Waterloo (1970)

I'm about to slip on my water wings and tread on into touchy international waters with the following declaration: not every foreign war movie is good, or important...or even necessary.

And one of the worst offenders of this idea are The Napoleonic Wars.

Who cares about The Napoleonic Wars anyway?  Well, the French, I guess.  And anyone else who just has to watch anything that has Napoleon in it...or anyone with a big funny black hat.

I don't know what it is but it seems every incarnation of Naploeon "The Little General" Bonaparte and his campaign for military immortality collapses under the weight of its own subject matter.

No, you're right: movies like Time Bandits and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure had our short superior officer in it, and they were more than successful.  They were generally comedies, though.  I guess it stands to reason that any film that refuses to take Napoleon seriously is in the right.

Why?  Apparently we've been conditioned to believe that because every delusional nutcase in a  movie, TV show or cartoon is going to think they're ol' Boney, walking around with those big funny hats and their hand stuck in their shirt, the characterization of Nappy as an insane-with-power megalomaniac is a given.

Therefore, any movie that tries to take him seriously is going to fail because we - the audience - are going to go in and expect a comedy...and we're gonna be quite disappointed when we don't get one.

Oh, I've seen a couple of serious meditations on our Military Crepe Suzette in films like the 1955 French film simply called Napoléon, a film with a big cast and so well-revered, apparently, that I was able to find a copy at my local dollar store.  It wasn't very good. 

Then there was a 1927 silent film directed by no less a master of the craft than Abel Gance, also called Napoleon.  It was re-released in the early Eighties and was a smash hit because, from what I gather, of the virtue of it being a re-discovered and re-released silent movie.  Never saw this one.  It might have been good....

However, for all I know, Abel might have been able to pull off a rarity in a world where the norm is the movie that I present to you today.

What makes Waterloo such a fallen souffle?  A couple of things: for one, we have another international co-production on our hands, this one between Italy and The Soviet Union (that's Russia, for those of you born after perestroika), which has the feel of both Laurel AND Hardy directing the same short subject.  Blindfolded.

And also, the star is a man for whom moderation and restraint were just the extra-point words in Scrabble: one Rod Steiger.  Yes, he was a fantastic actor. Won awards and dazzled in The Pawnbroker and In The Heat Of The Night.  However, his casting as Napoleon Bonaparte became one of the most....

Well, I'll get to that, but right now let's get to the matter at hand: After defeating France and imprisoning Napoleon (Steiger) on Elba, ending two decades of war, Europe and Louis XVIII (Orson Welles) are both shocked to find The Bone Man has flown ze coupe and caused the French Army to defect from the King back to him.  Whoopsie.  The best of the British generals, the Duke of Wellington (Christopher Plummer), had previously defeated Nap's best generals in Spain and Portugal, but has never faced The Short Soldier himself.  With a rag-tag makeshift conglomeration of an Anglo-Allied army to lead along with armed Prussians, Wellington stands between Napoleon and Shorty's supremacy, whereas an allied victory could bring long term peace to Europe. The deciding battlefield: Little Big Horn!  Nah, just kidding - it's Waterloo...but the comparison's the same.

Now there's nothing like a straightforward war story - even historic ones can give us the quality of a  well-mounted history lesson that would certainly give students enough to take notes on in class.  And director Sergei Bondarchuk manages to give us a lavish, spacious view of war and epic battles on the scale of Gone With The Wind or Doctor Zhivago (probably more of one than the other).

The problem is that Sergei is best remembered as the director who gave the world (or at least The Soviet Union) the massive seven hour-plus adaptation of the classic Leo Tolstoy book War And Peace, technically one of the most expensive movies ever made - cha-chinging in at $100 million dollars (which was a lot of rubles back in the Sixties).  However, it doesn't count because it was all subsidized by the Soviet government, meaning they picked up Sergei's tab and everything...you know, like Canada gave their film-makers tax breaks to create masterpieces like Gas, Utilities and Falling In Love Again.

Bondarchuk, however, didn't have such a luxury this time out since Big Comrade wasn't watching and able to keep everything under wraps.  See, way back when, War And Peace was a home-team project not meant to be scrutinized for all its bookkeeping practices outside of Red Square.  Waterloo, also having to be shared with La Italia, became a somewhat more public affair, with its budget looming near $25 million - still only a quarter of War And Peace's bill, but nevertheless a huge amount for any movie in 1970, especially when being shared by The Boot Country...where would they get their money to make the next 15 peplum epics? 

Bondarchuk also co-wrote this, along with writers Vittorio Bonicelli (who also worked on Barberella, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and a pretty interesting 1986 movie about Jesus' trial and resurrection called The Inquiry) and H.A.L. Craig (Anzio, Fraulein Doktor, Lion Of The Desert and The Message...yes, I know; another movie for another time).  So along with the idea that there were three people wiriting this movie, it works about as well if they each wrote theri own version of the same story, then mixed up the pages.  Dramatic disjointment comes and goes, dialogue made up of historic soundbytes and broad characterizations make for a story that seems more like a "greatest hits" collection of scenes than an actual film.

Anyway, this was $25 million buckaroos being spent on big-scale battles, intricatlely-choreographed troop movements shown from high overhead shots, gigantic crowd scenes and armies shown in all their lavish widescreen glory, along with men in ornate uniforms and ladies in detailed ball gowns talking about various government-and-war-related topics in meticulously decorated rooms....think it made back its budget?  Nyet; over-compensation meets over-budgeting and duke it out for supremacy, and no one wins.

Thing is, we have a pretty good cast here; including such respected actors as Dan O'Herlihy (whom most readers of this blog will more readily remember as The Old Man who owned most of New Detroit or the lizard-skinned alien who helped Alex Rogan to battle Zur and the Ko'Dan Armada) and some guy named Orson Welles (who was also featured in the 1955 film as a bit player...he did that a lot).  No slouches as far as acting goes; especially seeing as how these men took their responsibilities seriously, treating Waterloo as a serious subject.  Bless their trusting little hearts.

None more so that Christopher Plummer as the Duke of Wellington: this was a good part for any actor, seeing as in real life this particular Duke had quite the interesting life with many a battle fought against those Frenchies.  Not to mention the fact that all this clash of politics, ego, detailed planning and incredible amounts of fighting, in-fighting, disagreements and final controlled chaos made up quite the interesting little story about a man who would later rise to prominence in England's world of politics and leadership.  To say that Plummer embodies such a man is only scratching the surface; after all, he could pull of being The Emperor Of The Universe in only a day's worth of performance (StarCrash) - to be an actual historical figure is a snap.  And Plummer does a smashing job.

Then we have the matter of Rod Steiger.  At this point in his life, having won Oscars, BAFTAs, Davids, Globes, Laurels, Sheckys and Lulus, there was no living with him or the over-inflated opinion of his own creative soul.  He demanded much of his films and those who dare cast him in them.  He had a craft to hone, and creating Napoleon as he does here was apparently a 24/7 job.  A real hard one too, seeing that it looks like he's on the verge of suffering a major aneurysm every moment he's onscreen.  Intensity in your role is usually a good thing...but not when it's your over-riding performance!

