Heaven's Gate (1980)

I love a good Western as much as the next guy. Heck, I love a bad Western, too. I've seen quite a few and know my John Waynes and Randolph Scotts as well as my Lash LaRues and Roy Rogerses. You name it - chances are I've seen it.

What do I like about a Western? That it deals with good old escapist entertainment in its purest form. Good guys and bad guys, last-minute rescues, belief in God and the land, and right always triumphing over wrong. This, of course, was revised somewhat with Sergio Leone and the advent of "Spaghetti Westerns". With them came a more sinister level to the evil, and even the good guys weren't all that good. And they also celebrated the anti-hero; the guy who plays both ends against the middle (like in A Fistful Of Dollars). It was all good, evil was still being vanquished (if just marginally). And then along with "Spaghetti Westerns" came nihilism, where no one wins. Not even the viewer. The good and bad guys are all in the same boat and it's sinking fast. Usually, these had a lot of death, blood, dashed hopes and crushed dreams along with the tumbleweeds and six-shooters. And the bad guys were usually the heroes of the film. For those who were weaned on the heroism and positive qualities of True Grit and My Darling Clementine, this must have been quite a case of disenchantment.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to Heaven's Gate, a film that in and of itself created a legend that no one else could (or has) ever come close to. Not that this is a good thing.

In the mid-and-late-'70s, Michael Cimino had written or co-written some fairly decent movies (Silent Running, Magnum Force) and even directed a film that was met with critical and financial acclaim (Thunderbolt and Lightfoot). It was therefore no huge surprise that Cimino had ambitions to make The Greatest Film Ever Made (c) and prove once and for all that he was the real deal. He had labored for years on a particular film idea: the fight between immigrant landowners and the corrupt cattlemen of the Montana area in 1870. A simple enough idea, and one that may have held the basis for a better-than-average film. After all, we can all get behind the idea of the little guy fighting against the bureaucracy.

His script went through many titles ("The Johnson County War", "Paydirt") and bounced between many studios, producers and actors (Cimino even went as far as sending a draft to Steve McQueen!) and was drafted and re-drafted multiple times. This happened all through the early part of Cimino's career until he got lucky enough to pitch a different script idea to EMI Productions. That idea became The Deer Hunter and went on to earn money, win awards and give a new-found clout to Cimino, who was now poised to finally bring his long-standing dream project to fruition. Fate lent a hand when several top executives walked out of United Artists and formed Orion Pictures (which ironically folded a decade or so later). UA's new VP, Steven Bach, then took up the option for Cimino's script, wanting UA to benefit from having an "Oscar-winning director" and be a part of his winning streak.

And so Heaven's Gate came to be. Its budget was to be a comparatively conservative $7.8 million and Cimino would have full rein as director.

Now before I get into the logistics, let me explain the story in its basic terms. Idealistic Harvard graduate James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) becomes a sheriff in the semi-tamed Wyoming territory. In his duties, he comes across a plot by the Wyoming Cattlemen's Association to murder several immigrants who are stealing their cattle to survive. As Averill tries to foil their plans, he also maintains a romance with local brother madam Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert) while dealing with Association gunman/best friend Nathan Champion (Christopher Walken), who is also having an affair with Watson. And yes, that does sound more like a soap opera than a "classic" Western. But Heaven's Gate has more going on in it than just a simplistic story....

The megalomaniac tendencies of Cimino on the set of Gate are now the stuff of legend; at one point, he decided the space between buildings on one set didn't look right, despite being built to his specifications, and had both sides of the street torn down and rebuilt for $1.2 million. Shooting of the film as a whole lasted over a year and resulted in over 1 million feet of film being shot (and processed) - on average a typical film uses at most 100,000 feet, just to put that into perspective. And as if that weren't enough, Cimino also went as far as to supervise the period dressing of every person on camera, have an old steam engine locomotive transported in from several states away, tack on a prologue and epilogue to the film long after shooting on the project began (costing another $5 million) and re-shoot even the smallest scenes multiple times to make sure that he "got it right". With all of this going on it's no wonder the budget skyrocketed from $7.8 million to $44 million.

And something else - the film's initial cut clocked in at nearly FIVE HOURS AND THIRTY MINUTES (the final battle in Gate is rumored to have been the full length of a regular motion picture). Later, after editing it down to three hours and thirty-nine minutes, it was presented to theaters worldwide. Critics, naturally, were waiting with glee after catching wind of all the troubles UA was having in keeping Cimino in line (and on budget). Not that length itself is a concern, mind you, provided that the characters are worth watching and investing that much time in.

They're not.

Kristofferson acts as though he were bored stiff and suffering from a mild hangover throughout. Walken, a great actor when wound up tight, is distressingly soft-spoken and not really all that convincing, either when killing good and bad guys or professing his love to Huppert. And speaking of Huppert, her role consists mostly of stripping off her clothes at every opportunity, and not much else. And for having great actors involved like John Hurt, Jeff Bridges, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Geoffrey Lewis, Mickey Rourke, Richard Masur and Terry O'Quinn, none of them really contribute much to either the story or their characters; they simply wear their period clothes and say their lines. The best that can be said is that Hurt looks appropriately drunk through all of his scenes.

A word about the look of the film. Famed cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond made various panoramic shots look appropriately breath-taking and awe-inspiring. However, the film's overall look is simply an excuse to fill the screen with billows of smoke, clouds of dust and impenetrable fog - why bother having great background scenery if you're just going to obliterate it with opaque foreground smoke? There's one scene that isn't even all that important (it's when Kristofferson is piling a drunken Jeff Bridges into the back of a wagon) where Cimino decides to shoot in a faded brown, washed-out manner of an old tintype, which matches nothing else in the film. The editing itself is another matter; many of the principle characters aren't even given close-up shots so we can figure out who's doing what.

As I watched Heaven's Gate, I initially thought that no film could be as bad as what I'd heard; there had to be redeeming features in a film of such scope and magnitude. But that's the whole problem: this film has no scope. All of its facts are dubious (the film shows hundreds of people dying when in reality only TWO people died as a result of the actual Johnson County "war") and its characters are inane pawns that serve no purpose or conviction. This is a chess game played by Cimino against the audience in which he has it rigged in his favor. It's Three-Card Monty being played with jokers. Heaven's Gate is a failure on every conceivable entertainment level and caused the fall of United Artists, the firing of Bach and several other executives and, most importantly, a quick plummet from grace by Cimino himself (who's never again had the same control over a film nor again experienced the success of another Deer Hunter or Thunderbolt And Lightfoot). No surprise that it hasn't, to date, even earned back ONE THIRD of its $44 million budget - WORLDWIDE.

Heaven's Gate is not a good Western, not a good character study, not a good art film - heck, it's not even good nihilism. So, what is it?

If nothing else, Heaven's Gate serves as an example of what doom can be served by one man's hubris. And that in itself is a good lesson to learn, if painful to watch.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

Back in the early '80s, not many people knew who John Hughes was.

Oh sure, he was a writer for "National Lampoon" magazine and had written for movies both big (National Lampoon's Vacation, Mr. Mom), small (Nate and Hayes) and barely worth mentioning (National Lampoon's Class Reunion). Yet from these semi-humble beginnings, he became best-known for writing and directing the most poignant and funny films of that decade about teenagers. Starting with Sixteen Candles, Hughes' trademarks for the genre were teens that actually talked about their problems and the easily-recognizable types (geeks, jocks, etc.) that became more than stereotypes and ended up as real as most of the teens that watched these movies. He continued this tradition by writing and/or directing films like The Breakfast Club, Weird Science and Pretty In Pink.

It came as no big surprise that Hughes stayed the course in 1986 when he wrote, produced and directed a film about a high school senior who spent a day cutting school.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off had a disarmingly simple premise, no more nor less complicated than its title. But what set it apart is the fact that this idea became a springboard from which leapt the most honest observations and the most ridiculous circumstances. Not that the last part's a complaint, but it did foreshadow what direction Hughes' career was going to take in the following decade.

Growing up, everyone knew a kid like Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick); the one who could get away with murder and never got caught, a legend for the underclassmen and a thorn in the grown-ups' sides. For Ferris, it's not all that easy, since he has an incredibly determined dean/principal (Jeffery Jones) dogging his every move and trying to catch him in the act of skipping his ninth (or tenth, maybe) day of school this year.

But there's more to it than just enjoying a beautiful sunny day in downtown Chicago for Ferris; he also wants to help his hangdog friend (Alan Ruck) earn some self-respect in a home life where his father loves his antique car more than him. And then there's the matter of his girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara), an underclassmen of incredible beauty whom he'll probably never see again after he graduates. For Ferris, this is a do-or-die situation to help those he cares about and to give them a day that they'll always remember.

