Cult of Chucky + Spy Hard + The Money Pit

CULT OF CHUCKY
(R, Universal 1440, 91 mins., video release date: October 3, 2017)

The Chucky saga isn't as overbearing as Freddy or Jason, but ever since Karen Barclay bought the possessed play pal for her son Andy in 1988‘s Child's Play, the trajectory proved fairly similar. First, there was that intriguing and clever original from director Tom Holland. Then came a routine “the terror continues” sequel wherein the rebuilt Chucky proceeded to menace Andy Barclay and his adoptive family. It was tolerable, but the third installment made it look like Aliens by comparison. Controversial for the time as a lynchpin for the Video Nasties furor over in England, Child's Play 3 was also the series' nadir for a spell. Writer Don Mancini steered his creation through a couple of pomo revivals with the decent Bride of Chucky and the tired Seed of Chucky, which veered off too far into winking camp.

2013's Curse of Chucky gave Mancini's psychotic toy a fresher sense of purpose and also introduced the gifted Fiona Dourif (daughter of Chucky vocalist and character actor Brad) into the fray. This wasn't the Friday the 13th idea of a new beginning, but instead a leaner, meaner chamber thriller with a transfusion of new blood. Cult of Chucky, a.k.a. Child's Play 7, follows the path of Curse, but incorporates the more self-aware elements of the post-Scream Bride/Seed as well as tries for a trickier third act than expected from the reliable formula. The combination still seems unrefined: self-promoted director Don Mancini is no Wes Craven, and to watch Chucky brag about beating mean old Ms. Kettlewell with a yardstick is to cringe once again at the diminished returns which set in too early. Cult is a lesser movie than Curse despite its ambitions, but more tempered than previous rehashings and hinting at what could be a decent finale if Mancini tries for a third effort.

Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) and Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif) are most assuredly not well off for having made it out alive. Andy has never experienced a real childhood thanks to Chucky, and his adult life is even more abnormal. When another blind date ends in rejection because of his violent past, Andy retreats home to torture the disembodied, taunting head of his lifelong tormentor. Andy (and the child actor who played him in the first two movies) may have grown, but he's still mentally 12 and burning his action figures in a mutually spiteful dynamic. Paraplegic Nica, meanwhile, took the rap for the mass killings of Curse and is now in psychiatric care, with deliberate echoes of Brad's Oscar-nominated debut role as well as Fiona's association with the crowd-funded indie chiller Fear Clinic.

In a fraction of the time it takes for Nica to be rehabilitated, who should come interrupting her group therapy sessions but a Good Guy Doll with the familiar name of Chucky! The body count rises and Nica's warnings go unheeded by her lecherous shrink (Michael Therriault as Dr. Foley). Outside of these confines, Andy is mocked over the phone by Charles Lee Ray's paramour Tiffany Valentine, whose soul continues to live on in the body of actress Jennifer Tilly. Turns out there's an even more abridged version of the Damballa voodoo chant which Charles exploited to inhabit the Chucky toy. Worse, there's enough of the Lakeshore Strangler to go around when there are eventually three Chuckys going to murderous work at the funny farm.

Mancini quotes the visual tricks of De Palma and Kubrick (split screens and sterile palettes) as he peppers his dialogue with throwaway references to not just earlier Child's Play movies, but even the Hannibal TV show. Just as ham-fisted are his attempts to discredit Nica's sanity by having Dr. Foley hypnotize her into believing she is the real homicidal maniac, which only serves to set up the big ironic twist to come. There's a strong Elm Street 3 vibe to the proceedings, especially when Andy arrives to take care of Chucky but is punk'd in much the same way Nancy Thompson was at the end of Dream Warriors. Alex Vincent has less screen time than Langenkamp, but he does make a stronger impression up until he ends up in the cell. The characterizations of Nica's fellow inmates, which include the smooth-talking former vagrant Michael (Adam Hurtig) who believes her as well as the nastily skeptical Claire (Grace Lynn Kung), are as stock as a supermarket's inventory.

What remains good about Mancini's series are both Brad and Fiona Dourif, the delirious mixture of graphic violence (the worst saved for an unsuspecting orderly who walks into Dr. Foley‘s office) and psychological trickery (Elisabeth Rosen as Madeleine forms a deranged attachment to Chucky in repose) and his willingness to embrace unconventional narrative outcomes. I've come around to the diabolical fates for Andy and Nica in hindsight, and the film's reliance on practical puppet/splatter effects is old-fashioned in the best ways. And like Curse, the unrated version of Cult of Chucky is baited with a credit cookie that brings back another beloved survivor (“You seen dolls that pee?“) and gooses up Mancini's cliffhanger finale. It's tempting to suggest that Don Mancini, whose energies are better spent on writing, should hand over the directorial reigns to, in Chucky's vulgar parlance, your “goddamn women drivers!” You think the Twisted Twins would sign on for it? This is 2017, after all, and at least in the entertainment world, the honor of saluting the good old days of horror should itself transfer to a more progressive body.

