Worth Mentioning - Kiss Reality Goodbye

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 blend of '80s and '90s horror and comedy.

SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER (1993)

So I Married an Axe Murderer may not be one of the most popular comedies with Mike Myers in the lead, but it is by far the one I have watched the most - because of course I'm going to gravitate toward a movie where a guy fears the woman he loves is going to axe him to death. The film's title is actually a bit of a spoiler, because most of the 93 minute running time is about commitment-phobic poet Charlie MacKenzie (Myers) meeting and falling in love with butcher shop owner Harriet (Nancy Travis), and then coming to fear that she may be "Mrs. X", the "Honeymoon Murderer" who has killed three husbands in different places across the country. Word of Mrs. X comes from the tabloid Weekly World News, which Charlie's parents Stuart (also played by Myers) and May (Brenda Fricker) consider to be a more trustworthy source of news than the newspapers that are, they say, controlled by a shady organization called the Pentavirate, which counted KFC founder Colonel Sanders among its members. 

Officially, the three men that were reportedly victims of the Honeymoon Murderer are only missing, and there's no clear evidence to link Harriet to these men. Charlie just has suspicions. But are these sensible suspicions, or are they just Charlie's way of finding an excuse to break up with Harriet? He always finds an excuse, usually a ridiculous one, to break up with his girlfriends before things get too serious. Then he performs lame beat poetry about the relationships at the local coffeehouse.

Well, the title gives away the fact that Charlie will eventually overcome his fears, even though the marriage ceremony doesn't happen until 65 minutes in. But the title also promises some axe murderer action. And fact is, there is some, and the filming location for the honeymoon getaway where that takes place was the Dunsmuir House, which will be very familiar to fans of Phantasm, even with matte paintings behind it to make it look like it's in a creepier setting.

The initial screenplay written by Robbie Fox (who was given sole writing credit, even though Myers and Neil Mullarkey did substantial revisions) had been around for years before it ended up in the hands of Myers, and had been turned down by the likes of Chevy Chase, Albert Brooks, and Martin Short because they didn't like the Charlie character. It's understandable why they wouldn't, even in the finished film when the character has been reworked by Myers, because Charlie can be quite an ass sometimes. He's even more irritating now than he was in 1993, because he has a very '90s haircut.

I never found this movie to be a laugh riot, but I have always found it to be highly entertaining. Myers not only does well in the role of Charlie, even when he's being annoying, but is also hilarious as Stuart, who he modeled after his own father. Travis does a terrific job as Harriet, making the character so likeable that you feel sorry for her when Charlie treats her badly, even though, yeah, sometimes she does seem like she could be an axe murderer. Anthony LaPaglia is fun as Charlie's police officer best friend Tony, who is bummed that police work isn't like he has seen in the movies, and there are memorable appearances from Amanda Plummer as Harriet's sister Rose, Michael Richards as an "Insensitive Man" Charlie crosses paths with, Charles Grodin and Steven Wright as people Tony gets rides from in the line of duty, Phil Hartman as a prison guard, and Alan Arkin as Tony's Captain, who is kinder and more even-tempered than Captains usually are in movies, much to Tony's disappointment.

Directed by Thomas Schlamme, So I Married an Axe Murderer is a lot of fun, a good comedy with a little touch of thrills in there. I hadn't watched the movie in several years before watching it again this year, but it's packed with lines and line readings that have stuck with me for decades because I watched it so much in my youth.

ANGEL HEART (1987)

I don't know how much sense Angel Heart makes in the end, the movie gets a bit too weird and mind-bending for my taste by the time it reaches the final scenes, but I do know that the ride getting to those scenes is quite intriguing. Set in 1955, the film was inspired by the William Hjortsberg novel Falling Angel, but writer/director Alan Parker didn't stay completely faithful while writing his screenplay, which is why he decided it should have a different title. Mickey Rourke stars as the lead character, a New York private investigator named Harry Angel, who is hired by a strange, creepy fellow called Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro, allegedly emulating Martin Scorsese for this performance) to find a man called Johnny Favorite, a crooner Cyphre had a contract with before World War II... but then Favorite got drafted and injured in the war, so Cyphre isn't sure whether or not he's still alive. He has been led to believe that he is, and he wants Angel to find out for him.

Angel's investigation gets dark and strange very quickly; the first person he talks to who knew Favorite turns up dead with his brains blown out soon after. He almost quits the case right then, but Cyphre convinces him to keep working by offering a check for $5000. So Angel makes the mistake of continuing to search for Favorite, following his trail to New Orleans, where voodoo enters the picture and so does Lisa Bonet as a girl named Epiphany Proudfoot. The legend was that Bonet unwittingly sacrificed her job on The Cosby Show / A Different World by doing nudity in this movie, but her then-husband Lenny Kravitz has since said that wasn't the reason she was let go. According to him, she got pregnant and Bill Cosby didn't want her character to be pregnant, so she was taken off the shows.

With a running time of 113 minutes, Angel Heart goes on a little too long, but I find the mixture of old school private investigator story and horror - and things do get quite bloody and horrific - to be appealing enough to stick with it. At least up until the point where the weirdness gets overwhelming.

POLICE ACADEMY 2: THEIR FIRST ASSIGNMENT (1985)

There's a scene in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment that is one of the movie scenes I most clearly remember seeing in my childhood. 

