American Ninja
Canon’s Ninja Franchises Part Two
American Ninja
I’m
not sure if I actually realized that the American Ninja movies were Canon films… Although it figures. We’re well enough into the ninja cycle, and they have firmly established the Canon formula at this point. Why there is even Mr. Ockmonic from Alf driving one of the military vehicles as they convoy through slightly foreign looking lands.
Suddenly, they’re ambushed by Charlie! I mean terrorists… The sort of vaguely Vietnamese style terrorists that we were seeing a lot of in the 80s… It’s all very Rambo. When the terrorists fail though, they call in the ninja brigade. A bunch of black ninjas, dispatch most of the rest of the team.. however, our heroic musclebound “Joe“ is more than a match for them, and he takes off into the jungle with the generals daughter Patricia.
The problem is, when he brings her back alive, they assume he ran because he’s a coward, and are ready to court-martialing. He’s a nobody… No parents, no history, just a drifter who ended up with the platoon. At the same time, the ninja whose plans he foiled, vows revenge and sends an army of ninjas just asked Nate him and re-kidnapped the girl.
So, have we established the plot adequately?
Ba
ck in his homebase, the bad guy plots, and on the army base, Joe is getting into fights because of his bad James Dean attitude. He’s also making time with the generals daughter all top gun style on a motorcycle. This of course doesn’t go well with the sergeant or the general, and Joe ends up with weird duty, transporting a truck full of stuff over to an abandoned warehouse… Where the ninjas attack!l indeed, it’s ninjas invading the army base and chasing Joe into the jungle from here on out. Also, the general appears to be in league with the ninjas corporate leader… which means it’s not just the ninjas on his trail… It’s the army and the MPs too. But never fear, Joe has a hidden ally on the base… And he might just be the groundskeeper… And also the stranger who raised him. Like I said it’s all very Canon and very 80s. we’ve got Joe getting captured and thrown in jail, we’ve got the girl 
kidnapped and held hostage, team up with the older mentor and the cavalry (And by the cavalry, I mean Steve Jame’s character of Jackson) coming in just in time…
One of the things I have to admit I’m really enjoying about this is the exponential increase in Ninjas. We had more than a few in the Octagon, but Canon was a little skimpy with them in that original Ninja trilogy. This one came out after Ninja three, and it’s full on style. They’re also notably all men. Director Sam Firstenberg mentioned that feedback on ninja three revealed audience really didn’t enjoy seeing a female ninja… They preferred to see men in the role so he was looking for an action star who “looks like James dean, didn’t talk much, and seems to have a chip on his shoulder“.
Originally the studio want to Chuck Norris to be the star, but he wasn’t interested in wearing a mask. You can’t blame him, but Michael Dudikoff was early enough in his career that he recognized this is the sort of of thing that could make him a star… Indeed, the star of a five film franchise! He beat out over 400 other actors for the role of Joe, and planted his own flag and film history here. What’s interesting, is that he establishes his stardom in a martial arts film… Despite not having any martial arts training. In fact he was so nervous about the fight scenes alongside sidekick Steve James, that they filmed many of their fight scenes separately and completely different parts of the studio… At least until the two warmed up to each other about halfway through the film.
If you’re a fan of what canon films does… If youre one of those people who has a copy of Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films… this is absolutely a film for you. If you’re looking for a serious Shaw Brothers sort of martial arts movie… Well, this is kind of the Bugs Bunny version of that.
719
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
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Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
Zero Tolerance
Zero Tolerance starts with Robert Patrick’s name on the marquee and then opens to a hockey rink. As long as this doesn’t turn into Sudden Death, I’m hoping I’ll be OK… Of course I also see Mick Fleetwood in the cast to you and Miles O’Keeffe at the end (how much Keith is in this film anyhow? Miles O’Keeffe !)This is going to be some interesting cheese I suspect.
A black car rolls into Mexico, and some men in smart suits head into the prison, FBI agents ready to take custody of their prisoner. I’m amused because Robert Patrick would be an FBI agent later on The X-Files as well. I kind of like to think of this as a prequel…
Dirt bikes roll up on FBI agents car, followed by a truck with men wielding guns. Patrick shoots down the bad guys, but loses his car in the process and the villain, drug kingpin ray manta (someone obviously thought that was clever) escapes.
