Friday, May 31, 2013

Beverley Hills Ninja (1997)

When it comes to movies, it's always fun to rediscover childhood favourites that you haven't seen in forever! Such was the case with me and 1997 Chris Farley flick Beverly Hills Ninja!

I watched this movie all the time when I was a kid, but somehow forgot all about it as life went on. I recently remembered about it somehow, and after nostalgically remembering all about it, I tracked the movie down, and gave it a watch!

So is the movie actually any good, or did I just think it was back then because I was a dumb kid?...The former! Definitely the former!

The movie opens with a voiceover from the ninja clan's sensei (Soon Tek Oh), who relates the tale of the Great White Ninja, who, according to prophecy, will be a great ninja hero. He then goes on to tell about how a white baby in a chest washed along his dojo's shore from a shipwreck .

The child, Haru, grows up to be the black sheep of the ninja clan in more ways than one. Not only is he white, but he's overweight, a bit simpleminded, and very clumsy. After a (hilarious!) ninja training montage, the film cuts to the graduation of the clan's trainees to ninjas, save for Haru.

Later that night, the sensei and all the ninjas go out on a training exercise, leaving Haru alone to keep guard at the dojo.


While Haru's keeping watch, a woman, Sally Jones (Nicolette Sheridan) comes to the dojo, wanting help from the ninja clan. She suspects her boyfriend Martin Tanley of something, and, thinking he's a ninja, she hires Haru to investigate.


Haru goes off to the city on his own and locates Martin Tanley (Nathaniel Parker). He follows Tanley to a criminal deal. Tanley is buying 10,000 Yen plates from some guy, but the plates turn out to be of just one side of the Yen bill, as the other plates were stolen by other crooks. The angry Tanley shoots the seller, and kills him. Tanley dumps the body, which falls onto Haru's boat, and when Haru flees, he's seen by police, who think he's a murderer.


Haru manages to evade the police, and back at the dojo, the sensei reveals that 'Sally' is really named Alison Page, and he thinks that she decieved Haru in order to frame him. In order to prove himself to his clan, Haru goes off to Beverly Hills (thanks to a hotel lobbycard left by 'Sally') to find Martin Tanley and bring him to justice.


Haru arrives in Beverly Hills, and first goes to a hotel. After setting up shop in his hotel room, he befriends a bellboy, Joey Washington (Chris Rock), who is ecstatic to be meeting a real-life ninja. Haru teaches him a few tips on how to be a ninja, and soon after, Chris Rock vanishes from the movie, thankfully, because his voice is torture!

Haru soon locates 'Sally', and finds out that not only did she not set him up to be framed, but that she's dating Tanley so she can find incriminating evidence to have him arrested on, as he murdered her sister.

Meanwhile, as a gang war is brewing between Tanley's gang and the one that stole the other half of the plates, Haru's investigations get him, as well as Alison, in more and more danger...


Beverly Hills Ninja is pure slapstick, and it's incredibly entertaining slapstick! The plot is is simple, but well-written, and the ninja clan is so cool that this movie makes me depressed that ninjas stopped existing several centuries ago.

The film has plenty of action too, which is definitely a plus!

Chris Farley is great fun as Haru. He carries the film on his shoulder, and succeeds. Nicolette Sheridan is a good addition, and Nathaniel Parker is very good, albeit a bit underused as the film's villain. One thing's for sure, he's definitely not as bland as he was in that maudlin Inspector Lynley Mysteries TV series!


Chris Rock was intensely annoying to me at first and made me want to tear my eyes and eardrums out, but he sorta grew on me. Plus, he's not in it for a great deal either. Haru teaches Rock's character a few things, then tells him to not participate in the mission due to its danger, and Rock is absent for almost the rest of the movie.

Soon Tek Oh and Robin Shou are both great, with the former being a good mix of straight and funny, and the latter getting some good physical comedy (in more ways than one). The rest of the acting is all fine.


The soundtrack is all great stuff! Namely that Kung Fu Fighting song (You KNOW the one I mean), which makes a cool fight scene even cooler! Though there's a cover of it over the end credits which is pretty decent.

So, to finish, if you're ever feeling down about the fact that secret clans of ninjas don't actually exist, just watch Beverley Hills Ninja on a loop! It'll give you the temporary ninja fix you need!

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Iron Man 3 (2013) and Iron Man 4 (2013)



Warning! This review contains spoilers for Iron Man 3 and 4...

