IT (2017) ** ½

Stephen King’s It was one of my favorite books as a teenager.  I would even read it every year just before October to get me in the mood for Halloween.  I’m also a big fan of the 1990 TV movie starring Tim Curry, so it goes without saying that my expectations for director Andy Muschietti’s new version were lofty.  Sadly, it’s only half a great film. 

The stuff I loved, I loved dearly.  The Losers Club, the team of youngsters who band together to fight the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard), were all perfectly cast.  Every pre-teen in the film was amazing, but for me, it was the foulmouthed Richie (Finn Wolfhard) who was the standout.  (Although that’s probably because he reminded me so much of myself.)  Beverly (Sophia Lillis), the lone girl of the club, proved she was the boys’ match in every way and Lillis’ performance shows that she is a star in the making. 

The scenes of the Losers riding their bikes around town, standing up to bullies, and coming together to face the monster were expertly crafted.  Usually, in a horror movie, you can get away with having thin characters and poor craftsmanship if the scares are there.  Unfortunately, the opposite can be said for It.  It’s a superbly put together film filled with great performances, but the one performance the entire picture hinges on is so bad that it nearly sinks the whole enterprise. 

I’m talking of course about Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise.  I loved the opening scene where Georgie has to find something in the basement and is menaced by what appears to be two glowing eyes that turn out to be nothing more than two lightbulbs sitting on a shelf.  This is unfortunately the scariest part of the whole film and is way spookier than anything Skarsgard can come up with. 

First of all, Skarsgard sounds like the goddamned Leprechaun.  I don’t know who thought this was a good idea, but they should’ve been fired on the spot.  Every time he opened his mouth all I could think of was Warwick Davis.  (Actually, Davis wouldn’t have made a bad Pennywise.)  Secondly, he looks like he can’t wait to devour the kids, which is a huge miscalculation.  He should represent something wholesome to lure the kids in, and then turn evil when it’s too late to turn back.  If you start off with him being evil, there’s nowhere for the character to go.  The only thing you can do is give him even more teeth (which they do, and it doesn’t work at all).

The design of the new Pennywise was another miscalculation.  When I saw the first images of the costume online, I felt that something was off.  As it turns out, my gut instinct was right.  The problem is they tried way too hard to make him look “scary”.  Don’t the filmmakers know that a regular clown is creepy enough to begin with?  It reminds me of that Teen Titans Go episode when Beast Boy and Cyborg try to make clowns “extreme”.

Muschietti goes overboard with all the jump scares, high pitched screams, and sped-up fast motion monsters.  The monsters themselves are pretty crappy.  There’s a headless guy and a pus-spewing leper, and both of them suffer from poor CGI.   

The children’s fears are weak too.  Hands, a painting, a doll that looks like it came from Monster High, and a clogged sink all act as harbingers of doom.  This is It we’re talking about.  It should be shit-your-pants scary.  This feels like some Goosebumps stuff.  If only Muschietti could continually recapture the feeling of that early basement scene, this would’ve been a bull’s eye.  Too bad the rest of the scary set pieces land with a thud. 

There is one area in which the film improves on the original:  The final confrontation.  Instead of having just a cheesy spider, Pennywise transforms himself into various things while fighting the Losers.  While this is an improvement, it’s still nothing to get all worked up about. 

Another stumbling block is that we’re really only being shown half a movie.  This one focuses solely on the kids fighting It while the sequel will focus on them as adults having to confront It again.  Maybe my feelings will change when I see both halves together as one whole, but until then, the film just feels incomplete. 

There’s a part of me that wishes I could edit all the “scary” stuff out of the movie and repackage it as Stand By Me Too.   

In the end, this is an OK Stephen King adaptation.  It is a movie that is in many ways slightly superior to Pet Sematary 2.  It is, however, no Maximum Overdrive. 

WILSON (2017) *** ½

Wilson has some of the biggest laughs I’ve had in a comedy in recent memory.  It comes to us from the mind of the great Daniel Clowes, who was also responsible for Ghost World, one of my favorite movies of the ‘00s.  I can’t say it’s altogether as insightful and poignant as that film, but it’s a definite improvement on the last Clowes adaptation, Art School Confidential. 

