HARD BREED TO KILL (1967) **

A gang of bank robbers led by Slim Pickens attack a rancher, kidnap his wife, steal his horses, and leave him for dead.  As Slim and his men head into Indian territory, the rancher nurses his wounds and takes off in hot pursuit.  While the robbers endlessly bicker, the rancher picks them off one by one to reclaim his wife and exact his revenge.  

Well, when Rafael Portillo, the director of the Aztec Mummy movies makes a Mexican western with Slim Pickens, you can be damn sure I’m going to watch it.  Portillo offers up a handful of nicely shot scenic vistas, which lends the otherwise cheap-o film a much-needed shot of production value.  It’s also a bit grislier than some of its contemporaries.  We get a few slashed throats and a scene where our hero impales a bad guy on his walking stick. 

However, that’s not quite enough to make Hard Breed to Kill a quality south of the border oater.  The film suffers from a repetitive nature that prevents it from gathering much momentum.  After a solid set-up, it eventually devolves into an endless series of scenes of bad guys looking for water, making camp, nodding off, and shoving off in the morning.  The flashbacks (in which the wife remembers her husband teaching her how to survive in the wild) serves to flesh out their relationship, but it ultimately slow things down even more. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: HOWLING 6: THE FREAKS (1991) * ½

Ian (Brendan Hughes) is a British werewolf drifter stuck in a small American town.  He gets a job helping a local pastor restore his church and begins to develop a crush on the pastor’s daughter.  A traveling freakshow ran by the evil Harker (Bruce Payne) rolls into town, and he almost immediately decides he wants Ian to be his star attraction.  

The Greatest Showman it is not.  

This is the only Howling sequel I haven’t seen, which is why I wanted to review it to close out the Halloween Hangover column.  I’ve long heard it was one of the best Howling sequels.  Now that I’ve finally seen it, I’m not sure agree with that assessment.  Sure, 2 is bad, but it’s also spectacularly entertaining.  Although the freakshow plotline makes it stand out from the other sequels, there’s not much here that makes it “better” than them either.

Speaking of the freaks, they include a three-armed card player, a half man/half woman (who shows off one boob), and an alligator boy.  The best one though is played by none other than Huggy Bear himself, Antonio Fargas.  He’s the geek who bites the heads off chickens.  So, no matter how bad Howling 6 is, at least it has that going for it.

At 100 minutes, it’s about 20 minutes longer than any Howling sequel should be.  The subplot about a local election is totally unnecessary and should’ve been scrapped entirely.  There’s also a terrible montage where Hughes fixes up the church that’s accompanied by some awful country gospel music that deserved to be left on the cutting room floor.

Howling 6 moves at a slow pace and it takes a good 45 minutes before anyone turns into a werewolf.  As far as the effects are concerned, they are decent, compared to what we’ve seen in the other sequels, but the final creature (which isn’t all that hairy) is kind of lame.  The melting sequence in the end is pretty cheap looking too, although the final skeleton looks cool enough.  Much of the film is too dark, which might’ve been on purpose to hide the weak werewolf effects.  In fact, the blue-skinned vampire make-up (yes, there’s a vampire in this movie… don’t ask) is a lot more inventive than the shitty werewolf, who looks like he’s in dire need of Rogaine.

Hughes makes for a bland lead.  The good news is that Payne is quite good as the conniving ringleader.  His performance is easily the best thing about the movie, but it’s not nearly enough to qualify it as anything other than another shitty Howling sequel.

BLUE RUIN (2014) ***

After being impressed by Jeremy Saulnier’s Murder Party, I figured I’d give his follow-up, Blue Ruin a try.  It was a critical hit on the indie circuit and got him good enough notices to parlay it into his biggest success, Green Room a few years later.  While it’s not quite as strong as either of those films, it’s still an absorbing and stylish thriller.

What we have is basically a homeless version of Death Wish.  Dwight (Macon Blair) lives in his car along the Rehoboth boardwalk.  When he finds out the guy who murdered his parents is getting out of jail, he heads down to Virginia and kills him in a barroom bathroom.  His family comes after Dwight packing heat and he must defend himself at any cost.

Saulnier moves things along at a slow and methodical pace.  Even though there are times where it seems like not a lot is happening, it all works out well in the end because you get to see the toll that violence and revenge takes on its characters.  There are a lot of quiet stretches along the way that are punctuated with bursts of gruesome violence, which is what makes them so effective and shocking.  

Blair (who’s appeared in every one of Saulnier’s films) is great in the lead role.  The whole movie rests squarely on his shoulders.  If we didn’t grow to care about him and his quest for revenge, everything would’ve come crashing down.  He does a fine job showing what an average joe has to go through to get revenge.  He’s not Charles Bronson.  He’s just a dude, which is the main thing that separates Blue Ruin from your typical revenge picture.

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (2018) ** ½

The Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is their first Netflix movie.  It might also be the first western anthology ever made.  It’s the first one I’ve seen at any rate.  Like most anthologies, it’s almost doomed from the start because of the uneven structure of the genre.  However, there’s some real gold to be found here.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (****) Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) looks like an aimable, unassuming goofball, but he’s also a crack shot quickdraw gunfighter.  In addition to shooting people, he loves singing and narrating the events of his life.  In fact, nothing, even death can stop him from his longwinded narration.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (the story, not the whole movie) is probably the best thing the Coens have ever done.  It is a hilarious and surprising ode to Roy Rogers and Sam Peckinpah in which the sadistic outbursts of violence are almost as funny as Nelson’s performance.  This segment allows the Coens to take their penchant for creating colorful characters with peculiar dialogue patterns and their knack for sudden violence to the nth degree and they in turn create what has got to be the ultimate Coen Brothers creation.  

