TROLL 2: THE 20th ANNIVERSARY NILBOG EDITION -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 10/15/10

 

It's been so long since I saw the original TROLL, all I remember about it is that it stars Shelley Hack and Sonny Bono, takes place in an apartment building with a troll in it (not Sonny Bono), features John Carl Buechler as both director and makeup effects creator, and, as I was reminded recently, has a kid in it named Harry Potter, Jr.  Oh yeah, and there's a pretty cool performance by a little girl named Jenny Beck who at one point gets to be possessed by the title creature.


The in-name-only sequel, TROLL 2, has none of these things.  It does, however, share one quality with the original--one of the best performances comes from the kid in the lead role, in this case Michael Stephenson as Joshua Waits, a boy who is visited by the ghost of his deceased grandfather, Seth (Robert Ormsby).  Grandpa Seth reads Josh scary bedtime stories about trolls--or, as he calls them, goblins--who assume human form and trick people into eating a gooey substance that turns them into half-human, half-plant hybrids, which is the goblins' favorite food.


Nobody, including Josh's mom (Margo Prey) and step-dad (George Hardy) and his big sister Molly (Connie McFarland), believe him about Grandpa Seth's ghost or his warning that the goblins are real.  So when the family travels to the tiny town of Nilbog (catchy name) on a house-swapping vacation and all the local citizens turn out to be goblins looking for their next meal, it's up to Josh and his ghostly gramps to hold the ravenous little buggers at bay until the rest of the clueless family wises up and takes action.




TROLL 2 may have been made in 1990, but in spirit it's still a product of the 80s.  From the cheesy score, to sister Molly's awful aerobic workout dance, to her horny boyfriend Elliott (Jason Wright) and his chums who are like braindead refugees from a dull edition of "USA's Up All Night", the film is steeped in that golden decade's kitschy goodness.  Not surprisingly, the film known by some as "the best worst movie ever" also glows with the same cheapo charm of a million other junk films of the era that I rented on VHS or watched on late-night cable between used car commercials.


Horror-wise, there's not much on the scary side going on here, with the trolls--sorry, goblins--resembling a bunch of fat little kids in oversized Halloween masks.  These are designed to resemble the ones in the first film but clearly lack John Carl Buechler's artistry.  There's no gore to speak of, since anyone who ingests the tainted goblin-goo instantly starts bleeding green tree sap and literally vegging out. 


The creatures themselves are actually scarier in their mock-human forms, coming off as a cross between the hostile yokels from DELIVERANCE and the pagan farm punks of CHILDREN OF THE CORN.  When they surround the Waits family in their vacation house and start slowly closing in, it's a little like something out of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

 


Technically, TROLL 2 is pretty amateurish, with camerawork, direction, and editing that are definitely not so hot.  Yet it remains well-paced and watchable throughout, the story moving at a pretty snappy clip with few draggy spots and little or no padding.  The smalltown locations in Utah are certainly atmospheric--just being in this crummy little flyspeck burg would seem nightmarish enough even without the trolls (sorry, goblins).


As for the acting, most of the leads seem to have been recruited from grade-school plays, yet they invest their roles with conviction.  I love the awkward, stilted dialogue scenes between Molly and her boyfriend Elliott, who infuriates her by insisting on dragging his buds along on the trip.  While these guys aren't so hot in the acting department either, they do make good plant food.  One of them even ends up as a potted plant in the lair of Miss Creedence Leonore Gielgud, who turns out to be the evil queen of the trolls (sorry, goblins). 


Deborah Reed, whose acting dial is clearly stuck on "eleven", mugs her way through this role with the eye-rolling gusto of a horror-movie hostess.  When she's surrounded by her warty minions in the bowels of her inner sanctum, sporting a Technicolor makeup job and playing to the back row like Margaret Hamilton on PCP, the film resembles a particularly demented Sid and Marty Krofft production.




Also of note is Michael Stephenson as Josh, who makes up for his lack of acting polish with an intense performance that oftens has him emoting his little buns off.  There's a nice nightmare sequence early on in which his family turn into goblins as he begins to bleed chlorophyll and sprout branches through his fingers and chest.  Best of all, though, is when a famished Mom, Dad, and Molly sit down to eat a poisoned dinner and Josh has to act fast in order to stop them.  His solution, which was pretty much the last thing I expected, had me howling.



The Blu-Ray/DVD combo labeled "The 20th Anniversary Nilbog Edition" is from MGM and 20th-Century Fox.  The Blu-Ray is in English 5.1 DTS-HD master audio and English mono.  Features as listed on the box are feature film in high definition, 1080p, lossless audio, smart menu technology, and original theatrical trailer.  I reviewed the DVD only, which contains the feature film in standard definition with English mono sound, plus the trailer.  Both discs are in 1.85:1 widescreen and offer English, Spanish, and French subtitles. 


Like a Halloween spook-house slapped together by a bunch of enthusiastic but drunk neighborhood slobs, TROLL 2 is dumb as a doorknob but engagingly lively and fun right up to its startling conclusion.  (And it's one of the few films I've seen in which bologna plays an integral part in the finale.)  Although the whole thing threatens to fall apart any second, it never does.  In fact, for all its faults, the chewing gum and baling wire ingenuity that holds this creaky creature feature together somehow makes it more entertaining than your usual big-budget bomb.    

TROLL 2: THE 20th ANNIVERSARY NILBOG EDITION -- DVD Review by Porfle

THE SIMPSONS: THE FOURTEENTH SEASON -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 12/23/11

 

Whenever I hear that heavenly chorus singing the title as the camera's eye descends upon the town of Springfield--followed by one of the greatest TV sitcom themes of all time (thanks to Danny Elfman)--I know I'm in for a half-hour of almost supernaturally blissful cartoon comedy.  With 20-Century Fox's 4-disc DVD set THE SIMPSONS: THE FOURTEENTH SEASON, I get to experience this heady sensation 22 times! 

That may sound a little over-the-top, but aye carumba!, I love this show.  Breezy, colorful, and as addictive as only the most delectable mind candy can be, the irreverent and sharply satirical (yet often heartfelt) adventures of Homer and Marge Simpson and their kids Bart, Lisa, and Maggie easily earn a spot in the top ten greatest situation comedy series of all time.  Maybe even the top five.  Top three?  Arguably.

Some fans insist that the long-running show has long been running on fumes, but by season fourteen it was still going strong, netting an impressive array of guest stars, winning Emmys, and serving up some of its most memorable episodes with all the familiar panache.  As usual, each one reels us in with some intriguing situation which seems to be the main plotline until it unexpectedly veers into something entirely different.
 


A family jigsaw-puzzle obsession leads to Homer and Marge's sudden breakup; a disastrous trip to the Springfield Botanical Gardens morphs into a heartwarming love story between baby Maggie and eternal loser Moe the bartender ("Moe Baby Blues").  When movie star Ranier Wolfcastle holds an estate sale to pay off his debts, this gag-filled opening gives no indication of the trauma that will ensue when Marge is mugged on the way home and becomes a trembling agoraphobe hiding out in the family basement ("The Strong Arms of the Ma").

The season comes charging out of the gate with an outstanding Halloween episode, "Treehouse of Horror XIII", featuring three scarifying stories: "Send in the Clones", in which Homer acquires a magic hammock that generates even dumber duplicates of himself; "The Fright to Creep and Scare Harms", which tells what happens when the Old West's baddest outlaws rise from the grave to menace Springfield just after Lisa has succeeded in wiping out all handguns; and "The Island of Dr. Hibbert", a twist on the old H.G. Wells tale which has the Simpsons and other characters being transformed into manimals. 

This is followed by one of the series' most celebrated episodes, "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation."  After an inebriated Homer is caught dissing his family life on the reality show "Taxicab Conversations", Marge and the kids decide he needs a break and ship him off to a Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy Camp presided over by none other than guest voice talent Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, Lenny Kravitz, and Brian Setzer.

