Black Roses (1988)

It must have been an interesting time in the 80s when the biggest thing to worry about was the dangers of subversive rock and heavy metal music. Black Roses is a slasher that sort of doubles as a PSA for the PMRC, seeming to posit that maybe heavy metal really IS bad and will make kids kill people! Finally, someone is tackling the real issues!

Director: John Fasano

Starring: John Martin, Sal Viviano

IMDb

This starts off with shots of this band of weird demons, making GWAR look like they could play your corporate holiday party even if only through believability, playing a song… or, rather, miming along as Lizzy Borden’s “Me Against the World” plays. It’s a good song and got my hopes up unjustifiably for the movie. So now I have a bit of a grudge against it. Though, frankly, what I heard of the newer Lizzy Borden material maybe should've clued me in.

Then we’re introduced to your stereotypical small town with a lot of Christian stuff going on like banning rock and roll concerts because they’re Satanic and will destroy the moral fabric of society, etc. One lady, who I believe was a Frankenstein’s monster combined of all the uptight Christian moms of the 70s and 80s and who has probably never known what fun is, just straight up reads some of this band Black Roses’ lyrics out loud. C’mon. You know the delivery is half of it.

But apparently Black Roses are cleared to play the small town anyway – it’s apparently the band’s first live show ever, and they’ve only ever played in the studio and have mysteriously chosen this random backwater town as the location to play for four nights straight or some shit. Well, all of that sounds completely insane, better just greenlight it and let it happen! No red flags!

There’s a bunch of other stuff that happens. Like there’s the high school teacher who spends the whole movie trying and failing to get his students to care about Wordsworth’s poetry. It doesn’t go anywhere. As a bonus, he’s apparently involved in some weird romance with one of his students! This guy becomes the hero of the movie, by the way. This is our moral compass for this grand epic of a film.

I do think the first rock show is funny where the band pretends to be this nice sentimental pop ballad type of band for the first song, only while the adults are in the room – then as soon as the adults go ‘huh I guess this music isn’t that bad’ and leave, the band immediately strips off their clothes revealing skintight black leather, and begin singing about how they’re going to take over the town! But nah, I’m sure the lyrics are just metaphoric. You know - rock and roll at its best is just open to all sorts of interpretations.

The rock shows keep getting weirder and weirder after that – by the end, it’s literally just chanting with red lights like it’s the cult from “Mandy.” Except the guy in that movie played better music than this. Frankly, I know there have been periods where there has been music that got popular that was super avant garde or atmospheric, very removed from what was traditionally popular. But I’m pretty sure this shit isn’t charting. Maybe you should go back to the drawing board.

I guess all of this hypnotizes the kids, and they start all wearing black, acting ruder to their teachers and parents and whatnot. As we know, children have never acted out before. This is totally new behavior as of the late '80s. I'm glad the movie is this socially aware. Then things get even worse and they start killing everyone. The kills aren’t even very good. Like one is a car hitting someone, another is a gunshot to the head. Yeah – real slasher hall of fame shit. I personally want my on-screen deaths to be better.

The main source of morality in all this is the teacher, you know, the guy who has a forbidden romance with a high school girl. Fantastic source of good and bad, I say!

The climax, where the teacher goes and tries to burn down the concert while all the kids are in the building, involves some of the worst CGI you’ve ever seen. It’s seriously like somebody was handed an assignment to make the goofiest looking CGI monsters possible. Like I guess the point of the movie was to show off how the evils of rock and roll were. To me it was just like I’d rather convert back to Christianity than ever see this shit again. Mission accomplished, movie. You won.

Overall the whole thing is complete garbage. Go listen to rock and roll and ignore this whole movie!

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

REVIEW: Poltergeist III (1988)

Wow, three films in and I am tired of these things. It took six Hellraiser films to make me want to blow my brains out or at least the brains of the filmmakers, but it only took three Poltergeist films!

Director: Gary Sherman

Starring: Heather O'Rourke and the Holy Asshole Choir

IMDb

This is just shit. I mean the first half hour is just completely unwatchable, with horrible acting, annoying characters and boring pacing to boot. Apparently after the second movie, Carol Anne got sent away to live with her aunt and uncle, who spend the first ten minutes or so of this movie engaging in boring, stilted conversational dialogue. They joke and laugh a lot, but really, while watching these scenes, the audience is having about as much fun as they would be if the movie just looped a picture of a funeral over top.

Can't you just feel the soullessness seeping out of every pore?

