Documentary Review Filling in the Blanks

Filling in the Blanks (2023)

Directed by Jon Baime 

Written by Jon Baime 

Starring Jon Baime, Phillip Schafer 

Release Date August 15th, 2023 

Published August 14th, 2023 

Who are you? What makes you, you? Is it your name? Your parents? Your genetic makeup? What do you know about you for sure. An in-built anxiety that many have is related to the fact that, though, obviously, we were there when were born, we didn't start developing and saving memories for several more years. We are entirely reliant upon our parents and other family members, to piece together the portions of our childhood where we were not yet fully developed enough to remember anything. That's a big deal, not having those memories can have a profound long term effects. 

Imagine if you had the building blocks of your own life toppled by a secret from before you had awareness enough to know what happened? All that you have relied on your parents, grandparents, or siblings to recall for you was a lie. Foundational truths about who you are can be brushed away by a breeze when a major lie is revealed. Case in point, documentary filmmaker Jon Baime. He has first hand experience of having the formative years of life explode before his eyes. Jon took a DNA test and found out that his father is not his biological father. 

All those years of formative memories, questions about why his brothers don't look like brothers. Questions about his mother's experience of childbirth, about whether or not he can trust anything his parents have ever told him in his more than 50 years on Earth is now in question. Jon's brothers are also not biologically related to their father. The oldest of the siblings also seeks out his bio-family while Jon finds himself welcomed by half-siblings and cousins that he never knew existed. He even finds his biological father is a man named Hesh, who also welcomes Jon like family. 

Find my full length review at Humans.Media 

Movie Review The Last Voyage of the Demeter

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) 

Directed by Andre Ovredal 

Written by Bragi Schut Jr, Zak Olkewicz 

Starring Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian 

Release Date August 11th, 2023

Published August 13th, 2023 

The Last Voyage of Demeter is the second attempt this year by Universal Pictures to tap the Dracula I.P for box office dollars. The first attempt, Renfield, was a disaster business-wise. Whether you enjoyed Renfield or not, the movie cost $65 million dollars and made $26.7 million at the box office. The Last Voyage of Demeter cost Universal and Amblin Entertainment more than $45 million dollars and on its opening weekend, Demeter made a meager $6.5 million. This is no reflection on the quality of The Last Voyage of Demeter but rather on the marketing of the movie which failed to convey the horror elements of the movie well enough to rope in that often very loyal market. 

As for the movie, it's far better than the reputation the film now has another Dracula related box office failure. The film stars Corey Hawkins, a tremendous young actor who appears doomed to supporting roles after his leading man play here failed at the box office. Hawkins plays a man named Clemens who purports to be one of the first black doctors to graduate from Cambridge University. However, because of the severe racism of the time, Clemens was unable to find work after his graduation. He then accepted a position in Romania only to find that he'd been offered the position by someone who didn't know Clemens was black. 

Now, having been stranded in Romania for an unspecified amount of time, Clemens finds a potential way to get home to England. A ship called Demeter is set to transport cargo around the Horn of Africa and back to England, a two and a half month trip. They need hands and after locals refuse to board the ship, having seen carvings and symbols on the cargo that they recognize as evil, Clemens finds himself hired as Ship's Doctor and Deck Hand. He's also getting a share of a small fortune that the crew of the Demeter has been given for this trip, a sum large enough to get the Captain (Liam Cunningham) and his first mate, Wojchek (David Dastmalchian) to ignore the many, many red flags going up regarding this trip. 

It should not be very hard, nor should it be considered a spoiler, to know that the cargo is, in fact, the body of Count Dracula (Javier Botet), his many possessions, and a young woman, Anna (Aisling Franciosi), who is set to be Dracula's traveling snack until he starts chowing down on crew members. Plans change when the box containing Anna breaks during the trip and she's rescued by Clemens. Dracula then is forced to start feeding on livestock and then step up to eating the crew while leaving just enough of them alive to finish the journey to England. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Classic Movie Review The French Connection

The French Connection (1971) 

Directed by William Friedkin 

Written by Ernest Tidyman

Starring Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey, Tony Lo Bianco 

Release Date October 7th, 1971 

Published August 11th 2023 

I don't get it. I don't get what anyone sees in The French Connection. I've tried. I've seen The French Connection a half dozen times. Each time I watch I try and see what so many others, including my idol, Roger Ebert sees in this beloved action movie. For the life of me, I just don't see it. The characters are thin, the action that is supposedly pulse-pounding feels plodding as I see it, and that car chase that has been raved about for more than 50 years is only impressive because it looks genuinely dangerous. I guess we're lucky no one was killed. That's supposed to be impressive. 

I do believe that the elements of The French Connection should work. William Friedkin is a very good director. I have recently written about his exceptional work much later in his career on a pair of outlandish but artful and exciting movies, The Hunted and Bug. I also have a great deal of love and respect for Gene Hackman. Hackman is one of the greats of 1970s cinemas, an icon who kept up his remarkable legacy of great work through to the end of his career via well-earned retirement just as Friedkin returned to the big screen. Roy Scheider, the cinematography, the dirty, grimy milieu, all add up to what should have been a really great movie. So why do I find The French Connection so mind numbingly dull? 

