Phantasm II (1988) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - July 7, 1988

One of several 1988 summer horror films that underperformed at that box office.

As fun and atmospheric as Phantasm II is, general audiences were just not all that interested in seeing a spooky carnival ride of a movie in July. Maybe, just maybe, if the film had been pushed to late September or early October? Maybe. But who knows, really? I don't.

But what I do know is that this movie is fun. The higher budget, an estimated 3 million, not only allowed for better special effects and production design, but may have given writer-producer-director Don Coscarelli a tad more of the old shooting schedule.

And it shows, because the movie also looks great. I was able to see this opening weekend and had a blast. The friend I was with, however, did not. He hated the movie. So it goes.

The one downside is that Universal wanted a more established actor to play the lead character of Mike. So A. Michael Baldwin was switched out for James Le Gros. The one and only time Baldwin did not play Mike.

 

Fright Flicks - Trading Card #81

The Fly (1986)

 

Bug (1975) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - July 6, 1975

William Castle's production of Bug did not ping my pop culture radar until 1976, when I saw it at the Alameda three on a double-bill with Godzilla vs. Megalon.

The order in which the two were screened is a memory long buried under the inexorable sands of time. What I do remember is being both freaked out and grossed out by Bug, while being off-put by the broad cartoonish-ness of Godzilla vs. Megalon.

For a time the theatrical one-sheet for Bug hung in my bedroom. There are even some polaroids of my sitting at my desk and play acting as a working writer with the poster behind me. Where those polaroids are, and if they even still exist, I have no idea. If I do find them, I will share them. Why not?

In mid-to-late 1980s I managed to get my hands on a paperback of Thomas Page's source novel, The Hephaestus Plague and read it. While my admittedly fuzzy memory of the book remembers there being a tad larger scope to the firebug invasion, the core story beats of the novel seemed to have survived and been retained for this film adaptation.
 

Alien 3 (1992) - Trading Card #45

Behind the Scenes - Alien Puppet 1

Close-ups of the Alien "puppet" are filmed separately on a plain blue screen. Later, in the editing room, the real background will be added to give the illusion that the creature is quickly moving through the prison's narrow air ducts.
 

Watch Out, We're Mad [...altrimenti ci arrabbiamo! (1974)] - Soundtrack

New addition to the collection.

Although the English language title of this energetic and delightful action comedy, starring the popular duo of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, is Watch Out, We're Mad. Its original Italian title is ...altrimenti ci arrabbiamo! [Otherwise we'll get mad]. Which means that this disc will be filed under A, rather than W, and, since I am currently on the letter C of my collection, this oddity gets to cut in line. Because A has already been done and, well, alphabetical order.

Watch Out, We're Mad is the kind of film that Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, and Hal Needham thought they were (and should have been) making. Hill and Spencer are two affable and intensely competitive racers that have tied for first place. Which means they have to share the grand prize, a red and yellow dune buggy.

Yeah, right. Their playful games to decide who will win the dune buggy are interrupted when the car is stolen and destroyed by a local crime boss. Irritated and determined to get a replacement red and yellow dune buggy, so they can continue their challenges to see who will win said buggy, the duo confront the crime boss...

What follows are well choreographed fight scenes and car chases. There is also a comedically hammy performance from Donald Pleasance that needs to be seen to be believed.

Underplaying it all is this quirky score from the pop duo of Guido & Maurizio De Angelis, who I know best for their score for Great White [aka The Last Shark, L'ultimo Squalo (1981)]. Be forewarned though, you will be hearing and humming their song "Dune Buggy" incessantly afterward, as it is both a pesky earworm and underplays just about each and every action sequence. Of which there are a sizable amount.
 

Men in Black II (2002) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - July 3, 2002

Sequels, like all creative endeavors, exist on a spectrum. One that has three distinct points on its gradient.

First, and considered best, are the sequels that continue or evolve the pre-existing story in new and unique ways. This is where you will find the likes of The Bride of Frankenstein, The Godfather Part II, and The Empire Strikes Back.

Second, and where today's subject rests, is the most common and recognizable type of sequel. Which is to just replicate the first film's structure or story beats, albeit with some cosmetic changes that will make it appear 'all-new' and therefore different, and dial up all the stuff people loved or remember from the first. Think Jaws 2 or Die Hard 2, etc.

Third, and last, would be the anthology or in-name-only sequels. These are your James Bond, Dirty Harry, and Blind Dead films, which feature a reoccurring character, or characters, but do not continue a fixed storyline. Also folded into this example are the plethora of direct-to-video sequels that would just slap a franchise name on an unrelated film and call it a sequel. The Howling and Witchcraft 'sequels' are good examples of this. Also, Hellraiser.

Now let me get out of these weeds and back to today's ad, which is for Men in Black 2. While the first film was something of a delightful unicorn, this sequel... was not. The first Men in Black ended with the now seasoned Agent Jay (Will Smith) with a new partner, protecting the planet from the scum of the universe.

While there were two tie-in novels that attempted to deliver on the promise of that ending, The Green Saliva Blues, published in 1999, and The Grazer Conspiracy, published in 2000, this sequel presses the dreaded reset button.

