Popcorn Kernels: Who You Gonna Call?

When the remake of Ghostbusters is nigh, what else is there to do than catch up on a zeitgeist franchise of the sort we just don't seem to have anymore?

Ghostbusters (For our Scream 101 episode about this very film, click here.)

Year: 1984

Director: Ivan Reitman

Cast: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver 

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

A trio of out-of-work paranormal scientists open a business busting ghosts, only to stumble upon an ancient demon bent on ending the world inside from of their client’s fridges.

It’s impossible to approach a review of Ghostbusters without a great deal of baggage. You can try to check as much of it as possible, but you’re at the very least still stuck with your carry-on. The obscenely popular horror comedy was so ingrained into the hearts and minds of those who were growing up or even alive in the 80’s, the remnants of Ghostbusters have drifted down from generation to generation like a Jungian cultural memory. 

I could make “don’t cross the streams” jokes long before I was old enough for my parents to even consider renting me Ghostbusters. And if you can show me any American alive today who does have at least a rudimentary working knowledge of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, I will show you an amnesiac. My spell check even knows that "Ghostbusters" is a word. Ghostbusters is an innate, primordial piece of cinema, and that’s the reason that the backlash against the remake has reached such shrieking, ludicrous heights.

That is to say, Ghostbusters adopts such a revered position in the pop culture idiom, it’s difficult to walk up to that hallowed door and nail your Theses there for all to see. But what can a lowly blogger do but try to say true to himself? Here goes: Ghostbusters has flaws. Deep-seated, crippling flaws that loudly announce themselves while the world plugs its ears. Does that mean it’s not a good comedy film? Hell no! In fact, it’s a great comedy film. But as a holistic narrative piece, it can occasionally be a bit of a shambles.

Born as it is from the minds of extremely talented sketch comedians, the deliciously high concept of Ghostbusters (underemployed scientists become a modern, macabre twist on New York exterminators) is populated by a handful of wacky, paper-thin characters not suited for the long-term scrutiny of a feature film. More a collection of (admittedly funny) tics and mannerisms than fully rounded personalities, it’s extremely challenging to get a sense of what makes them tick and how the dynamics of their relationships operate. 

Comedy is a genre uniquely suited to contain these types of characters (and Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Rick Moranis especially have the chops to pull it off), but there’s just no excuse for a character like Winston Zeddmore (played by Ernie Hudson), who shows up halfway through the film, integrates himself into the group offscreen, says and does next to nothing that can be perceived as funny on the visual or aural spectrum, and then is arbitrarily handed the climax’s closing line. This guy is a non-entity, there’s no discernible reason for his presence in the film (other than the fact that the casting director probably looked around at lunch and realized there was not a single black person on set), and he doesn’t even have the decency to make us laugh. The producers really should send Mr. Hudson a fruit basket or something, because he is well and truly f**ked by this film.

Similarly vexing is Sigourney Weaver’s Dana, who gets plenty to do when she’s possessed by the demonic Zool, but it hardly more than set decoration in human form. Ghostbusters is haunted by this kind of half-finished feeling (and in fact there are some effects shots that literally weren’t completed by the deadline), with a heavy sprinkling of sedate hang-out scenes, a ghost BJ scene clearly shoehorned in for… personal reasons, and an altogether too easy climax.

But even a half-finished Ghostbusters is an incredible one. The state-of-the-art effects are designed with the gleeful creativity of a fairy tale yet are just dangerous enough to earn the horror half of that horror-comedy hyphenate. And there’s no denying that this cast assembled some of the brightest comic minds of the 1980’s, delivering an endless conveyor belt of quotable dialogue with some of the keenest, most off-kilter readings in the business. Ghostbusters is a tremendously funny movie and yes, that really is the only thing that matters.

Rating: 7/10

Ghostbusters II

Year: 1989

Director: Ivan Reitman

Cast: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver

Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

The now defunct Ghostbusters must reunite when an underground river of ectoplasm and an ancient Sumerian spirit threaten to destroy New York.

Ghostbusters II is kind of a miracle sequel, if only for the fact that it managed to reteam the director, writers, and entire cast (down to the bit parts) five years down the road after the original became a massive hit, spawning an empire of merchandise, imitators, and a cartoon series. For that fact alone, we must thank Ghostbusters II, but bringing back that crew brought back their particular set of problems, with a handful of new ones for flavor.

