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SHAKEDOWN (1988)--Directed by James Glickenhaus.
Stars Peter Weller, Sam Elliott, Patricia Charbonneau, Richard Brooks. All the elements for an exciting action movie
are present, but the damn thing never really clicks, despite the leading men’s chemistry. Criminal attorney Weller
and burned-out detective Elliott (like Sam ever plays any other kind) team up to investigate what appears to be an open-and-shut
case of a black drug dealer (Brooks) killing an undercover cop in Central Park. However, Weller believes his client’s
preposterous claims of self-defense and discovers a frightening cabal of crooked cops with little regard for the lives of
lawyers who provoke them. Weller’s tedious relationship with prosecuting attorney Charbonneau takes up time better
spent on Glickenhaus’ explosive action scenes, including a wild chase down 42nd Street and a squirrelly roller coaster
ride. The climax, however, is ridiculously over-the-top and fatally damaged by awful blue-screen work. Also with
Antonio Fargas, John C. McGinley, Larry Joshua (sporting a hilariously inappropriate mullet), Blanche Baker and Paul Bartel.
SHAKER RUN (1985)--Directed by Bruce Morrison.
Stars Cliff Robertson, Leif Garrett, Lisa Harrow. New Zealand is the novel setting of this car-chase flick, which stars
Robertson as washed-up American racecar driver Judd and '70s teen idol Garrett as his young mechanic Casey. Both are
hired by Dr. Christine Ruben (Harrow) to transport a stolen virus cross-country into the safe hands of the CIA. The
virus had been accidentally discovered by her research team and was the target of military forces that would like to develop
it as a weapon. Not wanting her work to be used in the art of killing, Christine swipes the bug from its laboratory,
and pays Judd and Casey $3000 to drive it into waiting CIA arms. Of course, the plan goes awry, and the trio finds themselves
dodging bullets, helicopters, explosions and other fast cars. SHAKER RUN contains several nifty car jumps and stunts,
and Robertson brings a hefty dose of color to his crusty character. SHAKER isn't the world's most plausible picture,
but few that rely on elaborate car chases for their thrills are. Also with Shane Briant, Peter Hayden and Ian Mune.
THE SHAKIEST GUN IN THE WEST (1968)--Directed
by Alan Rafkin. Stars Don Knotts, Barbara Rhoades, Jackie Coogan, Donald Barry. Milquetoast dentist Knotts goes West, and
ends up married to a conniving robber (Rhoades). When Indians attack their wagon train, Knotts becomes a hero, even though,
unbeknownst to him and everyone else, Rhoades did the shooting. Good for kids, but not too funny for viewers over the age
of ten.
SHAKMA (1990)—Directed by Tom Logan.
Stars Roddy McDowall, Christopher Atkins, Amanda Wyss. I bet you’ve never seen a slasher movie with a baboon antagonist.
It’s MAZES AND MONSTERS meets FRIDAY THE 13TH in this surprisingly downbeat horror movie about a bunch of medical students
who lock down the building on campus where their labs are and play a Dungeons & Dragons-like role-playing game for real.
The wild card that not even dungeonmaster (and professor) McDowall could anticipate is that a vicious baboon, under the influence
of a drug that makes it aggressively violent, is loose in the building and killing everyone. Although some animatronic
effects are used, most of the mayhem was filmed using a real baboon, which is pretty damn ugly and frightening as it slams
into doors, races down corridors, and rips the faces off its victims. SHAKMA actually received a theatrical release,
although I don’t think it sold many tickets. Nor should it have, although you’ll definitely cheer when Shakma
slices up the annoying nerd, and the body count is higher than I expected, killing off characters I expected to survive.
Also with Ari Meyers (KATE & ALLIE).
SHAMPOO (1975)--Directed by Hal Ashby. Stars
Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant, Jack Warden. Robert Towne and Warren Beatty's sharp, satirical Oscar-nominated
screenplay (Towne says he wrote it alone, and gave Beatty credit as a favor) pokes fun at sexual mores, politics, Southern
California life and more. Beatty is George Roundy, a sweet, womanizing hairdresser who pursues affairs with Warden's wife
(Grant) and mistress (Christie), even though regular girlfriend Hawn is the woman he really loves. Beatty gives a winning
performance, and Christie's under-the-table fellatio scene is a real hoot. Look for a teenaged Carrie Fisher as another of
Beatty's conquests. From the director of COMING HOME, although the story goes that Beatty (as he is on many of the films in
which he stars) was SHAMPOO's true auteur. Also with George Furth, Jay Robinson, Tony Bill, Brad Dexter and HOUSE ON HAUNTED
HILL director William Castle. Grant won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
SHAMUS (1973)--Directed
by Buzz Kulik. Stars Burt Reynolds, Dyan Cannon, John P. Ryan, Joe Santos. Burt is a down-and-almost-out Brooklyn private
eye hired by heiress Cannon to find some stolen diamonds. He finds a warehouse full of stolen guns instead. Reynolds is his
usual charming self, and Kulik tosses in enough chases and shootouts to keep things interesting. From the director of THE
HUNTER.
SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1986)—Directed by Sammo
Hung. Stars Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Richard Norton, Cynthia Rothrock. Sammo’s sprawling period epic provides
an all-star cast of (mostly unfamiliar to my eyes) Asian performers, several subplots, plenty of goofy humor, and instances
of eye-popping action choreography. I could have done with fewer storylines, as I eventually lost track of who was doing
what to whom, and since many of Hung’s characters eventually vanish from the movie with their plots unresolved, you’re
better off just enjoying individual gags and performances. Conman Fong-Tin Ching (Hung) returns to his hometown to make
amends for his life of crime. His notion is to blow up the railroad tracks outside of town, forcing a passenger train
filled with wealthy people to stay in town for awhile, spending their money and stoking the town’s economy. Meanwhile,
the town’s fire chief (Yuen) is encharged with tracking some comic bank robbers, a trio of Samurai do battle with Chinese
gangsters, Norton and Rothrock play ex-Confederate soldiers (in 1930s China!) affiliated with another gang of Chinese baddies,
and a cowboy arrives in town to collect the bounty on Ching, who is trying to conceal the identities of his friendly call
girls from Yuen. Whew. The comedy definitely outweighs the action elements in Hung’s frothy adventure, but
the madcap final reel will placate the attention-challenged. Props to Hung, who went to Canada to shoot the prologue,
in which he rolls around the snowy wilderness clad in just his boxers.
SHANGHAI KNIGHTS (2003)--Directed by David
Dobkin. Stars Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson, Aiden Gillen, Fann Wong. Pretty much more of the same light mixture of
laughs and anachronistic action SHANGHAI NOON provided. Chan and Wilson are back as Chon Wang and Roy O'Bannon, this
time in London to track down the killer of Chon's father, an oily Parliament member named Rathbone (Gillen) who plans to use
the Imperial Seal he swiped to murder his way to the British throne. I had fun with the first movie, and I guess I did
with this one too, but Dobkin and returning writers Miles Millar and Alfred Gough don't provide anything new of any substance,
falling back on the same old characterizations and even providing the boys with still another beautiful Chinese woman, Chon's
sister Lin (Wong) this time, to rescue. References to Hollywood movie-making, Jack the Ripper and Charlie Chaplin are
meant as humorous in-jokes, but only illustrate the sloppiness of Millar and Gough's script, since their appearances clash
with recorded history. Also with Donnie Yen, Tom Fisher and Aaron Johnson. Filmed mainly in Canada and the Czech
Republic. Music by Randy Edelman.
SHANGHAI NOON (2000)--Directed by Tom Dey.
Stars Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson, Lucy Liu. Just call it BUTCH AND RISING SUNDANCE: THE EARLY YEARS. Although this movie certainly
wouldn't exist if BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID had never been made, Jackie Chan's latest Hollywood swatfest more closely
resembles his previous release, 1998's RUSH HOUR, than anything else. Both films have exactly the same setup and plot, but,
thankfully, differ in sidekicks. Whereas RUSH HOUR teamed up Chan with motormouthed comedian Chris Tucker as an extremely
annoying detective, SHANGHAI NOON wisely steps back and allows Chan to take the leading role with a more laidback actor, Owen
Wilson, at his side. These two have a genuine chemistry together, and many of the film's pleasures are due to their charm.
It's 1881, and, in China's Forbidden City, icy Princess Pei Pei
(Liu from ALLY MCBEAL) is being forced into a marriage with the 12-year-old Emperor. Entranced by the story of Sleeping Beauty,
Pei Pei is convinced to flee to America with her unctuous English teacher (Jason Connery, Sean's son), not knowing he's part
of a kidnap plot led by the traitorous Lo Fong (Roger Yuan), who puts his Chinese slaves to work on his Nevada railroad. Lowly
servant Chon Wang (Chan)--yes, there are plenty of John Wayne jokes--accompanies three Imperial Guards and his uncle, the
Royal Interpreter, to the United States to deliver the 100,000-gold-coin ransom for Pei Pei's return.
Chon eventually becomes involved with Roy O'Bannon (Wilson), who's
sort of like a stoned James Garner. Roy's a train robber, but not a particularly good one; in fact, he's really in the outlaw
game only to impress girls. He won't let his gang steal from women, and even flirts with one just before dynamiting a safe.
It's during one of these heists that Chon and Roy first meet, and, due to some not-particularly-believable-but-who-cares-in-a-movie-like-this
circumstances, they find themselves sharing the same jail cell. Like all movie buddies, they dislike each other at first,
but realize that they really need each other--Roy knows his way around Nevada; Chon knows the location of the ransom money--and
decide to become partners.
The remaining running time consists mostly of amusing banter between
the leads, a bit of social commentary involving Chinese and Indian traditions that wisely isn't forced and doesn't seem out
of place like it should in a movie like this one, and several exciting fight scenes, in which Chan uses anything and everything
around him as a weapon to bonk his opponents on the head or knock them on their backs. You'd be surprised what you can do
with a horseshoe and piece of rope.
Chan is, of course, one of the screen's great physical actors. He's
different from most action stars in that he uses his amazing martial-arts skills as a device for comedy, rather than bloodletting--more
Buster Keaton than Bruce Lee. His English isn't the best--although his command of the language is probably no worse than Arnold's
or Jean-Claude's or, heck, even Stallone's, for that matter--but he's such a likable personality that he inspires patience
in his audience. His hands and feet do most of his talking anyway.
Wilson seems more than willing to use words rather than weapons
against the bad guys. He can't shoot worth a darn anyway, and when forced into a shootout, prepares himself by convincing
himself he isn't going to be shot down like a fish in a barrel. Wilson's zonked-out insouciance was put to good use in surfer-dude
roles in ARMAGEDDON and THE HAUNTING, and he shows some real comic timing when playing a bathtub drinking game with Chan or
haggling with a gunfighter over how many bullets to use in their duel. His character is more self-involved than Garner's Bret
Maverick, but the antecedent is definitely present.
Liu isn't used much as the plot's MacGuffin, but gets to show a
little spunk at the climax. Yuan proves to be a good match for Chan's fighting skills, while Xander Berkeley scores as sinister
sheriff Van Cleef, obviously a tribute to that great Western character actor Lee Van Cleef. And yes, the title is a clever
pun on a certain 1952 Gary Cooper classic, which, perhaps not coincidentally, also featured Lee Van Cleef in a meaningful
role. Cinematographer Daniel Mindel's camera perfectly captures the Alberta, Canada (filling in for Nevada) locations, while
composer Randy Edelman received some fine training by scoring Fox's sly Western parody THE ADVENTURES OF BRISCO COUNTY JR.
back in the '90s. Also with Walton Goggins, Brandon Merrill, Eric Chen, Rong Guang Yu and Cui Ya Hi.
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME (1979)--Directed by
George McCowan. Stars Jack Palance, Barry Morse, Eddie Benton, Nicholas Campbell, Carol Lynley. Although called
H.G. WELLS' THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME in the opening titles, this has little to do with him. Survivors of the holocaust
that destroyed the Earth and are now living on the Moon rely on a radiation-fighting drug to survive. It can only be
found on the planet Delta 3, which has been taken over by crazed wannabe dictator Omus (Palance). Scientist John Caball
(Morse), his son Jason (Campbell) and Jason's girlfriend Kim (Benton) hop aboard John's experimental starship, and, along
with their robot pilot Sparks, head through space for a showdown with Omus. Since Palance is the only performer who
shows much energy, it's unfortunate that he appears only for one scene at the beginning and not again until close to the climax.
His absence certainly affects the pacing by TV director McCowan, who can't find much more for his heroes to do until they
get to Delta 3 except chat with one another and discover a coven of sick children on Earth's ravaged surface. Although
both Earth and Delta 3 bear a remarkable resemblance to each other, almost as if McCowan used the same Canadian locations
to represent both. Palance's histrionics provide a few laughs, as do the clunky robot suits, but not enough to recommend
this STAR WARS-inspired lunacy, which doesn't even come close to offering the thrills promised in its poster. Also with
John Ireland. Music by Paul Hoffert. Benton, a U.S. television regular, later changed her name to Anne-Marie Martin,
the name she used when she co-starred on ABC's SLEDGE HAMMER and when she penned TWISTER along with her husband Michael Crichton.
SHARK ATTACK (1999)--Directed by Bob Misiorowski.
Stars Casper Van Dien, Ernie Hudson, Bentley Mitchum, Jennifer McShane. Nu Image sure stretched their meager library
of shark-chomping stock footage to the limit, churning out several middling adventures with the word "shark" in the title.
They're all pretty interchangeable, but if you're still jonesing for a bitedown at the conclusion of the Discovery Channel's
"Shark Week", then maybe this'll do.
Marine biologist Steven McKray (Van Dien) is summoned to South Africa
by an old school friend investigating a series of vicious shark attacks. When Steven arrives, his friend is dead, a
shark victim himself, and is being mourned by the friend's sister Corinne (McShane) and scientific colleague Miles (Mitchum).
