Horror in the 90s Child's Play 2

Child's Play 2 (1990) 

Directed by John Lafia 

Written by Don Mancini 

Starring Christine Elise, Alex Vincent, Jenny Agutter, Brad Dourif, Grace Zabriski 

Release Date November 9th 1990 

Box Office $35.8 million

Child's Play 2 is an improvement over the original. Where the first Child's Play movie spent a lot of time establishing the Chucky-verse, how he came to be, what he's capable of, why he wants what he wants, Child's Play 2 is unburdened by the need for exposition or backstory. Free to explore the space, Child's Play 2 brings the evil doll back to try and chase down the child that he tried to transfer his soul into in the 1989 original. Poor Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), reeling from his mother being committed to a hospital and the multiple deaths he was forced to witness by Chuckie, now is in a struggle for survival with his Lil Buddy doll. 

The story picks up with Andy being taken in by a foster family. Joanne and Phil (Jenny Agutter and Gerrit Graham) are good people who have dedicated their lives to taking in troubled children. They've been asked to take in Andy and though they are concerned about his mental stability, given that he's repeatedly stated that he believes a doll try to kill him and his mother, after killing several other people, they nevertheless relent to give Andy a home. There, Andy will have a foster sister, Kyle (Christine Elise) who will prove to be a wonderful ally and protector for young Andy. 

So how does Chucky come back after having been destroyed at the end of the original? That's never explained. What we do know is that the company that made the original doll needs to cover up the fact that their bestselling toy is, at the very least, linked to a series of murders. It's an association that company is eager to cover up. Thus, a slimy executive, played by Gregg German, has Chucky fully reconstructed. The goal is to show that the doll could not possibly be dangerous, he looks like just another doll in their life of Buddy dolls. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Horror in the 90s Hardware

Hardware (1990) 

Directed by Richard Stanley 

Written by Steve McManus, Richard Stanley, Kevin O'Neill 

Starring Dylan McDermott, Stacy Travis, John Lynch 

Release Date September 14th, 1990 

Box Office $5.1 million 

You know your career is not going well when someone makes a documentary about your being fired. Richard Stanley became infamous in 1994 when his first major studio directing job went worse than it could have possibly gone. The behind the scenes documentary, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's The Island of Dr. Moreau, is an all timer in terms of epic film boondoggles. Stanley went over budget, fought with executives, lost the star of his film 2 days into filming, was forced to watch as Mother Nature destroyed his multi-million dollar sets and then was fired during filming. 

Then, taking a bad situation and making it even crazier, a distressed and lunatic Stanley, snuck back onto the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau, made up like one of the movie monster extras, and was able to appear in several scenes as a background player. No joke, the fired director can be seen writhing and shrieking with his fellow freaks in a couple scenes in the final cut of The Island of Dr. Moreau. It's the kind of story that goes down in Hollywood lore and it all really happened to the young director who was making his major studio debut with a ludicrous cast that included the infamous Marlon Brando and even more risky and infamous Val Kilmer. 

The epic mishap of The Island of Dr. Moreau will be the lead in Richard Stanley's obituary one day. Perhaps, somewhere near the bottom of the article, there will be a mention for the rather ingenious, low budget sci-fi horror movie that brought him to the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1990's Hardware. This hybrid of horror, steampunk, and post-apocalyptic sci-fi is kind of genius and kind of deeply awkward. This is likely due to the director making one thing and executives, led by Harvey Weinstein, wanting the film to be cut to a length that was potentially more commercial, the point and purpose of the film be damned. 

Hardware is a movie that is sort of about how advancements in technology have begun to dehumanize us, reprogram us, and convince us to give up more of our freedom for a sense of security. Through the story of Mo (Dylan McDermott), a scavenger, and Jill (Stacy Travis) we get a glimpse of the modern condition of the world, one where scrappers can thrive if they are willing to risk their lives and artists, like Jill, struggle to get by despite creating transcendent works of art, things that belong in museums that no longer exist. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Horror in the 90s Graveyard Shift

Graveyard Shift (1990) 

Directed by Ralph S. Singleton 

Written by John Esposito 

Starring David Andrews, Kelly Wolf, Stephen Macht, Brad Dourif 

Release Date October 26th, 1990 

Box Office $11.6 Million 

Graveyard Shift is a grimy, gross surprise. I had zero expectations for this mostly forgotten monster movie, based on a Stephen King short story, and I was wonderfully surprised by just how boldly gross and silly Graveyard Shift is. Director Ralph S. Singleton has only one credit as a feature film director and credit to him, he made a heck of a unique little monster movie for a guy whose only previous experience was a pair of episodes of Cagney and Lacy. 

Graveyard Shift stars David Andrews as John Hall, a drifter who arrives in a small New England town looking for work. Despite his having just arrived, everyone seems to know that he went to college at some point. Townies call him a college boy and express needless resentment for a group of adults. John does however, make a friend in town. A coworker named Jane takes an interest in John after finding out he's a widower and thus the only attractive and datable man in her zip code. 

I say that John and Jane are coworkers and they are. John has just found work on the overnight or 'Graveyard' shift at a local textile plant owned and operated by the ruthless Warwick (Stephen Macht). Warwick is beyond merely shady, he's covering up multiple deaths that have occurred in his mill. Most recently, the man that John replaced was found mauled to death in the cotton thresher. How he got there is a mystery that will become clear as Graveyard Shift unfolds its monster movie narrative. 

Rats have a big role to play in Graveyard Shift. Let's just say that this is not a movie that PETA would find acceptable. Rats are never a welcome site but the abuse and violence aimed their way in Graveyard Shift is almost enough to make you feel bad for the plague spreading little pests. Rats are everywhere in Graveyard Shift and even our hero John is not afraid to demonstrate his disdain for the little buggers. An important plot point finds John using his trusty slingshot to fire empty soda cans at invading rats near his thresher, unaware that antagonizing the rats got the last guy on this shift killed. 

The rats are responsible for introducing the best thing about Graveyard Shift, the performance of horror movie MVP Brad Dourif. Indulging in his show-stealing, scene-stealing character actor schtick, Dourif plays a deeply gross and tormented exterminator who delights in his chosen profession. That Dourif's rat-catcher is going to die is not in question. How he dies and how gruesome that death will be is only a matter of patience on our part. Until his very expected demise however, Dourif is completely awesome, a wildly out of control weirdo who is so much gross fun to watch. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Horror in the 90's Jacob's Ladder

Jacob's Ladder (1990) 

Directed by Adrian Lyne 

Written by Bruce Joel Rubin

Starring Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Pena, Danny Aiello

Release Date November 2nd, 1990 

Box Office $26.9 million 

Director Adrian Lyne is known best for his sexy, sweat-soaked thrillers about cheating husbands, scheming women, and rich guys who pay for sex. So, seeing that he's also the director of a gritty, Vietnam era horror movie like Jacob's Ladder is a little jarring. Now, of course, he does throw in needless nudity, Elizabeth Pena's breasts are lovingly captured on screen for no particularly good story reason, but otherwise, Jacob's Ladder is a grand departure for the tawdry director of admittedly zeitgeist grabbing sex thrillers. 

