I Talk A Laurel & Hardy Short

In particular, 1929's Big Business: 

The story of a man who turned the other cheek-and got punched in the nose.

I only felt like watching a silent short to talk about tonight, so I found one at random from a legendary comedy duo, but it's one which technically is appropriate for the holiday season. You see, Laurel & Hardy sell Christmas trees door to door (was that ever a thing?) in Southern California, to no success. They run into a grumpy balding mustached middle-aged man & because of circumstances, things escalate and both parties do increasingly destructive damage to both his house and their 1920's automobile.

The comedy is that the feud spirals out of control to an absurd degree due to someone really not wanting a Christmas tree and items accidentally getting stuck in his door. The three main players plus the rotund barrister of the law that shows up-played by Stanley Sandford of Modern Times fame & amusingly billing himself as Tiny Sandford here-all provide great physical humor with their body language, not to mention their facial expressions. It was a nice way to spend 20 minutes; co-director Leo McCarey of course later went on to direct legendary movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood such as An Affair to Remember, Love Story & Going My Way.

I TRIED To Watch Knives Out

But there were complications... circumstances beyond my control: 

Well, I WAS gonna have a review of this, but...

Considering my negative reaction to The Last Jedi and how not only did it not feel like Star Wars at all, but the story was atrocious and made zero sense... it will be surprising to hear that I'd have anything to do w/ Rian Johnson ever again. The tremendous cast was enough to get me interested, so the plan was to see this last night during its early access screening, at the same AMC which had my disastrous viewing of Joker where if things escalated, I would have been physically assaulted by a band of punks.

I now realize it should be a long while before I return to that AMC; the screening was outright canceled... because of a power outage! I was not happy about this, as my decision to see this was sort of last minute and this place was the one that still had a decent seat available. I did not feel like watching anything last night after this fiasco-I was peeved-and staying in this weekend was preferable to trying and see the movie tonight (probably from a bad seat to boot) so instead the movie will be viewed sometime early December; maybe by then the black cloud over my head will dissipate. OK, so last night also included a tasty shrimp dinner, but a screening being outright canceled for this reason was a first for me.

Candyman

Candyman (1992)

Runtime: 99 minutes

Directed by: Bernard Rose

Starring: Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkley, Kasi Lemmons, Vanessa Williams

From: Tristar/PolyGram

I would have viewed this during the Halloween season... had it been readily available at the time. I mean sure it could be found in the nether regions of the Internet but such places are full of spyware and other malicious program-at least I understand that to be the case... as I was able to rent it last night and discuss this in 2019. As a new movie is coming out next year which is a “spiritual sequel” and has the involvement of Jordan Peele, this seemed like a good time for a review anyhow.

Virginia Madsen discovered that saying “Candyman” into the mirror five times was a grave mistake, even if she is a graduate student at the University of Illinois-Chicago and her thesis is on the urban legend & its impact on the Cabrini-Green housing project; that has mostly been demolished now but at the time it was where many poor black people lived and unfortunately, it was so riddled with neglect and gang crime, it looked like something from a third world country, as shown in the movie. Turns out, the legend is actually true and things become REAL bad for Old Virginia.

The first half of the movie definitely takes its time setting up the story and presenting how deplorable conditions are in Cabrini-Green & its effect on those innocent people who are just trying to raise an infant. It's never boring, even with there are obvious fake jump scares present to ensure no one becomes bored. The second half, things pick up-as the movie takes a left turn-there are some gruesome scenes and everyone gets to see the powers of the guy known in his life as Daniel Robitaille. Among a cast that is fine overall (especially Madsen), Tony Todd stood out the most as Candyman, being both hypnotically charming and utterly terrifying, usually in the same scene.

The movie touches upon subjects like racial prejudice and white privilege, ensuring it was never boring. Then again, I never found the story dull and even if I had, I would have been entranced by the hypnotic score from Philip Glass; that was a nice get on the movie's part. No surprise this became a cult hit and its reputation only will rise with next year's big theatrical release of the sequel.

I Talk Something Called Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny!

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)

Runtime: 96 LONG minutes

Directed by: Some dude named R. Winer... and also Barry Mahon

Starring: A bunch of non-actors you've never heard of

From: R&S Film Enterprises Inc.

Another bizarre oddity I've actually seen more than once now.

As people start celebrating Christmas even before Thanksgiving arrives (which isn't something I do myself), it gave me the impetus to finally revisit something I had watched years ago. Once again this was a movie I first discovered via a website doing a detailed review and being blown away by how strange it all sounded. Yes, it was long before Rifftrax did their review.

