THE AMITYVILLE HORROR
starring James Brolin, Margot Kidder, Rod Steiger, directed by Stuart Rosenberg, Color, , 1979

Distributed by MGM Studios
Film Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

As I hope to do in this continuing series of “Fresh Look” reviews, I want to revisit films that I haven’t seen in a long time and look at them with a new perspective.

What with the recent remake hitting theaters a few months ago, and the fact that I hadn’t watched this in over a decade, I thought it might be a good time to revisit The Amityville Horror.

The controversy as to whether the purported “true events” this film is based on actually happened or not continues to this day, just as people’s fascination with it hasn’t waned, either. Ronald DeFeo, Jr. murders his family in cold-blood, and a year later, the Lutzes move into the house. Once there, the house seems to do all it can to either drive them out, or possess them. Walls that drip blood, red-eyed monsters floating outside windows, cold-spots, dragon-statues that bite, and that creepy voice that demands to Rod Steiger’s priest that he...

“Get Out!!!!”

When I was a child, this movie scared the hell out of me, but ironically I never actually saw it until I was in my early teens. See, my parents had seen it at the theater and when they came home, they told me all about it, giving me all the creepy details and nuances, not realizing that when I tried to sleep that night, I would have some of the worst nightmares I can remember. Later on, when it ran on network television, they still wouldn’t let me watch it, but I could hear the TV from my bedroom, and all throughout I listened intently, wondering which parts were on now: is this the part where the girl’s imaginary friend locks the babysitter in the closet? is this the part where the dog finds the portal to Hell? is this the part where the dad gets bit by the dragon statue?

When I finally got around to watching the movie several years later, it didn’t live up to my expectations at all. The movie I had created in my mind (thanks to my parents naively filling my head with all the seeds I needed to grow a great horror scenario in my imagination) was intense and bloodcurdling; the actual movie was slow, talky, and boring. Sure, there were a couple of spooky parts (that scene where they find the upside down crucifix freaked me the hell out, and still does) but overall I found it extremely soporific, especially for a movie heralded as such a “classic.”

As far as haunted house movies went, I never thought Amityville held a candle to Robert Wise’s The Haunting, Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist or John Hough’s The Legend of Hell House. Even when I went back and watched it again, during my first year of college, I still found it dull. So, over the years, I’ve had a strange relationship with The Amityville Horror. (I should note here, I have never seen any of the sequels.) I cherish my early memories of the movie, and the horror it gave me as a young child, imagining things that no movie could probably ever live up to. But I kinda held the movie itself in disdain, for being such a disappointment.

Being the completist that I am, I eventually purchased the DVD a few years back, but never got around to watching it. I figured it was one I should have in my collection, more for its historical rather than cinematic value.

Then, earlier this year, the Amityville machine seemed to kick back into life. Rue Morgue did a retrospective on the film and its sequels, the MGM released its by-all-accounts ineffectual remake. So I started thinking I should maybe revisit the creepy old house again. See if maybe I missed something.

Honestly, upon watching it again recently, I can say that it’s really not that bad a movie. After all the MTV horror we’ve been getting lately, I found its languid pace refreshing. The acting in it is pretty solid, especially from James Brolin, an actor I enjoy in pretty much anything he’s in (except for Barbara Streisand). And Rod Steiger, as usual, kicks major ass as Father Delaney; his scene in the fly-covered room is still pretty chilling. And towards the end of the film, things do get pretty tense. Maybe when I watched it before, I simply checked out by the time things got interesting due to its somnambulant pacing (or, so I felt at the time).

I can honestly say I enjoyed watching it again. Maybe my expectations were lower, maybe not. I won’t go so far as to say it’s an underrated classic. It’s still not a great film. However, it is iconic. And for that, it deserves its place in the horror canon.

Give it another go if you haven’t in awhile. Be patient with it, and you might have a good time with it. It has more creepy moments (some extremely subtle) than I remembered, and it may for you, too.

Trivia note: Matt, one of the Lutz children, is played by Meeno Peluce, who some of you may remember as Jeffrey Jones from the great ‘80’s fantasy show “Voyagers!” He’s also half-brother to “Punky Brewster’s” Soleil Moon-Frye.

Horrors of Spider Island comes pretty darn close to being one of the all time great “bad movies,” a pantheon that includes, in my grimy little book, Petey Wheatstraw: the Devil's Son-in-Law, The Worm Eaters, Horror of the Blood Monsters, and Rats: Night of Terror.

