15 Christmas Greats: #13 and #12

#13 - Ernest Saves Christmas (1988)

     I know, a lot of people find Ernest P. Worrell to be dumb, annoying, unfunny, and... well, just plain stupid.  Well, he's three of those things, but I find the first few Ernest films to be quite funny.  And this is the best Ernest film, in my opinion.  Not only that, but it's a darn good Christmas film too.

    In this film Ernest is a cabdriver who happens to pick up Santa Claus.  Now Santa is not in his red suit, but looks like a regular old guy.  He's down in the United States to meet a guy who he thinks is just right to take over the job of being Santa Claus.  That person is a guy who did a children's TV show that was just recently cancelled, and who is now looking for other work as an actor.  Just as Santa is about to ask the guy to take over his job, the guy's douchebag agent blocks him from talking to the actor and has him thrown in jail as a crazy man.  Meanwhile Ernest has been fired because Santa didn't pay (he only had fake kid money) and Santa has left his Christmas sack in Ernest's cab.  So the girl and Ernest try to find Santa to give him his sack back.  After that, the three of them must convince the actor guy to become Santa and get him ready in time to start delivering stuff for Christmas.   Think of it as Mrs. Doubtfire meets The Santa Clause, but with a country yokel as the main character.

    This movie was a modest hit when it came out in 1988.  It was only the second Ernest film, and made 4 1/2 times the amount it cost to make.  Ernest films were family-friendly non-offensive entertainment.  They made very young kids laugh at Jim Varney's physical humor (and his two in-real-life buddies that were in most of the films are the funniest parts of the films, in my opinion), but adults were usually rolling their eyes at the stupid puns.  Never mind that, though.  This is a great Christmas film if nothing else.  It's not consistently funny, it's not too original, and it's probably not a movie that most children of today would care for.  However, to those of us that grew up with it coming on television or renting it on home video every Christmas season, it was great.  I don't think it's shown much anymore, but when I was 5-12 years of age, I watched it every year along with other Christmas traditionals.  The movie, as I said, isn't funny all the way through.  It is quite entertaining though.  The Santa in this film is amazing.  I agree with That Guy With The Glasses on this one in that he's probably one of the best ones on film.  He's so good, nice, and earnest (no pun there, folks).  He's not like the angry Santa we see in Rudolph or Santa Claus The Movie.  He has hope for everyone, and never once loses his temper.  The message the film gives about Christmas is also pretty good.  Still, the funny parts are pretty good when they work.

#12 - A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

     I'm sure a lot of you figured this one would be closer to the top of my list, but it's not one I really watched as a kid.  I always found it rather pedestrian and boring back then.  I did watch the 1992 Peanuts Christmas special every year or so though, as we had that one on VHS.  Let's just say there's a reason few remember it.  It was just a series of interconnected stories based on actual stories related to Christmas from the comic strip.  No, the 1965 one is the one to go for.  I think the difference is that the original special was made for families, the sequel for kids.  The special isn't all that funny, is very corny and preachy, and really is as trite as you can get for a Christmas special.  So why is it on my list?  It's all due to the making of the special and it's staying power throughout the years.  I may not understand the love for it, but it does fascinate me.

    The special was made on a very low budget, causing the production to be a bit sloppy (notice that Schroeder will stop playing his piano before the music ends), and the voices/sounds to be improperly recorded and mixed.  Peanuts creator Charles Schulz had full creative control over the special, which the studio bosses found quite frightening.   This was especially true for the following scene.

   No, it's not because there was a war on Christmas in 1965, it's merely due to the fact that he's quoting King James version scripture in something that the studio wanted to market to kids.  They figured kids didn't want to be preached to in a cartoon for Christmas.  Kids in this time period got that enough from the stop-motion show Davey and Goliath.  However, Schulz wanted kids to know the origin and true meaning of the holiday as he and a lot of America saw it.  To show that it wasn't about commercialism, greed, and lights.  That there was something that was being celebrated, that it was not just a meaningless celebration that it seemed to have become at the time, like Charlie Brown was annoyed at.   And this was with the show having corporate sponsers, which the special chastised.   The special also didn't use a comedy show laugh track, which was unheard of at the time, and used children to do the voices of the child characters, which was also unheard of.  So of course the studio, CBS, thought the special would flop and some thought the end of the Peanuts comic strip as well.  (Best try a Family Circus special next year folks!  /sarcasm\)   

    Well, what do they know....  The special was watched on about half of American televisions that night and has been critically hailed since.  It's a story of nothing going right, but still being successful, just like the story in the special itself!   No matter if you're indifferent to the special as I am, or love it, it's embedded in culture now.  The song Christmas Time Is Here, which is heard throughout malls, stores, and commercials was brought about in this special.  There's the image of the sad drooping Christmas tree burned into our memories.  The first live instance of the 'Snoopy Dance'.  It gave birth to 4 feature films, a tv show,  and over 40 TV specials featuring the Peanuts gang.  I'd say that's pretty darn successful and a good story even for a special that holds little appeal to me.