Don't get me wrong; Steiger does a good enough job as he dramatically addresses the troops at Elba before departing, and there are small quiet moments here and there where he doesn't say a word...but then he opens his mouth and hams out more effectively than Porky Pig, Babe and Gordy in a sausage factory.  I don't really know a better way to put it, seeing that Waterloo doesn't even care enough about its star's performance to bother keeping enough film in the camera to record him.  But I guess that's more the fault of producer Dino De Laurentiis than it is the fault of....

Wait.  Wait, WHAT???

Dino De Laurentiis produced a war history drama longer than 90 minutes?  Based on his involvement, I would have expected Charles Bronson to play Nappy, Martin Balsam as The Duke Of Wellington and a special cameo by Grant Cramer (you don't know him, never mind...).  Besides which, this is one of Dino's grabs at respectability, producing a film that has more bankable elements in it than your average direct-to-video cop action drama.  Oh, he did this more than once; look at Battle Of The Bulge, The Bible, Serpico, Three Days Of The Condor, Ragtime...oh, and he also produced Bondarchuk's War And Peace, too! 

I guess it was all because Dino wanted to be taken seriously...the man who gave us 1976's King Kong, Amityville II: The Possession, Dune and Orca.  He wanted to be taken seriously with an overblown 2-hour PLUS movie about a battle where the lead actor wanted more attention to him than to the story itself.

No prizes for guessing that this movie didn't even make back HALF of its budget.  Waterloo didn't even earn $2 million of its $25 million tab, and there's a good reason for that: being released in 1970, in the midst of the Vietnam conflict, the last thing anyone wanted to see was a movie that gave the viewer a detailed account of YET ANOTHER war.  In fact, the only movies that did well in the same time period were Robert Altman's M*A*S*H and Franklin J. Schaffner's Patton.  Of course, I have the feeling that they succeeded where Waterloo failed due to the fact that its makers realized heroism and bravado in the face of certain death is not a subject that can be taken seriously...especially when bueracracy is a governing factor.

Everybody moved on (especially De Laurentiis), but maybe not Bondarchuk and Steiger.  One of them would never again direct as large a movie as this and certainly would never be trusted with as gargantuan a budget, and another would never again have their star burn so hot.  This wasn't just a fall from grace, it was a nose dive off the Sears Tower.

Then again, maybe Steiger read the whole script all the way through first, and then realized the only way for this movie to succeed was to downplay the story.

Or maybe Rod was just a raging egomaniac who believed in his own awesomeness, no matter what the circumstance.

Either way, Waterloo had at least one thing going for it: it was aptly named.

Movies You've Never Heard Of - A New Addition Edition

 I guess I could be a smark-aleck and tell you that it would do you no good to look up films listed here because nobody else knows about them either.  But then I'd look like one of those tragic hipsters who wears glasses and laments the golden years when people sat in coffee shops and talked about the good old days when there were unsecure wi-fi link-ups and your double mocha latte was 20 cents cheaper...

Oh wait; that was YESTERDAY.

What I am here to do, though, is tell you about movies for which it is best if you never hear about them because of the endless mental anguish it will put you through when you do find them.  I'm saving your life.  You owe me.  After all, I'm the one going through the agony, here....

Okay, okay okay okay.  Enough small talk.  Let's get to the matter at hand and discuss the painful celluloid that brought you here.

Which is:

3) Nowhere To Hide (1987)

director: Mario Azzopardi / writers George Goldsmith, Alex Rebar / actors: Amy Madigan, Daniel Hugh-Kelly, John Colicos

Did you ever have the feeling that something just absolutely reeked of Canada?  Not that Canada reeks, but that is this movie.  From the first time I saw the ads for this, saw the trailer, looked at the dusty VHS cover, the only thing I could think of was "yeah, this is Canadian".  And I was right: Montreal and Rawdon, baby.

Apparently someone thought that the idea of hunting down the Marine-trained wife of a murdered Marine for some close-to-the-vest military secret would make for a smashing film.  Know who that was?  Alex (The Incredible Melting Man) Rebar - you last saw him dissolving into a puddle of special effects back in 1977 and time was not kind; all he could apparently do after dripping into nothing was use the two good fingers he was left with and start writing movies.  THIS was one of them.

Not surprisingly, this flick melted down about as quickly as Rebar did, becoming yet another casualty in a decade that was all about filling up the video store shelves.  Not one memorable moment, performance, scene or anything happens here, even with the involvement of Michael Ironside - another by-product of a Canadian film.  It seems whenever you made a film in Canada between 1979 and 1989, Ironside had to be part of it.  I think it was a sub-clause of The Cunningham/Mancuso Directive.

Amy Madigan is a good actress.  Hugh-Kelly was great in "Hardcastle and McCormick".  Colicos was...Baltar.  That's all I (or anyone else) could think of when he was on-screen.  So did you.  Admit it; if you were alive at all during the late-70s and watched TV, John Colicos was Baltar and that's that. Yeah, right: try and deny it.  Other than that, the only thing anyone does in Nowhere To Hide is remind you that this is NOT a Jean-Claude Van Damme flick.

It earned just under $850,000 bucks in its run; American or Canadian bucks, I dunno.  Suffice it to say, it was not a raging success.  Just a ragingly forgettable flick.  Plenty of them to go around, huh?

Speaking of which that's enought bad memories for now.  More saved up for next time, don't worry there....

Dope out.

- TGWD

Trending RIGHT Now (5/3/2011)

1. Shania Twain - In a televised statement that would go on for over two hours, Ms, Twain ranted and railed against someone she overheard who said that country music was "no longer relevant".  She ended her telecast by debuting a new song where her husband ran off with another woman after taking her pick-up truck and running over her dog while her daddy worked the fields alone.

2. Selena Gomez - After being announced as hostess for the upcoming MuchMusic Awards, Ms. Gomez promised her fans that this had nothing to do with her recent travels to Canada to try and find a cure for Beiber Fever.  "I felt so bad for them, being Canadian and all," she said.

3. Phil Spector - Still isn't getting "that Johnny Cash vibe" in prison; he hopes it will come soon, since he was promised a harmonica next month. 

4. Abigail Breslin - Answering critics who claim she is still too young to be taken seriously as an actress, Ms. Breslin tearfully admonished a roomful of Associated Press reporters.  To which the assembled responded, quote, "awwwww," end quote.

5. Fake quote - "Ask not what your country can do for you, read my lips and tear down this wall for the Gipper."  - Andrew Jackson

6. Manny Pacquiao - Angered about the lack of usable vowels for most modern-day names, one man is setting out to legalize the use of more than one "U" in his name.  Film at 11.

7. Thunderbolt iMac - The proposed sequel to Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, sans Jeff Bridges and Clint Eastwood, is expected to star Steve Jobs playing a dual role.  Though sure he will be able to play a character who looks like he was just kicked in the head, his secondary role may be harder since it requires him to be an invisible shape-shifting Gran Torino.