Iron Man 3 centres on multi-millionare and scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) and his dangerously unstable Extremis project, while Iron Man 4 focuses on a terror threat by The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) that's shaking America to its core!...

...Wait, they're the same movie?! Oh yeah, my bad.


Despite Iron Man 3 being a good movie, I was REALLY pissed off with it, thanks to the ridiculous twist it has halfway through!

So, The Mandarin is a comic book character who is one of Iron Man's most popular and recurring enemies, and he was due to be in Iron Man 3. After the AWESOME trailers, people were hyped to see The Mandarin on the big screen for the first time!...And were then eye-mutilatingly disappointed/horrified when they got to Iron Man 3's halfway point, where it's revealed that The Mandarin in this movie was just an actor hired by the true villain to serve as a diversion! The film might as well have said: "Dear Iron Man fans. Get fucked!"

A lot of what makes the twist so infuriating is that minus a couple of short scenes, the movie is never about The Mandarin. It's always about Killian and Extremis, and it never tries to hide the fact that he's the movie's big bad. Even people who don't know the twist going in would be able to see it coming because of this!

Also, the scenes with The Mandarin are GREAT, tense stuff, with awesome acting, and great story! They were so good that a movie about them would have been awesome! But instead, we got an insulting twist, and probably the biggest missed opportunity in all of the 'Marvel Cinematic Universe'.

What's worse is some of the people who try and justify the change. I've read some claim that The Mandarin is a one-note, outdated, nothing, heavily racist character who could not be salvaged for a movie in any way! Anyone who's thought that needs to have their shins broken! Not only is The Mandarin NOT just a one-note nothing villain, but he sure as hell isn't a racist caricature! Given that he was created in the 60's, he was probably invented by writers with a yellow peril mindset, and I don't know if the character was racist back then (it's likely, given what comics were like back then), but since then, The Mandarin has been more than just some cookie cutter Fu Manchu villain! Even the sometimes-mess that was Iron Man: Armoured Adventures handled The Mandarin pretty well-and fucking characters up was that show's forte!*

*That is to say, it was great at screwing up its characters in its own continuity, not in the comic's continuity.

Another supremely annoying thing that some people are saying is that the movie DOES have a proper Mandarin in the form of Aldrich Killian, thanks to a moment near the end when he yells "I am The Mandarin!". THAT WAS A FIGURE OF SPEECH! What he meant was that he was the power behind the puppet that was Ben Kingley's Mandarin!

They also say that Killian is simply a different interpretation of The Mandarin, and that we should be happy about it...Uh-huh, yeah right! I don't even have to point out why that's a load of shit! Aldrich Killian bears literally nothing in common to The Mandarin, so anyone who condescendingly calls me out for "daring to not love this movie simply because its interpretation of The Mandarin is not %100 percent accurate to the comics" can go stuff themselves!*

*Yeah, you'll notice that I'm pissed at a certain person! I'd provide a link, so you could see their awful article about Iron Man 3's Mandarin for yourself, but I'd rather not. I'd probably feel like an asshole if I did that.

Ben Kingsley's Mandarin may have lacked a few things that the Mandarin of the comics had, but he was still recognizable as The Mandarin, and I'm sure that interpretation would have done the character great justice if they'd let him have his own time to shine, and saved him for Iron Man 4, instead of destroying the character of The Mandarin in this continuity for the sake of a few jokes.


Soooo, time to get away from all that and talk about the rest of the movie.

For one, many people are complaining that the movie had barely any Iron Man action, and too much of suitless Tony Stark. To which I say, it totally did have enough! As far as I'm concerned, this movie definitely had enough Iron Man action. And anyway, the whole point of this film is how Tony does without a suit for a large portion of the film.

The movie DEFINITELY wasted AIM though! In the Iron Man comics-cartoons, etc., AIM is a huge evil corporation that's constantly making trouble for everyone! In this movie, AIM is just the name for Killian's company, and never resembles its comic counterpart in the slightest.

One other big problem is that the villain, Killian is barely developed. All you ever know about him is that he's a scientist, and he's evil. Also, his death is REALLY lackluster! Pepper just blasts him through a wall, and that's the last we ever see of him. The movie seems to assume he's dead, but considering what he survived involving Tony's explosive suit, I really doubt simply being blasted through a wall'd do any lasting damage!

