Shudder Saturday: Deathstalker (2025)

Despite the enduring love for the series, there are few people you could find who would tell you that the original Deathstalker is a great movie. It's even surpassed by the first sequel it had. So to say that this reworking of the property is better than the first film is quite easy. Yet it has something that still holds it back slightly, just a feeling that . . . well, I can't quite put my finger on one specific fault, but hope to mention a number of factors in this review.

Daniel Bernhardt plays the titular hero this time around, and he certainly looks the part. He's soon joined by a small creature named Doodad (voiced by Patton Oswalt) and a young female thief named Brisbayne (Christina Orjalo). Their fates are all tied together by a magical amulet that is desired by Nekromemnon (Nicholas Rice), and he expects his right hand man, Jotak (Paul Lazenby), to retrieve it from our hardy little band of heroes.

Written and directed by Steven Kostanski, who has been responsible for one of my all-time favourite genre movies of the 2020s (Psycho Goreman), there's a lot here that should be expected, if you're familiar with his work. Plenty of impressive practical effects, a decent amount of blood and guts thrown around, and clear affection for the source material.

The cast all work well in their roles too, which is a big help. Bernhardt has both the muscles and the attitude, Oswalt's voice is a perfect fit for his character, and Orjalo, Lazenby, Nina Bergman, Conor Sweeney, and John Clifford Talbot all feel well-suited to the onscreen environment. Rice is hidden under a lot more make up and prosthetics, as are both Jon Ambrose and Troy James, but the physicality is spot on.

Nobody could accuse the Deathstalker movies of striving for any kind of realism, and they were made with low budgets and limited resources, but this particular Deathstalker movie feels just as limited in one or two other ways. I'm surprised to say that part of that is due to how it lacks a specific charm, perhaps due to the knowledge that everyone involved is very much clued in on the kind of film they want to make. Original films of this ilk were made by people trying to present a fantastical world and a mad menagerie of monsters with whatever they had to hand. This is made by people trying to present a slightly more polished version of an older movie, and part of the charm of the older movies often stems from seeing the tape holding the cardboard together at the very edge of the frame, metaphorically speaking. I also can't help thinking that there's a bit of gentle mockery mixed in with the affection here, a feeling of Kostanski saying "you know this is silly, we know this is silly, but let's enjoy it nonetheless". It's not an overriding sensation, but I could feel it just underpinning almost every scene, and that was enough to stop me from loving this as much as I had hoped to. The Deathstalker movies were not without humour, but it was a very basic and genre-specific kind of humour (aka very '80s humour). This film doesn't have that, and it's the absence of THAT humour, the way that Kostanski tries to allow everything to be played quite straight, that paradoxically makes me sense some of the other humour layered throughout. 

Maybe I am being too sensitive, maybe I am responding to something that wasn't intended the way I am viewing it, but I cannot help thinking that many other Kostanski films have been made with the feeling that they're loving homages that couldn't possibly rival the impact of the original films that inspired them, despite how those original films are viewed with disdain by those who just don't understand the way to the heart of a horror fan who grew up through the halcyon days of VHS madness. Deathstalker somehow makes a major mis-step by being better than the 1983 original, which makes even the slightest wink or smirk feel like it's "punching down" at a beloved film series.

Still, when it comes to the film-making basics, there's no denying that what is onscreen here is done well. I'd love to hear from others, whether to help me better word my opinion or just tell me that I am talking nonsense, but, in the meantime, I still have to rate this as an enjoyable bit of sword 'n' sorcery entertainment. It's just not great, and left a slightly sour taste in my mouth as the end credits rolled.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Circle (2017)

I didn't mind The Circle, but I didn't really enjoy it either, and I am going to say that the fault here needs to be shared between the pair of us. The film doesn't quite do enough with the main ideas it is working with, but I may have enjoyed it a bit more if I'd watched it back when it was first made available in 2017. The intervening years have simply shown us more and more reasons to distrust tech-bros and offensively rich and powerful individuals, which makes The Circle much less tense and more predictable than it would have been in a world before people like Bezos and Musk started to act increasingly like parodies of James Bond villains.

