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Scanners II: The New Order

[Joy Division joke not provided]

Let it be known that I am a critic who can find a reason to review SCANNERS II: THE NEW ORDER twice. I didn’t know this about myself until I was doing this Summer of ’91 retrospective and realizing how important part 2s were to the season. This came out direct-to-video on June 28, 1991. So here we are.

(I first reviewed it in 2010, in a series where I also looked at SCANNERS, SCANNERS III: THE TAKEOVER, SCANNER COP and SCANNERS: THE SHOWDOWN. In those days the sequels were only on VHS.)

Of the sequels we’ve looked at so far I suppose the sequelization approach of SCANNERS II is closest to HOWLING VI: THE FREAKS – a story about a new set of characters set in the same world, where people are secretly telepathic rather than lycanthropic. But it’s different in that two of the characters are eventually revealed to be the children of part I’s protagonist. (Unlike MANNEQUIN: ON THE MOVE we have no returning actors.) (read the rest of this shit…)

June 30th, 2021 | 11 Comments »

F9: The Fast Saga

F9: THE FAST SAGA, a.k.a. FAST 9, actual onscreen title: FF: F9, is not the Platonic ideal of a FAST AND FURIOUS movie. That would be FURIOUS 6 or FAST FIVE. But if Plato is anything like me he would’ve appreciated this one for what it is. I don’t know how much of a grump he was.

(lots of spoilers here of course)

This is the first FAST movie since 2003’s 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS that’s not written by Chris Morgan, instead being credited to Daniel Casey (KIN) & director Justin Lin (HOLLYWOOD ADVENTURES) with a story by those two & Alfredo Botello (uncredited revisions on TOKYO DRIFT). They’ve come up with a patchwork that certainly shows the dangers of a movie series going on for twenty years with at least half that time spent trying to top itself in size and ridiculousness each time out. But for me it has a much better balance of preposterous action and sincere melodrama than, at the very least, HOBBS & SHAW and FATE OF THE FURIOUS. It has more and better spectacle than your average movie, but also requires that you like the characters and themes of the series to enjoy it. In fact, in between a car somehow Tarzan-swinging across cliffs on a rope and another one being (as you’ve surely heard) launched into space, you’re gonna spend a surprising amount of time in 1989 when Dominic Toretto’s dad (J.D. Pardo, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 2, SNITCH) was killed in a racing accident and Dom went to prison for beating another driver (Jim Parrack, FURY) with a wrench. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 29th, 2021 | 122 Comments »

Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear

You see, because it’s the second one, but they put a 1/2 on there so it doesn’t make sense. Because why would it be 1/2 unless it was a DVD release with added scenes but they didn’t have DVDs back then. That’s why it’s funny.

June 28, 1991

The Summer of 1991 was a big time for sequels, especially part 2s, so now I will attempt to write something about THE NAKED GUN 2 1/2: THE SMELL OF FEAR. The first sequel to 1988’s smash hit TV-spinoff-from-the-makers-of-AIRPLANE! NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD! is another irreverent overload of tongue-in-cheek cop drama silliness where there’s no reason to take anything about the plot (police try to foil a scheme by big oil to replace a scientist pushing a solar energy plan) seriously, and nobody wants to read me just listing some of the jokes that are funny (I like when Jane [Priscilla Presley, THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE] is singing “The Way We Were” to herself in the shower and the assassin creeping up on her [Anthony James, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER] is moved to tears and starts to sing along). But maybe for this retrospective we can look at it as a time capsule of some of the things that were thought of and joked about at that period in time. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 28th, 2021 | 62 Comments »

The Terminator

“Your world is pretty terrifying.”

Summer of ’91 origins: THE TERMINATOR

The only review I’ve written of the original THE TERMINATOR was in 2007 – so out of date it was combined into a review of the “trilogy” and framed as a response to THE TRANSFORMERS. There are some good observations and funny lines in that review, but I’m a smarter person now and I think there’s way more to say about the movie. So I thought I should take another crack at it before we get to its sequel in this Summer of ’91 retrospective.