Despite the title, not only do the Santa and Ice Cream Bunny segments only serve as bookends to another story, but Bunny does not appear until the final 10 or so minutes. Instead, a full hour of this is something previously filmed by the “legendary” Barry Mahon*. I realize I shouldn't dog too hard on someone who served in World War II and actually was in the camp where the real life events that inspired The Great Escape happened, but he was not the best filmmaker. Mahon's segment (complete w/ its own credits!) was filmed at Pirates World, a low-rent theme park in Dania, Florida that went out of business in '75 and amazingly had plenty of rock concerts from the likes of Bowie, Santana, The Grateful Dead (!) and... Led Zeppelin!! What Barry filmed in the park was much less exciting: a version of Thumbelina that was accurate to Hans Christian Andersen's story-at least according to Wikipedia-but the budget was zero dollars so the set looks cheap and the youths they have in the story all appear to be various stages of being stoned the entire time.

That occurs as a story Santa tells to a group of random kids in Florida; you see, he gets his sled stuck in sand (although “stuck” is being generous, as it's only like two inches of sand) and somehow he has the magical powers to call all the children in the neighborhood so they all scamper on over to him... this includes a young boy who just JUMPED OFF HIS ROOF while holding only a lawn furniture umbrella! They also somehow get random animals and a guy in a gorilla suit to try and pull the suit out, to no avail. Oh, and Santa keeps on his trademark outfit, despite developing obvious “swamp ass”! I mean, he had massive sweat stains on the back of his pants.

I'll be real here: this time I did not watch the movie on its own; rather, it was a YouTube video where some random guys did their own commentary and only one of them had seen this before. The rest were in disbelief over how wacky this was and they were howling when the Ice Cream Bunny finally shows up... in a fire truck that appeared to be from the 1930's... overloaded w/ all the kids that were not restrained in any way while on such a huge vehicle (this was even worse than the boy jumping off the roof) and the vehicle has to drive slow as the guy in the costume can barely see and yet he still operates it as if he is highly intoxicated... and the outfit itself looks so cheap and ghetto it becomes frightening. Of course, this bunny has no ice cream in the truck or anywhere else, so I do not know what an Ice Cream Bunny is even supposed to be. I'll stick with Blue Bunny Ice Cream, thank you very much.

The hilarity of the finale meant that this does not receive the lowest possible rating. Most of this is a slog to get through (w/ shots that go on for about twice as long as they should, to steal a line) but at least there is some tremendous unintentional humor which makes it worthwhile. Honestly, most people should only see this if there is commentary from Rifftrax or someone else.

* To clarify, not all the prints of this movie have the Thumbelina segment. Some (including the version used for Rifftrax) instead substitute Mahon's Jack and the Beanstalk, which is of similar length. I've never seen that print, although I understand it is the one available on Amazon Prime.

Night Of Horror

Night of Horror (1981, but this was made in 1978)

Runtime: 76 of the longest minutes you'll ever endure

Directed by: Tony Malanowski

“Starring”: A bunch of random people who can't act

From: Little Warsaw Productions

“This film is designed to be entertaining”... well, there's rather blatant false advertising. 

A few weeks ago I revisited an obscure early 80's horror movie titled Curse of the Cannibal Confederates (at least when Troma put it out) which is a lame and mostly boring picture where the titular confederates rise up to kill a group of irritating friends, all just because one of them stole a diary they found. Two Thousand Maniacs! this is not. The only notable aspect is that for a few minutes the content goes from 0-100 as out of nowhere it suddenly becomes like a Fulci film and features graphic gore.

Well, Tony Malanowski essentially created Cannibal as a Night of Horror remake. Those having seen that but not this... if you think Cannibal Confederates is bad (and it is) then... whoo boy... you will want to stay far the F away from Night of Horror. I've known of this for many years-due to a website review; this was long before even The Cinema Snob covered it-and it was only seen by me once before, on YouTube. I do know that recently some of those uploads were taken down but one still does remain, for those wanting to see this for free. I'll be frank here: that was how I viewed this again. No offense to the filmmakers, but honestly now...

There is an opening crawl which had the gall to portray the events in the movie as real... along with the inclusion of the phrase “this film is designed to be entertaining”; they failed in all regards with that promise. The movie's print is all washed-out but that's the least of its problems. It was a one camera shoot so there are long static shots, and one character will be focused on even if a scene has multiple characters and someone else is talking. The sound is terrible, making the dialogue hard to hear; perhaps that is a blessing, considering the acting is poor and there are plenty of flubbed lines that are left in instead of doing a better take. Then again, this is a production where during the process of creating the final print, there is a giant black smudge of... something on the bottom of the picture and it doesn't go away for almost 5 minutes!

The most “horrifying” aspect of this movie is how damn boring it is. There are long scenes of dialogue between characters that are impossible to give a damn about... long scenes of driving that will remind you of Manos (and THERE is something you want to be compared to!), a long scene of a woman pencil-sketching, something like 5 minutes of a Civil War reenactment battle, and an interminable conversation between the leads and the “ghosts”; just having ghosts does not a horror movie make, and all they do is ask the leads to do a task that proves to be relatively easy & simple... the end. Really. Cannibal having Confederates rise up from the dead to eat people was an invention only done for that movie.

