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Reviews
You Better Watch Out (1980)
A world long gone but one still haunted by such sad and tragic figures
You Better Watch Out is set in a world that no longer exists. American-made toys may be extinct, but here they are assembled in the shadows of New York City. Televisions are black and white and the viewers don't use remotes. Geraldo Rivera's twin appears from time to time on these tubes to report serious news stories. Areas adjacent to Montclair, New Jersey, are working class neighborhoods rather than homes of the McMansion. So this movie could have just as easily been directed by Fritz Lang than made a mere 30 years ago.
Harry, though, is all too common as a contemporary anti-hero. Coarse environs and rampant cynicism inspire alienation and anger. By the final reel, these impulses lead to murder and madness. Harry isn't Jason or Freddie. He is a pathetic figure pushed a little too hard by a world much too mean for Santa.
The greatness of this movie often is ascribed to Brandon Maggart's stellar performance as Harry, and that is undeniable. But there is an ensemble of talent not found in most major productions let alone low budget films. Small roles, some that feature wide-eyed children, are marvelously acted. The Christmas Eve atmosphere is gritty and dark. The cinematography is so voyeuristic that it almost induces shame; Maggart may gaze into the mirror at every opportunity to watch his Red Dragon-like transformation into Santa Claus, but the camera never takes its lens off of him. That took world class direction--this is how reality television would be if the subjects actually were ignorant they were recorded, and it would be most disturbing. Finally, there is not enough praise possible for the art director. Classical depictions of Santa as a harsh and malevolent judge are interspersed with the jolly clichés of the last century or so. This duality is an apt and brilliant representation of Harry.
So this is a B-movie that also is cinema. You Better Watch Out never lets you forget it is low budget, but it also causes you to think about yourself and your place in a cruel world. That makes it art, of course. For this reason, You Better Watch Out always reminds me of the better Corman classics, and of Bucket of Blood in particular. While made on the cheap, its depth and vision are a joy.
Finally, You Better Watch Out often is described as a holiday slasher, and that is inaccurate. While closer, it really isn't the psychological study frequently claimed, either. It is a tragedy that in the end inspires more sadness than exhilaration. There are no Billy Caldwells, but neither is Jimmy Stewart anywhere in the vicinity. The ending may leave you numb--neutral, actually, and that's how it should be.
Jimmy Hollywood (1994)
Hollywood ending, ironically, hurts potentially good movie
Director Barry Levinson would have done well to heed the old line that if you are going to go up to the bell, ring it. Levinson flirts many times with themes much larger than this small film, but he never stays with them.
The vapidity of celebrity, the seedy death of Hollywood, even indications of the descent into madness all are brought up but are not followed through. And flashes of brilliance throughout the film are forgotten as the credits roll because of the cheap Hollywood ending.
Levinson certainly had a capable cast. Joe Pesci, Victoria Abril (in a rare English-first roll), and an astonishingly effective performance by Christian Slater are wasted as this film runs from theme to theme but never focuses long enough to flesh out the thoughts. Even the comedy becomes sporadic in the latter half of the film.
This is worth a rental just to see how a potentially good movie about Hollywood is damaged by its conventions.
Trespassing (2004)
Cut above normal slasher but little originality, humor or T&A
Evil Remains references, pays homage to, or just blatantly rips off every classic as well as recently released horror movie. In the first two scenes, there are snippets of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Blair Witch Project, Jeepers Creepers, The Hills Have Eyes, The Evil Dead, Halloween, and fill in the blank, because when the credits roll you will be hard pressed to name at least one slasher film that hasn't been scavenged.
Nonetheless, this is a solid if not very original movie. Director James Merendino forgot it takes a lot of humor to glue together so many disparate pieces but that doesn't stop him from referencing two similar scavenger films that were quite funny, House of 1,000 Corpses and Cabin Fever. As a result a movie that could have been good is just a cut above the average slasher flick, no pun intended. Merendino also left out another essential ingredient for this genre: T&A. This will not start a trend.
The story is otherwise boilerplate slasher. Five students prowl around an abandoned plantation that is the subject of a vague legend. Four will die and one will live, and with this movie that isn't a spoiler. Two of the three male students are brothers, bonded by what apparently was a bad childhood (guess what happens before we know).
Yeoman acting is bolstered by standout performances from an uncredited Kurtwood Smith as the sagacious shrink and Estella Warren and Ashley Scott as lesbians who tag along to help on the ill-defined graduate work. The on-location New Orleans scenes also lend a creepy atmosphere to this otherwise ordinary film. Yet this is somewhat offset by production and continuity flaws, which include an abandoned house that is fully lighted in one scene.
