No, you’re right, a crazy is the exact same metaphor as a zombie. It just doesn’t eat intestines. The advantage though is that Romero’s original THE CRAZIES is not a masterpiece like his first three DEAD movies. It’s a great idea, some good parts but for me it doesn’t come together for some reason. I think I’ve tried watching it three times, thinking this time I’m gonna appreciate it more, I just know it. But after I watch it I never remember much about it at all. I think it had something to do with crazies? So for me there’s no problem with this remake having to live up to the original.

The movie takes place in a small town called Ogden Marsh, Iowa, and the crazy shit first goes down at a high school baseball game. The sheriff, played by Timothy Olyphant, happens to be at the game and sees one of the locals, a dude named Rory, walk out onto the field with a rifle. Rory’s a recovering alcoholic and he’s acting strange. The sheriff tries to talk him down but ends up having to shoot him. Just like on his show ‘Justified’ Olyphant starts this one with everyone questioning his self defense justification for shooting a guy.

Of course we know enough about the movie (for example the title) to know that guy’s no drunk, that guy’s a crazy. Other people around town start doing odd things too, like repeating the same sentences over and over, staring right through you, turning on farming equipment for no reason in the middle of the night, burning their families alive, etc. Whatever’s happening here, it’s obviously no good, and the sheriff’s gotta figure out what exactly is happening and why what’s happening is happening. Oh shit, it’s the happening! Stay away from trees!

Nah, he traces it pretty quick to a military jet that crashed while carrying a biological weapon and contaminated the water. Which I’m against. But in this story the military not only causes the threat, it also becomes its own separate threat when they show up to clean up their mess. After lots of tense chases and showdowns with crazies in a mostly empty town the movie abruptly shifts gears. All the sudden the quiet town becomes noisy and crowded with troopers in biohazard suits rounding up the citizens and quarantining them, separating anyone with a fever and strapping them to gurneys. This is a bad combination – not only does the sheriff get separated from his wife, but she guts stuck strapped down when a crazy stars coming through the room stabbing everybody with his pitchfork. Fuckin crazies. They need discipline, in my opinion. Stop being so lenient. Or at least take away their pitchforks. I’m sorry but they got it coming.

Unlike Romero’s, and like all remakes of Romero movies, I don’t think this is meant to be very political. But there’s enough going on I’m sure you could read something into it. It’s a solid thriller though with a good lead (when did Olyphant turn so cool?), nice atmospheric photography, mostly tasteful stylistic touches (I could do without the computery blips when it switches to satellite POV) and lots of different types of tension and danger (though I wish a few less sticky situations were solved just by somebody else showing up with a gun). I think one secret to the movie’s success is that it uses an extensive menu of paranoia types:

1. of people you know snapping, becoming unrecognizable. They look like your loved ones but they aren’t

2. authority figures metaphorically trampling all over civil rights, as well as literally trampling over things because they wear big boots

3. disease: you don’t want you or your wife to get it

4. being misunderstood or blamed for something that wasn’t your fault

5. having to call your friend out for going too far. The sheriff and his deputy have a good bond throughout the movie but it’s strained as one of them seems to be losing it. The old “is he turning, or just being an asshole?” dilemma.

One remake advantage for crazies is you don’t have to worry about the slow zombie/fast zombie controversy. Crazies aren’t made of rotting flesh, so it would make sense for them to run fast. Interestingly though these filmatists mostly use them slow anyway, because they know that can be more dramatic.

As long as we’re on the topic I want to point out the hypocrisy of some of the people who get worked up about fast zombies. I mean, you know my preference. I prefer the Romero shamblers, and it frustrates me when people think faster has to be scarier because it’s more of a physical threat. That’s missing the point: zombies in the original DAWN OF THE DEAD are not scary because they can get you, they’re scary because you can never get them. You kill a hundred of them a day it makes no difference, they’ll keep coming, and eventually overwhelm you.

I have noticed there are many horror fans who agree with me on that, and even pretend to be offended by the idea of fast moving zombies such as in Zack Snyder’s DAWN remake. Yet many of these same people make cute little quips and novelty t-shirts and shit that involve zombies saying “braaaaiiiinnns.” But Romero’s zombies don’t say “braaaaiiiins,” they don’t say anything. And they prefer intestines. They’ll eat what they can get, I’m sure they’d enjoy brains, but they’ve never shown a preference for them. The zombies that specifically eat brains and who say “braaaaiiiinnns” are from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD… and they are fast zombies!

BOO YAH. So if you ever catch some whiner complaining about fast zombies but also referring to zombies eating brains, sic ‘em for me.

But that’s zombies, forget about zombies, this is crazies we’re dealing with here. I think this was originally gonna be directed by Brad Anderson of THE MACHINIST, so his writer Scott Kosar still gets a credit on the screenplay. Kosar also wrote the terrible remake of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. I guess it shows that in addition to a decent script you also need a director who can direct actors so you like the characters and put together tense sequences, get some thrills and/or chills or whatever. THE CRAZIES, believe it or not, was directed by Brock Lesnar. I don’t know how he’s had time to learn about photography and editing, let alone shoot the movie in between being three-time WWE champion, his wrestling in Japan, his attempt to play NFL football with the Minnesota Vikings and his subsequent career in the UFC, where he captured the heavyweight championship from Randy Couture in 2008. You’d think he’d have to be training for upcoming fights and everything.

Wait, hold the phone, it turns out I heard that wrong. THE CRAZIES was actually directed by Breck Eisner (SAHARA). I don’t know how he’s had time to learn about photography and editing, let alone shoot the movie in between being the son of former Disney bossman Michael Eisner. But I guess I can see how his filmatistic roots run deep. According to the Wikipedia websight “Disney CEO Michael Eisner was struck with inspiration for the [hit 1980s cartoon show 'Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears'] when his son requested the candies one day.” It doesn’t specify which one of Eisner’s sons wanted the candy but I’m gonna sitck with my hunch that it was Breck, so I consider him to be the uncredited co-creator of Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears, and therefore a successful filmmaker since 1985. His dad also supposedly came up with this one called ‘Wuzzles’ which is “animal creatures composed of half of one animal and half of another,” for example rabbit + hippopotamus = hoppopotamus. I don’t know, I suppose an adult really could’ve come up with gold like that, but to me it sounds more like the work of a gummi bear eater. At any rate, I’m sure being around all that boundless creativity had to’ve rubbed off on him. I mean, he grew up in a Wuzzles family, for Christ’s sake. Of course he’s gonna be a director.

But seriously, he seems pretty good and I would like to take this opportunity to announce Breck Eisner as the latest recipient of Vern’s I Guess If Some Asshole Has to Remake Escape From New York It’s Fine That It’s This Guy Because Maybe He Won’t Fuck It Up Too Bad seal of approval. I think we need more directors with true vision, but these days it’s refreshing just to see one with solid skills, so we’ll have to keep watching this Eisner and hopefully he’ll amount to something. If not he probly has a life time supply of gummi candy he could live off of.

