Willy’s Wonderland (2021) – Review

When it comes to having a widely varying spectrum of movies no one come close to the range in quality of actor Nicolas Cage, from his Academy Award-winning performance in Leaving Las Vegas to his starring role in the universally panned apocalyptic thriller Left Behind, but in between those peaks and valleys you have such entertainingly bad films like The Wicker Man remake or fun over-the-top action films like Face Off, sadly, Willy’s Wonderland falls closer to Left Behind variety rather than the likes of The Wicker Man or even the over-the-top action flick Drive Angry.

In this particular outing, we find Nicolas Cage embracing the “Crazy Kooky” aspect of his filmography with him playing a “Man with No Name” who while passing through the remote town of Hayesville, Nevada has the tires of his car are blown out by a spike strip which leads to him eventually fighting off evil forces, very weird evil forces. The character is simply titled “The Janitor” but he is clearly playing on the archetype straight out of the classic Western where a lone rider arrives into town, ala Shane or High Plains Drifter, and who then sets things right. In the case of Willy’s Wonderland, it’s not a villainous gunman arriving on the noon train but a collection of animatronic puppets of the Chuck E. Cheese variety and the local townsfolk are covering for a dark secret.

 

Could that secret be how much they paid Nicolas Cage to star in this?

If you’ve played Five Nights at Freddy’s or watched the 2019 horror film The Banana Splits you won’t find anything new or interesting in Willy’s Wonderland as neither the director nor the writers have done anything more than cut and paste the concept. Not to get too much into spoiler territory – though this thing barely has a plot to spoil – we learn that a group of serial killers operated out of a family-themed restaurant where they would prey on their customers, that is until the law finally arrived and the head serial killer and his minions all committed suicide in a satanic ritual that resulted in their evil spirits possessing the animatronic puppets that made up the restaurants trademark gimmick. If that sounds a tad familiar that would be because that’s the basic premise to the original Child’s Play movie.

 

"Hi, I'm Willy, and I'm your friend 'till the end! Hidey-ho, ha-ha-ha!"

What makes less sense is the reasoning behind the police and local residents becoming participants in the sacrificing of strangers to this group of creatures that are inhabited by the spirits of bloodthirsty murders. We get some bullshit excuse from Sheriff Lund (Beth Grant) that after Willy's Wonderland was shut down the animatronics continued murdering people around Hayesville until she and a couple of others made a deal with murderous monsters, a deal where they would trick stranded drifters into cleaning up the place, basically offering these poor people as sacrifices, all so that “Willy and Friends” won’t murder the people of Hayesville. The problem here is that we never find out if the Sheriff or any of her compatriots even thought of just bulldozing or burning the place down – something we see the Sheriff’s adopted daughter Liv (Emily Tosta) trying to do at the top of the movie – and it’s not like the town gets any benefits from this arrangement, other than not being horribly murdered, and it would have been so easy for the writers to come up with some kind of demonic pact that the townsfolk were all in favour of, something that would make this hick tow prosper. This is a case of having a “cool premise” and then giving no thought as to how it all works.

 

“Get me the screenwriter on the line, this movie makes me look like an idiot.”

As for the ever-lovable madman Nicolas Cage, well I’ve seen many actors simply “Phone in” a performance before but here he brings that to a whole new level by not having a single line of dialogue throughout the film’s 90-minute running time. Now, it's claimed that “Nicolas Cage always wanted to give a silent horror performance” but that’s not what we get here, what is on display here is an apathetic character who we watch mop floors, power down energy drinks – that he takes religiously on some sort of schedule – and then he will occasionally open a can of whoop-ass on some animatronic monsters. That the fights themselves are boring and lethargic is the final kiss of death to this film, and all the blood and guts don’t stop Willy’s Wonderland from being a snooze fest.

 

I’m assuming this is a regular Friday night for Nicolas Cage

Stray Observations:

• Why would Sheriff Lund call in a State Trooper to help monitor the “Red Phone” if someone calling for help has to be ignored as part of their deal?
• Liv leads a group of fellow teenagers to burn down Willy’s Wonderland, but as they all have been aware of the horrors inside for over a decade why is this the first time someone has tried this?
• Nicolas Cage will not deviate from his schedule of cleaning, downing energy drinks and playing pinball, but why? He completely ignores Liv’s warnings about the danger and doesn’t seem to care who gets killed as long as he stays on schedule, and again I ask, why?
• The Sheriff and her co-conspirators never think to check if those they are sacrificing are going to be missed, with the callous haphazard way they handle things this whole enterprise would have been exposed long ago.
• Nicolas Cage kills one of the creatures with his hands cuffed behind his back but then immediately afterwards he snaps the cuffs as if he were Captain America, which raises the question “Why the fuck did he fight with them on if they were so easily broken?”
• I know kids getting killed while having sex is a horror film trope but the teens in this film know that they are in an establishment full of animatronic serial killers so them stopping to have sex isn’t just ludicrous it’s insulting to the audience.

