Midnight Movie: Deadly Friend (1986)

Paul, the teenage hero of Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend, not only designs advanced robots, but he teaches college courses, dissects human brains, and somehow finds the time to hang out with his friends. The robot he’s created, “BB,” looks like a robot from any other 80s movie. It can crack locks, shoot hoops, and move heavy furniture. The only thing his robot can’t do is dodge shotgun spray, which we learn when it ding-dong ditches the neighborhood crazy lady, played by Anne Ramsey from The Goonies and Throw Momma from the Train. Don’t you just love her?

Paul’s love interest (Kristy Swanson in her first leading role) is repeatedly abused by her alcoholic father. In one of the film’s three or four dream sequences, which are filmed Nightmare on Elm Street style, she stabs her dear old dad with a broken flower vase. What follows is a jarringly bloody scene. Jarring because watching Deadly Friend is like getting thirty minutes into Short Circuit before discovering it’s an R-rated horror movie.

And here’s where my objectiveness flies out the window. I love killer robot movies. Terminator, Runaway, Chopping Mall, Screamers… I can’t get enough of this shit. What’s disappointing about Deadly Friend is they dispense with the actual robot twenty minutes in. The movie then goes the Donovan’s Brain/Frankenstein route: after Swanson’s father accidentally kills her, Paul transplants BB’s brain to her body. As expected, the world’s first robo-girl doesn’t come in peace. How she got superhuman strength isn’t explained nor is it entirely important in a movie like this.

This is an 80s movie, through and through, no doubt conceived by coked-up movie executives who wanted a gorier E.T. The Extraterrestrial. I mention E.T. because that’s exactly what Deadly Friend’s plot structure seems to mimic. Genre movies back then simply moved at a different pace than they do now. While most “slow-burn” horror films bore, this one has a pleasant pace. It really takes its time, but never takes more than we’re willing to give it. It makes the absurd climax, which is cram-packed with unintentional laughs, all the more entertaining.

J.J. Abrams said he got the name for one of his The Force Awakens characters from Phantasm. I’m beginning to wonder if he lifted BB-8’s name from this movie.

Midnight Movie: The Vagrant (1992)

The Vagrant stars Bill Paxton, Michael Ironside, Marshall Bell, and Collen Camp. Killer cast, right? Unfortunately, each supporting character is compartmentalized. If you don’t see them interacting with the main character, you don’t see them interacting at all.

Paxton plays Graham Krakowski, which is pronounced “Crack-house-ski” by some characters. He has a stable yet mind-numbing job, which allows him to buy a fixer-upper from his nymphomaniacal real estate agent (Camp). Soon he’ll learn there’s a vagrant in the neighborhood (Bell) who’s squatting on a nearby lot. Krakowski takes out a second mortgage and fortifies the property with the best security money can buy, including a perimeter fence, stadium lights, and an automatic music player that makes intruders think someone’s at home when he’s away.

After spending every dime on this worthless stuff—worthless because it doesn’t stop the vagrant from letting himself into Krakowski’s house—he realizes he should have bought furniture instead of Pentagon-level security. So he has the inside of the house decorated at his girlfriend’s insistence and puts it all on his credit cards. Now that he’s ensured he’ll spend the rest of his life in debt, the vagrant’s antics drive him crazy, he loses his job, and an over-the-top homicide detective (Ironside) is trying to finger him for a murder the vagrant actually committed.

Did I mention this is supposed to be a comedy? I love horror-comedies, but this one isn’t scary and it isn’t very funny, either. The concept was ripe to become a cult classic and I’m a fan of all these actors. This is actually my second viewing and I was hoping I would notice satirical complexities I was too young to pick up on the first time around. Nope. It’s shallow and intentionally cheesy and pretty incompetent to boot.

The Vagrant isn’t a terrible movie, just mediocre, but it does entertain here and there.

Midnight Movie: Clown (2014)

I never thought clowns were scary, but I love seeing them in movies. It’s almost as if they were made for the screen. (For a recent example, see: Álex de la Iglesia’s The Last Circus.) Anyway, you remember that part in Parenthood in which Steve Martin has to dress up as a clown for his son’s birthday party? Imagine if he discovered the costume wouldn’t come off. Then, as his frustrations mounted, he developed urges to murder innocent children. That’s the premise behind Clown, a remarkably deadpan horror-comedy written by a couple of filmmakers who got Eli Roth to produce after they made a proof of concept trailer.