The music is either a mediocre 70's country song or a piano riff which wouldn't be bad on its own... but becomes so if you have to hear it constantly through the movie; of course this is what Night of Horror chooses to do. Overall, this does not have the charm of Birdemic, The Room or even Manos, which at least had Torgo. Night of Horror is a mind-numbing slog where not even the idea of Malanowski sometimes using the credit of TONY STARK to hide the fact that he had multiple roles in this production (including a small part on screen) provides any amusement and this is better left not seen once, let alone twice like my foolish self did.

I Discuss Eddie Murphy: Delirious

Maybe one day I'll get back to my usual schedule... for now, a review inspired by (as sometimes happens) a messageboard thread: 

Y'all didn't know I was a ventriloquist too!

Lamentably I am still experiencing a general feeling of malaise, a funk I haven't quite pulled myself out of yet; however, I'll try to get things back to normal soon, and at least I had the time to watch this. Despite an opening that is ghastly by 2019 standards (more on that later) overall this is still very funny to me and it does help brighten my mood.

Many people would know this from hearing much of the material on Murphy's first two comedy albums; me, it was different. Of course I saw his movies and enjoyed them as a kid and it wasn't until college that someone I knew had an MP3 rip of this (an HBO special filmed in Washington, D.C.) so I ripped it to CD and thought it tremendous. I don't even recall how many years later that I actually viewed Delirious... I was glad I did; Eddie's all-red leather outfit was stupendous but it helped seeing all his facial expressions and how he commanded the stage & the audience.

To address the elephant in the room, Delirious starts off with bad comments about both homosexuals and AIDS. I realize that at the time AIDS was seen as “the gay disease” but it went above and beyond that; saying “I'm petrified of gay people” is hard to defend or rationalize. Years later Murphy did apologize for that bit but once you get past that, Delirious is tremendous as he rips on such people as James Brown, Michael Jackson, and “ugly singers” in general... and adult topics like sex. Best of all was the long bit where he talked about his childhood and more innocuous topics like the ice cream man, bath time w/ siblings and backyard BBQ's w/ the family. Another highlight was all the great impressions he did throughout... and boy does Eddie's line about “white people voting for someone as a joke” seem prescient now after what happened a few years ago.

This was not viewed just because Eddie Murphy has experienced a renaissance due to Dolemite is my Name (which I'll view in the future) and the plans for there to be a 4th Beverly Hills Cop on Netflix-rumors of that sequel must have been around since my college days, and that was almost two decades ago. Rather, it was someone in a messageboard thread mentioning his viewing of Delirious that made me realize this was long overdue for a revisit and I could finally talk about it here. It's incredibly profane and there are other moments that will offend certain demographics... overall this still made me laugh as much as the first time I heard all those funny moments on what was a burned CD, probably Verbatim in particular.

Midway 2019

Midway (2019)

43% on Rotten Tomatoes(out of 117 reviews)

Runtime: 138 minutes

Directed by: Roland Emmerich

Starring: Another nice all-star cast, although not comparable to 1976's lineup

From: Lionsgate

The benefit of coming out in a terrible year for movies...

Roland Emmerich is not one of my favorite filmmakers, and that isn't just because the 1998 Godzilla was a travesty and an insult to a legendary character. Most of his pictures are just not for me; brainless blockbusters lacking in heart & soul just aren't my jam. However, this was a passion project from him and this was done independently (w/ an assist from China... more on that later) and I was hoping this would be at least OK.

This looks at the battle differently from the 1976 movie; that centered on the military leaders using their strategy to try and outfox their opponents, while 2019 was more about individual soldiers and their heroics; additionally, this did not focus as much on the Japanese side as 1976 did. Henceforth, there is more melodrama here than in '76, and that had a silly sideplot of Charlton Heston's son falling in love w/ a Japanese-American girl. Regrettably, the ending of this was changed from actual history to add some more excitement... I wish that wasn't done as this already had plenty of action beats.

I do understand & accept the complaints: the script is not all that great or intelligent... there are cliches a-plenty, the story was told better in '76, a submarine sidetrack is only two short scenes and then it's summarily forgotten about, the idea of spending plenty of time showing Pearl Harbor and other events before the United States even cracked the code and realized Midway would be attacked was nice... although that seemed to be done in part so a subplot about Japan occupying China at the time could be included... I could go on and on. 

All that said, it may be because 2019 has been a pretty bad year for motion pictures overall, but I'll be kind to this and say it was fine overall. The cast full of famous faces is decent as a whole (even the Jonas brother) and those interested in the action... it was satisfactory. As this could have been a jingoistic nightmare and wasn't... I suppose that helps me be forgiving of its faults due to good intentions, at least partially. Of course a documentary or book about what happened in the Battle of Midway would be the best way to learn the story, but this is an OK cinematic version, although what was done in '76 was superior in my eyes.