The French Connection tells the wide-ranging story of a drug deal. It begins in France where, presumably, an undercover cop is brutally gunned down. The opening scene of The French Connection lingers for ages as we watch the cop watch his targets, a French businessman named Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey), and his henchman, Pierre (Marcel Bozzuffi). He follows them from one location to another, and then goes for a walk and buys a baguette and appears to be calling it a day. He grabs his mail, and he gets shot in the face. 

Then we head to New York City where Detective Popeye Doyle is dressed as Santa Claus and talking to some kinds. Out of the corner of his eye, Doyle is watching a bar nearby where his partner, Cloudy (Roy Scheider) is undercover and waiting for a perp to make a move. When the perp does make a movie, a chase ensues. Eventually, in a back alley, after Cloudy gets stabbed in the hand, the perp is caught, and Doyle purposefully confounds the suspect by asking him if he 'Picked his toes in Poughkeepsie. Why? Who the hell knows. It never comes up exactly why Doyle does this. I had to google it to find out that it was a nonsense phrase intended to cause confusion during an interrogation. 

Toes aside, we then watch as Doyle and Cloudy get on the scent of a new player in the local drug business. Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) is a small-time shop owner who dreams of moving up in the drug racket. He's become connected to a top guy, a money man and Kingpin named Weinstock. Having made another connection with the aforementioned French guys, Sal has positioned himself to potentially pull off the biggest international heroin smuggling operation in history. Millions of dollars of the purest heroin on the market being brought into the country via a French movie star named Devereaux (Frederic de Pasquale). 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review The Fugitive

The Fugitive (1993) 

Directed by Andrew Davis 

Written by Jeb Stuart, David Twohy 

Starring Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Julianne Moore, Selma Blair, Joe Pantoliano

Release Date August 6th, 2023

Published August 7th, 2023 

The story behind the movie The Fugitive is much crazier than I would have ever expected. The movie is so tight and so uniquely performed, I assumed that it must have been a terrifically assembled piece of work behind the scenes. Then, I read an incredible thread on Twitter from a user named @ATRightMovies. This person lays out a behind the scenes story that, on the surface, you would assume led to the creation of a complete disaster of a movie. Script problems, a star who was halfheartedly interested in making the movie, and assumptions on the set that everyone was making a bad movie, somehow led to the creation of a film that was nominated for 7 Oscars, with one Oscar win. 

The Fugitive is based on a popular 1960s television series starring David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble, a man wrongly accused of murdering his wife. Harrison Ford takes on the role of Dr. Kimble in the movie which finds him returning to his well appointed home to find a one armed man had assaulted and murdered his wife (Sela Ward). Kimble fought the one armed man but he managed to mistake. When Police arrived, they found Dr. Kimble covered in his wife's blood, he'd tried to perform CPR and ended up clutching her dead body in his anguish over her death. 

The blood and Kimble's story about a one armed man are too much for the Chicago Police Investigators to buy. They arrest Kimble and charge him with murder. Found guilty, Richard is facing life in prison when fate intervenes. While being transported to a Federal Prison, other inmates on the transport initiate a plan for escape. They attack and stab a guard, the driver of the bus is shot and killed, and the bus crashes on train tracks. In a spectacular sequence, a train is headed toward the bus on the tracks. Kimble picks up the injured officer and saves his life. Then, in a moment that has been shared among the best action sequences of the past 30 years, Kimble leaps from the broken bus seconds before the train strikes it, leading to a train derailment. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 

Directed by Jeff Rowe

Written by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jeff Rowe, Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit 

Starring Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Hannibal Burress, Rose Byrne, Nicolas Cantu, John Cena, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, Post Malone

Release Date August 2nd, 2023 

Published August 6th, 2023 

I watched the 1990 live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles recently for a review timed to the release of the latest attempt to rebuild the Turtles as a viable movie franchise. What I found was a movie that I absolutely loved. I was too old when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released in 1990, I was 14 and I thought it was for much younger kids. Look back now, with the wisdom of more than 30 years, I can say, yes, it is a product for young children, younger than 14 even, but it's a wonderful product. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990 is a ridiculously fun movie. It's filled with wonderful invention and kid friendly action. 

Everything that came after that movie, not counting the television shows that I've never seen, has been a dreary slog. Each new film iteration of the Turtles has carried with it the very obvious burden of corporate exploitation. Each of the various filmmakers who tackled the franchise appeared to be doing so with a studio held gun to their head that dictated exactly how the movie should be geared toward selling merchandise and creating sequels was the only reason these movies existed. Thus, we got a series of joyless, unpleasant live action and animated attempts to leverage a popular I.P into a cash making machine. 

I say all of this to demonstrate the bias that the latest iteration of the Turtles on the big screen was up against in my mind. To say that I was cynical about seeing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the big screen again would be a grave understatement. What a lovely surprise it is then to report that the newest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles adventure, subtitled Mutant Mayhem, doesn't completely suck. In fact, it's actually pretty alright. The team of Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and director-co-writer, Jeff Rowe have found a tone and spirit that does well to hide the high level corporately leveraged truth behind its creation. 

Mutant Mayhem is yet another Turtles origin story. We have the back story courtesy of a flashback to the origin of our antagonist, a fellow mutant named Superfly. Superfly was the creation of mad scientist Baxter Stockman. Baxter created the ooze but was killed not long after by an evil organization who wanted to steal his ooze and use it to create their own mutant army. A very young Superfly fought off the baddies, rescued his fellow mutant babies, and fled into the night. He left behind one last tube of ooze which breaks and drips into the sewer. There, it finds the Turtles who are rescued by Splinter (Jackie Chan) who gets into the ooze himself. 

