I've been in the process of moving, so I've been without internet for the last few days, with only occasional times where I've hijacked my parent's computer for a short time.
Hopefully it'll all be connected by the end of the week, but I may get out a review or two in the meantime.
Stay tuned.
This 1960 film, staring no one of consequence and barely directed by anyone, is a highly amusing, and painfully horrible B-film.
Scientists on a Caribbean island are testing underwater bombs – for some reason I suppose. Well, not too long after this they discover a “frozen” Dinosaur, and soon later some goons find a caveman frozen as well. Wonderful.
I have a feeling that Evan Stone channeled this caveman in the bad late night HBO movie – Bikini Cavegirl. Again like most of my reviews, I digress. You’d think this was a rip-off of films like “The Valley of the Gwangi” or “One Million Years B.C.”, but this film preceeds both of them by many years.
The film does star one of the most annoying rapscallions ever to grace the screen, and yes that’s even including Dr. Jones’ buddy Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Also stars is a Dom DeLuise/Paul Prudhomme/”later years” Orson Welles lookalike who basically runs the town – almost like a crime boss, but apparently he isn’t one. I wouldn’t have thought otherwise with his somewhat iron grip over the town and his constant mistreatment of women and children.
Watch with friends.
Movie quality *½/*****
Watchability: ***½/*****
1949
Staring: Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee, Orson Welles.
Directed By: Carol Reed.
The Third Man is one of the best, and most classic of all film noir films ever made.
Of course you always get the people out of the woodwork hating on films such as this or Citizen Kane for no legitimate reason, but that’s okay, they’re morons. In my usual attempt for some inspiration, I perused the IMDb’s user comments – looking at bad reviews, the most absurd ones at that, which generally give me the best fodder for writing why the film is actually good. The internet is a wonderful place, but it sure does bring some odd ones out of the wood work, like the man who’s only 10 star review was “Sicko” – one wonders how he navigated off of the HuffingtonPost or DailyKos and had enough time to watch anything but second rate commentaries by “Countdown to no Ratings”'s very own Keith Olbermann on Youtube. But I digress… Now something has to be said about being a critic, we have to deal with the Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter’s almost weekly negative reviews so I’m used to it, but he’s paid to do these sort of things, bloggers, and even lower still – internet movie site reviewers shouldn’t be pretentious jerks about film.
Now on to the review.
Sometimes the best film situations come from coincidences.
Holly Martins, an American dime novelist, has arrived in post WW2 Vienna based on the word of his old friend Harry Lime – who has guaranteed him work. Holly quickly learns that there has been a terrible accident and that Lime has been killed in a road accident. In a sequence of fortunate events Holly has found a way to stick around the town a few days to wrap up the Lime’s affairs and figure out what he was up to – and what job he potentially had coming to him.
His detective side of his personality starts to take over as he starts to realize that not a lot of what he’s found out about the death of his friend adds up. There are conflicting accounts of the people who saw the death. Some claim there were only two people at the death – and a few others claim Three men were there. Those people don’t last long on this plane of existence to continue their tales of the mysterious third man.
His deceased friend, Lime, was mixed up in some illegal racketeering schemes and black market business, and it seems that someone is trying to pull Holly off the tracks of investigating this any further.
The setup is fantastic, and while the first half hour is a little slow, the film is like the snowflake which starts the avalanche. The climax of the film is one of the more gripping sequences in film history. The film made it on the original AFI “100 Years... 100 Movies” listing coming in at 57, but was dropped for the 10th anniversary. What were they thinking?
*****/*****
2003
Staring: Robert Englund, Ken Kirzinger, Monica Keena, Jason Ritter, Kelly Rowland, Chris Marquette
Freddy Krueger has long since been forgotten by the kids of Springwood. The children who do are locked away in the mental institution. To instill fear into the children once again, Freddy resurrects Jason Voorhees to make the residents think that Freddy had done it. The children begin to pick up on the Freddy legends, and all hell is opened for the teenagers of Springwood. But is Freddy happy with Jason's deeds?
I was never a huge fan of the Friday the 13th films. There’s good for a laugh (and probably some devised drinking game) but that’s about it. The series falls apart after two movies and barely picks itself back up in parts 4 and 5. After that point it is nearly unwatchable.
Unlike those b-movie horror sequels made in the 80s, this film has atmosphere and more than just two lighting features like most of the films had (bright and dark). They’re surprisingly faithful to both series – of course ignoring many aspects of both the 2nd and 7th Freddy films – and rightly so too.
