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.
Horror, smarts, and a new Fourth of July favorite!
MUNCHIES (1987)
Three years after she edited Gremlins, Bettina Hirsch was hired by legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman to make her feature directorial debut with Munchies, a low budget “tiny terrors” movie that was made to cash in on the success of Gremlins (and Critters and Ghoulies). This was a movie that I remember being excited to watch when it was broadcast on a local TV station when I was a kid. I was a fan of the movies it was knocking off, so I thought I’d enjoy this one as well. Unfortunately, I was quickly put off by its goofy, low budget vibe and didn’t end up paying much attention to it.
That was a youthful mistake. Over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, I randomly decided to give Munchies another the chance (on a recorded episode of House of Svengoolie this time), and it was quite a fortuitous coincidence: I had no idea that Munchies is set on the Fourth of July! And since the movie has a rather negative reputation, I also had no idea it would be as fun to watch as it was. Due to the setting and the unexpected entertainment value, Munchies has now become a new Fourth of July favorite, a movie I’m going to be adding to my annual holiday marathon alongside the locked-in likes of Jaws, Frogs, and The Return of the Living Dead, and additional options like Graveyard Shift, Uncle Sam, and I Know What You Did Last Summer (and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and I Know What You Did Last Summer 2025).
The story written by Lance Smith starts in Peru, where archaeologist Simon Watterman (Harvey Korman) is searching for evidence to prove his theory that Machu Picchu was built by extraterrestrials. Simon has brought his unfunny aspiring comedian son Paul (Charles Stratton) along with him – and while exploring a cave, they discover a small, strange creature that Simon is convinced is an alien. Somehow they get it back to the United States in their carry-on luggage, and they’re greeted at the airport by Paul’s girlfriend Cindy – who’s played by Nadine van der Velde, who had just played a prominent role in Critters the year before!
Simon and Paul are foolish enough to live next door to Simon’s evil twin brother Cecil (also Korman), a snack food / wine cooler entrepreneur who also owns a fast food restaurant and has scheduled a Fourth of July opening for his miniature golf course, which is named in honor of his wife Melvis (Alix Alias). When Cecil hears (he has his brother’s house bugged) that Simon has an alien in his possession, he and his idiot stepson Dude (Jon Stafford) kidnap the little guy. This part of the movie is a real bummer, because while the creature is in the care of Simon, Paul, and Cindy, we see that he’s a nice little guy (they name him Arnold Ziffel, like the pig on Green Acres) who just wants to eat – he has the munchies – and watch TV. He’s not very cute, but I liked Arnold because I could relate to him. I, too, prefer to spend my time eating and watching TV. Sadly, just as soon as we come to care about Arnold, we have to watch him get mistreated by Dude, who can’t tolerate Arnold’s desire to munch in front of the TV. This goes so far that Dude ends up taking a knife and cutting Arnold into pieces... and this is where the film truly enters “tiny terrors” mode, because Arnold’s pieces regenerate into multiple Munchies who don’t give a damn about being nice anymore and just want to wreak havoc. They steal Dude’s car (a Gremlin, of course), and head out to cause trouble all over town. Of course, some of the trouble they cause happens to be at Cecil’s miniature golf course.
Munchies is a fun, ridiculous movie that’s not on the level of Gremlins, Critters, or Ghoulies II, but still delivers a good time. The only downside is the fact that we lose Arnold after Dude cuts him up. He’s probably still part of the group of Munchies, but it’s impossible to tell the difference between them, and we never get the chance to see him reconnect with Paul and Cindy. At one point in the Gremlins development process, we were going to lose the adorable Gizmo once the Gremlins arrive. He was supposed to become a Gremlin himself. The filmmakers wisely chose to keep Gizmo around as a good guy while the Gremlins go wild, and I wish the same decision had been made about Arnold. I liked the guy! The movie would have benefited from at least having a moment of Paul being able to reason with Arnold during the climactic sequence.
That doesn’t happen, but Munchies is enjoyable nonetheless, and my girlfriend and I are going to be watching this movie every Fourth of July from now on.
LIMITLESS (2011)
It’s a popular misconception that human beings only use, or can only even access, ten to twenty percent of our brains. That even our best and brightest are only functioning at 20% of our full potential. We actually use 100% of our brains, and virtually every part of it is active even when we’re asleep. But that hasn’t stopped some fiction writers from telling stories about unlocking that other ninety-to-eighty percent of our brains that supposedly aren’t being used – and some of those stories are quite good. In 2001, writer Alan Glynn wrote a techno-thriller called The Dark Fields, which was about a man unlocking the full potential of his brain through the use of an experimental drug. Screenwriter Leslie Dixon snatched up the film rights to that story for herself – and a decade after the book was published, we got the loose film adaptation Limitless, which is a fairly entertaining movie to watch.