15 Christmas Greats - #14

Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol (1962)

     This is a Christmas special that those of my generation, at least where I lived, didn't watch.  It was never shown on TV, we'd never heard of it...   Heck, until the 1997 live-action film with Leslie Nielson playing Mr. Magoo, most of us probably hadn't heard of the character.  (And that movie didn't make many of us want to watch more Magoo either.)  Apparently, the special had not been aired on the basic broadcast networks since the 1980s until last year on NBC.  Even then, it is usually cut quite a bit for commercials now, including last year.  However, it's apparently a much loved Christmas classic.  So yesterday I watched it for the first time, and in it's full 53 minute form.  And I was pleasantly surprised!

     So the story is the same basic Charles Dickens story that has been told in a slew of ways many times.  Here there's a wraparound story that has Mr. Magoo and some other players putting on a play of A Christmas Carol.  And besides the wraparound, Mr. Magoo's eyesight problems (which is what the character is famous for) don't play too much in the story.   Unlike the more popular 1980s special Mickey's Christmas Carol, there's more time to tell the story here as Dickens wrote it.  Still, there a few alterations, subtractions and mash-ups to make the story shorter, as with most adaptations of the tale.

    What's really great here, however, are the songs.  They were written by an actual duo of Broadway song-writers, Jule Styne and Bob Merrill.  These two wrote the music and lyrics to the very popular musical  Funny Girl not long after they worked on this, and Jule Styne wrote the music for the famous holiday song, Let It Snow!, Let It Snow!, Let It Snow! way back in 1945.   Besides the first song, which is most of the beginning part of the wraparound segment that's usually cut out, the rest of the songs are of high quality.   My favorite is the song sung by the plunderers of the dead Mr. Scrooge (a part of the story that most adaptations leave out) sing as they try to sell them.  It's pretty good fun as a song in what is usually the darkest part of the story!

    Why such a good adaptation left the airwaves for so long is anyone's guess.  It's funny, it's got good songs, it takes it's time, and it was considered a Christmas classic up until the 1980s being broadcast every Christmas season like Rudolph, Frosty, and A Charlie Brown Christmas are today.  It's available to view for free on Amazon Prime's unlimited streaming right now, you can view the whole thing on Youtube, and it's out on DVD as a special feature on some Christmas discs.  So give it a view if you've never seen it.  It's pretty great.  The only hit against it is the very cheap animation, but that's easy to look past if you grew up on Hanna-Barbera like I did.

15 Christmas Greats - #15

Gremlins (1984)

     Yes, I count Gremlins as a Christmas film.  You know I had to include one odd choice on the list, and I decided to get it out of the way first thing.  I simply love this movie.  It starts out as an honest to goodness Christmas film with crackpot inventor Rand Peltzer in the city trying to find a unique Christmas gift to give to his son... and to sell his inventions.  He ends up in a Chinatown antique shop run by Mr. Wing, played by the great Keye Luke, who had played Charlie Chan in those films of the 1940s.  While in the antique shop, he hears the humming of an odd tune and discovers a Mogwai in a cage.  Mr. Wing refuses to sell the Mogwai, because it's 'too big a responsibility'.  As Mr. Peltzer leaves, Mr. Wing's grandson brings out the Mogwai and sells it to Mr. Peltzer, along with giving him 3 important rules, which he repeats to his son when presenting the Mogwai as a gift when he gets home.

     Now the town where the Peltzers live is all set up for Christmas, it's blanketed with snow, it's a beautiful place.  However, the townspeople aren't all nice and Christmasy.  There's the guy (Judge Reinhold) who wants Billy's (Zach Galligan) girlfriend and the promotion to bank manager that Billy really wants.  The girlfriend is played by Ms. 80s teen herself Phoebe Cates.  Then there's Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holliday) who is the Scrooge of the town and lives by herself in a house full of cats.  There's Mr. Futterman (Dick Miller) who is a paranoid and old-fashioned WWII vet that thinks gremlins cause all technological problems.  And scariest of all, a young Corey Feldman.  Even scarier?  He lives!

