Tag: 1992

Directed by Mansour Pourmand [Other horror films: N/A]

I’ll be honest: I wasn’t expecting much from Zipperface. It’s not just the 3.3/10 this currently sports on IMDb – ever since I first heard of this movie back in late 2009/early 2010, I was under the impression it wasn’t good. I’ve still wanted to see it, though, ever since I first heard about it, but I didn’t expect anything particularly great. Like Heavy Metal Massacre, I wanted to see it, but knew, in my heart, it wouldn’t be worth it.

I was wrong – Zipperface is worth it.

True, the movie’s not exactly stellar, but based on what I was thinking coming in, it did way over-exceed my expectations. The plot – about a guy in BDSM leather stalking and killing prostitutes while the police investigate the murders – isn’t exactly Earth-shattering, and the effects could have used some work, but they struck gold with the characters.

Naturally, it’s important to not overstate this, so I want to say that the movie has it’s problems. Some of the dialogue and acting is subpar, and perhaps some of the finale is silly, but I also think it’s important to be honest, and honestly, I had a hell of a lot of fun with this.

You have to understand where I was coming from, though. I knew this was an early 1990’s slasher, but I didn’t know it was a slasher in which the killer was a character known to us. I thought it was going to go the Slumber Party Massacre or Final Exam route, and have a completely random killer. In this movie, however, the identity of the killer is a mystery, and boy howdy, we’re given a lot of suspects.

It could be a police officer (Richard Vidan), side-lined to desk duty after his performance slips. It could be the mayor’s PR assistant (Timothy D. Lechner), who has some surprises up his sleeve. It could be a photographer (Jonathan Mandell) who burned pictures after the police questioned him, or a shifty religious figure (Christopher Dakin), or the mayor’s husband (Bruce Brown), or hell, the mayor herself (Trisha Melynkov), though admittedly, that would have been a stretch.

The point is, we’re given a lot of suspects, and I’ll be honest, while I thought I knew who the killer was, I wasn’t confident, which was wise, as I was incorrect. Naturally, we’re given a lot of red herrings, each of them pointing to a specific person, and just as I love that type of thing in gialli, I loved it here, and they did it well. I know this film had a lower budget, but props to the story.

Props too to the performances. Some were shaky, sure, but like I said, I had a lot of fun watching this one, and I suspect that they had a lot of fun making it. Dona Adams (in her sole role) made for a fair lead. She had some cringy dialogue (“I can’t stand women being referred to as chicks, broads, or babes!”), but she was generally quite good. David Clover was better – at first, I thought he’d be one of those misogynist cops who’d be pissed to be partnered with a woman, but he grows to be a really solid, supportive, and nice guy.

As the mayor, Trisha Melynkov is as aggravating as mayors can be in movies like this, but there’s also more to her. Richard Vidan (Scarecrows, Zombie Infection) cracked me up as an obviously sexist cop with a chip on his shoulder. Timothy D. Lechner had a few funny scenes, Laureen E. Clair and Jillian Ross had some suspenseful moments, and Bruce Brown, who didn’t do that much, made an impression at times too. Oh, and Jonathan Mandell was a sensual brah.

Speaking of which, there was a scene in which Mandell’s character, who happens to be a photographer, was seducing the lead, police detective Ryder (played by Dona Adams) during a photoshoot. And honestly – that scene was great. The photoshoot itself was a lot a fun (it was nice seeing Adams’ character actually having fun), and the music playing was quite nice. I went into that scene cringing, but I ended up appreciating it.

I also appreciated a scene in which two prostitutes go out to a John, only to run amok of the killer. It was played in a way that most people would suspect Zipperface’s arrival, but it still held some quality suspense early on. It ended with a somewhat poor decapitation, but honestly, I’ve seen far worse decapitations in my time, so I don’t think it was a big issue.

Aside from the decapitation, I don’t think many scenes here were necessarily memorable. Someone got stabbed in the back with a machete, someone got strangled, someone got run over by a car, and someone got suffocated with a whip (related, someone got whipped by, well, a whip, and it didn’t draw blood, so I was impressed) – none of these scenes were great, but I think the fact that none were terrible, and none detracted from the film, is good in it’s own way.

I was surprised by Zipperface. Slashers were few and far between in the early 1990’s, and I really wasn’t expecting much from this, but I had a pretty solid time with it. Most people would likely see it as below average (though I have to admit, that average rating of a 3.3/10 on IMDb hurts me physically, nor do I remotely understand it), but I’m not most people. It may be a movie that doesn’t work for many; I can say, however, that it worked its magic on me.

7.5/10

Directed by Mark Jones [Other horror films: Rumpelstiltskin (1995), Triloquist (2008), Scorned (2013)]

Leprechaun is a film that I’ve seen before and enjoyed, but it’s been a long time. I mean, ten years+ long, if not longer, so I was worried that when I revisited this one, some of the charm would be lost.