SPY HARD
(PG-13, Hollywood Pictures, 81 mins., theatrical release date: May 24, 1996)

Turner Classic Movies aired Who's That Girl recently as related from a tweet by Bill Chambers of Film Freak Central. But having reviewed it myself, it's just another sub-mediocrity which has benefited way too much from glib nostalgia. I dread TCM turning into I Love the '80s, but 1996’s Spy Hard doesn't make me pine for the dregs of the next decade to end up on the suspect list of modern "classics." Another case of something which stunk from the beginning and has rightly decomposed, Spy Hard appears to be a feature-length vehicle for director Rick Friedberg and spoof comedy superstar Leslie Nielsen. But it was also the debut screenplay credit for Rick's son Jason and his college roommate Aaron Seltzer, and one's heart not only sinks at this, it forces you to leave your seat to ensure it didn’'t fall right out of your ass.

The seminal send-up of espionage tropes already came from the ZAZ trio with Top Secret! All Spy Hard adds to it is "Weird Al" Yankovic's send-up of the Maurice Binder title sequences from umpteen James Bond movies and the discreetly bombastic theme songs accompanying them. Without his Airplane!/Police Squad benefactors, Nielsen winds up in his very own Leonard Part 6 as secret agent Dick "WD-40" Steele, facing arch-nemesis General Rancor (Andy Griffith) 15 years after blowing up his helicopter, but merely ridding him of both arms in the process. Rancor has taken hostage Barbara Dahl, daughter of Steele's deceased one-and-only Victoria (both Dahls played by Stephanie Romanov), but what the 80-minute Spy Hard is most concerned with are the kind of toothless pop culture references Friedberg & Seltzer have beaten to death since then as amateur parodists: from Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid to Sister Act to Speed, with an already-expired swipe at Cliffhanger (and a Michael Jackson gag better used in Neil Young's "This Note's for You" video) and an aimless recycling of Pulp Fiction's dance sequence which fails to do for that iconography what “Straighten the Rug” from Top Secret! did for Elvis movies.

With Nicollette Sheridan as the Yurrupean love interest (or Agent 3.14), Charles Durning as the Agency's master-of-disguise chief, Marcia Gay Harden as Moneypenny, and Barry Bostwick & Robert Guillaume as the reigning top agents, Spy Hard doesn't lack for a willing ensemble. Bostwick affects Ted Kennedy's Brahmin accent with blithe merriment, and the times when Nielsen simply coasts on his mugging, velvety charisma are comparatively painless to the inferior jokes he delivers. But the Friedbergs and Seltzer and fourth writer Dick Chudnow can't even do right by the cameo talent they've corralled, let alone their principals. Aside from both Mr. T and Alex Trebek in the opening riff on Mission: Impossible, there are the wasted likes of Ray Charles as a bus driver, Pat Morita (first Collision Course, now this) as a gay maitre d' and, as passengers on Charles' bus, both Curtis Armstrong and Michael Berryman. That I didn't notice or laugh at Curtis Armstrong at first watch is a special form of stupidity (the late Taylor Negron is in this, too, as a painter, but I don't want to see any more Savage Steve Holland MVPs pissed away like this). Eddie Deezen is in this, too, but so what? He's been too good for a lot of his post-Grease career.

Spy Hard plays like a dark omen for the way spoof movies would devolve into mean-spirited, cheapjack redundancy rather than genuine subversion or anarchy. Bond movies tended to be in on the joke even at their laziest and lamest, and Spy Hard doesn't push their inherent ridiculousness over the edge in an amusing way. Seeing Talisa Soto, the gangster moll from Licence to Kill, and Robert Culp, the other half of I-Spy who's not Cosby, doesn't lend it any charitable relevance. We get a lot of femme fatales and ancillary characters dispatched in cartoonish ways, including a dancing fool who pops up frequently to take bullets and throwing stars for Steele. But they are about as unfunny as the Home Alone rip-off (read: NOT parody, just regurgitation) which casts John Hughes' Dennis the Menace, Mason Gamble, to be Macaulay Culkin only to have the thugs rough him up as revenge for Getting Even with Dad and both My Girl movies. That Gamble-as-Culkin has to say he wasn't even in My Girl 2 only reinforces this malignant recognition-as-joke approach would get worse in the future with the "movie" movies. Ian Pugh, also of Film Freak Central, said it so well in his book-exclusive takedowns of Friedberg/Seltzer's Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie from the FFC 2009 Superannual. And so did Doug "The Nostalgia Critic" Walker in this editorial.

It took "Weird Al" Yankovic seven years after UHF to come up with the single funniest element of Spy Hard. In a shorter time frame, Seltzerberg have been distressingly rewarded for their brainless, repetitive, shoddy contributions to the genre. There have been six of them ranging from Date Movie to The Starving Games, and there isn't one moment in any them that could light the menorah like Yankovic did when he married the music from "Money for Nothing" to the lyrics of "The Ballad of Jed Clampett." Mark Knopfler is no match for such dire straits as this. In the spirit of Yankovic, here's my final thought on Spy Hard courtesy of Rip Torn's Artie from The Larry Sanders Show and the aforementioned Savage Steve Holland: "You opened with a showstopper. The movie's over...You can go home now." Move-ah, move-ah.

