#halloweek

140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW

In preparation for review, watched yesterday with wife. Conversation went like this, “But I really remember enjoying it in high school”…

Spoiler-free Movie Review of Shocker:

…And then there are those movies that you shouldn’t revisit. The ones that looked horribly stupid but you watched anyway and found something about them that you liked. If you’re lucky enough to have that occur, don’t press your luck. Be grateful that you were pleasantly surprised and leave it at that. Because I guarantee you that lightning will not strike twice…

Shocker is a slasher horror movie written and directed by Wes Craven, creator of the Nightmare on Elm Street series. It’s the story of Jonathan Parker (Peter Berg), a high school football player and foster child whose town is being ripped apart by a serial killer who is attacking entire families. For some reason Jonathan seems to have some psychic link with the killer and in a dream actually appears at the scene of the killer’s new crime – the killer can actually see Jonathan. Unable to prevent the killing of most of his adoptive family, Jonathan is able to lead his foster father Lt. Don Parker (Michael Murphy) to the killer, Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi), who is finally apprehended and sentenced to death by electric chair. Through some bizarre circumstances, Pinker seems to make a deal with a television set and achieve some odd form of immortality that has something to do with electricity. Sometimes. Sometimes he’s just body jumping through physical contact. It’s all a little muddled.

The cast is pretty good, as far as it goes. Watching for the first time in 25 years, I was stunned to see that the psycho who anchors the picture is Mulder & Scully’s boss from The X-Files. Peter Berg (great in A Midnight Clear) is pretty capable as lead here, although I never did figure out how he’s still in high school and also has his own place. Michael Murphy is Michael Murphy, which is always a good thing. Also check out “Theodore” Raimi in an early role.

Cami Cooper is the perfect girl next door, one of those actors that makes you run to imdb because you’re sure they are familiar. (Yes, idiot, she’s in that stupid slasher movie you’ve seen 20 times – this one!) Interestingly, though, in looking her up, I found that she left the biz to become a lobbyist then Director of Legislative Affairs for the National Association to Protect Children – I know nothing about it but it looks interesting. Nice second act…

I’m admittedly no horror expert, but I think Shocker may be the first time that Craven really went for the humor. There is of course always comic relief in his and all horror films – screaming and laughter pair so nicely – but this is a real understanding of how ridiculous horror movie conventions are and Shocker dabbles in the kind of self-deprecation that would be so effective in Scream a few years later.

Shocker is just funny. It plays things straight for the first act, which is solid slasher film material. But it begins to get irreverent in the second act as the killer jumps from body to body to amusing effect. By the third act the thing goes right off the rails and is just ridiculous, but gloriously so.

It really is an odd collection of different feels. By the end you can have completely forgotten just how bloody and grisly the movie was at the outset. This may be why I remember Shocker rather more fondly than it played for me now. There was an exhilarating thrill to slasher movies when I was in high school. That mix of hormones and energy, fueled by too much soda and Chinese food, needed the loud and obvious diversions provided by horror movies. This one was supercharged by the pinnacle (or nadir) of hair metal that 1989 could provide. The tagline for the film is “No More Mr. Nice Guy”, and the film features an adequate if unnecessary Megadeth cover of the Alice Cooper tune. Alice himself appears on a background tv set in one of my favorite moments of zen from this movie – the diner’s tv is recounting the recent grisly murders, but when the bereaved family members walk in the staff thoughtfully turn on something more appropriate – Alice Cooper videos…

That scene is a wonderful sampling of the film – terror with an undercurrent of self-aware mockery. When I tell you that this movie was aggressively promoted in the pages of comic books, you should get a sense of what you’re in for. I can’t say it ranks as highly as some of the horror classics, or even horror comedies like Evil Dead 2 or Bad Taste, but fans of the genre would surely enjoy this one.

Poster:

Trailer:

Bechdel Test:

Fail

The Representation Test Score: D (1 pts)

(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)

[schema type=”movie” name=”Shocker” description=”After being sent to the electric chair, a serial killer uses electricity to come back from the dead and carry out his vengeance on the football player who turned him in to the police.” director=”Wes Craven” actor_1=”Peter Berg” ]

Main Cast	Michael Murphy Lt. Don Parker, Mitch Pileggi Horace Pinker, Peter Berg Jonathan Parker, Sam Scarber Cooper
Rating	R
Release Date	Fri 27 Oct 1989 UTC
Director	Wes Craven
Genres	Comedy, Horror, Thriller
Plot	After being sent to the electric chair, a serial killer uses electricity to come back from the dead and carry out his vengeance on the football player who turned him in to the police.
Poster
Runtime	109
Tagline	On October 2, at 6:45 AM mass murderer Horace Pinker was put to death. Now, he’s really mad.
Writers	Wes Craven (written by)
Year	1989

140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW

Nearly perfect sci-fi/action film just as good as it was 30 years ago. Streamlined & tight. Best in the series. That’s right, I said it…

Spoiler-free Movie Review of The Terminator:

30 years ago, in a year already crowded with great movies, Orion Pictures released The Terminator. In the wake of the movie, James Cameron was launched into a career that would soon earn him a place as an A-lister & Ahnold would blast into the stratosphere. It was an amazing movie and enjoyed the reputation it rightly earned.

