Gerald's Game (2017)

For the third in our Three for Halloween, I thought I would go back to my Maine roots and pick a movie based off of a Stephen King novel.  I also thought too that it might be interesting to go away from the more traditional horror film.  Let's see how it all went.

Gerald's Game has Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood as a couple struggling in their marriage.  In an attempt to spice things up during their weekend away, Greenwood handcuffs Gugino to the bed, and then proceeds to die of a heart attack.  Now Gugino needs to try to keep her wits about her while she figures a way out of this predicament.  It's not going to be easy.

I know this was based on a novel, which I haven't read, but can see according to Wikipedia is 350 pages; but it felt like there was only enough material here to make a great Tales from the Crypt episode, not a 103-minute movie.  About 20 minutes in we were spinning our wheels, and I don't know that all of it was fluff padding the film until we got to the end, but a good portion of it was.  Then there was an extended ending that felt tacked on and inorganic, and in a way betrayed a lot of what made this unique for a scary movie by trying to give us a more traditional boogeyman.  I liked the idea and what they were trying for, I just think it could have been more effective in a smaller package.

Again, I haven't read the novel this was based on--in fact I haven't read anything by Stephen King before, beyond the first three pages of Pet Sematary translated into German in my German translation class in college, but I do respect him as one of Maine's most successful literary figures.  At least from what I know of him, this definitely had the brutality he's famous for, and I think the film makers were able to carry that through.  Maybe I should read the novel to see how this story is carried over 350 pages, because it's possible that what felt like padding and spinning its wheels in the movie, read much quicker in the novel.  It's funny how that works: 10 pages that might take 15-20 minutes to read can feel shorter than 5 minutes worth in a movie.

One of the biggest tropes in the DTV movie is bondage or the damsel in distress (and one of the biggest tropes in online movie reviewing is using the word "trope," but I digress...).  It's common to see either the female lead tied up in some way, or even see the male hero tied up--like Miles O'Keeffe yelling "no!" in Ator.  I think it dates back to the old pulp detective books that spawned a lot of the DTV genres we know, and when it involves the damsel in distress, can run into that vibe of control that borders on sexual deviance/embracing violence against women, but done through the surrogate of a baddie so anyone enjoying it can assuage any guilt they might have.  It's not like that in all cases, but I think for the ones where it is that, this movie really turns that trope on its ear.  There's nothing sexy or seductive about any of this, it's uncomfortable right from the start.  One could say it's an answer to Fifty Shades of Grey twenty years prior, but for me I think it's an answer to those pulp novels that were probably prevalent when King was growing up, which to me makes it an answer to the standard damsel in distress paradigm that we've become accustomed to.

As far as I can tell, this is not available on DVD.  I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing.  On the one hand, I almost never buy DVDs anymore; on the other, it seems like you can't own this, you can only stream it if you have Netflix, so in order to rewatch it you need to keep you subscription up.  I love that Netflix has so many titles available to stream, which gives me as a movie blogger many more options like this film to review; and I also know that my wife and I have a bunch of DVDs we no longer watch because it's easier to stream if it's available on a streaming service or On Demand than it is to get the DVD out, put it in the player, then get up and take it out when it's finished--plus we have an issue with finding space for all our stuff, so not having to get DVDs of all the titles we want to watch helps us; but it does put you in a tough spot if they've released a movie that you want to rewatch, because the DVD is a one-time price of $20 (or less), while Netflix is a monthly fee you have to keep paying.

It's always a treat if we get to use our "The Guy from ET" tag.  The funny thing is he plays Carla Gugino's dad in flashbacks, but they're the same age in real life.  The not so funny thing is that he's a not-so-great dad.  From this profile shot, he kind of looks like Mickey Thomas of Starship.  I think he's still touring the country, singing hits like "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now."  I imagine those shows cater to people my age and older, with plenty of seating and wine in plastic cups.  Maybe REO Speedwagon and The Outfield are on the same bill.  I get a few cups of Cab Sav in me and next thing I know I'm standing and belting out the lyrics to "Sara", when the couple born in the late 60s sitting behind me yells for me to sit down, and my face turns red and I apologize.  As I sheepishly try to return to my seat, I miss it altogether and fall in the grass, the remnants of my wine flying out of my cup and covering my face.

