Future War

The movie tosses us right in as our characters are sneaking slowly through a barn's, smoky, "tunnels."

We see them wander around a bit, and eventually the camera starts zooming in on the characters one at a time to visually introduce us. First there's the sleeveless-flannel-clad, generic brand Jean-Claude Van Damme as "the runaway" (Daniel Bernhardt). Believe it or not, this guy actually starred in a lot of stuff. You may recognize him as Agent Johnson from The Matrix sequels.

Poor guy got typecast into roles involving only futuristic robot wars apparently.

Next there's a large black man who seems like a really poor choice for subterranean sneaking.

And also there's a blonde woman with a magic mouth. When we reach her, she mouths about 3 words and this is what we hear:

"Four days ago a fire fell from the sky, and it brought a man that would change my life forever. But also came a pack of dinosaur-like creatures, in various ages, shapes, sizes, and etzmysterz (Not sure what she says last, but that's what it sounds like). For all the questions I had about the heavens, all it brought was hell on earth."

They wander a little while longer, and suddenly they stumble upon two dinosaur torsos with bodies extending off camera in precisely the way a puppet's might.

Not hand-puppets.

Now presumably, this is exactly what they were looking for, and the reason they were being slow and quiet. But they have forgotten this by this point because as soon as they see the dinosaurs, they immediately scream and run around.

They retrace their steps to get out, but on the ladder towards the end, the fat guy turns out to be just a little too slow.

The responsible dinosaur turns on his heat lamp before eating to prevent indigestion.

The movie goes back to the opening titles, and spends about five minutes there. When it runs out of names it transitions to telling us the second half of the backstory. We find out that cyborgs invaded, humans are bred as slaves, dinosaurs are bred to track escaping humans, and that heaven is a place on earth.

Five minutes of opening credits, and they couldn't squeeze in a writing credit to Belinda Carlisle?

Jean-Claude wakes up on a beach for some reason, and goes crawling away. We then see that someone's walking on the beach tracking him with a dinosaur on a rope. When we get a good look at the dino-handler, it turns out to be one of the aforementioned cyborgs.

Pictured: T-1000, Angry Mime Limited Edition. Now with robo-mullet.

The runaway guy eventually throws enough kicks and empty cardboard boxes at the cyborg until he's knocked out for a while. The runaway... well, runs away...

And is immediately run over by a nun.

The nun runs off to get help, and finds another sleeveless-flanneled person and another large black man.

Also in flannel... everyone's in flannel.

The nun turns out to know these guys actually, and so the nun talks to her a while and then spends the night. By the next morning she's changed into a flannel shirt too. The runaway apparently spent the night there also, and he spends the morning playing with the radio and eating noodles with his fingers.

The nun tries to communicate with the runaway, and finds that he can't really talk. As it turns out he doesn't know English at all, so she teaches him some basic gestures for "yes" and "no." She then leaves him to babysit. Within a few minutes of watching a kid play with a Talkboy, he's learned English and is talking just fine.

Unfortunately, all he can talk about is bible verses it seems. The nun doesn't have time to hear that sort of thing all the time, so she tries her best to get rid of him but he refuses to leave her alone.

Apparently the filmmakers ran into Forrest J. Ackerman at this point, because they now throw in an unrelated scene of him getting ambushed in the park while he reads a Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.


Once that's over, we cut back to the runaway and the nun walking along the street. Soon enough, they're picked up by a cop on his way to another box warehouse. There is no conversation, so we're left to guess why exactly they were picked up on his way there.

Already at the warehouse, we find a pretend-news team reporting on the situation with their pretend-news-camera.

Tape + Cardboard Box + Lens drooping off the front = Video Camera

One of the police already on the scene heads into the box warehouse to sneak around in the boxes. Eventually he finds blood, so everyone else comes in too. While they're looking at the blood, they hear gunshots in the other room. I assume we're to believe that the dinosaur was firing the gun, because he's the only one in the room when they get there. All the policemen immediately begin firing their guns at the dinosaur, who doesn't even seem to notice. Luckily for them, the runaway has arrived as backup, carrying a knife. He runs in and swings at the dinosaur, and apparently misses, but the dinosaur still falls down dead. I guess he was just aiming at the strings controlling it.


Either way, the dinosaur is dead. Also it explodes. The runaway tells the cops that the dinosaur is not alone and that there are more that will keep coming until they find him. The cops listen carefully, and then arrest him.

The nun heads back to meet with her pre-nun business associates, her former gang members, to discuss "monsters in the hood."

But first they all go to their formal gang-boardroom to discuss the details.

The runaway gets back out of jail and tells the gang that they need to go near water where the dinosaurs will be congregated, so the whole flannel gang heads on over to a parking lot in a warehouse district, nowhere near water, and heads into a weird tunnel.

Everyone in the gang is carrying guns, but rather than use them, they start setting up elaborate, Home Alone-style dinosaur traps. The improvised spear and electro-net make short work of the two dinosaurs and then there's a surprise fight with a second cyborg. This second cyborg fight doesn't last very long though. Everyone has to run back out of the tunnel because an unexplained bomb is about to go off.