Kent McCoy, real estate agent, is stuck in an old clown costume he found. All attempts to take it off—which have involved hemostats, razor blades, and power tools—have only injured him. The costume is fusing to his body like reverse-molting. His skin turns white so he has to wear flesh-colored makeup to pass in public. Unfortunately, it’s clear he’ll never look normal again and his appearance is progressively devolving into something hideous.

While researching the origins of the costume, Kent contacts an expert played by Fargo’s Peter Stormare. Stormare’s character reveals the costume’s not made out of fabric at all, but it’s the hide of an ancient Icelandic demon. Ridiculous, right? Wisely, the film plays it with a straight face and never elbows you for a laugh, which is far funnier than a Sharknado-level farce. Getting trapped in a clown costume actually is a scary concept because it would be as embarrassing as accidentally showing up to school without pants on. Illogical, yes, but so are most nightmares.

The demon the skin belonged to was known for eating children, an urge which proves contagious to Kent. The filmmakers leverage that aspect of the plot into a moral quandary that comes into play towards the end of the movie. Without giving too much away, people often say they would do absolutely anything for their children. Clown explores the darker implications of an otherwise innocent statement like that.

While Clown’s promotional material suggests it might assault you with buckets of gore, it neither wants to push the envelope or shy away from the good stuff. It implies more than it shows, yet it makes sparing yet effective use of body horror. These guys sneak the crazy stuff into your blind spot and by the time it’s in your peripheral vision it’s too late.

I really liked this movie, which is bizarre and subtle at the same time. I was reminded of the shocking reveal at the end of Rosemary’s Baby, which is simultaneously the worst thing that could happen and somehow amusing. The acting is good and the characters seem real and grounded. They don’t even do anything especially stupid like make excuses for why they don’t call the police. I mean, if an Icelandic demon fused with your body, who you gonna call anyway?

If you ever wondered why I’m an Eli Roth fan, it’s because of his involvement in movies like this. We need more cheerleaders for the smaller voices in genre films. Roth’s enthusiasm is infectious.

Midnight Movie: Fortress of Amerikkka (1989)

John Waters once said, “Get more out of life. See a fucked-up movie.”

I’ve written about the purity of exploitation films many times. They promise a certain kind of entertainment—usually mindless—and they either deliver or they don’t. Here’s one that delivers, but once it crosses the line, it doesn’t stop. Early on, a defenseless old man gets drawn between a car and a tree in gruesome fashion. Soon after, a terrified child get shot in the back. Not that any of it looks real, mind you, but it’s still not for the faint of heart.

Fortress of Amerikkka has a lot in common with Surf Nazis Must Die. They both have sleazy titles, they both contain unbridled cheese, and they were both distributed by Troma Entertainment (of course). Surf Nazis Must Die is just a little more fun; any revenge film in which the hero is a motorcycle-driving black mama is clearly better than one in which a white actor (Gene LeBrock) plays a Native American named John Whitecloud.

Whitecloud has just been released from prison. The first thing he does is stock up on weapons and ammunition at the local gun store. There he has a run-in with the dirty cop who killed his brother and put him away in the first place. The cop tells Whitecloud he better watch his back, a scene every movie like this must include. Meanwhile, there’s a militia performing training exercises in the surrounding woods. The villain, who reminds me of Donald Trump making Amerikkka great again, commands his mindless followers to kill anyone who stumbles upon the location of their camp, which seems to be damn near everyone but the cops.

These are two very different plots which run parallel until, suddenly, they don’t. And here’s where the confusion comes into play: Why is America spelled with a triple-K? It leads you to believe the militia has ties with the Klan, yet they’re a racially inclusive and female friendly group, as far as I can tell. Troma films have been known for being as subtle as a cannonball, so I’m not sure what the social commentary is here, if any. I just can’t bring myself to believe the guy who directed two Class of Nuke’Em High sequels had anything more important to say than “violence and boobies, yay!”

