Jeffrey Combs’ Herbert West is one of the all-time great movie characters and his presence alone makes BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR, a sequel to the 1985 cult favorite RE-ANIMATOR, worth a recommendation.
H.P. Lovecraft first created Herbert West for the 1922 short story “Herbert West-Reanimator.” RE-ANIMATOR took inspiration from “From the Dark” and “The Plague-Demon” (the first two sections), while BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR turned to “The Horror from the Shadows” and “The Tomb Legions” (the final two). West is the central human character in both films.
How to describe West for the uninitiated, that’s a challenge I face during this review. I first think of comparing West to a horror movie character archetype like Colin Clive’s Victor Frankenstein or, to be more precise, Peter Cushing’s Victor Frankenstein from the Hammer FRANKENSTEIN series. He’s brilliant, narcissistic, intense, intensely driven, and essentially amoral. He’s even far less interested in the ladies than Cushing’s Frankenstein. He’s only focused on his work.
West is one of those characters that we love to hate, like Cushing’s Victor Frankenstein and Michael Moriarty’s Jimmy Quinn in Q: THE WINGED SERPENT. There’s that great pencil breaking scene in RE-ANIMATOR, for example, that epitomizes West. He’s one of the great movie assholes.
Alas, most of the rest of BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR does not measure up against both West and the first picture. First and foremost, RE-ANIMATOR director and co-writer Stuart Gordon did not return for the sequel and instead Brian Yuzna directed from his own script. Yuzna earned production credits on his friend Gordon’s films RE-ANIMATOR, FROM BEYOND, and DOLLS.
Basically, I find that BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR drags more than RE-ANIMATOR or it’s a bit of a slog to get to the sequel’s rather nifty grand finale. I was really struggling around the hour mark and I even contemplated exiting BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR.
West’s arch nemesis from the first movie, Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), returns for the sequel or at least his infamous disembodied head shows up for work. We do not get enough scenes with Hill in the sequel and that helps explain why BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR sputters a bit during its middle portion.
The incredible tension between West and Hill contributed a great deal to the success of RE-ANIMATOR. That’s predominantly missing from BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR and West battling a persistent burly policeman simply does not possess the same magic. However, we do ultimately have a great payoff when Hill and West are finally reunited.
Bruce Abbott’s Dan Cain returns for the sequel in his role of the straight man and main audience identification figure. He’s not as effective as he was in the first movie.
Kathleen Kinmont and Fabiana Udenio do not make up for the first movie’s Barbara Crampton.
The one area where the sequel trumps the original is special effects, especially during the final 20 minutes. Credited artists include John Carl Buechler, Screaming Mad George, Greg Nicotero, and David Allen, who rank among the best in their field.
Combs’ West and the special effects make BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR one of those relatively difficult to come-by sequels that works.
An outtake is defined as “a scene or sequence filmed or recorded for a movie or program but not included in the final version.”
Blown lines and stunts, we all know the routine by now.
Hal Needham and Jackie Chan may have made outtakes for the end credits a cinematic institution, but Iranian “jack of all trades and master of none” Amir Shervan (1929-2006) directed SAMURAI COP, a feature movie solely comprised of outtakes.
Shervan trumped such legendary figures as Dwain Esper, William “One Shot” Beaudine, Bert I. Gordon, Bill Rebane, Ray Dennis Steckler, and even Ed Wood in absolute sheer incompetence.
Like a select few bad movies, SAMURAI COP is so, so, so bad in so, so, so many marvelous ways that it passes all the way through bad into good. It belongs filed next to Efren C. Pinon’s THE KILLING OF SATAN and Claudio Fragasso’s TROLL 2.
— Mathew Karedas, a.k.a. Matt Hannon, stars as Joe Marshall. Most people, though, just call him “Samurai Cop.” Joe must be the least convincing samurai in all history, cinematic and otherwise. For one, Joe’s entire look screams more Fabio and Kato Kaelin than, let’s say, Toshiro Mifune and his most dangerous weapon brandished is that damn speedo he spends what feels like the entire second half of the movie in. Anyway, for somebody allegedly well-versed in the Japanese vernacular, he sure does struggle pronouncing the name “Fujiyama.” When asked by his partner Frank Washington (Mark Frazer) what “katana” means, Joe snaps back “It means Japanese sword.” You don’t say, you don’t say.
