by ·Comments Off on Demons 2 (1986, Lamberto Bava)

Sally dances to Morrissey then goes to her room to watch horror movies alone during her own birthday party, relatable. She finds a TV movie about other young people uncovering demons (some idiot hellraisers a dead demon by bleeding into its open mouth) – but this is not the movie Demons. Then a demon videodromes through the TV, demonogrifies her, and she murders all her party guests then… melts(?), and her cursed acid blood plays hell on the apartment building below. Everyone acts like they’re the character in a TV commercial who needs a miracle product to perform a simple task, and no miracles are here, just the manic unstoppable demons of an Evil Dead movie.

Movie is properly disgusting – a demon child breaks into a woman’s apartment then convulses as an Audrey II-mouthed rubber alien bursts out of his chest and chases the woman around until defeated by a murphy bed. There’s an elevator shaft escape, an ineffectual parking garage showdown, and the hetero couple ends up at a quirky movie theater TV studio (which is maybe supposed to evoke the movie theater of Demons 1 but really only reminded me of Scanners 3). Among the doomed women is Asia Argento. Half the crew followed this with Dario Argento’s Opera and prospered, the other half made Graveyard Disturbance and did not. Speaking of Opera, I wrote “Argento characters never behaving like actual humans makes the movies more phantasmagorical,” and that’s sure true of the dialogue here – but I’ve never been to Italy, and what if the people there are really like this?

Hetero couple triumphant:

by ·Comments Off on Ballerina (2025, Len Wiseman)

John Wick spinoff from the writer of Army of the Dead and director of Die Hard 5, oh boy, this is even worse than part three. Tried to half-watch this, which worked fine during the opening backstory, then it turns into a gang war that’s also a dystopian cult thing with not a couple minutes rest between each CG-assisted fight scene. Lotta fighting with hammers at first, then she escalates to an audacious grenade battle in an armory and a flamethrower finale. I didn’t believe a single thing that happened for a second, so the revenge aspect doesn’t register, but eventually Ana de Armas shoots Gabriel Byrne while he’s monologuing, and the guy from Blade lives, which are good outcomes. Only great shot was when Ana whacked a would-be assassin with a TV remote, each blow summoning a different classic action scene on the background TV.

de Armas vs. Buster Keaton:

by ·Comments Off on Wake Up Dead Man (2025, Rian Johnson)

Priest Josh Brolin, Gardener Thomas Haden Church, and Doctor Jeremy Renner conspire with Glenn Close to perform a miracle, but she kills them all, confounding disheveled priest Josh O’Connor until our guy Blanc figures it all out.

The bar with a hell theme has a Ricky Jay poster:

by ·Comments Off on The Naked Gun (2025, Akiva Schaffer)

Not a remake – Liam Neeson is Leslie Nielsen’s son, so this is part four (or part ten if we count the TV series). A good joke every minute, can’t ask for more. Made by the same gang that did the Rescue Rangers reboot, weird. Muskian baddie is Danny Huston of Birth, his head thug is Kevin Durand of Resident Evil 5.

by ·Comments Off on Candyman 3 (2021, Nia DaCosta)

All along I thought this was a remake, but it’s full of references to the events in the Bernard Rose movie, so it’s either part three or a rebooted part two (nobody remembers Farewell to the Flesh, which starred some girl from The Gate). Bookended with scenes of murderous cops, artist Morpheus (The Matrix 4) learns from Colman Domingo that he was the bonfire baby from the first movie, so he becomes the new Candyman, his girl Lysistrata (Chi-Raq) along for the ride. I guess every generation has its own Candyman, and somehow bees are involved. Victims include an art curator and his Joy Division girl, a new white lady reporter, and a bathroom full of high school girls. A real obvious movie, but so was the original, and I like this one’s look (and love the shadow puppetry) so I declare them both to be Pretty Good.

