MURDER BY DECREE (1979) **

The prospect of Sherlock Holmes matching wits with Jack the Ripper is a grand idea.  Add in the fact that it stars Christopher Plummer as Holmes, James Mason as Dr. Watson, and it was directed by the great Bob Clark, and you certainly have my curiosity.  Too bad the execution is muddled and the whole thing is overlong to a fault.  Still, the performances are strong across the board, and there are stretches where you can see the promise the premise held.  

Clark had an amazingly diverse filmography, directing everything from Deathdream to Porky’s to A Christmas Story.  His horror roots are definitely on display during the early scenes of the Ripper stalking his victims.  (The first-person POV shots are quite similar to the ones found in Clark’s Black Christmas.)  Once Holmes proclaims, “The game’s afoot!”, the movie hits many speed bumps along the way. 

Some scenes are more successful than others.  My favorite detour involved Donald Sutherland’s amusing extended cameo as a clairvoyant who may have knowledge of the killer’s identity.  Ultimately, there are just too many subplots and unnecessary moving parts that gum up the works.  Genevieve Bujold’s long nuthouse scene in particular, stops the movie on a dime.  Holmes’ big deduction scene is also longwinded and goes on way too long.

Even when things are getting severely bogged down, Plummer and Mason are so good that their scenes remain watchable.  Plummer cuts a dashing figure as Holmes, underplaying the role ever so slightly.  Unfortunately, he’s not much of an action hero though as he gets knocked flat on his ass and/or out cold no less than three times in the movie, allowing the killer to escape each time. 

As a Clark fan, I was disappointed I didn’t like this one as much as I had hoped.  Then again, for a director with such an eclectic filmography, it’s only natural to expect some near misses.  I mean, they all can’t be Rhinestone.  Maybe if Clark let Jack the Ripper into the editing booth and he cut the movie to ribbons, getting it to ninety minutes, it would’ve worked.  At two-hours-and-change, it’s just too slow moving to ever catch fire.

AKA:  Sherlock Holmes and Saucy Jack.  AKA:  Sherlock Holmes:  Murder by Decree.

ASSASSIN’S BULLET (2012) * ½

In between directing Scott Adkins actioners, Isaac Florentine found time to make this boring Bulgarian-lensed espionage thriller.  It’s not very good, but it is interesting to see the trio of leading men, all of whom possess vastly different acting styles, populating a DTV flick.  Although none of them had an ice cube’s chance in Hell of salvaging the sluggishly paced snoozer, I’m still glad they at least got a paycheck out of all this.

First, we have Christian Slater who plays a former FBI agent who works at the American embassy in Bulgaria.  Donald Sutherland is the ambassador who wants to put Slater’s investigative talents to good use to find the vigilante who’s been assassinating some VIP’s.  Then there’s Timothy Spall, who plays Slater’s buddy who smokes a hookah, ogles belly dancers, and helps dole out the massive amounts of exposition.  While out clubbing, Spall helps Slater get out a lot of his pent-up Dead Wife exposition, and when Elika Portnoy is on his therapist’s couch, she gets to spout a bunch of Hypnosis May Help Me Remember My Secret Past exposition.  These big chunks of exposition aren’t especially involving and help to bring the film to a dead halt on more than one occasion.

The plot at hand is pretty weak too, and the twists are painfully predictable (and sometimes downright corny).  Florentine does his darnedest to dress it up the best he can.  He tries to cut dialogue scenes like fight sequences with a lot of camera movement and frequent edits.  Too bad that neither he nor the actors can make you give a rat’s ass about their characters or their various plights.  Also, what little action we do get is far from Florentine’s best work.  The fight scene and shootout that caps the movie is OK, but it comes up a day late and a dollar short.

Look, I like Florentine as an action director, and I admire his attempt to try something a little outside of his wheelhouse.  Ultimately, that’s all it is:  An attempt.  Other than the fact that the three leads delivered strong performances, Assassin’s Bullet is a complete misfire.

AKA:  Sofia.