"Barting Over" marks the milestone 300th episode (or does it?) with Bart suing to become an emancipated minor and becoming pals with skateboard ace Tony Hawk after moving into his own loft apartment. In "Pray Anything", Homer's ongoing turbulent relationship with God is further explored when he's awarded ownership of the church in an accident suit and turns it into party central. 

"Three Gays of the Condo" finds him exploring the world of homosexuality, not to mention his first guy-guy kiss, when yet another tiff with Marge results in him rooming with two gays including guest voice Scott Thompson ("The Kids in the Hall").  Marge's unconscious resentment of Homer surfaces with a string of attempts on his life in "Brake My Wife, Please", featuring the voices of Steve Buscemi, Jackson Brown, and Jane Kaczmarek. 



Other episodes in this collection include "Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade", "Large Marge" (a hospital mix-up results in Marge being given huge fake boobs), "Helter Shelter", "The Great Louse Detective", "Special Edna" (regular Marcia Wallace voices Bart's lovelorn teacher Miss Krabappel), "The Dad Who Knew Too Little", "I'm Spelling As Fast As I Can", "A Star is Born Again" (widower Ned Flanders has an affair with Marisa Tomei's sexy movie star character Sara Sloane), "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington" (Krusty the Clown runs for Congress), "C.E. D'oh", "'Scuse Me While I Miss the Sky", "Dude, Where's My Ranch?", "Old Yeller-Belly", and "The Bart of War."

Some of the guest voices not already mentioned: Kelsey Grammer (returning as Bart's eternal nemesis Sideshow Bob), Tony Bennett, Jan Hooks, Adam West and Burt Ward, Baha Men, Larry Holmes, David "Squiggy" Lander, Little Richard, Elliot Gould, Pamela Reed, Ken Burns, Lisa Leslie, blink-182, George Plimpton, Jim Brooks, Helen Fielding, Joe Mantegna (as mobster Fat Tony), "Monty Python" star Eric Idle, "Weird Al" Yankovic, David Byrne, Andy Serkis, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and Stacy Keach.

In addition to some beautifully designed menus featuring the entire cast being hosted for "dinner" by ravenous aliens Kang and Kodos, the set is overflowing with a wealth of fun special features.  These include an introduction by creator Matt Groening (bo-ring!), audio commentaries on all episodes, deleted scenes, lots of featurettes, sketch galleries, and several Easter eggs that can be accessed by pressing the "up" button on individual episode menus.  The packaging itself is an eye-pleasing double-sided pictorial foldout containing a sizable information booklet.  The only snag is having to fish the discs out of those snug built-in pockets.

Watching THE SIMPSONS: THE FOURTEENTH SEASON is similar to taking a trip through a theme park brimming with childlike delights, like Six Flags or Knott's Berry Farm (but not Dollywood, because Ned Flanders wouldn't approve) without the inconvenience of finding a parking space or having to walk.  If you're a Simpsons fan, the rewatchability factor is pretty much endless. 

THE SIMPSONS: THE FOURTEENTH SEASON -- DVD Review by Porfle

AVATAR -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 4/25/10

I missed AVATAR (2009) at the theater, which is hardly surprising since I rarely go to the theater anymore unless I'm having my house sprayed or something. In a way that's good since, with the release of James Cameron's blockbuster sci-fi epic on DVD, I can now judge it without being bowled over by the whoopty-doo big-screen 3D experience. And as far as I'm concerned, it pretty much lives up to all the hype. Unless you simply have an aversion to James Cameron films, which I don't.

Everyone probably knows the story by now: in the future, a paraplegic Marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) travels to the distant planet of Pandora and takes his deceased twin brother's place in a research project aimed at studying an indigenous alien race called the Na'vi. To do so, team members such as Jake, Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore), and crotchety project leader Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) mind-jump into cloned Na'vi bodies ("avatars") which also contain their own DNA (which is why Jake was chosen to take over for his deceased twin).

Jake gets more than he bargained for when circumstances bring him into direct contact with a Na'vi tribe which is initially hostile toward the intruder. He falls in love with the tribal chief's daughter Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who has been charged with teaching him their ways, and learns to appreciate their amazing physical and spiritual connection with nature,eventually becoming accepted as one of them. But a greedy corporate executive, Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), wants the Na'vi off their mineral-rich holy ground and tasks his ex-military security force, led by the extremely hostile Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) to get the job done even if it means using deadly force.


AVATAR is James Cameron's love letter to tree-huggers everywhere, and his message does resonate within the context of the film (although after awhile you just get a little tired of how perfect the Na'vi are compared to us horrible humans--even their deity is realer than ours). The familiar story contains elements of, among other things, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Kipling's "The Jungle Book", Disney's POCOHANTAS, DANCES WITH WOLVES, LITTLE BIG MAN, and, of course, a certain story about some starcrossed lovers named Rose and Jack.

But while Cameron once again gets to indulge the romantic side which bubbled to the surface of his roiling id in TITANIC (all that's missing, unfortunately, is a "cry moment" at the end), what really gets his moviemaking mojo in gear is the massive battle between the humans and the Na'vi which takes up the latter third of the film. Huge warships and helicopters maneuver around the floating mountains, firing incendiary bombs and other nasty things into the heart of the Na'vi habitat, while ground forces in mechanical power-suits (which are like a combination of similar creations in both ALIENS and MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS) do furious battle with thousands of bow-wielding Na'vi warriors. These battle scenes are spectacular and are my favorite part of the movie. I suspect they're Cameron's favorite part, too.


The SPFX are consistently amazing, providing the viewer with some of the best eye-candy to ever grace the screen. We've already come a long way from, for example, those beautiful vistas of Naboo in THE PHANTOM MENACE--Cameron's alien planet is filled with bizarre flora and fauna amidst a kaleidescope of vibrant colors (especially at night when everything turns luminescent), and looks like a conglomeration of Yes album-cover artist Roger Dean's wildest fantasies brought to life. The flying reptiles ridden by the Na'vi are especially impressive, although some of the other forest creatures look somewhat less convincing than one might expect.

The Na'vi themselves are the last word in CGI motion-capture technology, their performances every bit as expressive as those of the live actors. Worthington, Weaver, and Moore are, by necessity, recognizable in their alien form (it's really fun seeing Weaver's face on one of these things), while the faces of the native characters played by Zoe Saldana, Wes Studi, and CCH Pounder are creations of the FX artists which allow us to get to know them as individuals without any preconceptions.


Sam Worthington is good as the "stranger in a strange land" hero, making a convincing transition from dedicated Marine to Na'vi convert (some would say traitor), and Zoe Saldana is very appealing as Neytiri. Sigourney Weaver is her usual awesome self as Dr. Augustine, although for someone who's supposed to be a nicotine addict she smokes a cigarette like she had a fishing worm dangling out of her mouth. The versatile Giovanni Ribisi is hilarious as the cartoonishly greedy, self-obsessed "unobtanium" (THE CORE, anyone?) tycoon Parker Selfridge, a kindred soul to ALIENS' Carter Burke. My favorite, though, is equally versatile Stephen Lang (MANHUNTER, TOMBSTONE) as the quintessential hard-ass military ogre, Quaritch, who's itching for a bloody showdown with the Na'vi "hoss-tiles" regardless of provocation or lack thereof. And lest I forget, Michelle Rodriguez makes the most of her role as a spunky military pilot who sympathizes with the scientists.

The DVD from 20th-Century Fox is a barebones affair unless you consider chapter selections and subtitles to be "special features." Not surprisingly, a super-duper edition is in the works for later this year. If you can't wait to own it, though, and simply want the movie itself, this will do. Image and sound quality are very good as you might expect.