As the subtitle implies, this sequel finds that the Cadet characters from the first Police Academy - well, six of the standout Cadet characters, not all of them - have graduated from the academy, as we saw at the end of the previous film, and are ready for their first assignments as officers. As it turns out, that job is to work at the 16th precinct in their city, a precinct dealing with an overwhelming amount of crime, some of it due to a street gang led by the very strange Zed McGlunk (Bobcat Goldthwait, giving an incredibly unique performance, it's really something to behold). As part of this job, they're paired with veteran officers - and Eugene Tackleberry (David Graf) really lucks out, because he's partnered with Sergeant Kathleen Kirkland (Colleen Camp), a woman he very quickly falls for. Here's his chance to lose his virginity!

Carey Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg) is not so lucky. He's paired with Vinnie Schtulman (Peter Van Norden), and Mahoney goes to Schtulman's apartment to meet up with him. There he finds Schtulman eating cereal... and stopping to scoop something out of the bowl, flick this thing across the room, and yell at his cat to remind the feline that it's supposed to use the litter box. Then he continues eating his cereal. Cat poop in a bowl of cereal that a person just continues eating from; this is the scene that has clearly stuck with me ever since I was a little kid. This concept disgusted me and melted my little mind.

The recent academy graduates have been assigned to the 16th precinct at the request of Captain Pete Lassard (Howard Hesseman), brother of Commandant Eric Lassard (George Gaynes), who we met in part 1. It's not long before Pete regrets having this bunch of screw-ups and knuckleheads at his precinct, but Mahoney, Tackleberry, Moses Hightower (Bubba Smith), Larvell Jones (Michael Winslow), and Douglas Fackler (Bruce Mahler) do manage to make some progress in the fight against crime. Poor Laverne Hooks (Marion Ramsey) gets stuck with desk duty.

G.W. Bailey was not asked to reprise the role of the antagonistic Lieutenant Harris in this film, but our heroes do find themselves up against a fellow cop who's out to sabotage them just like Harris was. This time it's Lieutenant Mauser (Art Metrano), who would like to see the new officers fail because if the situation at the precinct gets too bad, Chief Hurst (George R. Robertson) has said that Mauser will become Captain and take control of the place. With the help of his idiotic sidekick Sergeant Proctor (Lance Kinsey), he does whatever he can to mess things up. So, of course, Mahoney does whatever he can to mess with Mauser - including a memorable moment where he replaces Mauser's shampoo with epoxy resin solution. It's just like the shoe polish gag with Harris in the first movie, but more effective.

Oddly, Mahoney's love interest Karen Thompson (played by Kim Cattrall in the first movie) was not brought back for part 2, and instead an attempt was made to give him a new love interest in seamstress Chloe (Julie Brown). Apparently Guttenberg did not play along with the Chloe scenes, resulting in the character being largely cut from the film. That's unfortunate for Brown, but giving Mahoney another love interest was really unnecessary.

Overall, I'd say Police Academy 2 is a decent sequel. It's from a different creative team, Jerry Paris of The Dick Van Dyke Show directed this one from a script by Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield (and James Signorelli directed for a couple weeks before being replaced by Paris), but it's very much in line with its predecessor. There are some great comedic scenes, and moments that are obviously very memorable, memorable enough to stick with a person for decades. In addition to the actors mentioned, there's an appearance by Jason Hervey of The Wonder Years and The Monster Squad as a brat Tackleberry has to straighten out while his talents are being wasted as a crossing guard, and Tom Morga, Jason Voorhees and Roy Burns in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (plus Michael Myers in parts of Halloween 4 and Leatherface in one Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 sequence), shows up as a criminal Jones gets in a fight with. Turns out, Jones is a martial arts expert, and seems to have these abilities simply because he can mimic the noises Bruce Lee made when fighting. Tim Kazurinsky is also introduced as Sweetchuck, a storeowner who is always having run-ins with Zed and his gang.

Sweetchuck and many of the other characters would be brought back for more Police Academy movies after Police Academy 2 proved to be a hit. Not as big of a hit as the first one was, but still quite successful.

ARCADE (1993)

Full Moon caught the attention of Disney with their film Arcade, and that was not a good thing for them. With a plot that required CG effects, the movie was already taking a while to make it through post-production, but when Disney caught word of Arcade and saw visuals that were reminiscent of their movie Tron, they reached out and gave Full Moon a slap on the wrist. Arcade had to be delayed even longer so the CG effects could be reworked.

Directed by Albert Pyun from a script by David S. Goyer (making this a Kickboxer 2 reunion), Arcade stars Megan Ward as Alex Manning, a teenage girl who could use an escape from reality because her life took a hellish turn the day her mother committed suicide. So that new-fangled virtual reality game from Vertigo/Tronics that just reached the local arcade Dante's Inferno, a game not-so-imaginatively called Arcade, might seem like a tempting way to spend some time. Unfortunately, Arcade just makes Alex's life even worse. It very quickly becomes clear to her that there's something evil lurking within that game. Not only does it fry the minds of some of her friends - who are played by the likes of Peter Billingsley, Seth Green, and A.J. Langer - but it also causes them to vanish, trapping them in the virtual reality world.

The CG effects in this movie aren't as impressive as the characters act like they are, but Arcade is still an entertaining horror movie that advances at a very quick pace. Alex becomes aware of how dangerous the game is quite early, and is actively trying to learn more about it and save people from it from that point on. Eventually she'll discover that the game has gone haywire due to the fact that human brain cells were somehow used in the making of it, and she's going to have to venture deep into the virtual reality landscape to set things right.

I watched a lot of Full Moon movies during my childhood, and this is one that I remember watching the most back in the day - not because it's one of my favorites, but because it got a good amount of play on the premium movie channels. It's sort of like a technological twist on A Nightmare on Elm Street, just replace Freddy with Arcade and nightmares with virtual reality. It's interesting and fun, a fine way to spend 85 minutes.