Emma Watson plays Mae, a young woman who is helped in to a dream job by her friend, Annie (Karen Gillan). She ends up in the Circle, a tech company that has seemingly unlimited power and resources. It's a bit odd though, considering how people are encouraged to interact online and fully commit to the Circle way of life. The pill is sugar-coated by the big boss, Bailey (Tom Hanks), who can acknowledge how silly some of their practices appear, but continues to present his vision of a tech-reliant utopia in a way that is convincingly benign. Some start to worry about the implications, however, as the Circle starts to reach further and further into the lives people all around the world.

Based on a novel by Dave Eggers, this was adapted from page to screen by a pairing of the writer and director, James Ponsoldt. Eggers has worked on other movies, and Ponsoldt has a mixture of projects in his filmography (with his best work being made for the small screen), but none of them manage to find the best way to handle this material. What should be a standard dream-turns-sour scenario, with the added threat of super-charged tech to make things more complicated, is turned into a disappointingly dull drama in which things go quite well for many of the characters . . . until they stop being so blissfully naïve. The biggest problems stem from the way things are plotted, but it doesn't help that the cast is relatively weak.

As much as I enjoy Emma Watson, she hasn't quite managed to convince in any of her post-Potter main roles, despite trying her hand in an interesting variety of projects. She's not bad here, but she's also not a strong enough screen presence, and is outshone by almost every supporting cast member (including Gillan, Hanks, Patton Oswalt, John Boyega, and Glenne Headly and Bill Paxton, who do wonderful work in the role of her parents). Mind you, few of those people I just mentioned are the best people for their roles either. Gillan has to overdo a heap of nervy paranoia throughout the second half, Hanks seems far too nice to have reached his position in life, and Oswalt isn't given enough screentime to make his character anything more than an obvious schemer who does some hand-wringing and metaphorical wiping of his damp brow as the plot heads toward the final scenes. Boyega does well, but his relatively small role here feels as if it doesn't deserve his talents.

It's ironic that I'll be sharing this review around in the usual places, ensuring that it ends up in certain social media spots, linking to it on IMDb, and potentially making some money from clicks that are generated via Google. Considering what the film posits, maybe I am part of the problem. Okay, I admit it, I am definitely a part of the problem. We all are, but many of us are savvy enough to shape our own corner of the internet to exactly how we want it to be, with the help of ad-blockers, data usage options, and ongoing attempts to balance out the negatives with more positives. There are very few legitimately good options nowadays when it comes to conscientiously maintaining an online presence. But at least I can use this platform to belatedly warn you against wasting your time with The Circle. It's not terrible, but it never manages to become more than harmlessly dull and average.

4/10

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Shudder Saturday: The Spine Of Night (2021)

I tried to watch The Spine Of Night before, but things conspired against me. I ended up busier than expected, had to stop the film, and then just never got back to it. I always thought I was missing out, and I figured that the film might be something I would love. A year or so later, I discover that I was completely wrong. The Spine Of Night is a boring waste of a great cast.

Described on IMDb as an "ultra-violent, epic fantasy set in a land of magic" that "follows heroes from different eras and cultures battling against a malevolent force", this is all about a powerful woman (Tzod, voiced by Lucy Lawless) who battles to retain possession of a mystical flower known as the Bloom. It, or something akin to it, has been guarded by others over many years (with one of those guardians voiced by Richard E. Grant), but it has fallen into the hands of a major baddie named Ghal-Sur (Jordan Douglas Smith).

Co-written and co-directed by Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King, this rotoscoped dark fantasy has a number of obvious influences feeding into it, and anyone who enjoys those influences should find something to like here, but they will struggle to maintain that enjoyment as the film makes one mis-step after another. Although the runtime is only 93 minutes, the pacing makes it feel much longer, and makes it feel like quite a slog at times. The characters are hard to care about, the environments shown onscreen feel like disconnected backgrounds, as opposed to a real world, and the central quest never becomes as interesting or involving as it should be.

The animation style also works against it slightly. I appreciate some good rotoscoping, but it works best when it feels like a vital component. This is a choice, and an ill-advised one. There's nothing here that couldn't have been improved by either a different style of animation or, perhaps, a live-action presentation of the unfolding events.

As for the cast, both Lawless and Grant are great picks for their roles, Smith does well as the villain, and there are roles for Patton Oswalt, Joe Manganiello, and Larry Fessenden, as well as quite a few others, but nobody is given good enough material to work with. I don't mind something that mixes in plenty of familiar elements, there's a comfort and fun in enjoying ingredients mixed into a new recipe, but this feels, perhaps as intended, like a tale that was written back in the 1970s and dusted off for modern audiences without any extra re-writing or polishing of the material.

