FRIGHTFUL FAILURE FRIDAY Of all the bad movies that we've all grown to love just because of how incredibly awful they truly are, 'Troll 2' may just be the most famous next to only 'The Room'. It's almost a guarantee that most people reading this will immediately recognize that horrified look in the accompanying picture. The next thing to run through your head is "They're eating her! And then they're gonna eat me! Oh my GOOOOODDDD!" But for as scary as that may sound to people who haven't seen that clip, trust me, YouTube almost any video about 'Troll 2' scenes, and this will be on just about any one of them. With that, there's also a pretty good documentary about the film called 'Best Worst Movie', made by none other than the child star from this film (not the guy in the picture), Michael Stephenson, as he takes us through his experiences on the making of the film. It's worth it but definitely watch the actual movie first. The film features the Waits family on a home exchange vacation in the small farming community of Nilbog. The town's name is not only "goblin" spelled backwards but also makes us realize that the movie isn't about trolls at all. Among the family are the father, Michael (George Hardy), mother, Diana (Margo Prey), sister, Holly (Connie Young), and the star of the show, young Joshua (Stephenson). One night, Joshua meets his ghostly Grandfather, Seth (Robert Ormsby) who warns him of... get this... vegetarian goblins who want to turn humans into pants as a food source. I mean, I'm no expert, but I feel like with something like goblins (again, not trolls) you can maybe skip that whole vegetarian step. But I digress. The process is done by the goblins feeding humans poisoned food or drink. In the meantime, we meet Elliot Cooper (Jason Wright), Holly's boyfriend, who spends a lot of time with his buddies, Arnold (Darren Ewing - pictured above), Drew (Jason Steadman) and Brent (David McConnell). Long story short, we pretty much know from the get-go that these characters essentially have to be the victims in this film. All of it is done in the presence of the druid witch, Creedence Leonore Gielgud (Deborah Reed) who uses a Stonehenge stone to give goblins power. Will Joshua, with the help of his grandad's ghost be able to put a stop to all of the goblin plant-eating mayhem before they consume the whole town of Nilbog? And just how many different scenes of pure cheese can one person laugh at throughout a movie, anyway? For all the talk about this film not having anything to do with trolls, to be fair, the original title of this was 'Goblins', but the American distributers decided to market it as a sequel to 1986's 'Troll' (yeah, I hadn't heard of it either before 'Troll 2'). To make this even dumber, the two films have absolutely nothing to do with each other. But what really made me laugh about the film's production was the idea that director Claudio Fragasso initially wanted to make the film for his wife, Rosella Drudi, as a way for her to express her frustration about her friends becoming vegetarians. But wait, it keeps getting worse and worse. The fluently Italian crew and fluently English cast had all sorts of communication issues, and just to add to that, most of the actors were very inexperienced, comprising largely of people who answered a casting call just to be extras. 'Troll 2' definitely makes for a fun time when checking it out with a bunch of friends, and laughing along with it. But if you're going to do that, as mentioned earlier, I still highly recommend following it up with 'Best Worst Movie'. That's a documentary that pretty much lets you know what made this movie so bad, and it's almost funnier and more unbelievable than the actual film. If you're like me, love yourself a really fun, bad movie, and you haven't checked this out yet, you need to put it on your list of essential viewing. It's so delightfully over the top with its execution and so delightfully low budget with its costumes and special effects. It's a terrible film, but it's still a solid laugh all the way through. 2/5
0 Comments
TRICK-OR-TREAT TUESDAY Here's another one of those great family favourites I put on that list I mentioned in my 'Hocus Pocus' review. Even though that was a list of a pretty randomized 20, I would have to say that this has to be somewhere at the top of that list as far as good, wholesome, family-friendly Halloween fun goes. And yes, I do say that with a bit of a bias toward these two charming characters, who we've seen in a few different things up to this point. There's something I love about the way these two play off each other. Wallace (Peter Sallis) is a sweet, charming man but a bit of a bumbler, and Gromit is the silent dog whose facial expressions say everything he needs to. My appreciation of Aardman Animations goes beyond these two as well, with films like 'Chicken Run', 'Arthur Christmas' and 'Shaun the Sheep' - just a few examples of some rather hilarious, yet wholesome entertainment. Interestingly enough, 'Curse of the Were-Rabbit' marks Wallace & Gromit's only full-length film so far, and I have to give them bonus points for making it a Halloween film! If you go through my list of 20 (as posted earlier), you'll see a lot of it is pretty hard to find, or otherwise painfully obvious, while this lies somewhere in between. I don't hear a lot of people talk about it during the Halloween season, but in my opinion, it's one of the best light-hearted Halloween-related things one can watch during the spooky season. This is one of those movies one can use to shine just a little bit of light on the otherwise scary and/or suspenseful thrillers and horrors they're watching through the month of October. In this feature, we see cheese-loving inventor, Wallace and his faithful dog, Gromit working in animal control with their humane company "Anti-Pesto". The big deal at the moment is rabbits who have been invading people's crops. This is made even worse by the fact that these people are attempting to grow giant vegetables for the upcoming Giant Vegetable Competition at Tottington Hall. After the pair rand up