In my attempt to escape the horror pattern I have been entrenched in, I selected Just One of the Guys as my next review. As it turns out, the director, Lisa Gottlieb, also directed an episode of Freddy’s Nightmares (the Nightmare on Elm Street television series). The film’s star, Joyce Hyser, appeared in that same episode.

Terry Griffith (Hyser) is a high school student who has almost everything she wants. Her parents are rich, she has a car, she’s beautiful, she goes out with a college dreamboat that is also rich. She dreams of becoming a journalist and the local paper is running a contest where students can submit articles for a chance to be published. The winning “reporter” will also get an awesome summer job at the paper. The article she submits does not get selected, and two male students’ work does. This coupled with a comment from her journalism teacher convinces her that she was not selected because she is a hot girl that no one will take seriously as a journalist. She becomes so distraught, that with the (sort of) help from her sex obsessed yet still virgin brother, she resorts to cross dressing and taking her article to another high school. She intends to submit it as a male to see if it gets selected simply because she is a boy. It doesn’t, but she stays at the school to find another story to write, and hilarious 80’s teen sex comedy ensues.

I also selected this film as sort of an easy 99th review so that we could quickly post the 100th review on the site. I happen to have it in my instant queue as it is a definite comfort movie of mine. Upon watching this, it would be quite easy to dismiss it for the one of a thousand standard 80’s teen sex comedies that it is at surface level. But watching it for the purpose of critical analysis, I realized that this is actually a pretty well put together movie, and really should stand out from the likes of Porky’s, Revenge of the Nerds, et al. There is only one scene with nudity, and it is rather brief. The main character is not obsessed with sex, in fact quite the opposite. Even the comedy is not largely based on sex. Really, the sex part of this is confined to Terry’s brother Buddy (played by Billy Jayne, and is quite hilarious) who is a virgin, determined to have sex while their parents are out of town. One could even argue that the categorization of “sex comedy” could even be a play on meanings where sex refers to gender, and not having sex.

There is a lot of interesting things going on in this film that you may miss if you just watch it for comfort, as I usually do. Terry is quite popular, but when she dresses as a boy and goes to a school where no one knows her, she is quite unpopular at first, as any new kid might be. As she befriends Rick, who himself has no friends, she takes him on as a sort of project, and gives him advice on how to dress and act, etc. in order to become popular and get a date. It’s actually borderline brilliant the way Hyser plays this; Terry the boy, trying to make friends, be hip and blend in, while at the same time Terry the popular girl, trying to help Rick do the exact same thing. You can actually see the back and forth she goes through. In a scene where Terry and Rick are talking about music in the cafeteria, you can see the genuine, yet subtle delight on Terry’s face in finding something in common, whereas in another scene, she is spouting off male things like, “this is what you call typical male bonding,” as if she is teaching Rick how to interact with other males. I found that this boy/girl, teacher/student conflict to be done quite well, especially when Terry falls in love with Rick, which only compounds the problem. I don’t know that there is any deep social commentary in this (other than the obvious), but not many (if any) films of this sort actually have anything worth looking at deeper than tits.

The film is is quite funny due largely to a decent script delivered with excellence by everyone that had a funny line. In addition to the few anachronisms, the film is sealed in the 80’s by an appearance from Willam Zabka as the (shocker) school bully. There are also appearances from Ayre Gross and Sherilyn Fenn to completely randomize the cast.

Now the film is not without its flaws of course. How a fight between 4 people at a prom could go on with not one member of faculty stopping it kind of baffles me. Also, as much ruckus as Zabka’s character caused in this film in general (much to the janitor’s dismay; pay attention to him in any scene he is in), I did not understand how no one gave him at least a detention. Also, I understand that even high school kids can have facial hair, but when you cast 30 year olds with mustaches as high school kids, they look 30. However, it feels almost pointless to pick apart a movie of this genre.

It may seem odd to write a review for this film, as it really is purely intended to be light and frothy, but it really is a decent comedy worth a watch. It is still very funny 25 years later, and deserves to enjoyed more than as just a teen sex romp.

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I will admit that I was not looking forward to A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 as part of this ongoing game of catch-up with the original films. Previously, I have been more or less ambivilent to the film as it is not the worst, is not the best, but falls into that middle ground also safely occupied by its predecessor. Due to the extreme condition of diminishing returns over the life of the franchise thus far, I had expected it to fair quite poorly, especially compared to the commercially-acclaimed Part 4. While this is in no way a good film, director Stephen Hopkins and at least one of the three credited screenwriters on this film had their hearts in it.

