Kategoria: 1988

#990 In Country (1989)

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In Country is a drama about a young girl who lost his father in the Vietnam war before she was born and who now on the verge of adulthood is set out to know more about his father through reading his old letters and trying to discuss with his former brothers in arms. Problem is, nobody wants to tear open the old wounds.

The movie never grasped me and the themes In Country tries to convey of coming to age mixed with shadows of the war and healing are obvious, but delivered in a way that is supposed to be touching, but end up indifferent. The big promised revelations of the plot never actually materialise and the powerful ending just does not speak to me.

Bruce Willis does a likeable, but very Bruce Willis like performance as the uncle suffering with PTSD, but his performance alone is not a good reason enough to warrant watching through the movie.

80s-o-meter: 81%

Total: 51%

#981 Freeway (1988)

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Remember when you used to cable surf around the channels and came upon a late night thriller that wasn’t that good but decent enough to stop the surfing and just gaze upon until you feel drowsy enough to go to the bed? Freeway is definitely one of these thrillers.

A demented priest is cruising around Californian freeways, blasting away passengers in other cars. If you’re familiar with the Last Action Hero, this is that very same movie Los Angeles where you can shoot other people, explode their cars and hang around to gloat without no other passers by nor the police showing around to make things more complicated for the killer. This is not actually a complaint as I very much love this other movie world, but more of a notification to set the mood so that you know what you’re dealing with here.

Freeway is an atmospheric, highly implausible, somewhat entertaining, totally forgettable late 80s thriller whose only real sin is the way that it somehow manages to get very little mileage out of its antagonist, played by Billy Drago, one of the most iconic movie villains of the era.

80s-o-meter: 89%

Total: 62%

#980 Hot to Trot (1988)

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Bobcat Goldthwait from the Police Academy fame stars in Hot to Trot, a horrific train wreck of a comedy and a sad, sad attempt at both movie making and humour.

Often one of the zaniest and funnies of side characters, it soon becomes painfully apparent that Bobcat just doesn’t have the comedic chops to carry a feature film in a leading role. In his defence he alone is not to blame for this disaster as the both the the manuscript and the concept of a talking horse are simply idiotic.

The biggest crime here is how the movie completely manages to waste the comedic chops of Dabney Coleman, who’s usually sidesplitting in his typecast ruthless middle-aged business executive roles. John Candy’s time as the talking horse is equally wasted here, but let’s face it; he probably canned the dubbing on a lunch break while shooting some actual comedy somewhere.

80s-o-meter: 85%

Total: 2%

#979 Stealing Home (1988)

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Stealing Home takes place on two timelines: The present where a washed-up baseball player is put in charge of the cremated remains of Katie, his long lost childhood love, and the in flashbacks from the past when she was still alive and he very much in love with her.

Mark Harmon doesn’t quite cut it as the disheartened alcoholic as he manages to look clean cut even with a stub and a bottle of whisky in his hand. I do applaud the movie in the way it handles the romance, lost love and death as a drama without being your typical marketing team driven chick flick (sic). This uncalculating approach is probably the reason why it didn’t fare that well at the box office.

Jodie Foster is always a treat to watch on the silver screen, and Stealing Home makes no exception. Her effortless and natural depiction of Katie manages to put a lot of flesh on the bone of the multi-layered, mysterious character that is no more. And I’m sure many of us viewers have no problem sharing the crush Billy has on her.

80s-o-meter: 72%

Total: 77%

#976 Halloween 2018: Waxwork (1988)

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A group of kids get invited to a wax museum where the exhibits come to life in Waxwork, a horror movie made in the best tradition of the late 80s Hollywood cinema.

While a triumph in most aspects, my only grief with the movie is that the waxwork theme would’ve lent itself for even more imaginative and outrageous wax scenes than the ones presented here – excluding one specific scene with Marquis de Sade that goes a bit too far out for my taste.

Waxwork offers some unique, tongue in cheek, Amazing Stories style of entertainment that’s admittedly a bit tame as a horror movie, but very recommendable as an adventure with a spooky twist to it. The movie would go on to gain a weaker sequel, Waxwork II: Lost in Time, released in 1992.