And then DEAD RINGERS. I mean, for crying out loud, DEAD RINGERS. So sonofabitch, why am I not surprised when I watch Clive Barker’s NIGHTBREED and there’s Dave Cronenberg as a masked “baby slasher” murdering families around Toronto?

I don't know, it almost seems to me like there could've been a better poster for an epic horror fantasy featuring dozens of cool monsters. But I mean, they're professionals, they must know what they're doing.

His name is Dr. Decker and he’s got a creepy mask with button eyes and a zipper mouth, but he wears a nice overcoat and chain mail gloves, he’s not wearing overalls or a mechanic’s jumpsuit. He wants you to know he’s higher class than Jason or Michael.

Sure enough his day job is as a psychiatrist, and he decides to frame one of his patients (Craig Sheffer) for the murders, basing the crimes on the guy’s bad dreams, recording him talking aobut it, and dosing him with hallucinogens to get him into trouble. I can see why he’d consider this guy an easy mark, too. His name is Aaron Boone but even his girlfriend just calls him “Boone,” like they’re in P.E. class or something. He’s kind of a brooding Kevin Bacon type in a leather jacket, and his answering machine message just says, “This is Boone. You know what to do. Add-i-os.”

But there’s one important piece of information Dr. Decker didn’t know about: Boone is not just some chump in a leather jacket. He’s some chump in a leather jacket who’s destined to be the Chosen One for the people of Midian, a secret town hidden beneath a cemetery where the surviving members of ancient monster tribes take refuge. They got weird lizard people, devilmen, a guy with a moon-shaped head like Mac Tonight, a woman who can turn into smoke, a fat guy who thinks it’s amazing that tentacles come out of his belly and likes to make puns about it. They got a statue-like demon god named Baphomet and a Moses-like dude who keeps telling them what the laws are and a fenced off area for “berserkers – mad bastards who’ll bite off your head and shit down your neck.” This is the rare case where that’s probly meant literally, but unfortunately you never do see the berserkers shitting into any necks. Maybe in the fabled director’s cut.

Boone heard some rumors about Midian being a place where sins are forgiven (what happens outside Midian stays outside Midian) so he tries to check it out and gets bit by some asshole monster who likes to eat “Naturals.” Turns out this is lucky though because then he gets set up and shot by the cops and the monster-infected bite brings him back from the dead sort of like a vampire. And I like how the guy who bit him is happy and claps for him at the ceremony where he’s accepted into the monster club. So that guy’s not as much of an asshole as you expect.

But oh shit, nobody shoulda let Decker find out about monsters. He saw himself as some kind of cleanser, killing off bloodlines of people he considered filth. Now he finds out there’s monsters, he joins a long line of witch hunters in oppressing these poor Nightbreed. I mean, I’m glad if it takes the heat off the working class Canadians, but you hate to see a guy getting off on genocide like this. Basically he lets the cat out of the bag about Midian and the monsters have to take a stand against redneck cops and local loonies. I don’t know what the cops thought Decker meant when he said “something’s breeding there,” but after they see a guy explode in sunlight the shit is on.

It’s a real ambitious horror fantasy, lots of scenes seem like the cantina in STAR WARS, just all different kinds of monsters, all in the pre-digital age, crazy latex makeup, occasional crude stop motion, and when somebody’s eyes or wounds have to glow you see that extra care that goes with painting it directly on the frame. Lots of mythology that they put lots of thought into, plus little moments that would only come out of Clive Barker’s perverted imagination (not even Cronenberg’s).

For example the porcupine lady. There’s this weird gal with no nose and a back covered in 10″ poison quills, but she’s supposed to be real sensual and erotic. When the cops are pulling a Waco on Midian she starts making suggestive tongue gestures to one of the officers, and he follows her. Barker’s point is that we all secretly yearn to explore the dark sides of our sexuality. My point is that nobody’s that hard up for a blow job that they’re gonna stop mid-siege to make it with a

Whaddya think... would you go for it?

porcupine monster. I mean at the very least he would stall for a while and act like he doesn’t want it and then wait ’til his friends are gone to hit it. But I guess that might be in the 50 minutes that I read the studio cut out of the movie.

NIGHTBREED’s biggest weakness is that its hero is the least interesting character. There’s not much to him except a bad boy pose, and he doesn’t have the Steve McQueen type of charisma to make that work. But his girlfriend Lori is more sympathetic, and alot of the movie is through her eyes. The movie also gets a little choppy as it escalates into full on human vs. monster combat, and I’m sure it would benefit from the longer cut.

But to me the uniqe qualities of this one make its weaknesses not all that important. I love this movie. These monsters have a genuine exoticness, they don’t seem like other movie monsters you’ve seen. Barker has one thing in common with Cronenberg and that’s that he seems to have some actual madness in there, and he’s not ashamed of it. So he does things (including the porcupine seduction) that you can truly say nobody else would think of. And the unpredictableness adds a real feeling of danger. You root for the monsters but can’t trust all of them, because you can’t honestly say they don’t bite. Some of them do, we’ve seen it.

Barker’s brain bubbles over with visual imagination like he left the burner on too long. The budget and technology are crude compared to most genre movies today, but he was able to get more imagery out of his head and onto film than in any of his other movies. He seems better at the designing than at moving the camera, but he does pull of a couple good tricks. I like the frenzied glimpses of the monsters in his nightmares, and they fit exactly with the busy Danny Elfman score.

And Cronenberg makes a great villain. I’m sure my knowledge of his movies adds something to it, but I think he really gives a convincing performance as a sicko. You gotta love the shot of him sitting in his office with a bunch of masks on the wall and a table covered in machetes laid out ritualistically. It makes you think – the Canadian health care system seems tempting, because you could actually get therapy and not have to do without it because your health insurance doesn’t cover jack shit. But then what if you get stuck with this nutball as your doctor? Doesn’t seem so great anymore, does it?

Man, what would be the closest modern comparison to NIGHTBREED? Would it be UNDERWORLD or something? They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore, and they didn’t before. I wonder where those guys went, anyway? It was obviously meant as chapter 1, it’s too bad it’s probly too late to do a follow up. I mean, unless they skip forward a bunch of years, and the porcupine lady’s got a bunch of kids, they’re all fat and wrinkly, the moon-faced guy looks like he’s had work done. And then all the fans would complain if they used any CGI, they’d say Clive Barker seduced their childhood and shot poison quills at it.

Oh well. Barker was trying to make “the STAR WARS of horror,” but I guess it wasn’t meant to catch on like that. But it’s an interesting oddity and as long as we know about it that’s enough. We’ll always have it on a shitty no-extras DVD, a freaky outcast living under a cemetery avoiding daylight.

In this one Scanner Cop (still Daniel Quinn) has a new Scanner Case. He’s gone from we-behind-the-ears rookie to completely-dry-throughout-the-entire-ear-area cocky veteran with long hair and even – and this is how you understand what he’s all about – a brown leather jacket.

By now people don’t just think he’s a psychic, he’s out in the open about being a scanner. In SCANNERS, scanners were completely underground. By part 3 they were rumored and discussed at parties. At this point they’re common knowledge enough that Scanner Cop can say to a doctor, “You know she’s a scanner, right?” and not have to explain what that means. On the other hand, people always seem surprised and confused when they use their powers.