a massive group of rabbits in one, Lady Tottington's (Helena Bonham Carter) garden, Wallace attempts to use one of his new inventions to try brainwashing the rabbits into not liking vegetables. As one can imagine, this all backfires and, long story short, it ends up creating a giant rabbit who terrorizes the local gardens. Just to add to the story a little bit, there's a love-interest thing going on here between Wallace and Lady Tottington, but Wallace does have to deal with that "jock" type in the form of Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes). However, thankfully, this all takes a back seat to a lot of the other stuff going on throughout the film, and it's clear that this is out to have fun first - just like most, if not all of Aardman Animations' work. It's actually a good collection of (yet again) family-friendly material that doesn't have to rely on a love story of any sort to keep things interesting. So, if you're in the mood for something your kid can watch that plays well for Halloween but really isn't scary, you need not look any further. One might wonder what kind of monster a were-rabbit could be, and what it might do to human beings, but to make it a little extra kid-friendly, the big threat here is against vegetables and not people, so even though the monster, itself could be a sort of scary idea, the execution of the monster is nice and tame, so you probably won't have to worry about getting your kids to bed after something like this. It may have a moment here and there, but for the most part, it's just fun all around. 4/5 TRICK-OR-TREAT TUESDAY I sincerely need to point out the fact that within several Halloween/Autumn Facebook groups I'm in, the most commonly asked thing has to be about finding some variety of family-friendly Halloween movies. This is pretty much what lead me to this theme for Tuesday, and I figured I'd start with something pretty much everyone can agree is a fine, family-friendly and actually pretty fun Halloween movie. Although I will say from the get-go that, as it's also mentioned in my "20 Family Friendly Halloween Classics" list, this is one of those titles that, while I don't altogether dislike, I still find a bit weak. It's not even something I'd say is bad, really, it's just kind of "there" at this point in my life, and there's actually not a huge nostalgic tie for me with this one. Most who are reading this, if not all, have probably seen this, but just in case, here's a quick plot summary. On Halloween of 1693, in Salem Massachusetts, a little girl named Emily (Amanda Shepherd) is kidnapped by the Sanderson Sisters; Winifred (Bette Midler), Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mary (Kathy Najimy). The trio of witches plot to suck the life essence out of the young Emily in order to make themselves younger. Ultimately, they succeed, while her protective big brother, Thackery Binx (Sean Murray), fails to save her and is thus cursed by the witches to be a cat for eternity, living in guilt. Soon, the sisters are discovered by the townsfolk and hanged, placing a last-minute, specific curse on the town. Said curse involves a virgin lighting the sacred "Black Candle" on one fateful All Hallows' Eve sometime down the line. Sure enough, in what was present day, 1993, the black candle is lit by the annoyingly whiney and rather obvious virgin, Max Dennison (Omri Katz), who, with his little sister, Dani (Thora Birch) and love interest, Allison (Vinessa Shaw), explore the old Sanderson cottage; now a local history museum. Long story short, the witches come back to life and ultimately wanna chase down Dani for her youthful essence, but much of the film also involves their chasing of Wini's spell book, which Max took from her during their escape (they escape, by the way). A lot of the comedy from the film comes from these three interacting with modern 90s society; so actually, a bit entertaining to watch in the woke culture of the present day. This is one of those titles where the more I watch it the duller it seems to get for me. But it should also be noted that I sincerely feel as though it's just a matter of me outgrowing something from my childhood. I'm big on nostalgia, as we all know, but for some reason, this one just didn't stick like glue. I can honestly say that this time around, I just found the whole thing very silly and not really that funny, but I can also honestly say that it feels clear that this was something made for kids. Some may question about the whole "virgin" thing here, and whether or not it's "okay" for a kid to be familiar with the term. It sort of leads me to imagine that there's a very specific age group this is aimed at, and I just so happened to fall into that age group in 1993. That said, however, I could very well be overthinking it. Even though I have sort of fallen behind in my enjoyment of this movie over the years, that's not at all me saying "hey, this is a piece of crap, avoid it". I'd just say it's not for me as much as it is for others who would insist on this being a sort of quintessential Halloween classic for a younger audience, or even just a family audience. It clearly has a big effect on a lot of people out there, and I'd never want to take that away from anyone. I'd still recommend it as a great family fun Halloween flick for anyone, but that's based on how much others love it more than myself. If nothing else, I'd give it to the performances of the three witches, who really do keep the movie kinda fun with a dark and admirably in-sync sense of humour. I dunno what else to say though. Take a look before checking out its new sequel and judge for yourself! 