    Chris Columbus wrote the script for this, which was originally much darker, with gremlins eating McDonalds customers, the dog being killed, Billy's mother being killed, and Gizmo the Mogwai becoming Stripe the Gremlin instead of just birthing him.   In fact, this was Columbus' first produced screenplay, and he'd later go on to being a popular director, directing things like the first two Harry Potter films, Adventures In Babysitting, Mrs. Doubtfire, Home Alone 1 and 2, Rent, and the first Percy Jackson film.  However, this film was directed by one of my favorite directors, Joe Dante.  He had already directed Piranha, The Howling, and a portion of Twilight Zone: The Movie.  He'd go on to direct Small Soldiers, The Burbs, Innerspace, Gremlins 2, and Looney Toons: Back In Action.  And his direction here is very similar to that of his other films.  There's lots of references to old sci-fi and horror films and a lot of zany Looney Toons style humor.

    Though I consider this a Christmas film, it's not for very young children.  People die in this film.  The gremlins can be quite frightening and icky.  The film proclaims that there is no Santa in it's most famous scene where Phoebe Cates tells the story of why she hates Christmas.

    I wonder how many little kids went seeing this PG rated film and learned there was no Santa.  No wonder this film and Temple of Doom brought forth the need for the PG-13 rating.   It's a sick story to tell in a family film, but I do love the dark tone it brings to a mischievous little film.  And that's what the movie is.  That's the right word for it.  Because the scenes of the havoc the gremlins reap across the town on Christmas Eve are not totally mean-spirited.  The gremlins are having fun and the deaths have comedy to them, such as when the gremlins hotwire Mrs. Deagles stair chair.  Then there's the gremlins singing along to the movie theater showing of Snow White's song Hi-Ho.  It's such fun.

    By the end of the film, everything is set right.  Christmas is saved.  And who doesn't want a bit of mischief at Christmas time?  Everyone should have this on their Christmas watch list.  It's fun, it's absurd, and just a joy to watch.  And tis the season for joy, after all.

 

Favorite Sci-Fi Films - #2

Flash Gordon (1980)

    

     If you value the changes that Star Wars made to film, special effects, and history, you have Dino De Laurentiis to thank.  George Lucas originally wanted to do a film of Flash Gordon, which had been a comic book hero and a movie theater serial character from the 1930s and 40s.  However, Dino De Laurentiis held the rights to character, so Lucas created Star Wars.  And I'm so glad he did that and Laurentiis did this one.  Flash Gordon is perfect the way it is.  It's a comic book come to life, complete with bright colors, unsubtle dialogue, and some of the most fantastic art direction this side of Speed Racer.   Instead of going for a dirty used look of space vehicles and other planets as Star Wars had done, the filmmakers decided to go a decidedly camp route.  Everything is shiny and bright here.  The score would not be done in a classical grandiose style as that film was either.  Instead, there would be minimal orchestration and the score would be done by a rock group.  Who better to do a space opera soundtrack than the biggest band in the world at the time, Queen?!  Their theme song for the film has become the thing of legend.  So camp, so catchy, and you love it or you hate it.

     I don't know how one could hate that song, but some do.  And some people also hate the movie.  It's for the same reason some hate the 1966 Batman film, which oddly enough has the same screenwriter.  Imagine that.  This film does not go to the height of stupidity that that film does, playing itself at least somewhat straight at times.  I see the film as just a celebration of the comic strip and the serials.  Every single shot in the film would fit perfectly as a comic book panel by the way they are blocked and shot.  There's no realism here, which I guess turns some people off, especially nowdays.  I'm not a huge fan of everything being strongly realistic, as most of the time it makes films a chore to sit through, all the fun being sucked out.  I know I'm in the minority on that one, but hey it's my blog.  I get to say what I believe.

     Now Flash Gordon had originally been a comic strip, then it was adapted into 3 different movie theater serials (back when people went to the movies once a week), then into a 1950s TV show, two soft-core porn parodies in the 1970s called Flesh Gordon, and finally this movie.  The story here is that the villainous Emperor Ming, ruler of the planets of Mongo has taken to playing with Earth, causing tidal waves, earthquakes, "hot hail", fireballs, and sending the moon off it's orbit.  The earth will be destroyed in a few days.  Meanwhile Flash Gordon, quarterback of the New York Jets, is flying home in a plane along with a girl named Dale Arden.  The plane's pilots disappear due to Ming and it crash lands in the lab of Dr. Hans Arkov, who is pretty sure that evildoers in space are causing all this mess.  He's made a rocket ship to try to make contact and save earth, and he kidnaps Dale and Flash and the rocket goes up into space.  It lands on a planet of Mongo and Flash tries to start a rebellion after Ming tries to have him executed and takes Dale as his sexual plaything.  Arkov is supposedly mind-washed into being a secret agent for Ming.  Yes, this is the stuff that used to happen in space operas.  In fact, Star Wars isn't too different.   Lucas simply took earth out of the equation, which was a smart move.  And in fact, having Earth involved is the one weak spot in this film.  After the first 5 minutes, we don't see Earth again, and we could care less if it's destroyed or not.  Besides, these new planets, races, and monsters are much more fun than boring old earth. 

