THE PRINCE (2014) ** ½

Jason Patric stars as a seemingly ordinary mechanic whose daughter (Gina Mantegna) disappears without a trace.  He gets her friend (Jessica Lowndes) to help him look for her down in New Orleans.  He quickly stirs up a shitstorm of attention from beating up pushers left and right, which catches the eye of mobster Bruce Willis.  Because of the Seemingly Unrelated but Very Important Opening Scene, we know the two have unfinished business together, and it’s only a matter of time before they’re on a collision course.  

The very appearance of Bruce Willis and John Cusack in a DTV movie often will be the subject of derision.  Both men have been accused of not giving a shit recently.  I can’t say it’s the best work of either of them, but they look like they’re trying a bit harder than they’ve been given credit for.  

Willis seems more engaged than he’s been in a while, especially in the early scenes with his young daughter.  He reverts to Scowling Bruce later in the film, but he stops short of going into cruise control.  Likewise, Cusack (who plays one of Patric’s old street cronies) tries a smidge harder than his recent output would suggest.  In most of his newer movies, he shows up wearing either a ballcap, sunglasses, or hoodie.  In The Prince, he sports a hoodie, but it stays down throughout the course of the picture.  That’s a metaphor for his effort or some shit.

Is it sad that I just spent an entire paragraph assuring you that two-thirds of the leading men are trying?  Probably.  To DTV devotees like myself, it’s a signpost of sorts to let you know the level of quality we’re dealing with.  As such, The Prince is better than expected  

Oh.  Would it surprise you that Jonathon Schaech and 50 Cent are also in this movie?  Probably not.

I haven’t even mentioned Patric, who is excellent.  He particularly excels in the first act where he goes all kinds of Taken on a bunch of hoods.  Some could accuse Willis and Cusack of phoning it in, but Patric came to fucking play.  He’s intense, brooding, and is quite credible in his ass-kicking scenes.

Director Brian A. Miller handles the various shootouts and fight scenes competently enough.  Only a rough looking car chase suffers from the typical DTV ADD over-editing and herky-jerky camerawork.  However, the second act doesn’t have the fire of the early scenes, and Patric’s final siege on Willis’ headquarters feels like a retread of the ending of ‘04’s The Punisher.  

Willis and Miller later reteamed for Vice and Reprisal.

  

AKA:  The Prince:  Only God Forgives.

GODZILLA: THE PLANET EATER (2019) * ½

The third (and thankfully, final) in the series of Godzilla animated adventures for Netflix is one of the worst Godzilla movies on record.  It’s certainly nowhere near as good as the old cartoons, that’s for sure.  I mean, would it have hurt the animators to toss in Godzooky?

The explorers of a doomed space mission are stranded on Earth.  Still smarting from not being able to defeat Godzilla in the previous installment, they set out to find a way to stop him once and for all.  They turn to a cult of religious fanatics for help, whose “Golden God” winds up being none other than Ghidrah himself.  Naturally, it turns out to be a big mistake for all involved.

The Planet Eater starts slowly as it spends a lot of time playing catch-up with various exposition dumps and arguments about what to do with Godzilla.  Godzilla lies dormant for most of the movie, which means, like the other films in the series, we’re stuck sitting through a lot of talk.  This one is particularly heavy on boring religious discussions that clumsily try to equate Godzilla as some sort of God substitute.  

The new design on Ghidrah is… uh… different.  While it sort of retains the same golden dragon look we all know and love, it has this new ability to transform itself into this snakelike entity made of energy… or something.  The big confrontation between the two titans of terror is a letdown too as Ghidrah spends much of the fight leeching energy out of Godzilla.  The final fight is also abrupt and anticlimactic.  Even after it’s over, the movie continues on mercilessly for another ten minutes.

While it’s not quite as bad as the last entry, City on the Edge of Battle, The Planet Eater is definitely one of the lowlights of Godzilla’s long and illustrious career.  The filmmakers never give him anything worthwhile to do and he spends too much of the movie in a goddamned coma.  I wouldn’t blame you if you did too.  

AKA:  Godzilla:  Eater of Stars.

DIXIE RAY: HOLLYWOOD STAR (1983) **

What the heck is Cameron Mitchell doing in a porno?  Apparently, he didn’t know he was appearing in a XXX flick until he already shot his scenes.  You can’t really blame him for thinking it was a legitimate picture though because director Anthony (Sweat) Spinelli does a great job mimicking the look and feel of old film noir detective movies.  That’s about the best compliment I can give him.   

