Worth Mentioning - A Kick in the Pants

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.

Giant leeches, the apocalypse, ghosts, and karate.

The Big Bad B-Movie Show: ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES (1959)

Cleveland has a long tradition of horror host shows, and in October a new pair of hosts followed in the footsteps of legends like Ghoulardi; "Big Chuck", who hosted shows with both Hoolihan and, the one I grew up watching and have fond memories of, Lil' John; Superhost; Frank and Drac; and modern hosts The Mummy and the Monkey, who happen to be involved with this new show as well.

Airing on WUAB Channel 43 (and also available to watch online at BigBadBMovieShow.com) is... well, the URL says it, The Big Bad B-Movie Show. The hosts of this one are comedian Zachariah Durr and photographer Laura Wimbels, who take on the personas of Leopold and Lenora, a duo who were trapped in the basement vault of WUAB for years with nothing to do but watch the television studio's stash of B-movies. This ordeal has driven them mad, but now they're dedicated to sharing those B-movies with the outside world. And that's why they're hosting this show.

In their premiere episode, they showed the 1959 creature feature Attack of the Giant Leeches, which stars - as Leopold puts it - Ken Clark, pinup queen Yvette Vickers, and "a whole bunch of extras in garbage bags pretending to be leeches". It was a great movie to get the series started with, because it lives up to the literal definition of the term "B-movie"; in 1959, it was released as the second film in a double feature with A Bucket of Blood. It also lives up to the "bad B-movie" part of the show's title, because it's not a great movie. It's watchable, though - and in years where I've tried to watch as many horror movies as possible in the month of October, Attack of the Giant Leeches would usually be in the line-up, because its 62 minute running time makes it quick and easy to get through.

A Roger and Gene Corman production that was directed by Bernard L. Kowalski from a script by Leo Gordon, Attack of the Giant Leeches begins when residents of a backwoods community start having encounters with, and being attacked by, "strange critters" with suckers on them. These critters are, of course, giant leeches, and when the local sheriff refuses to believe there are unusual creatures in the area's waterways, game warden Steve (Clark) tells him to soak his fat head and takes it upon himself to solve the problem. Doc Greyson (Tyler McVey), father of Steve's girlfriend Nan (Jan Shepard), also sets out to solve the problem, and uses some methods Steve doesn't agree with.

Attack of the Giant Leeches moves along at a good pace and has plenty of creature attacks, which is a plus even when the creatures don't look very convincing. Some of the most memorable moments center on Liz Walker (Vickers), the wild, disrespectful, and unfaithful trophy wife of store owner Dave (Bruno VeSota).

I've seen some Big Bad B-Movie Show viewers complain that the show doesn't let the movie play for long enough stretches at a time. The movie does get disrupted a lot, which might get irritating when watching the show on regular television where you have to sit through commercials every time there's a break, but I watched the episode online and it has a good flow there. The frequent host breaks are welcome, as I felt getting breaks from the movie made Attack of the Giant Leeches even easier to watch.

I found the host breaks to be a lot of fun. For this episode there were a couple segments involving a very exuberant leech salesman named Sherman Oaks, a bit about Lenora using leeches in her beauty care, a short from The Mummy and the Monkey on how to raise a giant leech, a skit about a sound effects specialist who uses cabbage for everything, and a cooking show skit where the cook is a celebrity leech making "leech loaf". There was also a segment in which Leopold and Lenora took some time to give some information on the film, which is something I always appreciate from a horror host show. Trivia they covered included the fact that Attack of the Giant Leeches was produced by the Cormans, that it was shot in eight days at the L.A. Botanical Gardens, that writer Leo Gordon was also a prolific actor, and that legendary filmmaker Russ Meyer was the photographer for Vickers' Playboy shoot. It was also fun to see some vintage clips from WUAB's past in the mix.

Overall, I think The Big Bad B-Movie Show is a solid addition to the Cleveland horror host tradition. I'll be sticking with this show for the duration, and since I'm not located in Ohio anymore I'm very grateful that the episodes are available to watch online.