Splinter is rightfully afraid of humans. His first time taking his turtle babies to the surface world nearly ends with them being killed. Thus, Splinter becomes deeply overprotective. He spends the next decade training his Turtles, Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (Micah Abbey), Michaelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.) and Raphael (Brady Noon), to fight. Using old, abandoned VHS tapes, Splinter trains his Turtles to be able to defend themselves against humans. As the Turtles grow up into their mid-teens however, they've only become more and more curious about humans. They wonder if humans arent't as bad as Splinter claims. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media

Classic Movie Review Jaws 2

Jaws 2 (1978) 

Directed by Jeannot Szwarc 

Written by Carl Gottlieb, Howard Sackler

Starring Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Keith Gordon, Murray Hamilton 

Release Date June 16th, 1978

Published August 9th, 2023 

If there is ONE movie in the long history of movies that does not need a sequel, it's Jaws. Jaws, as crafted by Steven Spielberg, is a perfect movie. That doesn't mean it's the greatest movie of all time or even my favorite movie. When I say Jaws is a perfect movie, I merely stating that as the story is told and the film is executed, it's perfectly crafted in and of itself. Jaws, as it is, cannot be improved upon and requires no expansion upon its story. The characters, action, and ending, all play out in the best possible fashion for this movie. Jaws, as it plays, doesn't need to be expanded upon nor does it lend itself to being expanded upon. 

Thus, the only reason anyone would be ridiculous enough to make a sequel to Jaws is money. It's a purely mercenary effort to separate audiences from their money. There can be no art, no pure joy of creation to this endeavor, it's only about using something powerful as a brickbat with which to beat money out of audiences. Jaws is a money pinata and greedy Hollywood executives wanted their candy by any means necessary. That means that if they needed to force actor Roy Scheider to star in the sequel by holding him hostage to his contract, they would do it. And they did do that, Scheider didn't want to be in this movie. 

If it meant backing up a brinks truck to try and get Steven Spielberg and Richard Dreyfuss back, they would do it. It's a sign of great integrity that both Spielberg and Dreyfuss refused big money deals to compromise their integrity. Studio executives likely tried to drag up the corpse of Robert Shaw's Quint but thankfully stopped short of that. But would you be surprised that the idea was floated? It would not surprise me if that happened. Anything remotely familiar was going to be exploited for the chance of wacking that Jaws pinata. For instance, one person who did compromise his integrity is composer John Williams who did return and provided one of his most forgettable pieces of work for Jaws 2. 

So, why am I ranting about Jaws 2? The movie isn't exactly timely or relevant. Well, Jaws 2 was the classic on our latest episode of the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast. We paired Jaws 2 with The Meg 2: The Trench and what we found is that both of these movies stink out loud. Both The Meg 2 and Jaws 2 are miserable, overlong slogs that fail to remotely capture what made the first film something worth watching. The Meg, of course, doesn't compare with the genius of Jaws, it's merely the first of two Meg movies. But, The Meg is certainly better than its sequel and that's where the sequel relates to Jaws 2, which is a vastly inferior film to its original. 

Read my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review The Meg 2: The Trench

The Meg 2: The Trench (2023) 

Directed by Ben Wheatley 

Written by Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber, Dean Georgaris 

Starring Jason Stathan, Cliff Curtis, Wu Jing, Page Kennedy, Sophia Cali

Release Date August 4th, 2023 

Published August 4th, 2023 

The Meg 2: The Trench is not great. Here we have yet another in a seeming series of mediocre, manufactured sequel/remake intended to nakedly capitalize on a vaguely appreciated Intellectual Property. There isn't a single person working on The Meg 2: The Trench who appears to have enjoyed making this movie. No one appears to be having fun, each is merely going through the motions of an idiot plot, a series of dimwitted set pieces that stack the odds impossibly against our heroes only to have main character powers intervene to protect Jason Statham and the young girl who provides his motivation as a character. 

The Meg of the title is a Megalodon, a theoretical construct of an ancient shark that lives in a trench heretofore unexplored and unmapped by human eyes. Or so we think. In reality, a heartless group of mercenary capitalists who managed not only to map and navigate The Trench, they managed to build an entire mining colony on the ocean floor, completely under the noses of our heroes. A spy in the operation of Jonas (Jason Statham) and his pal, Mac (Cliff Curtis), has helped steal proprietary equipment from their boss, Jiuming (Wu Jing). 

Now that the team has traveled to The Trench for an exploration of the area, the spy sets about a game of sabotage, attempting to make sure that no one finds out about the illegal mining operation and the risk it provides to potentially allowing deadly Megalodons to escape from their undersea home and into the inhabited waters of nearby islands. Naturally, of course, The Meg's get loose and the mining operation was a mistake, and you know all of this before you ever get to this point in the movie. 

The trailer has already told you that Jonas has a fight against Meg's in which he's trying to spear them. Thus, there is no tension or suspense, the movie has promised this fight at if it hasn't happened yet, then why should you worry that our characters might not survive the underwater fight sequence we suffer through for most of the second act of The Meg 2: The Trench. Not that the movie was ever going to place Jason Statham in a context where he might not survive, that's silly, he has main character powers. The only minor suspense in The Meg 2: The Trench is who, other than Statham and Jonas' step-daughter, have main character powers strong enough to never be in danger. 

