Classic Movie Review Sleepaway Camp 2 & 3

Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers (1988) and Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland (1989) 

Directed by Michael A. Simpson 

Written by Fritz Gordon 

Starring Pamela Springsteen 

Release Date August 26th, 1988 and August 13th 1989 

Published July 19th, 2023 

I notably did not care for 1983's Sleepaway Camp when I watched it recently and said so, loudly, in a review, linked here. I found the film unpleasant, awkwardly crafted, and acted with all of the energy and life of your average commercial for a local funeral home. There are few if any redeeming qualities to the original Sleepaway Camp and if it didn't have it's shock ending, the reveal of Angela being a teenage boy who'd been abused into playing the role of a shy teenage girl, Sleepaway Camp would have ended up on the ash heap of horror history. 

That schlocky, exploitative and gross ending appealed to the low tastes of many more forgiving slasher fans and thus, we still talk about Sleepaway Camp 40 years after it was released. I guess I could also credit the film for the bizarrely watchable, high camp performance of Desiree Gould as Angela's wildly over the top Aunt and abuser, but that's a very minor bit of enjoyment amid the misery that is Sleepaway Camp. There again though, I must pause to offer one more positive regarding Sleepaway Camp; it gave us Sleepaway Camp 2 and 3 and the glorious performance of the sadly forgotten, Pamela Springsteen. 

Yes, Bruce Springsteen's little sister, Pamela, starred in Sleepaway Camp 2 & 3, taking over the role of Angela from young Felissa Rose. It's a major upgrade. Springsteen's chipper slasher killer is a dark comic delight. With her big toothy grin and unhinged dedication to the goodness of going to camp, Springsteen's Angela is a complete refresh of the summer camp horror movie. Springsteen's take on the character is absolutely delightful, a bizarre combination of blood soaked violence and the eager enthusiasm of the ultimate apple polishing, teacher's pet. 

The story of Sleepaway Camp 2 is incredibly basic. A new camp has opened not far from the former Camp Arawak and the campers and counselors are eager to share the legend of Angela/Peter and her bloody rampage. Just as a new group is sharing Angela's story, Angela just shows up and immediately sets about punishing those that fail to live up to her standard as a happy camper. There is no attempt to hide Angela's villainy from us while the cluelessness of the campers is another fun bit of either intentional meta-comedy or poignant bad movie acting. 

The film rides the line between knowing and too knowing incredibly well, especially in Springsteen's performance. Springsteen plays every scene with the same chipper dedication and her wild-eyed nuttiness is the key to taking throwaway horror cliches and refreshing them with new, for the late 1980s, energy. We'd simply never seen a performance quite like that of Pamela Springsteen's smiling, wacky, comic energy take on a horror villain. It felt fresh and new and it still stands out all these years later. I find her to be completely hilarious and it appears to be entirely intentional while still maintaining a level of gore that befits the genre. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review: Die Hard

Die Hard (1988) 

Directed by John McTiernan 

Written by Jeb Stuart, Steven E. de Souza 

Starring Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia, Reginald Vel Johnson, Paul Gleason

Release Date July 15th, 1988 

Published July 15th, 2018 

Die Hard is my favorite Christmas movie. Mostly because it is set on Christmas but it is not about Christmas. If I’m being honest, Christmas isn’t a favorite holiday of mine. I don’t care for most Christmas movies including supposed classics such as A Christmas Story and the loathsome, grotesque, and lowbrow National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Die Hard is a Christmas movie for people like me, those who don’t enjoy Christmas movies. 

On Christmas Day, John McClain has arrived in Los Angeles in hopes of reuniting with his estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia). Things get off to a bad start when John arrives at Holly’s office and finds that now living in Los Angeles, she’s dropped the last name McClane, in favor of her maiden name Gennero. The two begin to argue but they never finish the argument, first after her boss calls and then when terrorists arrive and begin taking over the building, known as Nakatomi Plaza. 

John is changing clothes when he hears gunshots. He quickly intuits the situation using his instincts, he’s a New York Police Detective whose job has been a significant strain on his personal life. John quickly assesses the situation and after escaping to an upper, unfinished floor of the building, he attempts to contact the police. Unfortunately the cops don’t believe him when he calls and only dispatch one cop to the scene. 