— Samurai Cop arguably spends more time being a ladies man than anything else. No, seriously, he beds three, er, two women and he even blatantly talks about the beauty of another woman in the presence of his lover. Smooth, real smooth. Late in the 96-minute spread, he tells his future conquest, “Let’s just say … I can read eyes.” I wish that you couldn’t read dialogue.
Here’s a dialogue exchange from the Planet-X:
Nurse: Do you like what you see?
Joe Marshall: I love what I see.
N: Would you like to touch what you see?
JM: Yes. Yes, I would.
N: Would you like to go out with me?
JM: Uh, yes I would.
N: Would you like to fuck me?
JM: Bingo.
N: Well, then let’s see what you’ve got …
[Nurse investigates Joe’s bulge]
N: Doesn’t interest me. Nothing there.
JM: Nothing there? Just exactly what would interest you, something the size of a jumbo jet?
N: Have you been circumcised?
JM: Yeah, I have, why?
N: Your doctor must have cut a large portion off.
JM: No, uh, he was a, he was a good doctor.
N: Good doctors make mistakes too, that’s why they have insurance.
JM: Hey … don’t worry. I got enough. It’s big.
N: I want bigger.
[Nurse walks away]
I doubt that any screen lothario has ever partaken in dialogue that bad and the sound that we just heard is Rudolph Valentino saying “Thank you” for having made only silent movies.
That dialogue plays like a combination of a porno movie and “Dick and Jane” (most of the rest of the movie belongs to knocking off LETHAL WEAPON) and it belongs alongside the SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON interchange in the anals, er, annals of cinematic history:
Cataline Stone: I’m exhausted.
Ben Carpenter: Yeah, me too. But you know I’m really wired. What do you say … I take you home and eat your pussy.
Boy, that’s just about as great as the whole “Fini can water you” debacle from YES, GIORGIO.
— Lead actor Matt Hannon thought he was done with the picture and got himself a short haircut. Several months later, Shervan looked up Hannon and informed him they were going to reshoot scenes. Unfortunately, Hannon still had short hair. I say unfortunately because Hannon wears one of the least convincing wigs ever made during SAMURAI COP. It does not help that Hannon’s wig flies off during a late fight scene and the actor also displays his obvious displeasure having to wear his wig. Yeah, it’s that bad.
— The chase scenes alternate between moving incredibly slow (nothing like slow-moving cars …) and being artificially sped up (… except for cars that zip along unnaturally). Yes, there are times when the action in SAMURAI COP plays like a silent film projected at the wrong speed.
— Not sure that I want to spend that much more time and space on SAMURAI COP, because I don’t want to risk writing a dissertation. Yes, over 750 words feels like I have been writing on this movie for a long time. However, there’s so many more things wrong but right about SAMURAI COP that we could be here all day, ironic for a movie that lasts a meager 96 minutes. Just imagine SAMURAI COP at GONE WITH THE WIND length.
— In a review long ago, I wrote that the 1979 Chuck Norris action vehicle A FORCE OF ONE combines a standard issue cops and criminals plot acted out by a good cast with martial arts and a “very subtle” anti-drug message that plays like one of those infamous 1980s TV commercials, only featuring roundhouse kicks.
On that note, we can end this review with a public service announcement from SAMURAI COP: “Now I’m telling these son-of-a-bitches that we respect the Japanese of this country, who are honest businessmen. And yeah, this is the land of opportunity for legitimate business, not for death merchants who distribute drugs to our children through schools and on the streets. Now I’m telling these motherfuckers that if they continue killing our children to make their precious millions that they deposit in their secret Swiss bank accounts, counselor, before your lawsuit even gets off the court clerk’s desk, I’ll have their stinking bodies in garbage bags and ship them back to Japan for fertilizer.”
Beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and it makes me want to pop a top on an ice cold one and blast Alice Cooper’s “I Love America.”
Jim Wynorski’s CHOPPING MALL has just about everything anybody would ever want from a mid-80s horror film.
— An iconic shopping mall shooting location.
— Three killer robots who shoot real frickin’ laser beams. By the way, these kill-bots could eat Paul Blart for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and three desserts, plus in-between snacks.
— Big hair and big boobs.