So, AVATAR is a colorful, fanciful comment on the displacement of indigenous populations by encroaching interlopers, the destruction of the rain forests, U.S. military intervention into other countries, etc., etc. I don't care about any of that stuff. Cameron can exorcise his white liberal guilt and make big statements reminding us that racism=bad and the environment=good, and have the greenest mansion, land yachts, and private jet in Hollywood for all I care. I just happen to get a big kick out of the massive, powerhouse feats of action-adventure cinema this often underestimated and derided filmmaker manages to successfully pull off at great risk and expense (in addition to his earlier, lower-budgeted stuff, of course). While I don't love the guy with a fanboy's zeal (and am, quite frankly, glad I don't ever have to be around him in real life, ever), I find his movies visually sumptuous and incredibly entertaining, which fits quite nicely into one of the most vital niches of my movie lover's soul.

AVATAR -- DVD Review by Porfle

GENTLEMEN BRONCOS -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 3/8/10

 

I imagine that comedies about total nerds appeal to two seperate groups--the cool people who look down on the characters and laugh derisively at them, and the total nerds who can identify with them. Personally, I've always aspired to be part of a third category--the "cool nerd"--and thus able to enjoy GENTLEMEN BRONCOS (2009) from both perspectives. (Yeah, I know--all nerds think they're cool.) Either way, it's an exceedingly funny and inventive film that anyone can appreciate in one way or another.

Benjamin Purvis (Michael Angarano) is a high school nerd who lives with his widowed mother Judith (Jennifer Coolidge), a really bad clothing designer. Benjamin loves cheesy sci-fi/fantasy novels and has just finished his own epic entitled "Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years." During his stay at a writers' camp known as Cletus Fest, he submits his story in an amateur writers' contest which will be judged by legendary author Dr. Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement) of the famed "Cyborg Harpies" trilogy. The stuffy and conceited Chevalier, who has run out of ideas and is about to get the boot from his publisher, goes ga-ga over Benjamin's manuscript and submits it as his own work, whereupon it becomes a huge bestseller.

Angarano wisely underplays the role of the introspective, world-weary but guardedly optimistic Benjamin, serving as the outwardly calm center for the storm of goofball characters swirling around him. Clement's bad-sci-fi author Ronald Chevalier is the quintessential full-of-himself minor celebrity who is as pretentious and self-important as he is achingly banal. Two fellow nerds whom Benjy meets on the bus to writers' camp are Halley Feiffer as the friendly but manipulative Tabatha and Héctor Jiménez as overtly eccentric amateur filmmaker Lonnie Donaho (Jiménez pulls the most awesomely extreme fish-face in every shot) who end up making a hideously awful videotape version of "Yeast Lords" with Lonnie playing the female lead.


Fans of Sam Rockwell (GALAXY QUEST, THE GREEN MILE) should have a ball watching him play two wildly different characters here: first, he's Benjy's mental image of the "Yeast Lords" hero Bronco, a bearded, long-haired wild man (based on Benjy's late, lamented father whom he barely knew) whose potent gonads are sought after by bad-guy Daysius as cloning stock; and second, as Chevalier's altered version of the character (renamed "Brutus") as a mincing, platinum-blonde transsexual who looks like a cross between Captain Kangaroo and one of the Nelson twins. Scenes from both versions of Benjy's sprawling saga supply some of the most outrageously funny moments in the film.

Best of all is the great Jennifer Coolidge (AMERICAN PIE, BEST IN SHOW) as Benjy's equally nerdy mom, Judith. Her dream is to be a clothing designer specializing in nightgowns--when she proudly displays her sketches, they're deliciously awful. She also makes horrible matching outfits for Benjy and herself, which, to his credit, Benjy wears without protest because his eternally supportive mom is also his best friend. Coolidge plays the role with utter sincerity which makes her that much funnier, and she's a joy to watch. (The outtakes reel features some of her hilarious ad-libs breaking up the cast and crew.)


The blissfully spaced-out Dusty (Mike White), a member of the "Guardian Angel" program at Judith's church whom she has enlisted to be a friend to Benjy, teaches him how to use a homemade blowgun, and when Benjy accidentally fires a dart into Judith's left boob, her screaming reaction is priceless. Later, Judith is molested by a rich buyer who has expressed interest in her designs, and when Benjy leaps to her defense, the guy starts shooting at them from the balcony of his mansion as they cower behind their car.

Another highlight occurs as we see Lonnie's dreadful screen adaptation of "Yeast Lords" get its grand premiere at a local movie theater, with Dusty starring as Bronco. This prompts Chevalier to threaten Lonnie with a lawsuit for plagiarising his new novel (which he stole from Benjy), setting up the final confrontation between Chevalier and an increasingly-indignant Benjy.


Some of the humor in this movie is so painfully deadpan that it almost dares us not to laugh. At other times, the unbridled absurdity abounds in waves of pure delight as we're treated to sights that might make you wonder what filmmakers Jared and Jerusha Hess (of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE and NACHO LIBRE fame) have been smoking. Much of the funny stuff is the kind that can be appreciated in an intellectually-stimulated silence, but now and then there are instances (usually involving Jennifer Coolidge) that provoke the kind of cathartic belly-laughs that make good comedy such a joy to experience.

The DVD from 20-Century Fox is in 1.85:1 widescreen with English Dolby 5.1 and Spanish and French Dolby Surround. Subtitles are in English and Spanish. Extras include outtakes, deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes featurette, and a fun commentary track with Jared and Jerusha Hess and DP Munn Howell. (The Blu-Ray edition contains additional featurettes not found on the DVD--well, isn't that special?)

The opening titles feature a collection of wonderfully cheesy sci-fi paperback covers, one of which I actually remember seeing on the rack back in the late 60s or early 70s--something called "Gender Genocide", I think. My consumption of such literature at the time was mainly confined to "Star Trek" and the occasional Andre Norton novel, but it's still fun to see all of this old paperback cover art. The accompanying main title song is the soul-deadeningly horrible "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans, one of the most horrendously godawful songs ever written and thus exquisitely appropriate in this context.

I had a great time watching GENTLEMEN BRONCOS and, admittedly, identifying with a lot of it. Heck, it's fun to be a nerd sometimes, which Jared and Jerusha Hess seem to know quite well, and when Benjy finally, really smiles for the first time during the triumphant last scene, their obvious love for this oft-maligned class of people is infectious.

GENTLEMEN BRONCOS -- DVD Review by Porfle

THE BIG TRAIL -- DVD Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 10/26/11

 

It's not every day you get to watch a 1930 blockbuster movie in widescreen, with enough sheer spectacle to leave even modern viewers breathless.  The movie in question is Raoul Walsh's Western epic THE BIG TRAIL, a young John Wayne's first starring role and a genuine treasure for Western fans.

Shot on 70mm film using an early widescreen process known as "Fox Grandeur", THE BIG TRAIL was expensive to shoot and expensive to project--new equipment had to be installed in theaters just to show it--and with the onset of the Great Depression, it seemed the "Fox Grandeur" process had come along at just the wrong time.  Only a couple of theaters in New York and Los Angeles ever exhibited the widescreen version, while everyone else saw a much less impressive 35mm Academy aspect ratio version that was filmed simutaneously.  It would be another two decades before Cinerama offered moviegoers such wide vistas again.

The story takes place as a cattle drive blazes the trail for a wagon train full of settlers bound to reach the land north of Oregon.  For five months, director Raoul Walsh and his crew filmed 185 full-sized Conestoga wagons (or "prairie schooners") and thousands of extras on a 2,000-mile trudge across five states, facing conditions much like those experienced by the actual pioneers.  The settings, including a bustling river town, a massive riverboat, and various outposts along the trail, are meticulously detailed and wonderfully authentic, as are the costumes, props, and all other aspects of the production. 



The 23-year-old John Wayne plays buckskin-clad Breck Coleman, a tall, good-natured frontiersman who hires on as the group's scout for two reasons.  One, he's infatuated with a lovely young pioneer woman named Ruth (Marguerite Churchill), who can't stand him, and two, he's sworn revenge against the burly bullwhacker Frack (a Bluto-like Tyrone Power, Sr.) and his weaselly henchman Lopez (Charles Stevens) for murdering his best friend in order to steal his valuable stock of wolf pelts.  To complicate things, these skunks are in cahoots with a lowdown riverboat gambler named Thorpe (Ian Keith), who is also smitten with Ruth and is looking for an opportunity to shoot Breck in the back somewhere along the trail.

