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

LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) -- DVD Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 3/14/09

 

Up till now, I'd only seen Wes Craven's 1972 horror-movie debut LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT once, when I rented the VHS tape back in the 80s, and for the life of me I couldn't remember a damn thing about it. Which I found somewhat strange considering its reputation as a ghastly, hardcore horror ordeal that so many found hard to watch and even harder to forget. Now that I've seen it again, I can understand why I originally found it unmemorable, but I'm still at a loss to explain its profound effect on others. To me, it's just a fairly decent cheapo murder flick, despite whatever perceived historical significance it may have. Have I really become that desensitized, or what?

Sweet young Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel), who just turned 17, is on her way to a rock concert with her more worldly friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham), when they're kidnapped by sadistic escaped convicts Krug (David Hess) and Weasel (Fred Lincoln), their wretched moll Sadie (Jeramie Rain), and Krug's junkie son Junior (Marc Sheffler), who'll do whatever his pop tells him to in order to get his next fix. The bad guys dump their captives into the trunk and head for the hills, but their car soon breaks down on a secluded road. They take Mari and Phyllis into the woods, where the girls are humiliated, raped, tortured, and murdered.

Posing as stranded travelers on a business trip, they're taken in by a friendly couple who offer them food and accomodations for the night. As it turns out, however, John (Richard Towers) and Estelle (Cynthia Carr) are Mari's parents, the Collingwoods. And when they discover that their houseguests have just murdered their daughter, the mild-mannered mom and dad find their own killer instincts fiercely kicking in. Naturally, more bloody violence and mayhem ensue.

Visually, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is pretty artless, bringing to mind the likes of BLOOD FEAST and early John Waters films such as PINK FLAMINGOS. Wes Craven attributes this to a deliberate attempt at a documentary, cinema-verite' style, and claims that this makes the film's events seem more realistic. Marc Sheffler's assessment, as stated in one of the DVD's bonus featurettes, is that "in its professional ignorance, its stylistic ignorance, it has created its own style." I think it's just crummy camerawork. Plus, it's hard to be fooled into thinking "Hey, this is real!" when the characters are so borderline farcical and the acting, for the most part, is on a porn-movie level. (The script, in fact, started as a sick hardcore porn project, which is how adult actor Fred Lincoln became involved, before most of those dubious elements were wisely jettisoned.)

Hess, who would later appear in Wes Craven's SWAMP THING, comes off fairly well in a brutish way, while Lincoln isn't very convincing as a psycho killer. Sheffler's "Junior" is more of a comic doofus than the pathetic heroin slave he's intended to be. Jeramie Rain (who later became Mrs. Richard Dreyfuss and is surprisingly beautiful in her recent interview footage) comes off pretty well as the feral Sadie. As Mari's parents, Richard Towers and Cynthia Carr are superficial at best, although Carr comes to life in the final scenes. I like the two girls, Sandra Cassel and Lucy Grantham, who are unpolished yet appealing and who manage to express genuine terror during key moments, although in Cassel's case there's more to this than acting skills (more on that later). Her sad death scene provides one of the film's genuinely affecting moments.

As far as the violence and gore are concerned, there's nothing more extreme than George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD from four years earlier, or even 1963's BLOOD FEAST. And I can never take these characters seriously enough for their acts to be truly shocking or difficult to endure. The only thing I find hard to watch--the rape scene--comes not from what's happening in the story but from what went on during the filming of it. As David Hess relates during the commentary, he had the already nervous Sandra Cassel so distraught and fearful of him that much of her humiliation and distress during the scene are real. Marc Sheffler also tells of actually grabbing her and threatening to push her over a precipice if she didn't stop fouling up take after take of their main scene together. For me, these two accounts are the creepiest thing about the movie.

Meanwhile, awkward attempts at comedy relief keep inexplicably popping up at the darndest times. These come mainly in the form of a fat, bumbling sheriff (Marshall Anker) and his moronic deputy (Martin Kove, the most recognizable actor in the film), who run out of gas on their way to the Collingwood home and try to hitch a ride on a chicken truck. In an early scene, the world-weary sheriff laments, "Sometimes I wish I was something else" and his deputy asks, "You mean, like a duck?"

This, we're told, was meant to counterpoint the (already humor-laced) serious scenes just as David Hess' irreverent soundtrack songs serve as a jarring contrast to onscreen events. But as Fred Lincoln, who still refers to the film as "a piece of sh**", states in the commentary, "to cut back to them was to cut back to a different movie." It's like switching channels between a slasher flick and "The Dukes of Hazzard." The cartoonish Ozzie and Harriet-ness of Mari's parents is similarly overstated in their early scenes.

The blood-splattered finale, which takes place in and around the titular house, has its moments but is pretty much a mess. Reacting to the death of their daughter not with crippling grief but with a strangely industrious fervor, Mrs. Collingwood becomes a deadly seductress while Mr. Collingwood turns into a vengeful cross between Tim Allen and MacGyver. I won't give away too much of what happens, but aside from a few cool images, it's not all that shocking or suspenseful. A curiously tame chainsaw showdown does result in the destruction of some nice furniture, though. And one character's swimming pool demise is quite satisfying.

