Change Your Image
TheFearmakers
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
The Wild Racers (1968)
Corman's Racetrack Breathless
Following THE YOUNG RACERS, producer Roger Corman returns to the European Race Car circuit for THE WILD RACERS, which actually only really centers on one... played by a great singer turned limited actor in American import Fabian, actually decent here since he never has to oversell a contentedly cocky persona...
Deliberately clashing against the progressive 1960's French New Wave influence of Corman's director Daniel Haller, using future JAWS editor Verna Fields for a myriad of jump-cuts from creative camera angles to create a deliberately art-house showcase showcasing a young handsome driver with almost everything...
Except the initial ability to actually win races since he's that secondary blocker with the sole purpose of letting the better driver succeed... which reverses about halfway through...
Yet most of WILD RACERS is a love story between Fabian and an actress who coincidentally held wildly onto a rebellious roll-bar in the previous years low-budget exploitation HOT RODS TO HELL, but blonde beauty Mimsy Farmer (initially hanging out with a young Talia Shire) plays the good girl this time...
Docile, vulnerable but not entirely insecure, she's a seemingly perfect opposites-attract fit for Fabian's moody, borderline verbally-abusive upstart who'd gone through a few girlfriends already, from a lanky French model to ditsy yet likable British lass Judy Cornwell...
And while the best thing here is how the movie itself is made... a kind of speedway BREATHLESS with psychedelic camera tricks along with jazzy music interludes and dance-crazy nightclubs... Fabian and Farmer have enough tension and chemistry to make the audience hope their relationship reaches the finish line.
Take a Hard Ride (1975)
Not Spaghetti, Not Blaxploitation, But Good
Expectations for a Blaxploitation-Western, being that Jim Brown and Fred Williamson play the hero and anti-hero, or a Spaghetti Western, since Lee Van Cleef is the bad guy, will be disappointed. While it does have some of the (very intentional) Spaghetti elements in style and music, and slick action sequences for Blaxploitation fans...
TAKE A HARD RIDE is actually an old-fashioned cowboy flick involving honest man Jim Brown and dishonest gambler Fred Williamson, on a quest to deliver money (that Brown made with late boss Dana Andrews, veteran of said classic Westerns) to a small town with cunning and deadly bounty hunter Van Cleef on their trail...
For eye candy there's Catherine Spaak with her very own sidekick Jim Kelly is a mute Indian scout (Williamson said that it was because of his pal Kelly's limited vocal-acting abilities, although Jim did great channeling Fred's bravado in ENTER THE DRAGON), sporadically wielding his signature karate moves in-between running along with the mounted riders...
And Williamson's ambiguous nature adds suspenseful distrust for Brown, also adding to their chemistry in what's more a fun ride than a hard one, but a pretty neat flick since, with all the money involved, and an ensemble of non-trusting cowboys, you can say it's a mobile TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE.
One Down, Two to Go (1982)
Jim Kelly, But Without Fighting
We begin with Jim Kelly about to do what he does best, fight, in this case an arena kickboxing competition, and after about five years of him having been absent from the big screen...
But, realizing his fellow boxers are going down too quickly, he ventures backstage and discovers the mob's placing metal within their own fighter's gloves...
Kelly, seen eavesdropping, is chased outside and shot in the arm. And never fights again except for a quick uni-dexterous brawl...
And after a long forty minutes: enter Jim Brown and director Fred Williamson as Kelly and promoter Richard Roundtree's buddies, who spend the rest of this slug-paced turkey seeking dull revenge...
This is an obvious attempt to revitalize the blaxploitation era, particularly the trio's THREE THE HARD WAY and TAKE A HARD RIDE added with some SHAFT persona from Richard...
But winds up providing nothing but a cure for insomnia.
Three the Hard Way (1974)
Bombastic Collective
A mad scientist and a white supremacist millionaire will poison the water supplies of three American cities, killing only the black population in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington unless Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly stop them...
This action packed blaxploitation never lets up as the dynamic trio, sometimes together, sometimes alone, fight cops and goons alike, surviving car chases, foot chases, gun fights, explosions, and everything else thrown their way...
A scene where three motorcycle riding vixens cruise the streets, and then torture a crooked cop, will confirm the heavy influence this had on Quentin Tarantino's work...
