Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

There's really only so much you can do with a shark killing people as the plot of your movie, and really, the first Jaws film did all of it. Eventually, after so many sequels, you just start wondering why people don't just get the fuck out of the water and go home.

Director: Joseph Sargent

Starring: Lorraine Gary, Michael Caine

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This was the fourth Jaws movie, limply dragging its half-dead, Alzheimer's-ridden, gout-befallen, wrinkled corpse across a field full of younger and spryer films. But before I talk about this nonsense, what did I think of the other movies?

Jaws is a classic. It hits all the right boxes from the character development to the way the story is structured, and the tale of three arguing men who are stuck in a tiny box at sea making friends before two of them are brutally murdered by a shark, is a good one. While the effect may be a bit dulled because the movie is so iconic now, that shouldn't take away from the clear talent and merit in this film.

Jaws 2 is kind of like the runty not-as-smart little brother of the first one. There are a few kinda nice scenes here and there, but it seriously drags. Also, the whole plot is just redundant as hell. The same people who saw the shark wreak havoc in the first movie seemingly all got amnesia and now are skeptical that it could happen again. It's about as believable as the worst conspiracy theories you ever heard.

Jaws 3 is an asinine film that comes off like a fourth-rate Friday the 13th film with a shark instead of the usual slasher. The setting in the Sea World amusement park is hilariously awful corporate cock-sucking on a level that would be ridiculed even now. It's like if they made a Halloween sequel where Michael went and killed people in a Walmart. Is the fantasy here that having people killed in a movie at your park would somehow draw better publicity? Not sure that's how it works, bucko.

And that brings us to this one, which is pretty funny after the previous 12 years of mishaps that someone really thought they could pull this off. Did anyone seriously look at this script and go 'yeah, sounds awesome'? I just don't know.

The movie begins with shots of a town at Christmastime, the perfect setting for a shark attack movie, where the Brody family still lives. If you're thinking you're gonna see Roy Scheider again – well, sorry, that doesn't happen. But at least we get the rest of the family! Wait, where are you going? Why are you running away?!?

And don't get me wrong – Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody is a talented actress, and the others in the movie are fine too. But it's just not very interesting to watch them because the other Brodys were never the real focus of Jaws. Roy Scheider's Sheriff Brody was a cool character to watch because of, and solely because of, his hunt for the shark. We don't really need to see the continuing history of the Brody family after that.

So the plot begins when the younger Brody son is eaten by a shark while out on the water doing his job as a cop. Obviously, the family is crushed by this. Hell, when the other son gets there, you can see how distressed Ellen is because she's standing with her back to them outside, facing the water in an extremely cliché way. That's some real grief there. So real, you guys.

"It started raining hailstones the size of trucks, but we still didn't bring her in. She has been out there for days."

Shouldn't you be used to this by now? Geez. Get over it!

Later on, she tells the family at dinner some very troubling things that make me think she's ready to go to a nursing home. Number one is that the family should stay away from the water from now on. Well, no shit. I think we should go a step further – the whole town needs to move. I mean holy shit; three movies of sharks attacking and terrorizing them, and they still live here in this fucking town. Not to presume anything about peoples' motives, but there's got to be some kind of point where you go “okay, time to move before I get eaten by a shark.” The level of willful denial involved here is more than most serial killers need to convince themselves they're doing God's work.

The other one, which defines the film, is when she asserts very clearly that she thinks the shark is “hunting” her family for revenge. Her familiy specifically. Yeah, I remember the day in marine biology class when I learned that sharks had a capacity to want to enact revenge on people. That's just how life is – some days you're doing fine and other days, a shark wants to kill you for killing its family members. That's called the Shark Mafia, and they are ruthless motherfuckers.

She also says her husband – Sheriff Brody from the first one – died of fear of the shark. I love the delivery the actor playing the son goes with to say “Ma, he died of a heart attack!” But really, the main thing about this scene is the “fear” that killed the courageous main character of the first Jaws. I guess after two movies fighting that thing, the PTSD caught up with him. Maybe it was constipated PTSD and just took a while to come out.

But seriously – I do get what the movie was going for. They were trying to have some kind of character development here. But that's a bit difficult when Roy Scheider wasn't in the movie. Like talking about someone who left a party an hour ago, trying to convince everyone else they were cool.

The movie just kind of rambles on after that. I guess they go to the Bahamas so Ellen can heal, or something, and that's where she meets Michael Caine, the only British man in the Bahamas.

"I've been on Quaaludes ever since filming started!" 