 

Fans of the film will no doubt enjoy the yakky, argumentative, and funny commentary track featuring Hess, Lincoln, and Sheffler (but not Craven or Cunningham, who did a commentary for the 2002 DVD release), as well as the behind-the-scenes featurette "Still Standing: The Legacy of The Last House on the Left" and the 40-minute documentary "Celluloid Crime of the Century", both of which contain much interview material with Craven, producer Sean S. Cunningham, and members of the cast. Along with some interesting inside info, the personable Craven also dishes up a little after-the-fact hooey about the script (based on Ingmar Bergman's THE VIRGIN SPRING) that he banged out with no deep intentions besides making a simple horror flick, "but I think what was going on subconsciously was a pretty complex matrix of the fundamentalists being alive in America at that time, and...uh, the Viet Nam war..." He also opines that some scenes evoked a perverse sympathy for the villains which resulted in a "trememdous turmoil of emotions in the audiences that created a lot of anger." I guess you had to be there--at no time while watching the film do I feel any sympathy for them whatsoever.

In "Scoring Last House", David Hess tells of how he wrote the music for the film and performs snippets from some of the songs. "Tales That Will Tear Your Heart Out" is about eleven minutes of silent Wes Craven-directed footage from an unfinished 1976 film. There are also some silent never-before-seen LAST HOUSE outtakes, a minute of deleted dialogue from Mari's death scene, and some trailers for other films. This unrated "collector's edition" DVD, released on 2/24/09, is in 1.85:1 widescreen with Dolby Digital mono sound and subtitles in English, Spanish, and French. Picture and sound quality are about as good as can be expected considering the age and low budget of the film.

According to Roger Ebert, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT "never lets us out from under almost unbearable dramatic tension." I was really hoping it would have the same effect on me, and was genuinely surprised when it didn't even come close. For the most part, I found it lively and reasonably fun to watch, though much of the fun was of the "so bad it's good" variety with very little of it being just plain good. And it was nowhere near the grueling cinematic ordeal that I've come to expect over the years. I wonder if I've become desensitized, or if the film just isn't as sensitizing as it's cracked up to be.

LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) -- DVD 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

"WIZARD OF OZ" Blooper: Dorothy's Ruby Slippers Disappear (MGM, 1939)

Glinda the Good Witch warns Dorothy to never remove her magic ruby slippers.

But in the scene with the talking apple trees, there's a brief moment in which Dorothy is wearing...her regular black shoes.

Don't let the Wicked Witch catch you without those ruby slippers, Dorothy!


I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!

"WIZARD OF OZ" Blooper: Dorothy's Ruby Slippers Disappear (MGM, 1939)

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

WARGAMES: THE DEAD CODE -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 7/22/08

 

"Would you like to play a game?"

If this quote brings back pleasant memories of smarty-pants computer whiz Matthew Broderick making that big vein in Dabney Coleman's forehead throb back in 1983's WARGAMES, then chances are you'll find something to enjoy in MGM's direct-to-DVD sequel, WARGAMES: THE DEAD CODE (2008).

In this belated follow-up, another teenage computer geek named Will Farmer (Matt Lanter) crosses paths online with a secret government super-computer named R.I.P.L.E.Y. which is programmed to seek out and destroy terrorists by luring them into playing online videogames for money. Marked as a terrorist himself, Will becomes a fugitive trying to stay one step ahead of the feds while the increasingly ruthless R.I.P.L.E.Y. uses all the resources of modern technology to track down and terminate him.

As you might guess, R.I.P.L.E.Y. has been designed with just a little too much autonomy, which comes back to bite her creators in the ass when things get out of hand and entire cities begin to be viewed as targets. This time Colm Feore (STORM OF THE CENTURY, PEARL HARBOR) plays the guy with the throbbing forehead, while Chuck Shamata and Maxim Roy are a couple of project members who see the danger coming and try to shut the computer down before it can retaliate. There are definite shades of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY here when their characters discuss the matter in private while the crafty computer takes a tip from "H.A.L." and reads their lips.

Matt Lanter is bland but adequate when he isn't required to emote. As Annie, the girl who gets drawn into the situation and finds herself on the run with Will, Amanda Walsh is cutely appealing. Nicolas Wright is alternately funny and irritating as Will's slacker friend Dennis, whose character disappears from the film just as he's getting kind of interesting. And in case you're wondering if there's any direct connection between this story and the original, two characters from the 1983 film show up along the way. One is played by a different actor, Gary Reineke, who does okay although the original actor is sorely missed in the role. The other is--well, I won't reveal it, but I found his appearance to be a pleasant surprise.

I know roughly as much about "techmology" as Ali G. so I can't tell you how much of this is plausible or not, but it's presented in such a way that I pretty much bought most of it. Lanter's character isn't tied down to a home PC the way Broderick was back in '83, so he can run around evading government agents while still staying hooked into the system via his laptop and cell phone. On the other hand, R.I.P.L.E.Y. now has more up-to-date means of tracking him with public surveillance cameras, satellites, and scary military hardware at her disposal, which gives some scenes a nice sense of paranoia. The visual effects are generally well done, especially an exciting sequence in a subway tunnel and some explosive incidents involving a remote-controlled Predator aircraft equipped with missiles and other nasty stuff. (The bird's-eye-view bomb drop from PEARL HARBOR is duplicated early on.)

Director Stuart Gillard keeps the annoying visual indulgences to a minimum and moves things along rather briskly except for a few slow spots. As in the first film, the climax involves a battle of wits between man and machine inside the computer control center, with the lives of millions depending on our teen hero's madd puter skilz. It doesn't match the suspense of the original film and sometimes I was a little lost as to exactly what was going on, but the tension level is pretty well maintained.

The DVD is two-sided, giving us a choice between full screen (for all you diehard full-screen fans out there) and 1.85:1 widescreen. A commentary track features Gillard and Lanter chatting goodnaturedly about the film when they aren't caught up watching it and forget to talk. There's also a fourteen-minute "making of" featurette, a photo gallery, and trailers for THE ONION MOVIE, which looks pretty funny, and Uwe Boll's IN THE NAME OF THE KING.

