HOCUS POCUS (1993) **

I’m not entirely sure how Hocus Pocus has garnered a cult following in recent years as it’s mostly a dumb kids movie with only a few worthwhile moments sprinkled about to keep it from being totally forgettable.  I guess if you were seven years old in the ‘90s and saw this on video, it might’ve been an OK gateway into horror.  For anyone else, it’s kind of hard to sit through, unless you’re a die-hard Bette Midler fan, that is.

The new kid in school (Omri Katz) doesn’t give a shit about local legends and warnings, so he goes into the town’s haunted house, lights a forbidden candle, and brings about the return of a trio of witches (Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimi) who were hung for kidnapping children during the Salem Witch Trials.  They then set out to suck out all the souls of the kids, in town starting with our hero’s little sister (Thora Birch).  He then teams up with a talking cat and the most popular girl in school (Ladybugs’ Vinessa Shaw) to stop the witches and save his sister.

Hocus Pocus is a dumb kids movie, which is fine.  I am not the target audience for this sort of thing.  I’m just saying a dumb kids movie would’ve been infinitely more tolerable if it wasn’t for the constant mugging of the three witches, all of whom are pretty annoying.  Bette hams it up to almost embarrassing levels.  Kajimy and Parker are basically just there to repeat each other’s lines or finish each other’s sentences, which gets on your nerves in a hurry.  It also doesn’t help that Bette sings a terrible rendition of “I Put a Spell on You” (it must’ve been a contractual obligation) and Parker does half a number while casting a spell.  

There is, however, one legitimately weird and creepy scene when the talking cat gets ran over and flattened by a car.  Since it’s immortal, its bones break back into place and he comes back to life.  Another memorable part is the running gag when they keep referring to Katz as a “virgin”, not something you’d expect in a Disney movie.  

Sleepwalkers’ Mick Garris co-wrote and co-produced, which maybe explains why some of this threatens to work at times, but for the most part, Hocus Pocus is kinda bogus. 

CRY MACHO (2021) **

Cry Macho begins on a puzzling note.  An old rodeo hero (Clint Eastwood) far past his prime arrives to his job late and is chewed out by his boss (Dwight Yoakum), who promptly fires him.  This scene is longwinded, awkward, and filled with exposition.  Then, we see a newspaper clipping of Clint riding broncs in his glory days that miraculously comes to life and becomes old newsreel footage.  But never mind that, because here comes another scene that takes place one year later (later than the first scene and not the scene with the newspaper) where Yoakum breaks into Clint’s house and offers him money to go down to Mexico and kidnap his long-lost son (Eduardo Minett).  

Which begs the question:  Why did we need the opening scene of Clint being chewed out by his boss in the first place?  Why couldn’t we just cut right to the scene where he hires him to go to Mexico?  Couldn’t they just add some extra dialogue bits if they wanted to make it clear he fired Clint the year before?  Then again, the last thing this movie needs is more exposition.  I mean the first fifteen minutes is nothing more than Clint listening to other people describe the plot.  Shouldn’t Clint the director be SHOWING us all this and not telling us?  The film was based on a book unread by me, but in a book, you can get away with pages and pages where characters tell other characters about stuff that happened a long time ago that is pertinent to the plot.  It’s a little different in a movie.  

Things improve slightly once Clint and the kid hit the road, but not much.  It’s still a little patchy, but at least there’s more connective tissue in between scenes than there was in the early going.  That still doesn’t excuse the odd fade-outs that wind up fading back into the same scene.

Look, nobody does it (or more accurately, did it) better than Clint.  He is still one of my all-time heroes.  I don’t want to sound ageist or anything, but man, I think he should’ve hung it up with The Mule.  That was a great flick with Clint playing an age-appropriate role.  Here, we’re asked to believe the ninety-one-year-old Clint is maybe in his… sixties (?) and it still seems like a stretch.  The all-too obvious way the camera tries to hide Clint’s gaunt figure in silhouette, from behind, and from afar just compounds the fact.   

I’ve believed a lot of shit in movies over the years.  Believing a ninety-one-year-old man can punch out a guy three times younger than him is a bit much.  Or seeing him (or more accurately, his stunt double) riding a bucking bronco.  One thing I did believe that happened during the movie:  Clint getting Montezuma’s Revenge from drinking Mexican water.  

Then there are the random ass scenes that are supposed to pass for character development.  Like in the middle of one of the film’s many driving scenes, Clint suddenly blurts out, “You’re kind of growing on me, kid!”  Again, he’s telling us, and not showing us how they’re bonding as the compliment is completely unearned.  When you get to be ninety-one, I guess telling us is about all you can do.

At its heart, Cry Macho is a road movie.  After the awkward set-up, the film gets better once Clint and the kid head out on the road, and they slowly begin to appreciate each other’s company.  (It’s kind of a thematic retread of Gran Torino.)  I guess they were going for an offbeat feel because the kid only agrees to go with him as long as he can bring his pet rooster, a fighting cock named Macho, along for the ride.  Eventually, the crusty Clint learns to accept Macho too.  

