CLERKS 3 (2022) *** ½

Randal (Jeff Anderson) receives a wake-up call when he suffers a heart attack on the job at the Quik Stop convenience store.  Approaching fifty and surviving a near-death experience, he decides to finally do something with his life.  He makes a vow to stop watching movies and start making them, starting with the story of his life, set at the Quik Stop.  Along for the ride is his best friend Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and everyone’s favorite stoners, Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith).  

Of course, Kevin Smith suffered the same kind of heart attack in real life (dubbed “The Widowmaker”), which was the impetus for the movie.  Having Randal and Dante filming scenes from the first Clerks in the convenience store might seem like a lazy meta joke, but I think this was kind of a “What If” story for Smith, had he never found early success.  He might’ve still been making movies at the Quik Stop even if his career didn’t catch on.  Randal and Dante have always been his mouthpieces for pop culture musings and dick jokes in the past.  Now, the older and wiser (kinda) Smith is using them to speak from the heart (no pun intended), which is actually kind of touching.  

Smith has told many anecdotes of the making of Clerks over the years in interviews, commentaries, and one man shows, so seeing a thinly fictionalized version of them seems at first like a weak premise for a sequel.  However, Smith’s love of making movies shows through in scene after scene, and it’s fun seeing many of the original’s iconic scenes being remade.  (It would make a good double feature with Be Kind Rewind.)  I will say that the new dick jokes, Star Wars humor, and typical Clerks hijinks isn’t quite as laugh out loud funny (or as flagrantly foul) as some of the previous installments in the “View Askewniverse”.  However, the “audition” scene offers up some big laughs as it features a who’s who of celebrity cameos.  

Like most of Smith’s latter-day films, Clerks 3 works, largely because of the enormous goodwill the characters have built up over the past four decades.  Even when he goes a little heavy on the maudlin mushy stuff near the end, it works better than it probably should because we’ve grown to love these characters so much over the years.  While it may not live up to the heights of the first two films, it is nevertheless a fitting finale (possibly) to the trilogy.

PARTY DOLL A GO-GO! PART 2 (1991) ***

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HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: DARK GLASSES (2022) ***

Dark Glasses is horror maestro Dario Argento’s first film in a decade.  It might not rank among his best, but it serves as a strong reminder of what the master can do when financiers give him a movie camera.  Hopefully, he doesn’t wait so long to make another one.  

Things kick off with a great opening scene where an eclipse foretells impending doom.  A hooker named Diana (Ilenia Pastorelli) damages her eyes when she looks directly into the eclipse and has to wear sunglasses.  Meanwhile, a maniac is going around murdering prostitutes.  While chasing Diana, he causes an automobile accident that permanently blinds her, forcing her to wear the shades full time.  After the crash, Diana befriends a young boy (Xinyu Zhang) who was orphaned in the accident.  When the killer comes after her again, she uses to kid to help her stay one step ahead of the madman.

While Dark Glasses never quite kicks into fourth gear, it is nevertheless a solidly entertaining thriller.  Some may be disappointed that Argento doesn’t give the film his trademark visual splendor.  In the past, his lavish, colorful, stylish sequences were only there to compensate for a lack of plot.  This time, he doesn’t have to get crazy with the over-the-top kill sequences since the story is so sturdy to begin with.  

He still manages to do some interesting albeit subtle things with the camera.  When Pastorelli is alone, on the run, or in peril, the screen is usually dark, or objects/people in the background feel further away than they are.  It’s a good way to keep the audience as off guard as its heroine without resorting to the typical black screen or overuse of sound effects on the soundtrack.

Pastorelli’s performance also helps to anchor the film.  She cuts a captivating figure in skimpy outfits and sunglasses, and remains a tough and feisty heroine throughout.  She refuses to be a victim and stands up and fights, despite being robbed of her sight.  Her bond with the kid is sweet too.  They make for a good team, and the movie works mostly because you buy their friendship and her need to protect the kid at all costs, even though she is blind.  

It might be a little dry for an Argento flick, but he still delivers at least one solid strangulation/throat slicing.  This time around he seems to be favoring suspense over gore, and it works more often than not.  While the climax may not be as well-crafted as everything that came before, Dark Glasses has enough going for it to quality it as another winner from the maestro.

AKA:  Black Glasses.

PUPS ALONE (2021) *

In the next few weeks, I’ll be appearing as a guest on Matt’s Direct to Video Connoisseur podcast discussing this Christmas movie starring Dolph Lundgren.  In the past, we have discussed Santa’s Summer House, starring Action Movie Icons like Don “The Dragon” Wilson and Cynthia Rothrock, as well as the Dolph Lundgren flick Altitude.  This seemed like a perfect film to talk about since Dolph plays the villain in the flick, and it was made by Altitude’s director, Alex Merkin.  In fact, the film is filled with a who’s who of DTV talent (most of which are the voices of the dogs) like Danny Trejo, Malcolm McDowell, Keith David, and Eric Roberts.  Speaking of Roberts, this isn’t quite as bad as the Roberts-starring A Talking Cat, but man, it comes close.  

