easily manipulated. All they need is a dark house, a psychopathic killer and a young woman. It's a formula with inexpensive ingredients that can yield big profits.
"The Boogey Man" is merely the latest entry in the slash and bash sweepstakes. A young woman, obsessed with the murder of her mother's boyfriend by her younger brother, is beset by nightmares. Her husband, the stiff rationalist, insists that it's all in her imagination. But that's not the case.
It seems the maniacal ghost of the victim is trapped in a mirror and attacks anyone whose image catches its reflective gaze.
By the time the mirror is put to rest, it has drawn more blood than the local chapter of the Red Cross. A boy has his neck broken by a slamming
window; a girl has her chest punctured by a pair of scissors; an old man is pinned against the wall of a barn by a pitchfork through his neck; an old woman is strangled by a garden hose; the blade of a knife enters the back of a teenager's neck and comes out his mouth just before his girlfriend is compelled, by forces beyond her control, to give him a final kiss. She dies in his skinny arms.
This is not frightening, it's repulsive. Your eyes reel back from the screen in disgust, rather than horror. It's the oozing blood that repels you, not the well-crafted tension of a genuinely frightening movie such as "Don't Look Now" or "Dressed to Kill."
The economics of horror films featuring no-name actresses, such as Suzanna Love, and bulging advertising budgets are a good investment. The overhead is low (usually under $1 million) and the profit potential is high (" Halloween " returned 18 times its capital investment). Unfortunately, no matter how many times moviegoers have been disappointed by a horror movie that promises more in its commercials than it delivers on the screen, crowds continue to buy tickets.
If you're one of those people, you better watch out. "The Boogey Man" is going to get you. Don't say you weren't warned.
SILENT SCREAM (1980)
Image from CULT RARE VIDEOSREVIEW / MOVIE\ A MILDLY SCARY SCREAM'\ SILENT SCREAM - DIRECTED BY DENNY HARRIS. WRITTEN BY KEN WHEAT, JIM\ WHEAT AND WALLACE C. BENNETT. STARRING REBECCA BALDING, BARBARA STEELE,\ YVONNE DE CARLO, CAMERON MITCHELL AND\ AVERY SCHREIBER. AT THE SACK SAXON AND SUBURBS. RATED R.
Boston Globe - November 19, 1980
Author: Michael Blowen Globe Correspondent
A strange Victorian house overlooks the Pacific. The lace curtains flutter. The stairs leading to the attic are covered with cobwebs. The doors creak and Yvonne De Carlo is hidden away in an upstairs room.
A conventional setting for an exploitation horror film. In fact, everything about "Silent Scream" is conventional. But, given the avalanche of recent slice-and-dice films, it's not bad. After "Prom Night," "Terror Train," "Fade To Black," and "Motel Hell," "Silent Scream" is a welcome relief.
It's not a masterpiece. The acting is mediocre, the script pedestrian and the direction inconsistent. But it has enough cheap thrills to keep you riveted to your seat for its inconsequential 90 minutes.
Cameron Mitchell of television's "The High Chaparral" and Avery Schreiber, the Frito bandido, are a pair of police detectives trying to solve the bizarre murder of a wealthy, snobbish college student who lived in the house by the sea. The grisly manner of the death (the young man was knifed to death and buried in the sand) leads Mitchell and Schreiber back to the house. By the time these two lame-brained investigators discover the truth, several more gruesome murders occur.
The character actors, dredged up from the past, are fascinating. Yvonne De Carlo plays a puffy matron who spends the entire film in a frumpy housedress. Barbara Steele, once crowned Queen of the Bs for her many roles in serials and Republic features, doesn't have a line, but her performance is invested with chilling terror. Mitchell and Shreiber merely get in and out of a few cars.
Director Denny Harris, like most every other horror exploiter, steals most of his bits from Hitchcock. The sequence of killings looks as if he studied "Psycho" and made carbon copies. But he does show the ability to maintain suspense. In one frightening scene, while a young woman climbs up the attic stairs, Harris maintains tension by altering camera angles and quick cuts. It's frightening.
In spite of its obvious flaws, "Silent Scream" is the best low-budget horror film since " Halloween ." If that sounds like damning with faint praise, so be it.
