When her sister mysteriously disappears, Clover (Ella Rubin, Fear Street: Prom Queen) and four Gen Z pals retrace her last known steps to a quaint empty inn in a remote small town of Glore Valley. Seeing as how the inn is chockablock with flyers for missing people of all ages, races, colors and creeds, you know things don’t bode well for them.
Sure enough, 27 minutes into the movie, all five are murdered. Then suddenly, they’re all alive again, finding themselves trapped in a Groundhog Day-style situation, but dispatched in different ways by different threats each go-round. Like Happy Death Day, the key to survival is figuring out how to break that loop. Bet the freaky hourglass clock on the wall stands as a Big Clue.
Based on a PlayStation game I’d not heard of, Until Dawn turns up with a nifty premise, allowing director David F. Sandberg (2016’s Lights Out) to tinker among several horror genres — slashers, witches, zombies, clowns, etc. — one night at a time. Still, even with each switcheroo presenting new situations (“Is anyone else growing new teeth?”), tiring repetition can’t help but set in.
Ultimately, Until Dawn wastes its invention on underwritten, unlikable characters, as you’d expect people named Clover would be. (How are the others not named, like, Chakra, Journey, Justice and Inclusion?) That may explain my enthusiasm for something of its midpoint breather, in which — spoiler alert! — coughing leads to exploding.
It’s not enough. Until Dawn is high-sheen corporate synergy studio horror as aimless as it is needless. —Rod Lott
Comedically prescient as all get out,Eat the Rich is all about class warfare, rampant snobbery, low-class politics and, of course, the most sarcastic form of cannibalistic fine dining.
And I would have known about all these stiff-upper-lipped British themes, discussions and subtle comedy before now, if only my VCR worked the way it was supposed to in the early ’90s. Those were the days, when KOBC Channel 34, Oklahoma City’s UHF television station, broadcast religious programming in the morning, Western reruns in the afternoon and low-rent syndicated shows during prime time. When normal broadcasting went bye-bye around 11 p.m., KOBC became the best non-cable station around.
From Z-grade horror and UK sex comedies to rarely seen campy treasures from all around the world, you never knew what you were in for, and I was here for it … but it was past my bedtime. So I used my parents’ VCR to tape dozens of films off KOBC, with 1-900 sexy singles’ lines ads, Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unexplained shills and Channel 34’s own sad weather reports.
Eat the Rich was one of those tapes, except the VCR only recorded the first five minutes before skipping to the 6 a.m. farm report. Never were cattle futures so sad! Even in the era of Blu-ray special editions, this British satire was impossible to locate until I found it on Amazon Prime. Even better, it was only $3.99 to rent. God save the Queen and her fascist regime!
Featuring bit-part players of England’s alt-comedy faction the Comic Strip and, even better, music from Motörhead, it’s off to a ripping start, well past the originally allotted five minutes. In the posh restaurant Bastards, the abusive patrons dine on cheetahs, koala and pandas.
After a row with a blowhard patron, put-upon waiter Alex (Lanah Pellay) is having not anymore, shouting, “Oi! Where’s my fuckin’ tip?” He’s thrown out by staff and, through a series of blows to his ego and his superego, becomes a leader of a group of nonmilitary anarchists who want to, undoubtably, eat the rich.
Concurrently, former boxer Nosher Powell is a faux politician, a lager-swilling lout who gets all the racist football fans in his corner because he brokers deals with his ill temper and his uncompromising fists. (Sounds like the politicians in Oklahoma — right, Markwayne?) As you can imagine, all these punked-up parties and fucked-up parts end up riotously dead, with arms dealer Lemmy coming out top. And why wouldn’t he?
Though the film was a massive flop on a grand scale, it’s still a Comic StripPresents movie, giving the well-to-do British society two fingers way up. It’s directed by Peter Richardson, with alternative-comedy regulars such as Nigel Planer, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson in brash cameos. But Eat the Rich is comedian and cabaret singer Pellay’s show as Alex, with every line dripping in sarcastic wherewithal and venomous barbs that made me guffaw in all-knowing titters. Pellay is a true revelation, 30 years too late.
It took me three decades to find, watch and embrace this, but Eat the Rich is a properly digested and classically disposed comedy that needs to be rewatched, reassessed and, true to the movie, regurgitated. —Louis Fowler
I’m all for supporting one’s children in their endeavors. I wonder if Hollywood feels the same. Like, when the likable Chris Lemmon found himself starring in several unlikable B movies throughout the ’80s (like C.O.D.), did his famous father — Jack Lemmon, legend — watch those? Specifically, the aggressively stupid military comedy Weekend Warriors.
And if so, what did he say? “Well, Son, I was not expecting the plane to go loop-de-loop when the pilot got a beej from the showgirl.”
Anyway, Weekend Warriors, also known as Hollywood Air Force. Unofficially, it’s Police Academy on a Military Base. Whatever you choose to call it, one thing’s for sure: Bert Convy never directed anything better. To be fair, the perennial game show host and Cannonball Run second-stringer never directed anything else, so there’s that.
From The Movie Store — purveyor of fellow low-rent titty flicks Ski School, Meatballs III, Meatballs 4 and Basic Training, which this most resembles — the film takes place in the summer of 1961. To avoid the draft, a number of horny ne’er-do-wells spend drill weekends in the Air National Guard, where they pull pranks on authority figures — namely, their oblivious colonel (Lloyd Bridges, in what amounts to a Hot Shots audition) and strict sergeant (Vic Tayback, Mansion of the Doomed), whose bald head they top with whipped cream and a cherry after drugging him. (Convy, you card!)