In addition to sending Carol Anne to live with her aunt and uncle for no reason, the parents, being colossal jackasses, sent her to a psychiatrist who is under the delusion that she somehow hypnotized everyone in the last two films to convince them of the strange supernatural things that supposedly happened. At first it seems OK I guess, but when he keeps going back to “blame everything on Carol Anne’s manipulative hypnotizing” over and over again throughout the movie, it’s just ridiculous!

We get lots of long, long scenes of this asshole, whose name is Dr. Seaton, just gloating about how clever he is for taking on Carol Anne’s case and trying to help her. Yes, you truly are a badass for bullying and villainizing a little girl, you reprehensible piece of trash. God this character is shit. He makes the dad from the last one look like a saint in comparison! What does he even think? That Carol Anne is like the feminine version of Damien from the Omen, in control of everything behind the scenes, just terrorizing people for the fun of it? WHAT EVIDENCE OF THAT IS THERE? EVER? AT ANY POINT?

"I'm a snooty bastard with low self esteem and no identity outside of my degree, so I just bully and victimize everyone too helpless to do anything about it! Hur hur..."

If that wasn’t annoying enough, we also get a bunch of scenes with Carol Anne riding in the car with her cousin and this other family. It wouldn’t be so bad if the demon-spawn of hell in the form of a bratty little girl whose voice makes Urkel’s look like a choir of angels wasn’t sitting in the front seat:

My God, it's the most horrific daemon these films have ever produced! Call the Ghostbusters! Call in the paranormal researchers! CALL EVERYBODY!

This girl has to be the worst character ever made since…that annoying psychiatrist I just mentioned a paragraph and a half ago! She’s totally insufferable! Everything she says is antagonistic to the extreme and her scratchy, annoying voice will make you want to strangle her with a nine-iron. I know that doesn’t seem possible, but trust me, listening to this girl’s voice will make you think of inventive ways to use a nine iron to cause her death. It’s one of those types of voices.

Finally, we get something that isn’t ear-rapingly annoying or mind-rapingly stupid when cousin Donna wants to go to this party and tells her friend on the phone that Carol Anne isn’t really part of her family and is a little brat…oh, I lied; that IS annoying and stupid! Then when she gets off the phone she tells Carol Anne she didn’t mean it. What a stupid bitch. I hate her already. Carol Anne tells her to go ahead and sneak out and go to the party anyway, which she does with just a little bit of prodding.

So then we get a bunch of boring, tired and dated horror movie clichés as Donna and a bunch of her mullet-sporting brain-dead idiot friends go traipsing around the hotel. They put an ungodly amount of effort into breaking into the pool for some reason – some really convoluted plan involving looping security tapes, hiding from cameras on the ceiling and all sorts of nonsense that might as well be a James Bond movie – yeah, there’s a Skyfall sequel for ya; attack of the dumbass Poltergeist side characters. Real engaging, movie. This movie spends as much time on THIS subplot as it does on the whole “lead me into the liiiiiiiight” shit that the other movies have. That’s backwards! It’s like if a Friday the 13^th movie decided to focus more on kids partying than on the actual killi…okay, it’s actually kinda normal for 80s horror movies. Shut up.

We now interrupt your Poltergeist sequel to bring you a Ferris Bueller sequel.

We do get some vague supernatural garbage about Henry Kane trying to pull back Carol Anne to LEAD THEM INTO THE LIIIIIIGHT, and really, what is their fixation on Carol Anne for that anyway? If they’re all groping around in the dark for three movies, you’d think ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD would be good enough, even if they were half-assed conductors, but no, they’re still on Carol Anne and nobody else. Why? Can’t you find someone else compatible? Or are you just lazy and mean? It makes no sense. These ghosts aren’t malicious forces of darkness. They’re the spirit-world equivalent of fat-asses sitting on their couches and not changing the channel because they can’t find the remote.

But eventually, Carol Anne and Diane do get taken. Tangina arrives and tries to warn Dr. Seaton about what’s happening, but he just blows it off as Carol Anne’s tricks…yes because a little eight year old girl TOTALLY has the resources to get grown women to call her psychiatrist on the phone in the middle of the night, saying something is wrong. You’re a bona fide genius, man. Why do I get the idea this guy would ignore a house fire if it was someone he didn’t like inside?