I especially like the way that Ferris will break from the action and address the audience as to his inner thoughts. This is as old a plot device as when Groucho Marx did it in Animal Crackers. But Broderick, a Broadway-trained actor, is suited to asides and makes an earnest teen (though he was in his mid-20s when he played Ferris), even when describing in great detail how to fake out your parents to get a day off from school.

Of course, as in all of Hughes' movies, the grown-ups are incredibly shallow and dense. Ferris' parents (Cindy Pickett, Lyman Ward) are oblivious to his finagling of the school system and just love him as any parent should love their child. The teachers are all in school just to teach and get through the day; most memorably so is Ben Stein as a monotone economics teacher. Even Principal/Dean Ed Rooney and his secretary (Edie McClurg) are the main buffoons in this piece; when one's not making goofy speeches, the other is performing slapstick ballets of embarrassment and/or pain. But just a minute: in the eyes of every teenager, aren't all grown-ups either an empty suit or a graceless clown? After all, it's the student who is wiser than their teacher. So Hughes isn't being obsequious; he's just telling it the way that any teenager feels it is.

And then we get to Ferris' younger sister (Jennifer Grey), a queen "b" who can't stand it that her older brother gets away with everything and has yet to be caught. Anyone with siblings of a certain age difference can certainly identify with that sentiment. Any family without sibling rivalry is a dysfunctional one. But even though her role is pretty much thankless and superfluous, Grey does a very good job.

So Hughes is observant of the family dynamic as well as the school dynamic. But as a director he also gives a bright, cartoony look to the escapades of Ferris, Cameron and Sloane; from Chicago Art Institute to Wrigley Field to Sears Tower to big downtown American/German Day parade, everything is treated like a carefully-shaded character study and sprightly Chicago travelogue, with time for a big muscial number that combines The Beatles, Wayne Newton and a German oompah band. Oh yes; we're talking about a sentimental slant to an age in life where most kids are worried about their complexion, what others think of them and how uncool they are themselves (even in youth we're centered on self-image). That's the whole message of Ferris: forget about yourself; have fun - life's short.

But is Ferris Bueller's Day Off a good movie, even with all the artistic conceit and tomfooley? Yes, and simply because of the fact that Hughes realizes the Ages of Man advance all too quickly. "Youth is wasted on the young", says George Bernard Shaw, but not so says Ferris Bueller: he realizes that youth is the only time in life you can stop and smell the roses, enjoy a sunny day, spend time with your friends doing nothing in particular and debate what life beyond high school can (and should) be. After that, the magic and opportunity of youth is gone and, more or less, it's all downhill from there. Hughes celebrates the carpe diem mentality, and so does Ferris.

And so should you, while it's still early enough to do so. Not every person celebrates that magic that is life, and fewer movies do, either.

So while the sun is shining and the grass is green, seize the Day.

The Avengers (1998)

In my review of The Fugitive (1995), I observed that if a movie is to be done based on a venerable TV show, then it had better remain as faithful as possible to its source.

It goes without saying that most producers fail to follow that sage advice.

Now, most of you will remember the 1961 TV series "The Avengers". It was a very smartly-written, funny and well-acted escapist action show featuring the adventures of British Secret Agent John Steed (Patrick Macnee), who often worked (for a couple of seasons, at least) with Emma Peel (Diana Rigg). The series itself was a hit for eight seasons and made stars of its leads, Macnee and Rigg in particular (there were many actors and roles in the series through the years, you see, but the Steed/Peel pairing seemed to be the one that people recall most fondly).

Naturally it should have been made into a movie, so conventional Hollywood wisdom dictated. Never mind that it took almost 30 years after the series ended for them to get their act together and do it. They had a great show; just build on its strengths, get actors who could best channel the chemistry and power that Macnee and Rigg so exemplified as Steed and Peel and you had a winning formula. Then, instead of making a movie about "The Avengers", they made The Avengers - a horse of an altogether different color.

First and foremost, the main idea was good and seemed as silly as many of the show's episodes: a megalomaniac British lord, Sir August DeWynter (Sean Connery) is able to control the Earth's weather and plans to make the world pay for their weather or die if they try and stop him. And the only ones who can stop him, of course, are Steed and Peel.

As most good film students will tell you, there is all the difference in the world between a movie's general idea and its final execution. What pushes a movie into the positive is a well-written story, engrossing acting and tight direction. If you're going to make a movie based on a television show that 75% of the planet is familiar with, then this equation is even more important to follow.

Or, at least, you'd think it would be.

Now, as trivia would have it, the original cast would have been Mel Gibson as Steed and Nicole Kidman as Peel. This might have worked and, just maybe, would have helped the film as a whole. But fate, intervening as it oft times does, had other plans. Instead, the part of John Steed fell to Ralph Fiennes, a man whom most will recognize as the gaunt, humorless lead in films like Quiz Show, The English Patient and Strange Days. Quite naturally, he was expected to play the part of the jovial, elegant John Steed. However, all the time he's onscreen it looks as if he's wearing clothes that don't fit him quite right,and acts as if he's afraid he'll move naturally. Not exactly a confidence-builder.

And Mrs. Peel fares no better as embodied by Uma Thurman. You'd think she could effortlessly play someone that's slinky, sexy and altogether dangerous; she'd played as much in Final Analysis, Pulp Fiction and later on in Kill Bill: Volumes 1 and 2. But instead of bringing the same qualities aboard here, she struggles with a British accent that fades in and out, manages to appear in a trance through the film (except for the parts when she's supposed to look that way) and considering a development that occurs is revealed in the first half of the film, Uma does nothing to convince us she is nothing more than herself doing the same bad role twice.

Then comes the part of Lord DeWynter. As essayed by Sean Connery, he easily bests his co-stars in terms of acting and screen presence, considering this is his worst role since Highlander II: The Quickening. Consider; this is the man who has been James Bond, Robin Hood, King Agamemenon, King Richard and King Arthur. He can (and has) played any role with a strong conviction - except for those he's apparently in for the paycheck (The Rock, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen). To be sure, he roars, yells, swordfights, threatens and cajoles his heart out as DeWynter, but never for a minute does he contribute any more or less to his role than "Sean Connery playing a bad guy", albeit with a heavy, lingering aroma of aged ham. In other words: paycheck.

There's even time in the middle of the movie where DeWynter tries to seduce a comatose Mrs. Peel by dancing around a room of his mansion, chucking her down on a spacious bed and slowly undressing her. I don't care if this is a former James Bond we're talking about here, this was just plain creepy and Connery, who's suave and charming even in his eighties (watch Entrapment for proof), comes across as a dirty old man.

But there are worse problems still with The Avengers than mere acting can be blamed for. Jeremiah Chechik was a director who started out in TV commercials and graduated to films like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and Benny & Joon. However, when faced with the prospect of directing an action-packed film, Chechik seems ill-equipped for the demand. The dialogue scenes are clumped together out of pure exposition and plot explanation for the confused. And as far as the action, many set-pieces come and go without much explanation or sense (I've yet to understand where the mechanical bees came from, or what they had to do with DeWynter's weather plot). Of course, this was edited down from its original 115-minute running time to its present 89-minute form. So, if the ebb and flow of the action doesn't seem to click, that may attribute to some of it.

The rest of the problem comes from the script itself. The main characters come, of course, from "The Avengers" creator Sydney Newman. But the remainder of the film is written by Don MacPherson, who had previously written The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones, Absolute Beginners and...that's about it. I can understand, though, why The Avengers was his last work since 1998; everything is written so slipshod and characters most of grew up with are reimagined as shoddy Austin Powers wannabes who try to replace character and plot with "style" and "attitude". Not that it makes much difference, considering how bland and poorly drawn-out everyone is. And just to make everything feel irreverent and wild (like the TV show) they threw a scene in from left field where Connery details his plans to possible investors while all are dressed in brightly colored bear suits. That's right; FREAKING BEAR SUITS, heads and all. It's like a team mascot convention gone wrong.

You know what it is; since the success of movies like Men In Black and the Austin Powers series, there have been attempts to try and recapture the same exuberance and flip attitude with familiar characters in new settings. The difference between those films and The Avengers, however, is that the aforementioned also had smarter scripts, funnier jokes and better chemistry between their leads.

Sad as it is, for a $60 million film to earn back barely over a third of its budget just goes to show that if you''re not going to bother to make the right kind of homage to a classic show, not even its most hard-edged fan will bother to watch it.

