Worth Mentioning - The Games Are Over

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.

The return of The Karate Kid, a short film, and some '80s horror, classic and non-classic.

THE KARATE KID PART II (1986)

My older brother watched The Karate Kid a lot when we were youngsters in the '80s, and he watched The Karate Kid Part II just as much, if not more. I was constantly seeing scenes from one or the other play out on the TV screens around me, and have enduring childhood memories of seeing various moments from them.

The Karate Kid director John G. Avildsen and screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen both returned for the sequel, which starts off with a scene that was originally meant to be the ending of the first movie, but hadn't been filmed at the time because they decided to go out on the high of bullied teen Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) defeating his rival Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) at the All-Valley Karate Tournament. The ending scene turned opening scene takes place moments after that victory, in the parking lot of the sporting arena, and allows Daniel's wise sensei Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) to deliver some comeuppance to Johnny's villainous sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove). As Miyagi said, there's no such thing as a bad student, only a bad teacher, and Kreese had turned the students at his karate dojo Cobra Kai into a bunch of bullies because he's a douchebag himself. Miyagi shows Kreese that he's not the badass he thinks he is, and it's a great way to start off the sequel.

We then jump ahead six months to something that's not so cool. All of Daniel's troubles in the first film had started because he had a crush on Johnny's ex-girlfriend Ali (played by Elisabeth Shue), Daniel's pursuit of Ali while dealing with Johnny and the other members of Cobra Kai was a major part of the first movie. But Shue didn't return for this one, so Ali is quickly written off and made to sound like a careless heartbreaker; on the night of their senior prom, she crashed the car Miyagi had given to Daniel, then told Daniel she was in love with some college guy. There goes Ali in just a couple lines of dialogue. Avildsen and Kamen didn't want to deal with Daniel's mother in this movie, either, so she also gets written out with some dialogue about her taking a job in Fresno, which is over 200 miles away from where Miyagi lives in the Los Angeles area. So Daniel's mom goes off to Fresno and he stays at Miyagi's house... For a while. Then the story takes Miyagi and Daniel both far away from that house.

The first film had focused on Daniel's life, so Part II shifts the focus to Miyagi's life, an especially smart move since Morita had earned an Oscar nomination for his performance the first time around. The story begins when Miyagi receives a letter from his home, Okinawa, informing him that his father is seriously ill. Shocking news, especially since Miyagi always came off as being ancient to me (he's actually only around 60, while Morita was in his mid-50s), so I assumed his father had already passed away decades ago. This letter has been sent to him by his lost love Yukie (Nobu McCarthy), who is at the center of Miyagi's reason for leaving Okinawa and never returning.

Yukie was a daughter from the poorest family in Okinawa. Her parents arranged for her to marry a son from the richest family, Sato. Sato was such a good friend of Miyagi's that he asked his father to break the tradition of keeping karate within the family and teach Sato karate alongside him. Miyagi's father made the exception. Trouble is, Miyagi and Yukie fell in love. Miyagi didn't want Yukie to go through with the marriage to Sato, so he announced his intention to marry her himself in front of their whole village. This disgraced Sato so badly, he challenged Miyagi to a fight to the death. Never a fan of fighting, Miyagi chose to leave Okinawa - and Yukie - and never went back. He moved to the United States, fell in love with someone else, joined the U.S. Army, and then, as we learned in an emotionally powerful scene in the first movie, his wife and unborn child died in an American internment camp while Miyagi was serving in World War II.

Upon returning to Okinawa, Miyagi learns that Yukie did not marry Sato, and in fact never got married at all. Which is kind of odd; Miyagi experienced love and loss since his days with her, why couldn't she have had another great love along the way as well? Regardless, Miyagi and Yukie fall in love all over again. She is not only caring for his father, who is at death's door when Miyagi arrives and passes away soon after, she's also the guardian of her niece Kumiko (Tamlyn Tomita), who's about Daniel's age. So, of course, Daniel has a love interest while they're staying in Okinawa as well.

But it's not all romance while our heroes are staying in Miyagi's small homeland, Tomi Village. Sato (Danny Kamekona) is still a major figure in the community, and he's still as angry as he ever was about what Miyagi did. He still intends to fight his former friend to the death. Sato also has an unscrupulous nephew/henchman named Chozen (Yuji Okumoto), who serves as an adversary to Daniel, and by the end of the film has challenged Daniel to a fight to the death. The climactic fight in this film isn't a tournament match with a referee like in the first movie. This time there are serious stakes involved.

A dying father, a reunion with a love he lost long ago, an intense rivalry with his best friend... Kamen certainly came up with a dramatic storyline for Miyagi that could have earned Morita another Oscar nomination for this one. and if I had been involved with the making of this movie, I would have been inclined to lean heavily into that. I would have wanted to go further with the drama and emotion, to have scenes of Miyagi talking to his father, Yukie, and Sato in subtitled Japanese - which probably would have alienated members of the target demographic, since this was released in a time when people were more resistant to "reading movies" and we're supposed to be seeing this through Daniel's youthful eyes.

