Since the campy Piranha 3D made over $80 million (!!!) in the box office, it was inevitable that it would spawn a sequel. It's a difficult task to follow up a stupid hit with an inevitably stupider sequel, but the filmmakers got off on the right foot when they named the sequel Piranha 3DD. That is simply sublime. I don't think there is a better way to distill what this movie should be about than that: killer fish and big boobs. Somebody give that title guy a raise! Truly, this will live out its days with the royalty of movie sequel titles, like Electric Boogaloo and Die Harder. Here's the thing, though: I didn't really like Piranha 3D. Sure, it was campy and had some cheap nudity and gore, but it was too aware of its crappiness to for me to truly enjoy laughing at it. I hate laughing with bad movies --- I want to laugh at them. What are the odds that Piranha 3DD will be stupid, but still stupid-fun?
I started off liking Piranha 3DD's choices, right off the bat. Piranha 3D set the stage for the inevitable sequel, but 3DD opts to completely ignore the ending of that movie; in a brilliant move, they acknowledge that some people died in a lake, thanks to some fish, but it's probably unrelated to what's happening in this film. So, if you were hoping for some tighter continuity in this series, you're absolutely adorable. And out of luck. The story kicks off with Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) returning home from college, only to discover that the water park she co-owns with her step-father, Chet (David Koechner), is about to grand open with an all-adult section and a brand new name: "Big Wet." That's a lot to take in at one time, I know, but try to digest it all. Yes, a college student co-owns a water park. Yes, it is creepy that her step-father is setting up a raunchy zone in said water park. And, following that logic, the lifeguards in the adult section will be strippers.
"And the lifeguards can drop their kids off in the main pool while they're pool stripping! Genius!"
As the days count down to the grand opening of the park, Maddy and her friends start to notice some strange things happening at the lake that is located near the park. Luckily, Maddy is a marine biologist and quickly realizes that super-piranhas are entering the lake, somehow. But that's just the lake. It couldn't possibly affect the water park, unless it happened to be illegally siphoning water from that lake.
But then...how did...oh, I get it now.
One of the unexpected strengths of Piranha 3D was its surprisingly legit cast. Piranha 3DD doesn't quite match its prequel in that department. Danielle Panabaker was fine, I guess, as the character with the closest thing that passes for brains in this movie.I don't know why, but I keep expecting her to have a breakout performance one of these days, despite the fact that she doesn't even stand out in this crap. Her romantic interests are played by Matt Bush and Chris Zylka; Bush appears to be doing his best impression of a young Seth Green here, while Zylka continues to play teenage jerks. Both were fine for what their roles called for, but neither was particularly interesting. Meagan Tandy and Jean-Lu Bilodeau were only in the film briefly, but they were void of personality. Paul James Jordan would have been completely forgettable, if not for the scene where he cuts off his penis to keep a piranha from eating him.
I don't know if I would be that calm, sir
David Koechner was his usual bawdy self, and it actually made sense for him to show up in this film. He wasn't funny, but I kind of hate seeing him in movies, so this matches my opinion of his talents quite well. I was a little surprised that Ving Rhames reprised his role from the first movie (as did Paul Scheer), but at least his small part had a moderately funny moment.
...that had already been done in Planet Terror
Gary Busey and Clu Gulager showed up in the introductory scene and were reasonably amusing as idiot rednecks. Ever since Scream revived the "kill the recognizable actor in the opening scene" film trope, I have enjoyed seeing how different films have embraced the tradition; I'm fairly sure that Clu Gulager is the most obscure horror actor I have seen in a scene like that, but I am definitely not complaining. It may be nepotism on the part of the director, but it's obscure and fun nepotism. I will complain about Christopher Lloyd's choice to return, though; for an actor that is as occasionally hilarious as Lloyd, he sure knows how to stoop to the level of whatever movie he's in. He could have been one of the shining moments of this film, and he definitely was not. David Hasselhoff was shockingly not terrible playing himself. I definitely like his work in the Spongebob movie better, but his singing threesome scene was enough to balance out most of his all-too-aware-of-its-campiness part. When you get right down to it, the only actor I liked in the movie was Katrina Bowden. Her character was too stupid and sincere for words, but the more I see of her, the more I am impressed by her excellent comedic timing. Plus, she had the best line in the entire film:
John Gulager directed Piranha 3DD, and it was written by his buddies Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan; the three worked together on all three of the Feastmovies. In case you're unfamiliar with those movies, Melton and Dunstan have also co-written the last four Saw movies, so if anyone knows how to make a stupid movie funny, it's...the guys who write torture porn? That doesn't sound right.