For starters, despite expanded screentime for both, Ernie Hudson and Sigourney Weaver are still treated like tagalong little siblings that the movie just doesn’t have time to deal with right now. We see Hudson in the opening, where we’re shown what the former Ghostbusters are up to, but in the climactic first act trial scene that predicates their reformation, he vanishes in a puff of ectoplasm. He continues this Houdini act throughout Ghostbusters II, reappearing only when it would look cool for there to be four beams of light instead of three. 

And Sigourney Weaver is yoked to a particularly unforgiving role: divorced single mother/damsel in distress. All she’s asked to do is coo at a baby, waltz about in a towel, and be just strong enough that she can resist Venkman’s advances until she is broken in like a horse. It sucks to be an actress in an 80’s comedy, don’t it? She is trapped in this insipid part, which commits the egregious sequel sin of breaking her up with Bill Murray just so we can see their inexplicable romance blossom yet again in the exact same pattern. Whee…

And then there’s Rick Moranis. His performance in Ghostbusters is perhaps my favorite of the bunch, and he continues to excel here. But his character is shoehorned in so poorly that he hangs from the film like a throbbing goiter, a constant reminder that what you’re watching is entirely pointless, a ramshackle artifice created only to capitalize on the brand of a lifetime.

Naturally, the third act also has the same problems, depicting a generic evil threat with no discernible stakes that’s defeated in about 2.5 seconds flat. And the film has the audacity to tack on a nauseating “power of positive thinking” vibe to the whole thing. At least the desperate Stay-Puft substitute (an animated Statue of Liberty stomping its way through the street of New York) is achieved with some tremendously convincing special effects.

In fact, all the effects here are particularly well-rendered. Five years of technological development and time to actually complete the work does wonders for Ghostbusters II. Although the ghosts are much safer and more Henson-esque this time around (thanks to the overwhelming popularity of the Ghostbusters cartoon), there are actually multiple ghosts busted in this movie, wreaking convincing havoc about town with lavish detail. In this respect and this respect only, Ghostbusters II is a vast improvement over the original.

But, like I said before, the whole point of Ghostbusters is to make us laugh, and this sequel doesn’t quite cut mustard. Although Murray and Ramis still punch up their material with effortlessly kooky line readings and franchise newcomer Peter MacNicol is delightfully camp as an improbably accented museum curator, the script just isn’t up to snuff. It falls back on too much weak slapstick (especially where the river of slime is involved), awkward improv, and ill-thought-out plotting. It’s a very messy film that has little reason to exist, and while there’s still a spark of what the original has to offer, it’s not really worth your time.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1397
Reviews In This Series
Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)
Ghostbusters II (Reitman, 1989)
Ghostbusters (Feig, 2016)

Popcorn Kernels: Hell Hath No Fury

As we continue to clear out the wreckage of Halloween, let’s take a couple quick jaunts into the depths of Hell and see what we can dredge up.

Drag Me to Hell

Year: 2009

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Ruth Livier

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

An enterprising young banker denies a gypsy woman her loan and is cursed to be tortured by the Lamia then dragged to hell.

Like most horror icons, Sam Raimi has done all in his power to not actually direct horror movies. After helming the unforgettable Evil Dead trilogy, he moved on to projects like the Kevin Costner baseball treacle For the Love of the Game or the Spider-Man trilogy, all three of which are superhero flicks, but one of which is inexplicably a musical. After years and years of this nonsense, Raimi finally stepped back into the ring with Drag Me to Hell, and the really surprising thing is that it’s freaking awesome.

It pretty strictly adheres to the Evil Dead formula of invoking an ancient evil, being tormented in grotesquely hilarious ways, and then facing an unrelenting denouement, but from the perspective of an older and wiser director. He’s no longer 21 years old, and while in his maturity he has somewhat lost the borderline callous disregard for traditional film language that made his Evil Dead so uncannily kinetic, he has gained a sharper talent for embedding story and character in among his zany showboating.

These characters re still pretty rudimentary, but compared to Ash Williams and his meatbag friends, they’re Chaucer. Alison Lohman’s Christine is set up with a whirlwind flurry in a series of swiftly efficient scenes that paint her personality in bright splashes like Jackson Pollock canvas: she’s timid, eager for promotion, afraid of being branded a country hick, and ashamed of being overweight in her younger years. These qualities come into play again and again throughout the film, so they’re broad but hardly the pointless shading of 80’s cannon fodder that just needs to be differentiated from the next blonde over before she can be exploded into goo.