GO/DON'T GO (2020)    

Alex Knapp had a good idea for a 20 or 30 minute short film. Problem is, he turned that idea into Go/Don't Go, a 91 minute feature that serves as his writing and directing debut, and there's not enough going on in this feature to maintain the running time.

Knapp stars in his film as Adam, who was a wallflower type back when civilization was a thing. Now he appears to be the last man on Earth - or at least in his little section of Earth - after some sort of apocalyptic event that we never get any information on. All we know is that Adam has flashbacks to a time when he and his girlfriend K (Olivia Luccardi) were worried about whatever was going on and wondering if they should go to the mountains with her parents. Something went wrong, K and her parents aren't around anymore, and Adam isn't sure whether or not he should go to the mountains alone. Flashbacks to that panicked time aren't the only flashbacks we see involving K, because Adam is thinking about her all the time. He also occasionally has an imaginary conversation with his friend Kyle (Nore Davis).

Even with those disorienting flashbacks, the majority of the film's 91 minutes are spent watching Adam do random stuff around the countryside. He has keys to various homes and businesses throughout the area he's in, and he spends his days walking from place to place, messing around in the businesses, then going off to spend the night in a different house. Luckily, there's still electricity and running water, so Adam isn't too inconvenienced. He can still kick back and watch his tape of The Outer Limits. Whenever a lightbulb burns out in one of the locations he goes to, he gives it a proper burial. He takes long walks, and Knapp wanted us to see a lot of the walking, because the movie is packed with shots of Adam walking from place to place. It's like he was trying to pad the running time out with this stuff, when padding this movie was unnecessary. It would have gone over better with me if it had been shorter.

Adam is just doing random, weird stuff to waste his time, since he has nothing else to do. But you can only watch a movie character waste their own time for so long before it starts to feel like the movie is wasting your time. There may be some viewers who see this as a "wish fulfillment" sort of movie, due to the idea of having a large area to themselves, with plenty of places to explore... but even those who would have fun doing this themselves might find their patience tested. Still, I held on to hope for the duration. The hope that something was going to happen that would be enough payoff to make sitting through the build-up worth it. But Go/Don't Go isn't a big payoff sort of movie.

This isn't to say it's a bad movie. When Adam is doing something other than walking, it can be interesting to see what he gets up to, and the cinematography by Frankie Turiano is nice to look at. This was the first time the cinematographer has worked on a feature, and I look forward to seeing more Turiano imagery in the future. I look forward to seeing more from Knapp as well, both as an actor - he proves here that he can carry a movie, no matter what he is or isn't doing - and as a filmmaker. Maybe his next film will be more my speed.

Considering the "last man on Earth" concept, the imagery, the pace, and the dreamy tone, I'm sure there are going to be a lot of viewers who will be able to tune into Go/Don't Go's wavelength and just enjoy spending 91 minutes in Adam's world. For me, 91 minutes was too much.

The Go/Don't Go review originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com

POLTERGEIST III (1988)

I find Poltergeist III to be a very difficult movie to watch, and that only has a little to do with the fact that I think it's messy and underwhelming. The main reason I don't like to watch this sequel is that I can never get it out of my head that child actress Heather O'Rourke was just months away from dying when she was working on the film. She died of a bowel obstruction when the movie was in post, which is why there's a very obvious double for her in the ending, which was reshot later the same month she passed away. The bowel issue that would end up killing her was already bothering her before Poltergeist III started filming, but she was misdiagnosed as having Crohn's Disease and was being treated for this disease she didn't actually have during production. The medication she was taking caused her cheeks to get puffy, and she has those puffy cheeks all through Poltergeist III. So I can't watch her in this movie without thinking of her medical issues during every shot she's in, wishing she had been getting the treatment she really needed instead of being giving this medication that altered her appearance.