80s-o-meter: 94%

Total: 87%

#970 Halloween 2018: Hobgoblins (1988)

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Hobgoblins features some hairy monsters that resemble quite a lot those of Gremlins, although the director and writer Rick Sloane insists coming up with the idea well before Gremlins was released. Be that as it may the creatures featured here are dodgy hand puppets light years behind those of Gremlins and the actors’ interaction with them is mostly rolling around the ground holding the limp plush toys and then throwing them outside the camera view.

The start of the movie does show some promise, with a night watch discovering a closed vault inside an old movie studio where the Hobgoblins have been kept until now. But what happens next is a series of unfortunate design choices that make a little sense, including one act in a night club that could be longest and most tedious scenes I’ve had to witness.

Shot on short ends – leftover reels purchased from other productions – with apparently some decent gear, the movie manages to look much better than its shoelace budget suggests. The non existing plot become obvious with the tedious padding added for the movie to to make it to the 90 minute mark, resulting in multiple scenes that should’ve been left on the cutting room floor.

80s-o-meter: 85%

Total: 36%

#963 Halloween 2018: Hack-o-Lantern aka Halloween Night aka The Damning (1988)

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A low budget, direct-to-video horror movie known by many names, Hack-o-Lantern follows a satanic cult that sacrifices its victims on Halloween eves, run by a hillbilly granpa who this year he aims to initiate his mullet-sporting nephew Tommy as the new cult leader.

As soon as you hear there’s also a totally uncalled for impromptu stand-up comedy routine, tons of huge eighties hair and a trashy rock music video dream sequence ending up with the band members vanishing into thin air and the guitarist getting his head chopped off with a pitchfork you’d think you’re in to a real b-movie treat. But this potentially hilariously absurd concept is never followed up with any coherent plot, and the movie itself ends up something of a snooze fest.

Hack-o-Lantern has much of the right elements for a cult classic, but thanks to a total lack of direction the movie soon becomes uninteresting, ending up somewhat of a chore to watch through.

80s-o-meter: 72%

Total: 28%

#957 Halloween 2018: Sleepaway Camp 3 – Teenage Wasteland (1989)

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Shot back to back with the second part, Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland picks up the ’story’ one year after the events seen in the sequel.

On the thematic level the movie continues exactly where it left off previously, so it’s more of the same old. But this time around the movie seems even more relaxed and out there with the antagonist almost yawning as she wipes out the campers one by one. Some unnecessary flashbacks are added to the movie in an obvious attempt to make it run a few minutes longer.

Teenage Wasteland is utter garbage, but on the other hand it’s enjoyably loose and indifferent about it all, and that’s something I can still respect on some level.

80s-o-meter: 89%

Total: 53%

#956 Halloween 2018: Sleepaway Camp 2 – Unhappy Campers (1988)

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Shot five years after the original, Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers has a very little to do with the original. Sure, the summer camp motif is still there, but this time around its all for chuckles, laughs, titties and gore.

As a horror spoof Sleepaway Camp 2 is better than most of its peers, but as a movie it’s shallow as a puddle killfest where your mileage will depend on how much you enjoy witnessing the various ways the antagonist rubs out her victims. Made for a definite film to sit through with your brains switched off, I can’t but to help that the genre would still lend itself for a bit wittier spoofing than what’s on offer here.

80s-o-meter: 88%

Total: 51%

#954 Halloween 2018: Pumpkinhead (1988)

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When do the film makers learn? No matter how proud you are of your antagonist, overexposing it rarely works to your movie’s advance.

Such is the case with the Pumpkinhead, a horror cult classic following events of a vicious circle of revenge and the following regret. The odd, twisted atmosphere here is among the best of the best and gets better and more intense as the movie progresses. It is therefore a huge letdown that the summoned demonic beast is not kept as a mysterious dark force, but takes form of a sort of a overgrown alien mother, which – as neat as it looks – just doesn’t look or feel menacing enough to warrant the amount of screen time it gets.

Lance Henriksen is a perfect choice to play the father at his wit’s end, and the movie does wrap up in satisfying way after the few missteps it takes on its way there.

