Invaders from Mars (1986) - Newspaper Ad [San Francisco Examiner]

June 1, 1986

I was on summer break from SFSU, and thus in Hong Kong, when Invaders from Mars was released at selected theaters and drive-ins to a less than spectacular reception from both audiences and critics. So I missed out on seeing it on the big screen. Which is too bad, as I thought it was a nifty 'little' movie when I saw it on home video.

While not as chaotically bonkers as Hooper's delightful cult classic Lifeforce, which had cratered at the box office the year before, Invaders from Mars, despite looking and feeling ever so slightly choppy and uneven, has a colorful charm and a dreamlike sense of wonder to it. Elements that make it pair really well with Joe Dante's 1985 box office flop Explorers, which also, despite looking and feeling ever so slightly choppy and uneven, has the same kind of colorful charm and dreamlike sense of wonder to it as Invaders from Mars.

I think this movie is well worth seeing for the Martian ship set design, the Stan Winston creatures, and Daniel Pearl's gorgeous cinematography. There was an interesting essay, that was attributed to director Tobe Hooper, that was in John Russo's book Making Movies. It detailed some of the baffling meddling Hooper had to contend with while making this movie and should be sought out and read.

One anecdote I heard was that Golan/Globus, and the Cannon Group, were disappointed that the film was not scary enough. They wanted a scary monster movie, an alien invasion variation of Poltergeist. But Hooper was intent on making more of an E.T. style adventure.

And I think it succeeded, for the most part. This is one of those movies I really wished had done better at that box office. It would have been great if it had at least broken even at the box office and not lost a ton of cash for the struggling studio/distributor.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - April 20, 1984

Although it had been on home video for a few years, thanks to Charles Band's Wizard Home Video label, New Line Cinema dusted off Tobe Hooper's seminal and harrowing horror classic for a theatrical re-release. Tagging along with it seems to be another re-release, the surreal melding of Alien with Kramer vs Kramer that was Xtro. Although this newspaper ad misprints the film's title as Extro. So it goes.

The Funhouse (1981) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - March 12, 1981

My memory of this film is that it seemed to take forever and a day to reach theaters and drive-ins near me. Even then, I failed in seeing it on the big screen. Because, by that time, I read the novelization by Owen West (Dean Koontz), which I had not cared for all that much.

It turns out that Dean Koontiz himself had not cared for it either and had taken some liberties with the script, in regards to backstory and motivation and so on and so forth. This would also be the only novelization that Koontz would ever write.

The film itself is not all that bad, really. Tobe Hooper's oh-so-unique brand of southern fried insanity pulses in just about every frame and, despite some effect moments of outlandish and over-the-top theatrical bombast, this movie really works well in its quieter, creepier moments. Of which there are quite a few.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - November 12, 1974

Being all of seven years old at the time of its original release, it should come as no surprise that I have zero memory of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. My introduction to the film came post Salem's Lot (1979), The Funhouse (1981), and Poltergeist (1982). 

The first time I watched it was on home video, that grainy and somewhat fuzzy looking transfer courtesy of Wizard Home Entertainment, and found the film to be every bit as unnerving and intense as its lurid title implied it would be. Although that spell was broken when my dad strolled into the living room, just as Sally Hardesty jumps through a window and gets chased across the front lawn by Leatherface, and asked me, "What the hell are you watching?"

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," I told him.

He sighed, shook his head, and muttered, "Figures it'd be Texas." Then he turned and walked out of the room.

Poltergeist (1982) - Newspaper Ad [San Francisco Examiner - May 21, 1982]

How can it be that I gave Poltergeist a pass during its big screen release? There was even a controversy about the PG rated film being far too graphic and scary for its rating. This was my kind of movie, to be sure. So, why give it a pass?

Because Poltergeist fell victim to my habit of reading the novelization before seeing the film. I did not much care for the novelization, so I figured the movie would be underwhelming. I was wrong, of course. Poltergeist became a cultural touchstone for a countless number of Gen X kids. But for me, it was not to be. So it goes.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) / Massacre At Central High (1976) - Newspaper Ad [Oakland Tribune - April 30, 1982]

Although both films were most likely on home video by 1982, that fact did not stop New Line Cinema from dusting off both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Massacre At Central High (1976) as a double-feature theatrical re-release that very same year.

As much as I would have relished the opportunity to be able to see this double-bill at the nearby Coliseum Drive-In, the way mythical-god intended them to be viewed, that was not to be.

While I do remember watching Massacre At Central High at some point, the only thing I remember about it is the diving board scene. If you've seen the film, you know the scene.

The Mangler (1995) - Newspaper Ad [Oakland Tribune - March 3, 1995]

I remember studying one of the newspaper ads for The Mangler with no small degree of incredulity. How did this thing manage to get a theatrical release? By 1995 this kind of stuff was released direct-to-video, not to big screen venues.

Perhaps it was the film's source material. The Mangler is one of my all-time favorite stories from Stephen King's Night Shift anthology, so I knew I would be seeing it. 

Although Tobe Hooper had done an impressive job directing the 1979 Salem's Lot mini-series, his work post The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 wobbled between disappointing, at best, and dire, at worst.

Robert Englund being in the film did not hurt, but it also might not help all the much. While Englund was game for becoming a Vincent Price style horror icon, his on screen charisma could only carry a film like this so far. Hooper would need to bring his A-game, if that were still possible.

Those were all the pluses I saw in the ad. Yet there was one gigantic minus that eclipsed them all and raised my doubt level all the way up to critical. The name Harry Alan Towers.

Towers was an exploitation writer-producer best known for his numerous film adaptations of works by Sax Rohmer, Agatha Christie, Marquis de Sade, and/or Edgar Wallace. He also produced several of the more "notable" films made by the euro-sleaze-exploitation titan Jesus Franco in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Towers earned my eternal distrust by producing the lackluster sleaze-fest Edge of Sanity, which starred a slumming it for the paycheck Anthony Perkins. The friend I was unfortunate enough to see it with can and will attest that I writhed in my seat throughout most of that film's runtime.

So I was a tad suspect of The Mangler.

It is unfortunate that those suspicions proved to be well founded. While there were some things I liked about The Mangler, such as its production design, theatrical to the point of camp tone, and pitch black humor, I thought it dragged horribly. Cut some ten to fifteen minutes, starting with the extraneous, over-the-top, and painfully drawn-out dialogue exchanges between Ted Levine and Daniel Matmor, and maybe, just maybe, this could have become a campy horror hoot drawn from the same horror-comedy vein as HBO's Tales from the Crypt series.

But it was not to be. So it goes.