PIRANHA (1995) ***

Long before Alexander Aja’s wild and wooly Piranha remake, we got this remake of Joe Dante’s classic from director Scott (Midnight Tease) Levy.  It was part of Roger Corman Presents, a Showtime series that consisted mostly of remakes of Corman’s old titles, with a few originals tossed in there to pad out the season.  The remakes that tried to revamp the classic Corman movies were met with varying degrees of success.  For every ho-hum entry like the Humanoids from the Deep remake, there was a fun one like Wasp Woman to balance things out.  This is one of the good ones.

The cast for this thing is pretty phenomenal.  We have William Katt, Alexandra Paul, Mila Kunis (making her screen debut), Monte Markham, Soleil Moon Frye, James Karen, Lorissa McComas, Leland Orser, and Don Pedro Colley just to name a few.  Even if all of this feels overly familiar (ever the thriftster, Corman even recycled the fish attack scenes from the original movie), the cast alone keeps you watching.

Scream Queen McComas plays the skinny-dipping first victim who who makes an Attack of the Crab Monsters reference before being eaten.  Paul is the private investigator sent to look for her.  She teams up with tracker Katt and together, they stumble upon the Army test site where the piranhas were being experimented on.  They accidentally unleash the deadly fish into the river, which just so happens to lead to a summer camp where Katt’s daughter (Kunis) is attending.  

As far as the Piranha franchises goes, this is somewhere in the middle of the pack.  It’s missing the out and out fun of Dante and Aja’s pictures and lacks the goofy charm of James Cameron’s Piranha 2 and John Gulager’s Piranha 3DD.  It’s still a fairly enjoyable time waster.  It moves at an acceptable pace and the piranha attacks occur at a steady clip.  The highlights include a gnarly scene where a fisherman gets his feet bitten off, a golden retriever being turned into Dog Chow, and a skinny-dipper losing an arm.  

Levy’s direction is a little workmanlike, which prevents it from really cutting loose.  While it all might suffer in comparison to the other Piranhas, it does contain a scene in which Punky Brewster gets eaten by killer fish.  You can’t say that about any of the other films in the series, that’s for sure.  Because of that, this Piranha is OK by me. 

Jim Wynorski was credited as a “Piranha Wrangler”.  

AKA:  Piranha 3.  AKA:  Piranha ’95.

FREEWAY 2: CONFESSIONS OF A TRICKBABY (1999) ** ½

Matthew Bright’s wild Freeway played like a crazy modernized version of Little Red Riding Hood.  This one is more like Hansel and Gretel.  It’s not as consistently entertaining as the original, but it still has that same batshit insane DNA running through its veins.  

White Girl (Natasha Lyonne) and her serial killer cellmate Cyclona (Maria Celedonio) escape from juvie and head to Mexico.  Along the way, Cyclona goes off her meds and kills a bunch of people.  They’re kind of like Hansel and Gretel, only instead of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, they leave a trail of crack.  Some crackheads come along and steal the crack rocks and our heroines wind up getting lost in the woods.  Eventually they wind up in Tijuana where they meet the nun (Vincent Gallo) who raised Cyclona.  The girls realize all too late that the sister is actually a demented cannibal pedophile.

Bright only made a handful of films, which is unfortunate because every one of them I have seen has been unique, unpredictable, and kinda crazy.  Even this one, which isn’t exactly great has its moments of inspired weirdness.  (The first twenty minutes has more scenes of bulimic girls puking than you can shake a stick at.)  It’s not a patch on the original, but there’s enough craziness here to make me kind of wish Bright made another sequel.  

Gallo turns in one of his weirdest performances.  He dials his trademark arrogant persona way down, which sort of works against him.  It’s certainly something to see, but his half of the movie is easily the weakest.  It’s definitely more fun when Lyonne and Celedonio are on the run.  The supporting cast, which include David Alan Grier as Lyonne’s lawyer and John Landis as an incredulous judge are a lot of fun though.

Fun Fact #1:  According to IMDb, this was originally going to be directed by Doris Wishman, which would’ve been… something.