We discussed the film at great length, so look for the episode when it drops.  I’ll be sure to post a link here so you guys can check it out.  Until then, here’s a brief review to tide you over.

Christmas movies are a genre unto themselves now.  With Hallmark Channel and Freeform playing non-stop Christmas movies, the market is oversaturated already, but with the advent of streaming, the need for more Christmas-related content is growing.  That’s how movies like Pups Alone get made.  

I swear there are Christmas movie title generators at streaming services where they cut and paste Christmas related titles until they find one that seems halfway doable.  Such is the case with Pups Alone.  As you can tell by the title, it’s Home Alone, but with pups.  This isn’t the worst idea in the world for a kids Christmas movie, but as bad as you might expect it to be, it’s even worse than you could imagine.  You know you’re in trouble right away when the pups are full grown dogs, and not the little pups alluded to in the title.  

As a father, I sat through many of the Disney Air Bud spin-off “Buddies” movies.  Of that franchise, Super Buddies was by far the worst.  Since it was my daughter’s favorite, we had to watch it over and over again.  I am not lying when I say I have seen that movie as many times as Star Wars.  As bad as Super Buddies was, Pups Alone is even worse.  It makes Super Buddies look like Old Yeller by comparison.  

Robert (Tyler Hollinger), the inventor of a talking dog collar, moves into a gated community filled with other inventors who work as a sort of think tank for a pet toy conglomerate, owned by CEO Bill (Roberts).  While on a skiing trip, he leaves his dog Charlie (the voice of Jerry O’Connell) home alone.  Meanwhile, the evil Victor Von Manure (Dolph) plans to steal the Robert’s plans for the dog collar, so he hires two nitwits to break into the house.  Since the community is full of inventors, the neighbors’ dogs rig their master’s inventions up to become anti-theft devices.  This leads into the so-close-to-Home-Alone-there-might-be-a-lawsuit-brewing hijinks.  

I can’t imagine anyone under the age of five enjoying this.  Even as a fan of Dolph, Trejo, Roberts, McDowell, and company, this was 107 minutes of pure pain.  Scenes go on forever without laughs, set-ups, or payoffs.  Some end abruptly.  They try to compensate for the choppy narrative by using animated, pop-up book style vignettes in between the scenes, but it rarely works.  The premise is a sound one, but it takes forever to get to the talking dog vs. robbers shit as the first half is mercilessly weighted down with useless exposition, overlong and unfunny comedy scenes, and pointless subplots that go nowhere.  

The only scene worth a damn is when Dolph (woefully miscast in the kind of role Richard Kind or Jon Lovitz would play) kisses Eric Roberts’ ass at a dinner party.  The part where Roberts looks straight at the camera and says, “Let’s get drunk!” is the only laugh-out-loud moment in the entire thing.  I don’t know if he was talking to the cast and crew and they accidentally put it in the movie, or if it was in the script, but you might want to follow his advice as it’s the only way you’ll be able to survive this one in a single viewing.

Woof.

AKA:  Pups Alone:  A Christmas Peril.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: FIRESTARTER (2022) ***

In my review for The Black Phone, I mentioned that child abuse is kind of like last taboo in horror films.  I guess I was wrong.  Animal cruelty is probably the next-to-last.  This unnecessary but surprisingly effective remake of Stephen King’s Firestarter manages to combine the two in a scene of appalling repugnance that you just have to tip your hat to director Keith Thomas for Going There.

In it, the pyrokinetic kid Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) is learning to harness her flamethrowing superpowers when she happens upon an alley cat.  She goes to pet the seemingly friendly feline when the cat scratches her.  Since the kid only uses her powers while under mental duress, she lashes out at the cat and cooks that thing alive.  But here’s the kicker:  The thing ain’t dead.  The half-burned/half-fluffy kitty-witty is still mewling while its crispy catty-watty body is a smoldering mass of burnt flesh and orangy-worngy cuteness.  Since her dad, (Zac Efron) is trying to teach her how to control her gifts, he tells her she has to finish what she starts, so she nukes the poor scruffy-wuffy-itty-bitty-kitty-snookums.  

I bet this scene even made Stephen King say, “GODDAMN.  Get Sarah McLaughlin on the phone.”

I know Efron is probably trying to shed his clean-cut High School Musical image, and thanks to his participation in this rank-ass scene, I would say, “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!”

Yes, this scene is mean, nasty, and crude, but you definitely won’t find shit like this in that Drew Barrymore flick.  

John Carpenter did the music, which is interesting because he at one point was going to direct the 1984 version.  That didn’t pan out, but I guess providing the score to this nasty piece of work was an OK consolation prize.  I can imagine he didn’t want to do it at first, but then the filmmakers probably showed him the cat scene and he was like, “Shit, where do I sign on?”