   

     The film was made on a good sized budget of 20 million dollars.  By comparison, Star Wars cost 11 million and Empire Strikes Back, which came out the same year as Flash Gordon, cost 25 million.  The film would get pretty good critical reviews, but in America, the film only made 27 million, which was a disappointment as they were trying to get Star Wars sized success.  (A feat which few films that tried ended up even getting close to.)  Still, the film was a pretty good success in England, probably mostly due to their understanding of campy film which Americans don't get and due to the Queen soundtrack.  In fact, the Queen soundtrack went Gold on the Billboard charts even here in America despite vocals only being on two of the songs.  However, in 1980 Queen was at the peak of their success in America and most of the world, having just released the one album that gave them #1 hits in America, The Game.  The more highbrow critics didn't care for the movie, but those that realize that some films are there for "fun" loved it, including my favorite critic Pauline Kael.  And that's what the movie is.  Fun.  It's not art, it's not an important piece of cinema history, it's not worthy of Oscar praise.  It's just pretty and fun.  And sometimes that's enough.

    The movie has a hit or miss list of actors and actresses.  You have Playgirl model Sam J. Jones as Flash, Melody Jones as Dale...  Two actors most have never heard of.  In fact, until the movie Ted that came out a few years ago, no one probably knew who Sam J. Jones was.  And in that film, he just reprised his role of Flash.  (That whole movie worships this movie.  It's wonderful.)  However, the rest of the actors are of very high caliber.  Max Von Sydow, main actor in many Ingmar Bergman films and the old priest Father Merrin from The Exorcist plays the odious Emperor Ming here, and he's definitely enjoying the role.  He's so over the top and evil.  Critics gushed over him in this role even if they didn't like the film.  You have now famous British actors like Brian Blessed, Timothy Dalton, Peter Wyngarde, Richard O'Brien....  And for some reason Topol was chosen to play Dr. Zarkov.  And all I see is Fiddler on the Roof...  Still it's a very fun cast.  

    The special and visual effects are great.  Not realistic at all, but a comic book come to life.   I mean hell, you got henchmen that look like Shy Guys from Mario!

Most of the effects work, like Star Wars was done via blue screen and rear projection, however, unlike Star Wars, which used black backgrounds of space in order to hide the matte lines and such, there's a lot of red in this film.  And I mean a LOT of it.  And on Arboria, one of the planets, everything is green tinted.  As I said, the art direction is great.

    So why should you see this film?  Well, because there's nothing else like it out there.  The closest things are probably the 1966 Batman and maybe Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.  Seriously, if you haven't seen the film, track it down.  It's the perfect popcorn film.  It's not heavy sci-fi, but it's a good fun time for the whole family.  Here.  Revel in this scene's comic book dialogue, hokey acting from Dale, great music, and profound playfulness!

Favorite Sci-Fi Films #1 and A Note

     Before I get started, I'd like to thank everyone who's viewed my blog for the 2,000 views I've gotten in the past 1/2 year.  So thanks for that!  

    Now, I'd like to explain how I'm going to do this next installment here.  I was originally planning to do a list of my top 20 sci-fi films... and I realized I couldn't push it down to 20.  Then I decided to separate it into sub-genres.  The problem there was that so many of these films have overlapping genres.  Therefore, I'm going to do a continuing series of posts on my favorite science fiction films without them being in any order of greatness or limited to a specific number.  So this will be a continuing series that I do from time to time.  This also means I won't get burned out on a specific genre as I did with horror films back in October.  I still plan to do a set of posts on my favorite Christmas films/specials come December, however.  

So without further ado, here's the first of my discussions on specific science fiction films...

When Worlds Collide - (1951)

     

     There was a time when science fiction sold.  And it sold well.  This trend lasted from the late 1920s on until we went to the moon in 1969.  After that, science fiction pretty much died until 1977 and George Lucas brought it back.  Sure, there was science fiction in the early 70s, but it was very dark and cynical with films like Logan's Run, Silent Running, the Planet of the Apes films, and Soylent Green.  Dystopias abounded.  But in the 1950s was when science fiction was at it's strongest.  From giant animals or beasts caused by nuclear radiation to traveling to other worlds...  Our hope and gung-ho attitude about science and space had not yet produced the sad results we got when we sent our probes to mars and noticed it was nothing more than a dead rock or went to the moon and didn't know what to do when we got there.  No, we knew little about our solar system at the time.  Mars could have an atmosphere or hold a long-dead civilization.  Maybe the moon had some importance we didn't know about yet.  We couldn't possibly be alone out here.  Alas, science and discovery hit us where it hurts.  We would be alone for the forseeable future.  There was no long lost civilization.  We couldn't go to Mars.  There's nothing out there in the immediate vicinity.  With those sad discoveries, we lost our interest in space.  We've shrunk NASA's budget to miniscule proportions.  We don't want to know any more depressing facts.  