Near Algodones (***) James Franco stars as a bandit who tries to rob a bank.  He doesn’t count on the armor-plated teller (Stephen Root) and his devotion to the bank’s security.  As he is about to be hung for his crime, the bandit, through a set of unlikely circumstances, goes out of the frying pan and into the fire.

This tale has a great set-up and a strong middle section, but it ends much too abruptly (albeit fittingly).  Personally, I would’ve liked to have seen this sequence expanded upon.  It would’ve been nice to have had Franco’s character fleshed out a bit more.  It would’ve given the final scene a bit more impact, instead of just a taste of (literal) gallows humor.

Meal Ticket (** ½) A man (Liam Neeson) runs a small traveling sideshow.  The star of the show is a quadruple amputee (Harry Melling) who performs everything from the works of William Shakespeare to the speeches of Abraham Lincoln.  Eventually, he realizes the show can’t go on forever.

Wow.  This one is just bleak and depressing.  It’s well-realized and the art direction is excellent, but like the previous tale, it’s all too brief.  This is another one that would’ve benefited from a longer running time.  It earns points for being relentlessly grim, but the payoff (although inevitable) isn’t quite as effective as it could’ve been.  

All Gold Canyon (*** ½) An old prospector (Tom Waits) makes his way through the countryside looking for gold.  Through many ups and downs, he finally strikes it rich.  Almost immediately, he’s forced to defend his claim at any cost.

This tale perfectly shows us the loneliness and isolation of the Old West.  The grizzled Waits fits right into the Coens universe, so much so that you have to wonder why it took them so long to cast him in one of their movies.  Waits endears himself to the audience and when it comes time for him to protect his gold, we wholeheartedly root for him.  This also has the distinction of being one of the most uplifting stories in the lot, which is nice, because the last two tales are utterly depressing and/or dull.  

The Gal Who Got Rattled (**) Zoe Kazan goes out on the Oregon Trail with her brother to meet her future fiancée.  Along the way, she has to deal with the death of her brother, the possibility of putting down her dog, and the prospect of being cheated out of her money by a scoundrel wagon master.  A handsome cowpoke (Bill Heck) offers to help her by proposing marriage, but that might not be enough to save her doomed voyage.  

This one moves at an ambling pace.  It also lacks the sharp humor of the other stories.  The ironic ending doesn’t quite work as well as in the other tales either, mostly because of its drawn-out nature.  The performances by Heck and Kazan are solid, but they are unable to elevate this solemn, slow-moving sequence.

The Mortal Remains (**) A stagecoach carrying a handful of passengers pushes on toward the frontier.  The passengers pass the time by having rambling conversations and generally getting on each other’s nerves.  It soon becomes apparent that two of the passengers aren’t who they seem.  

The talky nature and claustrophobic setting help to drag this story down and end things on a down note.  That’s not to say there aren’t some good moments here.  I particularly liked Chelcie Ross as the talkative trapper who goes on and on about people being like “ferrets”.  The twist ending is a bit obvious (especially if you’ve seen Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors), but like most of the stories here, it ultimately comes off a bit slight.

Like most anthologies, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is uneven and fitfully amusing.  It serves to sketch for the audience the harshness of frontier life as well as the sudden outbursts of violence that hallmarked the Wild West.  Most of the stories end with a big death scene, which shows the arbitrary nature of life and death.  I can’t say it’s entirely successful, but the first segment alone just about makes it worthwhile. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: THE NIGHT OF THE STRANGLER (1972) ** ½

College student Denise (Susan McCullough) returns home to the south to tell her family she is leaving school to marry a black man.  Denise’s younger brother Vance (Micky Dolenz from The Monkees) is supportive, but her older brother Dan (James Ralston) is a full-blown racist, so he smacks her around.  The next day, Denise’s boyfriend is murdered by a sniper, and she is later drowned in her bathtub by a black gloved killer, who makes her death look like a suicide.  Meanwhile, a young black priest (Chuck Patterson) reaches out to the brothers to offer his condolences.  More people close to the family wind up dead, and a pair of perplexed cops are left trying to make sense of it all.

Directed by Joy N. (Night of Bloody Terror) Houck, The Night of the Strangler is surprisingly progressive and modern for a movie from 1972.  It has more on its mind than just being another whodunit, even if the execution is a bit clunky at times.  Houck tries to juggle the various plotlines, which involve multiple killers and (too many) supporting characters with inconsistent results.  It’s not completely successful, but the murder scenes have a moderate amount of kick to them (there’s a neat bit involving a booby-trapped glove compartment), and the twist ending is effective.  

Oh, and nobody gets strangled, so there’s that.  

Another debit is that some of the dramatic scenes veer into heavily into camp.  Ralston especially goes overboard as the sniveling racist brother.  Dolenz on the other hand fares well in a rare dramatic role and makes a memorable impression as the sensitive brother.

Dolenz also gets the best line on his brother’s wedding day when he says, “Beauty and the bigot!”

AKA:  Dirty Dan’s Women.  AKA:  Is the Father Black Enough?  AKA:  The Ace of Spades.

