Foster on Film – Page 74 – The Film Criticism of Matthew M. Foster

A Very Brady Christmas (1988)

Oct 081988

Carol and Mike Brady (Florence Henderson, Robert Reed) decide to skip their planned Christmas trip and bring their six children, Greg (Barry Williams), Peter (Christopher Knight), Bobby (Mike Lookinland), Marcia (Maureen McCormick), Jan (Eve Plumb), and Cindy (Jennifer Runyon) along with their spouses and children, home for a big family Christmas. However each of the kids has a problem or secret, and Carol and Mike have their own difficulty with a client who is unhappy with plans for his new building. Their ex-housekeeper, Alice (Ann B. Davis), also shows up when she is abandoned by her husband, Sam the Butcher.

There are fans of the 1969-1974 TV series, The Brady Bunch. I know there are. I don’t know what they look like, or what strange cults they belong to, but I know they exist. And it is only these mysterious individuals who will enjoy this TV reunion flick, and they won’t like it much. The show, with its father-knows-best dad, six always good-natured children with silly problems, comic housekeeper, and camp tone, could be fun, if you weren’t discriminating and had taken enough drugs. Fourteen years was not going to be kind to that story structure or the actors, but with some effort, A Very Brady Christmas could have been mildly amusing. That was as good as it could have been; it should be no surprise that it didn’t manage that.

In a bizarre move, writer-producer-series creator Sherwood Schwartz attempts to present globs of this pabulum as serious drama. Several of the children’s ordeals lack even a single joke, and we’re given Mike in a life-or-death struggle with a collapsing building, plus two trapped and dying inspectors. The mindless joviality of The Brady Bunch can’t support such excessive emotion. Since we all know Mike’s going to escape without a scratch, the attempt at soap-opera melodrama is more than usually pointless.

The “deep” distress of the children is fixed in less than a minute each, which is handy as I didn’t care about their distress. Some of them have problems that would have been more fitting for their pre-teen selves (Cindy doesn’t like being thought of as a little girl), while others show that Schwartz was deeply out of touch with 1988 society. Peter’s subplot has him refusing to marry his long-time and apparently perfect girlfriend because she makes more money than he does. This just might have worked as a sitcom plot in 1965, but was absurd in ’88.

Ah, there I go using the word “absurd” to describe just one part of a Brady Bunch movie; silly of me.

Christmas, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Scrooged (1988)

Oct 081988

In this comedy take on A Christmas Carol, the three spirits of Christmas (David Johansen, Carol Kane, Chaz Conner) visit TV network president Francis Cross (Bill Murray) who is producing a live version of the Dickens’s tale.

I can imagine Murray and director Richard Donner talking about how wild, how edgy their new film was going to be. I can see it in every frame. These guys thought they were being outrageous. Sigh. They weren’t. If you are going to twist and corrupt a classic, then do it! But this is the same old story, with the same old message, told in the same old way, but with a modern setting and a few mild jokes tossed in.

Wow, Cross yells at people and fires them on Christmas eve. What comedy! Apparently there was a script; there are writers listed in the credits. But it feels like they all just watched a few old versions of A Christmas Carol and then ad-libbed a film.

None of the characters are believable, which would be fine if this was some kind of unbridled laugh-fest, but when Carol Kane’s Ghost of Christmas Present repeatedly punching Cross is the high point of the hilarity (and it is), then it would help if there was someone on screen worth following. Strangely, Scrooged takes itself seriously, as if we are supposed to care about Cross’s transformation. I didn’t. It all culminates in one of the most embarrassing scenes I can recall. Murray’s Cross, having learned the meaning of Christmas, stops the live telecast of Dickens to ramble at the camera for several minutes. It isn’t inspiring. It isn’t funny. Was this planned or did Murray just have a few too many drinks and start talking? It ends with the little mute boy regaining the ability to speak. Gosh, how swell.

Christmas, Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

The Blob (1988)

Oct 081988

A homeless man, investigating a meteorite, is attacked by a small, amoeba-like blob that begins to dissolve his hand. High school football star Paul Taylor (Donovan Leitch) and cheerleader Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith), along with teen bad-boy Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon) take him to the hospital. When he dies, along with others, Flagg is blamed, and no one believes the story of an ever-growing, carnivorous blob.

Following the remakes of 1950’s sci-fi flicks Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly, Invaders from Mars, and The Thing, comes this 1988 updating of the drive-in film, The Blob. But this time, they made a horror film.

