Moon In Scorpio (1987)

Having heard about this slasher movie from someone online (who shall remain nameless, and still someone with an opinion I value, but let's just say that they like this one a lot more than I did), I decided to blind buy Moon In Scorpio and add it to my list of scheduled horror viewings for this October. I'm easily pleased, a statement I know that I repeat far too often, and I was hoping for some standard horror movie thrills here. 

The very basic plot summary concerns a bunch of friends heading off on a boat trip. Allen (John Phillip Law) will be introducing his new wife, Linda (Britt Ekland), to his friends. Burt (William Smith) and Mark (Lewis Van Bergen) are fellow veterans, and all three men are bonded by their wartime and war crimes. Their partners, Claire (Jillian Kesner) and Isabel (April Wayne), are also on board. As is a killer. 

There is a germ of a good idea at the centre of this, a vengeful force attacking guilty parties who have spent a long time trying to repress memories of bad war times, both what they have gone through and what they did, while also being irrevocably changed by that experience. It could be argued that the most interesting parts of the script, written by Robert Aiken, don’t involve the supernatural/slasher element. There’s interesting fluctuating levels of tension as the group simply settle back into some kind of false friendship, perhaps having kept in touch with one another when some would have been better to just break away and move on.

Director Gary Graver tries, but fails, to make the most of his relatively small budget, some interference from an executive producer (apparently), and the problem of the setting and small core cast making it harder to line up a selection of likely suspects as the murders begin.

Ekland isn’t terrible in her role, but she is clearly picked to be the big name that could draw in viewers. Law and Van Bergen are both fine, even if they find themselves overpowered by the domineering presence of Smith, who is enjoyably unpleasant throughout. Kesner gets to act over the top as someone constantly drinking her way through the film, Wayne is a very pleasant addition to the visual aesthetics, and Robert Quarry is enjoyable enough in a couple of scenes that have him as a doctor interviewing Ekland about just what happened on the boat (no spoiler - the film begins with a hysterical Ekland being found).

While there’s enough here to help this stand out from the crowd of slashers that overwhelmed horror fans from the late 1970s through the 1980s, Moon In Scorpio is more interesting for what it hints at, rather than what it is. Nothing stands out, the visuals, score, effects, and production design are all competent (at best, some nice shots of the boat notwithstanding), and it’s only worth seeking out once you feel that you have exhausted the large selection of more enjoyable, or more interesting, films in this subgenre.

5/10

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Shudder Saturday: Uncle Sam (1996)

Although it is completely ridiculous, never delivers an ounce of tension, and suffers from a cast of actors who deliver wildly varying quality with their performances, Uncle Sam, a satirical slasher movie directed by William Lustig and written by Larry Cohen, is still something I would recommend to people. Mainly because of those two names behind the camera.

David Fralick is Master Sergeant Sam Harper, a soldier killed in Kuwait when the helicopter he is in is brought down by "friendly fire" (quotation marks used because that is a stupid and paradoxical phrase). His body is delivered home just as everyone is preparing for their 4th July celebrations, but Sam's not as unanimated as he should be. And there are plenty of unpatriotic people he decides to punish once he gets his hands on them. One person who seems very safe is Sam's young nephew, Jody Baker (Christopher Ogden),  a young man who values patriotism as one of the best qualities that someone can have.

This wouldn't have taken much to turn into something a lot better than what we end up with. Basically, throw some more blood and gore around onscreen and you'd have a gloriously daft slasher to sit alongside the best of the subgenre. Sadly, it doesn't have an inventive enough selection of deaths, nor does it feel like it has a decent enough bodycount (although there are about ten deaths shown onscreen, few of them have any real impact). Maybe Lustig, who did such great work with limited resources to give audiences the likes of Maniac and the Maniac Cop movies, just couldn't manage to get quite the budget required for his final vision, but he's partially saved by a Cohen script that is sharp and merciless.