THE BLUE HOUR (1971) **

Tania (Ann Chapman) is unable to get it on with her boyfriend on the beach.  He tries to understand where her head’s at and she relates to him her entire sexual history.  She works as an artist’s model, gets accosted by her horny Greek uncle, attacked by bikers, and used by just about anyone who comes in contact with her.  The longest flashback recalls her teenage years living with her mother on a small island where her mating prospects are slim to none.  (“There’s nothing on this island but goats and old men!”)  That all changes when a young priest catches her eye, but like all her conquests, it too will end in tragedy.

The Blue Hour is a slow moving, sometimes dull affair.  It’s short on exploitation goods and long on amateurish artsy-fartsy aspirations.  The fractured narrative, which consists of lots of flashbacks within flashbacks, is frustrating, and the film hems and haws way too much to be considered effective.  The rapid-fire, ADD editing is probably the worst part, although the long, drawn-out scenes where nothing happens (like the endless belly dancing scene) don’t help either.  

This is more of a psychological profile of a damaged woman with a fragile psyche than an honest to goodness skin flick. If the director’s intent was depressing us instead of titillating us, then mission accomplished.  Still, if you are patient, you’ll be treated to a decent third act where Chapman has an excellent solo girl scene on a bed and bangs the priest on the beach. It doesn’t save the movie or anything, but at least we’re treated to an OK amount of skin.  It’s just a helluva long wait. 

Chapman is quite good and looks rather incredible naked.  Too bad she’s rarely given a chance to display either of her talents.  It’s a shame she didn’t have much of a career because there’s enough evidence here to suggest she could’ve been a minor exploitation star.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: HOBGOBLINS 2 (2009) *

Rick Sloane returns with a Hobgoblins sequel no one asked for, and thirty-one years too late at that.  It was his first film in eleven years after Vice Academy 6.  According to IMDB, he hasn’t made a movie since, which I’m sure is best for everyone.

A bunch of forty-year-old looking teenage college students go on a field trip to a mental institution.  After their visit, a disbelieving doctor unleashes the evil Hobgoblins upon the hospital.  The teens go home for a movie night and the hobgoblins soon show up to feed on their fears.

Most of the jokes are complete groaners, or worse, don’t elicit any response at all.  The only sight gag I laughed at was when one of the girls holds a textbook that says, “Really Abnormal Psychology”.  There are a couple of callbacks to the original, like the fight with garden tools, but they don’t really add anything to the film.

The worst sin this painful sequel commits is that it’s just boring.  As bad as the original Hobgoblins was, there was a goofiness about it that made it at least semi-tolerable.  Whenever things get too dull, someone will say “Hobgoblins” three times and get attacked by a hand puppet.  Or, should I say, awkwardly hold a hand puppet to their chest and pretend to be attacked.  It’s that kind of movie.

Even though Hobgoblins 2 was made in ’09, the grimy cinematography makes it look like it came out of the ‘80s.  Because of that, it feels like a natural continuation of the original (even if the mythology of the creatures is totally different).  That’s about the best compliment I can give it.

The best part though is seeing glimpses of Sloane’s old fake movie trailers like Chainsaw Chicks, Amputee Hookers, and Nightmare of the Lost Whores.  Unfortunately, you’ve got to wait until the end credits to see most of them.  Say what you will about Sloane, but at least he was making these faux trailers decades before Grindhouse made it fashionable.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: APOSTLE (2018) ** ½

Dan Stevens sets out to rescue his sister from a religious cult who live on a remote island in the early days of the 20^th century.  A chance (and potentially deadly) run-in with the leader Malcolm (Michael Sheen) sort of grants him an immunity to go around the island unsupervised.  His rescue mission is eventually compromised when one of Malcolm’s lieutenants (Mark Lewis Jones) stages an uprising.

Apostle comes to us from Gareth Evans, the director of The Raid.  I wish I could say it does for horror movies what The Raid did for Kung Fu action, but that is sadly not the case.  It has his fingerprints all over it and as a fan of Evans’ work, I can honestly say I’m glad I saw it. 

Many have compared it to The Wicker Man.  That’s certainly an apt description, but Apostle has its own unique energy.  It’s closer in spirit to Evans’ short from V/H/S/2 as they’re both about religious cults.  In the end, he veers into some serious Mark of the Devil territory as people are hoisted upon a series of torture devices and ground up into gory, gruesome gristle.  This justifies some of the longwinded build-up, although for such a slow burn, the movie really needed a little more sizzle in its finale.

Like most of Evans’ work, Apostle moves at a deliberate pace.  This is one of the rare times where his approach is a little too deliberate for its own good because you really start to feel the length.  The middle section particularly dawdles.  Once you learn the secret of the cult and the island itself, it works up to a certain point, but stops just short of being satisfying.  We do get at least one scene where he shows his Raid roots with Stevens showcasing a smidgeon of Kung Fu flair.

Stevens is excellent.  If anyone of lesser talent was in the lead, the movie would’ve gone off the rails much sooner.  Lucy (Bohemian Rhapsody) Boynton lends fine support as Malcolm’s skeptical daughter.  Sheen is a lot of fun too.  If you saw his scenery chewing performance in Tron:  Legacy, you know a cult leader loony is well within his wheelhouse.  All three leads do a great job, but in the end, it’s not quite enough to push this one into the win column.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3D (2006) * ½

Night of the Living Dead is in the public domain, so virtually anyone can remake it and not have to pay any royalties to George Romero’s estate.  However, just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you SHOULD.  I mean Romero and Tom Savani even tried to remake it in 1990 and look how that turned out.

