Category: Comedy

#774 Out Cold (1989)

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A smartly written black comedy that proves to have plenty of aces up its sleeve, Out Cold starts extremely slow but does get better every minute towards the end. While the movie itself is relatively unknown, its cast of a-list actors makes up for an fresh mix. John Lithgow plays a socially awkward butcher, a character not unlike his later TV-role as Dr. Dick Solomon. Teri Garr performs admirably as the black widow wife, and Randy Quaid makes for a perfect confused detective that wanders from one scene to another, always hilariously clueless.

There’s something very off-Hollywood about the whole movie; even if the locations are clearly those of California, somehow the overall mood of the movie resembles more an indie movie shot in Great Britain or New Zealand. While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why this is, clearly some elements like the really unusual(ly bad) soundtrack play a big part here. Personally, I’m really not a big fan of these design choices, and they did bring the overall score down.

Even with its flaws Out Cold is a charming little 90-minuter that manages to earn my recommendation – but won’t be going into my watch again pile.

80s-o-meter: 61%

Total: 68%

#772 You Can’t Hurry Love (1988)

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You Can’t Hurry Love is a fish out of water story about a young man moving to LA, trying to find a direction in his life while seeking for true love, mostly by trying to pass as a real LA cool cat. The story revolves around video dating which was a huge hit in the late 80s. These awkwardly shot VHS videos have been amusing people ever since they were uploaded to Youtube some 20 years later. Story is a strong word here though as the movie is more like loose scenes that somehow blend into each other.

For being a low budget movie, You Can’t Hurry Love has managed to gather some impressive cameos and song licences (not written for the movie, obviously); Charles Grodin makes a short but sweet visit as a disgruntled, condom-dispensing dad and Phil Collins’ huge 1982 hit song You Can’t Hurry Love can be heard as the title soundtrack for the movie. David Packer, formerly known to public from V the TV Mini-series and its sequels makes for a performance that’s synonymous with the movie itself: Unwitty but sympathetic and lovable.

You can’t hurry love isn’t obviously significant, nor even a good movie in any way – but somehow, one just can’t be too angry about it all.

80s-o-meter: 89%

Total: 60%

#767 Used Cars (1980)

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A comedy that somehow has a very strong early 80s Burt Reynolds movie vibe to it, Used Cars is a scoundrel story of a few ruthless individuals who trying to make their living by selling piece of junk cars to any unwary customer – by any means necessary.

As is the case with many of the early 1980’s movies, Used Cars is a bit too seventies in its style for my taste. This is the kind of comedy that trades in all the plausability with explosions, tits and wacky racing bits. While one could argue it’s all part of the genre and done just for the sake of entertainment, it is somewhat bothersome that all the characters here seem to follow a scripted movie logic instead of any kind of common sense.

The always charismatic Kurt Russell in feature film debut pulls off the lovable scoundrel bit admirably, but much like his character here who knows he has more to offer and suffers as a car salesman, the role here seems a bit menial for Russell who’d go on to star in such a legendary titles as Escape from New York, The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China.

80s-o-meter: 58%

Total: 62%

#766 Halloween 2017: Night of the Creeps (1986)

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One of those movies that I’ve avoided watching for a long while, out of fear that it couldn’t meet my expectations, I’m happy to say that all my fears were unfounded: Night of the Creeps is a gem of a movie!

Night of the Creeps first found its way to the finnish video rental stores as a heavily cut version and ignited a lot of speculation with the youth of the time of an uncut version circling around somewhere, and this cult status followed it throughout the 90s.

Night of the Creeps is an almost perfect combination of comedy and horror – and even some elements of scifi thrown in the mix as well – and as a living dead movie it’s up there with the greats like Return of the Living Dead and Dead Heat.

80s-o-meter: 94%

Total: 98%

#764 Halloween 2017: Killer Party (1986)

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Killer Party seems to be two different movies rolled together as one. The first half of the movie is a lighthearted fraternity comedy with a few small spooks here and there. After that we have an almost The Exorcist like portion of the movie where all the killings happen. Both halves are fairly well made, the biggest difference being that the comedic part is utterly trivial, and the horror part manages to show a lot of potential.

And herein lies my gripe with the movie. Instead of mixing and matching they really should’ve cut the comedy part short and rely more on the horror part, which seems stronger of the two. Although the overall viewing experience is surprisingly professionally made and fluid, the problem with parts that don’t meet follows the movie through. At the start of the movie we are presented with not one, but two different prologues that have nothing to do with the rest of the movie and there are numerous of sub-plots that don’t really contribute to anything.

The fans of Paul Bartel might be interested to know he makes a brief visit as the Professor Zito in one of the unrelated plot loose ends.