If only they had this picture to inspire them to greater heights...
I'm not going to bother commenting on normal directorial stuff, like cinematography, editing, or tone, because this movie doesn't care about any of that. Instead, I'll judge Piranha 3DD on what it obviously values. It had to be campy, gory, prominently feature large breasts, and, as the sequel to an already unlikely and campy movie, it had to be pretty darn stupid. If that doesn't sound difficult to you, think of the last movie you watched that was intentionally so-bad-it's-good. They're rarer beasts than you might think. So, how did Gulager do? This movie certainly was campy, but nowhere near as funny as it seemed to think it was.
Example page from the script: Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle [WAIT FOR APPLAUSE TO DIE DOWN]
Aside from Hasselhoff's narration-singing and bizarre post-credits scene, the only time I laughed was with the whole piranha-in-my-vagina explanation. That's not a good thing, especially when you consider how many other characters are in this movie. Instead of being ridiculous, like Piranha 3D, this movie was stupid, and then had the nerve to elbow the audience in the stomach and ask if they "got it." As for the gore, there definitely was some. My personal favorite moments included an annoying child's head being eaten, a cow carcass exploding, and (of course) piranhagina (AKA pussanha).
Thank God this didn't start with "This one time, in band camp..."
The rest of the gore was surprisingly tame. There was a lot of fake blood in the water, but it definitely felt less explicit than the original film, and it sure was a lot less original. The filmmakers went out of their way to show gratuitous nude shots at the beginning of the film, but I was surprised by how rarely I saw unnecessary nudity as the story wore on. Wasn't the entire point of making this an "adult" water park to constantly have topless girls splashing in the background of scenes? It seems like such an obviously exploitative move, and yet it was used so sparingly.
Why is Botox 'n' Balloon Chest Barbie even in this movie if she's clothed?
How about the plot? Yes, that was dumb. I know, I know, the filmmakers had to come up with a way to get piranhas into a water park, and they did it. I have no problem with whatever stupid justification they needed to get Jason into space piranhas into the water park. My problem is that the writers felt that they needed to build up to that. That meant there was less time spent in the novelty location (the water park) and more time spent rehashing the last film in and around a lake. This is a movie about killer fish in a water park; if I needed a plausible concept, then I wouldn't be watching a movie about killer fish in a water park.
Correction: a movie about killer fish in a water park that features Gary Busey exploding a cow
When it gets down to brass tacks, Piranha 3DD feels like the poor man's version of Piranha 3D, instead of the bigger and stupider movie that all sequels strive to be. It wants to be dumb enough to love, that much is clear. It is just missing the charm, wit, and tongue-in-cheek knowing humor that earned Piranha 3D3.5 stars (out of 10) from me. In other words, this movie sucks, even when compared to a movie I didn't like. The humor is cruder, the tone was more irritating than campy, there were human villains for some reason, and there wasn't enough creative gore or nudity to keep me interested. It just. Wasn't. Fun.
When 60% of your jokes come from the Hoff, you have a bad script
This isn't just a bad horror movie, it's a bad horror movie when you compare it to bad horror movies. I almost wish I had given Piranha 3D a better rating, just to illustrate how much worse this sequel is. How about this: Piranha 3DD made about 10% of Piranha 3D's box office gross. Ouch. Comparing it to Piranha 3D isn't even an apples-to-apples argument, because that movie actually achieved its goal of being dumb fun. This is a lot closer to Shark Night 3D; both movies tried to capitalize on the success of the last Piranha, but couldn't be bothered to be ridiculously over the top. This was lazy and boring instead of dumb fun.
