Blade Runner -- 1982 -- R

A futuristic sci-fi offering with Harrison Ford as a Blade Runner named Deckard, a person who tracks down a certain model of android and "retires" them. The movie follows 4 of these androids and his quest to take them down.

The movie was very cerebral in nature with lots of exposition about genetics and making these androids who are lifelike. There were some action scenes, but not very many of them. The characters tended to be very flat in nature, which would have been more expected had this film delivered more of a thrill ride. Ford's character, though ostesibly the main character, didn't get rounded out very well at all. We learned nothing of his past at all to give him any kind of depth, so his actions appeared to be primarily plot driven. 

The final scene climbing around the outside of the building should have had more punch to it, but it felt very anti-climactic since I was uncertain as to why he would have chosen outside as a viable option since the stairs would have been far more logical.

The androids' fear of dying was put forth fairly well, but it didn't really create much tension as it was probably intended to. To finalize the whole thing, the movie ended somewhat ambiguously, whch considering how ambiguous the movie was throughout, was entirely appropriate.

The verdict? It was ok and kind of weird, but lacked a little something to make it good.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street -- 1982 -- NR

The 1982 video recording of the 1979 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim at the height of his career. Sondheim has not turned out a show like this before or since. It was simply awesome. I have loved this story and cast recording every since I got it several years ago, and seeing it played out on stage was a real treat. 

hile the basic story is familiar to everyone (Sweeney Todd kills people giving them "close shaves" and Mrs. Lovett, his downstairs neighbor, uses the flesh for her meat pies with great success), this takes the horror and makes it into a melodrama where Sweeney Todd becomes a sympathetic character wrongly accused and sent to prison so the evil Judge can get ahold of his wife. When Sweeney returns having escaped prison, his wife is dead and his daughter, who was one when he was sent away, is now a ward of the judge, and the judge is planning to marry her. Sweeney wants his revenge and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it. 

It a wonderful revision of the gritty horror story of Todd and Lovett, and Sondheim's score makes it truly a cut above the rest.

Friday the 13th Part 3 -- 1982 -- R

I do try to find some kind of redeemable quality in movies, but this one really didn't do it for me. I guess the actors and people had some work for awhile, but it was hardly worth it. Let me count a few ways in which this film had problems.

We start with a flashback to Part 2 to see how it ended. Unlike Part 1's flashback, this one did not serve much of any real purpose other than to kill about 5 minutes and establish that we are 1 day following the end of that film.

We move on to some people who apparently live somewhere near Crystal Lake, but this is where we find problem number one. Friday the 13th has a simple premise: kill anyone who camps on Crystal Lake. These people (the first victims) had apparentlylived in this location for some time and even owned a store there. Why did he attack them? Why now? And the dude: no wipe, no flush? He deserved to die.

Anyway, we move onto the main girl and her horny friends, and she's going out to a farm house that she hasn't been to in 2 years. Apparently her family lived there prior to that time, undisturbed. So at some point, Jason decided the whole lake was his, and this occurred some where betwee parts 1 and 2. Figure out why. I dare you. Actually, I beg you. I have no idea and the movie didn't go into it.

So miss skittish reacts to every noise and sound she hears. A scream? Must run and check it out. She went out to the van and commented on the door being open, and she knew she'd left it closed. Hm. There are about 8 other people who could open it, and big surprise, one of them did. Also, these caracters check out every single frigging noise they hear. Who does this? A tree branch rustles. Who's there? Maybe the wind? It got very old, very fast.

They go into town for a second and run into this 80's gang, who of course, go out to this farm and get hacked. One of them even heard the obligatory noise and checked it out. Guess what happened the her... These guys served no purpose in the plot narrative beyond some early fodder and syphoning the gas out of the tank. One might think this created a no escape for the protagonist, but there were other, much more believable ways to do this rather than creating 3 kills for Jason. Well, one of them died, and then came back in the end or a helping hand only to die again. Weird. Maybe it's something in the water, since we will see Jason in another 8 films after dying in this one.

There were also highly curious instances of characters passing points where other characters died without noticing any blood. For some of those kills, there would be blood. Lots of it. It ain't coming out of the carpet. It happened multiple times to distraction.

A final comment on my complaint section would be some bizarre reference to "The Wild Bunch" like we've suddenly landed ourselves in the series finale of a bad sitcom. By that time, my eyes has rolled so many times that I about fell over.

Now, one significant point in this film that simpl must be mentioned is that this is the film where Jason first dons his legendary hockey mask. It is first worn by a character named Shelley (a male), who is probably the best developed character in the film. He isn't another teen cliche like everyone else. He attempts a slight character arc before he dies, but his arc was overshadowed by all the other crap in this movie.

Finally, they get kudos at one point because I did jump when the guy flopped out of the tree.

The plot attempted a shred of originality in that it involved a girl coming to face her demons at her old home with her friends. She didn't come for drinking, partying, or sex. She had a run in with Jason a couple years before, and we don't know fully what happened there, but she lived and left soon after. This was just to prove to herself that she could face the old homestead again. Where her parents are is anyone's guess.

Unfortunately, despite a decent premise, it went downhill quickly. There were so many kills in this film that occurred so close together that it got boring in the middle. I nearly fast forwarded it to the third act so something would happen again. It began rehashing elements from the first two films after awhile. The two main characters separate while everyone else is hacked. Two characters upstairs have sex and die. Kevin Bacon's death is redone. As in the end of 1, the survivor hops in a boat and then has a nightmare of someone coming up from the deep and dragging her under.