Reportedly, Clint only shot six hours a day, and often using the first take.  That might explain why some of the early scenes feels closer to Ed Wood than Clint Eastwood.  However, as the film goes along, you can sort of see what he was going for if you squint hard enough.  Since Clint is a master at squinting, that probably explains why it made sense to him and not the audience.

PSYCHO GOREMAN (2021) ** ½

Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) is a bossy little girl who finds an evil extraterrestrial warlord buried in her backyard and names him Psycho Goreman (Matthew Ninaber).  Thanks to a magic amulet, she can control his every move, which comes in handy when she needs an extra player for dodgeball.  Once the P.G.’s dreaded nemesis Templar Pandora (Anna Tierney) learns of his location, she goes to Earth to stop him once and for all.

Psycho Goreman has a decent premise, but its Amblin Meets Troma schtick is spread a little thin over the film’s ninety-five-minute running time.  While there are a couple of laugh-out-loud moments to be had, I can’t help but think that this would’ve made for a better faux-Grindhouse trailer than an actual full-length movie (or at the most, a half-hour short).  You could pull off a tonally out-of-whack idea like this off in a three-minute trailer and not have to worry about it.  When you have Psycho Goreman killing innocents while his young sidekick acts like a brat, it’s sometimes hard to take.  

The special effects are spotty, but I think that was intentional.  The Psycho Goreman himself is a cool amalgam of Syngenor and Wishmaster.  The other aliens are cheesy looking for the most part.  Many would not have cut it on an episode of Power Rangers.  They aren’t bad per se, and possibly could’ve looked more effective (and dare I say realistic) if director Steven (The Void) Kostanski didn’t film them with bright lighting while holding the camera on them for so long.  

It’s a tricky thing to make a readymade cult item like this.  Compare this to something like Death Rider in the House of Vampires.  With that film, Glenn Danzig believes everything on screen is pure cinema, which is what makes it so damn fun to watch.  Kostanski on the other hand seems to be clapping himself on the back for coming up with such a zany premise.  That layer of detachment kind of keeps Psycho Goreman from really clicking.  I will say that as far as these kinds of things go, you can do a lot worse (as was the case with Kostanski’s insufferable Manborg).  I have to admit, when it works, it’s kind of fun.  

THE BIZARRE ONES (1968) **

A babe who looks zonked out on drugs hops in her car and heads to a swinger party.  Along the way, she picks up a hitchhiker who says, “I don’t have to rape my women—They come to me!”  Naturally, he insists they bone, so she ties him up using a handcuff rig in her car (who needs AAA when you have BDSM?) and blows him.  Leaving him tied up, she goes to the party where more people are tied up and used for the pleasure of others.  Things take a turn for the worse when the party moves to a nearby river where everything comes to a tragic end.  

Directed by Henri Pachard (who’d later go on to make a slew of hardcore flicks), The Bizarre Ones has a decidedly Warholesque feel to it.  And by that, I don’t mean that it’s arty.  I mean that it features crummy black and white photography and long static shots where nothing much happens.  

There is a heavy concentration on S & M, but like the title implies; some of this shit is so bizarre it’s hard to know if anyone (including the actors and/or characters) are getting anything out of it.  Consider the scene involving a clunky portable sex machine.  It takes forever for the guys to set it up (outdoors), and once they put the woman in there, it offers so little payoff, that you have to wonder if it was all worth it.  Maybe that was Pachard’s intent after all.  He wanted to show you just how involved being a bizarre one was.  He wanted the audience to know if you’re gonna take a woman out into the woods and put her into a portable sex machine, you have to deal with wrangling extension cords and laboriously setting up equipment before you even think about coaxing her into the machine.  He wanted to show us that being a bizarre one is not nearly as glamourous as we seem to think.

Other allegedly kinky goings-on:  A girl is tied up and force-fed black rope licorice.  Another is strapped to the luggage rack of a car and taken for a ride.  (So THAT’S what Samsonite feels like!)  The film also contains the first use of a hammock as bondage paraphernalia, so it has that going for it.

One plus is that it features a lot of outdoor bondage, which is something of a novelty in these pictures.  So, if that’s your thing, you might dig it. Unfortunately, the poorly dubbed dialogue is laughable, and the droning sitar-heavy soundtrack will surely have you nodding off in no time.   

SPACE RAIDERS (1983) **

Roger Corman produced many films that reused the sets, special effects, and score from Battle Beyond the Stars.  This one was the first.  Not only is it a Star Wars knockoff, it’s one of those early ‘80s movies that had the word “Raiders” in title to cash in on Raiders of the Lost Ark.

A little boy (David Mendenhall, the kid from Over the Top) stows away aboard the spaceship of a band of space pirates.  He proves himself to be useful to the crew and they eventually take a shine to him.  Trouble brews when “The Company” sends a robot ship after them to blast them out of the stars.

