QUEEN OF THE DESERT (2017) ** ½

Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert tells the true-life story of Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman), writer, explorer, and adventurer.  After the tragic death of her fiancé (James Franco), Gertrude travels to the Middle East to find herself.  Upon returning home, the naturally restless and curious Bell time and again returns to the desert for more misadventures.  

Queen of the Desert will never be mistaken for one of Herzog’s best.  Although it follows the same themes as a lot of his work (namely a prim and proper person traipsing through a harsh landscape), it’s just too laid back and prosaic to really knock your socks off.  Most of Herzog’s lead characters are obsessed, mad, or obsessed to the point of madness.  Bell is basically just a headstrong woman following her own star.  Because of that, the film doesn’t cast the same spell as Herzog’s most memorable work.  

That said, even when he’s having an off day, Herzog is still pretty good.  The film remains watchable, even if it stops short of being completely captivating.  Part of that has to do with the pacing, which is episodic to a fault.  Bell will have some kind of personal setback, go out into the desert, find herself, return home, and then head on back out into the desert again.  Luckily, these passages are entertaining more often than not.

It helps that the performances are solid.  Kidman makes an ideal leading lady for this sort of thing.  The character is equal parts high society debutante and well-traveled explorer, and Kidman does a fine job essaying both aspects of the character.  Robert Pattinson is particularly amusing as Lawrence of Arabia, who lends Bell a hand on one of her adventures.  Damien Lewis is also quite good as the reserved married man who carries a torch for Bell.  Only Franco feels out of place playing the downtrodden, doomed fiancé.   

IMPULSE (1984) *** ½

After her mother’s attempted suicide, dancer Meg Tilly returns to her small hometown with her doctor boyfriend (Tim Matheson) in tow.  It doesn’t take long for them to discover that something is seriously wrong with the townsfolk.  It seems they are suffering from a severe impulse control problem, which leads to public fornication, extreme cases of road rage, and eventually, murder.  

Impulse is a simple, tense, and taut variation on George Romero’s The Crazies, and to a lesser extent, David Cronenberg’s They Came from Within.  There is also a little touch of various Stephen King books in there as well as the idea of a small town slowly becoming unglued was a common theme in his work.  Even though the film utilizes elements from those masters of horror, it still finds a way to be unique and most importantly, effective.  In fact, it might work even better now than it did at the time of its original release thanks to COVID.  (There’s also a scene where a cop mows down a kid in cold blood, and the citizens are more outraged at the destruction of their property than his death that certainly registers harder now than when it was made.)

Director Graham (The Final Conflict) Baker delivers a number of unnerving scenes that are usually punctuated with unexpected violence, mutilation, or just plain weirdness.  While Baker uses restraint for a lot of these sequences, the way he stages the set-ups and the payoffs work rather well.  

Baker’s direction, coupled with the fine performances make Impulse well-worth checking out.  The two leads are ideally cast.  Tilly is excellent as the waifish city girl returning home to her roots and Matheson is equally great as her boyfriend who may or may not have a touch of the sickness himself.  The always great Bill Paxton also pops up in the smallish role of Tilly’s brother, and it’s especially fun to see a folksy nice guy like Hume Cronyn succumbing to the madness.  

THE LAST SENTINEL (2009) * ½

The Last Sentinel is a cruddy mash-up of Soldier, The Terminator, and The Last Man on Earth.  Don “The Dragon” Wilson stars as the Kurt Russell/Michael Biehn/Vincent Price stand-in, a genetically engineered soldier who wanders the post-apocalyptic wasteland foraging for supplies and avoiding detection by the bands of robot soldiers that patrol the streets.  Sometimes, to break up the monotony, he’ll have a flashback to Keith David yelling at him or Bokeem Woodbine dying.  Oh yeah, and his gun talks to him.  

Directed by Jesse V. Johnson, The Last Sentinel is a mess.  It’s choppy, sloppy, and not a whole lot of fun.  The action is pretty generic too, which is fitting since the villains are equally generic.  (The robots all look like dudes in black leather and motorcycle helmets.)  That would be okay if it was just generic, but since this was a mid-‘00s action flick, that means the camera shakes unnecessarily during the action (especially in the flashbacks), which is supposed to lend some kind of urgency to the proceedings, but all it does it give the viewer a headache. 

