So far my study of summer ’94 hasn’t found much excitement in the big blockbuster type movies. THE FLINTSTONES got all the hype but the ones I’ve been most invested in were quirky things by well known directors – SERIAL MOM, CROOKLYN, EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES. Now finally we come to a straight ahead action spectacle that truly delivered at the time and still holds up today.
SPEED came out 30 years ago as I post this, and it’s a classic. It feels like a very traditional studio crowdpleaser, but also not quite like anything else before or since. Twentieth Century Fox figured out what they had on their hands and moved it up from August to June, but no one else was sure at first if Keanu Reeves would be accepted as an action hero outside of POINT BREAK, or even if people would want to see him with short hair. So for many it was a surprise how big it became (5th highest grossing movie of 1994). (read the rest of this shit…)
I don’t know why I never got around to seeing the THE CROW sequel from the director of SIX-STRING SAMURAI. Always was curious. Still took me 19 years. Lance Mungia’s THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER, just like the previous one, was meant for theaters, but I think it only played somewhere around here? Wiki(dprayer)pedia says its theatrical run was only in Seattle and only for one week, and I do remember seeing an ad for it and being confused, but I was thinking it was in Eastern Washington. Anyway, I didn’t go.
Two Halloweens ago we discussed Tobe Hooper’s first masterpiece. This is his second. He didn’t even want to direct it at first, sort of got pushed into it, but damn did he rally. In many ways THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 is the Tobe Hooperest movie ever made.
I don’t blame you if you’re skeptical during the opening scene where two obnoxious “senior boys at Wheeler High” calling themselves “Buzz and Rick the Prick” drunkenly drive a Porsche, fire guns, and harass the K-OKLA request line until they receive a drive-by chainsawing on a bridge that must’ve been built by the same people who made that endless runway from the climactic chase in FURIOUS 6. (read the rest of this shit…)
When Stuart Gordon died at the end of March I decided it was finally time to watch SPACE TRUCKERS, a movie I had been meaning to see for literally 23 years. You know how it is. You get busy sometimes.
Obviously I dig Gordon as a Master of Horror, director of RE-ANIMATOR and FROM BEYOND, as one should. And in recent years I’ve really come to love THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM and CASTLE FREAK. But I also think he’s under-appreciated for his sci-fi movies ROBOT JOX and FORTRESS. And ever since I first saw ALIEN I’ve loved those stories that are about space but the heroes are just working class people doing their job, not some royalty or chosen one or member of any federation or academy. As the title makes clear, this is about characters like that. Truckers. In space. (read the rest of this shit…)
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.
RED ROCK WEST is one of my favorite neo-noirs, an ingeniously concocted tale with a simple, appealing hero who makes one wrong choice that snags him and he has to spend the rest of the movie trying to crawl his way out of an ever-tightening trap. He’s driving through the town of Red Rock, Wyoming when it goes down, so every time he gets out and then something else goes wrong we share his dismay at passing that god damn “Welcome to Red Rock” sign once more.
Well before all the thrilling twists and tense (but down to earth) set pieces, director John Dahl (THE LAST SEDUCTION, ROUNDERS, JOY RIDE) wins me over with an A+ overture of visual storytelling that establishes Michael (Nic Cage)’s hard times and integrity. We meet him waking up in his car on the side of a farm road, shaving, smelling the shirt he takes out of the trunk to make sure it’s not too bad, looking in the window reflection as he tucks it in, preparing to try to make a good impression. We also see his USMC tattoo, even before he starts doing shirtless one-arm push-ups. This will be relevant.