Directed by Neil Burger, the film stars Bradley Cooper as Eddie Morra, a writer who’s struggling (and failing) to get through his days without looking like a sack of dirt, let alone get any writing done on his latest book. One day, he crosses paths with his disreputable former brother-in-law Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), who appears to have become reputable. Vernon gives Eddie a sample of a new, supposedly FDA-approved drug called NZT and Eddie suddenly feels like he has the world in the palm of his hand. He remembers every bit of information he has ever heard or read, he seduces his landlord’s wife, he cleans his apartment, and he starts writing his book.
Then Eddie finds Vernon dead in his apartment and fears that he might not be able to get his hands on any more NZT. Luckily, he’s able to find a sack of the stuff before the police show up. And with the help of his stash of pills, he goes on to greatly improve his life. He completes his book, gets into finances (which involves working with a tycoon played by Robert De Niro), and starts making millions. He also wins back his recent girlfriend, Lindy (Abbie Cornish).
But having access to 100% of his brain doesn’t stop Eddie from making stupid decisions, like getting involved with a violent loan shark (played by Andrew Howard) and cheating on Lindy. Soon, Eddie has to not only deal with the fact that continued use of NZT might have a devastating impact on his health, and might even be fatal, but also with the mysterious death of one of his one-night stands and the drug-fuelled danger of the loan shark.
For a movie about a character who gains smarts, Limitless could have been a smarter movie, but as it is it’s a good thriller, with an interesting story and some entertaining moments of suspense and violence.
NOMADS (1986)
John McTiernan made his feature directorial debut with the 1986 supernatural horror film Nomads, which he also wrote, working from a novel by prolific author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. The set-up is intriguing: Dr. Eileen Flax (Lesley-Anne Down) is called into the emergency department of a Los Angeles hospital to treat a bloody, injured man named Jean-Charles Pommier (Pierce Brosnan), who is thrashing and ranting in French. Before the man drops dead, he whispers something in Eileen’s ear – and from that moment, her mind becomes flooded with his memories. She experiences what he has been experiencing recently.
An anthropologist who has been travelling the world, studying various cultures, Jean-Charles just recently arrived in Los Angeles with his wife, Niki Pommier (Anna-Maria Monticelli). While Niki is looking forward to settling down and starting a family, Jean-Charles quickly becomes bored with city life. He’s so easily distracted, then when he finds out that their new home was the sight of a murder and a bunch of punks that keep roaming through the neighborhood have made a shrine to the killer in the garage, he ditches his wife, grabs his camera, and tracks the punks around town for thirty hours straight. Even after a moment where it looks like the punks might kill him, he remains obsessed with following them. He makes an occasional quick trip home, then he heads out to follow the punks some more.
The punks are played by the likes of Adam Ant, Mary Woronov, Frank Doubleday, Josie Cotton, and Hector Mercado, but none of them are portrayed as actual characters. They’re just a bunch of weirdos. Eventually, we’ll come to learn that they’re not even human, but demonic spirits in human form.
This sounds like the makings of a good horror movie, and Nomads gets off to a promising start, but it falls apart as it goes on, becoming a series of uninteresting “Jean-Charles follows the creeps” scenes and scattered supernatural occurrences. (With a quick appearance from Frances Bay as a nun along the way.) My friends and I found it very difficult to keep our attention on the screen and were anxious for the movie to end long before it did. Down has said that some of the movie was very good, but “some of it was plainly f-ing stupid.” I can’t disagree with her. Critic Roger Ebert gave the film 1.5 stars out of a possible 4 and said that even if viewers cared about the characters, the film is too confusing to understand. I can’t disagree with him, either. And the film’s coherence isn’t aided by the fact that Brosnan and Monticelli deliver their lines with such thick French accents, much of what they say is indecipherable.
Nomads did find a fan in Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was impressed by the atmosphere that McTiernan was able to capture on a small budget. That inspired him to hire McTiernan to direct Predator – and I’m glad Schwarzenegger enjoyed Nomads so much, because Predator is one of my all-time favorite films. McTiernan’s work on that led him straight into another favorite, Die Hard. So Nomads was a great stepping stone for him, even if it isn’t very good.