"I'll have to scrub for days to get all the shame off me"
On the bright side, this isn't a movie that deserves active hatred, it had a few worthwhile moments, and about fifteen minutes of its runtime was devoted to the end credits/gag reel, so the pain was short-lived. Let's just hope we don't see another sequel for a while.
By the time The Return of the Living Dead hit theaters in 1985, George Romero had already completed his original zombie trilogy (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead). What more was there to do or say about zombies? Romero had set the standard for zombie gore (with the assistance of Tom Savini), tackled social commentary, and made some of the coolest depressing horror movies out there. Who would have the balls to follow up Romero's series? As it turns out, the co-writer of Night of the Living Dead, John Russo, that's who. Apparently, he and Romero had argued over how to follow up their cult hit and came up with an interesting compromise; Romero's sequels would be "Blank of the Dead" and Russo's would be "Blank of the Living Dead." Each series follows its own continuity, but neither contradicts the other; these are two very parallel realities. Once I figured out who would follow up Romero's Dead pics, the question remained: how? The answer is "with humor."
On Freddy's (Thom Mathews) first day working for the Uneeda Medical Supply warehouse, he is being shown the ropes by Frank (James Karen). Uneeda's main business comes from shipping corpses, skeletons, and similar dead things across the country. As part of the natural order of breaking in the new guy, Frank decides to creep Freddy out. Frank explains that the movie, Night of the Living Dead, is based on true events; the movie changed the facts to not get sued, of course, but the gist remained the same --- the dead were coming back to life. How does Frank know all this? Because the military accidentally shipped a barrel of the chemical (245 Trioxin) to Uneeda, and you can see an undead body inside. Obviously, Freddy will need to see the barrel to believe any of this, so the two go down to the basement to check it out; sure enough, there is a metal barrel with military-looking words on the side, and a skeleton visible through the barrel's window. So far, so good. Frank then makes the fatal error of hitting the side of the barrel to demonstrate how sturdy it is, which causes a rupture and Frank and Freddy get hit with a heavy dose of gas.
From this point forward, you really don't need to know the specifics of the plot, but here's the gist. The gas reanimates the dead, and these zombies don't resemble the classic film zombies. They can run, speak, think, and you can't kill them by damaging the brain (or cutting off the head, or dismembering them, or...). Freddy, Frank, and their boss, Burt (Clu Gulager), manage to get the sole corpse in their freezer chopped up into little pieces, but the pieces are still writhing and dangerous. Since Burt is friends with the mortician next door, Ernie (Don Calfa), they take the body parts over and eventually convince Ernie to cremate the SOB. As soon as the ashes leave the crematorium chimney, though, they react with the clouds above and start an acid rain, which spreads Trioxin throughout the area --- and keep in mind that the area around a mortuary/crematorium is naturally going to be a graveyard. Yes, there will be zombies a-plenty.
Sexy zombies
The first thing you will notice about The Return of the Living Dead is that it doesn't take itself seriously. At all. The characters are all fairly stupid and no one is particularly likable, so you are just waiting to see how each one dies. And they die, early and often. That is a far cry from the somber tenseness of George Romero's films, but it works surprisingly well. This isn't a flat-out comedy with zombies in it, like Shaun of the Dead. This is a horror movie that wants to revel in gore and special effects, but still have fun doing it. You don't see movies like this made any more (with the possible exception of Black Sheep), and it was a welcome change from so many of the not-scary-but-not-fun horror movies I've watched this month.
Fact: eyeballs are the last things to rot
Even though they are all second rate actors, I enjoyed the cast of The Return of the Living Dead. There are no good performances in this movie, but there were a many enjoyable ones. The featured adults (James Karen, Clu Gulanger, and Don Calfa) weren't terribly exciting, but they served their purpose as authority figures. Thom Mathews wasn't great, either, but it was fun seeing him slowly transition into a zombie.
It's called "range"
The rest of the cast was made up of young actors in various youthful costumes. You could lump them all together as "punks," but it's probably more accurate to describe them as "victims of 80s fashion."