The science of scanner medication has also improved. You know how in SCANNER COP he had to stay off his pills to use his powers and that was real dangerous because he was guaranteed to go crazy in a couple days? In this one they brush that off by having someone mention it and somebody else says oh no, he has new medication that lets him use his powers.

“The Showdown” of the subtitle is between Scanner Cop and a new Scanner Villain named Karl Volkin (Patrick Kilpatrick, Mercenary #2 from UNDER SIEGE 2). He’s a maniac scanner who escaped from an asylum and is going around scanning other scanners, defeating them and absorbing their powers (”like a vampire”). A girl (Khrystyne Haje) who Scanner Cop wants to date and who also is trying to help him find his birth mother tracks down an obscure case that happened in Canda one time, a case we at home would call “the David Cronenberg movie SCANNERS.” Kind of sad that the earth-shattering events of the original story are now just an old newspaper clipping of something even Scanner Cop never heard of and that doesn’t even affect his case that much. But what this guy Volkin is doing is supposed to be like what happened at the end of SCANNERS, if I understand this right.

So like Michael Ironside he’s got a list of all the scanners, but he’s using it more as a hit list or a list of different snacks he wants to eat than as a recruiting tool. He goes around finding the scanners and causing them to shrivel up like mummies. One poor bastard hears his girlfriend go to answer the door and then has to peel her gooey head off the security caging.

I’d say it’s not as dumb as the case in SCANNER COP, but it’s sure not exciting enough. It’s very repetitive. In slasher movies at least you can imagine they might slip away. This guy is too super-powered. You’re just watching him feed over and over. I mean the effects are cool like usual, but that’s not enough. It’s like I COME IN PEACE without the humor, the action, or the charisma of Dolph Lundgren.

There is one minor thing to make it seem more like a straight up cop movie: Robert Forster plays his commanding officer now. Poor bastard. He doesn’t have alot of screen time and what he has is 100% dedicated to generic cop lines and exposition. But he’s Robert Forster so he still seems to make it a little better than it should be. He has that professionalism.

Also I had no idea while watching it but if you ever watch this keep your eye out in the opening scenes, it turns out that redneck sheriff who first encounters Volkin is the Lone Ranger himself, Clayton Moore. I guess I didn’t recognize him with his mask off.

The funniest part of the movie is definitely the showdown itself, when the Scanner Cop finally faces down Volkin. For some reason the girl keeps telling him that the only way he can defeat Volkin is through illusion. She doesn’t say it like, “I had this idea that you should try using the power of illusion!” She says it very matter of factly that it’s the only possible method of victory. No disrespect to her librarian skills or her scanner heritage, but what the fuck does she know about this? How is she so confident she has the solution? She’s telling Scanner Cop what to do. Who does she think she is? This is Scanner Cop you’re talking to, lady!

Anyway there are these two innocent people that get knocked out by Volkin, then Scanner Cop comes in and they have a scanner fight and Scanner Cop loses and gets torn up… but then it turns out no, it was one of those unconscious guys being controlled by Scanner Cop and made to look like him in Karl’s mind. So Scanner Cop walks in again and says, “Fooled you, didn’t I Karl?” Real proud of himself.

Yeah you fooled him. Fooled him into murdering an innocent man instead of you! Way to protect and serve, asshole. Then he does the exact same thing with the other guy. I don’t know, maybe these guys were supposed to be dead already, and he just horribly desecrated their bodies so that their loved ones will not be able to have the closure of an open casket funeral. But it seemed to me more like he used two injured people as human shields (and puppets).

Anyway, Volkin yells “WRETCHED COP BASTARD!” So it’s a pretty funny scene. And with that David Cronenberg’s original vision of 14 years earlier was finally fulfilled, and there were no more SCANNERS movies.

I know what you’re thinking: but how did he run out of pills with Canada’s health care system? Well, this one takes place in Los Angeles. A special Los Angeles where “sorry” is pronounced different.

When the dad dies in a police stand-off a beat cop adopts the orphaned kid, little Sam Staziak, keeps him on Ephemerol and raises him to become an LAPD cop played by Daniel Quinn.

The Scanner Cop’s big case comes when a series of weird cop-killings starts. Ordinary citizens keep flipping out when they see cops. It turns out a cult leader turned mad scientist is out to get Staziak’s adopted dad (now the chief) so he and a palm reader keep kidnapping people and brainwashing them so the sight of a police uniform triggers hallucinations of monsters or other evil things attacking. Then they end up killing the cop thinking it’s a monster. The police are so helpless they stop wearing uniforms.

The chief convinces his reluctant ward to stop taking Ephemerol for a few days and use his powers to solve the case. He can get into the minds of the killers and see what they thought was going on. And every once in a while he runs into a purse snatcher or something and makes them flip and bonk their heads.

But it’s not very interesting because 1. they basically use him like a police psychic, so we’ve seen this shit before, and secondly the villainous plot is kind of stupid, more like a bad episode of a TV show than worthy of a feature film. The one sort of cool thing they do is have him go into the psychic’s parlor and sit down for a reading but end up interrogating her without even talking.

SCANNER COP is the directorial debut of Pierre David, the producer of SCANNERS and other early Cronenberg works. I don’t think that means they’re on the same wavelength, though. They just happened to both be in Canada. Most of David’s productions are less arty. For example he produced THE PERFECT WEAPON and MISSION OF JUSTICE.

I think this could be much better if it was copying the style and content of police thrillers like DIRTY HARRY and LETHAL WEAPON, but with the cop having this ability. Standard cases would be easy to solve. Only if the perp was a scanner would this guy have any trouble. Hostage negotiations would be easy. And he could trick the angry chief into giving him back his gun and badge every time he’s suspended and taken off the case.

Being a Scanner Cop would cause new temptations and ethical questions. The tagline on the box is “Imagine a cop who can read your mind… then blow it away.” Sounds terrifying, but it’s supposed to be comforting. You’re supposed to want that, but I don’t think I do. Do you think N.W.A. still would’ve said “Fuck the Police” if all the police were scanners? I think they would’ve wanted to fuck the police even more, because they’d be even more corrupt and harassing. But I guess they wouldn’t have had to make the song though because the Sanner Police would’ve read their minds thinking it anyway. And instead of the FBI sending them that letter or the police unions refusing to do security for their concerts they would’ve just scanned them and made their heads blow up. There would be no “100 Miles and Runnin’” or “Amerikkka’s Most Wanted” or “The Chronic.” That’s why I’m glad there’s no such thing as Scanner Cops in real life. Because “The Chronic” is a pretty good album, man.

But it’s true, I bet Scanner Cops would be out of control. They’d feel superior and above the law. King Kong wouldn’t have shit on them. Only SCANNER KING KONG would. That’s why the perfect sequel to this would be BAD SCANNER LIEUTENANT. Or they could do a whole series about different scanner jobs. SCANNER LAWYER, SCANNER DOCTOR, SCANNER COMMUNITY PLANNER, SCANNER ENTREPRENEUR, etc.