Well, it’s a mixed bag, but generally, I still hold the same positive views that I had when seeing this movie those many years back.

Naturally, I think the biggest problem is that some of the humor is a bit too goofy for my liking, such as that skateboard sequence, or perhaps that scooter chase. Hell, even popping out of those cabinets felt a bit too Scooby-Doo to me. However, unlike later movies in the franchise, the humor is somewhat restrained, and while I wouldn’t exactly call the movie dark or overly serious in tone at any point, Leprechaun isn’t entirely without merit for the traditional horror fan.

It’s in the characters, I think, that this movie really shines. Certainly Jennifer Aniston’s Tory is bratty and unlikable for a solid third of the film, but Mark Holton’s Ozzie has a lot of heart, and his interactions with Robert Hy Gorman’s Alex were low-key my favorite portions of the film, as I felt they could be somewhat touching at times (especially concerning Ozzie’s mental disabilities, which I felt were handled decently in the film).

What’s somewhat impressive, at least to me, is that most of the central cast was pretty solid. Sure, the story may not have been a work of the Gods, but the performances were all varying degrees of good, which, for a movie that feels like a Full Moon feature half the time, is a stunning feat.

Aniston is an individual that some people might know from Friends, but as I’ve never seen an episode of Friends, my knowledge of her comes from films such as Along Came Polly, We’re the Millers, and Derailed (none of the three, sadly, will be reviewed on this blog). Like I said, she’s bratty at the beginning, but has some quality lines (“I know what it feels like when a man caresses my leg,” followed by John Sanderford’s reply, “You do?”), and she does improve as the movie goes on.

Speaking of Sanderford (The Alchemist), he doesn’t appear much past the first twenty minutes, but he’s of good value. Robert Hy Gorman (Sometimes They Come Back), as I said, had some touching moments with Mark Holton’s character. Somewhat amusingly, I saw Holton rather recently when I revisited a crime-drama film from 2003, Gacy, which stars Holton as the infamous serial killer. Also from films such as Hoboken Hollow and Madhouse, I found Holton’s performance great here. Ken Olandt (April Fool’s Day) probably stands out the least, but he still has his moments.

Warwick Davis brings a palpable energy into his role as the titular Leprechaun. It really seems as though he’s having a blast. Like I said, some of his actions are a bit goofy, but I definitely don’t fault Davis, and I love what he brought to the film. Plus, his rhymes are dope (though they get doper), and I love a man with that much dedication toward getting back his gold.

Now, Leprechaun isn’t exactly a gory film. There are a few moments, such as the pogo stick scene, that give us a little something, but that’s not the point of the movie. What I think Leprechaun does quite well are the other special effects, and toward the end, I couldn’t help but think of Gremlins and the gooey goodness both that classic and this provided.

As much as I appreciate a lot of this, though, it still occasionally felt too goofy for me. That doesn’t make the film a bad one, as I did enjoy revisiting this quite a bit, but then I think of how they distracted the Leprechaun by throwing shoes toward him (his compulsive desire to shine any and all shoes well-established by that point), or I think back to that (mercifully short) skateboard sequence, and I have to sort of reign in my praise.

Leprechaun is a solid movie. I personally find it fun, the cast fantastic, and the story amusing enough. It does go overboard, though, which I think is my only real issue. On a related note, if you want to say that I don’t know how to have fun, that’s certainly alright. When it comes down to it, I think the movie is a high average. It may be above average, in fact, but for the time being, I feel an average rating fair.

7/10

Directed by David Price [Other horror films: Son of Darkness: To Die for II (1991), Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde (1995)]

I have to say, I have an actively hard time disliking The Final Sacrifice. It’s not a good movie, and it’s nowhere as classic as the first movie, but it’s so damn funny at times, and if you can deal with a somewhat iffy story, at least the film can offer some quality deaths.

As it is, the story here is just so wonky. It apparently takes place shortly after the first film (so I’m guessing 1984), with the children of Gatlin being largely adopted by a neighboring community of Hemingford (based on Hemingford Home, where, as I’m sure we all know, Mother Abigail lived in The Stand). Well, you can take the children out of Gatlin, but you can’t take the Gatlin out of the children, and so they reform their religious separatist movement. Also, while I appreciated them mentioning Isaac, the fact that they didn’t mention Malachi, or the fact that come the end, they followed Malachi as opposed to Isaac, sort of bothered me.

Oh, and there’s also a subplot about a town conspiracy to sell spoiled corn for economic gain (the poisoned corn being set up as one potential explanation for why the kids went crazy in Gatlin), and there’s another thing going on about how there’s a Native American spirit of the land that gets revenge of those polluting it, or something like that.