Spoiler alert, most of the characters you see in The Meg 2: The Trench, have main character powers. This means there is incredibly little tension or excitement in the movie. The danger feels forced and perfunctory. Each action set piece lacks in pacing and believability. It's all very silly but not silly in a fun way, silly in a fashion that leads to eye rolling. The makers of The Meg 2: The Trench needed to lean into the silliness and respect the fact that they are making a big dumb blockbuster. Sadly, there is a dour, dispirited quality to The Meg 2: The Trench that prevents camp, ironic appreciation of the film from setting in. 

I did laugh during The Meg 2: The Trench but I don't get the sense that I was laughing at something intended to be funny. These weren't the kind of tension breaking cathartic laughs that a movie like this should inspire. Rather, this was derisive laughter, laughing at the movie rather than with the movie. It's not so much laughing at the ballsy absurdity of the film, something the Fast and the Furious franchise thrives on. No, this was more of a 'wow, this is really dumb kind of laugh that accompanies an eye roll and a check of your phone to see how much longer the movie is. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review So I Married an Ax Murderer

So I Married an Ax Murderer (1993) 

Directed by Thomas Schlamme 

Written by Robbie Fox

Starring Mike Myers, Nancy Travis, Anthony LaPaglia, Brenda Fricker, Alan Arkin 

Release Date July 30th, 1993 

Published August 4th, 2023 

I feel like I should like the movie So I Married an Ax Murderer. I have the impression of the movie as a light hearted romp with a true crime twist. It sounds charming in description: Nice guy meets a woman who happens to have a bad history with men who disappear after marrying her. There are things about it that sound like a fun twist on the true crime and rom-com genre. And yet, every time I try watching So I Married an Ax Murderer, the film sets off the pedantic, cranky side of my personality. I like to think of myself as a pretty chill, relatively relaxed guy, but when I watch So I Married an Ax Murderer, my skin crawls and I get easily irritated. 

So I Married an Ax Murderer stars Mike Myers as Charlie. Charlie is a poet in San Francisco. Is being a poet in a coffee shop his job? He doesn't appear to have any other means of support so I guess that's what we are supposed to believe. Through Charlie's poetry, set to the beat of improvised jazz, we learn that Charlie is finicky about women. His most recent break up was dubiously related to his belief that his ex-girlfriend stole his cat. Charlie's best friend, a police detective, Tony (Anthony LaPaglia), believes Charlie is too hard on the women he dates and too picky about minor flaws they may or may not have. He thinks Charlie is simply afraid of commitment. 

This notion will be put to the test when Charlie meets Harriet (Nancy Travis), a beautiful woman who seems to speak his strange comic language. The two vibe over Charlie helping Harriet on a tough and busy day at her family Butcher Shop. Charlie's Dad, also played by Myers, was also a Butcher back in the day so Charlie volunteers to work for Harriet as a way to get the chance to hit on her all day. The two flirt mercilessly, mostly via various cuts of meat, I am in cringing just thinking about this scene. I can't help it. I kept thinking, this is her place of business, she's busy with a line of customers, and this guy is doing meat based schtick. She encourages it, but I only find that equally frustrating. 

The meaty flirtation leads to the two spending the night together and helps Charlie locate the first red flag about this new relationship. Harriet has a habit of talking and moaning in her sleep while talking about someone named Ralph. When confronted about Ralph, Harriet doesn't want to talk about it. Nor does Harriet want to talk about any aspect of her past, especially the number of times she's previously been married. By coincidence, Charlie's mom (Brenda Fricker), shows him a copy of the Weekly World News tabloid which has a story about a marrying serial killer who seduces and kills husbands. The pattern matches with some of Harriet's backstory and Charlie begins to end the relationship. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze (1991) 

Directed by Michael Pressman 

Written by Todd W. Langan 

Starring Paige Turco, David Warner, Vanilla Ice, Ernie Reyes Jr. 

Release Date March 22nd, 1991 

Published August 3rd, 2023 

If you don't realize that Hollywood studio executives are blood sucking snakes eager to suck the life blood out of anything that appears remotely like a hit, I have just one sequel for you, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze. Pumped out in less than 12 months after the original and without director David Barron, the man responsible for the charming first live action Turtles adventure, is as nakedly commercial and mercenary as Hollywood can possibly be. I'm sure that Barron's director's chair still had his name on it when he was already being replaced by the cheaper, less experienced but very eager Michael Pressman. 

Barron dodged a bullet, for sure. Had he stuck around to make a sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequel, he would have been blamed either for not giving the fans what they wanted, more Turtles, and, more than likely, he would be blamed for the film's mediocre performance in the rushed wake of making the first film and the studio bean counters urgency in making a second film in a hot, of the moment franchise. Naturally, not at all unexpectedly, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lacks for not having the steady, ingenious hand of Steve Barron guiding the sequel. 

