Critters 3 (1991)

I'll keep this short, because Critters 3 isn't one of the most multi-layered movies ever made, but that doesn't mean it's bad. I would say so far that the Critters franchise is one of the more even franchises produced, with a constant level of entertainment. I'm not saying any of them is masterpieces, but I've never looked for perfect movies - I want entertainment and Critters gave me more than I asked for. A few years after the sequel fiasco someone at New Line Cinema discovered that the first two movies made a lot of money on home video and asked Barry Opper and his brother Don Keith Opper to return to Critterland with yet another... no, two new instalments shot back-to-back. First out was Critters 3, this time using the old trick of moving the story from the countryside to the big city (just like Jason takes Manhattan).

A family moving to the big city gets a big surprise when a bunch of Critters follow them and takes shelter in the old apartment building they're living in. But watch out, both the little smartass Josh and bounty hunter Charlie comes to the rescue, but first after some minor bloodshed and a lot of furry mayhem!

What really works is the change of location. The dark, dirty apartment building - just like Mulberry Street - does a great job of making the monsters less silly and more dangerous. Just sharp teeth and red eyes in a dark corner boosts the horror-quality of the film and this is also a lot more horror than part 1 and 2, to great success I would say. I love my creature features nastier and darker and more adult and Critters 3 delivers. Sure, it doesn't shy away from slapstick and comedy and we're seeing farting critters, food-throwing critters, critters who blows bubbles and well, all the crazy stuff a critter do when he's bored. The well-made creatures by the Chiodo Brothers helps a lot creating menace and walks on the line between silly and macabre.

This was the feature film debut of Leonardo DiCaprio, and even if he's not bad in it's hard to imagine that his annoying kid would grow up to be his generations most famous and celebrated actor. Here he just deserves a smack on the mouth and being fed to the critters for being such a nuisance! Oh, I'm a bit harsh there - but he can't help it, he just carries on a fine old tradition that the Japanese started with their "little boy with cap and shorts" that plagued the Godzilla- and Gamera-films for years and years. Like always the best and coolest person in Critters 3 is Frances Bay, who played many weird old ladies - sometimes with axes - over the years, maybe more famously in John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness.

Surprisingly fun after all these years, and visually darker and almost a bit nastier (bloody bites, lots of them!) than the first two parts. Not bad at all I would say, even if it hardly comes up in the quality of - lets say... - Yeah, the rat-people in Mulberry Street. 

Lurking Fear (1994)

This is the third version of H.P. Lovecraft's classic short story I've seen so far, the other two is the underrated and almost brilliant Dan O'Bannon-penned Bleeders (aka Hemoglobin) and the very unauthorized Dark Heritage. None of them is perfect, but Bleeders comes closest to that wonderful dread we want to see in this story and also has the freakiest monsters of all the version + Rutger Hauer, which of course is a great asset. Here we have Lurking Fear, produced by Charles Band under his Full Moon-banner and shot in the exotic land of Romania. From the beginning this was a project under Empire Pictures with Stuart Gordon at the helm, which probably would have turned out a pretty good movie. Can't say that about this version, but it's not completely worthless.

The story is something with a drug affair gone wrong, some gangsters lead by a slumming Jon Finch (remember him from Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy? Great actor!) and involving Jeffrey Combs playing yet another doctor and the fine character actor Vincent Schiavelli in a smaller part. And yeah, the always talented Ashley Laurence honours us with a good part also. Anyway, they end up at a graveyard and there an underground mutant, an inbred, is lurking around killing them one by one!

Lurking Fear is told in a flat TV-movie style with more or less non-existent direction from C. Courtney Joyner. Some scenes is so badly shot that it's hard to understand why there wasn't a producer screaming somewhere in the background so the shot would turn out a little bit better. Compared to Bleeders this movie has very little atmosphere, except every time the cool monster shows up doing something, like lurking... or killing. And lurking some more. The effects isn't half-bad actually, the make-up effects and the monster suit looks cool and there's some fine explosions and fire stunts at the end. It's not totally un-bloody either, but far from as graphic as Bleeders (okay, I will stop comparing these two from now on!).