 

This is what happens when you don’t practice safe sex.

I’m all for dumb and fun horror movies but there has to be at least a modicum of effort put into the script and that clearly didn't happen here and director Kevin Lewis failed to even approach the level of entertainment you'd hope to find in a "bad" Nicolas Cage movie. I could have dealt with the fact that the film never addresses or explains the film’s silent protagonist motivations or his weird quirks but when nothing else made any sense it caused me to quickly lose interest, but hey, if you think Nicolas Cage ripping the wings off of an animatronic ostrich is the height of entertainment then you may enjoy Willy’s Wonderland, I personally found the whole thing to be endless disappointing, which is a shame considering there is nothing more fun than an over-the-top Nicolas Cage.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) – Review

After the two rather “low stakes” spy adventures found in Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun it was finally time for Roger Moore to step things up a tad and have a balls-to-the-wall action spectacular, a movie that would not only pit James Bond against an honest to goodness supervillain, one with massive sets and a pair of truly impressive henchmen, but he’d also find himself teamed up with Russia’s top agent, one whose love he’d just so happened to have recently killed. Can even Bond’s bottomless levels of charm solve that bit of “awkwardness” and save the world? 

It’s at this point in the franchise that it has becomes abundantly clear that the filmmakers have no real interest in adapting Ian Fleming’s novels, instead, they simply slap one of his book titles onto a script that will bear no resemblance to the source material. There is no greater example of this than in the adaptation of The Spy Who Loved Me as the book was about a young Canadian woman who while touring America is asked to “house sit” for pair of unscrupulous owners of a motel who, unbeknownst to her, have hired a pair of arsonists to burn down the motel for insurance purposes. She is spared rape and murder by these nefarious criminals when Bond arrives, having had a flat tire while passing by, he then defeats the two villains and beds the grateful girl. The book ends with the young Canadian continuing her tour of America, devoted to the memory of the "Spy who loved her." To say none of this happens in the movie would be a vast understatement.

 

Note: One of the arsonists had steel teeth, which is the sole element to survive from the original source material.

The plot to this The Spy Who Loved Me is basically a nautical version of the Connery's You Only Live Twice, only instead of Blofeld’s spaceship swallowing British and Soviet spacecraft we have shipping tycoon and scientist named Karl Stromberg (Curd Jürgens) who is using a massive supertanker to swallow up nuclear submarines owned by Britain and the Soviet Union. With two missing submarines, the respective countries enlist their top agents, James Bond (Roger Moore) for Britain and Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) for the Soviets, to find out how someone could track and capture a nuclear vessel. This leads this ultimate Odd Couple to Cairo where they both hope to acquire the plans for a highly advanced submarine tracking system that has been put on the Black Market. Stromberg not too happy about his top-secret tracking system being offered to the highest bidder he sends two assassins to kill anyone who has so much as come in contact with the plans.  This leads to Bond and Anya tackling the brutish Sandor (Milton Reid) and the steel-toothed monster known as Jaws (Richard Kiel ), but as fun as it is to see duelling spies fighting off various thugs it’s not until the film’s halfway point do things really kick-off, it’s then that we finally meet the film’s third star, which would be production designer Ken Adam whose amazing sets and models are what really set Bond films apart.

 

This looks like a place the Legion of Doom would love to hang out.

It’s the returning of Ken Adam that makes this film a real treat, he’d been missing from the franchise since Diamonds are Forever, and it was the sense of scope and scale of the Bond villains that was sorely lacking in Live and Let Die and The Man With the Golden Gun but he does his best to make up for his absence by creating not one but two amazing villainous lairs in this outing, Stromberg’s supertanker the Liparus and its massive interior set and Stromberg's underwater Atlantis base. The Spy Who Loved Me is also notable for introducing the world to the second greatest Bond vehicle in the form of the Lotus Esprit from Q Branch, which is a car that converts into a submarine and can launch surface-to-air missiles while battling a variety of underwater foes.

 

It does trump the Aston Martin DB5 in the aquatic area.

Stray Observations:

• Bond is alerted to his new mission by a ticker-tape coming out of his watch, which is something that would really blow any undercover assignment and could result in a dead agent.
• Major Anya Amasova is also known as Agent Triple X which is either her KGB designation or her porn rating.
• The henchman Jaws is more a comic book villain than your typical Bond antagonist, not only can he survive being buried under tons of fallen rock but he also has the jaw strength to bite through steel chains.
• James Bond kills the beautiful Caroline Munroe with a surface-to-air missile, a crime that I will never forgive Bond for committing.
• This is the rare Bond film where we get our heroes escaping two villain-run facilities, the exploding supertanker Liparus and the Stromberg’s lair Atlantis.
• Going by the exterior views of Stromberg’s supertanker it clearly does not have an interior large enough to dock three nuclear submarines, but more to the point “Why did the Liparus even have three submarine docking bays when the plan only called for two captured nuclear submarines?”

