FILM FRENZY

Toomorrow (Photo: Deaf Crocodile)

By Matt Brunson

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray, 4K, and DVD. Ratings are on a four-star scale.)

GRADUATION DAY (1981). Depending on one’s own opinion of what constitutes a slasher flick — e.g. many folks consider the 1981 Lauren Bacall-Michael Biehn movie The Fan to be one; I do not — the 1980s saw anywhere from 250 to 500 releases from this disreputable subgenre. Nineteen-eighty-one, the year after Friday the 13th really opened the floodgates that had been unlocked by 1978’s Halloween, saw approximately 50 gorefests competing for box office bucks, and it’s saying something that Graduation Day manages to be even worse than fellow ’81 offerings Friday the 13th Part 2, Halloween II, My Bloody Valentine, and Night School. It starts with high school athlete Laura Ramstead (Ruth Ann Llorens) dropping dead of a blood clot after winning a track meet. Her older sister Anne (Patch Mackenzie) comes to town to represent her at the upcoming graduation ceremony, and she’s but one of many who believe that it was the demanding style of Coach Michaels (Christopher George) that led to Laura’s unexpected death. But is the coach also the one behind the ensuing deaths of the other track team members, who are being slaughtered in gruesome fashion? Graduation Day is so wretchedly directed that the film takes on a surreal quality — not a plus in this case since this factor makes the movie seem even more painfully amateurish. Slasher films are known for their unique kills, but a couple on display here — one involving a football, the other a pole vault — are more idiotic than imaginative. A pre-Wheel of Fortune Vanna White and future Scream Queen Linnea Quigley appear as two of the potential teen victims.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by writer-producer David Baughn; an introduction by Troma head Lloyd Kaufman; and interviews with Baughn, Mackenzie, Quigley, writer-director-producer Herb Freed, and editor Martin Jay Sadoff.

Movie: ★

JOHNNY HANDSOME (1989). An eye-catching cast and director Walter Hill’s typically muscular style help propel what’s ultimately a disappointing take on an interesting concept. Mickey Rourke stars as Johnny Handsome, mockingly given that nickname because of his severe facial deformity (somewhere just below The Elephant Man territory). A longtime criminal, he helps his best friend Mikey (Stuart Wilson) pull off a heist, one which goes tragically wrong after the pair are betrayed by their pond-scum accomplices Sunny (Ellen Barkin) and Rafe (Lance Henriksen). While in prison, Johnny is approached by Dr. Resher (Forest Whitaker), who informs him that he can give him a new face as part of a medical experimentation. Johnny agrees, and after the bandages come off, he really is Johnny Handsome. He lands a respectable job and even acquires a girlfriend (Elizabeth McGovern), but he’s dogged by the suspicious Lieutenant Drones (Morgan Freeman), who’s convinced that Johnny will eventually seek revenge on Sunny and Rafe. With Dr. Resher explicitly stating that a pretty-boy countenance should be enough to turn Johnny into a respectable citizen, the movie seeks to explore the notion that an unfortunate physical appearance could potentially lead a person to embark on a life of crime (a notion I would expect many to find offensive). But by not delving more into Johnny’s past, it’s just paying lip service to the idea, with the vested interest more in the conventional revenge plot. Freeman gets the majority of the memorable lines — I was particularly amused when he refers to Whitaker’s brilliant and respected doctor as a “fucking quack.”

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include film historian audio commentary, and interviews with Hill, writer Ken Friedman, makeup artist Michael Westmore, and stuntman Allan Graff.

Movie: ★★½

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987). Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the Cannon Group head honchos who never found a property they couldn’t cheapen (see: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace), probably weren’t the right guys to oversee what they breathlessly claimed would be the next Star Wars. Of course, these were the same gents who had boasted that their 1986 Chuck Norris actioner The Delta Force would be Cannon’s first film to gross $100M domestically — it topped out at $17M — so it was always best to take their ramblings with a grain or 2,000 of salt. Based on the Mattel toy franchise and preceded by the popular animated series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, it stars Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, an otherworldly stud locked in constant battle with the evil Skeletor (Frank Langella). Stranded on Earth alongside his companions Man-at-Arms (Jon Cypher), Teela (Chelsea Field), and Gwildor (Billy Barty), He-Man ends up needing the help of two teenagers (Courteney Cox, at this point still best known for her role in Brian De Palma’s music video for Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark, and Robert Duncan McNeill) to return home and defeat his nemesis. Chintzy in the extreme, Masters of the Universe is too dull to generate the sense of wonder and excitement required of this sort of sci-fi fare. Lundgren, coming off his breakthrough turn as Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, physically looks the part but provides absolutely nothing in the way of charm, magnetism or rooting interest. A far more expensive film version appeared just this past summer, but it proved to be an even bigger box office bomb (that one hits 4K/DVD on October 20).

