Movieline Online

If you didn’t live through the pre-VCR era, you might not understand the abnormal amount of excitement something like ABC’s Movie of the Week could generate. After all, short of theatrical reissues, there was no other way to see current or classic flicks. We also had to change channels and turn up the volume by hand, but that’s beside the point. While a fair number of major motion pictures popped up (in heavily edited form), you were just as likely to get a “copycat” production designed to spare network execs from paying for the real thing. Such is the case with this TV Terrors double feature, released by the horror specialists at Scream Factory. The Initiation of Sarah (1978) is a clone of Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976), minus the nudity, swears, Sissy Spacek and special effects. That obviously doesn’t leave much to work with. But that’s part of the retro charm of viewing these old made-for-TV horror rip-offs, many of which made as big an impression on the younger generation...

If you thought George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead said all there was to say about our consumer-obsessed society, you obviously missed Night of the Comet (1984), a likable and clever combination of I Am Legend and Valley Girl that pokes fun at the multiplex-in-a-mall culture. Of all the horror/action/comedy hybrids that popped up during the ‘80s, this one is likely the smartest and most enjoyable of them all. Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart, The Last Starfighter ) and Samantha (Kelli Maroney, Chopping Mall ) appear to be the only survivors of a comet-induced apocalypse that has reduced the rest of the population to piles of red dust. Those that escaped immediate death, however, are slowly zombified into dehydrated monsters, including a group of scientists holed up in an underground lab who want the two girls for testing. But Reggie and Sam are more interested in the same things they were interested in before the apocalypse: namely gossip, shopping and boys. Any synopsis makes N...

The World’s End , the third and perhaps final collaboration between director Edgar Wright and actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, is a natural evolution of sorts. Their first theatrical foray, Shaun of the Dead , focused on a pair of emotionally stillborn pals defending themselves against an army of zombies. Hot Fuzz saw them paired up as essentially children masquerading as adults in a world of gratuitous action-film inspired violence. The World’s End brings things full circle, introducing a now mature and responsible group childhood chums who’ve conceded to a man that to function in the real world, you’ve got to grow up sometime. Well, everyone except Gary. While the whole gang’s back this time around, including welcome newcomers like Martin Freeman ( The Hobbit, Sherlock ) and Paddy Considine, there’s no mistaking this is Simon Pegg’s movie. As Gary, he represents the entire film’s contradictory philosophy in a nutshell: a true friend never outgrows his true friends. One h...

With science-fiction once again in vogue thanks to Star Wars and Alien , plenty of aging movie stars took their careers to space in hopes of staying relevant with increasingly “effects-centric” audiences: Sean Connery twice ( Meteor and Outland ), Roger Moore ( Moonraker ), Anthony Perkins ( The Black Hole ) and Kirk Douglas, who hedged his bets by co-starring with poster girl Farrah Fawcett in Saturn 3 (1980), a sort of “Frankenstein in space” story set at an isolated research facility orbiting the ringed planet. Charged with growing food for an increasingly desperate Earth population, Alex and Adam (Fawcett and Douglass respectively) have created a private universe in their underground greenhouse. This Garden of Eden is interrupted by arrival of Benson (Harvey Keitel), a mysterious liaison who delivers a new type of advanced robot to assist with their harvest. But Benson is actually a mentally imbalanced imposter whose hormones take over when he sets eyes on Alex. Desperate to ...

Creating a successful horror icon is harder than it looks. Sure, Michael, Jason and Freddy make it look easy: a snazzy mask, the right accessories and a signature catchphrase or two. But check out The Horror Show (1989), produced at the tail end of the waning slasher craze, and you’ll see what I mean. Max Jenke is one bad dude. He’s put a lot of mileage on his meat cleaver and is now strapped to the electric chair to pay for his crimes. But as the cop who put him away watches, Jenke absorbs most of the juice and swears vengeance…just before collapsing into a lifeless heap. That’s one of a couple prologues in producer Sean S. Cunningham’s ( Friday the 13 th ) ill-conceived attempt to introduce a new serial killer in the cinematic pantheon. Jenke (which sounds a lot like the exclamation Velma makes on Scooby Doo ) is played by Brion James, probably most memorable as the psychotic replicant in Blade Runner . Here he just bugs his eyes out a lot and emits an evil high-pitched gi...

While it took the Terminator franchise three installments to get around to the idea of a “female Terminator,” 1991’s Eve of Destruction beat it to the punch by a good 12 years. But in this case, getting there first isn’t necessarily a good thing. With the unlikely choice of Gregory Hines as a high-ranking government secret agent assigned to destroy a runaway fembot before she goes nuclear, the film plays like good synopsis that either ran out of ideas…or ran out of money to execute them. The most crucial flaw in Eve of Destruction certainly isn’t Hines, who’s proven himself to be charming and believable in action roles before ( Wolfen, Running Scared ). It’s the fact that the film gives him nothing to do. After a quick intro setting of the concept of “Eve” – an experimental android programmed with the thoughts and feelings of its creator, Dr. Eve Simmons (both roles played by European actress Renee Soutenjijk) - the two characters are essentially kept apart for the rest of the...

It’s tough to be critical of films that were essential to the development of cinema itself. After all, the challenges faced by F.W. Murnau in shooting Nosferatu in 1922 were incomparably more difficult than those that came even 5 or 10 years later. We’re talking about the creation of a cinematic language: wide-shot, medium shot, close-up, mise en scene, essential filmic vocabulary tools that are mostly instinctual today. Not to mention introducing the world’s most famous bloodsucker 9 years before Bela strapped on his cape. Murnau had made several shorts and features in his native Germany before adapting (without legal permission) Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula , for the screen. The result, when viewed with modern eyes, can be tedious at times considering Stoker’s story has been told and retold from so many different perspectives. And the acting, although perfectly in keeping with stage-inspired techniques of the time, remains a tough sell. What makes Nosferatu an undisputed cl...

John Carpenter hit the ground running with his first full feature, Assault on Precinct 13 , in 1976. As a writer / director / composer almost all his stylistic virtues were already in place: throbbing synth music score, carefully composed shots, anti-authoritarian hero, and some studio system spit and polish on a film produced well outside of it. If Dark Star, his 1974 sci-fi collaboration with Dan O’Bannon ( Alien ), proved Carpenter could point and shoot on budget, Assault on Precinct 13 saw him poised to break it big. A modern-day variation on Howard Hawks Rio Bravo (1959), the film finds a mismatched group of cops and prisoners fighting for survival against a faceless horde of Los Angeles gang members out to avenge one of their own. Lt. Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) is the new cop on the job assigned to help shut down a ghetto area police station. A wayward prison bus drops famous criminal Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Justin) in their ill-prepared laps just as a panic-stricken fa...