Then 8 years later, a funny thing happened: The Terminator became suddenly less impressive of a film. What actually occurred is that they released a sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, with legendary special effects, great stunts, a more ambitious story and a newly kick-ass heroine in Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). It was funny and exciting and the original film suddenly looked dated and underachieving.

Everyone fell victim to this bit of revisionism. I remember being reluctant to go see T2 because I couldn’t imagine how they could improve on the original, and then walking out of the theater convinced that the 1984 film was a dinosaur.

On the 30^th anniversary of the release of the first film, it’s time to reexamine this movie and revisit this premise and come to the proper conclusion: The Terminator is the best film in the series.

“Are you kidding?”, you say, “T2 was so much better – it’s amazing!” Yes, T2 is amazing – it’s one of the greatest movies in the genre and one of my personal faves. But with clear eyes, The Terminator is a better and more unique film.

Five Reasons The Terminator is better than Terminator 2:

#1. Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn): Reese is an interesting character, a soldier who has volunteered for a one-way trip to the past. A man out of time who must quickly get up to speed in order to fulfill his mission – to risk and likely give his life for a woman he doesn’t know. He’s in a world he can’t possibly understand and is up against an unbeatable machine, but he never loses hope or determination to keep Sarah Connor safe. That – that right there is why this movie works so well. It’s not the fx, it’s the humanity. By contrast, the sequel has no meaningful characters or relationships. Sarah is so excellent of a character, but it really isn’t her picture this time around. Her character arc actually occurred off screen, in between the movies. May be why they did a tv series around her. No, John Connor is our protagonist (and to a not small degree so is the Terminator), which leads us to:

#2. No Edward Furlong. My problem isn’t really with the actor, particularly. It’s the character. It’s even the very idea of the character. The next great sci-fi/action film with a ten-year-old protagonist will be the first. Is there no reason that he couldn’t have been older? I love the attempt to try to have the series timeline mirror ours, but it really doesn’t totally work anyway, so maybe just write a more interesting and less irritating character and let the geeks retcon all this stuff to their hearts content. The underappreciated mixed bag that is Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines showed what would happen if you put an older John Connor in more or less the same situation and it was a much more effective dynamic, even if the film as a whole didn’t quite gel. (Except for the ending – one of the best endings I’ve ever seen…)

#3. The rating. Again, it’s not necessarily that going from an R to a PG-13 is a problem (although I can’t name one instance of this being a good decision), it’s what it represents – a move toward the middle. An attempt to appeal to the largest possible audience, which simply can’t be done without dulling the edge of the material; which leads us to:

#4. No jokes from Ahnold. The jokes are funny. It doesn’t matter. You’re taking a step down the wrong path. By the next film it will degenerate into camp. I laughed when I was supposed to in T2, but time makes that crap dated and cheesy. The only reason that the Louis Tully rule doesn’t apply to the T-800 is that he was the title character in the first picture and can’t really be considered a minor character.

#5. Finally, and most importantly, the run-time. The sequel was 136 minutes in theaters, 153 minutes in the director’s cut. The original by comparison was a half hour shorter at 107 minutes. It’s more tightly paced and just more direct. The pacing perfectly complements the rich but not complicated story.

It is, after all, a great story (although it may not be as original as first thought – author Harlan Ellison received a settlement and on-screen acknowledgment after he successfully demonstrated the possible plagiarism of some of his work on the tv show The Outer Limits – which Cameron proudly named as an influence on the picture). Cameron excels at creating interesting dialogue and personality for minor characters. Some of the effects are dated, but not as much as you might think. The amazing work by the late Stan Winston still holds up very well.

A franchise was practically a necessity with such a rich concept. If later films never quite lived up to the excitement of the original, that’s ok – it’s a hard act to follow, and each successive installment has offered something interesting. With a new film, Terminator: Genisys, in post-production and due for a July 1, 2015 release, the series that Cameron created seems to be stronger than ever.

