Universal Soldier (1992)

Tagline: The future has a bad attitude.

Curiosity: Dolph Lundgren. ’Nuff said.

Plot: In 1969, Pvt. Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is a soldier in the Vietnam War trying to stop his commanding officer, Sgt. Andrew Scott (Lundgren), from going batshit crazy and killing everyone. He saves... nobody. After Deveraux and Scott kill each other, the government covers up the slaughter and carts their bodies back to America.

Skip 25 years into the future, and the duo have been revived for an experimental new military operation called the Universal Soldier Program. Nicknamed “Unisols,” they don’t feel pain, don’t ignore orders, and always get the job done. Furthermore, their memories have been wiped; they’re as close to machines as people can get (Almost… Terminator-like, wouldn’t you say?). Only there’s a problem: Old memories eventually crawl back into the soldiers’ heads. That means Luc goes back to being a good guy and tries to protect a journalist (Ally Walker) who’s uncovered the zombie-like secret of the Unisols, and Andrew, well, he goes crazy again and starts killing. A lot.

Thoughts: Lundgren again knocks it out of the park as the villainous Sgt. Scott. He’s slow and deliberate in his atrocities, siphoning pleasure out of every second. Plus, his height advantage over Van Damme makes for some interesting images (check out that poster!). Speaking of the Van Damminator, I’m begrudgingly becoming a fan of his work. Where Lundgren goes big, Van Damme is understated as Luc Deveraux, as if he’s just woken up. It furthers the contrast between the two characters, and lends itself to some funny scenes. Also, he shows his butt a lot, which starts to become endearing after a while, in a weird way.

Oh yeah, and there are plenty of punching and explosions.

Reflection: Good movie, but the very last line of dialogue is a massive continuity error. For shame!

Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Tagline: This was the day the universe trembled before the demon forces of the killer planet!

Curiosity: SPACE VAMPIRES!

Plot: In a future where everyone wears the leather suits from X-Men­ and audio never synchs up with mouth movements, the crews of the ships the Argos and the Galliott respond to a distress call on a distant planet. After a disastrous landing, the crew of the Galliot, led by Captian Markary (Barry Sullivan), finds no survivors, either on the planet or the Argos. They explore the planet while their ship gets repaired, and discover a wrecked space ship of alien origin. Meanwhile, something sinister and unseen is taking over the crew members…

Thoughts: I thought I was going crazy at the time, but I’m not the only one who thought Planet of the Vampires had a lot in common with Alien. While director Ridley Scott denies having ever seen the film, it’s kind of hard not to see the similarities – distress call on a barren planet, mysterious attacks on the crew, claustrophobic locations, and technology that doesn’t do shit to save anybody. Of course, Alien was awesome and delivered on its title, two things that Planet of the Vampires does not do.

I’m calling shenanigans. I was promised vampires. In fact, I was promised a whole gosh dang planet of ’em. The creatures in this film are an invisible mind-controlling lot with parasitic qualities (like in Alien!). That’s not vampiric enough, clam flammit!

Also, this movie is thoroughly not awesome. It’s slow, the script keeps needlessly making up stupid sci-fi bullshit¸ and honestly not a whole lot happens until the big double twist ending, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, honestly. I’m not going to say Alien plagiarized Planet of the Vampires; it just made it better.

Reflection: No seriously, look at these suits:

I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

Tagline: If you think you know the secret…think twice.

Curiosity: When the special lady friend says she’s willing to watch a bad movie with me, I follow through.

Plot: We open on Dakota Moss (Lindsay Lohan), dressed in searing red, stripping and/or bleeding. It is hot and/or gross (OK, just gross). C-C-C-C-CUT to Aubrey Fleming (Lohan again), dressed in some seriously blue blues, being a talented artist. She plays piano and writes lurid pulp fiction for his English class that everyone likes (despite being kind of awful).

BUT THEN SHE DISAPPEARS.