The sharks have become extra-aggressive, tracking prey right up to the beach and eating humans almost daily. The local
fishermen are going broke, because the sharks are eating all the fish, and the community is in danger of losing their businesses
to financier Laurence Rhodes (Hudson). That means it's up to Steven to discover what's driving the shark population
to such a high level of bloodlust.
The only thing that surprised me about SHARK ATTACK is the lack
of a JAWS-type subplot about whether to close the beaches and ruin the tourist trade. Other than that, this is standard
Nu Image hokum with a couple of well-handled chase scenes included for good measure. Van Dien is a problem, as always,
but the supporting cast props him up as they go through the motions, pretending to be afraid of stock-footage sharks.
There is a fake shark that rears its plastic head in quick cuts, but it won't fool anyone. Filmed in Port Alfred, South
Africa. Music by Serge Colbert. Two more SHARK ATTACK films followed.
SHARK ATTACK II (2001)—Directed by David Worth. Stars Thorsten Kaye, Nikita Ager, David Alexander, Danny Keough. Beware of sharks that roar (!) in Nu Image’s DTV sequel to SHARK ATTACK. Remember what I wrote about SHARK ATTACK surprising me by not ripping off JAWS’ subplot about closing
the beaches? Well, here it is! Progeny
of the mutated maneaters from SHARK ATTACK have made it to Cape Town, where they continue their tried-and-true movie tradition
of chomping down on swimmers and scuba divers. Now it’s up to marine biologist
Kaye and blonde diver Ager, who wants revenge on the great white that ate her sister, to capture the killer sharks and avoid
interference by greedy businessman Keough and Australian TV personality (think Steve Irwin) Alexander. As ridiculous as it all is (particularly scenes where humans converse with each other…while underwater!),
Nu Image gives their audience exactly what they want—good pacing, a little sex and plenty of blood spurting. The post-dubbed performances are pretty weak, particularly that of Ager, whose wooden reaction shots during
a beach massacre may cause laughter. Director Worth returned to Bulgaria for,
yep, SHARK ATTACK 3 a year later.
SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON (2002)—Directed by David Worth.
Stars John Barrowman, Jennifer McShane, Ryan Cutrona. Worth, director of Nu Image’s dumb SHARK ATTACK II, returns
for another sequel, this time utilizing leading lady McShane, who co-starred in the first SHARK ATTACK as a different character.
It’s basically a remake of SHARK ATTACK II, as well as another Nu Image movie, SHARK ZONE. Really, almost every
Nu Image monster movie I’ve seen, up to and including OCTOPUS II, has basically the same plot, almost as if the studio
uses the same draft and changes the names and locations.
Here, handsome Beach Patrol officer Ben (Barrowman) discovers a prehistoric
shark swimming near Mexican waters, occasionally chomping on naked lovers. He posts a photo of its tooth on the Internet
(using a digital camera not hooked up to a computer that takes a photo of him holding the shark, yet magically erases his
fingers from the shot automatically), and Cat (McShane), a paleontologist from San Diego, flies down to help Ben hunt the
40-footer. Turns out the shark is actually a baby, and when Cat kills it by shoving a shotgun into its maw and screaming,
“You’re extinct, fucker,” just like Linda Hamilton in THE TERMINATOR, its mama, a big ol’ shark large
enough to swallow entire boats, rafts and jet skis (!) whole, comes looking for blood.
This is a terrible movie, beginning with Worth’s unconvincing use of
Bulgaria to stand in for Mexico and Bulgarian actors attempting to play Mexican. Some trudge ahead using their actual
accents, which obviously don’t sound Mexican. The actors who don’t speak English very well are later dubbed,
but with halting speech patterns because they were directed to speak the dialogue phonetically. The leading actors barely
emote more naturally, and I suspect, watching him make out with McShane and judging from the utter lack of sexual chemistry,
that Barrowman isn’t used to physical contact with women, making SHARK ATTACK 3’s only memorable line of dialogue
even more of a cackler (I suspect this was an ad-lib that Worth inexplicably left in the final cut).
The acting is still better than the visual effects, which mix grainy stock
footage with unconvincing underwater photography. The crummy CGI leads to some real howlers involving one shot of a
shark leaping out of the ocean that is recycled several times to show it swallowing swimmers and boaters whole. SHARK
ATTACK 3 is the worst Nu Image killer-shark movie I’ve seen, but it’s in some ways its most entertaining.
Continuity errors abound, and a major communications corporation employs a pair of stoners, one of whom wears a large earring
and the other a ponytail, as its main computer experts. Veteran character actor Cutrona impersonates Dale Dye as a former
Navy man with huge portraits of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney hanging on the wall of his living room. Worth (KICKBOXER)
even manages to get some gratuitous surgically enhanced breasts in his movie, which are no less convincing than anything else
in it.
THE SHARK HUNTER (1979)—Directed by Enzo G. Castellari.
Stars Franco Nero. Nero, in a silly long blond wig, survives a plane crash off the coast of Mexico and sets up home
on a Cozumel beach, where he idles around on a hammock and occasionally wrestles sharks for the fun of it. He does a
lot of scuba diving to cover for the fact that he’s been searching for the underwater wreckage of his plane, which was
carrying $100 million in Mob money. Some gangsters eventually show up in Mexico looking for the money too. There’s
a car chase and some action, but Castellari’s slack direction brings little excitement to the plot. The climax
is clever though. American actor Michael Forest (ATLAS) plays a Mob gunsel, and Castellari gives himself a juicy cameo
as a thug who splashes Franco in mud.
SHARK SKIN MAN AND PEACH HIP GIRL (1998)--Directed
by Katsuhito Ishii. Stars Tadanobu Asano, Sie Kohinata. I didn't get very much out of this energetic Japanese
gangster movie. An assassin (Asano) who swiped 100 million yen from the Yakuza teams up accidentally with a cute hotel
clerk (Kohinata) after he smashes his car into hers while fleeing from a pair of hitmen who want their money back. It's
kind of like his chocolate getting into her peanut butter. Among the motley crew of madmen chasing our heroes is a gay
super-assassin who looks about as menacing as Wally Cox, but shoots as straight as Clint Eastwood. Truthfully, my attention
wandered most of the time, but there's a great deal of silly humor mixed in with the bullets and occasional (non-graphic)
sex scene. Its Japanese title is SAMEHADA OTOKO TO MOMOJIRI ONNA.
SHARK ZONE (2003)--Directed by Danny Lerner.
Stars Dean Cochran, Brandi Sherwood, Alan Austin, Velizar Binev. Give Nu Image credit for giving its audience what it
wants. Any movie with the word "shark" in the title had better deliver plenty of gory chompdowns, and SHARK ZONE does,
in spades. Its astonishing body count almost makes up for the huge lapses in story logic, performances and production
values. Well, almost, though if SHARK ZONE were any better, it would probably be less entertaining. Take, for
instance, the staggering amount of stock footage that looks gleaned from the Discovery Channel. Notice how director
Lerner uses the same clips over and over again, sometimes forgetting that large chunks of chum used to lure the sharks within
camera range are present in the shot. And, heck, sometimes he even runs out of shark footage and substitutes whale footage
instead. After all, who can tell the two creatures apart? Aside from everybody, that is.
Seeing great white whales substitute for sharks is nearly as funny
as watching Lerner pass Bulgaria off as San Francisco. A few second-unit shots of trolleys aside, Eastern Europe hardly
resembles one of America's loveliest cities, and Sam Parish's ridiculous screenplay doesn't help the charade much. You
see, Parish posits that an 18th century Spanish galleon was sunk off the San Franciscan coast, taking the crown jewels, which
resemble large, uncut diamonds, to the ocean floor. Sailed from Spain to the western coast of North America? Would
it have hurt Parish to look at a map before he started typing his screenplay?
A group of treasure hunters, including teenaged Jimmy Wagner (Cochran,
in a role tailor-made for Dean Cain) and his father (Austin), attempt to explore the sunken vessel, but are attacked by a
school of man-eating sharks. This allegedly takes place miles off the Frisco coast, but since Lerner's camera accidentally
captures the Sofia waterfront in the background of his shots, we'll just assume the party is really, really lost.
Ten years later, the lone survivor, Jimmy, works as the chief of
security at a beach that is the site of an upcoming fiesta that, according to the mayor (also played by Austin, for no good
reason except the probable shortage of English-speaking actors in Bulgaria), is an important source of tourism dollars.
It doesn't look like much of a beach, and it's hard to believe that San Francisco is so dependent upon this puny little place
to fill its coffers, but he's the mayor. However, when sharks attack a bunch of swimmers, Jimmy wants to close down
the beaches against the wishes of the mayor, who isn't portrayed by Murray Hamilton, but might as well be. The plot
pretty much follows that of JAWS from this point on, with lots of people being eaten, Jimmy pleading with the mayor to close
the beach, and the mayor saying basically, "Hey, people will be okay if they keep their eyes open." And as if ripping
off JAWS wasn't enough, Parish and Lerner provide us with a parallel plot, this one involving a Russian mobster (Nu Image
regular Binev) who kidnaps Jimmy's son and forces him to take his goons to the location of the sunken Spanish ship (remember
that?), so they can steal the diamonds. Jimmy never does kill all of the sharks, and the movie ends after about 90 minutes
feeling only half-finished.
Still, I really don't mind, because Nu Image is like a hilarious
parallel universe where anything can happen. Russian mobsters can control San Francisco's economy, sharks with extremely
fake-looking Styrofoam fins travel in schools and chomp down on dozens of victims who shouldn't have been in the water anyway,
beach security guards boss around helicopter pilots and blow up sharks with grenades, and said security guard can end up married
to a gorgeous supermodel (played by Cochran's real-life wife Sherwood) who makes for the world's least convincing housewife.
Oh, and bartenders can moonlight as macho shark hunters.
Back to giving Nu Image credit, SHARK ZONE looks glossy, considering
its budget, which forced Lerner to substitute cardboard sets for luxury boats. Some of the visual effects, like the
sharks (which roar, by the way...) ripping into human bodies, look pretty good, as does the miniature work. The CGI
is awfully shoddy though, particularly the effects that provide Lerner's final shock. Nu Image appears to be grooming
Cochran for DTV stardom, casting him in other projects like AIR MARSHAL and TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY. Serge Colbert provided
the score, and I suspect at least one of SHARK ZONE's stock footage shots to have been swiped from JAWS 3-D. Nu Image
also made a trio of SHARK ATTACK thrillers, as well as movies about killer octopi and crocodiles.
SHARKS IN VENICE (2009)—Directed by Danny
Lerner. Stars Stephen Baldwin, Vanessa Johansson, Hilda van der Meulen. Is it possible to make a movie about sharks
in Venice without actually going to Venice? It is, if you’re the schlockmeisters at Nu Image that gave us RAGING
SHARKS, SHARK ZONE, and the SHARK ATTACK trilogy. Surprisingly, the SHARKS IN VENICE print carries no screenplay credit
(director Lerner and producer Les Weldon accept story credit), presumably because no one was brave enough to accept the blame
for this inept remake of SHARK ZONE.
Typically for a Nu Image production, the film is plagued by Eastern
European actors using their natural accents to portray Italian characters, divers able to speak to one another underwater
with breathing devices in their mouths, visual effects (by Scott Coulter, who does claim credit) less competent than what
a 12-year-old could do with Final Pro Cut, clumsy dialogue, and atrocious acting across the board. Even the costumes
are terrible. In one scene, Baldwin’s leg is completely severed in a shark attack, yet the next scene finds him
up and around on two healthy legs.
San Francisco oceanographer David Franks (Baldwin) is summoned to
Italy after his father goes missing while diving in the Venetian canals. With his university graciously paying all his
expenses (!) to find his dad, Franks and his fiancé Laura (Scarlett Johansson’s less attractive and only moderately
less talented sister Vanessa) try to convince the Italian authorities that his father’s companions were not killed in
any boating accident, as the official report claims, but by a great white.
After satisfying himself that his father was the victim of a shark
attack (even though there’s no body or evidence of an attack on him), Franks plans to return home, but his sightseeing
is interrupted by Laura’s abduction by mobsters who force him to dive beneath the city to find an ancient Medici treasure
stashed their during the Crusades. Throughout all of this, Baldwin barely registers on film, projecting the charisma
of a flounder. If he was disgusted by the material, it’s understandable, although one presumes he read a script
before accepting the job. Or at least was told his working vacation was going to be in Sofia, rather than Venice.
Baldwin’s performance is truly terrible, even by Stephen Baldwin
standards. It’s pretty hilarious, though, seeing him struggle to look tough in his unbelievable fight scenes or
warding off a chainsaw attack with a wooden (!) chair. SHARKS IN VENICE is one of Nu Image’s worst films, attempting
to enhance SHARK ZONE’s basic premise with ill-fitting elements lifted from Indiana Jones (Baldwin is teaching a class
of bored students when his boss summons him with the news that sends him to Venice), THE DAVINCI CODE, and NATIONAL TREASURE.
SHARKS’ TREASURE (1975)—Directed by
Cornel Wilde. Stars Cornel Wilde, Yaphet Kotto, John Neilson, David Canary, Cliff Osmond. The last movie of Wilde’s
interesting directing career (the star also produced and wrote the film) casts the buff 60-year-old as the skipper of a salvage
boat that trolls the Gulf of Mexico looking for a sunken treasure chest. The eccentric Wilde walks around with no shirt
and tiny shorts, doing one-handed pushups, for no reason than to show off what great shape he is in. Matter of fact,
everyone, including Yaphet Kotto as one of Wilde’s crew, wears tiny shorts. The treasure hunters, which also include
young Neilson and stutterer Canary (JOHNNY FIRECLOUD), are waylaid by gay escaped convicts who force their "bitch" to wear
a bikini and do a striptease. The climax takes place on a deserted island. I'm a Wilde fan and this PG adventure
is actually kinda entertaining, if not weird. The one-sheets promise much more shark action than actually occurs; on
the other hand, the oddball episodic structure certainly provides surprises. United Artists released it.
SHARKY'S MACHINE (1981)--Directed by Burt Reynolds.
