IT CHAPTER 2 (2019) ** ½

It remains my favorite Stephen King book.  Because of that, the “half the story” bullshit It Chapter 1 pulled kind of stuck in my craw.  I mean if they were going to only go halfsies on the book, they could’ve at least kept the original structure, going back and forth between the young Losers and the middle-aged Losers as they do battle with the evil Pennywise the clown (Bill Skarsgard).  Now along comes It Chapter 2, which retains the structure of the book, keeping the young Losers around for flashbacks and/or repressed memories.  This is even more frustrating because… well… it works.  Why couldn’t they have just done this right from the get-go?  Maybe somewhere down the road director Andy Muschietti will re-edit both films to fit the book’s framework a la Francis Ford Coppola with The Godfather.  Till that day, both Chapters of It will be a near-miss for me.

The movie works up to a point, thanks to the expertly cast players, who do just as good of a job (if not better) playing the Losers as the young cast did in the first film.  James McAvoy makes for an ideal leader (thanks to his day job playing Professor X in the X-Men franchise), Jessica Chastain (who was also in Dark Phoenix with McAvoy) brings the same winning vibrance her younger counterpart (Sophia Lillis) brought to Chapter 1, and Bill Hader is the perfect match for Finn Wolfhard’s hilarious, foulmouthed Richie.  The only Loser who didn’t quite click for me was Isaiah Mustafa, mostly because I kept expecting him to jump into his role of the Old Spice guy at the most inopportune time.

The acting is top-notch, and Muschietti does a fine job making the town of Derry have a life of its own, but the overreliance shitty CGI monsters pretty much sinks every opportunity for genuine scares.  It doesn’t help that the monsters themselves (naked old women, eyeball bugs, clown spiders, etc.) are uniformly terrible.  Scenes that call more for atmosphere than computer trickery (like the bleachers scene or the mirror maze sequence) are far more effective.  The build-up to these moments is handled just fine.  It’s when the obviously phony monsters come lurching about, you just kind of shrug in indifference than recoil in horror.  Skarsgard’s performance is a bit of an improvement over the last movie (either he toned down the annoying clown voice or I’m just slowly becoming accustomed to it), although he’s far from what you would call scary. 

The worst bit comes during a blatant rip-off of one of the most iconic scenes from John Carpenter’s The Thing.  Except instead of the awesome practical effects of The Thing, they just use some more shitty CGI.  If you’re going to do a Thing homage, at least have the common decency to use practical effects.  Using CGI to recreate The Thing is downright blasphemous.  

The best scare comes early in the movie.  Usually in these films, they use a cat jumping into frame to give the audience a cheap jump scare.  In It Chapter 2, Muschietti trades the cat for… Peter Bogdanovich!?!  Let me tell you, purple ascots are scarier than red balloons any day.  

Speaking of cameos that immediately take you out of the movie, we also get a completely gratuitous cameo by the man himself, Stephen King.  This is King’s biggest role since Creepshow and while it’s kind of fitting, I guess, he’s not particularly good.  It’s not a patch on his fine performance in Maximum Overdrive, that’s for damn sure.  

There’s also a lot of meta commentary about how the endings of McAvoy’s stories always suck, which is a thinly veiled allusion to King’s endings.  It’s not so much as commentary now that I think about it. It’s more like the screenwriters were preparing you for the sucky ending they cooked up.  There are also more false endings here than in Return of the King.  To avoid that same mistake, I’ll quit this review while I’m ahead.

SARTANA IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH (1970) **

William Berger stars as Lee Calloway (who is definitely NOT Sartana, although they dress similarly), a rugged bank robber who accepts a job busting some tough hombres out of prison.  He only asks for half of the gold they have squirreled away in Death Valley from a previous heist.  Naturally, his partners double cross Lee, leave him for dead, and take off across the desert.  After Lee gets back on his feet, he follows the bad guys in hot pursuit, waiting for the precise moment to exact his revenge.

Berger gets a memorable scene early on where he notices his wanted poster and crosses out the reward and writes in a higher number.  It’s a nice way to establish his antihero character.  So does the opening shootout, which uses simple, but effective editing techniques to maximize the suspense. Too bad the theme song sounds less like a Spaghetti Western tune and more like something you’d hear a below average lounge lizard belt out on an off night.  

Like most Spaghetti Westerns, Sartana in the Valley of Death uses one of my favorite genre clichés where the villains rough up our hero and he has to think fast and heal quickly before he can make his comeback.  Once Berger (who was also in the official Sartana movie, If You Meet Sartana… Pray for Your Death) follows his quarry into the desert, the movie practically stops on a dime.  The endless scenes of him stumbling through the desert gets dull awful fast and help negate the admittedly fun set-up.  In fact, the further the film strays from its central plot, the better it is.  The subplot with a horny frontier lady luring Berger with sex in order to get the reward is more amusing than anything the main plot line has to offer. 

Berger gets the best line of the movie when he guns a bad guy down and says, “He looked for gold, but only found lead!” 

AKA:  Ballad of Death Valley.  AKA:  Sartana in the Valley of Vultures.

THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES 3: A NEW BEGINNING (1986) ***

The Dark Brothers made some of the most outrageous porn movies of the ‘80s, so they were a perfect fit to pick up the torch of the Devil in Miss Jones series.  Lois Ayres takes over the role of Miss Jones from Georgina Spelvin and instantly makes it her own.  Gone is the mousy housewife of the ‘70s.  This Miss Jones is a tough-talking, spunky, and no-nonsense sexpot with a punk rock hairdo and an attitude to match.  

Miss Jones gets picked up by a man (Paul Thomas) at a singles bar one night.  He bangs her so hard that when she hits her head on the headboard of her bed, she dies and goes to Hell.  Once there, her jive-talking pimp guide (Jack Baker) escorts her through the many rooms of hellish sexual delight as she searches for a way out.  

Ayers is excellent, and she and Baker (who got his start in real movies like The Kentucky Fried Movie) have a lot of chemistry together.  Baker is very funny and practically steals the film, despite being a non-sex performer.  The rest of the cast, including Amber Lynn (who does “the dance of the double dong”), Tom Byron (as Miss Jones’ cheating boyfriend), and Vanessa Del Rio (who gets gangbanged) are also enjoyable and make the most of their brief screen time. 

Director Gregory Dark delivers on the bizarre, outrageous sex scenes.  The weirdest scene features two people fucking while dressed like horses as sounds of hooves pounding play in the background.  The “plot” stuff is really thin (the on-camera interviews with people talking about Miss Jones feel more like filler than anything else), and the non-ending (“cliffhanger” is the wrong word) is frustrating as it merely sets up Part 4.  (Scenes of the next installment help to further pad out the running time).  Despite these debits, as a madcap slice of ‘80s WTF XXX, it remains highly entertaining.  

The fun music was stolen from other Dark Brothers productions, such as New Wave Hookers and Let Me Tell Ya ‘Bout White Chicks.

DJANGO DEFIES SARTANA (1970) **

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking, “Mitch, didn’t you just watch and review a crappy Django/Sartana team-up/rip-off?  Why would you put yourself through that again?”  Well, I have always had a weakness for Spaghetti Westerns, and my fondness for them (even the bad ones, of which there are many) has only ripened in my old age.  You know the experiment with the mouse that gets an electric shock every time he tries to take a bite of cheese, but he keeps goes back for another bite of cheese, even if it causes him great pain?  That’s kind of like me and Spaghetti Westerns—and the cheesier the Spaghetti, the better.

Django (Tony Kendall) thinks Sartana (George Ardisson) killed his brother and tries to get revenge.  He eventually learns Sartana had nothing to do with it and the pair earns each other’s respect.  They then agree to team up and go after the real killer. 

If that’s a sparse plot rundown, I apologize.  There’s really not a whole lot to this one.  In fact, it’s kind of slow moving, and frankly, a bit boring in spots. 

At least the cinematography is lush, which helps to keep you from completely nodding off.  First-time director Pasquale Squitieri gives us lots of deep reds and eye-popping yellows (some parts look like a giallo), not to mention a couple handsome desert vistas.  Ardisson and Kendall don’t have much chemistry to speak of, but it’s Jose Torres who steals the movie as their machete wielding mute sidekick (appropriately named “Mute”).  Django and Sartana got dozens of cheap rip-offs and spin-offs throughout the years, so I’m not sure why Mute didn’t get one of his own.  He certainly deserved it.

AKA:  Django Against Sartana.  AKA:  Django Challenges Sartana.

CORPSE GRINDERS 2 (2000) *

A dying race of cat people leave their home planet of Ceta to live life anew on Earth.  Meanwhile, a pair of knuckleheads try to get their uncles’ old cat food plant up and running again.  To turn their sagging business around, they take to using the old family recipe, which if you saw the first Corpse Grinders, involves stealing dead bodies, grinding them up, and putting them in the cat food. 

Corpse Grinders 2 is the film that gave exploitation director Ted V. Mikels a second wind.  At the ripe age of 71, he set out sequelizing his back catalogue of films, which allowed him to work till his dying day.  As far as his twenty-first century movies go, it’s probably the worst one I’ve seen.  

That doesn’t mean I don’t admire the spirit Mikels put into these pictures.  I like the fact that Planet Ceta is nothing more than Mikels’ house (which will be familiar to you if you’ve seen his other films).  And if you’ve seen Mikels’ house, you know it looks like it’s on another planet to begin with, which makes it perfect. 

The original was a minor classic that at least had an off-kilter plot and a touch of WTF charm about it. This twenty-nine years later sequel has little of that old time Mikels magic to go around, I’m afraid.  Like his latter-day Astro-Zombies sequels, it’s too long (102 minutes) and has way too many characters and subplots.  The whole alien subplot is particularly useless, and the opening CGI alien dogfight looks like something out of a PlayStation game. 

It also takes a long time before the cats start going crazy and turning on their owners.  The scenes of bodies being sent through the grinder still work (love the close-ups of the meat coming out of the machine), but these highlights are few and far between.  Mostly, it’s just a long, dull slog.