THE MONEY PIT
(PG, Universal Pictures, 91 mins., theatrical release date: March 26, 1986)

Had Richard Benjamin's only directorial credit been My Favorite Year, I would embrace him as a legendary one-shot akin to Charles (The Night of the Hunter) Laughton. Alas, the retired actor kept plugging away from behind the camera, his follow-ups from 1984 being the romantic Racing with the Moon, starring Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage, and the pedantic City Heat, starring Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. Benjamin took the latter gig when Blake Edwards was booted from the production, and it turned out to be a thankless task. Neither of the macho marquee idols lived up to the charming self-deprecation of the great Peter O'Toole, and it was clear that not only had Edwards' muse abandoned him (he fittingly declined credit for the sloppy script by changing it to S.O.B.), but that Benjamin couldn't handle tonal changes even in a B-grade gangster movie.

Still, My Favorite Year was a pleasant surprise back in 1982, and the box-office king of that year was paying attention. The Money Pit should've closed out another banner year for Steven Spielberg as a Christmastime release in 1985, but with his own The Color Purple bucking for Oscar-validated prestige that he did not get, it was delayed until the following spring, upon which it was razzed all over in the critical press as a disappointing ancestor of both the Cary Grant/Myrna Loy gem Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and Spielberg's own Poltergeist. Tom Hanks and Shelley Long, Benjamin's leads here, each provided good work for Ron Howard in the past (Night Shift, Splash) but make a lackluster impression together, even if their individual appeal breaks through on occasion.

If Pacific Heights were a broad domestic comedy instead of a middlebrow thriller, The Money Pit is what springs to mind. Walter Fielding (Hanks) and his girlfriend Anna Crowley (Long) have respective gigs in the music biz (he as a legal advisor, she as a concert violinist), but they are dirt poor and crashing in the home of Anna's symphony conductor/ex-husband Max (Alexander Gudonov) on his European engagement. His tour ends prematurely, forcing them to decide upon buying a home just as swiftly. With luck, Walter and Anna hit upon a million-dollar mansion being sold at a $200,000 song by Estelle (Maureen Stapleton), whose husband Carlos has been detained by Israeli spooks. Or at least that's what she tells Anna; she neglects to mention the house is so decrepit, it's practically as stable as a castle made of Elmer’s Glue and popsicle sticks.

The entire staircase comes loose and collapses. The water main appears to be connected to the sewage system. One flick of a light switch sends wily sparks shooting up the electrical wiring. The naïve couple invest whatever cash they have for repairs in the service of men named Shirk (Joe Mantegna is the grossly disreputable carpenter) and hellion laborers who tear out the ground and leave holes in the walls. The ones who do renovate work for weeks on end, which doesn't prevent further destructive chain reactions. The lovers' morale is eaten away like a cartoon termite feasting on the Pink Panther's cottage, which leaves them to vulnerable to suspicion and infidelity.

Richard Benjamin is on surer footing here than he was with City Heat, and a couple extended scenes of the house wreaking havoc harken back to the slapstick vigor of My Favorite Year. Compared to Spy Hard, Benjamin is better at stacking his cards and toppling them than Rick Friedberg. And when it comes to peripheral jokes, writer David Giler shames Seltzerberg as much as The Nostalgia Critic. Walter seeks a cash advance from a prepubescent multi-millionaire he represents, coming up with this assertive form of blackmail: "If you don't loan me that money, I’ll not like you anymore!" There's also a fine gag involving Anna's medicine cabinet, and Gudonov's conceited, contemptuous Max upstages even the hysterical Tom Hanks.

But like Hanks' previous The Man with One Red Shoe, another terribly wan spy caper, The Money Pit lacks a black comedy foundation to go along with the elaborate catastrophe. It's inevitable that the unmarried Walter and Anna will require some patching up of their own, but this is thrown at us half-baked and hastily. Spielberg and Giler, as executive producers, have commissioned the house to be the star at the expense of Hanks and Long, still small-screen personalities in 1986 and saddled with a script that lets them down not just physically, but materially. The contrivance of their love story eventually shows up the limited capacity of the comedy, and since The Money Pit isn't as whimsically demented as Back to the Future or Gremlins, the Spielberg productions it truly recalls are the more labored, self-conscious carnival rides of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, and still on a lesser scale.

Homeward Bound 2: Lost In San Francisco + Noises Off...

HOMEWARD BOUND 2: LOST IN SAN FRANCISCO
(G, Walt Disney Pictures, 89 mins., theatrical release date: Mar. 8, 1996)

Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey caught me by surprise all over again when I revisited it a month ago. The film's main ingredients provoked the same stimuli the 9-year-old version of myself received back in '93, from the perils of the Pacific Northwest to the pugnacity of the voice actors. I recalled every wisecrack, every ancillary critter, every moment wood beams gave out from under the animals. And it didn't wear out its welcome, even managing to restore the lump in my throat I once had when Peter Seaver waited for his aged but persistent golden retriever companion, Shadow. Realizing that it came from the man who cut both Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart was simply one of the perks of adulthood.