— A Barbara Crampton topless scene that rates below RE-ANIMATOR and FROM BEYOND. Still, though, it’s topless Barbara Crampton.
— Other familiar teeny bopper horror movie bods and faces.
— The great character actor Dick Miller playing a character named Walter Paisley (his character’s name from BUCKET OF BLOOD).
— A Corman Factory production with posters from previous cult classics (including one directed by Wynorski, his debut film LOST EMPIRE) and clips from Roger Corman’s 1957 epic ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS.
— Cameos from Corman favorites Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov playing their characters from EATING RAOUL.
— Outdated special effects that were outdated even before the movie’s release. However, that’s all part of their charm.
— Gore galore highlighted by a gnarly head explosion.
— A plot that plays like a fast and loose combination of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, FRIDAY THE 13TH, and THE TERMINATOR.
CHOPPING MALL does not muck around, giving us our first killer robot scene right from the start and hey, let’s face it, it breezes past in 76 minutes. For crying out loud, that’s a running time straight from an earlier time in cinematic history. That not mucking around quality is one of the most admirable traits of CHOPPING MALL, that and its desire to give the people what they want in terms of meeting and exceeding the demands of an exploitation film.
It has a basic plot: Three security robots go haywire after a lightning storm, turn rogue and run amok in Park Plaza Mall, actually the Sherman Oaks Galleria in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood in Los Angeles. The galleria, on the corner of Ventura and Sepulveda Boulevards, has been given credit for inspiring the Frank and Moon Unit Zappa satirical hit single “Valley Girl” and FAST TIMES and COMMANDO famously utilized the location.
Of course, with this genre and location, we have four teenage couples who stay after hours to frolic and fool around inside a furniture store, naturally and predominantly hot and horny couples who make up the majority of our body count. That contributes the FRIDAY THE 13TH element, and the presence of Russell Todd aids and abets that mental connection. Todd played Scott in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2, a real smug horny bastard adept with a slingshot. Not that did him any bit of damn good against burlap sack Jason Voorhees.
CHOPPING MALL has a good cast and Kelli Maroney and Alan O’Dell make for appealing, likeable female and male leads, especially Maroney. With her big hair, her struggles working in a restaurant, her spunky attitude, and her way around weaponry, Maroney’s Alison Parks feels very reminiscent of Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton) from the first TERMINATOR.
What I especially like about the teenagers in CHOPPING MALL is that they load up on guns (echoes of DAWN OF THE DEAD) almost immediately after discovering the killer robots. They are far more proactive than the average horror movie teenager, and that helps separate CHOPPING MALL from the pack of run-of-the-mill exploitation films.
File CHOPPING MALL right alongside cult classics from that moment in time like RE-ANIMATOR, FROM BEYOND, and NIGHT OF THE CREEPS.
I had wondered long and hard for many years where Al Jourgensen found a certain sample for a cover version of Black Sabbath’s “Supernaut” that appeared on the Ministry greatest hits compilation “Greatest Fits.”
This incredible sample about halfway through “Supernaut” goes something like, “I’ve come to tell you what I see. There are great darknesses. Farther than time itself. And beyond the darkness … a light that glows, changes … and in the center of the universe, the eye … the eye … the eye … the eye … the eye.”
There I was minding my own fucking business on a hot Saturday night in early June 2020, watching the thrilling conclusion of a pretty damn good little science fiction horror movie called X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES, directed by Roger Corman and starring the reliably good Ray Milland. Then, hot dog, what do I hear but “I’ve come to tell you what I see. There are great darknesses. Farther than time itself. And beyond the darkness … a light that glows, changes … and in the center of the universe, the eye that sees us all.” I said to myself, “You magnificent bastard! That’s that sample from ‘Supernaut!’”
Before that discovery, I already thought X was one groovy movie. After that discovery, though, I am convinced it’s a great movie.
I must admit upfront to having a bias in favor of Ray Milland (as well as Roger Corman, for that matter). Milland (1907-86) has never let me down so far and that includes his Academy Award-winning performance as a struggling alcoholic writer in Billy Wilder’s THE LONG WEEKEND, his battle of minds with John Williams’ Chief Inspector Hubbard in DIAL M FOR MURDER, his ultimate cantankerous old coot Jason Crockett in FROGS, his ultimate hateful old bigot Maxwell Kirshner in THE THING WITH TWO HEADS, and his better-than-average Disney live-action villain Aristotle Bolt in the better-than-average Disney live-action film ESCAPE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN. To be honest, I enjoy FROGS every bit as much as DIAL M FOR MURDER and Milland proves responsible for much of the enjoyment of both films.