Jacob's Ladder tells the story of a deeply haunted Vietnam vet named Jacob, played by Tim Robbins. Jacob nearly died in Vietnam after his unit was the subject of a violent surprise attack. Jacob himself was stabbed in the gut and had to have his intestines pressed back into his body before he could be taken back to the base hospital. Jake remembers being gutted by a bayonet but he also has another memory that he cannot quite reconcile. Just prior to his being stabbed, Jacob's unit seemed to be having severe hallucinations and overdoses. 

Is it a dream or a memory? Jacob cannot tell. However, when Jacob survives a pair of attempts on his life and compares notes with some of the members of his unit, it appears that there may indeed have been more to this firefight than a surprise attack. Meanwhile, Jacob isn't sleeping, he's in desperate pain from a back injury. Thankfully he has a benevolent chiropractor named Louie (Danny Aiello) who acts as friend, confessor, therapist and guardian angel. Louis is seemingly the only one able to comfort the ever-tormented Jacob. 

On top of his traumatic near death in Vietnam, Jacob lost a son before the war. Gabriel (Macauley Culkin), was struck and killed while riding his bike. Jacob's life has been a mess ever since. Despite having two other children, Jacob fell apart, his marriage to his wife, Sarah (Patricia Kalember) fell apart and then Jacob nearly died. It's no wonder that he can barely function and gave up life as a Park Avenue Shrink for a relatively more peaceful and less stressful job as a postal worker. Boomers and Gen-X'ers are making dark jokes right now, millennials are a bit confounded and thinking yes, being a postal worker would be less stressful.  Both sides are right. 

Anyway, that's Jacob's Ladder. Jacob barely functions, survives a few attempts on his life, has a couple more near-death experiences and begins seeing demons. He has meltdowns at any function he attends, when he's not sick he's obsessed with his time in Vietnam. He's slowly destroying his relationship with his girlfriend, Jezzie (Elizabeth Pena), while she may have a secret related to what is happening to Jacob. What is real and what is a hallucination begins to intermingle into a confusing mélange of disconnected horror images that all mean nothing when the ending is revealed. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Classic Movie Review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) 

Directed by Steve Barron 

Written by Todd W. Langan, Bobby Herbeck 

Starring Judith Hoag, Elias Koteas, Sam Rockwell, Corey Feldman 

Release Date March 30th, 1990 

Published August 2nd, 2023 

There is a joy in discovering something that is almost indescribable. It's a kind of unmatched euphoria that becomes less and less available to adults as your sense of wonder morphs into an inability to find many things surprising through age and experience. When you are struck with that moment of discovery, that realization of seeing something that you have not seen before, you need to grab it and ride it out for as long as you can as these moments tend to be fleeting. I experienced the joy of discovery when I saw the 1990 live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. 

That sounds bizarre as this was a major blockbuster movie from my relative youth. I was 14 years old when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arrived in theaters and I was most assuredly aware of the film's existence. I likely would have seen the movie in 1990 but I genuinely do not recall it. I may have caught it on home video or cable television in the ensuing three decades before I actually sat down to watch it for my podcast, the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast. And yet, when I did watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as an obligation to my podcast partner, Bob Zerull, I experienced what I can only describe as a euphoric sense of discovery. 

Having deemed myself too old at 14 years to enjoy anything related to a kids movie, I had spent three decades dismissing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a movie for fans whose brains weren't fully developed. I had made up my mind that only a child could watch and enjoy a movie about guys in rubber turtle costumes spouting canned catchphrases intended to pop the tiny masses of children around the globe. Nevertheless, I did sit down to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for its 30th anniversary and I came away shocked at how lively, funny, and rich the experience was. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Horror in the 90s Gremlins 2

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) 

Directed by Joe Dante 

Written by Charles Haas

Starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, John Glover, Robert Picardo, Christopher Lee 

Release Date June 15th, 1990 

Box Office $41.5 million dollars 

I'm convinced that the only cultural reputation that Gremlins 2: The New Batch has comes entirely from the cache earned from Key & Peele. The brilliant minds of Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele performed a sketch on their Comedy Central series in which Peele as a Hollywood Sequel Doctor, played by a flamboyant Jordan Peele, enters the writers room for Gremlins 2 and proceeds to take suggestions for wild ideas to add to the Gremlins 2 story. What he comes up with are actual characters from Gremlins 2 that are so outlandish and dumb that they seem to have been made up. It's a brilliant sketch but it sets a standard that the movie simply cannot match. 

As wild as this Hollywood Script Doctors ideas for Gremlins 2: The New Batch are, the movie never feels that wild or outrageous. Instead, it feels deeply disjointed, often desperate, and unfunny. Gremlins 2: The New Batch has the feel of a sequel that was thrust upon director Joe Dante who responded to the burden by trying to sabotage his own movie. Dante comes up with several bad ideas, executes them poorly, and delivered a final cut that I can only imagine left everyone mortified but unable to not release the movie. Trying to cull a plot description together seems like a fool's errand but here we are. 

Gremlins 2: The New Batch returns Zach Galligan as everyman Bill Pelzer. Billy is now working and living in New York City with his small town gal-pal, Kate, played by an also returning Phoebe Cates. Also having moved to New York City is Gizmo, the cutest of the Gremlins. How and why Gizmo is now in New York City is a plot contrivance. He's needed in New York for this dimwitted plot to unfold. A Trump like developer named Daniel Clamp (John Glover) is eager to buy the shop owned by Mr. Wing, a returning Keye Luke, so he can continue to reshape the New York skyline in his tacky image. 

When Mr. Wing dies, Clamp gets his wish and Gizmo is left homeless. By coincidence, Gizmo is found by a pair of twin scientists who work for Daniel Clamp's top scientist, played in utterly bizarre fashion by Christopher Lee. He's eager to experiment on Gizmo but a further series of coincidences, including Billy happening to work in this building and offhandedly hearing about the cute creature in an upstairs lab, leads to a Billy/Gizmo reunion. Naturally, things go off the rails pretty quickly as Gizmo gets wet from a malfunctioning water fountain and dozens of new Gremlins are born and wreck havoc. 

Not a single one of the new Gremlins, who use the chemicals in Christopher Lee's lab to genetically alter themselves to vary the species design, are funny. A Gremlin with Spider Legs is a pretty good horror visual but since Gremlins 2 is clumsily straddling the line between horror and family friendly, kid friendly, comedy, the horror elements are drearily watered down. That all of the Gremlins described in the Key & Peele sketch are indeed real provides a semblance of fun but that's coming from the absurdity of Key& Peele's comedy magic and nothing that the movie is doing. 