 

Question: Would either a British or Soviet commander have actually handed over a submarine loaded with nuclear missiles to an unknown party? I’m betting self-destruction would be preferable to this happening.

The plot may have borrowed a little too much from You Only Live Twice, probably due in part to Cubby Broccoli hiring the director of that film to helm this one, but the one improvement direct Lewis Gilbert brought to his entry was in softening up Roger Moore’s incarnation of Bond and giving us a Bond girl who was equal to Bond himself, sadly, even though she does save Bond at one point in the film she still ends up becoming the standard damsel in distress at the end, but the key improvement in this outing was in moving Bond away from the aspect of Connery’s brutal killer to Roger Moore more charming and witty persona. In fact, he is so witty and charming that Anya forgets her vow to avenge her dead lover and sleeps with Bond instead.

 

I bet Major Anya Amasova’s next assignment is monitoring the Siberian Chipmunk.

The villainous plot of The Spy Who Loved Me is another case of something that is better not looked at too closely as it makes little to no sense. Stromberg’s plan was to have simultaneous launching of nuclear missiles from the captured British and Soviet submarines to obliterate Moscow and New York City, which would then trigger a global nuclear war and result in Stromberg and company surviving down in Atlantis where a new civilization would be established underwater. Sadly, other than a brief glimpse at a model of Stromberg’s underwater utopia we have no idea how plans to reboot humanity after instigating a global thermonuclear war. Has he been secretly recruiting the hundreds of scientists, engineers that would be required for such a feat? If so it would have been nice to at least have had a glimpse at such things. Also, his plan relied on Britain and the Soviet Union instigating a full nuclear reprisal but as both countries were currently working together, and they about the stolen nuclear submarines, why would they start a nuclear war when they knew a third party was responsible?

 

Note: The plot to wipe out humanity in favour of the villain’s own personal utopia would later be revisited in the film Moonraker.

Stromberg may be less memorable than previous Bond villains as he was even overshadowed by his steel-toothed henchman, but the sheer spectacle on display makes this a must-see entry in the franchise.  From the amazing ski jump stunt that sets Bond off and running to the spectacular battle between Stromberg’s forces and Bond’s allies, there is certainly a lot to enjoy this time out. With beautiful locals, gorgeous women, outrageous villains, great stunts and impossible situations – that require even more impossible gadgets to escape – The Spy Who Loved Me is easily one of the more entertaining Bond films if not necessarily one of the best overall entries.

The Ghost Breakers (1940) – Review

With the success of 1939’s The Cat and the Canary, Paramount Pictures were quick to re-team Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard for another go and what better way to ensure success than star them in another horror-comedy, one with both a spooky local and nefarious villains for our leads to run from.

The hero of the film is a crime reporter Lawrence Lawrence (Bob Hope) who is touted as “A man who knows all the rackets and all the racketeers” and it’s his latest broadcast about notorious gangster Frenchy Duval (Paul Fix) that sets the plot in motion. A nervous Lawrence heads over to his hotel to discuss his latest broadcast so that Frenchy can "give it" to him straight and it's there that he crosses paths with poor working girl Mary Carter (Paulette Goddard) who has inherited a plantation and mansion on a small island off the coast of Cuba. A Cuban solicitor named Parada (Paul Lukas), who delivers the deed to Mary, tries to discourage her from taking the place and even mentions that there is an interested party willing to pay $50,000 dollars for the place.

 

“This doesn’t make sense. Why should anyone offer so much for a castle full of secondhand spooks?”

Things get even more interesting when she receives a phone call from a man named Mederos (Anthony Quinn) who warns Mary about selling the property and states his desire to meet with her. Sadly, this meeting never takes place as the man is later shot dead in the hallway by Parada, and because this is a bit of a screwball comedy Lawrence was in that very same hallway on his way to meet Frenchy. Guns go off and before you can sing a single bar from “Cuban Pete” Lawrence is hiding in Mary’s hotel room under the false belief that he was the one who shot Mederos.  Hijinks ensue.

 

“Don’t scream. If there are going to hysterics around here, I’ll have them.”