This remake starts with same bickering siblings going to a cemetery, but it becomes very different very quickly.  Instead of being immediately killed, Johnny (Ken Ward) basically ditches Barbara (Brianna Brown), Ben (Joshua DesRoches) is white, and Harry (Greg Travis) is now a pot farmer.  Also, it seems that the zombie outbreak is a local phenomenon, which lessens the impact of worldwide impending doom.  What the fuck?  

I guess making Ben white is the biggest problem.  Instead of making social commentary like Romero did, director Jeff Broadstreet opts to make another stupid zombie movie.  The updating of the classic moments from the original are also weak.  In this version, Johnny delivers his famous “They’re coming to get you Barbara” line via a text message.  I’m not making this up.  There are even moments that crib from Return of the Living Dead and some of the make-up look like zombies from that film.

I didn’t see this in its intended 3D format, but it didn’t look to me like much popped out of the screen.  All I can remember is a joint, a bullet, a shovel, and a few hands.  That’s not nearly enough to really justify the 3D if you ask me.

It’s not all bad though.  I liked the opening, which starts with the beginning of the original film before the camera pulls back to reveal it’s just playing on a television set.  The addition of Sid Haig as an ornery mortician is one of the few treats.  He skates by on his persona alone as he seems more annoyed that the dead are coming back to life than anything.  Some of his dialogue is good for a laugh too.  

The other bright spot is Cristen Michelle.  She plays a horny babe who gets caught having sex in a barn by the zombies and is attacked in the nude.  Her extended nude scene is reminiscent of the one by Betsy Rue in the My Bloody Valentine remake and is by far the best thing in the film.  

A handful of memorable moments aside, Night of the Living Dead 3D completely falls apart in the end.  The change of the original’s ending is downright infuriating, although admittedly this ending isn’t nearly as bad as Savani’s version.  Heck, Michelle’s nude scene alone gives this one the edge over that flick any day.

AKA:  House of the Dead 3D.  AKA:  Night of the Living Dead 2007.  AKA:  Zombie 3D.  

DEAD OR ALIVE (2001) **

Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive begins with an orgy of violence, fast-cutting editing, and off the wall imagery.  Most directors could take an idea like two guys having sex in a public bathroom until one of them has their throat cut and sprays blood all over the other one in a suggestive manner and make a whole scene about it.  Miike is so amped-up that this bit is just a random slice of side business in a larger piece of rapid-fire mayhem.

After a wild set-up, things become a bit more conventional.  A plot emerges about a ruthless yakuza gang violently staging a coup and waging a war on the old-timey traditional bosses.  Meanwhile, an honest cop tries to track them down and make sense of all the carnage.

Dead or Alive is only about a hundred minutes long, but it’s often a tough slog.  Despite that, there are moments of sheer insanity peppered throughout the flick that will make jaded exploitation movie vets sit up and take notice.  The opening alone is almost worth the price of admission.

Unfortunately, once it settles down, Dead or Alive turns into an interminable bore, alternating between long, slow-moving scenes where nothing much happens to perverse outbursts of disgustingness.  These punctuations certainly grab your attention.  If only you gave a shit about the stuff that occurred in between them.

Speaking of giving shits, there is a scene involving a hooker being drowned in her own enema excess in a kiddie pool that must be seen to be believed.  It’s that kind of movie.  The bad news is for every deranged snippet like this, you’ve got to sit through A LOT of dull yakuza drama.

AKA:  D.O.A.  

KILLER FISH (1979) * ½

An all-star cast flounder alongside killer piranha in this mishmash of Jaws rip-off and heist movie from Italian schlockmeister Antonio (Cannibal Apocalypse) Margheriti.  You would think an exploitation flick about man-eating fish attacking the likes of Lee Majors, Karen Black, and James Franciscus would be a sure thing.  Too bad the whole thing is so damned toothless.   

Franciscus masterminds an elaborate jewel heist in a beachside resort in Brazil.  While Majors, Black, and the rest of the crew are risking their lives for the diamonds, Franciscus is living it up back at the hotel playing backgammon.  Franciscus plans to cover his tracks by hiding the loot near a school of hungry piranha.  Naturally, Lee and Karen become living bait as the double and triple crosses begin to pile up. 

The cast mostly wasted.  Franciscus acts more snotty than menacing, and Black looks like she’s barely there.  We are also subjected to a thoroughly worthless subplot where Majors tries to woo a raspy-voiced model, played by Margaux Hemmingway.  

The stuff with the jewel thieves is pretty dull and all the backstabbing among the crew is predictable.  In fact, the piranha attacks are the only thing worth a damn.  In addition to scenes of the killer fish swarming around character actors and nipping at their heels, there’s a gnarly scene where the scuba-diving Black stumbles upon a couple of chewed up corpses.  These moments are fleeting in the long run as Killer Fish needed more sequences of this caliber to make it worthwhile. 

AKA:  The Naked Sun.  AKA:  Piranhas 2.  AKA:  Treasure of the Piranha.  

LORDS OF THE DEEP (1989) *

Before he became king of the world with Titanic, James Cameron got his start working for Roger Corman.  One of his first jobs was on Corman’s Star Wars rip-off, Battle Beyond the Stars.  Nearly a decade later, Corman was ripping off Cameron’s The Abyss with this mind-numbingly shitty flick.  