    Travel back to 1933.  Science fiction was Buck Rogers, John Carter, and other pulp creations.  Then Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer wrote a very successful book about our world being collided with by a rogue planet and sideswiped by another before that.  It was called When Worlds Collide.  It would influence the creation of two new comic book characters, Superman and Flash Gordon.   The book being a huge success, it would only be a matter of time until it was made into a film.  Enter George Pal.

   George Pal was a film producer who had made the very popular science fiction film Destination Moon in 1950.  That was the first film that showed the dangers and trials of space travel in a time when space fever was beginning to engulf the world.  It also won an award for Best Special Effects at the Academy Awards that year, and was one of the first sci-fi films shot in color.  To follow that success up, he chose When Worlds Collide.  Not only was it a cracking good science fiction story, but it was also a doomsday film.  It's about a scientist who discovers that two rogue planets are on a collision course with Earth.  The first one, Zyra, will merely pass dangerously close to earth.  Enough to cause tidal waves, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. due to it's gravitational pull. (Flimsy science, I'm sure, but it's all in good fun.)  The second planet, Bellus, is on a true collision path and will destroy our planet.  Well, the rest of the scientific community scoffs at this idea and the world once again puts it's head up it's butt refusing to fund attempts at a "space ark" which will launch and piggyback onto Zyra before Bellus hits the earth with some people on board to restart the human race on their new home.  Okay, the story may be silly and unbelievable, but you have to understand...  This was the early 1950s.  We knew little about rocket capabilities, the movement of planets, space, or anything like that.  Also, there's a bit more to the story than what I told, but I don't want to give away some of the more moral and ethical dilemmas present.

    

George Pal was a very visual man. He would go on to produce War of the Worlds right after this film, which has become known as one of the most quintessential science fiction films ever made. He knew he would need to have the film shot in color, have an epic scale with lots of danger, and that he'd need astounding visual effects. And he got all three. The film would go on to win Best Visual Effects for 1951. In fact, George Pal films won the award 3 times in just 5 years! George Pal was Roland Emmerich before Roland Emmerich or Dean Devlin were even around! He was destroying the world before even Irwin Allen was doing his stuff in the 1960s and 70s! It's such a shame the man isn't remembered as he should be.

      When Worlds Collide isn't as well known anymore, sadly. Perhaps this is due to it's less well known director in comparison to War of the Worlds' Byron Haskin who had already done Disney's Treasure Island. In comparison, Rudolph Mate, director of When Worlds Collide was mainly known for cheap film noirs like D.O.A and The Dark Past. In fact, he's better known for his cinematography work than his directoral work. He did cinematography for such films as Foreign Correspondent, Passion of Joan of Arc, To Be or Not To Be, and Vampyr. (All those are in the Criterion Collection, by the way.)

      I'm sorry if I've made the film sound like a cheesy 1950s science fiction film. I mean it is all those things, but it's also not something to really make fun of. The film isn't all that stilted as the lower budget science fiction of the time routinely was. This was a big budget film done by a major studio that gave it a wide fanfared release. It was a huge moneymaker. In fact, I find it possibly less cheesy than some of the 1970s disaster films that I love so much. And the ending surprised me greatly. You think that in a 1950s film they wouldn't dare actually have the planet hit the Earth and kill everyone... But they do. (Sorry for the spoiler, but the movie IS over 60 years old.) Still, the film ends on a message of hope and perseverance anyway. I highly recommend those that loved Roland Emmerich's 2012 to watch the film, as it's got a lot of the same ideas in it. In fact, this one makes more sense, though that isn't saying much.

The film can be streamed for free in HD if you have Amazon Prime, and is also available on DVD for cheap. See this sadly forgotten film if you can. I like it better than War of the Worlds. I mean how can you not like a film that depicts a rocket being launched like a roller coaster?!

Ingenious!

Many Days of Friday the 13th - Parts VI & VII

Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives (1986)

    

     It's been a while since I wrote one of these so let me remind you...  The series was supposed to end on Friday the 13th: The Final Friday, which was part 4.  The very next year Paramount brought the series back to life with Part V: A New Beginning, which featured a regular homicidal guy wearing a hockey mask sort of copycatting Jason.  Well, that didn't go so well with fans that were expecting Jason back.  You always give the fans what they want, so come the next year, it was decided that Jason had to come back. 