He’s broke and having trouble finding a job and has a bum knee brought back as a souvenir from Lebanon but he’s an honest man, not looking for any shortcuts. Not until he stops at a bar and his timing and Texas plates cause the owner, Wayne (the great J.T. Walsh, BREAKDOWN, EXECUTIVE DECISION) to mistake him for “Lyle from Dallas” who was supposed to be here last week for a job. Michael plays along, which seems like a promising trick for the few minutes before he realizes the job is to murder Wayne’s wife Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle, POLTERGEIST III). So it’s neither a line of work he’s interested in or the type where you can just put in your two weeks notice and be on your way. (read the rest of this shit…)
After watching FIRESTARTER for the first time since the ’80s I sorta remembered there being some kind of a FIRESTARTER 2 made during this century. I am a completist by nature (see my week of CARRIE movies for evidence) and I thought that might be good for a laugh, so I settled in to watch it real quick. Imagine my surprise when, early in the movie, I checked the running time and saw that it was 2 hours and 48 minutes! What I thought was just a DTV sequel was actually a Sci-Fi Channel mini-series (this is in the old, spelling accurate days before SyFy).
I guess technically this is a sequel to the book, not to the movie, because they have flashbacks to scenes from the movie and they’re reshot with Skye McCole Bartusiak (24) as Charlie, Aaron Radl as her dad and Karrie Combs (BRIDE OF KILLER NERD) as her mom. But mainly we have Charlie played by Marguerite Moreau (the MIGHTY DUCKS trilogy, FREE WILLY 2, WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER). She’s all grown up and keeps a fire extinguisher under her bed for those nights when bad dreams set her bed ablaze. Living under a fake identity, she works at the Millington College academic archive, where she’s trying to uncover information about her dead parents and the experiment that started her firestarting. (read the rest of this shit…)
Oh, WATERWORLD, how I’ve been meaning to rewatch you. Maybe I should’ve done it before FURY ROAD, though.
Let’s get the “flop” shit out of the way first. This is still most famous as a big expensive movie that pretty much just broke even. I don’t care. That’s none of my business. I’m old fashioned.
I always thought it was treated unfairly at the time. It was in the news for going over budget and the popularity pendulum was swinging back on Kevin Costner after a bunch of Oscars and hit movies. It became everybody’s target and they were excited for how terrible it was supposedly gonna be. (This article from The Independent at the time examines the reasons for the backlash against Costner.)
Here, let me check if it was nominated for Razzies. Yep, Dennis Hopper won worst supporting actor and it was nominated for worst picture, actor and director. (SHOWGIRLS was the big winner that year.) So that speaks well of the movie if those assholes were against it.
We’ve been looking at the other movies of that summer, so we can see in context that it’s somewhere in the upper range of quality for what was in theaters at the time. It’s for sure less embarrassing than BATMAN FOREVER or MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: THE MOVIE, more impressive than CONGO, arguably better than JOHNNY MNEMONIC or JUDGE DREDD. It didn’t deserve all the hate that it got.
Do you guys know about SPEED? It’s like GRAND PIANO with a bus! An L.A. public bus that requires the very precise driving of not going below 50 mph or it will blow up. Even if it went through a school zone it could not slow down to avoid crunching the little ones under its wheels. That’s fucked up! I mean they don’t run into that problem in the movie but jesus, bad guy mastermind, think of the children.
It’s no mystery to us, this is the work of bomber-for-ransom Dennis Hopper (TICKER), who in a pre-bus sequence tries a similar job on an elevator full of Patrick Bateman types, but is foiled by Jeff Daniels (BLOOD WORK) and his young gum-chewing sidekick Keanu Reeves (MAN OF TAI CHI). This was after POINT BREAK but before THE MATRIX, so Keanu as the lead in a big action movie was still a new notion to the world. But what are you gonna do, the Jeff Daniels character gets shot and taken off the streets, it’s just not in the cards for it to be a kickass Jeff Daniels vehicle. I’m sorry. (read the rest of this shit…)
TRUE ROMANCE is an entertaining, uniquely textured crime movie, a celebration of youthful love, kitsch, Asian exploitation cinema, and great character actors. At the time it seemed like a new feel, especially coming from Tony Scott. Now it’s more notable as a record of young, undisciplined Quentin Tarantino manning the word processor. (Roger Avary was hired to restructure the original non-linear story and write an ending where the hero doesn’t die – yeah, that sounds like young QT all right.) (read the rest of this shit…)
WAYS YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHIT OUT OF VERN & OUTLAWVERN.COM
if that's your thing:
1. Patreon
Toss me a couple bucks a month, support the good shit, also get access to a bunch of exclusive writing. This is my primary source of writing money that has allowed me to cut down to part time at the day job. Thank you!