But I'm a sucker for underground inbreds - like The Descent for example. Pale, slimly, angry and aggressive monsters who just wants to eat and kill and eat some more. They're often quite scary and just the thought of something crawling around underneath me makes my hair stand up. Not that this monster is scary, but the face is cool and those big white eyes will follow you in your dreams. I like movies where you can see the monster properly and there's no shadows hiding this fella.

I have a feeling this could have been such a good movie with the right people behind the camera. The lack of love for the story and the flat cinematography is disappointing and it never really takes off. Most of the movie is just a bunch of people sitting inside a church talking with each other - and then someone wanders away or gets too near a window and 'napped by the monster and never seen again.

Okay, I wasn't bored. I'm one of those that rarely becomes bored by a movie, but I doubt I will watch it again. Lurking Fear is released on DVD in Germany and seems to be uncut. Well worth buying for those who must see every adaption of Lovecraft or for the few Charles Band-oholics out there. Like me. 

Invaders from Mars (1986)

Tobe Hooper is without a doubt one of the few directors who can be called underrated, just because he directed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and after that tried to do everything but copying his first hit movie. Eaten Alive is of course just a spin on TCM, a great spin to, and the sequel with Dennis Hopper is a witty black comedy - but that's about it. He obviously wanted to do other kinds of genre movies. His most interesting period was during the eighties with masterpieces like Lifeforce and TCM2 and close-to-masterpiece. Invaders fromMars was one of three movies he made for Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan, all flops - if I've got the correct information - but also highly personal and original. Invaders from Mars is also an alien invasion film but the total opposite to Lifeforce, which seems like a very conscious move from Hooper.

In something that looks like a dream world, an idyllic parody of the American lifestyle, an alien spaceship lands behind a hill and digs itself down into the soil. A boy, David, sees it - but his parents thinks it's a dream. The next morning his father is changed and has a weird scar on his neck. He's taken, controlled by the aliens and soon everyone is controlled by a device deeply injected into their neck. David finds a friend in the school nurse Linda and together they decides to strike back and try to stop the aliens taking over their friends, families and the whole earth...

It's easy to blame Invaders from Mars to be a strictly special effects-driven flick. Maybe it is, in on way, but it's also a full-blown adventure and has some of the most ambitious visuals I've seen in one of these trashier, more exploitative, big budget films from the time. The effects is actually excellent. From the visuals stuff to the AWESOME rubber monsters stumbling around in the underground spaceship. This is very creative puppeteering and it took me a while to figure out how the creatures were constructed. Hooper goes for a big look, with big sets and wide angles - and it fits the style of the film perfectly. Many other directors would have done it more claustrophobic, but here it's just big and wide and lots of colours.

Karen Black is one of my favourite actresses and while I can agree that her look got odder and odder over the years, I must say she looks beautiful and sharp here as the nurse being the sidekick to our boy-hero David (Hunter Carson, which also is her son in real life). Poor Timothy Bottoms, a wonderful actor with extreme bad luck in his career, gets another flat character to play, even if he seems to enjoy himself when he's going bad than when he's playing a normal father. James Karen, a welcome face in eighties horror, has a smaller but cool part as the military leading the operations against the aliens. Gotta love that guy. Oh, lets not forget Louise Fletcher, who plays one of her classic psycho-ladies - and she's great as usual. Very few actresses can give the audience that empty shark-eyed look and it's still damn scary.

Where Lifeforce is dark and moody, with a low-key emotional atmosphere, Invaders from Mars is big, bold and colourful with a weird addition of almost sadistic pleasure - but in a toned down way, almost, to make it fit a younger audience. The slightly disappointing final twist that echoes both the sentimental values of Wizard of Oz and the demented charming stupidity of Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City leaves us on the edge of the seat. What did he just see? What the fuck is going on? But Hooper is cruel, he's not gonna let us know the final-final twist, instead we can imagine all the horrors meeting the young eyes of Karen Black's son when he opens the door to his parents bedroom.

Invaders from Mars is another very fine film from the fucked-up mind of Tobe Hooper and the juicy wallets of Golan and Globus. Without those two many interesting genre flicks couldn't have been made. Bless them - in a non-religious way. 