It falls just short of entering those esteemed ranks only because, at about the hour mark, it shuts down, and then goes right to sleep by film's end (an ending seemingly ripped-off from Hammer's 1959 Mummy.)

A group of exotic dancers, their manager, and his secretary crash land on and island while flying to Singapore. Once on the island, they stumble across a man trapped in a giant spider web, and are besieged by the goofiest looking fake spiders I've ever seen. Their manager is soon bitten by one of these horrifying and ferocious arachnids and finds himself turning into a flesh-hungry were-spider.

And yes, for the first hour for the first hour of the movie, it is as good as it sounds. The women are cute, ditzy and barely clothed, the FX are below dime-store, and the dialogue outrageously bad. But, like I said, it just fizzles out and goes nowhere, delivering on none of its (meager) promises, so that by the end, if you're not almost asleep, you might be tempted to disregard the whole flick; which would be a shame, cuz the majority of it is quite amusing, and actually had me laughing out loud (and I watched this puppy all by myself.)

For one thing, the horribly fake, furry spiders are priceless. I am a connoisseur of bad movie monsters and these little guys are now high on my list of all time faves! Unfortunately they aren't allotted as much screen time as I would've liked, but when they do pop up, the steal the show. Watching Gary, the manager, holding one to his neck as he tries to “wrestle” with it is the highlight of the movie. I seriously had to go look for my ass in the other room I had laughed it off so hard.

This movie may have been super-good had a talented exploitation director, like Jack Hill (Spider Baby, Foxy Brown, Big Doll House), helmed it, but director Bottger (God rest his soul) really does nothing more than set his camera up and let the actors walk around on screen. The whole flick seems made up as it goes along, with characters changing their attitudes and motivations with every scene change. Not to mention the HUGE gaps in logic. At one point, after their manager has gone missing, and a couple of their cohorts have been killed, the girls decide to go for a swim, accompanied by completely “cute” incidental music. WTF? (I guess it just goes to prove the point that when the going gets tough and scary, girls lost without their strapping male heroes can find solace by frolicking naked in small ponds. Nothing like splashes and giggles to help you forget about those nasty monsters lurking about.)

Other absurdities and incongruities abound, and manage to entertain, despite the aforementioned snoozer of a climax. The editing is sub-grade-school level, the dubbing is absolutely piss-poor, and the music is astoundingly incongruous to the onscreen goings-on. At times, I thought Max Weinberg and the Max Weinberg 7 were playing off camera. That's fine when the chicks are just dancing around, but as music to be stalked on a creepy island by ... uh ... no.

As I said, had Jack Hill directed this and put Pam Grier, Margaret Markov and John Agar in it, and maybe let Les Baxter write a better score (like the one he wrote for X: the Man With the X-Ray Eyes), then this may have been a priceless, campy screamfest. As it stands, however, it is only a slightly better than average time waster, that will most likely appeal to fans of Z-grade slop, who can look past the crummy ending and enjoy the rest of the flick for what it is.

I say it's worth seeing once, but if you want “better” films of this ilk, then check out my list at the start of this review and go for one of those. You'll have an overall better time with one of those.

(Ryan Lies is a No-Fi "Magazine" Staffwriter
and loves the ladies with dubbed odd accents)

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INVADERS FROM MARS
starring Hunter Carson, Karen Black, Louise Fletcher, directed by Tobe Hooper, Color, , 1986

Distributed by MGM Studios
Film Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

Well, I hate to say this, but holy crap, Batman, am I old! I was thinking about starting this FRESH LOOK series off and what movie I wanted to inaugurate it with. I saw my DVD of the remake of Invaders From Mars sitting there on the shelf, and though, Why not? As I grabbed it, I began thinking to myself, You know, I really haven’t seen this flick since it came out on VHS back in the mid 80’s. I knew I had never seen it at the theater (despite much campaigning to my parents, who never relented, despite it being PG), but I knew I had seen it on video (most likely taped off HBO by my wonderful aunt Sandy.) It had been sitting in some discount DVD bin at Best Buy a couple of years ago, so I purchased it then, but never actually watched it.

Then I remembered what year it had been released at the theaters ... 1986! Almost twenty years ago! Egads! Where had the time gone? And had I really never watched this flick but once in all that time? I could barely even remember what I had thought about it back when I had originally viewed it. I’m sure I liked it in that way that I liked anything with aliens and guns and spaceships, but it obviously didn’t leave too significant an impression on me, because as I stood there, I really couldn’t recall too many moments from the movie. I remembered Louise Fletcher eating a frog. And the aliens kind of looking like gigantic offspring of the Critters and the Gremlins, but other than that ... nothing.

