RICK SLOANE DOUBLE FEATURE

HOBGOBLINS  (1988)  *

Hobgoblins is the worst Gremlins rip-off of all time, and this is coming from someone who has a soft spot in their heart for Gremlins rip-offs.  It makes Critters seem worthy of a Criterion release in comparison. 

A night watchman at a movie studio discovers the titular beasties while making his rounds.  These little furry monsters make their victims live out their wildest fantasies before killing them.  He stupidly lets them escape from the studio vault, and his friends almost get killed by the little boogers.  The Hobgoblins then take over his uptight girlfriend, who suddenly has an urge to strip at a sleazy club called “Club Scum”.  He and his buddies have to rescue her before she becomes the next casualty of the cretinous creatures.   

Writer/director Rick Sloane has made a career out of making crummy low budget movies.  I can’t say I hate everything he’s done.  I’m one of the staunchest defenders of Vice Academy you’re likely ever to find.  However, trust me when I say that Hobgoblins is among his all-time worst.

If Slone concentrated his efforts on the monsters themselves, it might’ve worked.  Unfortunately, he spends an inordinate amount of time on the annoying teenage characters and their allegedly humorous shenanigans.  The leads are amateurish, shrill, and get on your nerves almost instantly.  The only memorable cast member is Duane Whitaker (who would later to go on to have an infamous part in Pulp Fiction), who plays “Road Rash”, the Club Scum bouncer.  

Even as a fan of Gremlins cash-ins, I have to say Hobgoblins fails on just about every level.  There are just too many scenes here that run on forever and have little to no payoff.  (The extended garden tool duel scene being a prime example.)  The exorbitant exposition in the pre-credits scene could’ve also been trimmed down or taken out altogether.

It’s a shame too because the monsters are kind of cute.  They’re easily the best thing about this turd.  The fact that they are hand puppets is painfully obvious more often than not, but I’ve certainly seen worse creatures, that’s for sure. 

AKA:  Goblins.

THE VISITANTS  (1986)  ½ * 

A nerdy teen discovers his weird neighbors are actually aliens.  Desperate for a good grade in science class, he steals their ray gun and gives it to his teacher to study.  Naturally, his extraterrestrial neighbors want it back.  They eventually wait for Halloween night to retrieve the gun so they can move about the neighborhood freely without being noticed. 

The Visitants is Rick Sloane’s riff on ‘50s Sci-Fi movies, done with zero style, wit, or budget.  Man, if you thought Sloane’s Hobgoblins was bad, wait till you get a load of this.  It’s not nearly as blatantly obnoxious as that film was.  In fact, it’s a lot more innocuous, which is somehow even worse.  Even though Hobgoblins was awful, at least stuff happened in it.  This on the other hand is boring and forgettable.  The film lumbers on for a painful 92 minutes, and just when it feels like it’s wrapping things up, it continues on for another ten agonizing minutes.  

I know this is an early entry in Slone’s oeuvre, so I guess I should be kind of lenient as it’s obvious the man was still learning his craft (although whether he ever truly mastered it is up for debate).  However, even early on in his career, his shortcomings are evident.  As with Hobgoblins, there’s a lot of padding.  The opening sequence runs on far too long. and there’s a Halloween party scene that feels like it goes on for an eternity.  The actors are even worse than the ones in Hobgoblins (if you can believe it), with the teenage characters being particularly annoying.  The humor is also weak, even by Sloane’s low standards, and the finale is awful.  The alien creature is especially pathetic.  (The rubber mask rattles around on the actor’s head.)

In short, I can’t say I’ll ever again work up the courage to revisit The Visitants.

DOMINO (2019) *

Brian De Palma is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time.  Even his misses are usually more interesting than most director’s best stuff.  The same can’t be said for his latest effort, Domino.  I can’t quite say it’s De Palma’s worst movie, but it’s definitely his most lackluster (and boring).