The band of space pirates is comprised of an OK band of riff raff.  Vince Edwards is the leader of the gang whose only memorable trait is that he drinks beer (thank God there’s still beer in the future) while piloting his ship in the midst of a space dogfight.  Thom (Hawk from Buck Rogers) Christopher fares better as the alien with psychic powers.  Luca Bercovici is the generic space cowboy of the group.

Space Raiders was directed by Howard Cohen, the man who gave us Saturday the 14th.  It’s all rather harmless, forgettable, intermittently entertaining Saturday afternoon drivel.  Even if it seems overly familiar and more than a tad cheesy (the lizard guy is well done, even though the characters pronounce his name about six different ways), it moves at a steady clip, which is appreciated.  It also manages to have more heart than most of these things, thanks to Mendenhall’s performance.    

Sure, we’ve seen Star Wars rip-offs with alien cantina scenes, space battles, and long establishing shots of slow-moving spacecraft, but this is the only one I can think of that features Dick Miller as a sleazy used spaceship dealer, so that at the very least is worth something.

AKA:  Star Child.

WHEELMAN (2017) ***

Frank Grillo stars as a getaway driver who gets a call from an unknown number telling him to ditch his crew during a job and take off with the money.  As it turns out, it’s only the beginning of a double (or perhaps triple) cross.  Soon, people are on the lookout for his car, and he’s wanted by both the cops and the crooks.  In order to stay ahead of the bad guys and stay alive, he’ll have to think fast and (of course) do a lot of fancy driving.

Produced by Joe Carnahan, Wheelman is a blast from start to finish.  What makes it a change of pace from the typical crime thriller is the fact that it takes place almost exclusively inside of Grillo’s car.  Aside from a few establishing shots from the rearview mirror or of the tires’ POV, the camera rarely leaves the vehicle.  Writer/director Jeremy Rush does a good job ratcheting up the suspense and raising the stakes for Grillo’s character.  What’s maybe even more impressive is the fact that the film maintains a sense of claustrophobia while still feeling cinematic.  We’ve seen so many car chases in movies nowadays that when we see one entirely from behind the wheel of one of the cars, it feels like a breath of fresh air.

This is a perfect… ahem… vehicle for Grillo.  He gives a no-nonsense and commanding performance, a real feat considering you only see him from the shoulders up for most of the running time.  Very few actors could make a movie work using so little, but Grillo pulls it off effectively and assuredly.

At its heart, Wheelman is a gimmick movie, but it’s a pretty good gimmick.  It keeps up the gimmick for a long time too, breaking form only briefly near the end.  It was here where I feared it was going to become a more traditional picture, but luckily (SPOILER) the Wheelman was just changing cars!  From there, it resumes the automobile-bound framework and continues to kick ass. 

If it does have a fault, it’s that Wheelman (pardon the pun) never quite goes into fourth gear.  Despite that, it remains a solidly entertaining flick throughout.  If you still haven’t seen it, put the pedal to the metal and check it out.

MALIGNANT (2021) ** ½

Malignant is James Wan’s return to the horror genre after making Aquaman.  Previously, Wan made movies like Saw and Dead Silence with his co-writer and star Leigh Whannell, who has since moved on to direct the likes of Upgrade and The Invisible Man.  Malignant just might be proof that Whannell was the brains of the outfit because this one is a fucking mess.  

That said, I’m not sure Whannell could’ve concocted such a humdinger of an ending.  Whatever its faults are early on, the last twenty minutes or so of Malignant offer up some nutty goodness.  It kind of comes as a day late and a dollar short, but if and when they make Malignant 2, I’ll be first in line.

Annabelle Wallis stars as a grieving woman who just lost her baby.  As she tries to move forward, we learn that the doctors who cared for her as a kid are being brutally murdered.  Could it be her childhood imaginary friend seeking revenge?  Or could it be something even grosser?

Malignant has a bunch of cool ideas, but no singular vision to tie everything together.  It cribs bits from The Dark Half, Poltergeist 2, Basket Case and a few others.  Overall, it just feels like an overlong, overcomplicated mishmash.  None of it is particularly scary either.  Wan does his best to replicate the look and feel of a Dario Argento movie during the scenes where Wallis and the killer are psychically linked (Wallis is practically in Daria Nicolodi cosplay the whole movie), although he is only successful about half the time.  Ultimately, the excessive CGI that morphs the two settings into one during these sequences are cheesy, and hamper what little atmosphere Wan had managed to build up.

Also, what’s the deal with horror flicks being stretched out to absurd lengths nowadays?  The Empty Man was 137 minutes.  In the Earth was 106.  This is a whopping 111.  Can’t filmmakers just give us a 90-minute movie anymore?  Or would that mean it wouldn’t be “elevated” because it doesn’t have a bloated running time?  

Seriously, the first ninety minutes or so of Malignant are a slog.  It really could’ve been trimmed down, and no one would’ve noticed or cared.  However, that last act is a work of demented genius.  I just wish there was more of that kooky glee present elsewhere in the film.