The idea that R.I.P.L.E.Y. finds terrorists by luring them into a terror-themed online computer game (which appears to be on about the same difficulty level as Frogger) and then identifying them by their advanced terrorist game-playing skills doesn't make much sense, but then neither does a lot of what goes on in this movie. However, if you don't get too hung up on little things like logic, WARGAMES: THE DEAD CODE can be pretty fun to watch.

 

WARGAMES: THE DEAD CODE -- DVD Review by Porfle

IF IT'S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE BELGIUM -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 6/17/16

 

Expecting a raucous comedy romp, I found IF IT'S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE BELGIUM (1969) disappointing at first.  Gradually, though, I began to realize that I was watching something considerably less scatterbrained and more quietly clever in small ways than I'd thought, and that the movie regarded its screwball characters with a disarming fondness.

This isn't quite evident at first, however, when our American tour group arrives in jolly old England (the first in a whirlwind tour of nine countries in 18 days) and the movie tries too hard to mirror the hip, happening vibe of the era in its rather clueless way.  Thus, we get a lot of that freaky strobe-like editing that was in vogue at the time and are even treated to flashes of scribbled onscreen text containing "hip" one-liners in a "Laugh-In" vein.

Here, things resemble a less magical version of the Beatles' MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR only with more old fogeys wandering around complaining about everything.  It isn't until we get to know these people that their grumblings begin to be endearing, and even then much of the bad dubbing seems designed to take the bite out of their witty asides. 

Still, the movie gets better and better as we settle into its rather sedate pace and warm up to the characters.  And with a cast like this it isn't hard--this is one of the most amazing groups of character actors, stars doing cameos, and familiar faces in general that you could hope to see all in one place. 

First of all, nobody does world-weary grumbling better than guys like Norman Fell and Murray Hamilton, with the wonderful Reva Rose and Peggy Cass as their long-suffering wives.  One nice running gag involves Norman and Reva getting separated early on and his vain attempts to track down the Japanese tour group she's accidentally become a member of.  Hamilton has a nice vignette in which he tries to order some custom shoes in Venice from a cobbler played by famed director Vittorio De Sica. 

Also aboard the cross-continental tour bus are the likes of Michael Constantine (he's revisiting the places where he had the most fun in life--during WWII), Marty Ingles as a schlub who thinks he can score with European women, Mildred Natwick, a young Sandy Baron ("Seinfeld"), Pamela Britton, and Aubrey Morris ("Mr. Deltoid" of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE) as Harry Dix, a kleptomaniac determined to take half of Europe home in his luggage. (Be sure to watch the film to the very end, where he adds the final gag.)

One of the film's most charming features is the gradually-building romance between bachelor tour guide Charlie (a dashing Ian McShane in his way younger days) and Sam (Suzanne Pleshette), a single woman unsure of whether she's ready for marriage to her fiancé George.  Pleshette is at her peak of sophisticated loveliness here and is a joy to watch as she serves as catnip to notorious skirt-chaser Charlie.

Sam and Charlie's uneasy relationship is handled in a surprisingly adult manner and is actually interesting--in fact, it was during their first really good dialogue scene together that I realized I was starting to enjoy this movie as more than a lightweight comedy.  A morning-after love scene in their hotel room after a night of passion even resembles something out of a "foreign film."

Some of the other celebrity faces to spot along the way include John Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara, Joan Collins (stunning in one brief shot of her walking down the street in a miniskirt), Senta Berger, Virna Lisi, Anita Ekberg, Elsa Martinelli, Luke Halpin ("Flipper"), folk singer Donovan Leitch, and "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." star Robert Vaughn as an Italian photographer. 

Shot entirely on location, the film is directed by Mel Stuart of WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY fame and written by David Shaw (A FOREIGN AFFAIR).

The DVD from Olive Films is in 1.85:1 widescreen and mono sound. Subtitles are in English.  A trailer is the sole extra.

After the usual "ugly American" gags have run their course, the old fogeys of IF IT'S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE BELGIUM actually start being endearing.  (A big breakthrough is during a dinner scene when Murray decides that squid isn't so bad.) We've come to know them sufficiently that broad comedy strokes are unnecessary and simple character humor is enough to add a warm, satisfying glow to the proceedings. 

IF IT'S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE BELGIUM -- DVD Review by Porfle

KALIFORNIA [Blu-Ray] -- DVD Review by Porfle

(Blu-Ray comments by Ian Friedman. Originally posted on 10/21/10.))


Seeing the tense road thriller KALIFORNIA (1993) shortly after it first came out is the reason that I never viewed Brad Pitt as just another pretty-boy actor.  This was the one of the first movies I ever saw him in, and his character, a sleazy, parole-jumping serial killer named Early Grayce, is about as unglamorous as you can get. 

David Duchovny, trying to get a film career off the ground just as "The X-Files" began to take off, plays a psychology grad student named Brian Kessler who's writing a book about serial killers.  He decides to drive from Atlanta to California with his girlfriend Carrie (Michelle Forbes, "Homocide: Life on the Streets") and stop off at various famous murder scenes along the way for research.  But in order to share expenses for the trip he invites none other than Early and his ditzy girlfriend Adele (Juliette Lewis) along for the ride, getting way more than he bargained for. 

Director Dominic Sena (SWORDFISH) keeps things interesting as Brian and Carrie begin to discover just how dangerous their traveling companion is.  At first, Brian likes having such a colorful character to observe and is intrigued by his violent nature, which is demonstrated when Early beats the crap out of a guy in a bar.  Soon, however, he discovers that Early has been leaving a trail of bodies during their journey.  When Early kills one cop and then insists that Brian finish off the other one, the not-too-bright college boy realizes too late just how deep he's gotten himself into. 