She also continues to espouse her rational belief that one shark is out for revenge against the family by telling her granddaughter not to play on a rope, because the family needs to indulge her rampant paranoia and likely senility. The other kids around the rope are thankful for it, anyway – they're just glad that crazy white girl isn't playing with their rope anymore. Paranoid Grandma was good for that much anyway.

A lot of the rest is just Ellen and Michael Caine hangin' out. The two share a couple of nice scenes together, and the acting is fine, but again – why should I care? They're not really that good characters, and in a Jaws sequel, this isn't something I want to see. This isn't some Lifetime movie about two elderly people bonding, it's a fucking Jaws movie. Like yes...I totally needed a scene of these characters hanging out at a casino. That's what I think of when I think of Jaws.

"I'm gonna need more than this to get through the movie!"

Michael Caine also has several scenes flying a small plane, which he lets the daughter sit in his lap and pretend fly it while he does ridiculous dive bombs and stunts like a daredevil. It would have been funny if Caine's ridiculous plane stunts ended up crashing the plane. After all, any movie with a killer shark just needs more damage being done. I live for this bloodthirsty, indiscriminate carnage. What will kill the Brody family? A mad Englishman in a plane or a shark? The suspense is just killing me.

"Heh heh heh...I haven't been sober since 1963, and somehow I'm allowed to fly planes!"

Maybe if Michael Caine was the shark, in disguise, then it would be funny. But unfortunately they didn't have the budget to buy a Michael Caine suit for the shark to dress up in, so they had to nix that.

There are also scenes of Brody's son and his wife having arguments about money and how she doesn't want him to work out on the water doing science stuff anymore. Then they have sex in a tool shed in broad daylight right in front of the windows. Awesome. That scene was totally worth filming.

Does she burn his balls with that blowtorch?

After some more boring scenes in which Brody's son gets trapped underwater with the shark and somehow survives without a scratch because these movies are allergic to having any real tension, we get the climax. First there's the award Brody's wife gets on the beach for the sculpture she did. The shark wants to join in on the festivities too, and so it shows up like a big lunkhead and tries to join in by eating someone who has no connection to the Brodys.

This = THE SHARK IS COMING FOR US FOR REVENGE SPECIFICALLY! RUN!!!

Ellen of course sees this as a clear sign that the shark IS out to get the Brody family, and so she plays Captain Ahab and goes out alone on a boat to kill the shark. She has zero experience hunting sharks, but so what? Who needs any experience doing something that dangerous?

One wealthy, weak white lady against a man-eating shark on a mission...wait, no, it still doesn't sound like a good movie when you put it that way.

Her son finds out and teams up with a co-worker of his and Michael Caine, who was just coincidentally sort of hanging out nearby in a boat, where I'm sure he was doing copious amounts of quality British cocaine. He takes them up in his plane, and they go and find Ellen to fight the shark. It's a woefully long and boring fight scene with the shark just flailing around like a blow-up pool toy and the main characters scream like they're being castrated to make up for the lack of drama the shark brings.

The only real funny part is when the co-worker guy, who has been completely annoying for the entire film, gets eaten by the shark but later is revealed to have survived.

Eh, he's okay...no, really.

What, really? Either that guy was so asinine of a person that the shark just coughed him up whole immediately, or the shark really is just a pool toy and had no actual teeth or digestive system.

Aw, look, it's actually kinda cute.

Also, we get a bunch of scenes of Ellen Brody "remembering" all these moments lifted from the earlier films, which are shown in sepia tone, like the past always was in. Man, that's some prime-grade nostalgia for you! Movies may have colors that persuade you otherwise, but make no mistake - up until the late 1990s, the entire world was just in a permanent sepia-tone filter. Ask your parents. They might act coy and try to deny it out of respect for your fragile frame of mind, but it's true and they won't be able to deny it for long.

Fuck that, even memories from any time you weren't there were sepia toned! This movie really gets it. Also it's not weird at all that she remembers stuff that she never saw. Nope. Not at all!

This movie isn't fit to be shark food for even the lamest sharks. Its story is ridiculous from the start and the characters just aren't very interesting. The effects are bad and there are no good scares or thrills. I never got the impression anyone was terribly inspired to be making this. It strikes me mostly as a movie made just to churn out another sequel, because hey, they made three other ones, so how bad of a risk can it be? All I can say is – I'm glad we don't just get stuck with shitty summer movies like this one anymore.

