WILLY’S WONDERLAND (2021)

 

(Director: Kevin Lewis. Screenwriter: G.O. Parsons.)

Storyline

A stranded-for-the-night drifter is tricked into doing janitorial work in a shuttered Chuck E. Cheese-style pizzeria where its animatronic mascots eat the janitors.

 

Review

A mostly silent drifter─billed as “The Janitor” (Nicolas Cage, COLOR OUT OF SPACE, 2019)─is tricked into working a one-night janitorial gig in a shut-down pizzeria, Willy’s Wonderland. The Janitor is not told his task will involve more than cleaning.

While this happens, a teenage girl, Liv (Emily Tosta), plots to torch Willy’s. As a younger girl, she witnessed her parents being killed by the eatery’s supernatural animatronic mascots, led by Willy Weasel. In the now, Liv’s guardian, Sheriff Lund (Beth Grant, CHILD’S PLAY 2, 1990), handcuffs Liv to a pipe to keep her from following through on her fiery intentions.

The Janitor─locked in the building by the restaurant’s owner (Tex Macadoo)─cleans the semi-trashed building. Time passes, the animal- and fairy tale-themed mascots come after The Janitor, who does not seem too surprised. Meanwhile, Liv─with help from friends─escapes her cuffs. They make their way to Willy’s to rescue the energy drink-swilling Janitor (a stranger to them) and burn Willy’s down.

WILLY’S is good up until this point. Once the kids find themselves stuck in the Chuck E Cheese-style fatty food palace, the movie goes to s**t. While The Janitor proves himself a worthy adversary for the possessed mascots, the kids─even the initially spunky and smart Liv─are mostly useless as they try to find a way out, plot conveniently forgetting about the barely boarded-over windows they could bust through, or how they could help The Janitor kill the remaining satanic threats (especially the seductive, ultra-creepy Siren Sara). Twenty-plus minutes bloat the film to its mandatory ninety-minute mark with the kids running around and getting picked off while The Janitor hunts and fights the monsters.

WILLY, with a few minor plot and character tweaks, could have been an excellent future cult classic─all of the ingredients are inherent in the film’s barebones set-up and its characters. Its cinematography (courtesy of David Newbert), production design (Molly Coffee) and its makeup/FX crew make this feel like a goofy, gory 1980s video flick. The early-on stage-setting and editing are top-notch. Perhaps one of the more egregious failings of WILLY’S is that the filmmakers did not make a movie that matched the loopy, masterful weirdness of Cage’s performance as a wordless, bad-ass Janitor (Cage wanted to play him like a silent actor would), whose quirks sometimes border on bewildering.

The rest of the actors are good, but this is Cage’s show. Even though I felt let down as a viewer (due to WILLY’S flaccid last third, dumb teenage characters and bad CGI at the end), this still has its fun moments, and Cage works his quirkiness in fresh ways here. I wouldn’t recommend it for most people, but if you’re hardcore about Cage, you should check it out at least once─for free, if possible.

AMITYVILLE 1992: IT’S ABOUT TIME (1992)

 

(a.k.a. AMITYVILLE: IT’S ABOUT TIME. Director: Tony Randel. Screenplay by Christopher DeFaria and Antonio Toro, based on John G. Jones’s 1988 advertised-as-fiction book, AMITYVILLE: THE EVIL ESCAPES.)

Storyline

An architect brings home an antique mantle clock he bought during his business travels, unaware that it’s an evil, time-and-space-warping machine.

Review

Burlwood, California. Jacob Sterling (Stephen Macht, GRAVEYARD SHIFT, 1990), an architect and intense person, returns to his suburban house from a business trip during which he picked up an antique clock. Unaware or dismissive of the history of the notorious house it came from, he’s excited to place on it on the mantle above their fireplace.

His teenage children, Lisa (Megan Ward, TRANCERS II, 1991) and Rusty (Damon Martin, GHOULIES II, 1987), are happy to see him, as is his ex-girlfriend and art student Andrea Livingston (Shawn Weatherly, SHADOWZONE, 1990), who watched the kids while Jacob was gone.

Jacob convinces Andrea─in spite of her new boyfriend─to spend the night with him. Rusty─spirited, good-hearted, and sensitive─senses something weird about the clock, but he’s not sure what it is. One of the neighbors’ dogs (Peaches) also knows something’s wrong, and barks outside the Sterlings’ backdoor late at night, running away when Rusty opens the door to let the dog in.

