Hellgate (1989)
Credit has to be given that the actors do play this in a very fun way. But since both the script and the acting is atrocious, a gold star for attitude doesn't make up for the black spot for the story and characters.
The most bizarre thing for me in this story is not the magic stone which brings back the dead, or the 'ghost town' where loads of people live, or the teenagers who feel compelled to explore a place which they are telling scary stories about.
No, the really bizarre thing for me is the 80s glamour anachronistically situated in the 50s. This long-legged tall late-20s/early-30s woman is initially presented as a young girl, possibly even still in high school. It's like some kind of kinky roleplay. Now, actors play people nothing like themselves pretty often and its not unusual for adult actors to play high school characters. But this girl has been chosen less for her acting ability and more for her willingness to be naked or in her underwear for a ridiculous number of scenes.
The funniest thing about this is a scene where the girl is supposed to be dead and her father has a photo of her on the wall. This photo ‘from the 50s’ is a close up of her face clearly shot in an 80s photo shoot. And even if it wasn't completely anachronistic, it's simply not the sort of image you would mount on the wall to remember your innocent schoolgirl daughter.
Basically there was no point where I wasn't painfully aware that I was watching a dumb movie. The sets are obvious, the actors are winking at the camera even though they are rarely funny, and we're supposed to accept that the town has seriously been called Hellgate by someone not expecting horrible stuff to happen there.
The effects aren't always great. There's a very fake looking rubber bat at one point. But my favourite part of the film has to be where various animals are being reanimated and monster-fied by a weird crystal. That brief moment of cool monster effects was very entertaining. The rest of the film probably wasn't helped by its ghost story. There's at least one scene which has a surreal tone borrowing from cool low budget Italian horror, but it just doesn't work.
D-
Dawn Of The Dead (1978)
I decided to rewatch my least favourite of Romero's first four Of The Dead films. I love the intensity of Night, I thought the experiments with training zombies in Day were really cool (hence why Resident Evil Extinction ripped it off shamelessly), and Land had some pretty cool action moments.
But Dawn? It's really slow and the message of, "Wouldn't it be terrible to live trapped in a shopping centre?" is emphasised by making us watch the characters get bored.
This time around the characters felt a little more interesting to me. The character interactions are important, with the two macho characters, one less capable character who feels his masculinity is threatened and his girlfriend who struggles not to be left on the sidelines even while pregnant.
But really it's only the most annoying character, the insecure boyfriend who is less capable with firearms, who really goes through much character development. While the characterisation isn't terrible, this is more about Romero outlining the long term outcomes of a zombie infested world. It's not really a character-focussed drama.
It's undeniably cool that Romero explores the next stage of being overrun by zombies, where the living are running out of places to go. A lot of ideas in this film will be picked up in later zombie films too.
But the story isn't interesting enough and the characters aren't interesting enough. It's just way too dull even of it IS first to the table with a lot of key zombie genre ideas.
And it always annoys me that the zombies are blue...
C+
Clueless (1995)
The mean boyfriend from the movie "May" is in this! And Turk from the tv series Scrubs! And this is the most 90s film ever!
I don't know why Alicia Silverstone's career didn't take off after this, but this is one of my three favourite films with Brittany Murphy. This, Sin City and Freeway all have a different stand-out performance from this actress.
The way this romantic comedy acts as a modernisation of Jane Austen's "Emma" is really clever. The film clearly uses the same storyline, but it's subtle enough that it doesn't need to advertise its influences. Clueless has a distinctive style and has aged remarkably well despite being a time capsule for the mid-90s. I didn't even know ska-punk was a big deal yet when this film first came out, yet a big night out features a ska punk band prominently. In subsequent years, friends starting ska-punk bands would be a memorable factor in my life and Clueless was ahead of the trend it seems.
Hilarious, well performed, cleverly written and plotted. Just generally one of my favourite films of all time.
A+