What follows is a brilliant comedy with Bob Hope providing his trademark fast-talking patter and nervous energy that borders on volcanic at times, and once again the chemistry between Paulette Goddard and Hope is simply amazing and the fact that Goddard’s character isn’t your typical damsel in distress makes this pairing a highlight of the genre. These are two cinema legends at the top of their game and the balancing act of thrills and laughs is handled beautifully by director George Marshall and cinematographer Charles Lang who creates a dark and foreboding world that is one part film noir and two parts Universal horror movie. When our protagonist reaches the haunted castle not only does the comedy ratchet up a notch or two but the scares as well, with a real ghost walking the halls of Castillo Maldito.

 

I’d say that place would be a steal at $50, 000 even with ghosts.

Bob Hope’s portrayal of Lawrence isn’t as cut and dried as one would first assume, he does trot out some of his trademark cowardly mannerisms but he is far from a coward in this outing, once he discovers that Mary is in actual danger he sets aside his own problems and sails off to Cuba with her, and when Parada warns him about the dangerous ghosts that roam the castle halls he tells Parada, “You know, that gives me an idea that scares me out of my wits. I'll go there first.” This leads to one of my favourite exchanges in the movie.

Parada: “You are a brave man.”
Lawrence: “Me? No, my nerves are the break-away kind. I've got rabbit blood in me. Why, do you know what's libel to happen if I see a ghost there tonight?”

 

“I'd be so scared I'd probably take a shot at it... Won't I feel silly shooting ghosts?”

The definition of courage is the bravery and or strength to do something that could be dangerous, and that pretty much sums up Bob Hope’s character in this film, but he’s not alone in these acts of courage and this leads us to the other main character in this film, that of his manservant Alex (Willie Best). At a glance, modern audiences may find the character of Alex to be very politically incorrect - which it is - with all the stereotypes about African Americans and superstition in full force here, but not only does actor Willie Best rise above such material he is allowed to go toe to toe with both Hope and Goddard and he provides some of the film’s funniest moments. It should also be noted that he is the one who dispatches the villain and saves the day, not Bob Hope.

 

“Boss, did I press the wrong button?”

Stray Observations:

• As in The Cat and the Canary Bob Hope plays a radio personality, one could say this was a clear case of typecasting as that is what he was most known for at the time.
• The castle Mary inherits is called "Castillo Maldito” which means "Castle of the Damned" and one must wonder if it earned that name or was it just a strange choice by the original owner.
• To save Lawrence and Alex from a zombie Mary dresses up as her ancestor to distract the creature, proving that she’s not just another pretty face.
• Paulette Goddard repeatedly bumps into comedic actor Lloyd Corrigan throughout the film’s running time, making us suspicious of his role in the scam, but his presence comes to nothing and he vanishes from the movie without a clue.
• The zombie in this movie predates the type created by George Romero and is best described by Parada who informs us that these creatures have no will of their own. “You see them sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring” or as Bob Hope puts it, “Democrats.”

 

Romero, eat your heart out.

If one can look past the moments of uncomfortable racial stereotyping and avoid cringing at such line as “Oh, you look like a blackout in a blackout. This keeps up, I'm gonna have to paint you white” then you will have a great time with The Ghost Breakers, a horror-comedy that truly set the template for the genre and films like Ghostbusters owe a great deal to this entry. So, if you like spooky castles, nefarious villains, lumbering zombies and mysteries revolving around riddles and murder then this could be the movie you’ve been waiting for.

The Cat and the Canary (1939) – Review

When it comes to playing cowardly leading men Bob Hope is at the top of the list – Lou Costello is disqualified as he rarely gets the girl in the end – and with the 1939 remake of The Cat and the Canary, we have on hand one of the best horror comedies to date, a film that gives us the incredibly teaming of Bob Hope with the very talented and always beautiful Paulette Goddard.

You can’t get much spookier of a location than a decrepit antebellum mansion located in the Louisiana bayou and with The Cat and the Canary we not only get all the trappings of a classic horror movie but also the perfect blend of scares and comedy. The plot centers around the reading of millionaire Cyrus Norman’s will and the potential inheritors all gathering at his spooky mansion; we have Fred Blythe (John Beal), Charlie Wilder (Douglass Montgomery), Cicily Young (Nydia Westman), Aunt Susan Tilbury (Elizabeth Patterson), Joyce Norman (Paulette Goddard) and Wally Campbell (Bob Hope), a radio actor who is not all that comfortable with the frightening surroundings and is more than willing to forego any inheritance if it means not being eaten by an alligator.

 

Can you really blame him?

Cyrus Norman died ten years ago but it is only now that his lawyer Mr. Crosby (George Zucco ) has gathered together the man’s living descendants, which was one of several strange stipulations in the will with the others being that it be read at midnight and that the only ones to inherit his lands and estate are those with the surname Norman – Joyce being the only Norman present she will be the sole beneficiary – but another stipulation is that his heirs must remain sane for the next 30 days, which means if Joyce loses her sanity during that time, the heir will be determined from a second part of the will. Cue the scares and gaslighting as events unfold that would curdle the soul of even the stoutest heart.