Tangina teams up with the aunt and uncle only to find out that, apparently, the evil is inside the mirrors this time, as, I guess, the ghosts and evil spirits only show up in the mirror and not in real life…or something like that. It’s honestly kind of trippy and confusing. Tangina gets killed off by a demonic Carol Anne infected by Henry Kane. She falls over, turns into a wax sculpture zombie and then…this happens:

I always knew Tangina was just a big sack fulla bugs and nasty goop masquerading as a character.  This just confirms my suspicions.

Gross. I guess it is one of the scarier moments in the movie, though, just for how that girl screams when she comes up out of that dead body. Imagining what she went through down there is…well, probably way scarier than anything the bungholes who came up with this movie could think of. And there are a few other good, surreal moments created by the odd lighting and the eerie score, as the aunt and uncle wander around looking for a way to save Carol Anne from the spirit world. The film sometimes takes on a fairly avant-garde style that is interesting, and could have been arresting had the rest of it not been saddled with annoying as shit characters. Like the aunt!

"I TOLD YOU WE SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN THE AC FIXED!"

Yes, apparently midway through the film the aunt decided to stop having any redeemable qualities in a human being, and now wants to leave Carol Anne in whatever hellish purgatory she’s in and just go home and have a glass of Chardonnay and watch Real Housewives or something. She doesn’t even care that a young innocent girl is in danger…she just doesn’t want to deal with it, because she’s a callous bitch! Who wrote this? Someone who hates children? God; it’s like a convention of horrible self-centered assholes in here!

So, if you can believe it, somehow the movie ends with the aunt, who has been bitching about how much she hates Carol Anne, the innocent eight year old girl who has never done harm to any living thing in her life, saving the day. Yes, the aunt is the one who stops Kane in the end – she is the big hero of the movie. They try to play it off like she’s learned some valuable lesson and realizes that Carol Anne does matter to her, but really it’s done incredibly poorly, with little transition or logic to it, and how much can you really respect someone like this anyway? Big whoop. You came to the realization that, when a young child is in the jaws of mortal peril, helping her isn’t such a bad idea. Should we give you a medal?

Oh...I guess you already have one...

This is such a piece of trash movie. I guess it has some pretty neat visual ideas, but the conceptual themes aren’t explained much at all, the characters are all annoying beyond belief and to top it off, the whole thing feels NOTHING like a Poltergeist film, borrowing more from generic supernatural 80s disposable garbage. What makes it so much worse is that Heather O’Rourke, who played Carol Anne in all three movies, died before they even finished this, and so this was her sad epitaph – and what a load that is! Who would want to be remembered by this half-assed slop? Just forget this existed and go watch the first two films, as even when they were bad, she at least did a good job in them and they were worth looking at. Unlike this. This can go to hell.

Now as a special testament to those who were lost in between each Poltergeist film...I present to you the mausoleum of the dearly departed.

RIP. You were all taken far too early, and your work on these films is appreciated.

Images copyright of their original owners. I do not own any of them.

Project Hellraiser: Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

Project Hellraiser Log: A week ago I started on my journey to review the Hellraiser films. I didn’t know what it was I was getting into, but I knew I wanted to know. I had to know. It was simply consuming me beyond all else. Little did I know that even the first sequel after the original one would already bombard me with nonsensical plot devices, ridiculous imagery and a lack of any real substance. But it did have lots of gore and weird things on screen, so clearly I had a lot to wade through. It would be a long torturous journey, but then, I chose this hell. I had to deal with it. So let us recap the exact events that led me to this first log entry…

Director: Not-Clive-Barker

Starring: The special effects crew

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095294/

The movie begins right after the first one ended with Kirsty waking up in a mental hospital, and finding out that they couldn’t get her boyfriend to sign back onto the movie, so he just “left” the hospital already – yeah, sure. The detective with her has terrible bedside manner and in just a few minutes, he manages to get her screaming and shouting and throwing stuff all around the room. Glad to see someone good at his job! Oh wait…it isn’t opposite day.

So he calls in Dr. Channard and his assistant…well, I forget his name already, so I’m calling him GENERIC HORROR GUY #52789. Kirsty says that the blood they found on a mattress at her dad’s house means that good old Julia can come back to life, so they have to destroy it. How does she know that? When did she suddenly become an expert; in her dreams in the few hours before she woke up? What the hell?