Or another idea would be just to stop making SCANNERS movies.

Meanwhile his sister Helena (Liliana Komorowska – a Christian Duguay regular who appears in SCREAMERS, JOAN OF ARC, THE ART OF WAR, EXTREME OPS and HITLER: THE RISE OF EVIL) tries out EPH-3, a new experimental drug her dad’s company is working on that stops her migraines and hearing of voices but, as one character says, “it’s almost like it’s blocking your conscience.” (Also I’m sure it can cause dry mouth, drowsiness and extreme diarrhea. Do not take with alcohol or other prescriptions. Get help immediately if EPH-3 causes world-conquering urges. Talk to your physician to find out if EPH-3 is right for you).  She quickly turns from mousy nobody to scheming, cackling, patricidal, ball-busting CEO soap opera bitch queen. She pretends to be sad after scan-drowning her dad in a hot tub, but gives herself away because she can’t restrain her evil smiles while other people are still in the room.

Helena first uses her scanning powers on some punks who try to mug her in an alley. I don’t get why people in movies ever cut through alleys anyway. There’s always punks or creeps there and they always try to mug you. Anyway, this is your signal that it’s more of a shitty action movie and less of a Cronenberg follow-up.

And yes, I believe there are three head explosions this time. And a part where she makes a business rival dance badly in public. And sped up footage of a guy spinning in a revolving door until he pops. And thugs that dress kind of like the Blues Brothers.

Speaking of brothers, hers comes back to the states to save the day, there is some rappelling, some motorcycle jumps, some exploding vehicles. It’s decent action, actually, and one really spectacular flaming motorcycle stunt. But the guy doesn’t have much charisma so it’s hard to get too invested in the scenes.

The one really clever new idea is when Helena’s having sex with the TV on in the room and she accidentally transfers her orgasmic feelings to the guest on a talk show. It’s played more for weirdness than for laughs, and I dig that. But then it inspires an evil plot where she goes on TV so she can scan everybody who’s watching. She also blows up a football player during a game. Commentators aren’t supposed to interfere like that. It’s unethical.

I guess it wouldn’t have taken a scanner to guess that these movies would suck. But you know how I am. I gotta know for myself. At least there are a few laughs here and there. And they were constantly pushing the technology of bulging vein effects by making these movies. Without them who knows where we’d be with that.

But back in ‘91 when this came out I think they still thought they could tame him. They must’ve missed DEAD RINGERS, and NAKED LUNCH hadn’t come out yet. He folded his twisted sensibilities into THE DEAD ZONE and THE FLY, both pure Cronenberg visions that could pass for commercial entertainment. And all his movies had great gore in them. Melting, bubbling, tearing flesh, all done with rubber and foam of course, and it still holds up better than anything done with pixels. So that made him a hero to the Fangorians, and therefore a “horror director.” And that means SCANNERS is just a regular genre picture just asking for a lackluster part 2.

LIke the first one it starts with a grimy drifter scanner going nuts in public – he goes to an arcade and wins all the video games telepathically. He gets picked up by an orginization but instead of getting cleaned up and becoming the hero he just gets used as an evil henchman. This guy is guilty of serious overacting. I wouldn’t say mega-acting because even if it was a deliberate artistic choice I think it was a poor one. When Nicolas Cage mega-acts he seems genuinely nuts. This guy seems like he’s fakin it.

The real hero is some dude who looks like Justin Timberlake (David Hewlett) who’s a student at a veterinary school (he uses his powers to cure a cute puppy). He’s found out in the same way martial artists often are – he foils a convenience store robbery and people see the security camera footage of how awesome he is. Some scientists tell him what he is and help him hone his powers, supposedly to help society. They’ve been looking for good scanners but most of them freak out so they give them a drug that turns them into ghoulish junkies. They mostly keep those guys in the basement and when they use them outside it’s easy to spot because hey, that security guard looks like Lurch’s shorter cousin, must be a scanner.

He starts to get suspicious when they have him scan the mayor at a press conference and make her appoint the wrong person as acting police chief. That’s what this is all about – a takeover (which is weird since that’s the subtitle for part 3). The new chief talks Machievellian shit about the greater good, but the actor plays him as evil, so it’s hard to think of him as just misguided.

Our scanner decides to quit the team and go on the run, and he has to take on the conspirators himself. The writer, B.J. Nelson (LONE WOLF MCQUADE) must’ve thought scanning was like the Force, because he put in some stuff for the Star Wars trekkies. There’s a part where his dad (SPOILER coming up next word) dies and telepathically tells him he has a sister, just like Yoda did as he was (HUGE YODA SPOILER) dying in Return of the Jedis. Also he finds out he’s the son of Cameron Vale from part 1.

I have to give this movie some credit, because it has some pretty cool ideas in it. The best new scanner concept is that the brother and sister focus in on one of their enemies until they can see through his eyes, then they remotely control him into a secure building, then scan other people through him. Daisy chain scanning. But then the bad guy shows up and it’s three scanners poking around in the same head, so that causes problems. By the way, a medical tip: don’t leave a big rack of syringes on a table with the needles pointing up.

Also there’s some good effects – veins popping, heads bulging, and of course they do 2 (two) head explosions this time. In the first one the bad guy was pretty much trying to take over the world by leading a scanner uprising, in this one they’re just trying to rule the city with an iron fist. So it seems like a de-escalation but it’s not, because there are 2 exploding heads. That’s how sequels work.

I thought they were gonna do three exploding heads for a second there but with the last guy they stop right before it hits the breaking πoint, leaving his face horribly deformed. I like that. Also there’s a weird, ambiguous ending where I think brother and sister both have two pupils per eye. I think it means they both can see through each other now. Not sure.

That reminds me, there’s some weird, incestuous undertones when he scans his sister and she has to tell him to be more gentle. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but at least they didn’t go completely safe.

But without Cronenberg’s style the movie just doesn’t work. They turned it into a normal movie. THe guy has a mullet, the end credits have a song that sounds liek Brian Adams or somebody. The score contains what I think should be called “mystery sax” – you know, that cheesy type of saxophone they put on movies and TV shows when they want to say, “You know, this is like one of those old timey private eye type stories.”

Director Christian Duguay was considered a cool, stylish, MTV type director at the time. I don’t know this from any research, but from the fact that there’s a scene that takes place in a room only lit by a light behind a big rotating fan, creating a strobing effect. And there are a bunch of mannequins in the room. But it’s the fan that’s the dead give away. For some reason they were all into that trick, they really thought it looked amazing. Cronenberg’s scene taking place inside a giant sculpture of a head still looks cool. The fan trick I don’t think holds up quite as well.

Duguay went on to become an Emmy nominated director of mini-series such as JOAN OF ARC and HITLER: THE RISE OF EVIL. Hewlett became a regular for director Vincenzo Natali, appearing in CUBE, NOTHING, CYPHER and SPLICE. But also BOA VS. PYTHON.

If you’re a scanner you can just read my mind instead of continuing to read this, but all I got left to say is I wouldn’t really recommend this picture.