Fond memories of the original aside, it seems that remaking the live-action Disney movie of 20 years' past was perhaps its biggest coup. In the same year Homeward Bound premiered, Look Who's Talking Now! and Beethoven's 2nd demonstrated just how limited the concept of unleashed pets loose in wide metropolitan spaces was, what with their unavoidable debts to earlier Disney animated masterpieces Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians. Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco has a title/concept eerily similar to that of another, more high-profile kiddie flick sequel. And while it avoids the orange elephant which floats into the room whenever anybody now brings up Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (or The Little Rascals), the misadventures this time around are the very same classic Disney staples other studios nicked back in 1993.

Shadow, Chance the braggart bulldog & the aptly-named Sassy the cat are once again on a mission to reunite with the Seaver (nee Burnford) clan, who this time try to accommodate the pets by taking them on their vacation to Canada. With the exception of Ralph Waite, who ably fills in for the departed Don Ameche, the voices of Chance (Michael J. Fox) and Sassy (Sally Field) as well the entire principal cast (Robert Hays, Kim Greist, Benji Thall, Kevin Chevalia, and Veronica Lauren) are accounted for. This time it's Chance, still afraid of the dread pound (referred to here as "the bad place"), who instigates the pets' escape from their freight cages and away from the airport, their combined twelve paws leading them to the heart of San Francisco and in pursuit of the golden bridge that will safely maneuver them back home.

Their less-than-harrowing obstacles include sparring bands of street mutts, a friendly super-pack and a diabolical if dopey duo (voices of Jon Polito and Adam Goldberg), as well as the ever present danger of dog-snatchers prowling about in a "blood-red van" collecting lab specimens. The expanding roster of fur balls includes Riley (voiced by Sinbad), a crossbred canine less dependent on humans than Shadow; Delilah (voiced by Carla Gugino), a plucky stray Kuvasz who falls in love with mongrel-for-life Chance; and Bando (voiced by Stephen Tobolowsky), a coonhound swain. There is a rousing comeuppance or two as well as a heroic detour for Shadow and Sassy in the vein of the missing Molly from the last film, this time the result of a fire started by the two creeps in the red van.

With Caroline Thompson transitioning to director (Black Beauty, Buddy), Linda Woolverton riding the wave of success from The Lion King and Duwayne Dunham crossing back over into television (his last theatrical gig being Little Giants), the creative team of the original is missed. The belabored screenplay of Homeward Bound 2 instead falls to Julie Hickson, a Tim Burton collaborator from his embryonic career at Disney and of far less renown than Ms. Thompson, and Chris Hauty, whose claim to fame is as the writer of Never Back Down. Hickson and Hauty overwork the bickering which enlivened the first film to the detriment of both the story and the stars. Sally Field, regrettably, turns positively shrewish because of the pervasively arch inner dialogue Sassy is given. That the humble Shadow has to issue more than three exasperated ultimatums is indicative of the quality of writing here: thoroughly unimaginative in developing the conflict between the domesticated heroes and the mangier supporting pooches as well as the adorable Chance/Delilah courtship.

Just as the first film surprised me upon learning of Dunham's connection with David Lynch, Homeward Bound 2 is helmed by another peculiar candidate for a family film: the late David R. Ellis. This was actually his first film after a long career as stuntman, and Ellis kept active in second unit work even while making his bones with schlock horror, including two Final Destination sequels and the pre-Sharknado sensation that was Snakes on a Plane. As much as I want to be respectful of Mr. Ellis, who deserved better than to go out on Shark Night 3-D, he is a lesser breed of filmmaker than Dunham. Sentimentality is not his strong suit, as evidenced by a feeble subplot in which Chance is realizing that baseball buff Jamie is beginning to outgrow games of fetch. The human drama is deader weight here than before. And when I think of the increased voiceover work here, I find a director who has less confidence in balancing genuine animal acting with the spoken thoughts of the animals.

Not that there aren't some tasty bits in the kibble, like when Chance observes a mass of seals and takes it as proof of what happens when dogs stay in water for too long. The way he verbalizes heartbreak, combining three nightmare scenarios, is also commendable. And there is a sublime use of three actual sports commentators, weighing in as Chance sabotages one of Jamie's games. The entire roster of voice stars do, once you get past the script (which antes up the lame Schwarzenegger puns and hydrant-level scatology), come across as lively and cordial; even Shadow gets in a nice joke fitting for an old-timer such as himself. But take away the narration and Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco will have you asking "Are we there yet?" too early and too frequently, which isn't the way for anyone to rediscover their inner child.

NOISES OFF
(PG-13, Touchstone Pictures, 101 mins., theatrical release date: Mar. 20, 1992)

Annie Potts was the initial voice of Sassy when Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey "wrapped" in 1992, before Disney secured Sally Field as a replacement. But the Ghostbusters comedienne was also one of dozens of stars to be considered for the role Glenn Close immortalized in Fatal Attraction, and she was slated to reunite with Peter Bogdanovich a year after Texasville (the Last Picture Show sequel in which Potts played Jeff Bridges' wife) for the Amblin-produced film version of Michael Frayn's Broadway smash Noises Off. Alas, Potts was replaced by Marilu Henner and I haven't been able to find any reason as to why. 'Tis a pity, since Bogdanovich gathered the greatest comic dream team this side of 1985's Clue, even trading up in talent (Michael Caine > Martin Mull) when not finding adequate matches (Colleen Camp = Nicollette Sheridan).

