"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

The 400 Death Blows

Back in 2016 I did a review series where I alternated between Francois Truffaut’s five Adventures of Antoine Doinel films and Cannon Films’ five AMERICAN NINJA films, trying to keep the same open mind toward both, look for parallels, etc. I referred to it as Antoine vs. Ninja at the time, but now I like to think of it as The 400 Death Blows. Although I’m way more of a ninja guy than a French New Wave guy I think it’s good to try out a broad spectrum of art and not be put off by some other dip shit’s perception of what is supposed to be high or lowbrow or too trashy or too arty for little old you. Fuck that guy. You’re not that simple. You can appreciate all kinds of things.

The premise of this review series alone is just such a good encapsulation of what I aspire to be as a film critic and viewer that I wanted to make this post linking to all of the reviews so I could share it easier. Enjoy!

1. THE 400 BLOWS (1959)

2. AMERICAN NINJA (1985)

3. ANTOINE AND COLETTE (1962)

4. AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION (1987)

5. STOLEN KISSES (1968)

6. AMERICAN NINJA 3: BLOOD HUNT (1989)

7. BED & BOARD (1970)

8. AMERICAN NINJA 4: THE ANNIHILATION (1991)

9. LOVE ON THE RUN (1979)

10. AMERICAN NINJA 5 (1993)

September 10th, 2022 | 10 Comments »

Death Becomes Her

“She’s dead, sir. They took her to the morgue.”
“The morgue? She’ll be furious!”

On July 31, 1992 we come to another one of those odd happenings that caused me to label this as Weird Summer. This is the time when an A-list director became enamored of a cynical black comedy and turned it into a big summer movie starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis. Writers Martin Donovan (the Argentinian filmmaker who directed APARTMENT ZERO, not the guy from the Hal Hartley movies) and David Koepp (co-writer of APARTMENT ZERO – this was his movie after TOY SOLDIERS) saw it as a low budget indie, and then it got made with a budget bigger than ALIEN 3, and groundbreaking digital effects by Industrial Light and Magic. The effects ended up winning an Oscar and Koepp’s next gig was writing JURASSIC PARK.

Director Robert Zemeckis had put his name on the blockbuster map with ROMANCING THE STONE in 1984, and then triple circled, highlighted and put stars next to his name when BACK TO THE FUTURE was a surprise smash hit the following year. Since then he’d made my favorite of his movies, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT (1988), followed by the BACK TO THE FUTURE sequels (1989 and 1990). Those were all rated PG, and most of them were produced by Steven Spielberg, so Zemeckis was generally thought of as that kind of family friendly whiz bang popcorn movie guy. And now here he comes with this mean-spirited PG-13 movie aimed at adults, its wider appeal coming from the genuinely envelope-pushing ways it depicts gruesome bodily mutilations. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 8th, 2022 | 22 Comments »

Mom and Dad Save the World

July 24, 1992

MOM AND DAD SAVE THE WORLD is a comedy-sci-fi-fantasy thing apparently released pretty wide (but viewed very narrowly) on July 24, 1992. I saw this one when it came out on video and I remember kind of liking it for all its crazy sets and costumes and puppets and shit. Unfortunately, this time I found it extremely hard to sit through. It’s interesting that something could so clearly have so much work put into it and still turn out feeling like it’s barely a movie.

The cartoonish super villain who sets the plot in motion is played by Jon Lovitz, who we last saw in A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN. He’s the sleazy tyrannical ruler of the planet Spengo and his name is Emperor Todd Spengo. I don’t know why it’s funny for a character like that to be named Todd, but it is. It’s one of I believe two things that made me laugh in this movie. The other is a couple minutes in when Emperor Todd Spengo decides to postpone destroying Earth with his “Super Death Ray Laser” because through his telescope he spots the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen – Marge Nelson (Teri Garr, THE PLAYER) very awkwardly doing aerobics in an ugly sweatsuit. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 6th, 2022 | 16 Comments »

Honey, I Blew Up the Kid

note: I am very much aware that I’m way behind and the summer movie season is over but I’m gonna keep going and finish this Weird Summer retrospective. Enjoy! Please?