A member of the Scanner-Canadian community faces many hardships, so they tend to become outcasts, not really knowing how to fit in. We follow one of these scanner misfits, Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), as he scans some old ladies for talking shit about him in a food court, gets spotted and picked up by a private security firm called ConSec, and gets recruited to stop a militant, supposedly crazy scanner (Michael Ironside) who’s trying to band together all of the scanners for an uprising and kill the ones who won’t join up so there’s nobody to stop them.

That plot is pretty similar to X-MEN, and it’s easy to imagine this made today as a slick PG-13 thriller with lots of show-offy CGI and an ending that sets up a trilogy. But in 1981 young Dave Cronenberg made it as a creepy, seedy, low budget, lo-fi creepfest. It has all his early obsessions: video distortion, weird synthesized sounds, horrible and unnatural bodily mutilation, dangerous clandestine organizations, untrustworthy private companies involved in secret programs. It has a very cool thriller concept and enough groundbreaking gore effects to get in the horror magazines, but it doesn’t feel much like a normal genre type of movie. Cronenberg’s movies feel like they’re actually made by a madman. (Except FAST COMPANY, which is just made by a car enthusiast.)

Of course you know about the famous scene early on where Ironside causes another man’s head to (SPOILER) get full of silly ideas (THAT WAS A FAKE OUT SPOILER, HERE IS THE REAL ONE) explode. It’s a classic scene that says, “Despite my polite Canadian demeanor I assure you that I mean business!” There are plenty of other intense scenes like the car crash a scanner causes in order to escape custody, a bunch of shootouts and further scanner-on-scanner brain fights. I like that the bullet hits mean business too, there’s always a serious splatter and it seems like chunks of meat fly off.

But alot of the “action” is really just people staring and other people being affected by that staring. It’s amazing how much mileage Cronenberg gets out of facial expressions, convulsions and Howard Shore’s weird keyboard sounds. It really seems like you can almost see the beams coming out of their heads. It’s incredibly effective for something so simple.

In fact that could be the one thing that protects SCANNERS from getting recycled by the remake factory is that it’s not a power that would be easy to spend millions of dollars on. They’d have to change it to something that can be seen more. They don’t figure anybody wants a movie based on imagination and pretend and implying stuff. The concept does lend itself to all kinds of other stories (that’s why they made a bunch of sequels [also because what're they gonna do, make up a new movie?]) but you’d have to change it alot to be expensive. Of course, I’m sure they’d add a bunch more exploding heads. But only on the unrated version you didn’t see in theaters DVD.

What is it about that time between about 1978 and 1982 that just lent itself to this kind of dark, grimy mystery? SCANNERS reminds me of THE HOWLING how this guy is out in the city hiding his weird secret. But the serial killer werewolf doesn’t get cleaned up in a tie and trenchcoat and sent to inflitrate werewolf subversives. And also it’s more cerebral. (Well, no shit.) It’s such a good paranoid concept. How are you supposed to outsmart somebody who can read your mind? That’s a tough one.

Late in the movie there’s a part where Vale scans through a pay phone, sending his thoughts through the wires, causing a fire. In context it seems to make alot of sense. If your thoughts can travel through the air into other heads, why not travel through a wire like other forms of information? It made me think of those hackers who can do crazy shit just using a phone, except this is the Cronenberg version of that so it’s biological.

Another good idea for a SCANNER movie would be if one of them wins a bunch of money on “Jeopardy.” Or it could be more like ZAPPED and they just use their power for pervy reasons. But I guess Cronenberg’s idea of pervy is different from anybody else’s. It wouldn’t just be girls taking their shirts off, it would be erotic fingering of bullet wounds and shit.

SCANNERS is a real good example of a crazy artistic mind allowing itself to be just barely constrained by the rules of exploitation. I like that kind of stuff. Definitely check it out if you haven’t seen it. I mean, you can just tell by that little picture above that alot of crazy shit happens in this movie. But don’t tell the Hollywood people about it. I don’t mean to spend too much of the review worried about the remake potential, but it just seems so obvious that it could happen. So I would like to point out that the lead looks alot like Scott Adkins. Instead of remaking it I hope they consider just re-releasing it as a special edition with some new judo scenes.

I rented JAWS OF DEATH because the cover and the title made it seem like a JAWS rip-off. But actually it’s more in the tradition of the weirdo-with-attachment-to-unpleasant-animal movies like WILLARD. The director, William Grefe, also did STANLEY, about a guy who uses rattlesnakes to get revenge. In this one it’s sharks.

Richard Jaeckel (THE DIRTY DOZEN, also the crappy TV sequel to THE DIRTY DOZEN) plays Sonny, a guy who lives alone on an island and his only friends are the sharks, who he talks to, feeds every day, and even swims with. They won’t harm him because he wears one of those magical medallions that give you a psychic connection to all sharks. Like many of us, he got his during the war from a dude sitting in a throne shaped like a shark (there’s a flashback).

The locals are always trying to hurt sharks, and Sonny’s always trying to protect them, so he gains a shameful reputation as a “shark boy” and “shark lover.” In this neighborhood there’s alot of prejudice toward the shark-medallion community.

Then one night (although it looks suspiciously like daylight, but they keep saying it’s night) Sonny comes across some local yahoos trying to rape a woman. He fights them off and offers her a ride home… but then he has to stop and take his boat to the island “to feed my friends.” He should probly just drop her off and swing back over here, but he doesn’t want to miss the shark’s appointed feeding time. He also doesn’t mention that his “friends” are sharks and for some reason she thinks he’s talking about humans. Which brings up the question: would it be weirder to say “I have to feed my friends” and be talking about humans, or sharks? I’m not sure what the answer is.

She gets all pissed off and yells at him, which seems ungrateful. But admittedly he is acting pretty creepy. Not one of the better rapist-fender-offers, in my opinion. He could be more sensitive to how scared she is, I think.

She ends up coming with him to the island and he shows her the sharks, even demonstrates swimming with them. Since her job happens to be swimming in a tank at her obese husband’s bar this gives her an idea. She convinces Sonny to let her borrow one of the sharks for her act. Also he gives one to the aquarium to study, for some reason.

The sexy-lady-swimming-with-sharks-through-window routine goes over okay, but Sonny gets pissed because the fat husband is using some kind of machine (electrical current?) that’s mean to the sharks. So Sonny freaks out and the girl gets mad and yells at him to never come back.

So then he’s in revenge mode. He makes the sharks attack her. He pushes a guy from the aquarium into the tank to get eaten. He hooks a shark hunter by his sharkhunting hook and drags him behind his own boat.

Jaeckel is the only actor who seems like he’s done it before, but I bet this wasn’t the one that meant the most to him. His reactions to the sharks being mistreated is sort of along the lines of Nic Cage biting his fist when he sees a snuff movie in 8MM. This is one of those movies that seems like a local independent production, not a professional product. Alot of times it seems like they just set up a camera and stood in front of it as opposed to planning out angles like you would do if you were making a real movie. So poor Jaeckel being in it kind of feels like Bela Lugosi in the Ed Wood movies. But luckily he lived alot longer and got to do much bigger productions alongside Billy Blanks and Jeff Wincott.