While the bodies start to pile up and the threat eventually becomes clear to those who are left alive, Uncle Sam is ultimately about three main things. It's about patriotism, what that means to different people and how it is used (wielded) by some. It's about war, about training someone up to kill in a certain environment and then expecting them to just go back to a normal life when they are no longer of service. And it's about looking beyond the uniform. I have always insisted that I cannot go along with the kind of blanket praise that some people love to give to certain groups of people (mainly soldiers and police officers). I like to praise individuals, and it's because they are the ones doing the good work, which they may have found a way to do without the relevant uniform on. To be perfectly blunt, a piece of shit can still be a piece of shit while wearing combat gear. Critics may say this is just a copy of Maniac Cop, which had some very similar themes running through it, but it feels like a very different beast, perhaps because Cohen has decided that hammering home the point he is making is more important than being subtle. It's definitely not subtle.

Ogden is okay as the annoying child at the centre of this, acting in many scenes with his mother (played by Leslie Neale) and his aunt (played by Anne Tremko). Neale and Tremko are both better than the child they are acting alongside, as you might expect, but Ogden overdoes things in a way that helps to underline the heavy-handed script. Fralick is fun in the role of zombie Sam, and Isaac Hayes is wonderful in the role of a fellow veteran, Sgt. Jed Crowley. Other familiar faces in the cast include P. J. Soles, Timothy Bottoms, and Robert Forster, with the latter being a very welcome highlight in his small role.

I can see why people wouldn't like this, and I can easily understand anyone hating it, but I liked this more than I expected to. The rough 'n' ready feel of the whole thing adds to the charm, and I think the way in which the commentary weaves from underpinning the material to being pushed front and centre is a pleasingly ballsy move from Cohen and Lustig. Feel free to like or loathe it at your leisure, but I think it's a nice little slice of . . . independence cinema.

6/10

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Eye Of The Tiger (1986)

Gary Busey plays Buck Matthews, a man so tough that his entire character is defined by those two things. Okay, he's also just out of prison (where he didn't deserve to be, goddammit) and he was quite the champ in his years of military service. When he returns home, he finds a town that is being terrorised by a bunch of violent bikers. The local law enforcement don't seem to be doing much about it, so it's up to Buck to teach them a lesson that they won't forget in a hurry. Unfortunately, the bikers take their opportunity to exact some revenge and before you can say "did they name this movie JUST to use that Survivor song?" it's time for a bit of a one-man war.

Directed by Richard C. Sarafian, and written by Michael Thomas Montgomery, Eye Of The Tiger is a very pure film experience. It's a lean, mean tale of revenge that benefits from a great leading man (during the years when he was just the right side of sanity, apparently) and a solid supporting cast, including Yaphet Kotto in a particularly enjoyable turn, Seymour Cassel and big, bad William Smith. Denise Galik and Kimberlin Brown may have less to do, but they are actresses in a testosterone-filled '80s action flick, so whatyagonnado? Young Judith Barsi, as the daughter of our hero, doesn't have a lot to do either, but I had to mention her here after I was saddened to find out that she died (cause of death - homicide) not long after her tenth birthday, just a couple of years after this movie was released.

Busey has, quite simply, rarely been better onscreen (and let's just take a moment to remember how many great performances he's actually given, all too easy to forget as he weaves a cloak of self-parody around himself in the 21st century). He's a man who wants to stand his ground, and he's often in the right, despite what odds may be stacked against him. As things wind towards an inevitable, and satisfying, finale the whole movie delivers a well-executed dose of righteous machismo.

I'm not going to pretend that this is high art, but I will emphasise that it's all put together almost perfectly for what it aims to be. The script sketches out characters, but fleshes out enough little details to make viewers invest in every confrontation, while Sarafian's direction delivers some great moments, with the perfect pacing of the film leaving plenty of room for impressive stuntwork and set-pieces in between the more predictable beats.

And then, of course, there's THAT great song being put to good use. Enjoy.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/Action-Marathon-Cyclone-Alienator-Exterminator/dp/B00AJXO5X6/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1388415609&sr=1-1&keywords=eye+of+the+tiger