TERRIFIER (2018) ***

Terrifier is a nasty, gory little shocker.  Fans of old school slashers will definitely enjoy it as it caters to many of the genre's demands with gleeful abandon.  Even though the film treads upon a well-worn path, it still manages to spring a surprise or two on its audience.  It certainly scratched the itch for this dyed-in-the-wool gorehound.

Tara (Jenna Kanell) and her friend Dawn (Return to Nuke ‘Em High’s Catherine Corcoran) get white-girl wasted on Halloween night.  After hitting the bars, they stop for a bite at a pizza joint where they are stalked by a demented looking clown named Art (David Howard Thornton).  He soon makes life a living Hell for them as he chases the lovely ladies through an abandoned building with the intention of mutilating and killing them (and not necessarily in that order).  

Terrifier begins with a nifty little sequence that almost feels like its own self-contained short film.  It nicely sets the tone for what’s to come in the next seventy or so minutes.  I have to say that the scenes of Art playing cat and mouse with the two heroines in the early stretches of the movie are more effective than the scenes of him playing cat and mouse with the new potential victims that occur later in the film.  That said, there is some pretty gnarly stuff here, so whatever qualms I had were washed away whenever Art the Clown did something disgusting.  

I mean, I respect any movie in which the killer dispatches one of his victims by cutting her in half LENGTHWISE.  Too many jokers nowadays are content to cut their victims in half at the waist.  This guy Art not only cuts them in half lengthwise, he uses a rusty hacksaw to do it, and folks, that takes time, skill, AND dedication.  You have to tip your hat to that.  

It also helps that we actually like the characters.  Both Kanell and Corcoran are engaging and charming.  They both feel like real friends, and more importantly real people.  Corcoran in particular is a lot of fun to watch (especially during her drunken phase) and exhibits genuine charisma.  Too bad she doesn’t make it past the halfway mark.  

Art makes for a solid horror mascot too.  Walking around like a demented mime, he gets into his quarry’s psyche and makes it hard for them to shake his image.  He also knows how to dish out the torture and slashes up his victims like few of his contemporaries.  What I like about him is that Art takes what the slashers that came before him have already done and puts his own twist on it.  Remember when Leatherface cut off somebody’s face and wore it as a mask?  Well, Art cuts off somebody’s… err… region and plays dress up with it.  Imagine if Marilyn Manson was doing Silence of the Lambs cosplay and that might give you an inkling of what’s in store.  I guess what I’m getting at is there is a shortage of modern horror mascots today, and I for one hope that Art will be back for many more sequels.   

THE TRACKER (2019) *

Dolph Lundgren stars as a tracker whose family is brutally murdered.  Ten years go by, and he gets word regarding the whereabouts of his family’s killers from an Italian cop.  When Dolph arrives in Italy, he learns the cop has died under mysterious circumstances.  He then joins forces with a wet behind the ears detective who helps him in his quest for revenge. 

It seems to me I’ve seen a lot of these Grindstone Entertainment movies lately.  You know how these things go:  Name action stars are prominently featured in the credits and box art, but they usually wind up having limited screen time.  Although The Tracker isn’t as egregious as some of the Bruce Willis flicks when it comes to its star barely appearing, there is a lot of unnecessary stuff with the detective that gets in the way of Dolph doing his thing.  (The domestic scenes with the cop and his very pregnant wife are especially time consuming.)

Still, even as brief as Bruce’s appearances in the other Grindstone flicks are, at least the movies themselves run the gamut from so-so to not bad to pretty good.  I can’t say the same thing for The Tracker, which is probably the worst Grindstone picture I’ve seen.  The tip-off this was going to be bad happened early on when Dolph’s family is kidnapped.  He goes to the cops and asks, “Have you found them yet?”, and I’m over here thinking… DUDE YOURE THE FUCKING TRACKER SHOULDNT YOU BE… I don’t know… TRACKING THEM OR SOMETHING? 