Before we get too knee deep in the hoopla, let's wrap this up.  I'd be curious to know how close this is to the King novel, because that might tip the scales for King fans.  For me, I think it would have been great in a smaller package, maybe in the format of a Tales from the Crypt episode or something like that.  It is available to stream on Netflix, but as far as I can tell, because it's a Netflix original, that's it, you can't get it anywhere else.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3748172

The Hard Easy (2005)

I, like most people, rent my movies based on their potential. Who's in it? Who directed it? What did so-and-so say about it? In the case of this film, it seemed to be oozing with potential. Sure, the cover listed a bunch of actors I have no time for like Nick Lachey or David Blahblahblah from Angel; but it also listed two DTVC Hall of Famers in Peter Weller and Gary Busey. Now that's potential.

The Hard Easy is a 90 minute film consisting of 50 minutes of fade-outs. When it's not fading out, the plot involves David Blahblahblah and the guy from ET (who was also in Psycho IV) as two fellas from two totally different situations who need cash bad. The guy from ET has mad gambling debts, so his friend Gary Busey hooks him up with the not-as-cool-as-the-movie-makes-him-out-to-be Bruce Dern, who, with the chick from The Departed, are planning a jewel heist. David Blahblahblah works with Nick Lachey, and his boss Peter Weller has gotten them all in hot water with some junk bonds or whatever. You guessed it: P Dubs has also planned a diamond heist, and it's at the same diamond shop the guy from ET's hitting. They're on a collision course to wackiness.



This film had two things going for it: Busey and Weller. That's it. Whenever the two of them are on screen (and they're never on together, unfortunately), they hoist the film on their shoulders and carry it to a level beyond what the poor film makers could possibly hope to achieve with this complete and utter lack of imagination and creativity they're calling a movie. After Busey and P Dubs, this is simply a low-rent Tarentino knock-off.

And even worse, Busey wasn't in it much. It's one thing to make a movie bad, it's another to go light on the Abuse. If I see the name Gary Busey on the cover, I want it to be as Abusive as possible. Hit me with it, damn it. Haven't these people ever seen Point Break? The worst irony of this movie is that the film makers probably think they're above a classic like Point Break, and they're wrong, so wrong.



Peter Weller is sweet in this, but his character becomes a monster that's just too big for the amateurs who made this sack-of-asscrack to handle. His death is a totally played-up-for-laughs yet very unfunny scene where he loads up his weapons in a stand-off, gets ready to go out guns blazing, and is felled with a single shot in the heart by a police officer. It was a travesty that they'd kill off Weller's character like that, after all he did to elevate their fried shite of a film to something resembling respectability. The best thing these people could've done was see the movie Styx. Those people knew what to do with a too sweet Weller character.

The overuse of the fade out gave me a headache. Nothing spells amateur like not being able to transition from one scene to the next. I'd expect something like that from a horrible Star Trek movie some Finnish kids put up on YouTube that my friends might make me watch; but from film makers that were able to cast Busey and Weller, it's just unacceptable. My friends and I got bored saying "Next week on The Hard Easy" or "When The Hard Easy returns", which is kind of a tradition whenever a film employs a fade-out.



I don't get Bruce Dern in this. He was great in The 'burbs, but here we're supposed to believe he's some kind of criminal mastermind that's hardcore and really cool. He'll kill you if he gets the chance or something. Even worse, we're supposed to buy that he's anywhere near as cool as a Weller, when he's not even in the ballpark. My favorite scene is where Busey's telling the guy from ET about him, and he recalls some heist Dern pulls off dressed in clown clothes. I think the clown part is supposed to be funny and irreverent, but instead it's overused and cliched. The funny thing for me was how Bruce Dern kills his partners in the heist. Who does that? This happens again and again in movies, where the bad guy kills the people he does business with. Why do people keep working with him? And if this film's supposed to be so smart and different, why do they fall back on the same bad movie plot devices?

