a survey of summer movies that just didn’t catch on
July 23rd, 1993
Dan Aykroyd was the mastermind behind two of the most beloved comedies of the ’80s: THE BLUES BROTHERS (possibly my favorite comedy of all time) and GHOSTBUSTERS (male version), so what could be more of a no-brainer than to have him turn his most famous Saturday Night Live sketch into a movie?
Like GHOSTBUSTERS, CONEHEADS teams him with an ensemble of great comedic talents from SNL and elsewhere to build on a comedy premise about an intersection between the regular world and a fantastical one. Instead of a supernatural element it’s an extra-terrestrial one. The Coneheads are an alien couple who crash their Remulakian space cruiser outside New York and while waiting for extraction decide to live as earthlings, first in a motorhome, then in the New Jersey suburbs, raising a daughter, owning a house, golfing, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
a survey of summer movies that just didn’t catch on
“Are you tellin us that you’re gonna arrest a guy for bein a plumber? Get outta here!”
May 28, 1993
Okay, look. I’m not claiming to know a better way to make a live action movie based on a video game about an Italian plumber eating mushrooms, punching bricks and murdering hundreds and hundreds of turtles but also collecting coins while trying to rescue a princess. And seeing how directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel reimagine the world of the famous Nintendo game as a dystopic Manhattan in an alternate dimension where people evolved out of dinosaurs is the closest thing to fun this movie has to offer.
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
STEEL DAWN takes the post-apocalyptic world of George Miller, pumps up the samurai and western influences, adds a little martial arts, replaces the internal combustion engine with wind power, and invents the Patrick Swayze action vehicle. He’d already made a name for himself in ensembles – THE OUTSIDERS, UNCOMMON VALOR, RED DAWN – but this was released only three months after his breakout role in DIRTY DANCING. It didn’t catch on in the same way, and it doesn’t play on cable nearly as much. But this last time I watched it was a profound experience.
It opens with Swayze balancing on his head in the middle of a desert. That’s how he meditates. But then a bunch of shrieking, masked mutants climb out of the sand to attack him. He uses martial arts to fight them off, pulling a sword out of his bag when he gets too outnumbered.
He’s a nomad. In fact, he’s credited as Nomad. Heading for a tavern, he gets attacked by an old warrior who turns out to be Cord (John Fujioka, AMERICAN NINJA, AMERICAN SAMURAI, AMERICAN YAKUZA), an old war comrade just fucking with him. They catch up over drinks but suddenly a bunch of brutes led by a guy named Sho (Christopher Neame, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE, DRACULA A.D. 1972, SPECIES III) in a ridiculous hair metal wig attack them and kill Cord. (read the rest of this shit…)
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
Hello everyone. I don’t think it would be appropriate to discuss the sequel that Ridley Scott decided to make to PROMETHEUS until we first bow our heads in a moment of silence for the completely insane one we imagined when PROMETHEUS ended with Shaw in a stolen Engineer ship carrying a severed robot head on an impossible mission to stick her foot up the ass of the Space Jockeys on their home turf.
PROMETHEUS 2
b. June 8, 2012 – d. May 19, 2017
R.I.P. the way better movie in our minds. Gone too soon. Sleep well my sweet baby prince.
Instead of that legendary greatness we have something pretty good: ALIEN: COVENANT, a hybrid between what-people-expect-in-an-ALIEN-sequel and weirdo-philosophizing-PROMETHEUS-shit. Scott, with returning cinematographer Darius Wolski (CRIMSON TIDE, DARK CITY), gives us another gorgeous-looking sci-fi horror, this time with a script by John Logan (THE LAST SAMURAI) and Dante Harper that’s not as outwardly dunderheaded as PROMETHEUS at its worst, though not as imaginative as it at its best. It starts out with circa 1979 pacing (very effective) but eventually throws a modern amount of frantic action at the screen (pretty enjoyable too).
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
Troma boy made good James Gunn (SUPER) returns as director and this time sole credited writer to bring us GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2, the continuing adventures of Marvel’s literally-colorful team of intergalactic reprobates. Gunn doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, he just coasts on the charm and humor of the world and characters he set up in the first one. But this time they hit the ground running, already a team, and Groot (Vin Diesel, FIND ME GUILTY) is a baby tree man instead of a giant one, so they only have one big enforcer guy instead of two, and they have to take turns babysitting.
Think about it: wouldn’t it be weird if in one of the FAST AND FURIOUS movies all the sudden Tyrese was a 2-year-old and they still had to take him with them on their missions? It’s a pretty different dynamic.