He’s very good in X as Dr. James Xavier, whose name immediately puts the X-Man character Charles Xavier to mind. Are they related?
In X, Xavier develops special eye drops that give himself X-ray vision and with this great power comes terrible repercussions, of course. Xavier just cannot stop himself from pushing the limits farther and farther. He must see what no man has ever seen before. His friend and colleague Dr. Brant (Harold J. Stone) tries stopping Xavier and Xavier accidentally kills Brant. Xavier goes on the run, first to a carnival, then to a Las Vegas casino, and finally to a religious tent revival that leads to one helluva conclusion.
One of the great scenes begins when Xavier’s lovely colleague Dr. Diane Fairfax (Diana Van der Vlis) takes the X-Man to a groovy little party where everybody just loves to do the Twist. Xavier’s X-ray vision kicks in at some point and we ponder what this scene would have been like had the movie came out in 1969. Even greater.
Before closing soon, I should mention Don Rickles’ strong performance and Dick Miller’s enjoyable one as carny heckler.
X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES should be a treat for Corman, Milland, science fiction, horror, American International, sample, Black Sabbath, Ministry, Rickles, and/or Miller connoisseurs. Speaking only from personal experience, it was for me.
A tale of two movies, both from 1962 and both dealing with racism.
Other than their year of release, some of their subject matter, and their being filmed in black-and-white, the films are worlds apart in virtually every other way, including how they have been received by the establishment and the general public.
Roger Corman directed and co-produced (alongside his younger brother Gene) THE INTRUDER for $80,000 and it was filmed on location for three-and-a-half weeks in Southeast Missouri towns East Prairie, Charleston, and Sikeston. William Shatner stars as race hate inciter and outside agitator Adam Cramer and the young Canadian actor was still years away from becoming a household name for “Star Trek.” THE INTRUDER takes place contemporaneously with the civil rights movement and school integration; Charles Beaumont adapted his screenplay from his own 1959 novel of the same name and he even plays school principal Mr. Paton in the film.
Robert Mulligan directed TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD behind a $2 million budget and major studio backing with a screenplay by future Pulitzer Prize winner Horton Foote adapted from Harper Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name that had already become an institution even before a prestigious film adaptation. Gregory Peck, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor four times before his most famous role (THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM, THE YEARLING, GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT, TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH), stars as noble lawyer Atticus Finch. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD filmed on Hollywood back lots and sets designed to recreate the Monroeville, Alabama of Lee’s Great Depression youth.
THE INTRUDER premiered May 14, 1962 in New York City and it would be reissued as I HATE YOUR GUTS and SHAME. In other words, it flopped and Corman has never quite made another picture like THE INTRUDER again. His later exploitation productions hid and obscured their social commentary behind and beneath protective layers of nudity, sex, and violence.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD debuted Dec. 25, 1962 and just like the Lee source material, it became an almost instantaneous social institution and beloved classic. It received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won three, including Best Actor for Peck. It has been a longtime staple of the American Film Institute: No. 34 on the 1997 “100 Years … 100 Movies” list and No. 25 on the 10th Anniversary list and the AFI voted it the No. 1 courtroom drama and Atticus Finch the No. 1 hero on its list of the 100 greatest heroes and villains.
I watched both films in close proximity of each other (both for the first time) and THE INTRUDER absolutely shames TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
Sorry, folks, Adam Cramer presents a far more interesting character than Atticus Finch and Shatner’s incendiary performance blows away Peck and its relentless note of nobility.
Cramer, a non-Southerner decked in a bright white suit, rides into the fictional small Southern town of Caxton and quickly comes on strong as a gentleman. This clever conman and charlatan then goes to work and preys on the racist, anti-integration sympathies of many of the residents to meet his goal of inciting a race war town-by-town. Cramer’s a master manipulator and rabble-rouser who also sets his sights on a high school girl and a frustrated housewife. His manipulative powers lead to one of the black students, Joey Greene (Charles Barnes), being falsely accused of rape by a white girl. That, of course, ties in with the absolute worst nightmare of a racist, one infinitely worse than integration. In a chilling final scene, the inflamed mob interrogates Mr. Greene about this rape. The mob believes it has become judge, jury, and executioner.
