Dracula (1931)

DRACULA (1931) ****
I remember being first disappointed by the 1931 Dracula and that disappointment carried over for more than two decades.

Around the turn of the 21st Century, I bought the 1999 VHS release and that’s what I first watched, the one with Classic Monster Collection across the top and then New Music by Philip Glass and Performed by Kronos Quartet immediately below. Of course, I thought Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Dwight Frye as Renfield were absolutely incredible, David Manners as Jonathan Harker and Edward Van Sloan as Professor Van Helsing and Helen Chandler as Mina Harker less so, and I loved director Tod Browning’s 1932 Freaks at first sight contemporaneous with Dracula. Freaks remains one of my absolute favorite movies, so obviously some movies hit people right from the start and others just simply take more time or sometimes they never make that deep, personal connection others do.

For the longest time, at least a decade if not longer, I thought Dracula was overrated and paled in comparison against Freaks, Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man, all of which I first saw around the same time as Dracula and I loved, absolutely loved, and still do love all of them. At the time, I also loved Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein more than Dracula.

It was that darn Philip Glass / Kronos Quartet score that stank up Dracula and I still get a big kick out of the Triumph the Insult Comic Dog couplet, Philip Glass, atonal ass, you’re not immune / Write a song with a fucking tune. I remember my wife complained about Glass’ score for the experimental non-narrative film Koyaanisqatsi and I bristled at his score for Candyman upon revisiting that 1992 film for the first time in several years.

Revisiting the 1931 Dracula in recent years, without the Glass / Kronos score and back closer to how it first appeared in theaters on Feb. 14, 1931, it’s risen in stock from three to three-and-a-half and finally four stars. I cannot deny that it still has a fair share of faults, like those performances I mentioned earlier and the stage-bound production quality since it’s based off the 1924 stage play adapted from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, but I’ve grown appreciation for everything that works from the opening scenes in Transylvania to Lugosi (1882-1956) and Frye (1899-1943), who inspired later songs from Bauhaus (Bela Lugosi’s Dead) and Alice Cooper (The Ballad of Dwight Fry).

It also helps one to catch up with the Spanish language Dracula from the same year and the same sets but a different cast, a different language, and a different director. This Spanish version, rediscovered first in 1978 and then later on video in 1992, lasts 30 minutes longer and it’s better in almost every respect than its famous counterpart. Better shot and better looking, vastly superior cleavage and far sexier women (Lupita Tovar over Helen Chandler any day of the millennium), and less wimpy men in the Spanish version, but Lugosi still prevails against Carlos Villarias.

Several lines had already entered the lexicon decades before I first watched Dracula: I never drink … wine. For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you’re a wise man, Van Helsing. Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make. Even I am Dracula belongs somewhere in the pantheon near Bond, James Bond. Lugosi’s ability or lack thereof speaking the English language actually benefits the otherworldly nature of his Dracula and I hold his performance in high regard alongside Max Schreck in Nosferatu, Christopher Lee in Dracula, and Gary Oldman in Dracula.

I have a long relationship with vampires.

I remember the 1985 Fright Night being the highlight of a boy slumber party circa 1988 and third or fourth grade.

I must have been 11 or 12 years old and in the fifth or sixth grade when reading the Stoker novel. Right around that point in time, I also read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles and Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I loved all three of them and they each fired up my imagination and creative spirit.

A few years later, I caught up with the Francis Ford Coppola version and talk about a movie that wowed a 14-year-old boy. I remember staying up late and sneaking around (somewhat) to watch this Dracula on my bedroom TV, captivated by all the nudity and sexuality and violence and Winona Ryder and Sadie Frost and it recalled some of what I liked about the novel all while becoming a cinematic extravaganza. I know critics of the 1992 Dracula blasted the film for being all style, no substance and for being overblown, but I think it’s overflowing with creativity and sheer cinematic beauty. I rate it right up there with F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu as one of the best vampire films ever.

Some things simply transcend Keanu Reeves’ horrible accent and Dracula’s at one point beehive hairdo.

The vampire genre itself transcends such duds as Dracula 2000 and New Moon.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER (1984) ***
Once upon a time, I called Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter the most schizophrenic movie ever made and what I mean by this bit of hyperbole is that The Final Chapter largely alternates being a rather brutal, occasionally mean-spirited horror movie sequel and a jovial teenage sex comedy especially made explicit in casting Lawrence The Last American Virgin Monoson in one of the key supporting roles.

The Final Chapter has some of the best and also some of the worst moments in the entire 12-movie Friday series, easily the best cast and most likable characters from (almost) top to bottom, Tom Savini’s return as makeup artist, Harry Manfredini’s first-rate musical score, Ted White’s brutal conviction selling his kill scenes as Jason Voorhees, and it’s arguably the quintessential Friday the 13th movie.