The original had no frights, being a mix of camp and the over-forty set’s vision of teenage angst. The rebel-without-a-cause teen was the twenty-eight-year-old Steve McQueen, who fought alongside his best girl, who was twenty-five.

The newer version tosses the gee-wiz, gosh and golly, teenage alienation, though there’s still a tough-kid (played by Dillon who only looks a few years too old). He’s a rebel all right, and he has the leather jacket to prove it. Shawnee Smith, who is almost the right age, is the best of the human leads and gives a bit of credibility to her cheerleader-with-a-machinegun.

But none of the humans are all that interesting and clichés are everywhere. The characters are drawn with just enough complexity to make them distinct when they are liquified. It is in the monster that The Blob excels. No slow moving Jell-O here, this blob darts out tentacles and zips across ceilings. It looks good, and so do the many deaths it causes. I was surprised at how visceral the film is. With everything from full body dissolves to limbs being pulled out, this is top notch gore, but somehow done as good clean fun.

The coincidences run too high (our hero is saved from being shot by an opportune blob attack) and the teen angle offers nothing new, but it’s easy to forget about that when a telephone booth and its unhappy occupant are being engulfed.

With a more engaging group of characters (perhaps not standard teens we’ve seen over and over), this could have been an excellent horror picture. Oh well. Invite over a few friends, dim the lights, and toss this on as the second part of a double feature with John Carpenter’s The Thing, and you have a twisted, gory, pop-corn eating Friday night.

Aliens, Giant Monsters, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988)

Oct 061988

A writer, Marie Adams, suffers a nervous breakdown due to her visions. To rest, she rents a cabin with her husband in the secluded town of Drago. But the town isn’t as peaceful as she’d hoped when she starts to hear howling in the night, and an ex-nun shows up looking for a woman from Marie’s visions.

Hey, here’s an idea for anyone making a werewolf film: put a werewolf in it, and not just in the last five minutes. Howling IV: The Original Nightmare is a low budget bore-fest that saved money on werewolf makeup, actors, the script, and production values. Having endless dialog instead of actual monsters must have saved them a bundle. And why hire expensive, talented actors when the ones that can’t act are much cheaper?

Now I have to give them credit for the script. New scripts can cost (those pesky writers want to eat), but here, Clive Turner, pseudo-writer and on-screen tow truck driver, simply took the story from The Howling and switched a few details around. Clever, eh?

It isn’t often I see a film with such washed-out colors, but the poor picture quality is insignificant when compared to the abysmal sound. Muffled at some points, lacking in background noises in others, and with noticeable dialog looping, it’s hard to imagine that professionals worked on this project.

I can understand how the music ended up as it did. With the rest of the film so bad, some kind of game was invented to find the most inappropriate tunes. What is worse, the “scary” score that pops in at such terrifying moments as a traffic stop, or the achingly bad ’80s pop rock that doesn’t fit the story or tone? I say they both win.

Reviews, Werewolves Tagged with: One Reel

The Seventh Sign (1988)

Oct 061988

The signs of the End of Days are appearing around the world (boiling seas, ice falling from the sky), always with the same unknown wanderer (Jürgen Prochnow) nearby. In California, Abby Quinn (Demi Moore) is pregnant and emotionally unstable after an earlier miscarriage. Her husband (Michael Biehn) is working to stop the execution of a man who says he kills for God. They rent a room to that mysterious wanderer, but Abby soon feels that he is a threat to her unborn child, and maybe to much more.

It had been twenty years since Rosemary’s Baby, so Hollywood decided it was time for another look at Biblical prophecy as a metaphor for pregnancy. Since The Omen had been a hit, it opened up the Book of Revelations as a source for pilfering. So, the illegitimate child known as The Seventh Sign clawed its way into existence. If only it could be pushed back.

The Seventh Sign makes God a little nastier than other Christian Mythos horror. Here he is a fan of someone burning his parents to death because they were siblings. A strict God. Unlike most of the films on this list, Jesus is present, weeping both over the actions of man and the cruel necessity of his father. He’s also about to end the world. I would assume that should be a good thing (a happy heaven-world or so the Bible implies), but the film makes it quite clear that it is a horrible thing. And God, who apparently uses the Western calendar so Armageddon can come on leap day, first is going to play with a suicidal woman by tossing another miscarriage at her. Well, a severe God is better for horror.

Prochnow is an impressive Jesus, as long as he isn’t speaking. With his sad eyes and worn expressions, he does appear to have the sins of the world on his shoulders. Unfortunately, every line he has is unnecessary, normally repeating things we already know. If the film had focused more on him, it might have been good, but it focuses on an irritating woman.