80s-o-meter: 90%

Total: 82%

#763 Halloween 2017: Return of the Living Dead II (1988)

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The sequel – this time written and directed by Ken Wiederhorn – follows the look and feel of the original movie closely, and does not wander too far away from the winning formula. In this case the decision applaudable, making Return of the Living Dead II worth watching, even if it is the weaker movie of the two.

James Karen and Thom Mathews, the hilarious screaming and moaning duo from the first movie return as completely new characters here as if the events in the first movie never took place, but the movie thankfully acknowledges this by joking openly about it.

Some of the familiar reanimated cadavers – like the modernised version of the Tarman – are back, but the sequel falls behind the original in the overall quality of the effects, never surpassing its three year older big brother. The sequel trades in some of its quality to quantity by marching huge armies of living dead on the screen, ending up with a much less memorable array of baddies.

The series would go on to spawn three more sequels, one in 1993 and two in 2005, all of which are mostly unrelated to these eighties originals.

80s-o-meter: 90%

Total: 82%

#762 Halloween 2017: The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

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The Return of the Living Dead is a riot.

Starting off with an ‘official’ statement that all of the the events seen in the movie are true, it soon follows with a totally outrageous story of a misplaced army canister leaking out experimental gas capable of waking up the dead. Starting off as an unfortunate effect in a small warehouse soon gets out of hand as the substance spreads out, effectively waking up a cemetery full of cadavers, all hungry for brains.

I love the way the movie goes all in with everything it does, the effects are not only done exceptionally well, but they’re also visually pleasing and memorable. The meat locked cadaver, Tarman, army of the living dead and the ‘do you wanna party’ skeleton all beat the often poor, potato sack over the head antagonists many films try pass as a horror effect. Much of this outrageous genius must be credited to the director Dan O’Bannon – better known as the writer of Alien and Total Recall – whose pet project the movie was.

The Return of the Living Dead is a rare masterpiece that manages to hit the perfect spot between horror and comedy. If you still haven’t seen it, consider this your cue to do it!

80s-o-meter: 95%

Total: 98%

#761 Halloween 2017: Neon Maniacs aka Evil Dead Warriors (1986)

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Let’s get this out of the way: Neon Maniacs’s plot is a total nonsense.

A gang of ghoulies start spawning from under the Golden Gate bridge and start killing people – mostly young – around San Francisco. These creatures are straight out of carnival kind of goofy looking, and as is it turns out they can be killed using nothing but just plain old water. No Oscar winning material here.

Fortunately this nonsense is executed with a top notch B-movie style in the best tradition of the 80s: There’s gory and gooey effects the Neon Maniacs melting, parties and cheesy musical performances, all of which make otherwise mediocre Neon Maniacs a fun and rememberable slasher horror movie that offers a refreshing twist on this sometimes very tired genre.

80s-o-meter: 90%

Total:80%

#760 Halloween 2017: Zombie High (1987)

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Zombie High joins the rank of horror comedies that are dark in their humor and rarely wander off to being too silly and trivial. The movie is also very aware that the concept of a boarding school run by a staff who’s reached immortality through harvesting life-sustaining chemicals from the students’ brains is kind of a far fetch, but manages to tell the story in a fashion that lures the viewer to play along with the gag, if not to completely buy it.

The movie is pretty low on frights, and could’ve milked lots of additional shock value out of its ‘everyone is involved’ theme that is very briefly visited during the police station scene. The light-hearted social commentary about lively young people being turned to zombies that wear suits, carry briefcases and go on with the lives as a very successful drones is delightful one, especially with the small gag in the few last seconds to the film.

Although the script doesn’t provide her much to work with, Virginia Madsen, who’s playing the protagonist here, stands head and shoulders above your average, totally forgettable B-movie actresses, and really brings the movie up a notch or two.

Zombie High is a nifty little horror comedy that will keep you easily entertained – but probably not spooked – during its 90 minutes runtime.

80s-o-meter: 82%

Total: 70%

#746 Halloween 2017: Shocker (1989)

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I’m willing to cut most movies some slack even if the concept seems highly implausible. But Shocker just takes things much too far expecting a leap of faith of such a gigantic proportions that most people will probably fall short of taking it.

Directed and written by Wes Craven, the movie’s antagonist is an omnipotent killer not restricted by the limits of the physical world, not unlike Freddie Kruger from Craven’s earlier movie series A Nightmare on Elm Street. The problem is that Horace Pinker isn’t nowhere near as strong a character and can’t support a feature film. In fact, he’d have a hard time cutting it as a side character in a more decent short movie.

Shocker also pulls off the quite unique combination of being unbelievable up to the point of being utterly stupid, but still being totally unoriginal. The very same concept of a murderer coming back from the dead after an execution in the electric chair has been done before previously in Prison, Destroyer and The Horror Show, all of which are much superior films to this one.