Let’s hit a couple of the high points first.

The Final Chapter introduces us to Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), a 12-year-old boy with a hyperactive imagination and penchant for monster make-up and masks not unlike Savini; Trish Jarvis (Kimberly Beck), Tommy’s older sister and our Final Girl; Mrs. Jarvis (Joan Freeman), Tommy’s and Trish’s single mother; Gordon the Family Dog, the golden retriever whose fate remains uncertain. Anyway, this family dynamic is something fresh and new for the Friday series.

Crispin Glover, one of the great movie eccentrics, makes his mark on The Final Chapter and his Jimmy becomes one of the most unforgettable horny (dead) teenagers in a series that served them up by the hundreds as fodder for the slaughter. Jimmy and his buddy Ted (Monoson) especially feel like refugees from a teenage sex comedy, like they continued playing their characters from My Tutor (Glover) and The Last American Virgin (Monoson). Jimmy’s dance and exit line in this movie have become the stuff of slasher movie legend.

Feldman and Glover provide us two of the most likable characters in any of the dozen Friday movies, something that’s ironic given the fact The New Beginning (which arrived in theaters around 11 months after The Final Chapter) has almost no likable characters among the largest cast of corpses in series history. Never mind that Tommy did not exactly pan out in The New Beginning and Jason Lives like the endings of The Final Chapter and The New Beginning seemed to promise.

I almost forgot Rob (E. Erich Anderson), the older brother of a character killed by potato sack Jason in Part 2. Rob seeks revenge against Jason and fortunately he meets Trish and Tommy first, though ultimately it does not matter because Rob represents one of the great missed opportunities. Here’s a character who could have served as a basis for an entire movie and The Final Chapter makes him completely underwhelming. His death scene, designed to be poignant, instead becomes laughable (‘He’s killing me. He’s killing me’) and it wishes it could be as enjoyably bad as the bookseller’s death in Dario Argento’s Inferno. You might recall that the creepy old book retailer’s done in by rats and a homicidal Central Park hot dog vendor.

Now, we’ve moved on to the more negative.

Our first two new corpses in The Final Chapter represent one of my least favorite scenarios that’s commonly found in Friday movies. We spend several minutes, it feels even longer, much much much longer, with super horny morgue attendant Axel (Bruce Mahler) and super uninterested Nurse Morgan (Lisa Freeman) before they are massacred by Jason. Maybe it’s only a few minutes, but I never want to watch their scenes ever again to find out. I’ll use their introduction as my cue to go make some scrumptious butter popcorn.

Like the beginning of Part III and the obligatory murder of the lakefront store owners, these are minutes of my life that could have been attended to better things, even during a Friday movie.

The Final Chapter loves breaking glass and characters falling through windows.

The Final Chapter gets straight at the heart of the ambivalent relationship between parent company Paramount Pictures and the Friday movies.

One immediately gets the feeling that Paramount wanted The Final Chapter, you know, to be the end of Jason once and forever because the studio hotshots were ashamed to be associated with such a disreputable and sleazy franchise, but, alas, at the same time, The Final Chapter leaves the door open for more sequels with one of the series’ trademark endings. Paramount walked through that very door — actually, more like sprinted — when The Final Chapter returned a hefty profit.

The Final Chapter finished in the top 25 box office for 1984 and put together a $11.1M opening during the weekend of April 13.

Friday, April 13, 1984. The Challenger returned to Earth from their 11th space shuttle mission. India beat Pakistan by 54 runs to win the first Asia Cricket Cup in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

Paramount released A New Beginning on March 22, 1985, and 1983 and 1987 are the only years of the ’80s without a Friday the 13th movie. Do 1983 and 1987 belong to another decade?

I more or less grew up with the Friday movies, so I might be more forgiving of them for all their numerous faults than people who grew up in different times.

Then again, I might not be, because I only consider Jason Lives (the best made and the only entry that deserves a place near second- or third-tier classic horror movies like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man), Part III (the most suspenseful and the one where Jason acquires his legendary hockey mask), and The Final Chapter even worth recommending. Most of the rest of them have their isolated moments, all of them are excuses for reels of sex and violence and vulgarity, and the movies definitely created their own distinctive space in the cinematic marketplace.

How did the world end up with 12 Friday the 13th movies and legendary status for both the series overall and serial killer Jason Voorhees specifically, when similar movies like My Bloody Valentine, The Burning, Happy Birthday to Me, and Madman failed to produce one sequel among them. Granted, the original Friday finished 15th in the 1980 American box office sweepstakes and the first three sequels also proved to be solid hits among strong competition, while The Burning grossed $700 thousand, Madman $1.3M, My Bloody Valentine $5.7M, and Happy Birthday to Me $10.6M.

Money obviously talked for Jason.