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars as a Copenhagen cop who accidentally leaves his gun at home when he goes on duty.  Because of his forgetfulness, his partner is killed and the murderer (Eriq Ebouaney) escapes.  He naturally vows to avenge his partner’s death.  The only problem is the killer just so also happens to be doing the dirty work for a shady CIA man (Guy Pearce) who will stop at nothing to make sure his asset is well protected.

It’s always fun to see De Palma channeling Hitchcock.  Domino kicks off with a blatant copy of Vertigo in which the hero hangs by his fingernails from a high rooftop.  On paper, this should’ve been gangbusters, but the execution feels tired, as if De Palma is only going through the motions.  Even his trademark use of split screen is a bust here, mostly due to the fact that one half of the screen looks like something out of a first-person video game.  Likewise, the score feels like a pale imitation of past Hitchcock scores.  To make matters worse, the music is often halfhearted and rarely matches the action on screen. 

It also doesn’t help that Coster-Waldau makes for an incredibly bland lead.  Looking like a budget version of Aaron Eckhart, he sleepwalks through most of the movie.  The only spark comes from Pearce whose dirty CIA character feels like he came out of an entirely different (better) thriller. 

Mostly though, Domino falls down because it’s so dull and slow moving.  The action is piss-poor too.  Although the set-up holds promise, things only get worse as the film plods along.  The second half is particularly dire, and the finale is laughably bad.  Even the most ardent De Palma devotees may have a hard time defending this one.

FUN IN BALLOON LAND (1965) *

A little boy named Sonny falls asleep while his mother reads him a bedtime story.  He then sleepwalks into an oversized book of fairy tales and winds up in a parade balloon warehouse where he meets (among other things) talking balloons, watches ballerinas, and participates in a western square dance.  Sonny soon finds himself out on the street watching a very long Christmas parade full of odd balloons, floats, and (too many) marching bands.

Fun in Balloon Land is a very strange ‘60s oddity that seems to be made for children, but in reality, it’s stealth propaganda for balloon manufacturer Giant Balloon Parades, Inc.  Although it’s less than an hour long, it feels much longer than that.  It’s pretty terrible in just about every way imaginable, and yet there are so many weird and disturbing images here that it’s hard to look away.

The most uncomfortable moment comes when Sonny is running around the “underwater” section of the balloon warehouse where he encounters a giant talking lobster.  What makes this scene upsetting isn’t the constant sound of water gurgling on the soundtrack to remind us we’re underwater (although no attempt was made to represent it visually).  What’s disturbing is the fact that Sonny is wearing very tight, very short gold lame shorts, and nothing else the entire time.  

Most of the running time is devoted to the parade scene.  Here, a drunk sounding woman with a thick Philly accent narrates the action, recites nursery rhymes, and hurls out perplexing non-sequiturs as the parade goes by.  Imagine watching a dime store version of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade narrated by your drunk aunt and you might have some idea of what to expect.  Then again, that still might not be enough to prepare you for such WTF floats as “The Marrying Turkey”.  

Speaking of which, yes, Fun in Balloon Land is a turkey all right, but it’s not one I’ll forget any time soon.

SHOCKING DARK (1989) *

At a time when ripping off James Cameron’s The Abyss was all the rage, Italian schlock director Bruno (Night of the Zombies) Mattei took it upon himself to rip-off not one, but TWO of Cameron’s other movies.  You might not believe it, but Shocking Dark is Mattei’s blatant low budget rip-off of Aliens and The Terminator.  If only Mattei tossed in some flying piranha as a tribute to Cameron’s Piranha 2, he could’ve made it a hat trick. 

Instead of going to a distant planet to fight monsters, like in Aliens, a group of soldiers go into the caverns of Venice on a rescue mission.  The only survivor is a little girl (Dominica Coulson) who latches onto the head researcher Sara (Haven Tyler) in a way very reminiscent of Newt and Ripley in Aliens.  It doesn’t take long for the creatures to start picking off the soldiers, but Sara soon finds herself with another problem to contend with:  A murderous android who has infiltrated their group.

