SHAZAM! (2019) ***

Shazam! is the second-best movie starring a Captain Marvel released in the last four weeks.  It’s easily one of the weaker recent DC superhero movies too.  What keeps it afloat is the plucky, jubilant, and endearing performance by star Zachary Levi.

Foster kid Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is not happy in his new home.  While dodging some bullies, he hops on a subway and finds himself transported to the mystical lair of a wizard (Djmon Hounsou, who was also in Captain Marvel, coincidentally) who imbues him with superpowers.  Since his foster brother Freddy (Jack Dylan Glazer) knows all about superhero shit (he has a shrine in his room to Superman and Batman), he enlists his help to test out his superpowers.  Trouble brews when the evil Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong), empowered with no less than the Seven Deadly Sins, comes lurking around seeking to drain Billy of his power.

Like the main character, Shazam! seems to be going through an awkward phase.  Long stretches are dark, brooding, and gloomy.  It even threatens to turn into a balls-out horror movie at certain points (which is fitting I guess since it was directed by Annabelle:  Creation’s David F. Sandberg).  Other sequences play like a superhero version of Big (there’s even a direct homage to that film) where a boy trapped in a man’s body takes advantage of being a grown-up (buying beer, going to a strip club, etc.).  These scenes score big laughs, mostly due to the hilarious turn by Levi.  

The superhero scenes are clearly the better, breezier sections.  While the Seven Deadly Sins look better than most generic CGI monsters found in these things (they sort of resemble a stop-motion Harryhausen creation), the scenes where they are unleashed are surprisingly gruesome and a tad unnecessary in what is essentially a kid’s movie.  The tone is out of whack, more so than in Justice League, which tends to keep Shazam! from flying high.

There’s a good message here.  Family is where you find it, and all that.  It’s nothing we haven’t seen before though.  However, the family scenes are held together by the dynamite ensemble cast that help the film over its cliched passages.  

Jarring tonal shifts aside, Sandberg delivers on the superhero mashing.  The scenes of Shazam testing out his powers are quite funny, and the Found Footage shots of Freddy filming Shazam doing superhero shit are kept to a minimum.  The superhero brawls are well done and the finale (which I will not spoil) leaves me hopeful for more Shazams in the near future.

Strong makes for a solid villain.  He’s all business, and Levi makes an excellent foil for his no-nonsense demeanor.  I also enjoyed his scenes with the legendary John Glover who plays Strong’s father.  

The movie really belongs to Levi.  He’s so charming and funny that you kind of forgive the movie for its lapses.  It’s probably not the ideal vehicle for the character as it often uses the premise as an excuse to spoof the genre, but the bottom line is that Shazam! is just plain fun.   

DC Extended Universe Scorecard: 

Batman v Superman:  Dawn of Justice: ****
Man of Steel: ****
Aquaman: *** ½
Wonder Woman: *** ½
Justice League: *** ½
Shazam!:  ***
Suicide Squad: ***

2019 Comic Book Movie Scorecard:

Alita:  Battle Angel:  ***
Captain Marvel:  ***
Shazam!: ***

THE IMMORTALIZER (1989) **

A quartet of friends out for a night on the town take a shortcut down a dark alley and get kidnapped by a pair of bulky, rubbery-faced henchmen.  The deformed degenerates take the teens to an illicit clinic where the demented doctors put the brains of the rich and old into the bodies of the young and stupid in exchange for big bucks.  One of the teens manages to escape and tries to free his friends before it’s too late.  

The Immortalizer is a typical, no-frills My Friends are in Great Danger and Nobody Will Believe Me movie.  The make-up on the henchman is pretty cool (they kind of look like extras from Neon Maniacs), but the rest of it is fairly standard stuff.  The scenes of our hero trying to convince the cops the clinic is ran by mad scientists are humdrum and are pretty much devoid of tension.  

A lot of this will be overly familiar for anyone who’s ever sat through an ‘80s horror movie.  There are moments here that crib almost directly from Fright Night and Re-Animator (the doctor’s serum glows green, which makes me think Herbert West forgot to patent his rejuvenation methods).  Despite an effective set-up (the reveal of the henchmen works well enough), director Joel Bender is unable to inject any life into the proceedings.  One amusing subplot has the main teen turning to a nosy old neighbor for help.  This leads to a fun scene where she dresses up like an old rich lady and goes to the clinic posing as a prospective client.  Needless to say, it does not end well.  

As far as Joel Bender movies go, this ain’t no Gas Pump Girls.

AKA:  Dr. Immortalizer.  

HOME INVASION (2016) *

Natasha Henstridge is a rich woman whose home is besieged by masked men who break in during a hurricane.  DTV Hall of Famer Scott Adkins is the ringleader of the thieves looking for Natasha’s ex-husband’s hidden loot.  She calls her home security company, and Jason Patric answers the call.  Since the authorities are cut off from the storm, he tries to keep her alive and one step ahead of Adkins and his crew.  