Another issue is that characters Pepper, Rhodey, and Maya Hansen are very underused. Also, Tony's PTSD never affects the plot, it's just a couple of random scenes when he has anxiety attacks when New York is mentioned, so I have to wonder why it was even included! It would have been great if it played out more in the movie, but it didn't.

As for Extremis, it was handled well. Sure, Tony didn't get injected, and if he did, he wouldn't have been able to process information at super speed, nor could he have had near-telekinetic control over all technology, but Tony has his AI buddy JARVIS, as well as other handy gadgets, doing all those things for him anyway, so there was really no need for Extremis to have that ability here.

So, that's enough outta me about Iron Man 3. I'll be back tomorrow with my reviews for The Addams Family, and Parks and Recreation!

Friday, May 17, 2013

May Monster Madness Has Come to an End Once More

Well I've had a great time with May Monster Madness this year! I WAS planning on reviewing a random bunch of horror flicks, but after I reviewed the DVD Aussie-horror double feature of Inn of the Damned and Night of Fear, I realized that I owned quite a few more Australian horror movies, so that theme totally overtook everything else!

So, after ploughing through giant killer pigs, a murderous outback couple, a postal cop slasher film, one hell of a weird oddity of a film, and a nature strike back film that featured nowhere near as much wombats and koalas murdering people, I'm now done with May Monster Madness for this year! I would have also reviewed Bad Boy Bubby, but didn't because-1: I'm really not sure if it'd count; and 2: I was too busy watching Eurovision 2013 tonight to write the review.

Last year I did twelve posts, but I only did five this year. That's because I was a lot busier with other stuff this May! Hence, I've only read a few posts from other May Monster Madness entrees. Well it's time to change that! I have a lot of reading ahead of me!...

Same time next year!...


1. Annie Walls  17. Carmen Jenner Author  33. Roland Yeomans  
2. Magaly Guerrero  18. Book Me!  34. Real Queen of Horror  
3. Stephen Tremp  19. Design du Jour  35. Procrastonaut  
4. Toni @ My Book Addiction  20. Not This Time, Nayland Smith  36. Ms Misantropia  
5. QueenCicada  21. Shah Wharton  37. Sophie's Thoughts & Fumbles  
6. Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh  22. Tim Brannan, The Other Side  38. Dr. Theda  
7. Something WicKED this way comes...  23. Holly's Horrorland  39. Jenny's House of Horrors  
8. Little Gothic Horrors  24. Professor Z  40. TF Walsh  
9. Maynard Morrissey's HORROR MOVIE DIARY  25. The Beveled Edge  41. It Came From The Man Cave!  
10. Kweeny Todd  26. Candilynn Fite  42. Voodoo Ghoul  
11. L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off the Edge  27. Diane Riggins  43. The Moon is a Dead World  
12. The Dark World of MJ Preston  28. Lori Parker  44. KristenHead  
13. Entertaining Interests  29. Coffintree Hill  45. Memoirs Of A Scream Queen  
14. Emily Unraveled  30. Tasha's Thinkings  46. Evalina Maria  
15. Unnatural Selections  31. Stuff! Also, Things.  

16. GingerRead Review  32. Lexa Cain  

Thursday, May 16, 2013

[May Monster Madness]-Dangerous Game (1987)


So, here I am to continue my Aussie horror-athon with 1987's Dangerous Game, which I found on Youtube (By the way, good luck if you ever try and search for this film online on eBay, or something of the like! You'll be totally swamped by hundreds, if not thousands of results for The Most Dangerous Game (any damn version!), and the Harvey Keitel-Madonna film of the same same). The film is about a psycho cop hellbent on revenge against a group of university students.


Dangerous Game opens at univresity, where students and friends Jack (Marcus Graham), David (Miles Buchanan) and Tony (John Polson) are talking.

By the way, as if the guy's hilariously old computer wasn't funny enough, look at how this guy is dressed and done-up!


Yehp, it's the 80's alright!

As the day goes on, the three guys make friends with two women-Ziggy (Sandie Lillingston) and Kathryn (Kathryn* Walker), both of whom have a crush on David and Jack, respectively

*Really, movie? Well that must've been a stretch!

Jack, however, is continuously victimised by Murphy (Stephen Grives), a cop who hates Jack's guts, due to issues he had with Jack's (now deceased) Police Superintendant father.