Jay's partner washed out and Kay's retirement was a bust. The 'all-new' cosmetic change here being that it is Jay who has to break in the amnesiac Kay. Also new, the alien threat disguising itself as an underwear clad female model. Yay, I guess?

Fright Flicks - Trading Card #80

Poltergeist (1982)

One of the more irritating paranormal-themed urban legends regards the usage of actual human skeletons (aka human remains) in Poltergeist. While that may add an additional layer of ghoulishness to both the film and the gruesome reason for why the haunting is occurring. The truth is that actual human skeletons were used with great frequency throughout countless productions.

That skeleton hanging in the background of the doctor's office? Most likely real. Real skeletons were cheaper to rent than fake ones. So... if you see a skeleton in any and every thing from 1930s up through the 1980s, chances are it is a real skeleton.

Also, ignoring the real world horrors of domestic violence and blaming an innocuous prop is in very poor taste, in my humble opinion.

Scary Movie (2000) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - July 2, 2000

I have yet to see any of the Scary Movie films, or any of the genre parody films their box success unleashed into theaters, so I have little to nothing to say about them.

However, I do have some interesting trivia that will be pointed out whenever the appropriate film title gets a posting. So... here goes.

In 1982 writer-director Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer, Places in the Heart) made a film called Stab, which starred Roy Scheider and Meryl Streep. Prior to release, the title was changed to the less visceral sounding Still of the Night.

In 1996 directer Wes Craven helmed a film called Scream, which had the working title of Scary Movie. A movie within the movie, as it was a very meta commentary on slasher films, was a fictional film titled... Stab.

In the year 2000 the Wayan brothers used the title Scary Movie for an outright parody of horror films that combined raunch comedy with the ham-fisted self-awareness of the Airplane and Naked Gun franchises.

Oh, and Wes Craven directed Meryl Streep in the inspirational drama Music of the Heart.

Connected, they're all connected...

Alien 3 (1992) - Trading Card #44

Behind the Scenes - Foam Rubber Casting

Only one Alien haunts the prisoners planet of Fiorina 161, but dozens of foam rubber castings were produced in order to construct the three rod puppets used in filming based on designs by creature effects designers Tom Woodruff, Jr., and Alec Gillis. 

Lone Women by Victor LaValle - Review

From the very start of Lone Women by Victor LaValle, it is made quite clear that whatever is locked inside Adelaide Henry’s steamer trunk is both alive and very dangerous. It tore her parents to pieces, after all. An act that forces Adelaide to burn the family home, with the remains of her parents inside, and flee with whatever she can carry and whatever is locked inside that steamer trunk.

Being a lifelong addict of any and every thing to do with monsters. I was predisposed to wondering and guessing that when the locked steamer trunk would be opened, either by accident or on purpose, what style of entity would be revealed. 

While it could be something akin to Fluffy, the insatiable carnivorous beast that was locked inside The Crate in the first Creepshow movie, and in the source material story of the same name. I had serious doubts that that would be the case. No, my biggest suspicion as to what was inside that steamer trunk was that it was not all that different something akin to Belial, the deformed twin brother of Duane Bradly in Frank Henenlotter’s cult classic Basket Case.

Adelaide’s journey to Montana is not all that easy, but it is also not all that dangerous, either. She is going east from a homestead in California, after all. But while the frontier has been settled, it is also far from being toiled and tamed.

The real dangers and life-threatening challenges Adelaide must face and do battle with as she attempts to settle and build an all new life, in a region where no one knows her, begin manifesting when she arrives in the Montana town of Big Sandy, the city closest to her claim.

This is another homestead claim, which means that Adelaide needs to live there for three years, during which she is required to make it habitable and cultivate crops. If she succeeds in doing so, she gets to keep the land. If she fails or gives up, the land reverts back to the government. Failure is not an option for her. Neither is discovery, or so she thinks when she first arrives in Big Sandy.

While this is Adelaide’s first experience living in an area with few people of color, there was a refreshing absence of overt (i.e. dramatically performative) racism in the narrative. Oh, there is racism. But it is more a humming undercurrent of white noise (pun kind of intended) than anything of the kind that would found if this tale were set in the Jim Crow south.

As long as Adelaide is 'good' (in that she meets with the community standards in an area starved for people to populate it) she will be accepted. But if those arbitrary community standards are altered, or challenged, in any way… Adelaide may no longer be considered one of the ‘good' ones. While this is never explicitly stated outright by any character, it is something that Adelaide knows and is aware of.

There is a lot more to the story than Adelaide and the contents of her steamer trunk. There is also a traveling family or ruthless, murderous criminals that Adelaide gets on the bad side of. A ghost town that may or may not have actual ghosts residing within it. Then there is Mrs. Reed, Big Sandy's wealthy matron, who is supportive of the suffrage movement and the bringing of industry for women to work to the town. But she is also the author and the enforcer of the community standards. She and her husband, Mr. Reed,  are where that humming undercurrent of menace vibrates loudest. Make them happy and, well, everybody is happy. As long as the community standards are met and abided by.

Lone Women is my kind of book. It is exciting, it is touching, it is suspenseful, and, best of all, it continually surprised and subverted my expectations. I give it a hearty recommendation to any all Weird Western fans.

Until next time, happy trails…