Stars Burt Reynolds, Rachel Ward, Vittorio Gassman, Charles Durning. I'm betting you're thinking that if you live to
be 100, you'll never enjoy the amazing sight of Burt Reynolds beating the crap out of a couple of ninjas. Well, you'd actually
be right, but just barely.
SHARKY'S MACHINE is the best film directed by Reynolds, who also
stars in it as Sharky, a tough narcotics cop who gets screwed by the department after a bust goes bad and he takes the blame.
He's transferred to the black hole of Vice, which is headquartered in the precinct basement and plays host to the worst pimps,
hookers, dopers, and lowlifes Atlanta has to offer. The cops assigned to Vice were once among the cream of the crop, but the
frustration and humiliation of what they do has turned them into jelly. So it is that they leap at the chance to do
real police work. A case involving a major pimp and a politician (Earl Holliman) running for governor spurs Sharky to put
an illegal 24-hour surveillance on the apartment of a gorgeous $1000-a-night call girl named Dominoe (Rachel Ward). While
spying on her, Sharky falls in love with her, and he takes the case personally when a crazed, cokeheaded assassin (Henry Silva)
blasts her face off with a shotgun.
Reynolds the actor certainly loved the opportunity to put together
a very sharp cast for his crime drama, including Charles Durning as his Vice boss; Brian Keith, Bernie Casey and Richard Libertini
as his "machine"; John Fiedler; Vittorio Gassman; Hari Rhodes; Joseph Mascolo and Darryl Hickman as a jerk cop named Smiley.
Reynolds the stuntman certainly dug the brutal action scenes, including an opening shootout on a city bus and a suspenseful
climax with Sharky and Silva stalking each other on the top floors of the Peachtree Plaza Hotel. And Reynolds the director
got to spot the film with a lot of cool jazz songs by artists like Julie London and Joe Williams. SHARKY's pace flags
somewhat in the middle, as Reynolds spends more time than he needed on conversations (albeit well-acted ones) between cops
that don't serve the plot and on Sharky's various introspections. What we'd rather see is Reynolds fighting ninjas.
Can you believe it? While poking around a friend's basement, Sharky
is attacked by two Asian badasses with "numbchucks", who start whaling away at Sharky, "kicking his ass," to paraphrase Casey.
The fight is well-staged by Reynolds, who has to come out second best (let's face it, not even Burt can beat up a pair of
awesome ninjas), but he holds his own and has nothing to be ashamed of. Sharky gets a second crack at them a little while
later, and two guesses as to who survives.
SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004)--Directed by Edgar
Wright. Stars Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Nick Frost. It may be difficult to straight-facedly watch another zombie
movie after experiencing this cheeky British comedy. Made by the creative team behind the Channel 4 sitcom SPACED, SHAUN
isn’t a spoof or a parody, just a wickedly funny account of how a 29-year-old slacker named Shaun (Pegg) might handle
a day in which his girlfriend breaks up with him, his co-workers disrespect him, and a horde of zombies begins roaming the
countryside. A cheeky mixture of witty dialogue and gore, SHAUN became a sleeper hit in the United States, grossing
nearly as much as George Romero’s serious zombie sequel, LAND OF THE DEAD. The scene in which Shaun and his buddy
Ed discuss Shaun’s record collection while dispatching a pair of brain eaters is particularly sharp.
SHE (1965)--Directed by Robert Day. Stars Ursula
Andress, Peter Cushing, John Richardson, Bernard Cribbins, Christopher Lee, Rosenda Monteros. Hammer's Cinemascope/Technicolor
version of H. Rider Haggard's classic 1887 novel, which had already been filmed six times before, but only once since the
inception of sound pictures. In 1918 Palestine, three ex-World War I soldiers--Major Holly (Cushing), his manservant Job (Cribbins)
and Holly's "son" Leo (Richardson)--set out across the desert in search of the Lost City of Kuma. After a series of obstacles,
the trio finally arrives in Kuma to discover a band of natives led by a gorgeous white goddess named Ayesha, or She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed
(played by the gorgeous 29-year-old Andress). They also discover that Leo is the spitting image (and possible reincarnation)
of Ayesha's former lover Kallikrates, who was killed by Ayesha in a jealous rage over 2000 years before. Action, humor and
thrills in the usual Hammer style. Andress and Richardson certainly make a beautiful couple, although neither is a good actor.
Cushing and Cribbins are wonderful, and Lee is menacing as Ayesha's High Priest Billali. David T. Chantler adapted Haggard's
novel. James Bernard's score was among his favorite for Hammer. Michael Carreras produced. Partially shot on location in Israel's
Negev Desert. Bonus: Cushing bellydances!
SHE'S ALL THAT (1999)--Directed by Robert Iscove. Stars
Freddie Prinze Jr., Rachael Leigh Cook, Matthew Lillard, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, Paul Walker, Kevin Pollak. Another in a long line
of tame romantic comedies aimed at teenagers is let down by an frustratingly shallow script, which adapts George Bernard Shaw's
PYGMALION--most famously filmed as MY FAIR LADY--to a Southern California high school setting. Zach (Prinze) is the coolest
guy in school--superstar athlete, straight-A student and boyfriend of the hottest girl in school, curvaceous but vain Taylor
(O'Keefe). Two weeks before prom, Zach finds himself in deep trouble: Taylor has broken up with him to pursue unctuous TV
star Brock (Lillard)--who'd rather watch himself being obnoxious on THE REAL WORLD than make out with Taylor--leaving Zach
without a date. Humiliated--I mean, what's a BMOC without a gorgeous prom date?--Zach accepts a bet from best friend Dean
(Walker) that he can turn any girl on campus into the prom queen. Dean's choice: geeky artist Laney (Cook), a bespectacled
introvert who lives with her hearing-impaired little brother and pool-cleaner father (Pollak). No points for guessing that
Laney turns out to be a major fox with the right clothes and makeup, that Zach really does come to love Laney, that Laney
dumps Zach after learning about the bet, that Laney is humiliated by jealous rival Taylor, and that--in the end--everyone
gets what he or she deserves.
This material is obviously a fairy tale--more CINDERELLA than Holly Golightly--but SHE'S
ALL THAT would have benefited from some sort of grounding in reality. We're asked to believe that Laney and Zach would so
easily fall in love, yet we never really hear any sort of deep conversations between them or witness any indication that they
have bonded in a meaningful way. Iscove, who has done fine work in television (including a Disney musical version of CINDERELLA),
does his best to make the script seem fresh, whipping up a couple of fantasy sequences and playing one dialogue scene while
Pollak amusingly plays along (badly) to JEOPARDY in the background. The lesson--that Laney can only be cool by shedding her
individuality--is, of course, the wrong one for teenagers struggling with their own need for acceptance, and Iscove never
really resolves the question of whether Zach is in love with the pre- or post-makeover Laney.
Prinze and Cook work
well together; both are armed with amiable, sweet screen presences. Prinze will probably never become an A-list actor--he's
too slight to make action films and too sweet to fit into edgier fare--but he could easily have a decent career as a romantic
lead if he holds on to his gentle sense of humor. Cook is, of course, much too beautiful to be believable as lonely geek Laney,
a problem with all films with this particular plot contrivance. Even with her gigantic horn-rimmed glasses and baggy, paint-stained
clothes, it's obvious that Cook is not the type who sits home alone on Saturday night, waiting for her phone to ring. Lillard
stands out as a character not-so-loosely based upon real REAL WORLD contestant Puck (who was kicked out of his San Francisco
house), while O'Keefe, whose role mainly asks her to wear slinky clothing and act like a complete bitch, does her job with
aplomb.
SHE'S ALL THAT isn't, although Prinze, Cook and director Iscove deserve some credit for trying. Also with
Anna Paquin as Zach's sister, Kieran Culkin, Usher Raymond, Elden Henson, Li'l Kim, Gabrielle Union, Tim Matheson, Clea DuVall,
Debbi Morgan, Chris Owen, Alexis Arquette, Charlie Dell and Patricia Charbonneau. Look closely for a cameo by Sarah Michelle
Gellar. Music by Stewart Copeland.
SHE'S HAVING A BABY (1988)--Directed by John Hughes. Stars Kevin
Bacon, Elizabeth McGovern, Alec Baldwin, William Windom. Upscale yuppies Bacon and McGovern are having troubles in their attempt
to conceive a child. Their parents are anxious for a grandchild. Bacon's slimy pal Baldwin is anxious to help McGovern conceive.
Pretty typical Hughes vehicle; at least he made a film for adults for a change.
SHE'S OUT OF CONTROL
(1989)--Directed by Stan Dragoti. Stars Tony Danza, Ami Dolenz, Catherine Hicks, Wallace Shawn, Dick O'Neill. Divorced dad
Danza becomes a jealous papa when he realizes his little girl (Dolenz) has become a very sexy teenager. He becomes obsessed
with her love life, much to the chagrin of girlfriend Hicks. This is supposed to be a light comedy, but some of Danza's behavior
teeters on the brink of incest. If you don't become uncomfortable at some scenes, you may find some laughs here. Dolenz is
the daughter of Monkee Micky. From the director of MR. MOM.
SHEBA, BABY (1975)--Directed by William
Girdler. Stars Pam Grier, Austin Stoker, D’Urville Martin. “She’s a dangerous lady, and she’s well
put together,” sings Barbara Mason at the top of SHEBA, BABY—a lyric that describes actress Pam Grier as much
as the ass-kicking detective she plays in this American International action picture. As Chicago private eye Sheba Shayne,
Pam returns to her Louisville, Kentucky hometown (also that of writer/director Girdler) to protect her father’s loan
company from being taken over by black mobster Pilot (Martin). A chase through a carnival, a nighttime invasion of the villain’s
yacht (a great excuse to put Pam in a wetsuit), and a nasty catfight are among the action highlights.
Pam looks beautiful, of course, with a costume budget that probably
could have funded earlier AIP features. This and FRIDAY FOSTER appear designed to glam up Grier, in contrast to her Jack Hill
pictures like COFFY and THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, and prep her for a career with the major studios. SHEBA, BABY was her last AIP
movie, and though she went on to appear in more prestigious Hollywood productions, she was never a star again. I think it’s
because she was the rare actress perfectly suited to the action genre—I think only Angelina Jolie is her equal in combining
sex appeal and believability talking trash and throwing punches.
Girdler never made a very good movie, though he may have
eventually, had he not been killed in a helicopter accident at age 31. I like the use of Louisville as a setting, though Girdler
could have done more with it. His stock characters and plotting are a disappointment, and he didn’t have the filmmaking
skills, as Jack Hill did, to add original touches to his B-movies that would make them stand out in the crowd. Not one of
Grier’s better films, but your last chance to see her in tough Action Pam mode. Also with Rudy Challenger, Dick Merrifield,
Christipher Joy, and Charles Broaddus. Buddah Records released Monk Higgins’ soundtrack.
SHEENA (1984)--Directed by
John Guillermin. Stars Tanya Roberts, Ted Wass, Donovan Scott, Elizabeth of Toro. An unintentionally campy update of the popular
comic strip. Voluptuous bleached-blond Roberts is Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. She has a "way" with animals, and when her
mentor is accused of a murder, Sheena uses her powers--and two TV newsmen (Wass, Scott)--to find the real bad guys. Wass is
a pretty bland romantic lead, and, while Tanya (a former "Charlie's Angel") looks fantastic in a fur bikini, her acting isn't
too strong. Thank goodness her character doesn't know much English. Six-foot-tall Irish McCalla played Sheena in a '50s TV
series.
SHELL SHOCK (1964)--Directed by John Hayes.
Stars Carl Crow, Beach Dickerson, Frank Leo. Unusual but slow-paced WWII drama shot in Bronson Canyon and the Hollywood
Hills. A newly medaled G.I., Johnny Wade (Crow), has a nervous breakdown during an assault on a German platoon, leading
to one soldier's death. Brutal Sgt. Rance (Dickerson), who believes he should have gotten the promotion instead of Wade,
believes Johnny is faking his illness and allows him to escape into the Italian front. A group of G.I.'s, including
Rance and Johnny's childhood friend Gil (Leo), are sent after him. Hayes, probably for budgetary reasons, is fond of
long shots of people walking from one edge of the frame to the other. The short bursts of wartime action are decent,
and there's nothing wrong with the performances, but the languid pace makes SHELL SHOCK difficult to warm up to, and not even
the late addition of beautiful Italian women to the mix is enough to make up for it. It's an earnest, sincere effort
at making a war film with ambitious dramatic value, but an interesting failure. Also with Pamela Gray, Dolores Faith
and Bill Guhl. Music credited to Jaime Mendoza-Nava, but I detect a few library cues on the soundtrack as well.
THE SHEPHERD (2008)—Directed by Isaac Florentine.
Stars Jean-Claude Van Damme, Stephen Lord, Scott Adkins, Natalie Robb. I think it’s clear by now that Jean-Claude
Van Damme deserves another shot at the big time. In his direct-to-DVD movies over the last few years, the ‘80s
action star has demonstrated a mature screen persona and a finely lined face that would serve him well as a character actor.
While he doesn’t smile very much on screen, I think that’s due to the current trend of grim, gritty action cinema,
rather than the loss of any sense of humor (as online clips of the forthcoming JCVD demonstrate).
While Van Damme definitely serves a Hollywood movie role, he also
deserves better than what director Isaac Florentine gives him in THE SHEPHERD. As Florentine's films become bleaker
and more conventional, they also get less interesting. The comic-book silliness of U.S. SEALS 2, the voluptuous fantasy
of BRIDGE OF DRAGONS (where Dolph Lundgren fought a formidable foe in Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa), and the futuristic spaghetti
western COLD HARVEST (Gary Daniels in two roles) are much more fun and make better use of Florentine's skills than the routine
THE SHEPHERD. While THE SHEPHERD is certainly better than most of the action movies that get played in multiplexes,
and it is a fine showcase for Van Damme, it should have been better and might have if it hadn't taken itself so danged seriously.
