Tag Archives: Universally Loved

The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) Trilogy

The most maligned of the Universal Classic Monsters is probably The Creature from the Black Lagoon. He was last to the scene, directed by the same director that made giant spider movies like Tarantula, and was an original property. He wasn’t involved in any of the monster mash-ups and never scared Lou Costello. On top of all that, the Gill Man had only three, that’s right, only three movies made.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Revenge of the Creature (1955)
The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

I came at the Creature in a kind of roundabout way. In the 80’s, a local UHF station was promoting that they were going to show the sequel to The Creature from the Black Lagoon in FULL 3-D. The movie was called Revenge of the Creature with John Agar (also from Tarantula), Lori Nelson and Ricou Browning as the swimming Gill Man. I put on my red and green glasses and got prepared for full anaglyph 3-D mayhem.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) — Come on in. The water’s fine.

Now, this may not have been the first time I saw the movie or the Gill Man, but to me, it seemed like it was. The 3-D was surprisingly good on our 19 inch Panasonic color TV as I recorded it with our Sharp (front loader…not a top loader!) VHS for me to watch, approximately 300 times. I just fell in love with the movie. I loved the cameo by Clint Eastwood. I loved the stilted line readings. (Agar sounds like he is reading ad copy for a radio spot with every line and Nelson is even more extreme.) Most of all, though, I loved those great underwater sequences with fish swimming every which way and cattle prods coming right out of the screen.

So later, I visited the original The Creature from the Black Lagoon (flat) and realized that it was a much better movie…even without the 3D. So then the hunt was on. I had to find it in 3D! Eventually, I did, and it was everything I hoped. Gorgeous Julie Adams was cute enough on the flat version, but she was MADE for 3D! The scene where she swims above the Gill Man immediately showed me where Steven Spielberg got the inspiration for the similar shots in Jaws. I loved the movie and realized something else…

This might be the only “classic” Universal Monster movie that actually still has some scares in it. Yes, it is completely dated. But due to its familiarity and lack of any real rules, it seemed more dangerous. More untamed and wild. More chilling.

Frankenstein was some green dude with radio control knobs on his neck. Dracula was an Eurotrash aristocrat that went around giving girls hickies. The Wolf Man was not in control of his situation at all and went through a male menstrual cycle from hell. The Mummy…that dude was a lame medical experiment with bandages.

Naw. The Gill Man. That was the guy. He was scary. He was unbelievably fast (underwater). He had strength on par with Superman. He had razor sharp, blade like claws.

And he liked the ladies. And Julie Adams…she was a lady and then some!

But all these years, I never saw the third, and final, canon Black Lagoon creature feature: The Creature Walks Among Us. The first act of the film is actually pretty darn good, and Leigh Snowden was a fetching addition to the Gill Man Girls (wasn’t that a CW television series?) but it goes horribly awry when then take the fish out of water. This change to what made our damp demon so creepy in the first place…it just kind of took all the joy out of watching this eco-warrior go to town on unscrupulous types wanting to cash in on the fishman.

The first two films are still classics and if you watch them back to back, you basically have King Kong as done by the Little Mermaid. And what can be wrong with that?

The Creature from the Black Lagoon

Grade: A

Revenge of the Creature

Grade: B+

The Creature Walks Among Us

Grade: C

The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) Trilogy

Universal’s 110 Year Celebration

My last “Universally Loved” column was a review of the 1970’s Centennial TV miniseries. Just like that film, which actually covered much more than 100 years, I’d like to look at Universal’s 110th Anniversary.

There weren’t really any details of what this would consist of, so I decided I would look at the 110 years of Universal and make some suggestions how they could celebrate.

By the way, the 110 year anniversary stone is Pyrite. Be sure to get some today.

Open “Fourth Gate” early

Epic Universe

Epic Universe, Universal’s now under construction fourth gate at their Florida Theme Park campus, is set to open in “2023.” This is the park that is rumored to have a Nintendo themed area along with possible lands including another Harry Potter land and a possible Universal monsters area (where I would like them to rebuild “Jaws” and “Kongfrontation” thank you very much).

If they were to open this area early to tie in with the 110 year celebration, I think Universal fans like I would proverbially lose our minds. I know this is a stretch, but I put it here for wish fulfillment.

Re-release the good stuff

Universal truly has some awesome back catalog out there, and I’m always up for a trip to the cineplex to take in Jaws on the big screen again, but you can’t always get that to happen.

