Film Review: Summer Rental (1985)

Release Date: August 9th, 1985
Directed by: Carl Reiner
Written by: Mark Reisman, Jeremy Stevens
Music by: Alan Silvestri
Cast: John Candy, Karen Austin, Kerri Green, Joey Lawrence, Rip Torn, Richard Crenna, John Larroquette, Richard Herd, Lois Hamilton

St. Petersburg Clearwater Film Commission, Paramount Pictures, 87 Minutes

Review:

“I love you Scully. That’s not the booze talkin’ either.” – Jack Chester

This was one of those movies I used to watch a lot as a kid. I hadn’t seen it in years though but after recently revisiting The Great Outdoors, I wanted to give this similar movie some love.

Sadly, it’s nowhere near as good as I remembered it being. But that’s not to say that it isn’t amusing and funny. It is, but that’s mainly due to how charming and lovable John Candy is regardless of the quality of the production he finds himself in.

The story follows a guy who is forced to take a vacation so he packs up the family and heads to Florida for the summer. Once there, a series of mishaps happen and the vacation is turned into a bit of a nightmare but ultimately, he has to come to look at the silver lining and reconnect with those he loves most while also challenging himself in a new way in an effort to succeed at something important to him.

This is a lighthearted positive film and it feels like a relic because there are few movies like this anymore, which is kind of sad. But even with all the shit that is thrown at John Candy’s Jack Chester, he tends to find a way to get over it and be optimistic.

Apart from Candy, I really liked Rip Torn as his buddy that teaches him how to sail and helps inspire him to win a sailing race against the town’s rich asshole.

That asshole is played by Richard Crenna, who I also liked a lot in this, as he isn’t playing his typical tough guy role but is instead playing a pompous old yuppie that gets to ham it up and have fun. In fact, he and Candy made such good rivals in this, I’m surprised Crenna didn’t get more similar roles following this film. But then again, this just did okay in theaters and was critically panned at the time.

Summer Rental isn’t the best John Candy movie, by any means, but it still showcases the guy’s magnetic charm and it makes you want to root for him and his family.

Rating: 5.75/10
Pairs well with: other vacation comedies of the ’80s, most notably The Great Outdoors, also with John Candy.

Film Review: The Beastmaster (1982)

Also known as: Invasión Junk (Argentina), Dar l’invincible (France), El señor de las bestias (Spain)
Release Date: August 16th, 1982 (US limited)
Directed by: Don Coscarelli
Written by: Don Coscarelli, Paul Pepperman
Based on: The Beast Master by Andre Norton
Music by: Lee Holdridge
Cast: Marc Singer, Tanya Roberts, Rip Torn, John Amos, Billy Jacoby

Beastmaster N.V., ECTA Filmproduktion, GmbH & Co., K.G., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, United Artists, 118 Minutes

Review:

“Don’t move. The beast is fierce. But if we show no fear, we might escape.” – Dar

I used to love the hell out of this film when I was a little kid. It could because it was the first time I remember seeing boobies in a movie and that my parents seemed oblivious to this having boobies and lots of violence and therefore, never making me turn it off when I put it on. But then again, they were usually walking around the house doing adult things.

Anyway, I still like to revisit this movie every few years. It had been awhile seen I’d seen it this time though, maybe five years or more. But I wanted to work my way through all of The Beastmaster films since I haven’t reviewed them yet.

This is absolutely the best film in the series and I’d say that it’s the second best sword and sorcery film after the original Conan the Barbarian, which also came out in 1982.

I think that a lot of this film’s awesomeness can be attributed to it being written and directed by Don Coscarelli, the man behind the Phantasm film series, Bubba Ho-Tep and John Dies at the End. It has a very dark fantasy vibe that isn’t too dissimilar from his Phantasm series. And there are parts of this film that feel like actual horror, like the scenes with the winged demon vampire creatures that captured people within their wings and devoured them, turning them into a dripping acidic goo. Also, there is children sacrifice and all types of other hardcore shit thrown in.

The film also has a pretty layered narrative. It’s a straightforward movie where the hero is born, the hero loses the life he knows due to a tyrant, the hero grows up and then takes the tyrant down. But there are multiple villains in the movie: Rip Torn as an evil religious cult leader and a big brutish warrior with one of the coolest helmets in movie history. Plus, there are other evil abominations thrown in at certain points.

For those that might not know, Dar, the Beastmaster, has the power of befriending animals and using them as allies in his war against evil. It’s a cool concept and even though the idea comes from the book this is based on, which is really all they took from the book, it gives this story an edge over other sword and sorcery movies. Now it isn’t better than the first Conan but it is, at times, more entertaining.

