1982: The Greatest Geek Year Ever

Technically, there was a superhero movie this year, but it takes a while to get to it. As it happens, Clint Eastwood, whose most likely final film was just unceremoniously dumped into theaters, had two films release this year. Genre fans were truly spoiled this year, but we didn’t know how good we had it growing up in the 1980s. Looking back, most viewers will agree with the general enthusiasm of the commentators in Roger Lay Jr.’s 1982: The Greatest Geek Year Ever, which releases Tuesday on DVD in a feature-documentary cut.

It will not take long to convince readers of 1982’s cinematic merits. Just look at the highlights: E.T., Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Rocky III, Creepshow, Poltergeist, and Conan the Barbarian. Amongst the “flops” were universally beloved classics like John Carpenter’s The Thing and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Plus, there were “minor” hits like The Swamp Thing (the lone “superhero” movie) and Tron, which scratched out its profitability for Disney through video game tie-ins.

There were several historic firsts, like Friday the 13^th, Part III, which was the first film in which Jason wore the iconic hockey mask. Sadly, Halloween III: The Season of the Witch became the first and last installment of the Halloween franchise not featuring Michael Myers, but in retrospect, it was one of the best. Filmmakers took risks, which sometimes paid off, as with Jim Henson’s brilliant The Dark Crystal.

All of the above films are covered in considerable detail during Greatest Geek Year Ever—and rightfully so. However, some of the omissions will leave you scratching your head, like Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Quest for Fire and Alan Parker’s Pink Floyd: The Wall, which were shoot-for-the-moon movies if ever there was one. Weirdly, nobody mentions this was the first year Disney faced serious competition for theatrical animation, from Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH, and Rankin-Bass’s The Last Unicorn.

They cover some of the “prestige” films as well, while lamenting the Best Picture Oscar for Ghandi over so many other films that have become a part of our lives (yet, it is not as egregious as Kramer vs. Kramer winning in 1979, which stands as another incredibly deep year for movies). Appropriately, Lay and company spend a good deal of time on Eastwood’s Firefox, which arguably represents the very first “techno-thriller,” whereas Eastwood’s much more personal Honkytonk Man is ignored. Perhaps one of the most glaring oversights is An Officer and a Gentleman, which is only mentioned it passing, but still holds up and its military cred ought to buy it more screen discussion.

Frankly, some of the most entertaining segments focus on more idiosyncratic selections, like The Beastmaster, which became a hit on video, and the Roger Corman-produced Forbidden World, mostly because it is always fun to hear the low-budget mogul reminisce. Yet, nobody is more tongue-in-cheek than Barry Bostwick looking back on the goofiness of Hal Needham’s Megaforce.

TouTouYouTou, on MHz Choice

In the 1980s, France still had Yves Saint Laurent, but America had leg-warmers and spandex. They had Mitterand, but we had Reagan and contrary to what you might have heard, America in the Eighties offered far more professional opportunities for women. Consequently, an American spy reluctantly posted to France on an industrial espionage assignment has two potent weapons at her disposal: aerobics and feminism. French aerospace hardly stands a chance in co-creators Geraldine de Margerie & Maxime Donzel’s ten-part TouTouYouTou, which premieres today on MHz Choice.

Karine Lurdou could have been a great airplane designer, but instead she married pompous Didier, who treats her like a live-in maid, while he flails about hopelessly as a clueless executive at the Blagnac aeronautic company. Their daughter Laura hates them both—but her mother really can’t blame her. She pretty much hates herself too. Jane, the super-fit American expat uber-cougar who moves in next door does not exactly boost her self-esteem either.

Yet, that is ironically what Jane seems determined to do. She convinces Lurdou to try her aerobics classes at the community center. The 1980s craze had yet to reach Blagnac, so the moves and the style are all new to Lurdou and her friends. Her best friend, Mapi (who also happens to be the mistress of the aerospace company director) is skeptical, but Lurdou is receptive. Frankly, she gets the most of Jane’s message of physical and emotional empowerment, but she is also the only one who starts to suspect their aerobics instructor is a spy.

Obviously, there is an anti-American bias baked into TouTouYouTou. However, Alexia Barlier is so terrific as the jazzercizing Mata Hari, she almost single-handedly flips the audience’s nationalistic loyalties. It isn’t just her wardrobe. Barlier is enormously charismatic and caustically droll. Watching her scheming and skulking about is highly entertaining.

Claire Dumas is also very good as Lurdou, convincingly portraying both her outer and inner transformations. In fact, the strength of their two performances makes the somewhat ambiguous conclusion so counter-intuitively satisfying.

Totally Killer, on Prime

All the best slashers take you back to an Eighties state of mind. This one literally takes Jamie Hughes back to the 1980s. Late in the awesome 80’s, the mysterious Sweet Sixteen Killer murdered three high school girls, stabbing them sixteen times. Then, suddenly, he reappears in 2023, killing her mom. Through an odd chain of events, she travels back in time to stop the killer in Nahnatchka Khan’s Blumhouse-produced Totally Killer, which premieres today on Prime.

For years, Pam Hughes was preparing for the killer’s return, like Laurie Strode in Halloween (2018), but she wasn’t quite prepared enough. The killer targets her daughter next, but Hughes (as in John?) escapes in her best friend Amelia Creston’s science fair project, a time machine. Somehow, it works when the killer’s knife gets jammed in the control panel.

Obviously, returning will be a problem, especially since it needs wifi. Fortunately, Creston based her designs on plans in her mother Lauren’s old notebooks. The 1980s Creston will work on the technical problems, while Hughes tries to catch the killer, but it will be even more difficult than she expected. For one thing, the teen Pam and her mean girl friends are too busy partying to take her warnings seriously, until they start getting killed.