PROM NIGHT (1980)
Image from www.movieposter.comREVIEW / MOVIE\ SENIOR PROM, SOPHOMORIC PLOT'
Boston Globe - August 18, 1980
Author: Michael Blowen Globe Correspondent
A film directed by Paul Lynch. Screenplay by William Gray. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Leslie Nielson, Antoinette Bower and a host of unknowns. At the Sack Saxon and suburbs. Rated R.
My senior prom was a horror show. Everyone dressed in rented formal wear and danced to the music of the Eddie Corcoran Trio. We were kids dressed up like mini-adults indulging in a fantasy conceived and executed by our parents and the school administrators. It wasn't much fun.
Neither is "Prom Night," a low-budget exploitation film, imported from Canada, to fill this summer's quota of quickie horror movies.
The plot is predictably sophomoric. A killer, who six years earlier observed four children forcing a little girl out of the window of a deserted schoolhouse to her death, is stalking the hallways of Alexander Hamilton High School. He seeks revenge.
The concept of a maniac returning to avenge injustice is certainly not new to the genre. " Halloween ," John Carpenter's bargain basement horror film, is only the most recent example. But "Prom Night" isn't half as frightening as Carpenter's movie.
Except for the pre-credit sequence, when the four children tease the little girl by chanting, "The Killer's Coming, The Killer's Coming," as the camera darts around the dark, deserted hallways, there is little else that's terrifying. And when people aren't frightened at horror movies, when the situations are as ridiculous as those presented in this slice and dice exploiter, people begin to laugh. And "Prom Night" is laughable.
The entire cast must have flunked algebra at least 10 times. They all look old enough to be dancing the bop and, when Jamie Lee Curtis and Casey Stevens, the King and Queen of the prom, start to disco, it's uproarious. Their awkwardness is symptomatic of the film's misdirected style.
Director Paul Lynch could have made a witty satire on the nature of proms or a frightening excursion into the terror of locker-lined hallways after dark. But, with the exception of one obvious cut from a bloody victim to the Hawaiian punch bowl, he's humorless and inadequate.
"Prom Night" certainly doesn't give you any moments to remember.
HALLOWEEN (1978)
Two Movie 'Sleepers' That Woke Up Fast
Washington Post, The (DC) - March 18, 1979
Author: Sam Allis
" HALLOWEEN " IS suffering from schizophrenia; it can't decide if it's a cult movie or simply a pedestrain box-office smash.
"It's probably a cult movie in reverse," concluded David Levy, owner of the Key Theater in Georgetown. "Cult movies are supposed to take time to build and this is simply too big to be a cult movie now. But it has a hardcore following of horror-film aficionados, who will still be there long after everyone else has died away."
" Halloween 's" problem is this: Although endowed with some unmistakable ingredients of a midnight classic, it has already grossed over $12 million since it was released last Halloween -- an obscene amount of lucre for any sefl respecting cult film to make in six months.
Made on less than $1 million, without one bankable star, " Halloween " has been on Variety's list of the 50 top grossing films in the country for the past 18 weeks.
To put this in perspective, the legendary "Night of the Living Dead," George Romero's schlock horror classic, grossed under $5 million during its two years on Variety's charts before its copyright problems became so byzantine that it fell into the public domain and beyond financial scrutiny. Anyone with a copy can now distribute it.
"Night of the Living Dead" has grossed millions since it opened in 1968, to be sure; it has been translated into 17 languages. But it has taken years and countless midnight shows to become a big moneymaker.
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacres," another gory film with a hardcore following, has grossed somewhere over $10 million in the five years since it was released and continues to make modest amounts at drive-ins and on late night television.
Enter John Carpenter and his no-name sleeper, " Halloween ." Watch him walk off with $123,000 during the first three days that it opened in the Boston area and $2 million in the Chicago-Milwaukee area alone in half a year.
Critics add to the conclusion by being hopelessly divided over the value of the film. But that in itself is good for sales. Pauline Kael of the New Yorker savaged " Halloween " in one of her reviews last month. But she directed her barbs at those nameless people who think that it has a cult potential. In effect, she acknowledged that it has something going for it, albeit repugnant to her.
