Screenhead

Well, it’s been a great ride, folks–but all good things must come to an end with the final installment of Lions Gate’s The Lost Collection.  And this time, I’ve got the one horror movie in the lot to hit you with–Slaughter High.

Marty was the kid that everyone picked on, going so far as to have a hot chick invite him to have sex in the girl’s locker room on his birthday and then film him naked.  Well, one of the pranks goes a bit too far, and gives Marty a shot of boiling nitric acid to the face, leaving him disfigured for life.  But Marty’s not taking this one lying down, no sir–he may have vanished for five years, but he’s also set up an extra-special reunion for the little friends who left him disfigured.

Yes, Marty majored in cutting classmates–and it’s a good thing, otherwise we wouldn’t have much of a movie at all.  And when your movie starts out with full-frontal male nudity within the first five minutes, you know you’re in for a serious ride.

See, here’s the especially nifty part: The Lost Collection’s installment of Slaughter High is a fully uncut release.  Yes, to get its R back in the day, they had to dump some footage.  That footage is now back in full effect.  See, back in the eighties, studios couldn’t just release an unrated director’s cut when they went to video.  Now they can, but that’s left earlier stuff like Slaughter High in a bit of a lurch.  Until now–Lions Gate managed to find a fully uncut master print of this one buried in like a broom closet or something, where isn’t really that important, but the important thing is that you’re seeing this sucker exactly as it was meant to be seen.

And yes, it’s very, VERY, familiar–you’ve seen this type of movie before–but once again, this was actually around long before all those other movies you’ve already seen.  You’re looking at a genuine piece of horror history, folks; it really wasn’t a big deal where they found that complete print–it’s the fact that they found it at all that makes this one a downright collectible.

The really interesting part about Slaughter High is that the parts you’ve seen before are very well done…but the parts you HAVEN’T already seen are what really make this one worthwhile.  The ending is going to be quite literally unlike pretty much anything you’ve ever seen.  I’m having a very tough time recalling an ending similar to this one.  And I’ll say this, too–why Simon Scuddamore, who played Marty, didn’t find more work after this one is just downright perplexing.  He made an absolutely incredible lunatic serial killer, moving seamlessly from downtrodden nerd to lunatic with an axe to grind in both the physical AND metaphorical senses.  He could’ve done some truly AMAZING stuff.  Of course, the drug overdose he had the same year Slaughter High was released may well have had something to do with that, but wow…talk about your tragedy, huh?

But regardless of this, Slaughter High ends The Lost Collection with an absolute bang.  It’s everything a proper slasher flick should be, and then some.  It’s easy to see why so many movies were based on this sort of movie–it does its job with a fierce efficiency that’s unrivaled in most of its imitators.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I’m going to say just four words that’ll strike a weird sort of comedic terror into your very soul.  Those four words?

Father-Exorcist Leslie Nielsen.

You feel that?  Yeah, I know—I’m scared too.  But that’s what we’re looking at thanks to Lions Gate’s Lost Collection title Repossessed.

Basically, Repossessed takes a poor little girl named Nancy (an analogue of Regan from The Exorcist) and subjects her to demon possession.  Leslie Nielsen serves as the exorcist this time as Father Mayii (Father, may I.  get it?), courtesy of the unlikely-named church of Our Lady of the Blinding Vision, who ejects the demon from Nancy’s soul in a fierce battle.  The demon swears revenge as it leaves.

Several years later, Nancy’s all grown up, with children, and a love of split pea soup.  But it may not be the demon that’s the bad guy in this one—there’s a pair of televangelists (Ernest and Fanny Rae Weller, an almost too-clear analogue of Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker) who are looking to cash in on exorcisms, and find themselves taking on Nancy’s demon.  Who will come out ahead in this battle for eternity: the demon, the money-grubbing televangelists or the valiant non-child-molesting Catholic father?