That Bogdanovich puts his own ensemble through the same panicked, frantic and m-m-m-m-manic paces like Jonathan Lynn did in his overpraised board game spin-off is inevitable given his film's origin. Frayn's three-part deconstruction of a British sex farce, all slamming doors and swollen misunderstandings and polite innuendos, was informed by the unruly dynamics within its troupe of dysfunctional day players. First was a twilight-hour dress rehearsal before the premiere in which the stars are already on shaky ground and the director is driven to his wit's end. Then came a matinee performance aimed at the seniors wherein all involved are at each other's throats. Finally, an ad-libbed Armageddon of an evening show rife with defective props and irrevocable shifts away from character. "On we bloodily stagger," proclaims the show's irritable guv'nor, not immune to the bedlam he's brought upon himself and his clueless cast.

In Marty Kaplan's scripted adaptation, the setting shifts from the U.K. hinterland to the American heartland, beginning and ending on the Great White Way itself. Lloyd Fellowes (Michael Caine) recollects the three doomed stagings as he anticipates the worst in NYC. His perpetually aloof charges include aging star attraction Dotty Otley (Carol Burnett), who's gambling her retirement on the show's success while playing housekeeper Mrs. Clackett; Garry Lejeune (John Ritter), who is lascivious realtor Roger Tramplemain onstage and Dotty's possessive boy toy off of it; Frederick Dallas (Christopher Reeve), in the role of tax exile Philip Brent, who is pacifistic to the point of nosebleeds but naïve enough to end up a third wheel in Garry and Dotty's tempestuous affair; Belinda Blair/Flavia Brent (Marilu Henner), who dishes the dirt and proves an ineffectual if perky peacekeeper; Brooke Ashton (Nicollette Sheridan), a shortsighted bombshell who is dating her director whilst acting the part of Roger's ripe IRS secretary lover Vicki; and Selsdon Mowbray (Denholm Elliott), a showbiz friend of Dotty's whose performance as a doddering burglar is sabotaged by his own bottomless thirst for whiskey and short-term memory.

Lloyd tries to choreograph the melee of "Nothing On" but cannot handle dueling relationships with Brooke and stage manager/scapegoat Poppy Taylor (Julie Hagerty), whereas Poppy's assistant Tim Allgood (Mark Linn-Baker) is operating on little sleep and smaller reserves of capability. These nine personalities fall prey to the spiraling jealousies and deficiencies which obliterate whatever tenuous claims of professionalism they can claim.

Michael Frayn's Tony-certified Noises Off has the kind of bulletproof comic scenarios which are precise enough to survive even the lousiest revival. As the group rehearses in Des Moines, four of the actors stall the all-important farcical flow to question their motivation in the most imbecilic of ways, from Garry's mild-mannered vagueness (one of his more coherent gripes: "Lloyd, these damn sardines!") to Frederick's immaculately-sculpted timidity to Brooke's flighty tinge of doubt just as Act 1 is nearly complete. Hell breaks loose backstage two months later in Miami Beach, with the cuckolded Garry having regressed into a vengeful trickster, the self-absorbed Lloyd making an ass of himself every opportunity and everyone trying to prevent Selsdon from drifting off in a drunken stupor. By the time they get to Cleveland, every established flaw either takes its logical toll or comes back with a vengeance, from stuck doors to hazardous props to Dotty's full-fledged mental breakdown in front of a live theatre audience.

Peter Bogdanovich brings out the giddy worst in his all-star assemblage. John Ritter (of Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon and They All Laughed) does his sharpest variation on his man-overboard routine, tumbling down stairways and baiting his co-stars with tremendous energy. Ditto an equally game Christopher Reeve, his self-effacing matinee idol bearing the brunt of the many pants-down blunders. Julie Hagerty suffers smartly and Nicollette Sheridan stumbles sexily. Denholm Elliott, who sadly passed away from AIDS in 1992, makes a great wag and Carol Burnett, in a welcome cinematic return since owning Miss Hannigan for John Huston, burlesques as peerlessly as ever. Excepting the presence of two Brits and one Britt, Burnett's over-the-top Cockney accent comes closest to comic gold amongst her Anglo co-stars; and when it drops, she has the power to take the house along with it.

All that good stuff out of the way, however, Bogdanovich's and Kaplan's translation of Noises Off comes up short not unlike the dramaturgy Frayn lampooned. That rickety framing device centering on Michael Caine is overwhelmed by the star's cuddly lecherous charisma as Lloyd, and even that cannot fully mitigate his accountability in these blazing fiascos. Frayn had the good sense to paint Lloyd as one more bullheaded diva, his screaming complacency making him worthy of sinking along with the passengers of his own Titanic. The fluffier take Caine (and to be fair, the entire cast) is saddled with leads to a self-congratulatory and unconvincing curtain call which is more fitting with the legacy of Frayn's play rather than its content. "There's nowhere to go but up" is a Broadway Melody which doesn't mesh with the chaotic rhythm, the filmic equivalent of overlaying an Ignacio Herb Brown tune over a random snatch of Metal Machine Music.

