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 eventu...

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 studios 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 than 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 body building 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 counter-balan...

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 physi...

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 fea...

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...

THE SHOW: The overwhelming success of television shows on the DVD format can be explained in part by the ability to cram countless episodes on one shiny plastic disc. But there’s also the added value of giving fans a chance to watch an entire series at their own pace – a weekend marathon or once every few days grazing. But a show like “The Tick,” whose unsuccessful run on the Fox network lasted only nine episodes, makes it even easier to take in the entire series in one hilarious viewing session. Created by Ben Edlund (who also wrote the comic book and the animated series), produced by Barry Sonnenfeld (“Men In Black”), and starring Patrick Warburton (Puddy of TV’s “Seinfeld”) as the big blue bug of justice, “The Tick” is a show for those with discriminating tastes in comedy. It’s almost too smart for its own good, even though its central character has the vocabulary of a PHD and common sense of an extra-wide toaster. Built around the idea that superheroes and their exploits are an eve...

THE FLICKS: Blue Underground’s latest contribution to the world of cult cinema on DVD is the Christopher Lee Collection, which is a bit of misnomer. Although the horror icon is the featured player in each film, he’s far from the driving force behind them. The box set could easily have been re-titled “The Harry Alan Towers Compendium” (the producer and screenwriter of all four films) or “The Jess Franco Jamboree” (the director responsible for three of four). Bored with his association with Hammer and his typecasting as Dracula, Lee sought out more diverse roles to satisfy his creative outlet. While the “Fu Manchu” films were an initial success, by the time Towers and Franco put “Castle of Fu Manchu” and “Blood of Fu Manchu” into production, the actor was backed into the same corner – covered in heavy make-up with very little screen time. Both films are saddled with Franco’s lasseiz-faire direction - unnecessary and disorienting camera zooms, pathetic stunts, and a dash of clumsy erotica...

THE SHOW: In case you didn’t know, “Alias” is the best show on television. No, really. It is. Now that the Simpsons have gone goofy, Futurama is off the air, and ER is ready for euthenasia, producer J.J. Abrahms and star Jennifer Garner’s serpentine spy drama has no competition. For those that still aren’t in the loop, Garner plays Sydney Bristow, a grad student recruited by the CIA (or so she thinks) to live the life of a full-fledged secret agent. The James Bond cliches are all here: dangerous missions, clever gadgets, and deadly hand-to-hand combat. But “Alias” succeeds where even its big screen cohorts fail by putting a human face on all this espionage. Sydney is far from infallible (even though she is tougher than “La Femme Nikita” and better looking than most Bond girls), and it’s how her work interferes with her real life that give the show its heart. I defy anyone to watch the pilot episode and not be hooked. TV doesn’t get any better than this. THE FEATURES: This 6-disc set in...

THE FLICKS: Even though only a handful of people caught Mark Dacascos’ butt-kicking performance in the terrific period action/horror/ flick “Brotherhood of the Wolf,” there’s no doubt it made every one of them a fan. So how does some of the actor’s other work hold up? “Scorcher” casts him as the good guy trapped in a low-budget end of the world adventure. Inspired by other mediocre disaster movies with actors you’ve never heard of (like “The Core”), Dacascos is under-utilized as a Van Damme-type military man who must escort a team into LA to set off a couple of nukes and stop the planet’s plates from shifting. You can almost excuse the lack of special effects and terribly melodramatic dialogue, but to pull the punches on Dacascos’ fight scenes (which are choreographed like a bad 70’s TV series) is almost unforgivable. “Scorcher’s” only accomplishment is to make the apocalypse unbearably boring. “China Strike Force,” despite the Americanized voice-overs and Coolio’s stunt casting, is a ...

THE FLICKS: You’ve got classic auteurs like Bergman, Truffaut and John Ford. Modern guys like Kubrick, Scorsese and Copolla. Even the quirky independent minded fellas like Cronenberg, Lynch, and the Coen Brothers. But what the hell do you do with someone like Larry Cohen? Here’s a guy who arguably has put up just as impressive a body of work, but gets none of the credit. Laboring on genre pictures like blakxsploitation, shoot-em-ups, and monster-on-the-loose flicks, just to name a few, that garner little or no respect from mainstream critics. While the big names walk away with all the awards, Larry Cohen’s work is more subversive; changing the genre from within, adding a twist where another director would walk a straight line. One has only to take their pick of Blue Underground’s three new releases to get an idea of what his unique style of guerilla filmmaking is capable of. BONE is Cohen’s rarely seen (even during its initial release) skewering of California fantasies; its false-front...