If not for that, I could tolerate the movie's mediocrity enough to enjoy it as a fascinating magic trick. Directed by Gary Sherman from a script he wrote with Brian Taggert (with uncredited touch-ups from When a Stranger Calls' Steve Feke), the film finds the Carol Anne character (played by O'Rourke) staying in a hi-tech Chicago high-rise with her mother's sister Patricia (Nancy Allen), who had never been mentioned in these movies before, Patricia's husband Bruce Gardner (Tom Skerritt), and Bruce's teenage daughter Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle). MGM wanted this sequel to have Carol Anne in a new environment, surrounded by new characters, so this is what Sherman gave them, with the explanation that Carol Anne has come to Chicago to attend the Seaton School for Exceptional Children, which specializes in gifted kids with emotional problems. The head of the school is child psychologist Doctor Seaton (Richard Fire), who thinks Carol Anne is able to induce mass hypnosis. There was no real ghostly activity in the previous films, as far as Seaton concerned, Carol Anne was just able to put that nonsense into people's heads. Through hypnosis of his own, he digs into Carol Anne's memories of the terrifying events she has experienced - and that's how the restless spirit of the evil Reverend Kane (played in Poltergeist II by Julian Beck, now played by Nathan Davis in a Julian Beck mask, since Beck passed away before Poltergeist II was release) is able to find Carol Anne again. This time around, mirrors serve as the portals to the spirit dimension Kane inhabits, and there are mirrors everywhere in that high-rise. Sensing that Carol Anne is in danger again, clairvoyant paranormal investigator Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubinstein, reprising her Poltergeist and Poltergeist II role) hurries to Chicago in hopes of saving her. But things don't go quite as Tangina planned.

Sherman gave O'Rourke a bit more to do in the first half of this movie than she had to do in the previous films, and O'Rourke did some good acting here. It's a shame she gets pulled into the spirit dimension and held captive there for the second half of the film, because she was proving to be a solid lead. It's always fun to see Rubinstein play Tangina - but the new characters aren't so great. Seaton is extremely annoying, with Fire delivering a questionable performance. The Gardners aren't very interesting people, and Patricia isn't likeable because she's always complaining about Carol Anne behind her back - a set-up for her to earn redemption in the final minutes, if you can bring herself to root for her. 

The best thing about this movie are the special effects. Sherman didn't want to do any opticals in post, his approach was to do all of the "haunted building" effects live on set, in front of the camera. That means the crew had to pull off a lot of tricks with mirrors and reflections, and it's really awesome to see how some of these moments were accomplished. There's at least one effect in there that baffled me, I don't know how they did it.

I rarely ever watch Poltergeist II or Poltergeist III, my interest in watching Poltergeist movies ends when the credits roll on the first one, but when I do watch Poltergeist III I'm left wishing that the movie around the mirror tricks was better, and that Heather O'Rourke was still with us.

THE NEXT KARATE KID (1994)

After the completion of the Karate Kid trilogy, Ralph Macchio decided he didn't want to star in any more Karate Kid movies - but that didn't stop another Karate Kid movie from being made and released five years after The Karate Kid Part III. Columbia Pictures and producer Jerry Weintraub just replaced Macchio's character Daniel - who definitely would not have been a "kid" anymore at this point anyway - with a different "karate kid".

Macchio isn't the only one who didn't come back for The Next Karate Kid. The initial trilogy's director John G. Avildsen and screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen both moved on from the franchise at this point, with Christopher Cain (Young Guns) stepping in to direct and Mark Lee writing the script. Lee only has two other screenwriting credits, and one of them, his first, was another movie that was released in 1994. It's interesting that Kamen only wrote The Karate Kid Part III because he was concerned that no one else could write the interactions between Daniel and his sensei Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita), but for this movie the interactions between Miyagi and his new student were handled by a beginner.