Now, you can tell already that this is going to be a winner. When you start a movie with jokes before you even start the footage, you know you’ve got a movie that’s going to be a real comic winner.    And there will be plenty of jokes that are totally unrelated to the plot itself, almost befitting a Zucker / Abrams / Zucker film—for instance, check out the new and interesting definition of “severe tire damage” at the hospital.  Granted, some of the jokes will require a knowledge of 1980s politics and pop culture to be fully understood.  For instance, look for jokes on The Clapper, Magic Fingers bed controls, Chappaquiddic, and the Ollie North affair.

But despite some jokes that require understanding of events that happened twenty to thirty years ago, there will still be plenty of laughs to be had here, because they’re not dependent on culture.  Fans of the original Exorcist, and eighties film buffs, will especially be enthused by this fantastic comedy.

Here’s the REALLY interesting part—around the last half hour, you can look for the movie to turn into a nigh-genuine horror title, albeit with no small amount of laughs thrown in.  This eye-opening turn is at once unexpected and highly welcome, and also well executed.  With Linda Blair putting on a role that she’s already well acquainted with, added on to a comedic dynamo performance like Leslie Nielsen has made popular for years on end, the result is nothing short of amazing.

As one last little surprise, look for little movie and TV parodies, along with some quick costume changes to be slipped in throughout the narrative for extra fun.  There’s really a lot to like here, no matter your personal favor in movie types—so rest assured that whether it’s comedies or horror movies you favor, you’ll get a real charge out of Repossessed.  Look for this one to take over your DVD player.

Popularity: unranked [?]

For those of you who happen to be limited Keanu Reeves fans, you’re going to be pretty surprised by the knowledge that he was in a whole lot more than Bill And Ted back in the eighties.  One of the “whole lot more” is a movie featured in Lions Gate’s recent The Lost Collection called The Night Before, a movie that’ll show you what can happen when you start at the end and work your way backward.

Basically,  Winston, vice-president of the Astronomy club and all-around doofus extraordinaire,  wakes up late one night—or possibly very, very early one morning—in an alley with a semi truck about to run him over, and a series of unpleasant events both behind him already and about to happen.  His father’s red convertible Mustang has been stolen, he’s sold his prom date (a cheerleader / teen model who’s lost a bet)  for fifteen hundred dollars…and after a hilarious turn at a microphone in a sleazy night club / bar, a guy named Tito wants him dead at sunrise.  Worse yet, the girl’s father is a police detective with a whole cabinet full of guns back at the house.  Thus, it’s left to Winston to get the girl and get out alive before sunrise comes and either Tito or his prom date’s father comes to get him.

The thing that really makes The Night Before work, aside from an excellently written script, is the work of Keanu Reeves.  I hadn’t expected Keanu to do much of anything after watching him “dude” his way through Bill And Ted, and snarl his way through The Matrix.  But in The Night Before, Keanu manages to bring multiple levels to his character Winston, driving him alternately between a callow, scared little boy and a drug-addled wild man.  Even better, Winston even manages to grow as a character during his tenure, becoming steadily more self-reliant from his prom night spent on the streets of what I’m guessing is Los Angeles from the sheer amount of time they spend talking about “Marina Del Rey” and the Pacific Coast Highway.

And, as if actual character development in a movie—a downright rarity any more—weren’t good enough for you, maybe you’ll be enthused by the bit of action and crime drama they slipped into the proceedings besides.  That’s reason enough to get even the most skeptical parties interested.  Sure got ME interested.

Oh, and here’s an extra special note for you—if you happen to be fond of car chases there will be a fairly extensive one toward the end that’s just a hoot.  In fact, the entirety of the ending will be an absolute hoot in its own right and in many ways, right out of left field.  You’ll get to see the end result of all that character development I talked about, and it’s downright welcome.  Seriously, this one was a HOOT.   And on further note, those who enjoy George Clinton funk will find some on the soundtrack.

I actually had quite the time watching The Night Before, and there’s no reason that any comedy fans out there, eighties movie aficionados, and Keanu Reeves buffs will come away from this without having a similarly good time.

Popularity: 1% [?]