Harold Sakata has a bit part as a random thug who doesn’t really do anything and barely has any screen time, but they put him on both the credits and the poster as “Harold (Odd Job) Sakata.” I’m not sure if I’ve seen that before, a credit that lists the actor’s other credits. But if somebody’s gonna do that, this is the kind of movie they’re gonna do it on.

To be fair, the shitty quality of the DVD I watched doesn’t help. It’s dark and muddy with terrible sound and obviously transferred from a VHS tape. If Dark Sky or somebody like that cleaned it up it would probly be more enjoyable as a curiosity.

SPECIAL BONUS: HALF-ASSED REVIEW OF SAM FULLER’S SHARK STARRING BURT REYNOLDS

Another one that suffers from a terrible transfer and that I incorrectly thought was gonna be a JAWS rip-off was this disowned Sam Fuller movie called SHARK. It’s actually from ‘69, before JAWS obviously, and isn’t exactly about sharks. Reynolds plays Caine, a weapons smuggler who gets stranded in Mexico and takes a job with an underwater scientific expedition as his way out of there. Also he befriends a little kid.

Well, it turns out this isn’t a scientific expedition at all, and these people are sleazy and it turns into a fight over treasure.

I couldn’t get myself very involved in this one, but Reynolds is charismatic and there is some pretty good action, some rolling vehicles and explosions, etc. The highlight I think is an epic fist fight. On the shitty DVD put out by Troma the scene is so dark that their faces look like silhouettes, and yet I swear on Christs Holy middle initial of H that I could tell what was going on better than in your average modern fight scene. (I could tell what, just not who.)

I guess the other highlight is when Reynolds is threatening a guy for hurting the little pickpocket kid who he calls “Runt.” Then he’s asked what the kid’s name is, and he realizes he doesn’t know and says, “I forgot to ask.”

Fuller made this with Mexican producers during a long dry spell when he just couldn’t get any movies off the ground. One thing that is good about the Troma DVD is that they have a clip of “the author of Fuller’s autobiography” talking about it and reading an excerpt from the book to put it in context. You learn that Fuller immediately regretted trusting the producers, compared the filming to flying an airplane while you’re still building it, and tried to get them to take his name off when he saw how they re-edited it into something totally different from what he made.

One thing these two shark movies have in common is that they open with a dedication to the “brave stuntmen” who “risked their lives” to film the shark scenes. JAWS OF DEATH is especially funny about this because the poster and the opening both say “filmed without the benefit of cages, mechanical sharks or other protective devices”… in other words, “the people who made JAWS are a bunch of pussies!”

(I also like the idea of a mechanical shark being a “protective device.” Like they used the mechanical shark to scare off the real sharks.)

It’s always funny when a dedication is clearly more of a boast or grandstanding than a sincere expression of gratitude. Like how the Paris Hilton porno is dedicated to the heroes of 9-11. But these bragadocious dedications did leave me wondering how exactly they did those scenes. There are shots where people (even what looks to actually be Jaeckel) seem to be sort of wrestling with the sharks, and I’m not sure how they did it. Wikipedia claims that in the case of SHARK they had sharks that were supposed to be sedated, but that one still attacked and killed a stuntman on camera. I’m not sure if it’s in the movie. If it’s true, I gotta say, I don’t think it was worth it.

It also made me realize that I like mechanical sharks better than real sharks. Whenever they cut to the real one in JAWS it feels like stock footage, but when they’re showing a fake one (or nothing at all) it always works. Speaking of JAWS, there’s a funny extra on the SHARK DVD where Lloyd Kaufman of Troma talks to two teenage film nerds about Sam Fuller, and he seems to have brainwashed them into looking down on JAWS. They keep repeating that the music in JAWS “tells you what to think”… yeah, it tells you to think there’s a fucking shark there. Because there’s not, there’s just a camera moving through water. And it’s much more powerful and interesting than the real shark really eating the poor guy.

So you come across this nice little joint called Amity Island. Wide open, not much competition from other sharks or orcas. (There was one smaller shark, but some people killed it, mistaking it for you. Suckers!) So it’s a good set up. Just little pink morsels wiggling around, as far as the eye can see. Which is not that far actually, because sharks don’t have very good vision. But they do have a weird thing where they can sense the electromagnetic pulse of even a heartbeat. And these heartbeats feel delicious.

Unfortunately, there are consequences to eating this “hot lunch.” You eat one or two people, all the other people get pissed off and come after you. They stick an air tank in your mouth and shoot at it until you explode. Or they trick you into biting a power cable. Or they put a grenade in your mouth and blow you up in 3-D and it’s ironic because they call you “Jaws” and then your jaws are about all that remains intact when you explode into a bunch of blood and guts. People really know how to keep a big shark down.

Well this is the story of one courageous shark who got fed up with being blown up, and he took a stand.

To be honest I’m not sure who this shark is. It seems like it’s supposed to be the one from JAWS, but everybody knows the one from JAWS got blown to bits. This movie seems to take place in an alternate timeline not related to the other JAWS movies. Lorraine Gary is still Ellen Brody, but Lance Guest (THE LAST STARFIGHTER) plays Michael instead of Dennis Quaid, and he’s a marine biologist studying snails in the Bahamas instead of an engineer building a water park in Venezuela. Sean (Mitchell Anderson) is no longer trying to get away from the island, he’s actually a sheriff’s deputy there now. Chief Brody is dead, but his portrait hangs on the wall at the department, so he must not have gotten fired like in JAWS 2. Or he did and then they forgave him.

I can’t explain any of these changes, but I kind of like them. They keep you on your toes. This whole movie has a very strange dream-like feel. This JAWS feels more like a horror movie than the other JAWSes. It’s got a nice sort of surreal, paranoid, not-sure-what-is-reality type of feel.

I know, I know, you’re not supposed to say anything nice or neutral about JAWS: THE REVENGE. I looked it up, and it turns out everybody says it’s the worst. In the comments for the other JAWSes several of you declared it a “worthless piece of shit,” even “one of the worst movies of all time.” When I told friends I was watching the JAWS sequels at least one said, “Uh oh! Part 4 is terrible!” The stupid Razzies nominated it for worst picture (it lucked out ’cause it was up against LEONARD PART 6). Entertainment Weekly had it at #10 of the worst sequels of all time, just five above BATMAN AND ROBIN. It has a 00% on Rotten Tomatoes, and I never could figure out how to log in on there so I can’t change that. And I remember this comedian (Richard Jeni it turns out) had a popular routine that was just him talking about the movie and complaining about how dumb it was.

When a child grows up being told he’s worthless, he starts to believe it. But when a moviegoer hears about a movie sucking for decades before seeing it it lowers his expectations. And then he sees it and he thinks actually, fuck it. I know this is absurd, but I can go along with it. In fact I kind of like it. I don’t think people are being fair to this movie. The poor little guy. Why are they picking on him?