The actors, from the stars down to the extras, all look and act as though they belong in that era, despite the sometimes stilted acting styles (a leftover from the silent era, along with the expository intertitles).  And when the settlers encounter various tribes of Indians along the way, both friendly and not-so-friendly, they definitely aren't refugees from central casting--they're the real thing.  Much of this film is like a window into the past because the Wild West as we know it still existed at the time this was made, and Walsh's cameras were there to record it in its gloriously uncivilized state.



Breathtaking scenery and amazingly rich tableaux fill the screen throughout the film, with wagons, horses, and cattle often stretching as far as the eye can see.  One sequence shows the wagon train during a harrowing river crossing, while another details the grueling task of lowering the wagons, livestock, and people down the face of a sheer cliff by ropes.  We also get the obligatory "circling the wagons" scene (never as well-done as it is here) as the hostile Cheyenne attack and the settlers fight desperately to repel them. 

The excitement comes from knowing that these events are actually taking place and not being simulated by special effects or augmented by CGI.  From the rolling hills and mountains of the midwest, through miles of burning desert, and finally to the lush, majestic redwood forests (with a brief stop-off at the Grand Canyon along the way), the genuine locations used for THE BIG TRAIL are a non-stop feast for the eyes.

As Bill Cooke recently stated on the Classic Horror Film Board, "John Wayne may be a little rough in his first acting role, but was never more charming."  The financial failure of THE BIG TRAIL would relegate Wayne to a long string of B-movies until his breakthrough role as "The Ringo Kid" in John Ford's 1939 classic STAGECOACH, but his Breck Coleman character is just as likable and appealing as any he ever played.  He's earnestly convincing whether palavering with his friends the Indians, bashfully courting the gal of his fancy, or stalking his best friend's killers with deadly determination.



Marguerite Churchill, whom I always liked as Otto Kruger's sassy secretary in DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936), is winsome as the girl Breck must try his darndest to win over.  As the loathesome Frack, Tyrone Power, Sr. is almost cartoonishly villainous, but he's a formidable bad guy nonetheless.  Tully Marshall is outstanding as Breck's pal, the aging frontiersman Zeke, while vaudeville comedian El Brendel provides love-it-or-hate-it comedy relief as a Swedish doofus named Gus who is constantly being harangued along the way by his tyrannical mother-in-law.

20th Century Fox's 2-disc DVD of this restored version of THE BIG TRAIL is a real treat for fans of John Wayne and of Westerns in general.  Despite some rough patches here and there, the film looks great and is always visually impressive.  Four informative featurettes and some photo galleries make for interesting supplemental viewing, although the same can't be said, unfortunately, for Richard Schickel's boring commentary track.  The second disc contains the standard fullscreen version, which is interesting for comparative purposes although you probably won't care to sit through the whole thing after watching the widescreen version.

For me, the combination of a great Western adventure with the novelty value of seeing a beautiful widescreen film shot in the early days of talking pictures is a thrill that's hard to beat.  Add to this the opportunity to watch John Wayne shine in his starring debut and director Raoul Walsh at the height of his creative skills, and you've got THE BIG TRAIL--surely one of the most spectacular and irresistibly entertaining Westerns ever made.  To borrow another quote from Bill Cooke:  "By the time this one is over, you actually feel as if you've taken a wagon train out West."

THE BIG TRAIL -- DVD Review by Porfle

THE KEEPER -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 1/28/10

 

 

You have to hand it to Steven Seagal--he's managed to maintain a fairly popular action-hero persona that barely requires him to either move or speak intelligibly. These days, his movies don't even have to be very good at all as long as he's in them. His latest, THE KEEPER (2009), dog-paddles in the DTV end of the pool with the rest of his recent output, neither sinking all the way to the bottom nor demonstrating any fancy strokes to speak of.

The first ten minutes are a mini-movie in which Steven, as L.A. cop Roland Sallinger, is shot by his two-timing partner during a drug bust. He survives, then manages to kill the rat from his hospital bed when he comes to finish the job. Forced to retire due to his injuries, Roland then accepts an offer from his old friend Connor Wells, an ex-cop who's now a Texas oil millionaire, to play bodyguard for his daughter Nikita. She's in danger because a rival millionaire named Jason Cross wants to kidnap her in order to force Wells to sign over some land on which uranium has been discovered. Complicating things is the fact that Nikita's weaselly boyfriend Mason, a two-bit boxer, is in league with Cross.

I'm sure you'd like for me to skip the preliminaries and get to the action scenes, because we don't watch Steven Seagal movies for the acting and dialogue, right? Well, he hasn't been in town for five minutes before he sees a young Mexican woman in distress and has his limo driver pull over so he can whoop a few bad-guy butts. As most of us are aware by now, his fighting style now consists mainly of standing in one spot while flailing his arms wildly, disarming his opponents and bending their arms the wrong way until the bones crack.

Occasionally, he'll let loose with a low kick--his days of planting a flying foot in somebody's face are long past. And even with this limited mobility, a stand-in is often used for the shots in which his character is required to move with some semblance of agility. These fight scenes consist of many short shots and rapid-fire editing to give the illusion that our hero is a lightning-fast flurry of movement.

That said, it's still Steven Seagal, and somehow that's enough. I like the way he strolls into a heated situation and makes the bad guys suffer for being stupid enough to take him on. I'd love to be able to do that myself. And he's so damn sure of himself, mixing it up with multiple opponents with a supreme confidence that's bracing. It's especially fun when he screws around with them a little first, pretending to be intimidated, before giving them that patented Steven Seagal scowl and laying into them. And on the plus side, he seems to have shed some weight since the last time I saw him, so he no longer resembles a giant burrito or appears to be wearing his car instead of just driving it.

Later, there's a kidnapping attempt involving a car chase, and a couple of minor shoot-em-ups on the streets. A few more quick hand-to-hand battles lead up to the final confrontation between Steve and the kidnappers, with Nikita's life in the balance. It's all passable stuff, but none of it is in any way memorable or outstanding. The big guy does put his hand through somebody's throat at one point, which fulfills the requirement that he do something really overtly violent at least once per movie to whatever bad guy wins the honor of deserving it.

Technically, THE KEEPER is your basic meat-and-potatoes job with some irritating stylistic touches thrown in. There's the speed-up-slow-down effect, the appeal of which I never understood, mixed with quick camera moves that make a whooshing noise. Even a brief pan of some trophies Steve has amassed during his cop career does the speed-up-slow-down thing and makes a whooshing noise. Oh yeah, and some of the transitions are accompanied by a flashing white light that also makes a whooshing noise. I guess it's all meant to make the movie look more hip and contemporary, but that kind of stuff just has DTV written all over it. Seagal's 2007 film URBAN JUSTICE eschewed all of that crap for a leaner and more old-school, Don Siegel-type visual style and is all the better for it. To his credit, though, director Keoni Waxman spares us the usual Shaky-Cam overload.

As for the cast, most are capable performers. Steph DuVall as Wells and Luce Rains as Cross are a couple of old pros who know their stuff (although DuVall slips up and calls Seagal's character "Ballinger" at one point), while Arron Shiver does a good job as the slimeball Mason. As Nikita, Liezl Carstens handles the screaming and being scared parts well. When paired with Seagal for a dialogue scene, however, it's as though they're competing in a slow race to see who can underplay the other, and they may have you wondering which one will simply keel over unconscious first.

Seagal, as usual, emotes as though his meds just kicked in and his lines are being fed to him through an earpiece. This time around, he doesn't have any good lines such as "I'm gunna kill the muhfuh that killed mah son", nor the kind of vengeance-driven motivation that a dead wife or family member can provide, both of which are missed. And also unlike URBAN JUSTICE, which had a fadeout that was just cool as hell, this movie just ends when it runs out of stuff to do.