Set in New Mexico (but filmed in Bulgaria), THE SHEPHERD casts Van
Damme as another DTV hero scarred by a violent incident in his past and on a single-minded mission of revenge. After
his teenage daughter is killed by a drug overdose, New Orleans cop Jack Robideaux (Van Damme) joins the Border Patrol, so
he can track down Meyers (Lord), a big-time druglord with whom Jack served in Afghanistan. Shootouts, tortures and chases
ensue, but not with the joie de vivre of earlier Florentine features.
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON (1942)--Directed
by Roy William Neill. Stars Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Lionel Atwill, William Post Jr. After two 20th Century
Fox films set in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original Victorian setting, Universal snared the Sherlock Holmes rights and immediately
transplanted the legendary detective to contemporary London, so he could match wits with Nazis and wartime saboteurs.
In their second Universal feature, Holmes (Rathbone) and Watson (Bruce) are assigned to keep safe a Swiss scientist named
Tobel (Post), whose new bombsight could be a major boon for the Allies. However, soon after Tobel's arrival in England,
he's kidnapped by Holmes' equally intelligent archfoe, Professor Moriarity (Atwill). Tobel had wisely disassembled the
bombsight into four parts and hidden each in a different location, meaning it's up to Holmes and Watson to decipher the clues
and find all four before Moriarity can torture the information out of the Swiss man. Witty, fast-moving, atmospheric
and crisply performed, SECRET WEAPON is one of the best Holmes outings, offering serial-like thrills in the face-to-face scenes
between Rathbone (who also gets to show off his character-acting chops in a series of disguises) and Atwill, culminating in
a creepy blood-draining torture. Also with Dennis Hoey as Inspector Lestrade, Mary Gordon as Mrs. Hudson, Holmes Herbert,
Kaaren (sic) Verne, James Craven and Paul Fix. SHERLOCK HOLMES IN WASHINGTON was next for the sleuths.
SHINE A LIGHT (2008)—Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Stars the Rolling Stones. Rock fan Scorsese filmed two Rolling Stones concerts at Manhattan’s Beacon Theater during
the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World’s A BIGGER BANG tour. Though the Stones have been captured on film many
times, this slick production, which includes top-notch cinematography by Oscar winner Robert Richardson (THE AVIATOR), is
unquestionably among the band’s best visual documents. Guests Jack White, Buddy Guy, and Christina Aguilera (!) drop
by to perform with the Stones, and President Bill Clinton is among the illuminaries in the audience. The set list (which Scorsese
amusingly doesn’t get from Mick Jagger until literally the last second) includes old favorites (“Jumpin’
Jack Flash” is the opener), album cuts (like “Loving Cup”), and blues covers. The film’s (and the
band’s) secret weapon is the mechanical Charlie Watts, the drummer whose technique and wit has helped keep the sound
fresh for so many decades.
THE SHINING (1980)--Directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Stars Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, Barry Nelson. Another bad Stephen King movie, although this one is
at least ambitious. Nicholson is an author with writers' block who takes a job as caretaker of an isolated hotel during the
wintertime in order to work on his new book in piece. He takes his wife and son along for the winter, and it isn't long before
they realize that Jack has started to turn psychotic. Kubrick uses a lot of fancy camera pyrotechnics to keep the audience
involved, but the film is dull and sterile. Confusing screenplay by Kubrick and Diane Johnson. Nicholson's performance is
way over the top.
SHOCK WAVES (1977)--Directed by Ken Wiederhorn.
Stars Peter Cushing, Brooke Adams, Luke Halpin. Cushing and Carradine worked only four days apiece and look very gaunt
in this atmospheric horror film shot in Florida. A small cruise ship carrying four passengers and three crew members,
after nearly being rammed by a mysterious freighter that bears down on it in the fog, crash-lands on a small island.
Exploring the terrain, the landing party discovers an abandoned hotel with only one resident: a surly middle-aged gentleman
(Cushing) with a German accent. After two of the crew are found murdered, Cushing admits he's an ex-Nazi SS officer
who was forced to destroy an "experiment" in the waning days of World War II. Nazi scientists had created a race of
zombie warriors that needed no food, no ammunition, no oxygen--virtual killing machines. Cushing sank the freighter
thirty years earlier and sought refuge on the island, but it appears the zombies are back...and doing what comes naturally
for them.
Decent performances and chilling creature makeup by Alan Ormsby highlight
this sleeper that's better than you'd expect from the director of KING FRAT. What Wiederhorn and John Harrison's screenplay
lacks in logic (several important expository scenes were snipped out of the film, causing the audience to wonder what's happening
at times) is made up for in the director's insistence on creating a spooky atmosphere through mood rather than gore and in
Ormsby's makeup, which almost make you believe in underwater Nazi zombies. Cushing and Carradine were paid just $5000
apiece, but were well worth it, since their mere presence and horror-film pedigrees cement the preposterous premise on firm
ground. In retrospect, SHOCK WAVES (shooting title: DEATH CORPS) may be most notable as an early assignment for
Brooke Adams, who is very good as the ingénue and looks quite fetching in her yellow bikini. She had already appeared
in several films and TV shows, but it wouldn't be until the year after SHOCK WAVES' release when Terrence Malick's DAYS OF
HEAVEN and Philip Kaufman's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS put her on the Hollywood A-list. Halpin is the only other
familiar name, having played one of the kids on the FLIPPER TV series. Also with John Carradine, Fred Buch, Don Stout
and Jack Davidson. Richard Einhorn composed the all-electronic score. Producer Reuben Trane also served as cinematographer.
SHOCKER (1989)--Directed by Wes Craven. Stars
Michael Murphy, Mitch Pileggi, Peter Berg, Cami Cooper, Ted Raimi. Another silly and cliched Craven shocker. Psychotic TV
repairman Pileggi murders an entire family, except for son Berg. Pileggi is tried and convicted to die in the electric chair;
except he doesn't--he is able to travel through the TV waves and escape. He shows up in Berg's dreams, and reveals his location
to Berg. Cop Murphy looks on in disbelief. So will you. From the director of DEADLY FRIEND.
SHOCKWAVE (2006)—Directed by Jim Wynorski.
Stars Joe Lando, Blake Gibbons, Joshua Cox. Although I appreciate Wynorski’s extensive use of popular movie location
Vasquez Rocks to stage SHOCKWAVE’s precredits sequence, this Sci-Fi Channel thriller is a lazy and cheap pastiche of
scenes, characters and concepts from the director’s earlier films, such as CHOPPING MALL and THE CURSE OF THE KOMODO.
In one scene, characters escaping from a robbery take off in a helicopter, fly for awhile, encounter bad weather, and make
an emergency landing in the same clearing from which they left, even though they’re supposed to have landed hundreds
of miles away. Almost everyone in the movie acts like a complete nincompoop, which makes writing a script a much easier
task for Wynorski and Bill Monroe.
The aforementioned robbers, who swiped their loot from the vault
of a cruise ship in “Bora Bora” (actually the docked Queen Mary in Long Beach, California), end up stranded on
the same island as a bunch of Navy SEALs who are assigned to capture a pair of super-intelligent and super-deadly government-sanctioned
robots designed to be “perfect soldiers.” Outside of DR. QUINN’s Lando, the main actors are untalented
unknowns, although Wynorski did manage to snare names for cameos, including Tim Thomerson, George Takei, Robert Picardo, Alexandra
Paul, Billy Mumy, Michael Dorn, Jay Richardson and Hudson Leick. SHOCKWAVE (a title that makes no sense) may have been
called A.I. ASSAULT when it made its Sci-Fi debut.
SHOGUN ASSASSIN (1980)—Directed by Robert Houston.
Stars Tomisaburo Wakayama, Akihiro Tomikawa, Kayo Matsuo. Roger Corman’s New World released this unusual Japanese/American
production. Actor Houston (THE HILLS HAVE EYES) took a pair of Japanese action movies based on the popular LONE WOLF
AND CUB manga series, recut them into one feature, added English dubbing and a new score by former Paul Revere and the Raiders
frontman Mark Lindsay (“Just Like Me”), and put it in theaters in conjunction with an effective marketing campaign.
Released without an MPAA rating, the bloodsoaked adventure proved quite popular with drive-in audiences. Professional
executioner Ogami Itto (Wakayama) wanders Japan, pushing his baby son (Tomikawa) in a wooden cart outfitted with weaponry
and hiring himself out as an assassin. Much of his killing is done for free, as his former employer keeps sending mercenaries,
including an army of women, to cut him down. Lindsay’s electronic score is effective, and so are the gallons of
blood splashed out of Ogami’s adversaries and across the screen. It’s a good-looking, well-paced gorefest
with familiar voices Sandra Bernhard, Lennie Weinrib, Marshall Efron and more. Perhaps Houston found all the best parts,
but I’m surprised Corman didn’t solicit further “Baby Cart” adventures. Four more films continued
the Japanese series.
SHOOT (1976)--Directed by Harvey Hart. Stars
Cliff Robertson, Ernest Borgnine, Henry Silva. Confusing allegory about five macho hunters, led by their National Guard commander
(Robertson), who are attacked in the woods (for no reason) by another group of hunters. One of Robertson's party is wounded
(not seriously), and one of their opponents is killed. When they discover that their faceless enemies have reported the death
as a hunting accident, their jingoistic paranoia leads them to assemble a whole platoon (complete with helmets, flak jackets
and grenades) for a climactic grudge match.
Obviously meant to convey an anti-gun sentiment, these characters (except
for Borgnine's, who tries to talk some sense into his pals) are poster boys for Reagan-era Republicans, and are too cartoony
to take seriously. The females are treated unsympathetically, with Robertson's wife a whining simp and the wife of another
character embarrassingly attempting to vamp a stony Robertson. Director Hart and scripter Dick Berg (who based his screenplay
on a novel by Douglas Fairbairn) have attempted to structure their story as a satire, I imagine (the hunters seem to begin
firing at one another simply because there aren't any animals to shoot at), but if they were successful at all, it went over
my head. Also with James Blendick, Larry Reynolds, Les Carlson, Kate Reid and Helen Shaver. Music by Doug Riley. Filmed in
and around Toronto, Canada. Hart, who was raised in Canada and worked mainly in television, directed episodes of STAR TREK,
THE WILD, WILD WEST and COLUMBO.
SHOOT TO KILL (1988)--Directed by Roger Spottiswoode. Stars Tom
Berenger, Sidney Poitier, Clancy Brown, Kirstie Alley. There's a killer in the midst of guide Alley's camping trip in the
snowy mountain ranges of the Pacific Northwest. FBI agent Poitier is on the killer's trail; he just needs the help of outdoorsman/Alley's
boyfriend Berenger to get to him. Some beautiful mountain scenery complements the typical buddy-cop plot and Poitier's dignified
presence. Also with Richard Masur and Andrew Robinson. Poitier's first performance in ten years; he made LITTLE NIKITA the
same year.
SHORT CIRCUIT (1986)--Directed by John Badham. Stars Steve Guttenberg, Ally Sheedy, Fisher
Stevens, Austin Pendleton, G.W. Bailey. With Guttenberg's name in the credits, you know it won't be good, but kids may enjoy
this juvenile science-fiction tale. Guttenberg and Indian pal Stevens invent a robot, which the government intends to use
as a weapon. When the robot is struck by lightning, it assumes human characteristics, escapes from the lab, and moves in with
animal-lover Sheedy. Guttenberg and Stevens chases after the robot, while military officer Bailey wants to destroy it. Fast-moving
and silly.
SHORT NIGHT OF THE GLASS DOLLS (1971)--Directed
by Aldo Lado. Stars Jean Sorel, Ingrid Thulen, Barbara Bach, Piero Vida. Lado's directorial debut was this mildly
entertaining giallo with an intriguing premise. The corpse of an American journalist named Gregory Moore (Sorel), on
assignment in Prague, is found in a park. He's taken to the morgue where we discover that Moore is actually alive, but
in a complete state of paralysis so advanced that doctors are unable to detect any life signs. As they attempt to understand
why rigor mortis has not started to set in or why his body is still warm, Gregory flashes back to how he came to be lying
on a slab, starting with the disappearance of his beautiful girlfriend Mira (Bach).
One night, after being called out on a story that turned out to
be a wild goose chase, Moore returned to his apartment to discover Mira missing. None of her possessions were taken,
including her money, passport or clothes, although the fact that Mira must have been naked when she vanished seems to mean
little to the policeman (Vida) in charge of the case. Since the cops are of little help, Gregory, with the help of his
journalist friends, begins investigating himself, a path that leads to a very unusual and surprising finale.
At the same time, Lado cuts back and forth between scenes of Gregory's
quest and his voiceover in the morgue, creating two plots of suspense for the price of one. Both stories come to stunning
though in-character conclusions, thanks in part to Sorel, whose pretty boy looks belie some solid acting chops and the convincing
weight he lends to the preposterous story. Although it doesn't quite follow the formula of a straight giallo, SHORT
NIGHT (there are no glass dolls anywhere) is a satisfying mystery story, though ultimately a downbeat one. Also with
Mario Adorf (MANHUNT IN MILAN). Music by Ennio Morricone.
SHORT TIME (1990)--Directed by Gregg Champion.
Stars Dabney Coleman, Teri Garr, Matt Frewer. An uneasy blend of comedy, action and drama, SHORT TIME is an affable
little picture that goes a long way on its very fine lead performance by Coleman. Thanks to some mixed-up X-rays at
the lab, conservative police detective Burt Simpson (Coleman) believes he has only two weeks to live. Since he's due
to retire before that and his ex-wife (Garr) and son can collect his life insurance only if he's killed in the line of duty,
Burt turns into Dirty Harry, taking enormous chances and catching a lot of bad guys in his quest to get himself whacked, much
to the bemusement of his partner Ernie (Frewer). Champion stages some nifty action scenes in his directorial debut,
including a corker of a car chase, but it's Coleman, in a rare sympathetic role, who really makes it work by investing a strong
sense of reality in John Blumenthal and Michael Berry's absurd premise. Frewer is properly nutty as the comic sidekick
(and, yes, I realize the two cops are named "Ernie" and "Burt"). Also with Barry Corbin, Joe Pantoliano, Xander Berkeley
and Kaj-Erik Eriksen (BOSTON PUBLIC). Music by Ira Newborn.