This time Ellen Brody is the main character. (Unless you consider the shark the main character.) It’s Christmas time and Sean Brody is doing some petty deputy duties where he has to go out in a boat to check on some garbage in the water. Out of the blue he gets his arm bit off by a giant shark and bleeds to death. (PSYCHO-type spoiler.) I really fell for that one, I didn’t see that one coming and it’s a real brutal death scene.

Ellen realizes how unlikely it is that her husband was attacked by a giant shark all those years ago, and then he and both her kids were attacked again in part 2, and I guess we’ll ignore part 3 (because that’s on a 3-D timeline separate from the 2-D one) but now her other son gets killed by a shark… she knows this doesn’t make any sense, and that’s why she comes to the conclusion that, as the trailer narrator says, This Time It’s Personal. This fucking shark has picked out the Brodys and he’s stalking them, picking them off one by one. He has a vendetta. Or maybe just real refined tastebuds. Maybe Brodys are delicious. Either way, he’s singling them out.

Or that’s how she feels, anyway, but obviously everybody else thinks she’s crazy, or too stressed out from her son’s death. She tries to convince her other son Michael not to work in the water anymore. But he explains why this is ridiculous and convinces her to come stay with his family in Nassau for a while. Get away from the memories, play with her little granddaughter. So she does. And, uh, the shark shows up.

That seems to be the main sticking point, that’s why everybody else in the world besides me is not open to this movie. They can’t get past the leap of logic that this shark is gonna follow the Brody family to the Bahamas no matter how tender and succulent their meat is. I get it. If you can’t go along with that you can’t go along with that. But let’s be fair here. It’s not like this is some ridiculous thing that the movie is trying to sneak past us and hope we don’t notice. It’s not a “plot hole.” No, the movie points it out, emphasizes it. Michael tells Ellen that a great white shark has never been where he lives before, because the water is too warm. Then when the shark does show up his partner Mario Van Peebles points out the same thing.

All I’m saying is let’s acknowledge that the movie knows this is far-fetched, knows that we know it’s far-fetched, and in fact is using that as its way to try to scare us. It’s no longer just the shark itself that’s supposed to be scary, it’s the impossibility of the shark trying to get The Revenge, and going this far to do it. Impossible, but happening. It’s the same as when Charles Bronson shows up unexpectedly to confront creeps in DEATH WISH 2. They’re not just scared because a stranger is in their home. They’re scared because oh shit, it’s the guy. That’s why JAWS: THE REVENGE pays so much loving attention to the widening eyes of the Brodys as they see the shark and contemplate the significance of it being there.

Ellen: Holy shit, this shark killed my husband and my son and my other son is next if I don’t do something about it!

Michael: Holy shit, are you telling me Mom was actually right about that shark?!

So exactly as Ellen lets go of her paranoid idea and apologizes for being such a pain in the ass her son is actually realizing that she was right.

One thing that would make it more fun would be if you got to see more of the shark’s perspective on this, why he feels that This Time It’s Personal, why he wants The Revenge. It could be a shark’s version of DEATH WISH or THE EXECUTIONER, complete with a scene where a radio call-in show has different sharks giving pro and con opinions about the vigilante shark. But since it’s unclear which shark this is it’s hard to figure out what he’s got his fin up his ass over. What we do know is that Martin Brody died of a heart attack, but Ellen blames this specific shark for scaring him to death. Does this mean Brody actually died after the incident in JAWS, and the shark didn’t actually blow up? Or was there another shark later on that scared him to death, perhaps a relative or war buddy of Jaws #1? (They’re real close, they go all the way back to the USS Indianapolis.) Or did he really blow up the shark but then somehow it kept haunting him, a ghostly or undead shark, and that’s why it scared him so bad and why Ellen is so convinced that the family is marked for death?

I don’t know but there are definite hints of something supernatural going on. Elaine seems to have a psychic connection with the shark. At one point a wave laps against her foot on the beach and she senses the shark. She just needs to make physical contact with the body of water the shark is in to be able to zero in on its location. A big point is made about how big the ocean is and how unlikely it is she’ll run into the shark when she goes out on a boat, but of course they’ll find each other like Luke and Darth Vader. When she sees the shark from a boat, she takes her sunglasses off, as if she has to make eye contact to communicate with it. (Or maybe she just wants to look her boy’s killer in the eye.)

There’s also a sense of predestination, same as in (the admittedly much better movie) ORCA. Ellen is even less of a shark hunter than her late husband, but she feels that her and the shark are destined to do battle, and the more she runs the more trouble it causes. So when there’s a shark attack on a crowded beach (almost getting her granddaughter) she without hesitation, without telling anybody, speed walks to her son’s boat and single-handedly sails it out into the ocean to look for the man-eating bastard. It’s like that turning point I love so much in HALLOWEEN: H20 where Laurie has the realization that she can run all her life or she can go back and get this shit squared away, and she chooses the latter.

And check out how this alternate poster makes you question whether maybe the shark is not the one getting the revenge, or taking it personal. Maybe it’s Ellen:

Unfortunately, it’s not at all as badass as the painting indicates. And like Ellen Brody before me you’re all gonna think I’m a lunatic for saying this, but I think this is where the movie finally blows it. This should be the culmination of Ellen’s journey. She was right, the shark was after her. It killed her husband (?), it killed her son, it tried to kill her other son and her granddaughter. She tried keeping her family away from the water, but she couldn’t do it, and the shark found them. So now she must take on the responsibility as the matriarch of the family to put this fucker down. She goes out into the water herself and rams a boat up the motherfucker’s ass and lets him bleed to death. And the original ending they shot had the shark’s death throes tearing the boat apart, which is very fitting. They nearly take each other out.

But the way it unfolds in the movie it’s not really Ellen vs. shark. Hoagie (Michael Caine) shows up and lands his sea plane, he and Michael and Van Peebles hop aboard and they use their scientific know-how to try to defeat the shark. She gets to grieve some more (the shark eats the damn plane, momentarily making them think Hoagie is dead) but they totally steal her thunder. This should be her final stand. Instead it’s her acting crazy and her son stops her and takes over.

But more importantly they just fucked up when they were filming the ending. The first ending they shot was a better idea but, uh, I think you can see why they decided not to use it. Here it is, taken from the TV version:

They weren’t happy with that so instead of using the laughably fake looking shot of the shark they cut it together incomprehensibly. As she tries to ram the shark it’s intercutting with the end of JAWS (so he did blow up the shark after all, didn’t he?). I didn’t notice any explanation for why the shark would explode, so at first I thought it only exploded in her memory of part 1 and not in the present. But then all the sudden everybody’s safe, even Van Peebles who got bitten in half. I had to rewind it in order to sort of understand what happened, but the results weren’t entirely conclusive.

(By the way, for the most part Bruce the fake shark is used great in this movie. I think he looks really cool. I like that you see him so much. But obviously that original ending there didn’t work, they needed to figure out some other way to do that.)