The 4K + Blu-ray edition offers the theatrical version as well as an extended cut. Extras include audio commentary by director Gary Goddard; audio commentary by production designer William Stout; a vintage behind-the-scenes piece;  and interviews with Stout, McNeill, and Anthony De Longis (who portrays the villainous Blade).

Movie: ★½

RANDOM HARVEST (1942). The soap is lathered into a fine frenzy in this adaptation of James Hilton’s novel, even if it never really gets into the eyes. Ronald Colman stars as Charles Rainier, a British officer who suffers memory loss toward the end of World War II and is committed to a special section in a rural asylum. Known there as John Smith, he wanders away when no one is looking and meets sympathetic showgirl Paula Ridgeway (Greer Garson) — they eventually marry and are fabulously happy, as his writing career takes off and they’re expecting a baby. But a bump from a moving taxi cab while alone in a big city brings back his memories — he now recalls his name and his heritage, but he has completely forgotten the past three years, including the fact that a pregnant wife is waiting for him to return. He settles back into his old life, getting engaged to his stepdaughter Kitty (Susan Peters) and taking over the family business. He also acquires a new secretary, a woman who is closer to him than he could ever imagine… Mervyn LeRoy’s muted direction and a no-nonsense performance from Colman prevent this from ever getting too mawkish, but it also paradoxically keeps it from being the three-hankie melodrama that many will desire. This earned seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Actor (Colman), Supporting Actress (Peters), Director, and Screenplay; Garson, meanwhile, won the Best Actress Oscar for an even bigger 1942 release, the Best Picture winner Mrs. Miniver.

Blu-ray extras consist of two 1942 Oscar-nominated live-action shorts, Don’t Talk and Marines in the Making; a 1944 radio broadcast of Random Harvest with Colman and Garson; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

THE SEVENTH CROSS (1944). One of the first major credits for Oscar-winning director Fred Zinnemann (From Here to Eternity), The Seventh Cross precedes 1950’s Sunset Boulevard in that, as with William Holden’s Joe Gillis in the later picture, this one is also narrated by a dead man. After seven prisoners of war escape from a Nazi concentration camp, seven crosses are mounted on the property, with the purpose of crucifying each prisoner after he’s recaptured. The first to be picked up and killed is Wallau (Ray Collins), who then narrates the entirety of the picture. Six of the seven men are quickly recaptured, leaving Wallau to focus on relating the exploits of the seventh: George Heisler (Spencer Tracy), a hardened man who sees no good in anyone. As he hits a nearby town looking for those who can help him escape from Germany, he turns to many people, never knowing which ones he can trust and which ones might turn him in. Among the friend-or-foe possibilities are the friendly Paul Roeder (Hume Cronyn), his timid wife Liesel (Jessica Tandy), and a wary waitress (Signe Hasso) at the local inn. Wallau’s moralizing is laid on too thickly, but there’s genuine intrigue in ascertaining who might betray George. Cronyn and Tandy were married in 1942 and remained together until her death in 1994 (he would pass away in 2003) — they appeared together in approximately a dozen movies, of which this was the first (the eternal lovebirds also worked together on 10 plays). Cronyn earned the film’s only Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor (Tandy would win Best Actress 47 years later for Driving Miss Daisy).

Blu-ray extras consist of three live-action shorts directed by Zinnemann: 1939’s One Against the World, 1941’s Oscar-nominated Forbidden Passage, and 1941’s Your Last Act; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

TOOMORROW (1970). Before Physical, before Grease, and even before Have You Never Been Mellow, there was Toomorrow. The brainchild of the Monkees song manager Donald Kirshner and James Bond co-producer Harry Saltzman, it was an attempt to manufacture a band from scratch (a la the Monkees) and promote it with a movie, an album, and more. Olivia Newton-John was one of the chosen ones, making up the band alongside Benny Thomas, Vic Cooper, and Karl Chambers — plans were in place to go big, but a troubled production resulted in only a one-week run in a London movie theater, after which the group was disbanded and the film and soundtrack went AWOL for over 40 years. For those who can get on its groovy, goofy wavelength, it’s worthy of discovery. Directed by Val Guest (the first two Quatermass flicks) and featuring visual effects by Star Wars Oscar winner John Stears, it’s an extremely likable lark in which an extra-terrestrial Alphoid (Roy Dotrice) going under the earth name John Williams (ha) is ordered by his superiors to make contact with the college kids who form the band Toomorrow, since it’s their music and their music alone (sorry, Mick, Bob, and McCartney/Lennon!) that can save their race. The majority of the picture focuses on the foursome going about their daily routines, and their chemistry is so easy-going and their chatter so amusing that you’d swear they were also roommates in real life. The latter portion is when the Alphoids figure heavily in the plot, and these segments come complete with trippy effects.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by pop music historian Andrew Sandoval; a 1988 discussion with Guest about the film’s difficult production; a 1998 interview with Guest; a video essay; and The Nose Has It!, a 1942 short directed by Guest.

