(1990)
Dir - Malcolm Marmorstein
Overall: WOOF
Long-running screenwriter Malcolm Marmorstein finally gets behind the lens on the thankless zombie comedy Dead Men Don't Die; a childish and embarrassing would-be nyuck fest that scored Elliot Gould of all people to portray a news anchor that turns into a walking/mugging corpse. This falls in line with the type of painfully unfunny movie that tries relentlessly to be hilarious, failing at every instance in a fashion that is actually impressive. The film has shoddy production values, being shot almost entirely at a single office building that the production had access to, though they did splurge for a high-speed car chase as the closing set piece where both zombies and not zombies take turns climbing into each other's cars while cruising along in broad daylight. One could single out Gould as the actor who most humiliates himself, rendered mute, (at least when the script needs him to be), after being resurrected via singing voodoo by Mabel King, since that leaves him with nothing else to do but make cartoon character faces and wild hand gestures that there is no rhyme or reason to. In actuality though, you feel bad for everyone on screen, even Marmorstein from behind the lens who amazingly thought that he had a funny concept to work with here.
(1993)
Dir - George Hickenlooper
Overall: MEH
The first non-documentary from director George Hickenlooper, Ghost Brigade, (The Killing Box, Grey Knight, The Lost Brigade), is an ambitious yet flawed genre work set during the American Civil War. Lots of familiar faces show up, (David and Alexis Arquette, Dean Cameron, Matt LaBlanc, Ray Wise, Billy Bob Thornton, Corbin Bernsen, and Martin Sheen), and in the lead, Adrian Pasdar does a blatant and annoying Charlie/Martin Sheen impression ala Platoon and Apocalypse Now. This makes sense in more ways than one, considering the war setting, Sheen's cameo, and Hickenlooper having directed the acclaimed Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse which chronicled Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam masterpiece. The resulting film is a combination of grittiness, high concept yet vague ideas concerning the many facets that fellow countrymen struggled with during the Civil War, and schlocky production values. Hickenlooper utilizes one of those cheap keyboard scores throughout almost the entire thing, (always a sign of B-movie cheapness), the sunny exteriors kill any sense of foreboding atmosphere, and a small handful of trippy flashbacks and hallucination scenes come off as hackneyed. Such direct-to-video aesthetics undermine Matt Greenberg's promising script which would have benefited from a more experimental and/or nuanced approach.
(1996)
Dir - Scott Levy
Overall: WOOF
Though it borders on insulting due to how blatantly derivative it is, the made-for-tv cheapie Spectre, (House of the Damned, Escape to Nowhere), by director Scott Levy suffers even worse from its consistently embarrassing and unintentionally hilarious scare tactics and heightened performances. In other words, everyone involved makes a fool of themselves and every viewer will feel bad for them. The script from Brendan Broderick may constitute as a hate crime for those who cannot stomach yet another "family moves into a remote haunted house" film, and it directly references Carrie, The Shining, various Italian La Casa films, Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, and The Omen to name but a few. It hits all the beats plot wise, (a ghostly imaginary friend, evil spirits acting immediately to murder people while other times dilly-dallying around, infidelity hallucinations, paranormal experts brought in, the skeptical husband, possession, a sacred amulet, a ghost's body buried behind a wall, everyone thinking the problem is solved when there is still thirty minutes left in the running time, etc), but the production values are a combination of Showtime sleaze and Hallmark aesthetics, failing to create any convincing macabre atmosphere. We even get a computer generated, transparent gargoyle that looks like a Sega graphic for fuck's sake.
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