80's American Horror Part Seventy-Nine

MADMAN

(1982)

Dir - Joe Giannone

Overall: WOOF

Equally dull and forgettably formulaic, Madman is  the only film from writer/director Joe Giannone and is specifically interchangeable with the first two Friday the 13th movies and The Burning from the same year.  It opens with yet another goddamn campfire scene telling the tale of the bad guy who is of course going to start slowly, (make that very slowly), picking off sexually promiscuous camp counselors who do things like split up for easy pickings and keep hopping into cars that refuse to start.  Worse yet is that this time, said campfire kicks off with a wretchedly stupid a cappella song sung by some asshole which everyone just awkwardly smiles at while us poor audience members are left fighting the urge to stab pencils into our ears.  Worry not though, there is another even more horrible song that shows up on the soundtrack later during a boring hot tub scene.  Speaking of boring, the drawn-out "suspense" sequences are typically comatose-inducing, each one of them going for white-knuckled tension yet because they are so insulting unoriginal in their construction, the only emotion that they cause is yawns.  Some positive, differentiating qualities are that the very first kill is, (gasp), actually surprising, the characters are for the most part not painfully obnoxious, and Dawn of the Dead's Gaylen Ross makes her second of only two lead performances in her entire career before retiring altogether from in front of the screen after George Romero's Creepshow from the same year.

 

RETURN TO OZ

(1985)

Dir - Walter Murch

Overall: GOOD

 

As part of Disney's live action, dark fantasy period during the 1980s, Return to Oz has little to do with the seminal, 1939 film The Wizard of Oz aside from a handful of homage winks.  Instead, the lone film to be directed by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola collaborator Walter Murch is aligned with Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, except omitting any musical numbers and mixing kid-targeted whimsy with sinister details and nasty villains.  In this light, it is an engaging enough success as Murch and fellow screenwriter Gill Dennis adapt the second and third L. Frank Baum novels in the Oz series, The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz respectfully.  The source material offers up a slew of fresh characters, including a mechanical man, Jack Pumpkinhead, a talking chicken to replace Toto as Dorothy Gale's pet, wheelers on all fours to replace the winged monkeys, an evil Queen who has a collection of different heads to wear, a ramshackle sleigh with a taxidermied moose at the helm, and a King made out of stone.  Dorothy herself is played by a much younger actor in ten-year old Fairuza Balk, (making her cinematic debut), Will Vinton provides stop-motion animation, and the practical, puppetry effects are exceptional, all of which create an effective, enchanted atmosphere.

 

THE VIDEO DEAD

(1987)

Dir - Robert Scott
Overall: MEH

 

Part incompetent, amateur mess and part deliberately stupid zombie spoof, The Video Dead is a frustrating yet periodically amusing entry into quirky 80s genre tomfollery.  The only directorial effort from Robert Scott, he goes for and achieves the right tongue-in-cheek tone that is impossible to take seriously with a premise of bad actors playing stupid people who are terrorized by walking corpses that have the ability to emerge out of a black and white television set.  Several moments particularly defy all laws of logic and physics, such as a zombie being able to hide inside of a washing machine and another one turning into a sexy babe, (an undead superpower which is never referenced to or utilized again).  The fact that this particular brand of zombies seem to possess mild levels of ingenuity and intelligence, (plus that they are repelled by mirrors ala vampires), are two more unique attributes as well.  The gore and makeup effects are gruesomely effective without being all that convincing and while it is appreciated that the plot actually moves forward, the characters are too dopey and the performances too lousy to withstand any sequences where ridiculous nonsense is not transpiring.  There may be just enough of said ridiculous nonsense to appease the schlocky horror buff though who is out looking for more fringe content to devour.