In another time, with different writers, actors and director, perhaps The Avengers would have earned back its budget and been an experience for fans and non-fans to cherish. Maybe.

What a shame it is to consider that for all its money, intentions and bungled resources, the only thing that The Avengers went to prove is that this particular Steed and Peel are no longer needed.

Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake (1975)

People, join me in giving a shout out to my main man Bill Rebane.

Not that I actually know him but, after seeing his films I feel that I can honestly say I know his tastes in general. As would anyone who has seen such magnum opuses (opi?) as The Alpha Incident, The Capture of Bigfoot and that MST3K fave The Giant Spider Invasion. It affects one's opinion of the motion picture as a storytelling medium when they see people viciously attacked by a furry Volkswagen Beetle with spider legs. In the same vein, it also affects a director's standing when the largest exposure his films get is when being heckled by robots.

Like any director worth his salt, though, Rebane never aimed low with his works; he tried to make the most of the materials he had at hand...it's not his fault that what he had at hand was so paltry to begin with. An unfortunate fact of directors with big ideas and small budgets is that corners must be cut and, usually, it's at the sacrifice of their art as a whole. The sad thing with a Bill Rebane film is that his stories usually matched his budgets in terms of smallness.

In the midst of his career, Rebane released a film from his home state (Wisconsin) that dealt with, as many films did in the early and mid-70s, a local legend. It didn't matter whether it was real or not. However, much like the regional effort from New Mexico, 1976's Track of the Moon Beast, the legend here is made up with such detail and intensity that it creates a mental image within the viewer which no one could possibly follow through on without a multi-million dollar budget and extensive CGI effects, both of which are a million light years from Rebane's grasp here.

Not to say that he doesn't give it the proverbial college try.

Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake details the story of Kelly Morgan (Glenn Scherer), a man who as a youth (Brad Ellington) was told of the local legend at his local island home of a local frog god that local indians worshipped by throwing local gold into the local lake.

The discovery of a skeleton fragment with traits of a man-frog (don't ask) brings to the island a local professor (Karen McDiarmid) and her teenage niece Susan (Julie Wheaton) to study the area. Unfortunately, the legend also brings poachers out to the island to try and find that sacrificial gold of long-ago. This all draws the attention of the crazy hermit/trapper Charlie (Jerry Gregoris), who channels Gabby Hayes and takes potshots at the poachers. Through all of this, Kelly's dad (Alan Ross), a forest ranger, tries to keep the peace while assisting the professor with her work.

But soon, people start showing up dead. Is it the work of the gold-digging poachers, is it the crazy trapper...or could it be Rana?

Rebane's story is fine; as with anything else, it's all in how it's told. The dark green mossy woods and murky, foreboding waters of Wisconsin set an appropriately eerie mood. The problem is that Rebane (as director) is ill-equipped to set up a shot so that it pays off. Even the shock scenes are undermined by the fact that there is either too long an establishing shot so as to ruin the suspense or too sudden a close-up on the payoff. Many scenes also happen in slow-motion, supposedly to heighten the shock or make the suspense more agonizingly horrific.

It doesn't work.

Then there's the matter of the mood music: expectedly twangy '70s synth stuff, and what actual orchestral interludes there are end up spliced in abruptly and don't even match up with the "quality" of what came before, sound-wise and bear little to no context to the scene (one of the poachers dies to the strains of "Swan Lake" - though he is standing in the lake when he's killed, so I guess that makes sense...kinda).

Still, all of this could have been overlooked with good acting. Even decent acting. But Rebane, budget-cutter and bargain hunter that he was, could only settle for the types of actors that make local television commercials look like Strasbergian festivals of "The Method". Much of the movie centers on young Ellington, who evokes a monotone Dennis the Menace (without the Menace), right down to his striped t-shirt and dirty overalls. McDiarmid comes the closest to pulling off a performance, in spite of the fact that her character is so ill-defined that at one point we're not even sure if she's there for the gold or for the science! But even as the most colorful character in the movie, Gregoris manages to negate his own presence by growling out his lines and twisting his face into what looks like an Old West prospector mask. In fact, he acts more like a pirate than a trapper. You halfway expect him to growl out a tale about gold and treasure in the middle of....

Oh wait, he DOES do that. Well, at least that much is expected.

There's another sizable problem and that's with the monster itself. Many times the menace lies just below the green water and out of view, represented only by some air bubbles rising up to the lake's surface. Again, this is fine; it's building up suspense and forcing us to use our imaginations as to what Rana looks like. This "hiding" approach also worked in movies like Prophecy (1979) and The Giant Claw (1957), and all of these worked right up to the same point - when their respective creatures made their first appearances. After that, well.... Let me put it this way: Rebane shows an arm here, a leg or torso there, a distant shot of the creature's head bobbing around in the algae. And it''s okay until you put the pieces together. Rana itself has the appearance of The Creature from the Black Lagoon if he had been designed by Ed Wood Jr.; big bulbous yellow eyes, rubber glove hands and a wetsuit seemingly coated with tempra paint. Not exactly erasing my memories of Ricou Browning, here.

So, Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake actually did play in theaters (in and around Wisconsin, anyway) and did no more nor less damage to the better-advertised movies of 1975 than any other regional film. One can only imagine what would have happened if Rebane actually had a budget of $1 million, actual actors and a better director than himself - and better effects, can't forget that. He may have had at least the same effect with Rana as Charles B. Pierce had with The Legend of Boggy Creek. Not that this would necessarily be a good thing, but a movie like Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake needs all the help it can get.

One final note: I noticed on the box my copy of Rana came in that it has "Science Fiction" stamped right on the side of it, along with the artwork and everything. As a classification, I guess. Now if you can explain what Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake has to do with sci-fi, then perhaps you are more in tune with Rebane's train of thought than anyone else besides he. Congratulations.

The Fugitive (1993)

There is no new thing under the sun - Ecclesiastes 1:9

There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don't know. - Ambrose Bierce

See what I mean?

In this day and age, forget about ever seeing anything that can honestly be called original. You think you've seen something brand new that no one else has done, thought of or said? You haven't; you've just never seen it before then.

Take, for example, television: every single program you see is based on something that came prior - be it a concept, a genre or even a particular type of character.

And let's not even get into the same said repetition in motion pictures. Mad Slasher films? Millions. Cop/Buddy films? Billions. "High-Concept" comedies? Trillions.

Then there's a whole other genre that combines the best of both worlds: Movies Based On TV Shows. In this field, there are a few successes (Wayne's World, Mission: Impossible, the Star Trek films) and more than a few failures (Car 54, Where Are You?, Wild Wild West, I Spy). So what does it take to succeed in a genre whose road is paved with failures? Stay as close as possible to your source material, make sure your actors are up for what they're doing and above all, don't insult the original's fans.

Most everyone will know what I'm talking about when I mention the 1963 TV series "The Fugitive", created by Roy Huggins. Its characters are engraved in the collective subconscious of those who watched the series back in the day as well as those who watch its reruns on cable. Doctor Richard Kimble (David Janssen) is unjustly accused of murdering his wife, but escapes arrest in order to find the One-Armed Man who actually committed the deed. All the way he is dogged by the unflappable police lieutenant Phillip Gerard (Barry Morse) who vows to catch Kimble...dead or alive. And after four seasons Kimble does, finally, catch the One-Armed Man and prove his innocence (sorry if I spoiled it for you).

So, when Warner Brothers Pictures announced its intention to make a movie of this well-loved series, groans aplenty from fans and armchair critics worldwide arose. Their thought: how are they gonna mess up THIS one?

Some fears were alleviated when the director was announced: Andrew Davis. Now here is a man who has made some of the best action films of recent years. It was he who helmed Code Of Silence, what some consider to be the best movie of star Chuck Norris' long career. Davis was also behind the lens for The Package, Above The Law, Under Siege (Law and Siege being highpoints in Steven Seagal's filmography) and Chain Reaction. Davis' signatures as director were intense action, smart characters, exciting stories and hair-raising set pieces: all four things that would be critical to any movie based on "The Fugitive".

More sighs of relief came when the cast was announced...or at least casting for the two leads. Harrison Ford, a man who seemed born to play the "normal man forced to action", was to be Doctor Kimble, and pursuing him as U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard (a slight name and title change, but oh well..) would be Tommy Lee Jones (with whom Davis worked with on Package). Everything was set to succeed, so did it?