Bogdanovich's fixed camera is willing, but the spirit is weak thanks to such nagging artificialities as canned laughter and reaction shots, which doesn't expand the material for the big screen so much as kowtow to its smaller competition. Faithful to Frayn's libretto as he and Kaplan are, the theatricality endemic to the material becomes the film in rather staid ways. It doesn't set one up for the victory lap to come nor provide these fine actors with enough material to invest us when said coda intrudes. Noises Off is the funnier, more together alternative to Clue due in no small part to what worked so exquisitely the first time, and I'd rather Bogdanovich than Chris Columbus, for damn sure. But more so than the loss of Annie Potts, I mourn having to slot Noises Off into Hollywood's same "It Was a Good Idea at the Time?" file as Rent.

Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood

TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS: BORDELLO OF BLOOD
(R, Universal Pictures, 87 mins., theatrical release date: August 16, 1996)

Pop culture will eat itself, and Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood is, in its self-devouring way, as voracious as a behaviorally-reconditioned zombie falling for the rich taste of spilled entrails all over again.

In the first part of this mercifully split review, I offered half-hearted praise to Demon Knight, Ernest Dickerson's attempt to launch HBO's horror anthology series as a cinematic commodity. It wasn't as satisfactory as films like Warlock or Dr. Giggles, which I found unabashedly entertaining, but it also wasn't as much of a bust as Evilspeak or Wishmaster. The many elements of Demon Knight aligned well enough to give it a recommendation, from Dickerson's exuberant style to the varied performances to the giddy thrill of the hand-crafted gore.

What I really wanted to get across was that there was potential for the Tales from the Crypt Presents franchise to carry on the series tradition of combining left-of-center talent with comfortably crass formula. Bordello of Blood, sadly, skimps on the "talent" part of equation and jackknifes into the quicksand bog of "crass."

The first sign of trouble is that this is solely based on a story by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and not scripted purely by them. Demon Knight was not an original idea from any of the show's brain trust, but seeing the men who brought you Used Cars and Back to the Future in the credits is enough to raise your expectations. However, this was an idea that existed as far back as 1973, which somehow did not attract the checkbook of a single enterprising drive-in merchant in almost two decades of sundry Crown and Cannon films.

Taking rewrite credit are director Gilbert Adler and A.L. Katz, Crypt series honchos who also produced Freddy's Nightmares (which I forgot to mention the last time) and previously collaborated on the screenplay to Children of the Corn 2: The Final Sacrifice. All I can say is this: Imagine an unproduced Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond script being revived by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.

That is Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood. I wish I could end it on this.

The movie begins with an extended riff on the fake-out opening sequence from Demon Knight, only one which actually ties into the story to come. We are introduced to Vincent Prather, played by dwarf actor and Charles Band regular Phil Fondacaro, leading some greedy banditos on an expedition through the Tierra del Fuego. What appears to be a treasure hunt turns out to be a ritual involving the desiccated corpse of Lilith (Angie Everhart), a Queen Attila whose drawn-and-quartered heart is restored and thus allows Vincent total control over this ancient harpy.

"Where's our old pal, the Crypt-Keeper?" says no one but the hopelessly faithful, and sure enough, what we've just seen is a story idea being pitched from one Mummy (see if you can guess the actor, and no cheating) to another. The bandaged schmoozer proves a bit too irritating for our John Kassir-voiced mascot, and thus they engage in an all-or-nothing round of Chop Poker. P.S. that previously unnamed veteran character actor is neither Lance Henriksen or Kevin Tighe.

One overlong wraparound segment later, and we finally get our ever-groping hands with Bordello of Blood. The set-up involves the unruly metalhead brother of a Bible-thumper on a fateful visit to a funeral parlor where the password to pleasure is "Cunningham wake." Said miscreant, Caleb Verdoux (Corey Feldman), and a barroom bud get an eyeful of the underground brothel's chesty clientele, but say a mouthful in the presence of Lilith, who comes in for the heart-ripping climax.

Caleb's sister Katherine (Erika Eleniak) files a missing persons report with the procrastinating police, but is approached at the station by Rafe Guttman (Dennis Miller), a persistent, penniless P.I. who goads Katherine into allowing him the case. In a performance that suggests what would happen if Bill Maher were cast as the lead in Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions, Miller is unflappably sarcastic as he navigates every gumshoe cliché which follows, as Lilith develops an insatiable appetite for Guttman's sleazy blood.

Nothing's surprising at all about Bordello of Blood except for the fact that even as "a bad Tales from the Crypt episode" (Miller's description, not mine) stretched out to 80 minutes, it makes its immediate competitor in the hip bloodsucker stakes From Dusk Till Dawn seem like a GREAT feature installment of the series. Say what you will about that Quentin Tarantino enshrinement, at least it was craftier in its exploitative nostalgia. It had its heart and ate it, too.