Detective Nick Popodopolis (John Leslie) is in a pickle when he shoots a client (Juliet Anderson) in self-defense.  The lieutenant (Mitchell) wants to know what happened, and Nick relates a series of flashbacks leading up to her death.  Turns out he was hired by a fading movie star named Dixie Ray (Lisa De Leeuw) to find her missing husband.  Naturally, the dame isn’t on the level, so Nick has to keep on his toes while putting a series of ladies on their backs.

Even though this is a porno, the production values are quite good.  Leslie gives an intense performance and holds his own with Mitchell.  As one of the biggest Cameron Mitchell fans on the planet, I have to say it was an honest thrill to see him in something like this (even if he was in a strictly non-sex performance).  Dixie Ray:  Hollywood Star may be a hardcore film, but it’s far from the skeeviest movie Mitchell’s appeared in.  

While the camerawork and cinematography during the dialogue scenes is quite professional, some of the sex scenes suffer from poor camera placement.  Because of that, it’s hard to see the “good stuff”.  The best scenes are mostly weighted toward the beginning too, which doesn’t help.  Leslie’s scene with Juliet Anderson is solid though, as is his tryst with De Leeuw.  The sex also gets more sporadic as it goes along, and once the plot begins to take over, things start to get a bit dull.  It clocks in at over a hundred minutes too.  That might not sound as serious as murder, but it’s still a crime to make a porno that runs over a hundred minutes.

Leslie is strong enough to suggest he could’ve made the transition from porn to “legitimate” movies.  He does a fine job with the hardboiled narration too.  He’s also given the majority of the sex scenes, which is great for him, but it doesn’t offer the audience much in the way of variety.

Leslie also gets the best line of the movie; a clever riff on The Maltese Falcon:  “It’s the stuff wet dreams are made of!”

AKA:  It’s Called Murder, Baby.

MOIST FURY (2011) ** ½

“Moist” is one of those oddball words that incur a violent reaction inside certain people.  When they hear the word “moist”, they either freak out, act disgusted, or almost vomit.  Writer/director Chris (Return to Bloodfart Lake) Seaver knows this and gets some cheap mileage out of it.  I myself am one of those people who automatically thinks “moist” is hilarious, so I was probably already inclined to enjoy it.

Moist Fury follows a quartet of tough-talking post-apocalyptic lady brawlers who are in a gang called “The Crimson Queafs”.  When their leader Dewback (Hester Prynne) is ambushed and killed by a rival gang led by Doom Blade (Bill Thomas), her lover Andromeda (Desiree Saetia) goes out for revenge.  Aiding the gang in their quest is a badass named Death Bone (Billy Garberina, who talks like Stallone) who is vying to have the coolest name in the wasteland.  

If you’ve seen a Chris Seaver movie or two in your time, you may already know what to expect.  This one is a little more grounded in reality than many of his others (although it still has some outrageous characters spewing a stream of improbable obscenities).   It kind of resembles a Troma version of an all-female Warriors rip-off mixed with your standard DTV action movie.  

Seaver stages the action efficiently enough, especially considering the low budget.  Even though it’s closer to a “real” movie than what he normally makes, there is still plenty of funny moments along the way.  (I liked the fact that it took place in a post-apocalyptic world where Toblerone bars sell on the black market for seven bucks apiece.)  The overblown heavy metal music on the soundtrack is sometimes good for a laugh too.  

Moist Fury is a little light the gore department compared to some of Seaver’s other films, but I guess that’s expected since it’s more of an action flick.  That said, one girl gets stabbed in her lactating breasts.  So, there’s that.  

Is Moist Fury mostly a mess?  Kinda.  For every funny bit, there’s two or three clunky moments.  The mercifully short running time (it’s barely an hour long) certainly helps though.  

Best line, “You’re a bona fide member of the Clitterati!”  

IN THE HEART OF THE SEA (2015) **

In the Heart of the Sea tells the story behind Moby Dick.  It begins with Herman Melville tracking down the last survivor of the Essex, the notorious ship that was attacked by a giant white whale.  There was a smidgeon of a good idea here, but unfortunately, the story it inspired is a lot more entertaining than the real deal. 

Is there a reason to tell this tale?  Did anyone really ask for a realistic version of Moby Dick?  I mean who UNDERSELLS a fish story?  Fish stories are SUPPOSED to be tall tales that are larger than life.  What the fuck, Opie?

Thor, Spider-Man and Scarecrow go out into the middle of the ocean looking for whale oil.  The captain is a rich boy who’s never captained a boat before. They run into the monstrous whale that attacks the boat and shipwrecks the crew. 

What surprised me most about In the Heart of the Sea was that the whale attack happens halfway through the film.  From there, it becomes a tale of survival.  Think Alive in a lifeboat.  This could’ve worked, but Howard is too much of a nice guy to go all out during these scenes.  I mean, if you’re going to have cannibalism in a movie, show the damned cannibalism!  Don’t pussy out and cut back to the narrator.  