2. Buy my books from your local bookseller or somebody
(NOTE: My ten year contract has passed on the Titan books, so I don't get residuals on them like I do WORM ON A HOOK and NIKETOWN, but I would love for you to read them because I'm proud of them)
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. If you ever buy from Amazon, go through my links or search engines
(you pay the same amount you were gonna pay anyway they cut me a little slice)
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.)
4. 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)
5. 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 and/or chumps around here.
THANKS EVERYBODY. YOUR FRIEND, VERN
* * * *
Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Mr. Majestyk on Speed (30th anniversary revisit): “Yeah, I have nostalgia for the VHS era, but none for VHS itself. I like watching the movies of that…” Oct 9, 08:14
Aktion Figure on Speed (30th anniversary revisit): “Just chiming in to say I found a shrink-wrapped VHS of Speed yesterday at a thrift shop. Now, I have…” Oct 9, 04:58
Juliana Divas on The Crow (2024): “I want to testify to what Dr Ughulu did for me. I did everything I could do to bring my…” Oct 9, 04:24
Cannabis Waynesville on Bonnie and Clyde: “Hi there, You have performed a great job. I’ll certainly digg it and for my part recommend to my friends.…” Oct 9, 02:32
pegsman on The Crow (2024): “Don’t come here with your Dr. Oniha! I have a Shining Dr. Jakuta Mega Battle card, and I’m not afraid…” Oct 8, 22:02
Juliana Divas on The Crow (2024): “I want to testify to what Dr Ughulu did for me. I did everything I could do to bring my…” Oct 8, 22:00
ANNABELLA JUSTIN on The Crow (2024): “OMG! Thank you so much Dr. Oniha for restoring my Broken marriage after 4 years of total separation from my…” Oct 8, 19:53
Bill Reed on The Assistant/The Royal Hotel: “If you’re looking for another solid Julia Garner movie about a spirited waif dealing with systemic oppression and forced to…” Oct 8, 11:02
BuzzFeedAldrin on Dead Silence: “Easily my favorite Wan film. Spooky in all the right places, goofy in all he right places (Donnie Wahlberg is…” Oct 8, 06:36
Dude on The Killer (2024): “FWIW Nathalie absolutely “wears a leather jacket and kicks people in the face and jumps off of things” in Army…” Oct 8, 01:22
VERN on The Assistant/The Royal Hotel: “Yeah, I’d rate them about the same. A stressful double feature, but a great one.I hope they make it a…” Oct 7, 17:36
RBatty024 on A Quiet Place: Day One: “I joked that the real experiment here was to see what would happen if you replaced John Krasinski with a…” Oct 7, 17:00
Skani on Dead Silence: “Yes, this one’s a keeper! Otherworldy, nightmare-ish, unhinged. The part you mention with the dead, hollowed-out guy alone makes the…” Oct 7, 16:03
Curt on The Substance: “Majestyk, I’m on the fence as to whether to recommend this one to you. Is it elevated horror or is…” Oct 7, 15:40
June 10, 1994
Two Halloweens ago we discussed Tobe Hooper’s first masterpiece. This is his second. He didn’t even want to direct it at first, sort of got pushed into it, but damn did he rally. In many ways THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 is the Tobe Hooperest movie ever made.
When Stuart Gordon died at the end of March I decided it was finally time to watch SPACE TRUCKERS, a movie I had been meaning to see for literally 23 years. You know how it is. You get busy sometimes.
RED ROCK WEST is one of my favorite neo-noirs, an ingeniously concocted tale with a simple, appealing hero who makes one wrong choice that snags him and he has to spend the rest of the movie trying to crawl his way out of an ever-tightening trap. He’s driving through the town of Red Rock, Wyoming when it goes down, so every time he gets out and then something else goes wrong we share his dismay at passing that god damn “Welcome to Red Rock” sign once more.
aka FIRESTARTER 2: REKINDLED
Do you guys know about SPEED? It’s like 