3/5 MONSTER MONDAY My idea for Monster Mondays is to explore some of Hollywood's greatest (and perhaps not so greatest) creature features. After all, what's Halloween without a solid collection of monsters? We begin with a title which I quite honestly haven't even seen in its entirety until this viewing. Before going into this I knew three things about it. One, the transformation scene was famous for its use of practical effects from none other than Rick Baker. Two, it was written and directed by John Landis, who also did the music video for Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. Three, the very bare basics of it being, evidently, a must-see werewolf movie. I'm super thrilled to say that the last bit of info there is 100% true. One thing any film from this era will always score points for from yours truly is that it simply holds up. This is a fantastic example of how if one can become a master of practical effects, one can easily outshine all of the glimmer and glamour of CG effects. Interestingly enough, a lot of it does feel like the era it was released in, but the effects are something I'd probably argue were ahead of their time. This leads me to believe that if you were one of the lucky individuals who got to see this theatrically, you had an awesome time based on the genuine thriller this is. In fact, this film is what inspired Jackson to approach Landis to direct his now-famous music video which to this day stands as arguably THE quintessential song for Halloween, AND is my personal favourite music video of all time. With that info, one can probably imagine that I was pretty ecstatic to see this with fresh eyes, forty-plus years after its initial release. What took me so long? Damn good question. But nevertheless, it really added to my Halloween spirit this year; a much-needed thing considering the past two years were all "Covidified". But man oh man, this could be a bit of a lengthy review this time around because I actually got so much out of this. I was actually surprised to pick up on quite a few moments I've seen referenced in other things as well - namely 'Tiny Toons: Night Ghoulery' with its "Devil Dog" segment. This was kind of like enjoying the "Shinning" segment of 'Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror', then watching 'The Shining' for the first time and getting more out of it because all of the references suddenly made more sense. We open the film with two backpacking Americans, David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) who are trekking across the moors in Yorkshire. With the cold getting to them, they happen upon a pub called the Slaughtered Lamb and head in to warm up. There, they meet a handful of colourful harbinger characters who warn them that when they leave, they should stick to the road, steer clear of the moors, and above all else, beware of the full moon. Of course, we wouldn't have a movie if these two listened, so eventually, the pair gets attacked by an unseen creature who ultimately (early spoiler alert) kills Jack in a pretty terrifying mauling scene - again, some horror that holds up. If you wanna make your skin crawl just find this scene. Anyway, David is also attacked but does manage to survive thanks to some of the local townsfolk and their guns. Now, I should probably mention a Trigger Warning before I get into the next paragraph, as it involves some pretty heavy stuff. Three weeks later, David wakes up in a London hospital and is told that he and Jack were attacked by an escaped lunatic. However, David insists that the culprit was far from human, and much more like a big rabid dog or wolf. While at the hospital, David meets and befriends a lovely nurse named Alex Price (Jenny Agutter), and the pair form a sort of romantic bond over time. But he is also haunted by his now undead friend Jack, who insists that David is now a werewolf and needs to kill himself, which will not only sever the bloodline and allow Jack (and others') freedom from their zombified state, but more importantly, no more harm can come to others. That's got to be a tough pill to swallow if you're told you should do such a horrific thing in order to save the lives of many others. But I digress. This brings me to another thing I give the film total credit for - David is a very rational-minded person. Usually, you take any horror concept, and it's someone saying something along the lines of "You gotta believe me! I saw what I saw!". David doesn't even go there, he just straight up believes that he's losing his mind and wants someone to help him with it. It may not seem like a big deal, but for me, that breaks a lot of horror cliche that existed both before and after this film. I consider it a step forward that this film made in the fight against mental health problems when no one was even really thinking about that stuff as much as they do now. It's downright admirable to have the lead say "okay, I'm losing it, I need help" as opposed to just assuming you're right and everyone else is wrong. For this, I tip my hat to Landis. And my God, how I could go on about how much I enjoyed this. But the scene everyone is probably curious about is the super-famous (at least among cult horror fans) transformation scene. I've seen a lot of werewolf transformations over the years, but this has to be among the best of them if NOT the best of them. The visual flow is a smooth transition, a slow and agonizing process, and may just make one feel sick to the stomach as you're seeing this guy sweating, writhing in pain, and putting on a very believable performance. I don't like torture porn stuff, but that's largely because it's someone doing stuff to someone else. To carry out such a believable performance such as this is admirable, and it's easy to see why this scene took off in werewolf fame over the years. To close this review off though, I have a genuine complaint about the movie. After all that praise, what could it be? Amazingly, it's just the sheer unavailability of this movie! I could not believe it when I checked all of my streaming sources, even YouTube, and couldn't find this anywhere. Of course, this lead to pirating it, and that's becoming a real problem with fantastic movies like these. Somehow, these titles are actually dying off, and we need to pay closer attention to them, lest we lose them forever! I just saw this for the first time and I can't help but feel like I almost missed it altogether. To put it bluntly, streaming services need to do better with their selections if they're gonna be taking everything over! 5/5 |