Category Archives: Movies
Zombi 2 (1979)
It’s an old story but I’ll tell it again: George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead premiered in April, 1978. By September, it reached Italy under the title Zombi, because alteration doesn’t translate well and, hey, at least the title’s illustrative. I might’ve gone with Zombis myself, but nobody asked. Instead, hoping to cash in on Dawn of the Dead/Zombi‘s international success, Italian action/Western/thriller/giallo director Lucio Fulci gave us Zombi 2 the very next year.
Released in America in the summer of 1980 under the title Zombie, Fulci’s film (which I’ll refer to as “Zombi 2” from now on just for the sake of clarity) became a matinee and drive-in sensation. It’s another case of the right film in the right place at the right time, finding its natural audience in the English-speaking world’s teenagers. Between Night and Dawn, Romero managed to raise a whole generation of horror fans who didn’t want to wait ten years for the next zombie movies, damnit. We wanted them now. So what if half the cast have their lines dubbed? Some of us put up with way worse just to get our giant monster movie fix. Continue reading Zombi 2 (1979)
Drive (2011)
Am I the only one who remembers Grand Theft Auto: Vice City?
No, that’s too flippant. I know for a fact director Nicolas Winding Refn remembers Steve McQueen’s 1972 movie The Getaway. I’ll bet he remembers its pointless 1994 remake (starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Bassinger of all people) as well. Me, though, I remember Vice City. I played the whole way through that stupid game twice (2002 was a bad year) and, apart from its bitchin’ soundtrack, I remember a whole lot of hot pink cursive text. The kind that’s all over Drive, Refn’s ninth movie and the first real critical darling of Fall 2011.
That last sentence assumes you’re like me and like to pretend Planet of the Apes remakes don’t exist. [Future Dave’s note: You’ll have to forgive past-me’s egregiously ill-informed pre-judgement of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which we wound up liking quite a lot, in spite of its shitty title. Proof, once again, that the Cultural Zeitgeist is occasionally right about something and that I am a misanthropic, ornery jerk, prone to thinking the worst about everything.] So I’m a critic. I should like Drive…right? Well…I do…kinda…but I’m not like you people. You see this site. You know what I’m into. And hopefully I’ve made what I don’t like crystal clear. Continue reading Drive (2011)
Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1995)
Darkman (1990) – A video supplement
Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster (1966)
Twelve years after his debut, Godzilla found himself riding an international wave of giant monster movies, Japanese or otherwise. The previous three films flooded Toho Studios with an admirable amount of cash and an (arguably) even larger amount of prestige. Rival studios began fielding their own monstrous challengers to Godzilla’s crown, but no one really cared about them yet. Why settle for second, third, or even fourth-best when the King of Monsters’ still going strong?
Hoping to cement their market dominance, Toho shook things up behind the scenes, turning director Ishiro Honda’s years of daikaiju movie-making experience towards creating new kaiju with familiar, and thus internationally marketable, names (like “Frankenstein“). Special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya, his work now in high demand, founded the production company that bears his name and set to work creating the next generation of fans through the then-new medium of television…and a little superhero show called Ultraman. You might’ve heard about it.
Then someone got a hot idea: resurrect King Kong and team him up with Mothra for a rollicking kaiju adventure on a (budget-conscious) South Sea island. Then something happened. I’ve heard too many stories to tell you the truth. A dispute erupted over the rights to Kong’s name. Or the rights were all secure and the major sticking point became a cost-effective foreign distribution strategy. Or maybe someone, somewhere, mentioned the idea the became King Kong Escapes. Continue reading Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster (1966)
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)
I’m supposed to warn you away from early-90s [Famous Person’s Name] [Semicolon] [Actual Title] films, but I’m pretty sweet on this one. It’s no Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but New Nightmare is something we hadn’t seen for quite some time by 1994: a decent Wes Craven film.
(And yes, though I’ll continue to call it New Nightmare for brevity’s sake, I’ll be filing this under “W”). As a member of the Home Video generation, I’m culturally obligated to mention the Craven movies most people (including Craven, it seems) would just as soon forget. People like Shocker and if I tilt my head and squint, I can see that. People like The People Under the Stairs and, hey, why not? But by the mid-90s, a sizable minority of horror fans had begun to vocalize The Unthinkable: maybe Craven just got lucky. Twice. Three times if you stretch. Maybe he’d never been the Master of Horror everyone wanted to believe. Or maybe, like George Lucus, he’d just spent too much time inside The Hollywood Bubble, constantly hearing people tell him how much of a Master of Horror he was/is/will forever be. Continue reading Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)
Godzilla vs. Monster Zero (1965)
There is no human achievement more complex, daunting or inspirational than the “conquest” of outer space. I put “conquest” in sarcastic quotes because we really haven’t conquered jack shit. We’ve played golf on our nearest satellite and left a plaque for the cockroaches to find. By the standards of SF in the mid-60s, we’re way behind schedule.
We should’ve discovered our tenth planet by now. Instead we’re down one and the space shuttle’s been mothballed. Robots do all our exploring for us because it’s cheaper and “safer.” As if anyone said space would be “safe.” We’ve known there were monsters out there since before we knew how out there could really be. Martians invaded in 1898, 1938 and 1953. Earth itself faced off against (not just any ol flying saucers but) the Flying Saucers in ’56. The Mysterians came for our women in ’57, Krankor came for our rocket fuel in ’59, and in ’61 the Neptune Men came for…umm…yeah…something…I forget because that movie was so boring. King Ghidorah’s arrival in 64 was only the icing on the cake. And in 196X, we discovered Planet X. Continue reading Godzilla vs. Monster Zero (1965)
The Rocketeer (1991)
Here’s another great example of a good idea handled badly by a major studio more interested in selling toys than selling a movie. Dick Tracy didn’t do as well as Disney’s upper management hoped, at least not on the merchandising front. Michael Eisner’s mouse house – eager to make that up, and hopefully copy Warner Brothers success with the Batman franchise – bought license rights for this particularly independent comic book property because of its high-concept and oodles of nostalgia.
The Rocketeer is a deliberate homage to movie serials, pulp-novels, and comic books of the early-to-mid 20th century. Its steeped in cameos, in-jokes, and subtle references fans of its source material or time period (or both) will readily appreciate. Interestingly enough, Dick Tracy, which went out of its way to look like a comic book, could help but wind up feeling like a cheap, Disney-fied gangster movie. The Rocketeer, which goes out of its way to look like a big-budget movie (even if the budget wasn’t as big as it needed to be) feels more like a comic book done well.
Problem is, in order for a kid from 1991 to find The Rocketeer anything but slow, kitschy and boring, that kid had to have my parents…or the rough local equivalent. An adult figure kind enough to pass on their appreciation for the Golden Ages of cinema and Sci-Fi literature. You could say I was preconditioned to like this film, but does The Rocketeer hold up today…? Continue reading The Rocketeer (1991)