The more of them I watch, the more I'm convinced all movies from
1988-1992 need to be fired directly into the sun. There is a chance,
however small, that some day an alien race will land on Earth and
judge our right to exist based on our contribution to the arts, and if
they choose that time period to examine, we are completely and
helplessly screwed.
Some great movies came out of that timespan, but I'm afraid they're
going to have to be sacrificed for the greater good. The vast majority
of them--even the ones that are made more entertaining by their flaws,
like 1989's 976-EVIL--are too ugly, tacky, and sleazy to risk
keeping around.
Stephen Geoffreys wants to be cool and strong like his cousin Patrick
O'Bryan, but instead he's a beat-up wimp who all the girls laugh at.
His fortunes change, however, after he discovers a demonic phone line
that gives him terrible powers.
That's the condensed way of saying "lots and lots of time is spent
watching teenagers do what was once, to the horror of the modern eye,
considered cool." Some of their activities, like gambling, smoking,
and getting it on, are timeless. Others, like their obsession with
obscene graffiti and styling their hair with such moronic fetishism
it's a wonder they had time to feed themselves, are so specific to
their time and place the movie may as well have been "1989!!" flashed
for ninety straight minutes.
We're talking cheese with a capital cheddar. It's so cheesy you'll
need a machete and a burlap sack of tortilla chips just to wade
through it.
But director Robert Englund (that's Freddy Krueger, son!) delivers
some pretty funny deaths. And Geoffreys' acting is kinda good, making
it extra confusing he'd moved on to porn two years later. (His
filmography reads like something straight out of Clerks.) Most
bizarrely of all, it was cowritten by Brian Helgeland, who won an
Oscar for the script to L.A. Confidential.
That is one freakish pedigree. 976-EVIL is like the Bad News
Bears of horror movies, a ragtag collection of talent that ends up
much better than it has any right to be--not good, but a good time.
This one was suggested to me by a reader. I'm grateful for the helping
hand. So many movies get made a lot of them fall right off the social
radar, never to be heard from again. Without getting pointed in the
right direction, I might have missed 976-EVIL's ageless
message: bully a nerd, and you'll end up slashed to ribbons by a scaly
lizard-elf.
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'Contraband' smuggles into your good graces
'Contraband' smuggles into your good graces
Sometimes, all it takes to kick a movie up a notch is to change the setting.
Take werewolf movies. You know what you are getting with a werewolf movie. Lots of shots of the moon. Ghouly old forests filled with mist and moss. And a small village full of tight-lipped locals who are so damn rude they don't even warn the tourists about the high risk of getting devoured by night-monsters.
Pretty tired, right? But what if this was set on the moon itself ?
New 'Conan' just good enough
New 'Conan' just good enough
Despite being a wasteland so terrible people were inventing time machines just to get out of the place, the '80s were a pretty cool time for B-movie genres.
Ninjas swept the nation like a plague in black pajamas, setting the stage for years later, when Chris Farley would slap the hell out of some dudes with a pair of giant salmon. Speaking of the dead, zombies also rose once more from their graves to remind us that eating internal organs isn't just for foreigners. And did you like Star Wars ? Good because you got enough third-rate ripoffs starring space ninjas and fey droids to last you from here to a galaxy far, far away.
Fortunately for those of us who love genre flicks, we still get a lot of that stuff. Yet another '80s product has not been so lucky: the barbarian movie. For years, films like Conan the Barbarian , Beastmaster , and The Barbarians swept the big-screen steppes until suddenly they didn't. This was because, much like the Mongols before them, they were responsible for the loss of 10s
'The Real Horse Whisperer' interview
'The Real Horse Whisperer' interview
Dan "Buck" Brannaman is the subject of the documentary Buck . My guess is Buck doesn’t use the moniker Dan much. He’s just "Buck."
Buck is one of my favorite films this year and after urging Carmike Cinemas the past few weeks, they agreed to open it in Tri-Cities. The film is about training horses and subtly, about training ourselves.
In my opinion it’s a “must see,” even if you don’t own horses or ride them.
'Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows' a shade better than first
'Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows' a shade better than first
The bottom line: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is not the detective made popular in your granddaddy’s days.
While not close to traditional and not the most fun you’ll have in a theater this holiday season, it is a lot of fun and worth catching.
-- Local show times, theaters, trailer.
'Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows' an overstuffed turkey
'Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows' an overstuffed turkey
When presented with a range of unfamiliar food, the safest bet for delicious will be snagging whatever's stuffed with something else.
Stuffed mushrooms. Stuffed peppers. Stuffed turkey. Turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken. All of these things are great and if you disagree you should be stuffed into a beef chest and basted to perfection. My million-dollar idea for a restaurant is to tamp down a cannon with the first course, then fire it directly into the second. I could charge $200 a plate and it would still be worth it. Hire a first-rate cannoneer for that kind of money.
This concept doesn't translate as well to stories. Blasting a barrel-load of subplots into your main story usually just results in a mess, and not the delicious kind, because words are inedible, you dummy. "Stuff it till it bursts" seems to have been the guiding ideal to Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows , and as usual, the result is far less satisfying than it could have been.
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