Dir - Bob Logan
Overall: WOOF
As close to an official spoof of The Exorcist as has yet been made, Repossessed scored Linda Blair who was ready to collect a paycheck by lampooning her career-making role, along with Leslie Nielsen who was also game to collect a paycheck by doing any stupid Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker knock-off that landed in his lap. One of the most aggressively unfunny comedies of its era that tries harder than any of them, the film's infamous reputation is well-earned. Every gag is cringe-inducing, from characters busting out rhymes, indulging in a full musical number at the end, mugging right into the camera, falling down, gawking at boobs, and delivering one painfully hacky "joke" after the other. The references are so on-the-nose and ergo lazy that it is amazing that writer/director Bob Logan ever worked again, but he did follow this up with Meatballs 4 so at least he stayed in his lane. One cannot help but to feel bad for everyone involved, most of all its two stars who deserve far better material; even material that was still done in a similarly low-brow vein. Juvenile to the point of being unwatchable, it is best left forgotten amongst the hordes of other horror parodies that are equally hare-brained.
Overall: WOOF
As close to an official spoof of The Exorcist as has yet been made, Repossessed scored Linda Blair who was ready to collect a paycheck by lampooning her career-making role, along with Leslie Nielsen who was also game to collect a paycheck by doing any stupid Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker knock-off that landed in his lap. One of the most aggressively unfunny comedies of its era that tries harder than any of them, the film's infamous reputation is well-earned. Every gag is cringe-inducing, from characters busting out rhymes, indulging in a full musical number at the end, mugging right into the camera, falling down, gawking at boobs, and delivering one painfully hacky "joke" after the other. The references are so on-the-nose and ergo lazy that it is amazing that writer/director Bob Logan ever worked again, but he did follow this up with Meatballs 4 so at least he stayed in his lane. One cannot help but to feel bad for everyone involved, most of all its two stars who deserve far better material; even material that was still done in a similarly low-brow vein. Juvenile to the point of being unwatchable, it is best left forgotten amongst the hordes of other horror parodies that are equally hare-brained.
(1991)
Dir - Ernest D. Farino
Overall: MEH
The first film to be directed by visual effects man Ernest D. Farino, Steel and Lace acts as a feminist answer to RoboCop. When a rich yuppie shitbag, (Michael Cerveris), gets away with raping a concert pianist, (Clare Wren), due to the testimonial help of his willing cohorts, Wren jumps off building in despair, which forces her mad scientist brother, (Bruce Davison), to cyborg her up for revenge purposes. The plot line proceeds accordingly, following a slasher framework where the bad guys are picked-off one-by-one, leaving the worst offender until the very end. Why these movies never go after the ring leader first is anybody's guess. While these kill scenes are wonderfully nasty and inventive, (a guy gets tricked when Wren turns into a guy and grows boobs, another one gets his dick mutilated while having sex with her, dweeb character actor Brian Backer gets decapitated via helicopter blades, and Cerveris not only plummets to his death but does so while on fire), the plot is weighed down by a courtroom sketch artist and David Naughton's hot-and-cold relationship as the two people who are trying to solve a mystery that the audience already knows every detail to. Both campy and a bummer, its wild moments cannot undue the tonal issues and large periods of tedium.
(1994)
Dir - Stuart Orme
Overall: MEH
Developed by producer Michael Engelberg over a number of years, The Puppet Masters bares no resemblance to the persistent Puppet Master series from Charles Band. Instead, this is an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-adjacent adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's 1951 novel of the same name, done on a sufficient scale from Disney subsidiary Hollywood Pictures and hemed by British director Stuart Orme, who had a steady career behind the lens on Phil Collins music videos before this. Donald Sutherland, Richard Belzer, Julie Warner, Keith David, Andrew Robinson, and a few other familiar faces are all here wearing suits and acting businesslike as an extraterrestrial sting ray hitches itself to everybody's spinal chord for takeover purposes. It is difficult to take a movie seriously that has characters repeatedly asking each other to take their shirts off so that we can see if they have an alien puppet attached to them and though this is given a generous budget, it is a rudimentary B-movie with no meat on its bones. Its attempts at creating an increasing sense of paranoia is undermined by a repetitive plot that follows the "human gets an alien on its back and now lets chase them" template for almost the entirety of its running time. We know that the minor characters are going to make disposable targets just as much as we know that the major players will somehow survive, and despite the noted thespians playing it straight, plus some adequate practical effects, this is pedestrian schlock.
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