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!”