It’s really tough to separate my bias for “The Gate” and be objective about the entire film. “The Gate” is one film that was on constant rotation for me as a child, and it was a pure favorite of mine in the days when my only source of movie viewing was the WPIX primetime movie during the week. “The Gate” is almost like Lovecraft for the Goonies audience that thankfully hasn’t worn much in its old age. It’s tonally uneven, granted, but still such a damn fun horror fantasy.
For a movie with so much story and set up, it’s shocking how well “Deep Rising” comes together. Stephen Sommers is really committed to delivering a squared jawed hero with a lot of his action movies, and “Deep Rising” gives us Treat Williams in rare form. Director Sommers’ B monster movie action flick is still a lot of fun, despite the aged special effects and slew of sub-plots, some of which are left unresolved. That said, “Deep Rising” has all the ingredients for a fun and raucous action horror film.
Man, Evie and Rick O’Connell have to be two of the most incompetent movie heroes ever conceived. Not only do they bring the mummy to life in the first movie, but in the opening of the second film, they desecrate a tomb, and steal a sacred bracelet that their snot nosed son slips on. Even worse, their son is kidnapped, and said bracelet is going to kill him in a week if he doesn’t find a mythical oasis. There’s a big difference between being an average Joe adventurer like Indiana Jones, and a bungling nincompoop like the O’Connell’s. Seriously, is it so hard to watch one child? And if you’re handling priceless artifacts that are absolutely irreplaceable, why entrust it to an eight year old kid?
Stephen Sommers’ ridiculously successful reboot of “The Mummy” is a film that almost gets the formula correct. It’s like a cocktail of action, comedy, romance, horror, and adventure that almost becomes the perfect marriage of sub-genres, but never quite hits the mark; even when it’s at its best. “The Mummy” is incredibly uneven and tough to really respond to, because Sommers seems to want to opt for action, while Universal seems anxious to embrace the horror. Thus it’s all so unbalanced and drags down an action horror comedy hybrid with potential to be a classic.
So apparently, not only does the leprechaun value his gold beyond all else, but he also requires a bride, too. His convoluted rules are that if the bride sneezes three times and no one but the leprechaun blesses her, he can marry her and she’s eternally bound to the knee high monster. The sequel to “Leprechaun” opens in ancient Ireland, where the leprechaun agrees to free his man servant, once he chooses his bride. Unaware the bride is the servant’s gorgeous daughter the servant outwits the leprechaun, causing him to look elsewhere for his bride. Which takes a thousand years on St. Patrick’s Day, for some reason.
I remember the first time my brother and I asked my parents if we could rent “Leprechaun” from the video store. My dad responded with “No way! You guys won’t be able to look at a box of Lucky Charms for a month!” Suffice it to say he did rent it after we begged, and not only did the movie not scare us, but it bored us to tears. You can just sense that writers behind the concept were running low on mythical monsters to turn in to horror villains. Trolls were taken, as were elves, so the leprechaun seems like a logical but failed next step.
It’s not like the Leprechaun was a horror icon in the ilk of Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees, but one of the aspects of his movie that made them somewhat bearable was Warwick Davis. His personality and good humor shone through the crap that was the “Leprechaun” series. In one fell swoop WWE Films, and Lionsgate take the entire series and completely sap out the life, appeal, and dark comedy in favor of a really stock monster movie where absolutely nothing happens. All of the lore and mythos that the original series tried to implant with their small monster is gone and we’re given a very dull and lifeless horror film.