To tick off from the checklist used on Davis' other films, one should make note of the story first and foremost. The Fugitive's take on Huggins' original idea (written here by David Twohy and Jeb Stuart, both alums of action master Walter Hill), upped the ante as far as emotional impact; you can empathize with Kimble's anguish over the loss of his wife as well as his frustration and confusion as he struggles to keep himself hidden from the authorities and seek out the truth. And at the same time, you're right there with Gerard as he follows every clue, searches every outhouse and doghouse for his quarry and refuses to let up for a minute in his investigation, even as he begins to see cracks around the stories he hears. What other film could make the hunter and the hunted both so compelling?

The characters in The Fugitive are smart. At least as smart as your average Joe. Credit that to the acting as well as the story. In his later years, Ford has become a more thoughtful actor and allowed himself to chip away at the macho exterior of his action personae. As Kimble, he permits some overwrought moments, like when he breaks down during police questioning at the thought of his wife being dead. His face is lined with worry, his eyes darting with fear. Later on, while he hurriedly shaves off his beard (with trembling hands) and struggles to disguise himself at every turn of his escape there is no question that, perhaps, this would be how we would react in the same circumstance...albeit, if we were as resourceful and determined as he. You watch him here and you may remember Indiana Jones, but there's no question that Ford has found a more mature foothold in the same criteria.

Tommy Lee Jones, however, is a different story. Jones seems to have made a career out of playing characters that seemed to know more than they would say, grin at their own personal observations and play little mind games with those around them. It's not fair to say that he plays Sam Gerard as he would any other character he's ever played, but it IS true. Not that this is a complaint, mind you; Jones can act rings around most other actors who try to play the same type of role (except for James Woods, perhaps) but purists tend to believe that when Jones signs on for a part, it is no longer the director's or writer's...it belongs to HIM. Seriously, Jones is on top of his game here and takes control every time he's onscreen.

There are some spectacular set pieces. The now-legendary train wreck scene (using real trains, no less) not only carries a huge action payoff but plays for all the drama, pathos, tension and, if you will, emotional impact that such a scene can possibly bring And even in such a scene, there are character motivations put into play that add to the movie at large - rare for an action film nowadays. Then there's a leap from a water reservoir that is incredible, stunt-wise, but as you watch the build-up to it you'll no doubt find yourself stunned by how much you're caught up in the moment. As the camera pulls up and reveals the plummeting waterfall and the churning waters lying in wait below, it's a supreme moment of vertigo and anticipation that, for once in a movie like this, is more than a momentary thrill.

The Fugitive, then, is a good film and everyone acquits themselves well. As a matter of fact it's safe to say that this is one of THE BEST of the Movies Based On TV Shows genre ever made. As I said before, there's absolutely nothing here that you haven't seen in other movies. Sometimes, it's a matter of style that sets different movies in the same vein apart. Other times it's the effort that's put forth on both sides of the camera. Certainly the world wouldn't have ended if The Fugitive were never made. But the fact that it was made and it effortlessly earned its way into the coveted $100 Million Movie Club worldwide just goes to prove that even if there's no new thing under the sun, it doesn't necessarily mean that some people don't want to hear a good story told to them again.

The Fugitive is that good story.

Second Sight (1989)

This review concerns a movie that most of you, no doubt, have never heard of. After you've read this, you will know why you've never heard of it.

The world of television is, as some would attest to, a springboard for its actors to the "more respectable" world of movies. Certainly the likes of John Travolta, Tom Hanks and most of the first year's cast of "Saturday Night Live" would agree to that. And there ARE the lucky ones who find success on the silver screen, yet as history will show there are more failures than successes in this segment of acting hopefuls.

In the late '80s, two of the more successful comedy shows on TV were "Night Court" and "Perfect Strangers". Both delivered solid laughs and each one had men who were considered magnificent farceurs; "Court" had the talented John Larroquette and "Strangers" had the irrepressible Bronson Pinchot. Both men had been in films before they hit their stride on TV but neither had that elusive One Big Break (c) that would make them the worldwide stars they knew they should be; something that was tailor-made just for them.

So then along came Second Sight, a film in which both Larroquette and Pinchot were supposed to prove to the world at large that they were just as funny in your neighborhood theater as they were on your TV at home.

The movie is as follows: the Second Sight Detective Agency consists of smart-aleck ex-cop Wills (Larroquette), professor Preston Pickett (Stuart Pankin) and psychic Bobby McGee (Pinchot) who contacts a link in another dimension to help the agency solve otherwise baffling crimes. They are called on by a nun (Bess Armstrong) to find out who damaged a friend's car in a hit-and-run - this escalates into a papal kidnapping plot, uncovers conflicts in Bobby's abilities and develops a romantic possibility between Wills and the nun.

Joel Zwick, the director, is best known for his work directing sitcoms, having lensed episodes for series like "Happy Days", "Full House", "Family Matters" and even episodes of Pinchot's "Strangers". That's a good and a bad thing; good because he should know what's funny with that kind of experience, and bad because he approaches all of his characters like interchangeable parts of a special extended episode of your favorite sitcom. That's bad; really bad. In his defense, though, Zwick directed the better-received My Big Fat Greek Wedding...but that was long after this.

What's worse is the direction is pretty sloppily edited. In one scene a cutaway that's supposed to take place all in one room clearly happens in TWO different locations altogether (the room is clearly an abandoned warehouse, the cutaway is to a corner of a dilapidated apartment that shows up later in the movie!); another example of this plainly shows a crew member's shadow on a manhole cover where the city street is supposed to be deserted. That's worse than bad -- that's incompetent.

Writers Tom Schulman and Patricia Resnick fashioned this story in huge chunks without any flow or reason. Some of the dialogue is just fashioned to serve as awkward one-liners for Larroquette ("Great - I've got a psychic oboe on this case.") and others are just plot threads that go nowhere, like Dr. Pickett's wife using Bobby to get lotto numbers or Bobby's psychic spasms at inopportune moments. And just to make sure this qualifies as a PG movie, your occasional swear word. Some of this poor plotting I can understand; after all, Schulman is also responsible for 8 Heads In A Duffel Bag and the Eddie Murphy mistake Holy Man...but he also wrote What About Bob? and Welcome To Mooseport. Resnick's contributions are nigh well invisible, seeing as she was a graduate of no less than Robert Altman (3 Women, A Wedding) and even wrote 9 To 5. So maybe this was just an off-exercise for them both (they named a character Bobby McGee and never went for the obvious Janis Joplin gag. Or even Kris Kristofferson, for that matter. Just another mark against them.)?

The worst fates are saved for those in front of the camera. Larroquette's charm and grace on "Night Court" are replaced with loutish abrasiveness here, talking down to everyone he comes across, and not even in the entertaining way Assistant D.A. Dan Fielding would. Remember the foul mood that Bill Murray came across with when he starred in Scrooged that same year? Larroquette must have taken the same acting class or maybe he realized just what this movie was going to end up like.

Pinchot gives it all he's got, I'll give him that, but he just ends up annoying. REALLY annoying. Dancing around like a maniac, channeling his psychic link like a constipated New Jersey-ite and trying to "method-act" his way around what a "real" psychic would act like, he tries for the charm of Balki but ends up as annoying as Steve Urkel on "Family Matters".

The support given by Pankin and Armstrong doesn't exactly help matters. Pankin, best known for HBO's "Not Necessarily The News" and small parts in movies like Fatal Attraction is too busy chasing after Pinchot and being browbeaten by Larroquette to make himself any more than a guy in the background that takes pictures whenever Pinchot overacts, commenting "This is very rare".

And Armstrong, so great in earlier movies like The Four Seasons and Nothing In Common here just plays a nun. A cranky nun. A cranky, uninteresting nun. The looks she gives her fellow cast members appear as if she could throttle everyone right then and there (Sister Mary Anger-Management). And never for a minute does it appear like she and Larroquette share one iota of chemistry, even as melted ice cream is poured over them in one scene as they embrace.

Oh, and I haven't even mentioned the special effects yet! Not only is Pinchot's Bobby a psychic, but he also has the power to mentally change radio stations, levitate people, make marble busts pop up off their pillars and force airplanes to fly right through traffic tunnels. Many of these effects (besides being manipulated by wires) are accompanied by swirly, flashing blue animation that looks to the viewer like someone drew on the film with a turquoise marker. No one else in the film seems to notice (or comment on) these swirly blue lights, though. Maybe they thought if they acted like they didn't notice it would be funnier. Or something.

Which brings me to one important point. For a comedy, this is pretty laugh-free. None of the sight gags work, the one-liners are worse than the worst stand-up act you've ever seen, not a one of these people look as though they're enjoying this chance to work together (though I can't say as I blame them) and, most importantly, when you bring in great actors like John Schuck and James Tolkan for bit parts and don't give them funny things to do, say or react to, you've got more wrong with your movie than swirly blue lights.