There’s a killer out killin’ high school gals. He digs cutting off their limbs and then putting them in no-win scenarios, like tossing them in a lake. Gruesome stuff, and Aubrey is his next victim. BUT THEN A TWIST! Aubrey is found on the side of a road, sans an arm and a leg but still alive. Only she’s not Aubrey. She claims she’s the smoke-loving, sex-having, brassy ‘n’ sassy stripper Dakota Moss. Is it mistaken identity? Trauma? Better yet…will Aubrey/Dakota ever know who killed her? Find out all this and more, in Tim Burton’s The Parent Trap!

Thoughts: I try to hold off on spoilers (The Happening notwithstanding), but the filmmakers made little effort to conceal their big twist, from the big splashy use of color to denote characters to the got-damn winking poster slogan. Combine that with my therapist girlfriend’s freakish ability to figure out the killer like five minutes in, and I Know Who Killed Me is devoid of tension.

Oh yeah, and the title? That’s a line of dialogue. Someone looks into someone else’s eyes and says that line. I live for these moments. If Luke Skywalker looked at Yoda and said, “It’s time to end these Star Wars… with the return of the jedi,” and then made some sort of fist-pumping action, I would be ecstatic. Euphoric even.

So the twists are beat and the dialogue is awful. And yet, we both found I Know Who Killed Me compelling enough to sit through. The gore was surprising, perhaps because Lohan doesn’t really make this kind of a movie (or any movie) often. Director Chris Sivertson has a striking visual sense for a horror director, in that he uses blues and reds over muted browns and blacks and greens. The movie does pop, and I think Sivertson half-earns comparisons to Dario Argento. I say half because Argento’s movies are also good. Then again, Argento also has a knack for finding good locations, whereas Sivertson just kind of forces whatever color he needs into the frame. It is obnoxious how many blue things enter Aubrey’s life.

Reflection: I probably could have done without the cigarette-laden amputee sex scene that was used for comedic purposes. Poor Julia Ormond (First Knight, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) deserved better than that.

Kalifornia (1993)

Tagline: A state of fear and terror.

Curiosity: My special lady friend is a fan. Plus, it stars Brad Pitt in a rare villainous role. Plus plus, it’s got David Duchovny before I found out he was a super-gross sex addict, and it was filmed during his X-Files heyday!

Plot: Brian (Duchovny) is writing a book about serial killers, but it isn’t going well and he’s already spent his advance. His girlfriend Carrie (Michelle Forbes) is a confrontational, experimental photographer who’s too edgy for the establishment. By which I means she photographs boobies in black and white, which is classy. She’s all like, “No one understand my art; let’s get out of this scene.” So they do. Brian concocts a massive road trip in which he would visit famous murder sites to write about, and Carrie can photograph them. Gas is kind of an issue, though, so he puts up a flier looking for some passengers to chip in. In steps mega-hick Early (Brad Pitt) and his damaged girlfriend Adele (Juliette Lewis). While the whole thing starts off as the weirdest prolonged double date ever, the quartet soon finds overlapping interests, even friendship.

Except Early is an amoral killer, which may or may not put a damper on the whole trip.

Thoughts: Kalifornia is a good movie that could’ve been a great one. The film uses narration heavily, but to no real effect. As the protagonist, Duchovny swoops in to either comment on what just happened or spoil something that’s about to happen. Either way, he repeats key plot point for the slow kids. And at two hours, Lewis’ character actor shtick starts to wear thin after a while, even though her performance overall is pretty compelling. It takes a fine intricacy of personal issues to justify her character’s involvement with Early, and Lewis more or less nails it even though the film’s length forces her towards overexposure. And let’s be honest, there are a few too many convenient twists keeping Brian and Carrie alive and well.

But the performances keep the picture afloat. Pitt has never been particularly celebrated as a guy with range, but he is genuinely frightening as Early. Some might be turned off by his white trash-sploitation, but he manages to convey nuances that make the character alternately warm and horrific. See, Early isn’t evil; at least, he doesn’t have an agenda. He lacks moral comprehension, and to that end his character can be downright likeable. He kills because he thinks it’s necessary. Good and bad have nothing to do with it. Pitt captures this little switch from friend to murderer quite well. Not bad for the guy who did Meet Joe Black.