"A lot of people seem to be convinced that ' Halloween ' is something special -- a classic" she wrote. "Maybe when a horror film is stripped of everything but dumb scariness -- when it isn't ashamed to revie the stalest device of the genre (the escaped lunatic) -- it satisfies part of the audience in a more basic, childish way than sophisticated horror pictures do."
A prime target of Kael's wrath is Tom Allen of the Village Voice, who first discovered " Halloween " and wrote that "it stands alone in the past decade with George A. Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead' and, before that, with 'Psycho.'"
David Ansen of Newsweek, another " Halloween " fan, called it "one of the scariest flicks in years." "It's a classic grade-B movie with absolutely no pretensions," he concluded.
"You've got reviewers reacting to other reviewers, which is always a good sign," said Peter Kastoff, the man who orchestrates the distribution of " Halloween " for Compass International in Los Angeles.
It would appear that the American public likes the "dumb scariness" of " Halloween "; low-brow brutality has always fared well with audiences in this country. But combine a virtually no-name cast (Donald Pleasance does appear in it), timeless and simplistic terror with underwhelming acting and you're inviting the unswerving loyalty of horror devotees as well. " Halloween " appears to have captured both audiences.
Meanwhile Kastoff is running a piece that would make Anne Corio jealous. He eschews the saturation-distribution technique of "Jaws" that would splash " Halloween " all over billboards and theater marquees. While that route would be lucrative in the short run, he feels that it would lead " Halloween " to the pastures of late-night television long before its time. Instead, he is running the film sparingly and hopes to milk a little less for a lot longer. He assures us that we won't be seeing it one television for years to come.
After a brief, unspectacular opening last Halloween at a Broadway theater, Kastoff pulled the movie out of New York completely until late in the fall, when it reappeared at the Arty Eighth Street Playhouse along with that redoubtable cult film, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." After a two month run there, it was pulled again and will not be seen in New York at all until next Halloween , when it will reappear as part of a nationwide promotion.
"It could almost be a seasonal thing," Kastoff said. "We could run it every Halloween for a while and then pull it."
Kastoff operates on the less is more principle, which in this case, appears to be as good as gold. A little "dumb scariness" goes a long way. (ITEM 130) Picture, " Halloween ": $12 million in six months.
SLEEPAWAY CAMP (1983)
FILM: MORE TEENAGE MAYHEM IN ' SLEEPAWAY CAMP '
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - January 23, 1984
Author: Rick Lyman, Inquirer Movie Critic
Dear Mom,
How are you? I am fine. I went to Sleepaway Camp this morning. My editor made me go. She's mean. I had to sit through the whole thing.
There were other people in the audience. I guess their editors made them go, too. Some of them yelled at the screen.
"Hey, man, this is traaaaaash," one shouted. "This is like some weird home movie," another screamed. "When we gonna get some action?" another pleaded.
Here is what happened to the people in Sleepaway Camp : One was stung to death by bees, one was drowned, one was boiled alive, three were hacked to death with a hatchet, one was shot in the throat with an arrow, one was beheaded and one was abused with a hot curling iron. In a flash of originality, one of them was stabbed to death in the shower.
Here is what happened to the people in the audience: nothing. I've had more thrills untangling paper clips. You want excitement, try to walk across Vine Street before the light changes.
I am told that the average cost of making a movie these days is $12 million. Sleepaway Camp looks as if it cost about, oh, 59 cents.
You've heard of the Actors' Studio? The people in this movie appear to have graduated from the Actors' Toolshed.
Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you about the three people who get run over by a motorboat. Eeeeeek. . . . WHAM! That's how the movie starts.
We flash ahead eight years. The lone survivor of that horrible boating accident is Angela, a shy and troubled teenager who goes off to Camp Arawak with her protective cousin, Ricky.
Everybody makes fun of Angela. Nyah, nyah! Why are you so shy, Angela? You sure act weird, Angela.
Pretty soon all the people who've been making fun of Angela turn up burned, bloated or hacked into julienne slices. Mel, who runs the place, keeps everything quiet because he's afraid that bad publicity will ruin the camp's reputation.
This makes about as much sense as anything else.