Yes, I know that this movie is rated in the same league as Freddy’s Dead and Part 2 as far as quality goes but I felt this movie at least tried to not only stay within the growing cannon but also return to tension and scares over goofy puns and elaborate death scenes. Notice I say tried because for all the praise I could give this movie for the effectiveness of the character-driven scenes, Freddy’s part of the film is amplified 5x over the last film which leads to a really bizarre shift in tone whenever he is onscreen. It almost seems that two different scripts were written for this film, one goofy like the last and one more oriented to the first part of the series, and the film we received was an unholy combination of the two.

I certainly appreciate the fact that Alice is brought back for more than just killing her off in the opening scene as her character, and those around her, are vastly better than the relative cookie-cutter ensemble of the previous few films. Alice, her dad, and three friends who she seemingly became quite close with despite not knowing a year prior, are all fairly sympathetic characters and well written characters. I definitely bought the dialogue between these friends moreso than Debbie, Shelia, and the rest of the old gang.

Having fewer characters (and thus Freddy fodder) was a benefit to the story, although only having three deaths seemed to step backwards from the ratcheting up body count. While Alice’s connection to Freddy is dubious at best (Freddy, while still dead from the last film, inflitrates the dreams of her unborn child?), it works to the point that you do not have to buy the awkward change from one heroine to another like some other films. Also from the jump, one of my biggest problems with the last film was rectified here as the poppy 80s songs over the title credits and sprinkled throughout was replaced with original score music from Jay Ferguson which, like many other entries in the Nightmare series, was quite good in conveying mood and atmosphere through the gothic sounds of choirs and organs. In fact, short of the character of Alice and the god-awful Freddy, this movie seems to cut a lot of ties from the last.

So, while all of that was good, the problems I had previously have compounded. Freddy is more background now and I would guess has a significantly less amount of screen time but the time that he does appear kills the movie. Even leaving Super Freddy out of this for now, the makeup still looks like crap compared to the early films and the fact that this movie’s lame Freddy is so prominently featured in his scenes kills any goodwill the rest of the flick affords. And while some people might prefer the comical Freddy to the original incarnation, his puns and one-liners here seem to be done in the vain of a ZAZ movie with “jokes” being tossed out for quantity rather than quality. In most cases, Freddy is just lame in this movie with such memorable lines as “Let’s rock and roll” and “Bad-year!” It is a shame to see a great character fall in so few years to appease the mainstream.

It seems almost comical that this film, and its poor box office reception, lead to Freddy’s Dead to serve as an end for the franchise as this is light-years ahead of the crap that is yet to come in the next portion. In the end, I take comfort in the fact that at least someone tried to make a decent movie but was likely thwarted by New Line and their quest for gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

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So now we come to the fork in the road. Nightmare 3 has ended. A sequel is greenlit. I would imagine the head honchos at New Line sitting in the conference room thinking about how to best continue the series. I would guess by this point Freddy had become fairly mainstream if I, a six-year-old at the time, had seen a fair amount of merchandise, television promos, and previews for the last films. So, instead of continuing on the path of relative excellence established by the previous film, Bob Shaye turns Freddy into a laughably bad stand-up comedian on a beach, presumably to click with more teens and more dollars. One might say this was a good choice as this film more or less launched Freddy into stardom, but it was at the expense of a good series to that point.

For some reason, I have historically really liked this film in spite of the about-face in technique. It was, and to a point still is, a pretty fun movie to watch but man did it piss me off this go around. I chalk that up to the fact that I cannot say I have actually watched all of the Nightmare movies in chronological order, instead skipping around to avoid Part 2, 5, and Freddy’s Dead. But watching the movie on the heels of its predecessors almost immediately sets it up for failure. In the first sixty seconds, you have many indications that this movie will be nothing like those before. This is not only the first in the series to give Robert Englund the main starring credit, but it also is the first to have the updated New Line logo and feature a typical 80s pop song over the credits as opposed to the score. Granted, these are relatively trivial things but these just forebode the rest to come.