Instead, what we get is a movie that was made cheap and fast and not at all satisfyingly. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze isn't bad, but it is kind of cheap and ugly due to the nature of it being rushed into production simply to capitalize on the success of the first film. There is always going to be an icky quality to a sequel that exists purely as a way to wring a little extra cash out of an existing intellectual property. It's always going to feel like a movie that only exists as a product to be used as a flail slapped on to the moving going consumer with the sole purpose of separating people from their cash. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.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 

Classic Movie Review The Hand

The Hand (1981)

Directed by Oliver Stone

Written by Oliver Stone

Starring Michael Caine, Bruce McGill

Release Date April 24th, 1981 

Published August 2nd, 2023 

The Hand is a truly bizarre idea. Writer-Director Oliver Stone, directing only his second feature, sets out to have us be genuinely afraid that a severed hand might be killing people. Forgetting the fact that watching people wrestle with a severed hand that they are holding to their throat is a very, very funny visual, Stone is deathly serious in how he presents The Hand. Eschewing the 60s B-Movie, Drive-In aesthetic more suited to this idea, Stone seems to think that he can convince us that a severed hand is a frightening monster on par with the greats of MGM's murderer's row. 

Stone is undermined in his effort by his choice of star. Michael Caine may be an all time beloved actor but when he's in a bad movie, he gets into the bad vibe. Caine has famously said of The Hand that the film helped put a new garage on his home. That about sums up Caine's level of commitment to this silly, silly movie that only the writer-director seems to think is genuinely scary. Caine hams it up in the role of cartoonist, Jon Lansdale. 

The contempt with which Caine discusses his character's profession is unintentionally hilarious. The idea is that he's become wildly successful and famous for writing a manly superhero character. But when Caine tries to defend the integrity of his creation, his art, he sounds as if he were mocking the very concept of comic strips all together. There is simply nothing about the actor Michael Caine that screams comic strip auteur. It's easy to sense that Caine simply doesn't care about this back story, it's what he's been asked to deliver and he's doing it. 

The plot of The Hand centers on an accident in which our cartoonist protagonist loses his hand. The hand is cut clean off and then simply vanishes from the field where it most certainly had landed. The hand then begins a reign of terror that begins with menacing the family cat and graduates to a legit body count. The question hovering over all of the action of The Hand however is: Is the hand killing people or is it all in Jon Lansdale's mind? 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review What Comes Around

What Comes Around (2023) 

Directed by Amy Redford 

Written by Scott Organ 

Starring Summer Phoenix, Kyle Gallner, Grace Van Dien, Indiana Affleck 

Release Date August 4th, 2023 

Published August 1st, 2023 

What Comes Around is a deeply divisive and boldly abrasive drama. Director Amy Redford and writer Scott Organ, adapting Organ's own novel called The Thing with Feathers,' are playing with some big emotions and big themes. The film is about age inappropriate relations that border on criminality. The film skirts close to the line of exploitation in how it uses inappropriate sexual relationships for melodrama. That the film doesn't tip over into an overwrought parody is some kind of miracle that can be credited to a group of terrific actors. 

Grace Van Dien stars in What Comes Around as Anna, a teenager, 17 to be precise, who has begun a dangerous online flirtation with an older man. She thinks he's only college aged, but the reality is that Eric (Kyle Gallner) is 28 years old. He started this online flirtation on a message board for people sharing poetry, when Anna was 16. Then, on the day Anna turns 17, Eric, whom Anna believed lived several states away, shows up at her door. Though she's initially creeped out by Eric, she soon comes around and is eventually sneaking him into her house, under the nose of her mother, Beth (Summer Phoenix) and her soon-to-be stepdad, Tim (Jesse Garcia). 

If this were the only lying going on, it might not be so transgressive. However, Eric has a very, very big secret that threatens to blow up not just Anna's life but her entire family. Eric has a connection to Anna's mother that he has failed to mention in the time they've been connecting via poetry and Facetime. Similarly, Beth has not talked about a traumatic part of her past, Anna was 4 years old at the time and Beth had not met Tim by this point. She'd hoped that her past would stay in the past. That was until Eric arrived. 

Read my full review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Dreamin' Wild

Dreamin' Wild (2023) 

Directed by Bill Pohlad 

Written by Bill Pohlad 

Starring Casey Affleck, Zooey Deschanel, Walton Goggins, Beau Bridges 

Release Date August 4th, 2023 

Published August 1st, 2023

The story of Donnie Emerson is a remarkable one. In the 1970s, he and his brother, Joe, made a record. It got recorded and it was made available on vinyl and everything. It appeared that Donnie, if not Joe, had a bright future ahead of him as a singer songwriter. Circumstances conspired and Donnie never found stardom. Then, in 2008, a copy of Donnie and Joe's album was found by a man in Spokane, Washington. He made it his mission to get the record to as many people as possible. The efforts of this man, Jack Fleischer, brought the record to the attention of Light in the Attic records, an indie label that managed to track down Donnie and Joe. 

In an improbable twist of fate, Dreamin' Wild, their 1978 record, found a new life. Donnie began a second act as a respected and revered singer songwriter and now, writer-director Bill Pohlad has brought the amazing story of Donnie, Joe and their family to the big screen in Dreamin' Wild. It's an inherently cinematic underdog story but the typical elements aren't as interesting to Pohlad as the inner turmoil of Donnie Emerson, a man who was racked with guilt over the failure of his music career and struggled with intense mistrust, insecurity and fear over trying to once again live his dream. 

Casey Affleck stars in Dreamin' Wild as Donnie Emerson. A father of two, Donnie's recording studio is struggling to stay afloat. Donnie and his wife, Nancy (Zooey Deschanel) support their family and business by playing covers at weddings and other small venue events. Donnie is facing an uncertain future when this random phone call changes everything. Matt Sullivan (Chris Messina), a record company flack for Light in the Attic Records has moved mountains trying to find Donnie and his brother, Joe (Walton Goggins). 

