While I did not enjoy Conan the Barbarian all that much I did feel something of an obligation to subject myself to its sequel, Conan the Destroyer. What I did not expect was to enjoy it as much as I did.
As dour and colorless as I found the first film to be, this much brighter and far more family friendly entry turned out to be more to my liking. At least at the time of my one and only viewing of the film.
To save money, of course, the production had intended to recycle the first film's iconic score. Yet the tonal differences between the dour seriousness of the first film and the overt comic book adventurism of the second turned out to be a incompatible, so Basil Poledouris was brought back to provide a lighter, zestier score.
While the music for Conan the Destroyer might not be as iconic or impressive as what was composed for Conan the Barbarian, it is still provides a vibrant and entertaining listening experience.
While I have no concrete memory of this movie's big screen release, I do remember the numerous occasions I plucked the Media Home Entertainment box off the shelf of our local video store and contemplated renting the movie.
I never did rent it, though. Just not my thing. Which might strike some as odd, as I did rent and view such sleazy fair as William Lustig's Maniac and Joseph Ellison's Don't Go in the House. Some might argue there is little to no differentiation between these cited examples and Don't Answer the Phone! And that may be true, for some. But not for me.
In a matter of seconds, the Alien attacked Clemens. Everything happened so quickly and quietly, he didn't have time to defend himself. It didn't really matter. He couldn't have defeated it anyway. But Clemens' body didn't seem to be enough to satisfy it. The Alien came after me.
I saw this on the big screen, opening night, and thought... while it was not all that good of a movie, I did appreciate and enjoy the concept of Jumanji being done as an actual horror movie.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
Thanks to my having seen Jaws at an early age, being swallowed alive has been a recurring fear of mine. Do not get me started on how either Jaws 3D or The Borderlands (aka Final Prayer) gave me near panic attacks the first time I saw them!
Having shared this factoid, it comes as a surprise to no one that this sequence is one of my all time favorites of the entire series.
Six hundred pages and still no explanation as to how a dead rat turned up in the most sterile section of the module? Come on!
While the lack of a reason, or explanation, being given for what was a running gag between my best friend and I was disappointing on a personal amusement level, it was not all that surprising from a creative standpoint. In his introduction to this comically massive doorstopper of a novelization of Bruno Mattei’s Hell of the Living Dead, Brad Carter explains he is adapting the original concept as drafted by the husband-wife creative team of Claudio Fragasso and the late Rossella Drudi.
What Fragasso and Drudi had envisioned was a large scale cannibal apocalypse that, truth be told, might rival the unmade “Raiders of the Lost Ark with zombies” version of Day of the Dead that George A. Romero had hoped to make.
But, just as what happened with Romero’s costly first pass plans for Day of the Dead, budgetary restrictions would force Fragasso and Drudi’s concept to be whittled down to its barest, most cost effective of bones.
Those bones would be handed over to the low budget maestro Bruno Mattei, who, in the grand tradition of Edward D. Wood Jr, utilized mismatching stock footage from a couple of mondo documentaries to give his movie some sense of having a larger scale than its paltry budget was incapable of delivering.
Character development and exploration was kept to a non-existent minimum and almost all of the political commentary regarding how the industrialized world cannibalizes the third world, robbing it of it resources while also preventing its peoples from becoming independent and self-reliant, was likewise jettisoned.
The result was a cheap and shoddy exploitation flick that still manages to be entertaining. Only not in the manner intended by its creators.
I first learned about the film now best known as Hell of the Living Dead when it was reviewed in the pages of Fangoria magazine, in a tongue-in-cheek (and short-lived) column titled Zombie of the Month. Because, when the film was released in the United States, as Night of the Zombies, it seemed that there was a ‘new’ gut munching zombie movie being unleashed in theaters and drive-ins every month.
I did not see Night of the Zombies until well after its release on home video and, I think, I watched it all of two times, maybe. While my memory of certain moments were quite vivid, I was not all that inclined to revisit the film prior to cracking open Carter’s “epic” adaptation.
Doing so turned out to be a wise thing, because, as Carter notes in his afterword, this book departs from its source material “in just about every way.” While all of the significant story beats and scenarios remain, they have also been re-contextualized, or outright changed, to better serve a far larger and a tad more convoluted storyline.
Which also allows for some robust and biting (no pun intended) political commentary.
