'80s adventure, McDermott and Hauer thrills, and a crappy Thanksgiving.
SPACECAMP (1986)
If a movie like director Harry Winer's SpaceCamp came out today, I might watch it, but it's not something I would go out to catch at the theatre, and there's a chance I wouldn't like it because it's about young kids and could end up feeling like something off the Disney Channel - which is to say, it might work for kids the same age as the characters, but it's not something I would find entertaining now that I'm entering the second half of my thirties. But Winer's film had the benefit of being released in the 1980s, and '80s movies have a style and sensibility that I will always find appealing. SpaceCamp also had the misfortune of coming out in the same year as the Challenger disaster, so it didn't do very well at the box office, but I never knew it had underperformed. This is a movie I saw get played frequently on TV when I was a child.
Written by Clifford "W.W. Wicket" Green and Casey T. Mitchell from a story by Patrick Bailey and Larry B. Williams, SpaceCamp does indeed take place at a space camp, and the Winer gathered a cast of familiar faces to populate this place. The core group of campers are played by Lea Thompson of Back to the Future, Kelly Preston, Larry B. Scott of Revenge of the Nerds, a very young Joaquin "Leaf" Phoenix, and Tate Donovan, and instructors are played by Tom Skeritt and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom's Kate Capshaw.
Capshaw's character Andie has been dreaming of going to space, as her husband Zach (Skeritt) already has, ever since she was a little girl back in the '60s, but she has never been given the go-ahead. While putting this year's group of campers through the paces she's especially tough on Thompson's Kathryn, because Kathryn is basically a teenage version of Andie and Andie wants to push her to be the best she can be. Even when that means putting Kevin (Donovan), the guy who has a crush on Kathryn and openly admits that he doesn't care about anything that's going on at this camp, in charge of their shuttle team instead of Kathryn. Also in that shuttle team with Kathryn and Kevin are young Star Wars fan Max (Phoenix); Scott as Rudy, a guy who loves science but isn't very good at it; and Preston as Tish, who seems like an airhead mallrat but is actually capable of remembering everything she reads.
SpaceCamp isn't just the story of these people hanging out at camp and having fun in the flight simulators. Andie and the campers actually get launched into space - and the way that happens is through a story element that is pure '80s cheese. While at camp, Max befriends a droid called Jinx, which was supposed to handle maintenance at a space station but is so faulty that it is kept at this space camp as a "27 million dollar handyman". Somehow Max is able to keep this 27 million dollar piece of equipment near his bunk bed most of the time, and the droid really grasps onto the idea of friendship. When Jinx hears that Max wants to go into space, the robot hacks into NASA's systems and finds a way to make that happen. When the campers and Andie are allowed to sit in the cockpit of a space shuttle that will soon be launching, Jinx sets off a malfunction that causes the shuttle to launch early with no one on board but the never-picked Andie and the unqualified kids. Kids who have failed at working as a team in the simulator.
So they get launched into space. While that's quite an experience, it could a manageable situation with Andie on board and NASA being able to bring the shuttle down on auto pilot at the next re-entry window in 12 hours. But the launch happens at about the midway point of the movie, so of course all sorts of problems are thrown at the characters to keep us interested and wondering how they're going to survive this ordeal. As Andie and the kids work through the obstacles thrown their way, Zach and NASA employees - including Terry O'Quinn as the launch director - try to monitor things from the ground. An endeavor complicated by them not having radio contact with the shuttle.
SpaceCamp is an entertaining movie that might still work for kids today, but probably holds up the best for '80s kids nostalgic for the era they grew up in.
THE CLOVEHITCH KILLER (2018)
After years of being aware of actor Dylan McDermott but not paying much attention to him, I was very impressed when I saw his performance in the thriller Josie. So when I heard McDermott would be playing a man whose son suspects he may be a serial killer in director Duncan Skiles' The Clovehitch Killer, I immediately added this movie to my mental "must see" list.
Written by Christopher Ford, The Clovehitch Killer isn't a true story but it was clearly heavily inspired by the details that have been shared about the life of one specific real life serial killer who was captured within the last 15 years. That guy was convicted of murdering ten people, but in he was also a family man who was a Boy Scout troop leader and regularly attended church. McDermott's character Don Burnside is also a Boy Scout troop leader and regularly attends church, but within the first 10 minutes of the film his teenage son Tyler (Charlie Plummer) is starting to wonder if his father is actually The Clovehitch Killer, a serial killer who terrorized their small town a while back but hasn't killed anyone in the last 10 years.
McDermott again proves that I was missing out by not paying attention to him, because he gives another great performance in The Clovehitch Killer. On the outside, his character Don is just a dweeby dad, but there's something off about him just under the surface - it's easy to understand why Tyler might think there's something sinister going on with him. Especially when we see the strange collections that Don has hidden under floorboards and in the crawlspace.