 

Why would you even try to sleep in a situation like this?

The Cat and the Canary is a brilliant comedy spook show with Bob Hope illustrating that he was not only unrivalled in the manic scare category but also as a romantic lead and his chemistry with Paulette Goddard was amazing and as the two try to unravel the mystery – such as the murder of Mr. Crosby, an escaped lunatic from a nearby asylum – a murderous monster known as “The Cat” – as well as a riddle that will lead to a fortune in jewels, and with every horror trope imaginable being unleashed upon our stalwart heroes it seems like daylight is too far off.  It should also be noted that one of the film’s standout performances is that of the housekeeper Miss Lu (Gale Sondergaard) whose dedication to her late employer is only exceeded by her belief in the supernatural and it’s her “communicating” with the spirit world that really adds some flavour to this movie and Gale Sondergaard is more than up to the task of standing toe to toe with Bob Hope.

Now, when watching this movie with, all its secret panels, moving bookcases and paintings with roving eyes populating this “haunted house” one can’t help but consider this film a precursor to the Scooby-Doo mysteries and as the film ends with an unmasking, revealing the identity of the clawed and horrifying murderer "The Cat" as just one of the inheritors wearing a mask, it is even more apparent as it bears more than a striking resemblance to the episode “A Night of Fright Is No Delight” where Scooby-Doo had to stay the night in a southern style haunted mansion to earn his inheritance.

 

“Does this mean I’m Scooby-Doo’s father?”

Stray Observations:

• According to this movie most of the alligators infesting Louisiana bayous have their jaws strapped shut.
• Characters trapped in an isolated location with a killer stalking the halls echoes Agatha Christie’s "And Then There Were None" which was published the following year.
• The creepy and foreboding housekeeper Miss Lu could be considered a precursor to the imposing Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca.
• Bob Hope plays a radio actor in this movie but this was the actual profession that brought him fame and a contract at Paramount.
• Charles, Fred and Wally all seem romantically interested in Joyce despite being if quite distantly, all being blood-related to her.  So...Ewwww!
• This southern gothic setting may have inspired Walt when he came up with Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.

 

This place is easily an “E” ticket attraction.

With Bob Hope’s fast-talking comedic patter and double-takes, there are lots of laughs to be had in The Cat and the Canary but this doesn’t stop the film from being a truly suspenseful entry in the horror genre as well, director Elliott Nugent and cinematographer Charles Lang created a truly haunting atmosphere with long shadows and creepy settings for our heroes to run through. Even if you guess the perpetrator early on that won’t stop you from enjoying a truly perfect example of the marriage of horror and laughs, making this a film I heartily recommend you track down.

My Bloody Valentine (1981) - Review

Back in the early 80s, the increasing popularity of slasher films like Halloween and Friday the 13th was hard to ignore and the impact it was having on the industry was undeniable, with a slew of menacing figures stalking your local cinemas, even those up in the Great White North took notice of this phenomenon, which led to one of my personal favourites, My Bloody Valentine.

Like any proper slasher movie, My Bloody Valentine gives us a horrifying backstory for our killer, which deals with two mining supervisors who ended up leaving several miners trapped in the mines while they attended the Valentine’s Day dance.  There was but a lone survivor, Harry Warden (Peter Cowper), and he was forced to resort to cannibalism to survive, then went insane and a year later he returned to murder the two supervisors who left him and his mates to die.  The legend states that he vowed further attacks if the Valentine's Day Dance ever occurred again. One has to admit that’s a pretty damn good set-up for a horror film, and the movie does not fail to deliver on that premise, but what makes this film stand out from its slasher brethren is that the cast of characters we follow into the dark bowels of terror are fully developed and interesting people, they aren’t just one-dimensional cut-outs being sent to the meat grinder.

 

This is not to say that most of them don’t die horribly.

Aside from the “Legend of Harry Warden” to provide the film with some heightened drama we also have a love triangle consisting of T.J. Hanniger (Paul Kelman), a young man who had left his home town to "make it big" out west but now finds himself back home, a bitter failure, and to add insult to injury his old girlfriend Sarah Mercer (Lori Hallier) is now dating his old high school pal Axel Palmer (Neil Affleck). To say Hanniger wants her back would be quite the understatement, which makes him a nice suspect when the killings start. Of course, this film isn’t about broken hearts, unless it’s via a pickaxe through the left ventricle, and before you can say “Harry’s back” bodies start piling up and the blood really begins to flow. Things kick into gear when the Mayor (Larry Reynolds) receives an anonymous box of Valentine chocolates that contains a human heart instead of candy, and when the woman in charge of setting up the first Valentine’s Day dance in twenty years is found dead he’s quick to order the party cancelled.

