Tag: 1995 in Film

Stallone Month: Judge Dredd

Judge Dredd, the comic sprung from the minds of writers John Wagner and Alan Grant, has perhaps the most fully realized fictional universe in all of human storytelling. Every week since the late 1970s, with only a single exception, an issue of 2000 AD has been published with a Judge Dredd story inside. Since that time, the titular Judge Dredd and supporting characters have aged along with the rest of us, and the universe has retained the same continuity. Meanwhile, Judge Dredd’s superhero competitors retcon their universes ever time their sales need a punch up. DC recently carried out its 2nd reboot in five years. Continue reading “Stallone Month: Judge Dredd”

October Horrorshow: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

Woe be to the viewer when a film series becomes tired. At first there was innovation, followed by repetition. Afterwards comes mediocrity, before, finally, the series descends into total and utter garbage. Such is the case with the last film in this year’s Horrorshow, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. From the opening scene through denouement, the sixth entry in the Halloween franchise is a tedious affair. So tedious, in fact, that I was worried I wouldn’t be able to pay enough attention to this movie to write about it. It was a close call. More than once while I was watching a text message would come in or I would want to look up a member of the cast or crew on the internet, and any deviation in my focus threatened to derail my comprehension of on screen events. How could I possibly write a review of this dog if I couldn’t remember what I just saw? I’ve stopped watching films after fifteen or twenty minutes and still written reviews, but the difference between those films and this one is that, although I only spent a short time with those films, I was able to keep my focus. Halloween 6 was a struggle from beginning to end. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers”

October Horrorshow: Village of the Damned (1995)

The October Horrorshow continues here on Missile Test with a film from the latter half of John Carpenter’s career. The man whose work has inspired no less than three remakes (with more on the way) was no stranger to remakes himself, having previously applied his unique talents to The Thing. More than a decade later, 1995 saw the release of Village of the Damned, a remake of the 1960 British production of the same name. Carpenter’s Village of the Damned is not that bad of a film, but it suffers from the same great flaw that typifies much of his work. That is, the ideas in the film are better than the execution. Carpenter flicks will get the gears turning, a good thing, but in Village of the Damned, like in They Live or even a classic such as Escape from New York, so much territory feels left unexplored. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Village of the Damned (1995)”