THE FLICKS: If one is ever hard pressed to prove the legitamacy of film as art, the works of Ingmar Bergman make the case beautifully. Intensely personal, technically flawless, and emotionally raw, the director’s own obsessions are reflected throughout his career in the cinema. And although many European auteurs followed in his footsteps (Godard, Truffaut, and Fellini among them), none could explore the same psychological depths with a storyteller’s gift for tortured, yet unflinchingly honest, characters. The “Trilogy” is made up of three films that mark Bergman’s move away from the expressionistic style of “The Seventh Seal” toward a more intimate, and often painful, study of the human heart and mind. Bound together by the common thread of “God’s Silence,” Bergman finally addresses the theological questions he had danced about in previous films. A minister’s son who resented the hypocrisy of the modern church, the director had never before faced so many of his own personal demons in s...

THE FLICK: I won’t bore you with a rote description of the plot of John Carpenter’s “Halloween”. Not because it plays on some cable channel every night, or because you’re bound to catch one of its seven mediocre sequels. Because to do so is to sell the film short. Building off the modern horror ideas invented by Alfred Hitchock’s “Psycho,” “Halloween” brought terror out of the castle and into suburbia. The psuedo-supernatural killer Michael Myers doesn’t stalk his victims across some foggy countryside, he hunts them in backyards and parked cars. He’s anywhere and everywhere. It’s that sense of insecurity that puts audiences on edge. That’s what gives “Halloween” its impact – it brought fear into the home. But it didn’t do it in the sloppy, low-budget way, it did it with the same sort of meticulous craft ‘ol Hitch brought to the screen. Carpenter and cinematographer Dean Cundey produced unsettling shots with an eye for composition, where every empty inch of screen harbored a possible th...

THE FLICK: Director Robert Wise, despite his own string of successful films like “The Sound of Music” and “West Side Story,” will always be remembered for his association with legendary film figures Val Lewton and Orson Welles. An editor on Welles’ “Citizen Kane” and creative contributor to Lewton’s series of classy suspense films, Wise’s influences came to bear perfectly with his 1963 film “The Haunting,” an adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel, “The Haunting of Hill House.” A ghost story that uses the power of suggestion not out of budget constraints, but by stylistic choice, no spirits are ever physically visible in the film, but their presence is a near suffocating experience. Hill House was “born bad,” constructed at odd angles and designed to confuse those who wander its halls after dark. Which makes it perfect for Dr. Marquay’s ( )scientific quest to prove the existence of supernatural phenomena. He invites a psychic (Clair Bloom), a non-believer (), and Nell (), who’s naïve, n...

THE FLICK: For those unfamiliar with Columbia’s Superbit monikor, the idea is to strip away all the extras like commentaries, trailers and deleted scenes to make more room for the movie itself; what the consumer allegedly is buying the disc for anyway. This free space adds up to a much better transfer that approaches hi-def, plus DTS & Dolby Digital Sound. It’s safe to say that if you’ve already spent a couple grand on your home theater, a Superbit title is the best way to show it off. But how Columbia selects which movies to give the Superbit treatment is the true mystery. Even by horror fans liberal standards, “John Carpenter’s Vampires” is not the director’s crowning cinematic achievement. But it is a genuinely fun time-waster with a coarse, foul-mouthed performance from James Woods as a single-minded vampire slayer out to rid the world of bloodsuckers. It’s no secret that most of Carpenter’s action flicks can be read as new-age Westerns. And “Vampires” makes it even more obviou...

THE FLICK: The 70’s were an era of rebirth for the film industry. Studios, befuddled by a generation of baby boomers who craved something different, were forced to make “different” kinds of pictures. But who would think this would apply to animated films, too? “The Rescuers” has all the elements of a traditional Disney movie – cute characters, scary villains, and a healthy dose of comic relief. But it feels rawer than most of the studio’s classics, slightly unfinished, with an animation style closer to the Scooby Doo episodes of the 60’s than “Lady & the Tramp.” The plot, too, is a little darker than most, sending two mice (Bernard, voiced by Bob Newhart, and Bianca, by Eva Gabor) to rescue a runaway orphan from the clutches of some dastardly treasure hunters. They’re assisted their hunt through a spooky swamp by a clumsy albatross, a dragonfly named Evinrude, and a cast of alcoholic hillbilly critters. The unpolished feel of the film (even the music is sparse and “soft rock” in to...

THE FLICK: After Jackie Chan finally hit it big in the U.S. with “Rumble in the Bronx” the market was flooded with so many Chan imports from his native Hong Kong that the guy must have been making 10 films a year. Some got the deluxe re-mixed and re-released treatment (like “First Strike”) while others were picked up by cut-rate video distributors to cash in on the craze. “Project A2” catches Chan at the peak of his Hong Kong career, with enough clout to direct his own material and enough budget to produce something spectacular (at least by Hong Kong standards). The plot is a nonsensical mess – something to do with vengeful pirates, naïve revolutionaries, and corrupt cops – but the stunts are some of Jackie’s best. From the inventive (trading punches inside a giant bingo tumbler) to the just plain silly (Jackie swallowing hot peppers to spit and wipe in his opponent’s eyes), Chan is never afraid to let the physical comedy be front and center. In that respect, his films will never be ta...