Somewhere in Montana, someone found a copy of a record called Dreamin' Wild. The record was recorded by the Emerson Brothers in 1978 and it had been mostly a failure. It did lead to Donnie briefly getting a record deal and traveling to Los Angeles, but he soon ended up back home. That's a story that we will eventually uncover as Dreamin' Wilde lays out its story. For the moment, it's nothing but good news for Donnie's family, including his loving and supportive father, Don Sr. (Beau Bridges). The only one who seems reticent about this sudden new discovery is Donnie. 

Find my full length review on Beat.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 

Movie Review Haunted Mansion

Haunted Mansion (2023) 

Directed by Justin Simien 

Written by Katie Dippold 

Starring LaKeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny Devito, Chase W. Dillon, Jared Leto, Jamie Lee Curtis 

Release Date July 28th, 2023 

Published July 31st, 2023 

There is a lovely idea at the heart of Haunted Mansion that gets lost among the muck of trying to make a wide appeal blockbuster family movie. At the core of Haunted Mansion, director Justin Simien, creator of the ingenious, Dear White People, appears fascinated by the concept of grief and the ways it manifests in negative ways for many people. Losing someone you love is a life altering event, it can lead to any number of negative manifestations if it is not dealt with and processed in a healthy fashion. It manifests in Haunted Mansion via LaLeith Stanfield's Ben, an astrophysicist who gave up everything after his young wife died. 

Stanfield is unquestionably an actor who can handle this kind of heavy material but the heavy nature of Haunted Mansion unfortunately drags on what is otherwise intended to be a summer blockbuster version of a Disney theme park ride. While Simien is working in the emotional space of Stanfield's grieving widower, the rest of the movie appears to be going for something broad, campy, scary and yet family friendly and the tonal dissonance is a big part of the overall failure of Haunted Mansion. By attempting to serve a number of ideas, the film ends up serving none of those ideas particularly well. 

Ben (Stanfield) was once a very successful and happy Astrophysicist shyly using his unique profession to hit on women. One of those women is Alyssa (Charity Jordan), a tour guide who leads haunted tours through New Orleans. Ben, being a man of science, doesn't believe in ghosts but he still falls hard for Alyssa and the two end up getting married at some point, we don't see that part. What we do see is that Alyssa is no longer with us, a mystery that will be unsatisfyingly resolved later in the film, and Ben is floundering. Having given up all aspects of his previous life, Ben now leads Alyssa's tours while drunk and being entirely uninterested in indulging and any notions of ghosts being real. 

Ben's trajectory is altered forever by the arrival of Father Kent (Owen Wilson). Kent knows Ben by reputation. He knows that Ben had, years earlier, invented a camera that could theoretically, take pictures of the dead. He has a job for Ben. A single mother, Gabbie (Rosario Dawson), has moved into a decrepit mansion on the outskirts of New Orleans. Gabbie, and her son, Travis (Chase W. Dillon), are also dealing with the fairly recent loss of Travis' father, a loss that neither mother or son has fully processed. The parallel of both Ben and Gabbie having lost someone is used as something of a shorthand to bring them together as love interests but the love story feels rushed and forced. 

That's the thing about Haunted Mansion, I am this far into this review and I haven't mentioned any ghosts. That's because none of the ghosts or scares in Haunted Mansion are very memorable. Jamie Lee Curtis is perhaps the most interesting of the spooks. She plays a dead psychic who was killed and her spirit was trapped inside of a crystal ball. The visual of Curtis's head in the crystal ball isn't bad but its not very elaborate. It's fine, like far too much of Haunted Mansion is fine, it's there, it exists, but it doesn't have much of anything interesting about it. 

The big bad of Haunted Mansion is the Hat Box ghost, played by Jared Leto. The Hat Box Ghost is a remarkably weak villain. The ghost's real name is Crump and the lame comparisons between Crump and Donald Trump are not stated out loud but are very clear. It's a lame non-joke, clearly intended but not well executed at all. It stands out as a bad idea because Leto's performance as Hatbox Ghost is half-hearted at best. The same can be said of the weak CGI look of the character which is scarier in a single drawing by a sketch artist in the movie than it ever is alive and moving around in Haunted Mansion. 

Incidentally, the Police sketch artist in Haunted Mansion is played by Hasan Minaj, a very funny man who is wasted in a nothing performance. Minaj is there to skeptically poke fun at Stanfield and Devito's claims about a ghost and he's offscreen in less than 3 minutes. And, Minaj isn't the biggest waste of talent in Haunted Mansion. Dan Levy and Winona Ryder both make appearances in Haunted Mansion and you are left to wonder if they owed someone a favor and that favor was being in this movie. Levy, one of the most dynamic comic personalities working today gets less than 2 minutes of screentime and his outfit is funnier than anything his character does. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Classic Movie Review Robin Hood Men in Tights

Robin Hood Men in Tights (1993) 

Directed by Mel Brooks 

Written by Mel Brooks, Evan Chandler, J. David Shapiro 

Starring Cary Elwes, Amy Yasbeck, Mel Brooks, Richard Lewis, Roger Rees, Isaac Hayes 

Release Date July 28th, 1993 

Published July 25th, 2023 

Mel Brooks has a generational impact. For many, their Mel Brooks movie experience began with The Producers and proceeded to Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles. My Mel Brooks experience, due to having been born late in the Gen-X generation, was a little different. My Mel Brooks movies were Spaceballs and Robin Hood Men in Tights. The earlier Mel Brooks classics came to me later. Thus, I think I hold both Spaceballs and Robin Hood Men in Tights in high regard because I simply saw them and fell in love with them first. 