Read the full length review at Horror.Media 

Horror in the 90s Soultaker

Soultaker (1990) 

Directed by Michael Rissi 

Written by Vivian Schilling 

Starring Vivian Schilling, Joe Estevez, Robert Z'Dar, Gregg Thomsen

Release Date October 26th, 1990 

Box Office $43,000 

When I went looking for Soultaker in order to watch it for this project, it wasn't available. I couldn't find it for rent or purchase in terms of streaming services. I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was having trouble finding it and they surprised me with a DVD copy. That sounds fortuitous right? That sounds like good luck for me doesn't it? The DVD I was given by my friend was not an official DVD of Soultaker. Rather, it was an official dub of an episode of the comedy series, Mystery Science Theater 3000. 

I was not aware of the full reputation of Soultaker when I decided to include it in Horror in the 90s. When I made the list, I saw the title Soultaker and that it was in the horror genre. I wanted to see what a movie called Soultaker was like. Had I known that its reputation was that of one of the worst horror movies ever made, I would have thought twice about including it in this book. What possible lessors or ideas could be gleaned from watching a truly terrible horror movie? 

There are certainly plenty of bad horror movies that I have watched for this book, without knowing for sure ahead of time that they were terrible. Thus, having already been told how bad Soultaker was, I had a choice to make as to whether or not it was worth seeing. That choice was complicated also by the fact that I cannot watch it in its original form. The only access to Soultaker currently is this Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed version. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media

Horror in the 90s Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead (1990) 

Directed by Tom Savini 

Written by John A. Russo, George A. Romero 

Starring Tony Todd, Patricia Tallman, McKee Anderson, Tom Towles 

Release Date October 19th, 1990 

Box Office Gross $5.8 million 

The 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead is one of the greatest horror movies ever made. There was really no need for a remake. Any movie that tried to recapture the iconic qualities of the original was always doomed to failure. Naturally, the motivation to remake the George A. Romero classic was a shyster producer looking for a popular title that they could ring some cast out of. Enter Menaham Golan, half of the schlockmeister team of Golan and Globus, famous for awful sequels from Chuck Norris to Superman. It's doubtful that Golan ever even saw Romero's 1968 classic. All he wanted was the title and concept. 

That Golan hired special effects master Tom Savini to direct the remake makes sense, Golan figured he could save on salaries for both director and special effects by hiring one guy. I know that sounds cynical, but that is the exact type of corner cutting that Golan made his fortune on in the 1980s. Night of the Living Dead was Savini's first effort as a director and thus he could be brought in cheap with the added bonus of providing special effects and makeup prowess to the proceedings. 

The remake of Night of the Living Dead stars Patricia Tallman as Barbara. As she visits the grave or her late mother, along with her brother Johnny (Bill Mosely), Barbara is accosted by a strange lumbering man carrying the stench of death and a fearsome emptiness behind his. In the ensuing scuffle, Johnny is killed and Barbara goes on the run as another strange, lumbering, being emerges and reveals himself to having been recently autopsied. 

Running away, a hysterical Barbara arrives at a farm house looking for shelter. Unfortunately, what she finds inside are more of the undead lumbering and lurching after her. Barbara is rescued by the arrival of Ben (Tony Todd), who has, at the very least, learned that taking these beings out with a head shot is the only way to stop them from trying to eat their victim. Together, Ben and Barbara dispatch a pair of the monstrous undead before finding out they aren't the only ones alive in this farm house. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media

Horror in the 90s Tremors

Tremors (1990) 

Directed by Ron Underwood

Written by Ron Underwood, S.S Wilson 

Starring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Michael Gross, Reba McEntire, Finn Carter

Release Date January 19th, 1990 

Box Office Gross $16.9 million 

Somehow, I had managed to convince myself that I didn't like the movie Tremors. I don't know where this opinion came from as I am not sure I had actually watched the movie until now. I have little memory of seeing it before seeing it for this project and quite enjoying it. Indeed, I really had a great time watching Tremors. Why I thought I had disliked it is a mystery to me. It's my own personal Mandela Effect, my mind was convinced that I had disliked the movie when reality was that I had not seen Tremors before. 

That's about as deep as I can be in a review of a movie with such shallow pleasures as Tremors. That might sound insulting, but it's not intended that way. Tremors is quite shallow but that's not a bad thing. Instead of going for anything of substance, Tremors is about shocks and thrills, a gross monster and plenty of gross jokes as well. The movie is intentionally dumb with dopey characters getting by on their wits and dumb luck as they battle one of the most inventive movie monsters in quite many years. 

Tremors stars Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward as Val and Earl, Nevada rednecks working every part time job in their tiny, tiny community. Indeed, Perfection, Nevada has all of 14 residents. That is until residents start to get sucked into the ground and eaten by giant, poop brown slugs with snakes for tongues. It takes a little while to get going but once Val and Earl find out about the giant monsters, the movie takes on a much faster pace and cleverly pays homage to drive-in monsters of the past. 

That's the true heart of Tremors, an old school monster movie. Elements of The Blob, The Killer Shrews, Night of the Lepus, Shriek of the Mutilated and so on. Tremors isn't as much of a blood and guts horror movie as those films, the kills are relatively tame by the standards of some of the great 60s drive-in movies, but the homage is still quite clear. In the heart of Tremors, this is a movie you half watch while making out in a car, in a field, with a tinny speaker in the window and a sea of fellow cars stuffed with friends. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

 

Horror in the 90s The Guardian

The Guardian (1990)

Directed by William Friedkin

Written by Stephen Volk, William Friedkin

Starring Dwier Brown, Carey Lowell, Jenny Seagrove

Release Date April 27th, 1990

Box Office $17,000,000

The Guardian stars Dwier Brown and Carey Lowell as Phil and Kate Sterling. Phil and Kate have just moved to Los Angeles and have just found out they are having their first baby. Exciting times continue as their two jobs afford them a lovely suburban home and the ability to hire a nanny to care for their baby. The nanny they end up with is Camilla, played by Jenny Seagrove. Camilla got the job after the woman they initially wanted disappeared.

We know that that woman, played in a cameo by the wonderful Teresa Randle, has been badly injured, or possibly killed in a bike accident. We see this but it’s never clear if Phil and Kate are aware of what happened. Regardless, they appear quite pleased with hiring Camilla who appears to be warm and caring and has good references that they choose not to look into because she appears so sweet and sincere. What Phil and Kate don’t know however, is that a baby Camilla cared for in her last job, went missing under suspicious circumstances.

This sounds vaguely like the plot of The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, doesn’t it. Indeed, The Guardian, at one point, was envisioned as a thriller along that line, one taking advantage of the fears of young parents. Then, at another point, The Guardian was envisioned as a broad horror comedy to be directed by Sam Raimi about a mystical being that cares for an ancient tree by providing the tree with the blood of babies. When Raimi left the project and was replaced by directing legend William Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist apparently decided to mash these two disparate premises together.

Thus we have The Guardian a horror-thriller about an evil enchanted tree protector who steals babies from unsuspecting couples to feed her evil enchanted tree. This sounds comic but it is not intended to be funny in any way. It is however, just as sloppy, slipshod, and silly, as such a mash-up of movies would inevitably be. Friedkin choosing to keep both movies that The Guardian used to be and trying to awkwardly weld them together ends up delivering a desperately confused and unintentionally funny horror mess.