THE FLICKS: The Western has been unfairly maligned by today’s generation as a slow-moving, predictable genre of film with nothing to offer besides a few Clint Eastwood flicks. Nobody plays cowboys and Indians anymore. Toy guns have been banned from the shelves. And, for all practical purposes, the only things “wild” in the West now are wacko militia groups praying for the government to topple. Which makes it all the more pleasantly surprising that Universal has launched a Western Collection, releasing some of the most innovating and exciting films in their catalog. And at the top of fans most wanted list are the films of Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart, the director/star combo that produced a slew of unique post-war Westerns that redefined Stewart’s persona and gave the genre a swift kick in the pants. “Winchester ‘73” is straight up action with Stewart on a mission to track down his murderous brother and his one-of-a-kind rifle. Consumed with vengeance, Stewart’s character Lin McAdam w...

There should be an entirely different set of criteria used to judge children’s films. One fart joke you can ignore. Two fart jokes is becoming slightly odious. And three or more is just pandering to the pre-pubescent crowd that probably has their fingers up their collective noses. “The Santa Clause 2” takes the high road for most family fare, mixing some grown-up punchlines with all the expected childish hijinks. And only one reindeer passing gas. Tim Allen reprises his role as Santa from the previous film, now faced with finding a wife before Christmas Eve or losing all his magical powers. The elves make a duplicate Santa to run things at the North Pole while the real big guy enters the singles scene. But things get ugly when the replacement turns into a plastic Mussolini, putting every kid in the world on the naughty list. Meanwhile, Santa falls for his teenage son’s Scrooge-like principal and gets stuck in the middle of a family crisis. That’s a lot of whole lot of trouble stuffed i...

THE FLICK: Comedy is tough. Horror-comedy is even tougher. And a film like “Return of the Living Dead” has the odds stacked against it before the credits even roll. Maybe that’s why writer/director Dan O’Bannon (“Alien,” “Darkstar”) lets the audience get a taste of what’s to come with a pre-credit set-up that lays down the ground rules – George Romero’s zombie films were based on a true story, which was covered up by the government. Most of the remaining “undead” were bottled up like toxic waste and shipped to a secure location, but a few were accidentally routed to the Uneeda Medical Supply Company in Louisville, Kentucky. That’s where two bumbling warehouse workers turn them loose and contaminate the graveyard next door with reanimating gas, setting the stage for a zombie apocalypse! The script sounds like total cheese, but O’Bannon molds it into a colorful tribute to E.C Comics, with equal parts gross out effects and wink-wink-nudge-nudge horror humor. Where later films like “Evil D...

THE FLICK: Some might call “My Bloody Valentine” a hopelessly inept Canadian slasher movie – heck, the government even funded production as they did on David Cronenberg’s early exploitation shockers. But are Canadian’s really so different from the rest of us? So their “teenagers” in jeopardy are middle-aged coal miners with accents thicker than a slab of backbacon. Do they not bleed when gutted by a pickaxe? Do they not scream when thrown down a mineshaft or trapped in a dryer on high heat? Of course, they do. They just sound funny doing it. And that’s what makes “Valentine” so darn enjoyable – it’s an earnest slasher clone made at a time when audiences still took this stuff seriously, so well-versed in the serial killer rules it could have served as the guidebook for takeoffs like “Scream” and “Scary Movie.” Valentine Bluffs (wink, wink) is a quiet Canadian dump of a town getting ready to throw its first Valentine’s Day dance in over 20 years. But a madmen dressed up in a miner’s outf...

THE FLICK: While an appreciation for Judy Garland has become the butt of one-joke sitcoms like ÒWill & Grace,Ó her talent remains unsullied by all the drag queens and closeted metrosexuals that have come since. And thereÕs no better showcase than ÒMeet Me In St. Louis,Ó an unapologetic ode to turn-of-the-century Americana directed by GarlandÕs soon-to-be-husband, Vincent Minelli, a master of the musical form. When the Smith family faces an impending move from their beloved city of St. Louis to New York (just before the 1904 WorldÕs Fair, mind you), the news hits everyone hard, particularly Esther (Garland), a young woman in the midst of her first teenage crush, and Tootie (Margaret OÕBrien, who won a special Oscar for the role), whose mental state was never that stable to begin with! The ins and outs, ups and downs, through all the seasons of the year leading up this tragic event are told through some of the most memorable songs ever put to music (ÒHave Yourself A Merry Little Chri...