You'd think that the big question would be: Who's reponsible for these icky murders? There are plenty of suspects. It could be Ricky, protecting his shy cousin. Or it could be Angela, who's a little too quiet. Or it could be Mel, who looks a little too much like Milton Berle for his own good. Or the big- chested sexpot who torments Angela. Or the smart-aleck older boys who push Ricky around. Or Angela's sweet boyfriend, Paul.
But the even bigger question is: When will we get a daylight scene so I can look at my watch and see how much longer this thing is going to last?
I should warn you - in case your editor makes you go see it - that the people behind Sleepaway Camp seem to think that the climax is a real shocker. A big surprise. If you've been living in Sri Lanka for the last 20 years without television or newspapers, the ending might cause your right eyebrow to lift about one-tenth of an inch. No more.
The only good news is that there seem to be fewer and fewer of these teen- splatter movies, and they seem to make less and less money. That's good news because one more and I'm gonna be going away to summer camp. Either that or the funny farm.
SLEEPAWAY CAMP
Produced by Michele Tatosian and Jerry Silva, written and directed by Robert Hiltzik, music by Edward Bilous, and distributed by United Film Distribution Co.; running time, 1 hour, 19 mins.*
Mel - Mike Kellin
Ricky - Jonathan Tiersten
Angela - Felissa Rose
Ronny - Paul De Angelo
Paul - Christopher Collet
Judy - Karen Fields
Parents' guide: R (violence, obscenity, nudity)
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'SLEEPAWAY CAMP,' 'WAVELENGTH' - SKIP 'EM
Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - January 24, 1984
Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer
"Sleepaway Camp." A thriller starring Mike Kellin, Jonathan Tiersten and Felissa Rose. Written and directed by Robert Hiltzik. Photographed by Benjamin Davis. Edited by Ron Kalish and Sharyn L. Ross. Music by Edward Bilous. Running Time: 84 minutes. A United Film Distribution release. In area theaters.
* "Wavelength." A SciFi drama starring Robert Carradine, Cherie Currie and Keenan Wynn. Written and directed by Mike Gray. Photographed by Paul Goldsmith. Edited by Mark Goldblatt and Robert Leighton. Running Time: 87 minutes. A New World release. In area theaters.
Ring out the old year, ring in the new. Ring-a-ding-ding.
Well, folks, the annual glut of holiday movies finally has started to subside and we're back to grind, grind, grind.
Last week, we welcomed "Angel" and "Hot Dog - The Movie," not a very auspicious or promising start for the new film year. And this week, well, we have "Sleepaway Camp" and "Wavelength," examples of the poverty and pure gall of "contemporary moviemaking," or whatever.
A bloodied knife penetrating a child's sneaker figures prominently in the ads for "Sleepaway Camp." The ad reads: "You will go there in a bus . . . and come home in a box!"
Give me a break.
That's about as original as "Sleepaway Camp" ever gets. The plot is a replay of gory heebie-jeebies stirred in the "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween" trilogies: White middle-class kids, all sexually promiscuous, get hacked to death by an unseen killer in sunny, meadowy settings.
And as is true with most movies of this ilk, "Sleepaway Camp" prompted the urban audience surrounding me to cheer on the killer and ridicule and scorn the ill-fated white kids.
The film's cast includes a lot of New York stage performers, apparently hard-up for movie work, and features one of the last screen performances of the late Mike Kellin, the gravel-voiced character actor who made a career largely playing ex-cons and sociopaths. His best film roles: the psycho convict in "The Great Imposter" and the sentimental tour guide (who remembers the food and service of every hospital he's ever been in) in ''Paternity."
Mike Kellin deserved a better send-off. We deserve better movies.
Another case in point is "Wavelength," a bit of misguided camp that marks the directorial debut of screenwriter Mike Gray ("The China Syndrome"). This el cheapo flick is the flipside to Steven Spielberg's "Close Entounters of the Third Kind" and "E.T.": Three alien creatures come to earth, hole up in the Hollywood Hills and prove to be not so very cute or benevolent. Neither is this movie.
The creatures are being held there against their will by a short-sighted U.S. Air Force that fails to see that the bald outer-space critters resemble some of Hollywood's lesser denizens. (If you doubt me, check out the aforementioned "Angel.")
