I was listening to Critically Acclaimed podcast the other day.  Critically Acclaimed features movie critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold.  I do not agree with them that often, but I do enjoy listening to them as they bring an intelligence to film criticism that was unlike others.

This episode, they were speaking about the career of recently deceased actor Robert Forster and Bibbs mentioned that one of his favorite performances of Forster’s career was in Alligator.  I had never heard of this movie before, but I really enjoyed this year’s Crawl, which was about killer alligators so I thought this would be a good lazy Sunday feature to continue the October Horror Binge we are doing here at EYG Doc’s Classic Movies Reviewed.

If you were to describe this movie as Jaws with an alligator, you would not be too far off.  There is even a musical score that sounds pretty familiar when the alligator is coming up on a victim.

Robert Forster played David Madison, a police detective with a tragic past, who encountered a giant alligator in the Chicago sewer system.  The alligator had been flushed years prior and had been exposed to an experimental growth hormones and had grown to a massive size.  The alligator began feeding on more than disposed carcasses of laboratory test animals, causing a panic among the public.

This is clearly a B-movie, and it is full of cheesy moments and silly situations.  All the crummy characters the film introduced find their way into the gaping jaws of the alligator, making you almost cheer for the creature.

There is even one scene, set at a wedding of all things, that makes me think about scenes from the old 1980s TV show The A-Team.

This alligator is able to make his way around Chicago really well.  One scene he is in the swimming pool of a child’s party and the very next scene, he is in an alleyway ready to eat up big game hunter Brock (Henry Silva) in a scene reminiscent to the eating of Quint in Jaws.

The script is witty at times and does go out of the way to develop the character of Madison more than these types of movies usually do.  The film tosses oddball characters at Madison throughout the film that seem to play up the cliches of the genre.

In the end, it is a silly movie, but undeniably fun.  Forster gives a solid performance and the special effects are, for the most part (with the probably exception of the A-Team scene) pretty decent.

Honestly, the similarities between this and Jaws are strong.  See them both.   Jaws is better.

We are continuing the October Horror Binge here at EYG Doc’s Classic Movies Reviewed and now we come upon a horror/comedy classic from the early 1980s, Gremlins.

When inventor Rand (Hoyt Axton) purchases a cute, fuzzy creature called a Mogwai from a Chinatown store, he is given strict advice.  “Don’t expose him to bright light. Don’t ever get him wet. And don’t ever, ever feed him after midnight.”

Well, it is not long before Billy (Zach Galligan) has broken all three of these rules and the result?  The Mogwai, that the family has called Gizmo, starts to multiply.  And the results are not near as war and fuzzy as Gizmo.

My memory of seeing this movie originally when I was young was that I was not very thrilled by it.  In fact, I seem to remember even not liking the movie.  It has probably been over thirty years since I saw this movie and, while my opinion sometimes varies on some films, unfortunately, I had the same reaction to Gremlins that I did when I first saw it.

I was unimpressed.

I will say that I liked the practical effects of the movie.  There is no way we would get something like this today.  Today’s version would be full of CGI and special effects that would make the Gremlins feel more real and less special.  The cuteness of these little creatures more than made up for any lingering problems with practical effects.

The rest of the film was not great.  There was a forced story for side characters, including Phoebe Cates.  There was a horrific role for Polly Holliday (Flo from the Alice TV show) who appeared to be playing the Wicked Witch of the West from Wizard of Oz.

Hoyt Axton did voice over at the very beginning and at the very end of the movie and it felt out of place after seeing the entire film.

Sure there were some cute moments and the Gremlins are imaginative, but the human characters are lacking and the story itself is simplistic.  I found myself bored by much of the movie and it reinforced my first impressions of Gremlins all those years ago.

I had not intended on doing this film, but as I was flipping around the TV, I came across Halloween H20: 20 Years Later on AMC.  So I decided to watch it as part of the October Horror Binge.

I know this movie has been expunged out of existence by the most recent Halloween (2018) that was a direct sequel to the original film.  All other Halloween movies are tossed aside into the world of non-canon.  That was probably a wise choice.

Here, Jamie Lee Curtis returned to her role as Laurie Strode, now living under a pseudonym and working as a dean of a northern school.  She is drastically over protective of her son (Josh Hartnett) who is getting tired of the family boogyman.  Unfortunately, it is Halloween and Michael Myers is back with his knife.