So, Second Sight was a tank job that spent less than two weeks in theaters, never got ONE positive review in its initial release and (last time I checked) catapulted absolutely no one into the upper stratosphere of stardom. In fact, all that Second Sight served to do was take up space in theaters until a good film came along and replaced it.

And "good", my friends, is based on inference - because there is absolutely NOTHING worse than Second Sight.

The Thing (1982)

When is a horror movie NOT a horror movie?

Let's look at that question at length, shall we? In fact, it is the basis of my entire review for John Carpenter's remake of the 1951 Howard Hawks/Christian Nyby classic The Thing From Another World, which itself was a movie version of the John W. Campbell story "Who Goes There?". With a pedigree such as this, surely any remake could only be a success.

But first let's consider the career of John Carpenter: he started out a man of vision and fire with his freshman effort Dark Star and it's lower-than-low budget accomplishments, then went on to the slightly bigger-budgeted Halloween, which catapulted Carpenter into the pantheon of "Important Director". From there his flair for composition and artistic integrity continued with Escape From New York and The Fog, both of which had their own merit and separate accolades.

When he took the helm for his next effort, The Thing, his first decision was to go back to Campbell's original source material. A wise move; the book played out like a Cold War allegory, wherein the alien could take the shape of any one or thing - so maybe the person sitting next to you was a bloodthirsty Communist/alien? That in itself would make a compelling movie, so was Carpenter's apparent theory. Keep in mind that this was 1982 and tensions between America and Russia were still high. There was another film in 1982 that made the most of that tension in Clint Eastwood's Firefox, itself a high-tech special effects spectacular.

So far, all the ingredients are there: superior source, a director on top of his game. Now what about a script? That job fell to Bill Lancaster, a writer whose last big-budget job was scripting 1976's The Bad News Bears. And yes, that's the movie about Walter Matthau coaching a little-league team. Quite a leap but hey, stranger things have happened; the script could still turn out as long as the main plot of the book was followed. Now, on to the casting....

Kurt Russell was a favorite of Carpenter's since 1979 when they worked together on the TV biopic "Elvis". Russell was (and is) an adaptable actor who can make any role plausible; he'd also shed his Disney-fied image with Carpenter's Escape as the haggard, eyepatch-wearing Snake Plissken. This seemed like another way for Russell to come into his own as an actor. The rest of the cast was all male and contained great actors like (A.) Wilford Brimley, Richard Masur, Keith David and Donald Moffat and this made sense; not only was it (again) more faithful to the book but a romantic interest would have detracted from this life-or-death struggle against the unknown.

One more thing was now needed, and that was someone to oversee the special effects. Never were the effects more important in a film than they would be here to portray a shape-shifting alien creature that could mimic anything. For this, Carpenter welcomed aboard Rob Bottin, a makeup artist who worked with Carpenter on The Fog and Joe Dante on The Howling (a personal favorite). Certainly good things could be expected from The Thing now, what with all of the ingredients in place as they were. So the film was made, then released, then....

It's kind of difficult to be charitable towards a movie where such high expectations are built up. Like the guys who spend thousands of dollars to get ringside seats for the big fight, only to have a TKO end it all a minute in the first round. That's the feeling I got watching The Thing. This is not a movie that showcases direction, acting, cinematography or even the complexity of the story.

I'll explain: For a film that sets out to be a disparate all-tough guy production set in the South Pole, it's really just a Cliff's Notes version of the book. Distrust and resentment are built up and there are personal conflicts and such...and yet for all its macho swagger and bravado, this has more to do with the men getting separated from each other when it's imperative that they stick together. THEN the alien strikes. The basic element is there, but something's happened: not one character is built up enough or has generated enough personality for us to care whether they live or die. I'm not just talking in passing, either; in its entire running time, not a one of these men (not even Russell) becomes individual enough for us to interest ourselves in their situation. This is a filmic arcade game - we might as well watch the ghosts get eaten in a round of "Pac Man".

Carpenter's artistry is also not at its utmost; set in the Antarctic as it is, this is simply empty white space with several cramped interiors. It would be good to build up tension in, but none is. There are tense, sweaty faces aplenty and the script gives them more than enough opportunity to scream and swear at each other but none of the drama in Halloween is present. There are also no unique camera angles or off-kilter setups, a la The Fog. There's not even a chance for the grim humor from Dark Star; everything is straight-faced and solemn, as if this entire enterprise was a documentary, not a horror movie.

And as far as that goes, what IS The Thing? The only clue that it will be sci-fi is the spacecraft's pre-title plummet to Earth and a couple of fleeting references later on. The only drama will be who's the next to get killed, and since that's negated by the sameness of its characters even that's lost on us. A horror movie, perhaps, if for the fact that there are more than its share of jump-scares: sudden shock scenes that will make you literally leap right out of your seat. But that isn't due to any story or artistic conceit or even the acting. Russell and company all appear too cold to do very much emoting an what does happen is divided in two styles - muted or screaming. They could have provided over-the-top acting if they were permitted by the script, but there was no chance for that because there is only one star here, and that's Rob Bottin.

The main reason anyone watches The Thing today is to dare themselves to watch the screen; this was a landmark in 1982, in that never before had such an elaborate parade of live, "in-camera" effects been paraded across the screen of a studio film. The slime that permeates the effects could almost be billed as a secondary player, and I guarantee this is the only movie where you'll see a human's and a Siberian Husky's face literally PEEL AWAY.

But if you go to films like this to watch what is essentially an FX loop then you probably already own The Thing on VHS and DVD. And I won't deny Bottin his abilities; he created all of this at 22 and was sent to the hospital soon after for "extreme exhaustion". Bottin continues to work his trade today and has had phenomenal success.

As far as everyone else goes...Russell's career didn't suffer all that much, playing second-fiddle to the effects, and he still gets big parts from directors other than Carpenter. The Thing itself did make money but Carpenter's success afterwards as a director never peaked above his Halloween days and, though he still directs, his output is nowhere near as original nor as creative as it once was. He DID have one shot to recapture his glory with In The Mouth Of Madness, but this too seems to have fallen by the wayside along with his past laurels. A painful thing to say, but there it is.

So, when is a horror movie NOT a horror movie? When it is The Thing.

History of the World: Part I (1981)

Anyone who's seen a Mel Brooks movie knows not to expect normalcy. After all, this is the same Mel Brooks who incorporated Count Basie, Grauman's Chinese Theater and chauffeured limousines into a Western.

Mel has extensive training as a peerless farceur not only from his days as a TV writer (Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows" and "Get Smart!") but as writer and director of his own films (Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, Silent Movie). Brooks is a comic of the borscht belt variety and his pride and joy is doing any and everything for a laugh, no matter how corny.

The funniest thing Brooks has done, however, is take the covnetions of an established genre (cowboy movie, Hitchcock film, silent movie) and set it on its ear. He was good at it, as his track record will attest to. His biggest successes were always considered to be The Producers and Blazing Saddles and even for comedies they had their challenging moments, dealing as they did with embezzlement and Nazis, as well as racist attitudes and bodily functions. Pretty racy stuff for mainstream comedies of the late '60s/early '70s, but they worked.

Then a strange thing happened: after Saddles, Brooks' films seemed to "play it safe". They were still hilarious, mind you, but the jokes were only kind of "mainstream" funny, without touching on any sensitive topics or embracing the taboos of his earlier successes. No one will deny the humor that he imbued in his mid-to-late '70s work but these were still nowhere the level of passing gas around the campfire. He even went so far as to influence other film makers who brought Brooks' irreverent point of view to blackout skit films (The Kentucky Fried Movie, Tunnel Vision) parodies (Airplane!, The Big Bus) and films that poked fun at serious subjects like death (Burt Reynolds' The End), but Brooks' own work was becoming sparse. Was he running out of ideas?

It wasn't until the '80s when, as legend goes, Brooks was being badgered as to what his next big hit movie would be about. Just to keep the rabble quiet, Brooks announced, "The history of the world"; and so History of the World: Part I came to be...and basically, the film is just about that - however, one should not go into a film with this pedigree for a thorough history lesson. It is, instead, a sporadic cover of various developmental periods of Man's evolutionary history.

And again, such topics are approached wearing red, squeaky clown shoes.