And most importantly, all three athletic icons (two for football and one for karate) have their own separate identities to make them really count...
Fred Williams is a suave and funny businessman, Jim Kelly the mellow karate man, providing real chops for the audience to savor, and Jim Brown as the badass bottom line bringing the trio together in one of the best blaxploitations ever made.
Enter the Dragon (1973)
Bruce Lee's Introductory Swan Song
By the time Bruce Lee, starring in his first and last American produced motion picture, squares off against island-ruling heavy Han in ENTER THE DRAGON, one important thing is crystal clear...
Nobody, from henchmen Bolo Young to Robert Wall, or co-stars John Saxon or Jim Kelly, could have taken him on and so, liken to a James Bond franchise villain, the seedy-smiling, slave-owning, harem-surrounded Kien Shih has a glove with knife-fingers to give him that needed/necessary edge...
Providing DRAGON a combination of spy infiltration adventure (with the best fight scenes involving 11th hour guards getting bruised from high-kicks to nunchucks) and what's referred to as a karate-tournament-flick, involving various matches befitting both the plot and characters...
Particularly centering on Lee, sent to the island to compete while surreptitiously investigating a heroin trade: either randomly partaking in matches or sizing-up competitors with his experienced cat-like prowess...
Like Jim Kelly's scene-stealing, token black champion Williams, a combination of idealistic ("ghettos are the same all over the world... they stink") and cocky womanizer, hooking up with as many island girls that are provided (inserting groovy b-movie blaxploitation into the kung-fu mainline) while Lee's solid co-star John Saxon, a handsome and confident yet severely unlucky gambler, has targeted blonde madame Ahna Capri...
Who underrated director Robert Clouse previously cast in his neo-noir DARKER THAN AMBER wherein an actual on-set fight (between Rod Taylor and William Smith) eventually handed him this groundbreaking classic... that he never got enough artistic credit for...
The espionage story (capped with an Orson Welles roomful-of-mirrors homage) is as important as the surrounding Bruce Lee-choreographed scrapes, either inside or outside the central tournament, with strategic plot-devices including flashbacks fleshing out the three leads...
Making ENTER THE DRAGON a violently-uncompromising yet mainstream-entertaining 100-minute action classic that holds back just-enough to provide Lee both a proper worldwide introduction and a tragically legendary swan song.
Black Belt Jones (1974)
Clouse & Kelly Reenter the Dragon
Anyone thinking ENTER THE DRAGON director Robert Clouse simply got lucky need only experience BLACK BELT JONES starring Bruce Lee's cocky black rival and overall fan-favorite Jim Kelly who, giant afro and all, takes on the mafia in what Clouse neatly balances as part martial arts, part gritty downtown-blaxploitation and part GODFATHER-inspired mafia crime flick...
The latter serves the plot as Jones's friend Scatman Crothers owns an urban karate studio, and the mob needs the land... eventually inherited by the first James Bond girl in Gloria Hendry as Crothers' daughter, who winds up both Jones's love interest and a practically equal karate partner...
Everything's thrown into this breezy pot, enhanced by the locations, from the ghetto to one standout sequence at a beachfront mansion where Jones's white-girl-gymnast team sneaks into the mafia headquarters, providing the kind of resilient action/distraction that makes JONES a kind of spy-adventure as well...
Featuring eclectic side-characters from scene-stealing/smack-talking black poolhall owner Malik Carter to thumb-nosed mob henchman Vince Barbi to karate school climbers Alan Weeks and Eric Laneuville, BLACK BELT JONES... winding up with a foamy finale inside a car wash while scored by Luchi De Jesus and DRAGON composer Dennis Coffey... plays both lightweight and ultra-violent without being too silly or sadist: a near-perfect 1970's-exploitation tour-de-force.
Due occhi diabolici (1990)
Poe Ray Me
Two Edgar Allan Poe tales directed by two masters of macabre: George Romero and Dario Argento. Romero's outing, "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar," begins as a Film Noir tribute with a crooked wife of a dying rich man. Her young lover hypnotises her husband to sign over his inheritance...
When he dies, he's not really gone since he never woke from the trance. Romero's in his realm with a zombie antagonist, but unlike NIGHT OF THE LIVING and DAWN OF THE DEAD, it isn't scary and the characters aren't interesting. But it's mostly inspired by his CREEPSHOW in that, by the end, you'd think the corpse husband would be screaming, "I want my cake!"