Channard makes a phone call telling the cops to deliver the mattress to his house, and Generic Horror Guy #52789 overhears it and decides to go investigate, because he’s the super sleuth of our times! He luckily gets there just as Channard is calling in that generic ‘GET THEM OFF ME GET THEM OFF ME’ mental patient in every horror movie about a hospital ever made. He hands the guy a knife, makes him sit on the mattress and has him cut himself to bleed all over the mattress and summon back Julia, just like Larry accidentally did for Frank in the last one!

That’s all good and well, but…why didn’t Channard just prick his finger and bleed on the mattress himself? That seems like it would be the easier option, rather than dragging that other poor guy to be a sacrifice and making a mess all over the place. But I guess that would be too subtle for a movie with THIS in it:

Is this looking like your last really wild college party yet?

Ha ha ha…oh Hellraiser II, you are my everlasting disappointment. Don’t ever stop having all that dignity there!

So Julia is back, because I really wanted to see HER again…and she starts making out with Channard, because I guess she finally got over that whole Frank obsession from the first movie after GOD KNOWS HOW MANY flashback scenes of those two having sex. Seriously, this just pisses me off! We sat through all that garbage in the first movie about how much she wants to be with Frank again and now she’s just shrugged it off like last week’s food poisoning? What kinda crap is that?!

I guess the doc has a fetish for bald chicks with no skin. I'd say this surprised me but...no, it really doesn't.

Oh, and before I go any further, I forgot to mention one of the plot devices this movie has; this teenage girl the nurses nicknamed Tiffany for no reason, who likes to solve puzzles. Why, you ask? Because the movie really needs a plot device to bring the Cenobites back in! But that’s not for another few scenes, so shhh, spoilers.

Channard somehow brings Julia a ton of bodies within the span of like a few hours…glad that went unnoticed by anyone on the outside. She becomes human again just in time for Kirsty and Generic Horror Guy #52789 to get to the house to check it all out. Generic Horror Guy #52789 apparently outlived his worth in the movie, because he gets killed off immediately. Hooray for great characterization! Truly this film is a rallying battlecry for great writing.

Tiffany solves the puzzle box and summons the Cenobites, which take everyone to their own Hells – or they say they’re in their own Hells, but really they are all interconnected and in walking distance from one another, so it makes no sense really. Doug Bradley is still cool, but even he can’t save the appallingly hilarious and random imagery that follows:

What is this stuff? I don’t know; I guess the director just wanted to record one of his acid trips or something. Seriously, it’s a clown…with bloody eye sockets…juggling his own eye. And it still isn’t the weirdest thing this movie has in it! God, this is ridiculous. It’s like a circus created by Tim Burton and then visually raped by a troupe of one-legged, eyepatch-wearing midgets with sloped foreheads! And that still doesn't even describe how random it is!

Oooh, her skin just came right off! That’s not stupid at all, right?! No.

They get back into the real world only to find that everyone in the whole hospital has puzzle boxes now and are using them to summon back the Cenobites as well as the now-evil Channard. What, are those things just mass produced at Toys ‘R Us now? If so, I’m going to have to put it on my Christmas list this year.

And…okay, I mean really; was there just a contest in the studio to come up with the worst, most face palm inducing image in the film? Because this is pushing it; it’s really, really pushing it:

Ha ha ha...oh man, I don't even know...is that a rejected Power Rangers villain? A bondage fetishist with a penis growing out of his head? I'm actually curious as to how this was represented in the script..."weird-ass abomination of nature rises up through the window"?

Kirsty then appeals to the Cenobites’ humanity and gets them all to believe in their human selves again! This actually could have been a pretty decent plot device, but never fear a serious or emotional moment, because the movie is here with more ludicrous garbage to rob the scene of any kind of tension:

Aww...that's kind of sad actually. You see, Pinhead used to be a human before he was sent to Hell by a random act of fate and tortured for an eternity and...

Is this movie even trying anymore?

Okay, okay, the guy who put flowers and human fingers in those weird tentacle things wins that ‘worst image in the film’ contest. I concede defeat.

Then they…somehow just get back into Hell without even using any rituals or anything, where they face off against Channard one more time. It’s revealed that Channard once…did something to Tiffany’s parents, it’s really vague and unclear what, and so she cries about it and stuff, but then Julia comes back and makes out with Channard to distract him…and then somehow kills him…I’m not entirely sure what happens, but if it gets this movie closer to ending, then hell, I’m all for it.