Woody Harrelson stars as Wilson, a loveable loser who is shaken by the death of his uncaring father.  He sets out to reconnect with his ex (Laura Dern) who tells him they once had a daughter that was given up for adoption.  Inspired by the news that he is a father, Wilson decides to stalk and eventually befriend the daughter he never knew, which leads to a series of unintended consequences. 

Harrelson is terrific as Wilson.  Very few people could pull off the character’s in-your-face behavior and still make him likeable.  Harrelson does it with ease though.  It helps that he is given some truly hilarious dialogue.  When Dern takes him to task for calling everyone he meets an asshole, he turns to her and asks, “Am I wrong?” 

The second half is a bit maudlin and more than a tad depressing.  It’s definitely lacking the freewheeling panache of the early scenes.  That’s okay though because Harrelson does an equally great job when his character is down and out.  The ending is a bit too pat, but these little nitpicks probably won’t mean much upon repeated viewings.  The fact that I’m already itching to see it again is a testament to just how great it really is.

TERROR AT LONDON BRIDGE (1985) **

There were a lot of films about Jack the Ripper in the ‘80s.  In the span of just a couple of years we had The Ripper, Jack’s Back, Edge of Sanity, and this Made for TV movie.  It’s not exactly great, but it does have a fun cast and slightly more blood than you’d typically see on television at that time. 

Jack the Ripper is shot and killed by bobbies on the London Bridge.  His body falls into the Thames and his soul becomes trapped in a dislodged stone.   A hundred years later, London Bridge is brought over to Lake Havasu, Arizona and is turned into a tourist attraction.  When a tourist accidentally bleeds on the stone containing Jack the Ripper’s essence, he is reborn and starts killing women.  Cop David Hasselhoff investigates and tries to convince everyone that Jack the Ripper is alive and well and living in Arizona. 

Director E.W. Swackhamer handles things in a competent manner.  The stalk n’ slash scenes are well done and he manages to squeeze a decent amount of atmosphere out of the unlikely setting.  Unfortunately, there’s just too much fat here that gets in the way of the good stuff.  The Jaws plotline in which the town council wants to can The Hoff’s investigation because it could impact the local tourist trade is overly familiar and eats up a lot of screen time.  You also have to put up with the subplot about the appearance of not one, but two creepy guys with English accents; both of whom are potential Ripper suspects. 

The awesome cast will be the main draw.  David Hasselhoff is at the height of his Hasselhoffiness here.  Wearing tight jeans and a polo shirt, he just exudes all the Hoffian traits you’ve come to expect from The Hoff.  We also have the great Adrienne Barbeau as the town’s sexy librarian.  Although I wish her part was larger, I can honestly say there’s something about Adrienne Barbeau as a sexy librarian that gets my motor running.  Randolph Mantooth also appears as Hasselhoff’s more seasoned partner and Clu Gulager steals every scene he’s in as the chief of police.  (He even calls people “Buddy Boy”, just like he did in Return of the Living Dead.) 

This is exactly the sort of thing I would’ve eaten up if I caught it on the USA Network as a kid.  I’m a man now, and my tastes are (slightly) more refined, but it went down smooth enough.  It’s just a shame that all the padding ultimately prevents it from ever gaining much momentum. 

AKA:  Bridge Across Time.  AKA:  Arizona Ripper.

NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT (1975) **

Christopher Lee stars as a police inspector who is investigating a school bus accident.  Doctor Peter Cushing and his young colleague use hypnosis on a schoolgirl survivor to find out what she knows about the wreck.  After his protegee is found dead, Cushing and Lee team up to find the murderer. 

Nothing but the Night was the only feature made by Christopher Lee’s own production company, and by the looks of things, he was a better actor than producer.  Still, it’s worth watching because of the Lee/Cushing factor.  Other than that, there’s not a whole lot to recommend.  The opening sequence that chronicles the murder of three people is well done and the ending, while predictable is not without its strengths.  Too bad the movie drags its feet so much during the time in between. 

Whenever the two leads aren’t on screen, the film falters.  The stuff with the sexy reporter doing a story with the young girl’s prostitute mother (Diana Dors) eats up a lot of screen time and it doesn’t exactly captivate you either.  The scenes involving Dors running around the woods while trying to keep an eye on her daughter further bogs things down, but at least her eventual comeuppance is kind of cool. 