    The studio hired Tom McLoughlin, who had made a PG rated horror film three years before to write and direct.  He decided to inject humor into the by now clearly dying series, and to cut down on the gore.  What he created was the last good Friday film until the 2000s.  The film is so markedly different from the films that came before and come after it that it of course stands alone.  The story sort of picks up from Part V.   Tommy Jarvis escapes from his mental institution and feels the urge to go to Jason's grave to make sure he's dead.  So he and his reluctant friend dig up Jason's maggot infested corpse and he sees he's truly dead.  However, as he's not mentally well, Tommy takes an iron stake from the fence lining the graveyard and decides to stab Jason repeatedly with in when, what do you know, lightning strikes it and gives Jason life again.  So now Jason is a superhuman zombie that's even more powerful than he was before.  For instance, the first death he commits is punching the friend through the chest and grabbing his heart as his hand punches through the guy's back.  And that's probably the goriest part of the film.

     McLoughlin decided he wanted to go for a classic Universal Monster/Hammer horror film with this one, so what we get is less blood and gore, but more atmosphere.  They filmed the installment in Covington, Georgia instead of up north as the prior films had been, so the camp has this humid feel to it.  There's lots of fog, the camp is noticeably different from the past films... even the woods look different.  And I love the fact that the film is the first to not take the series seriously.  Take for instance the very scene I referred to earlier with the heart punch.  And the way that scene ends... With a Bond tribute?!

    It's pretty certain from there that you aren't getting the same type of Friday film that you've come to accept.  This one is just out to have fun.  Oddly enough, though this is supposedly more tame than the prior films, this is the only Friday film to have kids actually at the camp when the murders take place.  And it actually adds to the humor.  In fact, the filmmakers here used the humor, a lot of it self-referential, to disarm the MPAA.  They already cut out a lot of gore, there's no nudity here, only one (clothed) sex scene and little language.  In their place you have car chases, gunfighting, and more inventive kills.  There's little machete action here, as part of the way they played the MPAA was having Jason do kills that regular people couldn't imitate.  For example, there's folding someone backwards til their spine breaks, the aforementioned heart punch, chopping 3 heads off in one swing of the machete, twisting someone's head off, etc.  This way there would be less pushback about possible copycats. 

     The humor is great here, and the film never lets up on it.  There's a moment when the graveyard caretaker sees that Jason is gone and his grave dug up.  He knows he'll get into trouble if it's found out, so he just re-covers the grave mumbling to himself.  Then he turns directly towards camera and says "Some folks sure got a strange idea of entertainment."  Or there's when a couple (one of them the wife of the director, the other the sleazy bad guy from Ghost) is driving through the woods and sees Jason in front of them holding the iron fence stake from earlier blocking their path.  The guy doesn't see him at first and asks his wife why she stopped.  "I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly."   So with this film, postmodernism came to slashers a good ten years before Scream.

     This is probably my second favorite Friday the 13th film after Part II.  It's just a lot of fun.  It's got a great original screenplay, and is competently directed.  I don't really miss the huge amounts of gore from the prior films, as the humor and atmosphere make up for it.  I'd feel comfortable showing this one to a 13 year old, it's that tame.  Also, this one's got two or three songs Alice Cooper wrote especially for the film, and that's too cool.  I do highly recommend this one.  Can't say that about the next one, however....

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

      And here's where everything goes to shit.  After such a good movie like Jason Lives, they go kind of back to formula for this one, but bring in a telekinetic teenager.  (Yes, lame.)  If you thought they were scraping the bottom of the barrel before, well...  The teenagers in this film are for the most part horrible people that you want to see killed unlike the last film.  The story here is that Tina accidentally killed her father with telekinesis  after he hit her mother when she was younger.  Now her fame-seeking manipulative doctor has decided that she needs to go back to the scene to "deal with her grief", but really he wants to bring out more of her abilities by making her an emotional mess.  Well, she gets there and accidentally brings up Jason out of the bottom of the lake, and of course he kills the teenagers who are partying next door one by one.  And thank god for that, because they are the worst ones in the series.  Honestly, only two have redeeming qualities.  Even the nerdy guy who writes science fiction stories is a jerk.  In a way, this film is a semi-remake of Part IV.  You have the family and the partying teens next door, and you want most of those teens to die.  Sadly, Part IV was much better.  Even the acting, as the acting in this one is some of the worst in the series.  

