(1990)
Dir - Craig R. Baxley
Overall: GOOD
Grad-A, B-movie schlock, I Come in Peace, (Dark Angel), adheres to every 80s action movie trope in the book while going for unapologetic silliness in its Terminator knock-off agenda. As director Craig R. Baxley's follow-up to the equally absurd Action Jackson, (and sandwiched in between that and the following year's, Brian Bosworth-starred "masterpiece" Stone Cold), the director leans into the more goofy aspects of such movies with none of the personnel on board taking the material the least bit seriously. Dolph Lundgren gets a worthy staring vehicle here, spouting a more lean physique and disguising his accent efficiently as the detective who plays by his own rules, partnered up with Brian Benben's wise-ass, by-the-books FBI agent in stereotypical buddy-cop fashion. David Koepp and Johnathan Tydor's script breaks no rules with the specifics that have been seen countless times before, but it works as a borderline parody where the careless disregard for human life as well as endless quips, car chases, and explosions is meant to be laughed with instead of at. On paper, the concept of Lundgren battling an extraterrestrial drug dealer is plenty to get anyone on board who was brought up on such testosterone-ridden camp and thankfully, the film plays to its audience with just enough inventiveness at its disposal as to not insult them.
(1991)
Dir - Charles Lang
Overall: WOOF
Expectations are unavoidably low when partaking of anything in the SOV camp and this includes Soul of the Demon
which is the first of only two such movies made by Charles Lang. Shot
in Nevada with a group of unphotogenic nobodies, the acting is terrible
of course yet not as abysmal as one would expect, even if the bro-douche
characters that they play sure as hell are. Three of them have
glorious, obligatory mullets and one of them speaks like a parody of a
surfer dude who makes his thankfully small number of scenes
unwatchable. Though it takes almost fifty minutes until unholy mayhem
is finally unleashed which is way too long, (further padded by an
utterly useless and homoerotic basketball sequence), Lang goes for
something ambitious as he stylizes his film as if it was not actually
made for thirty-five cents with just a couple of his friends over a
weekend. The story line is embarrassingly lazy and goes for a
self-referential hodgepodge of horror movie cliches, (one of the
teenagers is a bonafide genre buff), but it finally delivers some
splendidly outrageous gore sequences in its last act that are bound to
make bad cinema fans laugh WITH the movie instead of AT it. Elsewhere
though, it is horrendously amatuerish and merely adorable at best.
(1992)
Dir - Anthony Hickox
Overall: MEH
Taking his first stab at non-comedic horror, director Anthony Hickox was the next in line to helm a Hellraiser sequel with Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. Though another installment was being planned before the previous Hellbound: Hellraiser II was released, it took a number of years for the finished product to get underway with its appropriate personnel. Clive Barker only came back on board in post-production after having disagreements with producers, incorporating a couple of his patented kinky gore ideas into the mix. One of the most noticeable differences between this and the former two movies is the persona of Doug Bradley's Pinhead who is no longer the neutral purveyor of Hell's rules. Here, his essence is split in two, one of whom is his humanity-laden World War II soldier and the other a cackling cartoon villain with his own diabolic ambitious after being untethered to the puzzle box. Barker's initial themes of the dynamics between suffering and pleasure are gone and instead we have a less profound, more straightforward good vs evil scenario that plays out restrained until the schlocky finale which busts out the groan-worthy one-liners and ups the heavy metal mayhem. Bradley chews the scenery when appropriate, Terry Farrell, (stepping in for heroine Ashley Laurence who only provides a mere cameo), makes an adequate if underwritten protagonist, and Bob Keen's special effects work is wonderfully ghastly, save for a couple of horrendous computer generated shots.
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