If you've never seen this side of Brad Pitt, his portrayal of scum-of-the-earth Early may come as a real surprise.  (One thing's for sure--this is probably the only time we'll ever see Brad blow his nose through his fingers.)  As Adele, Juliette Lewis plays her patented dingbat character to a tee, gaining our sympathy with her childlike naiveté and constant desire for acceptance not only by Early but also by the intellectual Brian and Carrie, whom she regards as her betters.


Michelle Forbes, a fine actress known almost solely for her television work (she was Ensign Ro on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and more recently played Admiral Helena Cain on "Battlestar Galactica") does what she can with the role of Carrie.  David Duchovny is his usual low-key, somewhat unremarkable self as Brian--sort of like Fox Mulder as an overconfident doofus.  Unfortunately, this film didn't do much for his big-screen career, and he's barely featured in the film's advertising these days if at all.

KALIFORNIA arrives on Blu-ray from 20th Century Fox/MGM with the unrated version of the film in HD. The movie looks nice in it's original 2:35:1 scope and has a normal amount of grain. The picture and detail are sharp and the colors are neither over or de-saturated achieving a good balance allowing for an accurate representation of the original movie-going experience. There were no noticable compression errors. This film was never a summer blockbuster experience, but it still looks very nice on Blu-ray. The English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix is acceptable as the movie is more character-driven than heavily action-oriented your sound system doesn't really get a heavy workout.

You just know that sooner or later Early's really bad side is going to turn against his fellow travelers, and when it does, KALIFORNIA delivers a violent and fairly satisfying conclusion which takes place on a nuclear test site in Nevada.  It's not really what I'd call a classic, but with a good cast and a pretty involving story, it should keep you in suspense till the journey's end.

KALIFORNIA [Blu-Ray] -- DVD Review by Porfle

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK [Blu-Ray] -- DVD Review by Porfle

(Blu-Ray comments by Ian Friedman. Originally posted on 10/4/10)

 

After the gritty shoot-em-up thrills of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and the terrifying suburban horror of HALLOWEEN, writer-director John Carpenter's inner geek went all out with this delirious conglomeration of all the comic books, pulp sci-fi yarns, Clint Eastwood movies, and other deeply-ingrained influences he had rolling around in his fevered mind.  When I saw it for the first time on the big screen, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981) made a direct connection with my own inner geek, and I mainlined it like heroin from the first notes of that incredibly cool theme music to the last royal screw-over at the fadeout. 

In between, of course, there's the story of how the USA's crime rate has skyrocketed so quickly (in the future world of 1997) that the whole island of Manhattan has been turned into a permanent dumping ground for criminals, from which there is no parole or escape.  When terrorists hijack Air Force One and the President himself ends up as a hostage in the big rotten apple, America's most notorious criminal, "Snake" Plissken, is recruited to go in and rescue him.  He's offered parole for the job, but as an added incentive, tiny explosives are injected into his neck which will explode unless deactivated before the time limit expires. 

Hard to believe now, but back in '81 nobody took former child actor and Disney star Kurt Russell seriously as an action hero.  His casting could've been a joke if he hadn't managed to pull off his tough-hombre character so well, but long before the film is over we've bought into his hard-as-nails mumbling-Eastwood impression.  With his eyepatch, shaggy mullet, week-old beard, skin-tight pants, black leather boots, and terminally bad attitude, he's a Marvel Comics character come to life.
 

If the film looks "cheesier" today than it did back then, it's a finely-aged cheese.  Working with his biggest budget yet, Carpenter opens with an impressive shot of the captured Air Force One flying over the heavily-guarded prison wall and into the heart of the city.  Plissken's own entrance into New York via glider, where he lands atop the late, lamented World Trade Center, is less convincing but has its own atmospheric visual charms which are enhanced by the baleful strains of Debussy's "Engulfed Cathedral." 

Not much in the way of SPFX follows, but the rest of the story is enriched by imaginative set design which, while not really taking full advantage of the New York location, is a well-realized and pleasingly grungy dystopia.  The dark skyline with its lifeless skyscrapers, dotted here and there by campfires, makes for an evocative backdrop to the action as Plissken fights his way through brutal gangsters, animalistic marauders, and other freaky denizens of the ruined city to get to the President. 

In addition to breakthrough action hero Russell, the rest of the cast is about as good as it gets.  As Hauk, the guy who offers Plissken amnesty and sends him on his suicide mission, the legendary Lee Van Cleef is there to cool things up considerably.  More cult favorites, Harry Dean Stanton and statuesque tough-babe Adrienne Barbeau (Carpenter's wife at the time) are on hand as Brain and Maggie. 

Brain works for New York's feared gang boss The Duke (a nicely-cast Isaac Hayes) with the entire New York Public Library as his crib, and the gorgeous Maggie is his fringe benefit as well as a capable and devoted bodyguard.  Hollywood mainstay Ernest Borgnine gets to indulge his penchant for big acting as Cabbie, who drives the last checkered cab in New York and always shows up in time for a fast getaway.  And in a brief cameo, Russell's own then-current wife Season Hubley appears as "The Girl in Chock Full O'Nuts."

As the American President, most critics considered very-British genre fave Donald Pleasance to be dreadfully miscast.  Which he is, but who cares?  They said he was miscast as Blofeld, too.  Chained to the wall as target practice for The Duke while the prisoners await release in exchange for their hostage, Pleasance grovels wonderfully and overacts with the same intensity as he did as Dr. Loomis in HALLOWEEN.  "You're the Duuuke!" he's prompted to scream obsequiously between gunshots.  "AAAA-Number Oooone!"  (What ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK fan hasn't intoned these immortal words at one time or another in full Donald Pleasance mode?)