8. Credit card fraud - Today a Visa Card attempted to enter Paraguay illegally by pretending to be a Diners Club Card.  A quick trial is expected today, followed by a hasty shredding.

9. Fuel-efficient cars - Many such car models have been developed, unfortunately their creators admit that while none of them use a drop of gas, that is because they do not have engines; just big push pedals.

10. Geronimo - Though still popular with parachute enthusiasts, newer names to shout have been tried out at plane-jumping centers recently.  Dances With Wolves, Johnny Firecloud and Two-Pines-Shimmering-After-Driving-Rain tested well, but many admit that Feathered-Chief-Running-Cloud-Descending-Mountain-Through-Raging-Forest-Fire-Caused-By-White-Man's-Negligence-And-Rampant-Smug-Superiority-Against-Those-Who-Were-Here-First-And-Were-Unfairly-Driven-Off-Their-Land, while historically thorough, still killed many jumpers who never finished shouting it after 900 feet.

Seal Hunting Photos | Please Stop Seal Hunting |

The Canadian Government had opened the seal haunting season, allowing hunters to kill up to 275,000 young harp seals on the ice floes off Eastern Canada, 5000 more than 2007 despite their earlier promises of reducing this number.

Once more a gallery from Reuters perfectly describes what's happening:

Movies You've Never Heard Of - A NEW FEATURE!

Okay, kids; time for another new segment on the ol' MBZ and this time, I think it's time for a shake-up.

I talk about bad movies all of the time and no one thinks twice about it. Fine; that I can live with. So how about we talk about some films that have a twist to them this time around...

How about movies that only a small fraction of you have even heard of?

A lot of movies were released in the VHS glut of the Eighties, just in the anticipation of "hey, if it doesn't make a lot in theaters, we can always recoup when we get released on video!". This is a train of thought that carries on to this day, natch. But it was ever-so-prevalent in this time period because, wouldn't you know it, not every producer took into consideration the fact that their movie would not do well on video rentals if it stunk bad enough in theaters.

But to video it came...and went. Usually in less than two or three months. Then it would be sitting there, collecting dust on the rental store shelf, its cover fading in the sun to a bluish-turquoise hue that all of those video covers eventually turned. Can I get an "amen", brothers and sisters?

Thank you.

And now to my first choice:

1) The Virgin Queen Of St. Francis High (1987)

director: Francesco Lucente / writer: Francesco Lucente / actors: Joseph R. Straface, Stacy Christensen, J.T. Wotton

In the history of Porky's-themed ripoffs we as a race had gotten thrown upon us since Bob Clark's game-changer, so many other versions have been made that it's a losing battle trying to catalog them. There's a lot, let's just say - and they're all pretty much the same.

This movie, however, coming as Porky's did from the sunny shores of Canada, gave us yet ANOTHER story about ANOTHER group of teens who have thoughts about sex and have ANOTHER slapstick series of misadventures...but this time there's a twist.

These kids are all really teenagers. Not college students pretending to be teenagers, but TEENAGERS.

Not that this helps the acting; I still felt like I was watching the neighborhood kids with a video camera.

Unfortunately, they are also stuck doing a script that is so dumb and so out of the game as far as laughs, sex, or even the prerequisite nudity expected in such films goes (these ARE teenagers, after all - my goodness, you want nude teens, you child molesters, you???) that it was barely a blip on the radar.

A few scant TV ads later. late at night on the USA Network , and it was gone. I don't think it even showed at any theaters in MY neck of the woods - heck...we even got Inchon shown here, but not The Virgin Queen Of St. Francis High? What's wrong with THIS picture?

Still, it's not like it's the best picture to watch. In fact, go watch it now and see if I'm wrong. It's on YouTube right now. Go look it up and watch it yourself. Coward! Double-dog-dare ya! Go on!

That's all for this installment. I'll see what I can scratch up the next time...just as a warning, it won't be a good one.

Gee, I feel like I'm doing a spot for the Ad Council.

Dope out.

- TGWD

Lake Huron : World's Third Largest Lake : Photos and Details

Lake Huron is the third largest of the lakes by volume with 3,540 km3 (850 cubic miles) of water. Its average depth is 59 meters (195 feet) and its maximum depth is 229 meters (750 feet). The Saginaw River basin is intensively farmed and contains the Flint and Saginaw-Bay City metropolitan areas. Saginaw Bay, like Green Bay, contains a very productive fishery.





The Lake Huron Binational Partnership effort focuses on pollution reduction activities in areas of obvious importance, such as Areas of Concern (AOCs), and directly pursues on-the-ground activities to protect areas of high-quality habitat within the Lake Huron basin. Existing stakeholder and agency forums are used as much as possible to support the goals of the Partnership. The Partnership maintains a close association with the Remedial Action Plan efforts in AOCs, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s Lake Huron and Lake Huron Technical Committees, the State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference (SOLEC), and domestic efforts that support the Partnership.

Visiting Hours (1982)

Sometimes when you're watching your Mad Slasher movie of choice and find yourself examining the storyline, you'll discover strange thing start to happen: you realize that no matter the unique trappings (high-rise building, cruise liner, summer camp, coal mine, high school), you've seen this story before.

It's not deja-vu, it's the fact that they can tell as many variations on a theme as they want but, basically, it's the same thing.

Back story, present-day setup, slow-but-steady murders (some of them under unusual circumstances), false alarms, final showdown, killer strikes multiple times, final victim strikes back, killer dies (or DO they?), horrified survivors' faces, stinger, fade out.

Sound familiar? It should if you've seen a Friday the 13th, Halloween, Child's Play or any variation or sequel thereof. I've written about them here more than once and taken into consideration the various differences in story - if they're there - but they are the same thing. Just a different shadowy killer, is all.

Now, remember back in the late Seventies/Early Eighties when they had the predecessor to the Friday the 13ths and such? These were slasher movies still, but they exclusively featured men and their masochistic killer instincts they practiced solely on women. Titles like Don't Answer The Phone, Don't Go In The House, Don't Go In The Woods, Don't Walk In The Kitchen With Those Muddy Feet, Don't Talk With Your Mouth Full and others made for a full plate for feminist protesters everywhere. And they were out there, believe me; protesting the fact that men were out there killing women - young and old - all over the place on the big screen. (okay, maybe I made up a couple of those, but you get the idea...)

In fact, the most infuriating thing for all these protesters about this entire sordid enterprise was that in every instance of these movies, the victim (the FEMALE victim) is shown to be weak, helpless, easily frazzled, and even-more easily victimized.

Is that a problem, you ask? I'll let you pose that question to a woman and then you get back to me.

In the meantime, let's go to 1982: dozens of variations on this theme have passed, millions raked in and even more were on the way. But it was about here that they (studios, producers) thought they could dress up the genre a bit. Yeah; dress up a movie about murdering women. A year earlier Paramount Pictures released The Fan with no less a victim than Lauren Bacall, and co-stars such as James Garner and Maureen Stapleton along for the gory ride. So with this in mind, 20th Century Fox went the same route and infused their sleazy little slasher with vitamin Lee Grant and an extra fortified shot of William Shatner!

