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!

The Caller (1987)

I've always been attracted to films with few characters or set on a confined space. That might be the reason why I LOVE Alien clones or even slashers, who often depends on a bunch of idiots stuck in the same camp/hospital/theatre etc. The Caller is very interesting just because of this, but also because it's a production from Empire Picture and produced by Charles"Full Moon" Band. Band himself is a guy that both can give us CRAP, but at the same time both director and produce minor horror classics, packed with imagination and passion. Puppet Master is an old favourite of mine, but he's also the producer behind Stuart Gordon's masterpiece Dolls.

One day night a stranger, The Caller (Malcolm McDowell) appears at the doorstep of The Girl (Madolyn Smith Osborne), his car has broken down and he needs to borrow the phone to call for help. Soon they both understand that the other one not really what he ands he claims to be, and they start cross-examine each other. This goes on for couple of days - not only in the house - and slowly they're getting closer to solve the mystery...

Director Arthur Allan Seidelman's only claim to fame was his first movie, the terrible, awful, Hercules in New York - starring a slightly stoned Arnold Schwarzenegger. If I knew it was him behind the wheels of this film I wouldn't have bought it, but I'm happy I was living in a bubble of not knowing it - 'cause The Caller is a great little mystery thriller, better than I thought it would be, and way wilder than I ever could imagine. It's hard to discuss a movie where the twist is so extreme in its absurdness without mentioning it, but after studying the movies from the same time and the work of Band its actually quite understandable why this movie came to be. It has everything that was trendy at the time, but executed so different and so classy that it probably just scared away the audience, resulting in a lot of people missing out a little gem of a movie.

The Caller has Malcolm McDowell and Madolyn Smith Osborne in frame for most of the time, there's not other actors - not even extras in the background - which makes it even cooler. It reminds me a lot about something that could have been a play, except for the special effects in the end that never would be convincing on the stage. Both actors is splendid, even if it's easier to raise McDowell as the best just because he's so colourful and charismatic, but Osborne gives us one helluva performance, even more intensive and physical than McDowell.

What might scare away audiences that I know will love it in the end is that it's very talky. I mean, it's based on dialogue - good dialogue - but a lot of dialogue. It's also quite flat, almost like a TV-movie. Because of the build-up, which lasts for ninety minutes, don't expect gore, violence or even horror - this is a mystery that takes it times and then delivers something very bizarre and unexpected. I didn't expect it! Maybe - just maybe - it could be considered a deus ex machina, but hey... I really don't think so. I think it's smarter than that, even if it leaves out a lot of answers.

The Caller is a really good, fun and (quite) smart mystery thriller with a wonderful cast and a great script.

New Year's Evil (1980)

I was an avid collector of x-rentals as a young man, believe it or not. My apartment - at the time - was filled with thousands of movies, some very rare. I bought tapes from Sweden, Denmark, Greece and every other country. One film that always showed up in its Swedish release was Emmett Alston's (who directed the brilliant, crazy, trasherpiece Nine Deaths of the Ninja) NewYear's Evil, a slasher/thriller/something produced by legendary madmen Golan & Globus, yes Mr & Mr Cannon themselves. I remember I watched it and forgot it quickly because of the lack of bloodshed and it wasn't until today that I saw once again, now on MGM's print-on-demand DVD.

New Year's Evil still lacks that important bloodshed, something that's a very important ingredient in eighties genre cinema, and Cannon has never been afraid of showing some blood and guts. But I have a feeling they wanted to break into the American market with something a bit more classier - and less sleazy and bloody - than the usual by-the-numbers Friday the 13th rip-off (something they totally forgot two years later when they gave birth to the trashiest and silliest slasher ever, X-Ray, starring Barbie Benton). NYE almost succeeds in being a good thriller. The set-up isn't at all actually:  a killer (Kip Niven) is murdering himself through the timezones during new year's eve until he reaches the main goal, the rock-queen TV-host Diane who's airing a live show, rock/new wave/punk/goth concert together with an audience of heavily make-upped wannabe-rockers.

The twist and some of the characters is genuinely good, so good it would work to do a remake to make the idea work better. Right now the script strolls along like a senile pedestrian, just stopping from time to time to kill someone - without gore or blood - and then stumble away to the next kill-scene. Make no mistake, everything look nice and proper and the cinematography by Thomas E. Ackerman (who later shot the immortal classic Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked) looks splendid. The film looks a lot more bigger and expensive than it probably was.

Kip Niven, a very competent but slightly forgotten leading man of the seventies - who's agent probably made a couple of very bad choices (lots of flops and increasingly smaller parts in big Hollywood films) - does one of his best, wildest and craziest performances here. What I like about him is that he looks terrible good, but somehow - don't ask me how - he manages to twist his whole appearance so he looks damn ugly when he's going on killing sprees. I guess that's called acting, of course, but I wouldn't have mind seeing him in more baddie-parts instead of just leaving to the land of has-been's. If you read this Kip, remember I think you're awesome. Even Grant Cramer (who later found fame in Killer Klowns From Outer Space) is good as Diane's creepy son.

And talking about the acting, don't miss John Alderman's performance as Dr. Reed, which makes William Shatner look like subtle, low-key, naturalistic actor! I'm surprise they didn't run out of film when they shot his scenes - the pauses in-between the words make up half the dialogue!

I still don't think New Year's Evil is a good movie, but it entertained me more than the first time and it has some wonderful acting and looks stunning. The soundtrack, mostly songs by the bands Shadow and Made in Japan, is excellent - which is another reason to revisit this uneven slasher-wannabe.

????

Give me one good reason for me continuing this blog?
Maybe I should let it be and start over at some other place?