Hours later, manta coordinates and salt on mattress hotel room as well as his family back home. Manta needs Patrick to get him back into the US and help him deliver a package (fancy new fictional drugs that will be divided amongst the for crime families) as quickly and easily as possible, holding his family against that task.
But once the shipment is delivered, Patrick discovers that he was lying. His family is dead, and when he returns to his home, manta sent a team after him as well. It’s enough to set him off on a rampage of vengeance against the whole white hand organization, Transforming him into two fisted with an a vengeance in blue jeans and white sneakers (Actually those are the exact same cons that I wore when I was in high school… which tells you a little bit about the budget of this movie. They are the sneakers that you buy when you can’t afford Nikes.) First off, he’s 
heading to Las Vegas to begin his killing spree. Tracking down each of the bosses in turn, while his night partner tries to track him down and talk sense into him, (driving the same Ford escort that I drove in college… There’s that budget again!).
After hitting the Las Vegas boss, the New Orleans boss is next and I kept looking at this guy and I could swear I seen them before. In fact, I just seen him in Maximum Force… The Sam Jones vehicle also included in this movie set. This guys been around for a while though, anytime you need a hood that looks like Bob Marley, this is the guy you cast. I’ve seen them in Automan and others over the years, he’s good, but definitely has a specific look.
By the time Patrick takes out the third bad guy, the heat is on, and he gets nicked the next night… Last two gangsters use this as the excuse to take him out on the way to the police station. He drives a police car through an exploding helicopter which is insane to do any damage to anybody and onto our finale.
I love Robert Patrick but the man is not a leading man, and it really shows here. Dylan, they managed to hit all the action beats though there’s a bit of a shortage on big weenies and you can tell that they only had a medium budget. It’s very much late night UHF fair, exactly the sort of thing I’d expect to see on TV on a Sunday afternoon.
The Attic
The attic starts off by the numbers. New house, the owner was killed in the last one, by a ghost in a white dress, and the young college age lady of the house is seeing things now. Spooky sound of the attic, and there’s a white dress there. Also there’s a ghost that owns the white dress there. It’s enough to make her fall out of the attic and bump her head. And we’re just 10 minutes out! Are certainly front loading the scares here, in the area that usually is reserved for set up and backstory.
The Local coffee/fire marshal/local hot dude takes an interest in the story, and asked to see upstairs, where she had an accident.
Upstairs they find a zodiac symbol hidden by a rug, and the cop promises to look into it further, doesn’t matter though, Emmas family thinks she’s crazy. Crazy or not, whatever this ghost is, it’s absolutely haunting her… Following her and leaving her messages… and the next time she’s in the attic, it’s covered in occult symbols.
Emma’s getting reclusive, and whether or not real physically, or not, she still a danger to her.
But things really get serious when the ghost attacked someone else (maybe that cover isn’t The misrepresentation I thought it was!)
And it turns out, there’s more going on here than meets the eye.
Everything ends in a shocking explosion of violence, and its not ending I expected. The film is really all over the place, A strange ride, with a weak finish. This one’s a pass.
Cultist… Wicker
Black-and-white grease paint
Shower bath scene
Moving to a new house
Ghost watching from window… But reversed.
Something walks by in the background
Cover kind of crap misrepresented movie… Definitely patterned after the conjuring
Occult symbols
716
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
Ninja 3 : The Domination
Canon’s Ninja Franchises Part Two
American Ninja
Oh
good, we’ve got the same ninja font… That makes me feel almost as good as we spy the canon logo. Interestingly enough though, we seem to also have retained the same white ninja style for this entry, even if it isn’t the same character. It’s a magic ninja cave and he finds nicely backlit ninja weapons in there. He comes out garbed and silhouetted by a gorgeous background evenings. Then he heads out to take out someone on the golf course. Ninja on a golf course is a something to see, I must admit. The bodyguards are surprised, but I feel like they sort should be doing more damage. Police arrive on the scene, only to get rundown and bamboozled by the ninja who seems one step ahead of them at every turn. It’s almost a shame he doesn’t know how to fly a helicopter… still, after he racks up 
an impressive body count, the cops finally managed to gun him down… Or do they? The flash bang and he vanishes after being hit by 100 rounds. He escapes in a flash bang, hiding in the dirt and sneaks away to die… But not before he hands off his sword in his soul to a nearby young woman. Now, she has visions and flashes of the policeman that killed the ninja… Images she can’t shake.