July 17, 1992

HONEY, I BLEW UP THE KID is the first sequel to the 1989 Joe Johnston directed Walt Disney hit HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS. Last time, eccentric inventor Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis, STREETS OF FIRE)’s machine accidentally shrunk his and the neighbors’ kids to, by one kid’s estimation, “the size of boogers.” This time he accidentally causes his new toddler son Adam (played by twins Daniel and Joshua Shalikar) to grow in spurts until he becomes basically a kaiju.

It’s directed by Randal Kleiser (THE BLUE LAGOON) and written by Thom Eberhardt (writer/director of NIGHT OF THE COMET) and Peter Elbling (Mr. T’s Be Somebody… or Be Somebody’s Fool!) & Garry Goodrow (The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour). A story credit goes to Goodrow (who was also an actor in Shirley Clarke’s THE CONNECTION), so I suspect that means he was the one who wrote BIG BABY, an unrelated giant baby script that was rewritten to fit into the HONEYverse. In that sense, the HONEY saga is much like the DIE HARD series. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 5th, 2022 | 30 Comments »

Day Shift

DAY SHIFT was a highly anticipated Netflix production that I watched right before leaving for my vacation-turned-sick-leave. I know plenty of other people enjoyed and discussed it upon release a couple weeks ago, now they’re mostly done with it and have moved on to other topics, but here I am to remind everyone that it still exists on a server somewhere and can be accessed at the click of a button if somebody remembers to. Which I recommend.

It’s a heartily enjoyable horror-action comedy that’s kind of like John Carpenter’s VAMPIRES but in L.A., and with more of a ZOMBIELAND sense of humor. I guess you could say it takes kind of a MEN IN BLACK approach to the profession of vampire hunting, but I can take it more seriously than that because it’s pretty raunchy and gory and especially delivers on outstanding action sequences.

And that was the main thing I was looking for, because this is the directorial debut of stunt legend J.J. Perry. I first became aware of him as the fight choreographer of UNDISPUTED II, followed by THE TOURNAMENT, WARRIOR, and HAYWIRE. But he’d been around since the ‘80s, a true blue veteran of the type of movies I love most. He played fighter J.J. Tucker in BLOODSPORT III and Cyrax, Scorpion and Noob Saibot in MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION. He did stunts in all the BEST OF THE BEST sequels, DRIVE, BLADE, and a bunch of Seagal movies (THE GLIMMER MAN, TODAY YOU DIE, BLACK DAWN, URBAN JUSTICE, PISTOL WHIPPED). He was the stunt coordinator and second unit director on productions ranging from ROAD HOUSE 2 to BLOOD AND BONE to FATE OF THE FURIOUS and F9. And there’s more justice in the world than I previously thought because now he’s directing a $100 million production starring an Academy Award winner! And Snoop Dogg. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 2nd, 2022 | 14 Comments »

Samaritan

It seems to me like Sylvester Stallone has been talking up this retired super hero movie SAMARITAN (not to be confused with THE SAMARITAN) for ridiculously long. That’s because, I’m reading now, it was intended for a theatrical release in November of 2020. A pandemic happened, it got delayed, Amazon bought MGM, now it’s finally out, but released straight to Amazon Prime. I can see why they’d do that – it doesn’t have the scope people expect from theatrical movies, but it’s also not a serious indie movie, or a cheapie where he shot all his stuff over a weekend and green-screened him in with the other actors. I think it’s a mid-budget movie! Like they used to make!

In my opinion SAMARITAN doesn’t go the distance to completely working, but honestly it’s much better than the bullshit I always pictured. Off brand super heroes aren’t all that appealing to me, and Stallone playing one kinda seemed like a concession. He’s keenly aware that super heroes have replaced his style of action hero in the popular imagination, so playing one sounded like a sad “Okay, kids, I guess this is what you want then” surrender. What I didn’t really consider is that Stallone already played super heroes in JUDGE DREDD and DEMOLITION MAN. It turns out SAMARITAN is sort of like that type of movie for the Old Man Stallone era – scaled down, grittier, with some melancholy to it. And, admittedly, without the satirical elements that have helped those survive in our memories. But it’s more interesting than I expected. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 1st, 2022 | 18 Comments »

Orphan: First Kill

ORPHAN: FIRST KILL is a good version of a usually under-appreciated popular art form: the knowingly-trashy-but-not-too-winky-about-it horror-thriller. I’m surprised and happy to see it getting as much love as it is, and hopefully that’s not setting expectations too high. I think it could kinda be like a 21st century version of the STEPFATHER trilogy. Though both started with the loose inspiration of real life crimes, the ORPHAN premise has the advantage of seeming much more absurd from the beginning, and therefore more ripe for escalation. I haven’t seen anyone arguing that it’s exploitative (in a bad way) to continue the adventures of Esther nee Leena (Isabelle Furhman, THE HUNGER GAMES), the (spoiler for ORPHAN part 1) dangerous escaped mental patient who pretends to be an innocent little girl.