Fact and fiction must have blurred for novice actor Charles Barnes, a 19-year-old young man from Charleston (one of the three towns used in filming) whom Corman instructed to draw from real-life experiences attending an integrated high school in his hometown his senior year. The Pittsburgh Courier ran a story on Barnes in May 1962, headlined “Negro Actor’s Reel Role Too Real for Whites … And He Has to Leave Hometown.”
THE INTRUDER plays real, and that sealed its commercial doom and consignment to the dustbin (at least the margins) of cinematic history.
On the other hand, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD plays like a series of pat moral lessons for two hours, interrupted by youthful shenanigans and occasional voice-over narration to put us in a proper nostalgic mood.
Enter “To Kill a Mockingbird moral lessons” into a search engine and it returns 1,340,000 hits.
Is that why so many people love TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD?
Are fans of the film made to feel virtuous watching it?
Just asking for a friend.
Atticus Finch comes across so darn noble maybe because an older Scout Finch, his daughter, narrates the story.
She begins, “Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning; ladies bathed before noon, after their 3 o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go and nothing to buy … and no money to buy it with. Although Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself … That summer, I was six years old.”
The narration put me off right from the start and it all translated as “Grandma, tell me about the good ole days.”
Between the narration and the sets and the characters, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD feels like experiencing a show called “The South 1932” at Universal Studios Hollywood. LOOK! It’s a one-dimensional racist white trash caricature! LOOK! It’s busybody neighbors! LOOK! It’s a crotchety old bag! LOOK! It’s a sheriff named “Heck Tate”! FEEL GOOD ENTERTAINMENT! I don’t know why I need to pay money to see that when I could experience all that for real somewhere in Small Town U.S.A. Never mind, I’ll pass on both.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD stitches together multiple narrative threads, some more successfully than others.
— Scout (Mary Badham), her older brother Jem (Phillip Alford), and her best friend Dill (John Megna), and their larger-than-life misadventures.
— Scout and Jem and their relationship with Atticus, as well as their black maid Calpurnia (Estelle Evans).
— Atticus defends Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), a black man falsely accused of rape by Mayella Ewell (Collin Wilcox) and her father Robert E. Lee “Bob” Ewell (James Anderson), during a trial when the odds are stacked dramatically against both men. Before the trial, townspeople — including Scout’s school mates — call Atticus a “nigger lover” and some of the most concerned citizens form a lynch mob.
— The children’s obsession with Boo Radley (Robert Duvall).
Badham and Alford both give very good performances and their rapport with each other and Peck forms the strongest part of the movie. Badham’s debut performance received a well-deserved nomination for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. I understand why multiple generations of young women have responded so favorably toward TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. (Mulligan later directed Reese Witherspoon in a similarly affecting performance in the 1991 film THE MAN IN THE MOON.)
On the race level, though, that’s where TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD fails and it fails miserably.
The black characters remain predominantly in the background, Tom Robinson dies offscreen, and Bob Ewell belongs to a movie racist tradition called “Ku Klux Klown.”
We also have quite possibly the only mob in history ever talked down by a 6- or 7-year-old girl.
By comparison, in THE INTRUDER, a mob burns a cross in a black neighborhood, blows up the local black church and kills the preacher in the blast, and severely beats up the white character who takes a stand alongside the blacks and encourages them to return to school after the bombing. This conscientious white character gets so beaten that he receives broken ribs and loses one eye.
Nobody lays a hand on Atticus.
Meanwhile, only Peters and Evans received screen credit among the black actors in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
All the others were not credited.
That includes William “Bill” Walker in the small but pivotal role of Reverend Sykes, who delivers the famous line “Miss Jean Louise? Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.” Peck himself said this scene — where all the black people in the balcony stand up for Atticus Finch after he defended Tom Robinson — wrapped up his Academy Award for Best Actor.
To be fair, some of the white actors, including Kim Stanley as the narrator, also were not credited.
By the point late in the movie when Bob Ewell attacks Jem and Scout and Boo Radley comes to their rescue, it was basically too little too late for this viewer. I was just ready for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD to be over.
Attack of the Killer Librarian 