In the fall of 1984, director/co-writer James Cameron exploded into filmgoer-consciousness with a stylish and imaginative little sci-fi chase movie called THE TERMINATOR. Made on about a fifth of the budget of the recent hit GHOSTBUSTERS and released by outsiders Hemdale (VICE SQUAD, TURKEY SHOOT) and Orion Pictures (MAD MAX, THE HAND, ROCK & RULE), it nevertheless immediately announces itself as a force to be reckoned with. The quiet, world-establishing text, the nightmarish glimpses of futuristic combat between man and machine, the absolute all-timer of a theme by Brad Fiedel (JUST BEFORE DAWN) and the slow reveal of the logo (title design by Ernest D. Farino, who later did GODZILLA 1985, CRITTERS, NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, ALIEN NATION, THE ABYSS and NEMESIS) all set the mood for a genre movie of unusual ferocity. Not bad for a guy who had only directed PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 24th, 2021 | 27 Comments »

Rurouni Kenshin Part II: Kyoto Inferno

“Avow Life and Be True”

RUROUNI KENSHIN PART II: KYOTO INFERNO (2014) is an epic sequel that builds on everything I loved about the first one (trust me – check that out if you haven’t!) and expands on this idea of a post-war world where various veterans either try to bring back the violence or maintain (and enjoy) the new order. Our hero is so badass and yet so against killing that he wanders around with a “reverse blade” – a sword sharpened only on the back side – to whoop ass and take names but not lives.

Played by one-time Kamen Rider (and co-star of my beloved SAMURAI MARATHON) Takeru Satoh, Kenshin is younger and prettier than I usually prefer in an action hero. But he makes it almost a badass juxtaposition, and he’s such a cool character – he’s seen shit you never dreamed of, but doesn’t use it as an excuse to brood. He’s quiet but not exactly stoic – he smiles and seems content during peace time, even laughs when he sees himself parodied in a play. Everywhere he goes people seem to recognize him as Battousai, the name he went by when he was a legendary killsword (the government’s teenage super-murdering-the-fuck-out-of-everybody assassin). But his friends call him Kenshin, the name he took after abandoning his bloody sword at the Battle of Toba-Fushimi. The real him.

Admittedly he sounds a little dorky later when he angrily growls the villain’s name to show that he’s had it, but I forgive him. I appreciate that we don’t see that side of him very often. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 23rd, 2021 | 9 Comments »

Psycho Goreman

As you may know, I can sometimes be a grump about horror comedies, because I’d rather be watching a horror movie that’s funny than a funny movie that references horror. But here’s a movie that’s on Shudder and has gore in it that is a straight up comedy and I kinda loved it.

The closest I can come to succinctly describing the vibe of PSYCHO GOREMAN is “that movie STAR KID combined with THE TOXIC AVENGER.” Or “WISHMASTER meets POWER RANGERS but a comedy.” Or “THE GUYVER meets SATAN’S LITTLE HELPER.” It’s about two little kids who find an alien artifact called “The Gem of Praxidike” buried in their backyard and then learn that it gives them power over a murderous alien supervillain the opening narration describes as “a nameless evil” and “ruthless being” that “had amassed power beyond measure, and was preparing to strike down all that was good and just in the universe.” He says he’s called “The Arch-Duke of Nightmares,” but Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and Luke (Owen Myre) think that’s stupid, so they rename him Psycho Goreman, or P.G. for short. And Mimi treats this hateful monster as her personal play thing, making him do silly things and not really caring when he uses his powers to turn people into goo. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 22nd, 2021 | 42 Comments »

Suburban Commando

According to IMDb, SUBURBAN COMMANDO had a limited release on June 21, 1991, before a wider one in October. Therefore, it is my misfortune to have decided to categorize it as a Summer of ’91 release.

Nah, I’ll be okay, but you will not be surprised to hear that this second Hulk Hogan vehicle from New Line Cinema is even dumber and shittier than NO HOLDS BARRED, and not as entertainingly so since it’s a family comedy instead of a brain damaged underground fighting movie. But I made it through and I know what it is now and at least I was able to see the big screen debut of one of today’s most acclaimed actresses in television and film.