Only then it’s revealed that it wasn’t Julia at all, it was Kirsty dressed up in her skin! Uh, no, movie, I’m not buying it. There’s no way she could just slip on that skin in that short of a time AND have it look realistic! I bought it in the last movie because of the supernatural implications, but here it’s just ridiculous! I don’t even care that the movie ends with the characters smiling and happy and what not; there’s no saving it. I’m past the point of buying this crap. Hellraiser II, I can buy clowns juggling eyeballs and naked red people wrestling on the floor, but THIS IS JUST TOO FAR!

Oh, what’s that? There’s an ending scene where some moving guy just touches the bloody bed and a giant pillar with Cenobite faces comes out…okay, well we got a late entry for the ridiculous images contest, but this one is a definite contestant for winner:

WhoooOOOOOOooooo random images!

I might have to re-evaluate the results after all.

…what? Are you waiting for that usual bit where I end the review by summing up my thoughts on the movie?  No; I'm not doing it for this one...it isn't even worth my time. See you for Hellraiser III!

REVIEW: Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore

Starring: Salvatore Cascio, Philippe Noiret

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095765/

A sentimental and even tragic tale of an Italian boy named Toto who grew up in the 50s with a burning passion for movie projecting. He befriends the kindly elder man who runs the theater, and the movie chronicles his life growing up in Italy, through the good times and the bad. This is a very wholesome and light-hearted tale, with a lot of romantic movie-esque things going on even when the characters claim that real life isn't like the movies. The acting is memorable and the story flows quickly and admirably. There isn't a dull moment, from the early days when Toto is a boy to his teenage years, and even to the denouement as he comes back as an adult in the present time. I like how this film manages to be both happy and sad at the same time. I think that’s really the core of why it works. That happy-sad mixture it evokes is sort of the core of nostalgia, which really is the big thing this movie is going for.

The whole film pretty much revolves around the titular movie theater, which goes through lots of changes and pretty much runs concurrent with what's going on in Toto's life. It's a story about growing up, as played out as that might sound, and nostalgia, too. The film spins a yarn about experiencing life and reaching one's potential, the juxtaposition between doing what you love versus becoming successful. But really what this is is just a great, lighthearted and fun film for anyone. Recommended.

Classic Review: Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

Director: Robert Zemeckis, otherwise known as the God of 80s Movies

Starring: Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, Kathleen Turner, Charles Fleischer

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438/

"I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way."

-Jessica Rabbit

Blending cartoons with live people in movies is a weird idea. But back when it started out…it was still a weird idea. But strong writing and a lot of charisma catapulted this oddball of a movie, titled Who Framed Roger Rabbit, to become quite a memorable and interesting flick that people still talk about today. Let’s take a look.

First off, there’s one thing that really bothered me about this movie, and it’s the DVD menu. Basically it’s set up in a very gimmicky, fun way to go along with the story of the movie. It looks like you’re sitting in the movie’s talking car, Benny, who provides witty commentary. That’s OK I guess, but then all the menu options are named after things from the movie. At first I was like, OK, this will all make sense once I’ve actually seen the thing…well, nope, it’s like they just randomly named everything for no reason other than to have it themed after the movie. It’s not terrible, and at least they were trying to make it fun, but I kind of wish they had just skipped all of this stuff and just given us a straightforward menu. I mean, I had trouble even finding the subtitles menu and the select scene one.

OK, all complaining aside, the movie is pretty great. The plot is basically this: Cartoons and reality are intermixed and each has their own politics and cities to live in. A cartoon star, Roger Rabbit, is framed for the murder of a high profile politician, which leads a grumpy detective and a voluptuous female cartoon companion to go and set things right, getting into a ton of mayhem and madness all the way. It’s a mix between Looney Tunes and film noir. Did you ever think you’d see that before the first time you popped this into your VCR back in the 90s? Probably not.

Really the reason this film is good is just because it’s creative and keeps your attention, nothing more. It’s a good, fun story, with a lot of energy to everything about it. You can tell they were having a ton of fun making this movie, as it shows in every scene. The thing about this is that it is funny – very much so, at times – but the humor seems to be naturally ingrained into the world of the movie itself, instead of forced on us through verbal jokes and slapstick, although there are some of those as well. This is a world that is funny in and of itself. That’s kind of interesting about this.

The acting is generally decent to good, with the main characters being the best ones. Bob Hoskins as Eddie Valiant, the grumpy detective I mentioned above, is a good one, and Christopher Lloyd as the evil Judge Doom is good, although he raises a few questions. How does one become a judge of doom? Do they really just elect judges this crazy in this world? I guess it fits the themes of corruption and 80s seediness though. I sure wouldn’t want him judging my case. Charles Fleischer deserves special mention, too, as he voiced several characters in this movie, including the titular Roger Rabbit, and also Benny, as well as a few others. He’s really talented and has a knack for making very different sounding, very goofy voices, and he brings us some of the film’s funniest parts.

