MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL (1997) **

I’ve been wanting to watch some Clint Eastwood movies I hadn’t seen before.  I chose this one based on the strength of the cast.  I mean who wouldn’t want to see John Cusack teamed up with Christopher Plummer?   

Cusack stars as a New York reporter who goes to Savannah, Georgia to do a story on a lavish Christmas party held by the eccentric Plummer.  During the party, his lover (Jude Law) storms in demanding money.  Later, he winds up dead and Plummer is charged for murder.  Cusack decides to stick around and cover the story. 

I never read the book this was based on, but supposedly, Cusack’s character was an invention of the screenwriters.  He’s only there to act as a tour guide to the various oddballs and eccentrics that populate the movie.  One guy walks an invisible dog, an old lady performs voodoo ceremonies in a cemetery, a trans nightclub performer constantly hits on Cusack, and an old coot carries around a vial of poison and threatens to taint the town’s water supply.  I don’t know if they were going for Twin Peaks Down South or what.  All I know is that the elements never quite gel.   

The reporter device doesn't really pay off.  It hinges on people telling Cusack information about other character instead of showing us what they’re all about.  This gossipy stuff might’ve worked in the book, but this a movie.  You have to show, not tell.  

It’s mildly amusing in the first half when we’re being introduced to the assorted bunch of colorful characters.  It’s when the film settles down into its long-winded courtroom scenes that much of the energy drains out of it.  Ultimately, the plot is just too dawdling, and the pacing far too languid to make it entertaining. 

This was an odd choice for Clint.  It kind of goes against the grain of his strengths and sensibilities.  Maybe he was trying to stretch as a director and show he could do more Oscar bait-y type of material.  To quote Dirty Harry, a man’s got to know his limitations. 

Plummer is so aloof that it becomes hard to root for his character.  Since you never really care about him, it's consequently hard to care whether he’s guilty or not.  In one scene he has a monologue about no one understanding his special “bond” with a much younger man.  Life doesn’t imitate art much, does it? 

Cusack gets the best line of the movie when he describes the situation to his editor:  “It’s like Gone with the Wind on mescaline!”

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: SADAKO VS. KAYAKO (2016) ** ½

If you’re going to do a vs. movie, you must make sure the opponents are evenly matched.  King Kong vs. Godzilla had two giant monsters facing off against each other.  Freddy vs. Jason found two of the premier slashers of their era going head to head.  Alien vs. Predator had two extraterrestrial beasties locking horns.  For Sadako vs. Kayako, we have the little ghost girl having a bad hair day from The Ring going up against the little ghost girl having a bad hair day from The Grudge.  This is about as evenly matched as it gets, folks. 

There’s even a little bit of Urban Legend here as the heroines have a professor that teaches a class on urban legends.  He offers his students cash money for proof that the cursed video from The Ring exists.  If only Rebecca Gayheart was lurking around in a parka, it could’ve been a triple-header. 

Anyway, our two heroines find a VCR at a dirt mall that just so happens to have the mythical tape in it.  Naturally, they watch it.  In a brilliant stroke, one of the girls is busy texting on her phone so she misses the whole thing!  Of course, her friend is doomed to die in two days, so they ask an unconventional exorcist to help them lift the curse.  He suggests performing the exorcism in the haunted house from The Grudge and letting the two evil spirits duke it out. 

Like both franchises, the pacing is awfully slow.  The constant cutting back and forth between The Ring and The Grudge’s storylines also takes a lot of the wind out of the movie’s sails.  I will say The Ring scenes work better than The Grudge scenes, but there is one good part where the Boy Who Meows Like a Cat from The Grudge attacks a couple of bullies.  You’ve also got to wait a long time before both curses fight each other in the final showdown and when it finally does happen, it’s a bit of a letdown.   

Despite these annoyances, this is still a lot better than any of the previous films in both respective franchises, so that’s a small victory at least.  It doesn’t take itself very seriously, which is a blessing.  Both franchises hinged on the audience’s belief that a little ghost girl having a bad hair day was scary, which, it isn’t.  This one kind of senses the stupidity inherent in the premise(s) and decides to have a little fun with it.  I’m not saying it completely works, but I’ll be damned… I ALMOST liked it.

