(1990)
Dir - Sam Raimi
Overall: GOOD
After failing to gain the cinematic rights to The Shadow, Sam Raimi in turn made the Universal monsters/superhero hybrid Darkman as his first major Hollywood production. Upwards of twelve drafts of the script were written, with Raimi bringing in a Navy Seal, Joshua and Daniel Golden, and two of his own brothers to work out the kinks for a classic, scientist-turned-derformed-revenge-anti-hero story that deliberately leans into its melodramatic nature. Though neither were A-listers at the time, Liam Neeson and Francis McDormand have a sufficient amount of chemistry on screen, with Neeson's theatrical performance in particular fitting right at home with Raimi's extravagant style. This is certainly not as ridiculous of a movie as Evil Dead II mind you, but it certainly delivers some wildly inventive moments, from quirky narrative details like Larry Drake's severed finger collecting bad guy and one of his henchmen having a machine gun peg leg, to wacky camera angles and POV shots right out of comic book panels. Even the dated special effects suite the violent cartoon tone, though Tony Gardner's superb makeup effects hold up as well as any from the era.
(1993)
Dir - William Lustig
Overall: MEH
The Maniac Cop series continues in its diminishing returns trajectory with Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence, the third and final entry in the series. Some of the issues may largely lie in the troubled pre-production period as the script was originally written with an African American protagonist before Japanese distributors allegedly vetoed that idea and the era's premier, tough guy action movie character actor Robert Davi was cast instead. Larry Cohen refused to re-write the screenplay without being compensated, something the producer's chose not to accommodate, which all in turn forced the franchise's sole director William Lustig to work with what he had before abandoning the project. The studio then came in to shoot extra footage in order to pad out the running time and the go-to, disowning Alan Smithee pseudonym was slapped on to cover the director credit. The resulting film is hardly as bad as all the behind the scenes trouble would suggest as there are some inventive kills, Davi delivering the goods in one of his rare, top-billed roles, and a pretty over the top finale with the undead title character engaging in a high speed car chase while literally being on fire. Though it tries and succeeds somewhat at being more than a mere rehash of the first movie, (something the previous sequel pretty much was), this one is still scrapping the barrel creatively. Thankfully, Robert Z'Dar was allowed to then hang up the police baton and monster prosthetics to ride off into the sunset.
(1996)
Dir - Brian Yuzna
Overall: MEH
Throwing his hat into the D-rent, "slasher via a specific profession" ring with the aptly-titled The Dentist, director Brian Yuzna delivers a thoroughly predictable, severed-tongue-in-cheek bit of nonsense. Fitting right at home with Dr. Giggles or The Ice Cream Man from the same era, Corbin Bernsen gets his deranged camp on as the title serial killer, one who randomly decides to start murdering people that either annoy him or trigger a schizophrenic compulsion to see mouth decay in every set of choppers that catches his eye. He usually does so from his dental hygienist chair of doom, effectively playing off of any audience member's universal disdain for having to make such an appointment for a deep cleaning. As one of the least subtle filmmakers there is, Yuzna indulges in dutch angles, distorted close-ups, gore, disturbed hallucination scenes, and a whole lot of orchestral keyboard music, making this a pretty hacky affair. Bernsen is diabolically fun in the lead and Ken Foree is always a nice addition, but the script by Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli, and Charles Finch is more underwhelming than clever. It is fine for a "bad movie night" viewing though which is probably all it was intended for in the first place.
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