I mean, there’s this whole flashback scene in the beginning of the film where Dolph’s dad teaches him how to track his quarry.  His father also imparts to him the difference between tracking and hunting.  He maintains there is a sacred bond between the tracker and his quarry and that the act of tracking is intrinsically tied to a man’s nature.  

So… when it finally comes time to track something, Dolph… Lets the cops handle it?  Naturally, the bad guys get away.  Then, you’re expecting Dolph to go track them suckers down because, he is, after all, The Tracker.  Does that happen?  NOPE!  Instead, he waits ten years to finally do something about it, but ONLY after receiving a tip from a cop halfway around the world in Italy?  

What the hell. 

If you can’t already guess, The Tracker definitely belongs on the lower rungs of the Dolph ladder.  In fact, of the four films he’s made with director Giorgio Serafini, this one is by far the worst (the other three being Ambushed, Blood of Redemption, and Puncture Wounds).  There’s not a lot of action either, and what action we do get is poorly filmed and edited.  To add insult to injury, the plot is slim, the pacing is slow, and the villains are weak and unmemorable. 

Dolph spends lot of time driving in the first act looking bored.  He then moves on to hanging out in cafes and walking down the street wearing a scarf in the second act.  Once the action finally kicks in (kinda), he trades the scarf in for a poncho and spends a lot of time looking through a sniper scope.  In short, this is far from the best use of his talents. 

At least the movie is watchable whenever Dolph is on screen.  Whenever it cuts back to the Italian cop and/or the bad guys, it stops on a dime. In short, The Tracker ain’t worth tracking down. 

WHEN WOMEN LOST THEIR TAILS (1972) * ½

Last week, I watched the excruciating Italian caveman comedy When Women Had Tails to eulogize the late, great composer Ennio Morricone.  As bad as that movie was, it still had the charms of the luscious Senta Berger to make it bearable.  Her presence was the only reason I decided to give this lamebrained sequel a chance.  Oh, and Morricone also provided the score once again, although I suspect they just reused his music from the first movie.  

Right away, you notice that the production values are much better than the original.  Instead of filming the flick in a jungle somewhere, the producers actually sprung for a studio, and the art directors managed to come up with some halfway cool looking caveman digs.  (I liked their hollowed-out dinosaur house.)  The main inspiration this time seems to be The Flintstones as there are domestic scenes where Berger uses a parrot as a kitchen appliance.  Now, I know the “a woman needs to stay in the kitchen” rhetoric is outdated and only a Neanderthal would dare to suggest it, but you have to understand, we are dealing with actual Neanderthals here, so take that into consideration.  

Anyway, Senta is eking out a meager existence as a housewife to the five chucklehead cavemen from the first film.  A conman caveman comes to the tribe and realizes he’s sitting on a gold mine.  He then proceeds to bilk the thickheaded cavemen out of their money, home, and land; all the while making time with Senta.  (You see, she likes him because he’s apparently the only caveman who’s heard of foreplay.)  

This is just as stupid as its predecessor, but the upside is Senta looks even hotter than she did in the original.  In that film, they tried to make her look like a legitimate cavegirl by covering her in mud and filth, mussing her hair up, and making her wear unflattering animal pelts.  Here, she flat-out looks like a cheesecake model doing a prehistoric photoshoot.  Her hair is well-coiffed, her make-up is just so, and her ample cleavage is on full display in her form-fitting cavegirl attire.  It’s almost expected the caveman humor is going to be painfully unfunny, so at least the copious eye candy helps take away some of the sting.  

Yes, the humor is painful, but that’s nothing compared to the odd subplot about the sole gay caveman who is so depressed that he doesn’t have a mate that he pays one of his friends to kill him.  Just when you think you’ve seen everything.  In an appropriate setting, this scene might’ve been touching and sad, but it feels sorely out of place in a stupid Italian caveman sex comedy.

DREAMS COME TRUE (1984) **

Lee (Michael Sanville) is a shiftless factory worker who meets the girl of his dreams (Stephanie Shuford), quite literally.  They soon figure out their chance meeting was a product of astral projection that occurs whenever they have sex.  Eventually, the two lovebirds discover they’re able to whisk themselves away to far off places every time they do the deed.  