Find my full length review at Horror.Media

Horror in the 90s Arachnophobia

Arachnophobia (1990) 

Directed by Frank Marshall

Written by Don Jakoby, Wesley Strick 

Starring Jeff Daniels, Harley Jane Kozak, Julian Sands, John Goodman 

Release Date July 18th, 1990 

Box Office Gross $53.2 million 

Arachnophobia exists in two popular horror sub-genre: Man vs Nature and the Monster Movie. A new breed of spider is located by an arrogant scientist who believes he can control this uncontrollable element of nature that he hubristically believes that he has mastered. The monster movie then comes into play when the scientists creation gets away from him and begins to wreak havoc in a small time while working to perpetuate its species to take over the planet, essentially, the Americas at the very least. 

If you are skeptical that spiders could be considered monsters in a monster movie, you underestimate the talent of director Frank Marshall and his cast. Indeed, Arachnophobia functions as a movie that could induce a lifelong phobia of spiders, arachnophobia of the title. It's so effective at making spiders a horror movie monster that I honestly would not recommend showing this movie to children. I would especially not recommend this movie for anyone who already harbors a fear of spiders as this movie will only exacerbate that condition. 

Arachnophobia stars Jeff Daniels as a doctor who has moved his family, including his wife, played by Harley Jane Kozak, and their two kids, to a small town in California. Dr. Ross Jennings (Daniels) has been promised the role of the only doctor in this small town but things do not go as planned from the start. The elderly doctor he was supposed to replace has now refused to retire and Dr. Jennings' new home in the country is a money pit with termites and a crumbling infrastructure. 

Unbeknownst to everyone in this otherwise idyllic small town, a dangerously poisonous Brazilian spider has hitched a ride with a corpse to the local funeral home. Having killed a photographer working with Dr. James Atherton (Julian Sands) in Brazil, the spider, that Dr. Atherton had assured us was dead, arrives in this small town and finds its way to the barn owned by Dr. Jennings where it cross-breeds with a local spider and begins to create a mutated version of itself that is so deadly its population could wipe out North America in a period of months. 

Thus it falls to Dr. Jennings to first discover that we are indeed dealing with a killer Spider and then, in the final act, to have a face to face fight with the Spider Queen over the massive egg sack the Queen has laid in Dr. Jennings' new wine cellar. Did you know that wine is not flammable? Neither did this movie which seems to think Wine is an accelerant. Anyway, that aside, Arachnophobia has some silly elements but one thing the film gets right is the staging of spider attacks that kill character actors. 

Characters actors James Handy, Kathy Kinney, Henry Jones and Mary Carver each appear in remarkably well-staged scenes where they are menaced by little spiders. These scenes are filled with genuine tension via simple, classic, filmic technique. Good choices in the editing bay and in the staging of each scene create a genuine tension while the familiar and kind faces of these character actors, people you've seen even if you don't recognize their name, add tension because we don't want to see them be killed by spiders. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Horror in the 90s Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer

Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990) 

Directed by John McNaughton 

Written by Richard Fire, John McNaughton 

Starring Michael Rooker, Tracy Arnold, Tom Towles 

Release Date January 5th, 1990 

Henry Portrait of a Serial Killers opens on a perfect and horrifying bit of misdirection. With birds chirping in the background, it’s an idyllic setting, for a moment you settle into the film. You see the peaceful face of what you initially believe is a woman sleeping, perhaps about to wake up and begin her day. Then, director John McNaughton’s camera begins to reveal what is really happening here. 

The woman is not sleeping, indeed her eyes aren’t even closed, they are blackened, either from the mess made of her makeup or, perhaps a beating. Regardless, her eyes are open and lifeless. In reality, the camera was never still, it was always pulling back and always about to reveal that you are looking at a dead woman, fully nude, wounds to her abdomen fresh with blood. The camera tilts and a score sets in underneath, a droning but angelic chorus that ends in a harsh cut to a cigarette, harshly stubbed out in diner ashtray. 

The harshness of the cut and the symbolism of the cigarette, once carrying a fiery, intoxicating life before being snuffed out with a careless force hits you hard. We are barely two minutes into Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, and that’s counting a credits sequence, that is just text on a black screen with a tense synth score. And yet, director John McNaughton has already set the tone. The plasticine perfection of nature in our imagination slowly melting to a horrifying and harsh reality. 

The movement from the mundane to the horrific is another hallmark of Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer. After that harsh cut from before establishes Henry in the diner, stubbing out his cigarette, we watch a mundane moment play out. The camera slowly pulls back to observe Henry pick up his bill, stand, put on his jacket, walk a few steps to the other side of the counter. He pays his bill and half heartedly flirts with his waitress. Then Henry walks to his car and climbs inside, giving us, ever so-briefly, a glimpse of his face. 

Then WHAM! Hard cut to a body lying face down on the counter of a liquor store, a bullet in her head. Look at the visuals, side by side of the diner waitress and the woman on the counter, they could be the same person. It’s as if the movie is showing us that no one is safe, Henry will kill whenever he feels like killing and whomever. We’re not even finished with the reveal however, as this time, there are two corpses, another lying on the floor, feet away from the first victim. 

We don’t need to see the killings, it’s quite clear from the editing, the progression of scene to scene, who is responsible for these grisly deaths. The sound design also progresses at this moment. I am imagining from the birds chirping and the silence of the opening moments, that the first victim was likely dumped in that location. I am inferring that because when the liquor store owners die, we see their corpses, but the sound design plays out the scene, we here the terror in the woman’s voice, we hear the shots fired that end their lives, and briefly Henry’s voice, telling the woman to shut-up. 

Cut to Henry, casually driving his car and idly listening to a rock n’roll radio station. Then, smash cut to bloody sheets in a hotel room. The droning bass of the score, a hellish drone. The camera slowly pans and the slow motion horror of this moment cannot be understated. The choice of weapon here catches you off guard. You don’t see it right away but as the camera slowly moves closer to the victim, the outline of a glass bottle protruding from her bloody mouth comes into focus as the source of the blood pouring down her neck to her chest. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Horror in the 90s Leatherface Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 

Directed by Jeff Burr 

Written by David J. Schrow 

Starring Kate Hodge, William Butler, Ken Foree, Tom Hudson, R.A Mihailoff 

Release Date January 12th, 1990 

Box Office Gross $5.8 million dollars 

Bottom-feeding cash-ins are always pretty obvious about their intentions. That was certainly the case when a group of huckster con-artists looked to cash in on the legacy of the greatest horror movie ever made, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Studio execs like money and when they can seize the rights to an exploitable property, they eagerly gobble up the opportunity with little concern for the quality of the product they plan to capitalize on. With this as the background, was there any way for Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre to succeed? No, probably not. 

A very game and determined Kate Hodge stars in Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 as Michelle, a student driving her dad's vintage car from California to Florida alongside her soon to be ex-boyfriend. William Butler is the soon-to-be ex of Michelle and he quickly makes a case for why they are no longer going to be together by being a whiny little prat. He can't understand why Michelle would want to leave him for a chance to travel the world. We understand it from just a few lines of whiny, man-baby dialogue from Ryan. 