MANBORG (2011) * ½

Faux-grindhouse throwbacks are risky propositions.  Sometimes I wonder if these things are just an excuse for people to make a bad movie on purpose.  If that was the makers of Manborg’s intentions, all I can say is mission accomplished.

In the future, the world goes to war with Hell.  A soldier is killed on the battlefield and turned into a cyborg by a mad scientist.  He is sent to fight in gladiator games against Hell’s minions before banding together with a few fellow fighters to stage an uprising.

The effects are purposely terrible, which gets old quick.  It’s like the movie thinks haphazardly using obvious greenscreen effects is automatically hilarious.  As a result, the whole thing looks like a shitty Sega CD game.  The stop motion animation is better than the crappy CGI, but it's still not very good.

The dubbing is bad on purpose too, but it’s never so out of whack that it elicits a laugh.  It’s no Kung Pow:  Enter the Fist in that department.  The only laughs come from the villain’s attempt to woo one of the women prisoners he has a crush on.  It’s odd that the intentional humor works rather well, but the calculated use of shoddy effects and low budget techniques falls flat.

There might have been enough material here to pick and choose from to make a three-minute faux grindhouse trailer.  At seventy minutes, it’s all rather insufferable.  If you stick around after the credits, you’ll be treated to a fake trailer for Biocop, which looks like a cross between Maniac Cop and The Incredible Melting Man.  It contains as many laughs in three minutes as Manborg did in seventy, which pretty much proves my point.  At least Biocop knew when to quit. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MISS OSBOURNE (1981) **

The potentially potent pairing of Udo Kier and Walerian (The Beast) Borowczyk is undone by turgid pacing and sloppy screenwriting.  Kier stars as Dr. Jekyll, who is throwing an engagement party in his home.  Naturally, Mr. Hyde crashes the party and starts raping guests (both men and women).   While the police comb the area looking for Hyde, Jekyll’s fiancée (Marina Pierro) catches a glimpse of her hubby to-be changing personalities.  Wanting to be with her man no matter what, she pleads with him to let her use his potion to unleash her hidden freaky persona. 

The gruesome scenes of Hyde raping unfortunate partygoers are guaranteed to shock.  I mean his dick is so big it goes through their ass and out their belly.  In another memorable scene, Hyde ties up Patrick Magee and forces him to watch while he has his way with his daughter (who unlike the other guests is more than eager to participate). 

These scenes certainly grab your attention.  Too bad the first half hour is so boring.  Seriously, nothing happens.  Even when Hyde does show up, it's only in frustrating glimpses.  

Fans of Udo are likely to be disappointed by this one, seeing as he did such a great job as Dracula and Frankenstein in the Andy Warhol movies.  Here, he’s not given a whole lot to do as Dr. Jekyll.  Even worse is the fact that another actor plays Mr. Hyde.  I’m sure he could’ve delivered a great performance as Hyde, but Borowczyk doesn’t even give him an opportunity to strut his stuff!  It's unfortunate too because it would’ve been interesting to see what Udo could’ve done with the character.  The guy they got to play Hyde... well… let's just say he's no Udo Kier and leave it at that.  

AKA:  Bloodlust.  AKA:  The Blood of Dr. Jekyll.  AKA:  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  AKA:  The Bloodbath of Dr. Jekyll.  AKA:  The Experiment.  AKA:  Dr. Jekyll and His Women.  AKA:  Dr. Jekyll and His Wives.  

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: HIDE AND GO SHRIEK (1988) ***

Most slasher films feature killers stalking teens in a place they shouldn’t be.  Usually in these movies that means the woods, an abandoned house, or in a cemetery.  In the case of Hide and Go Shriek it's... THE FURNITURE STORE. 

The teens spend the night in a furniture store for a party unaware there’s a scary ex-con who lives inside.  One of them says, “I KNOW! Let's play hide and seek!” and they take off in every which direction to hide and/or make out.  Since they’re all split up, it gives the killer a perfect opportunity to do some hacking and slashing.  

