C.I.A. 2: TARGET: ALEXA (1994) ** ½

I remember very little about C.I.A. Code Name:  Alexa other than it starred Lorenzo Lamas, his wife Kathleen Kinmont, and… uh… O.J. Simpson.  Fortunately for us, the Juice didn’t return for this second installment of the two-picture franchise.  Some more good news:  In addition to starring in this flick, Lamas also directed!  (It was a family affair all around as Kinmont co-wrote the story.)  

Terrorists are out to steal nuclear codes and hold the world at ransom.  Naturally, the only man who can stop them is Graver (Lamas).  Well, he also needs a woman to stop them too, so he turns to his former flame Alexa (Kinmont) to help take them down.  Little does Graver know the terrorist leader Kluge (John Savage) is also Alexa’s baby daddy, which could mean trouble for both sides.  Things get complicated when a rival terrorist faction led by Straker (John Saint Ryan) steals the chip necessary to launch the nukes and Graver must make an uneasy alliance with Kluge to save the world.  

I’ve seen many reviews kind of dis C.I.A. 2:  Target Alexa, or at the very least rank it lower than the original.  I don’t know what movie they saw.  The one I saw features Lorenzo Lamas killing a man with a forklift in the first ten minutes.  That scene alone puts it slightly above the first one in my book.    

Kinmont is quite credible in her action sequences.  She gets the requisite scene where she foils a convenient store robbery, as well as a decent fight where she takes on all of Savage’s henchman.  Too bad her one-on-one brawl with the musclebound Lori Fetrick (AKA:  “Ice” from American Gladiators) gets cut short.

Lamas doesn’t do a bad job directing the action, although some moments just flat-out do not work.  (Like his last-minute escape via hang glider.)  There’s also a love scene between Kinmont and Savage, which I’m sure was awkward for Lorenzo to direct.   (Making things even more awkward was the fact that his producer, Richard Pepin was also the director of photography.)  This was the only feature Lorenzo directed (he also helmed several episodes of his TV show, Renegade), which is a shame because he showed a glimmer of promise behind the camera.

Lamas and Kinmont are fun to watch together and some of their banter is good for a laugh.  The funniest thing though is the fact that Lamas’ long flowing hair is usually more elegantly styled than hers.  John Savage is pretty good slumming as the villain too.  We also get bits from Magnum P.I.’s Larry Manetti (who plays a slimy lawyer) and Branscombe Richard (as a party guest). 

One distinctly Lamas directorial touch:  The long scene that showcases his real-life helicopter pilot skills.  Sadly, Lorenzo has given up acting in action movies to fly helicopters full time.  All I can say is, come back Lorenzo, we miss you. 

AKA:  C.I.A. Codename:  Viper.  AKA:  C.I.A. 2:  Code Name:  Alexa.

THE HANGING WOMAN (1974) ***

Serge (Stelvio Rosi) is returning home to his ancestral castle.  He takes a shortcut through a cemetery where he finds a dead woman hanging by her neck.  The police investigate and seem to think it was murder.  The main suspect is Igor (Paul Naschy), the creepy gravedigger who is also a necrophile.  Meanwhile, Serge tries to get settled in to his new digs, but the place is kind of crowded.  There’s a horny countess (Maria Pia Conte) who performs voodoo rituals, a professor (Gerard Tichy) who conducts bizarre experiments in the castle basement, and his saucy daughter (Dyanik Zurakowska) who has the hots for Serge.  

The Hanging Woman contains a lot of plot elements that are blended together to create a sort of potpourri of Spanish gothic horror.  None of it ever quite gels, but it's never really boring either.  Just let your brain go on autopilot and appreciate the cliches that keep cropping up.  Said cliches include but are not limited to:  The reading of a dead relative’s will, a drawing room mystery (complete with a longwinded explanation from the killer in the end), long walks through the corridors of a spooky castle, trippy freak-out scenes, seances, and of course, the mad hunchback.  Heck, it even manages to turn into an all-out zombie flick by the end.  Despite the fact that it plays more like a laundry list of cliches in search of a movie, it’s still quite entertaining.  There are a couple of strong shocks to be had as well.  There’s a brief, but gory autopsy scene, a nifty decapitation, and the sequence involving the discovery of the titular character is especially well done.  

Despite what you might think, Naschy is not the star this time around.  He’s mostly lurking on the corners of the story, playing peeping Tom on the women and being a red herring.  Nevertheless, he’s in fine form as usual.  It’s Maria Pia Conte who steals the movie though as the nymphomaniac countess who gets naked at the drop of a hat and even plays kinky sex games with Igor.  Sultry and sexy, Conte commands the screen.  Rosi, who sort of looks like a budget version of David Warner, makes for a fine hero too, and Zurakowska is also memorable as the “good girl” who still manages to get naked.  

