Movieline Online

Everybody has a favorite slasher they’ll champion to the end.  The reasons vary:  creative kill scenes, great soundtrack, retro clothes, Pauly Shore, creative use of – wait a second!  Pauly Shore?!  Yes, 1989’s  Phantom of the Mall:  Eric’s Revenge  doesn’t have a whole lot to recommend it beside an early appearance by the Weasel as an ice-cream slinging mall employee who gets caught up in a mall massacre. Director Richard Friedman, whose previous genre films  Scared Stiff  and  Doom Asylum  were equally inept, can’t make heads or tails out of the re-jiggered script built around the idea of a burn-victim hiding out in airshafts protecting his true love from a corrupt businessman.  While the teens shop, Eric practicing his crossbow and Gymkata skills in the back room hoping for a chance to get revenge…instead of, ya know, revealing he’s actually alive and pressing charges against the guy who murdere...

Slow to develop, the Italian gothic genre is less consistent in quality than the Hammer movies filmmakers were quick to emulate.  But amidst the genuine classics by Mario Bava and Ricccardo Freda there are a number of fascinating one-offs that are still worth attention.   Mill of the Stone Women  (1960) just so happens to be Italy’s first horror film  in color , making for a lush, expressionistic debut that does more than just splash some blood around. Structured like a Poe film, but based on an original screenplay, the story follows a young journalist, Hans, assigned to write about the lifelike stone statues created by Professor Gregorious Wahl.  Of course, there’s a reason why the professor’s art is so realistic; his sculptures are the petrified female victims used to supply his daughter, Elfie, with blood transfusions to keep her alive.   Hans, torn between his attraction to Elfie and his shock at the travesties being committed i...

Low-budget horror hit a peak in the 70’s with films like Tobe Hooper’s  The 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. Despite its rabid cult following,   Hills  isn’t the most accomplished film of Wes Craven’s career.     The editing is clumsy, the acting is weak and the make-up is corny (actor Michael Berryman’s misshapen bald skull makes him the only convincing inbred hick in the bunch).     At best,  Hills   is a jury-rigged minor masterpiece, held together by sheer brute force and an overwhelming sense of dread.     The film feeds off the momentum of its stripped down story about a family of whitebread vacationers fighting for survival in the desert against a family of cannibalistic madmen (and women). ...

With the release of his fifth feature film,  Deep Red , Dario Argento was probably starting to believe his own hype.  As the “Italian Hitchock,” he’d proven himself a bankable director of international thrillers (and one obscure Western) who’d inspired hundreds of imitators in his own country and abroad.   The competition was getting fierce.  So Argento fired off one last salvo into the crowded  giallo  genre that would end the debates and put him firmly back on top.   Deep Red  is one of those films that catches a director working at the top of his game with deceptive ease. David Hemmings, in a variation of his role in  Blow Up , is the witness to a brutal crime who believes he saw a vital clue to the killer’s identity…but can’t quite recall the evidence of his own eyes.  With the help of a nosy reporter (possible killer #1) and a fellow musician (possible killer #2), Hemmings stays one step ahead of a stri...

After debuting  Demons  and  Demons 2  on Blu-ray in an exclusive steelbook format, followed by a slightly less collectible but equally spectacular looking pair of stand-alone editions, Synapse Films goes back to the well for a 4K Ultra-HD double-feature that epitomize the gonzo ‘80s Italian horror aesthetic.  Produced by Dario Argento ( Suspiria ) and directed by Lamberto Bava (son of Mario), you won’t find a more silly, sick and visually slick double feature of Euro-splatter anywhere!   At this point in his career Argento had drifted into a pattern of disconnected imagery tied with the loosest of narrative threads, designed more like  Fangoria  photoplays than linear stories.  And apparently he developed  Demons  and its sequel along the same lines, packaging both films with a prefabricated heavy metal soundtrack built around some outstanding make-up effects by Sergio Stivaletti.  There’s a screenplay in here s...

Just when we’d all learned how to properly conjugate  kaiju  in a sentence, along comes a whole ‘nother pantheon of Japanese monsters to remember:   Yokai .  Based on Japanese folklore, popularized by manga artist Shigeru Mizuki, and co-opted by the Pokemon phenomenon, Yokai (“strange apparitions) are the cultural equivalent of fairies, goblins or monsters, existing between the spaces of this world and the next and punishing those who misbehave.  Arrow Video’s new special edition box set collects four titles (three from the ‘60s and one from the early aughts) that capture the cinematic madness of these bizarre but usually benevolent spirits. Produced by Daiei,  100 Monsters  (1968) follows the same formula as the studio’s  Daimajin  series: ruthless feudal warlords tear down a temple and threaten the peasantry only to find themselves under attack by vengeful supernatural entities.  This first entry is slow to develop ...

Ridley Scott’s  Legend  (1985) was supposed to be the cherry on top of an unexpected wave of fantasy films.  Instead, it was a critical and commercial failure that had less impact on pop culture than lightweight movies like  The Beastmaster and  Krull  (I love ‘em both, don’t get me wrong).  Scott quickly pivoted away from genre films and found mainstream success, leaving the legacy of his muddled and maligned vision of good and evil to age in the cinematic cellar where it’s reputation might further ripen. Truth is,  Legend  is simply a beautiful mess.    The unapologetic fairy tale begins with nature boy Jack (Tom Cruise) introducing Princess Lili (Mia Sara) to the magical wonders of his forest domicile, including a pair of unicorns.  But Lili’s naïve mistake leads to an opportunity for Darkness (Tim Curry) to steal the unicorn’s power – and Lili herself - plunging the world into a snowy apocalypse.  ...