The film was Visiting Hours, it was set in a hospital for the most part and, in spite of the cast and setting (and its strict adherence to The Cunningham/Mancuso Directive), gave us...say it with me...the same old thing.

Killer plot coming through: Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant) is a controversial TV journalist, whose feminist views and championing of battered women and their rights upsets the wrong man. A homicidally-deranged woman-hater, Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside) has hated women since a traumatizing incident from his youth turned him against...well, women in general, I guess. So he breaks into her home, kills Deborah's maid and nearly succeeds in killing her as well. Somehow, Deborah manages to survive the attack and is rushed to the city hospital. Realizing she is still alive, Hawker sneaks into the hospital with the goal to kill her once and for all. It all leads up to a climax where dark hospital halls, lots of sharp objects and blunt force trauma all figure in a battle to the death....

Now I'm not against violent movies in general. Not if we have a good story to carry it along. There was reason for it and reason to follow it through in Charles Bronson's classic meditation on capital punishment Death Wish. The Class of 1984 was not necessarily a movie I liked but I appreciated everything it managed to come across with and how it told a very tightly-knit revenge story. Even a movie like Sleepaway Camp told us the same thing but did it with all its cliches in check and certainly did it with a fascinating twist. The problem with Visiting Hours is that this is a story that only fits in the same mold as its early 1980 brethren.

We've had films in what is called the Mad Slasher Golden Age such as My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday To Me, Mother's Day, Terror Train, The Prowler, Maniac, The Burning, Silent Scream, Final Exam, He Knows You're Alone, Schizoid, When a Stranger Calls...there's more, believe me. And all of them do the same thing that Visiting Hours does, just all in their own varying degrees. It's kind of like saying that they're all car crashes - just this one's a Chrysler, that one's a Ford, this one here's a Yugo...understand?

But seeing that I'm getting ahead of myself, let's backtrack: director Jean-Claude Lord is a native of Canada (surprise!) and at least TRIED to get a giallo vibe going here, what with Hawker's penchant for photographing his dying victims and assembling these pictures in his home and the doom and gloom all being very shadowy and artfully positioned, at least, in spite of the blood and gore. After all, this is the man who gave us a sequel to Eddie and the Cruisers (a fave movie of mine), so I'll let him slide.

The writer, however, one Brian Taggert, is an unadulterated hack who seems to know nothing about writing aside from assembling cliches and cliched dialogue like a Mad Libs page. He's also responsible for Of Unknown Origin (another killer rat vs. man movie), The New Kids (another Sean S. Cunningham kids and killing movie - from 1985!!!), Wanted: Dead or Alive (another "TV-to-movie" effort), Poltergeist III (another Poltergeist sequel), and Omen IV: The Awakening (another direct-to-TV Satanic movie sequel). Feeling warm fuzzies yet? Must be your bunny slippers, champ....

Not a one of these actors invest their parts with anything that could conceivably be called a performance. Grant is an actress, an honest-to-goodness actress who has been in such fine examples of the art as Detective Story, Buona Sera Mrs. Campbell, In The Heat Of The Night, The Landlord, Shampoo and Plaza Suite. Of course, she's also been in latter day efforts like Airport '77, Damien: Omen II, The Swarm, When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?, The Mafu Cage and Charlie Chan And The Curse Of The Dragon Queen. She's had bad times onscreen and though she at least fights back some here, she's more of a symbol than a character. I'll get to what I mean in a second.

Williams Shatner (a nice slice of prime Canadian ham, himself) plays William Shatner. Looking for everything like a man who had some free time in-between episodes of "T.J. Hooker", Shatner offers his face, his acting and his toupee to the service of the script as the TV producer/romantic interest of Grant's character. And while it's always good to see him do his thing, this is more like a walk-through than a walk-on.

Michael Ironside (another Canadian? what IS this??) has based an entire career on being a violent thug and it's worked quite well for him. A career stretching from 1977 on, Ironside has given us violent henchmen, violent ESP practitioners, violent alien overlords, violent generals, violent sheriffs,violent detectives, violent majors, violent inspectors, violent colonels, violent doctors, violent video game voices...let's face it, he's just good at being violent. And it's not like he has the shrinking violet part. He gets to chase women around while wearing their jewelry and nothing else, grind his forearm in broken glass, glower menacingly and have flashbacks - it's not his fault that he has both the most showy part in Visiting Hours and the most thankless. Being a misogynistic murderous loner lout has its perks but being sympathetic isn't one of them.

Linda Purl, a familiar character actress from TV and movies, plays a sympathetic part as a hospital nurse/future victim, but she also suffers the same fate as most every woman who has more than five minutes of screen time in this movie: she will be stalked, threatened, victimized, endangered and attacked. All the while her acting will consist of worried looks, sweats, wide eyes, cowering, whimpers, screams and gasps and little else. Too bad.

The astute Canuck-watcher will also recognize Harvey Atkin in the cast: he of the big mustache, big glasses and expressive face whom you no doubt will remember as Morty (not Mickey) from 1978's Meatballs and a whole slew of other things. Not that he does anything noteworthy here, but just to let you know: this movie has Harvey Atkin in it. So there you go.

Now, what I said about Grant being a symbol instead of a character: she represents the fiercely independent woman of the early Eighties who has ideas, ambition and a strong sense of self. This was, of course, the biggest threat to the men in the movie (not only the antagonist, but ALL the men) and made her both the main character AND the main victim. Think about it: movies like have to have at least one woman in it that stands up to the men, proves she is their equal if not better and that, in and of itself, makes her a threat to all bastions of masculinity that must be conquered and vanquished.

That is not only a symbol in whatever movie like this you choose, but also for the viewer (male or female) to focus on and realize that, if any woman dares act too independent in a male-dominated world, she will pay the price. That sounds more than a little Cro-Magnon-ish but isn't that basically what it all boils down to? And once the independent, assertive woman gets chased and threatened, she turns into a crying, whimpering, cringing weakling, losing every thread of character she had only a few scenes before. It's happened more than once and it sure does happen here.

I realize I'm starting to sound like an old Siskel and Ebert review for something like Eyes of a Stranger or Mother's Day but the fact that Visiting Hours does nothing more interesting than retell a familiar story with no twists other than different people and different setting belies the weakness of these movies: if all you're going to prove in your movie is that women automatically become weak and cowering when pitted against a male aggressor, then all you're doing is reinforcing decade upon decade of static cliches without even bothering to make a difference in what you show.

That was the difference in movies like 1978's Halloween and even the later Scream movies: at least they didn't give us the same thing. They gave us women that thought, were resourceful, clever and bothered to establish characters that made you actually invest yourself in their situation and care about what happened to them. That's why the patron goddesses of this genre are names like Jamie Lee Curtis and Neve Campbell.

Now as far as this goes, I know I'm going to get some feedback on this along the lines of what a great movie Visiting Hours is, how great the cinematography is, how awesome and menacing Ironside is as the killer and how perfect a character we have in Lee Grant. Fine. Have at it. All I can do is tell you that this is NOT the rose-colored classic you think it is. There's a lot to be said for revisiting the past, but not when it makes you question why you thought the movie in question was a classic to begin with.