Plummer does a fine job guiding us through the film's mystery, and there are some other notable actors in the supporting cast. I was glad to see Samantha Mathis in here as Don's wife / Tyler's mother, as I have been a fan of hers since the early '90s, and this movie made me a fan of Madisen Beaty, who plays a teenage social outcast who devotes her free time to doing research on The Clovehitch Killer.
I wasn't totally satisfied with the ending of this movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed the journey to those final moments, as I was intrigued throughout and anxious to see what was going to happen next.
BLIND SIDE (1993)
The late, great Rutger Hauer stars in this HBO thriller as a mysterious man who torments a couple (played by Ron Silver and Rebecca De Mornay) who get themselves into some serious trouble during a trip to Mexico.
That couple, Doug Kaines and his pregnant wife Lynn, run a furniture company that they're thinking of moving from California to Mexico to save themselves some money. While driving home at night, they accidentally hit a Mexican police officer who's just walking in the middle of the road. The police officer is killed by the collision, and the Kaines fear that the local authorities will toss them in prison for killing one of their own, accident or not. So they flee the scene, get back to the states, and now that they have actually committed a crime they live in fear that the decision is going to catch up with them.
It isn't long before Hauer's character Jake Shell shows up at their door. He claims that all he wants from them is a job at their furniture store, but he makes odd references that indicate that he was sitting on the side of the road in Mexico when the Kaines hit that police officer. It seems like he saw what they did, but if he did he isn't saying what he intends to do with that information.
Director Geoff Murphy and writers Stewart Lindh, Solomon Weingarten, and John Carlen keep Shell's secrets from us for a long time, but I was intrigued by the story, Hauer delivers a fascinating performance, and there's a crazy sex scene between Shell and Mariska Hargitay as furniture store employee Melanie along the way. Melanie is the first person hurt by Shell, as far as the Kaines know, and he does so in a sex scene involving cowboy gear, bondage, candle wax, a razor, booze, overzealous thrusting, and maniacal laughter.
Shell takes the cowboy aesthetic even further in the climax, where he goes full-on Old West gunslinger. I didn't expect that when I started watching Blind Side, but it took my enjoyment of the film up to a new level.
It took me twenty-six years to catch up to this movie, but I'm glad I finally watched it. I was entertained and on the hook to see where it was going.
The following review originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
INTO THE DARK: PILGRIM (2019)
The first two pilgrims who show up at their door are Ethan (Peter Giles) and Patience (Elyse Levesque), and during the build-up to the holiday Ethan dedicates himself to trying to show this family that they need to appreciate each other more, and appreciate everything they have. This family does need the help. Cody has never been able to accept Anna as a replacement for her mother, who left on Thanksgiving when Cody was a child, and Shane is constantly keeping track of the stock market when he should be focusing on his wife and kids. If this movie were made for a family-oriented TV channel by a different creative team, a team that wouldn't have the teenage stepdaughter call a reenactment of the first Thanksgiving a way to honor "the whitewashed history of the Native American genocide", it's easy to imagine that it would have played out in a heartwarming way, with the pilgrim being able to open their eyes to what they have through some fancy speeches and acts of kindness. But this creative team has Ethan and his pals put this family through the wringer.
Dunstan and his collaborators gradually build up to the moment when everything goes wrong. Cody is always wary of Ethan and Patience, and even though she's a sour pain in the ass for most of the movie it's clear that we shouldn't trust them, either. There's something weird about these folks. Patience is the more reserved of the two, but Levesque is able to make her come across as a formidable threat when she unleashes. Giles, on the other hand, is allowed to go way over-the-top as Ethan, and he does a great job in the role, whether a scene requires him to try to genuinely connect with one of the family members or laugh like a maniac while inflicting pain.
Once things take a turn for the worse roughly halfway through the movie and the pilgrims turn to violence, Dunstan dials up the insanity of the entire movie to match the level of Giles' performance. He and cinematographer Lyn Moncrief, who has worked on several of the Into the Dark movies, clearly had a lot of fun shooting the pilgrims' antics, throwing a lot of quirky camera movements into the film's second half.
Fans of Dunstan's work from the Collector movies and the Saw sequels he wrote with Melton might also be glad to hear that he managed to work some old timey torture into this story. Characters are put in stockades, branded, strapped into a device that dips them in water... and that's not the worst of it. Eventually Pilgrim gets downright disgusting. But it's the kind of movie that's trying to make the viewer simultaneously amused and grossed out. If it's possible to chuckle while gagging, that's probably the response Dunstan is looking for.
One downside to Pilgrim is that I had trouble connecting with any of the characters, since they're all having trouble connecting with each other. Cody is our heroine, but she's not always likeable. These characters do need behavioral adjustments, the pilgrims just try to make it happen in a way that can't be condoned.
Even though I didn't always care about the characters, I enjoyed watching their journey, and I was entertained by the way Dunstan brought their story to the screen. Pilgrim is a movie about appreciation, and I appreciated the effort the filmmakers put into making this a Thanksgiving tale that's even more horrifying than the idea of having to spend the holiday with annoying family members.
That sex scene in Blind Side 1993 was actually consensual sex becoming rape.
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