David Dubrow's Blog, page 25
February 24, 2017
Movie Review: Trancers III
(Interested readers can find my review of Trancers here, and my review of Trancers II here.)
The lighthearted humor of the previous movies is nowhere to be found in Trancers III: Deth Lives, making it a darker, more violent film. This presents a tremendous problem, because when a movie takes itself so seriously, the audience is obliged to take it seriously, and neither the story nor the acting in this offering are strong enough to support that. The ponderous grimness of the film doesn’t do the character of Jack Deth any favors, either: before, he was the perfect straight man in a silly set of circumstances. Now he’s a straight man in a dark world, so he doesn’t stand out.
Helen Hunt closes out her character Lena in this movie (and hence ends her association with the series), which is a terrible shame. Tim Thomerson does the best he can with what he’s given, which is enough, apparently, to keep the series going at least a couple more movies after this one. The best performance comes from Andrew Robinson, one of the finest character actors in Hollywood. Here he plays Colonel “Daddy” Muthuh, a psychopathic doctor/mad scientist, and invests his inimitable style of insanity into the role. Everybody else is instantly forgettable.
The plot is simple enough: there’s a Trancer war in the future that the good guys are losing (because all the hard work Jack and Lena and everybody else did in the earlier films didn’t make the least bit of difference, I guess), so Jack Deth is sent physically into the year 2005 to stop the Trancers at their source: Colonel Muthuh’s Trancer experimentation. Colonel Muthuh’s Trancer lab is located underneath a strip club, mostly so there can be a scene of a topless woman with pasties dancing on stage. A bizarre, alien-looking robot called Shark is sent to help Jack, but proves itself mostly useless. Guns are fired. Blood flies. Jack’s time machine has a black-painted apple corer on it. At one point, deliberately invoking his role as Larry from Hellraiser, Andrew Robinson as Colonel Muthuh says, “Come to Daddy.”
I got the impression that there was some kind of social commentary at the core of the story, but I couldn’t suss it out. Steroids are bad? The military is bad? Military people on steroids are bad? It didn’t make sense. Nor did the process of turning someone into a Trancer.
Unfortunately, this entry into the Trancers oeuvre represents a steep drop-off in quality from the previous two. However, if you’re a completist like me, you have to watch it.
February 22, 2017
Book Review: Haunted Grave and Other Stories
I reviewed Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso’s short story anthology Haunted Grave and Other Stories: Eight Tales of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction from the African Continent at The Slaughtered Bird:
With a name like that, you’d think you would know what you’re going to get when you first crack the book, but you’d be wrong. There’s some strange, original stuff in here, between the thematic elements and the style of writing: Chukwunonso combines Western story structure with vivid descriptions of the raw, aching difficulties of life in Africa in his own inimitable fashion.
Click to read the entire review!
February 17, 2017
I Watched Miss Sloane So You Don’t Have To
It’s too late for me, but you can still save yourself. Check out my latest piece at The Loftus Party:
Watching Miss Sloane is an exercise in endurance unlike any movie you will ever experience. It’s longer than Robert Altman’s 3-hour epic Short Cuts, the Director’s Cut of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and Andy Warhol’s 320-minute experimental film Sleep put together. I started watching it on Monday morning and the credits didn’t roll until Friday around 3 AM.
At least, it felt that way.
Click to read the whole thing!
February 16, 2017
Movie Review: Trancers II
(Interested readers can check out my review of Trancers, the first movie in the series, here.)
When you’re making an unapologetically low-budget B-movie like Trancers II, you can get away with a whole lot; your audience is expecting cheese, so you might as well serve it up. Huge chunks of plot exposition in the first few minutes? Sure. Rewriting the canon to fit the current plot? Go for it. More mindless violence for the sake of showing exploding blood packets? Oh yeah. This film is the perfect follow-up to Trancers: it’s silly, doesn’t take itself seriously, and expands the Trancers universe just enough to provide an entertaining surprise here and there.
Tim Thomerson continues the role he was born to play: Jack Deth, now the bodyguard to Hap Ashby. Hap’s on the wagon (for the most part), and has become a wealthy commodities broker. Jack’s wife Lena, played by Helen Hunt, complicates things by wanting to buy a house of their own instead of living in Ashby’s palatial estate.
And then Whistler’s brother shows up, Trancers appear, and everything goes to hell.
Yes, it’s Whistler’s brother. Not his son, because it’s funnier to have a character named Whistler’s brother, especially when Whistler’s brother is the leader of a radical environmental cult group bent on taking over the world with herb-fueled zombie Trancers. Remember: this movie was made in the early 90’s, when you could get away with making fun of environmental whackos. Today you’d be thrown in jail as a Global Warming Denier for even considering the script.