The story of Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 kicks in when the couple stops at a last chance gas station. The creeptastic gas station employee, begins to perv on Michelle, eventually spying on her in the ladies room. He's stopped by a transient, Edward 'Tex' Sawyer (Viggo Mortensen), who hopes that interceding will convince Michelle and Ryan to give him a ride. He ends up getting shot by the creepy gas station attendant while giving Michelle and Ryan a chance to escape. He appears benevolent but it's merely a ruse, he is, after all, a member of the Sawyer clan. 

Michelle and Ryan's escape is short-lived as they are soon chased down and menaced by what they assume is the gas station creep. They end up with a flat tire and try hiding on a side road. This side road however, leads them right to Leatherface (R.A Mihailoff) who attacks with his trusty chainsaw and his unnatural amount of physical strength which he demonstrates by ripping the top off of the car's trunk. Having made another narrow escape, Michelle and Ryan end up in another crash and, after colliding with Benny (Ken Foree), the trio end up in a life threatening game of cat and mouse with the horrific Sawyer family. 

The mercenary nature of Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 is obvious in the dimwitted marketing campaign which focuses entirely on Leatherface's weapon of choice, a chainsaw. In this case, it's a custom made saw, silver plated and engraved with the film's tagline, 'The Saw is Family.' The movie was pitched with a comic teaser trailer in which the custom chainsaw is gifted to Leatherface King Arthur style, via a lady in a lake. You can almost hear the cash registers ringing in the hearts of heartless studio execs. 

Cynicism aside, for just a moment, I want to commend Kate Hodge and Ken Foree. These two terrific actors work very, very hard to bring something to this beyond the cash-in effort being put in everywhere else in the movie. Where the film's writers, director, and producers either don't know or don't care about the legacy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hodge and Foree are giving great performances. While the rest of the film appears dedicated to sullying the memory of the original, these two performance darn near redeem the misconceived enterprise that is Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3. 

Hampered by a script that adds unnecessary aspects to the Sawyer legacy, Hodge delivers a gritty, hard as nails final girl performance while the horror veteran Foree is so good as Benny that the character is allowed to survive wounds that were absolutely intended as his death blow. Benny survived only because test audiences loved Benny and hated seeing him go. That's yet another testament to the mercenary quality of Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3. But, it's also a credit to Foree whose performance is so good, you may not mind the ludicrous nature of his miraculous survival. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Horror in the 90s: Brain Dead

Brain Dead (1990) 

Directed by Adam Simon 

Written by Adam Simon, Charles Beaumont 

Starring Bill Pullman, Bill Paxton, George Kennedy, Bud Cort, Patricia Charbonneau 

Release Date January 19th, 1990 

Box Office Gross $1.6 million dollars 

One image. Brain Dead is remembered for one, singular image. The fact that this one image has nothing to do with the movie that contains it, does not matter. There is only one thing that anyone remembers about Brain Dead and it is just one memorable, awful, brutal image. You see it in all of the marketing materials about the movie when it was released. To those who've never seen Brain Dead, this image is the star of the film. It's a very compelling image, one worthy of building a bizarre cult movie marketing campaign around. 

In a college science lab there is an unnamed student toying with a human brain. The student shoves an electrode into the ooey gooey brain situated in a petri dish. The brain is connected to something, a metal apparatus. Upon this apparatus is a complete abomination. Stretched like horrifying silly putty across an empty expanse, connecting to a circular metal apparatus is a human face. This face has eyes, a nose, and a mouth. It seems to have facial muscles somehow, hidden behind a weathered expanse of skin. 

The facial muscles are implied in the film by the way the face twitches in pain when the brain in the pan is electrocuted back to life. Depending on where the student stabs his electrode into this brain in a pan, the face twitches its eyes, wrinkles its nose, or turns the mouth in a pained expression, a wince. From the manner in which the student playfully stabs away at this brain, this is a normal day in the lab. We don't know how long the student and the face have been in this dynamic, but it is not the first time this student has engaged in this twisted game. 

You would be forgiven if you thought that this detached face were that of a main character, that of Bill Pullman, or Bill Paxton, or Bud Cort. It's not. In fact, we have no idea where this face came from or how this face ended up attached to a brain in a pan being painfully stimulated by electrodes. We get only a vague sense of why this is even being done. It's being done to prove that the human brain is capable of being stimulated after death. 

That's part of the crazed, doomed experiments being conducted by Bill Pullman's monstrous, genius brain scientist. Dr. Rex Martin believes he can cure all manner of neurological disorders by using the brains of the dead as guinea pigs. Dr. Martin's particular specialty is paranoia and he is convinced he can cure paranoia via brain surgery. This brings his research in line with the awful, amoral aims of Bill Paxton's corporate shark. Paxton wants Pullman to cure the paranoia of a genius mathematician, Bud Cort, so that said genius will reveal an equation that could be worth billions. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Horror in the 90s Tales from the Darkside

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990) 

Directed by John Harrison

Written by Michael McDowell, George A. Romero 

Starring Debbie Harry, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore, Christian Slater, James Remar, Rae Dawn Chong

Release Date May 4th, 1990 

Box Office Gross $16.3 million

Why don't more people talk about how great Tales from the Darkside The Movie is? I've seen Tales from the Darkside The Movie a few times but somehow, it wasn't until this viewing that it really clicked for me. This anthology of three horror movies, and one wraparound segment, combines the talents of Stephen King, George Romero and a powerhouse cast, across four stories, to deliver one of the most consistently entertaining horror movies of the 1990s. 

Let's begin with our wrap-around story. Tales from the Darkside: The Movie opens on a peaceful suburban milieu. A lovely looking woman has purchased groceries and is returning home to start dinner for a dinner party. This is classic horror movie stuff as perverting the pristine perfection of suburban life is a classic trope. The first signs of such perversions of norms only arrives once we are inside the home of that plain Jane woman and her groceries. 

We arrive in the home of Betty, played by rock icon Debbie Harry, before she does. While she's getting her groceries, the camera takes us into her home and a strange looking broom is propped against a wall. While we puzzle over the broom, which brings to mind a witches broom, we begin to hear a noise. The camera slowly reveals a door in the kitchen and someone struggling to open the door before fearfully retreating when Betty comes inside. The skillful visual filmmaking tells us everything we need to know, Betty is a witch and whoever is in that locked pantry, is her prisoner. 

Perverting things even further, Betty soon reveals her victim, tiny moppet with floppy hair and a crooked grin. This is Timmy (Matthew Lawrence) and we soon learn that Timmy is set to be that night's main course as Betty is bringing her witch friends over for a Timmy casserole. In a desperate attempt to keep himself alive, Timmy grabs a story book called Tales from the Darkside and offers to tell Betty a scary story as a reason to keep him alive. She agrees and we proceed with our first terrific story. 