The next day, Peaches, normally a peaceable canine, attacks Jacob while he goes on his morning run. Jacob, seriously wounded, survives the attack. The wound extends Andrea’s stay with the Sterlings, delighting Jacob─he wants her back. Weird stuff happens, like brief time-and-space shifts for those living within the house, and Jacob’s go-getter personality becomes darker, verging on violent─he refuses to have his bandages changed, despite his festering wounds.

After a spate of mean-spirited neighborhood vandalism, dark personality changes, and bizarre deaths of those near the Sterlings, the situation comes to a head, and Jacob goes full-psycho, with his clock-dominated house as a reality-shifting accomplice.

The clever dovetail ending is relatively happy and good, a creative breath of fresh air in a genre that too often favors unnecessary darkness in its filmic wrap-ups. (Shock or the-evil-survived finishes need not bash viewers over the head with obviousness, and such endings should do more than further a franchise’s financial profitability or be used to hide the fact that the filmmakers are creatively spent, producer-pushed or lazy.)

TIME is a good, low-budget, and slick B-flick, its storyline a mix of WAXWORK (1988) and a metaphor for toxic relationships. TIME is better than the two previous AMITYVILLE outings (AMITYVILLE 3-D, 1983, and AMITYVILLE HORROR: THE EVIL ESCAPES, 1989), building on the loosely linked storyline of ESCAPES.

Randel’s direction and DeFaria and Toro’s screenplay keeps the relatively goreless TIME moving along at a mostly solid, entertaining pace (even if I did wonder why Andrea stuck around the Sterlings’ disturbing household), with an effective object backstory that adds depth to this film and (possibly) the AMITYVILLE franchise, with all its disparate works.

TIME’s cast, ranging from good to great, is effective as well, with Macht nailing Jacob’s increasingly menacing attitude, Weatherly capably embodying Andrea’s flaws, struggles and overall good nature as she tries to save the Sterlings, and Nina Talbot (PUPPET MASTER II, 1990) as Iris Wheeler, Rusty’s afterschool chess-playing partner and occult-savvy neighbor. Fans of screen legend Dick Miller (PIRANHA, 1978) might be delighted to see his brief turn here as Mr. Anderson, who helps put out a yard fire.

TIME, a mostly fun, low-budget time-space-horror flick, is worth your time if you keep your expectations realistic about its budget, its era (the slick-flick 1980s-1990s), and don’t mind a few eye-rolling tropes (e.g., Andrea and Jacob’s sex scene) during its run-time.

SHOCK WAVES (1977)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Ken Wiederhorn. Co-screenwriter: John Kent Harrison, billed as John Harrison, and uncredited Ken Pare.)

Storyline

A shipwrecked yacht party are attacked by seemingly invincible, undead Nazi soldiers who live in the waters surrounding a remote island.

 

Review

A boatful of tourists and sailors are shipwrecked after the boat’s engine dies, a strange orange haze suffuses the sky, and a huge ghost ship hits their vessel. The next morning, after the captain has vanished, the survivors see the hulking, skeletal wreck of the ghost ship that sank the tour boat as they take refuge on a nearby island.

They wander around the island, find a dilapidated resort, and in it, a former SS commander (Peter Cushing , SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN, 1970) who tells them that they must leave the island, or they will die─not because he’s physically threatening them, but because the ghost ship has a still-active crew who will hunt them and kill them. This crew, the Death Corps, is made up of aquatic undead zombie soldiers who were part of a Nazi science experiment to create invincible soldiers who can fight on land and under the sea.

The seven survivors don’t believe the SS commander and soon find themselves stuck with their irritated-but-civil host (Cushing, whose character is listed as “SS Commander”). The vicious and efficient zombie soldiers pick off the survivors as they wander around the island. One of them, Rose (Brooke Adams, often seen in a skimpy bathing suit), accidentally discovers the shock troops’ Achilles heel, but it's too late.

Shot in thirty-five days by first-helmer Ken Wiederhorn in 1975 (but not released until 1977 due to financial issues), the low budget, PG-rated SHOCK is not quite good, not quite terrible. It has a lot going for it despite its dumb characters and overlong middle section.

One of SHOCK’s best elements is its atmosphere, shot in hazy 1970s dream-tones, as well as its sometimes-unnerving and effectively spare soundtrack by Richard Einhorn (THE PROWLER, 1981), which make this time-bloated movie better than it should be. The tone and music are especially effective when showing the Death Corp troops hiding in and coming out of the water as well as the exterior/interior ambience of the dilapidated, naturally spooky resort.