But Dario Argento fares better with "The Black Cat," pitting forensic photographer Harvey Keitel against an eccentric wife and a black cat, whom he kills and... it, like the husband, won't die...
Neither tales do the Poe sources complete justice, missing the master's mark of claustrophobic suspense, but the Argento story is at least enjoyable: aided by an important, and extremely sexy, cameo by Sally Kirkland.
Death Dimension (1978)
No Black Samurai, But Still OK
Any movie featuring Jim Kelly is an unrelated homage to ENTER THE DRAGON, the Bruce Lee classic in which he's the cocky token-black karate champ... and DEATH DIMENSION is the second directed by b-movie icon Al Adamson that's trying to be a James Bond flick...
Here, following BLACK SAMURAI, the original German title Der Einzelkämpfer translates to THE LONE FIGHTER, partly true since Kelly does most of the action against two Bond franchise legends...
Beginning with main heavy Harold Sakata, Odd-Job the assassin from GOLDFINGER who yearns to take over the world with a freeze-bomb while peripheral cop George Lazenby's connected to both Bond and Bruce Lee... he was 007 in HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and was about to star in Lee's DRAGON followup, that never happened...
Lazenby's sporadically at Kelly's side... till he isn't... but the true sidekick is stuntman Myron Lee, who was billed as Myron Bruce Lee, taking part in various karate fights, filmed in the usual stagnant camera style of Adamson, mostly in rural desert locales (including some Las Vegas shots)...
Original Title for Al Adamson's DEATH DIMENSION
Overall, for such a noticeably low-budget exploitation vehicle, there are nice moments and effective side-characters, like Patch Mackenzie, a McGuffin beauty with an implanted microchip everyone's after; Donovan's gorgeous real-life-wife Linda Lawrence as Sakata's Mad Magazine reading moll; a sultry madame played by veteran MIGHTY JOE YOUNG actress Terry Moore; Kelly's sexy black girlfriend April Sommers...
And best yet, black stuntman Bob Minor, more an equal match for Kelly than his Asian boss, who fitfully spouts expository monologues (mostly to greedy bomb-buyer Aldo Ray) than getting his hands dirty.... then again, as Sakata proved before and Minor proves here, the primary henchmen are usually the most memorable villains.
Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy (2024)
Netflix Attacks Amazon
Okay so Netflix is in competition with Amazon (both charging more to not have commercials, so both pretty much suck despite myself paying for, well, both) so they made a documentary showing Amazon as being what seems like a corporation version of a world-takeover Bond villain or something...
You mean when you are on an online shopping store, they are going to figure out ways to buy MORE STUFF???
Go to any grocery store and they'll lure you towards where you check out and all those last-minute choices... usually chips or candy or soft drinks... are there for the same reason as this very complicated doc makes it seem that Amazon is horrible for...
But what it really is is a kind of IInconvenient Truth wannabe given all the products that people return that then become trash that will take over the planet... there's that Bond villain again...
For a documentary it's just too filled with tricks and devices to remain interesting, which is ironic that a doc about what it takes to keep people around to buy more hardly had me at hello.
E yu tou hei sha xing (1978)
Not Black Belt Jones 2
With the famous style of camera zooms going quickly forward and pulling back even quicker, THE TATTOO CONNECTION is more of a noirish Asian crime flick than martial arts... although with groovy-smooth ENTER THE DRAGON co-star Jim Kelly imported for universal value and local master kicker Tao-Liang Tan the third-billed buried-lead, there's a whole lot of the latter...
Misleadingly deemed BLACK BELT JONES 2, Kelly (who returned as Jones in HOT POTATO) is an agent named Lucas, and appears about twenty-minutes in after establishing a frantic underworld where a young man's in-hiding after turning on the formidable mob boss...
His sister's played by the extremely cute Shu-Ying Cheng, and one of the main problems is she looks almost identical to Tan's stripper girlfriend Nami Misaki: both women with the same motivation to keep their men out of the crime world...
One of whom's killed off quickly while Tan eventually joins with Kelly to take down the baddies in an non-stop action-packed potboiler... with gritty locations from backrooms to industrial train yards to boat decks... with pretty much everything needed to quench Bruce Lee fans still suffering from the loss: including the finale reunion of Kelly vs muscular henchman Bolo Yeung.