Adler goes for a camp-vamp overkill which places it squarely in the lower rungs of the genre, with enough dated satire and leery T&A to completely ruin almost any chance this film as at being funny or sexy. The shadow figure of Lilith's nefarious pyramid scheme is Reverend Jimmy Current (Chris Sarandon), an obvious swipe at Jimmy Swaggart which was no longer fresh the moment Ozzy Osbourne released the scabrous "Miracle Man" in 1988. Chris Sarandon, who like Feldman seems to be here solely for his association to more fang-tastic career highlights, is valiantly animated as the gimmicky guitar thug who duck-walks and windmills his piety, but the welcome is ultimately wasted.

Despite all the hardbodies Adler rounds up in various skimpy burlesque costumes, the only nudity which sticks out involves a cadaver who is given unsavory attention by nutty mortician McCutcheon (Aubrey Morris), who tweaks her nipples with a hearty "Toot! Toot!" God damn.

And with his unceasing flippancy and stream-of-thought references to Catholicism, Agent Mulder and the Fortress of Solitude, Dennis Miller comes across as less Bill Murray and more Mike Nelson than one anticipates. He's so stuck in riff mode that the character proves gradually transparent and all that's left is a bottomless keg of Miller Lite, which is still somehow enough to leave you tapped-out on the third pint. You can't even laugh out loud at some of his more inspired throwaway quipsm instead just chuckling quietly and thinking to yourself "Enough already!"

The wad-blowing finale is as formulaic as they get, with enough exploding hookers to rival Frank Henenlotter without his trashy sincerity (and Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" finally proving insufferable) and a capper which will come as no surprise. And when you get an Oscar-winning "special guest" who is known for her sense of humor to show up out of nowhere, at least devise something funny for her to do.

The only thing Bordello of Blood doesn't completely bungle is Angie Everhart's saucy, slinky command of her villainess Lilith, who doesn't get much to really do but gives the film its only semblance of sex appeal and proper camp. She's to Bordello of Blood what Billy Zane was to Demon Knight, bless her. Lilith knows that the best way to a man's heart is in his pants, but there's nothing else as convincingly kinky to rival her, not even Phil Fondacaro's Sinful Dwarf.

Bordello of Blood helped drain the life force out of the Tales from the Crypt dynasty, so much so that the trilogy's end, 2002's Ritual with Jennifer Grey and Tim "Death of Some Salesman" Curry, was consigned to DVD purgatory. The Crypt-Keeper went out without a scream, but a Dead End.

The Craft

THE CRAFT
(R, Columbia Pictures, 101 mins., theatrical release date: May 3, 1996)

Texas Frightmare Weekend 2015 is approaching fast, and I've been keeping up with the guest announcements and such. This is one of the most high-profile events in the three years I have attended, having missed seven previous conventions. The first year I went, I guess the biggest draw was Danny "Machete" Trejo, who packed such a crowd that I remember Mariel Hemingway referred to the line outside his photo op as the "Trejo 500." I wasn't in that line, honestly, as it was conflicting with my date with a princess...

Ahem.

But year two upped the ante in that it featured a full-scale gathering of personnel from the Terminator series, including Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Michael Biehn, Kristanna Loken, and Earl Boen. Even Hamilton's tormentors from the same year's Children of the Corn, John "Isaac" Franklin and Courtney "Malachai" Gains, were in attendance. I had a great time at that event, too, mostly because I spent it with a friend I made the previous year. And whilst I understood that the potential to top even that star-studded weekend celebration was possible, I had no idea what the 2015 roster would bring.

Suffice it to say, 2015 has done the same thing 2013 did in the presence of Diane Franklin: it has awakened the teenager in me.

I say that because the year marks the debut convention appearances of some of the biggest names from my 1990s childhood, particularly Neve Campbell and Skeet Ulrich, as in "Sidney Prescott and Billy Loomis from Scream." But you don't have to be Ghost Face to recognize that these two had made an earlier splash in 1996 before Wes Craven's self-effacing horror blockbuster laid bare the rules of horror both past and future. You don't even have to know who fellow first-time attendee Rachel True is, but it helps, because 2015 is when that old black magic comes to Dallas in anticipation of the 20th anniversary of The Craft.

Before Scream author Kevin Williamson archly intertwined John Hughes (The Breakfast Club) and Fred Dekker (Night of the Creeps) in the Robert Rodriguez-helmed The Faculty, The Craft stood out as the decade's most recognizable high school spookshow by injecting voodoo into the sardonic teen angst formula. This could charitably be called "Hexers," except that the central clique in this film aren't idle rich snobs but outcasts from the word go, a brooding collective of female misfits whom their callous peers have christened "The Bitches of Eastwick."

Or at least that's how Ulrich's Chris Hooker describes them to the new girl in town, Sarah Bailey (Robin Tunney), freshly relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco. Sullen Sarah carries the trauma of a mother who died giving birth as well as suicidal slashes down her wrists, and is now forced to make a fresh start at St. Benedict's Academy, a parochial school just as ripe with classism and cruelty as any non-uniformed establishment. Sarah gravitates towards the terrifying trio, regardless, after nonchalantly demonstrating her powers during French class.