This is almost worth renting if you're as huge a Petter Weller guy as I am. If you cut out his death scene, it's sweet. On the other hand, you have to sit through another crummy Tarentino knock off that spends as much time as possible telling you how smart it is, when in reality, it's dumber than BloodRayne. If you're not a Weller guy, don't even consider this sack-of-asscrack.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425087/

Psycho IV (1990)

Sometimes I think I'm a real glutton for punishment. Sometimes I think my judgment on what's going to be a fun bad movie and what'll be a rough bad movie is not what it should be. I recently re-watched this bad boy after I'd TiVoed it on Sci-Fi, and it hurt. My buddy had fallen asleep on the couch before I started it, and woke up half way through. I felt so bad for him, because I can only imagine what was going through his head while his mind tried to take in this piece of cinematic garbage and make sense of it.

Psycho IV was a TV movie that acted as a prequel to the original yet at the same time a kind of wrapping up of the series. It had Anthony Perkins confessing his soul to a late-nite radio talk show, and then mixed in flashback scenes where a young Norman Bates was played by the kid from ET. Not Drew Barrymore. The older Norman is planning to kill his wife, who deceived him and abstained from her birth control to have kids. The younger Norman was made insane by his crazy mom, played by the hot woman who played Juliet in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. Anyway, Norman sees the light just before he kills his wife, and then burns the evil Bates Motel.



I'm not sure what Alfred Hitchcock thought of the sequels. He couldn't be too happy. The original Psycho was a movie masterpiece that today's Hostel 22s and Saw 87s couldn't fathom. One thing Psycho IV had going for it was that it was better than any of those, and better than the remake of Psycho with Vince Vaughn. Of course, if that's what you have going for you, you're in trouble.

The most absurd thing about the film is that Norman is a free man. How does this happen? People who kill other people, even if they are deemed insane, are still put away. They don't just do a few years, act cool, then get out and hang with the rest of us. Not only that, but he's married to a psychiatrist he met at the asylum, and she's still working there, or at least at another one. This is ridiculous. Who doesn't have the basic knowledge of human society to know that if a psychiatrist at an asylum dates one of her patients, she doesn't work at asylums anymore?

This has Anthony Perkins. As a huge Red Sox fan, I thought he was decent as Sox great Jimmy Piersal in Fear Strikes Out (except he threw like a girl, and Piersal had a rocket arm); I also dug him in Catch-22; and he was obviously great as Norman in the first Psycho. Here, though, he's working with shitty material, and even he couldn't resuscitate it. He died of AIDS about two years after this was made, which according to imdb, he learned he'd contracted through a National Inquirer article written after they got some of his blood and had it tested.

This also has Olivia Hussey, which for many out there, including myself, she's known only as Juliet from the Zeffirelli version of Shakespeare's play. When I was a freshman in high school, we had a long term substitute for English class, and he was pretty clueless. For three days we watched the scene where Hussey's boobs are shown, after we'd tell the teacher we'd only gotten to the point in the movie right before that. I'm sure we'd have been able to stretch it further, but the girls in the class had had enough. It's amazing what's entertaining to a fourteen year-old boy. Or a twenty-eight year-old one.



This was a pretty unmemorable movie. It tried to make references to the original, like one where Perkins cuts his thumb, and the blood going into the drain mimics the blood in the famous shower scene. Way too obvious and pretty obnoxious. The symbolism in the burning of the Bates Motel was kind of unwieldy too, and it left a bad taste in my mouth that a bad TV movie was trying to close the curtain on a movie series that was expertly closed by a master movie maker thirty years prior. There really shouldn't be a Psycho II, III, and IV, so the effort to put a punctuation mark on a horrible run-on sentence looks extremely trite.

This is ten kinds of avoidable. I shouldn't have watched it again when I did recently. My stupidity should be a lesson to you. The only reason to watch this is if you've done something bad, like didn't offer your seat on the subway to an old lady, and you want to so something as a personal penance to clear your conscience. Maybe Chris Hansen of Dateline To Catch a Predator fame could have the cops in the towns he works show this to inmates as they process them. That may bring in the ACLU, though.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102724/