It's assumed that with the two cyborgs dispatched, everything is fine now. So everyone heads over to some sort of chapel for the nun-reinduction process. Things go well enough for a few minutes, but then the ceremony is interrupted by cyborg #2 again.

You wouldn't think a villain based on the TRON guy would be so persistent.

Cyborg #2 and the runaway have a boring fight for a while, during which we see the runaway with wounds that spontaneously appear, disappear, and the reappear over and over. Eventually the fight is over when the cyborg inexplicably blows up... for good this time.

The runaway talks a little more about the bible with the nun and then the credits roll, leaving us to ponder how we made it through the entirety of Future War without ever seeing a war or anything from the future.

According to IMDB, the director was actually kicked out of the production at some point, and a salvage crew brought in to finish the movie. For their sake, I'll just assume that their aim was to salvage the movie by cobbling together what they had into a comedy. If that's the case, then they were pretty successful. If you're a fan of bad dinosaur movies like Carnosaur (also by Doublin), silly effects, or flannel, then you'll probably enjoy this laughably bad movie.

Available on Amazon: Future War

Leprechaun

First of all, the cover should be all you need for this one. You don't even need to read the text when the imagery alone promises Jennifer Aniston being chased by an evil leprechaun... I'm sold.

In this film, we're introduced to our titular leprechaun (Warwick Davis) in the very first shot. None of that don't-show-the-creature stuff here. The first lines "Try as they will, and try as they might... who steals me gold won't live through the night," introduces you to one of the two main leprechaun "rules" for the plot, and gives you a taste of the torrent of bad puns in store for you for the next hour and a half.

Next the film runs us through a short backstory scene in which Generic O'Irishman has stolen the leprechaun's pot of gold (apparently a "pot" is what the Irish call a bag). It doesn't take Mr. O'Grady too long to find out that that's just the sort of thing that makes the leprechaun come to kill you and those around you. The man survives, gets the leprechaun stuck in a wooden crate, and seals him in by putting a four-leafed clover on top (also nails).

Fast-forward 10 years to the present, presumably to 1993. Tory Reding (a 24 year-old Jennifer Aniston) is moving in with her father, who lives in an old dilapidated shack in the middle of North Dakota. She's not too happy about it once she arrives, and threatens to leave pretty much immediately. As soon as she tries though, she runs into Nathan (Ken Olandt), the guy hired to help repaint the house. After talking to Nathan, Tory decides to stick around to prove she's not afraid of spiders and dust, to make fun of Nathan's truck, and to show off her ridiculous patchwork shorts.


The last characters to be introduced are Alex and Ozzie. Alex (Robert Hy Gorman) is Nathan's little brother, and apparently the caretaker of the much older Ozzie (played by Mark Holton, Francis from PeeWee's Big Adventure).

Pictured: Not a bicycle thief.

Alex and Ozzie don't accomplish much painting before Ozzie runs off to follow the "magic rainbow."


Ozzie actually does find a golden coin at the end of the rainbow, and manages to enjoy it for about a minute before accidentally eating it. Alex finds the rest of the gold and takes a coin to town to get it tested and appraised. The guy at the pawn shop asks to keep it over night, and soon after tries to put it into his safe. When he opens it the leprechaun springs out, showing that apparently another one of the leprechaun's powers is teleportation, or at least teleporting through safe walls (this is something he apparently forgets how to do for all the sequels).

Anyway, the leprechaun finally has his first big kill here and he does so magnificently.



At this point, the leprechaun does what any good slasher villain would do to keep the tension building. He heads back to the house to polish everyone's shoes.

Everyone gets back home just as he finishes, notices that the shoes are all lined up neatly on the table and decide... it must have been a bear.

Pictured: A bear

Pretty soon the gang finds out that O'Grady is actually still around town and is now living in the local nursing home. So they all go by for a visit and find out leprechaun rule #2, four-leafed clovers are leprechaun kryptonite.

They go back home, Tory finds the clover easily enough, and Alex shoots it into the leprechaun's mouth with a slingshot. Alex doesn't have any problem with this, and even takes time to add his own bit of flair to it.

"Fuck you lucky charms."

The Leprechaun swallows the clover, falls into a hole, and explodes... Roll credits.


For those of you keeping track, these are the rules of the franchise so far:

1. Steal the leprechaun's gold and he will attack and/or kill you to get it back.
2. Four-leafed clovers are his one weakness.
3. The leprechaun can teleport through the walls of a safe, even while his powers are weakened.

Leprechaun is certainly an odd film. It is somewhat unique in that it's one of the few horror/slasher franchises from the period that didn't at least start out trying to be scary. Series like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street began purely as horror films and eventually integrated elements of comedy when it was realized that people really just wanted to see the crazy death scenes anyway and would rather have a more "lovable" slasher that they could pull for. To this end, Freddy Krueger turned into a one-liner spouting, malevolent-Beetlejuice kind of character, and Jason gets a mask and becomes a walking franchise logo that strolls from one death scene to the next. If that sounds critical, it isn't really. Some of those sequels are good, and they're both probably made more iconic in horror history because of their changes. But in the end they lost their potential to tell a truly horrifying story.