The set-up is simple.  It kind of plays like a mix of The Strangers, Panic Room, and The Call.  In the right hands, it could’ve been a crackling little thriller.  However, thanks to David Tennant’s staid direction, Home Invasion very much feels like a Lifetime Movie.  

I will give this to David Tennant (not the Doctor Who guy):  He gets the show on the road in an efficient manner.  In doing so, he kind of shoots himself in the foot because after that, there’s really nowhere for the movie to go.  The middle section where the thieves go through the house in the dark with flashlights and metal detectors while Henstridge and her kid play hide and seek with them is particularly paced like molasses.  

I watched this because of my immense crush on Henstridge, my love for Adkins, and the fact I dug Patric’s performance in The Prince.  Too bad Henstridge is stuck playing the thankless damsel in distress role who mostly just cowers in fear.  Adkins is hidden behind a shitty mask for much of the movie.  Even when he takes it off, he’s criminally underutilized.  Patric offers a measure of calm intensity, but there’s only so much he can do while talking into a headset and clacking on a keyboard.  

Even as a fan of the three leads, Home Invasion is a dud.  I can see why Scott took the role.  He probably wants to be known for more than just the action roles.  However, his villain character is severely underwritten.  

Ice Man himself, Shawn Ashmore was an executive producer.  

AKA:  Terror Online.  AKA:  Forced Entry.

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS (2017) **

The Girl with All the Gifts is another one of those horror movies where everyone whispers for long periods of time and you have to continuously turn up the volume on your TV until a character slams a door shut and it’s so loud you think it’s going to blow out your speakers.  I mean what’s up with the sound engineers on these movies?  They don’t put a microphone anywhere near the actors’ mouths, but they’ll crank up the levels on a simple door latch?  

Speaking of the actors’ mouths, it’s also one of those movies where many of the actors have thick British accents and it’s hard to tell what the hell they’re saying.  It’s one thing if the sound sucks so you can’t hear them.  It’s another when you can’t even understand what they’re saying when their dialogue is properly recorded.

It’s also one of those movies where zombies move like they’re running in the Boston Marathon.  I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of these fast zombies.  Can we please go back to the old Romero zombies that do the Pittsburgh Shuffle?  Or if you’re going to have fast zombies, can you at least make sure the movie itself isn’t paced as slow as a Romero zombie’s gait?

The plot has a wicked government scientist played by Glenn Close… yes… THAT Glenn Close.  What the fuck is she doing here?  I guess the rent ain’t gonna pay itself.  Anyway, she’s in an underground military installation performing experiments on zombie kids.  One zombie girl (the one with all the gifts), played by Sennia Nanua is noticeably more human than the others and carries the gene that could cure the zombie plague.  Wouldn’t you know it?  Just when Glenn’s about to perform the experiment, zombies attack the compound.  Glenn, Gemma Arterton (who teaches Zombie Sunday School), and Paddy Considine (soldier) go on the run and look for a new home.  They bring the Gift Girl along, but wisely fit her with a Hannibal Lecter mask to prevent anyone from getting bit.  

After a sluggish start, The Girl with All the Gifts reveals itself not to be a total wash.  I liked some of the gimmicks, like the soldiers wearing a zombie repellent that looks like hand sanitizer.  (It probably has the same effect as Axe Body Spray.)  I just wish the action wasn’t so shoddily filmed and the CGI headshots didn’t look like a game of zombie paintball.

There’s still a great deal of stupidity here.  Take for example the scene when the zombies stand perfectly still, and our heroes cautiously tiptoe around them.  What?  Or when the fungus that caused the virus turns the zombies into trees.  I guess they were trying for a different take on the zombie flick, but that’s not exactly the way to go about it.  

The third act is marginally interesting.  It’s here where the flick becomes sort of like a Lord of the Flies, but with zombies.  A great movie could’ve begun with this idea.  This one ends with it.  

AKA:  The Last Girl.  

A CLIMAX OF BLUE POWER (1975) ***

A cop named Eddie (I. William Quinn) busts a hooker (Starlyn Simone) and tells her he’ll save her a night in jail if she’ll fuck him in the back of his police cruiser.  She reluctantly agrees, but when he starts getting too rough with her, she resists.  Eddie pulls a gun on her and threatens to “put a bullet between her tits” if she refuses.  He then makes her strip down and roll around in the mud and masturbate during a torrential downpour.  

Here’s the kicker:  It turns out he’s not even a cop!  He’s a security guard who slightly modifies his uniform and car to make himself look like a police officer.  Eddie then abuses his power to force other women into sex.  When he learns a woman (Angela Carnon) has murdered her husband, he holds her prisoner in her home.  Eventually, she turns the tables on her captor.