It's feared that the aliens will do something awful to humans, like boggle them into a dazed state, but judging from the people on hand here (played by Robert Carradine and Cherie Currie, among others), it wouldn't make much difference. It might even be an improvement.
**SINGLEG* Parental Guide: "Sleepaway Camp" is rated R for its violence, and ''Wavelength" carries a PG for its language.
MORTUARY (1983)
Poster Image from Bosnuk's Public GalleryLYNDA DAY GEORGE IN 2 MINDLESS FILMS
Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - February 1, 1984
Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer
"Young Warriors." A drama starring James Van Patten, Anne Lockhart, Ernest
Borgnine, Richard Roundtree and Lynda Day George. Directed by Lawrence D. Foldes from an original script by Foldes and Russell W. Colgin. Photographed by Mac Ahlberg. Edited by Ted Nicolaou. Music by Rob Walsh. Running Time: 103 minutes. A Cannon Films release. In area theaters.
"Mortuary." A thriller starring Mary McDonough, Christopher George and Lynda Day George. Directed by Howard Avedis from an original screenplay by Avedis and Marlene Schmidt. Photographed by Gary Graver. Edited by Stanford C. Allen. Music by John Cavacas. Running Time: 91 minutes. An Artists Releasing Corp. release. In area theaters.
This week's bottom-of-the-barrel movie entries - sleazoid flicks guaranteed to revolt any civilized moviegoer - cannibalize everything from "Death Wish" to "Pyscho." And for better or worse, they also provide us with a sort of mini Lynda Day George Film Festival.
In "Young Warriors," a young woman is gang-raped and murdered by a bunch of roughnecks. Her brother (James Van Patten) enlists the help of his fraternity buddies to hunt down the street scum.
While they're at it, they decide to root out other killers and, if possible, interrupt other street crimes in progress. Kevin - that's the boy's name - does all of this without the permission of his police-officer father (Ernest Borgnine) or his mother (Lynda Day George) who insists that skull- crashing is the job of the police.
Before long, Kevin and his chums are dressed in military camouflage uniforms and carrying weapons of all sorts as they stumble onto crimes and whip the daylights out of the subhumans committing them.
"Young Warriors" is a half-hearted, simple-minded tribute to vigilantism, telling us that violent sex and brutality are not nice, while wallowing in both. You'll need to empty out your brain cells to make any sense out of this kind of misguided logic.
In "Mortuary," a clone of Norman Bates - named Paul Andrews (and played by Bill Paxton) - is terrorizing Small Town, U.S.A. with the embalming fluid
from his mortician-father's lab (workshop?). This unbalanced kid gets a kick out of extracting life juices from people while they're still warm.
Naturally, he comes from a bad home. His daddy (the late Christopher George in one of his last film roles) is heavily into black midnight chants, satanism and things that go bump in the night.
Like other films of this ilk ("Halloween," etc.), "Mortuary" finds true weirdness at the heart of Midwest normalcy. Its "suspense" revolves around Paxton's sick obsession with a sweet girl-next-door type (Mary McDonough of ''The Waltons") and around her deadly involvement with the father-son mortician team. Lynda Day plays the girl's mother, who may or may not be in on the weirdness.
**SINGLEG* Parental Guide: Both are rated R for language and violence.
POSSESSION (1981) U.S. Release (1983)
'POSSESSION' AN EXORCISE IN FUTILITY
Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - November 14, 1983
Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer
"Possession." A thriller starring Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill and Heinz Bennent. Directed and co-authored by Andrzej Zulawski from an original script by Frederic Tuten. Photographed by Bruno Nuytten. Music by Andrzej Korzynski. Special effects by Carlo Rambaldi. Running Time: 78 minutes (cut from original 128 minutes). A Limelight International release. In area theaters.
Any movie that has the gall to reach back to 1973 and attempt to redo "The Exorcist," whose own imperfections can be re-examined on TV these days, deserves every odious comparison it gets.
"Possession" is a boringly camp-elegante attempt by a group of reputable French, German and Polish filmmakers (most notably director Andrzej Zulawski) to find Art in the ooze and bile that monopolize most demonic-possession flicks. All we end up with is a movie that's even more fatuous than most exploitation thrillers of this ilk.
