(1981)
Dir - Richard Franklin
Overall: GOODFor his follow-up to the inconsistent Patrick, filmmaker Richard Franklin once again teamed up with screenwriter Everett De Roche for the Hitchcockian thriller on wheels Roadgames. Akin to Steven Spielberg's Duel and Robert Harmon's The Hitcher which came out five years later, the southern Australian Nularbor Plain region serves as an ideal, intimidating backdrop for a happy-go-lucky truck driver that becomes engulfed with paranoia as he follows and is followed by a guy in a green van who may or may not be a local serial killer picking off female hitchhikers across the desert countryside. Though there is some level of doubt throughout the running time as to whether or not Stacy Keach's suspicious are on point as far as having the right man in his sights, the audience persistently knows more than the characters do. This makes for a deliberately tense experience where we are at least aware that Keach is innocent, (no doubt helped by his effortless charisma and likability in the lead), yet others may hold different opinions as his heart-racing ordeal could prove to be for naught. Jamie Lee Curtis makes an appearance to get another sought-after, American star on board, though she is underused throughout the first and third acts. Still, this is an expertly paced and gripping road movie that rises the stakes accordingly.
Dir - Raphaël Delpard
Overall: MEH
French filmmaker Raphaël Delpard only has a handful of full-lengths under his belt and his second and final to be in the horror genre Clash is a full-blown, avant-garde nightmare that meanders in its frustrated ambiguity too much for most tastes. Centered around a woman who is holding up in a dilapidated warehouse to keep an eye on stolen money that her criminal boyfriend and his gang plan on reclaiming in a couple of days, this simple enough premise is introduced early on and then quickly side-tailed to make room for what is essentially over an hour's worth of incoherency. The audience is left to assume that childhood trauma and past memories are what begin haunting Catherine Alric's protagonist, but none of the minimal amount of dialog helps in trying to make heads or tails out of the fact that she gets locked in with a creepy guy who never speaks, a child version of herself probably, and a lot of mannequins that exhibit poltergeist activity. The effects of such strangeness do become hypnotic to a point as the story disappears and the style goes deeper and deeper into its pretentiousness, but Delpard's feverish agenda overstays its welcome even before the halfway point. It is a noble, interesting attempt at something profound, but it ultimately gets lost along the way.
(1988)
Dir - John Fasano
Overall: WOOF
Yet another piece of heavy metal stupidity from director John Fasano, Black Roses is a Canadian re-do of 1986's Trick or Treat and an embarrassing one at that. Taking the decade's Satanic panic craze to big, dumb, explody extremes, it is full of square parents and rebellious teenager stereotypes, focusing on a hair-teased rock group who are secretly demons in Halloween masks; a rock group that comes to town to turn the adolescents against the grown-ups with their fist-bumping anthems. Even with said faux band being assembled by Carmine Appice, (who even appears on screen), the songs are as terrible as the ones in Frasano's proceeding Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare, plus we are once again treated to fist fights with laughably unconvincing demon puppets and a script by Cindy Cirile that is half as asinine, which is saying something. Further comparing it to the other nearly identical movies that recently came before, this is a more bland affair with all of its recycled elements being less memorable yet just as obnoxious. There are plot holes left and right, piss-pour special effects, high-schoolers played by actors who look as old as their teachers, random supernatural set pieces that have no narrative rhyme or reason to them, and Julia Adams is completely wasted in two scenes.
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