Before Bad Lieutenant there was Eddie.  Seeing him recklessly abuse his power lends a definite taboo feel to this highly effective roughie.  There’s a little bit of a Taxi Driver vibe too as Eddie spends lots of his isolated existence spewing frustrated, hateful narration.  (Instead of going to a porn theater like Travis Bickle, he stays in and watches a stag loop at home.)  

Quinn is great as the sex-crazed cop.  He’s especially awesome in the wild scene where he dresses in drag to give his captive a bath.  The legendary Uschi Digard also pops up as a massage parlor girl, although, sadly, she doesn’t participate in any of the sex scenes.

Director Lee Frost, who made everything from nudie-cuties like House on Bare Mountain to drive-in fare like The Thing with Two Heads to hardcore roughies like this, handles the hard-edged sex scenes with vigor.   The various S & M sequences have a decided kick to them, and even the more “normal” scenes (like the three-way on a massage table) are hot too.  It definitely won’t be for all tastes, but for those who like their ‘70s porn with a mean streak, A Climax of Blue Power will be quite arresting.

AKA:  The Impersonator.  AKA:  The Passion of Blue Power.  AKA:  A Taste of Blue Power.  AKA:  Deviate in Blue.  

NURSIE (2005) *

C. Thomas Howell stars as a doctor who gets ran off the road on a dark and stormy night and wakes up in a strange nursing home.  A wacko nurse (Savannah Boucher) tries to take care of him and once he is well, she wants him to take care of old folks who live there too.  When he resists, the nurse drugs him, and holds him hostage in the home.  Howell soon learns the others are also being held against their will and together they stage a revolt.

Nursie is a muddled, boring, and forgettable mishmash of a Misery knockoff, a crazy redneck movie, and a ‘90s From Hell thriller.  Shot using digital cameras, it looks cheap and the single location only enhances that feeling.  It also doesn’t help that an old woman in a nurse uniform isn’t intimidating or scary in the least.  

Nursie also features a record number of scenes of a groggy C. Thomas Howell slowly trying to get out of bed.  I’m sorry, but it’s hard to feel sorry for his character when it takes him half the movie to make a legitimate escape attempt, especially when it’s painfully obvious that everyone around him is a total nut job.  He doesn’t give a bad performance exactly.  It’s just that he’s unable to do anything with the shitty script.

After a while (scratch that, almost immediately), you feel like you’re the one held prisoner by the old kook.  Nursie is agonizingly slow, and even when something does happen, there’s always some contrived plot device to send Howell back into bed.  The climax is woefully shitty too.  In fact, the whole thing would’ve been over ninety minutes sooner if he just knocked the old bat’s lights out once she started acting cuckoo.  

In short, this Nursie belongs in a bedpan.  

THINGS (1993) **

Things is a shot-on-video horror anthology.  What it lacks in budget, it makes up for with cool monsters and some decent gore.  It’s not completely successful (not by a long shot), but there’s some things to like about Things.  

In the “Wrap-Around” (**), a woman finds her husband’s mistress at a sleazy hotel room.  She pulls a gun on the girl and ties her to a chair (while topless).  She then proceeds to tell her two stories about ghoulish “things”.

The first tale is “The Box” (**).  A quartet of prostitutes buy an old theater and turn it into a den of inequity.  The evil mayor wants them gone and is more than willing to turn his evil face-biting slug monster loose on whoever gets in his way. 

The low budget, crummy videography, and amateurish acting has a certain charm.  The best thing about this segment is the slug creature that resides in the box.  It’s obvious that most of the budget went towards creating the monster, which is okay, I guess.  There’s a solid helping of gore and at least one decent jump scare to keep you interested.  Too bad the scenes where the surviving girls stalk around the theater looking for the monster are slowly paced, darkly lit, and go on far too long.  

“Thing in the Jar” (**) is the second story.  An abusive husband tells his wife, “There’s only three things you got to do:  Eat, Shit, and Fuck!”  Soon after, she begins having increasingly violent dreams about him killing and torturing her.  When she tells him about them, of course, the lout is completely unsympathetic.  Her instincts turn out to be correct and her hubby tries to do away with her for good.  He quickly discovers she won’t go away so easily.

There is some good camerawork and lighting in this segment.  Unfortunately, the sound really sucks.  (The sound effects of crickets almost drown out the dialogue in some scenes.)  While a couple of the hallucinations/dreams are funny (like when the wife sees eyeballs in her husband’s eggs), the domestic disturbance drama isn’t all that involving and the acting is rather wooden.  The monster isn’t quite as impressive as the slug from the previous story, but the villain’s comeuppance is appropriately gory.  

As far as shot-on-video horror anthologies go, Things isn’t nearly as bad as most.  There are one or two effective moments here, which is more than you can say for most of these flicks.  That’s far from making it a winner though.