Mac and Me (1988)

MAC AND ME (1988) *
Cable TV came to the little hamlet of Arcadia, Kansas, circa 1988 or 1989 and I watched a whole lot of movies time and time again.

That includes not only blockbusters like Back to the Future Part II and III, Beetlejuice, Big, Die Hard, Total Recall, and Terminator 2, but Arachnophobia, the first two Bill & Ted movies, The Blob remake, Tremors, Red Heat, Cocktail, The ‘Burbs, Bloodsport, Johnny Be Good, Appointment with Death, and even that disaster starring Tony Danza, She’s Out of Control. That last one begs the question WHY? Because it was on, naturally.

I only watched Mac and Me once back then, however, and that’s because even then with less discriminating taste I knew it sucked.

I revisited it all these decades later and it still righteously sucks. Just imagine a stupid E.T the Extra-Terrestrial where none of the cast members have the slightest bit charm or ability to keep our interest and to earn our emotional investment. It’s also incredibly weird and off-putting, especially considering that it’s designed to be family entertainment like E.T and The Wizard of Oz (1939), still the ultimate standard bearer for this kind of movie.

One of the main sources of weirdness: Mac and Me plugs more products than any movie this side of Leonard Part 6 or Happy Gilmore. Don’t you just hate it when a movie does that?

I mean, though, now that I think about it some more, it’s truly a missed opportunity for the ages that Dorothy didn’t drink Coke or the Tin Man didn’t use WD-40 or the Scarecrow didn’t wear designer hay or the Cowardly Lion didn’t have the courage to make a commercial plug right smack dab in the middle of his big melodramatic scene. MGM could have done so much more with their Yellow Brick Road (a sponsor on each and every brick) and the Wicked Witch of the West should have been melted by a brand name water, for crying out loud. We need a remake immediately just so the ruby slippers can be Nike.

Mac and Me could switch people over forever to Pepsi, Burger King, the St. Louis Cardinals, and Sweet Tarts.

Spielberg also missed an opportunity by not having a dance contest in a chain restaurant in E.T.

I was really bummed when I couldn’t find Paul Rudd in the cast and instead endured these apparently neophyte actors like Jonathan Ward, Tina Caspary, Lauren Stanley, and Jade Calegory. Ward and Caspary have considerably more acting experience than Stanley and Calegory, but they’re just as stilted or melodramatic in every scene.

The adult performers and their characters suck, as well, but they are blessed with fewer scenes to suck than the younger actors. By all rights, I should have rooted for the government agents, but, no, I cheered when the end credits rolled on this jive turkey. This is a movie that viewers should put they survived it on their resume.

Oh, in all this hubbub over a crap movie, I almost forgot MAC stands for ‘Mysterious Alien Creature’ and not that one restaurant with the impromptu dance scene interrupted by evil government agents. We have the main one, then his family, and I am guessing they’re distant, no good cousins of E.T. I mean, I doubt they would ever sit together for one of them big family pictures that brings in all the brothers and sisters and cousins and parents and grandparents and grandchildren. E.T. is simply too good for Mac.

Weird children, weird adults, weird aliens, product placement out the wazoo, and Squire Fridell add up to one weird (and awful) movie.

Mac and Me is so awful that Harry and the Hendersons seems like Citizen Kane instead.

Gappa (1967)

GAPPA: THE TRIPHIBIAN MONSTER (1967) ***
Sixty-two albums when he was alive and 54 more since his 1994 death, wanker guitar solos, frequently obscure and sophomoric lyrics, jazz and orchestral or hippie and doo-wop and other stylistic detours on the regular, and political and social satire that probably applies to all us members of the general audience somewhere down the line of a long and storied musical and recording career.

No, sorry, we’re not here to discuss the outstanding 2020 documentary Zappa directed by Alex Winter or Bill S. Preston, Esq., from the Bill & Ted films.

Nor are we here to discuss Gamera the giant flying turtle monster loved by children everywhere or Godzilla the ‘King of the Monsters’ or Gorgo and his sea monster mother Ogra (neither should necessarily be confused with Gorgo, Queen of Sparta) or Gordo the monster Spanish insult.

Nope, we’re here for Gappa: The Triphibian Monster from 1967, which if you like Gamera, Godzilla, Gorgo, etc., you might also find Gappa to your liking if you give it the good old college try. Why are there so many monsters that start with ‘G’? It’s a great big alphabet, for crying out loud.

The film’s also called Gappa the Triphibian Monsters and American-International dubbed the American version Monster from a Prehistoric Planet. It can be found in multiple places on the ‘Net.