Hot Potato (1976)
Sorry, This IS A SEQUEL
No one could fathom why the urban blaxploitation BLACK BELT JONES would have a pulpy-adventure sequel set in the Thailand jungle, so it's often regarded as basically, not a sequel: but it definitely is given that ENTER THE DRAGON icon Jim Kelly's name is, once again, Jones, and the original film's writer is now both writer and director...
The plot has Judy Brown as a politician's daughter being kidnapped, and Kelly and his cohorts traipse through the bulwark-laden jungles to bring her safely home... the first problem being that Jim's got too many sidekicks...
While Geoffrey Binney's a pretty decent second, MEAN STREETS actor George Memmoli (later to time the ice-skating-rink first date in ROCKY) is downright horrible... not so much his performance but the character desperately attempting comic relief in a movie that's too comical to begin and end with...
One scene involves Memmoli having an eating contest with an overweight woman who, the reverse of what would later occur in the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK drinking contest, falls over backwards in defeat...
Yet there are some pretty good karate fights involving eclectic groups of native antagonists, all choreographed by Kelly and making up for Oscar William's rather sluggish direction (Rupert Clouse was very needed)...
But the best thing going for HOT POTATO is leading lady Irene Tsu, not only a pretty Asian but a pretty great fighter and, had she been Kelly's sole cohort, there might just be something here.
Landman (2024)
Just Kinda There
One thing's for certain after re-watching GOLIATH: Billy Bob Thorton finally looks somewhat like he used to...
While always a great actor, he has turned into a skeleton, and it's downright scary... But in LANDMAN he's nearly got that ONE FALSE MOVE double-chin and looks a lot healthier...
Amazon gave a free episode, so this is about the pilot, and frankly it's just not that good despite the creator and cast...
Especially for an introduction where everything and everyone seems contrived and yet familiar... as in, the characters aren't properly introduced, all acting as if we know them already, seeming more part of a lackluster second season opener...
Meanwhile Jon Ham, absolutely brilliant on MAD MEN, is playing yet another handsome jerk, which he looks like with that famous square jaw... but he's so much better than what he's given here... and you can tell his character's gonna be greedy, unlikable and one-dimensional (remember how much fun Larry Hagman had antagonizing the oil business?)...
Making Billy the titular down-to-earth divorced-dad LANDMAN i.e. Dirty jeans oilman on the ground while Hamm's up in the big fancy skyscraper...
And Billy's daughter that everyone's complaining about isn't a bad actress or a horrible character really but, like everyone else, shen seems more written (everyone spouting too many clever one-liners to count) than genuinely actualized.
Flight of the Navigator (1986)
Was Always On Cable
You'd think a movie about a boy who flies around in a giant silver bean dip bowl would be completely awful, but it's only partially awful. The first fifty minutes is quite good actually...
A boy is wandering in the woods, he falls down a ravine, and when he wakes up, it's eight years later. His parents are older, and his little brother is his big brother. He ends up being taken to a NASA outpost where they do tests on his brain....
He has the intellect of a brilliant alien. They give him a room and then he gets "called" to, that's right, the giant silver bean dip bowl - actually a space ship - that the government is keeping in a hanger. He escapes from his room riding in a robotic butler, goes to the hanger, and climbs aboard the ship...
At this point the good half of the film has run its course. Inside the vessel is a metallic... something-or-rather, kind of a steering wheel with a personality, which begins speaking to him... and get this... it's Pee Wee Herman's voice. Imagine Mel Blanc providing the voice of "Hall 9000" and you'll get the concept.
Honky Tonk Freeway (1981)
A Perfect Road-Movie Ensemble
John Schlesinger's HONKY TONK FREEWAY has two composers: Elmer Bernstein doing his usual triumphant march while Beatles producer George Martin's melancholy interludes are thrown in randomly for an offbeat cross-country road-movie with everything...
And while known for having cost and lost tons of money, FREEWAY is both a fast-moving adventure and witty ensemble-comedy with only a few central characters representing both points on the map...
William Devane as a Florida small town mayor who creates an illegal off-ramp to get his desperate nowhere town back in business... while Beau Bridges plays a failed children's story author teamed with loose ex-waitress Beverly D'Angelo...