SHOWGIRLS (1995)--Directed by Paul Verhoeven.
Stars Elizabeth Berkley, Gina Gershon, Kyle MacLachlan, Robert Davi, Alan Rachins. This adult drama about Las Vegas lap-dancing
from the writer/director team behind the smash hit BASIC INSTINCT was released in a swarm of media controversy, thanks to
the NC-17 rating it received from the MPAA. Verhoeven and scripter Joe Ezsterhas take care to showcase female nudity at every
available opportunity, which are plentiful, since the plot concerns a hard-bodied young woman named Nomi (Berkley of TV's
teen sitcom SAVED BY THE BELL) who arrives in Las Vegas with dreams of becoming a showgirl in a hotel show.
Her first
step is to procure a job bumping and grinding at a sleazy strip joint run by a crude Robert Davi (LICENSE TO KILL). As we
all know, all of the entertainment industry's best dancers are recruited in topless bars, so Nomi soon becomes hired as one
of dozens in a show called GODDESS, starring a superstar named Crystal (Gershon). After that, the plot turns into ALL ABOUT
EVE as the naive starlet sets out to reach the top by whatever means available. Since the studio (Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer) intended
for SHOWGIRLS to receive an NC-17 rating anyway, Verhoeven and Ezsterhas could have pushed the envelope a bit more than usual,
and made an insightful backstage look at the hows and whys of exotic dancing. Instead the screenplay seems to be a conglomeration
of a 15-year-old boy's masturbatory fantasies. The plot is completely unoriginal, the dialogue is laughable, and as an actress,
Elizabeth Berkley is an incredible dancer.
SHOWTIME (2002)--Directed by Tom Dey.
Stars Robert DeNiro, Eddie Murphy, Rene Russo, William Shatner. The writers and the director of SHANGHAI NOON reunite
for this similar buddy movie starring the unlikely duo of DeNiro and Murphy as Los Angeles cops who star in a reality TV series.
Murphy's Trey Sellars is a showboat patrolman and aspiring actor who's excited about the camera time; DeNiro's surly Mitch
Preston just wants to do his job and be left alone, but is ordered to star in a hit TV series as punishment (!) after he shoots
a TV camera during a bust. It wants to be a mixture of SHANGHAI NOON and BEVERLY HILLS COP, but the stars don't have
the chemistry that Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson do, and the story is flimsy and needlessly violent. I guess you could
argue that about COP too, but Murphy's ballsy presence and the supporting cast overwhelmed that script in a manner that doesn't
happen in SHOWTIME.
The real problem with SHOWTIME is that it doesn't even believe
its own premise. The first scene is DeNiro telling a bunch of kindergarten kids that police work is not what it looks like
on TV, that he doesn't get into car chases or big action setpieces. Ten minutes later, he's shooting it out with drug dealers
in a back room someplace with helicopters overhead and bad guys with huge guns and armor-piercing bullets. Then Dey has the
gall to present a scene in which DeNiro is chewed out by his superior, who is a large black man (they really should have hired
Frank McRae from 48 HRS. to play this role; that might have given this part a tongue-in-cheek nod to the audience that would
make it work). You can't base your film on the premise that real cops are not based on TV clichés and then make the guy who's
chewing the maverick cop out a big black man. The film even knows this is a cliché, since there's a scene where Trey is auditioning
for a bad cop movie and the superior officer is being played in the audition by...a large black man.
SHOWTIME does have one very funny scene in which DeNiro and
Murphy are being schooled on how to be a TV cop by none other than T.J. Hooker himself, William Shatner. Shatner is great
and a good sport demonstrating the finer techniques of kicking in doors while still showing the camera your best profile,
jumping on to car hoods, and tasting drugs ("Hooker knows it's cocaine."). It's Chapter 10 if you have the DVD. Just watch
that part and skip the rest. Also with Drena DeNiro, Kadeem Hardison, Alex Borstein, Mos Def, Frankie Faison and Pedro
Damian as the dull Eurotrash heavy. Good score by Alan Silvestri, and Dey's action scenes are pretty good, even if they
do resemble a PM flick. The climax presents some impressive CGI effects too.
SHREK (2001)--Directed by Andrew Adamson
& Vicky Jenson. Stars Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow. Like Disney's TOY STORY movies, adults will
enjoy this frantic animated comedy as much as their kids. An ugly ogre named Shrek (voiced by Myers with an unexplained Scottish
accent) teams up with happy-go-lucky ass Donkey (Murphy) to rescue Princess Fiona (Diaz) from the tower where she's being
guarded by a ferocious dragon. Height-challenged Lord Farquaad (Lithgow) wants Fiona to be his wife, so he can become king.
Fiona wants only to be kissed by her One True Love, so she can live happily ever after. Shrek wants only to left alone, while
Donkey wants to be Shrek's friend. A well-written and performed fantasy with colorful computer animation and very funny voice
work by Murphy. A pet project of DreamWorks head Jeffrey Katzenberg.
THE SIDEHACKERS (1969)--Directed
by Gus Trikonis. Stars Ross Hagen, Michael Pataki, Diane McBain. Hagen, who also produced, plays a champion motocross rider
whose girlfriend is murdered by Pataki and his ruthless biker gang. Ross wants revenge and goes after them with his own biker
buddies. Also with Hoke Howell, Edward Parrish and big, bald Robert Tessier. Originally released as FIVE THE HARD WAY. I don't
know what the hell a sidehacker is either. From the director of TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT.
SIDEWAYS (2004)--Directed by Alexander Payne.
Stars Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh. The director of ELECTION makes an equally entertaining,
if less acerbic, comedy that follows a pair of middle-aged pals on a road trip through Northern California wine country.
Miles (Giamatti) is a neurotic, divorced English teacher and failed author who takes advantage of his friend's last week of
"freedom" before getting married to get away together. Jack (Church) is a washed-up soap actor who's less interested
in Miles' lectures about wine as he is about hooking up with as many hotties as possible before his wedding. So when
Jack manages to score with a zesty winery pourer, Stephanie (played by Oh, Payne's real-life squeeze), Miles is thrust into
a situation he's not quite prepared for: a date for Stephanie's friend Maya (Madsen). Miles and Maya, a waitress
at a local restaurant, are old acquaintances from his occasional trips to the area, and he has a crush on her that becomes
more pronounced when he discovers she's into wine too. SIDEWAYS, obviously, is not what it's about, so much as how it's
about it. Payne has created four vivid characters who talk, drink, muse, have sex, fight, all in a very absorbing manner,
and all four are vividly brought to life by the actors who inhabit them. Giamatti, so wonderful as the grouchy comic-book
writer Harvey Pekar in AMERICAN SPLENDOR, outdoes his acclaimed work there, inhabiting his character so completely that you
feel every bit of his pain, his passion, his broken dreams and failed ambitions. It's a wonderful performance which
is nearly matched by Madsen, who shares one particular scene with Giamatti on a porch that is as well-acted as anything else
you're likely to see this year, a conversation about wine that isn't really about wine as much as it's about loneliness and
insecurity. Church, whom you probably know only as the Dumb Guy on a dumb '90s sitcom called WINGS, is so good you'll
hardly believe he's the same guy. Payne's sense of humor runs from the sublime to the slapsticky, although broader scenes
set on a golf course and in a fat waitress' house are so funny, you'll probably not even notice they run counter to the more
sensitive humor of earlier scenes. SIDEWAYS is one of 2004's best films. Music by Rolfe Kent.
SIDEWINDER 1 (1977)—Directed by Earl
Bellamy. Stars Michael Parks, Marjoe Gortner, Susan Howard, Alex Cord. Amiable but inert drama finds motocross
racers Parks and Gortner going to work for industrialist Cord, who invites Parks to design a championship motorcycle nicknamed
Sidewinder 1. When Cord is killed in an accident, his sister (Howard) takes over the company and rankles Parks with
her bureaucratic manner. And with good reason, since she keeps talking about selling Sidewinder 1’s design and
getting out of the motocross game, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Parks and Gortner are winning a lot of races.
Not a whole helluva lot actually happens in this movie, although it moves along quickly enough and has quite a few decently
staged races (and crashes). The romantic relationship that develops between Parks and Howard (who also hit the sack
with John Saxon the same year in MOONSHINE COUNTY EXPRESS) isn’t believable, but doesn’t come as much of a surprise
either. Sitcom stars Charlotte Rae (THE FACTS OF LIFE) and Barry Livingston (MY THREE SONS) appear along with Bill Vint
and Byron Morrow playing—what else?—a stuffy banker. Music by Mundell Lowe. From the director of SPEEDTRAP
and SIDECAR RACERS.
SIEGE (1983)—Directed by Paul Donovan
and Maura O’Connell. Stars Tom Nardini, Terry-David Despres, Doug Lennox. It’s 1981 and the Halifax
police force is on strike. White supremacists invade a gay bar and murder the staff and customers, except for Daniel
(Despres), who escapes. The five goons and their leader, Cabe (Lennox), pursue him to a small secluded apartment building,
where Daniel holes up with the tenants, who include a young couple, a homosexual and two blind men. From there, it’s
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD meets ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 as the invaders, armed with advanced weaponry, besiege the Good Samaritans.
The cropped video print I saw does the film no favors and probably contributed to the biggest problem I had with SIEGE, which
is that you don’t get a very good sense of the physical layout of the building with its various staircases, drainpipes,
skylights and secret panels. It’s quite a suspenseful film with a fine leading-man turn by Nardini, a once-busy
actor who didn’t do much film or television in the 1980s, but he should have. Also with Barbara Bazinet, Darel
Haeny, Keith Knight, Jack Blum and Blaine Henshaw as himself.
THE SIEGE (1998)--Directed by Edward Zwick.
Stars Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, Bruce Willis. Zwick's drama about domestic terrorism was widely protested by Arab-American
groups upon its original release; while these complaints seem, in my mind, to be uncalled for, the movie itself, while well-made,
was also not worth the commotion. Washington (who is very good) plays an FBI agent called in when Arab terrorists blow up
a bus in New York City, killing many hostages. The terrorists are difficult to track since they consist of many different
cells, all of which know nothing of the identities and actions of the other cells. After more hostage-taking and explosions
(one of which destroys Washington's FBI office), the U.S. President orders martial law in NYC, and General Devereaux (Willis)
takes control, herding Arab-Americans into internment camps and breaking up families. The complex screenplay also teams Washington
with a mysterious female agent (Bening) who seems to know more (and be more involved) than she lets on. Zwick seems more interesting
in making a mainstream action movie than an indictment against racism; he attempts to do both, but doesn't entirely succeed
at either goal. Willis' character is more of a cartoon than a realistic portrayal of an Army general in this type of situation.
Tony Shalhoub gives excellent support as the Lebanese-American partner of Washington who finds his son taken away from him
by the Army despite his American citizenship and his loyal service to the United States as an agent of the FBI.
THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA (1989)--Directed
by Brian Trenchard-Smith. Stars Wings Hauser, R. Lee Ermey. Marine Sergeant-Major Hafner (Ermey) and his right-hand
man Corporal DiNardo (Hauser) find themselves in command of the titular Army firebase right at the beginning of the 1968 Tet
Offensive. With just a few hundred drug-addled soldiers to work with, Hafner is forced to defend Gloria against more
than 2000 Viet Cong. The urgent battle scenes are among the most realistic I've ever seen, as hordes of men waving machetes
and machine guns run, scream, kill, bleed and die in a chaotic fashion amid blinding clouds of smoke and deafening explosions.
Australian director Trenchard-Smith handles both the Philippines-lensed action scenes and the quieter moments of military
camaraderie with aplomb, bolstered as he is with dynamite performances by exploitation-film king Hauser and former Marine
and Vietnam vet Ermey. Also with Gary Hershberger (SNEAKERS), Clyde Jones, Albert Popwell, Margi Gerard and John Calvin.
Music by Paul Schutze.
THE SILENCERS (1966)--Directed by Phil Karlson.
Stars Dean Martin, Stella Stevens, Victor Buono, Nancy Kovack, Deliah Lavi, Robert Webber. The first of Dino's four outings
as Donald Hamilton's literary agent Matt Helm. Unlike Hamilton's serious potboilers, Martin's films were sophomoric spoofs
that highlighted sex jokes and silly gadgets. In this one, Dean and beautiful but klutzy Stevens stop Asian villain Tung-Tze
(Buono) from conquering the world with sabotaged American missiles. Also with Arthur O'Connell, Richard Devon and series regulars
James Gregory (as Helm's boss) and Beverly Adams (as Helm's lovely secretary). Theme performed by Cyd Charisse, who also does
a sexy dance over the opening credits that has nothing to do with the movie. MURDERERS' ROW was next for Martin.
THE SILENCERS (1996)--Directed by Richard
Pepin. Stars Jack Scalia, Dennis Christopher. Yes, I admit to an unreasonable fondness for PM Entertainment's
slick action movies, but this one had trouble holding my attention. It's Pepin and co-producer Joseph Merhi's version
of MEN IN BLACK, but made before that Steven Spielberg production. Aliens are here and conspiring with high-placed government
officials to keep their presence a secret from the public. To ensure that secrecy, government assassins known as "Men
in Black" run around murdering citizens who have had contact with extraterrestrials. One who knows the secret is a U.S.
Senator who is killed (in a rousing action scene that begins in a church and ends miles away in the wreckage of a derailed
subway) in the custody of Secret Service agent Rafferty (Scalia). Obsessed with learning the truth behind his boss'
death, Rafferty inadvertently finds himself teamed with hippie spaceman Comdor (Christopher), whose return to his home planet
hinges upon successfully completing his mission to destroy the evil forces that have invaded Earth. Christopher is miscast
as an action star, and PM's trademark action sequences could use a bit more pizzazz (although one stunt in which a car jumps
over a semi and through a hovering helicopter is very cool). I more or less like THE SILENCERS, but PM's forte is straight
action, rather than sci-fi. Also with Lance LeGault, Carlos Lauchu, Clarence Williams III and Madison Mason. Music
by Louis Febre.