I didn't like Visiting Hours, not even when it first came out. You just feel unclean watching something like that that tries to fool you into thinking you're watching something not only artful and creative but - dare I say - different. In reality, all Visiting Hours ends up becoming is one of many; a patchwork affair made from different rotted fabrics. If that's what you choose to watch, by all means do.

Just don't blame me if you've seen this story before. It's not like you weren't warned.

Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare (1987)

When it comes to horror movies, everyone gives game-changers like Psycho (1960) and Halloween (1978) a lot of flack for being responsible for giving us, the unprotected viewers, untold variations-on-a-theme. As a matter of fact, if it wasn't for those two films, most of the "HORROR" sections in the movie rental stores of my youth would be empty.

There is another film, however, that doesn't get as much flack for bringing many wannabes to the movie/video arena...but it should.

And that film, ladies and germs, is The Evil Dead (1981).

Think about it: if not for Sam Raimi's classic, any fledgling film-maker wouldn't have a basis for getting his or her foot in the door to show what kind of talent they have. This was a blueprint for films like Roger Evans' Forever Evil (1987), Michael Mfume's Ax 'Em (1992), Jason Stephenson's Off the Beaten Path (2004), Brett Anstey's Damned by Dawn (2009)...and no, you've probably never heard of many of these films.

After all, what can you expect; some of them went direct-to-video. Others still went direct-to-obscurity.

Then we have John Fasano.

Who, you ask?

Well, to be fair, he has been better known as a co-writer for films such as Another 48 Hrs. (1990) about Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte re-teaming, Darkness Falls (2003) about the Tooth Fairy, and Shauna: Every Man's Fantasy (1985) about...well...go ask your parents about that one. But for the purposes of this review, John is also a director who created a little film about rock and roll and nightmares. Named...appropriately...Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare.

How can we tell this is a true rock and roll movie? Because they only used one letter from "and" for the title, and replaced the missing letters with apostrophes - more rockin' that way, you know.

And it also was written by and stars someone who should be a legend in modern-day motion pictures. This man's name is Jon Mikl Thor, one of Canada's sons and the main reason anyone nods their head in head-banging fashion whenever Vancouver is mentioned.

What does any of this have to do with The Evil Dead, though? Glad you asked - let's get to the plot:

At an old Canadian farmhouse, a typical Canadian family mysteriously disappears at the hands of unseen Canadian forces which approach from low swooping camera angles outside. Coincidence? Prolly. After which, a van full of Canadian rock 'N' rollers, led by John Triton (Thor), arrive at same-said farmhouse, pile into the house and prepare to record their rockin' Canadian music in the adjacent Canadian barn, retro-fitted with Canadian recording devices. What follows is the appearance of various rubbery Canadian demons, which make various Canadian musicians and groupies and hangers-on possessed, force them to disappear and so forth until only one of them is left, and must do battle with the one responsible for the horrific Canadian goings-on.

In a basic description like that, one would think that this is, indeed, just another Evil Dead rip and leave it at that. Well, you're right on that count, because this IS just another Evil Dead rip - Canadian-based at that, per The Cunningham-Mancuso Directive. However, you have to understand that there are a few things that make Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare a horse of a different color.

First and foremost is the direction. Fasano doesn't have the quick skills of a Sam Raimi and so misses an opportunity to make with the quick camera cuts, different angles and comic-book-style lighting, like an issue of "Tales from the Crypt". Seeing how this was Fasano's first directorial attempt, I guess we can chalk it up to freshman jitters. Of course, the interminable van ride to the farmhouse is enough to make you think Harold P. Warren forgot to put the title sequence into THIS movie, as well (Obscure Movie Reference #72 - you're welcome).

Next we have the script itself. As written by Thor (Jeez; every time I write this guy's name, I picture him with a Viking helmet and swinging a hammer around...), we get characters that serve no real purpose other than victims, lame-joke reciters and a plot that, as far as story goes, is pretty routine. Except, of course, for one plot twist by the end that not only comes out of left field, but comes out of left field riding a brontosaurus, firing a laser cannon and singing "The Immigrant Song".

The effects are another matter. You'd swear that the effects crew must've gotten a sweet deal from Canadian Rubbers and Textiles for all the little rubbery demons and mutants that crawl around the film, especially at the end when the End Boss comes around...which is something one must see to believe. Or maybe that's too high a price to pay. Anyway....

Now we come to the acting. I guess we get what we expect from a movie named Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare. Thor heads up the cast and, like everyone else we see, at least has the big hair and glam Eighties wardrobe one expects for a flick from this era. No one really has much conviction in their dialogue, which makes it hard to accept when geeky manager Phil does his comic relief simpleton act or groupie girlfriend Randy grabs her breasts to indicate her want for male companionship (let's just say) or when Stiggy....

Okay, gotta stop here and mention Stiggy at length. The actor's name playing him is Jim Cirile, he's only acted in two movies, he now owns and operates a movie script evaluation website and, as this character - who is supposed to be Australian - has what must be the absolute worst Australian accent this side of Yahoo Serious. At least Yahoo's originally Australian, though. Cirile grates on the nerves, his voice puts teeth on edge and makes small dogs sterile and makes you long for the subtlety and charisma of a nice young soccer hooligan. In short, Cirile gets my vote for worst actor ever. Ever.

Back to the movie now: At no point in this flick does the viewer expect or get anything more than an Evil Dead goof with Canadian ham aplenty and lots of "rock" songs (see the quotes, there?) throughout courtesy of our boy Thor. Songs like "(You Give Me) Energy" and "We Live to Rock" make you long for the days when bands like Ratt and Quiet Riot roamed the countryside freely, but do very little for setting the tone of what is supposedly a horror movie.

Just a minute, though: IS Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare supposed to be a horror movie? What with the abundance of comedy relief from every other character, the laughable demon puppets, stupid characters doing stupid things and the aforementioned denouement that will quite literally leave you staring with slack-jawed incredulity at your TV screen, this thing has more laughs that NBC Thursday Nights. You don't imagine that this was written, cast or directed with the firm conviction of scaring people. Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare looks to have been written with crayons on the side of a circus tent. Really.

This may be a bad film, but it's a bad film I can certainly get behind. When you watch Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare, all you find yourself thinking is, "who comes up with this crap?" Quite rightly too, all things made known.

Thor may not be that well known in general, for his music nor for his acting, but at least with Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare, he has given the world something to marvel over. Maybe not regard with the same kind of awe as a Bruce Campbell or a Vincent Price, but in a movie with rubber killer starfish and one-eyed gape-mouthed demon lumps with troll hairdos, you take what you can get.

My advice to you: find yourself a copy of Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare and, whatever you do, make sure you're sitting down for the last 30 minutes to make sure you are prepared for the most amazing ending to an Evil Dead ripoff ever. I mean it: you will be floored. And that's not the kind of comment I just throw about lightly. And don't you dare go on moviepooper.com and see what the ending is: get the movie and see for yourself - you won't be disappointed.

