(1990)
Dir - Brian Yuzna
Overall: MEH
A Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise installment in name only, Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: The Initiation at least on paper sounds like it would be worth one's time. It has none other than Brian Yuzna behind the lens, continues his collaboration with Screaming Mad George whose special bug effects are appropriately icky, plus Clint Howard and Reggie Bannister both show up. Slugs, rats, maggots, cockroaches, jelly goo, Neith Hunter turning into a slimy mermaid or something, and a Rosemary's Baby-styled impregnation orgy scene with Howard thrusting away in a phallic-nosed mask, one cannot complain that the movie does not go for stomach-churning grossness. While it flies off the rails appropriately with Yuzna and George concocting more nonsensical and nasty set pieces one after the other, there are several awkward moments scattered throughout, plus the allegory of women being oppressed in a male dominated society is laughably handled at best. Still, as an entry in a film series that sets such a persistently low bar of quality, this one at least wins points for breaking the moronic slasher mold and throwing a bunch of weird bug cult, child sacrificing, female empowering, and gooey sex stuff into the mix.
(1991)
Dir - Albert Pyun
Overall: MEH
Continuing in their trajectory to make small people/creatures their main characters, Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment teamed up with schlock meister Albert Pyun for Dollman; a knowingly preposterous action movie where Tim Thomerson plays a rogue cop who gets transported from his world where he is normal-sized to the Bronx where he is roughly Cabbage Patch kid height. Besides such a goofy premise that should never be taken seriously under any circumstances, the film follows bog-standard R-rated, tough guy action tropes. There is plenty of gratuitous murder, plenty of gratuitous profanity, and it is set in a neighborhood overrun with reckless crime that just needs a little guy with a little gun, (that still shoots regular-sized bullets mind you), to clean up the place. A pre-pockmarked Jackie Earle Haley plays the main thug with a heavy New York accent to boot, plus Frank Collison joins the villainy as a disembodied head that wants to blow stuff up with a bomb really bad and is kept alive via alien technology. Everyone pretends that they are not in a movie called Dollman, which is adorable to a point, but the usual B-grade production values prove insufficient to take advantage of any convincing or fun "little man in a big world" set pieces. It is mostly just actors looking angry while saying "Fuck" a whole lot and Thomerson walking around in shots by himself where you cannot even tell that he is supposed to be itty bitty.
(1992)
Dir - Mary Lambert
Overall: WOOF
If a "kind of" Stephen King movie is so bad that King himself demands that his name be taken off of it, you know you are in for a rough ride. Pet Sematary Two is the obligatory sequel to 1989's Pet Sematary, with director Mary Lambert returning and trying to craft something tolerable out of a hackneyed, cash-grab script. Taking place in the same town as its predecessor, two underwritten teenagers nonchalantly make the terrible decision to first resurrect a dead dog and then one of the kid's scumbag stepdad who shot said dog in the first place. We also have bog-standard high school bullies, (including Jared Rushton who may be the most punchable kid in the history of cinema), Clancy Brown fusing a Maine accent, Vincent D'Onofrio's bug man in Men in Black, a zombie, and Ace Ventura together, a soundtrack full of gen x alternative jams, laughable hallucination/nightmare sequences, and Edward Furlong screaming a lot. Richard Outten's screenplay gets from point A to point B without considering any plausible logistics, and the tone is relentless D-grade schlock that would fit a Goosebumps episode if not for the gore, profanity, and occasional pair of naked boobs. The only good thing that one can say about it is that they never made a Pet Sematary Three...yet.
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