BLACK WATER (2018) * ½

Jean-Claude Van Damme wakes up in a submarine being used as an off-shore black site for CIA detainees.  He has no memory how he got there, but luckily Dolph Lundgren is in the cell next to him to jog his memory.  Turns out he’s a former agent who lost a valuable thumb drive.  Crooked agents board the sub looking to silence Van Damme permanently.  JCVD naturally gets the upper hand and sets out to escape.

Those hoping for a legitimate Van Damme-Lundgren team-up will be sorely disappointed.  Even though their faces are side by side on the DVD, Dolph’s interactions with Van Damme are precious and few.  Dolph’s appearances are frustratingly fleeting, and his bemused, aloof, and entertaining performance gives us glimpses of what could’ve been.  Van Damme gives a solid performance all things considered; it’s just that it pales in comparison next to his recent work in the Kickboxer remake (and its sequel).  Video Vacuum favorite Patrick Kilpatrick (who was also in Van Damme’s Death Warrant) also turns up as the CIA agent, but like Lundgren, he’s sorely underutilized.

Black Water gets off to a promising start.  The idea of a sub being used as a government black site is certainly intriguing enough.  Too bad the plot is belabored, the pacing is sluggish, and the running time is needlessly inflated.  

The claustrophobic sub setting doesn’t help matters either.  Much of the suspense relies on having the machine gun-toting villains miss Van Damme from nearly point-blank range, which takes some of the fun out of it.  The scenes that take place outside of the sub work much better.  (I liked it when Van Damme lands on a car and shoots a guy in the head.)  I just wish Van Damme had been given more of an opportunity to use some of his Kung Fu skills rather than leaning so heavily on the close-quarters shootouts.  Whenever Van Damme is stuck aboard the sub, Black Water sinks.

AKA:  Steel Thunder.

DEMOLITION UNIVERSITY (1999) **

Kevin S. (Night of the Demons) Tenney’s uninspired sequel to Jim Wynorski’s surprisingly fun Demolition High is another Die Hard variation with Corey Haim in the lead.  This time out, he tags along with Ami Dolenz on a class field trip.  When terrorists take the students hostage, it’s up to Corey to stop them.  

Despite the title, this doesn’t even take place at college.  Instead, it’s at a boring power plant where the terrorists try to poison the local drinking water.  Haim was entertaining in the last movie, so it’s befuddling that he gets less screen time this time around.  Disappointingly, he doesn’t do any of the MacGyver Jr. type of booby traps like he did in the original.  Instead, he mostly relies on dumb luck to take out the bad guys, which diminishes the fun.  Haim and Dolenz are pretty good together though, which makes you wish they had better material to work with.

Like the original, Demolition University suffers from a weak villain (Todd Allen).  The good news is that Robert Forster is excellent as the Army colonel who is stuck outside the plant negotiating with the terrorists over a walkie-talkie.  These scenes are usually the weakest in any Die Hard rip-off, but Forster’s cagey performance makes them rather engaging.  It’s definitely a lot more fun than the tired cat-and-mouse scenes with Haim dodging terrorists. We also have Laraine Newman as the professor who gets kidnapped.  She isn’t given anything particularly memorable to do, but it’s nice to know she got a paycheck out of all this.

Allen gets the best line though when he says, “Look what we have here… A Mexican standoff.  Or, as they say in Mexico, ‘A standoff!’”

AKA:  Demolition U.

THE THIN MAN GOES HOME (1944) ** ½

The fifth Thin Man adventure finds Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) returning to Nick’s hometown to visit his parents.  His crusty father (Harry Davenport) is still smarting that his son never went into the family business and takes every opportunity to mention it.  When a man is murdered on their doorstep, Nick takes it upon himself to solve the crime to show up his old man.

Having Nick and Nora take their antics out of the city prevents the series from becoming stale.  The way small town gossip expedites the case is amusing, as is the colorful town characters whose various skeletons in the closet help to complicate matters.  After too many movies of interchangeable thugs in fedoras, this was a nice change of pace. 

Richard (Jailhouse Rock) Thorpe takes over directing duties for W.S. Van Dyke and for the most part, he does a fine job.  He’s able to wring plenty of atmosphere from the night time scenes and moves the camera around a lot more than Van Dyke ever did.  This certainly gives the film a look that distinguishes it from the other entries in the series.