Abby is unreasonable, scene after scene, line after line. I realize pregnant women can be unreasonable, but that doesn’t make it entertaining to watch. If I want to watch the unpleasant effects of wildly shifting hormones… Skip that, I’m never going to want to watch the unpleasant effects of wildly shifting hormones. Abby’s paranoia (my, what a coincidence that Rosemary became paranoid in Rosemary’s Baby; yes, a coincidence) shifts between insane, and some kind of second sight as she repeatedly starts raving at things that will help the plot along. For instance, she suddenly decides that she must run down rain soaked streets after her boarder, shouting his name. Why? She’s seven months pregnant and he’s just a boarder. Why not let him be and go home? But then she also snoops around in his room, finds parchment with ancient writings (which is pretty reasonable as he claims to be a professor of ancient languages), and then yells that it means he’s after her baby. Ah, but that raving leads to important story points and the writers couldn’t come up with any reasonable way to move the story.

Oh, other people do bizarre things. A priest, who really wants the world to end, kills another priest and visits Abby. Besides giving information to Abby that he shouldn’t want her to have, these actions do nothing. They certainly don’t aid his cause. So why does he do them? Ah, plot points and filler, that’s right.

The Seventh Sign could have been interesting. The apocalyptic scenes have style. But that’s all crushed by the dull, annoying main characters (Abby’s husband is no more engaging than she is). Apparently the message of the film is supposed to be “hope will make everything wonderful.” The real message is “don’t rent a room from, visit, or even talk to a pregnant woman.”

Christian Mythos, Reviews

Hellraiser II / Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

Oct 051988

In this sequel to Hellraiser, Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) receives a message from her father, written in blood on a wall, asking her to free him from hell. Obsessed Doctor Channard also wants to open the gates of hell, and an autistic puzzle-solving girl is the solution for both of them. But opening that gate is as bad an idea as it was before, and Frank, Julia, and the Cenobites are waiting to tear their souls apart.

A sequel as good as, if not better than, the original, Hellbound expands on the Hellraiser mythology, taking you into a maze-like hell. Everything that made the first work is still here: creepy atmosphere, startling imagery, poetic lines, hooks and chains, Pin Head and the cenobites, and Young’s musical score. But this one brings a more interesting theme. All the great evils, the demons, devils, and nightmares that we all fear are nothing compared to the evil of men. This is a common theme in Barker’s work. For all his violence, Pin Head follows rules; he does only what he is asked to do, although those who ask rarely understand their requests. And he understands the difference between words and intent. But not men, who lack honor and understanding. Channard is the real fiend and hell does little to change him except cosmetically.

In general, the make-up and FX are excellent, though in a few scenes, the low budget is noticeable. One of the best make-up scenes involves an insane man and a straight razor. It is unsettling and may be too much for the overly sensitive. The R-rated version saps some of the punch from the film, so get the unrated one.

The other films in the series are: Hellraiser, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, Hellraiser: Bloodline, Hellraiser: Inferno, Hellraiser: Hellseeker, Hellraiser: Deader, Hellraiser: Hellworld.

Back to Demons

Demons, Reviews

Waxwork (1988)

Oct 051988

A group of students visit David Lincoln’s (David Warner) mysterious wax museum where each monster-filled exhibit can take victims into its world. When all eighteen exhibits have killed, the monsters will come alive in the real world, destroying it. Only two of the students, Mark Loftmore (Zach Galligan) and Sarah Brightman (Deborah Foreman), can stop Lincoln’s evil scheme.

Writer/director Anthony Hickox’s homage to classic horror is a funny, sexy, bloody joy within the waxwork exhibits, and an irritating, campy, pointless farce outside of them. The students range from non-entities to those I wish were non-entities. The worst is whining, mumbling, Mark Loftmore, which is unfortunate as he’s the lead character. While he does have some funny moments (particularly with his maid), generally, he is tiresome. The student’s conversations about their dating problems feel like filler, just there because the budget only allowed for a few minutes of monsters and gore. The final battle is an embarrassment. Not only does it contradict the storyline, but it involves sword fighting (where did the students learn fencing and why aren’t they using guns?) and apocalyptic monsters that turn out to be easy to kill.

The waxwork monster vignettes (only five are shown: werewolf, Dracula, mummy, zombie, and Marquis de Sade) redeem the film. The standouts are the bloody, humorous, and sexy Dracula segment, and the sensual Marquis de Sade piece. Deborah Foreman sighs, heaves, and sweats, in the latter, and it is lovely. Her performance combined with the atmospheric music makes this one of the most erotic moments in horror. Ms. Foreman disappeared from acting after ’91; I can’t grasp why some producer hasn’t lured her back.