Peter Billingsly's an RV-vacationing-family son who can only pee in public bathrooms... driven by mellow dad Howard Hesseman with semi-nagging wife Teri Garr frowning shotgun...
George Dzundra and Joe Grafisi are scene-stealers with a bag of stolen loot, seeking female companionship as Celia Weston's a fish restaurant waitress turned would-be call-girl's guided by seedy/breezy pimp David Rasche...
All enveloped in a freestyle experience that, although tanking at the box-office, provided the big-screen feel to rudimentary cable-television outlets... from afternoon to after-midnight screenings.... for the same diverse Americans that are equally celebrated and parodied herein.
The Man Who Loved Women (1983)
Burt and Blake
There are two movies reported to have been what Burt Reynolds decided to star in instead of co-starring in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT for the role famously taken by Jack Nicholson... and along with being box office bombs, they embodied each sub-genre that rode Burt through six-years as box office king...
The second is the action-comedy STROKER ACE directed by collaborator/stuntman muse Hal Needham; and the first by a director Burt's said to have liked the best, Blake Edwards, in the romantic-comedy THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN...
Which is a far better vehicle for Reynolds, herein playing it safely and naturally as a doomed sculptor who, as we begin, has a myriad of women attending his funeral that, narrated by sophisticated shrink and ultimate love-interest (and the director's wife) Julie Andrews, keeps the viewer guessing on how he'll eventually buy the farm...
As that too is ultimately humorous while MAN rolls around dryly and coolly... without any big laughs... in that slow-burn fashion of Blake's game-changing 10: both depicting a wealthy mid-life-crisis-struck artist with everything who still complains about having too much... of everything...
But it's the WOMEN who are the most intriguing... not only to gander at but to anticipate... ranging from extremely sexual married-Texan Kim Basinger, lovely-legged Marilu Henner, down-home Cynthia Sikes, 11th hour groupie Sela Ward while the cutest is the most subtle in Edwards' daughter Jennifer as a hooker turned secretary...
Overall making this Americanized 1970's-French-remake seem from that very decade of good-old-fashion jazz-soaked womanizing through dry self deprecation that surely suits Burt -- despite being on cruise control throughout.
Untold: Jake Paul and the Problem Child (2023)
Not That Bad
There's a moment, backstage, after a fight, when Jake Paul is with his family and employees, and he says something like he could have done better, or didn't do good enough because, after all, he just lost his first fight, and one against a real boxer... and he says that he doesn't want it uploaded onto You Tube but rather, to be on a Netflix doc...
So even when Jake Paul opens up and is honest after something as honestly serious as defeat, he's looking at the results of where it will be shown afterwards...
He's a multi-millionaire influencer, after all, as they're called, and got famous making videos like Jackass on You Tube, and then played a character based on himself in a Disney show...
These segments are kind of rushed through and yet they're what he's mostly known for, and how he became famous...
When he gets into boxing, while somewhat of a joke and more like a professional wrestler, he does seem more grown up and less of the bratty bad boy that got him there... and he seems like an alright guy... or that he became one...
What here's a kind of sports doc but not really, more an entertainment piece masquarading as a boxing piece but more like promotion or even propaganda but... it wasn't bad.
Countdown: Paul vs Tyson (2024)
Contemplating Demonstrating
If you count how long the left-wing streaming company Netflix deals with Mike Tyson's downfall, particularly his going to jail, it lasts shorter than his early one-rounders... and you never hear the word rape, not once...
Hence the liberal media has stopped/paused the cancel culture... especially if there is money to be made... as happened with the novelty fight between former world champion boxer Mike Tyson and You Tube Influencer Jake Paul...
Watching Tyson's bio followed by Paul's is like comparing George Washington to a district councilman in Cleveland with a dog that has hiccups... one's genuinely historic; the other got famous for getting tons of hits from what even his own biography (this documentary) doesn't fully explain...
The Ryan backers use the word "haters" when describing what/who he was up against... Haters is a term of a lot of people suddenly being against something or someone... And haters only exist in a world where someone goes from nobody to celebrity because of an overnight "viral" sensation...
So basically, haters exist in a world to counter celebrities who become famous for no actual reason, which is unlike Tyson... So if haters hate for no reason, they're hating people who became famous for no actual reason... It all evens out...
And if this documentary was more on Tyson and his struggles, it would be a lot better and would last longer because at this point we've already seen the Tyson/Paul cash-grab fight... this is all basically promoting something that has already happened.