Screenwriters David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver, and Jen D’Angelo score some laughs at the expense of 80’s attitudes that now look dated, as seen through the eyes of the woke-entitled Hughes. Yet, despite their intentions, the Reagan decade still looks like way more fun than our current scoldy watch-what-you-say times.

Surprisingly, their take on time travel is more consistently fun and entertaining. Hughes will indeed change things, but not always in the way she hoped. Murders still happen, but the victims and locations change. It turns out fusing slashers and time travel resulted in a fresh take on both.

Dead Flip: 1980s Horror for Teen Readers

If you can’t afford the Stranger Things pinball machine, you can at least read this book instead. In it, a trio of Eighties kids encounter the pinball equivalent of the Polybius arcade game, but instead of Men in Black, it runs on black magic. The scrawniest of the three falls victim to its power, but his other two friends will not uncover the truth until the 1990s in Sara Farizan’s YA novel, Dead Flip, which goes on-sale today.

Maziyar “Maz” Shahzad, Corinne “Cori” O’Brien, and Sam Bennett had always been inseparable, united by their geekly passions, but they were on the verge of the age when their coed friendship would get awkward. Halloween 1987 might have been their final time trick or treating together, even if Bennett had not mysteriously disappeared that night. Upset that his friends had opted for a party with the popular kids instead of visiting more houses, Bennett was drawn to the newly refurbished pinball machine at their favorite convenience store.

Shahzad also had a weird physical reaction to the Wizard-themed machine, but it really got its hooks into Bennett. Somehow, it made the young boy disappear. At least, that is what Shahzad always thought, but he couldn’t really verbalize the suspicion, because it would sound crazy. Instead, the guilt he carried affected his grades and his emotional well-being. He and O’Brien drifted apart, especially after he transferred to a new school. By chance, he and O’Brien bump into each other at the mall in 1993, which providentially reawakens their memories of 1987, just in time for a major new development in the case. Of course, it is too crazy for them to bring to parents, so they will have to deal with it together and with the help of a few of their new friends.

Occasionally, Farizan uses turns of phrase that would have sounds out of place in either the golden age of the 1980s or the bad old 1990s, but there is a good deal of on-target, era-appropriate nostalgia (plenty of Monster Squad references, but no Cannon action movies). Generally, she accurately captures the tone of a childhood without social media. The Stranger Things comps are unavoidable, but the Polybius urban legend was much more of a model for the story.

Yet, it is the relationship between the old friends and their new friendships that will keep the younger intended audience reading. At times, O’Brien and Shahzad’s devotion to the imperiled Bennett is quite poignant. It is also rewarding to see these central characters growing up and taking responsibility for their lives, especially under such extraordinary circumstances.

Unfortunately, there are a few interior monologues from O’Brien complaining about the unfair social demands of high school life for an in-the-closet young woman like that go on a little too long. Yet, that kind of content is demanded by the YA literary gate-keepers these days, and they don’t appreciate subtlety, so there it is. At least regular readers can blow through them relatively quickly and get back to a good story.

And it is a good story, nicely told. Perhaps most impressively, Farizan nicely handles the constant flashbacks and flashforwards, skillfully using them for dramatic effect. Recommended for teens who enjoy retro 19980s horror and Gen X parents, Dead Flip is now on-sale wherever books are sold.

Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 New York

It only made sense that radio in the 1980s would be as fun as the rest of the pop culture that decade. Scott Shannon was the first programmer/presenter to really figure that out and the New York radio station that hired him is still reaping the benefits of his top-40 “Morning Zoo” tenure. Director-writer-producer Mitchell Stuart chronicles the rise, with no subsequent fall, of the radio ratings juggernaut in Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 New York, which is now available on VOD.

You can’t beat 1980s nostalgia, even if you weren’t there for it at the time. Of course, Z100 is still a big name in the New York media landscape, but you have to wonder if anyone Millennial-age or younger really gets the influence radio used to have breaking new songs and artists. In this case, Shannon came to Z100 right when mega-stars like Madonna were poised to hit it big.

Frankly, Worst to First is almost more of a documentary about Shannon than Z100. Maybe it should have been, so Stuart could have covered Shannon’s rivalry with Don Imus when they were both VH1 VJs and his work as the announcer for Sean Hannity’s radio show. He outlasted a lot of his contemporaries, maintaining high-profile on-air gigs in the New York market and in national syndication.

Self-Quarantine Viewing: In Search of Last Action Heroes

In times like these, we could use some heroes. It makes us nostalgic for the 1980s, the golden age of action heroes. That was the decade action really came into its own as a distinct genre. Back then, even our president, Ronald Reagan, was an action hero. At a time when we’re self-quarantining and social-distancing, we will try catch up on some DVD/VOD releases we missed when they released earlier in the year. Oliver Harper’s In Search of Last Action Heroes, (co-produced by David A. Weiner, director of In Search of Darkness) is a particularly good viewing choice, because as an entertaining documentary survey of 80’s action, it also gives viewers plenty of good ideas for subsequent films to watch—and it is indeed available on DVD and VOD.

Of course, it is hard to chronicle 80s films without referencing some films of the 70s that they built on. This is particularly true of Death Wish and Alien, whose sequel Aliens is considered an action film rather than horror movie (that is a debatable but defensible position). Two stars come to define the era for Harper and co-writer Timon Singh: Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, which makes sense.

As was the case for In Search of Darkness, Harper follows the development of 80s action in roughly chronological order. Along the way, he and his many talking heads cover the rise of Cannon Films and the influence of Hong Kong action auteurs. Fans will be thrilled to hear director Sam Firstenberg look back on the American Ninja franchise, but they will be disappointed the late great Steve James is overlooked during the discussion. (Honestly, I would argue James is sufficiently significance to warrant his own documentary. Email me if you agree.)