I propose a 110 year celebration area on Peacock (particularly since cinemas are still on the ropes with this whole pandemic deal yet). What would you put in there? Easy. One film from each year they’ve operated. Some of the old silent stuff is really tough to come by and I can see cinephiles like me crawl through there with two movies a week.

At minimum, you could pick ten movies from each decade. That way some of their stacked years, you could pick a few and fill in some of the weak years. It’s a thought.

By the way, IMDB has a horrible list out there of the 110 best Universal films, but I literally started throwing up with how it erred toward recency in every case. Why would you list Furious 7…like at all? You can find this pile of cow dung at https://www.imdb.com/list/ls051501794/

Send out stuff to Uberfans that have columns about their studio

This is completely self serving but you get 0% of what you don’t ask for.

Enhance WWE offerings

Since selling their network to Peacock, WWE has been taking it easy with self made productions. Here’s the pitch.

110 years of Universal. 110 wrestler Royal Rumble.

Yeah. You know you love this idea.

An NBC special about their history

Before you say, “Well, that’s self serving,” please refer to my idea two up from here. I’m kidding.

Think about it. Disney constantly pulls the ABC lever. When they have a new ride at one of their attractions. When they have some Marvel flick coming out. If they added a second mint on your pillow at WDW’s Polynesian Village. You know you are watching it if one of the Hough siblings is hosting it. Or some goofus from a tween show Disney is trying to push. Or both.

They generally pull these out at Christmas. ABC has about 33 of these specials around Christmas. NBC? They trot out the Today show people to host the Rockefeller Center Tree lighting. Now, I love that tree lighting and the time I went out there to see it is still one of those “bucket list” things I got to do in my travels across this ball of dirt orbiting the Sun. Still…it’s that and the Macy Day Parade. Yes, I know they do the live Musical thing, but they never seem to promote ANYTHING during that special.

black and white unk unk unk — Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

My idea is simple. Place a person-to-person call to one of the experts bopping around TCM and put together a clip show of some of the finest moments of their history. Again, you could make multiple episodes over multiple nights and then drop the whole thing in your special area on Peacock. You could even tell folks, “If that clip grabs ya, go check out the film available this year on the ‘cock.”

I want them to abbreviate that name so we can say stuff like, “That early Hitchcock film wasn’t doing to well on our streaming service, so we had to pull it off the ‘cock.”

Peacock. Hitchcock. Hey, there’s a thing, too!

I am now avoiding a joke I thought of about Hitch’s unhealthy relationship with a blonde star of his…her name was Tippy. You see how this can all be balled up together.

This is below me. Moving on.

Merge NBC.com and Peacock

Why the heck do they have two streaming services? What the hell?

And we should totally call it “the ‘cock.”

Or we could name it like every other streamer and call it Peacock+ when it merges.

Ew.

I give these incredibly awesome ideas to Universal free of charge…well, unless you do what to send me some free stuff. I still have some wall space that I’m saving for the perfect item. Let’s get on that Universal!

If you can’t get this all done this year, let’s start the prep for the 111th Anniversary!

Universal’s 110 Year Celebration

Glass (2019)

If you watch Glass critically, you might believe it is about the power of belief. If one believes they can do extraordinary things, they can. I posit, however, that theme was played out in Unbreakable and, in more thorough fashion, in Split. These predecessors look at that thought closely, but I believe that much like the character this film, M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass, is actually making you believe that is the plot, but it sneaks in a twist.

I just had to reference Robot Chicken in an M. Night Shyamalan review.

This is a story about secrets. When you get down to it, all comic books are. This series of films have been about how comic books mirror the real world and in this way, it truly exposes that everything in life hangs on secrets.

This film is a sequel to Unbreakable and Split, but almost separately, not as a trilogy. Truly Unbreakable and Split are both standalone films, and this just draws them together. One of the tough things about all three of these movies is they have a twist ending so it is tough to discuss them except in the abstract. So here we go: the unusually gifted characters from the previous films all meet up in this film in a hospital for the criminally insane with a doctor (played by the horrendous Sarah Paulson, my key beef with the film) who believes she can cure them.

A three sided triangle of dysfunction. Is there even a hero?

As with the previous films, it is built on suspense and tension keyly constructed through dialogue scenes that capture and engage the audience despite the fact that not very much happens on the screen.

If you think that makes it dull, I would need to disagree with you.

Unlike this director’s other films, he scores the film throughout without all the brooding silences that punctuate much of his work. It is not pulpy or adventurous, but somber and haunting which helps set this aside from other films of this particular genre.

Bruce finally acting like he isn’t broken

Even telling you the genre is a spoiler, for Jiminy’s sake! Sheesh!

Above all else, it is the performances that shine here. Bruce Willis turns in one of the least “weary” films he’s done in ages. While it doesn’t sparkle quite like his earlier work, it does partner well with his earlier film. Samuel L. Jackson does his normal high level of performance here as he continues to show his dramatic range has not dissipated through the years. However, it is James McAvoy that gets the showy part(s) that he reprises. He is equal parts chewing the scenery while grounding it with a gritty anger that seems to drive the character(s) striving to get into the light.

The first film really focuses on belief. It is key the characters believe the unlikely events unfolding to drive them forward. The second film is about hope and empathy which draws out humanity. This film, ultimately, is about the power of secrets. It’s about the power of while they are kept and the deadly force at which they can be revealed.

And this reviewer is working hard to keep those secrets, while wildly encouraging to see this film and it’s two precursors. This is a wonderful capstone to those earlier films. I still believe I like the first best, but they are all constructed with high quality and ultimately entertain and invite the audience to ponder.

Grade: A-

Glass (2019)

Sgt. Bilko (1996)

Most modern viewers won’t know the character of Sgt. Bilko, and frankly, not many did when this movie arrived in cinemas in 1996 leading to a disappointing box office take. Nonetheless, I always had a soft spot in my heart for the character of Bilko and Phil Silvers. Never had a character so fit an actor than Bilko and I grew up with the reruns playing on Sunday mornings…but I never really had the chance to catch them. But I discovered Silvers when he was one of the stars of my favorite comedy films, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

So I wasn’t necessarily fully informed going into the film. It starts energetically and you understand the premise within seconds. Sgt. Bilko runs every scam at Fort Baxter and Steve Martin plays him…pretty much as Steve Martin, not Phil Silvers. That’s probably for the best, but it seems they wrote the character for Martin as well, which makes him a little more crass and has a smoothness that no one ever really bought with Silvers, making him all the more fun to watch.

Sgt. Bilko (1996) — Something strange, is in the neighborhood, and it involves a horse.

The character of Bilko started as a sketch on the Ed Sullivan Show until it became the basis of the The Phil Silvers Show. (Amazingly, this show is available NOWHERE for streaming. After a marathon of Car 54, Where Are You? I went searching since a number of the stars of that show started on Silvers, but it just is nowhere to be found.) The fast talking Silvers was always trying to pull one over on his dim witted superior officers with his company of complicit accomplices in the motor pool. This movie extends that, but as I’ll go into near the end of the review, some areas it moves into are not necessarily an improvement on the character. In the TV series, Fort Baxter was set in Kansas, but the movie sets the action in California as evidenced by a trip to Vegas and a reference to “returning a horse to Knotts Berry Farm.” The reference to Knotts Berry Farm is particularly of interest since Martin started his performance career at the Birdcage theater in that amusement park.

Unlike McHale’s Navy, which got a movie during its initial run, Sgt. Bilko had never made it to film before. Bilko was strictly a television creation. In translating the character, they decided on amping up the destruction and stunts Bilko was known for, often to amusing results.

Saturday Night Live alumni litter the film. Dan Akyroyd, Phil Hartman, and Chris Rock all have significant roles. Martin, himself, hosted the program nearly a dozen times himself. Often this comes off as a prolonged SNL skit parodying Bilko with over-amped scenery chewing by every member of the cast. In that regard, the film doesn’t feel like it was made in the 90’s. It feels like a misplaced 60’s romp…which might have made it a lot better since they could have used Phil Silvers himself. (Cathy Silvers, Phil Silver’s real life daughter, played a significant role in this film as well; a nice nod to the source material.)

Daryl “Chill” Mitchell does a nice job playing the morally upright Private Holbrook does his best grounding the film which often seems to veer off into over the top hijinks. He doesn’t exactly pull it off, but the script, the director, and every other actor in the film is working against him. It wasn’t a fair fight.

The weak link, somehow, is probably the strongest performer in the bunch. Hartman is playing his all-too-common villain role where he moves in on the protagonist’s girl. Frankly the only reason we don’t want to see her (played expertly by Glenne Headly) with Hartman is that he is possibly the only character more reprehensible than Martin’s Bilko in the movie. It just doesn’t feel like a good match for the rest of the military humor throughout the film. It’s a distraction that doesn’t pay off really.

The movie has genuine laughs within it, but instead of focusing on those, it gets distracted with this revenge scheme by Hartman. It destroys the best efforts in the other gags throughout the film (like the constant sound effects of cars having trouble starting due to the lack of care Bilko’s motor pool provides the vehicles on base). When the movie works, it works well, but this is no Stripes. It’s not Private Benjamin. It’s not Operation Petticoat.

It’s just Sgt. Bilko, so it all feels like a con. It’s amusing from time to time, but don’t trust this one with your money. This is not a sure thing.

Grade: C

Sgt. Bilko (1996)

Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town (1950)

As I stated with our review of Ma and Pa Kettle (1949), the Kettle movies helped a struggling Universal pivot from the horror films that kept the studio in the chips through the 40s as monster films lost favor. I’m a sucker for cornpone humor and B-movies, so this is right up my alley.

In Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town, Pa Kettle has won yet another slogan contest and this time they won a trip to New York. This time they will be “a fish out of water” not in a new modern home, but in the big city.

Pa Kettle on the Town — Don’t call’n me a fashionista…unlessin’ ya want ta

I was surprised that they started this film still in the “house of tomorrow” they were in at the end of the first film. I figured they would have the “sitcom reset” and be back in their old house with a throwaway line stating they are now back in the old place. It was a true sequel which I wasn’t really expecting.

A bank thief on the run comes across Ma and Pa Kettle and offers to watch their 15 monstrous children so the Kettles take their trip to New York. He plants the loot on the Kettles and tells his gang to collect the cash from the rural rubes.

Jim Backus, Mr. Howell from Gilligan’s Island, had a role as one of the gang. He had none of the vocal affectations he would made famous as Howell and later Mr. Magoo. It was rather interesting seeing him in such a different role than I was used to for him.

Ma Kettle discovers a secret stash of tickets

Of particular interest is seeing the New York of the 1950’s and seeing the cars and streetscapes of the time. I’m sure real New Yorkers would find it even more of interest as they saw a couple of the big sightseeing locations around the city.

A number of running gags and telegraphed plot devices follow. Amazingly, despite the age of the gags, some are still able to tickle you. That’s due to the expert craftsmanship these films were made with. What helps these movies is that despite the personal foibles of each of the characters, you can’t help but like the people you are spending the film with. Gags like popcorn getting mixed in with the pancake batter, endless soda deliveries due to winning the contest, not to mention chestnuts such as the Kettles forgetting their children’s names, still pay off.

Nothing mean spirited here, just goodhearted fun and quiet understated humor. A standout line comes when Ma meets a hostess in a lowcut dress at a ball. She says, “That’s a pretty dress you’ve got on… too bad the top wasn’t finished in time for the party.”

Pa Kettle gets grilled, but he keeps his hat with him

There are so many gags that you see coming a mile away, and yet the slow paced charm spins an irresistible charm. Key to that charm is Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride’s continued portrayal of the title characters. This was the third of eight they would do together and you can tell that they have really grown into the parts by the time they made this film.

The B-story of the criminal attempting to babysit the wild Kettle brood barely scraped the surface of the comedic material that was there. If anything was a shame, it was that we didn’t get to see more of that parallel tale since the Kettles in town wasn’t nearly as madcap as it could have been. I think the bank robber plot was overkill and slowed down the comedy. Just seeing the Kettles interact with high society would have been comedy enough. They didn’t need all the additional hijinks of law enforcement intrigue. We just want to see the Kettles flop around like the fish out of water they were. Thwarting villains isn’t really their bag, but you always needed that in mid century films.

I have to admit a bit where Pa Kettle is calling the Square Dance is more clever than I expected and nice final curtain on the film. Coming in at 80 minutes, it was just the thing for me tonight and maybe it will fit on your schedule, too.

Grade: B-

Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town (1950)

Tremors (1990)

It’s not a secret that my favorite film of no time is Jaws. I have Jaws puzzles. I have Jaws posters by the score. I have stuffed sharks, a shark poster in the garage where I park my car, and toy sharks with shark cages. I have the Jaws Pops. I have Jaws on VHS, DVD, BluRay and even something called a softcover book. I have the Jaws 2 and Jaws 3 trading cards…the entire series. I love this movie…and my collecting is casual compared to many fans.

But I love the film, Tremors, also but I don’t have one item collected. Why? THEY DON’T MAKE ANY! It amazes me that there is almost nothing. There’s no action figures. Not even gummy graboids. To me, this is the story of a great film that people just missed. This is one of the first movies on my lips when people ask for a great monster movie…and yet so many have never seen it!

Tremors is a throwback to 50’s and 60’s creature features about two somewhat dim handymen that work in a tiny, one road town in the desert pitted against killer carnivorous worms. That’s the story. All the tropes are here: the small town shop owner, the irritating kid, the cute kid, bad judgment, survival talk (the word “plan” is said 20 separate times during the film), and practical effects.

…and as much as I love Universal, they screwed this movie up. The advertising campaign for this flick was TERRIBLE! Couldn’t have been worse. I think the next time I would see a movie this mismanaged it would be Disney’s John Carter. Luckily for Universal, this didn’t result in a $3 billion write-off; it made its money back and then some once it got to the home video market. The movie was made for $10M and made $16M in the domestic box office and tripled that in home video. This launched a franchise that has bridged 30 years and 7 films (so far).

S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock wrote the film after a trip in nature climbing a rock and wondering what it would be like avoiding a creature under the ground. Early drafts were even titled “Land Sharks” but it took some time to develop. The pair wrote some good, successful films (Short Circuit and *batteries not included) and some horrid films (Short Circuit 2 and Ghost Dad) but I suspect these films will be their legacy.

Director Ron Underwood joined the project and injected some of the zoological detail to the film and really put together the tricky sauce that makes a successful cross genre film. Horror comedy is a tough mix and this one works because it actually took all the comedy out that was not “incidental.” They kept it to what was naturally occurring based on the characters they established and generated through a sparkling script and a pair of boffo performances by the leads Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward. Underwood would follow up Tremors with City Slickers with an Oscar winning performance from Jack Palance, so he knew how to get a performance (let’s not discuss Eddie Murphy in The Adventures of Pluto Nash) and could handle F/X as he proved later in his remake of Mighty Joe Young.

I was lucky enough to see this movie during its theatrical run and it played particularly well with an audience. The viewers laughed when they were supposed to laugh and jumped in their seats when they needed to. A lot of this could be attributed to Ward’s and Bacon’s performance who instantly connected with the audience. They didn’t this by being the stand in for the audience. They were “that guy” we all knew. Hard working but not necessarily brilliant but capable of taking care of themselves. They invited us all along for the ride.

So we join the road trip to Perfection and meet the miniscule (and quickly dwindling) population of the tiny town, with one road going in and out and a subterranean carnivorous worm problem. The Graboids (as the creatures were dubbed by Walter Chang, the local grocer) were good, old fashioned practical effects and provided the necessary menace to bring us our villain.

Included in the population was Walter Chang, the aforementioned grocer, portrayed by Victor Wong, who many genre fans recognize from Big Trouble in Little China. We have button cute Ariana Richards, who went on to be the elder child in a little film named Jurassic Park just a film or two later in her career. Reba McEntire, icon of country music, made her film career premiere as the survivalist wife of Burt Gummer, the only character to move through the entire Tremors franchise. Burt Gummer was a stand out of the supporting players portrayed by a post-Family Ties Michael Gross. Apparently when developing the script, they pictured Clint Eastwood and Chuck Norris to possibly portray the character, but I think it is Gross that really made the character pop enough to ground the series for the duration. Heck, if you can survive a pair of films co starring Jamie Kennedy, a few Graboids should be no problem, right?

As Bacon’s love interest in the film was Finn Carter, who I believe brings the right moxy to fill the role of a non-scream queen equal to the comedy team of Val and Earl. But make no mistake, this is the tale of Val and Earl and their absence from the follow up films is apparent from the jump. Their good natured bickering is the type of dialogue you could hear at any job site in the nation…except, of course, it centers on giant slugs that speed through the sand to consume natives.

For Jaws fans like me, there are some wonderful homages. A jackhammer pulled through the road stood in for a barrel and the death of a prominent character mirrored the death of Quint, complete with a little blood on the face as he is pulled below the ground.

I loved the movie from the moment I saw it in the theaters and as soon as it was available for sell through pricing on VHS (for the uninitiated, often films in the early days of VHS, would first be available for rental pricing at about $80 and later became sell through at $20 later in its run). I hooked up the VHS to my stereo and recorded the entire film onto a 45 minute audio cassette (I had to turn over the cassette to the other side to hear the rest) so I could listen to the film on my drive to college each day. In this way, I really appreciated the vocal performances of Val and Earl which struck me as being the kind of performance a comedy team like Abbott & Costello may have delivered on their radio program in the days of old. I really began to discover the wonderful soundtrack, learning later it was a mix of two composers works. The story goes that Ernest Troost’s original work, characterized by twangy country tones, guitars and harmonicas, was beefed up by a more traditional action score by Robert Folk complete with violins and trumpets. Frankly, I love both of their work and they mix wonderfully in the film. If I had to choose, though, the harmonica bits are what I remember whenever I think of the poor citizens of Perfection.

This is a mainstream film put in the cult film box has always irritated me since this film had the potential to find a much larger audience than it ultimately found. Still, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Except I’d really like some Val and Earl action figures, of course.

Grade: A+

Tremors (1990)

Freaky (2020)

Body swap movies have been around longer than you may think. Films like Turnabout and Here Comes Mr. Jordan came out in the 40’s. However, most point to 1976’s Freaky Friday as the popularization of the plot device, particularly in comedy. This led to some horrible films like 18 Again! and Like Father Like Son, but also led to fantastic films like Big (arguably Tom Hanks greatest performance), Heaven Can Wait, All of Me (possibly Steve Martin’s greatest performance) and Being John Malkovich. It also led to 2020’s Freaky, a body switch movie that proposes what would happen if a typical teenage girl swapped bodies with a psychotic killer.

I forgot my line but I’ll take a stab at it.

This film comes from Blumhouse (with Universal distribution) with directing and screenwriting by Christopher Landon, who also wrote and directed the Happy Death Day franchise films, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. (FUN FACT: Christopher Landon is the son of Michael Landon, himself starting his career in horror as the star of I Was a Teeenage Werewolf.) The pedigree of the film certainly was promising going in.

The casting was absolute perfection. Vince Vaughn checks both boxes of what you want in this movie. Vaughn is best known for his comedies such as Wedding Crashers and Dodgeball. However, he is a physically imposing man standing 6’5” which is tall IRL let alone in Hollywood, a land where many of the top leading men are of diminutive stature. Also, and this is oft forgotten in his filmography, Vaughn played a psycho once before as Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of Psycho. An actor equally adept at the horror and comedy elements this format is what I call perfect casting.

Kathryn Newton channeling
her inner Vaughn.

Leading the predominantly young cast is Vince’s swap partner, Kathryn Newton, moving from television to movies over the past two decades though I suspect I’ve just seen the role people will remember her from best. Her performance is as important as Vaughn’s and leads us to invest in her character as it moves from her body to Vaughn, who does a great job playing her as a character and not a caricature. It is very comparable to Jack Black’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle performance a few years back. Newton’s performance seems less showy in comparison but more grounded. Newton can’t bank on people remembering past characterizations and point to them as shorthand…she needed to mark her own territory. I honestly felt when the killer was in her body, she was even more menacing.

The Pink Ladies are going to rule the school

Another great, yet smaller role, was held down by Alan Ruck, best remembered as Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This time, he is the authority figure with a part you expect to go one way and veers off for a nice surprise prior to leaving the film’s plot.

Somebody’s knocking on the door. Someone’s ringing the bell.

It’s pretty obvious from the setup, comedy would be the emphasis of the film, so it is a fair question: do the horror elements work? The answer: for the most part. Because you buy into the characters, there are some real scenes of suspense that take you by surprise. There are also some very violent, gory kills that fill the requirements of the slasher film fan as well. It attempts some poignancy as well with a frayed family situation, and this is where I feel the film does not succeed as well. It might be a case of stuffing the script with too many unnecessary elements. Sometimes, it is those details that draw you into a film, but in this case, I saw elements such as the father’s death and mother’s battle with the bottle as superfluous and unnecessary.

I get the feeling I’ve SAW this one before.

The film flies along at just over 100 minutes and that seems like the perfect length. I find myself hoping it doesn’t lead to a sequel as the story is told and complete just as it is. Currently, it has doubled its tiny $6 million budget at a time where making your money back at all is quite an accomplishment. The legacy of this film is yet to be written, but I think like the best horror film of the year that came out early (The Invisible Man) this will be one of those films people will point to and say, “That idea should not have worked. It’s too out there. And yet, it succeeded.”

Grade: A

Freaky (2020)

Billy Elliot (2000)

Generally in this column, and in the Universal library for that point, we have been examining what I would call fantastic cinema. Fantasy, sci-fi, horror; outlandish and lavish productions outside the natural world. This week we take on a fairly grounded film at the turn of the century that sometimes strays into being a musical…but a very gritty version of one without a glimpse of an umbrella or sailor suit in sight. Billy Elliot (2000) is that film. A film that I had not had the opportunity to screen until now, but felt to me like a fitting sequel spiritually to one of my favorite musicals, 1991’s The Commitments which was also gritty and realistic.

The themes certainly echo each other. They are from similar geography in the United Kingdom about the downtrodden in the area using music as a form of escape from their desperate surroundings. In this case, it was set during the coal miner’s strike in the 1980’s. In some ways, this makes Billy Elliot even more specific than the frequently lyrical and mythical Alan Parker film, The Commitments. While I still prefer that treatment, this film celebrates the individual triumph in a way a rhythm and blues band film never could.

That’s because in this film he is not only fighting poverty. He is also combatting traditional gender roles of the time. In Billy’s world, the boys went to boxing lessons and the girls take ballet classes. That’s just how it was. Much was made of Billy joining the ballet classes and like a “feel good” / “coming of age” film always has….after a period of difficulty and resistance, Billy presses through and succeeds.

Oh, wait. Spoiler alert. Like you didn’t know that would happen.

It is a fairly successful formula for these films. The outsider slowly being integrated into society is always a key point. It is Billy’s passion for his interest in dance that draws the community to pull for him eventually as opposed to away from him. What I liked here is that his father, initially the antagonist, slowly turns the corner and in particular, his relationship with his brother rang true. Many brothers have this “love/hate” thing going as they are growing up under one roof, only to grow to a true family bond that grows as separation is introduced into the relationship.

Adding to the alienation was the family still coming to grips with their grief over the loss of Billy’s mother recently. This gave the entire film a bitter/sweet vibe that echoed throughout the film. It’s this sweetness, with an edge, which has made this an enduring film. It’s this loss which plausibly draws the family together to sacrifice all they have to bring Billy’s dreams to reality.

The secret weapon for Billy is brassy Julie Walters who serves as an external spine for the frequently wishy-washy protagonist of the film. She is definitely not some wilting flower ballerina that you might expect as the teacher to young Billy. He is trying to find his dancing equivalent of a voice and she is the strong sure hand to help him find the way to his artistic freedom and ultimate freedom from a world that seems committed to restraining his hopes and dreams. Walters plays the role to perfection with the right amount of vinegar to go with the sugar and bring a balanced character to the screen.

Beyond the film, upon an initial screening, Elton John suggested that the film would make for a good musical…and it turned out to be a big success running for over a decade. But success was not new to the property. The initial release made $100M after premiering in Cannes. (It was at Cannes that they decided to change its original title so it would not conflict with the Lars van Trier film Dancer (later Dancer in the Dark) featuring Bjork.

Jamie Bell has had some success since this film, most notably in voice work. The main credit being as TinTin in the tragically underseen Adventures of TinTin by Steven Spielberg. The soundtrack features a good amount of music by T-Rex, which was a 60’s English psychedelic rock band, which seems like an odd choice for a film set in the 1980’s, but somehow it fits stylistically and thematically.

When you get down to it, Billy Elliot resembles Footloose quite a bit; dance as an escape. Kevin Bacon’s character in Footloose wants to escape the quiet life in rural America through dance. Billy Elliot is trying to escape the cycle of life in the coal mines to something better.

The next time you are looking for a win, try dancing like no one is looking. It couldn’t hurt.

Grade: B+

Billy Elliot (2000)

Psycho II (1983)

Alfred Hitchcock, arguably, created the slasher genre in the 60’s with his sublime film Psycho based on Robert Bloch’s shocking (for the time) book of the same name. You would need to be a psycho yourself to try to make a sequel 23 years later.

Well, Richard Franklin didn’t know any better. He made Psycho II anyway.

Richard who? I had to look him up, too. His only other notable film, to my mind, was F/X 2, a criminally underseen action movie of the greatest action movie decade ever. You would have to have nothing to lose to try something like this.

This looks just like the one on the Universal backlot tour.

Now, it wasn’t like he did it alone. Somehow, he was able to entice Anthony Perkins and Vera Miles from the original cast to return. Great character actor Robert Loggia and ingénue Meg Tilly round out the cast. Armed with a script from Tom Holland, who has serious horror credits like Fright Night and Child’s Play to his credit, they were ready to take on the classic. (By the way, Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho II is nothing like the film and a little meta. I often think it was the blueprint to some of the 90’s slashers that followed Scream.)

Except they weren’t. At least not completely. While Franklin mimics some of Hitchcock’s most flashy shots from the original, it feels like imitation…not homage. The Jerry Goldsmith score, while perfectly serviceable, can’t replace the rip-roaring theme by Bernard Herrmann. The project, though, is well produced and the script is solid in amping up Norman from a seemingly weak goof at the beginning of the flick to the deranged mad man we all know and love as the film progresses.

