Worth Mentioning - He Do the Walk of Life

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.

A Summer School warm-up and some middle-of-the-road horror.

PRINCE OF BEL AIR (1986)

In January of 1986, ABC aired the TV movie Prince of Bel Air, which was directed by Charles Braverman from a script by Dori Pierson and Marc Rubel... and I'm not quite sure who the intended audience was. Did ABC think viewers were clamoring for a show that follows a guy who runs a pool cleaning service as he struggles with commitment issues? That pool cleaner isn't a particularly interesting person, and the script is a bit lacking, so when I caught up with the movie thirty-four years after its premiere I couldn't help but keep wondering throughout, who was this supposed to be for?

I wasn't very impressed by Prince of Bel Air, but there was one great thing about it. The element that made this movie a must-see for me in the first place. This TV movie basically served as a chemistry test for one of my all-time favorite films, the 1987 comedy Summer School. One year before Summer School, here we have Mark Harmon playing a beach bum man-child who falls in love with a more mature, higher class woman played by Kirstie Alley. Just like in Summer School. Plus Summer School students Patrick Labyorteaux and Dean Cameron are both present.

Harmon's pool cleaning character Robin Prince is very much like his Summer School character Freddie Shoop, just not as fun or likeable. As he pursues a relationship with Alley's character Jamie Harrison, the biggest obstacle for them to overcome is the fact that Prince worries he's the sort of guy who will never be satisfied being with just one person. His life up to this point has been one big party of hanging out with his group of pals, seducing random women (including one played by horror icon Barbara Crampton), and bedding the wives of men who hire him to clean their pool. Even though he loves Jamie, he might not be able to change his ways.

While Prince tries to become a better person, his wealthy friend Stanley Auerbach (Robert Vaughn) has asked him to mentor his son Justin (Labyorteaux) for the summer. Justin is an awkward virgin who just graduated from an all-male prep school, and Stanley is hoping Prince will get the kid some experience before he heads off to college in the fall. Basically, he wants Prince to turn Justin into a carbon copy of himself. And Prince is a little too successful.

Cameron's character Willard works for Prince at the pool cleaning business, and the way Cameron was used in this film is a prime example of how this movie had elements in place that would go on to greatness the following year, but Braverman didn't know how to achieve their full potential. Cameron delivered an iconic comedic performance in Summer School. He's funny here as well, but he was only given a couple lines. It's sad to see him get wasted like that.

Prince of Bel Air is a curiosity that's worth checking out if you're a Summer School fan, it's fun to see these cast members together before they went on to play characters we know and love, but I would advise going into it with lowered expectations, as it's not exactly a hidden gem.

The following reviews originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com

ALONE (2020)

Director Vladislav Khesin's Alone starts off with Emma (Elizabeth Arends), a blind woman with a tragic past, arriving at an isolated cabin in the woods, where she's hoping to get enough peace and quiet that she'll be able to focus on writing a book that her therapist suggests could help her get closure on the loss of her child. Emma is given a tour of the place and informed that she won't be able to get a cell phone signal there... and not long after she has settled in, strange things begin to occur. Items are moved around, the security alarm goes off for no apparent reason, Emma hears noises in the cabin. Alone starts to look rather predictable. Clearly this is going to be a slow-burn movie about someone playing cat and mouse with a vulnerable woman who is unable to reach out for help. I was getting prepared to watch a movie that would primarily consist of scenes in which the camera follows Emma around the cabin and we wait for something to finally happen.

But then Alone threw me for a loop, and it was quite welcome. I was not enthustiastic about the idea of spending an entire movie with Emma, because I found the character to be odd and distant. She was not a lead I could connect with, there was something off-putting about her. Thankfully, the film shifts gears about 25 minutes in, beginning with an event that seems to be along the lines of the Marion Crane twist in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. That film followed the Marion character for a large chunk of its running time, it looked like she was going to be the lead throughout, and then the shower scene happened. Here Emma runs into trouble, then a whole new batch of characters are introduced.

Those characters are Hailey (Sara Anne) and Jesse (Bailey Coppola), the college-age son and daughter of the cabin's owners, who have brought some friends and love interests for a short stay at this cabin Hailey and Jesse grew up in. With their introduction, Alone becomes a slasher movie, as it seems that whoever was tormenting Emma has decided to knock this group off one-by-one. And since I love slashers, they're my favorite sub-genre of horror, I was suddenly much more interested in this movie, as I'd rather watch a body count movie than a slow-burn thriller.

But that's not to say Alone becomes a particularly good slasher. In fact, the way most of the death scenes are handled is really underwhelming. Still, if you stick with it and wait for the entire story crafted by writers Samuela Bandeira, Gabriel Legua, and Olabode Olakanmi to play out, you might be able to forgive the movie for hiding the kills from us at first.