The most star-studded of our three stories was not quite so star-studded at the time of release. Lot 249 stars a pair of stars before they became big stars. Steve Buscemi and Julianne Moore were at the beginning of what would be lengthy and critically acclaimed careers when they played academic rivals in Lot 249, the story of a man and his mummy. Christian Slater, already having become a leading man by 1990, is the best known of the cast which is rounded out by lesser known character actor Robert Sedgwick. 

Lot 249 is a tale of revenge as Edward Bellingham (Buscemi) is convinced that a rich idiot, Lee (Robert Sedgwick), has used his influence, and his equally rich and duplicitous girlfriend, Susan (Moore), to steal a lucrative scholarship from him. The loss may force Bellingham to have to leave school just as he is on the verge of an astonishing breakthrough in his research on ancient Egypt. Through nefarious circumstance, Bellingham has secured Lot 249, an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus that could be worth millions, depending on what he finds inside. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Horror in the 90s Mirror Mirror

Mirror Mirror (1993) 

Directed by Marina Sargenti 

Written by Annette Cascone, Gina Cascone, Marina Sargenti 

Starring Rainbow Harvest, Karen Black, Yvonne De Carlo 

Release Date August 31st, 1990 

Box Office Unknown 

There were a mere 6 movies directed by female directors in 1990. One of those films is this oddball horror movie about a haunted Mirror. It was Sargenti's first and only feature film credit. Soon after she moved to television features and picked up TV odds and ends until seeming to leave the business in 1997, at least according to IMDB. Regardless, she's notable for having been one of the few women to get the chance to direct a feature length horror film at a time when women were struggling to find a place behind the camera. 

It's a shame the movie isn't more memorable. Mirror Mirror is a shoddy, slapdash and odd film. The plot centers on a haunted mirror which uses some kind of demon magic to invade the mind of people who own it and causing them to kill. The demonic power presents itself as being on the side of the owner, allowing the owner to believe they are wielding some kind of magic power. Then, the killing spree begins and grows out of control until someone finally puts a black curtain over the mirror. Yeah, that's literally how this demon is defeated, that and... a good character making a wish? Maybe? It's a tad bit unclear. 

Mirror Mirror features a notable cast of horror convention staples including Karen Black as the mother of our main character, Megan, played by Rainbow Harvest. Alongside Karen Black we have Yvonne DeCarlo of The Munsters-fame. DeCarlo plays an antiques dealer who purchased the mirror only for the mirror to refuse to leave the home. She also takes a bunch of books written by the previous owner of the mirror. DeCarlo acts as a plot convenience/contrivance, someone to do the legwork of researching the mirror's evil for us in the audience and then dying tragically when she was needed most. 

Another notable horror staple is character actor William Sanderson who pops up in the role of a pet undertaker. The mirror happens to hate dogs and when the mirror brutally murders Karen Black's dog, Sanderson's uber-creep undertaker shows up and the two wind up hitting it off. She invites this man to dinner and things don't go well as Megan channels the demonic mirror powers to make Sanderson hallucinate that his food is full of creepy crawlies. He leaves and we never see him again. 

The co-lead of Mirror Mirror, alongside the memorably named Rainbow Harvest, is Kristen Dattilo as Nikki, a fellow outcast who serves as an early model of the role played by Amanda Seyfried in Jennifer's Body. Each film pits female friends against each other, a common theme in many genres when you think about it. At least they aren't arguing about boys, not the same boy anyway, but yeah, movies tend to want exploit female friendships for drama in a fashion that they tend not do in stories about male friendships.

Find my full length review of Mirror Mirror at Horror.Media 

Horror in the 90s Nightbreed

Nightbreed (1990) 

Directed by Clive Barker 

Written by Clive Barker 

Starring Craig Scheffer, David Cronenberg, Anne Bobby

Release Date February 16th, 1990 

Box Office Gross $16 million dollars 

Clive Barker wastes no time; you see his monsters before the credits roll in Nightbreed. In terms of visual storytelling, a wall of cave paintings tells us that the monsters here are ancient, perhaps a pre-cursor to, or a compatriot of, early man. If these cave paintings are telling a story, that's unclear. Holy crap! Again, we waste no time. A mess of monsters are racing about to a classically Danny Elfman score. The scene is very... Andrew Lloyd Webber. The monsters and the choreography of the chase is, at the very least Broadway inspired. 

This is a dream sequence which explains the highly theatrical production and the stage-setting for the action. Our lead character, Aaron Boone (Craig Scheffer) has awakened from a dream of these fantastical monsters and the way in which Cliver Barker self-inserts himself into the story is hard to miss here. Having his handsome main character dreaming up these fantastical monsters is a very obvious corollary to the writer-director-author who has, in fact, created these monsters for this movie. 

Nightbreed is based on the novel 'Cabal' by Clive Barker. Barker adapted the book into a screenplay and directed the film based on that screenplay from his own book. So, yeah, this is a Clive Barker joint through and through. I imagine having himself inserted as the main character, stopping just short of calling the character Clive and having him be a multi-hyphenate artist, won't be the last time we see parallels between Aaron, AKA Cabal, and his creator. 

Seemingly out of the blue we get a sequence of slasher horror that is among the best of the decade. Barker takes us to a random suburban home. A loving wife and her husband are laughing together and playful. They have a young son and he gives us the first sign of something unseemly occurring. The boy tells his mother that he's afraid and claims that he was kept awake by a 'bad man.' This bad man turns out to be the real deal, a slasher killer who makes an incredible first impression. 

Employing a a horror filmmaking trope, Barker has the mother open the freezer door in the kitchen. This serves to block a portion of empty space next to her. Naturally, the trained film watcher knows that when mom closes the freezer door, someone, or something, will be there and this scene will move jarringly from the suburban mundane to the terrifying. Here, since he's employing a familiar trope, Barker has to deliver something big. Something shocking. And boy does he deliver. 

A killer in one of the most terrifying masks we will see in 90s horror, is behind that freezer door. He immediately slashes mom to death with what is surely an incredibly sharp knife. The movement is swift and horrifying and your breath catches when you see it. The visual of the blood on the ground and the sight of apples that the mother was near or carrying covered in blood as the roll across the floor is a sublime horror visual. The gurgling of the mother character, having been slashed across the face and throat, and the seemingly realistic amount of blood, only serves to amplify the terror. 

Dad is next. The killer, wearing this incredibly scary mask and a long black trench coat, a look that evokes a much more frightening take on Claude Rains' The Invisible Man, enters the living room and shuts off the lights. In just a brief moment that superbly heightens the awfulness of what is to come, dad smiles to himself, assuming that his lovely wife has returned for more intimacy. He's wrong, of course, and that we know it and he doesn't adds another layer of deep dismay. Once dad is dead, the scene heightens again. 

Our mind flashes to that little boy at the top of the stairs. Knowing this, and taking remarkable advantage of our empathetic rooting interest, Barker chooses to move the camera to the child's perspective, looking down the stairs at the killer. Here, Barker masterfully pauses, giving us the brief hope that maybe the killer won't look for the boy, maybe the child will merely bea witnes to this terror. That hope is snuffed out as the killer's sickening gaze, through what looks like buttons where his eyes should be. The mask evokes another, much less well-known influence, 1976's The Town That Dreaded Sundown, a Charles B. Pierce directed film, and also a movie about a serial murderer in a mask. 

