Re-Evaluating Bad Movies

Let's get a Renny Harlin retrospective thread going.

Nightmare 4 is my jam.

Cliffhanger over The Long Kiss Goodnight?

Also: Legend of Hercules is the funniest movie of the last decade.

Oh, that'll be coming in handy.

Oh, that'll be coming in handy.

PRISON (1988)
The movie stars Lane Smith, Perry White from the Lois & Clark show, as a hardass warden in a prison that’s haunted by a prisoner he executed. It’s a haunted house movie... but set in a prison. You can see why Harlin got hired for Freddy Krueger Part 4. He had the qualification to make an offbeat fantasy-horror movie. What impressed me the most is that Harlin managed to create suspense in an unlikely place. This isn’t necessarily camp. It’s mostly played straight. You’re expected to believe these are criminals serving their time and prison guards following the orders of an asshole warden. Then when the supernatural entity is unleashed you’re supposed to feel sympathy for all these people. It’s a lot to ask and he gets results. He does give us two “good” characters to identify with, a young Viggo Mortensen helping his fellow inmates and a government employee trying to right the wrongs of the warden, but it’s largely an ensemble. Harlin expects us to be invested in this environment and these people and go along with horror conventions. It’s a twist that Harlin managed to pull off.


THE DREAM MASTER (1988)
Before the worldwide acclaim of Lord of the Rings, New Line Cinema was the studio that Freddy built. The mainstream success of The Dream Warriors put Freddy Krueger on the pedestal of the horror genre and so New Line Cinema followed it with a sequel that did nothing but attempt to replicate the winning formula - but - lightening doesn’t always strike twice. With so much studio meddling, The Dream Master lacks the passion that made The Dream Warriors a beloved classic. Nonetheless, there are some good qualities. Alice, the new lead character played by Lisa Wilcox, is fun to watch and her friends are memorable and get excellent death scenes. That leads me to the special effects which are all great. It’s a shame it was paired off with an uninspired storyline. And yet, despite the lack in quality, The Dream Master was an even bigger financial success and remains, adjusted for inflation, the highest grossing film in the series. That’s without counting Freddy vs Jason. This was such a big deal that director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) got a phone call from Steven Spielberg to congratulate him. You have to love Hollywood sometimes.


DIE HARD 2 (1990)
Brace yourself for a controversial statement. Die Hard 2 is better than Die Hard 1. And this is not an opinion I arrived to lightly. It took me, like, 20 years to arrive at this conclusion. Die Hard is a classic. I'm not debating that. But it does have its issues that only get worse with each passing year. Die Hard 2, on the other hand, gets better with each viewing. And I figured out why. Stuff is happening. Let me explain. In Die Hard, Alan Rickman shows up at an office building and holds people hostage while making a bunch of empty threats. If you eliminate John McClane from the equation, nothing of importance happens. It's just a bunch of people sitting around. In Die Hard 2, the story is about mercenaries taking over an airport to rescue a drug lord who's being extradited to U.S. authorities. John McClane or no John McClane, serious stuff is happening. That's what makes Die Hard 2 so much fun to watch and an edge-of-your-seat action-thriller. Now, of course, this is where people start showing up and nitpicking the movie to death and pointing out every over-the-top scene. My answer: who cares? All the Die Hard movies are filled with nonsense and unrealistic scenarios. The point of this franchise is - or at least was - to put an average cop in extraordinary situations and Die Hard 2 succeeds in spectacular fashion.


CUTTHROAT ISLAND (1995)
You wanna know a secret about Cutthroat Island? It's actually a pretty good movie. It's your typical Old Hollywood style adventure film, but with a female in the lead role and some Michael Bay type explosions. So how did it end up being one of the most legendary flops in American cinema? Well... Carolco, the production company, was going bankrupt at the time. MGM, the distributor, was in the process of being sold. Michael Douglas dropped out before shooting began because he didn't want Geena Davis to be the star. Oliver Reed had to be fired for getting into bar fights. Critics and the press had to sell newspapers, so they wrote exaggerations about the movie and gave it a bad reputation. So, you know, the usual. But it's gonna be 20 years since Cutthroat Island was released and it's time for people to give it a second chance. It has a fun cast, great music, exciting action scenes and beautiful scenery.


THE EXORCIST (2004)

Instead of letting the Exorcist franchise burn in hell, Morgan Creek decided to finance a prequel directed by Paul Schrader. It follows the Priest from the first movie while he's in North Africa during the 1940's and first comes in contact with the demon all these movies revolve around. It's actually an okay movie, it's more about spirituality than horror. Had it not been about the Exorcist at all, it might have worked. Unfortunately, it IS a prequel to the Exorcist and Morgan Creek felt it needed to deliver an actual horror film, so they brought in Renny Harlin.

You read that correctly. Renny Harlin. If you need the toilet in your home to be fixed, you bring in Renny Harlin. You don't hire him to fix your movie. Harlin doesn't even attempt to tackle Schrader's version. He just made an entirely different movie that just happens to use the same locations and many of the same actors.

The key difference between the two is the Priest. In one version he's a man who has lost faith in humanity after his experiences in World War II. In the other, he's this Indiana Jones wannabe who comes across a demon during an archeological dig. It feels like a lesser version of Brendan Fraser's The Mummy. There's flashbacks to WWII, the only Schrader footage in the Harlin version, but it mostly feels forced and silly.

Audiences rightfully rejected the Harlin version in 2004, and the following year, Morgan Creek released the Schrader version to make amends. The damage, however, had been done. When it's all said and done, it's a giant waste of money and talent that there's an Exorcist franchise. They really should have stopped after the first one. Only good thing to come out of this whole series is Ennio Morricone's score from the second one.

It’s certainly.... problematic.... but I like it. It means well. It’ll be another 22 years before I watch it again, so I have no hard feelings about it. Hate sway...

I will not tolerate this bashing of the Son of the Pink Panther.

Cabaret is a movie that does this well. Life is Beautiful's first half is just Benigni bumbling around in the stereotypical "rich girl who's unhappy with her rich, arrogant fiancé finds love in the simpleton fool that treasures what's important in life" narrative that really only serves the purpose to have them bring a child into the story for the second half. It's a movie that manufactures every pandering emotion in an attempt to portray Benigni as the savior of the people. 

The premise of Life is Beautiful is a tricky one, but it can be done right. Never in the film does Benigni stop to ponder if what he's doing is morally dubious; he's too busy relishing being the heroic father that will shield his son from the evil of the world. It's the most embarrassing pat-on-the-back in movie history.

You don't like Cabaret? That's a damn good movie.

Benigni is not a good dude. He's a self-serving disgrace who took the easiest sentimental narrative he could (the Holocaust) to drub up empathy for his character. There are no real observations about anything, including the fact that he's an Italian supposedly reflecting on his country's role in the Holocaust. But he doesn't. Because if he had that kind of insight he would've never made Life is Beautiful, or at least had the chops to make it work. Life is Beautiful is shallow with nothing at all to say. It's a Mary Sue ego-trip that he 100% got the idea to make when he saw how many people responded to Schindler's List.