After Murphy moves Jack's car into a No Parking zone, then tickets him for it, Jack has had enough, and he goes to the police station to report him. Just as he arrives, a crazed Murphy, speeding faster than the Millenium Falcon, crashes his squad bike into several others, trashing them.

Holy shit, Murphy is fucking postal! He's one insane cunt-stable!

Murphy is dragged out of the wreckage and brought to his boss. Murphy is suspended (yaheah!), and is told that he'll have to have appointments with a psychiatrist. After an outburst in the locker room, a disturbed Murphy leaves the station.

While Murphy has a breakdown at home, the group go to David's house, where he's trying to prove that he can hack into any security system. David hacks into the nearby Markwell's Department Store, and the disbelieving group want to see for themselves what David's hacking has done to the store. In order to win the bet, David opens the back security door, and the gang head off to look.


They drive to the department store, and unbeknownst to them, they are followed by Murphy. The security door does open, and they go inside. They traipse around the dark, empty store for a few minutes, and are about to leave when Murphy covertly shuts the security door with the nearby manual override switch, then steals the key.


Now that the gang are trapped in the store, they decide to entertain themselves until morning, then pretend to be customers when the store opens. Soon enough, a few weird things happen ('courtesy' of Murphy), like the lift moving up and down, or the lift phone ringing, and no-one being on the line when the group answer it.

Unluckily, Murphy doesn't wait long before getting the full attention of the group, and the psycho cop begins his insane rampage!...



Dangerous Game is like a slasher film without a body count. While not all of the group make it out alive, most of them survive. The film isn't about Murphy sneaking around, picking the gang off one by one, but rather about the gang trying their best to survive against Murphy's onslaught. And it definitely works!

The acting is all very good, with the standout being Stephen Grives as psycho cop Murphy.


The film does a great job in setting up the character of Murphy. Just twenty minutes in, and we already know more about Murphy that we ever find out about, say, Jason Voorhees, or Michael Myers in a dozen films! That's why I will always prefer these kinds of movie slasher killers!

However, it does get a little silly at times how much damage Murphy can handle, and how tough he is! Not to the extent of Roy the Paramedic in Friday the 13th Part V (who could crush people's skulls with only a belt, and break down doors like they were made of plywood, even though he wasn't really Jason and didn't share his somewhat supernatural prowess), but still pretty ridiculous!

The film's main characters were likeable enought that I was kinda bummed out to see one of them die. Here's how I see it-If I like a slasher film's characters enough that I wish there was a comedy TV show about them, then I'll preferably want them to live* (and if I don't, well then bring on the carnage!).

*The only other slasher film that I feel this way about  thus-far is April Fool's Day.


Onto Kathryn, specifically. She did barely anything during the film, but I was pleased with her character by the end, considering her hulking out at Murphy!

As well as Murphy's durability, the other ridiculous thing about the movie is how impossible it is for the characters to get out of a department store! It's just a department store, not a fucking fortress! This place is just as stupidly tough as the apartment building from Demons 2!...Ok, not THAT tough! That was, after all, by far one of the stupidest things from that movie...

Also, I may be wrong, but what the hell kind of department store stocks crossbows and guns?! Either they do, they did (this was the 80's, after all), or this film is just stupid.

The film had one big holy shit moment, and that was during Murphy's breakdown. His tv was on, and playing was...Strike of the Panther! You know, the Aussie Commando-type movie? About Perth-bound karate spy Jason Blade? No?...


So, to finish, I had a lot of fun with Dangerous Game! I have no idea why it was called Dangerous Game, but it's the first Aussie horror I've reviewed for May Monster Madness that I can wholeheartedly recommend, and didn't piss me off in any way! That's gotta count for something good now, doesn't it!...

1. Annie Walls  17. Carmen Jenner Author  33. Roland Yeomans  
2. Magaly Guerrero  18. Book Me!  34. Real Queen of Horror  
3. Stephen Tremp  19. Design du Jour  35. Procrastonaut  
4. Toni @ My Book Addiction  20. Not This Time, Nayland Smith  36. Ms Misantropia  
5. QueenCicada  21. Shah Wharton  37. Sophie's Thoughts & Fumbles  
6. Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh  22. Tim Brannan, The Other Side  38. Dr. Theda  
7. Something WicKED this way comes...  23. Holly's Horrorland  39. Jenny's House of Horrors  
8. Little Gothic Horrors  24. Professor Z  40. TF Walsh  
9. Maynard Morrissey's HORROR MOVIE DIARY  25. The Beveled Edge  41. It Came From The Man Cave!  
10. Kweeny Todd  26. Candilynn Fite  42. Voodoo Ghoul  
11. L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off the Edge  27. Diane Riggins  43. The Moon is a Dead World  
12. The Dark World of MJ Preston  28. Lori Parker  44. KristenHead  
13. Entertaining Interests  29. Coffintree Hill  45. Memoirs Of A Scream Queen  
14. Emily Unraveled  30. Tasha's Thinkings  46. Evalina Maria  
15. Unnatural Selections  31. Stuff! Also, Things.  