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
A BOY AND HIS DOG is a strange, scrappy post-apocalypse tale directed by character actor L.Q. Jones (HANG ‘EM HIGH, LONE WOLF MCQUADE), based on a 1969 novella by Harlan Ellison. Don Johnson (COLD IN JULY) is the boy, Vic; a dog is the dog, Blood. Blood talks but his mouth doesn’t move, we just hear his tired, tinny voice, so at first I thought he had a machine attached that broadcast his thoughts. But actually they communicate telepathically, so that when other people are around he Vic seems like a crazy person talking to his dog. Blood reminds me of Teddy in A.I., but meaner and more cynical. And they do a good job of matching up the dog footage to imply attitude and emotion in his body language that probly isn’t really there.
It’s a dangerous world, and they’re constantly on the run. Blood’s job is to sniff for approaching enemies. Vic’s is apparently to find a woman to rape. He has a hard time getting up the nerve to go through with it, though, and Blood nags him about it. I thought the worst thing about dogs was that they eat cat poop out of the litter box and then jump up in your lap and lick your face and try to pass that off as affection. It turns out it goes deeper. (read the rest of this shit…)
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
I know what you’re thinking, ’cause it’s the same thing I’m thinking: if it’s just called POWER RANGERS now instead of MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS does that mean there’s no morphin anymore? Or that there is morphin but they didn’t want to mention it in the title because it’s not particularly mighty as far morphin goes? And is morphin actually just morphin’ without the apostrophe or is it some mythological Power Ranging concept that I’m unaware of and it’s not explained in the movie and that’s why it’s not in the title? Also, did they foresee that I would try to text “It’s morphin time!” to my friend and it would autocorrect to “It’s morphine time!”? I mean, this is a movie that raises many questions.
There is in fact morphin (not morphine) in the new 2017 movie POWER RANGERS, but they have to earn it. A do-over, not a sequel to the ludicrous 1990s after school TV show, director Dean Israelite (PROJECT ALMANAC) and writer John Gatins (FLIGHT) (story by Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless [THE LAST WITCH HUNTER, GODS OF EGYPT] and Michele Mulroney & Kieran Mulroney [SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS]) try to make sense out of a mythology that started as just some bullshit that importer Haim Saban made up to string together library footage from the Japanese robots vs. giant monsters show Super Sentai Rangers. (read the rest of this shit…)
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
LAWNMOWER MAN 2: JOBE’S WAR (theatrical title: LAWNMOWER MAN 2: BEYOND CYBERSPACE) is a weird sequel to a weird movie. Part 1, of course you remember since it is one of the most cherished and analyzed stories of all time and one of the primary pillars of our culture, is about a mentally challenged landscaper named Jobe (Jeff Fahey) who through virtual reality programs and smart pills becomes a mad telepathic super-genius who kills a bunch of people by controlling a lawnmower with his mind and then tries to live in computers but Pierce Brosnan blows up his lab. Part 2 picks up with stock footage of the explosion and reveals that Jobe survived all burnt up. When he heals he’s a bald Matt Frewer, who does not waste time pretending like they didn’t hire him because he already played a person who lived inside a computer world. He seems to use craziness as an excuse to act totally different in different scenes, but there are definitely parts where he’s mugging and quipping exactly like Max Headroom.
Part 1 took place at “the turn of the millennium.” Part 2 takes place in “Los Angeles – the Future,” a BLADE RUNNER type city of skyscrapers, monorails, futuristic vehicles I assume are left over from other sci-fi productions, fire barrels, steam, sparks and outdoor TVs. But Austin O’Brien (LAST ACTION HERO) returns as Peter, and he’s four years older, so that means this is around 2004. The futuristic year that SHREK 2 came out.
I mean, this is a real dystopia though because there are NO lawns in this movie.
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
I know you guys probly already have huge parties planned, but in case you’re in a part of the world that doesn’t celebrate, today is the 25th anniversary of STEPHEN KING’S THE LAWNMOWER MAN. And in March of 1994 we’ll be able to celebrate the anniversary of THE LAWNMOWER MAN, after King’s lawsuit made New Line Cinema remove his name from it.
(Weird detail from an Entertainment Weekly article at the time: King “hired a team of private investigators to check out video-store copies in five cities” to prove they were violating an injunction against using his name. Did he worry if he brought in four tapes from four cities New Line would say “Nah, it’s only the copies in those four cities, the rest of the ones we made don’t say Stephen King”?)
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
GHOST IN THE MACHINE is the second movie directed by Rachel Talalay, a behind-the-scenes New Line Cinema person who went from assistant production manager on A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET to production manager on part 2, line producer on part 3, producer on part 4 and then director and story provider for FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE. She followed that with this and then TANK GIRL and now she’s a very successful TV director who has done Supergirl, The Flash, Doctor Who, Sherlock, etc.
Back in 1993 when this came out I knew she was the FREDDY’S DEAD lady but I thought this looked really stupid: a dead killer’s soul gets into a computer and he can control machines? How does that make sense? Finally watching it 23 years later it turns out I was right, it is pretty stupid, and it doesn’t make much sense. But it was worth my time.