Did I mention she’s telephone repair person by day and aerobic instructor by night? Somebody obviously watched Flashdance.
Outside the gym, a couple of tough guys are harassing one of the girls, and our heroine comes out and goes all ninja Warrior on them.
She brings home one of the cops that killed the ninja… And seduces him by pouring tomatoes juice all over herself. S
eriously, it’s the least sexy thing ever… But at night the ninja speaks to her and strobe lights, levitating sword and trying to take her over. It’s more successful using a standup video game console, and it’s all very mystic. Well, mystic in a cheesy 80s sci-fi style with lots of smoke and lasers and levitating katanas….
I know I’m making fun of it, but at the same time, it’s just so much fun. We got a very comic book feel, girls and swords and special effects. Almost in a trance, she dons the ninjas garb, and goes to take revenge on one of the cops that killed her… Specifically the one that would end up playing the nosy neighbor on ALF.
When she wakes up, she’s lost the time, but the next time she runs into one of the cops that killed the ninja… She goes into… Almost a trance, following him into a sleazy spa, ready to exact revenge. You can kind of see where this is going.
The blackouts are all very confusing so she goes to see a Japanese spiritualist. I mean, there’s chains involved, but still, what can go wrong? Well, the ninja could stop speaking through her lip lips for one. The lighting and moves make it quite creepy… But then again, that fits right in with what’s going on here. It is in many ways a mystic story more than a revenge story, and the whole film, even the kills come off more like a thriller than an action film… And by the time we get to this sequence, we go into full on horror movie mode. Let me tell you something, I am all here for it!
A big problem of course, is that she’s possessed, not by a demon or a ghost… But by a ninja. And only a ninja can destroy another ninja… fortunately, there’s one with an eyepatch lurking around the area. Turns out, his master was murdered by the evil ninja possessing our girl, and his clan destroyed. He’s got more than enough reason to want to see 
the spirit destroyed and this girl exorcised.
We’re far enough in that she knows to fight becoming possession, but isn’t strong enough… Strobe lights and lasers flash, and she’s returned to the role of the ninja, just in time to crash the funeral of the last few cops that killed the ninja. However, the black ninja is nearby and able to knock some sense into her, lol convincing her and her boyfriend to meet him at the conveniently located Shaolin Temple at the top of the hill. It’s there where heal properly exercise the ghost of the ninja and fight his final special effects build battle.
And I do mean that, the effects are they obviously save their effects budget for this final sequence with lots of composited lightning and electricity and flashes and stuff it’s very impressive, and very comic book. In fact that’s really how I feel about most of us.
Of all of the ninja films, this is probably the one that I will revisit. It feels a great deal like a full moon film… A lot of horror elements but with that very heightened reality and comic book Sensibility. Like the other films, there’s nothing that really related, but you can tell that at this point, canon basically had the formula down and all cylinders firing on this genre. It’s now very much a canon film, and not even trying to be a classic martial arts film. You’re not gonna mistake this for a Shaw brothers movie.
If you’re only gonna check out one of these three, this is the one.
Revenge of the Ninja
Canon’s Ninja Franchises Part Two
American Ninja
W
e begin the movie in Tokyo, Japan. A family gathers at a peaceful temple amidst a quiet pond. Suddenly ninjas come along to murder everyone. But the woman is quick enough to hide the baby in the brush before the ninjas catch up with her.
Our hero shows up, arguing with his American friend – the fight is quickly forgotten though, as they find themselves in conflict with ninjas! They dispatch the bad guys and recover his son. It’s time to move to America to escape it all. The problem is, there’s Ninjas in the states as well.
Our hero is trying to live a simple life – and dosen’t want his son involved in being a ninja, he just wants to make dolls. But his americian friend wants to ship drugs in the dolls and this draws them into danger…and ninjas.
You can tell these ninjas are really bad guys because of the way they murdered the dude in the hot tub while I was getting some. They appear to be trying to muscle in on the drug trade, or maybe they got stiffed on the payment… I’m a little fuzzy on it.
It doesn’t really matter though, because the action is good. The martial arts are fast and furious, and our evil ninja is front and center. It’s a good ninja costume as well, with one of those angry samurai masks underneath… So his entire face is covered. I also get the impression that the previous film fell short on its jiggle qouta, and so it seems like this one has to make up for it. When his son and new wife are kidnapped, it’s time for a hero come out and face the bad guy… Ninja to ninja.
I particularly like IMDB’s description of the final battle –
The two ninjas meet and enter a rooftop badminton court for their awesome ninja-duel showdown. The ninja vs. ninja battle 
rages across the court and then across the whole rooftop of Caifano’s building, warping and mangling the very fabric of the space time continuum beyond all logic and reason, until Cho slices Braden’s ninja mask in half, which destroys Braden in a galaxy-bending discharge of Cosmic Ninja Energy ™.
We get good third act action, ninjas running through office buildings and taking down each other… Seriously, I’ve got no complaints on this one.
It may well be that this is actually a superior film to the first in the series, revenge of the ninja really goes all in on the genre in ways that enter the ninja only hesitantly dipped its towing. It’s enough to get me really excited to see what comes next.
Children of the Corn 4
This time around it sure seems like somebody is trying to redeem the franchise. Now I’m not sure who it is, because the year is 1996 and that places this firmly as a dimension films sequel, when they started cranking out franchise entries to any and every property that they owned, regardless of quality or logic. The end result was they started trying to drive the Hellraiser franchise into the ground, and the Prophecy franchise was getting the same treatment.
The good thing about this era though, is even though the producer shouldn’t care, and there was no money – if you are working on these films you were doing it because you loved these films and these franchises. That’s something that really shows here as we get a very cinematic entry into this series. This time around, we have kids that seem to be possessed by the old children of the corn – and the movement is growing. It’s not so much a religious conversion (although that is the most heinous baptism I’ve ever seen…and I watched Rawhead Rex at 12 Hours of Terror last year!) like we’ve seen in the other films, but more of a 
spectral ghost story with exorcism elements to it. It feels different, with quick cuts of terror and flashes of peril. Like I said, somebody is trying to redeem the series – not the least of which was shown by pulling in Karen Black for a cameo! There’s a blue filter to the colour palette here that we never seen before – and sort of dread that I haven’t felt in the rest of the series.
Even with the back to basics approach – cornfields and lots of children. I feel like the gore level has been capped but I found myself really enjoying this as a return to form. The children of the corn haunt this film – they don’t just threaten. They don’t just kill. The presence is felt even when they’re not on screen.
All this is good, because the story feels fairly insubstantial, but what it lacks in substance it makes up for in atmosphere. Perhaps it’s the supernatural possession aspect that’s really appealing to me here – he who walks behind the rows has always been a little bit of a paranormal creature, but this is the one where we really ramp up the the the ethereal threat. Of all the sequel so far, this is by far my favorite – I think I may even enjoy this more than the original. I lost track of how many times watching this I delightedly explain to myself “I love this!”
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Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
Haunted 3 : Spirits
Haunted three starts off exactly the same as part two – so much so I had to check to make sure I was watching the correct movie. Same journalist, same location. I almost wonder, if not last couple of minutes we saw at the end of haunted too or actually from this film (it was).At this point, just going into one of these films, I’ve got my thumb hovering and ready to mash the fast forward button as a mere act of survival, because I know nothing of any significance is really gonna happen until the last few minutes.
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Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
Enter the Ninja
Canon’s Ninja Franchises Part Two
American Ninja
Ent
er the Ninja begins with a white ninja he’s not the black ninja… Then battling his way through the forest filled with red ninjas until he comes to our house. It’s an extremely Canon films sort of movie. It’s also extremely 1980s, once you see the mustache hidden behind the mask of Franco Nero’s white ninja, Cole! The while thing is training exercise of course, but a great way to plunge us right into the genre.
It’s a good thing they frontload it with ninjas by the way, because we’re not gonna be seeing them again for a while. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by decades of superhero movies, but even in the 80s, it always bothered me that the hero of all of these action movies just looked like some… Guy. Very ordinary clothes, jeans and a collared shirt, satin or jean jacket or something… That’s not what I came for. I’m here for ninjas!