16. GingerRead Review  32. Lexa Cain  

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

[May Monster Madness]-Razorback (1984)

Jaws on Trotters! That's what the making-of special feature on my DVD of 1984 Australian horror/thriller flick Razorback is called, and it sure is a great description of this movie!

Razorback, one of the first films directed by former music video director Russell Mulcahy (Highlander, Blue Ice), and is about a giant razorback pig roaming in the outback, destroying whatever, or whoever's in its way...


The movie opens at a homestead nearby the town of Gamulla, where Jake Cullen (Bill Kerr), a local, is looking after his baby grandson. They're having a good night, but things take a turn for the worse when the house is totally demolished by a freakishly large feral boar, which carries the baby away to its death.

Cullen is put on trial, and, refusing to believe his story of a giant pig, most people assume that Cullen murdered his grandson. The trial starts, and naturally, this is small town Australia, so the town's courtroom is single-storey, smaller than my house, and besieged by flies!

Cullen's story is laughed at, but he's released anyway, due to lack of evidence that he killed his grandson.

Two years later, American journalist Beth Winters (Judy Morris), who specializes in cases about animal cruelty, goes from New York to Australia. She goes to Gamulla to ask around about the illegal slaughtering of kangaroos, which doesn't please the locals one bit, namely Benny (Chris Haywood) and Dicko (David Argue), two brothers who run a meat-packing factory-abattoir together, who toss darts near Beth's head.


In most countries, that'd be considered a threat, but here, that's just a traditionial Aussie greeting*!

*I may or may not be slightly embellishing that.

Soon after, Beth follows the brothers to the meat-packing factory and snatches several photos of them doing their gory job. They see what she's doing and chase her, but she escapes. She's not so lucky later that night, however, as when she's in a secluded location, the brothers drive up and ram her car up, and are about to rape her when the razorback shows up. They make a fast getaway, and Beth is...Well fuck you too, movie, for wasting my goddamn time with this Beth character!


Yep, the film establishes Beth's character, follows her for close to half-an-hour, and then suddenly kills her! Movie, that worked for Psycho, it doesn't for you! *seethe*

A short time later, Beth's husband Carl (Gregory Harrison) arives in Gamulla, intent on finding out what happened to Beth. Carl locates Jake Cullen, and the two have a talk. Cullen recommends that Carl start his search at the meat packaging, so Carl heads there, pretending to be an opal miner, and talks with Benny and Dicko.


The three go out for a kangaroo hunt come nightfall, and once the injure a kangaroo, the disgusted Carl puts the animal out of its misery. The brothers, who wanted to take the kangaroo back to the factory alive, so it wouldn't be as stiff as a board while they processed it, are annoyed with Carl, and leave him behind with the animal and some carving implements, so he can skin and gut the animal.

Carl instead goes to sleep, and once he comes too, a boar stampede starts up, forcing Carl up a windmill, then into the outback.


Carl stumbles around the outback, and then suddenly WHAT THE HELL!


Huh?! Has Carl phased into the universe of Robot Unicorn Attack?! Or the Jawa-minions' planet from Phantasm?! WHY ARE HORSE SKELETONS BREAKING OUT OF THE EARTH AND ATTACKING CARL?!


Carl comes to, and continues walking until he comes across a house. He approaches it and stumbles in on a woman (Arkie Whiteley) who's having a shower...outside! Lady, what the hell?! Who showers outside, and in broad daylight?! He collapses, and when he comes to, the woman, Sarah, an associate of Jake Cullen's, who talks with him. Once Carl mentions vaguely seeing a giant boar, Sarah quickly calls Jake over. Now having a rough idea of where the beast that kiled his grandson and ruined his life is, Jake goes on the hunt...