SILENT ASSASSINS (1988)--Directed by Doo-yong
Lee and Scott Thomas. Stars Sam Jones, Linda Blair, Jun Chong, Gustav Vintas. Cop Jones, crestfallen after still
another clever escape by his archenemy, a terrorist named Kendrick (Vintas) who distracted Jones by tossing a baby doll into
the ocean, plans to quit the force and move out of L.A. with wife Blair. Relocation plans are placed on hold, however,
when Kendrick kidnaps an elderly scientist and a little Chinese girl and forces the scientist to reveal a secret formula worth
millions. Teaming up with the girl's uncle, martial artist Jun Kim (Chong), Jones shoots, punches and kicks his way
into Kendrick's headquarters. Pretty routine stuff, slightly disappointing, since I hoped the Korean director would
add some spark to the fight scenes (Thomas receives a separate co-director credit). Jones is looser than I've ever seen
him, adding goofy humor to his domestic scenes with Blair, who has little to do and must be present for name value only.
Also with Philip Rhee, Bill Erwin, Rebecca Ferratti as the world's unlikeliest biochemist, Bill "Superfoot" Wallace and Mako.
Chong and Rhee served as co-producers. I don't believe Lee ever directed another American film.
THE SILENT FLUTE (1979)--Directed by Richard Moore.
Stars David Carradine, Jeff Cooper, Christopher Lee, Eli Wallach, Roddy McDowall. Carradine delivers a very good tour
de force performance in this thoughtful martial arts movie based on an original story by Bruce Lee, James Coburn and Stirling
Silliphant, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT. The idea was for Lee and Coburn to play the
leads, but it wasn't until well after Lee's untimely death that producer Sandy Howard was able to raise financing. Stanley
Mann (CONAN THE DESTROYER) stepped in to polish the script, which was helmed by first-time director Moore, a longtime Hollywood
cinematographer.
Released to U.S. theaters as CIRCLE OF IRON (the same title on Blue
Underground's DVD, even though the actual print contains the original title), FLUTE stars newcomer Cooper (reportedly a sparring
partner of Carradine's) as Cord, a callow youth searching for the "Book of Enlightenment" that is purported to reveal the
secrets of the universe. The Book is in the possession of a legendary martial artist named Zetan, and to reach him,
one must first pass through a series of trials. Accompanying Cord is a blind man (Carradine) who serves as the young
man's master, teaching him patience and Zen philosophy. And for a blind guy, he kicks a lot of ass, dispatching his
enemies with swift kung fu moves and his long flute, which he uses as a staff. Carradine also pops up as the leader
of a tribe of monkey-men, a colorful chieftain named Chang-sha (with what Carradine calls a "Ricardo Montalban Iranian accent")
and Death Itself in the form of a black panther-man.
Boasting gorgeous Israeli location footage and a surprising amount
of humor, FLUTE belies its ponderous premise in offering an entertaining and reasonably well-paced action movie that manages
to present a peaceful point of view. Those with Christian beliefs may scoff at the lesson that Cord eventually learns,
but it fits the philosophy practiced by Bruce Lee during his short lifetime and probably represents his original story pretty
well. The film's pink elephant is Cooper, who's both too old and too inexperienced to carry a film of this nature.
While he handles the requisite action scenes okay, he seems miscast in more dramatic moments or when interacting with the
veteran supporting cast members. Of them, only Carradine gets much screen time (he's practically in every scene); McDowall,
Lee and Wallach only worked a couple of days apiece, with Eli garnering top honors as a deranged doctor attempting to melt
away his genitals in a vat of oil. Aussie composer Bruce Smeaton (ROXANNE) delivers a nice, majestic score. Moore
never directed another film and soon retired from feature filmmaking altogether. Carradine's turn in KILL BILL, VOL.
2 seems partially inspired by his colorful playing here. Also with Erica Creer, Earl Maynard and Anthony DeLongis.
SILENT MOVIE (1976)--Directed by Mel Brooks.
Stars Mel Brooks, Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise, Sid Caesar, Bernadette Peters. Brooks is has-been film director Mel Funn. He
tries to convince studio chief Caesar to back his new silent movie. Caesar will give him the money only if Brooks and sidekicks
Feldman and DeLuise can get some big stars to appear in it. A silent film is the perfect outlet for Brooks's style of slapstick,
pratfalls, and sight gags. Also with hilarious cameos by James Caan, Burt Reynolds, Anne Bancroft, Liza Minnelli, Paul Newman
and Marcel Marceau, who speaks the film's only word of dialogue.
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984)--Directed
by Charles E. Sellier Jr. Stars Lilyan Chauvan, Gilmer McCormick, Robert Brian Wilson, Britt Leach. One of the most notorious--and
hilarious--slasher movies of the era. Angry parents picketed theaters where this Tri-Star release played during the 1984 Christmas
season, and Siskel and Ebert ripped it on their television series, causing the studio to pull it. The controversy definitely
caused more people to see it than otherwise would have, and when it came to home video, it was in an unrated version blessed
with additional footage. The reasons for the parent groups' ire appear to have been the one-sheet, which showed the arm of
an axe-wielding Santa slithering down a chimney, a barrage of television ads, and what they supposed to be a plot about a
killer Santa Claus. In fact, SILENT NIGHT concerns a psychotic teenage boy who goes on a Christmas Eve killing spree dressed
in a Santa Claus outfit. Um, well, maybe the protesters had a good point, but SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT was hardly the first
movie to feature a killer Santa, so who knows what brought them out from beneath their rocks this time. It's hard to
know where to start describing Sellier's film, a combination of wonky dime-store psychology, ludicrous logic, clumsy performances,
riotously funny plot contrivances, and the most ill-conceived, out-of-place musical montage in the history of film, one so
absurd you feel it must have inspired Trey Parker's brilliant montage parody in TEAM AMERICA WORLD POLICE.
Christmas Eve, 1971. Little Billy witnesses his parents being
murdered by a liquor-store robber dressed as Santa. Of course, the killer has to rip open the mother's blouse before slitting
her throat, and how lucky for us that Jane Housewife left the house on this cold December day without her brassiere. Fast-forward
three years later to the Catholic orphanage where Billy has been placed, where the cruel Mother Superior (French actress Chauvan)
beats Billy for spying through a keyhole on a pair of teen fornicators, forces him to sit on the lap of the Santa visiting
the kids (Billy socks him in the jaw and knocks him to the floor), and then ties him to his bed to endure annual nightmares
of Santa Claus "punishing" children like himself who have been naughty.
Eventually Billy turns eighteen (and is played in the second
flash-forward by Wilson), and with the aid of the friendly Sister Margaret (McCormick), he lands a job in a toy store (good
thinking, Mags) owned by Mr. Simms (Leach), where he fantasizes about hot sex with his female co-worker while enduring barbs
from his bullying supervisor in the stockroom. For some reason, Simms has a giant inventory inversely proportional to the
size of his store, which is doing so poorly this holiday season that he still has Halloween costumes and Easter toys on the
shelves.
Billy's fear of Christmas explodes into full-fledged craziness
when Simms asks the lad to don a red suit and whiskers and play Santa for the young customers. As thoughts of "naughty" and
"punish" pelt his brain, Billy finally goes postal at the store's Christmas party, wiping out all the employees in various
gory ways. With Sister Margaret hot on his trail, Billy wanders around town, murdering fornicators and setting his sights
on the orphanage where he endured his abusive childhood.
If there's one thing that Sellier and writer Michael Hickey
do reasonably well, it's building audience sympathy for Billy, who certainly grew up with the short end of the stick. Although
they present the material in a wildly funny over-the-top manner, it's easy to see that Billy isn't to blame for his actions
(that's considering you buy in to the psychological theories set forth by the film, which are admittedly a heck of a reach),
causing us to react to his killing spree with mixed emotions. While a few of his victims clearly "earn" their deaths by virtue
of being bullies or rapists or trigger-happy cops, many of them do not.
As if the elements of child cruelty, Catholic-bashing, graphic
violence and abundant female nudity aren't sleazy enough for one film, SILENT NIGHT trumps them with its uncomfortable anti-woman
stance. Granted, nearly all slasher films, if not the whole horror genre, have been accused of misogyny, but I'm afraid this
film actually earns the criticism. One of Billy's kills is a rape victim, who thanks Billy for strangling her attacker by
calling him "crazy" and a "bastard", resulting in a close-up of a box cutter slicing open her stomach just below her bare
breasts. Two other women are murdered while topless, even though the film goes to elaborate and unbelievable lengths to justify
it (would you open the front door during the winter to let the cat inside while wearing nothing but a pair of cutoff jean
shorts?).
On one hand, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is reprehensible,
a film as ugly in its attitude as in its approach. But of course, some people will choose to watch it for that very reason,
and it's true that, viewed strictly in Bad Movie terms, it's a delight. Sellier piles on the gruesomeness, the heavy psychological
twists, the deux es machina story elements to write himself out of a corner (like the character who is (poorly) introduced
well into the film's second hour to resolve the plot), and the outrageous juxtaposition of sex and violence in manners so
heavy-handedly that you'd have to be working actively against the film to not laugh at it. The strictly mercenary motives
for making this film are clearly obvious, and a glimpse at SILENT NIGHT's box office, as well as the presence of four sequels
(many in name only), prove that the filmmakers' approach was the right one. I wonder how successful this crudity would have
been if Siskel and Ebert had just ignored it. Filmed in Utah by the producer of the GRIZZLY ADAMS TV series and all those
Sunn Classics docudramas like IN SEARCH OF NOAH'S ARK and THE LINCOLN CONSPIRACY. Tara Buckman (THE CANNONBALL RUN) and Linnea
Quigley (SAVAGE STREETS) contribute nudity to Sellier's cause. Perry Botkin Jr. (BLESS THE BEASTS & CHILDREN) provided
the score.
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT PART 2 (1987)--Directed
by Lee Harry. Stars Eric Freeman, James Newman, Elizabeth Kaitan. If it isn’t the worst sequel ever made,
it has to be the most cynical. Harry’s film runs under 90 minutes, yet just about half of it is footage cribbed
from SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT. At least it’s all the good stuff from that twisted movie: all the gore,
nudity, rape, profanity and bad taste plot devices. After telling the story of his brother Billy’s killing spree
from the first SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT in flashback, Ricky (Freeman) kills his shrink and escapes from the asylum, where
he goes on a hilarious murder spree of his own. Unlike Billy, who at least had some vague reasoning for choosing his
victims, Ricky pretty much just goes nuts, running over a date rapist with a Jeep, connecting a wiseass romantic rival to
a car battery, and blowing up a car in one of stunt coordinator Spiro Razatos’ most death-defying gags ever; you couldn’t
slip a cigarette paper between the stuntman and the roof of the flipping car that slides past him. The movie isn’t
good, but it at least knows it and has fun with it. Freeman’s performance is one of the worst you’ve ever
seen. I believe this sequel played theatrically, but there were three more to come, and I doubt if any of them did.
THE SILENT PARTNER (1978)—Directed by Daryl
Duke. Stars Elliott Gould, Susannah York, Christopher Plummer. Gould's days as a leading man were just about done
when he went to Toronto to shoot THE SILENT PARTNER (which was Gould's third film of 1978, along with CAPRICORN ONE and MATILDA,
the execrable boxing-kangaroo movie), but he's perfectly cast as mild bank teller Miles Cullen. Miles anticipates that a mall
Santa Claus is going to rob him, and arranges it so that the crook gets only about a thousand bucks and the rest of the loot
(more than $40,000) ends up in Miles' briefcase. What Miles doesn't anticipate is that the robber, Harry (THE SOUND OF MUSIC's
Plummer, a native Canadian), is a psycho and threatens Miles to return the loot.
A tightly plotted cat-and-mouse match plays out between Miles, a
schlemiel whose life barely reaches beyond the bank's walls, and Harry, a vicious man who beats and rapes a teenage girl merely
to vent his frustration at being outwitted. The two men are opposite sides of the same coin, which is not an original conceit
for a crime thriller, but the screenplay by Curtis Hanson (later a Hollywood superstar who directed L.A. CONFIDENTIAL) and
direction by acclaimed television vet Duke (THE THORN BIRDS) nicely snap the pieces together, adding crisp characterization
and moments of real suspense.
John Candy, then between seasons of the early half-hour version
of SCTV (then called SECOND CITY TV), has a small supporting role, but Gould and Plummer's main backups are York in a tricky
part as a coworker of Miles' who somewhat fancies him and sexy French-Canadian actress Celine Lomez as an alluring young woman
who starts a romance with Miles. How she fits into the plot isn't exactly a surprise, though her fate plays an enormous role
in establishing to the audience the lengths to which Harry will go to beat Miles at their "game."
Whereas THE SILENT PARTNER may have been a hit in its homeland,
it didn't do much in the U.S. One can see how it may have been a difficult movie to market, and certainly the poster I've
seen of Plummer, dressed as Santa and firing a gun, doesn't accurately describe the picture. Certainly don't judge the film
based on the terrible DVD box art, which misrepresents the film. It's a good thriller with two strong yet disparate leading
men (mopey eccentric Jew vs. snake-charming Shakespearean) matching up together perfectly.
SILENT RAGE (1982)--Directed by Michael Miller.
Stars Chuck Norris, Ron Silver, Brian Libby, Stephen Furst, Toni Kalem, Steven Keats, William Finley. Just call it CHUCK NORRIS
MEETS FRANKENSTEIN. The chopsocky star's first foray into the science fiction/horror genre ranks among the best of his early
vehicles. Director Miller (JACKSON COUNTY JAIL) wastes no time tipping off his influences, beginning the film with a three-and-a-half
minute tracking shot clearly based on the opening of HALLOWEEN. I'd love to hear Miller discuss this shot on a DVD commentary
track (if anyone at Columbia is listening...), since it involves filming small children in a real two-story house, and must
have been a bear to shoot. The shot is an effective one, showing hulking John Kirby (Libby) flipping out and slaughtering
two people with an axe in his rooming house. Kirby appears to be stronger than the average bear; after being knocked out a
couple of times and finally apprehended by Sheriff Dan Stevens (Norris), Kirby snaps his handcuffs, kicks a police car door
off its hinges and is finally brought down in a hail of bloody gunfire by Chuck's deputies.