I wasn't always on board with what was going on here and I didn't like or care about most of the characters, but there was one element that kept me fascinated throughout - the presence of Bailey Coppola in the cast and his performance as Jesse. Coppola is the nephew of Nicolas Cage, and there are times when he looks exactly like a young version of his legendary uncle. It's no surprise to see that when Cage played a character named Frank in a movie called A Score to Settle last year, Coppola was cast to play "Young Frank". Watching Coppola in Alone was sort of like being able to see a Valley Girl era Cage in a slasher movie, and I was delighted to have the opportunity. Making it even better, Coppola proves to be a somewhat eccentric actor himself, making unique choices and gestures. And yes, Khesin gave Coppola the chance to play a "flip out" scene along the lines of what his uncle is well known for. His flipping out skills aren't on the level of his uncle's, but give him a few decades to catch up.

Aside from Coppola, Alone is very average. The most notable thing about the direction is a couple nice uses of reflective surfaces. The writing isn't great, and events are sometimes downright confusing. I was left feeling that the movie was "not bad", and that's the most positive thing I can say about it. I'm not sure I'd ever watch it again, except as part of a Bailey Coppola career retrospective - because now I'm hoping he'll continue following in his uncle's footsteps for a long time to come.

The end credits start rolling at just 76 minutes, so Alone won't take up too much of your time if you decide to check it out. It would have been shorter, but twists and turns in the climax require some flashbacks to earlier events to show us things from different perspectives, and instead of making this quick Khesin chose to do a Cliff's Notes recap of the whole movie, providing new information while showing us way too many moments we had already seen. It's padded out, but even then the movie is just 80 minutes total.

CAMP COLD BROOK (2018)

I was drawn to Camp Cold Brook due to the setting, as I love when a horror movie is set at a camp, and the talent involved. Genre legend Joe Dante was an executive producer on the film and gets a "Joe Dante Presents" credit in front of the title, one of the lead characters is played by Danielle Harris, and it was directed by Andy Palmer, who made The Funhouse Massacre a few years back. That seemed like a winning combination, but while things got off to a promising start I found that Camp Cold Brook fell apart in its second half.

Chad Michael Murray plays Jack Wilson, the producer and host of the ghost hunting reality show Haunt Squad, and at the start of the film Jack is notified by a network executive (Children of the Corn's Courtney Gains) that the show is being cancelled at the end of its current season. A family man who's already dealing with financial troubles, Jack has to find a way to save his show, and the executive gives him some hope - if he puts together a 90 minute Haunt Squad special that gets good ratings, there might be another season. So now Jack has to find a good subject for this show-saving special. At the suggestion of ghost hunting team member Emma (Candice De Visser), he chooses to investigate the haunting of the titular location in Oklahoma.

Brushing aside the warnings of locals, Jack, Emma, and fellow team members Angela (Danielle Harris) and Kevin (Michael Eric Reid) head out to Camp Cold Brook, which has been abandoned since 1991, when a woman everyone accused of being a witch poisoned and drowned thirty of the campers, believing that the deaths of thirty would resurrect her young daughter, who was hit by a car while crossing the road. Her plan didn't work out, and the witch set herself on fire rather than be apprehended by the police. That back story sort of seems like Friday the 13th mixed with Pumpkinhead, and I was fully ready to be blown away by the sight of some awesome paranormal activity in the wilderness.

Unfortunately, the haunting of Camp Cold Brook is quite lackluster. I was with the movie through the set-up, I appreciated the work Palmer and screenwriter did to let us get to know the characters, but then when the ghost action kicked in I was given little more to enjoy than scenes of people wandering through dark areas, jumping at the sound of laughing invisible children, and walking in circles in the woods. Very little happens until the end of the movie, when an unnecessary twist comes along to add a level of ridiculousness to the story.

Camp Cold Brook had a lot of potential that it squandered. The story is great, and I liked that most of this ghost hunting team has been out in the field being disappointed for so long that they have become skeptics. Jack runs the show and hosts it, but he no longer actually believes in ghosts. A new addition to the team, Emma still thinks there's something out there. The activity at the camp proves to everyone that an afterlife does exist, and while Kevin remains an annoying, whiny character throughout, I enjoyed watching Harris's Angela get more and more scared as the film went on. The movie just dropped the ball with the scenes focused on the actual haunting. The spirits of a witch and her thirty victims should have been able to trouble people in a much more interesting and frightening way than they do here.

At least the filmmakers didn't make the choice to present this as a found footage movie, something they easily could have done since the characters carry around cameras and also have cameras set up around the camp. We do see through their cameras from time to time, but thankfully it's a traditionally shot film - which also allows for flashbacks and cut-aways to other characters when needed.

If you're in the mood for a ghost story, you can certainly do worse than Camp Cold Brook, but it's not very eventful.