     Whereas the last film tried to tone down the gore, sex, language and nudity, all four are back in full force here.  (Or at least the filmmakers tried to bring the gore back.  More on that later.)  There's ample sex, the language is.. okay, there isn't much language, but there is a bit of nudity.  However, no one in this film is good enough looking for a nude scene in my opinion.  The kills are also not as inventive here.  There's another punch through the chest (without the heart this time), and a cool death that's remembered by everyone.  That's right, the one with the woman in the sleeping bag being thwacked against a tree!  However, most of the deaths here are severely trimmed, due to the MPAA.  You see a quick shot of something happening, and you see the after effect.  Now, on the DVD you can see what was trimmed, but that's in very bad quality.  Sadly, this fact makes a bad movie all the more worse.  And Jason's "demise" at the end of the film is probably the worst in the series.  It's too unbelievable even for a Jason film.  And like a few of the other films, this one takes place near Crystal Lake, but not at the place.  

     The one thing some people like about this film is that it introduced the most famous Jason.  Or rather the guy who played him.  Kane Hodder plays Jason in this film and the next three, being the only actor to ever portray Jason more than once.  He's actually a stunt guy, which means he's more bulky and better suited to be put through all sorts of painful stuff.  I'm actually not a huge fan of his tenure, as he starred in some of the worst entries in the series, and seriously, he's just a big lumbering lug to me.  Not much to do there.  Although he did do the longest uninterrupted on-screen body burn in history, which is shown towards the end of the film. Now, there is one actor very good at what he does.  That's the character of Tina's doctor, Dr. Cruz.  He's so hateable, and he can actually act unlike the rest of the cast.  I don't think I've hated a character this much in a Friday film, so kudos to him.  He even uses Tina's mom as a human shield when confronted with his eminent death by Jason.   The director of the film John Carl Buechler hasn't had a great career since the film, mainly doing direct-to-video films.  Before this film he directed Troll, which is actually a lot of stupid fun and is mainly known for it's sequel which has nothing to do with Troll.

     Absolutely not recommended.  For some reason this film did better than the last one did, which led to Part VIII, which we will get to in the coming weeks.   

Ender's Game and Thor: The Dark World reviews

Thor: The Dark World

     Just a word of warning before you start to read this review.  I'm one of the few that enjoys Thor more than any of the other Marvel Universe storylines.  I know it's considered by many to not be as good as the Iron Man and Captain America films, but better than the Incredible Hulk film.  Well, I've enjoyed all the Marvel Universe films, with Iron Man actually being the least interesting to me.  I mean sure, Robert Downey Jr. is great in the role and all, but the films themselves just don't grab me like the others do.  Steve Rogers annoys me to no end with his everprevelant nationalism and old fashioned morals (yes, I know that's part of who he is, and I like the fact that they make fun of it), and I wish they could finally settle on a person to play Bruce Banner.  (Mark Ruffalo is perfect, by the way.)  However, Thor has everything going right for it.  The storyline is different, it's got less to do with SHIELD, it's more fantasy than action, and it's the funniest of the franchise.

   I thought that the first Thor film was just about perfect.  I know I'm alone in that assumption.  I liked it's small scale, I liked the fact that it didn't take itself too seriously (Are you listening DC Comics?), and the casting was superb.  I feel like the Asgard setting takes the franchise to another level over the other films.  It makes the franchise approach the genre of sci-fi or fantasy to a larger degree than the other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which are mostly just action films with some sci-fi elements.  And with this, the second Thor film, the franchise is taken even farther into the fantasy realm.

     So the story here is that an ancient race that Odin's father defeated long ago, the Dark Elves, aren't as defeated as the Asgardians had hoped.  The villainous Malekith awakens and searches for the old weapon that will make him invincible, the Aether, which Odin's father hid in a stone column.  Well, back on Earth, Jane (Natalie Portman) is pining away over her Thor who has been gone for two years when he said he'd be right back.  She discovers these portals in an abandoned building and accidentally falls through one which, wouldn't ya know it, leads to the Aether, which overtakes her body.  Now when people touch her, they sort of... explode.  Thor finds out about this, returns to Earth to take her to Asgard.  (Daddy is none to pleased with that, as he dislikes the fact that Thor loves a mortal.)  Then Malekith and his enhanced Kursed Dark Elves attack Asgard and do some friggin' serious damage.  Then there's some stuff with Loki, who's in the Asgard prison after what he did in The Avengers, there's more stuff with portals, Stellen Skarsgard goes around in the nude ranting and raving and hugs people without any pants, cars suddenly become weightless...  Lots of stuff, people, that would take me hours to explain.

     As goofy as the plot is, the movie is very fun and easy to keep interest in.  There's more time spent on Asgard in this one, which is a blessing.  The CGI workers on this film have made a fantastic city that I just wanted to spend more time seeing, and they give you lots of time to do so here.  The stuff on earth is kept to about 1/3 of the screen time, which is enough so that people expecting just another run of the mill action superhero film will stay happy.  However, Thor's realm is Asgard, and that's where the franchise should base itself.  Sure, you have to have the Earth in peril to get people interested, but you can get that in any other superhero film.  