After a series of so-so action setpieces which include Snake having to fight for his life in the wrestling ring, the chase is on with Snake, Brain, Maggie, and Cabbie trying to make it across a heavily-mined Brooklyn Bridge before The Duke catches up to them.  (His white Cadillac is adorned by two blazing chandeliers on either side of the hood.)  It's one of the most fun sequences Carpenter ever filmed, with the added suspense of Plissken's neck bombs ticking down their last seconds as he makes for the outer wall with his ever-dwindling gang of cohorts, including the President, in tow. 

With this new two-disc Blu-Ray and DVD combo pack from 20-Century Fox and MGM, the film makes a wonderful transition to Blu-ray. John Carpenter's gritty classic maintains all the grain that the film has always had (due to both aesthetic choices and its low budget nature). The level of detail now available to home viewers brings an even greater clarity to the film's picture, allowing us to see all the details in the model work and design that went into creating the world of 1997 New York. The lossless audio sounds crisp and clear with no distortion or hissing and a surround track is included for those without DTS systems.

Fans of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK will no doubt relish the chance to see this giddy-fun blowout of a sci-fi action flick again, while those who have never seen it before owe it to themselves to check it out.  It's the movie that made Kurt Russell a star all over again, and a prime example of John Carpenter at his pulpy, geeky, do-no-wrong best.

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK [Blu-Ray] -- DVD Review by Porfle

BEN-HUR -- Blu-ray/DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 12/13/16

 

First things first--there's this Best Picture-winning classic from 1959 called BEN-HUR, and any remake of it is likely to suffer in comparison.  As will anyone else who plays the title role besides the great Charlton Heston, or anyone else who plays Judah Ben-Hur's adoptive brother Messala besides Stephen Boyd, or any other spectacular climactic chariot race that isn't the original spectacular climactic chariot race.

If, however, you can manage to get past all that (which I myself eventually managed to do to one degree or another), while remembering that the 1959 version is itself a remake of the equally spectacular silent version with Ramon Navarro and Francis X. Bushman, then the 2016 remake of BEN-HUR (Paramount Home Media Distribution) can be a rewarding as well as delightfully entertaining experience.

Based on General Lew Wallace's wildly-successful 1880 novel "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ", the story takes place in A.D.33 Jerusalem and is all about the loving yet highly competitive relationship between Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston, SHROOMS), a Jew, and his adoptive brother Messala (Toby Kebbell, WILDERNESS), a Roman, during a time when the Roman occupation is becoming ever more oppressive.

Complications ensue when Judah and his family are blamed for an attempt on the life of Pontius Pilate (Pilou Asbæk, LUCY), and Messala, now an officer in the Roman army, is forced to take sides against them.  With the brothers now mortal enemies, Judah's family disappears into captivity while he himself begins the drudgery-filled dead-end life of a galley slave. 

But a twist of fate allows Judah to escape during a sea battle against the Greeks, whereupon he is taken in by African entrepreneur Ilderim (Morgan Freeman, THE DARK KNIGHT, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION) and allowed to enter the man's chariot in a thrilling race which will pit him against his brother Messala, the Roman champion. 

If that chariot race is the main thing you're curious about, you're not the only one.  I was chomping at the bit throughout the entire film leading up to it, and when it finally got under way, it proved to be exceptionally well-done and exciting.

 

The oval track itself was built on the Cinecittà Studios lot in Rome (much of the rest of the film was done at Cinecittà as well) and filled in with CGI to create a suitably majestic backdrop for this breathtaking sequence.  Jerusalem itself is an actual city in Italy that serves as a stunning representation of the ancient setting.

As always, the use of digital effects detracts from the kind of real-world splendor and excitement we got in the pre-CGI days, but here, the effects are integrated well enough into the live footage to augment it very well. 

As for the stunts, the sequence is loaded with visceral thrills that make it, if not superior to previous versions, at least worthy to stand alongside them. Younger viewers unfamiliar with the story will no doubt see here the inspiration for the podrace sequence in THE PHANTOM MENACE.

 

The film boasts other notable action scenes as well.  Earlier in the story, we see glimpses of furious battles during which Messala rises within the ranks of the Roman military.  Later comes the spectacular sea battle, most of which we see from Judah's limited point of view as the galley slaves, toiling at the oars, experience a grueling ordeal of terror and death while unseen carnage rages around them.  Again, the CGI in this sequence is superb. 

There's a modicum of romance, mainly between Judah and his great love Esther (Nazanin Boniadi, IRON MAN), the daughter of a slave.  Most of the film's true sentiment, however, is focused upon the relationship between the two brothers, Judah's attempts to locate his missing mother and sister, and, most importantly, his spiritual awakening. 

Here, his life intersects poignantly at key points with that of a humble, peace-loving carpenter named Jesus Christ, whose eventual crucifixion as an enemy of Rome gives the film one of its most heartrending sequences.

As Judah, Huston is no Heston, but for this more modest version of BEN-HUR--relatively speaking--it makes sense to have more of a smaller-than-life hero.  Morgan Freeman plays his usual "sage old mentor" character while looking a bit like a cross between Whoopi Goldberg and the alien from PREDATOR.  The rest of the cast perform adequately. 

Direction by Timur Bekmambetov (ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER) is good although I would've preferred less "jittery-cam" and more traditional camerawork.  As mentioned before, the Italian locations are stunning, and well-served by their digital augmentations.  There are some amusing anachronisms in the dialogue, as when Judah cries out during some early horseplay, "ARE WE HAVING FUN NOW, BROTHER?" and later when a dazzled Messala exclaims "Wow!"