Chris will go on to slander Sarah as punishment for her not putting out, thus giving her all the reason to devote herself full-time to the supernatural machinations of her black sheep BFFs. They all seem to lack proper self-esteem for various reasons. Grand high Goth Nancy Downs (Fairuza Balk) has a sluttish reputation of her own and lives in a trailer with her alky mom and deadbeat stepfather. Meek Bonnie (Neve Campbell) has burn scars down her backside from a traumatic accident, whilst Rochelle (Rachel True) is the lone Negro student and susceptible to the catty insults of the mean blonde from Night of the Demons 2.

Séances and slumber parties ensue, with such ritualistic bonding exercises as blood oaths, beauty makeovers and the ever-popular "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board." All in the name of Manon, an all-powerful, all-natural deity who is described through analogy as the stadium God and the Devil would play football on. The girls pray their troubles away, and Manon hears them, and so, in quick succession, Bonnie's damaged skin tissue regenerates, Rochelle's racist bully develops female pattern baldness and Nancy goes from poor to posh after willing her penniless, perverted stepfather into a stroke and inheriting his life insurance funds.

All's well for them and for the audience, as The Craft fancies itself a playfully macabre twist on teenaged fantasy for a spell, or until the spell wears off. The conflict begins when the increasingly resentful Nancy decides she wants invoke Manon directly through a beachside bonfire and demand his almighty powers. The next morning, she walks on water as various aquatic mammals die on the sandy turf, all the while she screeches that these are her "gifts." Sarah is rightly perturbed, but her self-centered friends remain blissfully ignorant. And when Sarah's own wish to have Chris wrapped around her finger goes horrifically awry, Nancy takes it upon herself to get even by murdering him.

Gradually, The Craft reveals itself to be another grasp at slick, superficial morality from the ham-fingered writer of Flatliners. The naturally-crafted Sarah is elevated to Good Witch status as Nancy, tempting irony by the casting of ex-Disney child star Fairuza Balk, devolves into The Even Worse Than Worst Witch. And the two other girls are stripped of their integrity and rendered ditzy foot soldiers. This banal development compromises whatever slivers of rebellion and wit the film has accumulated, a celluloid sacrifice of the soul.

Flatliners at least allowed its bratty principals the divine method of closure, something Peter Filardi and co-writer/director Andrew Fleming push aside here for cheap tricks. Rochelle, in particular, is egregiously short-changed by the film's formulaic forthrightness. Part of that is down to the casting of Rachel True, who looks way too sophisticated and smart to play the fourth banana in a juvie horror film (and for good reason, as she was pushing 30). There comes a point in the film where Rochelle should arrive at the same epiphanies as Sarah, having seen the devastation her vengeance has wrought on Laura Lizzie. But when the film approaches some kind of intriguing opportunity for a truce, it fails to follow through, turning the focus over instead to the nutty Nancy.

Neve Campbell's Bonnie is undermined just as poorly. Right at the moment her confidence is restored and she is allowed to morph from Basket Case to Princess, Filardi & Fleming treat her sex appeal as a sign of snobbishness, with nothing in the script aside from the most innocuous one-liner (late for school, she sasses "Sorry, my pedicure ran late") to demonstrate this personality shift. This is no less one-dimensionally prissy than the attitudes of straw villains Laura and Chris, and speaks to the thudding, finger-wagging desire to shame which constantly reduces most teen films to rank hypocrisy.

The lead actresses as a unit demonstrate charisma the film doesn't fully capitalize on, with the possible exception of Fairuza Balk's vamp/tramp volatility. Balk's bee-stung sneer and outrageous overbite are impossible to deny as she devours the scenery with as much relish as this story eats its tail. The sensuous, green-eyed Robin Tunney works hard to compensate for the film's compromised intelligence, but even she cannot save The Craft from the perfunctory prophecy which is a prolonged siege confrontation replete with pools of maggots and miles of snakes, followed by a misguided coda which renders its characters as unsociably sour as their stigma suggested.

Like Joel Schumacher before him, Andrew Fleming relies on visual panache and trendy flash as the be-all-end-all. There is an extravagant, earthy texture to Alexander Gruszynski's cinematography which also meshes well with the digital FX work used for levitation and catching butterflies. Fleming has a liberal fluidity with the camera, and combined with Jeff Freeman's editing and the sound design, the centerpiece séance is the most bewitching moment of The Craft, so to speak.

Graeme Revell's score stings and swoons admirably, but is engulfed by the alt-rock song selection which teases Juliana Hatfield, Matthew Sweet and Jewel at best, and overemphasizes a handful of poor cover versions at worst. The film begins with Our Lady Peace's grungy, garbled take on The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" and ends with Heather Nova listlessly draining the human touch from Peter Gabriel's "I Have the Touch." The makers of Charmed must have seen this and loved Love Spit Love's anemic retread of The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?" though. Maybe Charmed was the unofficial spin-off of The Craft the way Friends was meant to be "Singles: The Series"?

"Whatever!" seems like the right response, as The Craft labors under the pretense of authenticity to the Wiccan faith (the threefold karmic comeuppances in favor of "Do onto others...") but is grossly conformist at heart. Its rushed-upon-the-blade apathy is its tragedy, and although it is undemanding fun in the right setting, it does not honestly achieve the kind of magic which has kept it in cult circles for nearly two decades. E.C. Comics don't take themselves as seriously as The Craft double toils to.