80s-o-meter: 92%

Total: 81%

#952 Halloween 2018: Scarecrows (1988)

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Scarecrows starts off with a bang as we cut to an aeroplane that’s been hijacked by mercenaries, and one of them betrays the others and jumps out of the plane with all their loot. The others perform an emergency landing and before too long they find themselves in a remote farmhouse surrounded by scarecrows that aren’t too welcoming for the trespassers.

Killer scarecrows is a delicate subject that could go very easily wrong. Luckily the movie manages to make its antagonists fierce and eery enough to convey the presence of the evil lurking outside the cabin. Despite the short running length of the movie, I applaud the team for not prolonging scenes or adding elements of some magical mumbo jumbo in the mix, which keeps the action of the movie well paced.

Scarecrows was a pleasant surprise, a tight shoelace budgeted direct to VHS gem that manages to look good and better many of the multi-million theatrical releases.

80s-o-meter: 89%

Total: 78%

#945 Halloween 2018: Hide and Go Shriek (1988)

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If you want to see the saddest excuse for an antagonist in the recorded movie history, look no further than Hide and Go Shriek, a made for teens movie shot in 1988 with a look and feel of an early 80s slasher.

In other words: Outdated and poor.

Like is the case with many late 80s slashers, Hide and Go Shriek makes for an attempt to change a few variables in the tired genre. This time around, instead of the cabin or the woods, the teens go camp in a department store where the maniac killer starts to rub them out one by one, as expected.

Despite the aforementioned laughably lousy baddie, Hide and Go Shriek leaves no lasting impression whatsoever and even the most forgiving slasher fans will likely be sick of it by the middle point.

80s-o-meter: 55%

Total: 17%

#945 Halloween 2018: Phantasm II (1988)

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It could be because I’ve missed the original Phantasm – released in 1979 – but I had no idea whatsoever what was going on in its sequel for the first 30 minutes. And even later to the movie it all seemed to make a very little sense: Who are these main characters, what are they after, who is the Tall Man and what is his agenda?

It was only after giving up the hope of making any sense of the movie and just going on with the flow that I started to enjoy Phantasm II for what it was: A collection of scenes to justify some inventive and gruesome F/X. There are tons of individual things to like here, like Reggie, the ponytailed, balding middle-aged protagonist and the imaginative guns he and his teenager friend Mike have put together to fight the Tall Man. Also, the movie manages to have a good ol’ horror movie ending to it, redeeming some of of the points in the last minute.

Phantasm II is a stylish, cartoony show not unlike the Evil Dead series, and a movie that relies heavily on its gory effects at the cost of its plot. It’s the incoherent story that makes the movie a hard one to recommended, but the admirers of hand crafted 80s F/X will surely find a lot to like here.

80s-o-meter: 90%

Total: 61%

#925 Red Heat (1988)

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Towards the end of the eighties the Hollywood movies started to reach out to gap the bridge torn between the two nations by the Cold War. Red Heat joins up two sides of the same coin kind of detectives from the rivalling nations together in a buddy cop movie that gets some extra mileage out of its nonconventional setup.

Ivan Danko, the CCCP detective played by Schwarzenegger draws a strong resemblance with Ivan Drago, a big framed antagonist from Rocky IV that famously muttered out only 9 lines of dialogue during the whole movie that he starred in. Both of the characters’ emotionless, powerful and almost non human qualities seem to meet very well the movie going publics’ expectations of the Russians – personally I’ve yet to meet anyone from behind the iron curtain even closely resembling either one.

At the top of his career in 1988 Schwarzenegger could very well pick the movies he wanted to be in, and in that light Red Heat is a somewhat weird choice since the wooden acting style is a step back from his earlier movies towards, on par what’s seen in 1984 Terminator. The character Schwarzenegger plays is also atypical for him as it has many comical sidekick qualities to it and keeps on making one bad decision after another throughout the movie, getting beaten up, shot and getting multiple people killed along the way.

Guess the Hollywood wasn’t ready to for an actual Russian hero just quite yet.

The fish out of water backstory provides a good base to this action comedy but if this wasn’t a Schwarzenegger movie, Red Heat would be average at best.

80s-o-meter: 92%

Total: 77%

#922 Braddock: Missing in Action III (1988)

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Falling somewhere between the first and second Missing in Action movies, the third part, dubbed Braddock: Missing in Action III follows Braddock going back to Vietnam to find his missing wife and son.