The DVD from 20-Century Fox is in 1.78:1 widescreen with English 5.1 Dolby Digital and Spanish Dolby Surround, subtitled in English and Spanish. There are no extras.

With THE KEEPER, you get pretty much what you might expect by now--standard latter-day Seagal with just enough of the old magic to keep it from being totally dispensible, yet little to make it of any interest to anyone but his most loyal fans. If you're among that number, check it out. Otherwise, why bother?

THE KEEPER -- DVD Review by Porfle

MISERY (Blu-Ray) -- DVD Review by Porfle

(Blu-Ray comments by Ian Friedman. Originally posted on 10/5/09.)


If you're a fan of Stephen King's books, you know that one of his favorite schticks is the "predicament" story. They're usually pretty simple and focus mainly on one character, with whom we identify, who is placed into a seemingly inescapable situation that will require ingenuity, endurance, and lots of suffering in order to come out of it alive. In "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon", a little girl is lost in the woods and must survive on her own for several days. In "Gerald's Game", a woman is handcuffed to a bed by her kinky boyfriend, who then dies of a heart attack and leaves her helpless. Stephen's game, it would seem, is to come up with these challenging premises which he must then write his way out of.

Rob Reiner's impeccably-filmed 1990 horror thriller MISERY, based on King's novel of the same name, places James Caan's "Paul Sheldon" into a doozy of a predicament--after crashing his car during a blizzard, he wakes up in bed in the secluded home of widowed nurse Annie Wilkes, his legs and right arm mangled.

Paul, author of a series of wildly-successful romance novels about a heroine named "Misery Chastain", is told by the sweet and attentive Annie that she is his number one fan. But when she finds out that he's killed "Misery" off in his latest novel, Annie goes off the deep end and her violent and dangerously insane side comes to the fore. Thus, Paul is helpless and at the mercy of a lunatic from whom there seems to be no escape.

Caan gives one of his best performances as a rational man who is suddenly thrust into a twisted, nightmarish ordeal of dehumanizing abuse and utter lunacy. He's very believable in the role and his expressions of guarded concern, growing alarm, and finally terror, outrage, and agony are some of the most realistic and expressive acting he's ever done.

Kathy Bates, of course, is just incredible as Annie Wilkes, every bit as much of a genuine movie monster as Mr. Hyde or the Phantom of the Opera. Clearly based in part on Genene Jones, the infamous "Texas Baby Murderer", Annie is a big woman with a big mental problem, and Bates plays the role to the hilt. Still, so powerful is her presence that she never needs to go over the top, which makes her character all the more unnervingly effective.

The direction by Rob Reiner is deviously clever. I don't think I've ever used the word "Hitchcockian" before, but I think it would apply here. Reiner seems to be having a ball shooting all sorts of different shots of walking feet, shadows under doors, etc. and editing them together to build little vignettes of mounting suspense. While Paul is creeping around the house in his wheelchair or doing something he's not supposed to be doing, we know that Annie could appear at any moment and inflict terrible punishment. Buster, the local sheriff (Richard Farnsworth), investigates Annie's house in a scene that recalls the queasy unease of Vera Miles' search of the Bates home in PSYCHO.


Annie's every tiny mood swing or irrational suspicion can bring new terror, until we're jittery with dread whenever she's onscreen. Her solution for Paul's attempts to escape captivity, while not quite as extreme as in King's novel, is still not for the squeamish. The final confrontation between the two, which could've turned out ludicrous in lesser hands, is handled extremely well.

The new Blu-Ray 2-disc set (BD/DVD) from 20th-Century Fox is 1.85:1 with English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and Spanish and French Dolby Digital 5.1, and offers subtitles in all three languages. The Blu-Ray image looks pretty good. There is actually some print damage, which is a bit surprising--not too much, but that there is any is a bit strange. The picture is a little soft, but still offers a good amount of detail.

MISERY takes its time establishing the situation and characters and then building an aura of suspense that can at any moment erupt into nerve-wracking terror. It's a great example of how a movie can put the viewer through the proverbial wringer without the need for graphic violence and cheap shocks.

MISERY (Blu-Ray) -- DVD Review by Porfle

PREDATORS -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 10/23/10
 

 

Not the adrenaline-charged action blowout I was expecting, PREDATORS (2010) is still a reasonably exciting and, for the most part, absorbing monster flick.

Things get off to a dynamic start as mercenary soldier Royce (Adrien Brody) wakes up to find himself in the middle of a harrowing freefall through the clouds.  His chute opens just in time but he still goes crashing perilously through the ceiling of a dense jungle below before finally thudding into the turf.  Before long he discovers he's not the only one, as more confused people keep popping up and wondering where the hell they are and how they got there.

Curiously, they all seem to be adept at killing, either for business or pleasure.  Along with soldiers Isabelle (Alice Braga), Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov), and Mombasa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), there's drug cartel executioner Cuchillo (Danny Trejo), a Yakuza named Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien), and a flaky rapist-murderer from Death Row named Stans (Walter Goggins).  The odd man out is seemingly mild-mannered doctor Edwin (Topher Grace), who, like the others, was abducted in a flash of white light.

They may be in the dark as to what's going on, but most of us viewers are well aware that these hapless individuals are the latest prey for big, vicious aliens known as Predators, who hunt and kill for sport.  As we wait for them to appear, the humans, with Royce taking the lead, trudge through the jungle toward higher ground and eventually realize that they're on another planet.  The game now afoot, they're soon tracked down by a pack of doglike creatures in a lively attack sequence that's pretty nicely CGI-rendered.
 

 

Some of the characters start dying off before we get to know them at all, while the rest remain sketchy and enigmatic.  Royce, who cultivates a cold ruthlessness in order to survive, gives Adrien Brody a welcome chance to not be a wuss for a change.  Isabelle (played by Sonia Braga's niece Alice) and Nikolai are patriots who kill efficiently for their country yet retain their humanity--Nikolai proudly displays a photo of his kids at one point, while Isabelle refuses to leave a wounded Edwin behind. 

Cowardly blowhard Stans reminds me a little of Bill Paxton's "Hudson" from ALIENS, until he starts fantasizing about getting coked up and going on a raping spree when he gets back to Earth.  A surprising new character introduced late in the film (I won't go into any details) provides the story with its strangest and most interesting interlude.  The dialogue is serviceable but nobody is given anything very memorable to say, including the sort of pithy one-liners Arnold spouted in the first film. 

KNB EFX Group, Inc. provide the excellent makeup effects which we get to see in loving close-up.  The "original" Predator, we discover, was a little feller compared to the bigger, badder species introduced here, and it turns out there's a blood feud between them which becomes important to the plot later on.  I still prefer the original-style Predator to the jazzed-up new version, and it's a little disconcerting to see him diminished in comparison.
 

 

Highlights include a clash of swords between Predator and Yakuza, an inter-species Predator showdown, and a final clash between the baddest Predator and the most resourceful human.  But while there are several action setpieces and some thrilling stunts here and there, viewers expecting a monsters-versus-humans free-for-all along the lines of ALIENS will probably be disappointed.  The breakneck pace of that film is also missing here, as the story moves rather leisurely between action scenes and never really maintains much momentum.  Still, PREDATORS remains fairly absorbing throughout. 

The DVD from 20th-Century Fox is in 2.35:1 widescreen with soundtracks in English Dolby 5.1 and Spanish and French Dolby 2.0.  Subtitles are in English, Spanish, and French.  Extras include a chummy commentary track with director Nimrod Antal and producer Robert Rodriguez, a look at the film's location shooting in Hawaii and Texas, three short motion comics, the theatrical trailer, and several trailers from other 20th-Century Fox releases. 

Good performances, top-notch makeup effects, and high-gloss production values keep this somewhat lackluster screenplay moving along well enough.  But Nimrod Antal, while certainly a capable director, doesn't have that Robert Rodriguez touch, and PREDATORS comes off as an entertaining but unremarkable sci-fi/monster flick with a direct-to-video vibe.