It doesn’t help that Wilson is miscast as the stone-faced super soldier.  He’s usually entertaining whenever he’s playing the affable kickboxing leading man.  He’s noticeably less effective here playing a morose, monotone, world-weary type.  Further adding to the movie’s woes is its repetitive nature.  Wilson will meditate in his library lair, go out looking for supplies, get into a gunfight with robots in a boiler room, and then head back home.  

At least Katee Sackhoff infuses the movie with a little spark once she finally shows up as the leader of the human resistance.  She doesn’t come close to saving the film, but at the very least, she makes it watchable.  (It’s no wonder they put her on the DVD cover rather than Wilson.)

AKA:  Robo Terminators.  AKA:  Last Soldier.  

THE BLACK HOLE (2006) **

This has nothing to do with Walt Disney’s 1979 The Black Hole.  It’s actually a cheesy ‘00s SyFy Channel Original produced by Nu Image.  As far as these things go, it’s not bad.  

Judd Nelson is a scientist who drank his way out of a quantum physics thinktank.  Naturally, when the lab creates a black hole that threatens St. Louis, his former flame and fellow scientist (Kristy Swanson) calls him in to find a way to stop it.  Complicating matters is the appearance of an electricity monster that periodically escapes the black hole and vaporizes random security guards and other expendable personnel.  Naturally, the military want to drop a nuclear bomb into the black hole (that’s their solution for everything), and it’s up to Judd and Kristy to save the day.

This has all the earmarks to be plodding junk, but director Tibor (The Gate) Takacs is able to inject a little momentum into the proceedings.  I’m not saying he set the world on fire with this one, but it’s about what you would expect from the SyFy Channel at two in the afternoon on a lazy Sunday afternoon.  Anyone expecting anything more from it should probably get their head examined.  Then again, you should already know what you’re signing yourself up for when you see Kristy Swanson playing a quantum physicist.  

The problems really rest at the script level.  It’s almost as if the producers didn’t think the whole disaster movie idea of a black hole threatening a major city would sustain a two-hour time slot, so they penciled in the monster from another dimension just to hedge their bets.  The creature is OK, I guess?  He kind of looks like a cross between an invisible Predator and the electricity Gremlin from Gremlins 2, but he’s not exactly a worthy villain if Judd freakin’ Nelson can take him down.  I did like the way he vaporized his victims a la Mars Attacks though. 

In short, The Black Hole does suck, but not nearly as much as it might have. 

GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BARES (1963) * ½

William Kerwin and Rex Marlow star as two nightclub performers who wonder why their respective girlfriends are always busy on weekends.  They do some snooping and eventually discover their gal pals are nudists.  Outraged, the two doofuses dumbly dump their dames.  However, the lovely ladies give their finicky fellas a shot at redemption and offer them a chance to spend the weekend at the camp to see how the other (naked) half lives.  

From the title, you’d think this is gonna be a nudist version of the old storybook favorite.  In actuality, it’s the first (or advertised as the first, anyway) nudie musical.  The problem, of course, is there’s way too much musical and not enough nudie.  

That’s right, before you even get a glimpse of skin, you have to sit through a lot of long, dumb nightclub acts.  Kerwin was great in Blood Feast and all, but a comedian he’s not.  His painfully unfunny stand-up act is a chore to get through and Marlow’s crooner numbers are even worse.  If that nonsense wasn’t already enough, director Herschell Gordon Lewis uses even more pointless stalling tactics that get in the way of the good stuff including long driving scenes, silent comedy sequences, and domestic squabbling that is sure to get on anyone’s nerves.  

In fact, you have to wait till the movie’s halfway over before you get to the nudism stuff.  As far as nudist camp movies go, the nudism scenes are OK.  We get:  Skinny-dipping, nude photography, nude swinging (no, not that kind), sunbathing, horseback riding (what, no Lady Godiva jokes?), water basketball (called “splash-ket ball”), boating, and a nude talent show.  At the very least, leading lady Louise Downe (who also wrote Blood Feast) does look great nude (especially while jiggling around on horseback), so that does help somewhat.  

