“Ninja III: The Domination” encapsulates everything you loved about the eighties. There are ninjas, Sho Kosugi, Aerobics instructors, Lucinda Dickey with puffed hair and an Aerobics uniform playing an arcade in her house, a synth pop soundtrack, and yes, a callback to “The Exorcist.” To reflect upon the fitness-centric decade, Dickey’s character even seduces a man by pouring V8 juice down her body. Teaming a revenge film with a possession film, “Ninja III” is every bit the silly genre mashing I remember from when I was a kid. While I have fond memories of Lucinda Dickey being called upon by her floating sword back then, “Ninja III” watches surprisingly well today. It’s silly as all hell, but in the end it’s a fun eighties trip that you can’t help but smile through from beginning to end. And who didn’t love Ninjas back then?
The 5 Most Underrated Fantasy Films of the Last Fifteen Years
Ever since “Lord of the Rings” broke the bank in the box office, studios have been searching far and wide for books to adapt in to big films and eventually series. With “Harry Potter,” “The Chronicles of Nania,” and “Twlight” proving a humongous success, studios are not stopping their search for new series. There’s no limit to the kinds of books they’ll bank roll for a movie series, as we’ve seen with the upcoming “Fifty Shades of Grey.” With every successful film series launch, there have been some fantasy films that have fallen by the wayside, and these are five we consider vastly underrated.
Hungry For More Krites
Krites! I love them, I adore them. I even think they’re cooler than the Gremlins. What am I saying? They’d swallow those gremlins up whole. Can the Gremlins get in to one huge gang bang of a ball and swallow up a man with a few bites? I think not. Granted, you have to love Gizmo, but the Krites are tops with us.
Cloud Atlas (2012) (Blu-ray/DVD + UltraViolet Digital Copy Combo Pack)
Re-incarnation links us to one another, there is no free will, we’re bound to one another in an endless stream of dilemmas we’re fated to live out. We can change it if we so choose, but it is incredibly difficult to defy fate. It takes almost three hours to spell out those very messages to the audience, and what a three hours it is. “Cloud Atlas” has a lot of ambition, with a hefty helping of self-importance to add to its genres, but it does very little to convince us why we should care. About anything in this movie. There are multiple storylines, but I never found myself empathizing with anyone really.
Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)
I’ve always had this idea that the sequels to Tobe Hooper’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” were just glorified remakes of the first film. While it’s true they’re all very similar, filmmakers didn’t start to remake Hooper’s horror film until “The Next Generation.” The Hooper fueled sequel, and “Leatherface” are different films from the first film with finales that are in fact nearly identical to the end of the first film. It’s almost as if the writers never really know where to go once they’ve had their fun, and just go back to the whole dinner scene where the heroine screams bloody murder for thirty minutes. Wherein the second film in the series had poorly developed story, “Leatherface” really has little story.
Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)
So, the sequel to Tobe Hooper’s “Texas Chainsaw” wasn’t the sequel. They were sequels, but perhaps there’s a parallel Sawyer family out there somewhere. Maybe there’s a Leatherface A and a Leatherface B? The stories from parts two, and three in the eighties that followed Tobe Hooper’s original “Texas Chainsaw” were all nonsense that–I’m presuming–were just Nam flashbacks told by a hippy or something. Maybe there were “What If?” storylines. Or perhaps they were scenarios about what became of the Sawyers after Sally managed to escape Leatherface’s clutches. In truth, it’s just hackey studio tinkering that works best if you ignore it. At this point the “Texas Chainsaw” series is more convoluted and confused than “Halloween” and “Nightmare on Elm Street.”
The PC Thug: Arrivederci, Zombie
No one will ever really accuse “H2″ or “Rob Zombie’s Halloween” of ever being a masterpiece. I mean, while they do have the vision of a man who has something to say in the horror genre, they’re not the indicators of someone who can firmly grasp what a remake is supposed to be. John Carpenter’s “The Thing” worked so well because he had source material to work off of, and re-imagined the Howard Hawks original in creative ways. Zombie’s “Halloween” movies felt like repackaged leftovers disguised as a meal. Heck, I don’t think Zombie ever grasped what filmmaking was supposed to be.