Sgt Al Powell (Reginald Vel Johnson) was thinking it would be a quiet night of enjoying twinkies in his cruiser but when he arrive at Nakatomi Plaza the shooting starts and his quiet night turns into a major hostage situation and the only things keeping a bloodbath at bay are Al and his new friend who won’t give his name. The two veteran cops bond quickly and even more when other less capable cops arrive on the scene and begin to screw things up. 

The terrorists are headed up by the nefariously ingenious Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). Making it appear as if they have taken hostages, Hans has the cops running around in circles while his real plan unfolds. Only John McClane stands between Hans and his ultimate goal, a whole boatload of money. Hans’ ruse is brilliant and Rickman’s supremely intelligent and superior performance gives the whole film gravity. 

In many ways, Willis and RIckman were perfectly matched as hero and villain. Where John is instinctive and primal, Hans is calculating and manipulative. Hans is a buttoned up, professional criminal, used to telling others to do the dirty work, McClane is a blue collar cop who acts on hunches and well worn experience. John’s unpredictable nature isn’t merely a character trait, it becomes a strategy and Willis is remarkable in deploying it. 

Willis brings an authenticity to John McClane that matches his star power and charisma and makes John McClane an indelible hero. The film has an old school western feel in terms of the battle of good and evil. John may not be the picture of white hat virtue, but rather, he’s a more down to Earth and believable kind of good. Hans meanwhile, has an alluring evil, though you’re never on his side, you wouldn’t feel too bad if he fooled you. 

Rickman’s arrogant superiority is his most nefarious quality. Even more than his murderous plot, his stuffy, accented, suited persona is a relatable sort of evil. He’s not the picture of either a terrorist or a killer, yet he feels more real than many actual, real world villains because Rickman is so incredible at playing him. His arrogance and his suit are reminiscent of the kind of Wall Street villains that Oliver Stone had recently introduced us to. He’s just more honest than them because he robs and murders people in front of you and not from behind a desk. 

The blue collar qualities of Al and John make them our automatic allies. More of us relate to John and Al than any of the stuffy, suited types in Nakatomi Plaza. It’s part of their charm and a big part of the performances of Willis and VelJohnson. John and Al seem like people we know, people we could have a beer with. The divide between them and the suit wearing villains are signifiers that director John McTiernan clever uses to create a subliminal divide underneath the the obvious criminal and not a criminal divide. 

The action in Die Hard is top notch. Director McTiernan stacks the odds against John McClane brilliantly. The stakes rise in each passing scene with John and Holly’s identity as husband and wife acting in many ways like a bomb about to explode the story at any moment. The name game with Holly is also a terrific piece of screenwriting as the argument over the name tells us everything we need to know about the strain between John and Holly. 

Many screenwriters need a page and a half of dialogue to tell us what the names Gennaro and McClane and the hurt in John’s voice and manner do in a single scene. Die Hard is rarely thought of as being a great screenplay but Jeb Stuart and co-writer Steven E de Souza deserve nearly as much credit as director John McTiernan. The economy of character building in John, Holly, Hans and Al is really remarkable. We learn  more about them from their actions than we would from endless pages of expository dialogue. 

Die Hard is Christmas for me because I watch it every Christmas. It’s the kind of smart, well-worn action movie that is perfect holiday comfort food. The familiarity, the easy good versus evil story, the action that even after 30 years feels refreshingly new and ever exciting. Die Hard is the gift that keeps on giving. 30 years of thrills, 30 years of pithy hero banter, and 30 years of watching Hans Gruber falling to his death. Merry Christmas indeed. 

Classic Movie Review: A Fish Called Wanda

 A Fish Called Wanda (1988) 

Directed by Charles Crichton

Written by John Cleese

Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, John Cleese

Release Date July 15th, 1988 

Published July 15th, 2018

It’s so strange, sometimes movies get a reputation for genius and you hear about it and hear about it and then you see it for yourself and you wind up wondering what all of the fuss was about. That’s the case for me with A Fish Called Wanda. Yes, I had seen the movie before, back when it was on HBO in the 90’s and I think that I tried very hard to like it as much as the critics of the time seemed to like it. I liked it so I could seem smart.

A Fish Called Wanda turns 30 years old this weekend and once again I watched with the aim of wanting to like it so I could seem smart. Only this time, I am mature and confident enough to say I simply didn’t care for it. A Fish Called Wanda just doesn’t work on me. I disliked the characters, I was barely amused by the gags and Kevin Kline’s Academy Award winning supporting performance, for me, came off as forced and shrill.