Cobra Kai: Eunjangdo (2024)
"Never Mistake Motion for Action"
Trying to turn COBRA KAI into the kind of binge series that's able to keep stretching things to where people have to wait months at a time is utterly ridiculous... it kills the entire purpose of the series...
When this thing's finally over... as in completely finished without dangling yet another carrot... the best years will be the first 2-seasons, when it was a YouTube RedBand series before being acquired by Netflix, where it basically went from a great character-driven action show into what's basically a teenage melodrama/soap opera...
Yes, okay, those things happened during the first two seasons, but the young new characters were peripheral to the original stars, Johnny and Daniel, who have been in the background from around the fourth season onward...
Gen-X Archie Bunker-type William Zabka curbed by All-Around-Nice-Guy Ralph Macchio is what the show's about, not a STAR WARS meets JAMES BOND opus of villains trying to take over the world that has happened ever since Ponytail Man from the horrendously infamous third movie has turned the series into...
Martin Kove was a terrific classic villain... he should have remained the main villain here... but providing him a backstory where he too is bullied was very unbelievable... Does EVERYONE have to have a bullied-backstory?
Meanwhile, cutting to this season, having a no-holds-barred battle where everyone is fighting each other at the same time is downright exhausting, and a total cop-out...
In any action movie or series, having too much running-around leads to what Ernest Hemingway warned with his line, "Never mistake motion for action..."
So this entire final season of Cobra Kai doesn't feel like the ending of the series, but the ending of what the series turned into a few seasons back...
It's just too busy, too complicated, and at this point it's smart that the show is ending, having been repeating itself since the point when William Zabka and Ralph Macchio went from being main characters of Cobra Kai to benign audience members.
Prophecy (1979)
Monstrous Eco-Horror
At one point, when idealistic city doctor Robert Foxworthy and quiet musician wife Taila Shire are in the Oregon woods investigating strange happenings around a Native American community, we cut to an immense paper-mill with formidable music that would usually prelude a march of Nazi soldiers, or their mustached leader...
Meanwhile polite antagonist Richard Dysart, a few years before being part of a gory monstrous takeover in THE THING, is subtly covering things up: overall making the liberal-minded eco-horror PROPHECY far more ambiguous than if it were made today (or in the last thirty-years)...
Promoted by a movie-trailer without the usual ensemble of scenes, but an entire pivotal sequence where a camping-out family's killed by an unseen menace... the young son slammed against a rock as his sleeping bad explodes into feathers...
Basically your standard body-count slasher kind of thing... but PROPHECY is more an investigative mystery where hit/miss director John Frankenheimer has some creative shots and builds tension semi-aptly...
And the actors... especially married leads Foxworthy and Shire... are more intensely focused on the enigmatic, perpetually unfolding plot than the somewhat heavy-handed, preachy theme behind it... curbing Armand Assante's overly-melodramatic turn as a beguiled Indian...
Leading the famous (or rather infamous) "mutant bear on a rampage" finale that reminds the audience this is a bonafide monster movie albeit far superior in the build-up than what it's clumsily narrowed into.
The Last Starfighter (1984)
Mainstream Cult Classic
The connection of THREE AMIGOS, GALAXY QUEST and TROPIC THUNDER... of actors thinking they're taking part in just another paid gig that turns out to be incredibly real and dangerous... in a way began with Nick Castle's THE LAST STARFIGHTER where Lance Guest plays the oldest son of a trailer park landlady... in the kind of lonely Middle American town that Steven Spielberg practically created for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (and a bit like the "there's something better somewhere else" planet of Tattooine in STAR WARS)...
Castle includes other Speilbergian touches, like a highway speed-limit-sign rattling from the power of a spaceship.... here belonging to scene-stealer Robert Preston, who, with his signature speaking voice that practically sings every line, is beyond perfect as the pre BACK TO THE FUTURE DeLoreon-driving alien-in-human-form recruiter for an actual "star war" that Guest's Alex Rogen is hired to fight in...
The catch here is - he's an extremely agile video gamer, specifically the titular LAST STARFIGHTER that was created to test possible pilots... yet the slowest parts happen once Alex winds up in a giant space-ship (with grids like STAR WARS' Yavin strategy center) where a group of eclectic applied-effect aliens are preparing for battle...