So, this was a perfect place to start. And what were my opinions upon taking a FRESH LOOK?

Well, it holds up pretty well. In comparison to such 50’s SF remakes as The Fly, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Blob, Invaders is probably the weakest of the bunch. While director Hooper updates the FX of the original and coats the movie in a Spielbergian sheen, it lacks any real heart. It comes off as a paint-by-numbers remake, with a few token updates to the original storyline that didn’t really do much for me.

Not to say it’s a bad flick. Not at all. I had a ball watching it. I just didn’t feel myself invested in anything. It might be because Hunter Carson, who plays the young lad who first gets wind of the Martian invasion (and who is Karen Black’s real life son), isn’t very good. I don’t generally like to rip on child actors and their performances (hell, I still stand by Jake Lloyd in Phantom Menace) but he just doesn’t really have what it takes to carry this movie. His scenes are painful to watch at times, because you can tell he’s really trying. I love these movies from the 80’s where kids are the heroes, because I grew up in the 80’s and was jealous of my onscreen peers for the adventures (however fabricated) they were allowed to have. And there are plenty of great kid-performances from that era: E.T., Explorers, The Goonies, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Any maybe it’s because of those movies that my standards are where they are, and I just couldn’t get by the forced acting here.

The rest of the performers are game though, and generally take the goings-on seriously, particularly James Karen, who plays a scenery-chewing Marine general with all the Reagan-era gusto you would want. He has the best line in the movie: “Marines have no qualms about killing Martians!”

The plot pretty much sticks to that of the original. Kid wakes up to see a UFO land in his backyard, and then discovers that his parents (and many in his small town) have been mentally enslaved by the invaders. Hooper doesn’t seem to want to do anything new with this formula, but he seems to be having a good time at the reigns.

All in all, a fun little flick. But I doubt it’s going to stick in my mind even now. Despite the neat alien upgrade, there’s not much else to get excited about. It’ll stay in my collection, but who knows when I’ll ever get it out again.

One thing, before I go: This movie, without a doubt, has one of the worst climaxes in genre history! It’s one of those lame, Wait! Before you go, we have a little surprise for you! (i.e. We hope we can make a sequel!) kind of endings that genre films are famous for. And usually I can tolerate them. But this one sucks. It almost ruined what little pleasure I did glean from the movie.

Give it another chance if you haven’t in awhile, but don’t expect a gem. And try not to slap Hunter Carson when he comes onscreen. He has a cool mom, at least.

(Ryan Lies is a No-Fi "Magazine" Staffwriter
and prefers his neck to be probed by a loved one)

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OUTLAND
starring Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen, directed by Peter Hyams, Color, , 1981

Distributed by Warner Brothers
Film Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

What a hell of a fun movie! Produced during an era when Hollywood was still making good science-fiction films for adults (and before Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich came around and traded good storytelling for CG bullshit and ADD editing), Outland holds up remarkably well and should still be able to please jaded SF/action fans.

Connery plays Marshal W.T. O'Niel, a space cop with a conscience (think Serpico in zero-G) who's assigned a thankless post on the Jovian moon Io, where a mining colony has been established by the Con-Amalgamate corporation. The workers there are a tough, surly bunch who indulge in prostitutes and alcohol after hours to make their tours on this hardscrabble rock more bearable. O'Niel's crew of officers are expected to break up bar-fights and see that the hookers don't get roughed up, and really not much else. After a series of bloody deaths, O'Niel discovers that some of the miners are taking a drug to increase their productivity.

While this particular narcotic might be increasing productivity, it is also causing the miners to go insane, leading to suicide. As O'Niel further investigates, he realizes that this drug-problem is wide-spread and high-reaching. The other officers in his unit tell him it's best if he just looks the other way. Even the boss (Peter Boyle) offers him some easy cash just to keep his trap shut and go back to worrying about the drunk-tank. But, since this is Sean Connery we're talking about, you know he's not going to have ANY of that nonsense. O'Niel finds an unlikely ally in a cantankerous nurse named Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen) and together they attempt to bring justice to this lawless space frontier.

Essentially, Outland is High Noon in space, and it works wonderfully. The plot is simple, and the outcome fairly predictable, but I had a hell of a good time playing along. Connery is, as usual, a stalwart, sympathetic hero. Boyle's hirsute, nefarious mining-boss is a treat, delivering threats in a subdued, quiet manner. And Sternhagen (who was great as a hypnotherapist in Communion) steals the show as Connery's churlish confederate, the kinda gal you wanna throw back a few with after hours and bitch about work, but never get on her bad side in daylight hours.