I had remarked in my review for Part 3 that the final third of the movie seemed to start the train of flashy Freddy who was more direct and more entertained by his overly elaborate stunts. Well, this flick takes just that final twenty minutes or so, puts it on ritalin, and breeds it. The relative simplicity of Freddy has now been all but lost as his kills this go around range from the strategic repositioning of a junk yard, encasing Joey in a water bed, deflating Shelia’s lungs and I guess all of the oxygen molecules in her body at the same time. You get the picture.

While the sight of Brooke Theiss turning into a roach is cool and all, could Freddy not have slashed her in the stomach while doing upside-down crunches or smashed her head with a weight-set? Sure he could have but I suspect the producers, and likely the audience too, wanted less suspense and terror but more trailer and quote-worthy scenes instead. Regardless, you can keep the kills but get rid of stupid, wisecracking, beach-going Freddy and we would have a significantly better movie.

The concept itself is one I could get behind if it were done differently. After the survivors from the last film are slowly killed off (why even bother killing Kristen if she’s going to last almost half the movie), Freddy wants to continue but he needs a conduit. So, enter Kristen’s friend Alice who was pulled into Kristen’s final nightmare. As Freddy uses Alice to bring him new blood, Alice is stricken with the guilt that her involvement indirectly has resulted in the deaths of her friends and even her brother.

Alice is a pretty cool character after all. While I had thoughts to amend my plea for her return, she is still the best part of the movie from the development of her character as she progresses from the meek girl afraid of her drunken father to the chick who can take down Freddy with some fancy footwork. In fact, I don’t think even Kristen got as much development or progression of her character and certainly none of the other kids from the previous films, save Nancy of course.

The danger in bringing Freddy into full view was the makeup which I would say is remarkably terrible here. Again, he was fairly prominently featured in bright lights during portions of the third, but it almost seems like the makeup artists were dictated to tone down Freddy’s appearance to match the more audience-friendly nature of this and later sequels. He no longer looks scary or disgusting, he just looks like Robert Englund with a prosthetic nose and a bunch of makeup.

The final showdown was, like the rest of the film, over the top and unnecessarily convoluted but I would say that it worked as Freddy is now dead, the souls of his captured children have been released, and everything is hunky-dory. Until the next one that is.

I really do not want to be too hard on this movie as I liked it before, it still is nowhere near as craptacular as what is to come, and I am sure I will have a burning desire to see the ‘Dramarama-kickboxing’ or ‘Suiting Up’ scenes at some point in the future. The turn this series makes here is still disappointing all the same.

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I would have to say my first real viewing of anything Freddy related, other than brief snippets, was Dream Warriors. I vividly remember fighting my brother for the VCR rights to record the horribly-tv-edited version while he wanted to record wrestling. That resulted in the VCR being thrown down the stairs and a hole being kicked into a door. Was it worth it? Fuck yea! At that time (I was probably about eight or so), Freddy was still savage, gruesome, deadly, and appeared in good (relatively speaking of course) movies.

This installment is more or less the true sequel to the original. Certain things were different from Freddy’s inception but the story line actually progressed instead of stalling out like Kristen running in that goop while trying to escape Freddy. Here we get a little more backstory on his origins but the pleasant thing was they did not seemed to be shoe-horned in by studio dictation into an already completed story line. These plots points added nicely to the overall mythos of Freddy but more as complimentary facts rather than a main plot-line as some sequels in other franchises had done.

So, since we have moved past worthless Jesse and his movie, we pick up with kids who are indirectly related to Freddy’s death, a point sorely missing in the second installment. While it is sad that this is really the only movie to deal with the parent’s responsibility heads-on (save for the first act of NOES 4), thematically it was quite important as these kids were eventually given validation and direction from Nancy, played obviously by Heather Langenkamp, who acted as more of a caring mother figure to these misfit, sleep-deprived, fucked up kids then their own parents did. Perhaps I read more into it but I find this comforting as all of the parents in this series are either dumb as shit or in denial as children around them drop like flies and they dismiss the kids’ claims of a fedora-wearing boogyman as nonsense. Even Nancy’s own father in this installment, still an excellent John Saxon, disregards Nancy and her thoughts again even when evidence mounts up to say otherwise.