AKA:  The Devil’s Undead.  AKA:  Castle of the Living Dead.  AKA:  Devil Night.  AKA:  The Resurrection Syndicate. 

CRAZY COUPLE (1979) **

Crazy Couple starts off promisingly enough.  It begins with our hero playing practical jokes back and forth with this creepy guy.  This weirdo decides to raise the stakes by swapping out our hero’s prescription with a laxative.  Little does he know the medicine was actually for his pet monkey.  The laxative is so strong that the monkey dies from it, which throws its owner into a Kung Fu frenzy. 

It’s here where I started to get excited.  I honestly thought the film was going to go into full-on Death Wish territory.  I mean, who wouldn’t love a movie in which a man tries to get revenge for his pet monkey?  Unfortunately, the two winds up joining forces to stop a Kung Fu master who has killed their doctor friend.   

So much for that.  From then on, the film turns into one of those lame Kung Fu comedies that feature so-so fight scenes and dumb humor.  The scenes that involve our hero trying to hook his buddy up with the doctor’s ugly daughter are the worst.  I did get a chuckle out of the scene in which a constipated Kung Fu master looks jealously over to the next stall while his assistant has no problem shitting.  (Complete with frequent “plop-splash” sound effects.)  If the film had one or two more of these amusing comic set pieces, it might’ve gotten a higher grade, but as it stands, Crazy Couple just wasn’t crazy enough for me to recommend it.

THE WILD WILD WORLD OF BATWOMAN (1966) ** ½

Batwoman (Katherine Victor) is a crimefighter who looks like one of the Golden Girls is all dressed up to go to an Eyes Wide Shut party.  Her arch-nemesis is a guy named Rat Fink who wears a fedora over top of his lucha libre mask.  When Rat Fink steals a top secret atomic hearing aid (it allows the user to listen in on any phone conversation) Batwoman and her all-girl army of bikini babes set out to recover it.

This is one of director Jerry Warren’s more coherent movies, if you can believe it.  Even then, there’s still inexplicable footage of The Mole People edited in for no good reason whatsoever.  I can’t say it’s as “good” as Teenage Zombies, but it’s about on par with Face of the Screaming Werewolf.

The shoestring budget, awful costumes, and bad performances lend the movie a certain amount of charm.  That’s not quite enough to sustain the entire running time, but it’s enough to make for an intermittently amusing flick.  Whenever things threaten to get dull, the scenes of scantily clad women go-go dancing help to maintain your interest.

There is at least one hilariously offensive sequence that is memorable.  That’s when Batwoman and some friends conduct a séance in order to find the whereabouts of Rat Fink.  During the séance, the voice of the spirit keeps getting interrupted by a spirit speaking Chinese.  It’s so wrongheaded and goofy that you just have to laugh.

AKA:  She Was a Hippy Vampire.  AKA:  The Wild World of Batwoman.  

MARVELOUS STUNTS OF KUNG FU (1979) **

Marvelous Stunts of Kung Fu, you say?  Well, I wouldn’t call them “Marvelous” or anything, but I guess they were okay.  Although the fight choreography is just so-so, the Kung Fu battles occur at regular intervals, so at least it never gets too boring.   

A deadly gang controls a small town and murder Kung Fu masters in rigged fights.  A traveler wanders into town and squares off against a crooked fortune teller who’s in cahoots with a sexy pickpocket.  Eventually, the trio decides to put their differences aside to take on the nefarious den of ruffians. 

Even though we don’t get any marvelous stunts or anything, the fight between the fortune teller and our hero is well done.  Too bad the rest of the fights are just ho-hum.  The finale, while jam packed with opponents, just doesn’t have the same sense of style.   

The most memorable fight happens right away in the opening scene.  That’s when the bad guys show off their “Golden Chicken” style.  In between shots of them punching and kicking, we see close-ups of a clucking chicken.  This scene is the comedic highlight of the film.  Unfortunately, the rest of the intentional humor fails to generate any laughs.  Maybe “Marvelous Chicken Kung Fu” would’ve been a more accurate title.  It certainly would’ve been a funnier one.