I probly didn’t need that spoiler warning. By now anybody who knows what ORPHAN is knows that wild plot twist: the adopted little girl who’s been terrorizing Vera Farmiga and making everybody think she’s crazy and abusive turns out to be a woman in her 30s with a rare hormonal disorder and a false identity. What makes this prequel so unlikely and so delightfully audacious is that Fuhrman originally played the character when she was around 12, and instead of recasting they brought her back at the age of 24, using Hobbitvision (forced perspective and body doubles) to make her look small. I honestly found it easy to forget, but just knowing they went through the trouble for this movie gives it an extra kick. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 30th, 2022 | 6 Comments »

Out of office message

On Monday I’m leaving on a trip, so I won’t have any new posts for about the next two weeks. I’m sure I’ll be posting on Twitter occasionally about my adventures, but hopefully I’ll be able to unplug a little, recharge, relax, reboot, rebuff, re-animator, etc.

When I get back it will be September, and yet I will continue and complete the Weird Summer series and try to catch up on whatever I missed while I was gone. Everybody be good, have fun, etc. Parties are okay, but don’t bother the neighbors. I’ll see you all soon!

August 12th, 2022 | 26 Comments »

TEXAS CHAINSAW Re-Massacred

For those of you who missed it when it was a Patreon exclusive in June, here’s my Vern’s Appeals Process revisit to the 2003 remake of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. And if you’re interested in something else to read I just put up a new Patreon exclusive (for now) where I do the same for Stephen Sommers’ DEEP RISING.

INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY

When I positively reviewed this year’s sequel to THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974), coherently titled TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2022), I wasn’t quite prepared for how controversial that would be. Not nearly as controversial as when I loved the 2013 EVIL DEAD remake directed by the producers/writers of this new CHAINSAW (I stand by that), but my appreciation for it really threw some people for a loop. What I came to understand was that people remembered how fiercely protective of Tobe Hooper’s creation I was when I went scorched earth on Marcus Nispel’s remake in my 2003 Ain’t It Cool News review, which I proudly titled “Vern massacres THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.” At least a few people wished I had come at this unpopular sequel with that same kind of righteous fury.

My perspective: of course I didn’t. That was a long time ago, I’ve changed, circumstances have changed, the franchise has changed, this one is more my style than that one was, and even if none of those things were the case, I’d still have different expectations for the — what, fifth? — sequel than the first redo. But I had been thinking about the remake, because I’d been seeing people on Twitter – possibly a generation younger than me, who saw it at a different stage in their life and horror fandom – saying that it was a classic in its own right, and they couldn’t believe there were people who disliked it. I ferociously disagreed with that assessment at the time, but like I said, I’ve changed, things have changed. And It’s been so long. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 12th, 2022 | 7 Comments »

Thor: Love and Thunder

I’m very late to this one, but I have finally seen and written down words about Thor picture #4, THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER, directed by the suddenly controversial Taika Waititi. I see most of the Marvel movies right away, but various other happenings conspired to make me wait until three weeks later on this one, and honestly it was kind of nice to miss most of the conversation and see it after the storm had passed. I’m curious to see if this review will still generates anything close to a new release level of discussion, or if the interest in such topics dissipates with exposure to oxygen. I honestly don’t know the answer.

It was also good to see later because I was aware that the response had been much more widely negative than for most MCU movies, and especially than the in-my-experience-universally-popular THOR: RAGNAROK from the same director and general attitude. Before that I had taken for granted that it would be one of the better Marvel movies. I concede that it’s the opposite. But maybe the lowered expectations contributed to me still being entertained and not hating it. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 11th, 2022 | 46 Comments »

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