There's nothing on screen here that we haven't seen before. This is not to imply that "Possession" is without its interests or curiositites. Not so. The film's history alone should command our attention: "Possession" is - now get this - 50 minutes shorter than the version that played the Cannes Film Festival two years ago and won star Isabelle Adjani her Best Actress award there.
In the seriously truncated version being distributed in America, nothing makes sense, least of all Adjani's babbling, incoherent and yet arresting portrayal of a woman who has given birth to some slimy, other-worldly monster (which could be a demon or even a god).
Adjani's character, Anna, is a little unstable and more than a little bonkers. When she isn't abusing her little ballet students, she's carving up herself with an electric knife or terrorizing her wild-eyed husband (Sam Neill), who also seems possessed.
Anna keeps her repulsive monster-child stashed in a suite of rooms in a decaying hotel in Berlin. Amidst a flurry of flashbacks, flashforwards and scenes involving Anna's demure alter-ego (named Helen), our madwoman and her evil ward spend their days killing off nosy intruders (and sutffing their entrails in a refigerator) and their nights making . . . love. The lovemaking scenes in "Possession" are fairly gross.
I think it is safe to assume that the film's American distributor edited out everything except the excess and and frenzy. The missing 50 minutes most certainly contains exposition, common sense and an explanation or two, quiet, introspective scenes that might have brought rationale to the excess and frenzy (and perhaps even made them more vivid).
Adjani works herself up in a succession of self-abandoning scenes that seem to be a takeoff on her role in "The Story of Adele H," and Neill, always fascinating, remains the screen's most civilized psycho.
Complementing the stars - and also suffering from the indiscreet editing (garroting?) - are the contributions of cinematographer Bruno Nuytten and effects wizard Carol Rambaldi ("E.T." and "Alien").
Rarely has so much been so senselessly wasted.
**SINGLEG* Parental Guide: Rated R for its violence and gory effects.
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FILM: 'POSSESSION' IS A THRILLER ABOUT A LADY AND A CREATURE
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - November 15, 1983
Author: Rick Lyman, Inquirer Movie Critic
I sat through Possession because it's my job. Why anybody else would want to do it, I can't imagine. Take my word for it: If today's Inquirer does nothing more than steer you away from this movie, you will have gotten your quarter's worth.
Possession, in its present form, is one of those movies that's so awful, so unclean, that it clarifies for you exactly what it takes to make a movie bad. It's as if someone had taken every wrong technique and simmered them down into a thick, unpleasant broth.
Isabelle Adjani, the beautiful French actress who came to stardom with Francois Truffaut's Story of Adele H and has never, for my money, lived up to her hype, is humiliated in the lead role.
It's kind of hard to figure out what's happening most of the time, but she plays a crazed young woman with a thing for Jesus and another thing that she
keeps in a run-down apartment house. This other thing, a gruesome sort of creature that she loves dearly and often, helps her knock off the curious souls who venture into their decaying refuge.
Ostensibly a thriller about demons, Possession is really an attempt to raise the gore movie to a level of pseudo art. There's plenty of spitting-up and contortions and people getting sliced and impaled, but there's also this moronic attempt to invest the images with an artsy weirdness. There are so many fisheye-lens shots that I thought I was at the aquarium.
But nothing is worse than Adjani's performance. She gurgles. She rants. Icky fluids comes out of her mouth. She screams her inane lines directly into the camera like a preschooler's idea of the way crazy people act.
And she won best actress honors at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. For this movie. It's unbelievable.
The original version of Possession, shown in Europe, was much longer. Perhaps her better scenes were left in the trash bin. Maybe they cut the movie in half and released the wrong part.
Suffice it to say that I don't think we're dealing with a lost masterpiece here. True, the movie is halfway hacked to shreds, but if they're looking for volunteers to finish the job they can add my name to the list.
There were a few unfortunates who went the distance the afternoon I saw the movie. It's a prodigious achievement and I salute them. But I'm not sure whether to give them a medal or a saliva test.
Maybe both. Just to be safe.
