Repossessed (1990)

Here it is, The Exorcist spoof you never knew you needed. Or wanted. It's strange to think that this was in UK video stores before The Exorcist itself was deigned suitable for British adults to view in a certificated video form in their own homes (you can look up the history of the film with the BBFC to see what I mean, although many horror fans will already know what I mean).

Anyway, written and directed by Bob Logan, this is a film that relies on two main bits of canny casting. First of all, Linda Blair plays Nancy Aglet, a woman who has her head turned by the devil. Second, Leslie Nielsen plays Father Mayii, the elderly priest who may be the one to save Nancy.

The story is all about Nancy, a married mother of two, becoming alarmed when she starts to utter profanities and spew pea soup. She asks for help from Father Luke Brophy (Anthony Starke), but this also brings her unwanted attention from two fake celebrities (played by Ned Beatty and Lana Schwab) who think they can cure her and get great ratings. Maybe the only one who can really help is Father Mayii, but he is reluctant to take the chance.

Logan throws everything he can at the wall here, and some of it sticks. You gets lots of obvious gags based directly on the source material (the "lick me" turn, as silly as it is, always makes me laugh), and you get lots of tangents, such as the scenes showing Father Mayii trying to get himself fitter and stronger. Unfortunately, the gags that miss the mark sometimes miss by a wide margin. Perhaps the worst moment has an incongruous rap interlude from Father Brophy, it's cringe-inducing to watch nowadays, but there are also a number of moments breaking the fourth wall that are never as witty as they think they are.

Kudos to Blair for accepting the role and having fun with something that derives comedy from her most famous performance, and Starke does well for a lot of his main scenes, but Beatty and Schwab are underused, while Nielsen is overused, often mugging and delivering his lines in a way that undermines the potential laughs.

Many people may still have fond memories of this spoof, but it doesn't hold up very well. The better gags still work, they just remain so few and far between, and nothing is done in a way that manages to distract from how cheap and careless it all is.

410

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

June-Claude Van Damme: Nowhere To Run (1993)

The funniest thing about revisiting the filmography of Jean-Claude Van Damme is finding out how others view his films, and also finding out that some of them weren't the popular hits that the younger version of me thought they were. Take this film, for example. I thought Nowhere To Run was an easy success for JCVD. It wasn't. It made money, but it didn't make lots and lots of money.

The plot sees Van Damme playing an escaped prisoner who ends up being in the right place at the right time for one single mother (Rosanna Arquette) who is being given a hard time by developers who want her to sell her home and stop getting in the way of a potential gold mine (metaphorically). Joss Ackland is the main baddie, but he uses Ted Levine to oversee the actual dirty work, and also makes use of a local law enforcement officer (Lonnie, played by Edward Blatchford).

Based on a script by Joe Eszterhas, Leslie Bohem, and Randy Feldman, Nowhere To Run is simply an updated riff on Shane, with extra moments that allow the leading man to either take his clothes off or ride about on a motorbike and look cool (or allow his stunt double to do that anyway, which is how it appears in a number of scenes). The pacing works well, despite this being far from the most action-heavy of Van Damme's movies from this time, and the characters are developed just enough beyond the paper-thin to help you care about how things pan out.

It helps that the cast all do a good job. As well as the two leads warming up to one another throughout, leading to some gratuitous nudity and sexy sex time, you get decent turns from Ackland and Blatchford, and a scene-stealing performance from Levine, who benefits the most from the script. You also get a couple of great child performances, from Kieran Culkin and Tiffany Taubman, both of whom latch on to Van Damme with an ease and innocence that kids can have within their first encounter with an adult they decide is okay by them.

Director Robert Harmon does decidedly okay work, but it's a shame that he didn't decide to shake things up a bit, either in terms of some more creative acton sequences or in terms of giving more time to character moments for Arquette and Levine, the former underserved and the latter having so much fun that viewers could have been rewarded by having more of him.

Nowhere To Run remains an enjoyable slice of entertainment, and Van Damme exudes enough charisma here to make it feel completely natural that the film was adapted to fit him into the lead role, but it's also very disposable, and ultimately easily forgettable.

6/10

The disc be here.
Americans can purchase it here.