      The humor is well balanced throughout the film.  It never becomes too serious, which I think is what makes these Marvel films so popular.  You want serious, go see a modern DC Comics film.  I'm not sure that having Stellen Skarsgard's character become quite eccentric was the right way to go, as it becomes a bit cliche after a while.  He basically turns into the Walter Bishop character from Fringe.  Everyone else is played pretty much as they were in the first film.  Loki is in this film quite a bit, obviously.  It wouldn't be a Thor film without him.  He's Thor's sort of brother and is the x factor for the whole franchise.  He's played more sympathetically than he was in The Avengers or the last Thor film, which was refreshing.  I like my villains to have feelings sometimes.  They don't all have to be Michael Myers or The Joker or Green Goblin.  Sometimes you need a Doc Oc or a Two-Face, villains that still have something of a sense of empathy or remorse however buried.  In fact, I thought Loki was in a way a better character in this film than Thor himself was, mainly due to some character development between films, which Thor has had little of.  Odin has become an even bigger jerk, however.  

     Overall, I thought the movie was fantastic.  I can't wait to own it on blu-ray in a few months.  It's up there with Pacific Rim as my favorite popcorn film of the year.  I was about to give this film  6 1/2 stars out of 7, but for the scene before the end credits.  Due to that scene and it's implications, I must remove a full star from my total.  It was that disappointing, that bad, so much of a stupid moment it's unforgivable.  

Final score:  5 1/2 out of 7

Ender's Game

      The 1985 book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite books.  I first read it my first year of college, which means I read it almost exactly 10 years ago now.  I quickly went from that book to reading it's companion novel which came out years later, Ender's Shadow, which is the same story told from the perspective of the character Bean.  In other words, it's Bean's story during the same time-frame.  The book series split off into two.  There's the continuing story of Ender, which is a very meditative and spiritual series after the first book (no more action folks, sorry), and then there's the story of Bean, Petra and the other former Battle School kids back on Earth under the rule of Peter Wiggin while Ender is on his spiritual journey away from the others.   I recommend both series for different reasons.

     I've been waiting for this movie to come out for years now.  I had figured it would never get made, at least not in live action due to Ender being such a young character in the novel (he's like 8 or 9 in the novel) and the cost of the special effects.  Also it wasn't your usual science fiction story.  Still, I was proven wrong after the film had been in development hell for many years.   I was not looking forward to it when I heard that the guy that directed the horrible X-Men Origins: Wolverine was writing the screenplay and directing.  Nor did I like the fact that they were upping the age of the main character by about 8 years.  However, my concerns were surprisingly unwarranted.  This is a fine film with just a few small problems.

     The movie has a lot going for it.  It's got a great cast with Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, and Abigail Breslin among others.  It didn't raise the ages of all the kids in Battle School, which was a relief.  The special effects are really very good and the Battle Room came out exactly like I had imagined it.  (The Battle Room is a zero gravity room with obstacles that the cadets train in.)  

    There's only a few things wrong with the film, and they are quite minor, even unnoticable, if you haven't read the book.  First of all, the film is sadly very streamlined.  The characters other than Ender have become archetypes or cliched.  Graff has no redeeming qualities in the filmed version, Petra warms up to Ender straight away, and it almost feels as if the whole film takes place in a matter of days instead of years, Stilson isn't killed, there's no mention of Demosthenes or Locke (which are very much important in the sequel books of both series), and a lot of the morality themes are gone.  Now this may seem like a lot, but as the film probably won't be getting a sequel due to it's mixed reception and not that great box office, it doesn't matter.  This is an adventure film a moral base.  Think of it as the inverse of Starship Troopers.  Heck, it even has big bugs!  I stand by my assessment that those that did not read the book will not notice all of the subplots that are missing, nor would they want them.  For those that did read the book and wanted a great adaptation, I think you've pretty much got it.  The film is interesting, great to look at, well acted, and sticks pretty darn close to the book.  There aren't many, if any, plot changes here.  There's simply omissions for the sake of time and pacing.  

     I loved this film, which is remarkable as it's an adaptation that I believed could not be done.  It was amusing, fun, thought-provoking, and well adapted.  I highly recommend it, even if the book's author is a homophobic evil person.  (Seriously, look up the stuff he's said or done in the past twenty years.  It ain't pretty.  However, he's a good story-teller, and that's all that matters here.  If you want to read the books, I would suggest your local library instead of giving him money through book sales, but that's just me.)

Final score: 6 out of 7