POSSESSION
Produced by Marie-Laure Reyre, written and directed by Andrzej Zulawski, photography by Bruno Nuytten, music by Andrzej Korzynski, and distributed by Limelight International Film Releases; running time, 1 hour, 18 mins. *
Anna - Isabelle Adjani
Mark - Sam Neill
Heinrich - Heinz Bennent
Parents' guide: R (violence, nudity)
ALONE IN THE DARK (1982)
A HAVEN FOR DARK DREAMS
Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - June 30, 1983
Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer
"Alone in the Dark." A thriller starring Dwight Schultz, Jack Palance, Donald Pleasence and Martin Landau. Written and directed by Jack Sholder. Photographed by Joseph Mangine. Edited by Arline Garson. Music by Rentao Serio. Running Time: 92 minutes. In area theaters.
Jack Sholder's "Alone in the Dark," I am happy to report, is a tidy little thriller that deserves to surmount the overall disagreeable reputation that the splatter genre has earned.
It is more than a little competent, often brutal and surprisingly witty as it kicks off a series of trauma dramas, each set in either a very clinical asylum or an attractively creaky country home where everything is dark, dark, dark, thanks to a convenient electrical blackout.
The horrorfest kicks off with a nightmare. Martin Landau - playing a character called The Preacher, a chap with pyromaniacal tendencies - wakes up screaming from a recurring dream that has him being castrated by a cleaver- toting butcher, Donald Pleasence. Landau sweats a lot during his bloody
dream work.
Cut to: a shrink's office, where a most serene Pleasence is greeting his new assistant, Dan Potter (the stage actor Dwight Schultz).
As it turns out, he's the director - or mad doctor - of a New Jersey mental asylum called The Haven. Here, the patients are called "voyagers" and their stay is described as a "vacation." There's no violence at The Haven, despite the free-flowing blood, just a lot of "cries of pain."
Pleasence, as Dr. Leo Bain, turns out to be the screwiest outpatient at The Haven, and he has a lot of competition: Besides The Preacher, there's Fatty (Erland Van Lidth), a child molester; The Bleeder (Phillip Clark), a chap who gets a nosebleed whenever he kills someone, and Hawkes (Jack Palance), a gung-ho warmonger. All are incurable.
Cut to: The Potter homestead, where we meet Dr. Dan's sexy, liberated wife (Deborah Hedwall), his sexy, punky sister (Lee Taylor-Allan) and his daughter (Elizabeth Ward), just the kind of child that Fatty likes to molest. Anyway, the aforementioned blackout loosens The Haven's security system, and the psychos bust loose.
"Alone in the Dark" then swings to and fro between the asylum and Dan's house. The men have an uncontrollable urge to dismember and/
or kill Dan because they believe he killed his predecessor, the beloved Dr. Harry Murton, who actually is alive and well and working in a hospital in Wynnefield, Pa.
Sholder neatly contrasts the certifiable behavior of the patients with the panicky behavior of the usually laidback Potter clan, and he has come up with one particularly clever twist (involving The Bleeder).
"Alone in the Dark" also is more eloquent than other films of its ilk and has the kind of humor that perfectly balances the gore. "All right!" Pleasence finally (and calmly) admits. "All right, they're crazy." A pause. ''Isn't everyone?"
One of the most engaging aspects of "Alone in the Dark" (running a close second to Schultz's very appealing performance) is that Potter's home is
somehow much creepier than the asylum.
Parental Guide: Rated R for its intense violence and adult language
MANIAC (1980)
HORRORS! 'MANIAC' ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU SICK, BUT NOT ENOUGH TO MAKE THEM STOP
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - February 27, 1981
Author: DESMOND RYAN
By Desmond Ryan
Inquirer Movie Critic
There are a fair number of films that make you want to throw up your hands in despair. Maniac simply makes one want to throw up.
To call this horror film the work of sick and irresponsible perverts is to demean the honor of perverts. In seven years of watching films for a living, I have walked out before the often-bitter end on only two occasions. This review is based on the first 40 blood-drenched minutes, which was as much of this unspeakable and genuinely depraved film as I could stomach.
Anyone ill-advised enough to venture into the presence of this disgusting venture should adopt the tactic favored by the fans of the woeful New Orleans Saints last season. This involved sitting in the stands with the head covered by a large, brown-paper bag, which afforded the double benefit of disguising one's attendance and obscuring the countless errors of the team on the field. For Maniac , it should also help with the nausea to which anyone with a claim to humanity will undoubtedly succumb.
For some time, it has been clear that, having exhausted themselves of original ideas, horror-film directors are now engaged in a blood-slinging contest. The situation in these movies is always the same - a woman alone and in peril is murdered in gruesome circumstances. Sometimes her companion - usually her lover - is done in for good measure.
In the normal run, I would ignore Maniac in the same way that one might cross the street to avoid a dead cat. However, there are aspects of this film that demand denunciation. And because the City Council and the Human Relations Commission are too busy condemning Fort Apache , to worry about what a film like Maniac does to the mental health of the citizenry, the matter has to be raised here.
I call this movie irresponsible for two reasons. First, it caters to instincts and feelings of a baseness that I don't even want to think about. This is not entertainment or the mild titillation of being scared. This is gross pandering. Secondly, the people who made Maniac - its director is a man of 26 named William Lustig - don't seem to know or care about what effect it might have on a sick or deranged mind. I have no way of proving such a connection, but the thought of certain men seeing it and then creeping off to a subway does not sit well with me.
The maniac in this instance is played by Joe Spinell. He has a penchant for selecting victims at random, scalping them and using the hair to adorn mannequins. The credits are preceded by one throat-cutting (woman) and one garroting (man). They are followed by one strangulation and scalping and one shotgun blast at a head. At this point Ileft the screening room and an ashen- faced veteran projectionist.
Beyond the specifics and a ghastly love of detail with which these killings are depicted is a more urgent issue. Maniac is the epitome of the new pornography, propaganda for an attitude about women that is obscene in a manner not found in sex films. Hard-core pornography tends to dominate women, but at least it does not exude the festering hatred of them to be found in Maniac . There is some incredibly twisted Calvinism at work in these films that says that women whose conduct is "loose" should be punished in ever more dreadful ways.
The film is doing well at the box office in New York, which means there are a lot of people who think of this as entertainment. That should terrify and appall anyone who cares about the state of our country. Mr. Lustig obviously does not. His film belongs in an abbatoir, not a theater. Space and the restraints of language imposed by a newspaper prevent me from discussing where he belongs.
THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2 (1985)
THOSE 'HILLS' STILL HAVE EYES
Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - January 2, 1986
Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic
"The Hills Have Eyes II." A thriller starring Michael Berryman and John Laughlin. Written and directed by Wes Craven. Running time: 100 minutes. A Castle Hill release. At the Duke and Duchess exclusively.
The local showing of Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes II" must be some sort of marketing experiment.
The movie is being screened exclusively in only one theater (the Duke or Duchess - I've never been able to figure out which is which) and, to the best of my knowledge, it is playing nowhere else in the country. So, I suppose that the eventual national release of "The Hills Have Eyes II" depends on how well it does here.
Judging from the local reaction at the performance I attended, Craven's film won't be released.
This movie is so shallow and pointless that it goes beyond the usual horror idiocy and enters the realm of anti-humanity. Its plot is so simple I couldn't even follow it.
It goes something like this: A bunch of kids jump on a bus and, with the money made from the stud fees of their communal pet dog, Beast, they head for the desert. Why? Who knows? (Anyone who figures this much out must have serious emotional problems.)
Anyway, one of the kids, the overaged Ruby, has reservations about the desert trek because she was involved in the murder and mayhem there that laced the first film. The original "Hills Have Eyes" was a fairly disgusting to- do about the systematic extermination of a family of vacationers by a family of hermits. Ruby was one of the hermits, see; now she's a good guy.
Much of the film recaps the previous movie via flashbacks. Ruby has flashbacks. Even Beast, the dog, has a flashback or two. Honest. Meanwhile, the fresh-faced kids - Jane and Harry, Foster and Susan, Cass and Sonny and something called The Hulk (John Laughlin of "Crimes of Passion") - start dropping like flies.
The bald Michael Berryman encores from the first film, once again exploiting his birth defects as the movie's most horrific villain.
He keeps telling the rest of the cast - the victims - to "choke on your puke."
I almost did.
Parental guide: Rated R for its senseless violence.
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