After rewatching the film again, I will break from the conventional horror-fan base here. Most say, justifiably so, that the downturn of the series came with the star-billing and pun-wielding Robert Englund in the fourth installment. But here, the first two acts of this film feel oddly different from the last portion in tone and execution. Early on, we get a good look at Freddy but only in fleeting moments: the mirror in the bathroom scene, appearing at Phillip’s bed, emerging from a TV to kill Jennifer. While these few scenes revealed much more of Freddy and his appearance than the last two films combined, these were not lingering shots, easily missed if you are commencing a drinking game. After the remaining kids enter the dream world to retrieve Joey though, Freddy goes from being an unseen menace scratching at padded walls to thrust in your face at every turn. This is not to the detriment of this film though as the final act features some impressive effects and dream sequences. But this is where we go from the Freddy in the shadows to Freddy with syringes for fingers and in a hall of mirrors. I never quite picked it up before but it almost seems as if the script from the final thirty minutes was written totally independent of the rest of the film with the exception of a scant number of references to earlier.

Having watched the movie with fresh eyes, I would have likely anticipated a different outcome. Of course in the end Freddy is defeated (like that really matters), but the characters who live and those who die seem odd if this were a conventional movie. We know Kristen will make it and probably Kincaid as well as they were fairly well developed (in the sense of this genre at least) and noteworthy characters. Jennifer, Phillip, Will? Goners and anyone could spot that. But I am actually a bit sad that Taryn did not make it though as Jennifer Rubin played her quite well and she was tougher than the rest of them. But Joey made it? The guy who didn’t say a damn thing until the hall of Freddy? I still dispute that especially given his quite incredulous death scene in the next installment (oops, spoiler alert!).

This of course is not to mention that Nancy and her father die while battling Freddy. While Langenkamp still cannot act to save her life, her death probably resonated more than any other in the entire series, especially due to Freddy’s deceptive (and to quote The Avod) dickish behavior. The most traumatic thing though is that this would have been an awesome bookend to the original three films (even though the second does not quite fit in). All the ties and callbacks to the first film have been severed, all the main characters are now dead (for now at least), but a cryptic ending followed by a Dokken song must have convinced New Line to forge ahead to disastrous results.

All in all, there was a whole lot of good in this movie (especially coming off of the failed experiment of Part 2) but I would argue that this is the film that killed the franchise, or at least inspired the crap ahead, with a bigger budget, wackier dreams, and an open opportunity for another sequel.

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If Chris Nolan ever needed to be consulted on a franchise, it was right after the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Granted, he may not have been up to the task at the time but he like few other directors know how to make a follow-up film to a highly regarded sequel, not by making a carbon-copy of it, but by expanding upon its original characters, story-lines, and plots. Sadly, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge did none of that.

It is almost as if New Line took a page from the Exorcist II fiasco of jettisoning everything effective from the first movie for the sequel. We replace Nancy with a whiny bitch, even though he does scream like a girl. Rather than focusing on developing the characters and humanizing them to make their inevitable deaths have an impact, we have a half dozen or so lazily-written characters with almost no defining characteristics. And most importantly, instead of a definitive motive for Freddy to avenge his death by striking back at the loved ones of those who killed him, we have random possessions to kill these totally worthless characters.

The subtitle of this movie makes no sense at all. Yes, we know Freddy is pissed about being killed/ignored at the end of the first movie. Yet, instead of continuing his streak of murdering the Elm Street children, he decides to pick a random kid who happened to move into Nancy’s old house and kill other characters who for all we know had nothing to do with Freddy or his death. It even seems strange that the events of the first movie are totally ignored except for the happenstance recovery of Nancy’s unmentioned journal detailing the events of the first film. One would think when a few teens die in pretty bizarre ways in a seemingly small town, that knowledge would still be present only five years later.

To keep continuity with the first film, no one in this movie can act. With the exception of Sir Robert Englund and Marshall Bell, no one in this movie is really recognizable or talented (not that the NOES series is famed for launching careers). For the protagonist, I am not really surprised Mark Patton did little else after this film as he is quite possibly the worse adversary to Freddy in the series. Hell, the only reason I still remember Clu Gulager is from the Feast-based Project Greenlight season.

I will give this film acclaim where due (and that is not in many places) as it was different. Not different in a good way but at least they had attempted to take the character in a different direction. After being banished by Nancy at the conclusion of the first film, Freddy needed a way to continue with his homicidal ways which he found in Jesse. The power of remote possession might have been granted to Freddy after the last installment but it was an interesting turn of events. Even the fact that Jesse was technically the murderer (as apparent by the knives protruding from his fingers as opposed to the glove) was unique we could say. Perhaps this explains why Freddy was going after the random citizens of Springwood instead of those who caused his demise but I don’t buy that and I think I am putting way too much thought into this now.