Luckily, all hope is not lost, though – because Michelle and I saw a theatrical performance of an original script kinda based around Jaws. It was called Jaws: The Movie: The Musical, and it played at the Orlando Fringe Festival here in Florida. The story was about a bunch of playwriters trying to put together an idea for a musical really quick. Bereft of good ideas, they take the easy way out and make a musical about Jaws. So it's a play about a musical being made about a movie based on a book. If that isn't meta enough for you...I'll eat this review.

The whole thing was a lot of fun and very tongue in cheek. The humor was of the bawdy sort that makes most people laugh big and loud on hot summer afternoons after long work-weeks – lots of simple but effective jokes about sex and work and other such things. The actors were full of personality, and the story moved along with a bouncy verve and style that was addictive to watch. The whole thing only lasted about an hour, and I could have watched even more.

I guess it wasn't very much about Jaws itself – though there was a very entertaining musical number where one cast member played a sharks' rights advocate who was protesting the musical being made. The play was mostly just about show business in general, and the folly of hack writers and producers putting out garbage for money – one of its main motifs is “it doesn't have to be good!” as sung by the bigwig producer character. Beneath the more sophomoric humor, there was some pretty good satire going on of the mindsets of those who just churn out mediocre sequels and adaptations just to have them out, just to get money coming in.

Y'know. Like Jaws: The Revenge.

Not sure how you can actually track this down, as it was an original production just at the Fringe Festival here. But you can certainly go support your local theater in putting out cool stuff like this. Hell, it's a thousand times better than Jaws sequels at any rate.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

REVIEW: Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare (1987)

Do you ever wish the 80s would come back? Well, this will probably make you reconsider.

Director: John Fasano

Starring: John Mikl-Thor VS THE DEVIL!!!

IMDb

Yes, Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare, the best movie ever to feature John Mikl Thor, the Canadian rock/metal performer who got almost no exposure but has kept on releasing material anyway in the underground, refusing to buckle to trends. Or, apparently, to indecent exposure laws. The film is filled with music that’s about what you’d expect from looking at this thing’s cover. That’s right, it’s gangster rap with techno elements.

We start off our movie with a bunch of quick shots of a family in an idyllic suburban home, reenacting scenes from Troll 2. Don’t believe me? Check out the little kid’s impression of the famous “Oh my GOOOOOOOOOD!” scene:

Props for the flaming, melted skeleton popping out of the oven though. I didn’t expect that at all. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t clean your oven for too long. You just miss things.

It's like if you skinned a Gremlin alive and then stuck it in an oven...what kind of monster could be so cruel?

Then after that we get the true identity of the killer; the tracking shot from the beginning of Halloween:

Of course, it was Michael Myers all along! I never thought John Mikl Thor would go so low as to steal the whole killer from a separate film though. And also, I have to say this whole ‘show some tracking shot footage and then cut to black for a title credit every few seconds’ thing is a bit stupid. It’s kind of like watching a film editor have a seizure while trying to do his job.

And finally we get our title screen, which of course will showcase the brilliant name of this movie for all to---

What? The Edge of Hell? What the hell is that? Pfft. Well, my trust in this movie has gone majorly down as of right now…if I can’t even trust a film to get its title right, then what the hell can I trust it to do? It’s almost like movie studios can mess with a movie or something…feh.

Next we see a bunch of people whose fashion will never go out of style.

Truly they are hip and attuned to the coming storm of the future.

So, apparently, these people are here to stay in this cabin and write rock songs for a week, or some shit like that. I dunno. It’s basically a ripoff of the 2010 movie Don’t Go in the Woods, and how dare this 1987 movie rip off that 2010 movie! The gall of some people. The characters are all kind of interchangeable. The women all sport haircuts that would be better suited to characters in blacksploitation films and wear color-coded dresses – you still won’t be able to tell them apart though.

The guys pretty much just talk about sex a lot. One of them has a fake sounding Australian accent and he literally just sounds like a character off of Sesame Street. Not to mention the acting is about as credible as emails from Nigerian princesses asking you for thousands of dollars so she can win a beauty pageant or something. I mean really, I expect professional acting quality from a movie like this. How long did it take to make? IMDb says seven days. Seven days is more than long enough time to hire good actors, Thor!

Ahem…I’m sorry; I seem to have been taken over by the vengeful spirit of a modern Internet-age nitpicker with a stick up his ass. Excuse that.

I also love how one of the couples on this trip is on their fucking honeymoon. Yes, that’s right, they used their honeymoon to come to this cabin with a bunch of smelly 80s rockers and write music. Are you shitting me? Girls, maybe I’m just not in tune here, but…wouldn’t this be the sort of thing that sends you running to divorce court? I mean, it’s just not that good of a sign for the marriage. All I can see as the future for this marriage is lots and lots of cocaine and marriage counseling. But hey, I’m not an expert.