With Kirby presumed dead,
Sheriff Stevens can concentrate on making time with cute hospital administrator Alison (Kalem), whose psychiatrist brother
Tom Halman (Silver) is involved with two other scientists, Dr. Spires (Keats) and Dr. Vaughn (Finley), in an illegal life-rejuvenating
experiment. Spires swipes Kirby's body, and, against Halman's wishes, injects it with a full dose of their new drug, which
has the unfortunate side effect of turning Kirby into an invulnerable killing machine whose wounds heal almost instantly.
The rest of the film details Norris's attempts to capture a man who seemingly can't be captured, and protecting Alison from
Kirby's murderous rage.
Miller, whose JACKSON COUNTY JAIL stands as one of the great drive-in flicks of the '70s,
does a nice job with Joseph Fraley's (GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK) somewhat sketchy screenplay. Miller uses lots of elaborate tracking
shots and long takes, which effectively builds suspense and a more realistic feel to the action, but also showcases Norris's
deficiencies as an actor. Chuck looks uncomfortable in long dialogue scenes, especially his love scenes with Toni Kalem and
those with Furst, who plays Norris's bumbling, fat deputy, which are played for (lame) comic relief. Silver, Keats and an
underused Finley (PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE) are very good, succeeding at bringing added dimension to their stereotypical mad
scientist roles.
The action scenes are, obviously, Chuck's specialty, and fans won't be disappointed by those of SILENT
RAGE. Although Norris's final grueling battle with the unstoppable Libby is fun, the film's highlight is a midpoint barroom
brawl in which Chuck takes out a couple of dozen bikers with skillful assurance. Sure, it's nice that these grubby brawlers
decide to battle Norris one at a time instead of ganging up on him, and it's a good thing none of them decides to pick up
his dropped pistol, but it's still an exciting example of movie mayhem. SILENT RAGE also features more nudity and gore than
you'd expect in a Chuck Norris movie (with Finley's demise the most brutal). Perhaps the most unusual aspect is the score
by Peter Bernstein and Mark Goldenberg, which is pretty good, but also quite sparse, since Miller chose not to underscore
the various fight scenes with music, allowing the sound effects and visceral effect to take charge.
Also with Stephanie
Dunnam, Joyce Ingle, Jay DePlano and Lillette Zoe Raley as the topless tattooed biker babe who captures Furst's fancy. FORCED
VENGEANCE was next for Norris, who would soon sign a lucrative exclusive contract with Cannon, for whom he would work through
most of the '80s until the studio went bankrupt financing his WALKER, TEXAS RANGER television series. Oddly, one of those
films, HERO AND THE TERROR, would be almost a carbon copy of SILENT RAGE with Jack O'Halloran as an indestructible serial
killer called Terror. Finley dropped out of films shortly after this, having established his genre chops with quirky performances
in EATEN ALIVE, THE FUNHOUSE and SISTERS. Miller's subsequent career is perhaps the strangest; he turned to television, cranking
out a series of romances based on the mushy novels of Danielle Steel, Judith Krantz and Barbara Taylor Bradford!
SILENT
RUNNING (1971)--Directed by Douglas Trumbull. Stars Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Jesse Vint, Ron Rifkin. Special-effects
wizard Trumbull's directing debut was this decent science-fiction film with a strong ecological message. After a nuclear holocaust,
the Earth of the 21st century is no longer able to grow plants or trees. The only Earth shrubbery left are in domed forests
aboard orbiting spaceships. The government decides keeping a few trees alive is a waste of taxpayers' money, so they order
the forests destroyed and the ships returned to Earth. Flower-lover Dern kills the three astronauts aboard his ship, and lives
in space with three robot companions. If you can withstand the numerous Joan Baez songs on the soundtrack, you'll find this
movie to be pretty interesting with some excellent visual effects. Thoughtful screenplay by Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino
and Steven Bochco.
THE SILENT SCREAM (1980)--Directed by Denny Harris. Stars Rebecca Balding, Cameron
Mitchell, Avery Schreiber, Yvonne DeCarlo, Barbara Steele, Brad Rearden. Four numbskull college students--including Dorothy
Hamill-haircutted Scotty (Balding)--move into a spooky old beachside mansion owned by the reclusive Mrs. Engels (DeCarlo)
and her creepy, bespectacled teen son Mason (Rearden). After one of the youths is brutally stabbed to death on the beach,
Lieutenant McGiver (Mitchell) and his unlikely frizzy-headed partner Manny (Doritos pitchman Schreiber) are summoned to the
house to investigate. While Mitchell is always a welcome sight in a cheap horror movie, nearly all of his scenes are irrelevant
and exist only to stretch the running time to 87 minutes, since all he and Schreiber do are discover facts and piece together
a puzzle that we already know.
In a film that borrows heavily from PSYCHO, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? and most
slasher flicks of the period, it's discovered that the killer is Mason's real mother, Victoria (Steele), who was lobotomized
after attempting suicide while pregnant (in a memorably grotesque scene shown in flashback) and has been hiding out in the
Engels' attic ever since, only occasionally exiting long enough to slice up an obnoxious teenager. As anyone who's ever seen
one of these movies can predict, the cops figure out what's going on just in time to be too late for the bloody climax.
Besides
the appearances of Mitchell and Steele (whose performance is completely silent), THE SILENT SCREAM (the film's onscreen title)
doesn't hold much interest for genre fans. The body count is relatively low, and only the first two killings contain any visceral
thrills. The drippy male leads are too repugnant to root for, while belly-shirted Balding fails to impress as the heroine.
Roger Kellaway's score is pretty amusing, since it obviously believes it's in a much classier movie, pounding away in an effort
to fool us into thinking something important is happening onscreen. Writer-producers Jim and Ken Wheat later penned THE FLY
II and PITCH BLACK. Also with Steve Doubet, John Widelock, Juli Andelman and Jack Stryker.
THE SILENT STRANGER (1968)—Directed by Luigi
Vanzi. Stars Tony Anthony, Lloyd Battista. Also known as THE STRANGER IN JAPAN, this Italian western was the third
of a four-film series starring producer/writer/star Anthony as a laconic, serape-wearing gunfighter known to audiences only
as The Stranger. It was co-produced by Allen Klein, the controversial manager of The Beatles who contributed to their
break-up, and as a result of legal wranglings, MGM didn’t release it in the U.S. until 1975. The plot is similar
to other spaghetti westerns; namely, it’s another ripoff of YOJIMBO (see: A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS). The Stranger
shoots down some bandits attacking a young Japanese man. The dying youth hands him a scroll and begs him to deliver
it to Japan, where he will be paid $20,000. Once The Stranger gets there, he finds that two opposing factions lay claim
to the scroll, and must play both against the other to ensure his own hide survives. The Japanese setting provides a
unique backdrop for the typical spaghetti trappings (swords replace guns in some action scenes), and Vanzi and Anthony slather
a good amount of sex and violence across it. THE SILENT STRANGER isn’t as good as BLINDMAN, in which Anthony and
Battista also played rivals, but it’s entertaining enough. Followed by GET MEAN, the fourth and final STRANGER
movie.
SILENT TRIGGER (1996)--Directed by Russell
Mulcahy. Stars Dolph Lundgren, Gina Bellman, Conrad Dunn, Christopher Heyerdahl. An uneasy mix of existentialism
and glossy action. One night during a tremendous thunderstorm, two government assassins played by Lundgren and Bellman
stake out the penthouse of an unfinished office building-the perfect site from which to snipe their target when he traverses
a bridge a mile away the following morning. The only other people in the building are the two security guards on duty-one,
a brutal, crazed cokehead; the other, a by-the-book sort with a secret agenda. Give Mulcahy (THE SHADOW) and writer
Sergio Altieri credit, I suppose, for trying to add something new to the usual Lundgren bombs-and-bullets formula, but Dolph's
tightlipped Zen ponderings don't fit too well with the slick but unmemorable action scenes. One of the film's major
problems is that Lundgren's main antagonist, the whacked-out Rent-a-Cop, is clearly no match for the 6'6" karate expert.
British-born Bellman is a cutie-pie and almost believable as sniper Lundgren's "spotter". Action fans should enjoy Mulcahy's
nice squib work. The dreamy score is by Stefano Mainetti. Filmed in Quebec.
SILK (1986)--Directed by Cirio H. Santiago.
Stars Cec Verrell, Bill McLaughlin, Peter Shilton. Prolific filmmaker Santiago shifts his base of operations temporarily
from his native Philippines to Honolulu for this action picture. If you've ever seen one of Santiago's movies, you know
pretty much what you're getting from SILK: poor production values, a smidgen of violence and nudity, a dopey plot and
wooden acting. Yep, wooden pretty much describes SILK's heroine, Jenny "Silk" Sleighton (Verrell), one of Honolulu's
baddest-ass detectives. She even walks across the lawn of the Iolani Palace at one point; I wonder why she didn't stop
by and visit Steve McGarrett's office. Between blowing up cars in her professional life and making whoopee with fellow
fuzz Tom Stevens (McLaughlin) in her personal life, I also wonder where she finds time to delve into a pair of mysteries:
a series of vigilante murders and the smuggling of gangsters into Hawaii from Asia using stolen identities. There's
also a blackmail scheme and a couple of rednecks stabbing people with huge knives. Santiago perhaps deserves some credit
for filming on squalid locations that most filmmakers in Hawaii tend to avoid, but SILK is not very interesting, and its convoluted
story never really pays off. And unlike the heroines in many Santiago movies, Verrell keeps her top on (although I understand
Monique Gabrielle, who reprised the title role in SILK 2, did not). Also with Vic Diaz, screenwriter Frederick Bailey,
Mike Monty and Joe Mari Avellana, who also served as the production designer. One of four films directed by Cirio in
1986.
SILVER BULLET (1985)—Directed by Daniel Attias.
Stars Gary Busey, Corey Haim, Everett McGill, Megan Follows. The small town of Tarker’s Mill is plagued by a series
of vicious murders in which the bloody victims are ripped to pieces. Even though it should eventually become obvious
to everyone, only crippled 11-year-old Marty (Haim) knows the killer is a werewolf…and nobody, not even his Uncle Red
(Busey), believes him. Based on a Stephen King novella with a screenplay by King, SILVER BULLET isn’t graphic
enough to capitalize on its R rating, while its kid-centric narrative probably deserved a PG-13 or lower. Plus, Busey,
who isn’t bad, really has a struggle with his character, who is still pooh-poohing the threat of a werewolf attack well
after the monster’s existence is obvious. Kids might get a kick out of cute Follows (as Marty’s teenage
sis), Haim’s souped-up motorcycle/wheelchair, which manages to evade a speeding car during a chase to the death, and
Carlo Rambaldi’s werewolf, which doesn’t look that great, but is still fun. Terry O’Quinn, as usual,
turns in good work in a small role as the beleaguered town sheriff. Also with Lawrence Tierney, Bill Smitrovich, David
Hart and the voice of Tovah Feldshuh. Jay Chattaway’s score doesn’t rank among its best. Dino de Laurentiis
produced SILVER BULLET at his North Carolina facility.
SILVER STREAK (1976)--Directed by Arthur Hiller.
Stars Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, Richard Pryor, Patrick McGoohan, Ned Beatty, Ray Walston. Wimpy Wilder, while on a cross-country
train trip from Los Angeles to Chicago, begins an affair with Clayburgh, and becomes involved in a murder, some stolen Rembrandt
writings and evil art expert McGoohan. Remembered as the film which first spotlighted Pryor's enormous comic talents in a
commercial setting, but you'll be surprised at how small his role really is. Still a great deal of fun, with a thrilling train
station climax.
SILVERADO (1985)--Directed by Lawrence Kasdan. Stars Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Kevin
Costner, Danny Glover, Brian Dennehy, Jeff Goldblum, John Cleese, Rosanna Arquette, Linda Hunt. One of the most fun westerns
in years. Four heroes--two brothers (Glenn and Costner), an ex-con (Kline), and a vengeful black man (Glover)--team up to
save the townspeople of Silverado from a corrupt sheriff and Kline's former partner (Dennehy). Unlike other westerns of recent
years, this was meant to be a fun movie reminiscent of the great westerns of the past. Kasdan wrote some witty dialogue. Gorgeous
cinematography by John Bailey. Cleese as an arrogant British lawman and Goldblum as a sneaky gambler give interesting supporting
roles.
SIMON, KING OF THE WITCHES (1971)--Directed by Bruce Kessler. Stars Andrew Prine, Brenda Scott,
George Paulsin, Angus Duncan, Normann Burton, Gerald York. Fans of lanky character actor Andrew Prine should have a good time
with this (then-)contemporary horror film set in Los Angeles. Prine is Simon, a warlock who lives in the storm drains beneath
L.A. While in jail on a trumped-up vagrancy charge, he meets naive hustler Turk (Paulsin), who invites Simon to a lavish party
thrown by wealthy homosexual Hercules (York). There Simon meets obnoxious Colin (Duncan), who reneges on paying Simon for
telling his future, and lovely Linda (Scott), the daughter of district attorney Rackum (Burton). After Linda falls victim
to a fatal drug overdose, Simon uses his powers to bump off the Establishment member he holds responsible, as well as Colin
for not paying his debt.
To be honest, I didn't know what was happening in this movie most of the time, but the amusingly
cheesy animation effects, healthy doses of female nudity (including a topless scene by frequent '70s TV guest star Scott)
and a charismatic turn by Prine make SIMON worthwhile. It's always nice to see a talented guy like Prine land a meaty leading
part like this one, and, although he's let down by Joe Solomon's (THE LOSERS) typically slipshod production values and slack
direction by TV vet Bruce Kessler (who was reportedly not allowed back onto the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE set after executives there
were disappointed by the one episode he did), Prine seems to be having a nice time, and he's a lot of fun to watch. I'm sure
he enjoyed working with his actress wife Scott, with whom he also appeared in the short-lived western series THE ROAD WEST.
