I grew up watching Rankin Bass cartoons. I loved them, and watched mostly around the holidays. So every single Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas were spent with the folks at Rankin Bass. Someone somewhere would air one of their numerous specials every year, so I love this company. “Jack O Lantern” though is very new to me, and one I was never really familiar with. Which is shocking considering “Jack O Lantern” is really quite a good adventure tale that I would have loved as a child.
I fondly remember renting “Meet Rockula and Frankenstone” quite often from our local videos store when I was a kid, and thankfully the movie genuinely holds up. Like all great comedy series, the Flintstones have had their share of crossovers, and this time they have the misfortune of meeting Dracula and Frankenstone. Or their stone age counterparts, as it were. While it’s not raucously funny as when Abbot and Costello met them, it’s a darn good short movie with the Flintstones doing what they do best.
Rowan Blanchard and Paris Berelc are two of the most interesting Disney personalities to come around in a while. So it’s pretty disappointing when they’re teamed up to star in a DCOM that’s pretty limp from the get go. Aside from barely being about Halloween at all, the entire notion of the movie never plays out effectively. The movie struggles really hard to find stuff for characters to do, and when it’s failing at that, it somewhat concoct subtle religious commentary. When it’s not doing that, it creates a series of plot holes that just leave the movie feeling incomplete and incredibly far fetched even for a kids movie.
“Night of the Wild” is a lot like those terrible seventies nature run amok movies. It’s badly directed, horribly edited, has terrible continuity issues, and garners some inadvertent camp. All that’s missing is an obligatory nude scene. “Night of the Wild” is brimming with potential, beginning with a premise that could have amounted to a great movie. A mysterious green meteor crash lands on a small farm town spreading its meteorites. Suddenly the local animal population begin turning on their masters, becoming violent murderous monsters. Without explanation or warning, now the humans must fight to survive and figure out a way to make it out of their town. “Night of the Wild” pretty much dips in quality after the first ten minutes, creating a story that the budget and resources couldn’t possibly afford.
Melissa Joan Hart is really good casting as Sabrina, the young witch who discovers that she has magical powers on her sixteenth birthday. Hart was always able to convey the girl next door charm and otherworldly beauty well, and she is able to transform Sabrina in to an admirable silver screen heroine. Much like the comics that spawned her, Joan Hart plays Sabrina a transfer student from Massachusetts who goes to live with her aunts at Riverdale. She’s fairly new to her school and dreams of becoming one of the senior elite. On the day of her sixteenth birthday, she discovers that she comes from a long line of witches and that her aunts are her witch mentors.
1998 was a big year for FOX television. Despite handing audiences turkey after turkey (Nick Fury Agents of Shield, anyone?), you have to appreciate their relentless pursuit to deliver genre fare. “Blade Squad” is one of the many failed attempts to build a show out of a TV movie that works as a glorified pilot. As a kid I spent a lot of time in front of the television, and I caught “Blade Squad” one dull Friday night. Suffice it to say despite its interesting concept, “Blade Squad” is a missed opportunity and really dull execution. It’s also a really unique artifact of a decade obsessed with futuristic punk and neon colored dystopias.
I bet you’re wondering the same thing. In order for a whalewolf to come to life should a werewolf bite a whale, or would a whale bite a werewolf? If a whale bit a human would it become a werewhale? Hey, the logic I’m posing is just as silly as the logic in “Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf,” a movie that’s much more fun than it has any right to be. Right off the bat, the thing to remember is the movie doesn’t take itself seriously at all. This is about a movie where a sharktopus are murdering people left and right and our main heroes aren’t all that emotionally distraught after the fact.