It was weird hearing Laurie call Michael her brother, as this was one of the twists in the series that had been expunged by the reboot.  That is a wise move as all of that connection felt very forced.

Then, this movie could not have crammed any more jump scares into the film’s run time.  There were jump scare after jump scare and most of them were simply the music getting louder and someone jumps out and surprises the character.  In other words, fake outs.  These may work once in a while, but I swear the first half of the movie was nothing but fake out jump scares knitted together with a thin connective tissue.

Jamie Lee Curtis is great as always. There is actually quite an impressive cast here as the cast included Michelle Williams, Adam Arkin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, LL Cool J, Janet Leigh, and Josh Hartnett.  Nobody gave their career best performance here though.

Michael Myers showed up in the third act and stomped around and really did not do much more than kill a few supporting characters.  It was not very well done.

I am not sorry this has been removed form canon.  It deserved to go.

With the October Horror Binge in full swing, I decided to take a step into the world of psychological thrillers with horror elements.  And what better film to fall into that category than the classic Oscar winning The Silence of the Lambs, starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins?

Has there been a more terrifying and intense performance than Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter?  It is why he was able to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for the role when he only actually appears on screen for a little over 16 minutes.

Jodie Foster brings the goods in this movie as Clarice Starling, a young FBI cadet who is sent in to see Lecter in an opportunity to pick Lecter’s brain about another serial killer, ‘Buffalo Bill’ (Ted Levine), who skins his victims.  Lecter takes a strange liking to Clarice and leads her to clues on the case.

While the leads get a lot of the well-deserved attention, Ted Levine does not get the credit he deserves for creating one of the most disturbing and frightening serial killers that we have sen on screen ever.  Some of Levine’s moments are absolutely menacing and horrifying.  It is unbelievable that the actor Ted Levine who played Buffalo Bill is the same actor who played Leland Stottlemeyer on Monk.

Director Jonathan Demme is masterful in the creation of suspense and tension. The shots are both disturbing and beautiful all in one.

If you have not seen The Silence of the Lambs, this is the ultimate film of suspense and tension.  The film contains a bunch of outstanding performances and some of the best direction you will ever see.  It is an all-time classic and worth the re-watch any time.

After the frightening horror of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I was ready for a change in the October Horror Binge.  So I went back to a couple of old friends:  Abbott & Costello.  This time, the comedic pair are meeting up with the Mummy.

The final of the Universal films featuring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello meting up with Universal monsters.  They had met Frankenstein, the Invisible Man and then the Mummy.

The film contained all of the typical Abbott and Costello bits, including a take on the famous “Who’s on First” routine using the word “Mummy.”  Another bit that made its way into many Abbott & Costello films was Lou seeing something, being scared, running to Bud only to have the thing disappear by the time they returned.  It was a routine they did regularly, and it appeared here many times.

In fact, the repetition shows how the duo has started to slip.  The comedy of Abbott & Costello was losing steam after a long stretch of success and in Abbott & Costello Meets the Mummy, you can see the strain.

And yet, looking back there are funny moments.  I have loved Bud & Lou for years and this, albeit not their strongest work, was a nice palate cleanser after the insanity of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The October Horror Binge continued tonight with what many consider one of the most influential horror films of all time.  The film that helped create the genre of slasher films that included giant, faceless hulking beasts as killers:  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre featured the killer known as Leatherface and a severely creepy film that is listed as “based on true events” though that it not actually true.  I mean, the story is fiction, but Leatherface himself is said to be based on serial killer Ed Gein.

The film has a realistic feel to it as it does not seem to be a studio movie.  The actors feel as if they are just kids coming across this monstrous killer and the whole film has a documentary type vibe going down.  That creates even more terror than something that is slick and perfect.

What is even more frightening is that this is something that could happen.  Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers are all characters that have some kind of supernatural/mystical binge to them, but Leatherface is basically a crazed cannibal in a mask with a chainsaw.  That is something that could happen.

And then it becomes so bat shit crazy that the horror really grips you.  The whole Grandpa bit was about as creepy as I could stand.  I had never seen this movie before and the portrayals of these crazy villains were not what I had expected.  Even Leatherface was one of the more original creatures you would ever see.