None of the really big stars like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, or even Michael Dudikoff (the American Ninja) appear in Last Action as interview subjects, but Harper talks to some really cool character actors and bad guy specialists, like Al Leong (Lethal Weapon), Bill Duke (Predator), Ronny Cox (Robocop), Vernon Wells (Commando), and Jenette Goldstein (Aliens), as well as Eric Roberts, who is in a class of his own. However, he gets a good deal of commentary from two contemporary action stars: Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White.

Retro: Silent Rage

It is Walker, Texas Ranger and Deputy Flounder versus the Wolverine from Hell. Chuck Norris, the man who never loses a fight takes on a killer who can never die and the results are pure 1980s—early ‘80s, in fact. Fittingly, Michael Miller’s Silent Rage (trailer here) releases today as one of Mill Creek Entertainment’s new retro-VHS-packaged BluRay releases.

Twitchy John Kirby just killed the other residents of his halfway house, so it is probably safe to assume the medical experiment using him as a guinea pig was a total failure. Sheriff Dan Stevens is pretty sure his deputies mowed him down with a sufficient hail of bullets, but his doctors discover he still has some life left in him. Dr. Tom Halman is the responsible one, so he wants to pull the plug, but Dr. Phillip Spires is determined to keep pumping him full of lightning, like Colin Clive in the original Frankenstein movies. Unfortunately, it works only too well, stimulating superhuman powers of healing and regeneration.

As it turns out, Stevens’ ex is Halman’s sister Alison, who cannot help falling for the Sheriff’s cocky charm when they run into each other in the hospital. Stevens will be busy rousting bikers, putting the moves on Ms. Halman, and mentoring his schlubby Deputy Charlie, while Kirby runs amok in the hospital.

Okay, there is no point in denying the first act is awkward and surprisingly pokey. Still, Rage is just a cornucopia of weird connections and trivial claims to fame. First and foremost, Norris credits/blames this film for his reluctance to do love scenes in his future films. His uncomfortable looking love interest is played by Toni Kalem, the future Mrs. “Big P” in The Sopranos, who succumbs to his muskiness while the turntable plays a cheesy pop ballad sung by Katey Sagal, the future Peg Bundy.

Believe it or not, Norris has some decent buddy chemistry with Stephen Furst, who everyone knows best as Kent “Flounder” Dorfman in Animal House. The late, great Ron Silver is about as charismatic as anyone possible could be as the too-ethical-to-live-long Halman. As an added bonus, William Finley (cult-famous for his appearances in the films of Brian De Palma and Tobe Hooper) adds some weirdness as Dr. Paul Vaughn, the scaredy-cat third scientist poking and probing Kirby.

There are a couple of entertaining fight scenes in Rage, but it just isn’t at the level of his other pre-Cannon, post-Golden Harvest action classics. Still, it is a total cinematic time capsule, especially with Mill Creek’s old school packaging. Plus, it is always great fun to watch a young Chuck Norris throw-down. Honestly, he looks very much like he did when he went toe-to-toe with Bruce Lee in the Roman Colosseum during the climax of Way of the Dragon. You just can’t beat this kind of nostalgia. Recommended for fans of early 1980s genre films, the special BluRay edition of Silent Rage is now on-sale, from Mill Creek Entertainment.

It: Stephen King’s Evil Clown Gets a Big-Screen Remake

In Medieval times, jesters served as a reminder of people’s mortality. In the Twentieth Century, at least one “Killer Clown” serial killer went beyond reminding. Last year, “evil clown” sightings became a full-fledged mini-panic. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable to be afraid of clowns. These days, it is practically required. Stephen King helped solidify the evil clown archetype with his 1,200-page 1986 bestseller, but there is more nostalgia than scares to be experienced in Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of It (trailer here), which opens today nationwide.

Pennywise is a particularly evil clown, whom we meet right off the bat. One rainy day, he lures stuttering Bill Denbrough’s younger brother Georgie into his clutches. Although he was sick in bed at the time, the older Denbrough brother is tormented with guilt over his disappearance. Unfortunately, children disappear all the time in Derry, Maine—so much so, the adults hardly give it any concern. Nevertheless, Denbrough is determined to find him, with the help of his friends in the so-called Losers’ Club.

Denbrough and his pals Richie Tozier, Stan Uris, and Eddie Kaspack are the long-time members. Overweight transfer student Ben Hanscom, home-schooled African American Mike Hanlon, and unfairly slut-shamed Beverly Marsh are the new recruits. They all have one thing in common. They have been bullied in some way by sociopathic Hank Bowers. However, Hanscom and Hanlon’s insights into Derry’s sinister history will lead them to suspect something darkly uncanny is afoot, operating on a twenty-seven-year cycle. That would be Pennywise—and he knows that they know.

There is an awful lot of Bill Skarsgård mugging and cackling as Pennywise. A little less probably would have been a little more. Frankly, some of the effects involving him and the related supernatural terrors look pretty cheesy. That might be partly by design, because Muschietti is clearly going for a nostalgic vibe, but there are moments that draw the wrong kind of awkward laughter,

Still, the film’s appeal to nostalgia is quite potent, unsubtly channeling Stand By Me, The Goonies, and The Lost Boys. The screenplay is apparently cobbled together from drafts by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman, but it still nails the way kids (primarily boys) talk and act when they are unsupervised together. Every scene that does not directly involve a predatory paranormal clown rings true as a bell.

Jeremy Ray Taylor is the stand-out as Hanscom, whose secret love for Marsh and the New Kids on the Block adds the perfect air of comedic pathos. Likewise, Sophia Lillis is terrific as the outwardly tough but emotionally scarred Marsh. Wisely, they spare her the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves-style orgy scene King ever so problematically included in the novel. Although he does not get a lot of distinctive business to do, there is no mistaking the intensity Chosen Jacobs brings to the screen as Hanlon. However, the other Losers’ Club members sort of blend together.