PREDATORS -- DVD Review by Porfle

BATMAN: THE MOVIE (1966) -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 10/31/09

  

I remember when Bat-mania hit. When the Adam West TV series premiered, millions of kids were glued to their sets. We thrilled to the colorful adventures of the Caped Crusaders, Batman and Robin, as they fought to keep flamboyant foes such as Joker, Riddler, Penguin, and Catwoman from terrorizing the good citizens of Gotham City. It was like seeing the old Bob Kane comics brought to life, and we all went batty over it. In no time the Batman logo was all over T-shirts, lunch boxes, bubblegum cards--you name it. It was cooler than cool.

We didn't know it was a comedy. Most of our parents and older siblings didn't either--they just thought it was the silliest, stupidest thing they'd ever seen, and as we sat there watching each episode in Bat-ecstacy while the older folks poured on the derision, the jokes just went zooming like Batarangs right over all our heads. As I got a little older, I finally started to catch on to how dumb it was myself. But it wasn't till much later, when the Tim Burton movie prompted a lot of local stations to start showing reruns, that it finally dawned on me that "Batman" was one of the most deliriously funny comedies to ever hit the airwaves.

Meanwhile, back in my childhood...the show had been on for one season when word hit the playground that there was gonna be a movie. HOLY HOLLYWOOD, Batman! The local theater was packed to the gills with screaming kids on a Saturday morning back in '66 when BATMAN:THE MOVIE lit the place up. 

We sat in awe as our formerly TV-sized heroes went widescreen with bigger adventures, a bevy of bad guys, and better Bat-gadgets such as the Batcycle, the Batboat and the Batcopter, in addition to the already-awesome Batmobile. 

What we didn't realize at the time was that the movie was just as dumb as the TV series--maybe even dumber! Along with the POW!, WHAM!, and THUD! graphics that "Batman" was famous for, there might as well have been a giant ZOOM! above our heads as the jokes continued to sail right over them.

Back in the Batcave--that is, my livingroom, present day--I can now enjoy BATMAN:THE MOVIE as the wonderfully funny spoof that it is. Adam West as the wise, mysterious, somber Batman and Burt Ward as his earnest, straight-arrow yet boyishly-impetuous sidekick Robin are almost painfully deadpan. 

They take their responsibility as the Dynamic Duo, tireless protectors of Gotham City, with utmost seriousness, and they totally crack me up as they swoosh down their Batpoles, leap into the Batmobile, and Bat-a-pult into action against the nefarious foes of all that is decent.

Their dialogue is often hilarious, as in this Batcave think-session which features them trying to decipher two of the Riddler's fiendishly clever brain-teasers:

BATMAN: "Listen to these riddles, Robin...tell me if you interpret them as I do. One: what has yellow skin and writes?"
ROBIN: (after a moment's reflection) "A ballpoint banana!"
BATMAN: "Right! Two: what people are always in a hurry?"
ROBIN: "Rushing...people...Russians!"
BATMAN: "Right again. Now what would you say they mean?"
ROBIN: "Banana...Russian...I've got it! Someone Russian is going to slip on a banana peel and break their neck!"
BATMAN: "Precisely, Robin! The only...possible...meaning!"

Giving Batman and Robin a run for their money in the deadpan humor department is Neil Hamilton as Commissioner Gordon. To him, each new outbreak of villainy is the gravest catastrophe and would spell certain doom for Gotham City save for the intervention of the Caped Crusaders. His constantly apprehensive expression and dead-serious line delivery are perfect. 

When it appears that Gotham's most foul enemies have become partners in crime, he's utterly crestfallen. "Joker, Penguin, Riddler, and now, Catwoman..." the commissioner solemnly intones. "The sum of the angles of that rectangle is too monstrous to contemplate!"

The bad guys, on the other hand, get to have all the fun. Back then, everyone wanted to play a super-foe on "Batman"--even Frank Sinatra tried to land a role--and people who hated or didn't "get" the show were astonished by the list of big-name guest stars lining up to be on it. Here, Latin romantic star Cesar Romero plays the treacherous trickster, the Joker, his trademark moustache covered in white greasepaint (he refused to shave it off!) 

Distinguished actor Burgess Meredith is delightful as the foul-feathered fiend, the Penguin, while well-known actor and impressionist Frank Gorshin goes nuts as the Riddler. Julie Newmar, who was busy filming something else at the time, is replaced here by the equally statuesque Lee Meriwether as the felonious feline, Catwoman. The scenes with all four of them together in their secret waterfront lair or in Penguin's submarine are sparked with manic intensity and unrestrained nuttiness as these actors get to ham it up without any of the usual restraints.

There's a story floating around somewhere, but it isn't really important. The villains kidnap a guy named Commodore Schmidlapp (Reginald Denny) in order to obtain his new invention that dehydrates people into powder so they can make off with a group of United World ambassadors and somehow end up ruling the world. Who cares? It's all just an excuse to have fun.

Highlights include: Batman on a rope ladder below the Batcopter with a rubber shark hanging from his leg ("Robin! Hand me down the Shark-Repellent Batspray!"); Batman scrambing all over the waterfront trying to find a safe place to discard a huge bomb he's carrying, but surrounded by nuns, mothers with baby carriages, and baby ducks ("Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!"); Batman scolding a Pentagon offical over the phone for selling a war surplus pre-atomic submarine to a Mr. "P.N. Guinn", who didn't even leave his full address; and a long sequence involving Batman's alter ego, millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, on a date with a Russian reporter named Miss Kitka, who is really Catwoman. 

Bruce becomes deliriously smitten with the lovely Miss Kitka, and the screen practically drips with romantic cliches that are played so relentlessly straight by Adam West that the result is almost excruciating.

Of course, since the TV series always featured a nail-biting cliffhanger every week, the movie is filled with certain-death situations for Batman and Robin. We also get to see the famous Bat-climb, and we're finally shown how Bruce Wayne and his youthful ward, Dick Grayson, always leap onto the Batpoles in their street clothes but end up at the bottom in full costume. ("An instant costume-change lever!" I remember thinking as a kid. "So that's how they do it!")

On the downside, the movie gets a bit draggy in spots, and the ending isn't exactly what I'd call a big pay-off. I've always been disappointed by the opening titles as well--no supercool "Batman Theme", no cartoon Batman and Robin POW-ing their way through a horde of evildoers. There's even a lame-joke foreword that betrays the mock seriousness of the whole concept. But most of the time, BATMAN:THE MOVIE is a colorful rush of nostalgic fun that raises pure, straight-faced Bat-silliness to a level rarely experienced by anyone who isn't huffing nitrous oxide. TO THE BATPOLES!

 

BATMAN: THE MOVIE (1966) -- Movie Review by Porfle

CHILD'S PLAY (Blu-Ray) -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

(Originally posted on 10/11/09. Blu-Ray comments by Ian Friedman.)

 

The last time I saw CHILD'S PLAY (1988) was right after its original VHS release, and I wasn't very impressed at the time. But watching it again for the first time in over twenty years, I'm now of the opinion that this movie is a real hoot.

For those of you who are unaware of the premise, here's the short version: a psycho killer named Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), at the moment of his death, uses black magic to transfer his soul into a "Good Guy" doll--similar to the old "My Buddy" dolls for boys--which is then purchased by Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks) to give to her little boy Andy (Alex Vincent) for his sixth birthday. The doll, "Chucky", comes to life, kills Andy's babysitter Maggie (Dinah Manoff), goes after a former accomplice who double-crossed him (Neil Guintoli), and then sets his sights on Detective Norris (Chris Sarandon), the cop who killed him and is now investigating Maggie's death. Worst of all, Chucky has discovered that he has the power to transfer his soul into the body of Karen's son Andy, who becomes the killer doll's final target.