And all of that screaming.  And those extreme close ups.  Man, it is an unnerving film and I can see why it was controversial.

I found it somewhat unsatisfactory at the end because I was invested in seeing this weirdo family get what was coming to them and I only got a little of that.  Again, it is very much like other horror movies that do not end with a happy ending.  And truthfully, there was a survivor.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not a film that I would want to watch on a regular basis, but I did appreciate seeing the classic film during this binge.

We are diving way back to the late 1960s for our next October Horror Binge as one of the iconic films, Rosemary’s Baby, was released.  Rosemary’s Baby is a psychological thriller/horror film directed by the infamous Roman Polanski featuring Mia Farrow as Rosemary, a young woman whose pregnancy may be more than it seems.

Rosemary and Guy moved into a new apartment despite the fact that their friend Hutch attempted to dissuade them from taking it considering the questionable past of the building.  Their neighbors, Minnie and Roman Castevet, immediately thrust themselves into the couple’s lives.  When Rosemary and Guy decided to have a baby, the Castvets got involved even more with special drinks and foods.

On the night when Rosemary is planning to be impregnated, she was drugged and raped by a demonic force.  She became pregnant.

When Rosemary believed , she became desperate to try and find out the truth.

The film was very tense.  Even though we saw the rape scene, the film built it as if Rosemary was paranoid and crazy.  There was always a slight doubt.

The movie is creepy as heck and the whole Satanic stuff works in the horror genre.  This is more subtle than you think and developed a really thrill ride that makes you desperate to cheer for Mia Farrow.

It is one of the great horror movies of all time.

Next up on the October Horror Binge is one of the great horror movies of all time in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.  The Shining is based on a Steven King book, however, King was not a fan of the adaptation of this film, which is odd considering how amazing the film is.  The sequel to this movie/book, Doctor Sleep will be released later this year.

Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson), a former teacher and current writer, moved his family, wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd), to the Outlook Hotel where they are hired to take care of the hotel during the winter when it was shut down.  The isolation and frustration begins to get to Jack as he struggled to write.

Danny has a mental power known as The Shining.  Scatman Crothers played the hotel’s chef who reveals to Danny that he too has the gift.  However, Danny begins seeing flashes that suggest that there is more to the Outlook Hotel than has been revealed.

The Shining does a masterful job of creating moods.  The Outlook is a wonderful setting that not only feels massive and extensive, but also isolating and claustrophobic.  One could understand how someone could go mad from the loneliness.  Although there are some implications that Jack may not have been the ideal husband/father even before the move to the Outlook.

Jack Nicholson is tremendous as Jack Torrence and his dynamic with Shelley Duvall is creepy.  When Jack starts going off-kilter, he is scary as can be.  While the ghost tale parts of The Shining are fine, they are meant to give reason for the breakdown.  Yet, I do not think I need anything supernatural to explain why Jack flipped out.

There are some truly disturbing imagery in The Shining and the entire “redrum” stuff is what nightmares are made of.

The Shining is frightening and filled with tension.  You are never quite sure what is going to happen and that is a great thing.  This is one of the best films in the genre.

The first Saturday evening in October 2019 and I am continuing the October Horror Binge that I started last week while the calendar still said September.   Now that it is officially the All Hallow’s Eve month, we can resume watching those scary stories from the big screen.

Last week I had watched, for the first time, Freddy Krueger’s debut in A Nightmare on Elm Street.  This week, I skipped over #2 and went right for what is, arguably, the best film of the franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

I was a fan of the title song by Dokken, and, I have a slight memory of renting the VHS when I was younger.  This came out the year I graduated from high school and I was not a slasher film fan, but I remember renting it.  However, as I watched the film tonight, there was little about it that I remembered so it is possible that I did not pay too close of attention to the movie when I watched it back in the late 1980s.

I watched it closer tonight and I enjoyed it much more than the first time.  It was fun with the return of Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) from the first film.  There is a group of new young characters, led by a young Patricia Arquette.  Some of the acting was questionable, but for a slasher movie, they were fine.

Freddy Krueger continues to be the man when it comes to creative kills and you can see why he became an icon in the world of horror.  I’m not sure if I am going to watch any of the other Nightmares, but Dream Warriors is great.

