Category: Reviews – Blog Only

Its title a nod to Dr. Frankenstein’s triumphant cry in James Whale’s 1931 classic, Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive may be the most discomforting filmic depiction of childbirth anxiety, parental responsibility and unconditional love I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of the all-time underrated horror movies, a deeply terrifying portrait of child-parent relationships and intolerant fears…

Ugly stereotypes, anorexic socio-political allegory, scant scares, and Bill Pullman – that’s The Serpent and the Rainbow in a nutshell. Based on Wade Davis’ novel, Wes Craven’s lame documentary-flavored horror story follows anthropologist Dennis Alan (Pullman) as he searches revolutionary Haiti for a mystery drug that reportedly raises the dead. With the help of a…

A lyrical portrait of aimless youth painted with touches of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho is cold and uninvolving, which isn’t to say that it’s wholly unsuccessful. Rather, if one can look past the filmmaker’s affected Bard adaptation – which has the raggedy, improvisational feel of a community theater production…

Made on the quick and cheap to cash in on Black Caeser’s popularity, Hell Up in Harlem lacks nearly everything that made its predecessor so groovy – a coherent (if clumsy) visual scheme, a forceful social consciousness, and James Brown’s funkadelic “Paid Tha Cost to Be the Boss.” Shot on weekends while writer/director Larry Cohen…

Refashioning the 1940s Warner Bros. gangster picture for the 1970s blaxploitation era, Larry Cohen once again plumbs the depths of American racial tensions with Black Caesar, a crime saga suffused with socio-political resentment and enlivened by James Brown’s classic soul-funk soundtrack. While freelancing for the mob, shoeshine boy Tommy Gibbs suffers a brutal beating at…

As his entitled, spendaholic wife Bernadette (Joyce Van Patten) sunbathes nearby, Beverly Hills used-car salesman Bill (Andrew Duggan) discovers in his swimming pool a giant black rat. This unwanted animal trespasser, however, isn’t nearly as dangerous as Bone (Yaphet Kotto), an imposing African-American thief and rapist who appears shortly thereafter to terrorize the couple. In…

While its predecessor boasted a healthy share of allusions, Gremlins 2: The New Batch is a smorgasbord of shout-outs to seemingly anything and everything that popped into director Joe Dante and screenwriter Charles Haas’ heads. A manic free-for-all that exudes – from its pre-credits intro featuring Bugs, Daffy and Porky – the rambunctious spirit of…

While most children of the ‘80s vividly remember Gremlins’ signature moments – the three crucial rules regarding the care of a Mogwai, the microwaving incident that helped usher in the MPAA’s PG-13 rating, the Scrooge-ish wicked witch Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holliday) riding a runaway stair-climbing chair – rarely does anyone seem to remark upon the…

Call me a sadist, but Hostel’s most egregious failing (of which there are many) is that it wants to be preeminent shock cinema, but doesn’t have the balls to fully follow through on its promise of unbridled carnage. Eli Roth’s banal follow-up to Cabin Fever spends its first half charting the ugly, arrogant behavior of…

Of all the late ‘70s-early ‘80s Jaws knockoffs, none balanced tongue-in-cheek humor with out-and-out gore as deftly as Joe Dante’s Piranha, produced with the low-budget aid of legendary B-movie impresario Roger Corman. Scripted by John Sayles with a preference for knowing wink-wink jokes (such as the bookending sights of a Jaws videogame and a woman…