Serving as the Steve Guttenberg fill-in, Lemmon leads the ragtag assemblage, which includes a nerdy mortician, a bisexual gossip columnist, an entire doo-wop group and a muscleman meathead with an Elmer Fudd speech impediment Convy leverages from start to finish. Among the actors sinking their teeth into these challenging roles are Matt McCoy and Tom Villard, thereby marking the We Got It Made reunion no one wanted.
When the boys embarrass visiting Congressman Balljoy (Graham Jarvis, Mr. Mom), they’re in danger of being sent overseas to face real danger, lest they pull off an upcoming inspection. If you think a missile gets knocked askew, a sexual assault is played for laughs, a puking contest is held and a massive fart becomes an actual story point … well, you’re wrong. But only because there’s no puking contest.
Weekend Warriors isn’t funny. (Disagree? Dude, you were probably 12.) It’s also amazing the degree to which its third act misjudges what its target audience wants from such a film. An elaborate tarmac show of military hardware sure ain’t it — with or without little person Deep Roy (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) disguised as a little girl. —Rod Lott
Because career criminal Nate doesn’t pledge allegiance to skinheads when he’s released from prison, the gang puts a hit on his family members’ heads. As She Rides Shotgun opens, Nate’s ex-wife already has been snuffed out, leaving his 11-year-old daughter next in line.
So when Nate (Taron Egerton) zooms up in a stolen car, Polly (Ana Sophia Heger) reluctantly joins her father because she barely knows him. It’s not like she has a choice, but it beats certain death. Suddenly, it’s a hard-knock life for her — on the run, on the lam and getting a crash course in cracking skulls.
A sympathetic police detective (Rob Yang, The Menu) gives Nate a shot at redemption: taking down “the meth house to end all meth houses.” It’s more a village of RVs lorded over by a corrupt town sheriff with a god complex (John Carroll Lynch, Zodiac).
Adapted from Jordan Harper’s Edgar Award-winning 2017 crime novel by Super Dark Times screenwriters Luke Piotrowski and Ben Collins, She Rides Shotgun arrives on screens softly, but carries a big stick — a metal baseball bat, to be precise. You might not believe me given the movie’s unfortunate tagline of “All a father needs is a fighting chance.” Pay no attention to that, as on-the-rise director Nick Rowland (The Shadow of Violence) is able — nine times out of 10 — to avoid the cloying sentimentality that clouds kindred efforts.
Rowland won me over with nail-biting tension in the first scene. A midpoint car chase following a botched convenience store robbery crackles with intensity, too, as Underworld’s “Denver Luna” sets pace. In those instances and more, the movie feels like Luc Besson’s The Professional if Léon and Mathilda shared common DNA.
Onboard as a producer, Egerton has shown real growth as an actor post-Kingsman, most notably on Apple’s Emmy-winning Black Birdlimited series. His excellent work there was overshadowed by Paul Walter Hauser, also excellent, in the meatier supporting role. A similar upstaging occurs here by Ana Sophia Heger (Things Heard & Seen) in her theatrical debut. As Polly, she possesses what precious few child actors exhibit: a lived-in authenticity. Without spoiling anything, what she does in the heart-crushing extended final shot — reminiscent of the one closing the Safdie brothers’ Good Time — is nothing short of amazing. —Rod Lott
One broken vial of “experimental yeast” at the BioTek Agronomics laboratory triggers a biohazard alarm and subsequent full facility lockdown. After security officer Joanie (Kathleen Quinlan, 1997’s Breakdown) seals the employees — herself included — inside to prevent a public outbreak, the local yokels try to bust their way in from the outside, despite the infection bearing a fatality rate of 80%.
Science vs. ignorance: Good thing Warning Sign is purely a work of speculative fiction that in no way can occur in today’s world.
A technician played by Police Academy foil G.W. Bailey is irate at Joanie for enacting protocol. Her sheriff husband (Sam Waterston, Serial Mom) is peeved their planned Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits dinner will go cold. Choppering into town like a boss is Yaphet Kotto (Alien) as a major for the U.S. Accident Containment Team, ready to take control because he knows the place’s secrets.
The lone feature directed by Hal Barwood, who wrote the film with fellow Dragonslayer scribe Matthew Robbins, Warning Sign begins as an out-and-out virus thriller, then flirts with approximating a zombie movie before settling into siege-picture territory for the finale. That schizophrenic nature all but halts initial momentum and harms any chance of staying power. The conclusion offers one element above average: Waterston aggressively shooting his way through the throng — with an inoculation gun.
Although middle-age Waterston isn’t as effective onscreen as today’s twilight-time Waterston, his supporting cast is a character actor’s dream, with meaty turns from the likes of Jeffrey DeMunn (The Mist), Scott Paulin (1990’s Captain America) and Richard Dysart (1982’s The Thing), who’s never had this much leeway to cut loose.
Warning Sign isn’t so rote to bear its own (other than maybe “CONTAINS MUCH WELDING”), but with as much talent involved, it should have been better. At least three shots are hilarious, which assuredly is not what Barwood and Robbins were going for. Make it a Blockbuster night by pairing it with Alan Rudolph’s loftier-minded, equally iffy and ultimately more bonkers Endangered Species. —Rod Lott