Probably the only positive note is the movie’s rock induced heavy metal soundtrack featuring selected tracks from Megadeth, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop and Bonfire that give the movie some good music video -like oomph to it.

80s-o-meter: 82%

Total: 47%

#745 Halloween 2017: Evil Dead II (1987)

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Sam Raimi is back with the second installation of the Evil Dead, this time around with a heftier budget. While Evil Dead II is not a remake, there’s a strong feeling of dejavú with all the events unravelling here: Ash being locked in the cabin, getting haunted by evil creatures spawning out the depths of the Necronomicon.

The gritty underdog home made feeling of the first movie is gone and while some of the effects are inventive, they all seemed more fresh in the original one. There’s also a forced comedy approach here that makes Evil Dead II much less a scary movie than the first one. To me it seems the first part played its hand better in this sense, being more scary and haunting in its imagery, and making you laugh occasionally, but in an uneasy, somewhat nauseated way.

On a positive note Sam Raimi’s fresh ideas with the camera movement are even more present in the sequel and Bruce Campbell furthermore shows he is an excellent physical actor really going all stakes in with his portrayal, and having become synonymous with the series for a very good reason.

While the sequel is weaker than the first movie, this is the movie most people refer to when talking about Evil Dead series. If I was to choose, I’d go hands down with the first movie, but the few iconic moments shown here – like Ash arming his stubb with a chainsaw – still warrant viewing the sequel as well.

80s-o-meter: 83%

Total: 60%

#742 Halloween 2017: Return to Horror High (1987)

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A confusing horror comedy, Return to Horror High shows some limited promise from time to time, but soon starts to stumble as it tries to be too clever for its own good. The endless stream of flashbacks and dreams wrapped up in a snappy movie-within-a-movie concept makes the movie tiresome to follow.

Among the totally no-name cast can be seen one young gentleman called George Clooney in his feature film debut role, cast in a side role of a cop getting killed in the very first minutes of the movie. Talk about an unfortunate casting choice!

The movie has a lot of good underdog kind of vibe to it that I usually root for, but the plot is just much way too unsatisfying to get sucked into. It’s a shame because this budget movie is shot and produced in a professional fashion, and on the surface the movie seems crazy enough to warrant a cult movie status.

80s-o-meter: 83%

Total: 61%

#741 Halloween 2017: Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)

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A step up in production values from its predecessor, Slumber Party Massacre II continues the story five years after the events taking place in the first movie.

If the first movie loaned a lot from Halloween, the sequel is all about re-enacting The Nightmare on Elm Street. There are dream sequences with the killer – this time around dressed in black leather and boasting a drill attached to an electric guitar – haunting the protagonist in her sleep.

The whole comedic aspect is present much stronger with the sequel, but it carries the humor and absurdity a bit too far away to the point that it’s nowhere scary anymore. The novelty of the whole concept wears thin towards the end, and Slumber Party Massacre II ends up a fairly tame experience.

80s-o-meter: 91%

Total: 61%

#740 Halloween 2017: The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

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Another day, another early eighties slasher. If you’ve seen the other movies of the era, you pretty certainly know what to expect next and there aren’t too many surprises here.

That being said, The Slumber Party Massacre might be one of the better ones in the genre, and although it’s offerings fall more to the humor section rather than the horror, it’s still a fairly solid show.

If you have a really bad craving for a eighties slasher, you can’t go wrong much with this one.

Those looking for some originality and genuine scares should probably steer away.

80s-o-meter: 74%

Total: 59%

#739 Halloween 2017: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

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Released 12 years after the original movie shocked the world, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 brings back the whole sadistic, cannibalistic family to the silver screen in a splattery, comedic package not unlike Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste, released one year later.

Directed by Tobe Hooper, the production values have amped up and what the sequel loses in its snuff atmosphere, it gains in professional set design, tight action scenes and quality makeup. The tone of the movie has changed quite a bit as well, changing from nerve wrecking, documentary like tension to action, comedy and guts.

Dennis Hopper is seen as Lieutenant ‘Lefty’ Enright who dives right into the role with the right kind of madness and intensity. Bill Johnson makes for a good dumb, often hilariously confused chainsaw wielding Leatherface often seen in delightfully violent entrances to the scene through some solid walls and doors. A lot of work has gone in the set design of the underground lair, which is a chaotic mix of a slaughterhouse, wax cabinet of mummified corpses in macabre poses, hoarded items, and endless, stuffy corridors filled with color lights.

The sequel is an exercise in bad taste that amps up the madness levels to the max, and the insanity depicted here gets so overboard at times that watching the movie feels suffocating like being locked in an asylum. It’s a movie that’s definitely not for everyone, but obviously that’s the way Tobe Hooper wanted to design it.

