In Uncaged, Netherlands genre giant Dick Maas (Amsterdamned) takes pride in his work — literally, as this loony movie is about a lion on the loose.
After an entire family is slaughtered, zoo veterinarian Liz (Sophie van Winden) gets recruited to help authorities track and prevent the jungle-king culprit from further going Dutch for din-din. Maas being Maas, any capture won’t happen until the filmmaker has his fun for moviegoers’ sake.
And what fun this film — alternately and generically known as Prey — is! To quote experts surveying the grisly mess at the big cat’s initial crime scene:
“Where’s his arm?”
“In the same place as his wife’s head.”
Because Maas’ singular sense of humor always accompanies the gore, it’s tough to take his well-choreographed sequences as anything other than an action-packed cartoon for grown-ups. If the lion chasing a delivery man on a moped through the streets isn’t enough of a ball, wait until the animal does the same to Liz’s ex: a cancer-ravaged hired hunter (Mark Frost, Faust: Love of the Damned) in a motorized wheelchair.
From golf course to public tram, Maas pulls no punches as the Uncaged lion does anything but sleep — just ask the poor kid on the playground slide! Then dig in. —Rod Lott
An anthology of speculative fiction, Portals posits that man has created a black hole. Global blackouts follow, as do odd behavior from citizens, citywide evacuations and mysterious monoliths — portals, if you will — that pop up everywhere with no apparent rhyme or reason. This setup, courtesy V/H/S: Viral producer Christopher White, is full of possibilities.
The four selected to explore, however, greatly underwhelm. A family flees its California home, encountering a portal on a desert road. Amid the chaos, a 911 call center’s operations are paused by a portal suddenly appearing between cubicle rows. Sisters in Indonesia stumble upon a portal in a parking garage. Finally, after the credits, scientists in Liverpool play guinea pigs with the portals, taking one giant leap for mankind.
Portals is nothing if not consistent, but that consistency arrives as aggravating ambiguity. Nothing is explained; rules appear to be as bendable as wire hangers; characters are barely introduced; they spout mumbo jumbo that hardly moves things forward. If you intend your sci-fi film to be that vague, may I suggest your name be Stanley Kubrick or Andrei Tarkovsky? Being deceased, neither numbers among the helmers involved: The Blair Witch Project’s Eduardo Sanchez, Beyond Skyline’s Liam O’Donnell and V/H/S/2 contributors Timo Tjahjanto and Gregg Hale.
Portals’ problem is its script, not the effects. Undaunted, White tried again two years later, reviving his vertical-rectangular-object concept with a fresh coat of paint (and lesser-known directors) as the omnibus Doors. I won’t knock it ’til I try it. —Rod Lott
Often cited as a forerunner to the meta likes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Midnight Movie Massacre exists as a playful ribbing of old B movies. Nonetheless, the film squanders that premise — one so simple, it should be can’t-miss.
One night in 1956, Kansas City’s Granada Theater packs moviegoers in to watch the sci-fi serial Space Patrol (which was actually a TV show) starring Robert Clarke and Ann Robinson. Meanwhile, off the big screen, a gelatinous, tentacled alien invades the bijou to kill the patrons.
As story goes, that’s all this Massacre offers, leaving a wide berth for jokes, more jokes and also jokes involving the various patrons and their various body parts and functions thereof. They include a poodle-skirted woman with balloon-sized breasts (Lori Davis, The Bikini Open 5), an obese family lugging enormous trays of concessions and, up in the balcony, a sneezing girl constantly pulling gunk from her nostrils like a magician to a chain of colored hankies.
Amid this vacuum of comedy, two characters stand out for their overly insipid nature. One is a fat nerd (Vince Cabrera) obsessing over a foxy sweater girl (Tamara Sue Hill) only he can see: “Holy Toledo, look at those milk bottles! She’s a one-woman dairy farm! I can’t go in there, I’ve got a boner! … I bet she’s got nipples like flapjacks! … My dick’s harder than Chinese arithmetic!”
The other, cowboy Tex (Brad Bittiker), longs to lay his date (Susan Murphy): “Oh, darlin’, my one-eyed muff torpedo wants to go to Tuna Land tonight. .. Howazbout a little stink on the dink, baby duck?”