The main problem is, whether it is really Jesse in Freddy-face or not, the fairly defined rules of the first apparently do not apply here. There was some grey area established but Freddy could mostly only lash out while you were asleep. Here though, he can apparently do whatever the hell he wants to: crash a pool party, burn a toaster oven, explode a bird, you name it! Another is the fact that Lisa (who should have been the final girl as opposed to the final girl’s girlfriend) can beat Freddy using the same logic as the last film which is just plain lazy. It is not even established how Freddy came back after the first (assuming it was not all a dream) so for all the audience knows, that shit does not work. And even the burn makeup on Freddy looks horrific (and in a “man, that looks like shit” way) as he is prominently featured in a few scenes with bright lights as compared to the shadowy figure of the last film.

While we have not yet reached the point where Freddy is the main character in the Nightmare series, his screen-time seems to be increasing. I would estimate we had about 23.748% more Freddy in this movie than the last go around (give or take). This still leaves more emphasis on the characters but sadly, no one gives a shit about them in this movie. In retrospect, while this movie might not be the very worse of the series (at the very least it is tied), it was still a disappointment coming off of the exhilarating original. And I did not once mention anything about the huge homo-erotic themes as well!

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Here we are less than a week away from the release of the latest part of my childhood to be repackaged and resold to me. Rest assured, I will be there to see Nightmare 2010 on opening day but let us forget about that for now as I cannot say I have high hopes for it. Instead, just like every other horror and/or movie related website, I will revisit the original films and see how they hold up … or don’t.

It is quite astonishing that Wes Craven was able to create such an iconic character with a budget reportedly of less than $2 million. Equally amazing is that through the various production and financial issues, the original Nightmare on Elm Street still remains as a highly regarded tentpole in the slasher subgenre twenty five years later along with the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises. I would argue the Nightmare series did not fair as well as the Myers and Voorhees based ones due to studio interference and rushing production to maximize revenues at the expense of the stories themselves.

Forgetting the rest of the series though, this movie stands up relatively well even to today’s horror standards. While the film is not without its flaws (more on those to come), it is still creepy as hell. I can safely say that the original has never come close to being “scary” to me personally, but that is more due to my pre-teen self seeing the thing a billion times and becoming desensitized. The overall concept of the killer coming after you in your dreams lends itself quite well to things that would normally be off-the-wall in more grounded entries. Sure, Michael Myers got shot six times and burned to a crisp and Jason can seemingly teleport anywhere, but overall those series were made up of events that could possibly happen.

Now, as you and I can attest almost anything can happen in a dream though. One moment you may be having brunch with the President, the next falling down an elevator shaft onto some bullets, and finish off with talking zombie gardeners. Craven uses the randomness and complexities of a typical dream to the advantage of the film as it cannot be damned for drastic location or tone shifts. Even the basic premise of being murdered in your sleep is horrifying enough as there is little that you could do to prevent that from happening. Everyone sleeps at some point and everyone has dreams. On the other hand, people could learn to stay the hell away from Crystal Lake and not be related to psychotic nutjobs (or at least do a better job of hiding that fact).

The general rule of “less is more” applies beautifully here as the minimal budget did not allow a great emphasis on showboating. In stark contrast to some of the later sequels featuring Freddy in a brightly lit place like … I don’t know, a beach or a television studio, Freddy is mostly relegated to the shadows with only a brief glimpse of his burned, disfigured face. Freddy is also more of an impending threat than a direct antagonist. His screen time is limited to the fairly infrequent nightmare world as opposed to being in every other scene. This is a much more effective manor of creating a menacing villain, scaring you with the unknown as opposed to putting it all out there, good or bad.

So with all of that acclaim being said, there were things here that irked the hell out of current me that previous me had never really picked up on. For starters, no one in this damn movie (save Johnny Depp, John Saxon, and possibly Robert Englund) can act. I sincerely like Heather Langenkamp and feel she really grew with this franchise but some of her scenes are downright awful, especially for a feature film like this. With the exception of a few scenes in the back half of the movie after everyone thinks she is crazy, Langenkamp awkwardly overacts and delivers her lines in a way that even Kristen Stewart would be embarrassed for her. Her cinematic mother, Ronee Blakley is even worse. I can forgive to a certain extent as the character is supposed to be a barely functioning alcoholic but that excuse even pushes the line frequently.

Craven also plays pretty loose with the rules of the dream world. While the infringements here are not as blatant as in some of the latter films, Freddy’s ability to transcend the dream world even when his victims are fully awake is a bit much without further explanation. With what we know, Nancy was wide awake when she received her unwanted makeout session with Freddy and Rod was more than likely aware as he was being pulled out of his cell and hung by the rafters. You can chalk these minor quibbles up to Freddy’s surging power as more fear is directed his way but again, these things are not really addressed here.

All of that is not really a problem though. Chances are if you are watching this you have seen it before. If you haven’t, you likely already know the basic premise where the most random shit can happen in a quick succession. As it stands, Nightmare ‘84 is an excellent movie that is fully capable of elevating itself over its somewhat inconsequential flaws.

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Now I can cross another classic teen 80’s movie off my list. For this, The Breakfast Club, and others, it was not as though I was actively trying not to see them. My younger days normally reserved for mostly harmless fare like this was instead spent watching 70’s and 80’s horror and action movies instead. Yes, I saw the entire franchises of Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and even Maniac Cop before getting around to some of the more relatable films of my generation. So sue me. I now have seen it.

I would imagine that everyone else has seen Better Off Dead so I will keep the synopsis short. Lane Meyer is for the most part a typical adolescent. He has really random daydreams, a crazy family, and a typical teen’s awkwardness. After meeting Tina, err Beth, he seems to be on a straight path up the popularity ladder in high school. When she dumps him for a 23-year-old-looking-professional-skier-turned-high-school-student, Lane is downtrodden enough that he attempts to kill himself. Fortunately for Lane, he is quite bad at offing himself even with the help of his friends and family. This leads to a turn in his luck, meeting an exchange student, getting a kick-ass car, beating the cocky jock at his own game, and redeeming his meaningless life. It’s every kid’s fantasy.

Apparently, this film was not very well received when it debuted. From a low box office take to negative reviews back in the day, it has now become an iconic teen movie much like the aforementioned Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Even having never seen the film before, I was still aware of its presence and even its influence in subsequent films like the recent Hot Tub Time Machine and the spoof Not Another Teen Movie. I can fully agree with the current sentiment that this is a masterpiece of a film. Instead of deriving comedy from standard teenage film means, Better Off Dead takes a more absurdist approach to everyday living. This is the kind of life that you thought you had in retrospect with a gelatinous pile of crap crawling off your dinner plate, the teacher you hated taking out your ex, and getting your face inverted by embarrassing a popular cheerleader. I can safely say none of these things happened to me as a child but I would probably want to kill myself as well if they had. Other than the basic plot I did not know that the film’s title actually referenced the character’s desire to commit suicide. It seems a rather odd plot point and one I hazard would not find its way into a mainstream teen movie today.

Even twenty years ago, John Cusack can play comedy very well. Just like his character in Hot Tub, Lane is the relatively normal kid in abnormal situations of course disregarding the fact that he is almost dangerously obsessed with Beth, has clear suicidal tendencies, and wears socks in the shower. There is a rumor/fact/whatever that Cusack hates this movie which I find deplorable if that is the case. His straight-forwardness to the events unfolding is quite brilliant especially as the other central members of the cast excel in selling the abundance of crazy shit that happens. And this movie even has Dan Schneider, creator of TV’s iCarly! I do not think I can look at that show the same after seeing the nasal spray-snorting Ricky.

It just seems shocking that this film was never not regarded as a masterpiece. Sure, it is yet another teenage based movie from a time overflowing with them but the wackiness of this makes it stand out. Where else can you get Booger getting “high” off of frozen rain, a pair of sports-loving drag racing brothers, and a tireless paperboy who will go to any length to get his damn two dollars? I wish the DVD was a bit more in-depth with special features but it seems that for as high that fans hold this movie, Paramount has bought into disregarding the film along with Cusack. It’s quite sad but it was a good day for me to finally get to this one.

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I challenge you to find one person who does not enjoy a hot tub. Putting aside the potential health issues from prolonged use or extreme temperatures (thank you Michael Myers for teaching kids about the latter), a hot tub is relaxing and therapeutic and can make a kick-ass time machine. I would argue a Delorean is better as it can also function as a normal automobile, but the titular hot tub is running a close second.

Three friends, Adam, Nick, and Lou have seen better days. Now in their middle ages, they find their lives slipping away from the dreams and ambitions they once had. After Lou has a mishap (or potential suicide attempt) with car exhaust and a sealed garage, the three hit the road with Adam’s nephew Jacob to a winter ski resort that they kicked at in the old days. The first night there as the four are relaxing in the bubbling, heated water containment unit, a mishap with a Russian drink and the hot tub controls results in a transportation back to 1986, a crucial year for the friends at the same resort. They realize with the help of an old, sage hot tub repairman that they must not deviate from their previous actions for fear of a dramatic ripple effect to the rest of the world. As this is a testosterone-filled comedy, that doesn’t happen as the down-trodden men stuck in teenage bodies attempt to right their prior wrongs.

While there are certainly comparisons to be made to the Judd Apatow and Todd Phillips like-minded comedies, Hot Tub doesn’t feel like an Apatow movie or even The Hangover. For starters, the characters are pretty flat. Aside from what we learn in the first ten minutes about their lives, there is not a great deal of development about their current lives. This is not necessarily a bad thing as the characters are rather stock. Nick is the dreamer, Lou is the asshole, Jacob is the nerd, and Adam is the straight-man to counter the absurdity of the situation. The bulk of the film has the group reliving out their childhood but it might have helped to understand more about the consequences those first actions had on their next few decades and how the deviations would have helped or even hurt.

On the plus side, all of the characters are funny as hell and very aware of the implications for their situation. Several references to the time traveling adventures (and subsequent paradoxes) of The Terminator and the Stargate series help ground the film as the realistic interpretation of what would happen if these guys were actually transported back in time. Even knowing what they do about the butterfly effect (the theory and the movie), they still fuck up the space/time continuum for the sake of their own personal gain. Whereas Back to the Future preached for responsible time travel, Hot Tub throws all of that out the window as Nick and Lou try to hustle a crowd on the outcome of a football game and Adam avoids breaking up with a hot girl because it was a really stupid thing to do and it resulted in him getting stabbed in the eye.

Setting the movie in the 80s is a relative goldmine for the trends and fads from that period which are so laughable now, it is conceivable that someone might set up a retro reunion as one of the characters ponders early on. From the leg warmers, MTV showing music videos, and even good old cassette players, you did not necessarily have to be alive during the 80s to see the humor as this group of iPhone carrying, Google-using, modern men try to wrap their head around a group of people wearing bright neon ski-suits or using the old-fashioned Zack Morris phone. Of course, the soundtrack helps to drive the point home as well with a good heaping of cheese and excess is blaring during a good portion of the film. Having only visited the 80s in my much younger years, I’m sure there were more subtleties that escaped me but it is quite fun to revisit these modern day anachronisms.

If I had any complaints about the movie (other than the previous character issues noted above), it would be that the setting of the bulk hinders what the group can fuck up for the future. Obviously, the ski weekend serves the story well as an important few days for each of the guys but it would have been fun to see that expanded out of the small town, if only for a few more 80s jokes at the expense of Michael Jackson or the Cold War. With the film clocking in at a reasonable 100 minutes length, for some reason this seemed to drag on much longer as I was about ready for it to end about fifteen to twenty minutes before it actually did. While the laughs are bold and frequent, there were some portions that fall flat. This is normal for most comedies but the as the funny parts were quite good, the unfunny seemed to detract even more.

So, admittedly the movie is not as good as The Hangover but for a semi-raunchy male-driven comedy by someone other than Apatow, that is a lofty goal to reach. It does have more class than comedies of its bygone era, better star power and even Crispin Glover in what is likely a career-making role (if we consider he has not had one yet) and I suspect Hot Tub will play even better on repeat viewings with drunken cohorts. I am beginning to think the concept of unrated DVDs were created for movies like this.

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This has to be my best find to date. Not only is The Running Man a great sci-fi action film staring Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, but the version I bought for $4.99 at Movie Stop is the Special Edition 2 Disc set with all kinds of extra features, including documentaries and audio commentary tracks. If you’re like me then you love extra features, but even if you don’t this is still a spectacular deal for a copy of this film.

Based on the novel of the same name written by Steven King, The Running Man takes place in the future, the bad kind of future with vastly depleted resources and a tyrannical military government. To keep people distracted from their terribly oppressive existence, the justice department has created a televised blood sport event where armed gladiators hunt down convicts for the pleasure of the masses. Arnold plays Ben Richards, a former military pilot that was framed and falsely imprisoned for massacring of dozens of unarmed civilians. After an unsuccessful escape attempt, he is conned into competing on The Running Man game show (the previously mentioned bloodsport) which is hosted by none other than Richard Dawson from Family Feud. Amazingly, Dawson manages to steal the show in this film with a truly villainous performance and is, in my opinion, one of the best bad guys Arnold has ever faced.

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So, in case you haven’t noticed, I have been on a cheesey horror kick lately. Since Jesusflix has the entire Phantasm franchise, I figured I might as well revisit that. While I would substitute “low budget, but decent” for “cheesey” in regard to the first Phantasm, I would apply the phrase, “utter disappointment” to the this installment.

Phantasm II has us watching Liz thumb through a journal, talking to herself in her head, about Mike, whom she has only seen in her dreams. While she is doing this, the film cuts away to the end of the first Phantasm, with Mike and Reggie relaxing after the ordeal that they have just gone through. The flashback reminds us that they decide to hit the road and get a fresh start. However, things go awry when the Tall Man attempts to take Mike and turn him in to a dwarf slave, but is thwarted by Reggie who ultimately blows the house up, but not with the Tall Man inside. We flash forward a bit, and Mike is being released from a mental institution, agreeing that he had imagined the entire events of the first film. Because he agrees to this, he is let go, but the very next time we see  him, he is in a cemetery digging up graves checking to see if there are bodies in them. There are not. You no doubt remember that the Tall Man takes dead bodies and turns them in to dwarf slaves.  Mike is convinced that this is still happening and eventually so is Reggie, and thus begins their journey to find the Tall Man and stop him, and also save this blonde girl (from the beginning) that keeps appearing in Mike’s dreams. They arm themselves with an arsenal of flamethrowers, chainsaws and a 4 barrel shotgun. As they travel though various towns, they can see that they have been ravished by the Tall Man and left in ruin.

My issues with this film are many, but researching it, I realize that it may not be entirely the filmmaker’s fault.  In the original, A. Michael Baldwin played Mike and Reggie Bannister played Reggie. For this film, Universal wanted the roles recast and made them audition for their own parts, but Don Coscarelli (Director, Writer, etc) wanted them for the sequel. I assume because they were cocks, Universal told Coscarelli that he could keep one of them but had to recast the other. He chose Reggie Bannister to stay, and James LeGros was cast as Mike. This did a couple of things: 1. Piss me off, especially since A. Michael Baldwin was in the rest of the sequels. 2. Made Reggie Bannister look like an even worse actor than he already was, because LeGros can act. Also, there were to be no dream sequences and Mike was to have a love interest. All that being said, I do understand that these limitations may have resulted in a final product that Coscarelli had not envisioned. But there was some other wacky shit going on. The pace was UNBEARABLY slow. In addition to that, I found the passing of time confusing at one point. Mike and Reggie are driving all over the place and at the same time, the movie will cut to a funeral taking place. Lines like “We have been on the road for a long time,” are uttered and I swear I saw it change from day to night, but the same funeral service is going on. This seems to be less of a horror film and more of a “let’s show off the huge budget we were given” film. I mean, there are 3 major explosions in this, and a lot of flamethrower and chainsaw action. It is a far cry from the indie spirit of the first one, which I preferred. One random thing I found hilarious, was that Liz shrieked when a rat runs by. However, she remained silent, and did not even look that upset after watching one sphere slice an ear off and drain a priest’s blood, or when a man cut his own hand off.  There was also little dumb stuff, like the Tall Man walking by Reggie who was hiding (and not very well) and not seeing him, yet he is able to sneak up on people all the time, and Mike saying he was 19 when he clearly looks 26. It was just not very good. Even the sphere deaths were not as cool. I will say, however, that Angus Scrimm was just as good if not better as the Tall Man the second time around.

This installment is really not good at all, which is unfortunate. Coscarelli obviously loved making these movies and the first one was quite good. If memory serves, the franchise keeps going downhill, which I will either confirm or retract in later reviews. Right now however, I suggest skipping this so as not to sully the memory of the first.

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