Reflection: Then again, 90 percent of Lewis’ dialogue is punctuated by loud guttural bursts. What’s up with that?

Gas-s-s-s (1971)

Tagline: Invite a few friends over to watch the end of the world!

Curiosity: It sounded like cheesy sci-fi movie. Turns out it was a satire helmed by schlockmeister Roger Corman.

Plot: Totally square adults in Alaska unleash a gas-s-s-s that kills anyone over the age of 25 – something about killing off all their neurons. The thoroughly pretentious hippies Coel (Bob Corff) and Cilla (Ellaine Giftos) decide to explore Texas and New Mexico after this cataclysmic event. Social satire occurs.

Thoughts: I’ve been bamboozled! Hoodwinked! Preharps even ever so slightly cuckolded? Little did I know that I was delving into the world of Roger Corman and *gulp* flower power. Gas-s-s-s takes broad strokes in explaining young people – all football players become rapists in the post-apocalypse, for example. Absurdist humor accompanies this. Gun fights are settled by naming actors instead of using bullets – Coel delivers a killing stroke by shouting “John Wayne!” Coel and Cilla engage in sex by naming big words, then climax by singing the word “orgasm.” Also available: stupid hippie peace platitudes, awkward attempts at being down with minorities, even more awkward rape humor, and the occasional free love segment.

The majority of the film, though, is dedicated to driving montages. Sometimes there’s a chase scene. Sometimes it’s folks going from one faux-surrealistic locale to another. But it’s always scored by Country Joe and The Fish. Every once in a while, the absurdist humor pays off – a pregnant character goes into labor, decides that a post-apocalypse is no place to raise a child, and cancels her delivery on the spot.

The rest of Gas-s-s-s doesn’t really pay off, though. The cast seems awfully smug in their free love bullshit, even though the film kind of tries to parody interracial relationships, which I did not realize needed parodying. In fact, the movie comes off a tad conservative in spots – rock ‘n’ roll and Native Americans are lampooned, while vegetarianism never comes up. Apparently, all you need for an alternative lifestyle is a ton of weed.

Reflection: As Gas-s-s-s, Erik the Viking, and Breeders taught me this week, rape just doesn’t lend itself to comedy.

Robocop (1987)

Tagline: Part man. Part machine. All cop. The future of law enforcement.

Curiosity: It’s about a cyborg cop. In Detroit!

Plot: In a totally dystopian, White Stripes-less future, Detroit (now called Old Detroit) is beset by crime and decay (just like the real Detroit!). Law enforcement is now handled by private corporations, in Detroit’s case, Omni Consumer Products (OCP). Under ethically questionable Senior President Dick Jones (Ronny Cox), they produce big, but not particularly effective, weapons like the ED-209, which tends to “accidentally” kill people even after they’ve surrendered. Also, it can’t use stairs. Awesome! When it becomes clear that ED-209 sucks balls, corporate upstart Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) steps in to recommend the Robocop program to OCP President (Dan O’Herlihy). Jones eats poop and hates it. Oh, how he hates it.

Meanwhile, Officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) reports to his new precinct and goes out for a drive with new partner Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen). They take on terrorist Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his cronies, which ends in Murphy being shot a gajillion times (although he does get off lightly compared to how ED-209 treats people). This guy is thoroughly dead. Which would suck for anyone else. See, OCP needs a body to create the first Robocop, a cyborg with a machine’s precision and a human’s bad dreams. Also, he gets a sweet gun. And so Detroit starts to suck a little less.

Thoughts: Director Paul Verhoeven (Showgirls, Starship Troopers, and other cult classics) is a man who appreciates the fine art of violence. Check out this scene where ED-209 goes haywire:

…and that’s the edited version.