Unfortunately, the execution of the story is a little too glossy and cheesy to reach Oscar level. The emotional moments don't go as far as they could have; Miyagi, Yukie, and Sato speak to each other in English, when they really shouldn't; and Kamekona's performance as Sato is so over-the-top that it's unintentionally funny at times. 

The Karate Kid Part II is entertaining, but with a little tweaking and a bit more sincerity it could have been better. Even as it is, it's still packed with memorable elements: the characters, the setting, a training moment at an old cannery, the ice breaking challenge, the storm that blows through Tomi Village, the little drums characters have, the climactic battle, Chozen's yellow outfit during that battle... There are choices I agree with, choices I disagree with, but overall I think this is a good sequel.

EXETER AT MIDNIGHT (2020)

A few years ago, I watched two features that were directed by Christopher Di Nunzio, Delusion and A Life Not to Follow. I enjoyed both, and looked forward to seeing what Di Nunzio would do from there. He hasn't made another feature just yet, but I did recently get the chance to check out a short film he made, Exeter at Midnight (the Exeter of the title being Exeter, Rhode Island).

I didn't know anything about Exeter at Midnight when I started watching it, but once I saw that David Graziano was in the lead role, the short instantly appealed to me. Graziano turned in great performances in both Delusion and A Life Not to Follow, and he's great again here, playing Anthony, an aging, retired hitman who is suffering from a "deteriorating mental condition". After it's made clear that Anthony is not well, he gets a visitor: a mobster named Vincent, played by Kris Salvi, who also wrote the script.

Roughly six minutes of the short's twelve and a half minutes are taken up by the interaction between Anthony and Vincent, with Salvi doing a great job himself. Vincent has come to ask Anthony to do make one more hit - and it's an especially twisted one, considering who Anthony is being asked to kill.

Exeter at Midnight almost feels like an appetizer of a short, something that's meant to leave viewers wanting to see a feature version of this story. That's how it was for me; by the time I was fully drawn in and invested in Anthony's story, the short came to an end. I'm generally not a big fan of movies about mobsters, but I would have gladly taken a longer glimpse into Anthony's messed up life.

POLTERGEIST (1982)

There has been a lot of talk about "Who really directed Poltergeist?" over the decades, with viewers asking that question because it was produced and co-written by Steven Spielberg, and even though Tobe Hooper is credited as the director, it feels a lot like the movies Spielberg was directing himself at the time. Spielberg was a major presence on the set, and for years viewers have felt like he ghost directed the movie, just allowing Hooper to take the credit because he was contractually restricted from directing it in the window of time when the production took place, and because it gave the film some extra horror credibility. Some people who were on set have confirmed suspicions and said Spielberg was the director, he was calling the shots, but others have said they only worked with Hooper as director. I think things balance out to find the truth in the middle. Hooper was the director, and even though the movie feels very Spielbergian, it also has a Hooper touch to it. This isn't along the lines of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Eaten Alive, it's closer to the Hooper who made The Funhouse and Lifeforce. That's mixed with a strong dose of Spielberg because the producer was on the set all the time, telling Hooper what he wanted out of the film, and I think Hooper was very open to suggestion. The result is a Tobe Hooper film made under the guidance of Steven Spielberg, and therefore the credits on the film are as they should be. Obviously they felt good about how things went, because this wasn't the last Hooper-Spielberg collaboration.

The fact that Texas Chainsaw Massacre assistant cameraman and future Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 cast member Lou Perryman shows up in the movie as one of the guys digging the Freeling family pool (working alongside Sonny Landham!) is something I take as proof that Hooper was making at least some of the decisions on this.

Whatever the case, Hooper and Spielberg working together resulted in a great movie that is still highly regarded as a horror classic nearly forty years later. The story Spielberg crafted with co-writers Michael Grais and Mark Victor introduces a group of relateable, likeable characters - the Freeling family; parents Steve (Craig T. Nelson) and Diane (JoBeth Williams), children Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke), Robbie (Oliver Robins), and Dana (Dominique Dunne) - who live in a very average, bland location - the Cuesta Verde housing development - and then puts this family-next-door through the wringer. It's a hell of a horror story, frightening and emotionally engaging, told through the use of some awesome special effects.

Poltergeist is creepy from its very first scene, where we see five-year-old Carol Anne waking up in the middle of the night, wandering into the living room where the TV is showing nothing but static since the channel has gone off the air for the night, and proceeding to have a conversation with voices only she can hear coming from the TV. We'll find out that this staticky TV is a way to communicate with beings in a world beyond our own. After Carol Anne sees some kind of ghostly energy emerge from a TV, the supernatural occurrences in the Freeling home begin small; chairs in the kitchen are rearranged, items placed on one spot on the floor will be pulled to the other side of the room. But things escalate quickly. The gnarled old tree outside Robbie's window, a tree that creeps him out, seems to come to life and attack the kid, but that's really just a distraction - while the Freelings are focused on what's happening with Robbie, the supernatural forces in their house are pulling Carol Anne into their dimension. Now we have the Freeling family dealing with the terrifying situation of a five year old having been abducted and taken into a world they can't even reach - but they know Carol Anne is still alive somewhere, because they can hear her speaking through the static on the TV.

