(1980)
Dir - Henning Schellerup
Overall: MEH
Appropriately airing on Halloween 1980, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was part of NBC's Classic Illustrated series of family television movies, adapting the famed Washington Irving short story with none other than Jeff Goldblum in the lead. Fleshing out the source material with town gossip, plus squires and elders contriving to marry their daughters off to the only two available men in the village, it is hardly brimming with supernatural intrigue despite the appearance of ghosts or the locals pretending to be ghosts just to haze the newly arrived school master. Goldblum is ideally cast as the tall, lanky, and awkward Ichabod Crane, and he is joined by Meg Foster as his blossoming love interest and former Chicago Bears legend Dick Butkus as local bully Brom Bones, with unmistakable Midwestern accent in tow. Soft in tone as to not scare away the youngsters with likeable performances and some mild comic relief, the tale of simple-minded superstition vs Yankee intellectual skepticism is not the most gripping under such a mild presentation. Also, it is given a happy ending which is conflicting with the original tale, plus the inevitable Headless Horseman stand-off is probably the lamest one ever brought to the screen.
(1986)
Dir - John Guillermin
Overall: MEH
The misguided sequel to Dino De Laurentiis' big-budgeted though lukewarm received King Kong remake came a full ten years later, with director John Guillermin and special effects man Carlo Rambaldi returning without anyone from the initial cast. Instead, King Kong Lives, (King Kong 2), has Brian Kerwin and Linda Hamilton playing an Indiana Jones-type capitalist monkey hunter and a scientist tasked with revitalizing Kong by way of blood plasma and an artificial heart transplant, respectfully. While the movie wastes no time getting both Kong and his female mate on screen, it still remarkably turns out to be a dull affair. The giant gorilla couple is captured, then they are on the run, then they are separated, then they are reunited, and our uninteresting human leads plus some one-note military characters get too much screen time along the way. It is still strong from a production standpoint, with the monkey suite performers doing a solid job of conveying hulking likeability, and there are numerous special effects moments that look like they cost a fortune to pull off, plus some bloodshed and profanity breaks up the cutesy tone. With such a razor-thin story though, loud set pieces are the only thing that such dopey schlock has to offer.
(1988)
Dir - Fred Olen Ray
Overall: MEH
One of the many bottom-budgeted and schlock-fueled genre parodies from filmmaker Fred Olen Ray, The Phantom Empire brings together a handful of familiar faces and was cobbled together quickly after the shooting wrapped on Commando Squad. Channeling the "Hey, we're already here so why don't we make another movie?", gusto of Roger Corman, Ray along with some cast and crew members stuck around the Bronson Canyon area of Los Angeles' Griffith Park and kept on rolling with a slapped together script about some archeologists looking for diamonds where mutants in Halloween masks and Sybil Danning dressed as an extraterrestrial dominatrix also show up. Along with Danning, Russ Tamblyn, Robert Quarry, Jeffrey Combs, and of course Michelle Bauer come along for the ride, along with Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot and recycled stop-motion footage from James Shea's Planet of Dinosaurs. While plenty of these cast members have displayed unmistakable charisma in better roles, the micro-budgeted presentation leaves little for them to do besides deliver smug quips at each other while standing and walking around in order to pad out the running time. Despite the various references to other genre serials and B-movies, it fails to pay homage to its roots in either a funny or compelling fashion.
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