Pee-yew! You have to appreciate Shout! Factory for restoring what is easily one of the worst anthology movies of the eighties. I admit to being a completely newcomer in regards to “Deadtime Stories,” and upon finishing it, I was not surprised it was such a rarity for so many years. “Deadtime Stories” watches like someone really loved “Creepshow” and decided to make their own version with only a quarter of the budget. Then mid-way when the studio realized how awful the movie was, they decided to turn it in to a comedy at the last minute so horror fans can convince themselves the whole disaster is intentional and a tongue in cheek jab at the anthology crazy of the decade.
Tag Archives: Fantasy
Firestarter (1984): Collector’s Edition [Blu-Ray]
If there’s anything that Stephen King loves to write about, it’s powerful children with god-like abilities, and I imagine considering most of his stories connect in to a universe, someone with Danny Torrance’s abilities is married to someone with the abilities from “Firestarter.” Mike Lester’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel is not a masterpiece, but I still insist it’s a fun movie with a good amount of effort behind it. The only thing it really suffers from is being ahead of its time. I imagine were we given a new adaptation “Firestarter” might be a mix of dazzling and disturbing a la “Carrie.” As it is, “Firestarter” is mostly a compelling horror drama about another very powerful young girl who is being hunted by the government.
You Have to See This! The Gate (1987)
There were a lot of movies about suburban unrest and the darkness of the suburbs in the mid to late eighties, and one of the most underrated is “The Gate.” I did not see “The Gate” when it originally appeared in theaters (I did see the sequel though!), but I did finally get to see it when it premiered on network TV in the early nineties. Back in the early nineties my family was much too impoverished to get a luxury like cable, so a lot of my time was spent watching network televised movies. The network I always watched was WPIX Channel 11 in New York, and it was once considered “New York’s Movie Station,” allowing me to see a diverse library of movies made between 1980 and 1991.
Mighty Joe Young (1949)
1949’s “Mighty Joe Young” is almost a parallel universe retelling of “King Kong” except with half the menace and a lot more innocence. Rather than an overgrown ape being exposed to the cruelty of humanity dying for a woman, we’re given an equally touching tale of an overgrown ape and his loyal female caretaker. With beautiful and often fluid stop motion by Ray Harryhausen, “Mighty Joe Young” tells the story of a girl named Jill Young who decides to buy a baby ape from a pair of traders. Anxious to prove to her father she can manage a pet, years later her pet Joe transforms in to a fiercely protective overgrown ape who isn’t very kind of poachers and hunters. When hunters Max and Gregg go to Africa to catch animals to use for their show, Joe Young appears attempting to break the animals free and begins fighting off the intruders.
King Kong Lives (1986)
This is the classic love story of a man and a woman falling in lover under weird circumstances. And a pair of apes that also fall in love under odd circumstances. And their heart transplant that bonds them. Okay, so this isn’t a classic love story, but it is the premise for easily the silliest “King Kong” movie ever made. In a movie that was sort of kind of made to be a spoor, but also meant to be taken very seriously, “King Kong Lives” is kind of the movie that killed King Kong until 2005, and proved that this concept was never meant to go beyond the one and done tale of his experience with Fay Wray on the Empire State Building.
King Kong Escapes (1967)
Poor Kong. He’s only a pawn in the game of life. “King Kong Escapes” is another in the efforts by Toho to create a more expanded mythology for King Kong, which is a shame since I think he could have been a nice part of the Godzilla movie series here and there. He could have balanced out all the reptiles and lizards and bugs. “King Kong Escapes” is a direct sequel to “King Kong vs. Godzilla” except this is a movie much more about Kong. This is also one of the few King Kong movies with an actual conniving villain, who walks around committing to an evil scheme.
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)
This is the bash we were all waiting for: the king of the monsters from America meets the king of the monsters from Asia—by way of Toho. Really, King Kong is given something of an Asian treatment this time around, increased in size, and allowed much more of a loophole to face Godzilla for this giant monster bash. I saw the Universal International version where the producers take it upon themselves to over explain everything. In this version the head of a pharmaceuticals company wants to grab a rare berry that is found on a distant island. Said berry has narcotic properties but it non-addictive. Wanting to improve his ratings and invest in a potential product, he sends two executives to the island to find the berries and the mythical monster the villagers are said to placate with juice from the berries.