Then again, it’s just a shame that the title is so misleading.  I mean the idea of a nudie Goldilocks movie could’ve really been something.  Imagine, she sneaks into the bears’ house and walks in on Mama Bare and Papa Bare making love in the bedroom and says, “Oh that bed’s just right!” before joining in for a three-way.  Unfortunately, Lewis and company didn’t follow through on the promise of the title and gave us this crap instead.  

Marlow gets the best line when he tells his girlfriend, “E-X-I-T!  That spells, ‘OUT’!”

AKA:  Goldilocks’ Three Chicks.  

MUNCHIE (1992) *

A little boy named Gage (Jamie McEnnan) finds an imp named Munchie (voiced by Dom DeLuise) who grants him wishes and helps him fight bullies.  Since Gage’s single mom (Loni Anderson) is being wooed by a complete asshole (Andrew Stevens), Munchie also lends a hand to ruin their big dinner date.  Eventually, Gage learns to handle his problems on his own without the help of a wisecracking (scratch that, the cracks he makes are anything but wise) imp.

Munchie purports to be a sequel to Munchies, Roger Corman’s not-bad Gremlins rip-off.  However, it has nothing to do with that flick.  It’s actually a dumb kids movie, and a lousy one at that.  As far as unrelated sequels to Gremlins rip-offs go, this ain’t Troll 2 by a long shot.

The big problem is Munchie himself.  He looks like an animatronic skinned Chihuahua and is more creepy than cute.  Even if you can get past the fact that he is nothing like the cool critters in the original, he’s pretty annoying and wears out his welcome fast.  It doesn’t help that his tired jokes, which wouldn’t have even gone over in the Catskills, land with a thud.

The most confounding thing about the movie is its weird rules, or lack thereof.  Munchie grants wishes, but his powers are inconsistent.  Even when the kid doesn’t want something, Munchie gives it to him anyway.  Like when Munchie throws him a party full of adults drinking alcohol.  What kid wants that?  I guess when you’re looking for things like “consistency” in a kids film directed by Jim Wynorski you’re bound to be asking for trouble.  

If you’re a fan of Wynorski like I am, you will at least get some amusement from the fact that all the top-heavy actresses have plunging necklines.  Even in a kids movie, Wynorski is gonna Wynorski.  It’s also fun to see the usual Wynorski ensemble (like Toni Naples, Monique Gabrielle, Ace Mask, Lenny Juliano, and Jay Richardson) cavorting around.  Heck, even Fred Olen Ray and Wynorski himself appear as extras in the party scene.  Although the Wynorski touches aren’t nearly enough to save the film, they at least help it go down smoother than it might’ve.  

CYCLONE (1978) * ½

Rene Cardona Jr.’s Cyclone is assembled from a whirlwind of durable disaster movie cliches.  There’s extreme weather, multiple doomed boat voyages, and a plane crash.  Since it was released in the late ‘70s, there’s also a subplot about a killer shark in there to ride the coattails of Jaws.  

Like Cardona’s Treasure of the Amazon and The Bermuda Triangle, it’s overlong (nearly two hours) and has way too many characters and subplots.  Because of the choppy plotting, and the cutting back and forth between the different groups of survivors, the early scenes can be rough going a lot of the time.  Some of the inane special effects are good for a laugh (like when branches are beaten against the camera lens to simulate heavy winds rollicking through the trees), but they aren’t nearly cheesy enough to make it a camp classic.  

About halfway through, the film switches gears and becomes a tale of survival.  It’s here where the survivors eventually gather aboard a tourist vessel and hunker down.  Faced with a dwindling water supply, no food, and no prospect of being rescued, they start to consider their options.  You just know the little dog (named “Christmas”) is gonna be the first to go.  This sequence is in especially poor taste and is far more unconscionable than the scenes where the survivors eventually resort to cannibalism.  

I guess it goes without saying that the cheesy early disaster movie scenes are a lot more fun than the schlocky survival sequences.  Even in its second act, it fails to drum up much suspense.  As lumbering and slow as much of the film is, Cardona totally rushes through the finale as cast member after cast member is devoured by sharks until the last remaining survivors are escorted to safety before the flick finally tosses in the towel and ends.  The abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion does little to win back any goodwill Cardona lost during the objectionable dog scene, but on the bright side, at least the movie is over at long last.

AKA:  Tornado.  AKA:  Terror Storm.  AKA:  Without Warning.