I really enjoy Marc Singer in this. I also liked Tanya Roberts, here, but she was always a favorite of mine when I was a kid, between this film and A View to a Kill. Also, she’s the best thing about Tourist Trap. I think the real highlights for me though, are seeing John Amos being a total buff badass in this, as well as Rip Torn embracing his character’s evil insanity. All of the performances are better than what’s typical within this genre.

The movie has good cinematography and the shots are framed quite well. I especially like the scene where Dar faces off with the evil helmeted dark knight amongst the flames. It was well lit, well captured and the use of contrast in this sequence was well done.

Decades have come and gone since this film came out but like Coscarelli’s other motion pictures, it has survived the test of time and it is still a lot of fun to watch.

Rating: 7.5/10
Pairs well with: other sword and sorcery movies of the time, most notably the Conan films. It’s also fun to watch with its sequels but this is much better than them.

 

Film Review: RoboCop 3 (1993)

Release Date: May 1st, 1993 (Japan)
Directed by: Fred Dekker
Written by: Frank Miller, Fred Dekker
Based on: characters by Edward Neumeier, Michael Miner
Music by: Basil Poledouris
Cast: Robert John Burke, Nancy Allen, Robert DoQui, Felton Perry, Rip Torn, Mako, John Castle, CCH Pounder, Stephen Root, Jeff Garlin, Shane Black, Bradley Whitford, Lee Arenberg, Daniel von Bargen

Orion Pictures, 104 Minutes

Review:

“Well, I gotta hand it to ya. What do they call ya? Murphy, is it?” – The CEO, “My friends call me Murphy. You call me… RoboCop.” – RoboCop

RoboCop 3 should not exist. Well, at least in the form that it does.

For one, Peter Weller left the series and Nancy Allen’s Lewis gets killed off pretty early on, leaving us with a movie mostly devoid of the actors and characters we’ve come to care about except for a few minor side ones like the the police sergeant and Johnson.

Not even Dan O’Herlihy came back to play the Old Man in charge of OCP. I guess his absence was explained by OCP being bought by a Japanese company. So instead of the great O’Herlihy, we got a bored looking Rip Torn as the new head of OCP. Johnson was still there though, even if he felt out of place hamming it up with new office buddies.

The story deals with a bunch of poor people getting violently thrown out of their homes so OCP can steal the land and build Delta City, which has been an overused plot point since the first movie. RoboCop catches feelings for the poor people, especially after meeting a four year-old girl that hacks ED-209s and watching Lewis get gunned down by a private military company hired by OCP. There’s also some terrible cyborg ninjas in this. Oh, and RoboCop gets a pointless gun arm and a lame as shit jetpack.

The special effects in this are laughably bad, even looked at within the context of the era this was made in. This is a much cheaper looking movie than RoboCop and RoboCop 2 by a wide margin. ED-209 looks about the same but I’m sure they just reused one of the robots from the first film. RoboCop himself is a new actor but he’s wearing Peter Weller’s suit, which was too short for the new actor and caused him a lot of pain.

RoboCop 3 is just one costly shitshow that has nothing redeeming hidden within it. I’ve only seen this one a few times but I’ve watched the first two at least a dozen times each. This is just really hard to sit through and pretty much a pointless film, overall.

Rating: 3.75/10
Pairs well with: the first two RoboCop movies but they’re far superior and I guess any bad RoboCop ripoffs with an extremely low budget, hokey effects and crappy acting.

Film Review: Slaughter (1972)

Also known as: Massacre (France), Masacre (Mexico), Kill Julian Drake (working title)
Release Date: August 16th, 1972 (New York City premiere)
Directed by: Jack Starrett
Written by: Mark Hanna, Don Williams
Music by: Luchi de Jesus
Cast: Jim Brown, Stella Stevens, Rip Torn

American International Pictures, 91 Minutes

Review:

“You’re really far out, you know that? I mean we go out to that house and let them know we are lookin’ to get killed, and all of a sudden your sittin’ on top of the world like your King Shit! Man, you’re weird Slaughter, I mean goddammit, you’re just weird!” – Harry

Jim Brown is a badass and there is no question that the man could pretty much beat the crap out of anyone else in his presence. However, he never seemed to have the command of the screen in the same way that Fred Williamson, Issac Hayes, Jim Kelly, Rudy Ray Moore and Richard Roundtree had. He was sexy, had a certain panache and could carry his own but it had to be hard to compete with the more charismatic male stars who were also making their mark in the blaxploitation era. Regardless, Brown still has an acting career that has lasted longer than the others.

I think that the reason why is because what you see is what you get. I think Jim Brown just plays Jim Brown. Sure, from film to film he has a different occupation or a different purpose. At the core of all his characters though, is authentic Jim Brown.