Statement of fact: I’m a big fan of the old school monster movie aesthetic — rubber monsters, men-in-suits, miniatures, hapless government and military men, pro forma human interest though I usually wish monster films to go lighter on the human interest, etc. I like a lot of the Showa Era Godzilla moving pictures, like most of the Gamera films, and like Gorgo a good deal. Yeah, call them goofy or silly or ridiculous or preposterous or whatever denigrating pejorative haters desire but they’re mostly a good deal of fun.

By the way, what the hell is a Gappa? A triphibian monster, of course. What the heck’s a triphibian? A monster who’s adept at war on land, at sea, and in the air. A triple-threat, for a sports analogy. That also sounds like the potential for tons of mass destruction and busloads of extras running for their lives. Damn straight, Skippy.

The plot of Gappa has been called a virtual duplication of Gorgo — stupid fucking humans find a tropical island, take a monster back with them against the warnings of the islanders, and the monster’s parents come smashing Tokyo looking for their pride and monster joy — and one might be tempted to group them together with Son of Godzilla and All Monsters Attack as family values kaiju. The Family Values Kaiju Tour literally could have taken the world by storm, in spite of the fact that Son of Godzilla and All Monsters Attack both suck and rank among the worst Godzilla films.

Anyway, we’re not here for Godzilla and I’ll go on the permanent record right now to say that I bawl like a big ole blubbering baby at the end of Gappa. In the words of Weird Al, I was just overwhelmed by its sheer immensity, I had to pop myself a beer.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943) ***1/2
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man starts with an absolute big bang and we have possibly the greatest five minutes in any classic Universal monster movie.

That includes such immortal movies as Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, all stone cold classics essential to every horror movie lover.

The opening gets everything absolutely right: two grave robbers, a cemetery in the middle of the night, Larry The Wolf Man Talbot’s crypt, a full moon, a whole bunch of wolfbane, the revived Wolf Man’s hand, and enough overall spooky atmosphere for approximately 50 scary movie scenes. Yeah, it’s such a phenomenal sequence that director Tom McLoughlin revived it for his opening in Jason Lives, the one film during that long-running series most influenced by classic monster movies.

The rest of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man does not quite measure up, especially once Frankenstein’s Monster enters the picture, but it’s still a great deal of fun.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt any that Lon Chaney Jr. (1906-73) returns as Larry Talbot, one of the greatest horror movie characters. Chaney Jr. played Talbot five times from 1941 through 1948 — the original Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Talbot’s a tortured soul — in fact, mondoshop.com hypes its Wolf Man poster, The most tortured soul in the Universal Monsters universe is unquestionably that suffering bastard Larry Talbot, a.k.a. The Wolf Man — and we feel great empathy for this character because he essentially doesn’t want any damn part of being the Wolf Man. Your own son Bela was a werewolf. He attacked me. He changed me into a werewolf. He’s the one that put this curse on me. You watched over him until he was permitted to die. Well, now I want to die to. Won’t you show me the way?

In that way, he’s different from Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man. Lon Chaney’s Phantom in the 1925 classic The Phantom of the Opera inspires similar feelings as Talbot and the Wolf Man. To his enduring credit, Boris Karloff (1887-1969) worked some pathos into Frankenstein’s Monster, especially in Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein. Still, Talbot stands apart from most cinematic monsters and maybe it’s because he’s the most explicitly human.

Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) passed on Frankenstein’s Monster in Frankenstein, much to his eternal regret, and so he signed on for the Monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man after playing Ygor in Son of Frankenstein and The Ghost of Frankenstein. During the latter film, one might remember that Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein accidentally put Ygor’s brain into the Monster’s head — he speaks poetically at one point in the film, I am Ygor. In a series that paid minuscule attention to continuity from one film to the next, the Monster originally spoke and explained his plight in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, but Universal studio heads apparently laughed their heads off at Lugosi’s dialogue and demanded it be excised from the final cut, rendering the monster absolutely ridiculous and his scenes basically a washout. I am not sure why Lugosi’s voice suddenly became laughable. Lugosi’s stunt double stands in for the 61-year-old man in many scenes. Ironically, though, whenever people imitate Frankenstein’s Monster, it’s the Lugosi version from Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. (Lugosi played Bela in The Wolf Man and Chaney Jr. was Frankenstein’s Monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein after Karloff bowed out.)

We’re not sure exactly why the Monster’s encased in ice or why there’s a production number that must have moseyed on over from MGM. The second half of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man often leaves us feeling awful perplexed.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man finishes strong, thankfully, and we do see our titular monsters slug it out, though it presents an internal struggle because while we’d love more battle royale between the monsters we do love the 90 seconds they give us. This movie paved the highway for King Kong vs. Godzilla and Freddy vs. Jason.