However, if you're a fan of The Evil Dead or Sam Raimi...you may very well be disappointed.

Maury Chaykin Dead at 61.

One of Canada's boys, and also one of Canada's leading character actors.

He started a career in the mid-Seventies and from there had consistent work in movies as well as television, won awards and quickly became one of those "Oh Yeah, THAT Guy" guys whom you recognize from everything he'd been in but just couldn't place his name.

And why not; he'd not only been in dozens upon dozens of conspicuously Canadian productions (The Kidnapping of the President, Nothing Personal, Mrs. Soffel, Def-Con 4) and some rightfully-regarded "big" pictures (Dances with Wolves, Twins, WarGames, My Cousin Vinny) but also some very recognizable B-movies, too (Meatballs III, Curtains, Of Unknown Origin, Cutthroat Island). All in all, quite a resume'.

And the best way I can think of to pay homage to the man is from his scene in WarGames - the "Mr. Potato Head" scene.



Rest in peace, Maury.

Dope out.

- TGWD

Star Odyssey (1979)

It's no secret that other countries love our movies - or rather they love the success our movies have and want to emulate same for their product. That's not jealousy; that's good business practice.

I know I've told all of this before, but this is where our bigger chunk of ripoff b-movies come from: oversea. Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, South Africa, India, Australia, Korea, Japan...you name the country (or continent) and odds are there are at least two or three cheapo exploitation-ish movies based on an American better.

And whilst on this tangent, there is no more prime a launching pad for this equation than 1977's reason for being, Star Wars.

This was such a successful, gargantuan blockbuster that its legacy stretched far beyond the Seventies and exists strong and solid to this day. And believe me, I've got the reviews to back it up.

Why should it be a surprise that almost every other country in the world wants a slice of this pie? Let's forget for a moment about our own country's liberal prowess in feasting on our own children with films like Battle Beyond the Stars, Battlestar: Galactica and The Black Hole. We're just that way. Just look then at Dunyayi kurtaran adam - aka: Turkish Star Wars (Turkey), Os Trapalhões na Guerra dos Planetas - aka: Brazilian Star Wars (Brazil), StarCrash (Italy), H.G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come (Canada - what?? It's another country...), Message from Space (Japan), Star Odyssey (Italy), and how about...

Uh, hold on here...wait a sec....

Okay, Italy: looks like someone's been double-dipping.

Guess I can't really blame Italia for visiting the well more than once. If you're gonna try and make a few bucks, might as well try it as many times as you can. Star Odyssey is an odd duck, though, in the respect that it fails outright at everything it does. It's not a good science fiction movie, it's not a good ripoff, it's not a good special effects extravaganza, it's not a good character study, and if it was trying to be a spoof of Star Wars and/or science fiction in general, it sure failed at that, too.

This movie failed so badly, in fact, that it more than invites humanitarian aid packages for everyone involved - if just out of pity.

Okay, (deep breath) the plot:

An evil Darth Vader-wannabe whose most evil feature is that he looks like he fell asleep in a waffle iron (so we'll call him WaffleFace) buys Earth in an intergalactic auction populated by "aliens" in Don Post masks and long flowing robes. WaffleFace plans to enslave all of humanity to do his bidding, like any right-thinking villain who looks like the breakfast special at Denny's would. The only way he can succeed, however, is to kidnap a bald scientist (in long flowing robes) by using his hundreds of gold androids in Dutch Boy haircuts. Mwah-ha-ha-ha, indeed.

Clearly, WaffleFace must be stopped and the only way to do so is by gathering the bald scientist's ex-team to protect both him and the earth. And not just any team; we're talking about a team that consists of Lyle the Effeminate Heterosexual, Sigourney Weaver with four levels of hotness removed, a ballet-dancing thin guy who boxes robots and jumps all over the place, a gambler who wants for everything to channel Vic Morrow and likes to wear his special-made Spider-Man 3 shirt, a husband and wife scientist team who play it like bored New Englanders and two duck-faced robots with suicidal tendencies.

This isn't a motley crew of heroes; they're just motley.

That's the premise and, just maybe, this might have worked. Many things were against it already, though, and not the least of them was having a director at the helm the likes of Alfonso Brescia. This guy - he's the Italian equivalent of Ed Wood. he directed Italian westerns, Italian superhero flicks, Italian gladiator movies, several Italian skin flicks and a handful of Italian sci-fi. He's choppy, inconsistent, blocks poorly, never follows through from one shot to the next and STILL had a career that spanned three decades.

Brescia co-wrote this beauty with Massimo Lo Jacono and Giacomo Mazzocchi, whose only other collective writing effort was in the 1977 sci-fi tragedy Battle of the Stars, which ironically was also co-written and directed by our boy Alfonso...along with some chap (or paisano, in this case) named Aldo Crudo (Crude-o? Cruddo?). Same difference; that movie sucked too.

Back to Star Odyssey; like most every other movie on this blog, it has a few alternate titles: Sette uomini d'oro nello spazio, Captive Planet, Matka tuntemattomaan, Metallica, Odissea solitaria and Space Odyssey...just in case they could get the same poor stupid rubes to watch the same movie twice, just under a different name. It happens.

A word about the editing in this movie. It sucks. Okay, that's two words. Mariano Arditi is someone else who had a long career in Italian film, but apparently it's who you know. Not only are some scenes so choppy and disjointed that an outer space dogfight cuts to a gathering of aliens then to a credit sequence in a manner that puts the viewer at risk of whiplash, but others are so long and dragged-out that you find yourself begging for some interesting cutting, just to spice things up. The only thing worse than overactive editing is NO EDITING. In Star Odyssey, you get both.

Oh, and don't expect light sabers; just aluminum sword cutouts with fluorescent paint on them. That's all you get. Thought I'd better point that out ahead of time so you don't get disappointed.

I'll take a guess that this was supposed to be a spoof of the Star Wars school of storytelling, if only because of the acting. I refuse to name any of the actors, if only so they can somehow come forward and humiliate themselves by admission to their association with this lumbering dollop of waste.

With the blue-suited heroes in black turtlenecks planting their fists on their hips and standing with legs apart to spout off ridiculous lines like "The electro-magnetic discharge won't be violent enough!" - the waddling duck-bots who bicker like an old married couple then compose love poems to each other like "Passion in a Printed Circuit" - the bald scientist who grabs his head and tries to mentally battle WaffleFace in terms of facial overacting (and wins on points, at least) - topped off with an outer space dogfight that seems to last twice as long as everything else we've just witnessed, you have the top vote-getter in the absolute most incoherent, poorly-staged, badly-acted and dismally photographed film ever put on a theater screen since...well...ever.

Do our intrepid fighters (please don't make me call them "heroes") defeat WaffleFace? Will Earth be saved? Will there be a twist ending that isn't so much of an ending as it is just twisted? Do the duck-bots follow though on killing themselves? Will anyone else appear wearing long flowing robes? Were you really paying attention to the plot? Does any of this matter? Why the hell am I reviewing this thing?