Right now, you might be wondering, wasn’t John Ritter in the It miniseries? Yes, he was, playing grown-up, slimmed-down Ben Hanscom, but Muschietti’s film doesn’t get that far. Remember, it’s a 1,200-page book. Although It all but promises a part-two, Muschietti manages to wrap things up in a surprisingly satisfying manner, especially by horror genre standards. Yet, the real strengths of the film are its grounded moments, not the wild interludes of cosmic terror. To his credit, Muschietti displays a working understanding of why 1980s films like The Lost Boys and the original Fright Night were so entertaining and applied that knowledge relatively effectively. If you remember when those films were new, you are more likely to enjoy this It. Earning a mixed recommendation for sentimental fans, It opens today, pretty much everywhere with a white wall, including the AMC Empire in New York.

Eclipse Viewing: Night of the Comet

The Sun and the Moon exert an influence over the Earth every day of the year, so there is no rational reason to fear the eclipse. However, after revisiting this awesome Eighties cult classic, the idea of gazing heavenwards with a large group of strangers feels like an invitation to bad karma. Skip the eclipse and find a steel-lined shed instead, to watch Thom Eberhardt’s influential end-of-the-world romp, Night of the Comet (trailer here).

As the in-a-word-style narrator points out in the prologue, a mysterious comet is about to pass Earth for the first time since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Some find this fact significant, but most do not. Regina (“Reggie”) and Samantha Belmont haven’t given it much thought. They are more concerned with their own high school love affairs and drama with their unfaithful stepmother, Doris. Each skips the comet-watching, crashing in lead-lined rooms.

In Reggie’s case, she slept with her pseudo-boyfriend Larry Dupree, a bootlegging projectionist, who might have become another Tarantino if the world had survived to early 1990s indie boom. Unfortunately, Dupree lived through the comet, only to become the first victim of the zombie-like remnants. Eventually, they too will turn to dust, like the rest of the comet’s victims, but first they will kill whatever they can catch.

Alarmed by her own encounter with an infected non-zombie, Reggie makes her way home through the eerily empty, dust-strewn streets of Los Angeles, reuniting with her in-denial sister. They might look and sound like Valley Girls, but the Belmont sisters know how to take care of themselves, thanks to their Special Forces father. Hooking up with Hector, a long-haul trucker at a still broadcasting radio station (local, but alas, not so live), they decide to stock up on guns at the nearby armory and famously, do a bit of shopping. Unfortunately, the scientists who received their is-anybody-out-there message at the radio station do not necessarily have good intentions.

Comet might just be the greatest apocalyptic science fiction movie ever. Some might dismiss it as a sarcastic teen comedy, but its sly attitude arguably reflects something acutely human, especially during times of stress. Maybe they are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but if the world really did end, you could do far worse than teaming up with the bickering Belmont sisters.

As Reggie Belmont, Catherine Mary Stewart became the movie-crush of every Eighties teen science fiction fan. Seriously, how could you not fall for a beautiful woman, who could fight and shoot guns, but preferred to spend her time playing video games? (Plus, she had already appeared in The Last Starfighter and would go on to co-star in Weekend at Bernies.) Stewart perfectly played off Kelli Maroney’s Samantha Belmont, who had most of the best lines and the cheerleader outfit, carrying off both quite well.

Robert Beltran nicely serves a grounding, stabilizing influence. Despite his years on Star Trek: Voyager, he probably gets more questions at conventions about portraying good old Hector. For extra cult movie cred, Mary Woronov plays the decent mad scientist and Geoffrey Lewis plays her evil boss.

There are not a lot of special effects in Comet, which is one of the reasons it is so gosh-darned cool. Instead, Eberhardt and his cast and crew filmed guerrilla-style on the deserted streets of LA one early Christmas morning. As a result, Comet feels more desolate than just about every doomsday movie that followed it. Whedon himself has cited the film’s influence on the creation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but you can see its influence on scores of ironic midnight genre movies. Frankly, Eberhardt’s contributions to 1980s and early 1990s pop culture have been criminally under-recognized, considering he also helmed the Sherlock Holmes spoof, Without a Clue and the pilot episode of Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.

Sure, the scientists’ subterranean base is pretty cheesy looking, but that is all part of the fun. All things considered, the film holds pretty well, especially when it comes to the energy and attitude of Stewart, Muroney, and Beltran. Just as highly recommended as ever, Night of the Comet is available on DVD and it screens September 5^th at the Alamo Drafthouse Winchester.

Lake Nowhere: The Return of 1980s Nostalgia

Welcome to Lake Nowhere, where all the kids are below average. Their hedonistic indulgences, most definitely including sex, drugs, and booze will kill them even quicker than C. Everett Koop would predict. 1980s VHS horror nostalgia returns like a psycho-slasher who never dies in Christopher Phelps & Maxim Van Scoy’s short feature Lake Nowhere (trailer here), which releases today in a BluRay-DVD combo-pack.

Much like Dude Bro Party Massacre III, Nowhere will try to recreate the lo-fi pleasures of VHS tapes, but instead of a bootleg recorded from a UHF broadcast, this supposed relic from the eighties tries to pass for a well-worn commercial VHS tape, most likely released with the rental market in mind. It comes with two fake trailers, one for a Giallo that looks like it could actually be the real thing and an environmentally-themed body-horror-conspiracy thriller that could have been released by Troma last week. There is also a brief advertisement for Wolf White Beer, which would definitely aid the viewing experience.

Okay, so a carload of thirtysomethings acting like teens arrive at Lake Nowhere for a weekend of drunken, stupid fun. When Bonnie finds a gravestone with some heavy satanic passages while walking her dog Fozzie, she thinks little of it, because why should she? Similarly, nobody is much concerned when Danny disappears for at least twelve hours skinny-dipping. This is not an intuitive bunch, but so much the better for the Masked Maniac. At just fifty-one minutes including front matter, he will have to work quickly to make mincemeat of the revelers. However, since he also seems to have some supernatural mojo going on, he should be up to the challenge.

