The Devil’s Rain, the mafia-financed(!) horror flick from 1975, is blessed with a dubious honor — it made Roger Ebert’s list of most hated films. Roger Ebert was a brilliant film critic, but something of a stick in the mud. Sure, this film is silly, the plot meanders and is sometimes contradictory, and the ending is far too drawn out, but I can think of many, many more films to hate before even considering The Devil’s Rain. In fact, I don’t have to think about it at all, since I have a list handy, and The Devil’s Rain is better than any movie in the bottom fifty in said list. So there, Roger. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Devil’s Rain”
Some of Those Responsible: Tom Skerritt
Empty Balcony: Top Gun
Beware films made with the full cooperation of the United States’ military. Without fail, such films are heavy on the heroics and jingoism, and do little to portray the full costs of war, and life in the military. Oftentimes, they are little more than recruiting films, pieces of propaganda aimed at high school-aged males full of testosterone and lacking direction in their lives. Also, these movies tend to be weighted heavily against showing the day-to-day drudgery that typifies the life of the average enlisted man or woman, reducing them to background automatons. Rather, such films are usually focused on glorified versions of officers and non-coms, their duties also scrubbed clean of anything resembling work. Even that most foul bane of soldiers and sailors everywhere — chickenshit — is almost nonexistent. But, who wants to see any of that, anyway? The American military has the coolest toys in the world, and it’s nice to see where our tax dollars are being spent once in a while, even if the resulting film has all the depth of a puddle. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Top Gun”
October Horrorshow, Retroactive: Alien
Always beware when a series of films has been labeled a franchise. Often it can mean that any effort to bring quality to the screen has been abandoned to embrace the industry’s insulting perceptions of mass taste. Such has been the fate of the Alien series of movies. The last entry that remained within the original continuity, Alien: Resurrection, was so awful it effectively killed the series. Since then, it has truly embraced the franchise label, making reality longstanding plans to team up with the Predator franchise, following a trail the comic book wings of the two brands began blazing in the 1980’s. Continue reading “October Horrorshow, Retroactive: Alien”