So, what did I think of Razorback? Well, for a start, the killing of Beth was just pointless! For one, we could have spent those 25 minutes following the real main character, and also, the film already had an Ahab-type, it didn't need two! As opposed to Psycho, where the killing of Marion Crane really jumpstarted the plot, Beth's fake main character seemed very unneeded. I did become accustomed to the protagonist switch eventually, thanks to Gregory Harrison's acting. I still find it really annoying though.

The acting is all good, the highlights being Gregory Harrison, Arkie Whiteley, and Bill Kerr. Chris Haywood and David Argue are good as the psycho brothers, but when it comes to laughing, they're weirdly terrible.


One of the best things about Razorback is the soundtrack, composed by Icehouse's Iva Davies (all my readers outside of Australia, you're scratching your head right now aren't you. It's to be expected. Just like I didn't expect anyone outside of Australia would get the Eskimo Joe joke in Django Unchained!). The scoring is plain fantastic at times!

One of the bigger problems I had with Razorback is that it's WAY too over-stylised! No more-so is this apparent than in Benny and Dicko's factory (which appears pretty frequently)-it's always really dark, there's smoke and blue lighting everywhere, and there's even an industrial fan with red light pouring up from under it! This is what happens when a music video director forgets he's directing a damn movie! The effects and visuals during the halucination seuence are great though!


The biggest problem is that the killer pig is barely in the damn film! That wouldn't be too bad, considering the killer shark was barely in Jaws, but Jaws was at least about a shark! Razorback is mostly about Carl either doing random stuff, walking through the outback, and asking about his wife. And when the film's nearing its climax, he's going after Benny and Dicko for revenge, not the pig!

A couple of little things about Razorback are the really weird segues it uses from time to time, and at one point, there's a jaws-style zoom-in!


Onto the monstrous razorback himself, the effects for it look very good!...From what can be seen of them! The razorback is almost never onscreen for longer than a split second. The effects whenever houses are attacked and torn apart are also very good!

So, while it did annoy the living hell out of me at times, this is the first movie of my May Monster Madness Aussie horror run that I can wholeheartedly recommend! It's got great effects, greater scoring, fine acting, and some kickass action! What more could you want?!



1. Annie Walls  17. Carmen Jenner Author  33. Roland Yeomans  
2. Magaly Guerrero  18. Book Me!  34. Real Queen of Horror  
3. Stephen Tremp  19. Design du Jour  35. Procrastonaut  
4. Toni @ My Book Addiction  20. Not This Time, Nayland Smith  36. Ms Misantropia  
5. QueenCicada  21. Shah Wharton  37. Sophie's Thoughts & Fumbles  
6. Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh  22. Tim Brannan, The Other Side  38. Dr. Theda  
7. Something WicKED this way comes...  23. Holly's Horrorland  39. Jenny's House of Horrors  
8. Little Gothic Horrors  24. Professor Z  40. TF Walsh  
9. Maynard Morrissey's HORROR MOVIE DIARY  25. The Beveled Edge  41. It Came From The Man Cave!  
10. Kweeny Todd  26. Candilynn Fite  42. Voodoo Ghoul  
11. L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off the Edge  27. Diane Riggins  43. The Moon is a Dead World  
12. The Dark World of MJ Preston  28. Lori Parker  44. KristenHead  
13. Entertaining Interests  29. Coffintree Hill  45. Memoirs Of A Scream Queen  
14. Emily Unraveled  30. Tasha's Thinkings  46. Evalina Maria  
15. Unnatural Selections  31. Stuff! Also, Things.  

16. GingerRead Review  32. Lexa Cain  

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

[May Monster Madness]-Long Weekend (1978)

Sorry for the wait everyobody, my internet conked out for some reason for several hours, so I couldn't post this until now.

Ah, it only took three movies before I got to an Australian nature-strikes-back movie! Unfortunately, 1978's Long Weekend contains no scenes of wombats punching people in the shin, or koalas dropkicking tourists and violently removing their necks. It's a very different kind of beast than stuff like, say, Food of the Gods, Frogs, Day of the Animals, Slugs, etc. The killer wildlife is largely in the background in Long Weekend, which is almost a good thing, but more of a bad thing...

Also, who wouldn't rather watch a film about killer koalas?! They're already vicious bastards-think how they'll act if exposed to sinister chemicals, or something of that ilk! It'd be awesome! And the movie could also contain the sinister, rarely-seen species-Drop Bears! A terrifying breed of animals that already have a taste for human flesh in real life! What? Why are you staring at me like that?! Drop Bears do exist! We Aussies didn't just make them up to scare tourists! That's ridiculous!


