(1980)
Dir - John D. Lamond
Overall: MEH
Australia was hardly going to sit out of the early 80s slasher boom and Nightmares, (Stage Fright), was a cheap and forgettable, cobbled together entry into the sub-genre from director John D. Lamond. No better or worse than the lot of em from any other country, it was allegedly shot and conceived quickly to take advantage of some funds, hence its lack of original ideas. While the killer is not blatantly revealed until the closing moments, there is no doubt at any point as to who is doing all of the murdering in a stage play production full of unlikable characters. The kill scenes lack flair and imagination, plus everyone's portrayals adhere to proper stereotypes, (the pretentious asshole theater director, the bipolar crazy virgin beauty, the horny actor who mostly is in it for the poon-tang, the smug critic who delights in the power that he wields in his niche field, etc.). Plot wise, it opens with a flashback that utilizes the ole gag of someone being traumatized by catching their parents having sex, and things simply go the straight, narrow, and predictable from there.
(1984)
Dir - Muscha
Overall: MEH
The second of only two movies from German punk musician-turned-filmmaker Muscha, (Jürgen Muschalek), Decoder takes a bold crack at adapting William S. Burrough's notoriously unfilmable literature on a minuscule budget. Made several years before David Cronenberg found an agreeable if still indecipherable angle to utilize in Naked Lunch, this one cobbles together various motifs from the eccentric author instead of interpreting a specific book, with Burrough's himself briefly appearing in a dream sequence. To be fair, the entire film can be described as a "dream sequence" and perhaps can ONLY be described as such. For people who thought that Cronengerg's aforementioned Naked Lunch was too easy to follow, the team of screenwriter/producers Muscha, Klaus Maeck, Volker Schäfer, and Trini Trimpop hold no viewer's hands through an impenetrable series of vignettes that have something to do with mind control muzak, Burger King, a peep show, frogs, and delinquent riots. The soundtrack is loaded with New Wave synth pop, industrial noise, and krautrock, and it manages to pull-off an impressive and colorful cyberpunk dystopia despite the fact that it was all shot on location and without the use of any special effects. It is also meandering and aggressively incoherent, but it deserves an A for effort at least.
(1987)
Dir - Carl Schenkel
Overall: MEH
Hey look, its Woody Harrelson. A Canadian NBC movie that appropriately aired around Halloween time, Bay Cove, (Bay Coven), is full of familiar trappings for better or worse. The script by Tim Kring pulls no clever punches, adhering to age-old tropes like a town full of old weirdos who welcome their new neighbors by being cordial yet also weird, said town being a remote island, the younger couple who moves there being big city yuppies, the husband changing his personality and insisting on staying, the wife being gaslit and wanting to leave, plus of course everyone is a witch. So basically, Rosemary's Baby without the baby. Such predictability is more annoying than enjoyable and all of the supernatural elements are in place to make Pamela Sue Martin look crazy. Every last nuance and detail has been lifted from other horror films of a similar ilk, (the dog dies, there are creepy kids around, old people in windows who disappear right when Martin wants to prove to another person that they are there, etc), and being a television production, there is a limited amount of foreboding atmosphere that director Carl Schenkel is able to muster. The incessant keyboard score by Shuki Levy is particularly ruining, contributing to the dated and cheap aesthetic of the whole thing. It is not insulting in its banality, but it is instantly forgettable.
No comments:
Post a Comment