Reviews

There's a place in the world for movies like this. This is the kind of movie you go to see at the drive-in, or you rent with friends, and you talk through the movie. You make Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot jokes. You make out. Maybe you get high-- though kids, I am not condoning such illegal shenanigans!

The "Jason" formula is good for that, because it holds your attention, without demanding it. It's not terribly scary, but it's not boring either, especially if you have someone interesting to talk to. It's not talky or complicated. The stock teenage characters are easy to recognize as they appear and are dispatched, one by one, by the lumbering sleepwalker in the hockey mask. There's the Leather Tuscadero Clone with her electric guitar. WHAM! There's the Spoiled Rich Bitch (you can tell she's rich cause she's into cocaine, and not marijuana). SLASH! There's the AV geek with the camera. YARGGH! There's the studious black girl. (You may remember her from Nightmare on Elm Street IV, when she had asthsma.) GASP! Anyone need anything from the concession stand?

It's worth noting that the first few Friday the Thirteen films, back before Jason discovered the hockey mask, were a little more interesting and original. If that's what you're into.

For just about anyone who took a driver's ed course in the sixties and seventies, those grisly highway safety films were usually the first exposure to the horrible truth about human mortality. For me, it was a little opus called "Death on the Highway". In my high school, you heard accounts of just what was in that film long before you finally got to see it. I saw it when I was seventeen, before I ever saw "Faces of Death 1", rotten.com, the footage of Budd Dwyer blowing his brains out, or the actual suicide of an unemployed dishwasher who jumped from the roof of a twelve-story building on a summer afternoon in 1986. "Hell's Highway" contains excerpts from "Death on The Highway", including the unforgettable image of two dead toddlers lying side by side, one with an arm severed. I've carried that image with me for thirty years, and when I saw it again in "Hell's Highway", I discovered that it hadn't altered a jot in my memory.

What makes "Hell's Highway: The True Story of Highway Safety Films" so very satisfying as a documentary is that it strives to cover its fascinating and obscure topic from every possible perspective. Therefore we have interview footage of John Butler, retired Chief of Police of Mansfield, Ohio, Earl Deems, who produced several of these 16mm traumafests, and Mike Vraney, head honcho at "Something Weird Video" who now markets these films to the morbidly curious. Everyone who speaks in this movie speaks intelligently, and is portrayed respectfully. No one is satirized or treated condescendingly. Part social history, part memoir, part critique, "Hell's Highway" focuses mainly on a company called Highway Safety Films, the film-making arm of the Highway safety Commision, which operated out of Mansfield from 1959 to 1979, and produced "Signal 30", "Mechanized Death", "Wheels of Tragedy", and "Highway Of Agony", among others.

Many of the interview subjects discuss whether showing grisly footage of bloody corpses being pulled from car wrecks to teenage kids actually made them safer drivers. To my way of thinking, it can't be proved either way, and the rule of "you can lead a horse to water, but the rule of "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" applies here. In other words, it would be irresponsible for educators not to try to make every effort to impress upon young drivers the consequences of reckless driving. What they do with the knowledge is not under the educator's control or responsibility.

The version of this film that I found in my Public Library came with a bonus DVD containing uncut versions of three of the best-known productions of the Highway Safety commission's short subjects. Personally, I think that watching these things still have the power to make the viewer want to pay attention to every last stop sign.

Somebody could probably make a great documentary about the Jerry Springer Show, but this fictionalized version merely succeeds in draining anything authentic and interesting out of the trash-TV phenomenon. There are dozens of famously bad movies (e.g. "Manos: The Hands of Fate") that show more creativity and spirit than this dreary, witless waste of film.

Seriously, why not a documentary about the Jerry Springer Show, that would begin to answer some of the real questions like: Who are these people? What happens to their lives after they appear on this show? How did the mayor of Cincinatti find himself here?

One good line: During an "orientation" session for guests: "People, I can't emphasize this enough: NO WEAPONS!"

I just saw this movie all the way through for the first time in years, and I loved it even more than when I was ten years old, and the climactic scene (which I will not give away here, not even under torture) scared the bejeezus out of me in the best possible way. As I remember it, I fidgeted in my chair, giggled uncontrollably, and never for a minute took my eyes off the TV.

The plot for "House on Haunted Hill" is kind of ingenious, but it's also kind of absurd. There are a few holes in it, and by that I mean HOLES... but the atmospherics are great, and the witty, nuanced dialogue is head and shoulders above what horror fans are accustomed to.

At the center, of course, is your host, Vincent Price, at his sly, elegant best. Price said of William Castle: "He wasn't a great filmmaker, but he knew how to make this kind of film." His respect for the material shows, and he nails the part of the mysterious, morally ambiguous Fredrick Loren with every word that comes out of his mouth. His final soliloquay at the denouement is delivered with all the care that actors usually reserve for Shakespeare. Obviously, he's having a great time.

Of course, some gorehounds and younger viewers aren't going to "get" this. There are not many special effects, no monsters, and the severed heads look phoney. "The House on Haunted Hill" is tame by today's standards, but it holds up well for its atmosphere and wit. Sophisticated and silly at once.

Other highlights include Carole Ohmart as Fredrick's wife Annibelle, Elisha Cook as Watson Pritchard, the half-mad, half-visionary owner of the house, and some terrific theme music.

As near as I can figure, this is an original "Flash Gordon" serial from the thirties, edited into a feature length film for television. I discovered this on a DVD in the bargain bin at a local pharmacy, and was delighted, I watched the serials in their uncut form on WPIX New York almost 40 years ago, and have long wanted another look.

The editing down results in a crazy faced-paced narrative that 21st century viewers will probably find particularly enjoyable. It just races from one wild plot point to the next-- the tournament of death, the invisibility ray, the atomic furnaces... it never ever stands still.

Considering the far-out plot, and ridiculous dialog, the acting is pretty good. Charles Middleton is especially effective as Ming the Merciless, completely deadpan in his interpretation.

Five minutes into SIN CITY, I was pretty sure that I had stumbled into a baaaaaaad movie. I defy anyone to sit through the opening scene-- a man and woman standing on a balcony spouting typical private-eye time dialog with typical private-eye first-person narration-- and not be reminded of a recent commercial for "Flonase". As the opening scenes progress, the elaborate visual style comic-noir only seemed to make the narrative seem more slap-dash and hyperbolic, a caricature. The artifice took me farther away, not closer to the story. I couldn't stop being aware that the actors were standing in front of wind machines, and that drove me crazy. I wondered if I would be walking out.

Fortunately, I stayed, and I was gradually seduced into accepting this film on its own special terms-- and I loved it. "Sin City" may be a classic of "pure cinema", meaning that it builds on everything that the cinema has always been about, from George Melies to Eisenstein to John Woo. It's not about characters-- it's about images, motion and magic. It's also just about the most violent thing since Homer's Iliad-- but the violence is brilliantly realized-- frightening and witty by turns. Like a Jackie Chan action film, or a keystone cops short, it doesn't give you much to think about when you leave the theater. But I'm pretty sure that I'll be seeing it again.