The “that’s so wrong” factor of this movie is simply stunning. Get a bunch of drunk friends together and you’ll probably have a blast. It’s one of the wildest Troma films that wasn’t produced in-house.

Midnight Movies: The Toxic Avenger II & III

I originally saw the original The Toxic Avenger on USA Up All Night! when I was something like eight or nine years old. On my many repeat viewings of the worn VHS I recorded myself, I would laugh gleefully when, upon committing vehicular homicide, one of the evil punks announces he has to go to bed early “because I’ve gotta go to church.” Years later, at the beginning of Toxic Avenger Part IV, Stan Lee’s voiceover recounts the events of the first film before going on to say, “Then… two rotten sequels were made. Sorry about that!”

Curiously, I’ve watched the “rotten sequels” more than I saw the fourth movie. I actually prefer Toxie’s makeup and his John Candy-like demeanor in the two middle entries. The biggest problem with the back-to-back II & III is they were intended to be one film until director Lloyd Kaufman, realizing he had shot too much footage, had the idea to split the one movie into two. The problem is Kaufman overestimated just how much usable footage he had.

Following the events of the first film, Melvin the mop boy, aka Toxie, has successfully cleaned Tromaville of crime and pollution. He lives with his blind girlfriend Claire (even Kaufman has admitted he doesn’t know why they changed the character’s name from Sarah) and finds himself without purpose. So he sets off to Japan in search of his long lost father, only to find the man sets off his Spidey-Sense (uh, I mean “Tromatons”) because he is, in fact, an evil drug lord. Meanwhile, in Toxie’s absence, an evil corporation moves into Tromaville.

The good stuff is present, albeit smothered in the padding. Part II opens with a hilariously stupid fight before the promising pace trips on the overuse of voiceovers and the extended interlude in Japan. A lot of the footage that’s used in Toxic Avenger II is actually recycled in Toxic Avenger III, sometimes with replaced dialogue, sometimes unaltered, but always at the expense of fun. In other words, there’s a great Troma movie between the two pictures and if a skilled fan editor hasn’t made a singular supercut yet, I’d be very surprised.

When I was younger, I preferred Part II because I somehow liked the stuff in Japan. Now that I’m older, it’s clear the third film, The Last Temptation of Toxie, is the superior picture. The opening was obviously shot after Kaufman decided to split the film into two. The fight may not be as long and complex as the one which opened the previous movie, but its brevity helps solidify the pace and believe me: this movie can use all the help it can get.

Toxie’s relationship with Claire takes an unexpectedly cute turn. Toxie literally sells his soul to the devil to pay for the operation to restore her eyesight (and to get his mother a microwave oven). He does this knowing full well that once she can see, she may be repulsed by his hideously deformed nature. That’s our little Melvin—a selfless darling—and we can only hope the inevitable Hollywood remake will absorb the more subtle ingredients of the franchise rather than focusing solely on the exploitation stuff.

Nothing in these two films is half as wild (or gleefully politically incorrect) as the punks who squash a little boy’s head before beating an elderly woman to death. Nor is the dialogue ever quite as poetic as the thug who exclaims, “I’ve always wanted to cornhole me a blind bitch!” Unless you’re a completionist, or a die hard Troma fan, it’s probably acceptable to skip all the sequels. But there is some of that old magic here. It’s only in short bursts, few and far between.

Keanu (2016)

Movie nerds can spot fellow movie nerds from across the room. Key and Peele don’t just parody specific movies (see: their Gremlins 2 sketch), but sometimes entire types of movies (see: their funhouse villain sketch). Any comedy team who casts character-actors like Clint Howard, while paying rapt attention to lighting and cinematography, is speaking my language. I’m sure Keanu is only one of many worthwhile films that will result from this partnership.

Rell (Jordan Peele) has just been dumped by his girlfriend. When we first see him, he’s moping beside a bong and a couple of posters for New Jack City and Heat. His best friend Clarence (Keegan-Michael Key) is a suburbanite who drives around in a mini-van while listening to George Michael on repeat. Clarence is on his way to cheer Rell up, but it turns out he doesn’t need to anymore. Rell has adopted a stray kitten he calls Keanu and all is well in the world.