Cole finds himself in a small town and aligned with a rancher who’s having problems with the local crime lord. He’s taking down various businesses and wants to take over her ranch. He’s the big industrial type, with a couple of second level stooges to do the legwork. Cole objects to all of it, and now it’s his job to protect the ranch and take down the crime lord and all of his henchmen. We’ll be well in to the third act before we see any more ninja action… and with less than a half an hour to go. However, back to the middle of the story…
The crime lord figures out that Cole is a ninja, and decides “I want a ninja of my own!“. He sent his right hand man to Japan to recruit a suitable adversary for Cole. In the meantime, cold is getting cozy with the ranch owner and dealing with Vietnam flashbacks.
The ninja kidnaps Marianne, the ranch owner, and burns down all the outbuildings. This is enough, and Cole is ready to don the garb of the white ninja… and invade the clean white office building his enemy dwells in.
This is one of those movies that, from a modern sensibility, drags in the middle. It’s the sort of thing though, that you’re bound to have seen clips of in various compilations. The costume and visuals in that third act are quite striking, but speaking for myself, if I were to ever pull this out again, it would really only be for the last 15 minutes or so.
Still, it’s a fascinating example of what Canon films built their name on in the 80s (there’s an excellent documentary on it called Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films)… And I’m intrigued enough and I’m looking forward to seeing the next two films in the series.
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Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
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Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
Maximum Force
Maximum Force starring Sam Jones. This is going to be painful. Yes, I know John Saxon’s in it too, but this thing is still going to be rough. It opens with a scruffy dude observing eight arms deal, he gets caught it’s chased by a helicopter, fortunately he’s got one of those grenade launchers attached to the bottom of his rifle and blows it up.
Big bold letters with the title MAXIMUM FORCE! And then we shift over to villainous Richard Lynch giving a speech to his cronies. Lynch is one of the guys that has a face… I seen that guy! Gasket on just about every show in the 70s and 80s, He’s bragging about being behind all the organize crime in the city, he’s having problems with the cops… Someone’s blaming someone asked me. We get an execution, in the middle of the board room.
been able to do separately. The three of them join forces, and they hold up in a smoky abandoned building to prepare.
Trick or Treat (no, not that one. No, not that one either)
Trick-or-treat starts with gorgeous displays at an amusement park, a sort of Coney Island strip. It’s night time and the lights are spectacular. Kids trick-or-treat over at our house and we settled in on the unhappy father in that house. He’s lost his job in the music industry, and has a newborn daughter, and no sense of identity. He’s kind of lost himself. And his wife is about fed up with his self pitying attitude
Suddenly the door is banging, it’s his drunk driving friend who thinks he may have just killed somebody.
Problem is it’s all a lie. And somebody killed with a local gang Lord’s son… The local gang or that used to employ with him in our hero, his brother.
The local Gang Lord of course comes knocking, searching for his brother, and it turns into a night of fleeing from them and trying to figure out what to do. But there’s a twist… The brother is sleeping with the wife.
I’m gonna be honest here, a little annoyed by the beam switch. Everything on the cover here is designed to let me think this is a horror movie. And indeed we have some scary touches, our league character occasionally sees the Grim Reaper… But it’s really just old age and dissatisfaction with life closing in on him – much like the red dragon in the Fisher King. This movie is actually a gangster movie. It’s all a mob drama, i’m genuinely not a bad one, but that’s the sort of intrigue we’re dealing with. This is one of those movies I think I want to revisit someday, in the right frame of mind… When I’m in the mood for a mafia doublecrossed fan, rather than another Halloween horror movie.