So, Long Weekend starts off with near-estranged and very unhappy couple Peter (Peter Hargreaves) and Marcia (Briony Behets) heading off to a beach to go on a camping.

Soon after carelessly tossing a still-lit cigarette out his car window and into some bush, Peter gets freaked out when he accidentally runs down a kangaroo

The locals strangely tell Peter that they've never heard of any beach nearby, and he leaves with what he bought-a huge box of beer! THAT'S how you can tell that this movie is Australian! Look at how much beer Peter bought for a weekend camping trip! haha!


The couple continue driving through the night, but when Marcia sees a familiar landmark (a directional arrow engraved into a tree), she angrily assumes that they've been driving in circles. Peter disagrees though, claiming to have been driving straight ahead the whole drive since the previous arrow. They stop the car and decide to find the beach during the day.

Come morning, the couple arrive at the beach, and set up camp.


Despite their hostility to each-other during the previous night, the couple seem very loving. That doesn't last long, however. Soon strange things start happening. After Marcia sprays a mass of ants in her way with pesticide, she nearly gets skewered when Peter's spear-gun goes off on its own, despite being on safety, then the frozen chicken they have thawing for lunch goes off way faster than it should've, and later, after Marcia has grown more and more impatient about what she sees as a boring camping trip, a strange wailing is heard on and off, and Peter is attacked by an eagle, which causes Marcia to cruelly break an eagle egg they found..


Peter also spots another van a short distance away, but he leaves, and when he comes back to investigate, the van's gone. After a night of being bitten by a possum, Peter now wants to leave as badly as Marcia, but he wants to go to the van on the beach first (severely angering Marcia). When he investigates nearby, all he finds is an abandoned camp. Then, after seeing a wave breaking, Peter sees the top of the van in the ocean. He swims in, and find bodies in the van.

Soon, things gradually get worse and worse for the hostile couple as nature strikes back!...


...Or not, since this movie's climax isn't very good at all!

The crux of Long Weekend is the couple, especially since other than a few minor characters in a bar for a few minutes, the only people in the film at all are Marcia and Peter. So, luckily the acting by John Hargreaves and Briony Behets is very good! The two characters are very toxic to each-other, and also don't give much of a shit about nature. Peter shows enough compassion towards animals to be shaken when he runs one down, and to love his dog, but he doesn't give a damn about tossing lit cigarettes out the car window and into some bush, or about shooting glass bottles up in the ocean. Plus, as well as having a bad habit of using a loaded rifle as a telescope, he likes shooting randomly all around him (sometimes quoting westerns!) like freakin' crazy! Did he bring enough fucking ammo?! He must have brought close to a hundred rounds with him! Dude, you're having a long weekend camping trip with your wife, not liberating a predator camp in Val Verde!


The film's musical scoring is mostly good, but some of it sounds like the composers were torturing guitar strings!

Long Weekend isn't very atmospheric to begin with (in my opinion) as nothing's wrong, minus some locals trying to divert the couple away, and the strange repetition of a directional arrow carved into a tree. As the film goes on, not much happens at all really. I did think the movie dragged at first, but after a while, I got over that, and once it got to the last half-hour, the film really started being eerie! But then the ending came and retroactively ruined everything! There's not much animal action over the course of the film, but since there's not much in the final ten minutes, the movie as a whole started to piss me off! Especially thanks to the finale's other problems!


The biggest problem with Long Weekend is that it focuses too much on Marcia and Peter's relationship, and not enough on nature and animals. Animals are barely focused on for a long while, and do almost nothing to the couple for well over an hour! And even then, they don't do much at all!

The movie's ending is also really poorly handled...




*mild SPOILERS*




We never see Marcie die! We see her running away from the car and into the night after a chase with birds, then BAM, we see her body in the scrub come morning! And as if having a character die offscreen wasn't bad enough, Peter's death is way too abrupt! He's mildy pestered by nature, and before anything can happen to him at all, he's hit by a truck. CUE END CREDITS.




*mild SPOILERS*




I guess I recommend Long Weekend, because, while it has issues, it does have good qualities too.


So, as this movie teaches, I think I will pay more respect to nature and all the lovely animals in this country!......Nah, if I see a Huntsman spider in my house, it's deader than Dillinger!...


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