Like The Abyss, Lords of the Deep is about scientists who come into contact with a friendly, possibly alien underwater species.  For The Abyss, Cameron used the latest advancements in special effects technology.  For Lords of the Deep, Corman used what looks to be a boogie board with a wet blanket Duct-taped to it.  Other times, it looks like a Styrofoam hand puppet.

Seriously, I have seen some bad monsters in my time, but the so-called Lords of the Deep in this movie are among the worst.

The human villain is Bradford Dillman, whose big villainous act is to make the crew sign non-disclosure agreements.  Meanwhile, the lead scientist (Priscilla Barnes) wants to save the species.  She also spends a lot of time sticking her hand into some Nickelodeon slime and having 2001-inspired freak-out scenes.  

All of this is handled clumsily, and the good-natured Spielbergian ending will cause you to slap your forehead in disbelief.  It’s only 79 minutes, but it feels so much longer.  The underwater scenes are a complete joke too, and the subs all look like bath toys.

Dillman overacts to embarrassing levels.  It’s almost like he wandered in from a Shakespeare festival.  Barnes is equally awful as the hippie-dippy scientist.  The acting is so bad that when Roger Corman pops up for a small cameo as the head of the underwater operation, he accidentally manages to give the best performance in the entire movie.  

MURDER ON THE EMERALD SEAS (1974) ** ½

Sherwood Gates (Roberts Blossom) is an eccentric millionaire who holds an annual beauty pageant.  Unfortunately, a killer has been picking off the pageant winners for the past three years.  In an effort to discourage the killer, Gates moves the next pageant aboard a luxurious ocean liner.  The chief (Frank Logan) remains skeptical and sets out to nab the murderer by convincing a boyishly handsome detective (Robert Perault) to go undercover dressed in drag as one of the contestants. 

Murder on the Emerald Seas was directed by the great Alan Ormsby the same year he made the classic Deranged.  If you’re a fan of Ormsby’s work, you’ll enjoy spotting many of the familiar faces that appear in his other films.  There’s also cameo appearances by Henny Youngman and Johnny Weissmuller too, which are more random than anything.

Ormsby’s approach seems to be throw anything against the wall and see if it sticks.  There are comic cartoon title cards, visual representations of old (bad) jokes, and there are even moments that borrow shamelessly from the Keystone Kops.  The broad comedy often falls flat, but the healthy doses of nudity assure that you’ll never be bored.  

The scenes that hew close to a straight-up slasher work.  I liked the part where the killer (dressed in a clown costume) chases a nude body painting model through the ship while Dixieland jazz plays, as well as the Psycho homage.  As uneven as all this is, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Murder on the Emerald Seas never really comes together in the end.  What is surprising is that the film treats its gay and/or female impersonator characters in a (mostly) respectful manner, so it comes off feeling (slightly) more progressive that many of its contemporaries.  

AKA:  The Great Masquerade.  AKA:  The AC/DC Caper.  

ATLANTIC RIM (2013) **

Giant prehistoric monsters arise from the Atlantic Ocean and attack an oil rig.  America’s last line of defense is three knuckleheads in giant robots who battle the monsters under the sea.  When the monsters finally make it to the shoreline, the robots follow in hot pursuit, effectively blowing the lid off their top-secret organization.

Atlantic Rim is, of course, The Asylum’s cheapjack version of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim.  It’s obvious and clunky, but it’s far from the lowest rungs of The Asylum’s ladder.  It’s just competent enough to keep you watching and be marginally invested in, yet it’s not “bad” enough to make it a camp classic.  

The only real unintentional laughs come from seeing Dances with Wolves’ Graham Greene earning a paycheck as the general in charge of the operation.  The rest of the cast (which include “Treach” from Naughty by Nature) are barely characters and the love triangle subplot is perfunctory at best.  David Chokachi is especially obnoxious as “Red”, the cocky robo-pilot.  

Once the pilots get into their mech suits and begin pounding on monsters, Atlantic Rim is sort of fun.  There’s a part of my lizard brain that just eats this stuff up.  Is it dumb?  Yes, but it’s also mildly amusing.  I was also anticipating the effects to be much worse.  To my surprise, they manage to get the job done. 

Overall, Atlantic Rim won’t fool anyone into thinking they’re watching Guillermo Del Toro’s flick, but it doesn’t deserve to sink to the bottom of the ocean either.

AKA:  From the Sea.  AKA:  5,000 Fathoms Deep.  AKA:  Atlantic Rim:  World’s End.  AKA:  Attack from Beneath.  AKA:  Attack from the Atlantic Rim.  AKA:  Battle of Atlantis.  

CREED 2 (2018) ****

Creed was a one in a million shot.  I mean how can you make a Rocky movie without Rocky as the main character and make it work?  Somehow Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan delivered a film that was every bit as good, if not better than the other Rocky sequels.  Even with the runaway success of Creed, I walked into this sequel with a sense of trepidation.  I mean, how can you make lightning strike twice?  Like the main character, Creed 2 beats the odds.  

Creed 2 sort of functions as Rocky 4 Part 2.  Ivan Drago (Dolph Lungren), the man who killed Apollo Creed, brings his son Viktor (Florian Munteanu) to America to challenge Apollo’s son Adonis (Jordan) for the heavyweight championship of the world.  Adonis turns to his trainer (and the only one to defeat Drago) Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) for help.  And that’s where I’ll stop, because seeing how the plot unfolds is one of the movie’s many joys.