Does the child die? We don't know. in the moment but but it certainly did not appear that he had much chance of survival. I can't stress how great this scene is. In only his second feature film, following the less than stellar but entirely memorable, Hellraiser, Barker demonstrates masterful control over his camera, the patience of Hitchcock in letting his scene build while adding details to amp the moment, and an ingenious notion of how to end a scene thick with dread and intrigue. It's remarkable and I am shocked I've not heard about this scene before. 

Another example of Barker's growth as a director is his choice to follow this scene by letting off some steam. He needs to place his characters on a map for the story to proceed. Thus, Aaron is at work and his girlfriend, Lori (Anne Bobbi), drops in for a visit. She explains that she's going to be at a nightclub that night, performing as a singer. The dialogue is all exposition but it's not tedious as Aaron and Lori are making out almost the whole time, breaking for dialogue and an occasional breath. Scheffer and Bobbi have tremendous sexual chemistry so the making out is a good choice but we now also know where the characters are going to be and why. What looks like a superfluous scene then, is thus now a scene that has set the table for what is to come and established the couple even further as young lovers we want to see together again. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Horror in the 90s: Frankenhooker

Frankenhooker (1990) 

Directed by Frank Henenlotter 

Written by Robert 'Bob' Martin, Frank Henenlotter 

Starring James Lorinz, Patty Mullen, Louise Lasser 

Release Date April 1990 

Box Office $205,000 

Frankenhooker is a visionary work of cinema. It's a vision so bizarre and singular that you can barely wrap your mind around the existence of such a thing. I want to be in a room where someone thought of the idea for Frankenhooker and then wrote a screenplay. They then took the idea to other people and instead of laughing this bizarre idea out of existence, they handed over funding to make Frankenhooker. Actors were then sought and cast in  Frankenhooker. Movie theaters were then invited to book Frankenhooker to be screened for paying audiences.

How? How did this get past the idea phase? How did anyone conceive of this series of scenes which begins with a woman being destroyed by an out control lawn mower and then having her head preserved and attached to a patchwork of body parts cultivated from dead sex workers. There are many weird movies in the world that leave you scratching your head over how someone came up with such nonsense but few of those movies have the head of a dead woman being grafted onto a body made up of a patchwork of dead sex workers. 

If you don't know about Frankenhooker you, perhaps, think I have had some kind of mental collapse and that I am just making something up out of the fractured pieces left in my shattered psyche, but no, Frankenhooker is an actual movie that was made and distributed. Frankenhooker is 33 years old and readily available to anyone capable of streaming movies right now. Rather than being the dramatic result of this writer having suffered a traumatic brain injury, Frankenhooker is a real movie. I swear it is. 

Frankenhooker stars James Lorinz as Jeffrey Franken, a small-time mad scientist who lives with his mother. James is in love with Shelly and the two are set to be married soon. That all changes when Shelly is gruesomely murdered by an out of control, remote control lawnmower that Jeffrey had made as a gift for Shelly's father. Though most of Shelly was eviscerated, Jeffrey manages to save her head and uses a solution he'd created for a different mad scientist project, one involving a brain in a jar on his mom's kitchen table, Shelly's head is preserved. 

But why? Why preserve Shelly's head? Well, Jeffrey believes that he can save Shelly from death. Yes, Jeffrey has a cure for decapitation but it's not a cure that is easy to deploy. No, unfortunately, it will require a lot of bloody murder of sex workers. Thus, in order to save Shelly, Jeffrey takes the last of his life savings and goes to big city where a pimp named Zorro helps him hire several sex workers whom Jeffrey plans to murder and assemble into the perfect body for Shelly. He has two days to make this plan work with a thunderstorm expected to power Jeffrey's Shelly monster. 

The ending of the movie turns the Frankenstein story into a Tales from the Crypt/Twilight Zone style movie with a twist that turns the tables on Jeffrey in a visual you need to see to believe. Then again, to believe anything in Frankenhooker actually exists, you need to see it for yourself. It's one of the wildest ideas that anyone has ever brought to the big screen. The fact that something this insane exists is a testament to pure insanity as art. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media

Horror in the 90s: The Exorcist 3

The Exorcist 3 (1990) 

Directed by William Peter Blatty 

Written by William Peter Blatty 

Starring George C. Scott, Brad Dourif, Scott Wilson, Nicol Williamson

Release Date August 17th, 1990 

Box Office $44 million 

People forget just how big a hit The Exorcist 3 was when it was released in August of 1990. William Peter Blatty's first and only directorial effort managed to top the box office on opening weekend and accumulated overall, a gross that would be over $100 million dollars today. Despite much negative reaction to the film at the time, The Exorcist 3 has persisted in the minds of horror fans as a rare third sequel in a famous franchise that doesn't stink out loud. 

The Exorcist 3 centers on a Police Detective, Lt. William F. Kinderman, played by legendary actor George C. Scott. Kinderman recalls having been at the scene of the crime when in 1975 Father Damian Karras plunged to his death from the apartment window of young Regan MacNeil after having participated in Regan's exorcism. It's a horrific memory that Kinderman shares with Father Karras' close friend, Father Joseph Dyer (Ed Flanders). And it's a memory that creeps back into both men's minds when a series of murders occur that recall a demonically possessed killer. 

In 2020, The Exorcist 3 turned 30 years old and on my podcast, the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast, we watched it and reviewed it on the show. Our review was incredibly positive. We loved George C. Scott's performance and the wild horror imagery of William Peter Blatty's shabby but endearing first time direction. Watching the film again, a mere 3 years later however, the charm is less pronounced. What steps forward are the flaws, the strange choices, the reasons the normies of 1990 hated this movie. 

It's sad but it appears to be true that I willed myself to like The Exorcist 3 so much in 2020 that I neglected just how weird and random William Peter Blatty's choices are. First of all, one of the first images of The Exorcist 3 is a jarringly silly shot that is intended to be frightening. Church doors fly open, and an ill-wind blows through the church, creating a chaotic swirl of loose hymnals and biblical verses. The camera slides into the chaos before cutting to a close up of a cross where a ceramic Jesus of Nazareth comically opens his eyes. The image of Jesus here looks like comedian Tom Kenny and the horror spell that Blatty is trying to cast fails immediately. 

This is followed by an attempt to give The Exorcist 3 the feel of a waking nightmare. The camera leaves the church and takes on a first person perspective, as if we are the camera and we are in the midst of a dream. We are walking down a wet street late at night. In the distance, a man who appears to be wearing a Priest's garb runs quickly and strangely across the street. The camera moves up and down with each step, the camera, our eyes, fall upon the sidewalk before us. A young man appears to the left of the frame holding a rose. We walk past him and continue up the street. The young man emerges again somehow having teleported to a spot ahead of us. He holds out the flower and we walk past. 