What Rell and Clarence don’t know is Keanu has just escaped a shootout at a Mexican cartel operation. The two super-assassins responsible for the shootout are also played by Key and Peele in heavy makeup and wigs. The bad guys also want the kitten, but when a local gang tries to trash the house of a dumb drug dealer (Will Forte), they accidentally target Rell’s house next door. The leader of the gang, played by Method Man, takes a liking to the kitty, too. So when Rell and Clarence go to get Keanu back, the gang mistakes them for the aforementioned assassins and… well, this certainly sounds like a routine comedy, doesn’t it?

And it is a routine comedy, but not the low-effort kind. This is the kind of movie Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder could have starred in thirty years ago: a simple vehicle for complex talent. Each time the movie starts to lose its footing on the slippery slope of situation comedy, they completely save it with their antics. There’s an unlikely and somewhat contrived scene in which the boys must perform a wall-flip in order to prove they’re the assassins. In most comedies, the flip itself would be the joke. The joke here is Clarence’s face when he somehow nails it. It’s not about what happens, but how it happens.

So do you like Key and Peele’s TV show? If you do, you’ll like Keanu. It’s pretty rare for sketch performers to make the leap to the silver screen so well. Most comedians probably just see it as a promotion, but Key and Peele have been grooming themselves for film for years. Yeah, it’s absurd to believe a street gang could ever mistake these two for legendary assassin, but I’m willing to suspend my disbelief for gags as good as these.

Alien 3: The Assembly Cut is a very different movie

For years I’ve heard about the so-called Assembly Cut of Alien 3, but didn’t expect much from it. I wouldn’t say I hated Alien 3 (although I would say that of Alien Resurrection), I just think Aliens’ version of Ripley is possibly my favorite movie character in history. I don’t know why I find her so endearing, I just do. I get chills whenever I merely think about her saying, “Get away from her, you bitch!” But in Alien 3 she just seems… off.

Those who claim Alien 3 was only disappointing because its critics were expecting more Aliens are mistaken. A lot of us loved the first sequel because it was so different from the original, not just because it was an action picture. Right out of the gate, Alien 3 makes the mistake of treading the same water as the original. It’s also important to remember Alien clones were a dime a dozen those days; the whole “we’re trapped in a spaceship/military complex/prison with an alien” thing was already severely played out by ’92. It was understandable audiences expected something different from a series which had yet to repeat itself.

Thankfully, the first forty minutes of The Assembly Cut feel like a completely different animal than the theatrical cut. In this edit, Ripley washes up on a beach after her escape pod crash lands on the penal colony known as Fury 161. Charles Dance’s character, whose best scenes are restored in this version, is out for a stroll on the beach when he discovers Ripley’s unconscious body. Many will oppose the idea that Ripley hops in bed with the first guy she sees, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t completely believable. It’s not, “We want you to believe these characters are suddenly in love,” but more like, “Sometimes, lonely adults have sex.”

Although there were so many lame alien clones at the time, The Assembly Cut makes it clear Fincher could have made the first truly skilled knock-off. Unfortunately, the special effects suck as bad as they did in ’92 and Ripley’s reaction to learning of Newt’s death still underwhelms. I was hoping the heavy-handed crucifixion imagery at the end of the movie was gone, and although that shot is improved in a way, it’s still stupid and pretentious. Other than that, The Assembly Cut is a decent end to the trilogy.

There are various other improvements I won’t spoil. I’ll just point out the alien’s entrance is much spookier than the one we initially got.

The Nice Guys (2016)

Look, kids. This is what summer blockbusters used to look like. I like Captain America movies as much as the next guy, but this is the film I was most hyped to see this year. If you’re wondering how Shane Black’s latest buddy action film stacks up to his previous underrated classic, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, I’ll save you the suspense: it’s probably even better.

The Nice Guys was supposed to open later this year, but Warner Bros. moved it forward to give its original date to Central Intelligence, which appears to be another soulless comedy for Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. Now The Nice Guys is opening against Neighbors 2 and The Angry Birds Movie, further proof that studio executives have no fucking clue what they’re doing. In promos, you can tell producer Joel Silver and the cast of the film are understandably bitter about the idiotic scheduling.