The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack from Paramount Home Media Distribution contains a Blu-ray disc with special features, a DVD disc with the film by itself, and access to a Digital HD version of the film.  The Blu-ray is presented in 1080p high definition with English 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, Portuguese 5.1 Dolby Digital and English Audio Description and English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles.  The DVD in the combo pack is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16:9 TVs with English 5.1 Dolby Digital, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital and English Audio Description and English, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles.

Extras consist of the featurettes "Ben-Hur: The Legacy", "The Epic Cast", "A Tale for Our Times", and "The Chariot Race", along with deleted & extended scenes and related music videos.

While seldom on the same epic scale as its predecessors, this latest retelling of BEN-HUR does benefit from an earnest sincerity in its dramatic scenes, even when they don't quite move us to the degree intended.  And--most importantly, of course--the action scenes deliver exactly what we're looking for when we watch a movie like this, and plenty of it.

BEN-HUR -- Blu-ray/DVD Review by Porfle

HANNIBAL LECTER COLLECTION (Blu-Ray) -- Review by Porfle

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

 

With 20th-Century Fox And MGM Home Entertainment's release of the 3-disc boxed set HANNIBAL LECTER COLLECTION on Blu-Ray, it might be fun to look back on these three films and relive those wonderful memories of fava beans, skin lotion, bite marks, and brains. Mmm...brains.

Michael Mann started it all back in 1986 with MANHUNTER, the movie that introduced suave, sophisticated, and thoroughly evil Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Will Graham (William Petersen in an excellent performance) is a talented profiler who can get into the minds of the serial killers he's seeking out, but at the price of his own sanity. Retired after an attack by Lecter that almost killed him, Graham is lured back into the game when a maniac known as "The Tooth Fairy" starts murdering entire families. Graham visits Lecter in his cell for advice, and to see if the sight of his old adversary will reawaken his suppressed instincts.

A bonafide cult film, MANHUNTER's biggest fans will tell you that it's superior to THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, while its detractors dismiss it as day-glo 80s cheese on the order of "Miami Vice." I'm not sure which Lecter film is best but I find this one to be first-rate in every respect. Tom Noonan's "Tooth Fairy" is an imposing figure whose calm, deliberate actions and quiet demeanor make him even scarier. In a thoughtful, soulful performance, Petersen makes for a highly sympathetic hero who's appalled by the thoughts and feelings in which he must immerse himself in order to think like a killer. The rest of the cast--Dennis Farina, Kim Griest, Stephen Lang, Joan Allen--are fine as well.

The highlight of the film, of course, is Brian Cox as Lecter. Caged in a stark white cell and stripped of anything that might conceivably be used as a weapon, this version of the famous character is cold, calculating, always wary and observant of the slightest detail, yet dulled and weary of a confinement which prevents him from interacting with the world in his own unique way. In this environment, his pretensions of sanity and normalcy are irrelevant, so he's very blunt and straightforward with Graham. The effect is chilling, with Lecter coming off as a creature of great cunning and intellect but absolutely dead inside, and we dread the thought of this thing ever walking free again.

The only good thing about the 2002 remake, RED DRAGON, is that it manages to make MANHUNTER look even better in comparison. A key scene shared by both films offers a good comparison--Lecter is allowed the privacy of a phone call to his lawyer, but instead manages to call a literary agent and get Graham's home address from the secretary. Brian Cox turns the scene into one of the film's high points, coolly finessing himself an outside line with a foil gum wrapper and then feigning an unctuous joviality with the secretary until she comes through with the address. Once procured, Lecter drops the fascade, pops the gum into his mouth, and returns to his coldly unsettling self. Anthony Hopkins, in the remake, performs almost the exact same scene but is too intent on being creepy to make it fun. Several other scenes that are key emotional high points in MANHUNTER--the hidden fingerprint, the sleeping tiger, the videotape discovery, etc.--are either glossed over or botched in RED DRAGON, as are most of the main characterizations.

With 1991's THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, Anthony Hopkins burst onto the horror film scene with a Hannibal Lecter whose rich theatricality and giddy delight in his own unfathomable evil captured the imaginations of filmgoers, including many in the mainstream, like few such characters before or since. Approaching his dark, Gothic lair in the bowels of a castle-like hospital for the criminally insane where he lurks like some medieval gargoyle, we share the trepidation of the young FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) who has been sent to consult with Lecter regarding another serial killer on the loose (known as "Buffalo Bill" due to his penchant for skinning his victims).

Hopkins plays Lecter to the hilt, relishing each perverse aspect of the character just as Lecter enjoyed feasting upon the organs of those he killed--sometimes with "fava beans and a nice Chianti...fthfthfthfth!" His version of the silken-voiced psycho, unlike that of Cox, is a creation that would fit comfortably in any rogue's gallery of horror film icons. One of the pleasures of this film is watching him toy with the callow Starling (excellently portrayed by Foster) on a purely emotional and intellectual level in which she has no defense, then growing to admire her courage, convictions, and strength of will.

Also unlike the Lecter of MANHUNTER, we get to see this monster at his full power once he's broken free in a terrifying sequence that is beautifully-directed by Jonathan Demme. When Lecter's brilliant escape plan goes into motion, it's a thrill to watch Hopkins turn into one of the most cunning and terrifying killers the screen has ever known. Compared to his mad-dog antics, the film's wrap-up of the Buffalo Bill story is almost anti-climactic, although Demme does stage a nailbiting finale with Starling taking on the killer by herself in his pitch-dark cellar of death. Still, Bill delivers a line to one of his captives that has since become one of the most oft-heard quotes in recent film history: "It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again." And his naked dance will become seared in your memory whether you like it or not.