But the tightest, most intriguing character-development occurs in the villain's vessel where Norman Snow - as a spoiled-heir-turned-evil-tyrant - overacts with the kind of heated fervor needed for science-fantasy...
Leaving the best sequences on the ground... particularly those involving Alex's "Beta Unit" replacement clone, awkwardly (and hilariously) attempting to seamlessly blend in with his... or, Alex's... best girl Catherine Mary Stewart and precocious Playboy-reading little brother...
Leaving the best sequences on the ground... particularly those involving Alex's "Beta Unit" replacement clone, awkwardly (and hilariously) attempting to seamlessly blend in with his... or, Alex's... best girl Catherine Mary Stewart and precocious Playboy-reading little brother...
Meanwhile random humanoid assassins provide necessary sudden-jolt action sequences... injecting jump-scare horror into the sci-fi adventure... between trips into outer space...
Where the whole space war (with dog-fights looking as if STAR WARS were in the TRON computer) never feel complete enough to matter beyond Alex's camaraderie with a stalwart alien played by Irish veteran-actor Dan O'Herlihy...
As director Castle strategically narrows the exterior action into what feels like random video game sequences, which brings the whole theme... of the gamer taking part in the real thing... into a neo-pulpy wish-fulfillment yarn that works better in various narrowly-escaping sequences than as an attempted-epic whole.
Anatomy of a Psycho (1961)
Actually Pretty Terrific
When token investigator Michael Granger is kind of affably/subtly questioning local hoodlum Darrell Howe on he and his gang's whereabouts when some people got beat up the night before, Howe's facially-scared Chet lies about going to a movie... specifically CRIME AND PUNISHMENT... an ironic parallel the cop instantly understands...
Yet is only partially what ANATOMY is inspired by... as the law's only around right after bad things happen: like a rich man's house burning because his son hooked up with Chet's loose and lithe GHOST OF DRAGSTRIP HOLLOW ingenue Judy Howard, who, with only a few scenes, smoothly combines passionate seduction with perplexed vulnerability...
The polar opposite of Chet's all-around-good-girl sister Pamela Lincoln, herself dating someone that Chet has a problem with... his former best friend... whose father (b-movie staple Russ Bender) had witnessed their brother committing a murder leading directly to the gas chamber... in a sequence that not only begins the movie but establishes the vengeful rage within our fearsome anti-hero...
Who's a pretty terrific young actor, keeping busy manipulating both a naive/innocent cohort and a restlessly rebellious one -- while sinking his teeth into some really violent sequences, particularly for the early-1960's in what's more befitting a noticeably low-budget exploitation-expose than if ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO was just another mainstream teenage-gang melodramas.
Running with Speed (2023)
Good, But Lacks An Antagonist
I watched this very long documentary having no real interest or knowledge (or interest to gain knowledge of) Super Mario Brothers, which came out after I was done playing video games (I am glad Colecovision was mentioned here, which I grew up with)...
But I gave it a try as it started playing directly after a RoboCop documentary, and they did a good job showing what's involved in the games and how to play the games fast...
But the best aspect is how to figure out the glitches of each game to save time... that alone could have been an hour-long documentary: on mistakes in video games that have become more iconic than the actual games...
Anyhow, all the young adults centered here wound up making money streaming, and it seems like the whole purpose was to say, hey, you can make bundles of money by sitting around playing video games... but believe me, that's extremely rare, like winning the lottery...
The four or five different gamers shown (no girls, by the way) are somewhat interesting, and they're very skilled, but what this doc lacks is what made A Fistful of Quarters so great, and that's a worthy villain...
That is, an egotistical "star" who is the opposite of the humble and very affable people here, making each story feel the same, overall lacking tension in when these people compete against each other...
Plus there's too much time centered on each person, so that when former interviewees turn up again, you've almost forgotten about them...
Overall, you're not really rooting for anyone since everyone's so friendly... But it's an intriguing glimpse into a niche world.
RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop (2023)
No Stone Unturned
Wow, talk about too much of a good thing, which is still a good thing centering on a great movie, but having four parts in what would have fit in two or three is one of several slight problems...
But it's a very unique documentary series in that almost every single second and moment of ROBOCOP is not only shown but explained by almost every single actor... from big parts to small to extremely small...