Written by, produced by, directed by and starring Brooks himself, History takes the same path as Irwin Allen's The History of Mankind, which started as a somewhat serious look at the same topic but instead served more as a game of "Spot The Star" than the subject at hand. Rest assured, if you enjoy such films, you'll take unadulterated delight in spotting such luminaries as Brooks, Sid Caesar, Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Shecky Greene, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, Gregory Hines, and British great Spike Milligan. There are also smaller roles filled with comics and comic actors like Ron Carey, Howard Morris, Henny Youngman, Charlie Callas, Pat McCormick, Bea Arthur, Art Metrano, Jack Carter and Jan Murray. There are even some "blink-and-you'll-miss-them" parts for the likes of Paul Mazursky, Hugh Hefner, John Hillerman, John Hurt (as Jesus!) and Brooks regulars Rudy DeLuca, Sandy Helberg and Ronny Graham. Always with an eye for the ladies, he has prominent roles for beautiful (and humorous) newcomers Mary-Margaret Humes and Pamela Stephenson. And yes, that's Orson Welles solemnly narrating as if this were as sequel to History of Mankind.

And nearly every joke, punchline, sight gag, double entendre and non-sequitor told in History will serve as a litmus test of what, indeed, can be made funny. Are there taboos? Is there such a thing as pushing the envelope TOO MUCH? Not according to Brooks, who gleefully assaults the viewer with jokes so corny and funny that he's reused them more than once in his films before and since (there's nothing like recycling).

So, this is a return to the rude side of Mel Brooks, you ask, but is it funny? Let's just say that it depends on your sense of humor and whether you like an occasional dirty joke. There are plenty of attacks on good taste here; even before the title card, there's a masturbation joke. And very soon after, there's jokes about eunuchs, virgins, marijuana and cocaine usage, circumcision, two or three jokes about urination and liberal use of four-letter, six-letter, ten-letter and twelve-letter words. If your ears can take it, they'll be burning by the end.

As far as racism goes, Brooks gives it another try as he did in Saddles, poking fun at every race, creed and color he comes across. There are the expected Jew and Nazi jokes, but also jokes about colored people, white folks, the French, Christians, Romans, homosexuals, the overweight, nymphomaniacs, virgins, pompus authority figures, leaders of society, the elderly, you name it.

Hines takes over the Cleavon Little "token black person" role but adds some softshoe, funny voices, twisted faces and the occasional cry of "the guy was dead when I got there!". If he appears a little weaker compared to Little in Saddles, keep in mind that Saddles had no less than Richard Pryor as a co-writer (Pryor was supposed to play Hines' part here but suffered from his infamous free-basing accident before filming could start). Hines gave it all he had, though, and shines throughout. 1981 seemed to be a good year for him; he also had a featured part in the horror movie Wolfen.

Yes, I found History to be extremely funny; the only complaint I had is that maybe some segments were too short (only ONE part of "The Old Testament" is featured, albeit a good one) and others a tad too long ("The French Revolution" could have been a few minute shorter). That's a mild quibble, though; there are jokes big and small, slapstick scenes galore and even time for a showstopping musical number about "The Inquisition" and its sadistic leader Torquemada ("You can't Torquemada anything!"). And enjoying the laughs that he serves up here doesn't necessarily make you a racist or subversive - certainly the shots Brooks makes here are no more nor less rude than you'd find in your typical Monty Python movie (certainly History would make a great double-bill with Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life).

Brooks certainly did it all here and showed (on a grand scale) that there were still plenty of jokes left in him. Indeed, History made back almost THREE TIMES its $11 million budget , so that should tell you something about how much people were looking forward to Mel Brooks coming back to true form.

In later years, however, his work became less and less and the films he directed ranged from slightly-to-moderately successful (Spaceballs, Robin Hood: Men In Tights, Dracula: Dead And Loving It) to virtually unseen (Life Stinks), which is a shame considering that this was once a man that the world looked to for the belly laughs to end all belly laughs. Since he's returned to his height of hilarity with the Broadway version of his classic The Producers, Brooks may yet have more surprises for us. I hold out endless hope for the man who showed that there is truly humor in every facet of life.

Even in our own History.

Time Walker (1982)

(NOTE - I'm probably going to reveal one or two spoilers during the course of this review. So, if you're one of the few people who haven't seen this movie late at night on HBO or even rented this one out of the local video place's "cheapie bin", proceed with caution.)

Is it really in a movie's best interest to contradict itself?

Time Walker is, essentially, not just a horror movie but an entire conglomeration of movies styles (monster film, suspense film, dumb campus comedy, mad killer flick) that get rolled into one big, ugly ball. You can sometimes get away with combining different genres in one film (The Bride of Frankenstein is an example of such cross-pollenation that works) but most often it ends up confused and confusing. One doesn't watch Time Walker, one tries to interpret it.

The movie begins with archaeology professor Doug McCadden (Ben Murphy, TV's "Alias Smith and Jones") discovering a hidden antechamber within the tomb of King Tut. Actually, "discovering" may not be the right word to use. The producers show a lot of still pictures of the outside of Tut's tomb with McCadden speaking over them - and they call that an expedition, but oh well.... In this antechamber lies the tomb of Ankh-Venharis. This translates into "Noble Traveler", so they say, but since I know no Egyptian I'll have to give them that one. The stone coffin (but none of the other items in his tomb, oddly enough) are shipped back to the California Institute of Sciences for proper study and display. However, upon doing an x-ray of the coffin, an overzealous student technician (Kevin Brophy) discovers crystals buried within it. He steals the diamond-like crystals and, to cover his theft, x-rays the coffin again. But due to all the x-raying going on, not only is the mummy within awakened (as one might expect in movies like this) but a strange green fungus that eats away flesh is also revived. Soon, not only are the crystals being distributed throughout campus, but people are also dying left and right.

Will the rampaging mummy get all his crystals back and kill those who stand in his way? Will McCadden discover the truth about what's happening? Will the campus president (James Karen) eventually believe that a long-dead mummy could be responsible? Will McCadden's beautiful student girlfriend (Nina Axelrod) be the next victim? Will the sniveling weasel professor (Sam Chew Jr., Serial) get what's coming to him? Will the film-makers be able to make an 86-minute film feel like a three-hour panorama through a pothole? To answer all of your questions - yes.

To look at the facts of Time Walker (let alone the cover of the box it comes in), you have to wonder what they had in mind; were they trying to give away the whole movie before we've seen it? In its cover artwork three things are prominently displayed: the moon above, three pyramids lying below and a round-headed humanoid with long fingers and a glowing chest standing between both. If you can put two-and-two together you've probably already figured out the plot (and plot twists) of this movie. Not that director Tom Kennedy would let on; instead, he proceeds to draw out the obvious twist and treat it like he had just discovered the wheel, so to speak. However, a few things have conspired to sabotage his noble ideals - his budget, his script and his actors.

This movie is the result of a budget of $750,000 - most of it going to the fog machines and the blue-lit special effects near the end. This is about as low a budget as you can get, it seems, when dealing with mummies and flesh-eating fungi. That sarcophagus alone must have had a lot of money sunk into it for its authentic look. Sad to say that it's the most realistic looking thing in the whole movie. But at least it looks like they set the whole movie within an actual college campus, so realism points go to them for that.

The script is another matter - created as it is by Jason Williams, Tom Friedman and Karen Levitt, it seems to get mighty confused as how to stage certain scenes, settling instead on gathering people together and having them read their lines. Badly. The actors here simply don't seem to have a lot of faith nor conviction in what they say (more on that later) and most of the dialogue that's supposed to be forceful, dramatic or even just conversational is delivered in a manner that's stilted and monotone at the same time. A lot of the script is scientific mumbo-jumbo combined with archaeological mumbo-jumbo and the remainder is just plain old mumbo-jumbo with some occasional swearing and an oh-so-brief flash of female nudity (this was 1982, when you could still get away with that in a PG-rated movie). Truth be told, with a little editing here and there, this could have been an "ABC Movie Of The Week".

And another plot point (in keeping with the film's changing consistency); the campus president is persuaded by the weasel professor that McCadden is the one responsible for not only the disappearance on the mummy but also for the deaths occurring on campus. Fine, but why not arrest him right off, if just to show he's innocent while the murders continue? And something else: the mummy, who is shown to only attack those who possess the crystals, kills some poor jerk custodian who happens to wander into his field of vision. Isn't that, you know, inconsistent with his/its modus operandi, to get back the crystals from those who have them, of which the custodian doesn't? And if the mummy was just killing random people, why not attack indiscriminately (like at the stupid Egyptian/Mummy frat party later on)? Why bother to ask questions that no one (especially the writers) has the answers for?