If co-directors Mark Stock and Larry Jacobs hold nostalgia for the single-screen moviegoing experience — and casting has-beens Clarke (The Hideous Sun Demon) and Robinson (1953’s The War of the Worlds) suggests as much — it’s lost within the tacky, lowest-level humor. Although credited to four writers, the lines play like someone’s sixth grader gave his dad’s script a “polish” as a prank … and no one noticed or bothered. Not even the movie within the movie is immune to such prepubescent chicanery: “Probing devices were penetrating Uranus to crack its dark and hidden interior.”
Preceded by trailers for Cat-Women from the Moon and Devil Girl from Mars, the Space Patrol portion aims for a lighthearted lampoon, but isn’t funny enough (if funny at all) to function properly, like the titular segment of Amazon Women on the Moon does with aplomb. Between Midnight Movie Massacre’s halves, what’s projected is slightly less dreadful than the in-theater gags, which are the dregs of failed camp. —Rod Lott
Apparently, Tenebrae is a religious service right before Easter where candles are extinguished in total darkness, or something to that effect. I guess that is a complacent title for Dario Argento’s return to the giallo realm of demonic horror after both Suspiria and Inferno … but I am bad with comparisons. Sorry.
Tenebrae has some serial strangeness coupled with a somewhat meandering plot but, thank heavens, Argento has a keen eye for engaging set pieces and the right amount of gore for the Fangoria crowd — original incarnation — that makes it a real-gone crowd-pleaser and a small-time chunk-blower.
Novelist Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa, who has a strong Christopher George vibe, if you know what I mean) comes to Italy to promote his bloody novel, Tenebrae. He is the type of guy who pedals to La Guida Airport to an international flight with several sexy sirens following in tandem.
Meanwhile, a heavy CPAP-breather is stalking nubile vixens in the Walmarts of Rome; eventually, he murders a petty shoplifter with pages of a book stuffed in her mouth and, of course, takes pictures for additional sleaze. I guess that kind of stuff makes him a bad dude.
Soon, the police partner with Neal after he starts receiving taunting phone calls. His handler (?) and her assistant (?) help him solve the crimes, which is both baffling and ridiculous. But with the sweeping crane shot in the pre-crime scene — you know the one — all is forgiven and the mystery is (somewhat) solved.
Of course, the glassy atmosphere is beautifully stilted, and it gives Argento’s productions that Technicolor shimmer that pops off the screen, better than a 3D movie (but not his Dracula 3D movie). With a menacing tone, while truly silly in some parts, is ultimately one of spaghetti-covered dread that really earns the wholly ludicrous ending.
And what can I say about the phenomenal score of Goblin, Argento’s house band (actually Claudio Simonetti), except that I truly rate it better than the actual movie? Check it out!
While some people say that Tenebrae is that last gasp of this horror master, at the time he had a real death grip on his audience and this film proves that even after Suspiria, he can still slay with the best of them. —Louis Fowler
Alan Birkinshaw enjoys the distinction of directing two Edgar Allan Poe adaptations in South Africa in 1989: Masque of the Red Death and The House of Usher. But only one dared put Frank Stallone’s name atop its poster!
It wasn’t this one.
Set in the present day, Birkinshaw’s House opens with Ryan Usher (Rufus Swart, River of Death) and his fiancée, Molly (Romy Windsor, Howling IV: The Original Nightmare), being invited to the titular, palatial estate by his enigmatic uncle, Roderick Usher (Oliver Reed, Burnt Offerings). Despite never having met the guy, Ryan and Molly go anyway.
Ulterior motive alert: Being the last of his lineage, Ol’ Roderick feels an urgent need to seed, and views Molly as his perfect bride/birthing vessel. Like Olive Garden, Roderick operates from the mindset of “When you’re here, you’re family,” assuming Olive Garden still performs mandatory pelvic floor exams at the table.
That’s just the start of the craziness under this House’s roof. A visiting physician loses his penis to a gnawing rat. Living in a hidden room, a sooty Donald Pleasence (Nothing Underneath) has an electric drill bolted to his forearm. Going so hammy that Jewish and Muslim populations may be forbidden from viewing, Reed’s Roderick humps Molly in the shower with pained thrusts that suggest he’s struggling to move a divan up a flight of stairs.
The travails of a Harry Alan Towers budget are apparent, with the Usher estate’s interior rather cramped, dressed and blocked like a sitcom set. (Somehow, the place looked more spacious in Masque.) Elsewhere, in the family crypt, stone tombs are clearly Styrofoam. More gaudy than Gothic, this House of Usher falls in on itself in credibility, especially with one of those “JK!” cheat endings. —Sir Roderick Lott