Here’s the thing – all of this over-complicates things. The first movie wasn’t innocent of this – I really think the first film should have avoided showing anything supernatural during the conclusion. The reason being is that I find a growing commitment to Old Testament Biblical values among the youth, causing them to turn on adults, far more interesting than the idea that the kids were just victims of bad corn. One deals with interesting sociological issues, and the other is just bad luck.

The story here really should have been streamlined. I think that would have benefited the film greatly (and that way, they also could have gotten rid of that God-awful CGI, as it gave me bad flashbacks to Hideaway), and I don’t see how adding in the Native American legends did much to make the film better (aside from giving Ned Romero’s character a reason to exist). Overall, the story isn’t great.

Also, the characters aren’t that great. I liked Ned Romero, as he was quite funny at times (“No, what happened in Gatlin is that those kids went ape-shit and killed everyone”), and while he was no Isaac or Malachi, Ryan Bollman was decent as a younger preacher of He-Who-Walks-Behind-The-Rows. Terence Knox (The Hunters) didn’t strike me as that likable a character, nor did Paul Scherrer. Rosalind Allen (Ticks, Son of Darkness: To Die for II) got so little personality, I’m surprised she existed, and Christie Clark (The Mummy’s Dungeon) looked cute, but I don’t think she added much either.

Even if the story and characters aren’t great, though, you still have a lot of amusing kills, and I mean a lot. Some are simpler, such as a house being lowered on an old woman, or another old woman who gets killed in her powerchair (the innocent children of Gatlin used a remote control and drove her into a busy intersection), or even a meeting house getting sent up in flames, surely killing most people at the town meeting.

The better ones include a freak storm which sends a corn stalk flying through a van window and impaling someone in the neck. The other guy there got his throat slit by corn stalk leaves. There was a guy caught under a corn harvester. Someone was stabbed to death with syringes. And perhaps my favorite, using a voodoo doll (which is something that is never once brought up again or alluded to), a kid carves into a man’s nose during a church service, causing one of the worst nosebleeds imaginable.

Save for the nosebleed death, none of these are particularly brutal or gory, but most of them are either quite amusing or just entertaining. There is an occasional darkness to the film – the movie opens with people finding quite a few decomposing corpses in the basement of a house in Gatlin, and later in the film, people run into the scattered remains of human beings in a cornfield, things such as hands and feet. The Final Sacrifice isn’t a gory movie, but honestly, as far as kills go, it’s decent.

I’ve seen most of the movies in the Children of the Corn series, and only a handful are films I actually find poor. As for Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice, I don’t delude myself into thinking the movie’s good, but I’ve been pretty entertained by it in the past, and that hasn’t changed with this most recent viewing.

7/10

Directed by Mary Lambert [Other horror films: Pet Sematary (1989), Strange Frequency (2001), Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005), The Attic (2007), Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (2011)]

I wasn’t a big fan of the first Pet Sematary, nor was I a big fan of the book. But boy, Pet Sematary II is even worse, and I cannot overstate just how much I dislike the direction that this one took.

As far as performances go, it was briefly nice to see Clancy Brown (of The Shawshank Redemption) here, but then his character quickly becomes one of the biggest dicks imaginable. Unfortunately, his character is only utilized in worse ways once he’s brought back to life, but I’ll touch on that atrocity a bit later. Anthony Edwards was somewhat enjoyable here, especially toward the end of the film, but he wasn’t anything special.

The two main kids, Edward Furlong and Jason McGuire, were okay. I sort of liked the bond between the two, but much like Edwards’ performance, I don’t think either one was particularly special. McGuire certainly was at his best, though, with his asshole step-father (Brown’s character).

It’s with Brown’s character that I really started losing interest in the film. Once he’s about to strike his step-son and gets killed, the boys decide to bury him in the burial ground to bring him back, and back he comes. How the wife didn’t notice that her husband was essentially a zombie blows my mind, but really, any scene past Clancy’s death was pretty much coming to unwilling eyes, because the whole “My step-father’s a dangerous zombie, help me,” was just so stupid, and I didn’t care whatsoever.

The whole idea of a son desperately wanting his mother back was touching, and I do think some of the finale was perfectly okay. But boy, I could definitely have done without the other portions, and overall, though I didn’t care for the first movie that much, I found this even harder to swallow.

4/10

Directed by William Lustig [Other horror films: Maniac (1980), Maniac Cop (1988), Maniac Cop 2 (1990), Uncle Sam (1996)]

I didn’t love the second Maniac Cop, but I did think it was a bit above average. Unfortunately, but not unsurprisingly, this sequel doesn’t fare nearly as well, and I generally didn’t care for it whatsoever.