Continuing to reach for October, our October Horror Binge continued today with the fictionalized film about the making of a real film.  The silent film classic Nosferatu is the film that is being used as the historical part of this historical fiction.  Shadow of the Vampire is the fictionalized version asking the question, “What if director F. W. Murnau (John Malkovich) were to use a real vampire as the lead role in his movie?”

Willem Dafoe plays Max Schreck, a real vampire playing the role of Count Orlok.  The cast and crew is told that Schreck is the consummate “method actor” and will only be seen at night and will always stay in character.   Little does the crew know that Murnau had made a deal with the vampire to give him actress Greta Schröder (Catherine McCormack) to feed upon when they were finished.  Murnau insisted that Schreck leave his crew alone and not hurt them, which was a promise that Max could not keep.

There is a lot of humor in the film.  Willem Dafoe gives a remarkable performance as Max and John Malkovich is creepy and cold, wanting only what he wants.  The fact that some people are hurt or in danger in his efforts to create the most realistic vampire movie ever really does not alter his choices.  It makes one wonder exactly which of these men were the monster.

The film is shot beautifully, taking many of the techniques of silent movies, which Nosferatu was, into effect.  The idea behind this is very creative and original.

Defoe was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in this movie.  His performance alone is good enough to watch the movie, but there is much more here than just one performance.

I guess technically, this one is not really a horror film.

You see, I loved Bud Abbot & Lou Costello when I was a kid and I wanted to do one of their movies during the time they were meeting up with the Universal Monsters.  However, I have already reviewed their most famous Monster film, Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein, so I found another one.

The Invisible Man was one of the Universal Monsters, so I figured this would work.

However, it is more of a crime drama than anything else.  Abbot & Costello are private detectives hired by an escaped felon named Tommy, a former boxer who was convicted of murder.  Tommy claimed to be innocent, and winds up taking the formula that was used by the original Invisible Man, John Griffin, to make him disappear.

The film had all the normal Abbot & Costello hi-jinks and had some great laugh-out-loud moments.  Lou Costello was a master of the reaction.  He was so funny when he saw something that scared him or surprised him.  As a team, Bud and Lou had impeccable comic timing, in both banter and physical comedy.  Even if you had seen the same routine or shtick already, you couldn’t help but laugh.  They were masters.

So, even though this film is not, technically, a horror movie, it will fall into the October Horror Binge.  Maybe it helps that it is not, technically, October yet either.

Another film that I had never seen before, but had seen a few isolated scenes was Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.  This ballooned into a huge franchise with Freddy Krueger becoming one of horror’s greatest icons.

However, the start here was a bit shaky.  Some of the acting felt weaker and Freddy Krueger himself would see better days.  The story was challenging to follow and, while that is not a bad thing, it did make me uncertain exactly what was happening.

Yet, there was something about the film that spoke to me.  It had its moments of biting humor and it had the iconic scene where Johnny Depp as Glenn gets pulled into his bed and suddenly becomes a blood fountain.  Huh?

The fact that you are never quite sure what is going on is most likely part of the point.  Dreams can be very surreal and this film shows that effect.  Nancy, played by Heather Langenkamp, was being isolated by the monstrous “Fred” Krueger (I have to say, it was shocking every time someone called him Fred) and her lack of sleep continued to make the story confusing.  What exactly was happening?  Not sure if we really know.  And that ending?

Freddy revitalized the slasher genre in the 1980s with this clever work from Wes Craven and will always be one of the giants of these types of films.  While I have never been as fond of slasher type horror films as I am in other versions of the genre, I appreciate where the franchise was able to take this character and how it scared a generation of people.

October is right around the corner and, for the month, I will be watching a series of horror films that I either have never seen before, have only seen parts of it, or haven’t seen for years.  I am starting off the October Horror Binge with one of the all-time classics of the Universal Monsters, The Bride of Frankenstein.

As I watched the movie, I realized that I have never actually seen the film before, outside of the iconic ending scene.

Boris Karloff resumed his role as the Monster and continued to show the tragic nature of this poor soul.  There is so much sadness in Karloff’s performance that you can’t help but feel for him.  The Monster simply is looking for a way to ease his pain, whether it be physical or emotional.  Everyone reacted to the Monster with fear and anger and the Monster’s response was violence.  However, those who were kind to him could make a connection.