709
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
2001 Maniacs : Field of Screams
Two Thousand Maniacs franchise
Hol
y crap this looks cheap. 2001 maniacs Field of screams was recommended on my Tubi list right after I finished 2001 maniacs. I didn’t even know that this was a thing! But I saw Bill Mosley and Lin Shaye in it and thought “OK fine”. But wow does this look cheap. 2001 maniacs Had a budget behind it… And quite frankly, they understood the source material. They got that this was a ghost story even if it went in some weirdly modern directions…
Field of screams feels like something else. Admittedly, they open with a familiar detour attempt, but it looks like it’s been failing these last few seasons, and they’re going to have to content themselves with the local sheriff as their victim. The sheriff then gets to be the participant in the “barrel roll“. Again, we’ve got a legitimate call back here to the first film… A very similar style, stuffing somebody into a wooden barrel that’s got nails pounded in all around it… but it’s done far more cheaply. Out in the middle of a woodsy nowhere, with 
less pomp and circumstance… And vulgarity that is played for laughs. Mayor Buckland, recast with Bill Mosley (though it’s not the only recast here by the way, town hunk and heartthrob Harper has also been recast with Nick Ogre, the former front man from skinny puppy) This time screams to the crowd “roll out the what?“
“Roll out the barrel!“
“I can’t hear you!“ He shots back, riling them up. And a child Young yells back in reply;
“Kill that mother fu…,” (well, you get the picture).
Yeah, I suppose that’s funny… But it’s not southern. I already 
feel like somethings gone wrong here.
Even the opening credits… With the conceit that the ghosts are all boarding an old school bus and heading up north since there’s no Yankees coming to town to sacrifice… It’s a montage of photos that look more like frat boy Hijinx on the bus then they do sinister southern ghosts. The entire point of 2000 maniacs is the fish out of water… Northerners heading into southern territory that feels like it should be familiar but enter been almost alien. This group just feels like a bunch of cheap slashers… It’s exactly the sort of thing that Bill Mosley 
does well, but I don’t know if it’s suited for this particular genre. It’s really strange because it’s still Tim Sullivan. It’s still the same writer Director everything… But it’s way less money… about 400 grand, down from the 1.5 million that 2001 maniacs reportedly had. Literally The production companies literally “Tax Credit Finance@ … It’s bizarre. It’s not helped any either by the fact that Robert Englund couldn’t make it back for this one… Schedules just couldn’t line so they just recast him with Bill Mosely and went on thier way.
So the crew road trips up a little bit until they hit a D list celebrity reality show to crash and find victims at. It’s supposed to be kind of like the simple life with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie (the original pitch was in fact, supposed to be for this to happen in LA… But the budget could never have afforded that, so they just moved everything to Iowa instead) with a couple of dead on lookalikes and a crew of sufficiantly d
iverse cardboard cutouts to murder.
We get beginning trailers for the reality show and it’s as insipid and vapid as you would expect… Basically, I’m kinda looking forward to watching these girls get sliced and diced . The Reality stars are headed to Georgia, but there bus breaks down in Iowa, but discovers Pleasant Valley crew camped out. Discovering that they’re from Georgia, reality stars decide to mingle and see if they can shoot their show around them…
And we got our set up done.
This is bad. I mean it’s really bad. It’s almost cartoonish in its execution and lacks a lot of the visceral blood and gore that we got from the last movie. We got a scene of one of the girls 
tied up in the medical tent and suddenly a buzzer starts coming up between her legs. We know that she’s about to be sawed in half, but they cut away… I don’t just give us the reaction shot of the maniacs killing her and blood spraying on them. Like I said, cheap. Then there is the flash dance music video about the main cannibals… I kid you not. What is Lin Shaye doing here anyhow? She’s embarrassing herself. From the horribly awkward sex scene with the mayor, to the flat out dumb one-liners and aforementioned musical interlude, I just don’t know what to do with her. It’s not the Lindsey that I know, it’s not the dignified actress that
can send shivers up your spine in stuff like Insidious.
And then there’s Ahmed Best. Does that name sound familiar? If you’re my age it probably should but you may have a hard time placing him, especially looking at his face. That’s because we’re not used to looking at his face… Where are used to hearing his voice coming out of the mouth of Jar Jar Binks. And yet, he’s managed to find in this movie a role that lowers and degrade him even further than the pariah of Star Wars. He is the token black dude of Pleasant Valley, and it’s just ugly.
In fact, all of the stereotypes are kind of ugly. Look, I’m really not that kind of guy… I don’t get in an uproar over characters or stereotypes… But it’s played so garishly here… With the J
ewish TV Director literally having the curls of hair protruding from his hat, and them having a token Asian hooker among the people of Pleasant Valley with the most egregious accent as she croons “Twenty dolla, make you Holla!“.