With a level of excellence that garnered it Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, and Best Director, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS remains one of the finest and most popular horror films ever made.

Not so well-received, unfortunately, was the inevitable follow-up, HANNIBAL (2001). The unenviable task of trying to match the financial and artistic success of SILENCE fell to director Ridley Scott, whose ALIEN and BLADE RUNNER were already regarded as classics. Here, he is working not only with a lesser script but with a new leading lady, Julianne Moore, replacing the absent Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling. With the Lecter character now free and unrestrained, Anthony Hopkins has a field day developing him into an even more sinister, sardonic, self-satisfied, and almost supernatural force of evil who savors every sensual nuance of his heinous actions.

Moore does what she can with the Starling role as her character suffers a major setback and is unjustly suspended from duty. Lecter, returning from a sabbatical in Rome in which he was forced to disembowel a detective (Giancarlo Giannini) who was on his trail, takes an active interest in the life of the only person on earth for whom he has any affection. This puts them both at odds with a horribly-disfigured billionaire named Mason Verger (a fascinating Gary Oldman), a former victim of Lecter who has concocted a revenge scheme which involves man-eating pigs. Ray Liotta, in full slimeball mode, plays rival FBI agent Paul Krendler, whose ill treatment of Clarice will put him on Lecter's bad side in a big way.

Lacking the new-car smell and scintillating story of SILENCE, Ridley Scott compensates by turning HANNIBAL into an elegant yet balls-out horror epic loaded with shock value and gore. Scott pulls no punches with the graphic violence and boldly risks alienating audience members expecting more of the same but finding themselves in the middle of a big-budget H. G. Lewis flick. There must've been a few walkouts by fans of the previous film when the Italian detective's entrails splashed onto the pavement or the ravenous pigs started feasting on screaming humans in loving closeup.

But (warning--this paragraph contains spoilers) Scott saves the most memorably jaw-dropping image for the finale, as Lecter hosts a dinner party for Starling and Krendler in which the entree just happens to be Krendler's brain. Our gracious and urbane anti-hero deftly slices around the top of the drugged Krendler's skull and pops it off, then begins to feed him sizzling morsels of his own sauteed gray matter hot off the wok as Starling, along with most of the audience, gapes in mortal revulsion.

A final encounter between Lecter and Starling defines their relationship unequivocably and ends the movie on a suitably morbid note. While admittedly inferior to SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, I find HANNIBAL to be an outstanding horror film in its own right and above-average on every level. The Lecter character is taken farther than ever before and explored in lots of fun ways, yet still avoids the cartoonishness into which he finally sinks in RED DRAGON. For me, Ridley Scott's uncompromising foray into the horror genre is a success.

Aspect ratio for this 3-disc set is 2.35:1 for disc one and 1.85:1 for discs two and three. Audio is English 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio and French 5.1 Dolby Surround and Mono, dubbed and subtitled in English, French, and Spanish. No bonus features.

Picture quality is great, with vivid and properly balanced colors. There is no sign of any digital encoding errors. The detail is also excellent. One thing about SILENCE OF THE LAMBS--the detail displayed by the film is generally pretty good (as you can tell by the sharpness of the title credits), but the picture is a little soft and smeary. I can't be sure, but I seem to recall the film having a hazy look to begin with.

If you're already a fan of these films, the HANNIBAL LECTER COLLECTION is a good way to add them all to your Blu-Ray collection. And if you haven't seen them yet, then here's your big chance to get Hannibalized.

HANNIBAL LECTER COLLECTION (Blu-Ray) -- Review by Porfle

PAGAN LOVE SONG -- Movie Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 2/20/16

 

Like an exotic postcard from Tahiti come to life, PAGAN LOVE SONG (1950) is a Technicolor fantasia with Esther Williams looking gorgeous in brown body makeup and two-piece outfits as the half-Tahitian Mimi.

Bass-voiced Howard Keel is "Hap" Endicott, a teacher from the USA who just inherited some land with a bamboo shack on it and wants to kick back and become a native. Even though Mimi has plans to move to the States just as Hap is settling in, we know that they'll get together somehow.

This is easily one of Esther's prettiest yet dumbest films. Keel plays Hap like a big, grinning oaf who belts out some of the worst songs ever written (subjects include his singing bamboo house and how much fun it is to sing in the sun on a bicycle) while blundering his way around the island like a newborn giraffe.

He gets along great with the natives (one of whom is played by a very young Rita Moreno), since they're all portrayed as a bunch of addle-brained children themselves. It's enough to make one yearn for the cultural authenticity of an Elvis Presley comedy.

Keel works overtime trying to force some feeling into the nonsensical songs that are shoehorned into the slim plot but he has little to work with--he was much more at home in robust musicals such as ANNIE GET YOUR GUN and SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS. Plus, incredible as it may seem, he and Esther have about as much romantic chemistry as a couple of cocoanuts.

After the movie has toodled along with nothing much going on until almost the end, an awkward and overly melodramatic plot twist is dropped right in the middle of it like an anvil in order to remind us that there's supposed to be a story.

The only things PAGAN LOVE SONG has going for it--besides one of those cool SPFX water fantasies that glorifies Esther Williams as a sort of aquatic goddess--are the lush scenery, a really cool Tahitian dance sequence, and the fact that the star looks so good at times that it's almost unreal. (Amazingly, a look at the musical outtakes reveals that the film's best songs aren't even in it!)

If you can turn off your critical faculties for an hour and a half and watch PAGAN LOVE SONG purely on a superficial level, you might enjoy it. Otherwise, this movie is so stupefyingly slight that it makes DONOVAN'S REEF look like a James Michener epic.