A total rehash of The Beginning, this last part of the trilogue and has some of the same strong suits in its action department, but I never really cared about the story line involving the boy. Despite the action the third part seems a little wishy-washy and Braddock tightropes somewhere between being totally unrealistic, but not nearly as iconic and over the top as the Rambo sequels.

If you really liked The Beginning, the third part offers more of the same, but in a watered down form.

80s-o-meter: 84%

Total: 59%

#879 Jack’s Back (1988)

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Awkwardly named Jack’s Back is a weak horror thriller following a manhunt for a Jack the Ripper copycat killer.

The movie does not shy away from throwing totally unconvincing elements in the viewer’s face: Long lost missing twins, psychic abilities, shoe salesman subplots and a killer who gets caught by walking into a trap and totally breaking his earlier patterns that kept him safe, only because the movie needed a closure. Even if Jack the Ripper never was that intriguing persona to me there are tons of better movies out there that get a better mileage out of the subject.

Most reviews of the movie seem favorable, which I did find surprising. Many dub this to the lead James Spader’s magnetic performance, but personally I found his acting work here mostly corny and a long shot from his authentic and chilling performance in The New Kids.

80s-o-meter: 82%

Total: 41%

#869 Tequila Sunrise (1988)

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Given its kick-ass name, I always took Tequila Sunrise for a hard boiled action thriller. Although there are certainly some action elements to it, the main focus is on a love triangle between a woman and two men; one of them a cop and one of them an alleged drug dealer.

Tequila Sunrise isn’t a bad movie — with this kind of budget and production team it really can’t be — but it just didn’t do anything for me. The plot is on the weak side and even the strong cast struggles to keep the script moving on. Instead of showing something exciting or memorable, the movie seems an endless stream of unimpressive macho dialogue yapped by its caricature like characters.

There’s an effort for getting the show running towards the last minutes to the movie, but it’s just too little, too late.

80s-o-meter: 88%

Total: 59%

#863 Iron Eagle II (1988)

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While the first movie in the series was a fresh take on the subject, Iron Eagle II – released two years after the original – takes much more notes from Top Gun by introducing a roster of outcast pilots ordered to perform a seek and destroy mission along with a fleet from the Soviet Union.

The sequel ditches the former lead Doug Masters by killing him during a firefight in the very first minutes of the movie, leaving us with Colonel Chappy – arguably the weaker half of the duo. Along with the Top Gun influence, the movie is built on the post cold war thematics with some Police Academy style of humour thrown in the mix.

Iron Eagle II is a tired follow up to the original that inexplicably went on to spawn two more sequels during the nineties, both of which apparently even weaker than this one.

80s-o-meter: 91%

Total: 58%

#858 Willow (1988)

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You have to excuse me for having always mixed up Willow with Ridley Scott’s Legend; another mid-80s fantasy movie with stunning, faerytale like visuals. While Willow might not be as beautiful a movie, it’s still stunning to look at and the groundbreaking special effects by ILM still look mostly impressive, despite their age.

Story-wise there isn’t anything extraordinary going on here: Your usual fantasy stuff with evil queens, dwarfs and dragons. But it’s the way that the director Ron Howard manages to tell the story that makes it truly captivating. Young Warwick Davis makes for a terrific, unlikely hero of the story, and although Val Kilmer at first seems to overact the role of the mischievous thief, he soon grows on to you.

Fantasy movies are not my cup of tea, but in Willow’s case, the end result is just much too charming to pass by with just a shrug.

80’s-o-meter: 48%

Total: 84%

#844 It Takes Two (1988)

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A young man on the verge of getting married departs from his ranch to the big city to buy a sports car of his dreams and runs into all kinds of trouble in It Takes Two, a lightweight romantic comedy with a somewhat patchy script.

Biggest problem with the movie is the lack of meaningful content and the resulting, obvious padding to make it meet the 75 minute mark. The movie does find its tone during the end, and even manages to have some elements of entertainment and coherency.

It takes two is an insignificant, fluffy movie that is impossible to recommend to anyone – but it’s not horrid either. In other words, if you happen to watch this movie from a cable tv without planning, chances are you won’t hate it.

80s-o-meter: 89%

Total: 60%