Horror in the 90s Warlock

Warlock (1991) 

Directed by Steve Miner 

Written by David Twohy 

Starring Julian Sands, Lori Singer, Richard E. Grant 

Release Date January 11th, 1991 

Box Office $15 million dollars 

Warlock is a completely hilarious disaster. Though it stars respected English actors, Julian Sands and Richard E. Grant, it's an embarrassment to both men's legacies. It's a black mark on their CV's for sure and I feel unkind in even bringing it up in the wake of Julian Sands' tragic passing. But, sadly, as we start a new year of Horror in the 90s, winding out 1990 into 1991, we are confronted with Warlock as the next major horror movie release. Never mind that the movie was actually made in 1989, the release date and its subsequent reputation as both a disaster and somehow a franchise, begins in 1991. 

Warlock stars Julian Sands as the title character, Warlock. Here we must pause to examine the first thing we see in Warlock. A man is building a cage into which cats will be placed. These cats are then taken to the gallows where they are stacked on top of kindling. The ritual is being undertaken for the execution of the Warlock. The cats are being burned alive along with the witch because... witches like cats? Cats and witches do have a long-standing association though where director Steve Miner got the notion that cats were burned with witches they weren't directly associated with; I have no idea. 

Anyway, before he can be executed by fire with cats, Warlock talks to Satan and is tornadoed into the future. The movie literally shows a wispy cartoon tornado engulf Julian Sands and sweep him out of the room. It's the first of several unintentionally funny special effects in this epic bad movie. For reasons never explained, Satan tosses the Warlock into the future world via a farty tornado and tosses him through the window of a suburban California home. Here, the world's most chill roommates, Lori Singer's Kassandra and Kevin O'Brien as Chas, react to having a human being crash through the window of their home the way you or I might react to spilling our drink. 

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 

Movie Review Ghosts of Monday

Ghosts of Monday (2023) 

Directed by Francesco Cinquemani 

Written by Francesco Cinquemani

Starring Mark Huberman, Julian Sands, Elva Trill, Joanna Fyllidou 

Release Date January 23rd, 2023 

Published 

A television producer travels to Cypress to make a reality show about a supposedly haunted hotel in the new horror thriller Ghosts of Monday. Julian Sands stars as the host of the documentary, a man desperate to see an actual ghost after years of documenting non-haunted hauntings. Mark Huberman is the documentarian, the man charged with keeping his host in line while also investigating any potential haunting. Naturally, this being a horror thriller, ghosts do start showing up. 

In the 80s and early 90s, Julian Sands was a much-respected leading man with international acclaim. It's been years since Sands has stood at the center of a film and Ghosts of Monday is a strong demonstration as to why. Sands is hammy and completely checked out throughout his short stint on screen. Early on, his character is shown to be a bit of a drinker and it's hard not to imagine that the actor was getting a tad bit method in his performance. That's one thing that might explain Sands' rather bad performance. 

Ghosts of Monday relies heavily on a creepy soundtrack filled with atonal shrieks and symphonic flourishes. It's not a great soundtrack but at least it's trying harder than the rest of the movie to be creepy. Most of Ghosts of Monday is stultifyingly mundane. Clues are given as to the nature of the haunting at the hotel, and the link one of the main characters has to the haunting, but these clues aren't particularly intriguing. The film employs some of the tricks of reality TV ghost hunting shows and that only serves to show how low rent the whole movie is.

When your movie has to borrow from YouTube ghost hunting channels to create even a notion of tension, it's not a good sign. The film's best asset is being only a few minutes longer than your average episode of a ghost hunting reality show on YouTube. At a slight 75 minutes with credits, Ghosts of Monday doesn't linger. That's the nicest thing I can say about the movie however as nothing about film ever rises to being more than passably, professional. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

The Medallion

The Medallion (2003) 

Directed  by Gordon Chan 

Written by Bennett Joshua Davlin, Alfred Cheung, Gordon Chan, Paul Wheeler, Bey Logan

Starring Jackie Chan, Lee Evans, Claire Forlani, Julian Sands, John Rhy-Davies 

Release Date August 22nd, 2003 

As a stuntman Jackie Chan is unparalleled. However, as an actor, Jackie fights dialogue and loses badly. I can't fault Jackie for not having mastered the English language but I can fault the numerous directors who still force Chan to wrestle with not only dialogue but jokes and one liners, something that is almost as painful as one of Jackie's numerous pratfalls. In The Medallion, Jackie is once again relied upon to deliver jokey dialogue in between the fights, and though the fights are fun, the dialogue is absolutely deathly.

Chan is yet again in the role of a Hong Kong cop sent around the world to fight bad guys. In this version he's Eddie Yong and he is searching for a mystical young boy with strange powers who has been taken hostage by a terrorist named Snake-head (Julian Sands). On Eddie's side are a pair of Interpol agents, the bumbling comic relief Arthur (Lee Evans)and the love interest Nicole (Claire Forlani).

The Medallion of the title is the boy’s power source. With it he can bestow immortality or take it away. He can also use it to bring people back to life, which comes in handy when Eddie is killed attempting to save him. Not only does Eddie come back from the dead he now has super strength and immortality. However Snakehead has also used the Medallion and has the same powers as Eddie leading to climactic battle that is essentially an exercise in special effects, which really doesn't suit Jackie's more natural approach to fight scenes.

But then not much of anything in The Medallion seems to suit Jackie's talents save for the early fight scenes where Jackie gracefully works his way through henchman after henchman, barely breaking a sweat. When he does sweat it's usually fighting his way through sub Abbot and Costello style banter with Evans.

Director Gordon Chan, directing his first western feature, seems at a loss trying to combine Hong Kong action with a Hollywood script that calls for as much acting as fighting. You can see from the hack job editing that Gordon Chan didn't have a clue what to do with the film’s scripted humor which looks as if it was pieced together from the outtakes that always play during the credits of a Jackie Chan film.

The Medallion is yet another attempt by Hollywood to shoehorn Jackie Chan into American style action comedy and, like last years The Tuxedo, it's yet another failure. Jackie Chan is a charismatic and lovable actor but watching him have to wrestle with a script that doesn't suit his talents is painful to watch and impossible to enjoy.