Movie: ★★★

FILM CLIPS

GUYVER: DARK HERO (1994). Superior to 1991’s The Guyver (reviewed here), this sequel finds Sean Barker/The Guyver (David Hayter, an uptick from the previous picture’s Jack Armstrong) joining an archaeological expedition in Utah that might hold the key to unanswered questions involving the Guyvers and the destructive Zoanoids. Overlong at 123 minutes and thus privy to drawn-out scenes and subplots, this at least jettisons the unbearably jokey attitude that helped make the original a frequently wince-inducing experience.

The Blu-ray offers the original cut as well as (aping Lucas) an enhanced version with newly created visual effects (I opted for the OG FX). Extras include audio commentary by director Steve Wang; interviews with Wang, Hayter, and co-star Kathy Christopherson; and photo and artwork galleries.

Movie: ★★½

THE SISTERS (1938). Despite two studio superstars heading the cast, this is one of the lesser efforts from Warner Bros. during its Golden Age. Although based on a novel of the same name, Sister Act might have been a better title for the movie, considering the sisters played by Anita Louise and Jane Bryan are required to share the back seat in order to allow Bette Davis to dominate the proceedings as Louise Elliott, struggling through an ill-advised marriage to drunken, self-pitying sports writer Frank Medlin (Errol Flynn). Even a guest appearance by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake can’t shake this to life, and the ending is particularly weak (as it turns out, the work of meddling preview audiences).

Blu-ray extras include the studio blooper reel Breakdowns of 1938; the 1938 live-action short Night Intruder; and a 1939 radio broadcast of The Sisters, starring Irene Dunne and David Niven.

Movie: ★★

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

THE LAST METRO (1980). Arriving on the heels of the violent and critical war movies that appeared during the second half of the 1970s — films like Germany’s The Tin Drum and Italy’s Seven Beauties, to say nothing of Hollywood’s spate of Vietnam war flicks — France’s The Last Metro (Le Dernier Métro) almost seems as if it hails from a different period of cinema, bringing to mind the humor of 1942’s To Be Or Not to Be and the sentimentality of 1943’s Watch on the Rhine more than the bleakness of its cinematic contemporaries. That’s hardly surprising, though, considering not only the fact that this was largely inspired by writer-director François Truffaut’s own rose-colored memories of his childhood during World War II but also that the picture functions as the auteur’s loving ode to theater (just as his 1973 Oscar winner Day for Night served as his tribute to filmmaking). When Jewish stage director Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent) is forced to flee Paris after the Nazi takeover, it’s up to his wife Marion (Catherine Deneuve) to take complete control and keep their theater afloat. But while everyone thinks that Lucas has hightailed it to South America, only Marion knows that he’s actually hiding in the building’s cellar, doing his best to keep his spirits up and figuring out a way to remain involved in the daily rehearsals taking place above him. Deneuve is radiant in the central role, while co-star Gerard Depardieu offers up his usual combo platter of swagger, sweetness, and sophistication as the matinee star who also happens to be a member of the French Resistance. This earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

Movie: ★★★

MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY (2008). Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is the sort of airy confection that was dismissed by many as a pleasant but forgettable bauble, and that’s OK. But those open to it will discover its pleasures are not only bountiful but durable. It’s romantic without being cynical, witty without being puerile, and blessed by two divine performances from Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. McDormand plays the title character, a British maid in 1939 London who all too suddenly finds herself unemployed. Desperate to remain off the streets, she dupes her way into the position of social secretary to American actress Delysia Lafosse (Adams), an opportunistic if sweet-natured starlet whose biggest problem seems to be choosing between one of two playboys (Tom Payne and Mark Strong) who can advance her career or a struggling pianist (Lee Pace) who truly loves her. Yeah, I know: It’s a no-brainer guessing who gets her hand by the fade-out. Yet despite Adam’s enchanting screwball-style performance, the film’s true delight doesn’t rest with Delysia’s affairs of the heart but with Miss Pettigrew’s. A prim woman who lost her beloved during the First World War, Miss Pettigrew has long given up on any chance at romance. That a potential suitor comes along in the form of a successful clothing designer (Ciaran Hinds) seems just right, not only by the demands of the storyline but by the demands of our own hearts. McDormand sells her character with utter conviction, and the only thing possibly more praiseworthy than Miss Pettigrew is the movie that bears her name.