Creed 2 cherry picks the best elements of all the Rocky movies and weaves them into one rich tapestry.  The obvious one is Rocky 4, but there are also shades of 2, 3, and even 5 at play here.  Even if some of the plot seems a bit familiar, it’s still full of surprises that I wouldn’t dream of revealing. 

Creed was such a treasure.  I wondered how they’d ever top it.  That’s the secret of 2’s success.  It feels the same way.  Just as Adonis is living in the shadow of his father, Creed 2 is living in the shadow of the original.  Adonis, like the movie itself, realizes in order to escape that shadow, you must forge your own path.

Creed 2 keeps an eye in the rear-view mirror, honoring what came before, but never loses sight of the future as it blazes down its own road of discovery.  It’s a movie about fathers and sons and how the legacy of the father can lead to unrealistic expectations for the son.  It’s about trying to rewrite history while at the same time securing the future.  It’s about doing the right thing for the right reasons.  There are scenes that pull at your heartstrings and make you pump your fist; sometimes at the same time.  That is to say, it’s a Rocky movie, and a great one at that. 

The performances are stellar.  Jordan once again essays the role of Creed with confidence, swagger, and heart.  He’s especially good whenever he’s on screen with Tessa Thompson.  Their chemistry during their domestic scenes are the foundation of their journey together, one that I can’t wait to see flourish as the series goes on.  Stallone does another fine job as Rocky.  He has a little less to do here than he did in Creed, but he is nevertheless excellent, particularly when professing the guilt he still feels for not stopping Apollo’s fight with Drago.  Speaking of Drago, all I can say is that Dolph Lundgren is a revelation.  

God damn it.  I didn’t think it could happen.  Dolph Lundgren made me cry. 

Director Steven Caple, Jr. doesn’t do any of the long-take cinematic gymnastics of Ryan Coogler.  He brings his own style to the proceedings and carves out his own niche in the Rocky franchise.  He has made a film that stands shoulder to shoulder alongside the original as a shining example of what the Rocky movies, and what cinema itself, are all about.

Naturally, Rocky gets the best line of the movie when he says, “He broke things in me that ain’t never been fixed!”

LIQUID SKY (1983) **

Avant-garde, oddball, bizarre.  Those were the first three words I wrote down to describe Liquid Sky.  Even after writing that sentence, I’m having trouble to find the words to do this movie justice, but I’ll try.

Aliens looking for heroin land their ship (it’s the size of a dinner plate) on top of an apartment building in New York.  They observe a gaggle of weirdo performance art types doing drugs and having sex.  They soon determine the combination of sex and drugs adds to the high and wait till the punks, artsy-fartsy people, and hooligans are in the throes of passion to strike.  Meanwhile a scientist from Germany investigates the aliens and spies on the punks fornicating.

Anne Carlisle stars in the dual role of Margaret and Jimmy.  In the film’s most memorable scene, she gives herself (himself?) a blowjob in front of a bunch of partygoers.  It’s moments like this that keep you glued to Liquid Sky.  Even though you’re forced to wade through a LOT of crude, weird, and confounding stuff, there are just enough rewarding bits here to justify its cult status.

I guess one of the things that irks me about Liquid Sky is that it was consciously made to be a midnight movie.  It’s like the filmmakers looked at all the other cult films at the time and tried to make their own version of it.  There’s obviously John Waters, Andy Warhol, and Rocky Horror influences running throughout the picture, along with a punk rock type of attitude towards androgyny, rape, and necrophilia, but it never quite works.  With its garish lighting, colorful costumes, and purposefully absurd line readings of trashy dialogue like “I kill with my cunt!”, it’s easy to see why some cult film fanatics would take to it.    

Liquid Sky doesn’t endear itself to the audience by making most of the characters drug-addicted loonies.  The disjointed editing is also really distracting, and the irritating and repetitive score gets on your nerves as well.  I think I may have been able to handle all of that, warts and all, but the sheer oppressive length (112 minutes) ultimately sinks it.

It’s certainly visually appealing.  Some of the colorful, neon-bathed shots are trippy, but the infrared POV shots of the aliens are random and annoying.  It’s hard to take your eyes off it, even if it is way too long, aggressively weird, and sometimes dumb.

As a lover of cult films in general, Liquid Sky has been on my radar for a long time.  Now that I’ve finally seen it, I have to say I’m glad I saw it, and I probably don’t ever have to see it again.

SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY (1972) *

Santa’s sleigh gets stuck in the sand on a beach in Florida.  Some local kids try to help Santa by bringing him every kind of animal known to man to pull the sled out, but it’s no use.  Meanwhile, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn come floating by on their raft with their pet raccoon in tow.  At one point, it looks like it takes a bite out of Tom.  I hope Santa has a rabies shot in his bag.  Santa finally gives up trying to get out of the sand, so he tells the kids a long story about Jack and the Beanstalk to pass the time.  Finally, the Ice Cream Bunny shows up (without ice cream, I might add) to give Santa a ride back to the North Pole.

So basically, this whole movie is about someone frittering away an hour or so while they wait for a tow.

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is one of the worst Christmas movies I’ve ever seen, which is to say I’m sure it’ll become a yearly yuletide tradition in my home.  There are so many WTF moments here that your brain will have trouble cataloguing it all.  Take for instance the scene at the North Pole where Santa’s elves (children in pointy hats who sing badly dubbed songs) go to check on the reindeer and we see them walking around in a grassy field.  Apparently, climate change hit the North Pole.  Hard.  

