Chucky as a killer Internet device

CHILD'S PLAY (2019)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

A Vietnamese worker at a doll factory has to make Buddi hi-tech dolls, designed to be lifelong friends for their "masters." The worker is fired by his irate boss, told to finish making the doll before his exit. Then the worker decides, out of spite, to remove all the safety protocols of the doll. Interesting opening until the worker commits suicide by jumping from a window and landing on a car. Why? I don't know. I don't look for much logic in a Chucky movie but this movie, an unnecessary remake of the 1988 film of the same name, has lots of moments that make you go, "huh?" 

Andy is now a 13-year-old hearing-impaired kid (Gabriel Bateman) who has trouble associating with the new kids on the block. His mother, Karen (Aubrey Plaza,) works at ZedMart (I suppose a knockoff of WalMart) which happens to sell those Buddi dolls. Karen loves her son and tries to spice up his days with a new Buddi doll that somehow works by being connected to the Internet and all other working WI-FI devices - think of this new Chucky as the demented doll version of Amazon's Alexa except with spooky eyes that turn red. Chucky wants to please Andy which means that without the doll's safety protocols, it is inspired by watching clips of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" (!) and the doll kills anyone who makes Andy irate. This includes the cat (watch out animal lovers); Karen's bastard of a boyfriend who happens to be married; the maintenance guy who installs surveillance cameras and some in people's houses (not to mention keeping an eye on Karen when she disrobes in the bathroom), etc. We are also introduced to Andy's new friends, an unremarkable bunch of teens, and a curious cop who lives with his mother down the hall from Andy.

Wait a doggone minute - why have so many characters who are barely given much depth? Take Karen's indifferent boyfriend - he's a bastard to her and Andy. That is all there is so it is easy to accept his comeuppance by Chucky, but did it have to be that grisly? The poor guy falls from a ladder, breaks his legs, is practically strangled by Christmas lights and gets his face torn off (thanks to Chucky's imitation of similar grisliness in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie.) Then there is the maintenance guy, a sexually deviant creep to be sure, who is stabbed by Chucky on the chest and the legs and then gets sliced up as ground meat by a table saw. Was this necessary? I won't even talk about the cop's mother in a scene that might make anyone squeamish about taking a driver-less Lyft ever again. 

"Child's Play" has able support from Gabriel Bateman as Andy though his actions are often questionably dumb (the severed head as a birthday gift for the cops' mother that can only be opened on his birthday is one for the slasher film books of unbelievably stupid situations). Aside from him, everyone else in this film exists as fresh kills for Chucky except for (SPOILER ALERT) Andy's poor mother. But why would a corporation install safety protocols for a doll that could turn murderously violent if those protocols were not installed? That is a deep question for a movie that is already overcooked in just about every way imaginable. The Chucky doll is creepy (with an added dimension of subtle malice from Mark Hamill's voice) and the film perhaps does the job of a serviceable bloody slasher film. I prefer the tongue-in-cheek attitude of the 1988 original.

Unwatchable one-dimensional Bruce as the shark

JAWS 3-D (1983)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The original title for what was going to be an actual spoof of "Jaws" was "Jaws 3, People 0," an appropriate title. This stupid, senseless sequel shot in poor 3-D with poorer special-effects and, even worse, a shark with little to no mobility not only moves at a snail's pace it also has no energy. Every shot is static, and that goes for the actors.

There is one scene of vibrant energy between Bess Armstrong, Dennis Quaid and John Putch. Dennis Quaid is one of the engineers of Sea World, Bess plays his girlfriend, a marine biologist, and John Putch plays Quaid's younger brother (the brothers are the Brodys, supposedly the offspring of Chief Brody from the first two films). Putch arrives at Sea World, greets his brother and his girlfriend - it is a scene of harmonic bliss, a sense of real mutual love between them. Other than that, there is an inspired bit where we see a victim struggling inside the mouth of the shark! That is all folks.

"Jaws 3-D" is not a movie - it is a series of scenes searching for a movie. Its only justification for its existence is that, along with the "Amityvilles" and the "Friday the 13ths" of that year, it is in 3-D. Leaving aside three dimensions of its one-dimensional story and characters, the infrequent shark attacks are less fearsome than usual, just minor bloody affairs that wouldn't scare a 9-year-old (the big cut on Lea Thompson's leg, her feature debut by the way, is about as gory as this film gets). Looking back, the first "Jaws" was a sensational thriller with great, colorful characters like Quint (Robert Shaw) who was as crazy as the shark was. "Jaws 2" was a snoozer with occasional support from Roy Scheider who had to carry that inferior sequel on his shoulders. This movie is so lazy, so clumsily patched together that you forget what Lou Gossett Jr.'s role is supposed to be, other than staring with a deadpan look at monitors in a control room. The effects are so shoddy that it all looks dark and murky in the  underwater scenes thus making it hard to decipher one character from the other. In some instances, you can't tell the difference between a shark and a dolphin! Skip this addle-brained sequel and watch the Spielberg classic all over again.