This doesn't mean that I believe that Spaceballs and Robin Hood Men in Tights are better than the Brooks 1970s movies. It just means that I have a much softer spot for Brooks 80s period, one that many older Brooks fans do not share. Older fans of Mel Brooks have often stated that Brooks became a bit to reliant on referring to his past glory in the 80s and early 90s. They aren't entirely wrong. Both Spaceballs and Robin Hood Men in Tights rely heavily on referring to gags and characters that Brooks invented in his glorious 60s and 70s peak. 

That said, I still love Robin Hood Men in Tights and looking back on it 30 years after it was released, I was surprised to find that my love for the film is as strong as ever. Brooks' ingenious satire of Kevin Costner's dreary Robin Hood adaptation is also a loving homage to the original telling of Robin Hood on the big screen, that undertaken by the legendary Errol Flynn in the 1930s. Weaving nods to both of those Robin Hood stories, amid references to his own legendary canon, Mel Brooks created Robin Hood Men in Tights, a cocksure, headstrong comedy that stands on its own. Or was that the other way around? 

The brilliance of Mel Brooks is on display immediately in Robin Hood Men in Tights. Within moments of his credits sequence bursting on the screen with heroic music and the visual of fiery arrows being fired into the distance, Brooks begins breaking the fourth wall. The credits arrows have hit a nearby village, lighting the whole thing on fire as residents complain that this happens every time someone makes a Robin Hood movie. The very funny meta gag ends with the extras turning to the camera to tell Mel Brooks to leave them alone. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Classic Movie Review Dr. Strangelove

Dr. Strangelove (1964) 

Directed by Stanley Kubrick 

Written by Terry Southern, Peter George, Stanley Kubrick 

Starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens 

Release Date January 29th, 1964 

Published July 24th, 2023 

Dr. Strangelove is very much a movie of its time. When it was released in 1964 it was a boiling mad, raging cauldron of immediate satire of world events currently in motion. Imagine something like Oliver Stone's W, w a film made and released while George W. Bush was still President, and you can get the sense of how timely Dr. Strangelove was in 1964. It's also far better than W which was a desperately bland attempted polemic. There was nothing bland about Dr. Strangelove in 1964. The film was bitter and biting, savaging the powerful in a fashion that genuinely set the leaders of the day on edge. 

Powerful leaders in military and government would have preferred that audiences in 1964 not know just how desperately unsafe our approach to nuclear weapons was at the time. They wanted us to be reassured that their leaders were well prepared, thoughtful, and of sound judgment. The reality, of course, was that the people in charge of our nuclear program were human beings just as potentially flawed and failing as anyone else. Dr. Strangelove takes the idea of egotistical, deeply flawed individuals in charge of world destroying technology to its most ugly and terrifying yet logical conclusion. 

The thought experiment was thus: What if one of our military leaders happened to come unglued and decided to end the world? What would it take to stop this military leader from causing the end of the world? Was it possible for one crazed lunatic in our leadership to end the world? The answer was a very uneasy, yes. The fact of the matter, though we were never blown up by nuclear weapons during the Cold War, it was always a possibility. All it took was a couple of bad breaks and one determined nut to bring about a global catastrophe. 

Dr. Strangelove exposes the absurdity of this idea, putting the idea in your head and forcing you to understand the stakes of a Cold War. Cold War has become synonymous with a period of time from Post World War 2 through the fall of the USSR in the early 1990s. But the real definition of a Cold War was simply a war that didn't involve fighting battles with troops and guns. It was a war of behind the scenes maneuvering and global chess. It was a balancing of big egos, bitter words and unrelenting suspicion. The only thing keeping us all alive was the desire among our leaders not to die. Had they come up with a solution that they could have comfortably survived, they might not have been so good at holding back the nukes. 

We look back on it now with a sort of wistful sigh of relief, as if we aren't still under threat of Nuclear annihilation. But, the fact is, Dr. Strangelove is actually still entirely relevant. Nuclear détente is still a thing. We still have a standing agreement with other countries capable of having nuclear weapons that we don't destroy each other but we all still could destroy each other. We just don't talk about nuclear weapons anymore aside from vague observations during Presidential election years when someone will allude to not wanting so and so to have the nuclear launch codes. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Barbie

Barbie (2023)

Directed by Greta Gerwig 

Written by Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig 

Starring Margot Robbie, Helen Mirren, Ryan Gosling, Rhea Perlman, Simu Liu, Will Ferrell, America Ferrara 

Release Date July 21st, 2023 

Published July 23rd 2023 

Barbie is some of the most fun that I have had at the movies in 2023. The comedy is rich and thorny and the attitude is all sparkles and pink. It's lively, energetic and innovatively presented by one of our best working storytellers today, Greta Gerwig. I was highly skeptical and a bit perturbed that one of the best directors working today had turned their attention to directing a movie about Barbie. I should not have been. I should have just trusted that Greta Gerwig knew exactly what she was doing. The product of this highly commercial move into blockbuster product placement is a wildly funny meta-comedy about existence, purpose, and the desire to understand oneself. 