Yankee… hotel…

by ·Comments Off on New Nightmare (1994, Wes Craven)

For years I’ve suspected I was wrong to hate this movie, which I saw in the dollar theater where they spray windex on the popcorn, and now can confirm it’s actually a good movie. They try hard to sink it, having two out of three scenes turn out to have been only a dream, which becomes tiresome, and including a haunted child (who Poltergeists and Shinings and Exorcists) and giving digital assistance to the claw effects, and evoking worst sequel #5 in the climax of a mom searching for her kid in dream world, and Craven learning to make everything All About Trauma, and Freddy looking like a Dick Tracy villain.

Linking the Elm Streets with the Scream series, Freddy interferes with the making of an Elm Street movie, killing the effects crew and tormenting Heather/Nancy and her kid. Englund and John Saxon play their actor selves, concerned friends of Heather, then gradually turn into their Nightmare selves, pulling her back into the movie-world. Since the kid is full of fairy-tale bedtime stories, Freddy gets wicked-witched again – after the silliness of the last few movies this one is trying to get darker and more serious with higher stakes, then she stabs Freddy in the eye with an eel and he fights back by extending his hundred-foot tongue.

by ·Comments Off on A Chinese Ghost Story III (1991, Ching Siu-Tung)

Tony Leung is our buffoon young monk, taking over while Leslie was off filming Once a Thief. Jackie Cheung returns as the swordsman and Joey Wong as the ghost, but I can’t even tell if there’s character continuity (it does open with the title “100 years later”) or if they keep remaking part one with the same cast and different action scenes. Either way, all three movies are wonderful and mad.

Tony and his Master are hiding out at the dilapidated temple after greedy townspeople glimpsed their golden buddha, where Tony falls for Joey but has to keep his ghost gf a secret from his ghost-banishing master. Introduced giving each other sexy tattoos, Joey has a frenemy in Nina “Wife of Jet” Li, both of them in the power of the Tree Demon Priestess. Epic fights and aggressive praying ensue, but mostly… tongues. Evil ghosts have mile-long tongues, and the tongue-POV shots kill me every time. I guess Tony ascends from the earthly plane and becomes the new golden buddha to save them all.

by ·Comments Off on Freddy’s Dead (1991, Rachel Talalay)

Opens with a Nightmare at 20,000 Feet scenario.

After a teenage apocalypse, 24 year-old Shon is the last living teenager in Ohio.

Fred keeps wizard-of-ozzing him, until Amnesiac Shon thinks he is the Anti-Freddy Messiah, then he gets dropped from a height onto a bed of spikes.

Dream Therapist Yaphet Kotto and Lisa “sister of Billy” Zane are counselors bringing a fresh batch of doomed teens to Freddytown. They immediately run into Roseanne and Tom Arnold, a bad sign.

Deaf Ricky Dean Logan (Back to the Future Part II) is given faulty hearing aids and his head explodes.

Gamer Breckin Meyer (of Skeet Ulrich thriller Touch) goes inside the television and gets Super Mario’d in a series highlight.

Boxer Lezlie Deane (of 976-EVIL) maybe survives along with the counselors?

Comin’ at ya:

Little Fred turned bad because his father was Alice “Prince of Darkness” Cooper. Now he’s dead, like the title says. They got him with a grenade, he’s dead for sure.

Talalay followed up with video store staples Ghost in the Machine (a mashup of Lawnmower Man with Pulse 1988) and Tank Girl.

Comin’ at ya:

by ·Comments Off on Terrifier 2 (2022, Damien Leone)

A year after part one, teen Sienna is dressing as Non-Copyright-Infringing Victoria Secret Wonder Woman for a halloween party with her friends while her little brother Jonathan is going through a (timely) nazi phase and discovering The Backstory relating to their dead artist father and killer klown Art, when his hero comes around and terribly torture-kills all of their family and friends. Looks slick, and I like Art’s new imaginary girlfriend, but all of this feels like an Elm Street sequel where each scene last too long. I was annoyed much of the time, but can’t stay mad at my best friend Art The Clown.

The girl has a musical advertisement dream sequence: