Posts Tagged ‘weird sequels’
Wednesday, October 4th, 2023
As we touched upon yesterday, William Friedkin’s THE EXORCIST is a great movie, a horror classic, the godfather of “elevated horror,” beloved by horror fans and non horror fans alike, making it a smash hit, box office record breaker, and cultural phenomenon. It was the first horror movie ever nominated for best picture, and received 10 Oscar nominations total, winning for adapted screenplay and sound. It caused mass freakouts and faintings and many still believe it’s the scariest film of all time. Its success launched an entire genre of demonic possession movies, pretty much all of which just rehash the last act but without a fraction of the directorial flair, and those movies still do well.
For all of these reasons, many people really weren’t (and still aren’t) open to the idea of somebody else making a sequel to THE EXORCIST. When EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC came along four years later, numerous major critics, even some of the ones who disliked the first one, called the sequel ludicrous, preposterous, incomprehensible, unjustifiable, the worst or stupidest movie ever made. And the late great Friedkin, who wanted no part in a sequel for both artistic and legal reasons, deemed the half hour of it he saw “a stupid mess made by a dumb guy… Scurrilous. A horrible picture” and “the worst piece of crap I’ve ever seen… a freaking disgrace… made by a demented mind.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Albert Whitlock, Ennio Morricone, exorcism, James Earl Jones, John Boorman, Kitty Winn, Linda Blair, Louise Fletcher, Max von Sydow, Paul Henreid, Richard Burton, Rospo Pallenberg, weird sequels, William Fraker, William Goodhart
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 26 Comments »
Monday, July 11th, 2022
“It’s the so-called normal guys who always let you down. Sickos never scare me. At least they’re committed.” —Selina Kyle
“He had graduated to a point where he wanted to make movies that are his movies. And this is one hundred percent Tim’s movie.” —BATMAN RETURNS producer Denise DeNovi
On June 19, 1992 we got a blockbuster super hero movie unlike we’d seen before or have since. Since Tim Burton’s BATMAN RETURNS was about as much of a sure thing hit as a studio could ever have, and because the director had been unsure about doing another one, Warner Brothers left him alone to do what he wanted. So it’s a rare combination: an expensive summer blockbuster based on pop culture icons, but also an odd, personal film by an earnest visualist director without much interest in crowdpleasing spectacle. Okay, maybe that describes 1990’s DICK TRACY also, but this is DICK TRACY’s much freakier second cousin. As the first sequel to the movie that made comic book adaptations a hot commodity it was in a unique position to make up most of its own rules about what a super hero sequel is supposed to be, and it wasn’t timid about it.
I’ve written before about my love for the era of comic book movies that started with BATMAN and ended around BLADE or X-MEN. Since the medium that inspired them was still considered nerd shit, since digital FX were in their infancy, since most of them never worried about setting up a sequel let alone a cinematic universe, and since most were heavily influenced by what Tim Burton had done in BATMAN, the genre was very different from what it is today. There was far less literal fidelity to the source material (for good and bad), and relatively few attempts to depict extravagant super powers and creatures, meaning less falling back on visual effects sequences. Some tried to reimagine a pulpy past (THE ROCKETEER, THE SHADOW, THE PHANTOM, DICK TRACY), while the ones trying to be new and contemporary often celebrated colorful outsiders and weirdos (THE CROW, THE MASK, BARB WIRE, TANK GIRL, X-MEN). And I think my favorite thing about them is that they didn’t usually take place in “the real world.” They depended on a stylized look with big sets on sound stages, matte paintings and miniatures to create their own heightened reality. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony De Longis, Christmas, Christopher Walken, Cristi Conaway, Daniel Waters, Danny DeVito, Danny Elfman, DC Comics, Denise DeNovi, Diane Salinger, great sequels, Jan Hooks, Joan Giammarco, Michael Gough, Michael Keaton, Michael Murphy, Michelle Pfeiffer, Pat Hingle, Paul Reubens, Sam Hamm, Steve Witting, Tim Burton, weird sequels, Wesley Strick
Posted in Reviews | 111 Comments »
Wednesday, July 21st, 2021
BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (1989) is one of those beloved comedies you take for granted. I hadn’t seen it in 20+ years, so I was kinda afraid it might not hold up. It’s kind of hard to put your finger on why it works so well, and it would be hard to explain why it’s funny if somebody asked. I’m not sure if you had to be there or not.
Don’t get me wrong – there’s a pretty straight forward comical premise: what if a couple of dumb guys got a hold of a time machine and recruited actual historical figures to help with their history test? But for the most part that’s not really what’s funny about it. It’s the particular personalities of the dumb guys, and the reasons they have access to time travel.
Bill S. Preston Esquire (Alex Winter, DEATH WISH 3) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves, THE NIGHT BEFORE) are a Californian version of what we used to call “rockers” and some regions called “heshers” – guys whose lives center around heavy metal and/or hard rock. In the wild you’d expect them to have longer hair and leather jackets, smoke lots of pot and drink lots of beer, but Bill and Ted mostly just idolize Van Halen, talk about “babes,” and laugh at the number 69. They have a band called Wyld Stallyns, which features only the two of them on guitar, an instrument neither of them knows how to play. Still, their worst fear os for the band to be broken up if Ted fails his history test, in which case his dad (Hal Landon Jr., ERASERHEAD), who is a police captain and wears an NRA jacket while off duty, will ship him off to Oats Military Academy in Alaska. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Al Leong, Alex Winter, Bernie Casey, Boogaloo Shrimp, Chris Matheson, David L. Snyder, David Newman, Diane Franklin, Ed Gale, Ed Solomon, George Carlin, Hal Landon Jr., Jane Wiedlin, Joss Ackland, Keanu Reeves, Kevin Yagher, Kimberley Kates, Oliver Wood, Pam Grier, Peter Hewitt, Pop N' Taco, Rod Loomis, Stephen Herek, Steve Vai, Stevie Salas, Summer of 1991, Terry Camilleri, time travel, weird sequels, William Sadler
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 27 Comments »
Thursday, March 30th, 2017
A RETURN TO SALEM’S LOT is Larry Cohen’s weirdo theatrically-released sort-of-sequel to Tobe Hooper’s TV mini-series of the Stephen King book. But really it just takes the location – the tiny town of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine – and the idea of doing a vampire story there. It’s not the same vampire or the same type of vampire. It doesn’t connect, from what I remember. But I like that.
Joe Weber (Cohen’s muse Michael Moriarty) is an anthropologist working on a CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST type documentary when he finds he has to come home to look after his troublemaking teenage son Jeremy (one-time actor Ricky Addison Reed, who IMDb claims was cast to play Robin in Tim Burton’s BATMAN in scenes that were never filmed). Joe brings his son to the old, recently-inherited fixer-upper in his birth-town of Salem’s Lot (as some but not all abbreviate it). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Larry Cohen, Michael Moriarty, Samuel Fuller, Stephen King, Tara Reid, vampires, weird sequels
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 95 Comments »
Monday, November 14th, 2016
“So, will this little pink lunchness fulfill his destiny, nourishmentally speaking?”
“We shall see.”
With BABE, writer-producer George Miller (and director Chris Noonan) created a warm little perfectly-told tale of a pig and a farmer finding happiness by violating social norms. (If that sounds gross to you, that’s not what I meant.) For the bigger, darker, weirder sequel, BABE: PIG IN THE CITY, Miller dropped the pure-hearted little pig into that world’s version of a noisy, chaotic metropolis, knowing he’d face the challenge with his head held high and make it out with his spirit intact, brightening lives along the way.
The Hoggett farm in BABE looks straight out of a storybook, but you figure that’s an anomaly. When the family comes over for Christmas, bringing modern attitude and technology, they seem to be visiting from the real world.
Maybe not, it turns out. Esme Hoggett (Magda Szubanski, who was only 37 at the time! Holy shit!) and “the wee pig” get stranded in a major city. They don’t say which one, but it’s whichever city that is where the skyline includes the Hollywood sign, the Sydney Opera House, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Eiffel Tower, among others. (No Space Needle, I’m afraid.) Garish billboards hang above picturesque canals and cobblestone roads. Most of the hotels don’t accept pigs, but they find one secretly housing a bunch of dogs, cats, chimps and an orangutan. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Goldberg, Elizabeth Daily, George Miller, Glenne Headly, James Cosmo, James Cromwell, Magda Szubanski, Mickey Rooney, Roscoe Lee Browne, Steven Wright, talking animals, weird sequels
Posted in Family, Reviews | 31 Comments »