Critters 2 (1988)

I love a good sequel, and there's quite a few that even is better than the original: Maniac Cop 2, Hellraiser 2, Children of the Corn 2, Warlock 2, Halloween 2 (yes, and I'm not gonna join a debate about it), Psycho 2 (a film on the same level of quality as the first one) etc. Yesterday I watched Critters and kinda liked it, but today I sat down and watched the sequel, Critters 2: The Main Course, and found out that it's actually a damn fine and fun sequel and superior compared to the original. What makes a good sequel? When it comes to this form of genre cinema I think the budget plays a big part of the creativity. Sometimes the sequels gets less money, but here it feels like New Line Cinema believed in the projected and gave the Opper's and director Mick Garris both a lot of love and freedom to create something out of the ordinary.

Charlie (Don Keith Opper), the village idiot from the first movie is now an intergalactic bounty hunter together with Ug (Terrence Mann). They thought the Critters was dead and extinct, but some eggs has survived and now they're ready to hatch! At the same time Brad travels back to his old home town to visit his grandma, but soon he realizes that something is wrong and the space monsters he's been trying to forget is back and they're even more hungry! Lucky for him he gets some help from Charlie and Ug... and the whole town is now ready to kick some Critters-butt! If they survive...

In cinemas Critters 2 seemed to be a flop, but it must have made a big buck on home video - remember it spawned two more sequels, direct to video. It's a pity, because Critters 2 is a lot better than the first one. It also feels more adult, which I like: more blood, some nudity and a fun orgy of monsters and special effects. It has a more epic feel to it, more characters involved and a whole town under siege at the end. Mick Garris knew how to boost the production values without forgetting interesting characters we cares about. Scott Grimes is back as Brad, and here he's two years older and with more character. He's not just the annoying boy, he's more a of a hero and a proper sidekick to Charlie and Ug (and Zanti, the third bounty hunter who transforms into a naked woman in a memorable sequence). The only thing I feel is odd - and somehow fresh - is the little, almost non-existent, love story between Brad and Megan, it's very visible that she's like 6-7 years older than him...

The comedy is also darker and the script is filled with fun and somewhat macabre ideas. The easter bunny sequence, from when they places the "eggs" outside the church to when the poor bunny comes crashing through the church window is brilliant, cheesy and loving filmmaking. It's the suburbia of John Waters mixed with the dark, family-friendly splatter of Gremlins. Yeah, Gremlins. Critters 2 is a lot closer to that movie than the first movie, which is good. It was during that time in the US when movies for young adults could be a bit bloodier, a bit more extreme. Not so damn wimpy and correct. We've seen some similar quality productions recently, J.J. Abrams Super 8 and Joe Dante's underrated The Hole for example, but except those it's hardly anything worth mentioning.

Like every good monster movie it ends spectacular. Critters 2 brings all the artillery with an awesome sequence starring one big mother of a Critters, put together by every other Critter around. I didn't remember it to be so effective, but it looks cool and the creative special effects helps a lot. If I was allowed to make a sequel  would want to see even more big Critter-piles eating humans while rolling over them!

Even if I wish I could, I can't complain about this movie. It's made with a lot of love and creativity and with a fine cast of actors who seems to care about what they're doing and not just cashing in the paycheck. Can't say that about every movie I've seen. Recommended and if you haven't seen this one since it came it, give it a new try! I'm sure you won't regret it. 

Roar (1981)

The Italian poster strangely avoids everything
that could sell the movie to a wider audience.

I love big budget oddities that's totally forgotten and Roar is one of the oddest movies around. Some call it the most expensive home video ever - with a budget of 17 million dollars. It didn't score especially much at the box office, probably because it's also the most expensive movie with the thinnest script ever written. According the official homepage "No animals were hurt during the filming, but over 70 people were injured", which is obvious when you watch the movie. The always reliable IMDB (that's irony!) reports this:

During production, director/star Noel Marshall was attacked and severely injured by one of the lions in the film. He was hospitalized and it took him several years to completely recover from his injuries. 