Powell and Loy’s banter is as sharp as its ever been, even if the film is at its best when Nick is off on his own cracking the case.  This time around, they drink cider instead of martinis (due to the wartime rationing of alcohol), so if you love their inebriated antics, you might feel a bit shortchanged with this installment.  They still have their dog Asta, who has one or two funny moments, but their son Nick Jr. is nowhere to be seen.

The Thin Man Goes Home isn’t perfect by any means, but it’s the best entry since the first one.  Although the plot spins its wheels occasionally, Powell and Loy’s performances help it over the rough patches.  The final wrap up of the plot goes on too long and the culprit is predictable.  Really, the same can be said for any of the Thin Man films.

THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS (2018) *** ½

Eli Roth is one of my favorite directors working today.  When it was announced he was making a kids’ movie with Jack Black, I immediately thought the worst.  I guess I imagined it was going to be like a Goosebumps redux or something.  As it turns out, I needn’t had worried.  The House with a Clock in its Walls is an Eli Roth picture through and through.  

Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) is a misfit kid who goes to live with his weird uncle Johnathan (Jack Black) after the death of his parents.  He eventually comes to realize that his uncle is a warlock and Lewis begs Johnathan to teach him the family trade.  Lewis meddles with a forbidden spell and accidentally awakens a dead warlock (Kyle MacLachlan) bent on destroying the world.  It’s then up to Lewis, Johnathan, and his witchy neighbor Florence (Cate Blanchett) to team up and stop him.

When Roth makes a kids’ movie, he doesn’t fuck around.  If you thought this was going to be watered down, you’d needn’t worry.  Even though people aren’t torn apart or gratuitously tortured, there are still tons of creepy moments here and plenty of Roth’s trademark black humor on display.  

The difference with this and Jack Black’s previous kids’ horror movie, Goosebumps is that Roth plays the horror with a straight face.  We get a creepy automaton attack, an atmospheric scene set in a graveyard, and the bit with the withered old demon in the forest is just as effective as anything in Roth’s R-rated arsenal.  Even the more outlandish moments have an icky vibe to them that most directors wouldn’t even think about applying to a “kids’ movie”.  (I’m thinking specifically about the Jack-Black-as-a-baby scene.)  His wicked sense of humor shines through too as there is a gym class scene that is flat-out hysterical.  

Is some of this a little too broad?  Yes, unfortunately.  I for one could’ve done without the shitting topiary griffin.  However, the film is so jam-packed with eye-popping visuals and effective moments that it’s easy to dismiss some of the clunkier passages.

The performances are uniformly excellent, which help further elevate the film from being your typical kids’ stuff.  Black is having a lot of fun in a tailor-made role that simultaneously allows him to run rampant while remaining an inspiring role model for a little kid.  Blanchett is her usual awesome self and gives her character a measured balance of cantankerous wit and tragic loss that few performers could’ve pulled off.  She’s just as good here as she was in any of her Oscar-nominated (and winning) roles.

The secret to Roth’s success is that he doesn’t pander to kids.  Sure, there is some silliness here, but his aim is to make you jump during the horrific moments.  My daughter, whose two favorite movies are Little Shop of Horrors and Beetlejuice ate it up.  The House with a Clock in its Walls is very much in the vein of those films.  They’re funny, fun, fast-moving, and contain just enough gruesome delights to please horror fans of every age.

LITTLE DRAGON MAIDEN (1983) ***

A noble household takes in a reckless beggar they find poisoned in the streets.  The lady of the house feels responsible for his father’s death, so she urges her father to teach him Kung Fu.  During his training, the beggar is beaten senseless and leaves the house with debilitating injuries.  He is nursed back to health by the magical “Dragon Girl” who eventually agrees to train him.  This causes friction with her clan, who forbid handing down their teachings to men.

For the first hour or so, you’ll swear Little Dragon Maiden is just like every other Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movie you’ve ever seen.  It’s got guys in flowing robes punching each other, old beggars doing stupid comic relief shtick, training montages, beautiful women getting into fights in restaurants, and scenes of people flying around on wires.  The action is well done for the most part.  The choreography is decent, although it pales in comparison to some of the Shaw Brothers’ best stuff.  The scenes with the cool weaponry, like the spinning boomerang buzz saw, is more fun than the hand to hand stuff.  