So, apparently, Jon Cryer was huge back in the eighties, because Lions Gate’s really recent The Lost Collection features him into TWO different movies.  You’ve already read about Cryer’s earlier escapades as a Senator’s spunky son in in Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home–now you can catch a whole different side of this surprisingly versatile actor in Hiding Out.

This time, Jon Cryer plays stockbroker Andrew Morenski, who’s inadvertently done some business in a bond deal with the mob, and it’s gone all wrong.  So wrong, in fact, that the Justice Department wants him to testify against the mob.  And that, in turn, means he’s marked for death.  He’s on the run, and winds up in his cousin’s high school.  Apparently, when Jon Cryer shaves his beard and dyes his hair slightly blond and gets a new coat, he’s easily mistaken for a high school junior, or possibly senior.  High school’s surprisingly good for Andrew Morenski–now posing as high schooler Max Hauser–he’s got a hot new girlfriend, he’s handing the history teachers their heads by knowing as much about history as they do (having lived through it) , he’s just been elected class president…it’s better than he could have imagined.  But the mob hasn’t forgotten about Andrew, now Max, and they’ve found him with a vengeance.

It’s shocking to see how well this turned out.  Maybe I just don’t watch this kind of thing that often, but I’m really very impressed by this.  Jon Cryer really does look like a seventeen year old kid when he shaves off his beard.  And maybe I’m feeling overly nostalgic but I remember roller skating rinks that look EXACTLY like the one that was in this movie.  This dates me horribly, but I remember it well.

There’s a lot of little moments that coalesce together to form a whole that proves both comical and surprisingly entertaining.  Jon Cryer virtually seizes the movie to make it largely his own, and everyone else, though thoroughly competent, seems to be just along for the ride as he steals virtually every scene in the movie.  Not that I’m complaining–Cryer is fantastic and making everyone else his supporting actor is hardly a bad idea–it’s just that it’s clear that that’s what they’re doing, and if you came here for anything more than Jon Cryer you’re likely to be disapppointed.

Perhaps the best part about Hiding Out is that they’ll actually pack more jokes and more interesting scenes into the last half hour, making the whole experience a steady ratcheting-up instead of blowing all its good jokes in the first half hour and leaving the rest of the movie to coast on its earliest successes.  They saved the best for last, and this is a surprise.  In fact, the ending is actually quite a surprising chunk of awesome, which is also a comparative rarity for filmmaking, especially in recent years, where no one seems to know how to end a movie anymore and instead just lets it roll to a gradual stop.

So basically, Hiding Out is a surprising sack of joy that will provide plenty of laughs and even a few thrills for extra fun.  You’re going to love this movie–I sure did.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Okay, this is one I’m REALLY looking forward to talking about.  Not necessarily because I liked the movie or anything like that, but because of the historical footnote it represents.  Released JUST TODAY as part of Lions Gate’s The Lost Collection, Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home will sound unsettlingly familiar for a host of reasons, but you’ll have to remember that it came first.

The plot, like I said, sounds familiar enough—a high-spirited young man, Morgan Stewart (played by Two and a Half Men’s Jon Cryer), gets kicked out of prep school once again—the tenth time in seven years.  But he’s got a purpose this time: his dad’s senatorial bid is in jeopardy, and he’s decided to play the family card.  But after not seeing their son for so long, Morgan’s family isn’t exactly ready for his brand of good-natured tomfoolery.  Like I said, sounds familiar.  Movies like Charlie Bartlett and even Malibu’s Most Wanted would use similar plotlines, but those wouldn’t come for years, pushing DECADES after the fact, which is interesting enough in its own right.

But there’s something else that makes Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home a particularly rare piece—its director.  This is one of the extremely rare, dozen or so, movies to be directed by Mr. Alan Smithee.  For those of you not familiar, Alan Smithee is the officially sanctioned pseudonym of the Director’s Guild of America for  directors who wish to officially disavow their work.  In order to be approved for a Smithee, the director in question must prove to a panel of the DGA that he (or she, depending) could not exercise full creative control over the work.