In a way, his satirical take on Robocop – although I should just as much credit to screenwriters Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner – reminds me of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (FUN FACT: Miller penned the crappy Robocop sequels). Both satirize ’80s America, from its stupid-big cars to its vapid TV shows to Ronald Reagan. Robocop really does double as a comedy, taking digs at yuppies and corporate America, two things that still hit home in today’s economy. OCP’s second rate weapons system reminds me of the body armor debate from a few years back. Obviously, the jokes about ridiculously big cars (the 6000 S-U-X) still ring true.

It’s this critical eye that gives Robocop extra depth. Of course, it helps to have explosions. In fact, the crew bought a block’s of condemned buildings specifically so they could blow them up for a scene. AWESOME.

Reflect: Holy crap, I used the phrase “in today’s economy” and meant it.

Night of the Creeps (1986)

Tagline: The good news is your dates are here… The bad news is, they’re dead.

Curiosity: It’s the movie writer/director Fred Dekker created right before doing The Monster Squad.

Plot: In prologue one (of 35), two aliens attempt to stop a third from firing some sort of capsule out of their spaceship. In prologue two, we cut to Earth in the year 1959, where a college-age couple is parked at the local make out point for some zesty kissings. The girl’s ex-boyfriend Ray (Tom Atkins), a cop, is charged with sending all the sexual revelers home, as there is an escaped homicidal maniac on the loose. He gets his heartbroken, and the couple ignores his orders after they see something fall… FROM OUTER SPACE! They investigate. The dude gets attacked by whatever was in the capsule while the gal gets hacked to pieces by the killer on the loose. Got it? Good.

NOW IT’S 1986. Chris (Jason Lively) is a whiney little whiner looking to get laid. His best friend J.C. (Steve Marshall) tries to set him up with the similarly horny Cynthia (Jill Whitlow), but she’s got a dickhole frat boyfriend named Brad (Allan Kayser, Mama’s Family). Chris and J.C. try to impress Brad’s frat by breaking into the university medical center. Turns out they’ve got a frozen cadaver… THE GUY FROM THE SECOND PROLOGUE! They set him free, he turns out to be a zombie, they run, and then more space zombies appear. Now, only Chris can fight the dangerous hordes. Well, actually Cynthia and the now super crazy Ray do more work. And J.C. figures how the space zombies work. But Chris, uh… whines? Effectively?

Thoughts: Holy set-up! Night of the Creeps takes a while to get going, although I suppose I could have just explained the story as “Space zombies terrify horny college students.” In a way, it feels like a dry run for everything Dekker accomplished with The Monster Squad. Both films are spoofs of but also homages to B-movies. The Monster Squad just happened to be more focused in its love for the Universal monster movies. Creeps, meanwhile, is mostly a zombie flick, but with elements of sci-fi, slasher, and detective movies. It’s perhaps a little too obsessed with its own love of camp (One character even watches Plan 9 From Outer Space, which is perhaps the only time someone has namechecked that movie for credibility, while Ray at one point comments about being in a bad B-movie), but there’s still enough material to put the movie over.

It helps that Dekker sprinkles the film with some great bits and one-liners. Ray is deliciously crazy, with guns a-blazing and suicide a-planning. But the film works more as something to laugh at, whereas The Monster Squad is something to laugh with. Lively comes off as a bitchy jerk, and after a while I started to delight in his failures just a wee bit too much. Also up for hilarity: the film’s homosexual subtext. J.C. tells Chris two things repeatedly: That he loves him and that he wants him to be happy. And he really hammers it home, as if he can’t bring himself to tell Chris just how much he loves him nudge nudge wink wink say no more. Same goes for Brad’s relationship with his frat brothers – he has some designated to carry his shades for him and another to carry his backpack. They’re like his personal groomers. Through in the fact that he’s a frat (and the moustaches! My God the moustaches!), things seem a bit queer, though I’m sure Dekker would deny it.

Still, with B-movies, as long it holds your attention, they win. Night of the Creeps succeeds on the might of genre-bending, pretty good special effects, and that batshit crazy-crazy I lovingly called Detective Ray Cameron.

Reflection: The ending to the Director’s Cut is so, so much better than the theatrical ending.