And with this post, I have already doubled my annualized update frequency as compared to 2020.
First up, help yourselves to the All-You-Can-Keep-Down Seafood Buffet of 1989:
DeepStar Six (1989), in which the poor, sad bastards on the ocean floor are setting up an undersea missile base, and the weird thing they find is sort of like a giant mantis shrimp…
Endless Descent (1989), in which the poor, sad bastards on the ocean floor are trying to rescue the crew of a vanished submarine, and there’s no frigging end to the weird things they find…
Leviathan (1989), in which the poor, sad bastards on the ocean floor are silver miners, and the weird thing they find is the result of an experiment by the Soviet Navy to turn their special forces troops into gill-men…
and…
Lords of the Deep (1989), in which the poor, sad bastards on the ocean floor are scientists trying to develop undersea habitats for a post-apocalyptic humanity, and the weird thing they find is a colony fishlike extraterrestrials.
And then we have the usual rather random miscellany:
Crimes of Passion (1984), in which Ken Russell accidentally makes a full-on 90’s-style Erotic Thriller several years early, just by getting Ken Russell all over a mid-80’s neo-noir…
The Video Dead (1987), in which watching TV really is as bad for you as the pundits always said…
War of the Colossal Beast (1958), in which Mr. B.I.G. brings back Mr. Big…
and…
The Wraith (1986), in which the Crow borrows the Car from Satan in order to hunt down Toecutter from beyond the grave.
#1 by Hurdy Gurdy Man on May 26, 2021 - 1:56 am
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Bravo, El Santo! This time you have truly outdid yourself. This is the El Santo I fondly remember, and I am glad that you have found your usual groove again. It also helps that I know of all these titles unlike your last update, where Predator II was the only one I was familiar with. That increased my interest level manifold.
I had inferred Crimes of Passion and The Wraith from your hints, but the “all-you-can-keep-down-seafood-buffet” stumped me. I suppose I should have paid attention to the specific year. Your review of Crimes of Passion is the highlight of this update – I love how you went in detail about the history of the Erotic Thriller and gave specific pointers about how this firmly qualifies as one while the others don’t.
Keep writing… and may your blues be blown away this year.
#2 by Chris on May 26, 2021 - 8:46 pm
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Thanks for the trip down memory lane, El Santo! For a young scuba diver and sci-fi fan with marine biology aspirations, 1989 was a glorious year. I saw all of these at around that time (The Abyss being the most impressive to me in its ambition and technical production) but I’ve wistfully wished ever since that Leviathan’s terrific cast and production values had encountered in their silver mine the monster from Deepstar Six. Now I have an inexplicable urge to go revisit Neon Maniacs and The Kindred again….
#3 by ronald on May 27, 2021 - 6:53 am
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Some [re]viewers (clearly NOT including yourself) perceive the revelation that Glen has a sister, after a statement in the previous film established that he had no other family but Carol, as some sort of glaring continuity error. They fail to take into account that it was CAROL who said that, not Glen himself. Maybe Carol and Joyce didn’t get along and she thought her involvement would only make things worse. Maybe Glen never told Carol that he had a sister at all. Maybe Carol and Glen had thought that JOYCE was dead. Family, y’know?
In retrospect, the earlier movie presented a savage indictment of the USA’s treatment of its returning veterans: Glen ends up wandering the streets, mentally ill and with nothing to call his own, with as much as clothes on his back. This movie Sort Of follows up on that by depicting the buck-passing and incompetence of the government which is, after all, sort of OBLIGATED to help an ailing veteran (“Bert I. Gordon sticks it to THE MAN!” — Joel Robinson).
Do I think that Bert I. Gordon did that on purpose? Of course not. Yet, as Stephen King once noted of “Horror of Party Beach”‘s implied criticism of the USA’s dump-and-forget policy regarding nuclear waste, the very fact that a film with so little thought behind it addressed it, defaulted to it, demonstrates how such concerns permeated the zeitgeist of the times.
OSLT, I don’t have King’s “Danse Macabre” in front of me. 😉
#4 by ronald on May 27, 2021 - 7:57 am
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re “The Wraith”: As an agent of vengeance on [at some junctures] a motorcycle, the Wraith is also reminiscent of Marvel’s Ghost Rider [created during the era of Evel Knievel], although the latter debuted long before the former.
Some sources classify “The Wraith” as not just a horror movie but a super-hero movie [or at least a movie about a super-powered vigilante since defeating villains and only killing them when no other option is possible is much different than outright murdering them; the Wraith is more akin to the similarly attired Exterminator and his own eighties ilk, but no one wants to get into an argument about finer points], something which, frankly, I think the horror genre could stand to have more of [I’m not saying that there aren’t others, just that I think there should be more of them].
(To those who think that “Brightburn” qualifies as a super-hero movie…well, don’t by any means let me stop you from continuing to think that.)
It would, for instance, only take a few tweaks here and there for a slasher movie [sure, they’re out of vogue at the moment but they’ll be back] to also qualify as a super-hero movie. After all, what’s a Final Girl if not a heroine who, although usually sans super-powers, defeats a [usually] super-powered opponent with only her wits and her fighting prowess, a Black Widow or Catwoman in all but name and attire [and sans gimmicks, of course]? Any production company that has three or more such slasher movies under its belt has the seeds of a Cinematic Universe right there. IMHO. And if outright codenames and costumes would seem too campy (even for a slasher movie), well, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has neither and far more sources categorize HER as a super-hero [although I suppose “Slayer” can be considered a codename]. 🙂
#5 by RogerBW on May 27, 2021 - 2:41 pm
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War of the Colossal Beast: I’ve heard book marketers saying that they don’t like to put a big “2” or “3” on the cover because some significant number of buyers will say “oh, I really ought to read the first one first”, see that it’s not there on the shelf, and buy something else. So maybe Arkoff and Nicholson thought movie audiences would feel the same way? I got the impression that sequels in film only started to be a really big thing in the 1980s.
Or maybe they felt it was easier to tell basically the same story all over again if they claimed it was a different set of characters, rather than continuing the story that was basically over already…
Crimes of Passion: I guess if you employ Ken Russell when he’s coming off a break after Altered States, you should know at least roughly what you’re in for…
The Wraith: well, there’s the tradition of joss paper (“hell money”)… but you point out a fascinating narrative lacuna here, which presumably nobody noticed enough to fix while they were making the film. Because they were copying older dead-guy-revenge stories in low resolution?
The Video Dead: I’ve heard it argued that the original myth that became the vampire no-reflection thing was that they couldn’t abide to see their own likeness, and it’s interesting to see that come back here.
As for the wetness… I knew about DeepStar Six and Leviathan (and of course The Abyss), but I’d never heard of the other two. Thanks! (Well, I’d heard of Lords of the Deep from MST3K season 12, but I didn’t realise it was from the same year; I’d assumed from the look that it was a whole lot older.)
So Endless Descent was entirely new to me. I’ve seen R. Lee Ermey add a touch of class to a film (granted, in Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 – I mean, it’s not as if it were the original Omega Code which opens with Michael Ironside as an assassin in Hasidic disguise and never manages to top that) but I’m guessing this isn’t one of those. But I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for this.
Lords of the Deep is also educational, I think, because it shows just how establishing locations matters: it’s far more confused in terms of place than it needs to be because it never seems to know how you get from A to B. And that’s not a budgetary problem
DeepStar Six is one of the first films I remember seeing where my reactin was not so much that it was rubbish but that there was a lot of enjoyable stuff going on too. So that was one of the first steps on a road that eventually led me here.
It’s particularly interesting to me to consider the final act of that in conjunction with that of Leviathan, considering how similar they are in many respects. But where DeepStar ascends from disaster film to monster action, the big L forgets about its interesting people (all right, many of whom are now dead) and ideas in favour of standard monster action.
And maybe it’s just me but I really like that underwater worksite set that’s pretty much the first thing we see. I mean it’s crude and unergonomic and just the sort of thing you’d expect EvilCo to build on the cheap.
I had honestly not realised that that was Ernie Hudson.
#6 by PB210 on May 27, 2021 - 5:58 pm
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Regarding the Wraith:
Jake Kesey/Jamie Hankins: The forename James derives by etymology from Jacob, of which Jake serves as a nickname.
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“Some sources classify “The Wraith” as not just a horror movie but a super-hero movie:”.
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I may have suggested to John Clark to profile “The Wraith” along with the Robocop franchise.
https://haphazardstuff.com/superhero-series/
Sidebar: He will cover a Dick Tracy adaptation, which seems odd, as he started with George Reeve’s initial turn as Superman, rather than the 1940’s RKO DIck Tracy adaptations, of approximately the same length.
#7 by PB210 on May 27, 2021 - 6:22 pm
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“and if outright codenames and costumes would seem too campy (even for a slasher movie)”
Two of the Eternals will have a homosexual marriage in the adaptation, so concerns on homoeroticism seem less pressing. “Camp” seems to have started as a term amongst homosexuals.
#8 by ronald on May 27, 2021 - 7:18 pm
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““Camp” seems to have started as a term amongst homosexuals.”
Well, now it’s just a term, period. No subtext about gays was intended.
#9 by ronald on May 27, 2021 - 7:22 pm
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(continuation)
If it comes to that, why doesn’t Troma Entertainment re-imagine the Toxic Avenger films (the last of which indeed included outright super-heroes) as a Cinematic Universe? Why doesn’t Full Moon productions do that with its roster of Doll Man, Doctor Morbid, and others? Some components of the Godfrey Ho oeuvre (many of which admittedly don’t conform to even the most generous definition of “horror movie”) — not only super-powered ninjas but such figures as Robo Vampire — could also be so adapted. Heck, even Low Budget Productions (one of the most outrageous examples of “deliberately bad” filmmaking I’ve ever come across; seriously, Chris Seaver makes Lloyd Kaufman look subtle and refined)’s man-beast Teen Ape, barbarian Deathbone, and martial artist Bonejack could sort of maybe KIND of be re-worked in such a way.
It’s an idea whose time has IMHO come: The low-budget blockbuster. 🙂
The Wraith, back from the grave and out for vengeance, kind of qualifies as a slasher himself except that, unlike most slashers, he’s murdering the people who were ACTUALLY RESPONSIBLE for the horrible fate that he received rather than just whoever he runs across. IMHO horror movies could use more of THAT, too. There’s even the stock slasher figure of the useless law enforcement office in Sheriff Loomis although, oddly enough, he shares a name not with Sheriff Leight Brackett but with the reasonably competent Dr. Sam Loomis.
#10 by RogerBW on May 28, 2021 - 4:36 am
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“The low-budget blockbuster” – “apartmentbuster” maybe?
#11 by dawn on June 2, 2021 - 1:42 pm
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In a true example of serendipity, right after I read your review, ‘Leviathan’ was on tv. I read your review after I watched the movie, and enjoyed it even more.
Her eyes were colder than ice, weren’t they?