In most every way possible, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man proves to be a red hot mess, but a lovable and thoroughly entertaining one nonetheless.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986) ***
I wanted to like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 considerably more than I did, because of the way director Tobe Hooper (1943-2017) and screenwriter Kit Carson (1941-2014) mixed in satire and dark comedy with all the material that seems like a prerequisite for a sequel to only one of the most infamous movies ever made, 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Unfortunately, though, leading lady Caroline Williams’ harried disc jockey Stretch — yes, even women from Texas have names that play right alongside Slim and Tex — spends a good 75 percent of her screen time screaming. Williams screams more than Fay Wray in The Most Dangerous Game and King Kong and Mystery of the Wax Museum combined, more than Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween and The Fog and Prom Night and Terror Train and Halloween II combined, and more than all the heroines combined who have faced Jason and Freddy and Michael over the last couple decades. Williams probably wishes they paid her by the scream.

All that infernal screaming begins to bog Massacre 2 down in the middle stretches of a film that both starts and finishes rather strongly.

Massacre 2 also features a Dennis Hopper performance that rates a distant fourth behind River’s Edge, Blue Velvet, and Hoosiers in the unofficial Hopper-portrays-an-epic-burnout-not-totally-unlike-himself (though, to be fair to Hopper, his Blue Velvet character goes beyond, way beyond, the pale of the normal cinematic psychopath) in 1986 competition.

Since Hopper (1936-2010) portrays former Texas Ranger and Sally and Franklin Hardesty-Enright’s uncle Lt. Boude ‘Lefty’ Enright and Cannon Films released Massacre 2, wouldn’t it have been absolutely fantastic if Cannon action hero Chuck Norris played the ranger pursuing vigilante justice against the ripped, twisted, absolutely positively deranged (not to mention cannibalistic) Sawyer family.

Both Chainsaw movies start with narration and an opening crawl.

The original: The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young. But, had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day. For them an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

The sequel: On the afternoon of August 18, 1973, five young people in a Volkswagen van ran out of gas on a farm road in South Texas. Four of them were never seen again. The next morning the one survivor, Sally Hardesty-Enright, was picked up on a roadside, blood-caked and screaming murder. Sally said she had broken out of a window in Hell. The girl babbled a mad tale: a cannibal family in an isolated farmhouse … chainsawed fingers and bones … her brother, her friends hacked up for barbecue … chairs made of human skeletons … Then she sank into catatonia. Texas lawmen mounted a month-long manhunt, but could not locate the macabre farmhouse. They could find no killers and no victims. No facts; no crime. Officially, on the records, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre never happened. But during the last 13 years, over and over again reports of bizarre, grisly chainsaw mass-murders have persisted all across the state of Texas. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has not stopped. It haunts Texas. It seems to have no end.

Made on an estimated $80-140,000 production budget, the original deserves such descriptive phrases as grainy and gritty. Gory, no. Disturbing, yes definitely, terrifying, for sure, with a more than macabre sense of humor, especially during the best dinner table scene this side of Tod Browning’s Freaks. I about lose it every time the family wants the 124-year-old Grandpa Sawyer to end Sally’s life with one crushing blow of a hammer and this cannibalistic codger just can’t find the strength to do it, ultimately giving Sally the opportunity for escape.

More than a decade later, Hooper wanted Massacre 2 to be a dark comedy, accentuating those elements from the original. Meanwhile, naturally, Cannon desired a finished product more along the lines of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or at least its shocking reputation.

The finished product plays more like a compromise.

Both films are reflective of the times they were made. The original, released on the first day of October 1974, came out in the midst of Richard Nixon’s resignation speech, the Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down, the final year of the Vietnam War, the Oil Embargo 1973-74, and general discord in the land. The sequel, released on Aug. 22, 1986, gives us cannibals with ‘family values’ a few months before former Hollywood actor turned politician Ronald Reagan’s speech centered around the family unit and giddy excess in every single frame to produce a bigger but not better Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The original has this insidious way of getting underneath our skin and dominating our thought patterns, and none of the slicker sequels, remakes or imitations even come remotely close to its power to provoke.

NOTE: The parody of The Breakfast Club earns the film’s poster four stars.

The Wild Geese (1978)

THE WILD GEESE (1978) *
We’ve seen The Wild Geese many times before and we’ve also seen it done a lot better many times before — the rounding up of the mercenary troops for their new mission, the basic training, the jail break, the great escape, the big double cross, the death scenes, etc.

If we pool our collective resources, undoubtedly we could brainstorm 50 or 100 titles easily and recall their overall plots and specific individual developments.

Worse, far worse, infinitely worse even, how do I describe the pace of The Wild Geese?

I thought about saying it moves at a snail’s pace, but then I quickly realized that it more accurately moves like a three-toed sloth dipped in molasses. This is one action movie that does not require slow motion because it’s already slow enough.

In fact, I am hard pressed to come up with an action movie that moves slower than The Wild Geese. I just can’t do it and I don’t want to ever find out if any do exist in this great big universe.