Everyone always talks about Jessica Rabbit, the sexiest cartoon alive, and for good reason. She was specifically constructed to be that way, like a middle finger toward everyone’s perceptions of what is attractive. The way she flaunts her unnaturally curvy body and talks in that low, sultry voice…damn. It’s pretty hard not to anticipate every scene she’s in. She’s just a cartoon! But let loose your dignity for a second and try to tell me with a straight face that she isn’t at least a little bit sexy anyway. Kathleen Turner does an admirable job as her, too.

The film just sort of hooks you in. It keeps the punches rolling and remains very watchable all the way through – the most basic kind of enjoyment. There isn’t a boring moment. The plot has a ton of mysteries and goofy, imaginative cartoon stuff to make sure you’re kept on your toes at all times. There’s a lot of completely zany things going on at all times and I really like how creative they got with some of the animation and ideas. It’s a feast for the eyes as well as a well told story, with the blend between wacky cartoons and film noir being so odd and out of left field that it just becomes awesome. If you like creative movies, you’ll like this, but you’ve probably already seen it anyway. These were just my own ramblings. Take them as you will.

Classic Review: The Naked Gun (1988)

Welcome to a new section of the site called Classic Reviews, where...I basically just review classic movies. This needs distinction because these are not unfamiliar movies to the general public, and I'm really just engaging in some discussion of why said movie is so great. Is it maybe just like the regular reviews? Well...shut up; this is The Naked Gun.

Director: David Zucker

Starring: Leslie Nielson, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095705/

Frank: It's the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girls dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day. 
Jane: Goodyear? 
Frank: No, the worst. 

This is comedic gold. Leslie Nielson really sells himself here as Lt. Frank Drebin, the hilariously inept cop out to stop an assassination attempt on the queen. Really this is just one of those old school comedies that gets everything right. It isn’t afraid to be as wacky and over the top as possible, and I think that’s really the key with a great comedy flick. You don’t have to work with the laws of reality, and you can have a story going on while doing whatever you want. You have to keep the jokes coming like bullets from an automated machine gun, and a mix of visual and verbal comedy makes it even better.

Mayor: Drebin, I don't want anymore trouble like you had last year on the South Side. Understand? That's my policy. 
Frank: Yes. Well, when I see 5 weirdos dressed in togas stabbing a guy in the middle of the park in full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards. That's *my* policy. 
Mayor: That was a Shakespeare-In-The-Park production of "Julius Caesar", you moron! You killed 5 actors! Good ones. 

The Naked Gun is just supreme. It’s like the whole world is looked at through a funhouse mirror. The plot is pretty simple – Drebin, while trying to liberate the name of his friend Nordberg (OJ Simpson), stumbles into a plot to kill the Queen of England. And hilarity ensues along the way in spades.

Frank: It's true what they say: Cops and women don't mix. It's like eating a spoonful of Drano; sure, it'll clean you out, but it'll leave you hollow inside. 

The comedy in the dialogue is loud, proud and crude, but the visual humor is there too, and although it’s certainly not subtle or anything, paying attention throughout the whole thing yields a LOT more humor than is initially apparent. The Naked Gun is just a really brilliant comedy with a ton of really hilarious moments and that good old naïve, light-hearted, good natured comedy. Everything feels so zany and larger than life, with each joke put in exactly the right place and given the right emphasis – this is not a sloppy movie at all. But even through the intelligent structuring and well-made nature of the movie, it’s still impossible not to have fun when watching, as every inch of it is taken up with the desire to make you laugh. And how can you really resist? I’d name highlights but really, there’s no point in this movie that I wasn’t having fun with. A masterwork of comedy and a true classic.

Frank: Just think; next time I shoot someone, I could be arrested.

Quotes from IMDb. And from the movie.

REVIEW: Pumpkinhead (1988)

Director: Stan Winston

Starring: Lance Henriksen, John D'Aquino, Brian Bremer

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095925/

In the 80s, horror movies liked to take somber situations and just spruce them up, adding supernatural characters and freakshow-esque monsters to make sure each story lodged in your brain like a terrible urban legend, a cautionary warning not to do anything dumb – lest the monster come after YOU next. And nothing exemplifies that more than Pumpkinhead, the 1988 slasher that taught us never to commit a hit-and-run, or else we’d be hunted down by a supernatural vengeance demon bent on tearing us to shreds. Sound cheerful enough yet? Let’s dig in.