The dominoes are hardly even in position before the first one topples. Christine is suddenly plunged into an ancient nightmare and for the duration of the first act, it’s legitimately scary. Classic Sam Raimi touches electrify the proceedings (giddily twirling camera, looming silhouettes on faces, you know, the usual) and Drag Me to Hell goes through the motions of an utterly effective horror flick.

That is, until about he midway point. A talking goat and a necrotic mazurka smash the film off its hinges, sending it flying into a classic Raimi fever dream. The subtle and chilling horror jumps screeching into your face, putting Lohman through the Bruce Campbell ringer, smearing her with filth, gore, and excrement, beating her to a pulp with a gypsy corpse, and just generally making a mockery of her attempts at normalcy. It’s buoyantly silly, with enough references to Evil Dead II to be a hearty nod and not a brazen rip-off.

An exquisite blend of gushing camp and bleak fearlessness (they kill a child, for goodness sake), Drag Me to Hell isn’t Raimi’s best film, but it’s certainly a dazzling return to form. Between this and the pilot episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead, I’d say it’s time for the man to ditch the producing game and get back on the horse. And yes, we’re pretending that Oz the Great and Powerful never happened.

Rating: 8/10

Bedazzled

Year: 2000

Director: Harold Ramis

Cast: Brendan Fraser, Elizabeth Hurley, Frances O'Connor 

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

An unloved loser sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for wishes, which invariably go awry.

“Starring Elizabeth Hurley and Brendan Fraser.” Could a phrase possibly be more early 2000’s? How about “comedy where a lead actor performs caricatures in a variety of zany, vaguely racist costumes?” Bedazzled, a remake of the 1967 movies of the same name, is an effortful, ridiculous comedy that reeks of flop sweat. As Brendan Fraser attempts to channel his inner Jim Carrey, jokes are flung out into the audience like wet fish. They can be funny in a nostalgic “the new millennium was so stupid” kind of way, but that’s the only thing that has allowed itself to hold any vestige of esteem past its demographic’s infancy.

OK, maybe I’m being a little harsh. The opening credits are genuinely fantastic. I really mean that. And there is good in Bedazzled, it’s just sandwiched between a whole lot of “wacky” artifice, Sometimes the film stumbles into thickets of such sublime stupidity, that you let your guard down and it can actually tickle you. You absolutely, positively must be in the right sophomore Stifler mood to watch this movie, but it’s entirely possible to enjoy it all the way through.

The biggest setback to the comedy is the smokin’ hot Elizabeth Hurley as the Devil, who gets the film’s funniest lines but delivers them with the nuance and vivacity of a mailbox. I bet she and Rachel Ward are having crumpets in some fantasy realm beyond our understanding, because they share the same vacant, pouty stare. The lines are humorous enough a la carte that they still work, but Hurley does everything in her power to vacuum every last crumb of comedy from them. She is the knife in Bedazzled’s back if you’re not attracted to women, because otherwise she has absolutely zilch to offer.

It’s not like the movie needed help sucking the air out of itself, what with its preponderance of offensive stereotypes. In one fell swoop, Bedazzled knocks down Latinos, gays, and wise old black men. In the fantasy where Fraser becomes a basketball player, I’m legitimately surprised they didn’t put him in blackface. I’m grateful they showed a modicum of restraint, although the hulking albino beanpole he becomes is pretty unsettling just the same. I forgive that scene’s woeful makeup for providing a pretty hilarious lampoon of less-than-erudite players in post-game interviews.

But Bedazzled isn’t finished with us quite yet. We still need to talk about the way it treats the women. Oh, the women! There are brief specters of progressive values here (merely being rich and powerful can’t win someone’s heart, etc.) but the love interest here is never treated as anything other than a vapid, mercurial prize to be won. [SPOILERS] Even once Fraser realizes that he just wants her to be happy and accepts her rejection, he is rewarded for his morality with an exact twin of her. I hate to get too political on movies that are irrevocably from a certain time period, but it’s not exactly on message.