Poster:

Trailer:

Bechdel Test:

Pass

The Representation Test Score: C (5 pts)

(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)

[schema type=”movie” name=”The Terminator” description=”A human-looking indestructible cyborg is sent from 2029 to 1984 to assassinate a waitress, whose unborn son will lead humanity in a war against the machines, while a soldier from that war is sent to protect her at all costs.” director=”James Cameron” actor_1=”Arnold Schwarzenegger”]

Main Cast	Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator, Linda Hamilton Sarah Connor, Michael Biehn Kyle Reese, Paul Winfield Lieutenant Ed Traxler
Rating	R
Release Date	Fri 26 Oct 1984 UTC
Director	James Cameron
Genres	Action, Sci-Fi
Plot	A human-looking indestructible cyborg is sent from 2029 to 1984 to assassinate a waitress, whose unborn son will lead humanity in a war against the machines, while a soldier from that war is sent to protect her at all costs.
Poster
Runtime	107
Tagline	In the Year of Darkness, 2029, the rulers of this planet devised the ultimate plan. They would reshape the Future by changing the Past. The plan required something that felt no pity. No pain. No fear. Something unstoppable. They created ‘THE TERMINATOR’
Writers	James Cameron (written by) and, Gale Anne Hurd (written by) …
Year	1984

140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW

One of the first atomic age monster pictures and still one of the very best. It was released 60 years ago but actually still is scary…

Spoiler-free Movie Review of Them!:

I grew up loving this movie. My father loves it and it was one of the first films he got on VHS (ask your parents, kids). It’s an absolute classic, one of the greatest creature features and still plays surprisingly well.

The main reason that the movie has aged so well is the same as that of other classic monster pictures; slow-building suspense trumps special effects wizardry. Although Them! employs rather simplistic techniques for the monsters, this is a good thing. There’s a menacing quality to the slow approach of the ants that makes them frightening. The filmmakers also wisely don’t overreach with the shots of the creatures, displaying their falseness, but instead judiciously focus on the terrifying sounds of the ants (tree frogs) and the dark underground settings to ratchet up the suspense. I’m serious – this film is far more suspenseful, thrilling and actually scary than you might expect considering it’s about giant killer ants.

It would have been brilliant to see this movie when it came out. These movies get spoofed like crazy, and deservedly so, but at the time they were not so credulous. This was the dawn of the atomic age. People truly did not know the full effects of these incredible weapons. It may not seem plausible today to assume that weapons testing in the desert could cause the type of mutations that these 1950’s monster pictures reveled in, but there was just enough doubt in peoples minds at the time that it’s easy to understand why the public ate these things up.

Unbelievably, the movie was supposed to be in color and in 3D, but they had technical problems. So there are entire shots that are clearly meant to play up the 3D effect. I can’t imagine this film in color – it would have severely cheapened it. The atmosphere evoked by the dark, black & white scenes, particularly in the desert is magical and adds so much atmosphere that you excuse any eye-rolling dialogue.

(For the best movie about this time, check out Joe Dante’s marvelous 1993 film Matinee, a comedy picture set during the Cuban Missile Crisis wherein John Goodman plays the director of these atomic age creature movies. Brilliant.)

For all of the times you’ve heard someone go on and on about how great Jaws is because they keep up the suspense and don’t reveal the beast until well into the picture, have you ever wondered where Spielberg learned that technique? Them! is the original – one of the all time great monster pictures.

Fun fact: Look for a young Leonard Nimoy as a soldier reading out some wire copy.

Fun fact #2: Has a number of Wilhelm screams from back before it was an inside joke.

Poster:

Trailer:

Bechdel Test:

Fail

The Representation Test Score: D (2 pts)

(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)

[schema type=”movie” name=”Them!” description=”The earliest atomic tests in New Mexico cause common ants to mutate into giant man-eating monsters that threaten civilization.” director=”Gordon Douglas” actor_1=”James Whitmore” ]

Main Cast	James Whitmore Police Sgt. Ben Peterson, Edmund Gwenn Dr. Harold Medford, Joan Weldon Dr. Patricia ‘Pat’ Medford, James Arness Robert Graham
Rating	Approved
Release Date	Sat 19 Jun 1954 UTC
Director	Gordon Douglas
Genres	Horror, Sci-Fi
Plot	The earliest atomic tests in New Mexico cause common ants to mutate into giant man-eating monsters that threaten civilization.
Poster
Runtime	94
Tagline	The Amazing New Warner Bros. Sensation!
Writers	Ted Sherdeman (screenplay), Russell S. Hughes (as Russell Hughes) (adaptation)
Year	1954