The solid kill scenes are tame by today’s standards, much of the actual violence happening offscreen (although often-unmarked corpses are found later), with little or no gore shown. The Death Corp boys─whose zombie makeup is excellent─ like to drown and strangle people.

The cast ranges from good to fun, appropriate for this unique and quirky film. Of course, Peter Cushing (ASYLUM, 1972) plays his SS Commander with nuance and grace, a man who’s done horrible things and knows it, and perhaps regrets some of them. John Carradine (THE HOWLING, 1981) does what he can with his brief role of Captain Ben Morris, imbuing the character with his usual color and charm. Don Stout is good as Dobbs, who maybe shouldn’t be in a rush to get those supplies.

Brooke Adams (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, 1978), in her first credited movie role, is solid as the hysterical, brutalized Rose. Luke Halpin (MAKO:THE JAWS OF DEATH, 1976) and Fred Buch (THE NEW KIDS, 1985) are decent in their roles, but if this had been their last film I would not have been surprised.

SHOCK is worth your time if you’re looking for a miasmic, atmospheric if overlong film with unique-at-the-time zombies, a memorable soundtrack, a few notable actors and striking cinematography (courtesy of SHOCK producer Reuben Trane).

Fun additional fact: According to IMDb, Roger Waters sampled dialogue from this flick in his title track to Amused to Death (1992)─specifically, he lifted dialogue from the part where two characters fight over a flashlight.

HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF (1985)

 

(a.k.a. HOWLING II: IT’S NOT OVER YET; a.k.a. HOWLING II: STIRBA—WEREWOLF BITCH. Director: Philippe Mora. Screenplay by Robert Sarno and Gary Brandner, said to be loosely based on Brandner’s 1978 novel, THE HOWLING II, but if it is, it’s only in spirit.)

Storyline

Ben White, brother of Karen White from the first HOWLING, goes after werewolves who wanted to claim his sister’s resurrected body, with help from his girlfriend and a werewolf expert.

Review

Los Angeles, California.  HOWLING II begins at Karen White’s funeral, attended by her brother (Ben) and his girlfriend (Jenny Templeton). The details of Karen’s on-camera death at the end of THE HOWLING (1981) are not known by Ben and Jenny (the tapes of her death disappeared). All Ben and Jenny know is that her death was a suicide.

Also at the funeral is Stefan Crosscoe (Christopher Lee), a stranger who tells Ben and Jenny about the circumstances surrounding Karen’s death─and that she’s not dead, since the M.E. took the fatal silver bullet from her body. At the next full moon, Stefan says, Karen will rise from her grave as a lycanthrope. Jenny isn’t sure what to think until Stefan shows them the tape of Karen’s transformation and death. Jenny believes Stefan. Ben still thinks Stefan is full of it. Later, they go to Karen’s coffin and by the end of the night, Ben is a believer too.

Stefan tells them he’s going to the Balkans to wipe out the remainder of the werewolf pack─a few of whom were seen at Karen’s funeral. They want to take her to Stirba, a lycanthropic enchantress and Stefan’s mortal enemy. Ben and Jenny go with Stefan─Ben wants revenge for his sister; Jenny wants to help resolve the situation.

Stefan, Jenny and Ben arrive in the Balkans. (In addition to LA, the film was shot in Czechoslovakia, specifically Central Bohemia and Borrandov Studios in Prague.) Werewolves stalk them, occasionally attack them.

The film meanders while Stefan and Stirba-hating villagers locate her castle near town. While this happens, Stirba─an old crone─breathes in a young sacrifice’s yellow soul-vapor during a satanic ritual. Stirba de-ages into a big-breasted, sexy woman (Sybil Danning), who dons metal-adorned leather and wraparound sunglasses (Danning had conjunctivitis) and prances around when she’s not ripping off her clothes and writhing in orgiastic, R-rated passion with Mariana (Marsha A. Hunt, DRACULA A.D. 1972) and Vlad (Judd Omen, C.H.U.D. II: BUD THE CHUD, 1989), her hunky second-in-command.

Jenny is kidnapped by Stirba’s minions and held as a future sacrifice. Stefan, Ben, and Stefan’s villager friends battle Stirba and her worshippers. Will Ben rescue Jenny? Will Stefan and the others defeat Stirba and her pack?