Andromeda Strain with a shot of Rambo

OUTBREAK (1995)

A 2020 Look Back by Jerry Saravia

"Outbreak" is one of those Hollywood earthbound-virus-threatening-humanity flicks that looks a little silly today, in light of the worldwide threat of the Coronavirus. Though based on the book "Crisis in the Hot Zone" which dealt with the horrors of the Ebola virus, the movie starts strong and then segues into some last-minute rescue attempts and incredible foresight from its lead character, a hero with amazing intuitive powers played by none other than Dustin Hoffman. The whole affair is somehow contrived, underwhelming and a bit cheap - trivializing real-life horrors when it comes to an airborne virus that nearly decimates an entire town and threatens to go worldwide. We will get into the silliness that seeps in after some established early scary scenes.

Hoffman is an Army Colonel who is also a disease expert. He gets wind of a virus outbreak in Zaire (the virus is known as the Motaba virus considering its proximity to Motaba River Valley of Zaire), the location of which a similar outbreak had happened 20-plus years earlier and, while wearing a hazmat suit and tracking the area  with a group of scientists, he discovers it is not airborne. Daniels is convinced it will spread like wildfire yet his superior (always a pleasing presence by Morgan Freeman) doesn't want to cause alarm. Nevertheless, the virus does spread through its cute little host, a frosty-haired monkey. First, the virus spreads in a ship headed to America, then some foolish guy (Patrick Dempsey) sells the monkey after already contracting the virus, then a pet store has the monkey, and then the virus enters a movie theater and eventually an entire California town where martial-law is instituted. People get sick with too much expediency and the horror becomes palpable and frightening, at least for a while. The virus is deadly beyond belief, though it has been proven scientifically to be inaccurate, and it not only causes bleeding from the eyes, ears and the mouth but it also liquefies internal organs! This is Ebola times 100. It also develops in your cells within an hour, though again such a virus would take longer (Check for the science behind "Outbreak" and "Contagion" at https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-contagion-pushed-hollywood-to-get-science-right).

The first hour of "Outbreak" is electrifyingly exciting, tense beyond belief and scary. We see how this virus travels and,  through the magic of notable cinematographer Michael Ballhaus ("GoodFellas"), the deadly paths it takes on unsuspecting people as the particles travel through the air infecting everyone is infectious (pardon the pun) cinema. This virus mutates and becomes airborne and even if the science is faulty, the effect these scenes had on me back then resonated and still do today, in light of the respiratory Coronoavirus we have to contend with. Seeing people wearing masks in the town of Cedar Creek brings the realism home, especially all the makeshift hospital beds where patients are dropping like flies. 

"Outbreak," unfortunately, still has the same problems it did 25 years ago - it is "The Andromeda Strain" with an adrenaline shot of "Rambo" action scenes. Yes, Hoffman gets to be an action hero-of-sorts as he improbably convinces two Army pilots not to bomb the town of Cedar Creek to kingdom come. I am sorry, what? How he convinces them is laughable (and I will not divulge it here). We have a few action scenes where Daniels and a daredevil pilot (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), who scoffs at the devastation the virus has wrought, are chased and shot at by Army pilots under the command of  Major General Donald "Donnie" McClintock (Donald Sutherland, who oozes menaces as he always can). McClintock's evil nature is resolved in a scene by Morgan Freeman as Brigadier General Billy Ford, MD that strains credibility. Even further straining credibility is Daniels' amazing ability to generate an antiserum from Brigadier General Ford, who has handily kept the original serum from the Zaire incident of 25 years earlier, and mix it with the monkey's antibodies. All this is done in an hour to save Daniels' former wife, also a disease expert (played with grace by Rene Russo). Logically speaking, this could take longer than an hour (see above article) and the contrivance of tracking down that damn monkey in record time is almost too unbelievable. This would probably take years to do everything that is accomplished in the shortest time span imaginable.

"Outbreak" is entertaining to a fault yet its strong start is diminished by contrived scenes and action elements that do not mesh with what should have been a disturbing, eye-opening thriller.  It assumes that nobody wants to see a deadly airborne virus destroying humanity as a doomsday thriller as the action heroics are brought in to save the day. Who would've thought that it would take a Dustin Hoffman character to save the world. Not this movie critic. And with our current pandemic and the race to find a vaccine that could logically take a year if not years, "Outbreak" seems redundantly harebrained in comparison to real-life.