A Fish Called Wanda is a comic heist movie which stars Jamie Lee Curtis as Wanda, a woman who is dating a thief named Georges Thomas, played by Tom Georgeson, a gag funnier than most in the movie. Wanda is only setting Georges up so that she and her lover, Otto (Kevin Kline) can double cross him and their other partner, Ken (Michael Palin). Georges isn’t stupid however and to insure his cut, he hides the loot until he knows he’s clear, an idea that pays off when Otto secretly turns him, unaware of where the loot actually went. 

To figure out where the loot is hidden, Wanda and Otto begin a convoluted plan surrounding Georges’ barrister, Archie Leach (John Cleese). The hope is that Otto will give Archie the location of the loot as a way to reduce his sentence after he is caught. The plan is for Wanda to seduce Archie to get him to reveal the location of the loot so that they can steal it back and leave the country. Things take a turn when Wanda develops a soft spot for Archie.

A Fish Called Wanda was directed by Charles Crichton, sort of. Though John Cleese claimed to have put his name on the co-director credit in order to allay studio fears about the fact that Crichton hadn’t worked in 23 years and was in his mid-80’s, it appears from on-set stories from Curtis and Kline that Cleese was the creative force. It was Cleese who came up with the memorable running gags about Wanda’s fetish for foreign languages and Otto’s insecurity about being called stupid.

 There are other Cleese-ian touches as well such as Archie having a wife and the two of them having separate beds ala his character on the famed British television series Fawlty Towers. Regardless of who is responsible however, not much of anything in A Fish Called Wanda got a laugh out of me. Whether it’s the door slamming, Noises-Off style gags of people running in and out of rooms and weaving elaborate lies when caught in the wrong place at the wrong time or the almost nihilistic approach to right and wrong, I found nothing appealing about A Fish Called Wanda.

The characters in A Fish Called Wanda are all terrible people, and that includes Palin’s Ken who, though he may feel guilty about a few of his evil deeds, is nevertheless as terrible as anyone else and has arguably the most notable body count in the movie, if you count dogs. The gags involving the elaborate ways in which Ken accidentally murders an old ladies three dogs is some of the ugliest humor I can recall in a supposed comedy.

We are supposed to like Ken because Palin plays him as a simpleton, a dupe who thinks he's helping his friend but is blundering his way into crime. We are supposed to either sympathize with or find funny his stuttering but it only engenders a sad sort of pity that is far from funny. A scene where Palin and Cleese finally share the screen comes late in the film, as we've anticipated seeing the Python guys together, and the scene is a wretchedly excessive scene of Palin struggling with his stutter and Cleese becoming more and more explosively irritated while trying to stay calm. There is no gag here other than Palin's stutter and it's never funny, merely insensitive. 

A Fish Called Wanda presumes its own sophistication. The filmmakers and stars appear as if they should be erudite, sophisticated players in a farce but somehow the film never earns a laugh. I shouldn’t say never, I was amused a few times, such as when Cleese dances about spouting Russian phrases while Jamie Lee Curtis writhes in ecstasy but the amusement was tempered and rare.

In his 1988 review of A Fish Called Wanda, Roger Ebert says “One of its strengths is its mean-spiritedness” and I could not disagree more. I don’t find the mean-spiritedness of A Fish Called Wanda to be a strength. It’s my least favorite thing about the movie. I don’t enjoy these odious characters and their greed and I especially don’t care for the ending that rewards each of them in some strange way.

I revere Roger Ebert which explains why, nearly 30 years ago, I watched A Fish Called Wanda and desperately attempted to like it. I wanted to seem cool to a man I would never meet. I wanted to impress this idol who didn’t know I existed via some transference of psychic energy; as if the universe might inform my hero that I was no ordinary teenage movie fan, I was a teenage movie fan who liked A Fish Called Wanda.

I still revere Roger Ebert, his writing will influence me for my lifetime but as an older man I find myself able to politely disagree. While Roger enjoyed this movie, I loathed it. I didn’t enjoy the mean-spiritedness because the characters weren’t pleasant or entertaining enough to earn it. I don’t mind a mean character winning in the end if they are charming or interesting enough and they are perhaps thumbing their nose at some societal ill. But when characters are just terrible because being terrible gets them what they want, I lose interest.