I had no idea that the famous scene from Young Frankenstein with Gene Hackman as the blind man was actually a parody of a scene from The Bride of Frankenstein.  It was nearly impossible to watch The Bride without remembering that hilarious Mel Brooks film and Gene Hackman’s amazing work.

Directed by James Whale, The Bride of Frankenstein is a masterpiece of monster movies.  The film is quite subversive as well, with many hidden concepts that can be representative of many deeper, philosophical experiences.

It is amazing as well that the title character of the film is really barely in the film.

The first of the horror films for the October Horror Binge starting in September… is an influential and iconic film, beautifully shot with a tone of eeriness.

“Chicken…good!”

This is still a line that I quote on a regular basis (especially when I have some good tasting chicken) and this movie has its fair share of quotable quotes.  “Big Bada Boom,” “Leeloo Dallas Multipass,” “Anyone else want to negotiate,” and “I am a meat Popsicle.”

Luc Besson’s classic futuristic sci-fi action/comedy, The Fifth Element, is one of the great underrated films of the past 20 + years.  Bruce Willis stars as Korben Dallas and Milla Jovovich stars as Leeloo, the Fifth Element, the Ultimate Being and these two look to be having so much fun with the out-of-this-world (literally) premise.

The ultimate evil is returning to destroy the earth and the stones that are needed for the Fifth Element to stop evil are a hot property.  Being pursued by Leeloo, the Father Vito Cornelius (Ian Holm), the evil and greedy Zorg (Gary Oldman), Korben Dallas winds up smack dab in the middle of all the chaos.

The characters of this movie are as “Super green” memorable as you are ever going to find.  Gary Oldman’s Zorg is as epic of a villain as you could get.  Tiny Listen plays the President.  Chris Tucker steals every scene he is in as Ruby Rhod.

Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg, as played by the incomparable Gary Oldman, is one of the great sci-fi villains of all-time.  He elevates what could have been nothing more than cheese to brilliance.  Zorg is both humorous and sinister at the same time.  He is both a buffoon and a terror.  It is a top notch performance by one of our greatest character actors.

This is always in consideration as one of Bruce Willis’s best films.  It is certainly different than any other film he made.  He had great chemistry with Milla Jovovich and you believed that they fell in love during this adventure.

The scene with the Diva Plavalaguna and her song is one of the best scenes in a film with great scenes throughout.  Her opera song is beautiful and mesmerizing.  The character design is as wonderful as the rest of the film.  So much originality and it shines though.

The Fifth Element is one of my favorite films ever.  I was a huge fan of Bruce Willis at that time in his career and this is a classic.

I actually avoided this movie for quite awhile.  I have never been a fan of the UFC and this just seemed like nothing more than an overblown ad for them.

However, there was much more to Warrior than that.

I heard lots of people online whose opinions I respect say that Warrior was one of their favorite movies and so I decided to give it a chance and rent it off of Vudu.  Yet, I rented it and it sat in my queue for almost a month.  In fact, I almost forgot that I had it available.  The rental period was almost over when I finally decided to watch the movie.

By the end, I had tears in my eyes and goosebumps all over my body.

Warrior is the story of two estranged brothers who both wind up in a huge UFC tournament called Sparta.  One brother, Brendan (Joel Edgerton) was a science teacher who needed to do something drastic because he needed money.  He had been a fighter early in his life and gave it up for his wife (Jennifer Morrison).  The second brother Tommy (Tom Hardy) was a Marine who deserted his unit, but came across another unit where he saved someone by ripping the door off a jeep.  Changing his name, Tommy had to deal with his own inner anger from the life he had lived.

Their recovering alcoholic father (Nick Nolte) was estranged from both and wanted to reconnect with his boys.

There was so much emotion in this movie.  You could feel the anger of Tommy and the desperation and determination of Brendan.  It was pretty obvious that these two brothers were on a collision course with one another, but once you get to that point, anything could have happened.

The film was filled with awesome performances from everyone involved.

Of course, Warrior is to the UFC as the Rocky series is to boxing.  The matches in this movie are way more exciting to watch than the ones that are actually presented in the real UFC just as boxing was never as exciting as when Rocky was punching one of his foes.  There may be moments within a match that elevates to this level, but these are thrilling from the start.

I am glad that I was able to make time to watch this movie before my rental period ended.  It is a wonderful film worth the watch.