Movieline Online

The Flick Willis O’Brien is the cinematic equivalent of a one-hit-wonder. There’s no denying “King Kong” is a milestone in movie history. Even the stop-motion animator’s silent warm-up, “The Lost World,” pushed the art of filmmaking into a fantastic new direction. But O’Brien’s career seemed to topple with Kong’s long fall off the Empire State Building. “The Black Scorpion” (1957) is one of his latter efforts and is hampered by a low budget, hammy acting, and all the contrived set-ups of the giant bug genre. That being said, there’s still a lot to enjoy once the talking stops and O’Brien’s title character starts tearing up the screen. After being awakened by a volcano, a swarm of prehistoric scorpions descend on Mexican peasants, eating livestock and disturbing the peace. Luckily, a Norte Americano scientist and his Mexican sidekick volunteer to meet the big bugs on their own turf, at the bottom of a bottomless cavern that serves as a “lost world” of its own. The plan fails and eventua...

THE FLICK: Those who insist on trying to convert the unenlightened to the stop-motion artistry of Ray Harryhausen are fighting a losing battle. As the effects master’s lifelong friend Ray Bradbury puts it, “We grew old together, but we never grew up.” And that’s the key to enjoying films like “Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” and “Valley of Gwangi”; keeping your heart and mind open to the fantastic. The vast majority of audiences simply don’t get it, but those that do are in for a treat. “Beast” is loosely based on a short story by Bradbury and is also Harryhausen’s first solo project (he assisted mentor Willis O’Brien on “Mighty Joe Young”), hired to bring his titular Rhedosaurus to life on a low, low budget. Laying down the groundwork for atomic monster tales like “Godzilla,” the story has its prehistoric dino thawed out at the Arctic Circle, only to make its way to New York City and Coney Island for the famous flaming rollercoaster finale. As is often the case, the film wrapped around Har...

The Flicks Classic horror fans and Hammer aficionados are two discs closer to nirvana with the release of “Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell” & “Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter” – two of the British studio’s latter fare that stacks up surprisingly well with some of their best. The final installment in their Frankenstein films, Hammer somehow roped in Peter Cushing and director Terence Fisher to send out the series with a low-key tale of dread and dismemberment at a remote asylum which, of course, results in the creation of a murderous man-ape that runs amok. While the plot may be redundant and does nothing to further the mad scientist mythos, Cushing is predictably amazing in the lead role as “Dr. Victor,” now hiding under a flimsy alias and using mental patients as raw material to continue his bodybuilding experiments. Railroad-spike thin but still full of nervous energy (witness his piggy-back stunt at the ripe old age of 65), the actor gives it his all, a nice counterbalance...

The Flicks To hear Lucas and Spielberg tell it, the Indiana Jones films are nothing more than shameless patchworks of Saturday Afternoon serial adventure films. Of course, to an entire generation that had never seen Flash Gordon, Tarzan, or the assorted cowboy heroes, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was a completely new and completely liberating experience. And in their fanciful quest to re-create the films of their youth, Lucas and Spielberg managed to create an entirely new cinematic icon almost by accident. Few films, if any, can top “Raiders” for sheer entertainment value. Yes, its action set pieces are the stuff of legend – the boulder, the blowdarts, the truck stunts, the exploding heads – but it’s the surprisingly well-rounded performances from secondary characters like Karen Allen and John Rhys-Davies that make it feel like family reunion every time you watch. “Temple of Doom” took some much undeserved heat at the time of release for being too violent and dark, even though the physic...

The Flick The third film in Godfrey Reggio’s “Qatsi” series continues his visual dissection of human society. Only this time, instead of contrasting the natural world with Man’s complex mechanical imitations, “Naqoyqatsi” is made up of images that are electronically altered to support the title’s thematic translation, “Life as War” – war with each other, war against ourselves, and war against technology. If you turn off your brain, Reggio’s film is nothing more than an adult version of those “Baby Einstein” videos – a mesmerizing montage of glorious photography set to the hypnotic beat of composer Phillip Glass. But the deeper meanings behind it all begin to seep in eventually, even if it’s only on a subconscious level. And you come out of “Naqoyqatsi” with a different view of the world, one that lay hidden just below the surface. The Features After a brief intro by producer Steven Soderbergh (who champions the film as an example of brave and experimental filmmaking), the special featu...

THE FLICK: Low-budget horror hit a peak in the 70’s with films like Tobe Hooper’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and Wes Craven’s “The Hills Have Eyes” breaking the barriers of good taste and the heretofore predictable rules of scary movies audiences came to expect. These were the pioneers of the “anti-Hollywood” horror movie. “Hills” is a jury-rigged minor masterpiece, held together by sheer brute force and an overwhelming sense of dread. Despite an obvious script full of over-the-top melodrama (a weakness Craven carried throughout his career), the film feeds off the momentum of its stripped down story about a family of whitebread vacationers fighting for survival in the desert against an family of cannibalistic madmen (and women). The set-piece scene (and the one that likely earned the film its reputation) is a disturbingly violent attack at the family RV which includes one rape, two deaths and a kidnapped baby saved for dinner. Almost 30 years later, it still has the power to shock. And ...

THE FLICK: It’s hard to say who should get the blame for “Mimic: Sentinel,” the producers who came up with the ridiculous “Rear Window with giant cockroaches” concept, or first-time director J. T. Petty, who was handpicked out of NYU on the basis of his student film. And it’s also hard to say whether the slow-pace, bad acting and claustrophic sets are the result of a stripped down budget or some artistic aspiration to take the “Mimic” films in a new direction. You won’t get any answers by watching the movie. All you’ll get is a frustrating experience in low-budget “art-horror” hidden behind name-brand franchise. The plot has a Strickler’s disease survivor, Marvin, isolated in his room with a view, living vicariously through his telephoto camera lens as he snaps pictures of the neighbors. When he catches some clues on film of mysterious murder, it’s not long before the truth comes back to bite him: the Judas Bugs are alive and well and breeding. And his family is smack dab in the killin...

THE FLICK: Think of “Wrong Turn” as a glam-slasher flick, all dressed up in CGI and Stan Winston make-up, but still grinding out the old-school body count. And there’s nothing wrong with that...especially since horror went south with the “Scream” trilogy a few years back and is only now on the comeback trail. A film like “Wrong Turn,” which at least embraces its 70’s horror roots rather than mocking them, can now be enjoyed for the mechanical thrill machine that it is. Essentially an extension of that creepy “X-Files” episode about the in-bred family of mountain people, Eliza Dushku (“Bring It On”) is the hottie on the poster who goes out camping with her four pals and comes back with none of them. No surprise, since a trio of backwoods monstrosities (covered in elaborate disfiguring make-up appliances) has been picking them off one by one. Since this is the new millennium, director Rob Schmidt enhances his death scenes with some clever computer effects and stages a few set-piece scene...