Ryan Gosling plays Holland March, a shitty private detective who has rare bouts of intuition. Like Saul Goodman, his client list consists of confused elderly people. Russell Crowe plays Jackson Healy, a guy who beats people up for money and he’s just been hired to kick Holland’s ass. Soon they’ll discover they have overlapping cases, at which point they team up and scour 1970s Los Angeles for leads. Holland’s impressionable young daughter, who’s at least a little smarter than her dad, tags along for the ride. She’s not incidental to the plot, either.

My favorite supporting characters are Keith David and Beau Knapp’s henchmen. These nuts would have stolen the show if not for the perfectly cast leads. David is just one of those guys I love seeing in movies and his presence here makes it all the more legitimate as a throwback film. Knapp, who I’m not entirely familiar with, plays a presumably coked-up idiot who has a hilariously evil laugh.

Gosling and Crowe make a brilliant team. I really miss the mid-budget action-comedy. This is exactly what going to the movie theater was like when I was kid.

The VVitch (2016)

I love movies about witches, whether there’s an actual witch or it’s just hysteria. The latter is typically more terrifying than the former, but The VVitch gives us the best of both worlds. Patient and irresistibly atmospheric, it layers on the horrors experienced by a Christian family who have been outcast from their New England community.

Katherine, (Kate Dickie from Game of Thrones), is the mother of five children who spends the entirety of the movie grieving. Dickie’s acting is subtle for the most part and believably grand when necessary. William (Ralph Ineson, also from Game of Thrones) is the father of the family; he’s responsible for the sin which got his family exiled to the wilderness in the first place. The film wisely keeps his criminal indiscretion vague so we won’t pass judgment on him too early. Whereas his wife sobs herself to sleep, William stoically chops wood to cope with their hardships.

Their children include a newborn baby, creepy twins who spend their days playing with a goat, and Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) who doesn’t seem to be aware her younger brother Caleb is developing feelings for her now that she’s becoming a woman. Because their father is a lousy hunter, Caleb and Thomasin secretly decide to hunt on their own despite the trouble they’ll get into when they return. It’s then that they stumble upon the witch’s hut in the woods. At this point, I wouldn’t dream of telling you what happens next.

The best thing about The VVitch, which already has plenty to like, is its unpredictability. I suspect first time director Robert Eggers felt himself veering dangerously off course while writing the script, but instead of correcting himself, he said “eh, let’s see where this goes” and barreled right off the intended path. I can’t imagine we’ll see a better horror film this year.

Midnight Movie: Chuck Norris vs. Communism (2015)

Following in the wake of American Grindhouse, Corman’s World, Machete Maidens Unleased!, and the highly watchable Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, Chuck Norris vs. Communism represents yet another slice of history dealing with the cultural significance of B-movies. This time the focus is Irina Nistor, a translator who dubbed three thousand bootleg videotapes in spite of her country’s oppressive regime. According to one of the film’s subjects: “For regular people, video nights were the one thing that helped us survive.” Another bit of insight: “The films changed what you thought, what you were looking for, what you were interested in. You developed through films.”

Set toward the tail end of the Cold War, Nicolae Ceaușescu is the General Secretary of the Communist Party and shit generally sucks for common folk in Romania. Censorship is so extreme, Ceaușescu’s lackeys are going over every second of television programming with a magnifying glass. They delete anything which might even begin to suggest that life might be better elsewhere.

Although VCRs can cost as much as a car there, people are buying them and showing western films to their friends and family despite frequent raids by the secret police. After the movies, the children go outside to make believe they’re Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sylvester Stallone, and Chuck Norris. Meanwhile, the adults draw comparisons between the movie’s injustices and their own. One interviewee points out that they couldn’t talk about these movies on the bus the next day. There was no telling who might be listening. No telling who’d turn them in.

The well-shot reenactments, which make effective use of brutalist architecture, are part political thriller and part espionage (think: The Secret Lives of Others). These taut scenes are sandwiched in between interviews about how films change people for the better. This is one of the leanest documentaries about film I’ve ever seen. If you love movies of any type, you’ll probably love this one. Cinema obviously wasn’t the only force pressing for revolution, but it was an integral one.