Movie Marathon Reviews-Day 2

Here we are at Day 2 of my "Brigitte’s Gone So Have a Marathon of Movies She Doesn’t Want To Watch" marathon.

JOHN CARPENTER’S THEY LIVE

“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.”

First up today is John Carpenter’s essay on consumerism starring Roddy Piper. Some of you may know him better as “Rowdy” Roddy Piper (you know who you are.) More on him in a minute.

This is another one that I can’t believe evaded me until now. Maybe it wasn’t as readily available at my local video store when I was kid, devouring John Carpenter films, or maybe it was the lack of IMDB and Google and I didn’t know it existed. Either way, I fixed that error today.

While it’s not my favorite John Carpenter film – it can’t compete with masterpieces like The Thing, Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China (see a trend here?), and Halloween - it definitely has the elements that make me love his films. It’s got cheesy humor, good action, and a fun interesting story that keeps me coming back for more.

Roddy Piper – I don’t know why Kurt Russell wasn’t in this film – was their friendship going through a rough patch, was he busy? That’s all I’ll say on the matter.

I love John Carpenter’s films (for the most part.) His blend of comedy, horror and good storytelling works for me. They Live is no exception.

THE CAVE

Not much to say here. By that, I mean that the movie did not have much to say.

I, on the other hand, have a lot to say about it. But, I already spent an hour and a half with this movie so I will just say this:

It had your “traditional” action movie characters, many of them did not make it to the end. It had cool looking monsters that were wasted on this story.

BAGHEAD

Smart. Fun. It scared me.

I hated the camera work.

THE RUINS

Bloody. Good. Fun.

THE WOLFMAN (1941)

You can’t go wrong with the classic Universal horror monsters. And this one has Bela Lugosi and Claude Rains (Casablanca) backing up Lon Chaney (jr.) For a 60 year old movie it held up pretty well. Sure the creature makeup and effects are dated (the transformation from man to wolfman is just a dissolve), but the story and characters were well done and it is an enjoyable film.

This is definitely going into the annual rotation of movies that I watch over the Halloween season (what, you didn’t know there was a Halloween season?, Well, there is.)

Brigitte lands early in the afternoon tomorrow so I’ll have time to get a couple of movies in before she gets home.

Cheers!