There are many moments here that egregiously copy from Aliens.  We have a scene where the soldiers find humans cocooned into the wall (it looks like dime store Halloween cobweb decorations), a part where the Ripley and Newt copycats are stuck inside a locked room with a murderous alien, and a sequence where the troops use a tracking device (it looks like a pocket calculator) to find the monsters.  A lot of these bits are ripped off beat by beat from Aliens.  The big difference here is that it sucks big time.

While the bad movie lover in me loved seeing Cameron’s work so mercilessly aped, the fact of the matter is most of this is just too boring to work as an effective rip-off.  Haven Tyler is no Sigourney Weaver either.  Heck, her character is often frightened and needs the men in the group to constantly save her.  The rest of the acting is awful, and the hyperventilating histrionics and terrible dialogue aren’t even loopy enough to muster any so-bad-it’s-good laughs.  The production design is crummy too as most of the movie takes place in a series of boiler rooms and basements, and the monsters are inconsistent, non-threatening, and thoroughly stupid looking.  (They all look like props left over from other movies that have been hastily repurposed.)

That’s not even bringing up the Terminator rip-off aspects, which are half-assed at best and are relegated to the last twenty minutes or so of the movie.  Plus, you also have to deal with the annoying kid who screams, “Sara!” every forty-five seconds or so.  Speaking of annoying, there’s also a constant beeping sound effect that plays throughout the film that sounds like a dump truck backing up.  

In short, Shocking Dark deserves to be nuked from orbit.  It’s the only way to be sure.

AKA:  Terminator 2.  AKA:  Alienators.  AKA:  Aliens 2.

THE SEARCH FOR WENG WENG (2014) ***

Australian video store owner Andrew Leavold’s obsession with Weng Weng, the diminutive star of such WTF Filipino exploitation films as For Y’ur Height Only and The Impossible Kid, leads him to travel to Manila to find out the story of Weng’s rise and fall.  Early in his journey, Leavold learns Weng passed away some time ago, but undeterred, he presses on.  As chance would have it, he bumps into the editor of Weng’s films in a parking lot, and he just so happens to know where all the old timer Filipino stuntmen hang out.  There, he finds many of Weng’s former costars and directors, all of whom are more than eager to tell all about his story.

The Search for Weng Weng works not only as a heartfelt tribute to the smallest star of the big screen (at 2’ 9”, he’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for shortest leading man), but it’s also a bizarre and sometimes surreal documentary in its own right.  Much of the fun comes from seeing how sheer dumb luck keeps propelling Leavold forward on his filmmaking quest.  He even winds up getting a face to face interview with former Filipino First Lady, Imelda Marcos, who had Weng as her guest many times.  (She even invites the documentary crew to visit her husband's perfectly preserved corpse in the family crypt!)  

The biggest takeaway from all this (which is also evident in Weng’s films) is that Weng had a genuine screen presence and charisma.  Yes, the productions were often slipshod, and many of the jokes were aimed at him, but he did a great job within the confines of those movies, which had their own unique quirky charm.  Plus, Weng did all his own amazing stunts!  I mean, of course he did.  At 2’ 9”, who could possibly double for him?  The Search for Weng Weng is further proof good things come in small packages.

THE LEGEND OF THE RED DRAGON (1994) ***

I always say, “If you have to steal, steal from the best”.  Well, The Legend of the Red Dragon opens with a scene that directly rips off Lone Wolf and Cub!  That right there was a clue this movie was going to kick some ass.

Jet Li returns home and finds his family murdered.  The only survivor of the slaughter is his little baby.  Knowing he’ll be on the run from his enemies for the rest of his life, Jet gives the kid a choice:  The sword or his toys.  If his son chooses the toys, that means he’s too young to follow him on his adventure.  If he chooses the sword, that means the kid is ready for a life of violence and mayhem.

He wisely chooses the sword. 

Almost immediately, they are jumped by Ninjas.  An all-out badass brawl ensues, culminating with an awesome fight scene where Jet squares off against the villain, who is brandishing a giant flaming timber.  It’s truly an applause-worthy sequence and a heck of a way to kick off a Kung Fu flick. 