Then we get one of the movie’s favorite things – a scene of the band playing a song while Thor wears a jacket that looks like he skinned a disco ball alive. The song is actually pretty good; I’ll be honest. I hope they don’t remake this movie in the 2010s. Then it would just have a bunch of Myspace-era alt rock trying to rip off Neutral Milk Hotel or At the Drive In as the soundtrack.

Be honest, you wish your band could look this awesome while playing.

So while you’re busy wondering how a band practice jam turned into basically a music video for one of Thor’s new songs at the time, the band members decide to partake in some recreational activities. Especially this nerdy guy, who has a hot chick approach him on the roof and then denies her sex. I think this is basically a Litmus test for how straight you are.

Ew, cooties!

But it’s OK, because the woman is not actually a woman at all, but a rejected Troll 2 claymation monster!

You know the old saying…rock music gets you chicks. And horribly deformed and insane monsters.

So then we see that fake-Australian accented guy having loud, irritating sex with his girlfriend, never shutting up throughout the whole thing. Then he gets up and tells her he has to go “drain the dragon,” because yeah, that’s really a metaphor that needed to exist, right? He goes to the bathroom and then sees a hot chick waiting for him in the doorway. But then it turns out it’s just a rotting, decaying green zombie. I’ve made the same mistake lots of times.

Fuck this character anyway. He got what he deserved!

Meanwhile the couple on their honeymoon is having fun listening to everyone else have sex all around them. And by fun I mean the girl is probably regretting her decision to marry this bunghole. He even makes a joke about how they could’ve been somewhere romantic and exciting like Hawaii or the Keys! He’s admitting that this whole thing was an asinine excuse for a honeymoon! Somehow that doesn’t make it okay. It’s like an alcoholic going “Yeah, I sure do drink a lot!” Doesn’t really make it any more excusable or better.

Luckily for me, the movie has another surprise right up its sleeve – the one single girl and single guy in the group meet up when the girl comes in and says she couldn’t sleep and wants to “talk.” Heh. Yeah right. “Talk” in a movie where characters have sex more often than they exchange dialogue? Please. You’re being so obvious about a cliché porno scene set-up that even a blind person could see it bright as day – hell, in glowering neon letters even! C’mon movie. Stop jerking us around and get to it already! Just have them fuck like we know they…

Wait a minute. What’s going on?

"Aw man, I can't even get sex when a woman walks into my room wearing no pants? I must really be hopeless."

They’re really just talking and all she wants to do is sit on his bed with him and have a conversation? Huh. I did not see that coming. Good play, movie…

Next scene we get Thor and his girlfriend sleeping in what looks like a coffin together (which is never explained or even brought up, so I guess it must be the norm). Apparently the book he’s reading is really good, because every time she says something, he replies with “what was that, honey?” He doesn’t even miss a beat. She says something and then he just responds with that right after. She gets annoyed that he isn’t listening. Personally I think this is a subtle commentary on the repercussions of playing and hearing too much loud rock music. He isn’t an insensitive douche. He just has a huge hearing loss!

Also I’m not sure Thor can read, so I don’t really know what they’re playing at here.

The next day after another music video, the possessed Australian guy says in a creepy voice that he wants to take his girlfriend on a walk by the lake. The way he says it, it’s more like a child molester inviting little Timmy into his van. Eugh, who would fall for that? Apparently these girls’ huge hair is cutting off the flow of blood to their brains, because the chick just goes along with it without questioning a thing. She immediately strips her top off and, not to be outmatched, he rips himself apart from the inside out!

Well, it’s more like a demon hand thingy that comes out, but eh, who’s nitpicking? Its first move is to grab her boob. So it can’t really be that far off from the human part of him. I guess it kills her, but the movie doesn’t really go into too much explicitness about it or anything.

After that we get a scene with some fans of the band coming to the house. The nerdy guy – who is really the demon at this point, as we haven’t seen him in a while and the last we did see was him getting killed – lets them in and then demands they all take off their clothes so he can judge if they look good enough to be groupies. They’re really offended at it and end up leaving. I love how the nerdy guy just lets them go. What kind of evil villain in this guy? He just shouts at them to strip and then lets them go when they get mad? He doesn’t even try that hard! What on Earth was the point? I bet these girls didn’t want to do anything sleazy at all. They just wanted to have a sophisticated conversation on the merits of literature with the band. But alas, sexism wins again…

"What do you MEAN we get objectified when we act like groupies of a band and go to their house in the middle of the night? WE ARE RESPECTABLE FEMINISTS!"