As far as eighties slasher spoofs go, Phelps & Scow ace the look and vibe of vintage dead teenager movies, even surpassing the relentlessly grungy Dude Bro III, but they never approach the wit and inventiveness of Todd Strauss-Schulson’s Final Girls. In terms of quality and entertainment value, it probably ranks dead center between the two comparison films. It certainly knows where it is going and how it should get there.

Lake Nowhere will get you in the mood to binge-watch Prom Night and Sleepaway Camp movies, so it definitely pushes the right buttons. As satire, it arguably allows fans to indulge their sentimental nostalgia, without seeming excessively creepy. Still, the relative brevity is probably a blessing. Recommended for those who will appreciate where it is coming from, Lake Nowhere releases today on BluRay-DVD, from BrinkVision.

The Final Girls: Revenge of the 1980s Slasher Film

Camp Bloodbath is pretty much what it sounds like. The early 1980s slasher film has a loyal cult following, but nobody would what to become a part of it. After all, there will only be one young scantily clad woman who survives the massacre. Sadly, it is not the character played by Max Cartwright’s actress mother. That makes it even more disconcerting for her when she and her high school associates are swept into the vintage exploitation movie. Not even the Scream franchise was as satirically meta and self-referential as Todd Strauss-Schulson’s The Final Girls (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Max and her mother Amanda Cartwright were always scuffling, but at least they had each other—until the fatal accident. Her biggest part was Nancy the camp counselor who unwisely relinquishes her virginity in Camp Bloodbath. Unfortunately, its campy reputation was more of a hindrance than a help whenever Cartwright auditioned for parts. Therefore Max has rather mixed feelings towards the film. Nevertheless, she agrees to attend the anniversary screening organized by her best friend Gertie’s annoyingly Tarantino-esque step-brother Duncan, in exchange for help in the class she is failing.

Gratifyingly, Chris, the classmate she is most definitely interested in, comes to offer moral support. Less agreeably, his codependent ex also tags along to gum up the works as best she can. Somehow, when disaster strikes they are all supernaturally transported into the world of Camp Bloodbath. Of course, it takes a while to figure out where they are and what are the rules that apply to them. Fortunately, Duncan knows precisely when and where bullied camper turned savage serial killer Billy Murphy will strike. They assume if they stick close to surviving “final girl” they should be fine. However, that will not be Nancy, whom Cartwright cannot help relating to as her mother.

Without a doubt, Final Girls is the best horror send-up since the original Craven-era Scream films. While there are a decent number of laughs, it is more about visual inventiveness than set-ups and punchlines. The world of Camp Bloodbath is actually a closed ecosystem that strictly follows its own rigid logic. Frankly, it all makes perfect sense if you are a horror movie fan.

Final Girls also features an unusually big named cast for a horror spoof-nostalgia trip. Honest to goodness, Malin Åkerman is shockingly sweet and poignant as Amanda Cartwright and the character of Nancy as played by her. She also has some really nicely turned scenes with Taissa Farmiga, who makes a worthy prospective “final girl” as Max. As Gertie, Alia Shawkut is sort of doing her Arrested Development shtick again, but it works pretty well in the film’s context. However, Angela Trimbur and Tory N. Thompson steal scene after scene as Tina the nymphomaniac counselor and Blake the ultra-New Wave counselor.

It will probably be a cold day in the netherworld before production designer Katie Byron, art director Alexi Gomez and the rest of the design team get the awards recognition they deserve for Final Girls, but they make the film look terrific, in an eccentrically macabre way. Movie fans with any love for eighties horror will find it seriously stoked by M.A. Fortin & Joshua John Miller’s thoroughly clever screenplay and Strauss-Schulson’s high energy level. However, viewers should be cautioned to look for that plural “s.” The recently released Final Girl singular is an entirely different film. Highly recommended for retro genre connoisseurs, The Final Girls opens this Friday (10/9) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Dude Bro Party Massacre III: Fake 1980s Nostalgia

There was a time when you could see some pretty weird cultural detritus wash up on UHF channels. Now you have to go out of your way to see grade z micro-budget oddities. That’s the downside when every media outlet aspires to produce the next prestige television show. However, your enthusiasm for nostalgic grunge will probably be curbed by Tomm Jacobsen, Michael Rousselet, and Jon Salmon’s Dude Bro Party Massacre III (trailer here), a selection of this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, which releases today on VOD.

It is the 1980s. We can tell because there is a picture of Pres. Reagan in nearly every scene. The Delta Bis are the worst house on Chico’s fraternity row, but they are survivors. Not only have they escaped punishment for their often fatal pranks, they also lived to tell of their nearly fatal encounters with the serial killer Motherface in Dude Bro Party Massacres I and II. At least, some of them did. For a while, Brock Chirino was one of the lucky ones, but his luck runs out in the opening scenes. Fortunately, he has an identical twin brother to investigate his murder. Brent Chirino couldn’t buy a clue at the clue store, but he looks halfway bright compared to the dim bulbs surrounding him.

According to its framing device, DBPM3 only exists on a VHS tape some bored kid recorded off his local UHF channel back in the day. Supposedly, the Reagan administration destroyed all other known copies, presumably because it is nearly unwatchable. Frankly, DBPM3 is arguably too ambitious for its own good, throwing in a cabal of satanic cops, a suspiciously needy girlfriend, and a grieving father bent on avenging the daughter who died when the Delta Bi’s flooded their small town as a prank. Perhaps the only thing they neglected to include was fun.