So, here we are. Bedazzled is palatable if and only if you can manage to completely unscrew your brain. It’s problematic and its narrative is nothing more than a sequence of sketches, but if you’re in the mood for a juvenile time capsule flick, look no further.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1173

Get These Monkeys Off My Back

As a super important future famous blogger, I've been attempting to up the ante with my movie reviewing over the past year, providing a frankly ridiculous amount of content on the off-chance that somebody wants to read 2,000 words about the splendors of The House on Sorority Row. But loath as I am to admit it, I am a fallible human. And the daunting list of movies I have yet to write about is weighing on me like the Earth's globe on Atlas' back.

What follows is four capsule reviews for films that I've seen over the past month but haven't had the time (or, frankly, the interest level) to fully explore in a broader article. You know, it might actually do me good to explore a shorter form of review writing. Consider this an experiment should I ever become the next Roger Ebert.

Birdman: or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Year: 2014

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Cast: Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton

Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A washed-up movie star attempts to revive his career with a Broadway play.

Countless films have worried at the edge between reality and fantasy like a dog with its favorite bone, including two of my very favorite horror films, so Birdman is in good company. But, and I say this without even the faintest whiff of sarcasm: Birdman ain't no Wes Craven's New Nightmare. 

The cardinal sin of the "comedy" Birdman is that it takes itself far too seriously. Many of its core scenes and conceits are pitched up to a more over-the-top register that would best function as laugh-out-loud comedy, but there's only one single line in the film that is obviously intended to elicit a chuckle. The rest is as dour and self-serious as the rest of the Oscarbait in the worm bucket, and that weighs down the film like an anchor.

There is some interesting material to chew on about how social media is shaping our generation's perception of art and reality, as well as how actors can get so trapped within a famous role that it casts a shadow over their entire lives. This is interesting to film enthusiasts and (more importantly) members of the Academy, but it's remarkably separate from the reality of the average American filmgoer. It absolutely doesn't need to play to the lowest common denominator, but Birdman's sense of what "reality" actually is, is already so mired in artifice that the film loops around itself uselessly like when I try to put the garden hose away.

In the process of all this philosophizing, Birdman loses itself among a pile of heaving, exhausting Important Movie cliches, like the Inexplicable Lesbians, the Real Life Connection, and the All in One Shot gimmick. Slathered with some improperly proportioned magical realism, a variety of subplots that utterly fail to go anywhere at all, and an astonishingly artless ending, Birdman is a frustrating nut to crack.

But when you finally break through to that sweet sweet nut meat (I am writing this very late at night), there's something special in there. Birdman is a film with an impeccable sense of rhythm, a variety of delectable lighting arrangements, and a series of off-the-wall performances pulled from actors who really have no business being in a movie like this. Emma Stone rips a nothing part to pieces with a spiky vulnerability, Zach Galifianakis tones down his usual energy to become a wonderful straight man, and Edward Norton shines as a loose cannon actor with a feeble grip on his own humanity.

And, after all, Michael Keaton has been getting all the awards buzz, so let's not forget to mention him. Although he gave a Brave performance more than he gave a Great one, Keaton carries the movie on his back across the finish line. His imbues his character with a wild-eyed animalism that propels the narrative through its illusion of a single shot without a single hitch or draggy moment. 

For my purposes, it is not a truly remarkable film, at times veering into an immensely irritating one. But for art cinema-inclined viewers, Birdman is one to RedBox before it's too late.

Rating: 6/10

Edge of Tomorrow

Year: 2014

Director: Doug Liman

Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton

Run Time: 1 hour 53 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

An unwittingly drafted soldier finds that, every time he dies in battle, he wakes up the day before only to repeat his misery.

Edge of Tomorrow represents everything that's wrong with Hollywood today. 

By that I mean that it's a fantastic original movie, but it was misrepresented in advertising, brought in only slightly more than half its budget in box office, and was scuttled away to home video with a confusing new title to perish in ignominy.

It's a real shame. An adaptation of the manga All You Need Is Kill, Edge of Tomorrow presents a fun, fresh, sci-fi fueled twist to time loop storytelling, pitting Tom Cruise's eternal movie star glamor (which, as this movie proves, can survive even the weirdest twists and turns of his personal life - hail Xenu) against the endlessly unappreciated high caliber efforts of Emily Bunt. Blunt takes on the most kinetic, action-packed role of her career with aplomb, dragging a loopy sci-fi plot headfirst into gritty, believable reality.