Anyway, we have the first 30 minutes to meet our stars Richard Burton, Richard Harris, and Roger Moore, then around the 45-minute mark it’s basic training and finally around one hour in we get into the main action. I almost said jump, but that’s way too much activity for The Wild Geese. To be fair, The Wild Geese picks up the pace in the last hour to such a degree that only two of the three sloth toes are molasses drenched. Guess what, though, it’s still dull as dishwater.

Yes, indeed, there’s not an exciting moment to be found in The Wild Geese.

Of course, that incredible pace might have something to do with the fact Burton, Harris, and Moore were in their late 40s (Harris) and early 50s (Burton, Moore) when they made The Wild Geese. Harris and especially Burton are not the least bit convincing in their action hero roles. Moore was nearly halfway through his run playing British secret agent James Bond, so he’s more credible than his counterparts and looks much less a fool than either Harris or Burton.

It is ironic that Burton, Harris, and Moore are playing middle-aged mercenaries and the film drops mercenary dialogue routinely during a 135-minute spread, because the three main actors fit the adjective definition of mercenary — primarily concerned with making money at the expense of ethics.

It seems like they paid Burton, Harris, and Moore by the word during The Wild Geese, because they yap and yammer constantly, their barrage of banter only interrupted by the generic requirements of the action movie. Granted, it takes a (long) while before the prerequisite explosions and gunfire.

By my reckoning, a long, long, long, long, long, long while and The Wild Geese lives up only to the geese portion because it is something foul alright. Wild, however, it is most certainly not.

Odds and Odds: The Vikings, Dolls, The Monster Squad, Scream Blacula Scream

ODDS AND ODDS: THE VIKINGS, DOLLS, THE MONSTER SQUAD, SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM
Richard Fleischer’s The Vikings calls to mind epic grand adventure pictures Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, and The Sea Wolf, not to mention The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad from the same year (1958) and John Boorman’s Excalibur from 1981.

Kirk Douglas’ lust for life recalls Errol Flynn’s in Captain Blood, Robin Hood, and Sea Hawk and Janet Leigh’s incredible beauty compares with Olivia de Havilland’s in Captain Blood and Robin Hood, as well as Helen Mirren’s in Excalibur. Never mind that Leigh and Mirren play characters named Morgana; however, their beauty and first name are where their characters’ similarities begin and end.

In other words, The Vikings belongs to the fine cinematic tradition of swashbucklers, hair-raisers, cliff-hangers, nail-biters, period costume pieces, and historical fiction.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that it has an uncredited Orson Welles narrate. The Vikings, in Europe of the eighth and ninth century, were dedicated to a pagan god of war, Odin. Trapped by the confines of their barren ice-bound northlands, they exploited their skill as shipbuilders to spread a reign of terror, then unequaled in violence and brutality in all the records of history. Good stuff.

Highlights include Douglas’ Einar and Curtis’ Eric having key body parts removed, the former his eye by a falcon and the latter his hand in a bout of capital punishment. These moments undoubtedly make The Vikings one of the most gruesome films in 1958 this side of the British classic Fiend Without a Face. Oh, that’s a golden oldie.

Naturally, one can’t go too wrong with any picture where Ernest Borgnine plays a character named Ragnar and spouts screenwriter Calder Willingham’s dialogue like a bountiful fountain, for example What man ever had a finer son? Odin could have sired him, but I did … and Look how he glares at me. If he wasn’t fathered by the black ram in the full of the moon my name is not Ragnar.

Back in the day, my friend would call on quotes from Airplane and Austin Powers for our amusement, and it’s a crying shame that we had no idea about The Vikings, because I think lines such as You sound like a moose giving birth to a hedgehog and The sun will cross the sky a thousand times before he dies, and you’ll wish a thousand times that you were dead would have perfectly fit a night of carousing, especially for two byproducts of a school with Vikings for its mascot.

Rating: Four stars.

— I finally got around to watching Stuart Gordon’s Dolls for the first time.

Finally, because I love Gordon’s first two features Re-Animator and From Beyond.

I must say that I wasn’t disappointed by Dolls, though it’s a step down from From Beyond and a good two or three from Re-Animator.

Alas, Dolls belongs to a slightly different but no less venerable tradition than Re-Animator and From Beyond, both of which cross mad scientists and low-budget exploitation (nudity, gore, etc.). Think Frankenstein meets Dawn of the Dead.

Dolls, meanwhile, recalls such touchstones as The Old Dark House and The Devil-Doll, not to mention the 1979 Tourist Trap. See if this plot sounds familiar: On a dark and stormy night, six people — a dysfunctional family (husband and father, wife and stepmother, and daughter / stepdaughter) and a young man with two hitchhikers — find the nearest house (The Old Dark House) and they have to fight to make it out of the other end of the motion picture alive because their kindly old hosts are magical toy makers with killer dolls (The Devil-Doll, Tourist Trap).