I could probably go on for awhile, but I recall doing that with two. These people need a script doctor to go over this tripe before they film it. There are a ton of talented people on the net who could do this, and I know quite a few. With all the talent available, stuff like this doesn't have to get out there.

Amityville II: The Possession -- 1982 -- R

The Amityville Horror gave us a big old house with an ugly secret past: a guy had killed his entire family for an unknown reason one year before. Amityville promises to take us back to that event and what led up to it, meaning we, as an audience, are placed in the superior position right from the beginning. Unfortunately, what we get is a prequel ridden with continuity errors when compared to the history given to us by the original along with a cut-and-paste combo of the first film plus The Exorcist.

We start with a family of six purchasing the notorious property and moving in, and right from the beginning, stuff starts happening. The mother gets bad feelings from something out of the depths of an unknown chamber of the basement which leads her right from the beginning to beg her new priest to bless the house. Well, the priest is originally driven out by her abusive husband, leading her to get hubby to go down to the church and apologize, which allows the demonic presence to possess the son, destined by part 1 to wipe everyone out.

This is likely why the movie does not make this rather significant event the focal point of the story as the actual murders occur at the story's midpoint. From here, we move to focus on the priest and his dealing with the possession of Sonny (I find the name's usage amusing; I don't know about you) and convincing the authorities that as a person, he is innocent of his crimes because of being possessed of by a demon. Yeah, the judge wasn't convinced either. If you've seen the Exorcist, you know how this will turn out: "Take me! Take me!" Wait, what genre am I watching again?

Plotwise, the almost direct rehashing of two insanely popular horror flicks really hurts this story. There's not a shred of originality to it, and a monkey could have probably strung this together. I will say that the pacing is well done -- far better than the original, really -- but the rehasing of Amityville material after only one film in the franchise along with lifting the plot of the Exorcist for the second half serves to make a film that is wholly forgettable.

Add to these plot issues that of continuity with the original film. One of the plot points of the original is that the dad starts looking like Sonny, growing out this big, bushy beard to give an unkept look. Sonny in this one never grows a beard, nor does it look like he even could. In fact, he shaves rather religiously during the 2 or 3 day total plot. That's actually the biggest problem here. In the original film, the house has a dockhouse or something behind it on the water. This film has a dock, but no house. Dad was never given time to build one.

Finally, with the plot, in the first film there was an implication that the possession of Sonny created the haunting. In this one, the evil spirits already existed and the house for sale, making me wonder what came before this. Were there other families driven from this house? A cheap backstory scene gives some info about the house's history making me feel like they could drive the story backward even further if they wanted to making this movie not the beginning, but only a small piece of a larger whole.

The characters are 90% cliche. The younger children are deliberately underdevloped so when the inevitable occurs, we don't feel so bad. The teen is given a sin to her name, so we don't feel so bad when she goes. The dad is a total stereotype of abusiveness and anit-church, so we're glad when he gets wiped out. Mom is stereotyped as well being the polar opposite of dad and beating the children because they are sinful. Bottom line is we're not given a sympathetic thread for much of anyone in this house, so when they all die, we're glad to see them go. Good riddance. You've done the human race a favor.

So it was a poor attempt at a sequel to a film that wasn't all that scary to begin with. It had its moments, and it was paced well, but that wasn't enough to save it from its own rehashed plot, and more convoluted history. If an original turn had been taken, that would have helped this immensely, and while I would say there are only so many ways to do a haunted house story, we still occasionally get some that give us something new on the genre (The Grudge and even Poltergeist which came out in 1982 as well) meaning that this could have been more, but it wasn't.

The Thing -- 1982 -- R

Been waiting awhile to watch this one. I’ve seen it crop up on list after list of great movies, and not just in the horror category either. It’s got an unlikely title to be a good movie, but great movies are made of character and plot, not out of cornball titles (though a good title does help, I grant).

The Thing is about a group of scientists in the Antarctic who come into possession of a dog that was being chased by a crazy Norweigian with a gun. The first part of the film is a slow build from there as they work to figure out what happened to these Norweigians and what possessed them to chase this dog with firearms. After some digging, they become even more curious about everything when they find the Norweigian camp burned out with a patch outside the camp with a burned, deformed body.

The plot continues to thicken as more discoveries are made and the mystery of the dog is unveiled. It runs like a slow-burning fuse throughout, with the plot continuing to grow and unwind and a nice mix of action, character, plot, and intrigue. All the wonderful freakiness within the plot is fully covered before anything happens, and it manages to keep its secrets and twists to itself until it’s good and ready to reveal them.

When it comes to character, it ran a lot like Alien in that there were quite a few characters with some getting more screen time than others, and some being a bit more recognizable than others. We get a really good sense of who everyone is, however, and when the "infected one" is revealed, it comes as a complete surprise to me. It’s one of those things where it takes a couple of watchings to keep track of everyone, but the film does a fair enough of trying to keep track of so many characters and making us care enough to stay glued.

When it comes to originality here, it does lack a little bit. There are a few original elements, and it does enough to make us forget that we’ve seen similar things before, but that Alien reference is but one familiarity here. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a huge similarity, since one thing this alien does is duplicate the DNA of its host and take over in the host’s body. The whole "aliens are coming down to kill us all" runs a bit tiresome when it comes to film plots as well, and its a central point to this one’s plot.

So it is a retread, but it’s a good one, and one worth watching that a good job was done on. It has some creative elements and enough originality to keep me watching. The characters are better than average for this sort of movie, so when it comes to weighing all the elements out, it works really well, and is a pretty good watch.