Director Tom Holland, who gave us that other modern classic FRIGHT NIGHT (also with Chris Sarandon), doesn't dwell much on violence or gore and gives us just a few cursory nods to the horror genre. Instead, much of CHILD'S PLAY is directed like a tense, 80s-style cop movie with a revenge-crazed killer on the loose who just happens to be an animated doll. Some of the suspense sequences, such as Maggie's murder, remind me of something out of an old Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson flick. And one scene in which Chucky attacks Detective Norris in his car is pure action-movie stuff, with the out-of-control speeding car crashing through barriers and throwing off sparks as it scrapes against walls.

Chucky himself, as voiced with evil relish by Brad Dourif, is an awesome character. All manner of animatronics, puppets, midgets in suits, and camera tricks are used to convince us that the malevolent doll is alive. Nowadays, of course, they'd just take all the fun out of it by doing the whole thing up with CGI, like George Lucas eventually did with Yoda. Yawn.

The edge-of-your-seat finale takes place in the Barclay apartment, as Chucky goes after Andy with the intent of stealing his body while Karen and Norris try to stop him. This is a harrowing sequence that had me giddy with suspense even as I was groaning at some of the hokier elements (the gun's jammed?) that Holland shamelessly tosses into the mix. At one point, when it looks like the end for Chucky, the little boy gets to deliver an Arnold Schwarzenegger-sized zinger that almost had me howling with laughter. The kid pretty much nails the line, too.

My only complaint is the same one that I recall having back in '88--the ending is one of those "he's dead...he's not dead" things that they used to drive into the ground back in those days. But the whole thing is just so much fun that I didn't really care. Plus, Holland manages to maintain interest during this scene even when he's teetering over the top.

Catherine Hicks gives a really intense performance as Karen, and I just have to say that I find her really likable for some reason. As Detective Norris, Chris Sarandon is his usual cool self, and Alex Vincent does a great job as the cute little kid, Andy, mainly because he is a cute little kid. Neil Guintoli (MEMPHIS BELLE) doesn't get to do much, but his character has some nice hair for a change. Dinah Manoff as Maggie is cute and funny as usual.

The new 2-disc BD/DVD combo from 20th-Century Fox/MGM Home Entertainment is 1.85:1 widescreen with English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.9 audio plus Spanish 5.1 and French 2.0. Subtitles are available in English SDH, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and French. The image looks great for what was a low-budget horror film, with vivid and properly balanced colors. You can even seen the wires used to make a character fly back during one explosion. There is no sign of any digital encoding errors. The detail displayed by the film is also excellent.

All these years I thought I didn't like CHILD'S PLAY, when all I really needed to do was to get reacquainted with it. Now that it's a couple of decades old and I've begun to feel nostalgic for that era in filmmaking, it has a whole new appeal for me. Besides, it's just a really fun movie.

Buy it at Amazon.com

CHILD'S PLAY (Blu-Ray) -- DVD Review by Porfle

BAD ASS -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 5/27/12

 

If you've followed actor Danny Trejo's career from the young prison boxer (which he actually was at the time) of RUNAWAY TRAIN to the fearsome knife-throwing assassin in DESPERADO to the even more fearsome killing machine Machete in MACHETE, then no doubt the lively trailer for BAD ASS (2012) made you think "Hey, this could really be cool."  And if you're like me, actually watching the movie made you think "Hey, this is really...ehh."

Not that seeing perennial bad ass Trejo, now in his late 60s, as a geriatric do-gooder bopping around in a baseball cap, baggy shorts, and sneakers isn't funny and somewhat endearing.  The scene in which he intervenes between two hostile skinheads and an old man on a city bus, kicking their butts and becoming a YouTube hero in the bargain, is feelgood stuff that satisfies my urge to vicariously dole out vigilante justice to those who deserve it. 

Other scenes with Trejo's "Frank Vega" character taking on various attackers and administering gut-busting stomach punches and granite-knuckled haymakers, all in a quest to find the killers of his best friend Klondike (Harrison Page) while the police do nothing, have a similar visceral appeal.  But the movie surrounding all of this is a hit-and-miss affair that resembles some cheesy 70s flick you might have paid scant attention to at the drive-in whenever there wasn't something kinetic taking place on the screen. 

Of course, this may have been director and co-writer Craig Moss' intention and, if so, he has succeeded.  The cheese factor begins early with a flashback of young Viet Nam veteran Frank (Shalim Ortiz) unsuccessfully readjusting to civilian life while wearing what looks like a Halloween wig that was cut and styled at a dog-grooming parlor.  The actress playing the elder Frank's mother (Tonita Castro) later on appears to be between 5-10 years older than him at most. 

When Frank comes to the rescue of pretty young Amber (Joyful Drake), the battered wife next door, their May-December romance is handled in about as embarrassing a fashion as you might imagine.  Amber's son Martin (John Duffy) sports a 70s-style 'fro and is one of those hip wisecracking kids we're supposed to find funny even though we actually want to place-kick him through a bay window.  The dialogue during all this is pretty wince-inducing although Danny, bless his heart, brings his best game to the whole thing, even giving us a crying scene at one point.

Forgetting the film's dumber elements and concentrating on the action is your best bet.  Ron Perlman makes a brief appearance as the city's crooked mayor, but it's his henchman Charles Dutton who gets quality screen time with Frank when he discovers that the local hero is in possession of a flash drive (given to him by Klondike) that could send the mayor to prison. 

Once Frank is captured and tortured via some painful-looking booby electrodes, Dutton does the actor equivalent of Hulking out with some big, and I mean really big-big bad-guy acting that culminates in one of those epic dirty fistfights that makes you wish the camerawork and editing were better.  And right before that, we get a crash-tastic chase between two city buses which pretty much makes the whole movie worth watching. 

The DVD from 20th-Century Fox Home Entertainment is in 1.85:1 widescreen with Dolby 5.1 sound and subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.  Extras consist of a director's commentary track and a making-of featurette.

The oddest thing about this film is that in the midst of Frank's occasionally lighthearted quest for justice (Danny Woodburn, the midget from "Seinfeld", has a funny cameo) there's a jarringly nasty scene that's so violent, with the basically decent Frank suddenly turning so heartlessly sadistic, that it's like something out of a torture porn flick.  Yet in his commentary, director Moss seems to regard this as just another cool scene topped off with a couple of funny zingers.  It's just this sort of thing that makes BAD ASS such a disjointed and not particularly cohesive movie--not really bad but not all that good, either.

BAD ASS -- DVD Review by Porfle

SPACEBALLS: THE TOTALLY WARPED ANIMATED ADVENTURES! -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

(Originally posted on 1/11/10)

 

 

 

When Mel Brooks' sci-fi spoof SPACEBALLS came out way back in the 80s, I only watched it once because it wasn't all that funny to me compared to his previous films, and I didn't like it very much. The same could be said for Mel Brooks' SPACEBALLS: THE TOTALLY WARPED ANIMATED ADVENTURES! (2008), only with even more emphasis on "not funny" and "didn't like." As low comedy, the laughs just aren't there, and as an exercise in shock value (cartoon characters saying and doing very crude things) much of it is enough to embarrass even John Kricfalusi.

As in the original film, Mel plays (that is, voices) the evil President Skroob of the planet Moron. Together with his diminutive henchman Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis in the movie, Dee Bradley Baker here), Skroob comes up with one dastardly scheme after another for ruling the universe, but is thwarted every time by interplanetary good guy Lone Starr (Rino Romano) and his canine co-pilot Barf (Tino Insana), who are patterned after STAR WARS' Han Solo and Chewbacca. Bill Pullman and the late John Candy are missing from these roles, but Daphne Zuniga and Joan Rivers are back as the ever-in-peril Princess Vespa and her faithful protocol droid Dot Matrix, who is like a female C3PO. Brooks also supplies the voice for Yogurt, a Yiddish Yoda who aids Lone Starr in using "The Schwartz" to battle evil.