Next scene we get two of the other morons having sex when they hear a little kid run by. I’m surprised that isn’t one of their fetishes. They assume he just let himself in off the street, because you know that happens all the time. They go and search for him, and figure out the answer to the mystery: he’s not a little boy at all. Just a character from Where the Wild Things Are.

Meanwhile, Thor and his girlfriend take a shower. I’ll give you a prize if you can tell who’s the man and who’s the woman in this picture:

Eventually, I guess it just comes down to Thor and his girlfriend, as she gets taken over by the demon too and confronts him as he’s sitting in the shed trying to write songs. We get some legitimately scary bits when the girlfriend comes downstairs and her voice starts changing into something demonic as the world fades away behind her.

That’s pretty goddamned cool, and really makes me think this could have been a much better film if they had just stopped right there and not used special effects – just have the devil be something intangible and unseen, you know?

But of course that would be antithetical to the movie’s goal of being as stupid as possible. So instead we get this, which looks like something ET shat out whilst partaking in PCP:

We also get a couple of the devil’s minions, which look like phallic symbols crafted by Jim Hanson if he was starring in The Exorcist. I seriously just don’t get some of this imagery. I mean what the fuck is THIS supposed to be?

If someone doesn’t make THAT into a meme and slap some goofy self-aware captions beneath it, I’m calling BS on the entire internet!

So I guess the story here is that the devil toots his own horn a bit, expecting Thor not to know who he is, but gets a nasty shock when Thor starts rattling off a list of the devil’s names and proves he knows the devil probably better than anyone. Even the devil himself.

An even bigger realization is that none of the other characters have really existed in the movie at all. They’ve just been part of Thor’s imagination this whole time! Apparently he was just trying to lure the devil to come to him by pretending to be in a shitty slasher horror film and thus creating characters that would fit in that world. Well, I’ll give the movie that: I didn’t expect this at all. And what is the devil’s first move? To throw rubber starfish at him of course!

I don't get it either. I guess starfish was in the movie's budget, and anything that actually looked cool or made sense was not in the movie's budget. Does the devil just command all starfish? Does Patrick from Spongebob answer to a darker master?

But it’s okay, because Thor has the magical power of transforming into a male stripper!

Seriously movie - this face...I can't even...I just...okay, I give up.

They wrestle a bit. The only thing missing from this whole thing is a crowd of adoring fans and a pole dancing sequence – then it’d be just about perfect. The devil eventually just gives up and disappears in a poof of smoke. What a whiny little coward. So I guess Thor wins and can then go back to writing music that sounds like distilled 1980s in a can. What a happy ending. And really, no one actually died in the movie, so you can rest peacefully now.

So that was Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare – aren’t you glad you know this exists now? It’s a marvel. It’s completely bat shit insane and makes no sense, but it’s a marvel. It’s so cheesy and ridiculous, but it also has a real genuine passion behind it that I really like. I can get behind the surreal atmosphere, and while a lot of the scenes drag on a bit too long, there are some very cool shots here – all the ones of the blue-tinted house at night with the wind blowing are pretty damn chilling. The characters and dialogue are all awful, but then, I guess that was on purpose, seeing as Thor reveals he just made everyone up to trick the Devil into thinking he was in a horror film. That’s…almost clever.

So yeah, I like this one. It’s stupid and half-insane, but it has a real idea behind it and goes all the way with it. I can respect that. Plus, we all know what my REAL rock ‘n’ roll nightmare is…

Eugh. Just watch Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare instead.

Pictures copyright of their original owners; I own none of them!

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Starring: Matthew Modine, Vincent O'onofrio, R. Lee Ermey

Director: Stanley Kubrick

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093058/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Metal_Jacket

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Did your parents have any children that lived?
Private Gomer Pyle: Sir, yes, sir.
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: I bet they regret that. You're so ugly you could be a modern art masterpiece! 

Well, it is Memorial Day, so it is time once again to commemorate the day by reviewing a classic war film. Granted, it is a film that shows a group of Marines as they are psychologically traumatized in boot camp before heading over to be further traumatized by an actual war, so I cannot say it is the most patriotic of films to spotlight. That being said...it is a war film and it is by Stanley Kubrick and awesome, so I am going to do it anyway!