Return of Fire (2004)
Mindless contemporary blaxploitation lacks heart, soul
Even at its mindless worst, blaxploitation usually had heart as well as soul. Those hearts often subscribed to whacked out conspiracy theories that linked anyone who even knew a white person to the Aryan Brotherhood and high unemployment rates. Nonetheless, the intent was good even as things got preachy and patently absurd.
Most contemporary attempts at blaxploitation can't make the pivot from being logically impaired to also being a worthy movie. A recent example is Return of Fire.
This film even has the requisite cheesiness required of a great blaxploitation flick. Among the howlers: post-production additions of ferocious growls to a faux guard dog that is plainly wagging its tail and trying to lick everyone in sight. The neo-soul score is incongruously upbeat. Nick Ashford of the famed Ashford and Simpson duet appears as the title character Fire's mentor. If that weren't funny enough, Ashford looks exactly like Eddie Murphy in Vampire in Brooklyn. Robert Klein, who reputedly said something funny once or twice during the Seventies, has a needless role added only to boost the film's faded star power.
These and like moments should portend a great B-movie. Yet low budget charm alone can't save this film.
The story engenders no sympathy in the hero, Fire, portrayed as well as possible by Paul Campbell. The plot is, on the surface, formulaic blaxploitation. The Man sent Fire to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Fire is released and finds his best friend (the Sopranos' Federico Castelluccio ) not only set him up but now beds his lady, Karen Williams from "Law and Order". Guns sound, people die, and Fire gets the girl. It should work but fails miserably because the main characters remain strangers at film's end.
Director Aleta Chappelle simply lacks the skilled shamelessness of a Jack Hill or Gordon Parks required to overcome a bad script and a tiny budget. In the final analysis, Fire is just another low rent gangster with a high body count. A little less focus on washed out singers and more self-righteous melodrama about Fire's plight and this could have worked. As it is, Return of Fire is as bereft of humanity as it is devoid of intelligence.
Mr In-Between (2001)
Deeper than usual gangster flick, Sorossy explores evil
Jon is a brutal gangster whose conscience is like an amputated limb--it's gone, but sometimes he thinks it is still there. As he maims and murders we learn little about Jon other than he lives in London, that he has a first name, and that he is a leg breaker, assassin, and apprentice sadist. Despite the thin biography, at the close of Killing Kind we know Jon.
He ain't pretty.
Director Paul Sorossy gives a taut, grim, and gritty glimpse into the lives of mobsters who transform violence into performance art. As a sadistic crime boss boasts, these men embrace their brutality. Jon, played brilliantly by Andrew Howard, finds this difficult after he reconnects with childhood friends who are a reminder of a more innocent time. We don't get a lot of details about Jon's past, but the indications are it didn't involve torture. The story focuses on the present and the conflict Jon experiences as he is torn between his old comrades and his current terror mentors.
Set in the underworld of working class Britain, Killing Kind avoids the maudlin affectations Hollywood attributes to hit men with mid-life crises. Forget any Road To Perdition-type father and son relationships: this is a tale of the devil and his particularly worthy disciple Jon. Director Sorossy manages to cram mayhem into almost every other scene yet it never comes across as gratuitous or cartoonish. Sorossy, who borrows heavily from director Michael Mann in a few of the more memorable and graphically violent scenes, makes certain the audience never forgets how repulsive Jon can be. Any sympathy Jon has generated evaporates with an ending that is both intelligent and disgusting.
As for that IL' debbil Satan, he appears in the form of Jon's mob boss, a sixtyish, heavily tattooed sociopath given to Goethe-like pronouncements that could have been barked from the neighbor's dog to Son of Sam. The Tattooed Man, portrayed by David Calder, steals the show as he instructs Jon on the finer points of torture, contract killing, and the meaning of life. Calder's character is one of the more menacing since Brian Cox nailed Hannibal Lecter in the aforementioned Mann's masterwork, Manhunter. The Tattooed Man's dialogue crackles as he proves to be the Philosopher King of sadism. Geraldine O'Rawe also stands out as Jon's love interest. Her role as a feminine savior, though, is overshadowed by Calder's portrayal of the devil in the form of an English mobster.
Great atmosphere and brilliant cinematography set the stage for the topnotch acting that transforms what could have been an ordinary gangster flick into a powerful exploration of the nature of evil. As Sorossy reminds us, Satan still has the upper hand in this world.