HOWLING II is not a good film but it has a lot of humor and occasional Hammer flick drama in it, along with a few worthwhile actors (this does not include the wooden role-fillers who played Jenny and Ben). Despite his evident disappointment with the project, Christopher Lee is professional and fun, elevating the film to a barely watchable level. Sybil Danning (THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES, 1972) is good as the villainess with a mysterious link to Stefan, and for those who can’t get enough of her breasts, one of her few nude shots is repeated seventeen times during the end-credits─a producer’s doing, something that pissed Danning off when she saw it. Tired of taking off her clothes on camera, she had been reluctant to do topless shots, but she’d relented. Then to see them used in that manner. . .

HOWLING II also has decent (if cheesy) practical FX, especially when one considers what the filmmakers had to work with. The blood is bright red, shots are clever, and some of the lycanthropes are ape-like─according to IMDb, that’s because the filmmakers were accidentally sent ape suits from a PLANET OF THE APES project, so Mora and company made do with what they had.

HOWLING II might appeal to fans of low budget, playful Eighties films and Lee/Danning completists. It’s far from the worst entry in this seven-film franchise, but for most people, it probably wouldn’t be worthwhile fare.

AMITYVILLE HORROR: THE EVIL ESCAPES (1989)

 

(a.k.a. AMITYVILLE 4: THE EVIL ESCAPES. TV/NBC movie, aired on May 12, 1989. Director: Sandor Stern. Teleplay by Sandor Stern, based on an unpublished AMITYVILLE story─not co-producer John G. Jones’s 1988 advertised-as-fiction book, Amityville: The Evil Escapes, whose title Jones allowed the filmmakers to use.)

Storyline

The demon-haunted house is cleansed by six priests and its furniture is sold at a yard sale. One of the items, a lamp within which the demon hid, is shipped to a California home, where the horror begins anew.

Review

This fourth, made-for-television AMITYVILLE entry aired on NBC on May 12,1989. When it was released on video, additional footage was shot, most of it brief instances of bright red blood that wouldn’t have been allowed in the NBC broadcast─director and teleplay writer Sandor Stern has said he doesn’t know who shot the additional footage. An R rating was slapped on the video version though it’s a safe-for-television flick.

EVIL takes place before the events of AMITYVILLE 3-D (1983), opening with six priests going into the Amityville house to cleanse it. One of the priests, Father Kibbler, is attacked by the house’s three-hundred-year-old demon who has transmigrated into a standing, twisted tree-like lamp. Kibbler, unconscious, is brought to hospital while his fellow priests declare the house “clean.”

A few days later, Helen Royce (Peggy McCay) buys the lamp from a yard sale and sends it to her sister, Alice Leacock (Jane Wyatt) in California.

Alice’s widowed daughter, Nancy Evans (Patty Duke, THE SWARM, 1978) shows up at Alice’s house shortly after the lamp. Nancy arrives with three children in tow: adolescent Amanda (Zoe Trilling, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS 2, 1994); tween Brian (Aron Eisenberg, PUPPET MASTER III: TOULON’S REVENGE, 1991); and pre-tween Jessica (Brandy Gold), who talks to her dead, imagined father.

The lamp talks to Jessica, pretending to be her father. She falls under its dark sway and acts uncharacteristically moody. A doctor (Warren Munson, FRIDAY THE 13^th PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN, 1989) says she needs rest.

Strange things happen in the brightly lit house─there are few dark shots in EVIL. The lights flicker a lot. Bad things happen to people, including Gabe, a plumber (Gary Davies, SHOCKER, 1989), and Peggy, Alice’s maid (Lou Hancock, EVIL DEAD 2, 1987). When Father Kibbler shows up, Alice and their family realize what’s happening─now, if they can exorcise the lamp. . .

EVIL is not a scary flick. The mounting tension between the characters does not get nasty like the Lutzes’ and the Monticellis’. EVIL is also more entertaining (in a white-washed, silly way) than AMITYVILLE 3-D, especially when certain actors ham it up during their terror scenes. Near the end, there’s a farewell-to-a-priest scene that’s directly lifted from THE EXORCIST (1973).

Film geeks like myself might recognize Robert  Allan Browne (PSYCHO II, 1983), who plays Donald McTear, and one of the priests (John DeBello, billed as John Debello, who appears in the 1989 film NIGHT LIFE).

EVIL is a Golden Turkey made-for-television flick, worthwhile if you’re looking for something silly.

THE HOWLING (1981)

 

(Director: Joe Dante. Screenplay by John Sayles and Terence H. Winkless, based on Gary Brandner’s 1977 novel of the same name.)