Based on the novel "The Short-Timers" by Gustav Hasford, the movie follows a soldier nicknamed Private Joker (Matthew Modine) who in the first half of the picture attends the Parris Island boot camp, under the command of the tyrannical and profanity-laced Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey). The drill sergeant is particularly cruel toward a sub par recruit whom he names Gomer Pyle (Vincent O'onofrio). Joker nervously watches as Pyle morphs into what Hartman wants them all to be: lean, mean, killing machines. The second half shows Joker in Vietnam as he heads to the front lines and witnesses the horrors of war and the effects it has on himself and his fellow Marines.

Like "The Deer Hunter," the film is intriguing in how it follows people as they go through the different stages of the Vietnam war. The boot camp is meant to be a training ground, a safe place for soldiers to hone their skills. Instead it seems more like the first phase of the conflict as they struggle to survive their commanding officer's wrath. Ermey does an outstanding job as Hartman, the iconic character who has come to epitomize the angry military authority figures we see in many of today's movies, television shows, and commercials (remember that GEICO commercial where Ermey is a therapist? Yeah, I liked that one too...). While it is likely that Hartman gets a bit of a sadistic pleasure out of torturing his cadets (for a supposedly model citizen and Christian, he sure does have a sexual-explicit vocabulary), it does seem to serve a twisted purpose, which is wear them down until they ready to release their fury upon the enemy when they face them. It should be noted that Ermey himself is a Vietnam veteran who was also a drill instructor while serving in the Marine Corps and he improvised a lot of his now infamous lines. Must have been pretty disturbing for the other actors! Another standout is Pyle, who is overweight and is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but seems to be a nice guy. However, the camp takes a toll on him and while he becomes a much better soldier, his mental well-being worsens, resulting in a disastrous conclusion. His struggles symbolize the destruction of innocence being inflicted on Joker and the rest of the men heading off to fight. 

When the troops are finally sent off to Vietnam, things really start to go downhill for them. They are caught in the middle of the Tet Offensive, putting them in the path of danger and destroying their morality. This is made clear when witnessing the actions and personality of Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin), a courageous but dangerously unbalanced Marine who you would not want to meet in a bar...or anywhere else for that matter. Except maybe the battle field, but ONLY if he was on your side (though I have to admit, along with Hartman, he is one of my favorite characters)! He basically replaces Pyle as the movie's poster boy representing what constant exposure to combat can lead to: effectiveness, but also to a loss of humanity.

It sounds like I am not paying much attention to Joker in this review. This is mainly because, even though he narrates the story and the plot is basically about what he did during the war, he is not really the main star. In reality, it is the actual atmosphere that is the real attraction of the film. There is relatively little use of music, but when there is, it is usually a low humming sound or drum beat that indicates impending danger, giving it a very chilling quality. Okay, the "Surfin' Bird" scene was a little weird, but hey, Kubrick always had a dark sense of humor. This can clearly be shown in various instances involving prostitutes, bigotry, and frank talk about the politics of the war. Needless, to say it also has a good amount of violence and heavy moments to pass around. The movie is a real psychological event to behold. Obviously, I cannot say how accurately this portrays the mindset of a soldier during Vietnam, or any war for that matter. From an entertainment standpoint, however, it certainly succeeds.

It is a classic for a reason and if you have not seen it already, I definitely recommend it.

I do not own the rights to the image and links in this post; they are the property of their respective owners and are being used here for entertainment purposes only.

REVIEW: Hellraiser (1987)

Have you ever wondered what would happen if your dead occult-obsessed brother came back to life in the attic of your new house and needed human flesh and blood in order to sustain himself and eventually return to his old self? Me too. This is Hellraiser.

Director: Clive Barker

Starring: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093177/

"We are demons to some; angels to others."

-Pinhead 

This is one of those classic horror movies that polarizes audiences even to this day. It was made by resident cheap-ass hack director Clive Barker in the days before he was responsible for movies like Midnight Meat Train and Candyman, and while I don’t have much vitriol to espouse upon it, I’m not raving either, and even if you like this movie, there are certainly some really goofy things about it that I have to point out or else I’ll never be able to sleep right again! Well, okay, maybe not. But…just get on with it.

The movie starts out with a guy named Frank buying an ancient Rubix Cube from a man who you know is trustworthy because his fingernails are dirtier than the underbelly of a gas station bathroom sink:

PERSONAL HYGEEEEEEIIIIIINNNNNEEEEE!

Anyway, then he goes back to his house and sits in a big circle of candles:

Not even a Satanic ritual could make this movie any good. And what, did that puzzle box thing come with instructions as to what to do?

