(1990)
Dir - Joe Dante
Overall: GREAT
One of the most gleefully silly horror sequels ever made, Gremlins 2: The New Batch quite successfully ups the comedy to the point of pretty exclusively being, well, comedic. With a handful of the cast returning, (including leads Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates), as well as director Joe Dante who was given a triple-sized budget and complete creative control from Warner Bros., the result is a deliberate satire on everything from frozen yogurt, to cooking shows, to technological advancements, to movie sequels in general. Dante and screenwriter Charles S. Haas's script is ludicrous in a Looney Tunes type fashion, (it is no accident that Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck open the film), but it is also nearly perfectly structured. There are oodles of Easter eggs and meta references scattered throughout and just about every supporting performance is from a recognizable face. Rick Baker's more dynamic creature design gives way to an endless array of inventive puppets, famously including a female gremlin, an intellectual gremlin, a vegetable gremlin, and a spider gremlin to name but a few. It is both arguably better than its predecessor and as strong a contender as any for Dante's finest hour behind the lens.
(1995)
Dir - Gregory Widen
Overall: GOOD
Thus far the lone, full-length directorial effort from Highlander and Backdraft screenwriter Gregory Widen is The Prophecy; an adequately ambitious "war in heaven" thriller that spawned an increasingly less interesting franchise. Led by a perfectly cast Christopher Walken as the sinister archangel Gabriel, most of the film's viewability revolves around his effortlessly quirky and eerie performance. Elsewhere, Eric Stolz, Virginia Madsen, Elias Koteas, and Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer himself add some further respectability to the proceedings. Widen's version of such frequented, Biblical source material offers up some nifty details, particularly how the angels prefer perching to sitting, can suck out and transfer souls, and carry themselves convincingly as if they have eons of all-knowing history amongst them. As often seriously as the story is presented, the conventional structure gets a bit silly at times with some ham-fisted dialog and plot inconsistencies. For the most part though, both the accidental schlock and well-intended humor remain entertaining enough with all the other fun aspects firmly in place.
(1997)
Dir - Mick Garris
Overall: MEH
Mick Garris was all over the small screen in May of 1997 with The Shining miniseries dropping on ABC a mere week before yet another of his Stephen King adaptations in Quicksilver Highway premiered on Fox. Comprised of two stories, (one, "Chattery Teeth" by King and the other, "The Body Politic" by Clive Barker), Garris initially proposed a horror anthology series which was rejected outright by studio executives. Fox eventually came on board for a stand-alone television film, at which point original director John McTiernan stepped down and Garris went from screenwriter to being behind the lens as well. Featuring a positively hammy performance from Christopher Lloyd as the linking Crypt Keeper Aaron Quicksilver, each segment is typically generic. Typical in the sense that Garris' directorial work is rarely poor, but also just as rarely memorable. Once again tampered by the censored network TV format, the stories are given a goofy yet flat presentation. Considering that one is about a child's toy coming to life and biting its victims and the other is about people's hands leading a revolution against their human bodies while talking in cute goblin voices to each other, perhaps some fault lies with the source material itself. Still, Barker and King's writings certainly do not read this silly and perhaps are simply not suited for primetime.
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