The 5-Second Film team best known for their web videos obviously understands the affection for low budget straight to drive-in and video 80s horror films, but not nearly enough of their jokes land. They try to compensate with some unexpectedly surreal imagery, making the film an unusually erratic viewing experience. Still, there are two amusingly appropriate cameos from Larry King and Nina Hartley. A lot of people watched them in the Eighties, but nobody wants to admit it on the record. When it comes to the 5-Second rep players, probably Kelsey Gunn shows the most polish as Samantha, the desperate girlfriend of a bizarrely chaste Delta Bi.

There are some funny bits sprinkled throughout the film, but the extended gags misfire. There is also a short stinger that is about as pointless as most stingers. Probably the best aspect of the film is its retro-distressed look. Watching it brings back memories of taping old horror films off late night television and pausing during commercials. If that stirs enough memories to motivate you, Dude Bro Party Massacre III is now available on iTunes and it will have a special free Comic Con screening this Friday (7/10) in San Diego. As a further note of interest, there is a DBPM3 AMA scheduled this morning (7/7) on reddit, which is the real horror show this week thanks to the censorship-inclined management.

Almost Human: What Happens in Maine

As an independent station way up in northern Maine, Channel 83 is not exactly the fast track to a network career, but they know how to cover mysterious disappearances. Thanks to an unearthly entity, they can look forward to some salad days in Joe Begos’ throwback 1980’s style sci-fi slasher flick, Almost Human (trailer here), which releases this Friday in Los Angeles and on VOD.

Something in the Maine woods chased Seth Hampton to his buddy Mark Fisher’s cabin. Initially, the outdoorsman dismisses Hampton’s panic, but it turns out the alien force prefers the burly Fisher.  After a flash of blue light and piercing tone, Fisher is sucked out of the house, leaving Fisher’s girlfriend Jen Craven and the guilt-ridden Hampton behind. For a while, the police key in on Hampton as their prime suspect, a development the confused Craven does little to discourage.  However, no evidence can be found to implicate Hampton.

Two years later, Hampton tries to live a quiet life as the town weirdo, but he is plagued by disturbing visions of similar horrors. We soon learn Fisher has returned, or at least the shell of his body under alien control. As he preys on Maine’s backwoodsmen, Hampton and Craven reconcile, hoping to find some answers and a bit of closure. Not so fortunately, the malevolently mutated Fisher soon comes looking for Craven.

Throughout Almost Human, Begos deliberately goes for a low budget retro-eighties look, much like Ti West did with House of the Devil, except even grubbier. Frankly, it seems strange to emulate the look of 1980’s straight-to-video horror, when it is so easy for genre fans to find the genuine article. Still, he shows a flair for inventive gore, but the narrative is defiantly workaday stuff.

Arguably, the work of Graham Skipper and Josh Ethier are also a cut above those typically found in 80’s grind ‘em outs. Skipper (whom some might recognize from the Off-Broadway production of Re-Animator: the Musical) is actually quite engaging as the everyman Hampton trying to hold onto the last shred of his sanity.  Conversely, Ethier (who also doubled as editor and co-producer) is an interesting looking heavy, whom we can sort of buy into as a hardscrabble one-man version of Jack Sholder’s under-appreciated The Hidden.

In a way, the consistency of Begos’ no-frills vision is quite impressive (right down to the old school UHF news reports we see from the fictional Channel 83), but a little goes a long way. Ultimately, Begos just defrosts some red meat leftover from the 1980’s (admittedly a great decade) rather than pulling together a nourishing feast.  Serviceable as a midnight movie, but nothing viewers will carry with them after the show, Almost Human opens this Friday (2/21) in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinema and next Wednesday (2/26) in New York at the IFC Center.

SFFS Hong Kong Cinema ’13: Blind Detective

He is sort of a consulting detective, whose bedside manner is about as warm and friendly as Holmes at his chilliest.  Chong “Johnston” Si-teun has a sizeable ego and an even larger chip on his shoulder, but he is not without empathy—for the dead.  Somehow, he still might find love with a far less deductive copper (his personal Lestrade) in Johnnie To’s genre blender, Blind Detective (trailer here), which screens on the opening night of the 2013 edition of the San Francisco Film Society’s annual Hong Kong Cinema series.

Johnston’s sudden onset of blindness forced him to retire as police detective, but he still solves crimes for a living.  He now relies on reward bounties, particularly those still valid for cold cases. Impressed by his results, Inspector Ho Ka-tung retains his services to find her long missing high school friend, Minnie. She has always been good with firearms and martial arts, but the cerebral side of detective work has always troubled her.  Promising to teach her his methods, Johnston moves into her spacious pad, but immediately back-burners Minnie’s case in favor of several expiring bounties.

The half-annoyed Ho indulges Johnston for a while, eventually embracing his extreme re-enactment techniques.  Blind arguably reaches its zenith when Johnston and Ho recreate a grisly murder conveniently set in a morgue, strapping on helmets and whacking each other over the head with hammers.  If you ever wanted to see the Three Stooges remakes Silence of the Lambs, To delivers the next closest thing.  Of course, their search for Minnie soon percolates back to the surface, when Johnston starts to suspect she fell victim to a serial killer preying broken-hearted young women.

Much like the old cliché about the weather, if you don’t like the tone of Blind Detective, just wait five minutes, because it will change.  You do not see many films incorporating elements of romantic comedy, slapstick farce, and dark serial killer thrillers, probably for good reason.  To gives roughly equal weight to all three, yet it all hangs together better than one might expect.

Sammi Cheng is a major reason Blind works to the extent that it does. It is great to see her Inspector Ho act as the film’s primary action figure and her radiant presence lights up the screen.  She develops decent chemistry with Andy Lau’s Johnston, but he looks profoundly uncomfortable in the intuitive curmudgeon’s skin. However, To fans will be relieved to hear Lam Suet duly turns up as a fugitive gambler hiding out in Macao.