Then, after about an hour, the acid starts to kick in and Little Dragon Maiden turns into an entirely different sort of animal.  Speaking of animals, this is probably the first movie I’ve ever seen that has a Kung Fu Chicken in it.  Yes, you read that right.  A Kung Fu Chicken.  It might come a little late in the game, but when the bodies start dropping, the Kung Fu Chicken starts tossing swords, heads get decapitated, people are cut in half lengthwise, and enemies start exploding, insanity rules.  I guess the fact that it was directed by Hua (The Super Infra-Man) Shan should’ve told me this wasn’t going to be just an ordinary Kung Fu flick.

Much of this is out of whack.  The term “Uneven” doesn’t even begin to do it justice.  The fantasy elements are ill-fitting with the more traditional Kung Fu scenes.  While the stuff with the Dragon Girl is handled well enough, her story is just no match for the hero’s run-ins with the six-foot Kung Fu Chicken in the third act.  If you have any problems making it through the first hour or so, trust me, hang in there.  Those Kung Fu Chicken scenes are something to see.  I’m not saying the Kung Fu Chicken saves the movie or anything, it’s just… okay… it saves the movie.

You know, just when I think I’ve seen it all… I haven’t.  

I don’t even know why they bothered to call this Little Dragon Maiden.  They should’ve called it Kung Fu Chicken.  It would’ve made a billion dollars domestic.  Easily.  Heck, the little dragon maiden isn’t even a real dragon lady.  The Kung Fu Chicken is a literal chicken who knows Kung Fu… and a six-foot tall one at that.

SHOCK CINEMA VOLUME 2 (1991) ***

The second installment in Scream Queen Brinke Stevens’ Shock Cinema series is even better than the first.  The format varies slightly from the template of its predecessor.  This time, Brinke interviews an eclectic pool of subjects known for their work in front of and behind the camera.  The range of talent runs from Scream Queens (Melissa Moore) to screenwriters (Ted Newsom) and special effects artists (Michael Burnett).  

Brinke gets more screen time in this volume, which is always a good thing.  I especially liked her intro, which takes place in a video store (where several of her films are prominently displayed).  The highlight is her face to face interview with Forrest J. Ackerman in his Ackermansion.  Some might be disappointed that Ackerman talks more about his film appearances than the creation of his Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, but I’m sure he got a kick out of it.  Not only is the interview (which occurs about halfway through) fun, it also helps to break up the talking head format a bit.

There is a wealth of interesting stories here.  Director Gary Graver talks about getting cheated out of money from distributors, Robert Quarry has some good anecdotes about the making of Count Yorga, and Deanna Lund bemoans the use of body doubles.  (She doesn’t mention the title by name, but I can only assume she was talking about her role in the immortal Elves.)  The most flabbergasting tidbit:  Hearing Newsom being touted as the screenwriter for “the upcoming Spider-Man movie” (although he claims he blew all his Spider-Man money making his own film). 

DIABOLIK (1968) ** ½

Mario Bava’s eye-popping, colorful, mod, but frustratingly uneven psychedelic adventure plays like a mash-up of Batman and James Bond.  Both franchises were ultra-hip at the time, and fans of their respective series will probably have fun spotting how Bava liberally sprinkles their influences about the screen.  It’s nowhere near as good as some of Bava’s horror films of the decade, however, it’s neat to see what he could accomplish with a broader canvas and a bigger budget.

John Philip Law (who appeared in producer Dino De Laurentiis’ other big budget comic book movie of 1968, Barbarella) stars as Diabolik, a daring thief who lives in an underground lair with his sexy girlfriend/assistant (Marisa Mell).  The cops try to entrap him by putting a valuable emerald necklace on display.  Diabolik easily snatches it but finds himself behind a rock and a hard place when the leader of a criminal syndicate (Adolfo Celi) kidnaps his girlfriend, hoping to make a switch for the necklace.

Diabolik is fun in fits and starts.  It’s at its best during the sequences when Law dons a skintight outfit and dangles perilously from rooftops and castle walls.  I also dug the parts that shamelessly rip off Batman, such as the scene where Diabolik sabotages a press conference by using “Exhilarating Gas”, as well as his Batcave-inspired hideout (where he makes love to Mell in a pile full of money).

The biggest stumbling block is the character of Diabolik himself.  As portrayed by Law, he’s more or less an emotionless cypher that draws no sympathy from the audience.  I guess they were trying to make him into a badass antihero, but Law’s wooden performance does very little to make you root for him.  

AKA:  Danger:  Diabolik.