There is a basic level of competence on display during the Jack and the Beanstalk sequence.  Even though the effects are crummy (like the rear screen projection to make the giant look big), the songs are terrible, and the props are laughable (the “beanstalk” is merely a rope with some greenery wrapped around it), director Barry (The Beast That Killed Women) Mahon at least can tell the story from A to B.  The Santa Claus wraparound scenes (which incredibly enough, only take up only about 15% of the actual running time) are spectacularly inept.  I mean, it appears that Santa has shit his pants in one scene and the editor STILL kept the scene in there.  Amazing.

Then there’s the Ice Cream Bunny.  Never mind that he never brings anyone any ice cream.  I can handle that.  It’s the fact that he looks so damned creepy that I can’t get over.  The scene where the Bunny slowly approaches the beach in his jalopy accompanied by the sound of air raid sirens is the stuff of nightmares, and when he slowly winks at the kids, it’s nothing short of horrifying.  

Incredibly enough, there’s ANOTHER version of this movie that substitutes Thumbelina for the Jack and the Beanstalk story.  I think I know what I’m watching come Christmas.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: MURDER PARTY (2007) *** ½

Before he wowed everyone with Green Room, Jeremy Saulnier made this surprising and fun horror flick.  It starts off with a very Carpenter vibe (especially during the opening scenes of kids trick-or-treating), before turning into something wholly unique and fresh.  It’s truly the work of a gifted filmmaker who is having a blast springing surprises and twists on his audience every chance he gets.

A likeable nerd (Chris Sharp) is content on spending Halloween alone with his cat.  He changes his plans when he finds an invitation to a “murder party” on the street.  He then makes a costume out of cardboard and shows up to an abandoned warehouse where a group of weirdoes in costumes kidnap him, tie him up, and inform him that they will kill him at the stroke of midnight.

Murder Party starts off like gangbusters and Saulnier rarely takes his foot of the gas.  It’s a thin premise, but the running time is only 79 minutes long.  Saulnier’s obviously smart enough to know when to quit and gets as much out of the (mostly) single setting as possible.  Even in the claustrophobic location, Saulnier is economical enough to make the production feel much bigger, and his deft style keeps you on your toes.

Once the axes fly and chainsaws start revving, it’s a gory good time, but even some of the stalling tactics (like the game of “Extreme Truth or Dare”) are clever and fun.  The last act, which takes place outside of the warehouse location is like going down a rabbit hole of nightmarish lunacy.  Saulnier also makes a handful of funny jabs at the hipster art scene during this section of the film, most of which manage to score a bull’s eye.

As good as a debut as this was, Saulnier amazingly just got better.  

THE MAN FROM S.E.X. (1979) ** ½

Gareth Hunt takes over for Nicky Henson as secret agent Charles Bind, “Number One” in this sequel to Her Majesty’s Top Gun.  This time out, Number One must stop a corrupt Senator (Gary Hope) from replacing the Vice President with an evil double.  He also contends with the Senator’s ruthless henchman, Jensen Fury (Nick Tate), who’s just itching to prove he’s a quicker draw than Number One.

It’s always fun when someone from the legitimate James Bond series appear in these campy 007 knockoffs.  In this case, it’s Geoffrey Keen playing the M role.  There are lots of Bond tropes that are lovingly sent up.  We have a Q-like inventor named Merlin, a sexy love interest with a double entendre for a name (“Carlotta Muff”), karate fights, oddball henchmen, cool gadgets (including a flying car), and a Bond-style opening credits sequence.  (The song itself doesn’t sound like it would belong in a Bond movie, but it’s quite rocking.) 

As far as Bond spoofs go, you can do much worse.  Although, it’s not exactly a spoof, but rather another version of a Bond movie done on a smaller budget, with more desperate puns, weirder gadgets, and a few topless scenes.  Some of the highlights include a car equipped with a buzz saw, exploding women, and flamethrower lighters.  The best scene is when a stripper with razor blades fastened to her tassels begins twirling them so fast that they become deadly buzz saws.  Number One protects himself by holding up a wooden table and she literally turns it into a toothpick!  To which he quips, “You wouldn’t happen to have an olive?” 

She replies, “No but I have a pair!”

Genius. 

The movie really fires on all cylinders during the first act, but the fun slowly dries up as it goes along.  I guess you can say that about many legitimate Bond pictures though.  The third act is weak too, which is probably the only thing preventing it from receiving a *** rating.  The good news is it’s funnier and more effective than Her Majesty’s Top Gun. 

AKA:  Licensed to Love and Kill.  AKA:  Undercover Lover.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: MANDY (2018) ***

You know Nicolas Cage is going to be awesome in Mandy when his first line of dialogue is a knock-knock joke about Erik Estrada.  He also casually name drops Marvel characters into his pillow talk with his wife (Andrea Riseborough).  He’s kind of broody for most of the movie, but once director Panos (Beyond the Black Rainbow) Cosmatos finally lets Cage off his leash (or out of his cage, if you prefer) he’s often amazing.  No one can say a simple line like, “You ripped my shirt” and make it sound like a wounded, emotionally-unraveled battle cry.  If you think he’s wacko then, wait till you see him high on zombie mescaline.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Cage is a lumberjack named Red Miller who adores his wife Mandy (Riseborough).  A cult of religious fanatics sends a gruesome mutant biker gang to kidnap and kill her.  They leave Red for dead, but he returns to avenge his loved one armed with a freshly forged battle axe and a case of pure CAGE RAGE.