Then we get to the actors. Ben Murphy was always an easy-going presence on TV in shows like "Alias Smith And Jones" and "The Gemini Man", but he had less success in the movies. He tries, he flashes his smile and is the second-best actor here, but it could also be that a laid-back manner on TV doesn't work in movies that deal with murderous mummies and other-worldly powers. James Karen (the FIRST-best actor) is a name best-known to devotees of films like Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster and Return Of The Living Dead I and II. He's dependable and his part isn't too intrusive, making him good by default. A pity he's best remembered as "that Pathmart guy", but more people have shopped at Pathmart than have seen Time Walker, so there you go.

The rest of the cast is rounded out by deadweight (pardon the expression). Pretty faces like Axelrod, Shari Belafonte (TV's "Hotel"), Melissa Prophet (1985's Invasion U.S.A.) and Greta Blackburn (Yellowbeard) serve no more nor less a part than either 'Victim' or 'Innocent Bystander'. Brophy is okay but is barely used. You may recognize other actors here and there (Alan Rachins plays a jeweler for a few seconds) but why bother? The main thing the largest part of the cast does is serve as mummy fodder or witnesses to the lurid events.

So, a whole bunch of people die (for which a campus cop and a police detective are all the law in the vicinity to handle this, I suppose), then the mummy is found and everything comes to a head as it reveals its true nature....as an alien. Blue skin, big round head, huge black eyes and long fingernails. It looks no more detailed than your average Don Post mask (those ones they used to sell for twenty bucks in "Starlog" Magazine in the early '80s) and wears a stylish black unitard with a glowing E.T.-style chest.

Now, you may think I've ruined the ending, but I HAVEN'T! Right after the alien's appearance, McCadden gets accidentally shot by the campus cop (although he's 15-20 feet away from the alien. Great aim, campus cop.) and then, as he lies on the ground bleeding, for some reason he reaches for the alien, and then....

Okay, THAT I'll leave for you to discover. If you want to find out what happens so badly after I spent all this time warning you away, you DESERVE to watch Time Walker.

And if you walk away enjoying every last of the 86 minutes of this film, then congratulations; you have truly won your stripes as a battle-scarred veteran of B-moviedom.

The Blues Brothers (1980)

John Landis and John Belushi both have their own legacies.

Landis was an upstart director who specialized in slapsticky films like Schlock and The Kentucky Fried Movie. Belushi was a comedian who started as Second City then floursihed on "Saturday Night Live". Both men were passionate about what they did and seemed to love one thing: making people laugh.

They both seemed to hit the big time with the same movie - 1978's Animal House. It was a raucous, disorganized romp about a college fraternity that turned an uptight college structure on its ear. Ararchy was the key here: Landis could direct it and Belushi embodied it.

How fitting, then, that their next collaboration would bring both men's talents to the fore, and in a package of city-wide destruction, to boot.

Back in his SNL days, Belushi teamed with fellow comic and best pal Dan Aykroyd to put together a blues band during theri summer hiatus. Calling themselves The Blues Brothers, they actually were pretty good and received fan support and cut a best -selling album ("A Pocketful of Blues"). So, after the success of Animal House, they teamed with Landis to create what would become the ultimate in musical (and comedic) anarchy.

The Blues Brothers starts out with Jake Blues (Belushi) getting out of Joliet Prison (all this takes place in and around Chicago, Belushi's old Second City stomping grounds) to be met by his brother Elwood (Aykroyd). They are then guilte and bullied (correct terminology) by the sister (Kathleen Freeman) of the old Catholic orphan's home they were raised in to save it from foreclosure. From there on in, Jake and Elwood reassemble their old band and fight innumerable obstacles, old girlfriends (Carrie Fisher), Nazis (led by Henry Gibson), state troopers, country bands, SWAT teams and most all of the rest of Chicago to perform at a concert and raise said money and get it to the Cook County Assessor's Office on time.

From such a (semi-) basic story, Landis (who co-wrote with Aykroyd) created almost non-stop insanity, car chases, car crashes, destruction of buildings and more high-octane madness than the Deltas of Animal House ever thought of doing.

For a movie like this to succeed, you have to have an able cast. Starting with Belushi and Aykroyd, who act as though they are the coolest slobs on the face of the earth, the actors are top-notch. I already mentioned vets like Freeman and Gibson but the likes of John Candy, Charles Napier and Paul (Pee-Wee Herman) Ruebens also lend support. There are also comic turns by the unexpected like Fisher, Twiggy, Steve Lawrence and Frank Oz (just another director that Landis likes to cast in his films) that bring a smile.

But then comes the music! What an accomplishment to have so many huge names in the world of soul and blues in one film! Belushi and Aykroyd show that they have the chops with each number they perform, but they are also aided and abetted by such great ones as Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan and John Lee Hooker, all of whom bring a boost to their music scenes (which there are plenty of). Not to mention the band Jake and Elwood themselves have; many music afficionados will recognize names like Steve "The Colonel" Cropper, Matt "Guitar" Murphy, Donald "Duck" Dunn and Willie "Too Big" Hall. There are so many musicians and so much music that, yes, this would probably qualify as one of the funniest musicals you could ever see.

As far as the comedy goes, this movie owes a lot to the legacy of film-makers like Blake Edwards, whose Inspector Clouseau was destroying buildings and inadvertantly inflicting pain and agony years prior. You can see his influence, as well as that of The Three Stooges, and The Marx Brothers. Instead of having any pretense of plausibility, The Blues Brothers operates at the same level as a Road Runner and Coyote cartoon with plummeting falls, comedic collapses and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" thrown in for good measure. All that's missing is someone walking away from the carnage and making a wacky accordion sound with each step.

But what is this movie about? Music? Comedy? death-defying stunts? Toppling the pillars of decency with the squeal of burning rubber and the wail of a harmonica? Oh yes, it's all of that plus a travelogue of 1980s Chicago with Jane Byrne glowing endorsement (hey, if you're gonna destroy half a city, you'd BETTER have the mayor's okay).

Let's face it: there aere so many "important" movies out there and so many "comedies with a message" you could watch that it really helps the kid inside you to watch a movie that simply paints a portrait and sings a song dedicated to the good-old days of our youth when such supreme, grand-scale silliness brought big laughs. It's not overkill, mind you, if it gets a laugh.

In the end, this 27 million dollar live-action cartoon earned back MORE THAN DOUBLE its budget, further cementing the reputations of its creators. Oh, there would be successes later on for Landis (An American Werewolf In London, Trading Places) as well as Belushi (Continental Divide), but neither one of them would reach the same heights as they did here of success or hilarity. It's a sad footnote that Belushi would be dead of a drug overdose only two years after this movie. But then again, no better legacy can a man leave behind than the fact that he brought laughter to so many people.

And it's with that thought that The Blues Brothers serves as a fitting memory to Belushi, to Jake and Elwood, to music and to comedy in general.

See you next Wednesday.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

What constitutes a bad dream?

And I'm not asking in literal terms here, merely in filmic ones. Everyone's idea of a bad dream varies; what is scary to you may not be scary to another (getting caught in public with no pants is far different than being chased by creatures you cannot see). But putting these ideas to film to symbolize the tortured mind of a dreamer is touchy If it doesn't make the viewer scream out, then it'll most likely make them laugh.

So was the problem faced by Wes Craven when it came to A Nightmare On Elm Street; in a movie with "nightmare" in the title, he'd have to make sure this was stuff that would indeed give you bad dreams after seeing it. He succeeded, but the main reason is not in the storytelling nor in the artistry of directing itself (more on that later).

The plot, as anyone who grew up in the '80s can no doubt recite to you, is basic enough: the teenagers on Elm Street have been having horrible nightmares lately, all of them centering around steamy basements, dark alleyways, impenetrable shadows and a cackling boogeyman with razors for fingers. After the death of some of her friends, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) discovers the truth behind the horror of the child-killing beast known as Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) and why the parents of Elm Street, her father (John Saxon) included, have kept it a secret all these years.

By that synopsis, you wouldn't expect anything spectacular...especially if you were familiar with the likes of Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. After all, we're talking about a simple, jump-from-your-seat shocker without any of the psychological twists of a Silence of the Lambs or the understated shocks of a Psycho. This is more along the slash-and-chop mad killer vein from the Friday the 13th and Halloween vein, though not holiday-specific. By taking facets of Samoan folklore where children died in their sleep of heart failure after horrific dreams, and Craven's own experiences in his youth with bullies and scary hoboes, the characters and symbolism took shape, creating the movie as it is known today.

The special effects are well-done, to say the least. Over 500 gallons of stage blood were used throughout the film, Freddy's charred skin and exposed musculature is quite effective and there are imaginative deaths (in one, Freddy makes it seem as if a troubled youth has hung himself). The makeup department and special effects team are the real stars here.