Leprechaun on the other hand skips all of the horror bits on the way to making its horror franchise and instead creates a slasher out of a three-foot tall shoemaker that speaks only in limericks. Also, although he does have one or two kills in the movie, it's nothing like the body counts of your average slasher film. This slasher barely even slashes; he spends far more time riding tricycles, skateboards, and barbie cars.

While it's not the first or only movie to go this route (Troll, Hobgoblins, etc), the charisma Warwick Davis brings to the leprechaun makes the films a lot of fun and is enough on its own to keep Leprechaun head and shoulders above those others.



The trailer sets the film in South Dakota. The movie, North Dakota. Good job!

Available on Amazon: Leprechaun (1993)

Frankenhooker

Sometime between Basket Case and Brain Damage, Frank Henenlotter tried to make a movie called Insect City. When he went to pitch the idea for funding, no one was interested, so he made up Frankenhooker on the spot and pitched that instead.

In Frankenhooker, Frank Henenlotter shows us that the winning formula to make a romantic comedy is simply: young love + mad scientist + crack cocaine + blowing up prostitutes.

Anyhow, we start the film off with Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) playing with his pet eye/brain creature. It doesn't seem to work quite right, so Jeffrey is forced to perform a quick bit of brain surgery... which of course involves a hammer.

This thing is straight out of The Crawling Eye

We're introduced to his girlfriend Elizabeth (Patty Mullen) just in time for her father's birthday party. She wanders around the snack tables eating pretzels and talking to whoever's around about her problems with losing weight. Soon enough she unveils Jeffrey's gift, a remote controlled lawn mower, and is quickly devoured by it. This movie is wasting no time at all, we're barely at the five minute mark.

Elizabeth's death inexplicably causes someone to squirt a lawn gnome with chocolate syrup.

After introducing Elizabeth just in time to kill her off, the movie shifts back to Jeffrey. He's moping in his room, but at least he's stolen Elizabeth's head to keep him company. He talks to his mother, has a romantic dinner with Elizabeth's head and begins his decent into monologuing madness. From this point on, unless the plot requires that Jeffrey talks to someone about something, everything he says is pretty much just him talking to himself. Since he does this pretty much constantly, Jeffrey is essentially the narrator for the remainder for the movie. But before he leads us to the next plot point, our narrator has to pause the film and take a drill to his temple because it "helps him to relax."

Once all of that is finished, Jeffrey decides to go out looking for hookers for body parts to rebuild Elizabeth. He heads out to browse the local hookers, and ends up taking them all back with him. Too bad for the crack-addled hookers, Jeffrey's recently whipped up a batch of super-crack.

As the movie explains, when it comes to super-crack, "Just say no."

With his hotel room now full of ladylimbs, Jeffrey now has plenty of stuff to reconstruct Elizabeth. As for the leftovers, he sticks them in his freezer along with his... purple.

Pretty soon, frankenhooker is born and completely steals the show for the remaining 30 minutes of the movie. She stomps around the town in her Frankenstein platform shoes, spouts all the catch-phrases from all of the hookers earlier in the movie, and sexes an old guy's head off (he doesn't seem to mind this at all).

Jeffrey eventually catches up to her (but only because she breaks down and needs repairs) and takes her back to his place. Elizabeth's memories and personality come back and they live happily ever after... but then there's a twist... and then another one.

As usual, Henenlotter sticks to his specific brand of comedic horror and hits it out of the park. I've watched this 3 times this month and I think I've got to agree with Bill Murray who famously said, "if you see one movie this year, it should be Frankenhooker."

Available on Amazon: Frankenhooker (Special Edition)

Candyman

Now I'll admit that I've only ever seen a few clips from Sideways (and that's unlikely to change), but I would suspect that Virginia Madsen's Oscar-nominated performance there isn't anything to measure up to her role here as Helen Lyle in Candyman.

Or her role as the unlikely offspring of Gillian Anderson and Lucille Ball.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable movie, and I believe it was mostly because of the casting. Madsen was excellent and believable at all times as Helen Lyle. Tony Todd is surprisingly excellent as the Candyman. When he first shows up in a parking garage wearing what looks like a fur pimp-coat and a pirate hook, it's hard to keep from laughing at him, but he somehow he makes it work. He makes the character unique and like the rest of the cast, really gives 100% here.

He's also probably the most genteel of all film murderers, to the extent that he even politely asks Helen, repeatedly, if she'll please be his victim.

The Candyman is also fairly unique as a slasher villain in that he is black. This was no accident, one of main themes here is class/race differences in America... which brings me to one of my only real complaints. Although Candyman manages to constantly bring up social problems of that sort, it doesn't always seem to get around to making it's point. If it had managed to stay on a train of thought for a little longer and finished constructing the points it was trying to make, then I think it could have made them well, because the film never feels preachy.

I've heard criticisms about the ending, but I thought it was just fine. The entire movie is about urban legends, how they survive, and how they change. In that light, what happens to the legend of the Candyman wraps up that idea neatly enough.

Available on Amazon: Candyman (Special Edition)