31 Days of Halloween

I knew that when I posted it. It might be his best movie.

It's awesome.

Film Three: The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
For the last eight years I’ve made a point of watching through one of my Universal Monsters Legacy collections but now I’ve finally watched through all of those but there is one Universal monster I do still want to explore: The Phantom of the Opera. They didn’t make a whole bunch of sequels to that and there isn’t a Legacy edition so I’ve decided that I will instead watch a handful of different adaptations of the story that various studios have attempted over the years starting with the first and most famous of them: the Lon Chaney version that Universal released in 1925. This version is almost certainly most famous for Chaney’s performance and the makeup used for the movie is rightfully iconic. The movie is famous for three really great scenes: the unmasking, the color Bal Masque sequence, and the climax where the phantom is being chased by a mob. Those great sequences are more than enough to build a legacy on but I do think there are better silent horror films out there, many of them made in Europe and specifically Germany and these movies generally have creepier tones. This one by contrast feels a bit Hollywood in sensibility and it has a couple of plot holes (which may well be because of the many, many, many versions of this that are out there and I admittedly watched the prettier but less complete 1929 re-issue version). Still, this is definitely a classic that has more than earned its way into film history.

**** out of Five

I haven't watched Jaws 2-4 since I was a little kid but I used to watch them all the time despite how bad I knew they were even when I was 9.  Jaws The Revenge is just one of the worst movies put to film.

I watch Jaws all the time honestly. Still amazing.

Wow.

Right up Ian's alley.

Day Four: Jawsathon Part Two


Jaws 3-D


Jaws 3-D is rightfully considered one of the worst sequels of all-time, but I wanna start talking about some things the film does right. I like that the film is tyring to do something different by moving the action away from Amity Island and to Sea World. That opens up the possibilities a bit. I also like Dennis Quaid as Brody's son more than whoever played the role in Jaws 2, though the character is still not very interesting. Anyway, that about ends my section on the positives because the rest of this film is pretty terrible. This probably goes without saying, but the 3-D effects here are laughably bad. The most infamous shot is that of the shark colliding with the glass, but none of the effects look good. The film also spends way too much time following the characters at Sea World before they are aware of the shark's presence. These characters aren't interesting and most of the things the film sets up are not paid off. There are also a lot of scenes dedicated to just showing the various acts and animals of Sea World perform.

Finally in the third act, the Great White is unleashed at Sea World and you think the film might provide some schlocky fun, but that isn't really the case either. The film doesn't really do anything fun with the shark attacks and ends up squandering its setting. There is one cool moment where we see someone inside the shark's mouth trying to get out, but that's the only moment that delivers on its shark action. Most of the other attacks fizzle out. The film's final shot is also really dumb. I didn't expect Jaws 3-D to be good, but I did hope it would at least provide some dumb entertainment. That isn't the case.

D-


Jaws: The Revenge


As the title would expect, this film is all about vengeance. Specifically, a shark's vengeance on the Brody family, presumably for killing all of its shark buddies. The film opens with the youngest Brody son being mauled to death by a Great White. Brody widow Ellen moves to the Bahamas with her eldest son, a marine biologist. She is assured that sharks stay out of the waters in that part of the world as they are too warm. However just a few days later, the Great White has arrived in the Bahamas for Brody blood.

That premise is obviously absurd and has been rightfully mocked by audiences since 1987. The fact that Jaws: The Revenge is a dumb movie isn't surprising, what is surprising is just how boring the film is. Instead of using it's ludicrous premise to go balls out and make some schlock, the filmmakers seem to still be under the impression they're making a serious film. Much of the screentime is spent simply observing the boring characters. Bringing Ellen Brody back as someone in grieving isn't a bad idea, but the execution is pretty weak. The dialogue she's given is pretty hokey and the whole idea is undercut by idiocy like the notion that Ellen and the shark have a psychic connection. Most everybody else is just boring and their character development doesn't really go anywhere. I don't care about any of these people. Michael Caine's natural charm is there but this was a well-documented paycheck film for Caine and that does show.

I might have been able to overlook some of this if the film was more fun. Jaws: The Revenge should have gone full-on schlock, with a lot more shark attacks and bloodshed. That wouldn't have made for a good film, but at least it might have been entertaining. However there aren't many shark attacks here, and the few we get are very poor. Either they are a jumbled mess of editing where we get a bunch of quick close-ups of a shark mouth and then see the aftermath (such as the opening set-piece), or they have a crappy looking fake shark awkwardly slapping against a boat. Even the build-up to these sequences is terrible. Often times a character will just turn around and see the shark in a flat shot. Or we'll just see the shark's fin going through the water. There's never any suspense. I criticized the set-pieces in the other sequels, but they really hit a new low here. The big finale is equally bland while also featuring some poorly used-slow motion.

All told, Jaws: The Revenge is terrible, but it's not the kind of mess that leaves you confounded and angry. In fact, that's actually kind of a problem. Much as I've bitched about movies like Batman and Robin or Alien: Resurrection, at least those films are interesting in their awfulness. Those are fascinating trainwrecks you can't look away from. Jaws: The Revenge is inept, but not hilariously so, and most scenes are just boring.

F

So far the only movie you've discussed that I've heard of is Frankenhooker.

The guy who directed that one does have something of a following with genre/exploitation aficionados.

So basically you're telling me there's a legion of Neverendings out there.  Good to know.

Film Five: Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
I never really liked the original Hellraiser that much, but there were some interesting ideas in it and for whatever reason I was curious to see more even though very few people seem to like the sequels. Hellraiser II is… well it’s certainly flawed but it was better than I expected it to be, I might have even liked it a little better than the first movie if only because it gets to the point faster. The movie certainly has more of that signature Hellraiser blood, gore, and weird sadomasochism but also adds a touch of Lovecraftian weirdness as the characters actually go into hell or whatever alternate dimension the cenobites come from. The movie’s fatal flaw (outside of its budgetary limits) is that the rules of the supernatural goings on in this movie and probably in the series as a whole makes very little sense and seems largely inconsistent. I don’t know, I’ve long thought that the Hellraiser franchise would be a good candidate for a Hollywood reboot because there are clearly ideas to be mined from it that could be executed a lot better.

** out of Five