On top of all of this, Edge of Tomorrow is, like, unbelievably funny. I'm serious. The film takes the notion of comic relief and stretches it liberally throughout the entire film like that Bible story with the fish. It's just shy of genuinely being classifiable as a "comedy," but it's a raucous good time all the same. The best part is that the humor bubbles up naturally from the situations and characters instead of being imposed upon the film by some unseen, arbitrary entity like certain of the more dour sequences in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

The endless repetition of plot points that comes with the territory of time travel films is treated with fleet footing, capturing the highlights while always furthering its central story arc. Between the repeated story beats with ever-changing perspectives and the secretly pretty cool alien tentacle CGI, Edge of Tomorrow feels like a particularly difficult video game level and captures the intrinsic joy that comes with solving an intractable problem while simultaneously having a great time shooting bad guys into piles of goo.

But there's something pulsing beneath the surface, too. Both characters are recognizably human and have fully developed arcs. This is something that shouldn't even technically make sense considering that Emily Blunt's character resets at the beginning of each day, but the film is so invested in its storytelling that it works no matter the obstacle.

There are some technical difficulties that derail the film slightly, like an undercooked third act and a severe lack of proper lighting during several key sequences, but Edge of Tomorrow is wicked fun, and worth a watch from anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Which is pretty much everyone, because the world is a terrible, unfair place.

Rating: 8/10

Groundhog Day

Year: 1993

Director: Harold Ramis

Cast: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

A curmudgeonly weatherman gets trapped in a time loop and is forced to repeat Groundhog Day endlessly until he becomes a better person.

Two guesses as to how I decided to pick this one.

Groundhog Day is an indisputable classic of the 90's comedy genre, one for which I have an immense amount of esteem and absolutely nothing new to say, so this will be my shortest review yet. Depending on your inclination, you may either cheer or jeer here.

...

Alright, we're back. Set in the small Pennsylvania town of Punxatawney, Groundhog Day is more than just the story of one man finding his inner Samaritan. It's about the clash between the town and the city folk, and the lack of respect for others that the city garners in otherwise good people. 

As Murray's weatherman discovers the better person inside of him, he simultaneously develops a working interest in the lives of those around him. It is these people more than anything who help make him better rather than any supernatural force or deus ex machina. And Bill Murray is at the top of his game, giving his sardonic bastard a likable humanity without letting his brittle exterior of the first act show any chinks in his armor. 

Subtextual undercurrents, Bill Murray being pitch perfect... Throw in a lush, reactive score, an inventive visual schema, and a hard-hitting lesson about the fact that, sometimes, bad things are destined to happen and there's nothing we can do about it, and you've got yourself an unforgettable comedy with real heart.

Oh, and Andie MacDowell is OK, but her accent is ridiculous.

Rating: 8/10

Wild

Year: 2014

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée

Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Gaby Hoffmann

Run Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The true story of Cheryl Strayed, a kind of annoying hipster who decided that hiking the Pacific Crest Trail would solve all of her personal problems.

The next breadcrumb on our trail of Oscarbait leading us out of the 2015 Academy Awards is Wild, the first outing for Reese Witherspoon's new production company, Pacific Standard. I daresay, it's in good company with Birdman because it has several shining glimmers of pure cinema sandwiched in between what ends up being an immensely frustrating, self-indulgent project.

The biggest flaw of Wild is unfortunately inextricably attached to it: the subject matter. Based on the popular memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, the film necessarily must take on her character and situation at face value. The only problem is that, at all times, Cheryl Strayed can be relied upon to be the most douchey, irksome person in the room.

Now I'm not even referring to her backstory, which involves biblical amounts of heroin and cheating on her husband. That's par for the course in this kind of Find Your Clarity picture. What I'm referring to first and foremost is her habit of quoting famous authors in this manner: "I took the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost (and Cheryl Strayed) Like, what. Were you there helping him write his magnum opus, Cheryl? No you weren't. Now stop prancing about like you're so much better than everybody else and crapping all over authors you've never even read. So there.

I'm sorry. I just really despise Cheryl Strayed. At least as portrayed in the film, she is the worst kind of pretentious hipster and could hardly care less about the plight of other people, although her mind-altering journey is ostensibly about coping with the loss of her mother, played by Laura Dern over what adds up to about a minute of screen time. But enough about that.