Like both Re-Animator and From Beyond, Gordon and Dolls screenwriter Ed Naha jump off from their basic old-fashioned plot structure with inspired moments of madness.

Dolls also predates Child’s Play by more than a year and rather than just one killer doll, it has a horde … but Child’s Play, created by Don Mancini, spawned Child’s Play 2, Child’s Play 3, Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky, Curse of Chucky, Cult of Chucky, and Child’s Play (2019), plus short films Chucky’s Vacation Slides and Chucky Invades and the TV series Chucky.

So, apparently, not all killer doll films are created equal.

Rating: Three stars.

— The Monster Squad starts with an absolute genius idea: Take a group of kids, horror movie fans one and all, and have them do battle against Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, Wolf Man, Mummy, and Gill Man.

Yes, what an absolutely positively brilliant idea by screenwriters Shane Black and Fred Dekker, whose names ring a bell loud and clear for genre fans. Others will be familiar with their work regardless whether they know their names or not.

Black made his fame and fortune first for the script of the buddy cop picture Lethal Weapon and some of his other credits include Predator (he plays Hawkins), The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight.

Dekker’s other feature directorial credits are the fantastic Night of the Creeps and the not-so-fantastic RoboCop 3.

The Monster Squad gives us both protagonists and monsters that we like, and that goes a long way toward producing a memorable motion picture experience.

The Wolf Man gets his due for a change. The fat kid Horace kicks the Wolf Man in the groin and unleashes the film’s trademark line Wolfman’s got nards! In 2018, Andre Gower, one of the stars of The Monster Squad, directed a documentary named Wolfman’s Got Nards, which looks at the impact one little cult horror film made on fans, cast and crew, and the movie industry.

Anyway, in a movie filled with nifty little moments, I love it when the Wolf Man regenerates after he’s blown up real good.

On the site Drinking Cinema, I found a game for The Monster Squad so drink whenever: 1. Dynamite EXPLODES! 2. A monster dies! 3. You hear a sweet insult. 4. You learn a new monster fact. 5. The cops are having a really hard time figuring out that, um, hello, the perps are various Jack Pierce creations. 6. You see amazing dog acting. 7. You witness a patented Monster Slow-Walk. 8. There’s a monster scare!

I give The Monster Squad a slight deduction for the obligatory music video montage right around the midway point of the picture.

Rating: Three-and-a-half stars.

— Vampirism and voodoo go together rather well and their combination helps Scream Blacula Scream become one of those rare sequels I prefer over the original.

I thought William Marshall’s performance as the title character was the redeeming factor in Blacula and he’s every bit as good in Scream Blacula Scream. Marshall just has a commanding screen presence and he brings both a gravitas to a character and legitimacy to a movie that otherwise might be laughable with the wrong person in the main role. He’s equally effective in every guise of this character — the debonair Mamuwalde who has a definite charm with the ladies befitting an African prince (which he indeed was before the racist Dracula cursed him and imprisoned in a coffin until Blacula awakened in 1972 Los Angeles), the menacing Blacula with his fangs bared, and the more reflective Mamuwalde who hates the dreaded vampire curse.

A highly respectable box office return — not voodoo, no matter what the plot synopsis might read — brought Mamuwalde / Blacula / Marshall back.

In the first movie, Mamuwalde / Blacula comes to believe the lovely Tina’s the reincarnation of his long dead wife Luva. Well, it definitely helps that Vonetta McGee plays both Tina and Luva. By golly, doesn’t this plot thread just get you every single time?

In the sequel, Mamuwalde / Blacula believes in the voodoo powers of Lisa Fortier. She can provide a cure and exorcise the curse once and forever.

Scream Blacula Scream came out two weeks after Coffy and had it been made later in 1973 after Pam Grier busted out as a star playing Coffy, her Lisa Fortier character in Scream Blacula Scream would have undoubtedly been different. Grier plays a more traditional leading lady and screaming and shrinking damsel in distress in Scream Blacula Scream, and she’s definitely no shrinking violet in either Coffy or Foxy Brown. So if Scream Blacula Scream had been produced more in the aftermath of both Coffy and Cleopatra Jones, which came out a month after both Coffy and Scream Blacula Scream, surely American-International — one of the best exploitation film outlets — would have wanted Grier to play one badass mama jama vampire killer rather than her more stereotypical role.

Fair warning: Scream Blacula Scream ends on an extremely jarring note. I remember thinking, in the immortal song title of Peggy Lee, is that all there is? Despite the fact of that ending, you might be surprised to find that I am granting Scream Blacula Scream three-and-a-half stars. Yes, it is just that good.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956) ***
I would have liked to been a fly on the wall (but not Mike Pence’s head) for several conversations throughout motion picture history.