A lot of this is just plain silly.  Like, why is there such an abundance of mannequins in a furniture store?  They try to explain it away with one awkward line of dialogue, but you get the feeling this was originally written to take place in a mall, but a crummy furniture shop was all the location manager could afford to rent.  Then again, if there wasn’t a mess of mannequins laying around we wouldn’t have the sweet scene where Sean (“Karate’s Bad Boy” Mike Barnes from Karate Kid 3) Kanan gets impaled with a mannequin arm. 

Director Skip Schoolnik (the guy who edited Halloween 2) delivers the goods in a competent manner.  He handles the stalking scenes efficiently enough and I liked the gimmick of the killer dressing up like his victims to lure in another potential teen.  The T & A quotient is also above average for the genre’s standards.   

It’s in the third act that the film reveals itself to be something truly special.  The unmasking of the killer is positively jaw-dropping.  More surprising is the way the sensitive subject is handled.  It’s a lot more progressive than what you’d normally see in this sort of thing.  The killer is also given one heck of a demise.  Naturally, he comes back for the gratuitous set-up for a sequel.  I for one am a bit sad it never happened.  

AKA:  Close Your Eyes and Pray.

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (1976) **

Catharine Burgess stars as a bored, frigid housewife who becomes obsessed with an old mirror in her attic.  One night, she masturbates in front of the mirror and a man comes out of it and fingers her.  Jamie Gillis is the “demon” in the mirror that takes the form of her late father and beckons her to join him on the other side of the mirror. 

Through the Looking Glass is a XXX movie that tries to serve a dual purpose.  It wants to be a psychological drama and a porno flick all rolled in one.  None of the elements really click.  There’s some Alice in Wonderland imagery here, although probably not as much as the title would lead you to think.  Burgess has a lesbian scene with a woman who runs off and says, “I’m late” and there’s a Mad Hatter tea party when the guests fuck a woman with a carrot.  That’s about it though. 

The non-porno scenes are kind of dull and it takes a good twenty minutes to get to the first explicit sex scene.  Even though the scenes revolve around kinky fetishes such as incest and pissing, none of them are particularly hot.  There is also an enema scene, but it’s nowhere near as graphic as the ones found in Water Power, which also featured Gillis.   

Much of the problem lies with Burgess.  She just never really engages the audience.  I did like the scene where the camera actually goes inside of Burgess’ pussy though.  The movie fitfully comes alive when Gillis is on screen.  He has a demented charisma that everyone in the cast lacks.   

Through the Looking Glass’ artistic aspirations are muddled at best, and its turn into horror territory in the third act is even less successful.  If you can get past the sluggish pacing, you’ll be rewarded with a handful of memorable moments.  Overall, it’s just too uneven to be completely successful as either art or porn. 

The effective score was by none other than Harry Manfredini of Friday the 13^th fame.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL (1984) **

This is one of the most infamous no-budget shot-on-video horror movies of the ‘80s.  Like many videotaped wonders, it contains slipshod editing, amateurish performances, and poor audio and picture quality (the latter adds to the overall feel of the film).  The music is pretty good though. 

A lonely God-fearing woman goes into an antique store and buys a ventriloquist dummy.  The puppet (who looks like Lester from Willie Tyler and Lester with dreadlocks) watches her shower and rapes her.  She starts to like it though (she even calls him “Mr. Wonderful”) and soon she becomes a sex-starved trollop.   

Much of Black Devil Doll from Hell is slow and excruciating.  The dialogue scenes are so long and boring that the camera starts wandering around the room filming walls and knickknacks instead of the performers.  If you can get past these long scenes (which take up the bulk of the movie), you’ll be treated to some jaw-dropping antics.   

The money shots of the puppet humping are hilarious.  (“How do you like that bitch?”)  They do tend to go on too long.  You have to wonder if the director had some kind of puppet sex fetish.  These scenes, long as they are, are worth the price of admission.   

It’s those non-puppet scenes that are a problem.  The running time is 90 minutes, but it could’ve easily been cut down to 75.  Okay, 45.  I mean the long disco dancing scene could’ve been excised completely and no one would’ve known the difference.  I would recommend it, but you’re probably better off just watching the puppet fucking highlights and forgetting the rest of it.  If you do decide to watch it in its entirety… well… you were warned.