EVIL DEAD RISE (2023)
I absolutely love Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy (The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness) and the three-season follow-up TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead. When Raimi decided to hand a franchise reboot over to director Fede Álvarez in 2013, I enjoyed the resulting movie much more than I expected to. Bruce Campbell starred in Raimi’s films and Ash vs. Evil Dead as the demon slayer Ash Williams, and when the show came to an end, he announced that he was retiring from the role. So Raimi, Campbell, and their fellow franchise rights holder Rob Tapert decided to start making more movies along the lines of the Álvarez reboot, handing directors who are early in their careers a chance to work inside the Evil Dead universe.
Impressed by Lee Cronin’s feature directorial debut, a horror movie called The Hole in the Ground, they hired him to write and direct an Evil Dead movie, which is how we got Evil Dead Rise... and Cronin managed to make the first Evil Dead movie that I don’t like.
This one annoys me from the start because it has the same problem that a lot of modern horror movies do: the picture is too damn dark. I miss the days when movies could be scary and visible at the same time. The darkness we were making fun of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem for back in 2007 is now the norm. The characters in Evil Dead Rise appear to live their lives in utter darkness. They can turn a light on, but it won’t do much good. Even during daylight hours, rooms that have open curtains on the windows manage to be pitch dark. This is the nightmare of watching horror movies in the days when filmmakers have decided to drain all of the light and life out of their digital imagery.
Squint and you can see some actors playing out scenes. Following an opening sequence in woodsy setting reminiscent of the previous films (aside from Army of Darkness), Rise moves the action to a low-rent, sparsely-populated apartment building in Los Angeles... although filming took place in New Zealand rather than L.A., so it doesn’t really feel like L.A. Lily Sullivan takes the lead as guitar technician / “rock chick” Beth, who has just gotten the disturbing news that she’s pregnant and goes to visit her sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland). At her sister’s apartment, she gets more disturbing news: Ellie’s husband has ditched her and left her to raise their three children – Morgan Davies as teenage Danny, Gabrielle Echols as teenage Bridget, and Nell Fisher as tween Kassie – on her own.
Since this is meant to be L.A., there is, of course, an earthquake. This rips a hole in the parking garage and reveals a chamber hidden beneath, where Danny discovers some phonograph records and an ancient book: the Naturom Demonto, a.k.a. the Necronomicon Ex Mortis, a.k.a. the Book of the Dead. Taking a cue from a goofy moment in Army of Darkness, this movie confirms that there are actually three volumes of the book, making it easier to produce a wide range of sequels. Aspiring DJ Danny slaps those records on the turntable and plays them. It’s a bad idea, because they contain a read-aloud translation of the book that was recorded in 1923 and unleashes those familiar forces of evil in the apartment building. The first victim: Ellie, who gets possessed and proceeds to spend the rest of the movie tormenting her family (and some of the neighbors).
Evil Dead Rise goes through the motions you expect from an Evil Dead movie, and it does have a bit of an extra edge due to the fact that it’s putting children in danger and having people getting attacked by beloved family members... I just don’t find it to be very interesting or entertaining, and the darkest of the imagery makes it very difficult and annoying for me to sit through. I want to see a movie when I’m watching it, and this one is ridiculously dim.
It all builds up to the twist that these possessed people, the Deadites, are able to merge their bodies together and become a multi-limbed monster called the Marauder. This doesn’t make them more of a threat; it actually just makes it easier for them to be defeated. You don’t have to worry about destroying the bodies of multiple Deadites when you can just drop one Marauder into a woodchipper.
Evil Dead Rise was well received by critics and fans alike, and it was a major financial success, making $147 million at the global box office on a budget that was somewhere in the 15 to 19 million range. That made it the most successful Evil Dead movie yet; the Raimi trilogy had been cult favorites and the 2013 movie had a similar budget, but topped out at $97.5 million. The sequel I didn’t like wound up being the biggest hit in a franchise I love.
I will continue watching the Raimi movies over and over, and I’ll take in the occasional viewing of the 2013 film, but it’s difficult to imagine that I’ll ever rack up more than a handful of Evil Dead Rise viewings. The movie has some interesting elements, but it wears out its welcome for me around the midway point of the 96 minute running time and getting through the rest of the movie is a slog. When I power through it, I don’t feel like it was worth it, because that Marauder twist is really dumb.
Evil Dead Rise is just not for me.
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