To also delivers plenty of bang for the audience’s bucks in the third act. There are some distinctly creepy bits and a fair amount of suspense.  On the other hand, a drawn out subplot involving Johnston’s long held crush on a dance instructor chews up plenty of time but serves little purpose except to telegraph the feelings beginning to stir between the odd couple detectives.  

Thanks to two well executed showdowns, Cheng’s winning performance, and some evocative Hong Kong locales, Blind Detective chugs along steadily enough for a while and picks up mucho momentum down the stretch.  Recommended for To fans and those with a taste for comedic mysteries, Blind Detective screens this Friday night (10/4) at the Vogue Theatre as part of the SFFS’s 2013 Hong Kong Cinema series.  Action aficionados should also check out Chow Yun-fat’s massive return to form in Wong Jing’s The Last Tycoon screening Saturday (10/5) and Sunday (10/6) at the same venue.

Computer Chess: Analog Dreams of a Digital Future

In 1980, all music was analog.  So was just about everything else.  Computers were generally recognized as the coming thing, but they were still too large, bulky, and slow to be a part of most people’s daily lives.  However, these zero-point-zero generation computers could be programmed to play chess.  A motley assortment of early computer pioneers will pit their chess programs against each other in Andrew Bujalski’s retro Computer Chess (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

In a tacky suburban chain motel, some of computer science’s shabbily dressed elite have come together for a computer chess tournament.  The winner will face off against the arrogant human host, Pat Henderson, who has never lost a match to a machine—at least not yet.  He and his opening night panel predict that will end by 1984, a year rife with significance.  The defending champs from Cal Tech are still the presumed favorites, but their TSAR program is acting decidedly buggy.  It is so bad, the project director, geek superstar Dr. Tom Schoesser, hastens his arrival for an emergency diagnostic session.

Things seem to be going well for the MIT contingent, with Shelly Flintic receiving an inordinate amount of attention as the first woman team-member in the competition.  In contrast, nobody wants to deal with the prickly, borderline homeless Michael Pappageorge, even if he is a mad genius.

Bujalski fully embraces the technology of the era, shooting Chess in black-and-white, on now archaic late 1970’s video cameras.  The film is even rougher and grainier than viewers will expect, yet Bujalski’s nostalgic vision will win them over.  Indeed, it is clear throughout the inspired first four-fifths of Chess that the game of chess is really just a stand-in for innumerable AI applications to come.  We can also recognize Pappageorge as the sort of social drop-out who either became the Bill Gateses of the world, or more likely remained marginal figures, haunting tech clearance auctions, buying bizarre obsolete hardware to continue building their mad visions.

Myles Paige arguably deserves award consideration as Pappageorge, finding pathos in his obnoxious behavior.  Texas-based film editor Robin Schwartz is also gives Chess some soul as Flintic, one of the few competitors with any facility to make human connections.  University of Chicago professor Gordon Kindlmann’s Schoesser has a knack for making his theory-heavy dialogue sound smart and accessible, while in his on-screen debut, film critic Gerald Peary chews the scenery nicely as the pompous Henderson.

Considered one of the godfathers of Mumblecore, Bujalski now demonstrates how handy it is to have some plot and an underlying concept supporting a film.  Still, he overplays his hand in some respects.  Initially, the hippie-dippy encounter group sharing the motel is a rather brilliant piece of era-appropriate cultural satire that could have been lifted from 1980’s uber-zeitgeisty Serial.  However, whenever Bujalski contrives ways for the two groups to intersect, the forced comedy falls flat.  Likewise, the genre payoffs he offers late in the third act are head-scratchers that make little sense in the film’s overall context.

Frankly, Chess works best when suggesting TSAR might just be the not so distant ancestor of WarGames’ Joshua and 2001’s HAL 9000.   Nonetheless, Bujalski presents a consistently compelling time-capsule that captures the innocent fascination and single-minded commitment to innovation that drove the digital revolution.  A sly period production with a keen understanding of early computing, Computer Chess is recommended for Wired readers when it opens this Wednesday (7/17) at New York’s Film Forum.

Awesome Fest ’13: Rewind This!

The classic 1980’s movie hero was a commando who could inexplicably bury himself in mud, yet spring up at exactly the right time to ambush an enemy army.  Today’s prototypical protagonist is a man-child who tries to win back his elfin girlfriend by working in an organic food coop.  How did we go so far wrong as a culture?  Back then, the best way to watch a bunch of crap blow-up was on VHS.  It still is for some die-hards.  Josh Johnson profiles the VHS tape and the people who love it in Rewind This (trailer here), which screens during the 80’s themed Awesome Fest in Philadelphia.

There are scads of oddball films that were released on VHS, but have yet to get the DVD treatment.  Partly this is because the big studios were late to party (like they were right on time for the digital download thing), leaving the field open to bargain hunting independents.  More importantly, the voracious demand of mom-and-pop rental stores across the country required a constant stream of new product, regardless of good taste or logic.  Those zero budget wonders are a major reason why some collectors bitterly cling to their VHS tapes.

Johnson gives a good overview of VHS’s origins and its triumph over Betamax.  While he covers the love affair between VHS and porn, he does not belabor the point, preferring to focus on the old school action and horror movies that became mass market commodities thanks to home video.  In addition to a motley crew of blogger-collectors, Rewind features commentary from legendary grindhouse director Frank Henenlotter, Cassandra “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark” Peterson, Lloyd “Troma” Kaufman, David “The Rock” Nelson, and dudes from SXSW, Something Weird, Twitch, Severin Films, Cinefamily, and Alamo Drafthouse.  There is also a Japanese contingent, including Shinji Imaoka, the director of Underwater Love, probably the most endearing Pinku Eiga film ever.