Say what you will, but this film brought the series back to where it should be. Overall it was violent, dark, had production values that weren't second rate, and had a story that (for the most part) made sense. It was actually rated-R, in a time where Hollywood big-wigs believe that films should have a PG-13 rating so that the first week’s opening will make big bucks, only to have the audience find that the film isn’t really that good because it’s heavily edited for gore and/or language.
***/*****
1994
Staring: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Wes Craven, John Saxon, Miko Hughes.
Directed by: Wes Craven.
"New Nightmare" is decent, but it's completely set apart from universe created (and destroyed by Freddy’s Dead). So after Freddy’s Dead they needed to breath some real life into the genre, enough to kill it off with some dignity, something entirely lacking in the brain dead “Dead.” Enter Wes (yet again) to pick up the pieces left from the film preceding it (he did so for “Dream Warriors”).
It’s not a sequel. It’s actually quite interesting with the film taking place in the “real” world. Unlike many of the previous films in the series, the tension builds up – which is a honest relief, and a nice change from the other “horror” films that have come out lately.
I’ll leave this one short, because honestly I can’t think of too many bad things to say about this film or too many good things. It just is.
***/*****
1991
Staring: Robert Englund, Lisa Zane, Shon Greenblatt, Breckin Meyer, Yaphet Kotto.
Directed by: Rachel Talalay.
For all intents and purposes "Freddy's Revenge" is the "Halloween 3" of the series. You’d think that things could not get worse than the second Freddy film, well it takes a certain kind of film and this is it.
The plot takes a drastic turn (for the worst) in this installment delving into previously unheard of back-history of Freddy. The plot revolves around who Freddy’s long lost (and previous to this) unheard of child. How could the “bastard son of 100 maniacs” have had such a stable life as to actually settle down and have a family, let alone a kid you ask? Beats me. What is also interesting is that if his illness (and fondness of killing) is heredity, why his child isn’t prone to the same urges he was. But that's bad horror films for ya.
So a bunch of teens are traveling to Springwood, and apparently by this point the entire population of teens and children have been wiped out. How this has happened in just 10 or so years without anyone outside of the town really raising an eyebrow is a little beyond me, but I digress. What they discover is a town molded after a two-bit version of Twin Peaks – with cameos from Roseanne and Tom Arnold to boot. I’m guessing it was all the rage in 1991.
Then there’s the deaths. Not to be outdone by worse deaths, this film has the least horrifying and quite possibly the worst deaths in the entire series. They’re played up as a complete parody of previous films, something which really bugs me because Freddy at one point had been horrifying – something he was by the time everything was fixed again in New Nightmare.
Personally I think the worst decision was giving the film to Rachel Talalay. This is not because she’s a woman, but because she made horrible creative choices. One only needs to watch behind the scene specials where she discusses the creative changes of the storyline from this film and the last three films (which were directly linked to the first film). They changed the entire setting of the film – and dropped a perfectly fine story arc – while Alice’s story was pretty much over – by completely blindsiding the storyline it only makes this entry weaker. The issues that came up in the previous installment – many complained about how there were few deaths – were not fixed because it was more like a Tex Avery cartoon when Freddy was doing the killing.
A lot of this is compounded by the poor ending with the two color 3-D sequence at the end of the film (DVD comes with the glasses so you can see it in all it's terrible glory).
Half star /*****
1989
Staring: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Erika Anderson.
Director: Stephen Hopkins.
Alice, staring Wilcox again (sporting a different hair color) begins to have dreams of Krueger once again. Freddy's plan this time is less about indiscriminately killing off the youth of Springwood, as his intentions are directed more at Alice's unborn child. Can she stop Freddy before he takes more lives and even her son's soul?
I’m actually shocked they didn’t recast her since they seemed to have the habit of doing so in some of the previous films (or the actor/actress “moved on” and didn’t want to get shoehorned into the genre).
This film is surreal. It's not good, but I have to admit that the sequence in Freddy's mind is fantastic (note, this isn't the 3D one, but the one styled like an Escher painting. It also has very few deaths (though some are pretty decent). It was the last entry into the Nancy/Kristen/Alice storyline before they royally screwed it all up with Freddy’s Dead.
Verdict: **/*****
1988
Staring: Lisa Wilcox, Tuesday Knight, Robert Englund, Ken Sagoes, Rodney Eastman
Director: Renny Harlin (yeah… him).
The film picks up after the 3rd left off, with Kristen (now played by Tuesday Knight) attending high school with the other kids from "Dream Warriors" in toe. Soon, they discover that their apparent win over Freddy was very short lived. Which is funny because that’s pretty much what the rest of their lives will be, short lived, if they can’t figure out a way to stop him.