Return of Navarone-style WW2 stories

THE SEA WOLVES (1980)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Prepare yourself for one of my favorite war movie genres - the WW2 escapist stories involving spies, double-crosses and a motley crew of heroes. Sure, by the time "The Sea Wolves was released in 1980, such stories seemed to escape the fancy of most. How can anyone though resist the charms of Gregory Peck, David Niven, Trevor Howard and Roger Moore? I can't. 

Based on actual events in 1943 (complete with actual photos during the end credits), British Intelligence officers get wind of a Nazi radio ship that is stationed off the coast of India, specifically Goa which is a neutral Portuguese colony. Neutrality means no British ships can attack the German ship which is transmitting top secret information to U-boats. A mission spearheaded by Col. Lewis Pugh (Gregory Peck) and Capt. Gavin Stewart (Roger Moore) called Operation Creek calls to action the efforts of the Calcutta Light Horse. These retired British, pot-bellied officers who play polo are members of the Calcutta Light Horse and, without special mention, compensation or even commendation, will covertly attack a German merchant ship by taking off on a dirty riverboat and pretend to be drunks. The Calcutta Light Horse brigade is led by Col. W.H. Grice (David Niven), who adds some spice to this already classy production. Trevor Howard, by the way, plays an officer who arranges for brothels to be free of charge to the Nazis during this raid.

"The Sea Wolves" has everything you'd expect from a World War II yarn, including a villainous British woman/German agent (Barbara Kellerman, icy to the core) who romances Moore's Capt. Stewart, who pretends to run a coffee business; an explosives expert (Patrick MacNee, who has too few scenes); the strategies involving the attack which I always find fun; the diversions that include an exclusive party and fireworks display, and much more. The difficulty of maintaining the riverboat allows for sporadic humor - it always looks like the boat is about come apart like paper while the engineer does his best to fuel it with often limited success.

"The Sea Wolves" is often exciting with a doozy of a climax involving the attack, though none of this comes close to the power and vitality of say "The Guns of Navarone" (which Peck and Niven starred in). Still, it is engaging, the heroes are a colorful bunch (Peck's line readings always rivet the attention) and the cast makes it work even if we have seen it all before. Hooray to the Calcutta Light Horse!

Amen to a dismal Armageddon

THE FINAL CONFLICT (1981)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

In the early 1980's, we started receiving cable TV channels such as Cinemax and HBO (Home Box Office as it once was called). I recalled reading our cable guide of upcoming theatrical releases headed to one of those channels. I saw the ad for "Omen III: The Final Conflict" with a close-up of a smiling Damien Thorn as played by Sam Neill (seen above). It freaked me out and I knew it just might be too intense for this viewer. I did not see it till much later and let's say the scare factor was solely depicted in that ad. The movie is insanely dumb, almost as bad as "Damien: Omen II" which had only one good scene (young Damien being tested of historical war dates). Sam Neill never comes across as threatening and the story goes from inspired to bombastically stupid within the first interminable hour.

Damien Thorn is now the Ambassador to Great Britain, just like his father in the original film. He gets the job by throwing just a little pressure on the President of the U.S. (Mason Adams, who could've used more scenes) though Damien realizes he might have to relinquish control of Thorn Industries. "Oh, don't worry about that," says the President though little else is mentioned about Thorn Industries. The rest of the film focuses on seven priests each armed with the daggers of Meggido, ready to assassinate Damien the Antichrist. However, despite a couple of moments of vague suspense like the elongated fox hunt sequence where two priests try to trap Damien with a dead fox that brings the hounds together, the movie has few payoffs even with such sequences, especially the opening involving the former Ambassador who offs himself with the help of...oh, why bother saying it. Also, the plot involves a constellation that signals the Second Coming so Damien wants every child born between certain hours on March 24th to be killed. This all leads to a silly anticlimax where Damien looks for Jesus: "Come on out Nazarene!" Wow, how devilish of him considering this could lead to Armageddon. Sadly, no.

None of the killings, of which include killing babies offscreen thankfully, merit much in the way of shock or the most rudimentary thrills. It all feels very neutered, very safe, nothing of which I would expect from an "Omen" flick. Sam Neill is far too bland (though I like his speech to a congregation on the hills, sort of a sick joke on the Sermon on the Mount) and the whole film lacks urgency, danger or any degree of involvement. It is all so hopelessly boring and blah and disconnected, including the priests who look like bargain basement scavengers (Rossano Brazzi is a solid choice to play a priest but he's given nothing to do). In the original "Omen," you had Gregory Peck as the determined father who sought to destroy the Antichrist despite his own doubts - you rooted for him. There is no one to root for in this movie.