These guys are the reason this movie is so enjoyable. Each one is a poorly sketched and developed character, and each one is annoying in their own right. They have names like Suicide, Trash, Spider, and Scuz. Suicide hates everything, the guy with the leisure suit wants to get laid, and the girl punk, Trash (Linnea Quigley), just wants to party naked. Seriously, she's naked (aside from her legwarmers) for all but the first few minutes of this movie --- definitely the most full nudity I have seen from any actor in any movie, including some pornos.
One of only two clothed pictures I could find online
To give you an idea of the level of talent in this film, three of these actors (Mathews, Miguel A. Nunez, Jr., and Mark Venturini) were featured in the Friday the 13th series. 'Nuff said.
The special effects are actually pretty solid for being such a silly movie. Of course, skeletons rising from the grave is goofy as all hell, and a lot of the recently dead didn't require much makeup, but there are a few awesome standouts.
"BRAAAAAAIIIINNNSSSSS!"
There is a lot of gore in this movie. Bodies get slashed to pieces. Brains get chewed. Eyes get blinded by acid. Fake blood is plentiful. While certainly not realistic, the quantity and quality of the gore in this zombie movie cannot be knocked.
This is only one of two films directed by Dan O'Bannon, and I think he did a good job with what he was working with. Of course, he radically rewrote John Russo's original script beyond the point of recognition, so he had complete control over what he had to work with. Still, O'Bannon created a zombie movie that was markedly different in tone and internal logic from the Romero films. That, alone, is an accomplishment. The fact that he made watching people get torn apart genuinely entertaining is just icing on the cake.
If you are a huge fan of Romero's movies, The Return of the Living Dead might annoy you. Zombies that can speak, plot, and run don't really make much sense. I get that. However, I don't care. This is one of the few zombie movies out there that is jam-packed with action and doesn't take itself seriously. For what it is --- a fun, utterly disposable horror flick --- it's pretty good. It even has the distinguished honor of being the first film to feature zombies craving human brains. Is this a classic? I don't know if I'd go that far. Aside from the naked chick and a couple of the zombies, nothing will really stick with you after you finish the movie. On the other hand, I seriously doubt that this was intended to be a think piece. Appreciate it for what it is.
"Nothing much has changed." Well, that's a tag line that sounds promising. Normally, I would pass on a movie that sounds like the audio-visual version of a sedative, but this film earned eight Academy Award nominations in 1971, winning two, and they are primarily in the acting and directing categories. I like me some Oscar bait, so let's check this out.
The Last Picture Show is the story of Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), a high school senior in a two-bit Texas town. The only things to do in town are go to the movie house, play pool, and go to the diner, all of which are owned by Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), the only man in town that seems satisfied with his life. Everyone else does dumb stuff, like having petty affairs that are common knowledge in such a small town. Sonny and his best friend, Duane (Jeff Bridges), are still too young to be disillusioned, but even they know that the biggest adventures of their life will come outside of this town. Still, they try to find what fun they can in this town, and it usually boils down to sex. In particular, it often comes down to Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), the prettiest and richest girl their age. Jacy starts the film dating the handsome and popular Duane, but she is interested in expanding her experiences, and tries her best to manipulate any man who looks twice at her, including Sonny. But this isn't the story of a love triangle. It's more like "A Year in the Life of..." their small town. Things change in that year, both big and small, but the big picture stays the same: teenagers will come of age, once again, in this two-bit Texas town.
That is kind of a bland synopsis of the film, isn't it? I can't help it, this movie does not really have much of a plot. It's all about the ensemble cast and a subtle sense of sadness that pervades the film. The cast in this film is pretty impressive. I wasn't terribly impressed with Timothy Bottoms in the lead role, but there were many strong supporting performances, including four (!) that were nominated for Oscars, and two that won. Jeff Bridges (who was nominated) is pretty good as the not terribly bright high school alpha male that struggles to maintain his importance out of school. Ben Johnson won the Best Supporting Actor award playing Sam the Lion based, from what I can tell, largely on a monologue where he reminisces on loves and risks taken and lost, but always worth the effort. Sure, it was a great speech, and that speech alone separated his character from everyone else in the movie, but I have to admit that I was surprised that his famous role gets so little screen time. I was impressed with Cybill Shepherd, in her first film role, playing what amounts to a femme fatale in training. She might be developing into a manipulative bitch here, but her mother (Ellen Burstyn, in an Oscar-nominated role) is the reigning queen of bitchy despair and skepticism. Cloris Leachman received the Best Supporting Actress award for her portrayal as the love-starved married woman who winds up having an affair with Sonny. The rest of the cast is recognizable, but their contributions are relatively minor, although, compared to four Oscar-nominated roles, what do you expect? Randy Quaid made his film debut in this movie; it's hard to picture now, with his near-permanent casting as a drunken uncle, but his character is a rival with Duane for Jacy's affections at one point. Sam Bottoms, Clu Gulager, and Eileen Brennan all played functional roles to the plot (such as it is), but they get relatively little time to develop on screen.