Terry Munroe (Karen Allen rocking Dana Sculley hair) happens to catch the eye of a serial killer (Ted Marcoux, DARK BLUE) shortly before he gets into a car accident (he giggles as his car slides upside down through a graveyard) and then is getting an MRI when there’s power surge and becomes a GHOST IN THE MACHINE(s). In my opinion MRI technology has gotten worse, because he gets scanned and given great power in less than a minute. Mine took a couple hours, cost me $6,250 and still didn’t make me into a magical being living inside computers and appliances. (read the rest of this shit…)
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
(I get residuals and/or the respect of my publisher, you get to have your life changed forever by the power of my words)
EXTRA CREDIT: Review them on Amazon! That would really help me out. Unless you didn't like them, in which case forget I said anything.
3. Straight up give me some money
(I still have this Paypal donation thing you can use if you hate the name Patreon or something)
4. If you ever shop at Amazon, go through my links or search engines
(you pay the same amount you were gonna pay anyway but Amazon sends a little slice of it my way)
I also have an Amazon UK one:
(I can't get the search box widget to work anymore, so click on MOONWALKER and then search for what you want. Or buy MOONWALKER.)
5. My exciting line of fashion and leisure products
(I get a couple bucks per item, you get a cool t-shirt, mug or lifestyle item)
6. Spread the word
Tell your friends about my reviews and my books and everything. Only cool people though please, we don't need a bunch of suckers around here.
THANKS EVERYBODY. YOUR FRIEND, VERN
* * * *
VERN’S “I RECOMMEND THE SHIT OUT OF THIS PRODUCT” CORNER:
Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
CrustaceanLove on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Edgar Wright's movies have exceptionally tight scripts; nothing is wasted in his movies, almost every line is either setting up…
Mr. Subtlety on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Never understood the grouchiness Wright seems to inspire around these parts. All he ever did was make four highly entertaining…
RBatty024 on The Beguiled (Clint’s version) I soured on Sofia Coppola after Maria Antoinette, which seemed like a tone deaf defense of economic privilege when I…
MaggieMayPie on The Beguiled (Clint’s version) I saw this - well, probably only part of it, when I was somewhere between pre-teen and teenager some Saturday…
RBatty024 on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Yeah, there are Anglophiles here in the States who assume that if something comes from Great Britain, then it's automatically…
MaggieMayPie on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World I don't know why any of you listen to "the internet". They're the worst. This is literally the…
geoffreyjar on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World I didn't mean to lump every (non-UK) Wright fan as a crazy British fanboy. I just brought it up…
JTS on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World From Vern's Attack the Block review, I have to accept that there exists American nerds who love everything British, because…
Major Calloway on The Beguiled (Clint’s version) Correction! Mae Mercer has two tracks available on Amazon. Searching for "Mae Mercer" didn't work for me, but searching for…
Major Calloway on The Beguiled (Clint’s version) So, Mae Mercer doesn't even have any tracks available on Amazon. But if she did, I would've bought them. Anyone…
Sternshein on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Forget what I said. Baby Driver is awesome but you all will hate it because you are awful people lol
Daniel Strange on The Assignment Vern, Like you, over the years I've come around to thinking that some of the ideological purity…
geoffreyjar on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World If you want the following worded better and much nicer, read Vern's ATTACK ON THE BLOCK review.…
karlos on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World I honestly think THE WORLD'S END is incredible, and easily the best of the Wright/Pegg films. Does…
STEEL DAWN takes the post-apocalyptic world of George Miller, pumps up the samurai and western influences, adds a little martial arts, replaces the internal combustion engine with wind power, and invents the Patrick Swayze action vehicle. He’d already made a name for himself in ensembles – THE OUTSIDERS, 
More like ALIEN: LOVIN’INT, am I right?
Troma boy made good James Gunn (
A BOY AND HIS DOG is a strange, scrappy post-apocalypse tale directed by character actor L.Q. Jones (
I know what you’re thinking, ’cause it’s the same thing I’m thinking: if it’s just called POWER RANGERS now instead of MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS does that mean there’s no morphin anymore? Or that there 
based on characters NOT created by Stephen King
I know you guys probly already have huge parties planned, but in case you’re in a part of the world that doesn’t celebrate, today is the 25th anniversary of STEPHEN KING’S THE LAWNMOWER MAN. And in March of 1994 we’ll be able to celebrate the anniversary of THE LAWNMOWER MAN, after King’s lawsuit made New Line Cinema remove his name from it.
GHOST IN THE MACHINE is the second movie directed by Rachel Talalay, a behind-the-scenes New Line Cinema person who went from assistant production manager on 