The story starts off showing us the epitome of neighborly love – a love so great that one farmer won’t even open the door when his fellow man is clawing at it outside, screaming in pain as an unseen monster attacks. All the movie’s hallmarks are already in place: the wild blues and oranges of the lighting, the strong winds and the desolate country atmosphere. All awesome things, for sure.

The main story, though, centers on a shop owner on the side of a desert road played by Lance Henriksen. He and his son live rather ideally and have a simple life, with no real troubles. The first few minutes are just him and his son enjoying their morning – which surprisingly works to establish character and make us care about these people. Imagine that. A horror film actually playing to our emotions.

But then a bunch of teenagers on their way to a cabin in the woods, because that was all teenagers had to do back in the 80s, stop at the shop to get some stuff and also show off their motorcycles. Here we also see a bunch of country kids playing around, and they give us our first real explanation of the movie’s monster – if you’re wronged, you can summon Pumpkinhead and he’ll get revenge for you.

During the motorcycle showing-off, the typical 80s badass of the group, complete with leather jacket and mullet, accidentally hits the kid while flying off a dune and kills him. They decide to just leave to go to their cabin and call for help there, except the mullet-guy is worried because he already has two prior offenses and can’t go to jail for a third. So the logical solution is naturally to cut the phone lines in the cabin and go ax-crazy, holding anyone who wants to do the right thing and help the kid hostage in the closet.

Meanwhile the father is grief-stricken, and I have to say this is the first bit where we really see why Lance Henriksen was the right choice for this movie. He really brings out the sadness and rage a parent would feel for his child, and the earlier scenes with the two of them bonding together really drive it home that this man has lost the shining light of his life. He takes a drastic action and gets one of the country kids to help him find an old witch who may be able to help him.

This is another reason why this movie is cool – shamelessly cheesy horror cliché. I mean, it’s an old witch lady who lives on a mountain and has a house full of burning candles, skulls, animal skins and other stuff that you’d expect to find in a haunted house, and it’s all just so awesome, setting a great atmosphere for what’s to come. You really feel the grief that Henriksen’s going through, adding a lot of raw power to the proceedings.

She tells him she can’t bring his son back, but she does give him the opportunity to get revenge, which he takes quite readily. And so the creature is unleashed. Whenever it kills, Henriksen feels it on his own body – because that’s the price of vengeance, you see; it hurts you as well as whoever you’re inflicting it upon.

The movie goes on as all of the kids are eventually killed off. Henriksen realizes that what he did was a mistake, and tries to help the kids defeat him. There are some really great shots like one where you see Pumpkinhead up in this huge tree, with the girl he killed dangling down from its longest branch. The atmosphere is always really occult and seedy. The lighting and special effects are great, which is no surprise, as director Stan Winston has done special effects for movies like Avatar and Terminator 2.

The end of the film builds up tension to a boiling point. Lots of people die and lots of blood is spilled, but the terror, unlike many slasher films, comes more from the idea that these kids are being killed off by a completely alien, unstoppable, ancient force all for a MISUNDERSTANDING (albeit a very tragic one). They were trying to go get help, but because the one guy didn’t want to get caught, he stopped them, and Henrikson’s character thought they were all a bunch of hit-and-run scumbags. And he cast an ancient evil curse on them for it. Essentially, these kids were damned to Hell for no good reason, for a misunderstanding by a fellow human being. Thus is the fallacy of all men. That is the horror of Pumpkinhead. This is one of the great 80s horror flicks, definitely a cut above the average. Go see it.

NIC CAGE MONTH: Vampire's Kiss (1988)

Director: Robert Bierman

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Maria Conchita Alonso

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098577/

"Alva, there is no one else in this entire office that I could possibly ask to share such a horrible job. You're the lowest on the totem pole here, Alva. The lowest. Do you realize that? Every other secretary here has been here longer than you, Alva. Every one. And even if there was someone here who was here even one day longer than you, I still wouldn't ask that person to partake in such a miserable job as long as you were around. That's right, Alva. It's a horrible, horrible job; sifting through old contract after old contract. I couldn't think of a more horrible job if I wanted to. And you have to do it! You have to or I'll fire you. You understand? Do you? Good."