During filming in 1977, Melanie Griffith was mauled by a lion and required plastic surgery. Griffith reportedly received fifty stitches to her face. 

Tippi Hedren fractured a leg during production when an elephant bucked her off its back when she was riding on top. Moreover, also during production, Hedren was bitten on the back of her head by a lioness called Sheri. Hedren received thirty-eight stitches to the open wound.

Assistant Director Doron Kauper was attacked and mauled by a lion during production filming of this picture. Kauper's throat was bitten open from whereupon the lion proceeded to bite his jaw and attempted to rip an ear off. Reportedly, this attack on Kauper almost cost him his life. 

John Marshall was bitten by a lion during production filming of this picture and required fifty-six stitches. 

Jerry Marshall, whilst wearing tennis shoes, was bitten on the foot by a lion during production filming of this picture.

The whole movie was shot on the ranch owned by husband and wife Noel Marshall (who funded the movie from the money he made from producing The Exorcist) and Tippi Hedren and starring more or less the whole family, playing themselves, shot on location in California. 11 years before the movie was released Hedren and Marshall started to discuss making a movie with lions and someone told them to get their own lions - it all got out of hand and in the end they had 150 animals on their ranch! Crazy people.

Anyway, the story is this: the Hedren-Marshall family lives on their farm. One day all the lions takes over the place. And then all become friends. That's it. What makes it truly unique is the FANTASTIC animal scenes. I've never seen anything like it. This movie more or less only has scenes of big cats attacking (not in a violent way though) and running after humans, and it's stunning. Really. We're talking really spectacular shit here, especially inside and on top of the house with lions breaking through walls, stomping and gnawing on Melanie Griffith, chasing Tippi Hedren in the water outside the house. I'm deeply impressed to see Hedren doing her own stunts - like everyone in the family - and it looks both dangerous and impressive.

What's there to say about a movie like this? Well, it's made just to show wonderful animals doing what they like to do - they're not portrayed in any evil way and the end credits has a whole lotta message about how to protest against the killing of lions and other big cats and how to help and support the wildlife in Africa. It's both a deeply impressive production and a deeply flawed movie. Watch it for the lions. And for Tippi Hedren. And for that lion who tries to eat Melanie Griffith's head.

Jan de Bont shot the movie and one of the editors was a young Ted Nicolau (Subspecies 1 to 173). Just saying.

Critters (1986)

The year was 1990. I was thirteen years old and sat down in Gröna Ladan (The Green Barn) in Sigtuna, the oldest town in Sweden - where I lived with my mother and her husband - excited to see Gremlins 2: The New Batch. It's still one of the best experiences I've had in a cinema, with a roaring enthusiastic crowd of young teens. I was a movie geek already at the time and I knew that the movie had one instances where it's suppose to break (the video version had a similar thing later on - I wonder if the DVD has the cinema version?) and when it happen and the kids around me went furious I just smiled to myself, because I had the knowledge. I wanted to see similar movies and found Critters on tape - and also Critters 2. I saw them and forgot about them... some years later I watched part 2 and 4 and forgot about them. So why the hell should I watch them again? Obviously they didn't stay in my mind for that long. I blame Swedish director Ola Paulakoski, probably the biggest monster fan I know. Ten years ago I wrote  a short script for him and five years later I rewrote it to feature length script. Every since I started with this project he's been talking about Critters and Critters 2 - so today I took the train to town, went to the Science Fiction Bookstore (amazing place by the way) and bought myself The Critters Collection, part 1-4. Jesus wept.

Somewhere in the distance universe a gang of eight Crites escapes from a prison planet (or what the hell it is!). They steal a ship and heads for planet earth and crashes out in redneck-farmville somewhere. Soon they start chewing their way through cows and one or two poor humans, but they're meeting opposition in the form of a hard-working farm-family and their slightly retarded farmhand. Oh, and there's two intergalactic bounty hunters out to get them also, like in every sci-fi flick from the eighties!