Read our review of TCM SPOTLIGHT: ESTHER WILLIAMS VOL.2

PAGAN LOVE SONG -- Movie Review by Porfle

BITCH SLAP -- DVD review by porfle

Originally posted on 3/3/10

 

 

I just got through watching--experiencing--the raucous, explosive, titillating, jaw-dropping, hilarious, and generally rather stimulating BITCH SLAP (2009), and I feel like I've just spent a fun-filled day at B-flick Disneyland. This is one of the most absolutely freakin' awesome movies I've seen in years. I can imagine Tarantino and Rodriguez wha**ing off to it in paroxysms of utter joy. For a good time, call this movie. 

 

After a delightful main titles sequence, the story begins with three ruthless women arriving at a secluded mobile home in the desert, trying to track down some hot diamonds, a "nano-swarm" biological warfare device stolen from the CIA, and whatever MacGuffins might pop up along the way. Hel (Erin Cummings) is the leader and brains of the group, Camero (America Olivo) is the snarling, hot-headed strong-arm, and Trixie (Julie Voth) is the simpering stripper used to lure bad-guy Gage (Michael Hurst) into revealing the location of his hidden stash. It's here that most of the action will take place, while numerous flashbacks reveal (in MEMENTO-style reverse chronological order) the events leading up to it, including explosive shoot-outs, James Bond-style exploits, and sexy nuns. 

 

 

 

 

 

Erin Cummings represents the old-school, voluptuous Russ Meyer-type babe who looks retro-stunning in a 40s-era "Rosie the Riveter" outfit or a slit skirt with fishnet stockings. America Olivo rocks as one of the toughest, most out-of-control psycho bitches ever. As Trixie, Julie Voth is the quintessential weak, vulnerable ditz who screams "Eek!" and makes even something as simple as digging a hole look like a trip around the stripper pole. 

 

All are costumed to show off their ample assets which the camera unabashedly explores at every opportunity, and they perform everything from searing lesbian love scenes to some of the all-time greatest chick fights ever filmed with equal skill. They even manage to bring conviction to some of the most intentionally cheesy dialogue you're likely to hear, such as: 

 

"Ram this in your clambake, bitch cake!"

"Blow my biscuit!"

 And, of course, the immortal: "I'm gonna baste your giblets, butter britches."

 

Two separate fist-pounding showdowns between Hel and Camero are spectacular setpieces that benefit from the expertise of stunt-coordinator and stand-in Zoe Bell ("Xena", KILL BILL, DEATH PROOF) and are the catfight equivalent of the John Wayne-Randolph Scott free-for-all in THE SPOILERS. Big guns, swords, chains, razor-edged yo-yos, explosions, and everything else you can think of come into play in several other blazing action sequences--this movie just keeps being great scene after scene. 

 

 

 

 

 

From the moment director Rick Jacobson introduces the main characters as they emerge from a Thunderbird in the middle of the desert, you know he's going to go all out with all the eye-candy stylistic flourishes he can pack into this film. Slow-mo, split screens, speed-up/slow-down effects, some (restrained) Shaky-Cam, creative editing--generally all the cinematic confetti that can ruin a DTV action flick in lesser hands--are all handled here with just the right touch and add up to a richly visual experience. Even the green-screen used in the flashbacks is handled well and gives those scenes a pleasing fantasy look. It's as though Jacobson were transferring his wildest flights of fancy onto film directly from his fevered brain. 

 

Having worked on such TV series as "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" and "Xena: Warrior Princess", Jacobson also manages to stock his cast with familiar faces such as Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor (as a couple of nuns), Kevin Sorbo as Hel's secret-agent boss "Phoenix", and, best of all, Michael Hurst as "Gage", the bad guy who's out to get his hands on whatever the girls are looking for before they do. Producers Jacobson, Eric Gruendemann, and Brian Peck appear in brief but funny cameos, and BIKINI FRANKENSTEIN's Christine Nguyen shows up just long enough to get sprayed with gore. Even the diminutive blonde Debbie Lee Carrington can be seen firing a machine gun just as she did way back in TOTAL RECALL. And last but not least, there's William Gregory Lee as Tourette's-spewing punk thug "Hot Wire" and Minae Noji as his nasty-girl sidekick "Kinki." 

 

 

 

 

 

BITCH SLAP is a dizzying melange of comic books, music videos, Hustler Video, Tarantino references (Hel, we discover, is a former member of "Flesh Force Foxy"), biker flicks, James Bond by way of Austin Powers, sci-fi, horror, and chunks of Russ Meyer's "Faster Pussycat--Kill! Kill!" along with shades of other kickass action movies. As a loving homage to bad-but-beautiful babes who fight, shoot guns, talk tough, and generally kick ass while managing to be gorgeous at the same time, BITCH SLAP is off the dial. There's more cool stuff in this movie than a six-month subscription to "Girls 'n' Guns." It's like everything ever shown on Spike TV crammed into two hours. 

 

The DVD from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is 2.35:1 widescreen and English 5.1 Dolby Digital, with English and Spanish subtitles. There are two fun and informative commentary tracks, one from producers Jacobson, Gruendemann, and Peck, and the other featuring stars Cummings, Olivo, and Voth. There's also an excellent feature-length documentary called "Behind 'Bitch Slap': Building a Better B-Movie."

 

BITCH SLAP is the kind of film Larry Bishop was desperately trying to make when he made HELL RIDE. Some people will hate it, and if you're like them, you will, too. But if you're like me--heaven help you--you'll love it, and you'll think it's one of the best B-movies ever made.

 

 

BITCH SLAP -- DVD review by porfle