Movie: ★★★½

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (2014). There’s a moment late in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when one of our shell-stocked heroes woos plucky reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox) by playing the song “Happy Together.” The joke, of course, is that the group behind that classic song was The Turtles — this fact isn’t mentioned in the movie, meaning it’s the only gag over the course of 100 minutes that’s specifically targeted at adults. The rest of the film, though, seems aggressively geared toward kids who aren’t particularly bright. Then again, that’s generally the modus operandi of Michael Bay, who’s attached as producer and whose sticky fingers are all over this thing (the director is Battle Los Angeles helmer Jonathan Liebesman). The major problem with this TMNT — aside from its impersonal nature, mediocre performances, sloppy script, and unseemly visual style — rests with the title characters themselves. I was decidedly not a fan of the three live-action TMNT films that appeared in the 1990s, but in retrospect, maybe placing four actors in cheap turtle suits wasn’t such a bad idea. It certainly bests the approach here, which is to use CGI to make hulking monstrosities out of Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Donatello (unless you’re a fan, you’ll need more than their color-coordinated headbands to tell them apart). Looking as if they’ve been ingesting steroids their entire lives, these ripped reptiles are almost as visually off-putting as their mentor, the rat Splinter, all of them created in a mock-realistic style when all anyone really desires is pure fantasy. The action set-pieces are choreographed fairly well, and there’s a climactic skirmish between the quartet and the villainous Shredder (Tohoru Masamune), set atop a towering edifice, that delivers the goods. For these reasons, I’ll graciously give these heroes in a half-shell an extra half-star.

Movie: ★½

VISITING HOURS (1982) / BAD DREAMS (1988) / THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1989). For your perusal (or rejection), here are three more 80s-era slasher flicks.

The Canadian release Visiting Hours is the best of the bunch, if only because it sports an interesting cast (I’ve always admired the theatrical poster design as well). Oscar winner Lee Grant (Shampoo) stars as Deborah Ballin, a feminist TV journalist who so rankles psychotic misogynist Colt Hawker (Scanners‘ Michael Ironside) that he tries to kill her in her own home. She survives the attack and is sent to the local hospital to recuperate; Colt, however, isn’t finished, so he hides out in the hospital looking for a chance to strike. Deborah’s boss (William Shatner) isn’t around enough to be much help, leaving the task of aiding Deborah from her assailant to a young nurse (Linda Purl of Happy Days, Matlock, and countless other TV productions). For the most part, this is a routine slasher flick, although director Jean Claude Lord does display some occasional innovation in his shot selections.

There’s almost no innovation in Bad Dreams, which registers as a blatant rip-off of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series. Jennifer Rubin plays Cynthia, the only survivor of a cult led by the fanatical Harris (Richard Lynch). Spending 13 years in a coma, she finally awakens, remembering nothing of the fire that killed Harris and the rest of his followers. Now in a psychiatric ward overseen by Dr. Berrisford (Harris Yulin) and Dr. Karmen (Bruce Abbott), she comes to believe that Harris has returned from the grave to torment her. It can’t all be in her mind, though, as someone is bumping off her fellow patients. The twist ending isn’t bad, but everything else is dreary and derivative. Look — or maybe listen — for Charles Fleischer (the voice of Roger Rabbit) and Elizabeth Dailey (the voice of The Powerpuff Girls‘ Buttercup and Rugrats‘ Tommy Pickles) in small roles.

“But wait!,” you protest. “The Phantom of the Opera isn’t a slasher yarn!” Well, it is now. In this umpteenth screen version of Gaston Leroux’s venerable tale, it’s A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Robert Englund who’s cast as the disfigured madman, with Jill Schoelen co-starring as his beloved Christine. Englund brings none of the pathos that charged the iconic performances by Lon Chaney (1925 version) and Claude Rains (1943 version), and while the film initially appears as if it will intriguingly move the story up to modern times, that’s merely a ruse, and the result is a dreary and gory rendering of a story we know all too well. The most interesting element is catching sight of a young Molly Shannon (in her film debut) and a young (well, at 39, younger) Bill Nighy.

Visiting Hours: ★★

Bad Dreams: ★½

The Phantom of the Opera: ★½