Alice (Lisa Wilcox), a friend, gains the same kind of powers that Kristen has in the hope that she can finally put an end to Freddy's killings. How long can any of them survive before the end?
Okay, the series shows its cracks well in this film. I actually enjoyed it (even without Arquette), even with it directed by Holllywood’s go to guy for a cheap buck, Renny Harlin. Overall the film is lacking from the two good films that fall prior to this, but is vastly superior to the films that come after (save Freddy vs Jason). Most of the deaths remain cruel, and are still walk the fine line between “funny” and horrifying.
Verdict: ** ½ /*****
1987
Staring: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Patricia Arquette, John Saxon, Craig Wasson
Director: Chuck Russell
So the problems that happened in the second film caused the production crew to go back to the drawing board on how to do one of these films. Thank goodness because it led to the return of Wes Craven to clean up the mess.
Nancy (Langenkamp) returns, in this entry of the series set at an institution, where teens (which include Patricia Arquette as Kristen) are trying to get help from their nightmares. Little do they know that Freddy is at it again. Kristen apparently has the power to "pull" people into her dreams. Can they stop Freddy in time? Laurence Fishburne also stars.
There were some things that really bugged me about this film, but for the most part, it was handled pretty decently, especially for a third entry into a series that eventually spans 8 films.
Frankly it would have been better if they had droped the “3” in the title and just pretended the second film didn’t even come out.
This film was the start of the "funny" Freddy, but thankfully it wasn't overplayed in this film. The same can not be said about the sequels. You can't help but laugh when he says "Welcome to prime time, bitch" as he smashes a poor teenager's head into a TV set.
*** ½ /*****
1985.
Staring: Robert Englund, Mark Patton.
Director: Jack Sholder.
Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge, is exactly the kind of sequel you don’t want to have in a film series. Not even at the level of a black sheep, this shows exactly how far a premise can stray after just after one film.
Taking place 5 years after the events of the first film, this film features no returning cast members beyond Englund. Freddy’s back and wants revenge. This time he’s going to take it out by possessing the body of Jesse (Mark Patton).
The potential for this film is slashed after the opening sequence. Poorly directed, edited, and acted, with mediocre bland 80s set design and all around poor atmosphere make this film a travesty to almost all the senses.
Frankly one of the most perplexing scenes in the film is when Jesse “sleep walks” down to a gay bar and comes across his school gym teacher – who just happens to be decked out in leather. After confronting Jesse he decides to take him back to the school and teach him a lesson for staying out so late – only to end up being spanked to death with a towel. Wonderful.
You’re better off forgetting this film and pretending “The Dream Warriors” is the direct sequel to the original – which in all respects it is.
*/*****
1984
Staring: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, John Saxon, Johnny Depp.
Director: Wes Craven
It has been a little bit since I wrote a review – I’ve been busy and have not had a lot of free time lately to do one. I also went down to Norfolk to see my old apartment one last time before my old roommates move out of it. I’ll miss the place for the most part as I’ve had many memories – some pleasant (my good friend Jonathan yelling out the window spouting Maury-esque lines to bypassers at 3am) and some not so pleasant.
So I bring to you the very first film in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Nancy (Langenkamp) is having an absolutely terrible time trying to sleep. She’s constantly having the same terrible dreams, all involving a man who is scarred with a glove that is made up of razor-sharp knives. The most peculiar part of it all is that all her friends keep having the same dreams as well. Woops, you're all screwed kids!
The film is surprisingly well made, especially for the time-period that was attempting to make films “bigger” than they actually were – without the help of CGI. I don’t mean “bigger” in the sense of “Epic” which is entirely plausible and easy to achieve (insofar as long as you have the budget, space, and ability to cast enough people). There are a few instances of “cheese” but come on –80s horror film here.
Again, for a cast of a Horror film – of which, lets be honest, don’t normally have the “best” script to act from – do a fantastic job.
Because of this film, the Freddy Krueger character becomes a massive hit, spawning many sequels and even his own TV show on MTV (so much for Music Television, huh?).
This is, obviously, the best film in this horror series. Original, serious (for the most part) and doesn't devolve into parody (at least not poor parody – that’s all reserved for that trash heap called “Freddy’s Dead”). It's chilling, the music is fantastic, and all around is one horror film that everyone (even non-horror fans) should see, especially one of the most memorable finales in a horror film.
Hey, plus you get to see a young Jack Sparrow.
****/*****
1988
It's not unlike ancient dental equipment on Earth - not that you'd know anything about that!