Since there isn't much of a plot, the strength of this film lies in the small moments of small town life, circa 1951. Some of those moments ring true today, like when Sonny freezes when confronted with Ruth's (Leachman's) tears; there is little more frightening to a young man than a woman's tears, because his idiotic first instinct is "How'd I break it?" The same goes for any scene with Sam the Lion; it doesn't matter if he is talking about dreams, love, or how much you disappointed him, he is that rare adult that commands respect from the kids. Other moments feel appropriate, but seem alien to me. Maybe I didn't hang out with the right crowd growing up, but the cool, detached and uninterested attitude toward sex from these teens struck me as strange; however, if you're in a small enough town or clique, I suppose eventually everybody who's anybody gets with everybody else who's anybody. Still, it makes for some unusually unerotic sexual scenes.
Peter Bogdanovich did a very good job directing the actors in this film (in case the four Oscar nominations didn't clue you in), but he was largely responsible for the film's other impressive nominations: Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. Even if you are unfamiliar with the influence a director can have on a film, The Last Picture Show looks and feels different from 99% of the movies you will see. It's a black-and-white movie made in 1971, set in 1951 --- that's an interesting choice, given the tendency for films in the early 50s to brag about their Technicolor picture. The soundtrack is composed only of ambient sound, so when you hear music, it is because there is a radio nearby; that gives the movie more of a documentary feel to it. But it doesn't go too far in that direction, since there are some very occasional moments shot from the point-of-view of particular characters. The dialogue is good, the acting is very natural, but...the lack of a distinct dramatic arc bugs me. Some of the less typical camera shots lead me to believe that I'm missing the message in this movie, but I couldn't tell you why or what it is.
My big problem with this film is that it is clearly aimed at a target audience that I don't belong to, and the subtle filmmaking makes it difficult for me, as an outsider, to decipher what message is being delivered here. Why is the closing of the town's only movie theater the basis for the film's title? I'm not sure, but it seems to connect to the general sense of loss that is pervasive throughout the film. Maybe it's mourning the loss of larger-than-life men, like Sam the Lion (what an awesome name!) and John Wayne, both in daily life and in the escapism of film. Maybe this is a love letter to an innocent way of life that died out as the post-Depression generation came of age. Whatever it is, it is frustrating for me to try and fail to understand the point of the film. The performances are good, but without that subtext, I was only truly impressed with Johnson and Shepherd's work. I liked the direction in general, but it didn't give me a payoff I could appreciate. Despite that, there were several inconsequential moments that I was disproportionately amused by:
Every time Sonny or Duane drove their truck, Hank Williams was on their radio. Of course he was. It's Texas.
How easily a beer bottle was broken over Sonny's head. Either they make better bottles now, or that boy has a metal plate in his head.
When Jacy offers to shake hands with a handsome rich boy, he reaches his hand for her and, instead of shaking her hand, gropes her crotch and then kisses her on the mouth. The stones on that guy...! Even better, that's is about all he does in the whole movie.
I just can't get over Randy Quaid, looking like this, having even a fictional chance with Cybill Shepherd, when she looked like this.
Randy Quaid, Tiger Beat "Dream Hunk" of 1971
So, despite the good acting and the interesting direction, I'm going to knock this movie down a few notches for being too subtle with the point of the movie for me to fully grasp it. And if there isn't a deeper meaning behind this film, then I guess I think the plot just stinks.