The thing in his hand, children, is a wired telephone.

So, the movie doesn’t quite stack up to what is considered one of the greatest directors of all time’s top five films…but what can??? They did a good job with this film and it is a fun little fear machine. Enjoy it for what it is and try not to compare it to the original so much that you lose this movie’s merits in the process.

Grade: B+

Psycho II (1983)

So what is all this Twitch stuff?

So why do I keep reading about Twitch over here on Otherworldly Culture? It’s really not difficult to explain. Our shows and Internet presence continue to evolve and we see this as the next step in our evolution as broadcasters and content creation.

Trust me, I wouldn’t have changed this thing over if I didn’t think it was a really good idea. I’ve had enough change with this stuff. Let’s give you a brief history.

Back in the day as East Coast Horror Group

We started as East Coast Horror Group (you can still get T-Shirts if you want!) and joined up with Midnight Spookshow in their podcasts. We started as a show we would record and then release, but then moved into live podcasting using a number of the early tools available for live podcasting in those early days. After some personnel changes, we moved off on our own to continue podcasting and continuing to develop our programming. This was all audio podcasting at this point.

We continued on and had some more personnel switchups moving to OtherworldlyCulture.com with a widened categorical offering in our website with renewed emphasis on some non-podcast articles. We also started producing our live shows on YouTube, then Facebook, and the audiences evaporated on us in both locations.

The cool kids just aren’t there anymore. They are on Twitch. This is where people go for live broadcasting on the Internet and their tools really show this. We now have a single browser channel video that I can drop into any article like this:

…and they have a great chat client that can similarly be used…

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In fact, if we just want to have a chat with NO SHOW AT ALL GOING ON we can.

Our hopes is that this new set up will allow us to rebuild a community. So here’s the current status on things.

Dead On the Bases Pumpkin Ball — Dead On the Bases

Dead On Movie Reviews

We’ve moved our two live shows over to Twitch for their current seasons. That would be Dead On Movie Reviews and Dead On the Bases. On the record and release slate, Horror Realm Radio, which is produced by Pittsburgh’s top horror convention, Horror Realm, will continue to be released here and on their excellent YouTube site. Adam’s Interview from the Crypt is likewise recorded and then released on the OWC YouTube along with the Dead On… live shows. (I just realized how stupid it is that our live shows are both named Dead On…)

Article-wise, we continue to pump out occasional Reviews from the Crypt by Adam (does that make him the Crypt Keeper?) and Universally Loved by myself. As if that wasn’t enough, Adam is continuing to pump out press releases we receive from scores of streaming services on the ‘net.

One experiment I was involved in last weekend was a Live Stream “Watchparty” on Twitch. You got me commenting on a film with trivia and stories as a movie was unspooling for you on Amazon Prime. We didn’t get many viewers that first time (by design! I wanted to make sure it worked!) but this might be a cool way to invite guests to join us and tell us about their films. This new show has been dubbed OWC Prime Cuts and if I do a second episode, that’s when it will get a category. This isn’t my first rodeo. You never know what shows will take off and stick around.

So we need your feedback, folks! If you have general feedback, send it to me at tim@otherworldlyculture.com or you can use our handy survey at this link:

Should we develop a chat only event? Would you like an interactive game show of some kind? Would you like to contribute articles? See too much of something? Too little? Let us know!

I promise we’ll at least read the feedback. Our goal is to have fun and build a community…and have lots of fun in the process. We look forward to hearing from you.

Tim Kretschmann is the host of Dead On Movie Reviews, Now Streaming, and Dead On the Bases. He is also a columnist on OtherworldlyCulture with the column Universally Loved.

So what is all this Twitch stuff?

TKPN Podcast

Tim Kretschmann Podcasting Network

Tag Archives: Universally Loved

The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) Trilogy

The Creature from the Black Lagoon

Revenge of the Creature

The Creature Walks Among Us

Universal’s 110 Year Celebration

Open “Fourth Gate” early

Re-release the good stuff

Send out stuff to Uberfans that have columns about their studio

Enhance WWE offerings

An NBC special about their history

Merge NBC.com and Peacock

Glass (2019)

Grade: A-

Sgt. Bilko (1996)

Grade: C

Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town (1950)

Grade: B-

Tremors (1990)

Grade: A+

Freaky (2020)

Grade: A

Billy Elliot (2000)

Grade: B+

Psycho II (1983)

Grade: B+

So what is all this Twitch stuff?