Rewind does not skimp on the vintage clips, reveling in the aesthetics of direct-to-video exploitation movies with lushly painted pre-Photo Shop covers.  Unfortunately, the not infrequent whining about big media corporations quickly grows tiresome.  It is also rather off the mark.  No distributors were bigger cutthroat capitalists than Golan-Globus, yet they brought us VHS milestones like the American Ninja franchise.  Sadly, viewer tastes just shifted from red meat to vegan comfort food.

Despite the occasional eye-rolls, Rewind This offers some heartfelt nostalgia for some of the scrappiest films ever haphazardly released.  Good, kind of clean fun overall, Rewind This! is recommended for all cult cinema fans when it screens Monday night (6/17) as part of Awesome Fest, which also totally deserves your support for their 30^th anniversary screening of The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew on July 8^th.

KCS Korean Movie Night: Sunny

If Rizzo were dying of cancer, surely Frenchie would reunite the Pink Ladies.  Such is the position married and well-to-do Im Na-mi finds herself in.  Some members of the girl gang are happy to get back together, but others are harder to find in Kang Hyeong-chul’s monster hit Sunny (trailer here), which screens tomorrow as part of the Korean Cultural Service’s free Korean Movie Night in New York.

While not exactly a life of quiet desperation, Im leads a sheltered existence that is not wholly fulfilling.  Since her husband and daughter are too busy to visit her mother-in-law in the hospital, she upholds their obligations.  During one such visit, she chances across the room of Ha Chun-hwa, the leader of the clique dubbed “Sunny.” When Im’s family moved to Seoul from the countryside, Ha took the shy teen under her wing.  As we watch in flashbacks, most of Sunny quickly fell in line, but not Jung Su-ji, the moody prospective model.

When not rumbling with other girl gangs, Sunny practiced their choreography.  However, they were never able to perform their big number, for reasons that will eventually be revealed.  Hmm, anyone smell some unfinished business here?

In a Korean film, when a character is introduced with fatal illness in the first act, it is a cinch there will be an emotional funeral coming down the pike.  This goes way beyond Chekhov’s gun.  Without a big weepy payoff, audiences would want their money back.  Not to be spoilery, but Sunny delivers the goods.

Yes, this is a chick flick, but it is an admittedly well crafted film.  Employing some surprisingly striking transitions for each temporal shift, Sunny is more visually stylish than it probably needed to be.  In fact, Nam Na-yeoung won the best editing honors at Daejong Film Awards for good reason.  As the narrative unfolds, it pulls you in, despite viewers’ macho or hipster resistances.

Yoo Ho-jeong plays grown-up Im with admirable restraint, never overplaying the gilded cage empowerment card.  Likewise, Shim Eun-kyung is earnest and awkward as teenaged Im.  Yet, both Jin Hee-kyung and Kang Sora really outshine the ensemble as the ailing adult and fearless teenaged, Ha, respectively.  Although hardly a teen herself, singer Min Hyo-rin has her moments as the high school ice queen, Jung.  As for her adult counterpart, that is really the question driving Sunny’s third act.

If Cyndi Lauper floats your boat and you prefer Boney M’s version of the title song over Bobby Hebb’s original, than Sunny’s unabashedly 1980’s soundtrack will be your catnip.  The ways screenwriter-director Kang interjects and darts around the May 1980 democracy protests also gives the film a bit of seasoning.  He certainly conveys his point of view, without waving the bloody shirt.  Sunny is shamelessly manipulative and sentimental, but it does exactly what it sets out to do.  Recommended for those looking to celebrate sisterhood, it screens tomorrow (5/28) at the Tribeca Cinemas—free of charge, courtesy of the Korean Cultural Service in New York.

Back to the Eighties: The House of the Devil

Those kids in the 1980’s were a mess. They were always listening to their Walkmen and getting killed by satanic cults. At least that is the cheesy world of 1980’s horror movies Ti West faithfully recreates in The House of the Devil (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York, just in time for Halloween.

Samantha is a hardworking college student, but she can’t be too bright. To earn money for her first apartment, she agrees to spend the night in an old dark house under highly dubious conditions. Hired in an odd manner by the Ulmans, an obviously weird couple, to “baby-sit” for their unseen shut-in mother, Samantha should have bolted as soon as she saw their well-secluded, ultra-gothic house. The fact that her employers have such a hot date purposely scheduled on the evening of a full lunar eclipse might also raise some suspicions, but Mr. Ulman is offering several hundred dollars for a few hours work, so hey, what could go wrong?

How creepy are the Ulmans? Well, they are played by Tom Noonan, the “Tooth Fairy” serial killer in the original Hannibal Lecter film, Michael Mann’s Manhunter, and Mary Woronov, the cult star associated with the films of Andy Warhol and Paul Bartel. Would you stay in their house during the darkest night of the year?

Of course, Samantha starts foolishly poking into dark basements and the like, generating plenty of gotcha jolts, which is fine as far as it goes. Rather than tweak the conventions of the 80’s films that inspired it, House slavishly observes them, from the dubious “based on a true story” opening claim to the annoyingly ambiguous ending. However, the retro looking titles really are pitch-perfect. Seeing them roll makes you expect to hear Crow and Tom Servo start to riff.

House benefits from the easy likability of its lead, Jocelin Donahue, who shows a young Karen Allen quality as Samantha, which is definitely a good thing. As expected, Noonan and Woronov are also appropriately sinister as the Ulmans. It is also cool to see Dee Wallace Stone (fondly remembered for E.T. and perhaps more applicably Critters, Cujo, and The Howling), even in what is essentially a cameo role as the “Landlady.”

House will bring back memories for many children of the 80’s of those cheap junky chillers we watched on cable or at second-run theaters. Sure, everyone loves nostalgia, but for the cost of a movie ticket in Manhattan, you could buy at least one vintage 80’s horror flick on DVD, probably two or three. Still, for those who want to see it in a theater with a like-minded audience, it opens tomororow (10/30) at the Village East.