Look, this movie is bad. Let's just leave it at that. If you insist on watching Star Odyssey after being warned away so heavily, then you have no one to blame but yourself for all the anguish you're about to unleash. Period. Go ahead; watch it and consider yourself cursed.

I see that Italy also released another Star Wars ripoff around the same time called The Humanoid (L'umanoide), which starred Barbara Bach and Richard Kiel.

Triple-dipping now, huh Italy?

I've tortured my brain enough for one night. If you want to experience any more of a movie the likes of Star Odyssey, eat pickles and ice cream then bang your head against a wall - same results.

My Bloody Valentine (1981)

My BLINE!

Sorry, just thought I'd start my review with an obscure in-joke.

Anyway, this is yet another mad slasher movie set during yet another holiday where yet another masked killer is killing yet another gaggle of stupid teens yet again.

What's the difference this time, you may ask?

Same crap, different holiday.

Lessee: Halloween came out in 1978, meaning that the rest of Hollywood had to scramble fast to climb onto the blood-soaked bandwagon and rake in the bucks to cash in on something before its time went by. And for the years to follow Halloween, they sure did that.

Figures, though; they did the same thing with musicals, with documentaries, with 3D movies and with Burt Reynolds movies. And all of those things came and went pretty quickly (apologies to Burt, but it's true), but like all things, they come back around every so often for a renaissance for a few months or so. Except maybe for one of them; hang in there, Burt....

Mad Slasher movies, though, have always been and always will be around because they can be made cheaply, cast inexpensively and rushed through and turn a profit. Most of them can also be marketed almost entirely by word-of-mouth. And when it comes to premise, a lot of them can be summarized by five words:

Mad killer strikes during holiday.

And so it came to be we had Friday the 13th, Mother's Day, Silent Night Deadly Night, New Year's Evil, April Fool's Day, Happy Birthday to Me, The Hand (oops...I was thinking of Palm Sunday there...nevermind) and so on, some of which had sequels, others which were so slipshod and under-developed that they were lucky to get the one shot they got.

So it only makes sense that almost every holiday would get its own representation in the horror genre. Bringing us logically to Valentine's Day.

Now hold on: Valentine's Day was a holiday that came about in 500 AD when then-Pope Gelasius I established it in honor of the early Christian martyrs, many of whom were named Valentine. And then we have Geoffrey Chaucer in the Middle Ages to thank for the day being associated with romantic love. How, then, did we go from such a high-minded celebration of idealized love to a murderous masked killer on a rampage?

The same way we went from the celebration of the birth of Jesus to an axe-wielding Santa Claus: there's money to be made in it.

Now, as if this kind of thing needed any setup: 20 years ago in the peaceful little mining community of Valentine Bluffs, an explosion of methane gas took the lives of a group of coal miners on Valentine's Day, all because supervisors left their posts to attend the annual Valentine's Day dance. Oops.

A year later, Harry Warden, the only survivor of the accident - and he did look a bit plumper when they rescued him (wink wink, nudge nudge) - retaliated by killing the supervisors and warning the town never to hold another Valentine's Day dance.

Fair enough; I'd listen to a warning like that.

Flash-forward 20 years later as a group of young adults (let's just call them "teens", even if they are older, just because they all act stupid and won't listen to reason) decides to hold another dance.

Idiots.

After the usual warnings pop up - blood-soaked heart in a candy box, old woman tumble-dried to death in a laundromat, the usual stuff - all accompanied by ominous messages to knock this Valentine crap off, the dance is canceled. Good.

But (and there's always a "but" in movies like this because the people in them are stupid) a Valentine party is held in its place... at the coal mine.

You stupid moronic idiotic teenage-acting-and-thinking idiots!!!

Well. Because these "teens" and everyone else in this town all seem to be auditioning for their own personal Darwin Awards, they begin dying violently. Pickaxes to the chest and face, shower nozzle through the back of the head, hard-boiling of faces, nail-gunning, limb-chopping, hanging: everything that makes Valentine's Day memorable. See what happens when you don't listen to Harry Warden?

My Bloody Valentine came out during the heyday of Fangoria Magazine, which shows production pics of all "the good shots" from upcoming horror movies. I remember catching the issue that had pics from this beauty in it, many gory, detailed captures showed the salivating reader looking for blood and gore just what they could expect at their local theater.

Of course, many of them would be sadly disappointed, but I'll get to that....

This was concocted by story creator Stephen A. Miller whose career led up to this by writing for such TV shows as "The Jeffersons", "Flo" and that one show where MacLean Stevenson played a priest. The script was detailed by John Beaird who also wrote, ironically, Happy Birthday to Me, which did for birthday cakes and shish-kebabs what this movie does for miners. Which ain't much.

Director George Mihalka began his career by helming that 1980s sleaze epic Pick-Up Summer then made a career of directing many films and TV shows you've probably never heard of before in your life. Lord knows I hadn't. There are a few good camera angles here and there, but that's like trying to find Waldo when you're not really sure he's there to begin with.

The actors themselves all try their best but, seeing that 90% of them (and this whole production, in fact) hail from Canada, that's about 1/3 of the U.S. going rate for talent here in the States, so a lot of it doesn't get across the border. You may recognize names like Neil Affleck, Lori Hallier, Cynthia Dale and Helene Udy, since they are synonymous with stuff like this and many of them were there in the thick of it when it came to Canada's churned-out theatrical junk - in fact, if you had HBO at all during the mid-Eighties, you've probably seen the biggest chunk of this cast's work.

Now, about the effects: they are, for lack of a better word, good. Effective I guess is the best way to put it. But in its original release, albeit in its first VHS and DVD releases, the censors did more hacking and chopping than Harry Warden did, leaving carnage still, but not the kind of blood and guts those earlier Fangoria readers were coming into the theater to see. Can't give that Video Nasty group any reason to throw a conniption, now can we?

Of course, they got everything back to where it was meant to be seen 20-plus years down the road, but seeing that My Bloody Valentine's wealth was in its gore, could it stand on atmosphere alone?

Some. Cinematographer Rodney Gibbons gave a gritty look and feel to the proceedings and editors Gérald Vansier and Rit Wallis knew how to splice things together so that the viewer got their money's worth for shocks. But as far as actual bank-ability goes...?

For a budget of $2,300,000 in Canadian earning back almost $6 million American, I guess that's pretty respectable, though I don't know the allowance between currencies off the top of my head. Maybe it just sounds good, like having one million Mexican pesos sounds good until you convert it?

As far as a crass exercise in earning money for being on the holiday killer kick, My Bloody Valentine has no shame. It tries pretending it's original, but it just renamed Jason Voorhees Harry Warden, changed a summer camp into a mining town and replaced Kevin Bacon with Canadian bacon - or ham in this case.

I didn't care much for it, but darned if I don't still feel some nostalgia for this thing. After all, My Bloody Valentine was part of my childhood - as it was of anyone who grew up in the late Seventies/early Eighties. I grew up watching the ads for this on TV, catching glimpses of gore in magazines and wondering if I'd ever have the nerve to see it and find out if it was all that it was cracked up to be.

