It’s October 1st, when I like to start binging on horror movies to prepare me mentally and spiritually for my annual wishing I had something to do on Halloween. But this time I’m in a new apartment building so I decided to watch this Tobe Hooper picture I never seen called THE APARTMENT COMPLEX. It’s made-for-cable and only on VHS but it’s also the start of Hooper’s recent “doesn’t suck as bad as you’d think it would” period. So it’s historical.
Chad Lowe plays some dipshit psychology student who becomes the manager of a weird apartment building with strange goings on. It’s not eerie, atmospheric horror but that goofy post-Twin Peaks thing where all the characters are eccentric and it’s supposed to be dark and funny. There’s some twins, a police psychic, a possible murderer (Patrick Warburton), a shut-in, a crazy but possibly wise homeless man, a pair of insane stuntwomen, R. Lee Ermey, etc. Also there’s an ordinary young black couple, I’m not sure where they fit in, except maybe to show that white people are crazy. The previous manager was obsessive compulsive and he disappeared, so Lowe has to dig through all the crazy shit he left to try to solve the mystery. John Polito plays the sleazy slumlord who hires him and obviously he’s the right guy to play that character but then his name is “Dr. Caligari” which is just stupid. (read the rest of this shit…)
Kevin Bacon plays a regular ol’ businessman guy whose son is randomly murdered in a gang initiation killing/convenience story robbery by tattoo-having, muscle car-driving, meth-dealing fantasy skinhead gangsters. When it becomes clear that the killer will only get a few years in prison he decides not to testify so that the case will be dropped and then he hunts the guy down and murders him. That is why it is called DEATH SENTENCE. The end.
Well, I guess now it’s officially a pattern. The pattern goes like this:
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
SPOILER ALERT !!
SPOILER ALERT !!
SPARTAN is named after some quote from Leonidas, so yes it sort of has something to do with 300. Or maybe David Mamet is really into John Spartan, Stallone’s character from DEMOLITION MAN. Either way, this is a gritty thriller where Val Kilmer plays a badass special ops agent from a nameless government organization who investigates the disappearance of a high ranking politician’s daughter. (It seems like it’s the first daughter, but I think they leave it ambiguous.)
I gotta be honest. As good as THE WARRIORS is it’s not quite the amazing masterpiece I like to remember it as. What makes it good is mostly on the surface: the different gangs and their gimmicks, the bleak rawness of everything from the cinematography to the John Carpenter-ish analog keyboard music, and the dead seriousness of all the characters in the face of this exaggerated world where thugs patrol the streets in baseball uniforms and gangs seem to outnumber law abiding citizens by a thousand to one.
Merrick here…