I could recommend you plenty of animated movies to watch ahead of this, from the fantasy, sci-fi, and horror genres, and some of those show a much better way to make use of rotoscoping. I'm sure The Spine Of Night has some fans, but I'm never going to want to revisit it, and I'll probably forget it exists at all within the next few months.

3/10

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Reno 911!: Miami (2007)

While I never watched the TV version of Reno 911! I was somehow always aware of it. It was a parody of the "COPS"-style TV shows that have become so popular over the last decade or so and featured some great comedy from two people I really enjoy seeing onscreen - Thomas Lennon and Wendi McLendon-Covey. Maybe if I'd seen some episodes I would have enjoyed it. Maybe not.

The plot sees our hapless police officers invited to a big event in Miami. It's not that they're special, or that anyone actually wanted them there, but the fact is that this time around everyone was invited. Things start off as you would expect - the group are mocked and their details can't be found on the system - but things swiftly turn around the next day when a terrorist attack leaves every other officer quarantined inside the main event building. Law and order must remain and it's up to the folks from Reno to uphold it. Uh oh.

Directed by Robert Ben Garant (who also co-wrote the thing with stars Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenney - and, I'm sure, everyone who was able to improv some lines), this movie suffers due to the fact that every single character is just slightly too dumb to be amusing for an entire film. The cops are dumb, of course, but The Rock pops up just to be dumb too. Then we have a dumb, though still amusing, Scarface-inspired baddie played by Paul Rudd. Patton Oswalt, as Jeff Spoder, does reasonably well until the big finale, in which he also becomes pretty dumb. It's a symphony of stupidity and that's a tricky thing to get just right, which is why the movie falls down slightly.

There are many individual moments that cause laughs (the aforementioned appearance from The Rock is one while attempts to remove the body of a beached whale is another) but there are many other moments that pile on the crudity and nonsense without success. Lennon is consistently great, as are Wendi McLendon-Covey and Kerri Kenney, but the other main characters are either undeveloped or just plain unfunny.

With a cast that also features David Koechner and Nick Swardson, and even a small and amusing cameo for Danny DeVito, there's enough stupidity thrown around to make this a passable time-waster but it's not one that I'll choose to watch again.

5/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reno-911-Miami-The-Movie/dp/B000RGUN2W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341255680&sr=8-1

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)

Time has rolled merrily along since the second Harold & Kumar movie and the two characters have gone their separate ways. Harold (John Cho) has a great job, a lovely wife (Paula Garces, reprising her role from the first two movies) and generally a life of comfort and security that always seemed to elude him while he spent his time getting high. Kumar (Kal Penn) hasn't really gone up in the world and is, funnily enough, still mostly interested in getting high. Fate brings the two together just in time to put Christmas in jeopardy and they spend the movie trying to put things right. If Harold doesn't manage to sort out a Christmas tree that will please his father-in-law then he will be in big trouble. Especially when that father-in-law is played by Danny Trejo.

With Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg back on the writing duties it's surprising to find that this Harold & Kumar movie feels the least like an actual Harold & Kumar movie. Perhaps that's due to the Christmassy nature of the whole thing or perhaps it's simply because our duo have, inevitably, grown up. Just a little bit.

Regardless of the reason, we get quite a slightly movie this time around. The one thing that stays constant throughout all three movies is just how much fun the supporting players are. Danny Trejo in a Christmas sweater, Patton Oswalt as a drug-dealing Santa, Neil Patrick Harris as "Neil Patrick Harris", Eddie Kaye Thomas and David Krumholtz as bickering friends, Thomas Lennon as the main scene-stealer this time around, Richard Riehle as another Santa Claus and Elias Koteas as a violent gangster - there's plenty to enjoy.

Director Todd Strauss-Schulson doesn't do too badly in his role, and the direction and script both make some of their best little gags out of the whole 3D razzle dazzle, but you can't help feeling that this should really be the last hurrah for Harold & Kumar. The quality and quantity of the comedy has dipped since that enjoyable first outing but they've managed to stay the course through a decent enough comic trilogy.

6/10

http://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Two-Disc-Blu-ray-UltraViolet-Digital/dp/B006OFN0ES