Fun Fact #2:  George Erschbamer, director of the Snake Eater trilogy, was the second unit director. 

AKA:  Freeway 2:  Highway to Hell.  AKA:  Trickbaby (Freeway 2).

THE DUEL (1973) ***

A bloodthirsty clan take out members of a rival gang at their boss’ funeral.  (They smuggle in knives hidden inside burial wreaths.)  The gang retaliates by killing the head of the clan.  His son, Tang (Ti Lung) is sent into exile for safekeeping, but when he returns, he discovers it was all a ruse to supplant him as leader.  His clan even resorts to selling his girlfriend to a brothel.  When she commits suicide, Tang teams up with his sworn enemy, known only as “The Rambler” (David Chiang) to get revenge. 

I love shit like this.  You know how it is.  When you and your mortal enemy are at each other’s throats, but you put your differences aside JUST LONG ENOUGH to help him out of a tight spot.  Of course, when it’s all over, you’re going to have to fight one another to the death.  Naturally, when he’s wounded, you’re going to nurse him back to health too.  I mean, you don’t want to fight him when he isn’t 100%.  Where’s the honor in that?  This is just the kind of macho soap opera shit that director Chang (Five Deadly Venoms) Cheh excels at.  

The Duel features all the bloody fight scenes and out and out mayhem you’d expect from a Shaw Brothers/Chang Cheh collaboration.  The themes of loyalty and honor that run throughout the picture are absorbing and the performances (especially by Chiang as the fan-waving, cigarette-smoking badass) are uniformly great.  The finale probably has one slow-motion overly-dramatic interlude too many, but there’s enough gory goodness here to make it a top-notch Kung Fu flick.

AKA:  Duel of the Iron Fist.  AKA:  Revenge of the Dragons.  

CHAINSAW SALLY (2004) ** ½

Sally (April Monique Burril) is a seemingly innocent looking librarian by day, chainsaw-wielding maniac by night.  She murders people when they talk in the library and hunts them down if they don’t return their books or pay their late fees.  She was molded to become a killer at an early age, due to a traumatizing incident in her childhood and Sally sets out to kill anyone who threatens her family again.

Chainsaw Sally was shot on video and filmed in Baltimore.  As a Maryland resident, I enjoyed hearing some of the thick Maryland accents.  It’s also cool seeing local genre heroes like George Stover and Count Gore De Vol appearing in cameos.  We also get Leatherface himself, Gunnar Hansen playing Sally’s father and the Godfather of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis pops up as the owner of the local hardware store.  

All the stuff with Chainsaw Sally sawing up her victims is just fine.  I liked the scenes where she and her brother play a demented version of Twister as well as “Toolbox Murders:  The Home Game”.  We also get a great scene where Sally ties up a woman and pours acid down her throat until she pees something that looks like the consistency of baked beans.  

Unfortunately, there’s a subplot about a shady real estate deal that eats up a lot of screen time and is kinda dull.  It does give us at least one inexplicable Jaws reference though, so it can’t be all bad.  The weak stabs at Tarantino-esque humor and dialogue (like a conversation about Batman being gay) are obvious and aren’t very funny though.

Chainsaw Sally is better than most low budget shot-on-video horror movies.  However, it falls well short of being a classic of the genre.  Still, it’s nice seeing the future director of Gerald’s Game, Mike Flanagan getting his start as the director of photography (which is probably why the film looks better than a lot of its shot-on-video contemporaries).

THE YOUNG VAGABOND (1985) ** ½

Beggar Su (Gordon Liu) is the rambunctious son of a famous winemaker.  When he’s not out getting drunk, Beggar is getting into brawls.  While he’s away at school, a crooked villain makes a play to take over his father’s winery.  After he kills Beggar’s brother and girlfriend, Beggar goes out for revenge.

The Young Vagabond is a Shaw Brothers production that is similar in some ways to Drunken Master.  Unlike most Drunken Master knockoffs, it’s fairly successful when it’s trying to be funny.  I liked the part where Beggar and a schoolmate fight at their desks whenever the teacher’s back is turned.  Some sequences aren’t very funny or go on too long (like the extended soccer game), but it all works more often than not.  Although it looks like a period piece, one guy makes a random Miami Vice reference, which is probably the funniest thing about the movie.  