Mummies, Reviews, Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies Tagged with: Three Reels

Return of the Living Dead II (1988)

Oct 041988

Two kids open yet another barrel of the zombie-making gas and the dead are walking again.

Quick Review: If you liked Return of the Living Dead, you’ll like this, which is part of the problem. It’s one of those sequels that is so much like the original that it’s hard to come up with a reason to watch it. There is nothing new here. Again, there are jokes, most of which you’ve heard before, and gore. It’s all OK. The filmmakers were good enough to admit the repeat factor and play with it, bringing back two of the victims from the first film to go through exactly the same situations (and even use some of the same dialog). Adding in children was a mistake, and there is no nude dance, but otherwise, think of this as an extra 89 minutes of the first film.

Followed by Return of the Living Dead III.

Back to Zombies

Reviews, Zombies Tagged with: Two Reels

Die Hard (1988)

Oct 041988

New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) is visiting his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia) when terrorists, lead by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), take over the building she works in. It is up to McClane to save his wife and get out alive.

There are a lot of action films out there, most with poor acting, slim plots, and non-existent characters, relying on the ability to blow things up. Apparently, most filmmakers think if you have action, you don’t need quality in anything else. So, when a good action film comes along that is also just a good film, see it.

In the past twenty years, there have only been a few first rate action films, and Die Hard is one of them. The fights are better than most and the pacing is impeccable, but it is the characters that make it shine. John McClane has all the testosterone necessary for the hero role. He is also complex, with a sense of humor, a mixed love/hate feeling for humanity, and a realization of his own flawed personality. In one of the the best scenes, after McClane snipes at his estranged wife for pursuing her career and returning to her maiden name, he realizes that not only is his position wrong, but his bringing it up shows he’s not as bright or as emotionally together as he should be. It makes it easy to like him, which makes it important when he’s shot at or runs barefoot through broken glass. Bruce Willis fills the character with strength, humor, and self doubt. Willis is an under-appreciated actor due to disasters like Armageddon and The Whole Nine Yards, but one The Bonfire of the Vanities does not diminish the skills displayed in The Sixth Sense or in Die Hard.

Willis is match by Alan Rickman, playing the intelligent, suave, Hans Gruber. Action films can be judged purely on their villains, and on that scale, Gruber puts Die Hard where it belongs, on top.

Christmas, Christmastime, Reviews Tagged with: Five Reels

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Oct 031988

Michael Myers returns to his hometown to kill his niece, Jamie, and anyone else that gets in his way. Also returning is Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), who along with the police and Jamie’s foster sister, try to save Jamie and stop Michael.

Remember how in Halloween 2, Michael died, getting shot and then burned? Well, funny thing, he didn’t. And remember how Dr. Loomis died? Well, guess what, he didn’t. John Carpenter, a director with some integrity, knew when to quit, but the producers, lacking integrity, didn’t. So, after Carpenter’s attempt at something different in Halloween 3 failed to sell, the producers brought us Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.

It turns out that Michael has been in one of those special magical comas for the past ten years. You know the type, where you don’t move but can hear everything. Either that, or he’s really patient and has been playing possum all this time. Whatever the case, he hears that he has a niece, and away he goes. To make it easy for him, the asylum decides to transfer him on October 30th to…to…ummmm. Well, they were transferring him because…because… OK, the only reason I can think of for the transfer was to make it easier for him to escape, which he does, by putting his thumb through a guy’s forehead (yes, that’s right, he uses the thumb of death).

Soon Michael is back in Illinois, where all small towns are filled with overweight, flannel-wearing rednecks who carry shotguns wherever they go. Michael must kill his niece because… Alright, I have another confession; I have no clue why Michael needs to kill his family members. But I’m sure the only reason the producers could come up with is it causes Michael to meander about killing folks. Anyway, Michael kills some folks, and for a change, the police listen when Dr. Loomis starts up with his “He’s evil, eeeeevil!” mantra. Of course listening changes nothing as they die all over the place. Partly, this is due to Michael’s Star Trek transporter unit which he must have somewhere as it’s the only way to explain how he can walk slowly and still not only catch a speeding pickup, but end up on it. Well, he could have sprouted wings and a propeller.