So it's basically fan-service on steroids and a really fun time going back to the 1980's where, despite some of the usual Hollywood Reagan-bashing, is when... as we learn throughout... special-effects workers had to be really creative before computers did everything...
Then, one moment mentioning Peter Weller as a "pussy-hound" was surprising because, isn't that the kind of talk that gets people cancelled? Hell, they even cancel dead Hollywood stars for having had too much of a good time on the set...
But Weller seems like a cool dude... surprising how he was so original set on NOT participating here... He and Nancy Allen, and all of the thugs, really seemed to have had the times (and roles) of their lives...
Some of the manipulation of director Paul Veerhovan and the tricks done to the actors by editing conversations between what are separate interviews are a bit contrived and sometimes silly but again...
If you want to know everything you ever wanted to know about Robocop, well... this has all of that, and beyond.
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)
Apocalypse Slow
As the story goes, original director and screenwriter Richard Stanley was fired from THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, replaced by veteran John Frankenheimer who, prone to making action movies, seems confused whether it's an aggressive PLANET OF THE APES creature-uprising prequel or the quirky science-fiction that the quirky Richard Stanley probably intended...
What's really strange is that big-budget superstar Bruce Willis was going to star in THAT original art film, and is replaced with offbeat-looking indie British actor David Thewlis, seeming more like Stanley's choice over Frankenheimer, who'd have been able to do a high-octane Bruce Willis flick with his aged-eyes closed...
Well what you heard is true: THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU IS a complete mess with absolutely no flow... but there are a few stories and performances inside the noisy bedlam that stand out...
Thewlis's central character's relationship with the titular mad scientist's feline/human daughter Fairuza Balk is somewhat involving, and while there's more brimming passion than actual simmering chemistry between the two, you'll want to know how it pans out...
Meanwhile the scene-stealer is the most aggressive of the mutant hybrids in an actor who died soon after as Daniel Rigney (the film's revolutionary APES franchise Caesar surrogate), along with sneakily cerebral house-servant Temuera Morrison, have enough primal energy to headline their own feature without the human-expository-spouting first hour...
Where on-set-scoundrel Marlon Brando infamously plays Dr. Moreau who, based upon a character liken to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness Colonel Kurtz adapted into APOCALYPSE NOW, actually performs with an awkward, nebbish overbite and bookworm spectacles like in John G. Avildsen's forgotten thriller THE FORMULA...
Also like APOCALYPSE is Val Kilmer (the biggest pain to both the original and replacement director) basically playing Dennis Hopper's hippie sidekick but with none of the offbeat humor/spontaneous charm that Kilmer began his career with in REAL GENIUS or TOP SECRET... instead he seems as bored in the role as he was on the set...
And so does the usually-intriguing Brando (looking like POWDER after an eating binge), listlessly going through the motions while poor David Thewlis, as hard as he tires in the stranger-in-a-strange-land-role, seems lost in an entirely different picture while those beasts rule the second half in both plot and passion that Richard Stanley probably intended in his dreams of bridging low-budget b-genre and mainstream sci-fi, but, without the right catapult... and like those creatures... DR. MOREAU is a disastrous creation seeking both logic and reason.
Slaughter (1972)
Blaxploitation With Everything
By the time Rip Torn as a main mobster's main hit-man kills that very boss who hired him to kill Jim Brown's titular black tough guy SLAUGHTER... seeking revenge for his father's mob-ruled death... the 1972 anything-goes/gun-blasting extravaganza is only halfway through...
And has already featured some incredible actors including Cameron Mitchell and sidekick's sidekick Don Gordon, right at home in a b-movie that passes for mainstream... almost something from a Bond franchise as Brown, wearing a dapper tuxedo, walks coolly into the antagonist's crooked casino, winning money and even landing a sexy moll, who at least three of the unapologetically racist mafiosos are after...
In that, Stella Stevens has one of her most memorable and controversial roles since, at that time, a black leading man hasn't had on-screen sex with a white woman: not only making some real-life audiences angry, but is what Torn's all torn-up about, desperately taking-over a Mexico-set mafia den that cannot take Jim Brown down...
In a Jack Starrett directed revenge-flick (including groovy fish-eyed-lens slow-mo death sequences) that could be the greatest blaxploitation flick ever... or at least the coolest, tightest, and most convincing.