I get why this material resonated with Howard.  It’s thematically similar to Apollo 13.  It’s another historical tale of survival.  That doesn’t mean it’s very good though.

The camerawork is often odd.  He uses a lot of weird camera angles aboard the boat for no good reason.  (Unless Howard was trying to make us seasick.)  It’s also a really ugly looking movie too.  Much of the film has a garish yellow tint to it.  It almost looks as if someone pissed on the camera lens or something.

There is one gnarly moment when Spider-Man crawls into a dead whale’s blowhole to dig out the last bits of oil.  If anything, Howard does a good job showing the lengths men would go through to get oil back in the 1820s.  It’s a good thing men stopped doing shady shit for oil after this incident.

As far as Ron Howard movies go, it’s no Gung Ho.

SHARK EXORCIST (2015) * ½

A killer nun (named Linda Blair!) makes a human sacrifice at a lake.  One year later, a giant shark with glowing eyes starts eating swimmers.  A trio of friends go to the lake, and one of them is bitten by the phantom shark.  Her bite miraculously disappears a few days later and she begins acting strange.  A priest, whose brother was also a victim of the shark, comes to town looking to send the shark’s spirit back to Hell.

The early scenes have sort of a screwball charm to them.  Unfortunately, the plot is all over the place, and things get increasingly incoherent as it goes along.  It sometimes feels like writer/director Donald (Hooker with a Hacksaw) Farmer just strung a bunch of unrelated short films together as he keeps introducing more and more characters who never intersect (and very few of them were even necessary).  

The most memorable character is Nancy (Roni Jonah), a sexy redhead reality show host.  She’s the star of “Ghost Whackers” and tries to make a mental connection with the shark.  The sight of Jonah (who kind of looks like Bella Thorne) writhing around on the ground, arms flailing, and yelling, “Spirit, come inside me!” is amusing, but that’s about as good as it gets, I’m afraid.

The shark itself isn’t bad, especially compared to the sharks featured in so many of the other movies from the ‘10s that have the word “Shark” in the title.  It just doesn’t have a lot of personality.  We also don’t see enough of it to make much of a difference anyway.

Farmer spends most of the running time on the various subplots.  Once he finally sets his sights on the usual Exorcist-type shenanigans (there is a pea soup-puking scene), it still comes up short.  The big exorcism finale winds up being nothing more than a priest exorcising a girl who’s possessed by a shark.  This is disappointing, especially for anyone hoping the priest would be exorcising an actual shark.

Shark Exorcist is far from Farmer’s worse, but it never lives up to the potential.  It also suffers from offscreen kills and skimpy gore.  (In one scene, a shark bite is signified by a dollop of fake blood on a girl’s leg.)  It’s only seventy minutes, but it feels much longer.  There’s not one but two post-credits scenes (one features a girl wandering around an aquarium gift shop), which helps to pad out the running time. Both of them are equally pointless.

As bad as most of Shark Exorcist is, I have to tip my hat to Farmer for writing such howlers as, “That’s the thing about almost dying, Emily:  It’s a real buzz kill!”

NOTHING PERSONAL (1980) **

Donald Sutherland stars as a professor who is outraged that baby seals are being bludgeoned with baseball bats by the government who want to install a military base on the seals’ breeding ground in Alaska.  No one wants to take on the big corporation holding the government contract, so he resorts to looking in the phone book for a lawyer.  He winds up choosing Suzanne Somers and together they team up to stick it to the man and save some seals.

Nothing Personal is a weird movie.  I don’t know who the intended audience was.  It seems like an ‘80s updating of a ‘60s counterculture comedy with a dash of ‘70s political thriller, but the subject matter is so specific that it’s hard to generate any laughs.  

What you’re left with is the sight of Somers flirting with Sutherland in between causing a ruckus with corporate execs over the seals.  They aren’t bad together either.  In fact, they’re interesting enough to make you wish they had better material to work with.  (There’s a scene where Sutherland goes on and on about Somers’ pussy that is surprising, considering the PG rating.)

The reason why none of this works was probably because it was never intended to.  It was made as a Canadian tax shelter movie (the accents are a dead giveaways), so the producers could write it off and still come out ahead, even if it was a flop.  The ending is a washout and some scenes feel like they were almost stapled together.  Perhaps there was a longer cut somewhere that got whittled down because so much of it is choppy.  (Obviously looped dialogue like, “Let’s stop back at the hotel and change our clothes” is clumsily added in to prevent obvious continuity errors in between scenes.)  

Director George Bloomfield also did a lot of episodes of SCTV, which explains why Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, and Joe Flaherty appear in bit parts.