The film did surprise me with the best ending of the franchise (not the falling down a mineshaft thing—yes, Michael falls down a mineshaft because those are everywhere in Illinois). They actually come up with an entertaining way to continue the series, a way which is promptly ignored by the next film. So much for the only entertaining part of the movie.

The other films in the series are Halloween, Halloween 2, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Halloween 5, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, Halloween: Resurrection.

Halloween, Reviews, Slashers Tagged with: One Reel

Phantasm II (1988)

Aug 131988

Mike is released from the insane asylum he’s been in since the first film and immediately Reggie’s family is killed. That means it’s time for revenge. The two set off on a road trip, from cemetery to cemetery, with Mike’s dreams of a girl in need of their help as their guide, searching for The Tall Man.

Since the first movie ended with one of those not-so-clever twists that imply much of what we saw didn’t happen, there were several ways this film could have started. Coscarelli went with the worst option—to the extent that he decided anything. Apparently, most of Phanstasm was a dream and The Tall Man won. Since Mike’s version of events and Reggie’s don’t match, there’s no way to know what was supposed to have happened specifically. All we know is The Tall Man exists and Mike and Reggie want to kill him, even if Reggie doesn’t agree that The Tall Man did most of the things he did. This isn’t weird, “question-reality” filmmaking. Just lazy scripting.

And it is lazy instead of threadbare as Universal pictures was now paying the bills. Money does make a difference, even if it is only three million. Low-budget is a big step up from the first film’s no-budget and it shows in set design, locations, editing, and camera work. This is a far more competent film than Phantasm. The acting is better as well, including from a recast Mike, and though dialog is still painful, it is less painful. So everything that was bad in Phantasm is less bad.

As for the good, that’s a harder call. This is less of a party film and more straight horror with a heaping helping of road picture. It is pretty silly horror, with blood just for the sake of blood and boobs because all horror films of the period had boobs, but at least it is clear what kind of film you are watching. Even more than the first, it tries to be cool rather than make sense while nodding to every type of horror film (and sometimes just other films and directors—yes Sam Raimi’s name is on a cremains bag). And like the first, the twist ending makes it all pointless.

Still, if you want nothing more than some weird midgets, an evil mortician, a lot of running around, and some flying bladed orbs, Phantasm II has you covered. This is lowest common denominator horror, but it isn’t boring.

Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Gotham (1988)

Apr 111988

A down on his luck private detective (Tommy Lee Jones) is hired by Charlie Rand (Colin Bruce) a rich, nervous husband, to find his wife (Virginia Madsen), and tell her to leave him alone. The catch? Rand claims she’s dead.

A good helping of Film Noir, a touch of ghost story, and a bit of surrealism and you end up with something that doesn’t quite gel. Gotham (also titled The Dead Can’t Lie) is lacking in every department, but there’s just enough onscreen for me to wish there was more. I’d also like to know when the events in this film take place. If the wife died in the 1970s (if she died at all), then it isn’t unreasonable to think all this is happening close to the film’s 1988 release date. But everyone behaves, speaks, and dresses as if they are leftovers from a 1940s movie.

Gotham borrows heavily from Film Noir. There’s the slightly shady, cash-low private detective, a girl Friday, a questionable case with a lying client, and a femme fatale. I see writer/director Lloyd Fonvielle sitting on his couch for days on end, watching Humphrey Bogart, Dana Andrews, Lana Turner, Barbara Stanwyck, and Veronica Lake, and nodding his head saying “Ah, so that’s how it works.” Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, and copying doesn’t do the trick.

It’s no secret that Noir became a joke by the ’60s and it is extremely difficult to make a good, pure one now. Fonvielle at least understood that, so he wove in a supernatural element. Probably. Everything gets so surreal in the third act that the only way to piece the plot together is to drop the ghost element, and assume the P.I. is insane. But that’s no fun, and I’m sure wasn’t the intention.

So, it starts as a slow, light Film Noir, fades into a plodding ghost story (still with strong noir elements), and then becomes incoherent. There are dreams and symbols galore with the fog machines from several hair bands pumping overtime. Along the way, the film pauses for a rendition of Danny Boy by a bum. No one does anything as he sings and sings. I like the song, but I also like Stairway to Heaven and I don’t think an eight minute Led Zeppelin music video at the hour mark would have been a good idea either.

With a few more script revisions, and an extra month of pre-production, Gotham might have been a nice, if not terribly significant film. Instead, there are multiple nude scenes with the lovely Virginia Madsen to interest viewers (and one with Tommy Lee Jones if that’s more your style), but not enough else.

Back to Ghost Stories

Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

1 2 … 72 73 74 75 76 … 133 134