(1990)
Dir - Luca Bercovici
Overall: MEH
Cannon jumped on the horror comedy bandwagon with the apply-titled Rockula, staring none other than everyone's favorite party dude from the era who was not Pauly Shore, Dean Cameron. Shot two years earlier yet left unreleased for a time due to Cannon's bankruptcy troubles, this vampire nyuck-fest has the distinction of also being a musical with none other than Bo Diddley joining the party as Cameron's guitar player. Cannot blame a blues legend for collecting a paycheck. Toni Basil and Susan Tyrell are also on board, so with its unlikely star power and plenty of terrible songs in tow, the movie proceeds with a rudimentary plot about a centuries old undead dweeb who get pestered by his more cool reflection and keeps falling for his resurrected true love every twenty-two years, only for a guy who is dressed as a pirate to swoop in and kill her every time with a ham-bone. It is a whole thing. All of the stupid components are in place and it knows what kind of movie it is, but despite everyone looking as if they are amusing themselves, the songs sure do suck and there sure are a lot of them.
(1991)
Dir - Fred Gallo
Overall: MEH
Just what the world needed, an equally cheap remake of the Roger Corman-produced Forbidden World made only nine years later. Dead Space has less nudity and less gore than its predecessor which was also shot in about the same number of days, (twenty-ish), plus the big extraterrestrial monster still looks stupid, but at least it is shown in quick cuts and shrouded in fog. In fact fog it utilized to mask more than just the mutated puppet creature, drenching the sparse sets and even some outside desert shots, which is a solid move in an attempt to trick the audience into thinking that they are watching something with higher production values. Marc Singer as the dashing space cowboy and Bryan Cranston as a super-serious scientist are nice additions to the retreaded story that was already a cliche-fest knock-off of Alien, except this time the research facility is working on a cure for AIDS because ya gotta stay topical. Still, without the sleazier exploitation values in place, this is an even more pointless and lame-brained affair than the Allan Holzman-directed and dopey original, so it is not likely that anyone alive would prefer it.
(1996)
Dir - Rob Cohen
Overall: MEH
Years after the sword and sorcery boom came and went, screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue and producer Raffaella De Laurentiis got enough momentum behind a buddy cop variant on age old Dungeons & Dragons motifs to get an A-level presentation. The resulting DragonHeart is silly business by design, sticking to well-trotted-out fantasy cliches, endless nyuck nyucks, (to the point where this is as much a comedy as it is anything else), hammy acting with Saxon accents, and incessant orchestral accompaniment to slam home the schlock. Because 1996, the CGI dragon looks absolutely terrible, but to be fair, its cartoon/PlayStation One aesthetic is at least fitting to when the movie sticks to its slapstick and kid-friendly tone. On that note, such a tone is not diligently adhered to since we also have brutal violence, rape, and peasants who are subjected to various forms of brutality. Dennis Quaid and the Sean Connery-voiced last dragon palling around while scheming villagers out of sacks of gold is an amusing concept though, and it serves the simplistic story well enough. It is only when things keep circling back to David Thewlis' dipshit/hot-headed/weakling villain and the local uprising against him that the movie stalls into formulaic tripe. Elsewhere, it is simply dated, childish, and harmless popcorn-munching hoopla.
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