I’m not going to lie.  While Firestarter won’t wind up on anybody’s “Best Of” lists of Stephen King adaptations or find its way onto any “Year End Top Ten” countdowns, it remains a better-than-expected remake.  I guess that had something to do with my expectations being in the toilet, but still.  Even without the showstopping cat scene, by the time Charlie was torching government agents in a Day-Glo lit secret facility while Carpenter’s tech-noir music was thumping and bumping, I had to admit, I was having a good time.

Then again, what do I know?  I liked The Dark Tower.

Gloria Reuben, who plays the head of “The Shop” gets the best line of the movie when she says, “She’s been brainfucked from birth!”  

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: THE BLACK PHONE (2022) *** ½

Child abduction/abuse is probably the last taboo in horror films.  If you’re going to make a movie about this already icky issue, you might want to tread lightly.  With The Black Phone, director Scott (Doctor Strange) Derrickson does a pretty good job navigating the subject matter, all things considered, and along the way delivers a damned fine supernatural suspense story.

A small suburb is rocked by a series of kidnappings by a skeevy killer the locals have dubbed “The Grabber” (Ethan Hawke).  This masked maniac snatches up a young boy named Finn (Mason Thames) and keeps him locked in a dank basement with only a broken phone to keep him company.  Eventually, Finn discovers he can use the phone to talk to the Grabber’s past victims, who help him devise an escape plan.  

The supernatural aspects don’t really come into play until the second half, and work surprisingly well, given the fact that the first half is so grounded in reality.  The film is based on a short story by Joe Hill (the son of Stephen King), and like many of his old man’s stories, there’s a subplot about a psychic (in this case, the kid’s sister, played by Madeleine McGraw, who is excellent).  Even this supernatural touch is handled better than expected and doesn’t detract from the immediacy and urgency of Finn’s desperate situation.  

It also helps that Ethan Hawke underplays the menace of the Grabber.  What makes it work so well is that we don’t see very much of him, so when he does appear, it leaves an impression.  Even when he is on screen, he wears his mask about 98% of the time, which keeps up the air of mystery of the character.  Derrickson wisely leaves a lot of the general unpleasantness of his past victims up to the imagination, and stages a heck of a finale when Finn faces down his captor for the last time.  

The Black Phone is a low key and effective chiller.  It’s much better than Derrickson and Hawke’s previous collaboration, the overrated Sinister.  This is one horror flick that will definitely grab you and won’t let go.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: TERRIFIER 2 (2022) **

Terrifier 2 was given a limited theatrical release over the Halloween season and became an unexpected box office hit.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to see it in theaters.  Thanks to Halloween Hangover, I get to play catch-up.  

Of course, I had heard all about the reports of theater patrons fainting and puking in the aisles, which is always a good sign.  I’m glad to say the gore is easily the best thing about the movie.  The gore alone isn’t quite enough to salvage the film, however.  Even though Terrifier 2 has some unexpected moments and weirdly veers off into uncharted territory for a slasher, its crippling overlength prevents it from really cooking.  

Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) is out to slaughter more unsuspecting victims on Halloween.  A potentially disturbed kid named Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) sees him, but naturally no one believes him.  His sister, Sienna (Lauren LaVera) just may be the only one with the power to stop Art’s reign of terror.  

Let’s get this out of the way first:  There was no reason for this to be 138 minutes.  Too many scenes just go on for way too long.  Writer/director Damien Leone (who also made the first movie) was probably so enamored with the individual scenes that he didn’t want to lose anything.  I’m sure taken on their own accord, these scenes worked as their own self-contained vignettes.  However, once they were all strung together, it should’ve been apparent that not everything should’ve been kept in the final cut.  At all times, it feels like you’re watching an assembly cut of all the footage that was shot.  I’m sure the editor could’ve easily snipped a minute here and a minute there in the name of expediency.  

Slashers work best with a ninety minute runtime (or shorter).  Anything over that, I feel the director has to justify the excess running time.  At one point, I hit the “DISPLAY” button on my remote, fully expecting there’d be only ten more minutes left.  Much to my shock, there was still a half hour to go.  

That’s because Leone has something… different up his sleeve.  I won’t spoil what it is.  All I’ll say is that you either go with it or you don’t.

I didn’t.

Fortunately, Leone’s overindulgences extend over into the gore scenes, which are some of the most over the top blood and gut sequences I’ve seen outside of a Troma film.  Grisly murder set pieces include a decapitation, skull crushing, and dick trauma.  One particularly ghoulish scene involves Art slashing a woman’s eyeball, scalping her, and tearing off one of her limbs.  Then it gets REAL nasty.  Scenes like this make Herschell Gordon Lewis look like Walt Disney in comparison.  If only Leone had been a bit more judicious with the editing, this might’ve been a minor classic.  

Thornton is excellent as Art.  He could’ve been a silent movie actor as he milks the mime routine for all its worth.  Thornton’s performance is the reason Art is about the closest thing we have to another Freddy or Jason these days.  I can’t wait to see him in another installment soon.  I just hope the next one will be a bit more streamlined than this one.