I know everybody was excited to see me rip this one a new gill, but I look at all these criticisms and I can’t help but think that people are being unfair to it. Yeah, okay, it’s preposterous, but it’s not as constantly inept as I keep reading it is. Until that crappy ending it’s well shot, well put together, dramatically paced. It treats its plot and characters seriously. And it’s very against the grain for 1980s horror sequels. It has a rare romance between older folks. None of the FRIDAY THE 13TH or HALLOWEEN sequels had the balls to put a 50 year old widow in the lead. The only sex in the movie is an off-screen romantic encounter between a married couple. The body count is low (isn’t it just one?) but upsetting when it happens. The granddaughter is a good kid performance, precocious but naturalistic like (hey, wait a minute) a Spielberg movie. The acting and dialogue are better than expected in this type of thing. So it’s not TROLL 2, let’s not exaggerate.

Reading about the movie I’ve seen alot of people mention Michael Caine coming out of the water and then immediately being dry. Yeah, I noticed that too. But I notice that all the time in movies, people coming out of a lake or a rain storm and then all the sudden they’re totally dry. It happens in plenty of movies without anybody saying it makes them the worst of all time.

I remembered that Richard Jeni comedy routine so I looked it up, couldn’t find it on youtube but found a transcript.  Always seemed like a cheat to me to just describe a movie plot and call that comedy, but it was more of a cheat than I realized, because nothing he says is accurate. He makes fun of Ellen having a love life when “4 or 5″ members of her family have just died. But only one has just died and her dating Michael Caine is part of her struggle to move on with her life. Jeni makes fun of her for going to an island to hide from the shark, but of course she’s not trying to hide at all and in fact feared going there for the very reason that a shark can get to an island. The only legitimate complaint in that whole routine is about how fast the shark was able to swim there, although he doesn’t actually beat the jet as Jeni says and it’s unclear how much time has passed when he does show up. So I take exception to that comedy.

Well, shit. There you have it everybody. I’m the guy. The one guy who says JAWS THE REVENGE isn’t all that bad. Please adjust your respect for my opinion accordingly.

The director is Joseph Sargent, a prolific director of TV movies. He didn’t come from “Night Gallery” like all the other JAWS directors. He was actually from an earlier generation, going back to “Lassie” and “Star Trek.” One of the few theatrical movies he directed, though, was THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE. And not the Tony Scott version, either. The Joseph Sargent version. Something to be proud of.

I bet if they used the PELHAM theme song for THE REVENGE it would’ve gone over better.

* * *
Watching these movies made me wonder something. Why is it that sequels appeal to me so much? They’re an easy way for studios to make money without having to gamble on new ideas, everybody knows that’s why they’re made. And while there are sequels that manage to live up to or even surpass the first time around (THE GODFATHER PART II, ALIENS, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 [gotta throw that one in there], THE DARK KNIGHT) I think we all agree that’s an exception to the rule. Most of the time – including in the case of this particular shark series – the best you can hope for is a pretty entertaining but derivative hollow shell of the original that has a few funny or cool twists to the formula.

But somehow I like that about them. Or maybe I just like ’80s sequels. If I like the thing that started it all, it might be best that they left that thing alone. But since they didn’t, the sequels become a part of the history of that thing, and somehow take on an importance in my mind. I like that it’s a series, a continuing character or theme that can be reworked or copied by different filmatic teams over the years, with varying success. It’s kind of like they’re given a challenge, a set of rules to work within or to bend. You gotta have a shark in it, you gotta have some bullshit connection to the Brody family, you gotta use this theme music, but other than that just be creative. I like seeing the different things they tried to keep it fresh. If I like the series enough as a whole I’ll even go back and revisit the bad ones every once in a while. I seem to go through the entire FRIDAY THE 13TH or NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series once every couple of years. I even rewatch the HALLOWEEN sequels every once in a while, and those are mostly terrible. I like watching the PSYCHO sequels, even though the original is so sacred and so separate from them. I still enjoy them.

So if you want somebody to blame for all the unnecessary sequels made in the ’80s, blame me. It was partly my fault. I didn’t mean any harm, though. Don’t take it personal.

Ain’t that a bitch? Diners full of people like this have faced down giant worms, killer trucks, body-switching Jason, etc., but there aren’t too many monster movie foes as rough as the big guy in the sky. And in this case He’s a mysterious unseen God, not Morgan Freeman or somebody. In my opinion God’s shit list is a good one to avoid having your name on.

Luckily for humanity they’ve got a powerful ally in the angel Michael (Paul Bettany, taking over John Travolta’s beloved cinematic creation) who thinks God is being a Dick and has refused his order to kill the unborn baby that for reasons I didn’t understand is prophesized to grow up and save humanity in a John Connor type of fashion. Michael pulls up in a stolen cop car loaded with guns and arms the diner patrons to the teeth so they can gun down and blow up the approaching angelically possessed monsters. Some of them get out and get filled with bullets, mostly they just drive up and their cars explode. In my opinion there is a possibility that the creative minds behind this motion picture have played some video games at some point in their lives.

I won’t give away how this all kicks off, it’s a pretty good over-the-top scene that was given away in the trailer, but maybe some of you didn’t see that. There are some pretty cool (but completely cartoony) digital monster effects in some scenes. It’s all very computery, especially the swarm of locusts that appears and disappears mainly just so Tyrese can say, “You expect me to explain the behavior of a pestilence?”

I’m not sure if it’s actually trying to be scary. Their strategy isn’t to turn everyday harmless things into monsters, but outdated movie things that most people have never seen in real life. For example a 1950s style ice cream man with a little hat and everything CGI stretches into an evil-appearing-but-actually-servant-of-God-spider-man-monster. I hope these filmatists didn’t think they were being subversive by showing the dark side of an outdated style of ice cream man. But I’m thankful they didn’t choose clown.

The protagonists include Dennis Quaid (JAWS 3) as the owner; Lucas Black (TOKYO DRIFT) as his son, a mechanic; Tyrese (2 FAST 2 FURIOUS) as the typical Tyrese good-hearted criminal and Charles S. Dutton as the classic Charles S. Dutton righteous Bible-toter. Also you got the pregnant waitress and a bickering couple and their sullen teen daughter. And I don’t mean to give anything away but they may or may not all manage to work through their issues, improve their relationships and come to an understanding about their pasts and their purposes in life and what not.

So the characters are pretty one-dimensional and by the numbers, and some of the action is pretty dark and muddy. The angel Gabriel, who tries to be God’s pet (you know how Gabriel is) fights Michael (I wonder if he’d get mad if I just call him Mike?) with some kind of holy buzz saw and some wing-chops, which is pretty good. But other than that I don’t remember any battles that were very exciting.

Still, I gotta give this one a marginal passing grade for the sheer ballsiness of the idea. It definitely stands out from the pack. Mike is basically a conscientious objector against God. He has been taught to love by God and is not about to switch over to hate. But Gabriel is just a blind follower, a toadie, a yes-man. At first glance it seems like these crazies got away with making a movie where God is the bad guy. So I guess to some people it might be a cop out that it ends up being a little more thoughtful and nuanced than that. I think it’s still enough to offend many people (it does depict God sending monsters to kill people) but it ends up a good message about really understanding and believing in something (your religion, country, whatever) instead of just stupidly following orders. Michael is a good soldier, just not a good German.