I will give Wild this: When it makes an effort to be an art film, it really rises to the challenge of creating something visually stimulating. The rhythmic, stream-of-consciousness editing patterns link together disparate images in a reckless collage of life, at least in the patches where they crop up.

And Reese Witherspoon really does a terrific job here, for better or for worse, taking a physical challenge and inhabiting a role that drags her straight out of her comfort zone to expose some really raw, true emotion. She is also essential in providing the film's infrequent undercurrents of humor, which are a welcome presence in the midst of such a straightforward story.

I have my doubts as to whether the conclusion of the story is as clear-cut as screenwriter Nick Hornby seems to think it is, but when it comes amidst such a magnetic performance and easy, beautiful visuals, it's not hard to ignore. All in all, Wild is a plus, but for a great deal of the time it wastes a lot of its energy pushing against that current.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 2007

December Cleanup

I'm trying, I'm really trying to get my slate clean before the new year. I'd love to begin 2014 without any pending reviews to write, free to watch movies and write as I please. But as it happens, in the idleness of Winter Break, I've been watching far too many movies to keep up with. I am but a mere mortal. So, as per monthly custom, it is time to purge some of the less relevant films I've seen this month in a spate of mini reviews. Here goes nothing!

House

Year: 1986

Director: Steve Miner

Cast: William Katt, Kay Lenz, George Wendt

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Our first target is 1986's House, not to be confused with the 1977 Japanese fever dream House (Hausu), or the 8 seasons television medical drama House, M. D., or the 2008 Michael Madsen thriller House. Or really any of those other movies that are exponentially better than this one.

From producer Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th) and director Steve Miner (Friday the 13th: Part 2 and Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D), House is an alleged horror comedy in the vein of campy gore classics like Raimi's The Evil Dead or Gordon's From Beyond and Re-Animator. What those three movies share is a singleminded dedication to gleefully over the top gore and high camp in spite of the limitations of their poor budgets. Helmed by devoted and enthusiastic auteurs, these films looked cheap but made up for it with cleverness and fun.

House is nothing like those movies. Despite having directed one of my favorite slasher films, Sean Cunninggham has been a passionless hack ever since his early days in the soft core porn scene. While Steve Miner has proven himself to be a capable director with the actually pretty good Part 2 and Halloween: H20 (and, weirdly enough, the pilot episode of Dawson's Creek), there's not a lot he can do with the material he is provided.

House is yet another 80's cult classic where its reputation (largely derived from its sequel - House II: The Second Story) vastly exceeds its quality. Starring Norm from Cheers and William Katt aka The Greatest American Hero, House is a dull oddity about a struggling horror writer who is trying to write a memoir of his Vietnam experience in a house owned by his recently deceased aunt which turns out to be haunted.

In the grand tradition of cheesy B-horror, this film attempts to plumb a much deeper thematic vein than your average horror flick (namely the post-war reassimilation of veterans). Unlike its brethren, it is an unusually shallow and pointless exploration of such. There is some joy to be found in the monster in the closet and the gonzAno closing scene, but most of it is stifled with pacing as stiff as a corpse's joints.

There is a surprising deficit of actual comedy and the whole affair feels much longer than 90 minutes. It's plagued by a common 80's horror ailment - Fadeout Disease - and despite some of its more gleefully campy charms, it is better to let sleeping ghosts lie in this case.

Rating: 4/10

Caddyshack

Year: 1980

Director: Harold Ramis

Cast: Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Murray

Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It is interesting that a comedy at least nominally about the young caddies at a golf course should focus so heavily on its older male characters, but as it is it's an interesting combination of upper class caricatures heavily intermixed with copious teen nudity and revelry.

A classic comedy that doesn't play quite as well today, Caddyshack is still a clever and charmingly batty look at life behind the scenes at a country club. Cast with a whole pack of comedy greats in their prime, classic line deliveries zing left and right.

The filmmaking of Caddyshack isn't the best thing in the world. In fact, it's quite grainy and washed out for a studio comedy of its time. It seems like something that could have been produced in the 50's, although this isn't necessarily a problem and lends a kind of wholesome feel-good atmosphere.

And though the script is well done, the teen antics pale in comparison to the veterans of the craft who are made of much sterner stuff. Allowing Murray, Chase, and Dangerfield a chance to run the show instead of placing protagonist duties on the young shoulders of Michael O'Keefe would have allowed the film more room to breathe and avoid the hijinks overwhelming the script.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 764