The characters of A Fish Called Wanda aren’t charming, their ugly. I don’t mind that they are criminals, I mind that they aren’t interesting or funny criminals. I don’t mind that they are killers or thieves, I mind that they aren’t charming or silly or funny killers and thieves. The characters appear as if they and what they are doing should be funny and yet I don’t laugh. I dislike these characters and thus they never become funny.

Movie Review Married to the Mob

Married to the Mob (1988) 

Directed by Jonathan Demme

Written by Barry Stugatz, Mark Burns 

Starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Modine, Alec Baldwin, Dean Stockwell, Oliver Platt

Release Date August 19th, 1988

Published August 18th, 2018 

Married to the Mob stars Michelle Pfeiffer in one of the best performances in her incredible career. As Angela DeMarco, the increasingly uncomfortable mob wife of ‘Cucumber’ Frank DeMarco (Alec Baldwin), Pfeiffer is the only sympathetic character in a universe of cartoonish killer criminals and duplicitous, weirdo FBI guys. Pfeiffer is the only element of Married to the Mob that makes complete sense.

Angela DeMarco wants out of the life of a mob wife. The bloom is off the rose of being married to a man who furnished their home with items that ‘fell off a truck.’ Angela is tired of the politics that come with being a mob wife which means spending a lot of time with fellow mob wives, a group of shrill, crispy-haired, harridans led by the Boss’s wife, Connie (Mercedes Ruehl), who demands that all mob wives follow her lead.

While Angela is plotting her escape from the mob world, FBI Agent Mike Downey (Mathew Modine) is looking for his way in so he can take down the whole thing. Mike and his partner Benitez (Oliver Platt) have been after mob boss Tony ‘The Tiger’ Russo for a while now and when things break down between Tony and Frank and Angela becomes a target of Tony’s affection, Mike has his way to get after the boss, if he can keep from falling for Angela himself.

Married to the Mob is a strange movie. The title is comically overlong and humorously ill-suited to the actual content of the film. The mob clichés are comically over the top. The Italian accents, the greasy hair, the mob lingo are right out of a parody. The story however, features mob killings that would feel at home in an episode of The Sopranos. Despite the comic accents, Dean Stockwell and Alec Baldwin play their characters with a seriousness at odds with the supposed comic nature of the movie.

Then there is Michelle Pfeiffer who plays Angela completely straight, with none of the comically over-arching touches that Mercedes Ruehl and the rest of the female cast, bring to their characters. When she begins the romantic plot with Matthew Modine’s FBI Agent, posing as a plumber while using Angela as bait to catch Tony, the romance has a light touch but she doesn’t play any single beat with the comedy that director Jonathan Demme appears to be directing her toward.

Modine’s character as well is really strange. He appears to be a comic character early on as he and Oliver Platt dip into strange banter, they have a weird slow motion high-five that appears for no real good reason. Then there is the bizarre glimpse of his home life where he has a Pee-Wee Herman style set up to help him put on his suit. It kind of fits the bizarre comic tone of Married to the Mob but the joke only serves to make him seem like a weirdo and not a romantic hero.

Everyone in Married to the Mob appears to be doing their own bit of business. The accents, the hairstyles, the odd quirks, every character seems to take a moment to demonstrate an odd trait and none of it appears to fit either in the comedy that the movie kind of is and the mob drama that the movie also kind of is. All of that said, these touches give the film personality but where that personality fits in in terms of genre is a mystery that keeps the film from greatness.

There are great moments throughout Married to the Mob and Jonathan Demme is a fine director who brings personality to the film but he can’t seem to decide whether we are to take the film seriously or laugh at it. Characters like Mercedes Ruehl are playing straight comedy while Dean Stockwell, who was nominated for an Academy Award for this performance, and Michelle Pfeiffer are taking the film relatively seriously.

The film is a tonal mess. Comedy, violence, mob drama and mob comedy, Married to the Mob is filled with personality but it’s a Sybil-esque personality in which we never know which movie is on screen from scene to scene. I don’t have a huge dislike for Married to the Mob but I can’t fully embrace the movie, outside of Michelle Pfeiffer’s star-turn, because it is such a whiplash of weird shifts in tone.

Married to the Mob was released 30 years ago this weekend.