Dreams Come True is a low budget astral projection sex comedy/drama released by Troma, and it’s not nearly as exploitative (or fun) as their in-house productions.  Strangely enough, the version I saw had all the nudity cut out of it.  I can’t say that heaps of nudity would’ve salvaged the picture, but it certainly couldn’t have hurt.

At least the astral projection scenes have a kooky allure to them.  Every time the couple falls asleep, a glowing version of themselves rises up and begins spinning around towards the screen during a half-assed light show.  It kind of looks like a cross between outtakes from Xanadu and deleted scenes from an a-ha video.  These sequences are repeated often, but they do help break up the monotony of the ho-hum drama between the pair of paranormal paramours.  

While the comedy portions of the film are largely unfunny (like when they steal a pizza), it works much better than the awkwardly handled scenes of Shuford confronting her rapist uncle.  These scenes are unappealing and give the otherwise harmless movie a tinge of unnecessary unpleasantness.  It also doesn’t help that the matter is resolved in such an unsatisfying manner.

My favorite scene comes when the couple go to the movies and see The Children.  Later, while making love, they accidentally astral project themselves INTO the movie and are attacked by the ghoulish boys and girls from that classic killer kiddie flick.  That scene alone is enough to keep this one from being a total washout.  (Which makes sense since both films were from the same director.)

Oh, and the music for the movie was provided by the band Spooner, whose members later went on to form Garbage, so I guess that’s something. 

HITMAN’S RUN (1999) * ½

Hitman’s Run kicks off with a great opening scene.  The titular hitman, played by the one and only Eric Roberts, refuses to perform a hit.  He then gets into a car chase with his former employers that results in a pretty strong crash stunt.  So far, so good.  Unfortunately, it all goes downhill fast after that. 

Two years later, Eric is in the Witness Protection Program with a new life and a new family.  He cooperates with the Feds to testify against his former bosses when the Mob comes looking for him.  You see, they’ve come into possession of a disc with a list of the names of all the witnesses in the program.  The teenage hacker (Esteban Powell) responsible for obtaining the list winds up in Roberts’ charge, and together they have to race against time to save his girlfriend from the bad guys. 

Hitman’s Run was directed by great Mark L. (Showdown in Little Tokyo) Lester, but it’s far from his best work.  At all times the film feels like the producers had a bunch of unrelated car chase and car crash scenes sitting around the editing room and they decided to edit them together into a feature.  They cobbled together an overly simple (and yet, strangely overly complicated) story to hold everything together, but somehow forgot to make it fun.

While the action is decent, the stuff in between the car chases and shootouts is ho-hum at best, and downright irritating at worst.  Roberts isn’t bad.  His massive mullet is pretty rocking.  The big problem is Powell as the dorky teenage sidekick.  This kid will grate on your nerves something fierce, and the banter with him and Roberts is often insufferable. 

The supporting cast is solid though.  Brent Huff is in a few scenes as a hired gun, and C. Thomas Howell has the thankless job as the Fed helping Roberts.  I also enjoyed seeing Michael D. (The Ice Pirates) Roberts as Howell’s boss, and it was fun spotting perennial Mob movie vet Joe Viterelli as another killer in the Witness Protection Program. 

Although some of the action beats work, the editing throughout the film is choppy.  Some scene transitions look pretty rough, which only adds to the already awkward narrative.  The ending, set aboard a boat, is particularly sloppy.  Not only that, but it seemingly goes on forever, featuring everything from Mexican standoffs to Roberts swinging around on a rope like Tarzan to and a father/son reunion DURING a bomb diffusion scene.  

In the right hands, this might’ve worked.  This sort of thing is usually well within Lester’s wheelhouse, but for whatever reason he kinda dropped the ball on this one.  Because of that, even the most devoted Eric Roberts die-hards are likely to skip Hitman’s Run.