After that, Jet takes the kid and hides out from his enemies.  Unlike Lone Wolf and Cub, he doesn’t push the tyke around in a booby-trapped, heavily armored baby carriage.  Instead, a few years pass, and he and his son (who has religiously trained with his father over the years to become something of a Kung Fu expert himself), travel through the countryside incognito.  Facing starvation, the proud Li lowers himself by accepting work as a bodyguard for a rich braggart as a way to put food on the table.  His new boss is about to marry a woman who only wants to steal his riches. Naturally, she and Jet kind of develop a thing for each other.  Before long though, Jet’s enemies show up looking for him and his kid, leading to more Kung Fu madness.

The Legend of the Red Dragon contains many wild, energetic, and memorable fight scenes.  Among my favorites, Jet’s fight with his master’s fiancée (who uses knitting needles, thread, and measuring tape as weapons) and his son’s brawl with a bunch of streetwise brats.  The villain is also something else.  He rides around in a metallic death machine that looks like something from Wayne Enterprises.  There’s even a scene where he rips a dude in half.  LENGTHWISE.  WITH HIS BARE HANDS.

Unfortunately, the movie starts to run out of steam as it enters the third act.  I mean it couldn’t possibly maintain the energy of the early action sequences, but it certainly tries.  Also, the action in some sequences is so hectic that it becomes a bit numbing after a while.  A lot of the humor falls flat too (like when the master’s future mother in-law accidentally doses herself with aphrodisiac).  Those qualms aside, The Legend of the Red Dragon is a rip-snorting buffet of asskickery.  Any Jet Li fan worth their salt should check it out.

AKA:  The New Legend of Shaolin.  AKA:  Master of Shaolin.  AKA:  Legend of the Future Shaolin.  AKA:  The Legend of Red Dragon.  AKA:  Legends of Shaolin.  

THE GENERAL (1926) ***

Buster Keaton stars as a man who tries to enlist in the Confederate Army and is denied because his services as a train engineer are considered too valuable to let him go to war.  When his best girl (Marion Mack) is kidnapped by Yankee spies, he hops in his train and tries to get her back.  He succeeds, and together, they head for home in his trusty locomotive with the Northern Army breathing down his neck.

I’m familiar with the works of silent comedy legends Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, but somehow, I haven’t seen any of Buster Keaton’s films.  I had always heard The General was a great movie, and yet I just never got around to seeing it.  I thought I’d rectify that, seeing as I really could use a good laugh these days.  Even though I had always wanted to see the flick, I didn’t really know much about the plot.  I was a little taken aback by the Confederacy angle, especially given the current circumstances.  I guess it’s just a case of poor timing. 

I know there are probably many people out there who won’t watch this because the hero is Confederate, and that is okay.   Then again, there are probably just as many people who won’t watch it just because it’s a silent movie.  That’s unfortunate too, because while I didn’t like it quite as much as some of Chaplin and Lloyd’s stuff, it’s full of laughs, terrific stunt work, and some amazing set pieces. 

You can see The General’s influence throughout cinema history.  Keaton performs some leaps and bounds here that probably inspired Jackie Chan.  The scene where he narrowly avoids the shit thrown at him by the villains is very much like a Looney Tunes cartoon.  It’s also easy to imagine George Miller taking notes while watching this as the action in both Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Mad Max:  Fury Road owe a huge debt to this film. 

The train chase scenes occur at a breathless pace.  What makes them particularly noteworthy is that most of the action takes place on a speeding train as it’s barreling down a set of railroad tracks.  It’s ingenious how the film piles up the peril and Keaton is somehow always able to slip out of danger. 

The General is not a perfect movie though.  Even at 78 minutes, it feels much too long.  The final battle sequence between the North and South was superfluous and pales next to the railroad chase scenes.  However, the exploding bridge scene is a jaw-dropper.  I mean, they really blew up a bridge while a speeding train was on the tracks, and it is nothing short of spectacular.  Seriously, fuck CGI.