 You might get a little chill from one scene involving a future disciple to Damien (who becomes some sort of detective!) who dutifully does the Antichrist's bidding. A few little chills sprinkled in infrequent doses is hardly worth the effort. Amen.

Stallone goes to head-to-head with Terrorist Hauer

NIGHTHAWKS (1981)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Nighthawks" is an incredibly over-the-top though occasionally diverting movie that could've used tighter pacing for a cop thriller - put it this way, "The French Connection" and "The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three" are far tighter and better paced. This film is exciting in spades but too often, the build-up is not quite there to sustain some incredible looking stunts.

"Nighthawks" has a chilling villain at its core, an international terrorist a la Carlos the Jackal named Heymar Reinhardt, alias Wulfgar (Rutger Hauer who sends chills to the bone). In an early scene, he bombs a London department store. Children are killed during the bombing and this irks some of his associates in the terrorist world.  

Enter Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams as New York undercover cops who become part of a team to thwart Wulfgar, who has moved to New York and changed his appearance through the divine art of plastic surgery. Stallone and Williams are briefed on Wulfgar's personality, his expensive taste and his need to live with women and run around in nightclubs. For some odd reason, Wulfgar keeps an arsenal of explosives in his girlfriend's apartment...could he not hide them somewhere else like a locker at Penn Station? The point is for these two supercops to think like him and this process is fascinating yet never explored in much depth. All we know is Stallone doesn't want innocent people killed.

"Nighthawks" unfolds with a more or less a steady rate of suspenseful scenes but Wulfgar is too enigmatic to understand - he is a terrorist who kills without much provocation (ditto his partner in crime played by Persis Khambata who is even more underwritten). At first Wulfgar bombs a few banks in New York at night and calls the media to glorify his position, but to what end? When he holds UN delegates in a Roosevelt Island cable car, he predictably kills one of them but his purpose is more sadistic than political. Of course, we root for the cops to nail him yet this could easily have been an extended episode of either "Dragnet" or "Adam-12" only with a lot more grit.

Stallone and Williams (sporting a Superman shirt) are well-cast yet their characters are severely underwritten. Stallone has a girlfriend who works in the fashion district (Lindsay Wagner in a blink-and-you-will-miss role) - either beef up her role or cut it out, one of the most thankless woman roles of the 80's (and I am not including those sex-starved Fort Lauderdale-type comedies). Still, the film deliver its action quota though, at times, it feels as if it needed more lubrication in its motor to keep it running (the cable car footage goes on way past the tolerable meter). The ending is a nail-biter and a keeper and Hauer is memorably chilling. The movie just needed more pizzazz.

There is more than meets the camera eye

LAKE MUNGO (2008)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Lake Mungo" is not a straight horror film nor is it in the found footage category. It is more of a domestic drama of grief over the loss of a young woman, someone who may or may not be lurking in the homestead as a ghost.

Ghost stories always enthrall me but this one is on some other level - it is about the humanity of a family that is trying to work its way through a grave loss. The young woman is Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker), a sixteen-year-old who has a boyfriend and several friends and loves to hang out and have fun. Nothing unusual about that until she is found dead in a lake, an apparent drowning. Her parents, June Palmer (Rosie Traynor) and Russell Palmer (David Pledger) try to move on yet Alice's brother, Mathew (Martin Sharpe) who loves photography, begins setting up video cameras in the house at night. When reviewing the footage, it is clear that Alice appears in fuzzy form, sometimes in a mirror reflection or walking around in shadow form from one room to the other. The parents consult a local, sympathetic psychic named Ray Kemeny (who initially records conversations with people under hypnosis) and they set up a seance that is recorded by Mathew. It turns out, thanks to Mathew, that this whole scenario with Alice's ghost is a hoax, or is she lurking in areas of the house we least suspected?

"Lake Mungo" is a straight-laced mockumentary yet it is so exceedingly well acted that I believed this family really was enduring an unimaginable ordeal. Both Rosie Traynor and David Pledger make this all believable, including Mathew who's unsure of how to deal with his sister's death. We understand his need to continue making us believe she exists in spirit. Even Steve Jodrell as Ray Kemeny is a bit skeptical yet he grows fond of the family - he is also uniquely credible as the psychic.

"Lake Mungo" unfolds with a few revelations that I did not anticipate, and a bone-chilling scene that is completely unforgettable. Shot in Australia, the film has stunning shots of the desertscapes at sundown and some amazing time-lapse photography of the night skies (Sure, we have seen that before but the Australian skies are something to behold). The interiors of the house are welcoming yet eerie, even after we discover the hoax which may not be fully manufactured. It is a film about seeing the unbelievable and then finding that there is more than meets the camera eye. "Lake Mungo" is a treasure worth visiting.