And far be it from me to ignore what was put in acting-wise. Langenkamp is effective as the troubled Nancy, who grows increasingly more frustrated as the deaths mount up and no one believes her when she blames a spectral killer. Saxon does the dogged cop role once again with a dash of over-protective father thrown in for good measure; Saxon has yet to play any role unconvincingly and goes great here as well. And Johnny Depp's early role as Glen showed promise and flash even then as a teen who admits "Morality sucks".

But what review of Nightmare would be complete without bestowing the proper credit onto Robert Englund? An honest-to-goodness actor (whose biggest role prior to this was as one of the "good-guy" invaders from the TV miniseries "V") whose prominence today as "this generation's Vincent Price" is due in large part to this movie. Seen as a vile, repulsive creature with no redeemable qualities, Krueger's role can only be essayed as high camp. And as it would have been for Price in films like The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Theater of Blood, Englund pours on the gusto and gives it all he's got. For all intents and purposes, Freddy Krueger IS the boogeyman.

But as I said earlier, Nightmare was never meant to be a really effective horror film. What it does create, however, is the unsettling sense of how bad dreams feel to us (or at least to MOST of us). Disorienting surroundings, sudden peals of mad laughter, being chased by something that seems to surround you, the fear of almost certain death - these are all touched on in nearly every moment of the movie. Note that I said TOUCHED ON, not examined. They unsettle, they frighten, then move in for the kill. Not a moment herein challenges, only shocks.

That's the way it's supposed to be, though, you see. Nightmare was not supposed to be a thoughtful undertaking into the psyche of a young teen's mind and what he or she feels AND fears. That would be an entire universe removed from what we see here. Think about it; in all the horror movies you've seen made in recent years based on the mad-killer-after-teens plotline, how many can you think of that actually made you THINK about what you're being afraid of onscreen? Or at least made you wonder about what the person ONSCREEN is thinking?

Well, at least we know what Freddy Krueger is thinking. This is certainly one of those movies where the bad guy gets all the good scenes. Or at least the most memorable ones. How can you root for the good guys or hope that they survive the horrors brought forth when the horrors themselves are embodied so entertainingly?

Am I being too critical? After all, for a movie that made many times over its budget and served New Line Cinemas long and well as a multi-million dollar franchise, no one would think of straying away from a tried-and-true formula. That just wouldn't be Hollywood. And indeed, it appears that Nightmare came into a life of its own with a multitude of sequels, spinoffs (TV's "Freddy's Nightmares"), Halloween costumes, Freddy dolls and fans galore the world over. So in a manner of speaking, Freddy Krueger did just as well as Jason and Michael, if not in the same psychological ballpark as Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates.

It would take years before Craven (who went on to parody such films with the Scream series) would come back to direct YET ANOTHER sequel to his original creation. But at least in Wes Craven's New Nightmare he (and most of the original cast) hits the nail on the head while examining the joys, pitfalls and true horrors of being part of such a franchise opportunity as Freddy Krueger.

Which is, in the end, all that A Nightmare on Elm Street ends up being.

Jumanji (1995)

This movie didn't really need Robin Williams.

Not that there are very many movies that do (although Popeye and Aladdin benefited from his involvement), but just because you have a movie and you plunk down Robin Williams in the middle of it doesn't necessarily guarantee a good time for all.

Of course that wasn't always the case; in the beginning, Williams' rapid-fire comic timing and riffable nature made the TV shows and movies he was in entertaining for the fact that YES, as a matter of fact, he was quite picky about what he was in. Remember The World According to Garp and Moscow On The Hudson? After that point it seemed EVERYBODY wanted to have Robin in their films, even going as far as writing scripts tailor-made for his wise-cracking abilities. But then came mediocre (The Survivors), dumb (Cadillac Man) and downright embarrassing (Father's Day) dreck that did zero for his career, not to mention the success of said films. They could have had anyone in them. And after awhile, even Williams' effortless schtick seemed forced and heavy-handed.

It was about this time that Joe Johnston came into the picture. Joe was a director who started out as a special effects artist. His biggest success was directing Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, which itself was loaded with all kinds of effects concerning children shrunk down so small that lawns looked like jungles. But what could Joe want with Robin?

Awhile back, author Chris Van Allsburg wrote a charming little book called "Jumanji" about a couple of bored kids and their playing of a mysterious board game that made an entire menagerie of animals appear in their house, literally enveloping it in a huge jungle. Hollywood being Hollywood, someone got a hold of this property and proceeded to make it "hot" by adding Robin Williams to it. Now if I recall correctly, any parts of adults in the original book were small at best and the kids were the actual players of the game and the centers of attention. BUT...well, let's face it; if you're gonna shell out $65 million on a movie based on a kid's book with Robin Williams in it, you just don't have him put in a cameo. Do you? Apparently not. So Jumanji was now a Robin Williams vehicle. The kids? Ehh...they worked 'em in.

Here's how the plot went: it starts out kind of like the book, with two kids, a boy and a girl, playing the game back in 1969 and one of them, the boy, getting sucked down into the board game while the girl is chased away, screaming, by huge vampire bats.

...THEN, jump to 1995, where a woman (Bebe Neuwirth) and her niece (Kirsten Dunst) and nephew (Bradley Pierce) move into an abandoned house. Soon, the kids find the same game and start playing it...and who should pop out but Robin Williams! See, Robin is the boy that was trapped in the game all those years ago and...well, the rest of the story is filled with wall-to-wall (and I mean WALL-TO-WALL) special effects. Elephants charging, lions attacking, alligators snapping, man-eating plants crushing whole cars, vicious little monkeys leaping about, the whole bit.

Oh, and did I mention the biggest leap from the book? Everyone in this movie, just to open it up and make it, you know, "accessible" has more problems than any two episodes of "Dr. Phil". The 1969 children playing the game have self-esteem problems, the 1969 father (Jonathan Hyde) is a distant business-first martinet, the modern-day kids lost their parents in an accident, the modern-day boy is struck semi-mute becasue of it, a worker for the father in 1969 (David Allen Grier) has multiple levels of incompetence (implied racism, maybe?) as both a shoe factory worker AND as a modern-day cop, the 1969 girl grows into an eccentric recluse (Bonnie Hunt) who doesn't trust others because no one believes she was chased out of the boy's house by bats way back when, and.... Uh, did I tell you about the elephants?

But there in the middle of everything is Robin Williams. Something's terribly wrong here; he has no idea whether this is all supposed to be taken seriously or if it's all a big joke on the "Movies Based On Kid's Books" genre. One minute he's mugging after monkeys stealing a police car, the next he's somberly asking "Where's my dad?", after that he's trying to drive a car with Grier's incompetent cop handcuffed to it, and then he's clinging for dear life to a swinging vine as hungry lions swipe at him and crushing pythons snap at his heels.

So, is it a serious movie? Of course not; how serious can you take a movie where one of the characters is slowly turning into a monkey and Grier's inept cop is screaming and clomping around, flaccidly issuing orders that no one really listens to? And the animals; crushing cars, destroying houses, looking as CGI as all get-out. Not a thing can be taken seriously for a second, but the actors don't know that. I don't know if that's to their credit or not but it says something that they can LOOK like they're plausibly rescuing someone being sucked down into a hardwood floor.

I didn't like Jumanji for three standout reasons:

1) It completely blew Van Allsburg's book out of proportion; I know there has to be some padding in a movie where the source material is only a few pages long, but come on. Why introduce so many characters if you're only going to lock some in a closet, float others away down a flood on Main Street and simply stick others back in 1969 to be forgotten?

2) WAY too many CGIs. I can appreciate the fact that Johnston and associates worked hard in getting the effects onscreen and looking reasonably realistic, but Johnston ran into the same problem that George Lucas did with the Star Wars prequels: if you put in too much CGI, it's gonna draw attention away from your story and its characters. Though considering the story and characters they ended up with, maybe that was their intention.

3) Robin Williams. Galumphing around and trying to shoehorn a "realistic" performance here and there, he had NO reason to be here except to pick up a paycheck for a part that had no business being in the movie. So, why was he here? To sell tickets -

"Hey, let's go see that new Robin Williams movie!"

"What's the movie about?"

"I dunno...but it's got Robin Williams in it!"

You laugh, but movie-goers have seen movies for a lot less reason.

Not surprisingly, Jumanji broke the $100 million mark and made him yet again the king of movies. Of course, Williams would continue to make good movies (Awakenings, The Fisher King, Good Will Hunting) but there would continue to be missteps (Jack), miscalculations (Flubber) and gross misuse of his talents (Death To Smoochy). But hey, this is Robin Williams we're talking about; he's surely got another Garp or Aladdin in him.

...and probably another dozen Father's Days.