Commentary that is in no way subtle and is every bit as on the nose as the commentary in any of Romero’s zombie epics, or in the preachier episodes of any and all variations of Star Trek. Which only made it all that more endearing to me, because there was obvious heartfelt thought put into the book’s just as obvious political and social commentary.
Some of that commentary echoes, or at least reminded me off, observations made by Paul Farmer in his book Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History.
A lot of the zombie action set pieces, as well as their evolving behaviors and intelligence, echo, or flat out repurpose, ideas and moments from Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead. I also spotted a few similarities to Resident Evil (both games and movies) as well as David Cronenberg’s zombie-adjacent thrillers Shivers and Rabid, to name just a few. There is even a healthy smattering of Stephen King's The Stand sprinkled over it all.
Which only made the book all the more fun to read. Because Carter knew what he was writing and why he was writing it. This reads just like the Italian exploitation movie it is based on, gleefully cribbing anything and everything it can to stuff into its sprawling narrative.
Carter also knows when it is best to be serious and when some tongue-in-cheek snark is needed to take the wind out of the narrative's nihilistic sails. A good example of the former is noting that the HOPE portion of Project HOPE is an acronym for Humanitarian Operations for Preserving Earth. Which reads and sounds feasible. But a giggle-snort inducing example of the latter is a political think tank organization calling itself the Foundation for American Reason and Truth. You know, F.A.R.T.
Also notable is how Carter puts in an effort to develop most of the primary characters, who come off as a lot more intelligent and interesting than they were in the movie, which was greatly appreciated.
What I did not appreciate was the frustrating to the point of being contempt inducing number of errors in the book. There were so many missing words and clumsy or repeated phrases (such as “she let herself into herself into the room,” or something to that effect) that I began to suspect the book had not been copy, or line, edited prior to publication. Considering its hefty price, around $25 to $30, I was annoyed and frustrated by the poor editorial oversight displayed here.
Yet, as frustrating as all that was, I still found myself really enjoying this over-the-top and truly epic return to conceptual form for what eventually turned into Hell of the Living Dead. I doubt any fan of the film itself, or fan of the zombie apocalypse genre in general, will finish this book feeling cheated, or all that disappointed.
So, if you want to read a big chonker of a book that is just a cheap and trashy movie at heart, but is also smart enough to keep you engaged for most of its almost 600 hundred pages, I suggest you give it a try.
Besides, any and all that have read this far will already have known if they want it to read it or not, before they even started reading this review. I hope you enjoy(ed) it as much as I did.
While the E. T. spliced with Alien oddity that was Xtro was only playing at the Roxie in the East Bay, in San Francisco it was screening at a three venues. Those lucky enough to have gone and seen it at either the St. Francis, where I saw many a movie, or the Geneva Drive-In would have the delight of seeing it paired with the every bit as goopy, slimy, and sleazy Alien knockoff Forbidden World. Wow.
Silently, it dropped down from the ceiling of the infirmary. I could only watch in horror as it rose to its full height, poised for attack, just behind Clemens. I couldn't call out to warn him of the danger. I tried to scream but nothing came out, nothing but air.
Another movie that I missed out on seeing on the big screen whilst living in Hong Kong. But I don't think I missed out on anything all that special, as this anthology film lacks that charm and creative zest that made Creepshow so entertaining.
Director Lewis Teague (Alligator, Cujo) does what he can with the material, but there is only so much that could be done with the first two yarns. Quitters Inc and The Ledge. Both were taken from the Night Shift anthology, yet neither were all that well suited for the cinematic screen. The first leans way too heavily into camp comedy, while that latter fails to generate the high stakes levels of stress the situation calls for. So it goes.
It is all redeemed with the final story, though. Because The General does manage to capture some of the comic book energy that pulsed throughout Creepshow, when the titular cat does battle with a nasty little breath-stealing troll in order to save the life of an endangered girl. It is pure fun and only makes the previous yarns suffer all the more in comparison.
If you haven't seen Cat's Eye, my advice is to just skip to The General.
%20-%20Examiner_Thu__Apr_10__1980_.jpg)
%20-%20Oakland_Tribune_2010_04_09_46.jpg)
%20-%20Examiner_Fri__Apr_8__1983_.jpg)
%20-%20Oakland_Tribune_1985_04_07_89.jpg)