I still, to be honest, feels a bit unsure if Critters is a good creature feature or not. I agree that the direction and production values is very nice, very good-looking and classy. What it misses is the anarchy of Gremlins and it's sequel. Those was also aimed at a quite young audience, but like every movie by Joe Dante they also dared to go a bit further, beyond that almost religious correctness when it comes to violence, sexual tension and scary scenes. I'm sure New Line Cinema wanted something even broader, something more safe at the box office. And yes, it was cheap - costed aprox. two million dollars and earned back thirteen millions in US cinemas - and probably a fuckload more from home video and foreign sales. Good business for good old New Line Cinema.

I know he's nothing in this movie, Billy Zane, but he's spot-on performance as a spoiled - but nice - city boy is the acting highlight (well, except the always reliable Dee Wallace - in a very underwritten, boring part, and M. Emmet Walsh, who's brilliant as usual). It can because I have a crush on Billy Zane and I adore him even when he slums in the crappiest of crap-movies, but that's another story to be told in my future memoirs.

But what's good about Critters? Except that it's way to soft on both horror, monsters and mayhem, it looks great and it's at least never boring. The creature effects is well-done and they're not bad monsters at all - but they could need more blood! I wasn't bored, which is a good sign - but I glanced at the Facebook and Twitter updates once or twice to much, which means the story didn't caught my attention as much as it should have done. I'm gonna give Critters 2: The Main Course a spin sooner or later - and maybe even part 3 and 4 just for the hell of it.

Wattya say, buddies?

Don't Go In The House (1979)

Here's an interesting psycho-drama that eluded me for many years, probably mostly because it has one of those "Don't" in the title and that never bodes well quality-wise. Joseph Ellison's film, Don't Go In The House, is more or less yet another take on Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but it shares several very similar ideas (and even scenes) with 1980's classic Maniac - if that's a sign of William Lustig ripping off this movie or just coincidence or not, I have no idea, but these productions would make a fine triple feature a dark and stormy night.

Donny lives with his old mother in a big spooky house. One day he finds his controlling mother dead, by natural causes. He continues to hear her voice and we learn that she's been torturing him with fire physically and breaking him down mentally since childhood! Now when she's gone his repressed state stops and he starts killing women the hot way, with a flame thrower...

What strikes me the most is that the visual style is quite far away from the typical cheapo 70's thriller, it looks very good and very professional, but never shies away from the violence and the that grittiness we love so much from this decade. It's very clear that Ellison has a vision and wants to make an ambitious take on the old story about a fucked-up man and his dead mother. Dan Grimaldi, as Donny, comes off as stiff and flat, and I first thought this was because of bad acting - but after I while I could see that its actually a very fine peace of performance, not that far from what Anthony Perkins did in Psycho: a man without a personality, controlled by his cruel mother. No wonder why he's flat, boring, bland - his mother never allowed him to be nothing but her slave.

But a nasty underrated classic like this wouldn't be anything without the horror (or at least a good drama about a weird guy walking around in a rundown house talking to his rotting mother) and Don't Go In The House delivers quite good there. Not that it's particularly gory or something like that. The killings is our dear Donny burning people alive, but those scenes and the set up is chilling and disturbing and the effects is very well-made. The film also has two-three very eerie hallucinations (from Donny), one of them very reminiscent of William Lustig's Maniac, that helps boost the horror quota.  

What makes this film even more interesting is the inclusion of what could be an example of real friendship, a rare thing in a genre that depends of people behaving like bastards towards each other. I'm talking about Donny's co-worker. I can't remember his name now - or the actor - but he seems genuinely interested in caring and helping the slightly anti-social Donny, from just trying to keep him company to defending him when the boss starts one of his rants. It's a sign of a mature screenwriter, or at least someone who understands that there's some love even in a very destructive and depressive life as Donny's. I also like the priest - for once - who has his belief in god, but also claims that the devil just is a symbol of evil, he doesn't exist. A radical thing to say even today among religious people, and it gives that character a lot more IQ and EQ  than more or less every priest I've seen in a horror movie.

Don't Go In The House is a smart and emotional strong gritty horror-thriller that easily would be on the same level as Psycho and Maniac if it was more known and widely distributed. I recommend totally!