Well, I had.

And I did.

And it wasn't.

But it made me feel like a kid again.

Not that I want to rush out and buy Valentine's cards or anything.

My own mining mask? Maybe.

Prom Night (1980)

Is it altogether possible that I have been a little too hard on the legacy of Halloween?

After all, any movie made artfully that deals with such tactless subject matter as death, teenagers and mysterious masked killers can be palatable when it contains the hands-on contributions of such past masters of the craft as John Carpenter, Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci.

They all had an undeniable style and grace with which they pulled of their classic film works and they all have their fans. In all honesty, they make the case that some horror movies can be - GASP - artistic.

Of course, then we have Paul Lynch.

No, I didn't say DAVID Lynch, who can be artistic when he wants to be. I said PAUL Lynch, a director from the bright, sunny shores of Liverpool, England, whose style consists of making every movie and/or TV show he films look as if it were set in an overcast part of Edinboro around seven in the morning.

Who else would you want to film your Mad Slasher movie that's set in - wait for it - wait - Canada!

See, they all have to be lensed in Canada, ever since 1979. Even if they're set in California. It's the law, they call it The Cunningham/Mancuso Directive: every color motion picture featuring any combination of teenagers, mad killers, poor lighting and up to one featured star that half of the world's populace has heard of in a supporting role, must be filmed in Canada, Nova Scotia or a province thereof.

This was revised somewhat in 1984 to accommodate a filibuster being held at the time by director Wes Craven, who lobbied to include Southern California so as to make his filming of A Nightmare on Elm Street fall within the law's guidelines....

...You don't buy that, do you?

Fine. Sheesh.

Here's the details: For six long years, Hamilton High School seniors Kelly (Mary Beth Rubens), Jude (Joy Thompson), Wendy (Anne-Marie Martin), and Nick (Casey Stevens) have been hiding the truth of what happened to ten-year-old Robin Hammond (Tammy Bourne) the day her broken body was discovered near an old abandoned convent.

The foursome kept the secret of how they taunted Robin until, frightened, she stood on a window ledge... and fell to her death. Though an accident, the then-twelve-year-olds feared they'd be held responsible and vowed never to tell.

But someone else was there that day... watching. And now, that someone is ready to exact murderous revenge on Halloween!

Oops...I mean, Prom Night.

Okay, right there is your basic boilerplate for a mad killer on the loose story. Past sins, secrets sworn to be hidden, bloody killings. All that's missing is some style, some imagination and some class.

In fact, those are the same three things that are missing in Prom Night, too.

This story is told in a basic, almost mindless way that is lock-step in its simplicity; if a little girl is killed, then OF COURSE someone is going to have witnessed it and OF COURSE that someone is going to keep things bottled up until the present day and OF COURSE they're going to wait for a huge moment in the guilty parties' lives to strike and OF COURSE they will try and intimidate them as much as possible before the axe falls, so to speak.

Typical situation: teenage girl machinates things so that she is all alone in the corridors of said high school, she hears someone breathing heavily in the shadows, she sees the Mad Slasher wielding their axe, runs away hysterically - yet still maintaining a slow-enough pace so that the Mad Slasher can keep up with her - and/or same-said Mad Slasher then can pop up in close proximity to her and dispatch her quite easily. By knife, by axe, bye-bye.

See, not a lot of the girls in this movie have much of an I.Q., so this is less a story arc and more like the Darwin Awards being handed out.

And for another OF COURSE, many of the victims are young teenage girls - or at least as teenage as these Mad Slasher movies get.

What do I mean? Well, for one thing, one of the high schoolers is none other than our poster child for the Mad Slasher movement of the Early Eighties, Miss Jamie Lee Curtis, folks. And yes, she was in her 20s when this film was made but that's okay; part of the magic of Hollywood (Canadian branch) is the art of deception, and making women of 20 years+ look every bit the fresh-faced, pubescent flower of womanhood that these flicks crave, hunt down, slice up and discard is all part and parcel of Big Screen Magic (c).

But anyway, Jamie is clearly bored here. I mean, look at her; when she interacts with people, she stares blankly like she can't wait for the scene to be over; when she speaks, it's almost in a monotone; even when she boogies to the late 70s/ealy 80s beat (oh yes, there will be disco), it's with all the vim and verve of a lethargic 80 year-old after chugging the last of the NyQuil.

In other words, this is not the Jamie Lee Curtis we all knew and loved and sympathized with in Halloween. This is the Jamie Lee Curtis who is picking up a paycheck until something better comes along. Sorry, Jamie: you'll have to wait a couple of years down the road for that when John Landis knocks at your door with his Trading Places script. Until then, expect to be in at least three or four more variations on this theme.

Oh, and Leslie Nielsen! Yes, he's here, as a no-nonsense principal at the high school where the bloody business is about to go down. And no, he doesn't play a single scene for laughs. This was the same year that Airplane! came around, but also the same time in his career that Leslie was still thought of as nothing more than a staunch, serious actor. That would change after 1980, but he still had this period in his life to get through. And he plays a no-nonsense principal about as well as a serious, deadpan, unaware Leslie Nielsen would. Don't worry, though - he grew out of this period of his career for the better.

Well, unless you count 2001: A Space Travesty, but anyway....

No one else in this cast counts as anything but a background player, victim or a red herring to throw into the works. Yeah; there's a creepy pedophilic groundskeeper at the school, there's a pill-popping and booze-guzzling mom of Jamie's, there's a hot-headed young stud tyro at school who likes to threaten and torment anyone in his field of vision, and I'll bet I missed a couple more of 'em, but it doesn't matter - once the killer is unmasked, you'll not only hate yourself for missing them to begin with (there's a BIG clue as to the killer's identity early on) but you'll also hate the film-makers for stringing you along right up to the very last minute. Jerks.

Writers William Gray and Robert Guza Jr. cut their teeth writing for this flick and went on to careers writing for even smaller movies and for soap operas, respectively. Not that any of them went on to bigger and better things, but hey: at least they were familiar enough with manipulating standard formulas that writing movies like Humongous and The Philidelphia Experiment and TV shows like "Melrose Place" and "Sunset Beach" came as second nature.

So what happened after all was filmed and released to poor unsuspecting theaters the world over? Well, for a budget of less than 2 million (Canadian) dollars, Prom Night went on to earn more that 14 million (regular) dollars, proving yet again that there was a market for trashy Halloween ripoffs and by golly, producers knew to strike when the iron was hot...and this particular iron was a-sizzlin'.

But to what end? Prom Night was, for as much as everyone involved (well, MOST everyone) wanted to kid themselves and everyone around them into thinking they were doing something different, something important and something ground-breaking, just another example of the same old thing done the same old way. No invention. No imagination. No creativity. Nothing.

Still, for everything, this was a small bump in the road for both Curtis and Nielsen, who would have varied and vibrant careers ahead of them for decades to come - and both for reinventing themselves from one set of films and into others.

And I'm happy for them both. Really.

At least SOMEONE was able to recover from Prom Night. And sooner than I will, that's for sure.