Morita did reprise the role of Miyagi here, which is why The Next Karate Kid still has some merit within the franchise even with Daniel being absent. The beginning of the story ties back to Miyagi's military service during World War II; when we catch up with him in this film, he has traveled across the country from his home in Los Angeles to attend a ceremony honoring the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which he was part of, in Boston. There's a continuity error during this ceremony, as it's said that Miyagi's name is Kesuke Miyagi, while The Karate Kid Part II had already revealed his name to be Nariyoshi Miyagi.

The ceremony brings Miyagi back in contact with Louisa Pierce (Constance Towers), the widow of Lieutenant Jack Pierce, who Miyagi served alongside and befriended during the war. This film provides the back story that Miyagi taught Pierce karate during their time together, which is another continuity error because Miyagi had previously told Daniel that he had never taught anyone karate before. Regardless, Miyagi's history with the Pierce family gets him wrapped up in the life of Jack and Louisa's granddaughter Julie (Hilary Swank), a music-obsessed, hot-tempered, rebellious teen reeling from the deaths of her parents. After witnessing a blow-up between Julie and Louisa, Miyagi has a suggestion: Louisa should go spend some time at his place in L.A., and he'll watch over Julie for a while. It's clear to Miyagi and the audience that Julie will benefit from his guidance, but it's not going to be easy to get through to her, and we have plenty of scenes of Julie being annoying and grumpy to endure along the way.

When Julie isn't being irritating (not quite as irritating as Daniel was in Part III), we get an early indication that she's a good kid when we see that she's nursing a wounded hawk back to health in a pigeon coop on the roof of her high school. The fact that she takes care of a hawk, which she calls Angel, is one of the more memorable aspects of the film.

Julie already has some karate knowledge, it was passed down to her from her father and grandfather (and therefore Miyagi had an impact on her life before she even met him), and it's not long before Miyagi is giving her some further training to help her deal with her anger issues. She also wants to know more karate so she can defend herself. Miyagi doesn't like fighting, but it's required in these movies. A karate kid needs someone to fight.

The villains of this film are the Alpha Elite, a group of student security guards at Julie's school who give her a rough time mainly because group member Ned (Michael Cavalieri) has an unrequited crush on her. Another member of the group is played by popular character actor Walton Goggins, then just a couple years into his screen acting career, and the Alpha Elite operates under the leadership of former military man Colonel Paul Dugan, played by Michael Ironside. The whole concept of the Alpha Elite strikes me as really strange, this movie is the only time I have run into the idea of student guards with a military leader, but I guess I can go along with what the movie shows me.

Much of Julie's training takes place at a monastery that she and Miyagi stay at after she gets suspended from school for two weeks, thanks to the Alpha Elite. Nothing about her training is as fun or cool as the training we saw Daniel receive in previous movies, but she learns to respect insect life and how to do a jump kick from one rock in a rock garden to another. Plus she gets the monks into The Cranberries and watches Miyagi take part in a dangerous archery demonstration.

One of the least interesting things about The Next Karate Kid is the romantic subplot that develops between Julie and schoolmate Eric (Chris Conrad), who is joining the Alpha Elite when we first meet him but ditches the group as the story goes on. Eric is not an interesting character, and Conrad looks way too old to be in school with Julie. He's only four years older than Swank, and therefore would have been 23 during filming, but he looks his age, not like a high school student.

The Next Karate Kid didn't do well at the box office; it was immediately dismissed by most movie-goers for not being another Daniel and Miyagi movie. Personally, I was fine with the idea of Miyagi training a different student from the moment I first heard about this sequel. I was ten years old when this was coming out, and remember having a magazine with a preview of the film in it - I think it might have been an issue of Disney Adventures magazine. I was looking forward to the movie, but for some reason didn't end up seeing it in the theatre, even though I had seen Part III on the big screen five years earlier. So I was open to it, but didn't give it any help financially.

When taken on its own, this is a decent movie - not great, but a pleasant time waster. Miyagi and Julie have nice interactions once he's able to get her to stop being so stand-offish, and Morita is great in his role, as always. I would love to see the events of this movie get acknowledged - and to see Swank make at least a cameo - on the franchise's TV series continuation Cobra Kai.