Music by Stu Phillips. Also with Ultra Violet, Richard Shepard, William Martel and former Lone Ranger John Hart.
A
SIMPLE PLAN (1998)--Directed by Sam Raimi. Stars Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Bridget Fonda. Taut, well-acted
thriller about three men living in snow-covered Minnesota whose lives change forever after discovering a crashed plane in
the woods, a dead pilot and $4.4 million in cash. The three--college-educated Hank (Paxton), his socially deficient brother
Jacob (Thornton), and Jacobs alcoholic friend Lou--decide to keep the money, and--fearing someone may come looking for it--split
it three ways a few months down the road when the situation has cooled. Of course nothing works out the way it's supposed
to, the barriers of trust begin to fall among them, and the bodies begin to pile up. Thornton was Oscar-nominated--and he's
very good in a well-written character part--but I find Paxton even more impressive in a less colorful role as a character
who goes through a lot of changes during the course of the film and becomes a person I'm sure he never thought he would be.
All the performances are excellent, including Brent Briscoe, Chelcie Ross and a chilling Gary Cole. Paxton's papa John shows
up in a cameo. Oscar-nominated screenplay by Scott B. Smith is based upon his novel. Music by Danny Elfman. This is a different
kind of Sam Raimi film--no zombies, superheroes, gore or cartoony camera flourishes--and one that firmly establishes him as
one of Hollywood's most interesting filmmakers.
SIN CITY (2005)--Directed by Frank Miller,
Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Stars Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Mickey Rourke, Carla Gugino, Nick Stahl, Elijah
Wood, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Rosario Dawson, Rutger Hauer. Perhaps the most faithful adaptation of a comic book
Hollywood has ever produced, this black-and-white sendup of films noir is shallow and dumb, but also a remarkable visual and
visceral experience. Based on stories written and drawn by Miller, who was recruited by Rodriguez (SPY KIDS) to "co-direct",
SIN CITY worked for me better than I expected it to, despite several major flaws, most prominently the atrocious dialogue.
It often sounded more like an SCTV parody of a noir; I was reminded of Harrison Ford's (apocryphal?) statement to George Lucas
on the set of STAR WARS: "You can write this shit, George, but you sure can't say it."
SIN CITY is actually an anthology of three Miller stories.
In one, Hartigan (Willis), the last honest cop in (Ba)sin City, is embroiled in the pursuit of an old enemy, Yellow Bastard
(Stahl), a child rapist and murderer who is stalking an old friend of Hartigan's: Nancy (Alba), a beautiful but innocent stripper.
Owen (CROUPIER) stars in another as Dwight, a tough guy who becomes involved in a standoff between the corrupt police, including
Jackie Boy (Del Toro), and gun-wielding tough-chick hookers led by Gail (Dawson). The most interesting story also offers
the best-developed character, Marv (Rourke), a hulking, disfigured hood who declares vengeance upon a prostitute's murderer,
who turns out to be Kevin (Wood), a super-agile, sadistic son of an influential cardinal (Hauer).
What really struck me was how SIN CITY illustrates the massive
gap in acting talent between generations. I thought the older actors--Willis, Hauer, Powers Boothe (as the politically powerful
father of Yellow Bastard), Carla Gugino (whose eye-popping nude scene as Marv's lesbian parole officer will be rattling about
in my head for quite awhile), especially Rourke--were wonderful, but the younger stars were generally unexceptional. I never
believed that any of them fit convincingly into this tough, dark alternate universe; they all seemed too callow and soft,
particularly Josh Hartnett (who appears in SIN CITY's bookends) and Alexis Bledel (GILMORE GIRLS), who plays one of Gail's
stable, but looks like a little girl played dress-up in her slutty big sister's closet. Alba is quite likely the worst
actress with star magnitude working today (now that Denise Richards has fallen onto the C-list); I thought she was bad in
DARK ANGEL and HONEY, but she's so wooden here that I'm surprised there weren't termites crawling on her. Though I suppose
it wouldn't be fair to other Hollywood actresses if Alba were able to even recite two consecutive words convincingly and with
flair, because with her looks, she'd own every major role available.
SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER (1977)--Directed
by Sam Wanamaker. Stars Patrick Wayne, Taryn Power, Patrick Troughton, Jane Seymour, Margaret Whiting. Last in the SINBAD
trilogy produced by Charles H. Schneer and featuring the often spellbinding stop-motion wizardry of visual effects legend
Ray Harryhausen (who also co-produced and co-wrote the story). Sinbad (a very dull Wayne) is engaged to be married to the
gorgeous Princess Farah (a perfectly cast Seymour), but she won't join him at the altar until the couple gets the blessing
of her brother Kassim. Unfortunately, he's been magically transformed into a chess-playing baboon by evil sorceress Zenobia
(Whiting), who would prefer that her own son take the throne. Sinbad and his party must journey to find the wizard who can
reverse Zenobia's spell.
The special effects range from substandard to pretty cool, and, despite lensing in Spain,
Wanamaker spends too much time posing his actors in front of process screens instead of shooting them on actual locations.
Harryhausen does well with a giant troglodyte and a saber-toothed tiger, but some of his other creations just aren't very
lifelike. Power is the daughter of Tyrone Power--and looks just like him--but she is pretty stiff as an actress. Of course,
she looks like Bette Davis compared to the tree trunk that is Patrick Wayne, who manages to be even duller than his Sinbad
predecessors Kerwin Matthews and John Phillip Law. The movies G rating won't prepare you for Seymour and Power's nude bathing
scene. Also with Kurt Christian, Damien Thomas, Nadim Sawalha and Peter "Chewbacca" Mayhew. Score by Roy Budd. Screenwriter
Beverley Cross (a man) also wrote CLASH OF THE TITANS and JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS. From the (usually an actor) director of
CATLOW.
THE SINISTER MONK (1965)--Directed by Harald Reinl.
Stars Karin Dor, Harald Leipnitz, Eddi Arent. Karin’s kurves are a prime reason to enjoy this adaptation of Edgar
Wallace’s THE TERROR. It’s talkier and less gimmicky than many krimis, but any movie with a whip-wielding
monk, a water pistol filled with acid, trapdoors, carrier pigeons, death masks, carrier pigeons and sexy coeds in nighties
is worth seeing. Gwendolyn (Dor) stands to inherit her late grandfather’s fortune unless her aunt, uncles and
cousin cheat her out of it. She also has a family secret to hide: her father is doing life on a murder charge.
Meanwhile, the girls at the school where Gwendolyn is staying are frightened of a killer monk that is knocking off his victims
on the grounds. Peter Thomas’ wild funk accompanies the weirdness. Arent, usually cast as comic relief,
plays it mostly straight this time as the butler.
SISTER STREET FIGHTER (1974)--Directed by Kazuhiko
Yamaguchi. Stars Sue Shihomi, Sonny Chiba. Japanese kung fu kicker "Tina Long" (Shihomi, a member of Chiba's Japan
Action Team school of stuntpersons) goes to Hong Kong to find her missing brother, an undercover detective investigating a
big-time dope dealer who wears sunglasses all the time, even during sex. Every once in awhile, Chiba, not playing the
Terry Tsuguri character from the three previous STREET FIGHTER movies, pops up and kicks a bunch of asses. I don't know
what was happening plot-wise much of the time, but I'm not sure it matters. The main heavy tries to turn the brother
into a heroin addict, and a rape takes place before the victim's father's eyes. The music is hilariously funky, and
the bad guy's army of henchmen enters battle with long, pointy, black leather baskets over their heads. Maybe I should
have paid more attention, but I had a lot of fun watching it. Fans of gravity-defying Asian martial arts battles should
love the campy fun to be had here. Shihomi is both cute and a decent fighter, but you may be wishing for more of Sonny,
who rules the screen in the few minutes he appears. When New Line Cinema released SISTER STREET FIGHTER in the U.S.
in 1976, Peter Fernandez (who provided the English-speaking voice of Speed Racer) penned additional dialogue and served as
voice director.
SISTER STREET FIGHTER: HANGING BY A THREAD (1975)—Directed
by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi. Stars Sue Shiomi. Made just after the original SISTER STREET FIGHTER—in fact, reportedly
before the movie ever came out—this sequel bears a strong resemblance to both its ancestor and the next in the series,
RETURN OF THE SISTER STREET FIGHTER. They all basically have the same plot, and star Sonny Chiba disciple Shiomi (real
name: Etsuko Shihomi) as Koryu, a chopsocky cutie who pursues evil from Hong Kong to Japan. This time, her sister is
the prisoner of a smuggling ring that sneaks diamonds into the country by surgically implanting them inside the supple buttocks
of Chinese hotties. For some reason, Yamaguchi doesn’t take much advantage of this lurid but juicy concept, concentrating
instead on a bunch of martial arts battles, which are rousing enough, but when you have diamonds smuggled inside the asses
of hot girls, I think you have to build on that. The cartoony violence occasionally reaches the ick factor for many
viewers; Yamaguchi has a yen for bloody eye injuries. It’s a jumbled, action-packed picture and a fun one.
THE SISTERHOOD (1988)—Directed by Cirio H.
Santiago. Stars Rebecca Holden, Chuck Wagner, Lynn-Holly Johnson, Barbara Hooper, Robert Dryer, Anthony East. Another post-Apocalyptic
action flick by prolific Philippines director Santiago, THE SISTERHOOD offers Cirio’s trademark brand of cheap action,
even cheaper sets, and completely senseless scripting. It opens with a pair of women in a swordfight against a handful of
male warriors, which is fine, until one of the women distracts her opponent by shooting beams from her eyes (!) and causing
a rockslide. I don’t know about you, but if I could fire explosive beams from my eyes, I wouldn’t dirty my hands
in close combat.
The chick with the eye beams is Alee (Holden, the redhead from KNIGHT
RIDER). She and her partner Vera (Hooper), who can use her hands for healing, belong to the Sisterhood, a free-ranging female
group of warriors that ride across the wilderness fighting for peace. Though there’s something relaxing about Santiago’s
familiar filmmaking (I swear he must have shot twenty pictures in this same damned rock quarry), this one rambles too much.
Santiago’s action movies, though frequently inept, are rarely dull, but THE SISTERHOOD presents no new ideas and features
too little action. It gets amusing near the end, after the Sisterhood finds a long-buried U.S. missile silo stocked with Soviet
weapons and a Filipino attack vehicle, which the two are easily able to operate.
SISTERS OF DEATH (1972)--Directed by Joseph
L. Mazzuca. Stars Arthur Franz, Claudia Jennings, Cheri Howell, Paul Carr, Sherry Boucher, Joe E. Tata, Roxanne Albee, Sherry
Alberoni, Elizabeth Bergen. This fun '70s low-budget thriller opens during a bizarre sorority initiation ceremony involving
six shapely young ladies in sheer nightgowns, symbolic pendants, a minimalist (re: cheap) set, ponderous dialogue and Russian
roulette. The blonde with the most cleavage, Elizabeth (Bergen), is killed, everyone screams, the (blurry) opening credits
roll, and the narrative leaps ahead to "Los Angeles--Seven Years Later..." The five survivors--snobby model Judy (Jennings);
cynical hooker Sylvia (Howell); cute but batty Francie (Alberoni); meditative Penny (Albee); and curvy tease Diane (Boucher)--are
invited by an anonymous acquaintance to Hacienda del Sol, a desert stronghold surrounded by an electric fence and stocked
with champagne, secret passages and deadly surprises. Accompanied by a pair of horny swingers--Mark (Carr) and Joe (Tata)--the
girls discover that their mysterious benefactor is Elizabeth's father, Edmond Clybourn (Franz), a classical flutist who announces
that his daughter was murdered by one of the girls, who substituted a live round for the blank cartridge intended for Elizabeths
noggin. Most of the cast gets bumped off in various ways (aren't you glad movie serial killers are so imaginative in their
methods of murder?) until the typical-'70s downbeat twist ending.
One reviewer described the opening sequence as "...like
Russ Meyer lensing a Third Season episode of...STAR TREK". It's funny just how right he is, and while the remainder of the
picture doesn't quite live up to the wackiness of the beginning, I enjoyed SISTERS OF DEATH despite its obvious crudeness
(there are a LOT of boom mikes dropping into the shot!). The slightly misogynic screenplay (the only character who doesn't
use her feminine wiles to rile up the menfolk is the first to die) by Peter Arnold and Elwyn Richards is structured as a whodunit
as well as an old dark house thriller, and although I thought I was able to predict what was going to happen, the script added
a few more twists that made it more ambitious than I had expected. Mazzuca, whose credits include some BIG VALLEY episodes,
perfunctorily directs by pointing his camera in the right direction and tossing in a zoom or two, but he's immeasurably aided
by a professional journeyman cast.
The late Jennings was not only sexy, but also--like Pam Grier and Roberta Collins--a
much better actress than she had the opportunity to show during the '70s; Franz was a mainstay of '50s genre fare such as
THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE and INVADERS FROM MARS; Carr did dozens of TV guest shots--including as the ill-fated Lt. Lee Kelso in
STAR TREK's action-packed second pilot--and co-starred again with Jennings in TRUCK STOP WOMEN; Tata became a familiar presence
as Peach Pit proprietor Nat on BEVERLY HILLS 90210; and Alberoni was a former Mouseketeer and child actress who found great
success in voicing Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters, including Wendy on SUPER FRIENDS.
The (OOP?) tape by Interglobal
Home Video looks and sounds okay, considering the age and budget of the film, though the soundtrack was marred by a slight
hiss that I eventually got used to. The PG-rated SISTERS OF DEATH appears to be uncut, though a brief second or two of gore
is shown during Elizabeth's killing. SISTERS OF DEATH was sat on the shelf for six years before finally being released by
First American Films, a company I've never heard of.
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