80s-o-meter: 82%

Total: 80%

#735 Never Too Young to Die (1986)

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Vanity, who sadly passed away on 2016, went totally under my radar before seeing her in Action Jackson and the insanely awesome The Last Dragon, released the previous year. Never Too Young to Die, starring the ridiculously gorgeous Vanity along with Gene Simmons portraying Velvet Von Ragnar, a hermaphrodite night club singer gang leader plotting to poison the entire Los Angeles water supply at first seems to have the same awesomeness written all over it.

Written to be the first part of a movie series starring Stargrove, a son of a super agent killed in action the movie suffers from pilot episode like pacing; although there is a lot of things going on, the movie still seems to take it sweet time to really get into action.

After I let go of the idea of the movie being quite the epic win like The Last Dragon, I started to enjoy the movie for the enormous camp value it has: Gene Simmons in a corset and a drag makeup boasting possibly the worst acting seen on the silver screen and delivering one ridiculously stupid line after another is stuff that’s best consumed with some like-minded friends who enjoy a good laugh or two.

80s-o-meter: 94%

Total: 76%

#734 The Woman in Red (1984)

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A new version of a 1976 french comedy film adapted to the american silver screens by Gene Wilder, The Woman in Red is a movie about a man finding himself in a middle of a midlife crisis and falling for a young model he starts chasing after.

There are a few positive sparks here. Gilda Radner absolutely steals the show as the disgruntled secretary caught between the affair by mistake, and Charles Grodin once again proves he can make the best out of any material thrown his way. Gene Wilder also reminds us with the horseback riding scene that his comical abilities are still there.

Otherwise the movie is a mess. The overall pacing is off, the relationship between the office worker and the super model doesn’t seem to follow any logic and all the numerous disjointed plot lines are patchy and never followed through. Although the movie is short at only 80 minutes, the struggle in both writing and directing to tie a bunch of mediocre ideas together to an actual film is obvious.

The Woman in Red was heading to the ballpark of 40% overall rating until it performs its ultimate sin with its 70s style ending by first carefully painting the protagonist to a corner and then resolving everything with an idiotic shrug of a shoulders.

80s-o-meter: 67%

Total: 17%

#727 Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988)

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Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers is one of those movies made shoddy and stupid by design in order to make them cult classics. There’s a constant stream of low quality, weirdness, dumb jokes, prostitutes, tits and chainsaws, but not really anything much more.

The problem here is that the movie is smart-alecky without being witty and never takes anything seriously enough to have any kind of substance to make watching of the movie interesting. The few chuckles the movie provides now and then aren’t really enough to justify watching this 80 minutes of nonsense.

I’m not quite sure for whom the Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers is made for. Those interested in having a b-movie night with some friends know there are a lot of crappier, more entertaining, unintentionally hilarious movies out there to enjoy.

80s-o-meter: 84%

Total: 22%

#719 Teen Witch (1989)

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An 80s cult classic largely thanks to its unshameful depictions of teenage high school everyday life – including white boy rapping on school hallways and improvised dance and sing numbers in the girls’ locker room – Teen Witch no doubt paved the way to a lot of awful 90s movies and series, the likes of Beverly Hills 90210.

While I have to admit that all that over the board teen stuff is entertaining in all of its awfulness, Teen Witch never goes full way with any of its concepts. The soon-to-be-cinderella protagonist isn’t a loser to start with, the antagonists aren’t menacing enough, the teen witchery aspect isn’t explored beyond getting a male teacher to undress and getting to be popular in the school, which could’ve been achieved without resorting to any supernatural plotlines.

Finally, the moral of the movie of believing in yourself and being just yourself, well .. I’m not too sure if it ever actually takes place in that final scene.

Teen Witch plays campy like a high school musical with very limited amount of music, but although the movie is flawed and makes just a little sense, there’s just something very irresistible about the whole sincerity of it all.

80s-o-meter: 97%

Total: 70%

#718 Married to the Mob (1988)

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On the surface Married to the Mob had nothing to interest me: I’m not particularly big on mob movies and the cast here didn’t seem to include anyone with the kind of comedy chops that will provide some sure laughs.

Luckily the movie turned out much different than I anticipated. Instead of a lowest common denominator gangster film, Married to the Mob is a movie about starting anew and trying to let go of your past that won’t let you go. This is not a laugh out loud comedy, but one that manages have a lot of heart.

Michelle Pfeiffer is totally gorgeous and lovable as the widow trying to start all over again. Both Matthew Modine and Dean Stockwell are likeable in their roles, but both somehow seem just a bit off. Stockwell in particular tries his very best to be as repulsive as possible, but ends up a much too sympathetic mob boss.

80s-o-meter: 70%

Total: 82%