The artwork for the series is pretty good--at times resembling a moving Bill "Zippy the Pinhead" Griffith comic--while the animation is done via digital manipulation a la "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." This doesn't quite compliment the series' BLAZING SADDLES-style humor which depends so much on performance to put it across, especially considering that much of the voice work here is less than stellar.

Brooks tries his best to liven up the stale, smut-filled dialogue he has to work with but the medium is simply too constricting and makes him sound stilted. His "Yogurt" character grows especially tiresome with its endless string of Jewish jokes, and the attempts at topical humor mostly fall flat (Yogurt's nagging wife Yenta chides him for eating imitation shellfish: "Kosher-shmosher! Still gives you more gas than Dubai.") The "adult" nature of the show's humor manifests itself mainly in a plethora of boobs, barf, blow-up dolls, overt sexual sight gags, single entendres, and fart jokes.

Four of the series' thirteen episodes are on hand here, and can be viewed either seperately or combined into a "feature" with new interlocking segments in the form of a telethon-slash-infomercial for President Skroob's new book, "The Moron's Guide to Conquering the Universe and Beyond." The first episode, "Outbreak", concerns Skroob and Dark Helmet's plan to spread Ebola and Ecoli throughout the galaxy with a new soft drink called Ecola. When all shipments of the tainted cola are accidentally sent to their own planet Moron, they must call upon Lone Starr and Barf to save the day as the entire infected population begins to drown in its own barf.

There's a big barf sequence with a random fart-joke topper that provides a few laughs. We also get some pretty groan-inducing lines such as a conversation about "moving the bowels" of the ship, Dark Helmet's "I'm getting a bad case of deja-voodoo!", and Skroob announcing "I can see your Schwartz is as firm as ever, but it's no match for mine!" A sequence showing Dark Helmet trying to fit his head into the tight folds of a tent entrance is a prime example of the kind of anatomical visual humor this series has to offer.

"The Skroobinator" pokes fun at a certain Arnold flick (along with BACK TO THE FUTURE) with Skroob scheming to go back in time to the 1980s and kill Lone Starr's great-great-great-etc-grandmother. The one redeeming feature of this episode is a pretty good chase sequence although the "hog" joke might make you wince. In "Deep Ship", Skroob tricks Princess Vespa into his clutches by luring her and Dot Matrix onto an interplanetary cruise ship to the planet Areola (where things tend to get "a bit nippy"), making way for a string of clunky gags based on TITANIC and THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE. Not surprisingly, the ship eventually gets sucked into the Galaxy of Bad Gas, prompting Skroob to announce to us: "Lucky for you this isn't Smell-o-Vision!"

"Grand Theft Starship" wraps things up with Lone Starr's videogame obsession resulting in him and Princess Vespa being sucked into the titular game and forced to play for their lives. Skroob and Dark Helmet get into the act with a scheme to take over videogame land, and with Yogurt's help Barf must enter the game MATRIX-style and save his pals. Gamers might appreciate the myriad of references to everything from Tetris to Super Mario Brothers to (of course) Grand Theft Auto, with other gags aimed at the likes of THE MATRIX, TRON, and THE ROAD WARRIOR.

The DVD from MGM and Fox Home Entertainment is 1.33:1 full-screen with Dolby Digital stereo and English soundtrack and captions. Besides the four episodes, there are the five brief connecting segments mentioned previously, plus an additional closer entitled "One More Goodie."

SPACEBALLS: THE TOTALLY WARPED ANIMATED ADVENTURES! would probably be dandy entertainment for little kids if it weren't packed to the gills with bouncing boobs, bawdy (and oddly old-fashioned) burlesque humor, and resounding farts. As a cartoon aimed at adults, however, it wouldn't last long on Adult Swim alongside far superior shows of its kind such as "Aqua Teen Hunger Force", "Futurama", and "Sealab 2021." Back to the drawing board, Mel!

SPACEBALLS: THE TOTALLY WARPED ANIMATED ADVENTURES! -- DVD Review by Porfle

WRONG TURN 4 -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 10/6/11

 

Everybody likes a good origin story, and if you're a fan of Three Finger, Saw-Tooth, and One-Eye, then WRONG TURN 4 (2011)--subtitled "Bloody Beginnings"--could be the prequel of your dreams. 

The rousing pretitles sequence finds our three inbred hillbilly-cannibal brothers as rambuctious young 'uns who are already the most dangerous inmates in the asylum.  They don't stay locked in their cell for long, though, and once they've escaped and let all the other loonies out as well, the hapless asylum staff are in for a day of total bedlam climaxed by the drawing and quartering of poor Dr. Ryan. 

This jaw-dropping scene, as well as the rest of the film's gore, is done with state-of-the-art practical effects with a minimum of CGI, which should make old-school gorehounds giddy with delight.  With Dr. Ryan's screams still ringing in our ears, we then plunge directly into a sex scene involving two couples, one hetero, one lesbian.  Writer-director Declan O'Brien (WRONG TURN 3) clearly isn't wasting any time ringing the standard slasher-flick bells and whistles here, and once fully sated the two couples and their friends immediately set off for a snowmobiling weekend in the woods which we know isn't going to end well.

Taking a "wrong turn" on the way to their cabin, they end up having to seek shelter from the freezing cold in the old abandoned asylum, which naturally is the current home of our grown-up hillbilly cannibals.  Before you can say "no cell phone reception", they're in party-hearty mode amidst clouds of cannabis and pairing up for the night.  It doesn't take long for one of them to wander off on his own and come face-to-hideously-deformed-face with Saw-Tooth, whereupon we're treated to our first peek at what goes on in the asylum's kitchen these days. 

Once the entire gang of kill-fodder college chums is clued in that they're in big trouble, WRONG TURN 4 segues into the usual routine in which everybody runs around being terrified as they get picked off one by one.  This gives O'Brien and his crack effects team the chance to stage a series of bravura death scenes (one victim is hanged by barbed wire until her head pops off like a cork) culminating in what is known as the "F**ked-Up Fondue." 

Here, the extremely unfortunate victim is tied to a kitchen table and taken apart piece by piece as the hillbillies dip each morsel into sizzling oil before gobbling it up.  Actor Dean Armstrong displays an outstanding vocal range with some of the best screams ever recorded, and the SPFX artists are equally good as they pull of some queasily convincing effects that should please even the most demanding gorehounds.  Definitely one of the sickest sequences I've seen in a while, it's enough to have even Herschell Gordon Lewis wondering what the hell he hath wrought.

Meanwhile, the rest of our cast of idiots are voting whether or not to go help their friend even as his blood-curdling shrieks resound up and down the corridors.  These are not the brightest characters ever written, and if you're in the right mood you may enjoy watching them scurry around making one incredibly dumb move after another as director O'Brien manages to record their antics with some style.  Once they've exhausted their full range of indoor stupidity the action moves outside, with the survivors being harrassed by hillbilly cannibals on snowmobiles until the surprise (ehh) ending.

The good-guy cast do what they can with characters and dialogue that are--how should I put this--"lacking in depth", adequately depicting their assorted stereotypes.  Jennifer Pudavik is appealing as Kenia, who comes off as "final girl" material from the start, while Dean Armstrong gets my vote as "Scream King of the Month."  Extra points go to actor/stuntmen Sean Skene and Scott Johnson for their double acting duties--Skene plays both college boy Vincent and psycho Three Finger, and Johnson, in addition to being one of the orderlies eaten in the pretitles rampage, also assumes the role of the adult Saw-Tooth.

The DVD from 20th-Century Fox Home Entertainment is in 1.78:1 widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio and subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.  Extras include a director-producer commentary, a making-of featurette, "Director's Die-ary", "Lifestyles of the Sick and Infamous", deleted scenes, and a music video.

So far, my favorite film in this series is the second one with its wantonly over-the-top gore and sick humor.  But while WRONG TURN 4 doesn't quite match up, it's still packed with enough action and carnage to make it a worthwhile turn for gore addicts to take.

WRONG TURN 4 -- DVD Review by Porfle