As beloved as anthologies are by genre fans, they rarely do well commercially (the latest example of that being Trick R' Treat, which didn't even make it to theaters). Personally, I don't get it. I love the idea of seeing a film with multiple stories. The great thing about anthologies is that with three to five stories to get to in just two hours or so, none of the stories can overstay their welcome. Math is on their side.
An anthology that deserved a much better reception than it got was Tales from the Hood. Putting an 'urban' spin on the Amicus anthology format, Tales from the Hood was clearly made by people who knew their stuff. It's not an exercise in nostalgia but yet for fans, there was plenty of shout-outs to the anthology classics of the past. Plus, with Clarence Williams III as the loquacious funeral director Mr. Simms, director Rusty Cundieff and co. got a perfect actor to act as the host for these stories. His performace alone is enough to make the movie memorable.
Sadly, there just wasn't an audience for it. Too bad, as I'd like to think that the team behind this movie had some more Tales to tell.
I still remember being taken back by the first shot of The Crow, as the camera glides over an inner city hellhole. I don't know exactly what I had expected from the look of the movie, but I knew that I didn't expect anything so stunning - not from a modestly-budgeted adaptation of a little-known comic. Thanks to the internet, it's so hard to be surprised by movies these days but in '94, it was pretty easy - even for a hardcore movie junkie - and from the get-go, The Crow definitely surprised me.
Nowadays, it's common - even mandatory - for filmmakers to "get" comic books. Many still don't - as Jonah Hex proves - but on the whole, Hollywood is more comic-literate now than at any time previously. But in the early '90s, studios and directors were still figuring out how to translate comics to the screen. Unlike, say, the directors of Spawn, Steel, or Judge Dredd, Crow helmer Alex Proyas had a natural affinity for the material he was adapting (by all accounts, star Brandon Lee shared the same affinity) and that made The Crow a true eye-opener.
The day the story broke that Lee had died, I kept hoping the news would turn out to be a hoax. It just seemed too sad to be true. Watching Lee's heartfelt, would've-been-star making performance in The Crow all these years later, it still does.
To read my full Summer Shocks review of The Crow, click here.
Horror Dads were once Horror Kids and our experiences growing up with parents who sometimes indulged, but didn't always understand, our strange interests is the subject of the third and final Horror Dads roundtable.
I hope these discussions have been as fun to read as they have been to participate in. If you've been enjoying these, the good news is that more roundtables will be coming up, focusing on specific films!
To read the concluding installment of Horror Dads, click here.
I'll keep this short: The Expendables is fucking awesome. My expectations were met and exceeded. If you're any kind of action fan, a Stallone fan, or a fan of things that don't suck, I bet you'll enjoy this. If you count yourself as belonging to any of the aforementioned categories and this movie doesn't ring your bell, you're lying to yourself about the kinds of movies you like. Stallone and co. totally bring it and there should be no argument about that. The Expendables has all the action you'd want and there's genuine heart to it as well.
The "heart" part is what might confuse some people. You know, Stallone isn't just in this to portray a bunch of killing machines. He doesn't skimp on that end of it, no, but he's also out to give these characters - his character and Mickey Rourke's, in particular - a bit of soul-searching to do. Personally, I'd be disappointed if he hadn't. A younger crowd might get fussy towards scenes where some sincere talk takes place among these battered and bruised legends but that's their hang-up. Stallone knows what he's doing, he knows what needs to be in this movie and sure enough, it's all there.
I wouldn't call this movie retro, I'd call it old-fashioned. Retro, to me, implies camp; a movie that is out to wink at the audience. When I think "old-fashioned," on the other hand, I think of a film that subscribes to the values and tastes of an earlier era without any concern towards fads. The Expendables isn't trying to be old-school, it is old-school. Not so much in how it's shot or edited but in the storyline and the interactions of the characters. There's no pop culture references, no snark, no undermining of the skill-sets of these guys. A lot of modern action movies feel like they have to put macho heroes in their place but this one puts them on a pedestal.
I won't go into any details about my favorite scenes as I really think people owe it to themselves to go in to this with as little spoiled as possible (although the fact is I could tell you about my ten favorite kills and I still wouldn't even be scratching the surface). As terrific as the movie is, I don't know if The Expendables will lead to a revival of this kind of action picture. The sad fact is, even if the public decided they wanted more - as much as Hollywood could give them - there's just not enough filmmakers working today who know how to do these kinds of movies right.
Before I say a few things about my Summer Shocks selection for 1993, let me just say how crushing it's been to discover how badly Jurassic Park has dated. I don't know - maybe I'm the last one to find this out, maybe everyone else has known that Jurassic Park sucks for awhile. If so, bear with me.
I was all set to go with Jurassic as my pick for '93. I saw the movie several times in the theater and still have fond memories of seeing terrified kids haul ass out to the lobby during the first T-Rex attack. It was the most notable movie event of that summer, the movie that single-handedly ended the era of stop-motion animation.
Watching Jurassic Park now, though, is a painful experience. The effects are still astonishing but the characters are just dead weight (even good actors like Sam Neil, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Jackson can't do much with their parts), any screen time spent on the kids is torture, and talk about a drawn-out set-up! I knew that it took awhile to get to the T-Rex attack but it's over an hour (!) and every minute drags by getting there. By the time the T-Rex finally shows up to party I had fucking had it with the movie and everyone in it. On the upside, I watched Jurassic Park III afterwards and still really dug it as a solid B-movie. But that superior sequel was from 2001 and this is the summer of '93 we're talking about, which brings us to Jason Goes To Hell.
There's not a lot of support out there for this movie and I get that. I think the fact that the series went on to ignore this entry altogether makes it easier to appreciate on its own terms as a one-shot deal but yet I do agree that writer/director Adam Marcus and co-writer Dean Lorey should have put down whatever they were smoking, checked their egos, and made a real Friday the 13th movie. If only Sean Cunningham had brought back director Joe Zito for Jason Goes To Hell, I bet Zito would've delivered something tight. And it's a guarantee that no metaphysical, mystical nonsense would've made its way into the film.
Shit, back in the day there'd be no way that Marcus would've been allowed to film a single page of his screenplay. According to interviews in Peter M. Bracke's book Crystal Lake Memories, when Zito did The Final Chapter and Tom Savini came up with the idea of having Tommy Jarvis kill Jason with a handmade microwave contraption, the money guys back then said no way, that it was too "sci-fi" for the Friday the 13th universe. Machetes - now that was what Friday the 13th was all about. Those guys who called the shots on all the sequels through A New Beginning would've taken one look at the Jason Goes To Hell screenplay and thrown it out the window.
That said, and putting aside the fact that everyone involved in this film needed to have some sense shaken into them, there's some fun to be had with Jason Goes To Hell. I'm sure that Sean Cunningham regrets letting Marcus and Lorey run with the ball but it is what it is. For my full review, click here.
In the slasher films of the early '90s, it wasn't about invincible boogeymen anymore. No more heavy-breathing dudes in ski-masks stalking slumber parties. Now it was about the outwardly normal people who worked with you, who took care of your kids, who you were dating, who were your neighbors or tenants. Or, as in the case of 1992's Single White Female, who could be your newest roommate.
These movies weren't as down and dirty as the early '80s slashers had been but yet they were more serious about scares than most of what passed for horror at the time. You know, if you wanted a good seat-jumper, you were better off with something like The Hand That Rocks The Cradle than Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice.
Like most cinematic trends, this one ran its course in about five years - falling out of favor just in time for Scream (1996) to re-invent the slasher genre again. But while it lasted, it was great fun. When Obsessed came out last year, I got all excited thinking that the "blank from Hell" genre was making a comeback. That was the movie where Ali Larter plays a temp worker who sets her sights on her handsome, well-to-do boss and gets violent when her planned seduction of this married man (and new father) hits some road bumps. It looked great and it looked like it could've came out in '92, smack at the height of the yuppie slasher trend. In the end, though, it was just so-so. It was adequate but it just didn't have the flair that the psycho flicks of the early '90s had. They really knew how to do crazy right back then.
To read my full Single White Female review, click here.
The summer of '91 was especially barren for fear fare but on the upside, that only made the, ah, limber medical chiller Body Parts all the more memorable. It's probably hard for younger fans to imagine a time when there wasn't a glut of horror movies to enjoy but that was the way it was back then. I mean, this summer is a little light but at least there's been Splice, Predators, Survival of the Dead and [REC] 2 (the later two in limited release and VOD) and The Last Exorcism and Piranha 3-D are on the way.
In comparison, the summer of '91 had Body Parts, Child's Play 3, and Dead Again (and calling that horror is really stretching it). So with so little to see, you had to appreciate what was out there.
With Body Parts, that wasn't so tough as I liked it from the get-go. It's flawed, yes, but the cast is terrific, the premise is classic, and writer/director Eric Red knows the genre well enough to be able to surprise even seasoned viewers once or twice. It'll never be a classic but it's still a keeper. I also fondly remember it because a friend of mine at the time inexplicably insisted on pronouncing Fahey's name with four syllables. Whenever I see Body Parts, I always hear my long ago pal's voice saying "Fa-ha-hey-ey" in my head. Good times!
As beloved as anthologies are by genre fans, they rarely do well commercially (the latest example of that being Trick R' Treat, which didn't even make it to theaters). Personally, I don't get it. I love the idea of seeing a film with multiple stories. The great thing about anthologies is that with three to five stories to get to in just two hours or so, none of the stories can overstay their welcome. Math is on their side.