For example, when Chevy Chase was offered Oh Heavenly Dog. We all remember that one, right, where Chase plays a private detective who’s murdered real early in the picture and then, almost just like Warren Beatty in Heaven Can Wait, he’s reincarnated as, wait for it, Benji. We see Benji solve the murder and hear Chase on the soundtrack. Yes, it’s a real movie.

Another example would be how Alfred Hitchcock reacted when he was told his Man Who Knew Too Much star Doris Day would sing Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) not once but twice during the movie — the first time about 12 minutes in and the second with about 12 minutes left.

Isn’t it obvious, though, that Hitchcock wasn’t into Que Sera, Sera, even before Day sings that line about 500 times.

I search it up (as the kids today say) and find this juicy bit of IMDb trivia: Throughout the filming, Doris Day became increasingly concerned that Alfred Hitchcock paid more attention to camera set-ups, lighting, and technical matters than he did to her performance. Convinced that he was displeased with her work, she finally confronted him. His reply was, ‘My dear Miss Day, if you weren’t giving me what I wanted, then I would have to direct you!’

Apparently, Day (1922-2019) herself was initially turned off by the notion of singing what became her signature song, even in death. She thought it was a forgettable children’s song.

I call this 1956 version The Woman Who Sang Too Much.

The Man Who Knew Too Much ’56 (a remake of Hitchcock’s own 1934 film) predominantly works because of the performance of James Stewart and a couple spectacular set pieces.

Despite this being the least of the four features Stewart made with Hitchcock, way behind Vertigo, Rope, and Rear Window (in that order), we follow the events from beginning to end mostly because of the inherent pull of Stewart … and we also know that even during a lesser Hitchcock film, that sly old master, that dirty old dog, would still come up with something to wow us.

Here, it’s the murder of the mysterious Frenchman in Morocco and the attempted assassination of the prime minister at Royal Albert Hall. Personally, I still prefer Jimi Hendrix’s two nights at the Royal Albert in February 1969. Que sera, sera, right?

Bernard Herrmann, the man responsible for the scores to seven Hitchcock films as well as Citizen Kane and Taxi Driver, makes a cameo as the conductor.

Hitchcock apparently made his trademark cameo around 25 minutes in, but I missed it. Que sera, sera, right?

Especially now that I’m blaring Hendrix’s Hear My Train A Comin’.

Invasion U.S.A. (1985)

INVASION U.S.A. (1985) *
Joseph Zito made a logical progression from directing mad slasher films The Prowler and The Final Chapter (Jason Voorhees’ third screen entry) to Chuck Norris action spectaculars Missing in Action and Invasion U.S.A for the Cannon Films Group, one of the ultimate purveyors of schlock all through the ’80s.

Their schlock includes Ninja III: The Domination and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, both from 1984 and directed by Sam Firstenberg.

Anyway, I digress, which is something that I will invariably do whenever discussing Invasion U.S.A. Yes, I admit upfront this review will be filled with digressions.

The plot: Multinationals with guns (sometimes with subtitles, sometimes without) invade the United States, actually Florida but Invasion Florida doesn’t quite ring the same liberty bell, and one-man army Chuck Norris stops them with bloody ballyhoo. Named Matt Hunter in a fit of poetic fancy, perhaps by one of the writers of this garbage, Norris could have killed ’em all with denim.

Basically, Invasion U.S.A is Red Dawn dumbed down even more and it substitutes teeny bopper Commie scum killers Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Grey, and Lea Thompson for Norris, who laughably tells us that he works alone. No joke, we know this after ’bout 50 Norris films where his character informs us that he kills scumbags all on his lonesome. I mean, wasn’t one of Norris’ better movies even called Lone Wolf McQuade for crying out loud?

The best Norris pictures have strong supporting characters and casts, who make up for the sometimes personality deficient Norris. Alas, Invasion U.S.A gives us one of the worst characters in not only a Norris movie but all movies in general — an apparent photojournalist named McGuire (Melissa Prophet) who probably should have been named Molly Magsnarl instead. She’s not the least bit grateful for Hunter saving her, and I would have let her meet her ultimate demise after the first time she snarls at me Cowboy. She blows out the tires on Invasion U.S.A every time she’s on screen.

Seeing her camera made me laugh, though, because I thought about how it was John Rambo’s assignment to only take photos of the POWs — not to rescue them — in Rambo: First Blood Part 2.

Speaking of First Blood Part 2, released a few months before Invasion U.S.A, it and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando (released just after Invasion U.S.A) both blow away Invasion U.S.A in the great 1985 One-Man Army Movie Sweepstakes.

I also found a worse movie than Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that includes characters singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat.