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The Slumber Party Massacre (1982): B
The Slumber Party Massacre is something of a 1980s slasher film anomaly: written by lesbian erotica novelist Rita Mae Brown and directed by Amy Holden Jones, this gory story about a drill-wielding serial killer terrorizing scantily-clad high school girls during a nighttime get-together is, in fact, a gruesome, T&A-filled feminist tract about female fears of…
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Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971): B+
Mel Stuart’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory has given pleasurable highs to many an acid dropper, but there’s nonetheless something dreary about all the song-and-dance numbers peppered throughout this adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s tale. Listening to Jack Albertson’s Grandpa Joe sing about Wonka’s factory tour-yielding golden ticket is enough to make one…
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Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990): D+
Tobe Hooper’s imprint is nowhere to be found on Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, a failed attempt by New Line to reinvent the titular chainsawer into a Freddy Krueger-style villain. Two bickering ex-lovers (Kate Hodge and William Butler) driving cross-country run into trouble when they hit a stretch of deserted highway used by Leatherface and…
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Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland (1989): C-
Shot almost immediately after Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers, Michael A. Simpson’s Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland is the type of cheap quickie sequel that eventually ruined the slasher film genre. Angela (Pamela Springsteen) murders a poor girl with “Milk” and “Shake” tattooed on her chest, assumes her identity, and takes her place at Camp…
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Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers (1988): C+
Gender-confused Angela is back and crazier than ever in Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers, a sequel that finds the murderous androgyne taking a counselor job at Camp Rolling Hills after having undergone snip-snip sex change surgery to become a real woman. It’s the perfect summer gig for the guitar-strumming, camp song-singing psycho, whose bunk is…
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Sleepaway Camp (1983): B
Robert Hiltzik’s Sleepaway Camp unimaginatively mimics Friday the 13th’s summer camp setting for its string of mysterious slayings, but the film’s infatuation with gender confusion is its own dubious legacy to the 1980s slasher flick genre. Years after a boating accident claimed her father and younger brother, silent, wide-eyed Angela (Felissa Rose) is sent to…
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Dolls (1987): D
“Now that doesn’t make a whole lotta sense,” says child-at-heart toy lover Ralph (Stephen Lee) at the end of Dolls. Ain’t that the truth. In Stuart Gordon’s (Re-Animator) flabbergasting film, an abusive father (Ian Patrick Williams), his manly second wife (Caroline Purdy-Gordon), and his precocious daughter Judy (Carrie Lorraine) find themselves stranded in the middle…
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Hustle and Flow (2005) C+
A hit at this year’s Sundance, Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow is a Southern remix of 8 Mile, a rags-to-riches fairy tale in which a struggling Memphis pimp named DJay (Terrence Howard) uses his street smarts and stable of loyal whores – as well as an aspiring music producer (Anthony Anderson) and his white deejay…
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Any Which Way You Can (1980): C
Clint Eastwood and his orangutan sidekick return for more boozing and street brawling in Any Which Way You Can, a redundant Buddy Van Horn-helmed sequel in which Philo Beddoe (Eastwood) and pet monkey Clyde find themselves embroiled in a high-stakes fight against legendary fisticuffer Jack Wilson (William Smith). A slightly sloppier rehash of Any Which…
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War of the Worlds (2005): B
Until its phony finale undoes everything exhilarating that’s come before, Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds proves to be not only a thrilling apocalyptic adventure haunted by the specter of 9/11, but also a summer spectacular in which human relationships and emotions refuse to be overwhelmed by (admittedly awesome) computer-generated mayhem. As with countless Spielberg…
