Movieline Online

Fed up with the studio filmmaking experience after Starman and Christine , director John Carpenter went back to his low-budget horror roots with Prince of Darkness (1987), a $3 million dollar quickie that offered him total control from beginning to end. Reuniting with actors from many of his past projects – Donald Pleasance ( Halloween, Escape from New York ), Victor Wong and Dennis Dun ( Big Trouble in Little China ) – the film offers a creatively ambitious take on the apocalypse as Satan returns to earth courtesy sub-atomic particles trapped in a jar of swirling green goo. Actually, the ideas Carpenter uses to explain the bizarre happenings at work here are darn near inexplicable. It’s all quantum mechanics, supernovas and alternate dimensions. But when spoken in a menacing tone of voice and shot with his usual menacing style, it raises goosebumps nonetheless. And despite all the technological double-talk, it really comes down to ten people trapped in a church on the wrong side...

It’s tempting to give great directors a free pass when it comes to their, shall we say, “weaker” films. John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, even the great Alfred Hitchcock had his fair share of clunkers but suffered little ill effect to his reputation in the annals of cinematic history. So shouldn’t Mario Bava get the same treatment? The maestro of gothic-giallo Italian horror films has several certified classics to his credit ( Black Sunday and Blood and Black Lace the most notable), but stretched out his career with several films that, even by his own admission, weren’t up to his high standards. As explained by historian Tom Weaver in the disc’s commentary, Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) was a bit of a slog for Bava to complete due to the usual budget and time constraints plus intrusive producers. And it’s a bit of a slog as a viewer, too. The story – several couples on an isolated island retreat fighting over a million-dollar business deal that leads to murder – has all the ...

SyFy Channel movies have now become synonymous with cheesy Saturday night fare like Sharknado and Snowmageddon. And while there’s a certain level of enjoyment to be had scoffing at poorly rendered flying sharks devouring Tara Reid, it’d be nice to have a flip side of the coin now and then: a made-for-TV movie that actually attempts to, I don’t know, actually scare somebody! Dead Souls premiered on Chiller , another network not exactly known for being too discriminating about their schedule. But the product this time around is better than average and often superior to some recent big screen scares, if you keep your expectations in check. The film has a humdinger of an opening as a father brutally murders his wife, two kids and the family dog. Only the youngest son escapes the massacre, raised by his aunt with no knowledge of his scandalous past. But when he inherits the family estate, he returns to his birthplace and unwittingly awakens the spirits of his deceased relatives…an...

Despite arguments to the contrary, most foreign filmmakers have a deep-seated jealousy towards Hollywood and all its many resources. From a technical and financial perspective, it’s just too hard to compete head to head with the spectacle that the U.S. can put on the screen. But as computer effects have evolved, costs have dropped and it suddenly becomes feasible that a couple of Norwegian filmmakers could produce Kon Tiki (2012), the Academy Award Nominated story of Thor Heyerdahl’s insane goal to cross the Pacific on a crude raft simply to prove his scientific theory of prehistoric migration. Heyerdahl himself earned a nomination for the documentary film he made of the journey in 1947. And while that account may be historically accurate, it doesn’t have the spit and polish of directors Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg’s film, which recreates not only the ocean crossing with harrowingly realistic effects but the period setting and backdrops too. In short, Kon Tiki has everyth...

Of the much-heralded crop of ‘70s directors – Scorsese, Spielberg, and Coppola among them – to emerge from the ruins of the studio system, Brian De Palma seems the least significant by critical comparison. Perhaps because he was labeled more of an “imitator” than an “innovator”; lifting the themes, characters, music and wholesale camera movements of Alfred Hitchcock to elevate his career. Even the harshest critic couldn’t argue that De Palma’s work is technically wondrous to behold. But just as often, the material on the page couldn’t compete with what he was doing with his camera. Body Double (1984) followed the commercially successful but equally controversial Scarface (1983) which found the director in the familiar position of defending his supposed endorsement of racism, misogynism and overt on-screen violence. It was a return to the Hitchcockian thriller format that served him quite well in Dressed to Kill and Blow Out . But, perhaps as a snide sort of revenge for all that...

The most memorable war movies are those that use the military conflict as nothing more than a backdrop. Apocalypse Now, Paths of Glory, The Bridge on the River Kwai ; all war movies by definition but with more subtext than actual armed combat. Australian director Tom Jeffrey’s The Odd Angry Shot (1979) intentionally avoids most of the controversy around his country’s participation in Vietnam. It’s not a protest film, it’s not political film and – oddly enough – it’s not an angry film. It’s a coming-of-age story not unlike Oliver Stone’s Platoon , but with half the angst and twice the beer. Bill (John Jarratt) is a naïve kid shipped off into a M.A.S.H.- style barracks on the edge of the jungle, partnered up with a hodge-podge of semi-professional soldiers and newbies like himself. The film’s plot is as standard-issue as a pair of boots: some dangerous missions, a little R & R, some colorful camp hijinks and the eventual trauma of losing a friend. A little patience goes a lo...

For a movie with a title as morbid as The House of Seven Corpses ( (1974), you probably couldn’t find a more family friendly piece of horror real estate. More often that not, the film looks and feels just like similar made-for-TV product produced in the same era ( Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, etc) with a cast of past-their-prime stars and a plot not quite sensational enough for the big screen. That’s probably to be expected, since writer/ director Paul Harrison biggest claim to fame at the time were several episodes of H. R. Pufnstuf. Scary, indeed! Although House actually played theatrically, any notoriety it still has today is thanks to local late-night creature features and various home-video releases, all of which made the movie look even more low-rent that it actually is. Now debuting on a blu-ray / DVD combo thanks to Severin Films, one can finally see the movie we’d all been missing…and we haven’t been missing much. Oh, there’s so some fun to be had watching the great Jo...

Up until a decade or so ago, animation could be divided into two categories: Disney and everybody else. By its very nature, the animation process was so labor intensive and commercially risky that very few independents ever achieved notoriety besides an odd Oscar nomination now and then during a lull in the show. Ralph Bakshi is one of the rare exceptions. Fritz the Cat (1972), a lewd, crude and X-rated cartoon based on the work of R. Crumb was a bonafide sensation and a legitimate hit, which brought Bakshi to the attention of other producers quick to capitalize on his uniquely adult approach to the previously kid-friendly animation genre. Heavy Traffic, released just a year later in 1973, provided a bit more mature palette. The self-reflexive story follows a struggling cartoonist caught between his obnoxious Jewish-Italian parents and a street-smart female bartender who shows him just what kind of hard knocks it takes to survive in the city. Fully embracing the squalor that i...

Tower Block fits quite nicely into the new catch-all category I like to call inter- tainment : not quite high-concept enough for a theatrical release, but with much better production values than your average YouTube channel, the story by writer James Moran ( Severance ) has echoes of ‘70s era grit mixed with a Rod Serling-esque morality play as a sniper keeps a dozen top floor residents of a condemned tenament pinned down as revenge for refusing to assist with the investigation of a murder in their building. Die Hard meets Dirty Harry . Towering Inferno meets Twilight Zone . The film mixes and matches characters and clichés quite liberally, but is assisted by a surprisingly able cast (including Jack O’Connell who played an equally nasty teen in the British thriller Eden Lake ) and enough “what would you do” moments to keep you sticking around for what turns out to be a blandly predictable conclusion. But Tower Block proves that a simple scenario well told can be engaging even...