Another debit is the amateurish cast.  Some are clearly reading right off their script (and not even going through the trouble to hide it), and none of them can keep your attention during their long, painful dialogue scenes.  Cult legends Dolores (Glen or Glenda?) Fuller and Liz (Desperate Living) Renay show up briefly, but they’re not given a whole lot to do.  Mikels himself plays a professor and easily gives the best performance of the movie.

The thing that really sends Corpse Grinders 2 into the shitter is the ending.  All the plotlines threaten to come together, as if the film is leading up to a big reveal… and then it… doesn’t.  Oh well.  Maybe the answers I seek will come to pass in Corpse Grinders 3.

THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES 2 (1982) ** ½

Devil in Miss Jones was truly a classic that transcended the hardcore genre.  Director Gerard Damiano made a film that, in addition to being damned fine erotica, was also a great movie.  This sloppy, occasionally humorous sequel has no such aspirations.

You know you’re getting something different right from the first scene.  Miss Jones (once again played by Georgina Spelvin) is still stuck in Hell and more desperate than ever to get off.  She crawls to Cyrano De Bergerac (Alan Adrian) and climbs on top of his dick nose and rides his face.  Then two guards with dick-shaped helmets haul her away to see Lucifer (Jack Wrangler).  Naturally, she seduces Lucifer by sucking on his pointed tail and then fucks him till he has a flaming orgasm.  Satisfied, he makes her a deal so she can go back to earth and finally cum.  

So far, so not bad.  However, the wheels begin to fall off once Miss Jones gets out of Hell.  It’s here where Lucifer puts her soul into the bodies of different women.  First, she inhabits a call girl (Jacqueline Lorians) before hopping inside a soldier (Joanna Storm), and then a prudish door to door saleswoman (Anna Ventura) whose Tupperware is transformed into sex toys.  

All this is mildly amusing.  It’s just a pity that Spelvin couldn’t have stuck around longer.  I guess the filmmakers could only afford her for a day or two.  Either that, or she was just ready to move on to greener pastures.  Either way, her presence is sorely missed throughout the rest of the film.  It’s especially disappointing considering her performance was best thing about the original.

Director Henri (Jailhouse Girls) Pachard’s vision of Hell is also much different than that of Gerard Damiano’s.  Gone is the sparse sets and minimalistic approach.  Instead, we get outlandish sets populated by performers wearing crazy outfits, some of who are made up to be famous historical figures (like Marie Antoinette and Cleopatra).

Overall, this is more of a cash-in than a true continuation, but it’s not without its charm.  I have a soft spot (or a hard spot I guess you could say) for these early ‘80s hardcore films that at least tried to be wacky and emphasized crazy production design over the sex.  Too bad Hell’s “No Orgasms” rule cuts down on the number of money shots, which is disappointing.  (There’s an annoying “Orgasm Alert” every time someone goes to bust a nut.)

The big problem is that the women Miss Jones swaps places with just can’t compete with Spelvin.  Lorians tries, but she is simply unable to fill Spelvin’s shoes.  R. Bolla is a lot of fun as “The Devil’s Advocate” though.  You’ll wish he had been cast as the devil instead of the boring Jack Wrangler.

Sure, much of The Devil in Miss Jones 2 is frustratingly uneven.  Sometimes, it threatens to get on your nerves.  (If you play a drinking game where you take a shot every time someone says, “There are no orgasms in hell”, you’ll be in a coma before the credits roll.)  Then again, it has Ron Jeremy licking his own dick, so there’s that.

MARAUDERS (2016) * ½

Bruce Willis stars in another Grindstone Entertainment picture, so named for their penchant for grinding out generic DTV actioners.  The good news is, this one features a slightly better supporting cast than usual.  Unfortunately, it’s undermined by a standard issue plot, unnecessary overlength, and a visibly disinterested performance by Willis.  

A gang of vicious bank robbers (who wear cool skull masks that look like a cross between one of the masks in The Strangers and the Punisher skull) exclusively rob banks owned by a rich fat cat (Willis).  Christopher Meloni is the Fed on their trail trying to bring them down.  His efforts are hampered by a loose cannon cop (Johnathon Schaech) with a penchant for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.

Willis has been accused of phoning it in as of late.  The fact that many of his scenes in Marauders require him to talk on the telephone, so he’s quite literally phoning it in, doesn’t help.  It’s also obvious due to the wonky editing and sound that he wasn’t even in the same room as some of his fellow actors during some scenes.  When Willis and Meloni are finally together, it feels like they’re acting in completely different movies.  Unlike Willis, Meloni shows signs of a pulse, while Willis almost seems oblivious there’s a movie being filmed around him.

Meloni may give the movie a faint spark, but his police procedural scenes are sluggish at best.  At least the bank robbery scenes are competently staged.  Too bad the plot spins its wheels for the better part of the running time.  

The supporting cast features a lot of familiar faces, but they are spread thin and given very little to do.  Dave Bautista plays a member of Meloni’s team and Adrian Grenier (who also was in director Steven C. Miller’s much better Arsenal alongside Schaech) is the wet-behind-the-ears rookie.  While Meloni and Bautista’s halfhearted banter occasionally breathes a little life into the flick, you can only perform so much CPR before you’ve got to call it.