We then leap to a new location, the steps from Georgetown below the former home of Regan MacNeil. It's the place where Father Karras died after leaping from a fourth story window. We, the camera, roll down those stairs just as Father Karras did, rolling and bouncing horrifically until we reach the bottom, and there the nightmare ends. We awaken to helicopters intercut with scenes from the church. Our protagonists, Lt. Kinderman and Father Dyer going about their business. Kinderman is investigating a grisly murder scene. Father Dyer is practicing a sermon and scolding a student priest, played in a cameo by a very young, almost unrecognizable Kevin Corrigan, a favorite character of mine. 

The visual marriage of Lt. Kinderman and Father Dyer is accompanied by dialogue that establishes the long-time friendship of these two men. It's a friendship bound in the blood of their dead friend Father Karras. it's established that each man is haunted by this date, the date of Father Karras's death. They are haunted so much that they each feel the need to comfort the other. Each man talks of having to cheer up their old friend and thus they meet at a local movie theater for an umpteenth showing of It's a Wonderful Life. 

One can infer that Blatty is intending to evoke the life-affirming emotional power of It's a Wonderful Life to underline how these two men appreciate being alive. Other than that, it's a particularly random inclusion. The movie date is followed by a bizarre non-sequitur conversation in which the detective relates a story about why he doesn't want to go him to his wife and mother-in-law. It's a story about a fish currently occupying Kinderman's bathtub and how he hasn't had a bath in 3 days because the fish is there. This is the pretense Blatty feels is necessary to get Kinderman and Dyer to have dinner together and rehash stories about Father Karras and Kinderman's strange new murder case. 

Not to be Mr. IMDB trivia, but, as we cut to the restaurant in the following scene, there is an entirely random and uncommented upon cameo from a famous non-actor. Glimpsed ever so briefly in this scene is the former United States Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop. Most won't recognize the man but if you are of a certain age, his oddly styled beard, a style referred to as a chinstrap, as it circles the face without including a mustache, is a strangely familiar sight. Koop became famous in the late 80s and early 90s when he defied the Reagan and Bush administrations to openly discuss AIDS. He spoke of safe sex and promoted condoms at a time when it was not something conservatives wanted him to do. 

That's a wordy way of saying that spotting C. Everett Koop in a brief cameo in The Exorcist 3 is weird and quite distracting for someone who knows who he is. Perhaps the former Surgeon General was invited because he shared a prominent Letter C with star George C. Scott. These are the kinds of bizarre intrusive thoughts that such random inclusions invite. And they are a warning to future filmmakers, try to minimize such distracting cameos in your movie as they might pull focus from what you are trying to accomplish in a scene. 

Find my full length piece at Horror.Media

Movie Review: Cadillac Man

Cadillac Man (1990) 

Directed by Roger Donaldson 

Written by Ken Friedman

Starring Robin Williams, Tim Robbins, Paul Guilfoyle, Annabella Sciorra

Release Date May 18th, 1990

Published May 18th 2020

“Movies are machines that generate empathy” Roger Ebert 

My favorite theme in a movie is compassion. Watching genuine compassion from a character in a movie almost always gets to me. Cadillac Man was not a movie I expected to have compassion as a theme. On the surface, Cadillac Man is about a supremely selfish, self-involved car salesman who is taken hostage and has to use his ability to lie, cheat and steal to get himself out the jam. 

That’s just the surface, in the performance of Robin Williams as Joey, we have a desperately soul-sick man whose shallowness is beginning to wear away his will to live. He doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t even want to change too much, but Williams in his sweaty, sleezy, gesticulating performance, communicates Joey’s emotional emptiness and the desire he has to be better, even if he doesn’t realize it yet. 

Joey’s about to be forced to have the realization that he wants to be better in a highly stressful and dangerous way. As he’s desperately trying to sell cars to save his soul-sucking job, Joey winds up in the middle of a hostage situation. Into the scene comes Larry (Tim Robbins), the crazed husband of one of Joey’s co-workers, Donna (Annabella Sciorra). Donna’s been sleeping with the boss’s son, Little Jack (Paul Guilfoyle) and Larry has come to the dealership with an automatic weapon to exact revenge. 

Again, that’s the surface of the situation. Yes, Donna is cheating with the boss’s son, but Larry doesn’t really have a plan for revenge. He has the gun and what he claims are plastic explosives, but in reality, he’s the same kind of sad sack, lost soul that Joey is, only not nearly as self aware, intelligent, or brazen. Larry is like a lost child who just needs someone to care about him a little and Joey is a man who knows how to read people, sizes him up right away. 

Sensing that he can get everyone out safely, Joey turns to his skill as a salesman and sets about calming Larry down, serving his emotional needs, and almost instinctively, the goodness in Joey becomes the driving force of what comes next. For the next hour, Joey sets about becoming Larry’s friend, soothing his ego, nursing him and along the way, Joey transforms from a desperate man trying to save himself to a genuine person, who wants nothing more than to save everyone. 

That’s never on the surface of Cadillac Man. You get all of that just from Robin Williams’ incredible performance. The turn that Joey makes from self-obsessed con-artist to Larry’s friend and the protector of everyone in the car dealership happens steadily over the length of the midpoint of the movie, and through the final act. It begins as an act of a desperate man and becomes genuine compassion and empathy from one desperate, sad, man to another. 

All while this is happening director Roger Donaldson keeps up a relentless pace. Cadillac Man rarely lets up on the pace. The dialogue, the plot, the scenes, move with great quickness. Even before Larry arrives, about 40 minutes into the movie, he makes an early cameo but Robbins doesn’t arrive fully until the midpoint, the story sets the table incredibly well by introducing the competing ways in which Joey has dug himself into a seemingly inescapable hole of his own careless and callow creation. 

The opening act, with a motormouthed Joey talking directly to the camera before getting to work, allows Williams to be dynamic and of the kind of Robin Williams we know. As the act progresses though, and the walls start to crumble around Joey and this empty, selfish place he's created for himself, the film begins to take shape. Larry then enters in full chaos and shakes the foundations of the movie. Joey's resolve to keep his various lies in place begins fall down and as we watch the man reborn into a place where he is a genuine person it's fascinating to watch. 

Williams acts the role of Joey with his entire body. The sweaty energy that Williams brings to his broad stand up comedy here is inverted into drama as the quick wit searches for real answers instead of punchlines and pathos in instead of laughing payoffs. It's really rather extraordinary and unlike any other Robin Williams performance. Williams takes an empty suited, selfish, borderline villainous character, breaks him down to pieces and rebuilds him before our eyes without ever letting up on the pace of the story being told. 

Cadillac Man is desperately underrated and cruelly forgotten by time. Williams, known for his broad comedic roles, has a legend that overshadows his often brilliant dramatic work. That's why I wrote this review, I want to get people to see what I think is arguably the best Robin Williams performance. The one least seen by the masses and one that can work to remind people just how brilliant Robin Williams could be in just about any role. 

Cadillac Man is maybe my favorite movie of 1990.