I will admit that as we go on, the kills do you get better, and someone there knows how to create busts and props and set dressing. That’s not the same however, as being good at make up and Gore FX… Which is really what is this movie REALLY needed. You don’t have any kind of a real story here. You have director Tim Sullivan drifting from disjointed set piece to unrelated set piece, while poking fun at whatever comes to mind. It might be forgivable if those set pieces were 
spectacular in their gore, but They’re not, and all he has to offer really is as many topless shots as he can cram into the movie without going strictly pornographic.
You know, I don’t understand what happened here either. It’s weird, because it’ a Tim Sullivan film. He’s the same Director and writer… It’s the same vision. It’s been the same guiding hand from the remake to the comic book to this ill-fated sequel. But this thing is so bad, easily one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen… And having watched more than a little bit of Neil Breen’s work… That’s not a judgment I pass lightly. This one is a pass. In fact it’s not just a pass, it’s a flee, run, burn it with fire recommendation. If someone offers to give you a copy for free? Slap them in the face and tell them you’re not their friend anymore.
In fact, all of the stereotypes are kind of ugly. I’m really not that kind of guy… I don’t get in an uproar over characters or stereotypes… But it’s played so Gerrish Lee here… With the Jewish TV Director literally having the curls of hair protruding from his hat, and them having a token Asian hooker among the people of Pleasant Valley with the most egregious accent as she croons $20 make you Holla.
I will admit that as we go on, the kills do you get better, and someone there knows how to create busts and props and set dressing. That’s not the same however, as being good at make up and Gora facts… Which is really what is still needed. You don’t have any kind of a real story here. You have the Director drifting from disjointed set piece to unrelated sap piece, while poking fun at whatever comes to mind. It might be forgivable if those set pieces were spectacular in their gore, but They’re not, and all he has to offer really is as many topless shot says he can cram into the movie without going strictly pornographic.
You know, I don’t understand what happened here either. It’s weird, because it’ a Timm Sullivan film. He’s the same Director and writer… It’s the same vision. It’s been the same guiding hand from the remake to the comic book to this ill-fated sequel. But this thing is so bad, easily one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen… And having watched more than a little bit of Neil brains work… That’s not a judgment I pass lightly. This one is a pass. In fact it’s not just a pass, it’s a flea, run, burn it with fire and if someone offers to give you a copy for free? Slap them in the face and tell them you’re not their friend anymore.
Frozen
Can I just first state that I’m a little pissed that Disney pops up with a fun family princess film by this same title, about a year and a half or so after Adam Green released this thriller? I hate that these things are inevitably going to be confused, and the way that the Disney frozen really grabs that name in eclipses Adam Green’s Frozen. This is actually the first film of Green’s that I ever saw, it came on the strong recommendation from the late and lamented Horror et cetera podcast. It’s the story of three people on a ski weekend who get stuck on a chairlift, as the ski resort shut down for the week. It’s such a simple yet terrifying premise and it’s a great departure from the Hatchet films that Green was getting known for. Its a chance to show what else he can do. Even though it’s locked into the category, this is not really horror, not to me anyhow. This is thriller territory. There are no monsters here, unless you count the wolves that are very active below them. No, in this case the situation itself is the villain – and the interpersonal relationships take center stage. It is squirm inducing, and uncomfortable. It is the sort of movie that will stay with you, long after the film is over.
I mentioned earlier that this is a departure from the style of the Hatchet series, and that’s intentional – Green didn’t want to necessarily be pigeonholed into the horror genre, and really – this is the kind of thing where he shines. You have to remember that he started, writing comedy, particularly romantic comedy – and characters are really his strong points. While his romcom type work hasn’t gotten nearly as much exposure as the horror stuff, it’s where his skill sets begins. The emphasis on characters and relationships is what makes Frozen work. You genuinely care about these people, you emphasize and sympathize with them and that’s absolutely what this film needs to be able to tear apart your heart. That’s what Frozen is about really, to break your heart and to chill your soul – no jump scares, just suspense. This is absolutely a must see, although for me it doesn’t have a lot of repeat value. I don’t think I’m going to be a visiting it, but I’ve got a say – definitely watch it, even if its only once.
Argo City Comics 