Though in this case, I’m not sure why the original director was so eager to disavow this project, because this movie is just shockingly awesome.  I spent large portions of this movie laughing myself stupid.  When I watched Morgan cut a hole in his door with a chainsaw autographed by Tobe Hooper, that was about it for me.  This movie was just entirely too awesome.  Yes, it’s very eighties-movie in its formulaic, happy-ending, bubblegum-pop teen romance sort of setup, but it’s no less satisfying for the predictability.

I find myself wondering, considering how well this turned out, how it would’ve turned out had the original director not gone the Smithee route and instead got the creative control he’d wanted originally.  I’m an old subscriber to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy, so I wonder.  Would it have improved even farther?  Would it have been, amazingly, MORE fun?  Or would it have been brought down by attempts to make it deeper, or more lit’ry?

There’s not much sense in playing what might have been, especially with a movie that already turned out so solidly well.  While it’s interesting to think about, the fact remains that there’s a perfectly good, perfectly solid title waiting off in the wings for us to enjoy.  So go out and grab a copy of Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home, because when you bring him to YOUR home, you’ll have plenty of laughs and good times to come.

Popularity: 1% [?]

So Lions Gate, probably figuring that it’s picked up the rights to a whole lot of movies in its days of acquisition, picking up studios like Artisan and such, and thus realized they had a LOT of old movies in their vaults.  Thus, they’ve released several of them into what they call The Lost Collection, a block of films featuring currently big-name actors in roles before they were A-listers.

They’ll start coming out on DVD this Tuesday, so keep your eyes front for stuff like Homer and Eddie, which we’re talking about today.

Homer And Eddie puts James Belushi (otherwise known as John’s brother) together with Whoopi Goldberg (otherwise known as Used To Have A Career) and puts them on a cross-country drive across America.  Homer, a baseball fanatic who took a fastball to the head as a boy, is off to visit his father in Oregon before his father dies of cancer.  Robbed of his last eighty-seven dollars on his way to Oregon, he runs into Eddie, a crazy lady who’s been told she’s only got a month to live.  Eddie, deciding to take advantage of Homer’s slow mind and trusting nature, decides to take Homer off to recover his eighty-seven dollars. As was the standard with movies like this, there’ll be plenty of laughs and growth opportunities along the way.

This is where I’d normally say how derivative movies like this are, and how you’ve probably already seen a few dozen like this, but this was originally released back in 1989.  This IS “one of those movies like this”. It’s downright difficult to accuse Homer and Eddie of being derivative when they were there first.  In fact, movies like this serve a greater purpose.  Most of these kinds of movie were long since removed from video stores, and they’re hard to find.  So a DVD re-release like this actually does us a service, as it allows us to get a look at movies long since forgotten, or worse, forced off video store shelves by sheer necessity and lack of space.

I’ve got to admit, Whoopi Goldberg really knew how to play a lunatic like no one else I’ve ever seen.  Seriously, even when Vince Vaughn took over for Anthony Perkins in the Norman Bates role, neither one of them put such sheer breathless abandon into smashing their heads into a mirror.  And James Belushi was also surprisingly confident—these two do shockingly well in a buddy comedy with a little bit of a dark edge.

While it made—or helped make—a lot of the conventions that we’ve come to know and expect today, it also had a lot of its own   Sure, there are plenty of parts where it’s schmaltzy and plenty of times where it’s a bit tiresome, and even plenty of places where it lays EVERYTHING it’s got on WAY too thick, but this all adds up to the charm.  It has that strange sort of appeal that can only come from a heartwarming buddy comedy, one of the first of its kind.

This is one of those strange sort of movies where you’ll feel all upbeat and happy for a while, and then something dark will happen and you’ll almost feel BAD for feeling upbeat and happy in the first place.  And then it won’t take long for them to do something else that’ll get you all upbeat and happy again.  It’s tough to figure this one out, but that poses a challenge much more interesting that a lot of the movies we see these days.  Homer And Eddie make a great combination, and a combination you’ll be glad to watch.

Popularity: 1% [?]