Imagine if Clive Barker did a biker movie and that might give you an idea what to expect.  (Hellraiser’s Angels on Wheels?)  Cosmatos’ style is visually dazzling.  He often fills the frame with eye-popping colorful imagery and lots of lens flares, which make the film look like the love child of Dario Argento and Steven Spielberg.  In addition, there’s a kitchen sink approach that makes it unique.  Cosmatos uses everything from anime-style animation to goofy faux ‘80s commercials and what only can be labeled as Heavy Metal Album Imagery to keep us on our toes.  

Honestly, there was no reason whatsoever for this to be two hours long.  Some of Cosmatos’ tangents are less successful than others.  The deliberate pacing also helps to take some of the wind out of the movie’s sails, particularly in the second act.

For all its faults, there’s still nothing quite like Mandy.  It may be uneven, but when it cooks, it’s with an open flame.  Besides, any movie that features Nicolas Cage locked in a chainsaw duel to the death is OK by me.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: DON’T KILL IT (2017) ** ½

Don’t Kill It is what happens when you let the director of The Convent, Mike Mendez direct a Dolph Lundgren DTV action movie.  That is to say, it’s a pretty junky, but sort of fun action-horror hybrid.  Mendez was also able to convince Dolph to give one of his most spry performances in a while, for which we should all be grateful.

A hunter finds a golden artifact in the woods and becomes possessed by a demon.  He then goes on a killing spree in his small town.  Every time the host body is killed, the demon hops into the person who killed it.  Hence the title, Don’t Kill It.  Dolph is the demon hunter who wants to trap the spirit permanently before it wipes out the entire town.

The plot is an awful lot like another Lundgren flick, The Minion.  At least this one has a sense of style, a handful of memorable moments, and some gory set pieces.  Mendez has a Raimi-esque way of filming the demon carnage.  He handles all the shotgun blasts, meat cleavers to the face, and heads shoved into boiling water with aplomb.  I also liked the way he edited in the little snippets of Lundgren’s past experiences as a demon hunter, which helps to jazz up what would’ve otherwise been a thoroughly ordinary exposition scene.

The centerpiece is the sequence when a possessed guy starts laying into people with an ax during a town meeting.  This scene is a lot of fun and features some over the top gore.  Not only does the demon change bodies, it changes weapons as the killers use axes, guns, chainsaws, and even a milk truck to take out their victims.

After a crackling start, Don’t Kill It begins to spark and sputter as it enters the second half.  The scenes of Dolph teaming up with an FBI agent to track down the demon are sort of rote.  The movie also gets a little repetitive as the plot keeps finding new ways of having stupid people interrupt Dolph by killing the demon and allowing it to enter their body.  The last act is also kind of weak, especially when you compare it to the stellar town hall sequence from earlier in the film.  

Dolph is quite good.  He’s looser, and more relaxed than usual, and can rattle off demonic exposition in an offhand, funny manner.  He gets a funny introduction scene where he beats up a guy in a bar and then buys him some ice cream.  There’s another memorable bit where the cops think he’s crazy and try to pull him out of the room, but he’s too big and strong to budge.  This is one of his best performances in a long time.  

I can’t say Don’t Kill It ever quite clicks.  I can say it’s just good enough to make me want to see another Mendez/Lundgren team-up.  I just hope the next time the script is a bit tighter.

AKA:  Dolph Lundgren:  Zombie Hunter.  AKA:  The Demon Hunter.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: GET OUT (2017) ** ½

I’ve heard so much about Jordan Peele’s Get Out for over a year now that I finally had to get off my ass and watch it.  Maybe I should’ve seen it when it first came out because it left me kind of cold.  After months of non-stop hype, huge box office numbers, and even Oscar nominations (and one win for Best Screenplay!?!?!), I guess I was expecting… more?

Allison Williams brings her African-American boyfriend Daniel Kaluuya to meet her parents (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener).  After they get all the awkwardness out of the way, Kaluuya still feels out of place, especially when he notices that the only other black people around (the maid and the groundskeeper) act a little off.  Eventually, he comes to realize there is something sinister going on and that Williams’ family have plans for him.  

The horror elements are more subdued and subtler than I expected.  Peele instead goes for more of a paranoiac slow burn.  It’s also more of a social statement than full-blown horror movie, which left this die-hard horror fan a tad disappointed.  The horror elements don’t really take off until the last reel, which is admittedly gripping.  It’s just that by then it’s too little, too late.  Because of that, I think Get Out might’ve worked better as a short or as part of a horror anthology.  Heck, it would’ve played like gangbusters at 80 minutes, but at 104 minutes, it just a long way to go to get to the good stuff.

Peele won an Oscar for Best Screenplay, but that’s more confounding than anything as there’s nothing here that really seems all that Oscar worthy.  Especially when it’s essentially just a modernized version of The Stepford Wives.  There’s also nothing particularly scary about it either, unless you count the uncomfortable scenes of our hero interacting with his girlfriend’s family as “scary”.

The performers really carry the movie, even when it’s dragging its feet during the middle section.  Kayuula has a strong screen presence and has a lot of chemistry with Williams.  Whitford and Keener are excellent as they pretty much steal the whole show as the nutzo parents.  

Peele is currently producing a new redo of The Twilight Zone.  I think he’s perfectly suited to the job as he has a keen knack for springing last-minute plot twists.  With the tighter time frame of a television show, I think he’s capable of delivering something memorable.  With Get Out, it’s just dawdles way too much until it gets to its well-executed finale.