Review

Loosely based on Gary Brandner’s 1977 novel of the same name, the film version is about a television newswoman, Karen White (Dee Wallace, ALLIGATOR II: THE MUTATION, 1991), who’s being stalked by a serial killer. When the psycho, Eddie Quist, falls for a police set-up using Karen as bait, she’s almost raped and killed by Eddie, who’s fatally shot by the cops. Traumatized by this, she suffers from memory loss and has disjointed nightmares about her missing minutes. Her shrink, Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee, WAXWORK, 1988), suggests that she recuperate in a remote resort in the woods, Drago, where Waggner can better guide her healing.

Karen and her boyfriend, Bill (Christopher Stone, CUJO, 1983) arrive in Drago. Everybody’s friendly, if occasionally weird, some of them too friendly. One of those people is Marsha, an exotic woman who flirts with Bill. He fends off her advances, but after he’s attacked by a wolf-like creature, his attitude changes. Meanwhile, Karen is still unnerved by her unfolding-memory nightmares and the wolf howls that fill the night, some of them close to their cabin.

Back in Karen’s home city, her co-workers and friends─Terry Fisher (Belinda Balaski, GREMLINS, 1984) and Chris Halloran (Dennis Dugan)─have done further digging into Eddie’s life and death, and discovered several things: Eddie’s body has disappeared from the morgue; Eddie had an obsession with werewolves, Karen, and an area that bears an uncanny resemblance to Drago. . . Eventually, Terry and Chris head up there at different times, and it’s not long before the true nature of Drago’s denizens is revealed, with wild, bloody confrontations that Karen, Bill and her friends might not survive.

HOWLING is an excellent, humorous, and clever update of the furry moon-beast genre, a satire about media and a cautionary tale about sexual repression. Its tone is lighter than that of its source book (e.g., in the book Karen is raped in her own home, and its ending is different than that of the film). Aficionados of werewolf works might especially enjoy HOWLING’s nods to previous shapeshifter films, like the name of John Carradine’s character (Erle Kenton). In real life, Erle C. Kenton (1896-1980) was a director, actor, and writer; one of the films he directed was HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944), which featured Lon Chaney Jr. as Larry Talbot, the iconic Wolfman of several Universal films. In several scenes of HOWLING, Chaney’s first outing as Talbot (THE WOLFMAN, 1941) plays on a television set.

So many things make HOWLING work as well as it does. Its running time is kept short (an hour and thirty minutes, every scene important to the film).  Its writing and dialogue is sharp, often clever and funny, with an underlying theme of sexual and social repression woven into its various aspects, verbal and visual. Its special makeup effects, practical not digital (HOWLING predates the latter), are top-notch, overseen by Rick Baker (AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, 1981), created by Rob Bottin (THE THING, 1982) and further brought into being by their talented special makeup effects crew.

Its cast is perfect and fun. Beyond Dee Wallace and Christopher Stone (who were married from 1980 until his death in late 1995), and others, everyone nailed their parts.

Kevin McCarthy (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, 1956) played Karen’s boss, Fred Francis (perhaps a reference to Freddie Francis, who directed 1975’s LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF). Dick Miller (AMITYVILLE 1992: IT'S ABOUT TIME, 1992) played Walter Paisley, the bookstore owner who’s also a werewolf expert. Robert Picardo (GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH, 1990) played Eddie Quist with playfully sadistic relish. Meschach Taylor (DAMIEN: OMEN II, 1978) played Shantz, a concerned cop. Kenneth Tobey (THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, 1951) played an “Older Cop.”

The denizens of Drago include: Elisabeth Brooks (FAMILY PLOT, 1976) as Marsha; Slim Pickens (BLAZING SADDLES, 1974) as Sam Newfield; and Noble Willingham (THE LAST BOY SCOUT, 1991) as Charlie Barton.

Sharp-eyed horror fans might recognize Karen’s co-anchor, Lew Landers, who appears in GREMLINS (1984), another Joe Dante flick. James MacKrell played Landers in both films.

There are several uncredited cameos as well. Producer/director Roger Corman played “Man in Phone Booth.” HOWLING screenwriter John Sayles played a morgue attendant. Forrest J. Ackerman (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD II, 1988) played a grumbling bookstore customer. Writer/director Mick Garris (PSYCHO IV: THE BEGINNING, 1990) played “Man with TV Guide.”

HOWLING is one of my Top Ten werewolf flicks, worth checking out, even if you’re a casual lycanthropy viewer who doesn’t geek out like I did in this review.