AKA:  Bracula:  The Terror of the Living Dead.  AKA:  Beyond the Living Dead.  AKA:  Dracula:  The Terror of the Living Dead.  AKA:  Beyond the Living Dead.  AKA:  Orgy of the Living Dead.  AKA:  Return of the Zombies.  AKA:  Zombie 3:  Return of the Living Dead.  

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE: DÉJÀ VU (2019) **

After forty years, Camille Keaton and director Meir Zarchi return for the first official sequel to the original I Spit on Your Grave.  

Remember that film’s famous tagline?  “This Woman Has Just Cut, Chopped, Broken, and Burned Five Men Beyond Recognition… But No Jury in America Would Ever Convict Her!”  Apparently, no jury did convict her because Jennifer Hills (Keaton) wrote a book about her experience in the first movie and goes on call-in radio shows to not only recount her ordeal, but get the audience up to speed on the plot of the original.  Her daughter, Christy (Jamie Bernadette) is “the most famous and highest-paid model in the world”.  After a mother-daughter brunch they are kidnapped by the relatives of Jennifer’s assailants from the first movie, and well… uh… déjà vu.

I don’t know who thought this had to be two-and-a-half hours long.  The original was always a little long to begin with, but at least the payoff justified the elongated running time.  With two heroines, Zarchi splits the difference and the constant cutting back from mother and daughter fighting their separate battles only adds to the running time.  I’m pretty sure a lot of this could’ve been cut down considerably, but I think Zarchi was working under the assumption that allowing the attacks play out in (nearly) real time would be more effective.  (He was only about half right.)  

I don’t know if Zarchi was trying to soften the blow or say something about equal opportunity by making the ringleader of the rapists be a woman this time around.  She also wears the same wardrobe her husband wore in the first movie, which is kind of weird.  In fact, the more the movie tries to remind you of the original, the worse this one seems.  The occasional flashbacks only highlight how powerful that film was, and how this belated attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle fails.

Although the movie itself is really uneven, I have to give Camille Keaton credit.  Everyone applauds Sylvester Stallone for continuing to be an action star in his seventies.  At seventy-two, Keaton deserves the same kind of praise.  She’s tough and resilient and even though bad things happen to her, she refuses to play the victim.  When she turns the tables on her captors, she once again carries the spark that made the original so iconic.  Although that spark only shows itself briefly in the film, it still manages to make a statement.  Hollywood usually relegates actresses of Keaton’s age to grandmother roles.  Zarchi is smart enough to show that septuagenarian badass women can still kick ass, even if the picture they are in might not be up to snuff.

The rapists’ comeuppance sequences are solid.  While they are nowhere near as savage as the ones found in the original, they are moderately effective on their own terms.  It’s just a shame you have to wait so long to get to them.

As you can imagine the torch is eventually passed from mother to daughter about halfway through.  Bernadette handles herself capably enough, although she suffers from comparison to Keaton.  I can’t help but think this would’ve turned out better if they had split it into two movies; one that focused on the mother, and the other centered around the daughter.  As it is, it just crams too much into one flick.   

I Spit on Your Grave:  Déjà Vu, while a big disappointment, is not exactly a bad film.  I think Zarchi could’ve hammered out a decent flick if he was a little more judicious with his editing.  Although he does give us a couple of strong moments, that last half-hour is especially longwinded and gratuitous (predictable twist included).  

Oh, and I know Zarchi is not one for subtlety, but did we really need the scene where someone spits on a grave LITERALLY?  Multiple times?  Probably not.

TAINTLIGHT (2009) ** ½

Taintlight is writer/director Chris Seaver’s spoof of Twilight.  If you’ve seen Seaver’s Terror at Blood Fart Lake, you might already know what you’re in for.  Anyone unfamiliar with Seaver’s brand of juvenile humor will probably hate it, but I thought it was better than any of the actual Twilight movies it’s spoofing.

It helps that Meredith Host does a mean Kristen Stewart impression as the new girl in school, “Stella”.  This fact is made especially evident when she has funny dialogue like, “I’m going to my room so I can look out the window and brood awkwardly!” to recite.  Even when the punchlines don’t land, she is still fun to watch thanks to her deadpan demeanor and spot-on impression.  Kurt Indovina, who plays the glittery vampire, “Edgar Mullens” isn’t nearly as impressive, but that’s perfectly okay when Host is so damned funny.  

Taintlight is kind of amusing when it’s mocking its intended target.  The scenes where Seaver uses low-fi ingenuity to spoof the big budget original are often rather clever.  For example, the scene that pokes fun at the big moment where Edward saves Bella from being hit by a car is just flat-out funny.  The over-the-top close-ups of Edgar and Stella looking longingly at each other are good for a laugh too.  (I also liked the way Seaver was able to mimic Twilight’s bluish hues on a nearly nonexistent budget.)  However, it’s noticeably less successful when it devolves into Seaver’s typical over the top humor.  