-Nic Cage, giving one of his famous pep speeches to his secretary 

Okay, seriously. Whatever crack addled minds in 1989 made this movie were clearly prophesizing Nicolas Cage’s eventual rise to Internet stardom. I mean almost every time he freaks out in this movie, it’s begging to become an internet meme. This movie isn’t even that good! It’s pretty much just ‘watch Nic Cage freak out, laugh at it, and then wait for the next time while being bored at the rest of the movie’s plodding pace.’ The soundtrack is a late 80s synth nightmare and the production values look more like something out of the 70s - it’s like Nic Cage’s equivalent to Hercules in New York.

Yes folks...this is Vampire's Kiss.

I mean, this shit is just insane. The basic plot is as follows: Nic Cage is the head of some literary editing company or something, and he loves to harass his secretary Alva, who quite literally lives in fear of him by the end of the movie. He starts going crazier and crazier in his loneliness in the urban city setting, and when he sleeps with a strange hooker (who comes back again and again to suck more of his blood as the movie goes on), he starts to think he is a vampire, thus going even crazier and getting even more violent with his secretary. At the end of the film, he is unceremoniously murdered with a stake in his dilapidated and wrecked apartment by the brother of the terrified secretary.

The two plots (the vampire thing and the secretary thing) don’t really even make a lot of sense together. It’s kind of like the writers were halfway through the script, coming up with these clever metaphors for struggling in life, when the director approached them and said, “Hey, we just got Nicolas Cage to sign on for this. You don’t really have to write anymore. We’ll just have him jump all over the place and scream a lot, and you can still get paid for the half script you did write.”

The writers then had their eyes physically replaced with dollar signs, and that was that.

The movie’s pace is pretty flawed, as I said before, as it’s just too slow and too plodding when Nic Cage isn’t absolutely losing his shit. You’re literally just sitting there watching this movie waiting for the next freak out, because the parts where he isn’t freaking out are just flat out boring. The dialogue isn’t that good and the story is a bit stale – nothing that wasn’t done better by Cemetery Man or American Psycho in years to come. The sole reason to watch this movie is for Nic Cage.

But isn’t that what NIC CAGE MONTH is for, I ask you?

Let’s go through some of the highlights, shall we?

Look at all that rage! Man, that’s insane. And the way he calms down right at the end to say “And you call yourself a psychiatrist”…how can you not be TOTALLY CONVINCED this man is not completely insane, on heavy drugs, or both? He’s just so into this.

“THERE YOU ARE!” I didn't know people his age still got that enthusiastic about hide and seek...

We’ve all had moments like this, haven’t we? Those moments where you think you’re a vampire so you run down the street screaming about it and…oh, what’s that? Nobody’s had those but me? Oh, well OK then.

I just love how obsessed he is with his secretary and with finding those files. It should be sad and scary how creepy he is with stalking her and all, but this is just SO HAMMY. There’s literally nothing else on his warped mind but finding her and making her do the job she’s already trying so hard to do. Imagining it from her point of view is both funnier and even more terrifying. One of which may be more prominent, depending on your point of view.

So, yeah, I think that’s evidence enough. The Vampire’s Kiss is batshit insane. If you like Nic Cage, this is mandatory, but just don’t go in expecting much more than a silly curiosity. Now, I'm off to drink more blood and work on my freaking out in front of the camera.

"It's a very IMPORTANT job!"

Twins (1988)

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger Danny DeVito, Kelly Preston

Directed by: Ivan Reitman

"Twins" is a film about...well, twins...who are separated at birth, and are unaware of each other's existence until decades later. It soon becomes clear that they are very different, and not just in physical appearance, as they try to bond, evade dangerous criminals, and search for their long lost mother.

This is a good movie. To be honest, it was not quite as funny as I thought it was going to be and I did not like it as much as "Kindergarten Cop" (one of Arnold Schwarzenagger and Ivan Reitman's other collaborations). Still, I had a decent amount of laughs while watching the film and it has its own little charms. It was kind of amusing seeing Schwarzenagger playing a "Mr. Sensitive" role for once. Danny DeVito also does well as a schmuck who gradually learns that he has a conscience, and the two of them have good chemistry with one another. There is one scene in the movie where DeVito's character successfully persuades his girlfriend to help him out using a puppy-dog look. That really sums up the feel of the movie: you know what you are getting is not high-quality material, but you cannot help but be won over by it. It is not a strong recommendation, but it is a recommendation nonetheless.