If any actress was going to be the right choice to deconstruct and uphold the legend of Barbie, it was Margot Robbie. She's ideal Barbie, an uber-talented, multi-hyphenate, who happens to look like a Barbie doll come to life. She's also among our most talented and versatile actors today so, of course, her take on Barbie is way more complex than anything you are anticipating. And it's that very complexity that brings the biggest laughs as invasive thoughts begin to consume Robbie's 'Stereotypical Barbie,' the version of Barbie you imagine when you think of Barbie Dolls. 

Of course, there have been dozens of different Barbies over the years. Barbies of different ethnicities, body types, and professions as vast and wide as Astronaut, Supreme Court Justice, and President Barbie. Each Barbie is played by a murderer's row of the best supporting players working today including Issa Rae, Hari Neff, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Mackey and Sharon Rooney. All of the Barbie's of this unique movie universe live in Barbieland, a magical place adjacent to the real world where Mattel, headed up by Will Ferrell, keeps pumping out market tested new versions of Barbie, as well as several Ken's. 

Oh, yeah, almost forgot about Ken. Ken is played by Ryan Gosling in a scene-stealing performance. He's stereotypical Ken and thus fated to love Barbie. But what happens if she doesn't love him? Meanwhile, several dozen other Ken's follow the lead of either stereotypical Ken or his nemesis, Ken 2 (Simu Liu). Both appear to be vying for Barbie's attention, much to Ken's dismay. Oh, and Alan (Michael Cera), is kicking around somewhere in the background. Alan is a long-discontinued pal of Ken and Barbie, a real Barbie character variation. The jokes about Alan are all hits throughout Barbie, even as Michael Cera portrays him quite sympathetically. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer (2023) 

Directed by Christopher Nolan 

Written by Christopher Nolan 

Starring Robert Downey Jr, Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett 

Release Date July 21st, 2023 

Published July 21st, 2023 

Oppenheimer is the kind of epic filmmaking that we've not seen in years. It's expansive, expensive, and visionary work that encompasses American history within a singular story. The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of contradiction and controversy. Oppenheimer gave the humanity the ability to destroy itself and placed that power in the hands of egomaniacal world leaders. Then he spent his life trying to convince people to use this power responsibly. He was somewhat successful, we haven't been incinerated by Oppenheimer's creation. But that that is cold comfort, Oppenheimer's creation still hangs like the sword of Damocles over all of our heads, even as we all do our best to ignore it. 

The expansive story of J. Robert Oppenheimer exists in movie form in three separate threads. In the first thread, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) is facing a Congressional hearing over his appointment to a position in President Eisenhower's cabinet. Though a top aid to the President, played by Alden Ehrenreich, assures him his approval is a near guarantee, Strauss is concerned that his past interactions with J. Robert Oppenheimer, a former friend and subordinate, will cost him his position. As this story plays out there were many twists and turns in the relationship between Oppenheimer and Strauss and that we only remember one of them historically says a lot. 

In the second thread, we see J. Robert Oppenheimer rising through the academic ranks in the world of physics before ending up at Berkley. There he forms a friendship and partnership with Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), the man who would take Oppenheimer's theory and turn it into a reality. Both men are brilliant and one doesn't succeed without the other, even as Oppenheimer is the one who goes on to infamy as the man who founded Los Alamos and led the charge to create the bomb. Nevertheless, without Lawrence, Oppenheimer may not have been sought to lead Los Alamos, it was Lawrence who joined The Manhattan Project first. 

The third thread finds Oppenheimer, known by colleagues as Oppy, though that always feels far to whimsical for a man this serious, takes charge of Los Alamos, essentially a town founded with the specific goal of uniting America's best scientists in one place in order to build the bomb. Here, Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves work as leaders and adversaries in the 2 billion dollar effort to beat the Nazis and then the Russians to the development of a weapon of mass destruction. The point of the Manhattan Project was beating the Nazis but the war in Europe is won before the bomb is built. 

This leads to a number of ethical debates about whether the the bomb still needs to be built. Oppenheimer here is shown as ineffectual in trying to make the case against developing the bomb. At a certain point, he just wanted to know if it could be done and this ambition allowed him to passively be convinced that dropping the bomb in Japan was a necessary evil intended to end the war in the Pacific and show Russia the full force of the American military. Oppenheimer was of two minds, understanding the bomb as a deterrent to future wars while also worrying that developing the bomb would cause a dangerous and divisive arms race. 

Simmering in the background is Oppenheimer's personal life which is divided between two women, among several he may have carried on relationships with. Oppenheimer's first love was communist author and psychiatrist, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). She tries to recruit Oppenheimer to communism but finding him noncommittal to the cause, she settles for a tumultuous affair with Oppenheimer that unfortunately collides with Oppenheimer's relationship with the woman who would become his wife and mother of his children, Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt). 

These two women reveal different aspects of Oppenheimer, aspects that cut to the core of the human being behind the pragmatic scientist turned unlikely patriot. From Jean Tatlock we learn about Oppenheimer's approach to politics but also to passion and how emotion can collide with his dedication to reason and education. Through Kitty we see the conflicted Oppenheimer, the vulnerable, awkward, self-effacing man behind the confident veneer of a world famous scientist. In the performances of these three actors we see this incredibly tense and passionate attempt to get Oppenheimer to open up and confront himself and his creation and we watch Murphy do everything he can to maintain composure in the face of world altering history on a very human scale. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media

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