(1990)
Dir - Stuart Gordon
Overall: MEH
Stuart Gordon's return to horror after the brief diversion into sci-fi with Robot Jox was the made for television vampire yarn Daughter of Darkness. Shot in Budapest and featuring a primarily Eastern European cast, familiar faces Mia Sara and Anthony Perkins are in the leads yet they unfortunately deliver uneven performances. Perkins fairs better and does in fact class up what is essentially a silly B-movie, but his accent gets unintentionally silly at times. Sara on the other hand is frequently trying too hard and laying the melodrama on a bit heavy, but it is not like the lame dialog that she is given necessarily helps. One or two fairly creepy moments aside, the script is pretty lousy with some "twists" that are either predictable, eye-ball rolling, or both. There are also generic plot points including spooky dreams with Sara startling herself awake about half a dozen times. Even if their tongues have tiny little mouths at the end of them instead of biting people with teeth, the vampire lore here is not particularly satisfying either as it is another case of an underground, romantically-dressed undead society who wants to procreate with a chosen one kind of to take over the world and blah blah whatever.
(1993)
Dir - Fraser C. Heston
Overall: MEH
When the conclusion of your suspense-building horror movie amounts to "People yell and make speeches at the villain and then he leaves", good luck pulling that off and not making it embarrassing. Charlton Heston's son Fraser in his theatrical debut does an adequate job of keeping the schlock almost entirely at bay during the first two acts of Needful Things. Yet for the finale, the gloves fly off and what was a somewhat fun and only slightly goofy affair with a decent enough premise turns into something more closely resembling Wes Craven at his mix-matched, cornball worst. It is a cliche in itself to point out how the ending to a Stephen King movie, (or story), so very often drops the ball, but simply not being surprised here by such a thing is of course not an excuse. Performance wise, Max von Sydow is wonderful and calmly menacing while everyone else is too underwritten to do anything besides yell "Son of a bitch!" a lot. Juggling an entire small town and trying to give weight to all of their bickering feuds understandably gets muddy and several characters as well as side arcs are bypassed. In the meantime, ridiculous details like Sydow's mysteriously Lucifer stand-in unnecessarily keeping newspaper clippings of every major tragedy that has happened in the 20th century all casually lying about his basement that he just moved into does further damage to the entire thing.
(1997)
Guillermo del Toro
Overall: MEH
The first American-speaking film from Guillermo del Toro was a highly troubled one behind the scenes. Being a Miramax production, Bob Weinstein nearly came to blows with del Toro over the latter's handling of the material, stormed the set while demanding it be directed a certain way, and then had final cut anyway. All of this made the experience one that del Toro claimed was the worst of his career and he would continue to make all of his truly lauded works for awhile back home in Mexico where he had free creative reign. Mimic is not a bad giant bugs run amok movie really, but it is far from a remarkable one. Tone wise it is very solid with only the most minute silliness creeping into the proceedings, generally handled by a wise-cracking Josh Brolin and Charles C. Dutton saying "fuck" a multitude of times. Otherwise, it is pretty icky and, (literally), dark. The practical effects look fine if again too difficult to really see at times, while the digital ones are piss-pour, as was common of the era. It is far too easy to tune out of the story altogether though which is highly formulaic and lacking in interesting set pieces during the entire first half. By the time everyone is trapped in a subway and doing implausible things like blowing up an enormous area with leaking gas and a spark, or getting a decades-abandoned subway cart to run by using a pair of glasses, (no exaggeration), it is more unintentionally dumb than skin-crawling.
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