It’s not like the movie’s awful or even that much worse in quality from the second, but I didn’t care much for the route the story took, what with a corrupt cop (Robert Z’Dar, our titular maniac cop) trying to protect an injured corrupt cop (Gretchen Baker) while another corrupt cop (Robert Davi, returning in his role from the second film) does other stuff.

The beginning of the film mentions that Cordell’s character was ‘framed’ and sent to prison. I won’t deny that whatever crime he was thrown into prison for might have been a frame-up, but I will point out that Cordell should have gone to prison anyway, as he absolutely partook in police brutality, the same as Baker’s character, it seems. And on that note, Baker had every right to shoot when she did, but she was using an illegal weapon and illegal ammunition (yet she’s still cleared in the mind of her corrupt cop peer, Davi’s character), so Baker’s character also should have gone to prison had her outcome in the film been better.

My point is that there’s no likable characters in the film. Even the one with potential, a doctor (played by Caitlin Dulany), then falls in love with a cop who just literally tortured her patient minutes before. Again, jail time would be nice.

I don’t like cops, and I don’t respect cops, but this hasn’t really hurt my feelings on the first two movies (though from the beginning, I scoffed when Cordell is called ‘sympathetic’, as he’s not at all). Here, though, it grated on me because there’s not one likable character in the bunch, and their behavior appears to have zero consequence (the video that was uncovered that would have ‘cleared’ Baker’s character, again, still showed multiple illegal actions), but that’s par for the course as far as the corrupt institution of the police force goes.

Throughout the film, there are some okay kills, mostly with firearms, but a solid stabbing is thrown in. As it was, the ending rubbed me the wrong way, also, mainly because I absolutely refuse to believe that someone on fire could drive a car for twenty minutes without 1) melting the seat, 2) causing the gas lines to malfunction, 3) effect the engine, or 4) screwing up the steering wheel. Did it look cool? For the first minute or so, but then it just keeps going. And using the burning arm to light a cigarette, eliciting laughs from his new love? Ugh, kill me now.

Despite all of this, I wouldn’t even be averse to watching this again, as there were some decent scenes, but it’s definitely nowhere near as good as the first movie, and doesn’t much come close to touching the second. It’s not terrible, but it’s not good, and I wouldn’t really go out of my way to recommend this unless you’re already a fan of the series, in which case you’re like to be disappointed anyway.

5.5/10

This is one of the films covered on Fight Evil’s podcast. Listen below as Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss this one.

Directed by Dennis Dimster [Other horror films: N/A]

This is a moderately interesting little movie, if not potentially somewhat forgettable.

Starring Brian Bonsall (who was on Family Ties for three years), Mikey’s a story of a psychotic kid, though without the flair of The Bad Seed or the religious nature of The Omen. Just a kid who gets off on killing people.

It’s a simple affair, and Bonsall does his role pretty well. Generally speaking, most of the main cast does also. Mikey’s adoptive mother, played by Mimi Craven (who had a small appearance in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street), is memorable in her role. Whit Hertford (Jacob from the fifth A Nightmare on Elm Street and also having a minor scene in Jurassic Park) was pretty decent as a neighbor of Mikey’s (though really, he never goes anywhere).

Lyman Ward (who, funnily enough, had a small role in Freddy’s Revenge as Ron’s father) was pretty fun as a school psychologist, though I wish he had gotten more scenes. Quite attractive in her role, Josie Bissett played Hertford’s sister pretty well, though again, like Ward, I wish they did a little more with her in the movie.

The unsurprising standout, though, is Ashley Laurence, who is most well-known for her role of Kirsty from the first two Hellraisers (well, and Hellseeker, but let’s not talk about that). Mikey comes across as a lower-budget flick, so how they got Laurence, I don’t know, but she shines in every scene, and her interactions with Ward were always enjoyable.

The thing that stands out most about Mikey, Laurence aside, is the low-budget feel the movie has. At times, it reminds me of The Stepfather, in that it occasionally feels much like a television movie. While there’s not really a ton of gore (the most common form of execution is electrocution), there’s a few solid scenes of individuals beaten with hammers and bats, or shot with arrows. For the most part, though, they don’t really stand out one way or the other.

One small last thing, the setting of this film, being Arizona, was sort of interesting. While most of the time you couldn’t tell one way or the other, a few of the shots that showed the moderate sparse locality just felt interesting. For one reason or another, though it made zero difference insofar as the plot’s concerned, it stood out to me.

Mikey’s occasionally slow throughout the film, but with as many interesting actors and actresses as there are, I was never quite bored. The final twenty minutes were pretty fun (as was the entirely expected last minute scene), but I wouldn’t quite say the movie was entirely worth watching. Having seen it twice, I personally find it a decent flick, but it’s one of those movies where it’s not quite good, but has some charm to it. I would probably put Mikey somewhere marginally above average, but if you go in looking for The Omen, or even The Good Son, you probably won’t be happy.

7.5/10