 

My bloody Valentine, indeed.

I like the fact that we don’t get a carbon copy of the Mayor from Jaws, so there is no moment where the Mayor state “We must keep the dance on, the town’s economy is at stake” instead we have police Chief Jake Newby (Don Francks) cancelling the dance but then stupidly refusing to give the reason why. I guess he doesn’t want a panic on the 4th of July either. The cover-up of Harry Warden’s possible return results in the town's youngsters deciding to hold their own party, and where should such a party take place?  Why, at the mine, of course. Now, if you think the woods at night are scary they’ve got nothing on the dark and dank claustrophobia-inducing mine in this film.

 

“Good evening, I will be your tour guide.”

Stray Observations:

• The scene with the miners finishing work and joyfully heading into town to drink had me wondering if I’d put in The Deer Hunter by mistake.
• This movie is so Canadian it could double as a commercial for Moosehead Beer.
• A couple of the kills actually take place on Friday the 13th making this a good double with film Friday the 13th.
• The idea of an idiot prankster faking a bloody attack would later appear in Friday the 13th Pt 3.
• This town’s bartender provides us with a “Crazy Ralph” who warns of the impending carnage.
• Valentine Bluffs is the kind of town where you can walk around in full mining gear, while carrying a box of candy, and no one will even notice.
• This film is also the key reason I don’t go to the laundromat.

 

Who knew dryers had a broiled meat setting?

It should be noted that not only does My Bloody Valentine provide viewers with a collection of gruesome kills, on par with anything from Hollywood, – thanks to the work of imported make-up man Thomas R. Burman – but even though the MPAA brutally cut most of them they’ve survived and been restored, unlike the footage from the Friday the 13th franchise, which if survived at all looks like it was stored at the bottom of a hamster cage. As in more slasher films, things are a little rough around the edges when it comes to clichés as they are fairly abundant in this outing – the amount of times these idiots split up is simply staggering – but this doesn’t stop My Bloody Valentine from being an excellent example of a genre and can be incredibly fun and entertaining if you enter in the right frame of mine.

Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (2001) – Review

With the success of the direct-to-video release of Tremors 2: Aftershocks a sequel was bound to happen – it just took a while – and so five years later we get the return of a few more original cast members, along with the franchise’s flagship star Michael Gross, in an entry that brings us back to Perfection.

In this third installment in the Tremors series, we find Burt Gummer (Michael Gross) returning to the town of Perfection, after becoming Argentina’s answer to Patton on their war on Shriekers, only to find that the population has now dwindled to five. The town’s residents have kept things ticking along well enough with the mildly lucrative Graboid tourism business despite no sign of Graboids in the past twelve years. Chang's Market has become a tourist trap operated by his niece Jodi (Susan Chuang), and along with her, we have Desert Jack Sawyer (Shawn Christian) a scam artist running a “Graboid Safari” where he and his partner Buford (Billy Rieck) create mock Graboid attacks tours for visiting tourists – selling them overpriced beverages while “stranded” on a rock – but also hanging around are returning cast members Miguel (Tony Genaro), Nancy (Charlotte Stewart), and Nancy's daughter Mindy (Ariana Richards), who provide little continuity from the first film, but that’s about it. Finally, we have Melvin (Robert Jayne), now grown up and has become a real estate tycoon and who wants to buy up and develop the land, which leads to the question “Who in the fuck would want to live out there in the middle of nowhere?”

 

“Come for the barren landscape, stay and get eaten by monsters.”

Inexplicably, after a decade’s absence, Graboids do make an appearance and they eat poor Buford during one of Jack’s tours, which gets Burt up and raring to go on his Graboid killing life’s mission, but this is stopped by the arrival of government agents Charlie Rusk (John Pappas) and Frank Statler (Tom Everett) and a paleontologist, Dr. Andrew Merliss (Barry Livingston) who claim that the Graboids are an endangered species and are to be protected not killed. Now, I’m not saying the United States Government wouldn’t put the lives of man-eating monsters over that of its human residents but this plot development seems to exist solely to prevent Burt from easily destroying the Graboids and ending the movie at the 30-minute mark.

 

“Don’t worry about me and my men, we’ll quietly die off-screen.”

The fun and charm of the first two movies is rather missing here, relying heavily on the goofy charisma of Michael Gross, but his character of Burt Gummer is elevated to even greater cartoonesque stature by having him swallowed whole by a Graboid and then rescued, completely unharmed. This leads to a key issue I had with this entry, which is the fact that the filmmakers forgot that this was supposed to be a horror movie, albeit one with comedic elements but still a horror movie, and at no point in this film did they manage to build any sense of tension or suspense. Our cast of characters seemingly has no problem avoiding the Graboids, Shriekers or even the new Ass-Blasters as these monsters become deaf or blind whenever that plot requires them to be. Hell, the new life-cycle of the Graboids turns out to be vulnerable to over-eating, seriously, that’s a thing in this movie.

 

Defeated by a moronic dietary problem and duct tape.

As for the appearance of the Ass-Blaster, this third phase of the Graboid life-cycle that moults from a Shrieker and turns into an explosive fart-propelled winged creature, they look about as dumb as they sound and the CGI employed to create them is just as laughably bad and the effects people over at HimAnI Productions should be ashamed of themselves. But not only do we get crappy digital monsters but the filmmakers also re-used Graboid footage from the original Tremors along with puppeted tentacles that wouldn’t convince a five-year-old, it’s just sad. Tremors 3: Back to Perfection is the longest movie in the franchise at 104 minutes – and we feel every minute of it – but what we don’t really get is much in the way of good monster action. Where the first film survived on a great cast and a clever script, hiding the creature much as Steven Spielberg hid the shark in Jaws, this movie fails on all counts and when we do see the monsters they are quite disappointing. The cast didn’t seem all that engaged, though Michael Gross does give it the old college try, and when we do see the monsters we don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

 

Does anybody find this thing scary?

Having the franchise bring back several familiar characters and actors from the original, having them regroup back in Perfection, was not a bad idea – though we really do miss Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward and Reba McEntire – but it sorely lacks the charisma and chemistry found in the first film and this pretty much sinks this movie from the outset. With poor pacing and a plot that meanders around aimlessly around – there’s a love interest attempt between Jodi and Jack that is way too forced and the subplot of Melvin’s real estate plan goes nowhere unless you check out the short-lived television series – but worst of all, it’s just not all that fun. I really wanted to enjoy this movie yet despite Michael Gross’s every effort to breathe life into a dead script we are left with a rather dull movie and a disappointing chapter in the Tremors franchise.

 

“Not to worry, my career is completely Graboid proof.”

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) – Review

With the moderate success of Roger Moore’s first outing as James Bond, in the southern fried Live and Let Die, producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman decided to have Bond return to the Far East in a thriller that would pit the world’s most famous secret agent against an evil alter ego, a notorious assassin who uses a golden gun.

As is standard for most Bond films The Man with the Golden Gun bears very little resemblance to Ian Fleming’s book, in the novel Bond is after a Cuban assassin named Scaramanga who is believed to have killed several British secret agents and is now working with both American gangsters and the KGB to destabilize Western interests in the Caribbean's sugar industry, which would increase the value of the Cuban sugar crop, running drugs into America, smuggling prostitutes from Mexico into America and operating casinos in Jamaica that would cause friction between tourists and the local people. Sounds like an awesome plan, right?  Well, pretty much none of that happens in this film. In the movie adaptation James Bond (Roger Moore) is called into 'M’s (Bernard Lee ) office and is told that MI6 had received a golden bullet etched with '007' on it, which implies that Bond is to be the next target of world-renowned hitman known as Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) and thus Bond is pulled off his current mission, which was to find a missing energy scientist named Gibson (Gordon Everett) who has invented something called the "Solex Agitator" which is a revolutionary solar energy device that could end the energy crisis, and he is sent after Scaramanga instead.

 

Note: Christopher Lee depicts Scaramanga as a shadowy reflection of Bond and is easily one of the more interesting foes to face off against Bond.

The plot to The Man with the Golden Gun doesn’t make a lot of sense, something to do with Scaramanga getting into bed with a Thai millionaire industrialist named Hai Fait (Richard Loo), who had employed Scaramanga to assassinate Gibson and get the Solex, but mostly the film is about Scaramanga wanting to test his skills against a worthy opponent ie Bond. The film opens with an American gangster being brought to Scaramanga’s private island to ostensibly kill him, hired by Scaramanga’s dwarf manservant Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize) and lured into an elaborate funhouse type shooting gallery. The gangster is handily dispatched by Scaramange but while “touring” this shooting gallery we see that Scaramanga has a wax statue of James Bond, who Scaramanga clearly considers to be a worthy opponent.  Question: Where would someone like Scaramange get a lifelike statue of James Bond?

 

I wonder if he stole it from Madame Tussaud’s wax museum.