A group of paranormal investigators led by Beatrice Straight as Dr. Lesh get involved, a clairvoyant named Tangina is called in - and Zelda Rubinstein delivers an unforgettable, iconic performance as this character. By the end of the film, we won't just be seeing furniture move around or dazzling light shows caused by the increasingly agitated spirits that are reaching out to the living within the Freeling home, we'll also see Tangina lead the Freelings on a supernatural adventure inside their own house; we'll see gross-out effects when the spirits trick an investigator into thinking his own face is peeling off; we'll see monstrous creatures and rotting corpses; Diane tossed around a room in a way reminiscent of the first kill in A Nightmare on Elm Street, which came along two years later (dealing with this stuff also gives Diane some white hair, just like the heroine in the first Elm Street); and a famous moment involving a clown toy. This isn't a haunted house movie that goes for subtlety, there is quite a lot of horrific action in this one, and things get pretty crazy in the second half. As crazy as it gets, the emotional element keeps things grounded. We care about the Freelings and want to see them rescue Carol Anne and get out of this okay.

There is a very unnerving atmosphere to this movie, it's very effective at making the viewer squirm even when there's not something supernatural happening on the screen. A conversation Robbie has about death and the afterlife makes me uneasy, and so does the funeral Carol Anne has for her dead bird early on (and the fact that the bird is buried in a spot that causes it to be unearthed once the digging for the pool begins). And I'll admit, part of what makes me feel uncomfortable about watching Poltergeist is that I have known since my earliest viewings that I was watching people who were no longer living, that two of the primary cast members passed away at ages that were way too young. Dominique Dunne was just a few weeks short of 23 when she was murdered six months after this movie was released. Heather O'Rourke was 12 when she died of a medical condition in 1988. Knowing the tragic circumstances of their deaths, watching them in this movie has always had a major emotional effect on me. It's very saddening. There are other cast members who are no longer with us at this point. Rubinstein, Straight, Perryman, and Landham are gone, and so is James Karen, who plays Steve's boss Mr. Teague, a man who made a very bad decision when Cuesta Verde was in the planning stages. It's sad to know they've passed away, and Perryman's was cut short because he was also murdered, but they each had the chance to live long, full lives. Dunne and O'Rourke didn't get to live very long, and it really gets to me.

Another thing that gets to some viewers is that the skeletons that come bursting out of the ground on the Freeling property were actual human skeletons, purchased from India. Hooper was attached to direct The Return of the Living Dead for a while, and I assume that the characters in that film talking about the sale of skeletons from India came from him.

Questions about the director credit, cast members lost too soon, real skeletons, people believing there was a curse on the production - there are a lot of real world subjects that may weigh on your mind when you watch Poltergeist, but if you can set them aside and just evaluate the film based on what's on the screen, this is a great horror movie. Whoever directed it, it works.

TWISTED NIGHTMARE (1987)

Even though the slasher movie Twisted Nightmare wasn't given a wide release until 1987, it was filmed in '82, and it's a special treat for fans of Friday the 13th Part III because it was filmed at the same cabin and barn location used for that F13 movie (which was released in '82). F13 Part III fans may be the only viewers who find the film to be a treat, because it doesn't have many good things to offer beyond the chance to see more horror action at that cabin. Twisted Nightmare has my attention from the moment it begins, the first shot looking at the cabin from just inside the barn that Jason Voorhees spent so much time in. But if I weren't so interested in that location, this would have been tougher to sit through.

The movie was written and directed by Paul Hunt (with additional scenes for some reason written and directed by Charles Philip Moore, writer of the Don "The Dragon" Wilson movie Blackbelt ten years later), and I'm surprised to see that Hunt had more than fifteen years of experience in the filmmaking business by the time he made this movie, because it feels like the work of a first-timer who might have even been a one-and-doner. The writing is bad, the acting is worse. Still, there is plenty of slashing, and some of the acting is so atrocious and some of the characters written in such a baffling manner (especially the guy who is constantly pissed off to an extreme degree) that it's fun to witness.

The story centers on a group of pals who used to hang out together at a place called Camp Paradise until one of their group accidentally burned to death in the barn on the property. That person's body was never found. Now the group has come back together because they've been offered a free weekend at Camp Paradise, and they accept the offer. That's an odd choice, and turns out to be a bad one, because soon enough someone or something starts killing them off. To explain why this is happening, not only do we get the drawn-out mystery of 'What happened to that guy who burned in the barn?', there's also some nonsense about the camp being built on the burial ground of a massacred Native American tribe, and the property being cursed by a medicine man who was burned at the stake there for allegedly being evil.

Twisted Nightmare is too poorly written and poorly acted to ever be very engaging, but it has a certain degree of entertainment value if you enjoy watching bad movies, and of course if you like seeing the Friday the 13th Part III location. If you make it through the movie, you'll be rewarded with the awesome sight of one victim managing to shoot their own severed head.