At least the vampires in this one suck blood and have fangs, which is more than you can say for Twilight.  Heck, there’s more blood spilled in this flick than the entire Twilight franchise, so that’s a plus.  Another bonus:  It’s only an hour long.  Even with that kind of abbreviated running time, it still manages to feel overlong, but at least Seaver knew when to throw in the towel, an instinct many his SOV contemporaries often lack.

In short, Taintlight is one of Seaver’s best efforts, mostly because he has clear blueprint to work from.  By doing a riff on Twilight, he can use that film’s storyline to hang his trademark brand of humor on.  Is mocking Twilight akin to shooting fish in a barrel?  Sure, but Seaver hits more than he misses, which is more than I can say for a lot of his movies.  Although it pretty much falls apart in the third act, the finale does feature the screen’s first vampire death by Frisbee, so that’s worth something.

PET SHOP (1995) *

A pair of aliens arrive on Earth disguised as cowboys and take over a small pet shop in the middle of the Arizona desert.  Terry (Friday the 13th Part 7:  The New Blood) Kiser is the patriarch of a dysfunctional family who are in the Witness Protection Program who move to town in order to hide from the Mob.  When his daughter (Leigh Ann Orsi) drops by the pet store, the aliens give her a dog that also happens to be an alien in disguise.  More kids get extraterrestrial pets, but they soon realize the cowboy aliens intend to kidnap the town’s children and sell them as pets in a galaxy far, far away.  

Pet Shop is a dumb kid’s movie from Charles Band’s Moonbeam Entertainment.  As such, I shouldn’t be so hard on it, but it is just plain bad.  It’s full of odd elements that never gel together, crappy effects, and irritating performances.  The whole Witness Protection subplot is especially incongruous.  I mean who thought combining E.T., Explorers, and the ending of Goodfellas was a good idea?

The aliens are mostly annoying and more than a little cheap looking.  The dog looks like a deranged Muppet, the rabbit resembles a broken Furby, and the turtle looks like one of those Land Before Time hand puppets they used to sell at Pizza Hut with some minor alterations.  The only animal that remotely looks decent is the lizard, which has some surprisingly well-done animatronics for its face and neck.  They must’ve blown the effects budget on that guy, because everything else looks like crap.   The “human” aliens are pretty pathetic as they have a cyclops eyeball hidden under their cowboy hat that shoots freeze rays.

The kids are all rather annoying, and the adults don’t fare much better.  I know this is a kid’s movie, but everyone plays things way too broadly for it to be remotely funny.  The only semi-clever part is the broken sign on the pet shop that is missing its “P” so it reads, “ET Shop”.  That’s about as funny as the movie ever gets.

SCARED TO DEATH (1981) **

William Malone made his directorial debut with this sporadically successful mix of Alien and Halloween.  A bunch of sexy women are being murdered by a slimy monster called “Syngenor” (Synthesized Genetic Organism).  When the police are helpless to stop the killings, they turn to a former cop-turned crime novelist (John Stinson) to help track down the monster.

In addition to directing, Malone also co-wrote, co-produced, and created the monster.  He’d later go on to make Creature (another Alien clone) and the House on Haunted Hill remake.  He gives us all the stalking peeping tom POV shots of women getting dressed and terrorized in their cars that you’ve come to expect from a slasher flick.  Just to keep things interesting, he tosses in a memorable scene where the creature stalks some roller skaters.  

The slimy monster was obviously inspired by H.R. Giger’s Alien design (it even has a mouth inside of its mouth).  Heck, you can probably say that about any monster from an ‘80s movie.  At least this one looks better than most Alien rip-offs.  You can tell Malone really liked the design too because he shows the monster a lot, skipping with all the “you’ve got to keep the monster in the shadows for the first two acts” shenanigans that most directors try to pull.  On the other hand, a lot of scenes are way too dark, which kind of takes some of the fun out of it (although that might’ve been more the fault of the print than Malone’s).

If Malone concentrated solely on blending together aspects of Alien and Halloween, it might’ve worked.  (Although the attack scenes where the camera violently shakes in Syngenor’s face get repetitive.)  However, the stuff with the writer’s love life really bogs things down.  These scenes play out like a romantic comedy that isn’t romantic or funny.  The detective scenes are halfhearted as well and feel like a half-assed TV pilot or something.  

It doesn’t help that Stinson is stiff as a board in the lead.  A big miscalculation on the script’s part was sidelining the likeable heroine (Diana Davidson) about halfway through.  I guess Malone was going for the Janet Leigh in Psycho thing, but the brainy scientist (Toni Jannotta) who takes on the heroine role in her stead is pretty annoying.   

Ten years later, a quasi-sequel, Syngenor was released without Malone’s involvement.

AKA:  Scared to Death:  Syngenor.  AKA:  The Aberdeen Experiment.

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.