The problem here is that we later learn that the golden bullet etched with “007” was actually sent by Scaramanga’s mistress Andrea Anders (Maud Adams), who had hoped Bond would track down and kill her rather dangerous and mentally unbalanced lover, and throughout the film Scaramanga allows Bond to live – he inexplicably leaves him alive on multiple occasions – and their final confrontation is only due to Bond chasing after the Solex and a kidnapped fellow agent. So we are left wondering if Scaramanga actually wanted a duel with Bond or if he simply wanted to admire his career from afar, the movie is never clear on this part. What is clear is the film's opinion on women, and it’s not a good one. First, we get the aforementioned Andrea Anders, who is murdered by Scaramanga after sleeping with Bond and stealing the Solex, which once again proves that Bond is worse than a sexually transmitted disease.

 

Maybe she faked her death to avoid another night with Bond.

Secondly, we have Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland) an astoundingly stupid blonde British agent who is sent to help Bond and basically serves as a receptacle for Bond’s slew of sexual innuendos and double entendres, now, we do get one brief moment of hope when she rebuffs one of his advances by saying “Oh, darling, I'm tempted. But, killing a few hours as one of your passing fancies isn't quite my scene.” Unfortunately that resistance is short-lived as moments later she shows up in his room dressed in a nighty, and when Bond asks “What made you changed your mind?” her response is “I’m weak.” This is a far cry from Britt Ekland’s badass secret agent in Where Eagles Dare and her turn here as Holly Goodnight will go down as one of the worst Bond Girls.

 

Baby Doll nighties are obviously a standard British Intelligence issue.

Roger Moore’s turn as James Bond in this outing is a little harder to enjoy, at least when compared to what we see in his later films, his violence and attitude towards women may have worked for Connery’s Bond but here it seems rather out of character. When Moore isn't torturing a woman he's pushing some poor kid into the water which makes him seem cruel and callous and not the charming and suave Bond we think of when Moore’s incarnation of Bond comes to mind. The Man with the Golden Gun does have some solid action set-pieces and a couple of excellent hand-to-hand combat moments, which Moore pulls off quite well, but then director Guy Hamilton thought bringing back the racist sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James) was a good idea and it really hamstrings the second act of the film. I understand the character was a fan favourite from Live and Let Die but he is completely out of place in this outing and that Bond runs into him twice, while zipping around Thailand, is patently ridiculous and unnecessary.

 

“Could you let me out here, they need me for a Superman sequel.”

Stray Observations:

• Nick Nack hiring killers to attack his master is very reminiscent of Cato attacking his boss, Inspector Clouseau, in the Pink Panther movies.
• Scaramanga is believed to have killed agent 002 so it’s rather odd that in the five years since then that MI6 hadn’t put more of an effort to find and take out this notorious assassin.
• Bond poses as the mysterious Scaramanga to get a meeting with Chinese millionaire industrialist Hai Fait yet he acts surprised that Fait doesn’t know of famous British agent James Bond, but if Bond is so famous he’s risking the fact that Hai Fat may have recognized him at first sight, third nipple disguise notwithstanding.
• Bond being saved by Agent Hip’s young nieces, who wades through a horde of martial arts trained goons as if they’re nothing, is easily one of the few great feminist moments in the franchise.
• Sadly, that Hip accidentally leaves Bond behind, driving away like a clueless idiot, is one of the dumbest moments in the franchise.
• If Anders was the one to send MI6 the golden bullet, in the hopes Bond would kill Scaramanga, why did she make Bond twist her arm for information when they first meet?
• The use of the slide whistle sound effect when Bond’s car did that amazing corkscrew jump completely undercut what was clearing an amazing car stunt.
• The villain’s lair isn’t destroyed by Bond this time out, instead, it’s Holly Goodnight who is responsible for knocking a henchman into a liquid helium vat that causes the plant's temperature to spiral out of control.
• Why would Nick Nack try and kill Bond after Scaramanga’s defeat? It was established that Nick Nack was Scaramanga’s heir so why would he risk his life trying to take out James Bond?

 

Note: In the end, Nick Nack is not killed by Bond, instead he suffers a rather humiliating defeat by being stuffed in a suitcase, which is not something your standard Bond henchman would ever have had to put up with.

The Man with the Golden Gun is easily one of the weakest of the Bond entries – though far from the worst – which is a shame when you consider the fact that it has Christopher Lee as the film’s primary villain but instead of getting a true match for Bond we got a villain who turns out to be nothing more than a glorified henchman with delusions of grandeur. This is no slam on Christopher Lee whose performance is spot on but on the weak script that gave his character a ludicrous plot that didn’t match his personal motivations.  Worse is the fact that they gave him a giant laser gun that was practically pointless.  Why give Christopher Lee a giant laser gun and not have him demand world domination?  There is some fun to be had in a viewing of this particular spy adventure, most of that due to Christopher Lee always being a joy to watch, it's only sad that they didn't have a script worthy of him.

 

Trivia Note: Christopher Lee worked in British Intelligence during WWII and later he was tasked with helping to track down Nazi war criminals. Where's that movie?