Then we get the greatest puzzle never solved by man!

Are you shocked yet?!

Then we see our actual main characters of the film, Larry and Julia, a couple of unlikable assholes moving into a house. Larry’s daughter Kirsty is also in town and although she makes a big to-do on the phone about not coming, she ends up coming over in two scenes anyway – spoilers! There’s also a couple of guys helping them move who apparently will ogle any woman who comes by, including Julie as well as Kirsty – they really have no shame, do they? They do it RIGHT IN FRONT OF LARRY.

I especially love this one line where the younger doofus says to Kirsty, “she’s got her mother’s looks,” thinking that Julia is her mother. Larry curtly responds, “Her mother is dead.”

"I was directed to be as big of a douche as I possibly could! Hur hur hur..."

Yeah, you get back to work, you stupid idiot you.

Then we see Julia going up to the attic to fantasize about the one time she had sex with Larry’s brother Frank, who was the guy from the opening. Yup, the movie’s focal character is a lady who continually fantasizes about screwing her husband’s brother – isn’t that just charming? I don’t even think it was an ongoing affair – the movie makes it seem like it was just one time that they had sex, and she just never got over it. What a sad sap.

I actually kind of think this is an interesting plot point, and a decent enough commentary on marriage, but the way they present it is just a bit awkward with it just being a one night stand she had and keeps fantasizing about constantly – maybe if they didn’t keep cutting to flashbacks of the two of them screwing every time Julia is on screen it would be a little more tasteful and realistic, but as it is, the movie just comes off as comical, which I know it wasn't going for…but enough of that; we got BLOODY HANDS to show as Larry cuts himself on a conveniently protruding nail while trying to move the mattress, and then whines about it for like a whole scene like a big wuss:

I’m not sure hands bleed THAT much, movie, not from a cut from a nail…and why did he come all the way up to the attic like that instead of just running to the sink to clean the cut out? And why didn’t those two other morons help him with it? Was that just not in their contract? Are they only obligated to help women they can sexually coerce later?

Also now we see that the floors are able to soak up blood; how convenient! And in return they spit out a bloody skeleton of Larry’s dead brother Frank, who looks like an anorexic Freddy Krueger.

This whole bulimia thing is really getting out of hand...

So then we see a dinner scene in which Julia’s thoughts are dominated by that one night of sex with Frank all those years ago and apparently nothing else at all, literally. I guess it must have been pre-etty good…and Larry just makes stupid conversations…that guy is kind of lame actually.

But you know what ISN’T lame? Random hobos watching you when you go on a date afterwards!

In between his porn reading sessions and his street peddling for change to buy more porn, he just ogles any couple who walks by I guess, being that there's NO WAY he can know Kirsty is going to be involved in the film's events, which is what the movie is actually suggesting...

I also found it weird that Kirsty and her date go home but sleep in different beds…kinda defeats the purpose of a one night stand there, guys.

Meanwhile, Frank the skeleton blood boy in the attic tells Julia that she has to help him become whole again by feeding him human blood and flesh, and like any sane person she doesn’t question it one bit; just starts picking up guys at bars while looking like distilled 80s loneliness, sunglasses and sports coat and high heels and all. The guys she picks up are pretty much the nerdiest guys Clive Barker could find on short notice; probably his Sunday Dungeons and Dragons group.

And yay, probably the worst possible way of hiding a body: when your husband comes home, make sure NOT to just leave the body in the empty attic where no one even goes, and DO drag it across the hallway where it could be very visible if he happened to walk past at the wrong time. You’re so smart, Julia!

I don't think I've ever seen a worse attempt to cover up a murder in a serious film. This is pretty much rock bottom on the list of stupid things you can do.

While that’s going on, Kirsty sees the weird homeless guy in her pet shop and he eats some bugs and then disappears randomly; glad that scene was in the movie!

Frank gets crazier and crazier, even going so far as to cut a dead rat up over the bed while Julia and Larry attempt to have sex! How utterly shocking! Julia gets freaked out so much that she starts crying, and of course Larry thinks it’s his fault – you’ll have to excuse him. He is just a true blue simple country boy from the sticks! I just love the look on his face here:

"All I knows how t' do is milk cows!"

Kirsty goes to her dad’s house but sees Julia inviting in one of the idiots she picked up from a bar. She also sees Frank killing him, and Frank tries to calm her down, but I don’t think that works very well when he looks like he took a bath in a pool of human entrails. And when that doesn’t work, he tries the sexual harassment route that…pretty much makes no sense, being that we never even saw any evidence that he acted that way towards Kirsty before. Movie, if you want to tell a gross-out sub-plot like this, BRING IT IN EARLIER. Don’t just shove it in randomly to shock the audience for two seconds and then discard it later! 

I'm sorry, but it’s really hard to defend liking this movie when it has scenes like this one. He calls her all kinds of creepy pet names and it’s just downright despicable how much this movie is pandering. It’s just so odd because Barker actually has some very solid scares and atmosphere in this movie – why did he need to resort to scenes like this? It’s not just this one time, either…almost every time Frank is on screen, we get this kind of lewd, low-brow garbage haphazardly forced in that just takes the viewer out of the movie. Ugh.

Kirsty steals his magical Rubix cube and summons the Cenobites, renowned the world over for giving piercing artists more money than anyone else. These characters are pretty vaguely defined right now, but they’re supposed to be some kind of demonic figures who make people repent for various sins they’ve committed, or something like that. I don’t know – they are cool looking, but they don’t really get much screen time here.

Look at this guy. He's too cool for the actual movie he's in.

The Cenobites make a deal with her that they’ll let her live if she brings them to Uncle Frank, who escaped from their torture dimension place, because yeah, these guys look like they’d be the type to make deals…and also, how come these guys can't just find Frank themselves? It seems like they should be able to, given all the other stuff they can do! Are you really telling me these intergalactic torture aficionados with magical powers can't find one little escapee from their dimension? I'm sorry, I just think it's a little silly that these guys don't take any precautions in case this ever happens. Sure, you could say they never thought it would - but no; these guys seem way too smart to even let it happen, let alone be so incompetent that they have to rely on a puny little human to help them recapture their prey.

She goes back to the house and gets jump scared by her mom’s arm on the stairs even though she should have clearly been able to see her coming down:

"AHH! AN ARM!" Seriously, weakest jump scare I've seen in a while.

Uncle Frank has apparently, somehow, it’s never explained, taken over Larry’s body, and Kirsty takes a long time to notice, despite the fact that he has blood all over his face and hands…

Yeah, not noticeable at all when you're sitting right in front of him, right? You could make the argument that she was just in shock. But frankly, I think that's a bit of a stretch.

Is everybody in this movie just blind? No, really. Tell me the truth.

Frank kills Julia by accident – real smart bad guy this movie has! – and then goes up to the attic where Pinhead kills him and he utters the line “Jesus wept.” Why? Because it would later sound good as a soundbyte on many black metal albums. Then the Cenobites start to blow up the house and try to kidnap Kirsty, only her boyfriend shows up – man this guy has bad timing. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on, but it all just really starts to drag. The film finally ends with that crazy hobo from before picking up the Rubix cube and turning into a winged hell-spawn and flying away…yup, that’s the end. Phew. Doesn’t make sense? Who cares, it’s over!

I can’t say I hated this movie, but it had a few big problems. I really don’t think the three main characters were well written, which is bad because we see them constantly. Sure, you don’t have to make every character likable and honorable, far from it - they can be loathsome wretches; but these characters are just too simplistic. Frank is just so blatantly crude that he’s almost a caricature, and he doesn’t have much at all in the way of character depth or texture – he’s pretty much a cardboard cutout; nothing he does really paints a good picture of a character. He just serves as a plot device for gross-out scenes. Julia is blindly stupid and doesn’t have any real personality beyond “Oh, I really miss that one night stand I had twenty years ago before I was married!” And Larry is so bland he might as well not even be there. These characters are the focus of the movie, so even though there are other things I like, the blunt, rather caveman-like character construction and writing makes it really hard to get into at times.

However, the film does have a great morbid atmosphere to it when the Cenobites show up, sort of like a darker Nightmare on Elm Street or something, and the story progresses in a rather noir-meets-occult type of fashion that reminds me of really old school Gothic horror. Doug Bradley is a great actor as Pinhead, and whenever he’s on screen the movie is suddenly really awesome.

If this film had just focused more on giving us that chilling elegant-yet-perverse dichotomy of scares that it is so good at yet only really shows us in like 2-minute intervals, rather than trying to let the trinity of unlikable assholes drive the movie forward. As it is, Hellraiser is flawed and boorish but still pretty interesting, if not an absolute gem of its genre…but hey, at least I don’t have to review any of the sequels! I mean, there are like a dozen of those things! Why would I ever subject myself to that?

What’s that? You’re daring me to do it? You don’t think I can survive a whole month of reviewing these things? YOU’RE ON. THIS IS PROJECT HELLRAISER!

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