The premise is that you got a bounty hunter guy from a poorly explained, generic bootleg Star Wars rip-off sci-fi universe who lands on earth and lives with a bad movie’s idea of a normal suburban family. ALF with muscles and worse jokes. In the opening you have some cheap looking Star Destroyer knockoff model shots as the great hero (or maybe anti-hero? it’s not really clear) Shep Ramsey (Hulk Hogan, GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH) flies in to save the president (Nick Eldredge, “S.I.D. #1,” Hill Street Blues) from their dollar store Darth Vader, General Suitor (William Ball, one episode of The Streets of San Francisco) who’s just a regular unimpressive dude in a black outfit and cape, no mask. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 21st, 2021 | 33 Comments »

Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell

Back in 2003, a whole voting-age-person ago, I wrote about the 1984 documentary STREETWISE, along with a fictional movie somewhat inspired by it, and by the same director, called AMERICAN HEART. The latter is interesting, the first is a straight up masterpiece. You can read that review (though I’m embarrassed of a few lines – nothing too bad, but I was stupid back then) but the gist is that STREETWISE is an incredible movie about a group of teenage runaways who used to hang out on the block between 1st and 2nd and Pike in Seattle. Kind of the main character was a 14 year old girl nicknamed Tiny. She lived in an abandoned hotel with her boyfriend Rat, had a badass red jacket and mullet, also the poor girl was a prostitute and they actually had footage of her getting picked up by the world’s worst grandpas. She said she hated doing but she liked the money and kinda laughed about it. The movie vividly illustrates that some of these people you walk past on the street every day maybe have it even harder than you would’ve guessed, and also are just really interesting people worthy of love and compassion that they don’t get much of.

Of course I live in Seattle, and back when I first saw it I walked near there every day on my way to work, so the movie haunted me for a long time. As I wrote in the review, “It kind of feels like spying on ghosts or something. After watching the movie you find yourself trying to calculate how old these people would be now and guess if they’re still alive. Would you recognize them if you saw them walking around somewhere?”

Well, there are three pieces of news here. One, this great movie that was only available on VHS in the U.S. is finally easy to see because Criterion released it on blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday. Two, it comes complete with the 2016 followup film, TINY: THE LIFE OF ERIN BLACKWELL. Three, that’s a great movie too. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 17th, 2021 | 5 Comments »

Howling VI: The Freaks

This isn’t like me, but I have not followed the THE HOWLING franchise. Before now I’d only seen 2 of the 8. I’d seen the original THE HOWLING a couple of times and HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS once, and I’d liked both. But I figured I could jump right to HOWLING VI: THE FREAKS, which falls into the Summer of ’91 since it was released DTV on June 13, 1991 according to IMDb. I guessed correctly that it’s not connected to previous entries (although production company Allied Vision had been behind the series since part IV).

It’s directed by Hope Perello, who I believe is the only woman to direct a HOWLING to date. She’d worked as a production coordinator (TROLL, FROM BEYOND and DOLLS) and producer (DEADLY WEAPON) and was producer and second unit director of PUPPET MASTER, but this was her first time as a director. Screenwriter Kevin Rock, who apparently loosely incorporated a few elements from the third installment in the Howling book series by Gary Brandner, was also a rookie.

The movie opens with a typical monster-P.O.V.-chasing-a-little-girl thing. Or, wait— no, it’s an adult woman, I just assumed it was a little girl because she was clutching a teddy bear. Anyway, she gets killed by an unseen howler, and then we go to a sunny desert road where a mysterious David-Duchovny-looking drifter named Ian Richards (Brendan Hughes, RETURN TO HORROR HIGH, BAD INFLUENCE, and apparently the werewolf in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON!) is carrying her teddy bear. Hmm. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 16th, 2021 | 20 Comments »

Straight Out of Brooklyn

STRAIGHT OUT OF BROOKLYN was a little $450,000 movie that The Samuel Goldwyn Company released on 5 screens over Memorial Day weekend, 1991. Some time after that it expanded up to 75 screens, and it made $2.7 million dollars on that small budget. Roger Ebert reviewed it on June 28th (he liked it).

You will not not notice how low that budget is. At its slickest, STRAIGHT OUT OF BROOKLYN seems like an early ‘80s TV movie, as the saccharine orchestral score by Harold Wheeler (arranger and producer, Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk by Meco) plays over dark, grainy establishing shots of New York City buildings.

At its cheesiest it looks like a filmed community college play, with straight-on shots of family drama at a dinner table or a man looking in a mirror giving a long monologue to a white man he argued with at the gas station earlier.

At its best, though, it’s a time capsule of the Red Hook housing projects, where the director grew up, and of an exciting young actor giving a great first performance, even if he’s saying pretty on-the-nose stuff about The American Dream and shit as he points accusingly to the Manhattan skyline.

(read the rest of this shit…)

June 15th, 2021 | 4 Comments »

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