I feel like Brown’s vehicles also weren’t as good as the other blaxploitation stars. In all honesty, this is probably his best film of that era and it isn’t very good. It’s also not bad but it’s pretty tame and just lacks the style and energy of the other films in the genre.

I do like that this primarily takes place in Mexico though. It isn’t a rehash of the American urban blaxploitation shtick and gives us something refreshing while keeping a familiar formula. Jim Brown plays an ex-Green Beret that has to avenge the murder of is parents. This takes him to Mexico where he must take on an Italian drug cartel and get to a final showdown with the great Rip Torn, who makes a solid heavy in this.

The finale of the film was pretty good but just about everything else is fairly mundane. One thing that was annoying about this movie is that it often times used these weird fish-eye effect action shots that felt like they were cut into the editing just sort of randomly. These shots looked bad and were a distraction to the flow of the action.

Slaughter just isn’t very exciting or engaging. You want to really like Jim Brown’s character but he just never seems to turn the volume up enough.

Rating: 6/10
Pairs well with: Other Jim Brown ’70s pictures: Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off, Black Gunn, I Escapred From Devil’s Island, Three the Hard Way, etc.

Film Review: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

Release Date: March 18th, 1976 (London premiere)
Directed by: Nicolas Roeg
Written by: Paul Mayersberg
Based on: The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis
Music by: John Phillips, Stomu Yamashta
Cast: David Bowie, Rip Torn, Candy Clark, Buck Henry, Bernie Casey

British Lion Films, 138 Minutes, 119 Minutes (cut version)

Review:

“Well I’m not a scientist. But I know all things begin and end in eternity.” – Thomas Jerome Newton

David Bowie is in the upper echelon of artists I have loved and followed my entire life. I first discovered him, as a kid, when I was creeped out a bit by his music video for “Look Back In Anger” and enchanted by his video for “Ashes to Ashes”. I was really young, mind you, and this was all experienced when MTV was just sort of becoming a thing. I also grew up seeing him in Labyrinth and in other places, all while enjoying his tunes in the ’80s.

I never went back in time to check out The Man Who Fell to Earth until I was quite older. Actually, I first saw it in my early twenties, playing on television sets at a pretty intense party where the events and visuals in the film weren’t too dissimilar from the party itself.

I’ve since seen it sober and with my full attention, free of distraction.

The Man Who Fell to Earth is a real work of art. It’s not an incredible film when you look at the sum of all its parts but there are aspects of it that are exceptional, unique and inspirational. It has gone on to influence other motion pictures since it’s release and Bowie fans still adore it generations later.

The film follows an alien named Thomas Jerome Newton. He goes to Earth in search of water, as his home world is suffering from an apocalyptic level drought. He teams up with a patent attorney and invents a lot of things, advancing the technology on Earth and making himself rich. His ultimate goal is to have the money and ability to transport water back to his home. Sadly, Newton becomes distracted and corrupted by sex, alcohol, materialism and all aspects of the physical human world on Earth. Ultimately, Newton loses his way.

While the film is a bit long and feels very drawn out, it sometimes moves at a pace that is too fast. It is sort of disorienting, at times, when you go from one scene to the next and its obvious that a large portion of time has passed due to the effects of age being apparent on the characters that aren’t Newton. But there was a lot of ground to cover and I haven’t read the book, so I’m not sure how it compares to it. I’d assume that a lot had to be left out because the time jumps leave you feeling like you missed something important.

For this being David Bowie’s first big acting role, he did a fantastic job. Granted, this is a role that seems tailor made for him, especially at this point in his career. He loved singing about space and aliens and now he got to take over the screen as an odd yet intriguing extraterrestrial.

Bowie is surrounded by a pretty good cast that features Candy Clark, Rip Torn, Buck Henry and Bernie Casey. The chemistry between Bowie and Clark is good and Clark is really sweet in the first half of the film. That is, until things go sour for the romantic relationship due to Newton being driven a bit mad by the vices that control him.

The film is trippy and surreal. The alien planet scenes are enticing and charming. Also, whenever alcohol makes Newton have visions, we get to go on bizarre rides through time, space and imagination.

The Man Who Fell to Earth is an underrated gem that almost seduces you from its opening moments and continues to lure you in at every turn. While it isn’t very well known today, I don’t think that it is a film that will ever be truly lost to time because of David Bowie’s presence in it. Bowie transcends music, movies and pop culture and even in death, he will always attract new fans and many of them will most likely have the urge to experience this strange and unique film.

Rating: 7.5/10
Pairs well with: The Man Who Fell to Earth TV movie from the ’80s. Also, for Bowie fans, this flows well with The Hunger.