All this is entertaining for the most part.  There are also plenty of Kung Fu battles throughout, which certainly helps.  However, the uneven tone prevents it from really kicking into gear.  The first half is dedicated to a lot of slapstick humor while the final act is awfully dark and violent.  The last shot is rather over the top and gory for what was initially a silly and lighthearted movie too.

Lui gives a great performance.  He combines his badass martial arts expertise with a light comic touch and is a lot of fun to watch.  I can’t say it’s one of his best, but The Young Vagabond should please most of his fans.

PHARAOH’S CURSE (1957) **

Captain Storm (Mark Dana) leads an expedition through the desert to join an archeological dig in progress in Egypt.  Their voyage is beset by troubles once a beautiful stranger Simira (Ziva Shapir) joins them on their quest.  Pack mules run off, their water supply inexplicably dries up, and scorpions attack.  Once the tomb is opened, the mummy disappears and Simira’s brother becomes a dried-out, bloodsucking, mummified killer.  

Pharaoh’s Curse is a no-frills mummy movie.  At least it’s short and moves at a relatively brisk pace, which is appreciated.  Director Lee (Catalina Caper) Sholem brings a workmanlike style to the picture, which looks right at home on your TV screen.  (The early scenes of Dana and company traveling across the desert sort of resemble an Egyptian variation on Wagon Train.)

The monster certainly had potential as it’s basically a mix of mummy and vampire, going around from victim to victim draining them of their blood.  Too bad the mummy make-up isn’t very effective as it just looks like somebody’s wrinkled old grandfather.  I did like the scene where its arm falls off and almost immediately began crumbling to dust though.  Ultimately, moments like this are just too brief and undistinguished to make Pharaoh’s Curse a winner.  The lackluster ending doesn’t help matters either.

Screenwriter Richard Landau also wrote Voodoo Island and The Girl in Black Stockings the same year.

AKA:  Curse of the Pharaoh.  

THE HURRICANE HEIST (2018) *

The beginning has two young boys watching in horror as their father is killed by a violent hurricane.  Then, the storm sets its sights on the house where the two boys are hiding.  When it barrels down on them, the clouds form into the shape of a skull that screams maliciously as the opening title appears.

At first, I thought I had mistakenly put on one of those SYFY Channel Sharknado knockoffs.  Was this The Hurricane Heist or was it Skullnado?  Maybe Skelecane?   

Oh, would it surprise you that one of the boys is named “Breeze”?  Or that one of the screenwriters had the last name of “Windhauser”?  Probably not.

Unfortunately, the skull-faced cloud is the best thing the movie has going for it and it progressively gets worse from there.

So, there’s millions of dollars’ worth of old money that’s marked for destruction by the US government.  Maggie Grace is the gal in charge who’s supposed to make sure it all goes to plan.  Naturally, some thieves try to jack the shipment, which happens to coincide with the storm of the millennium.  It’s then up to the two (now grown) boys from the beginning (played by Toby Kebbel and Ryan Kwantan) to help Maggie thwart the robbery.

The Hurricane Heist was directed by Rob Cohen, a man who isn’t a stranger to stupidity.  Anyone who has seen XXX or Stealth can tell you that.  I don’t know if this is quite as bad as Stealth, but it comes awfully close.  Despite the enjoyable stupid opening skull sequence, the movie never really leans into its silly premise.  There are moments that flirt with awesomeness (like when Kebbel throws hubcaps into the wind and they propel into the bad guys) but they almost always come up short.  I mean you can only take so many scenes of people being blown away by the wind and/or getting hit with crashing waves before it gets a bit old.  

Overall, The Hurricane Heist left me feeling under the weather.  It rained down scene after scene of emotionless dialogue, ludicrous plotting, and half-assed action sequences.  This had potential to be a so-bad-it’s-good movie, but the unrelenting sense of non-fun takes the wind out of its sails.  That is to say, it blows.  

AKA:  Hurricane.