Director Hyams makes the simple premise of his script work with taut direction, aided by the beautiful, but not overwhelming cinematography of Stephen Goldblatt (who recently did superb work on Closer and Angels in America.) I am an admirer of Hyams's work, particularly Capricorn One and 2010. In fact, I believe that 2010 belongs right at the top of the list of “underrated sequels that are overshadowed by their more famous progenitors;” a list that would also include Psycho 2, Amityville 2, Jaws 2 and Alien 3. Hyams's later work (The Relic, Timecop, End of Days) hasn't done much for me, but I'll always appreciate him for his older SF goodies. (And, not to keep hammering my point home here, but his space-walk sequence in 2010 ranks, in my book, as one of the greatest set-pieces in modern film history! That scene still, almost literally, takes my breath away. SO glad I got to see it on the big screen back in 1984!)

Surprisingly violent and gory, with exceptional FX work and set-design, Outland is a real treat for anyone who misses these kinds of flicks. The last movie like this I can remember, where the heroes were tough but kindly, where the villains were slimy and brutal, and where the SF elements where simply the backdrop to a basic, old-fashioned, good-guys-vs-bad-guys scenario was the criminally underrated 1998 Kurt Russell vehicle Soldier (arguably the only good film Paul W. S. Anderson has made yet).

Like that movie, Outland tells a rousing, bang-up story that isn't afraid to get a little messy when it needs to, and keeps you on the edge just enough so that even though our hero may get a little roughed-up, and at times it may seem like not a soul in the universe cares whether he lives or dies, you know, in the end, justice is served. Be it in the Old West, in a burning high-rise hotel, or the moons of Jupiter, that, my friends, never gets old.

Yee-haw!

(Ryan Lies is a No-Fi "Magazine" Staffwriter
and always explodes at the thought of spiders)

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RACE WITH THE DEVIL
starring Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit, directed by Jack Starrett, Color, , 1975

Distributed by Anchor Bay
DVD Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

Hell yes!!!!

This is what I like to see, and what we sure don’t see enough of anymore: an old-fashioned, balls-out Satanic chase movie with a bleaker than bleak ending. They knew how to make ‘em in the ‘70’s, and as long as companies like Anchor Bay, Blue Underground and Mondo Macabro keep finding these gems and releasing them on beautiful-looking DVDs, everything will be all right in the world.

Shot on a small budget Race With the Devil tells the simple tale of two married couples out for a camping trip witness a murder during a Satanic mass and are subsequently chased across the desert in their RV. Through every small town they pass, the evil threat grows as Satan’s minions appear to be everywhere. Were our heroes just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or is this all part of some greater, more malignant scheme?

Clocking in at 88 minutes, Race spares no time for subplots or heavy character development; and in this case, that’s not a bad thing at all. It starts fast and doesn’t let up as our heroes careen towards the type of twist(ed) ending that horror films of the era are famous for. Race mixes elements of Rosemary’s Baby, Due, The Hills Have Eyes and various “crash-‘em-up” movies that were also in vogue back then (Eat My Dust, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Gone In 60 Seconds, etc.)

The cast is a treat to watch. These people were, and are, MOVIE STARS, man. Back when movie stars had distinct personalities and energy (not like the majority of the cookie-cutter “pretty people” that studios pass off as “stars” nowadays). They seem to be having a ball making this down-n-dirty little horror flick and their enthusiasm is contagious. I could watch Warren Oates and Peter Fonda in anything, especially if they’re shot-gunning Satanists and wrestling poisonous rattle snakes. Like I said, hell yeah!

The DVD features a gorgeous transfer of the movie, in 1.85:1 widescreen (enhanced for 16x9 TVs). There’s also an audio commentary by executive producer Paul Maslansky and actress Lara Parker. Fonda gets his own say on the flick in the short but sweet documentary Hell on Wheels. Fonda has nothing but love for this little movie and speaks effusively about how much fun they had making it, and how wonderful his fellow cast-mates and crew-members were. He especially raves about his late friend Warren Oates. Fonda spills many fun tidbits about the production (my favorite being that the shotgun used in the film is his and that he “always brings his own firepower to the set.” Awesome!!!!)

This is just a fun, energetic movie throughout and should be seen by all fans of ‘70’s low-budget cinema, and all horror fans in general. I’m sure some jackass will get the lame idea to remake this someday, and if they do, they should immediately be sacrificed to our Evil Dark Overlord. Or at least kicked in the nuts.

BUY THIS ONE NOW!!!!