While the story is all over the place compared to the first film, Trancers II makes up for it by populating the cast with three B-movie titans: Jeffrey Combs of Reanimator and From Beyond fame as Dr. Pyle; Barbara Crampton (also from Reanimator and From Beyond) in a thankless role as a TV interviewer; and Richard Lynch, who’s been the bad guy in so many movies and television shows that his sere, aquiline visage must haunt the media-fueled nightmares of everyone born before 1975. It does mine, at least.
One of the most remarkable elements of the movie is the bizarre, only-in-science-fiction love triangle that occurs: Jack Deth’s first wife is time-traveled just before her death to stop Whistler’s brother in the past where Jack lives with his second wife Lena. (No, the sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense. Deal.) So now Lena and the first Mrs Deth must share Jack, at least for a little while. This situation is so untenable that Lena shouts, in frustration, “You’re a bigamist, Jack!” But what’s a man to do? In Jack’s timeline he was a widower. Now he’s got two wives to deal with, one of whom has been implanted into a young, nubile teenage body.
More scenes were played for laughs than in the first movie, which is fine: the heavy, apocalyptic theme could use a little lightening. The baseball game with the drunks wasn’t as funny as intended. The exploding ham was hilarious because food is always funny. The Long Second Watch now includes a Tapback feature, which you’ll have to see to believe. Mcnulty returns as an even more obnoxious teenager. People inexplicably and instantly turn into Trancers, and disappear exactly like The Invaders when Jack shoots them to death. The final confrontation makes little sense.
It’s a great sequel. Did you like Trancers? You’ll dig Trancers II.
February 13, 2017
Beneath the Ziggurat: Alternate Cover
My younger brother enjoyed my Kindle Single Beneath the Ziggurat so much that he was inspired to craft a new cover, featuring a well-known character that he says resembles a figure from the story’s climax.
While it’s missing David Angsten‘s wonderful blurb, this new cover does tell you the price up front, which is a powerful sales tool. Once my legal representation has gotten permission from Nickelodeon to use their copyrighted character, I look forward to changing the cover to this new image.
February 10, 2017
Book Review: Devils, Death & Dark Wonders
At The Slaughtered Bird, I reviewed Randy Chandler’s short story anthology Devils, Death & Dark Wonders: 
It misses greatness by a hair, but in a collection like this, encompassing such a broad swath of genres, tones, and characters, it would be virtually impossible to hit every note perfectly. Who cares? For only $2.99 (or free on Kindle Unlimited), it’s a steal for such a huge, quality tome. There’s no way you won’t find at least something in here that sticks with you. Intelligently written, gripping, imaginative, and fearless in its use of both imagery and language, it’s a disturbing look at the dark side of literature, often taking a fresh perspective on well-trodden themes.
Click to read the entire review!
February 8, 2017
Movie Review: Trancers (1984)
I first saw Trancers as a videotape rental in high school, which I suppose dates me somewhat. My standards as a teenager weren’t terribly high, so at the time I thought it was great. The film was was ludicrous but I loved it all the same. Mental time travel to an ancestor? The Long Second Watch? A guy named Whistler with hypnotic powers? Come on.
Now, decades later, does the movie hold up?
Yes. Yes it does.
It’s a low budget movie. But to paraphrase a former Secretary of Defense, you go to production with the budget you have, not the budget you wish you had. So there are parts of it that look cheesy. Can’t be helped. It’s not the budget that makes a movie, but the care put into it, and in the case of Trancers, a lot of care was put into it.
There’s not one performance in the film that takes you out of the story, which is one of its greatest strengths. Tim Thomerson plays protagonist Jack Deth with perfect, down-the-line seriousness, which makes him stand out in what is already kind of a silly movie. His charisma and imposing physical presence make you believe in the role. Helen Hunt is appealing as Lena, appropriately scared and vulnerable when necessary. She deserves great respect for returning in the sequel. The movie wouldn’t have worked anywhere near as well without Michael Stefani as Whistler: with his staring eyes and creepy smile, he’s the bad guy this film needed.
The story’s uneven, and an interested viewer could spend days picking holes in the plot. But why would you want to? The bizarre dystopia of Jack Deth’s time, with its Council of Elders and half of L.A. sunk into the sea, where real coffee is prized like gold but everyone smokes tobacco (at least, I assume it’s tobacco), when mankind has colonized other planets but hasn’t conquered death at the hands of a madman and his zombie army: it’s extremely imaginative. What the writers don’t show but hint at makes you fill in the blanks yourself. The Trancers themselves are sort of like zombies but with a bit more volition, making it relevant to our current zombie-obsessed culture. Why can the future cops send Long Second Watches into the past but not people? Don’t worry about it: just watch the movie. If members of the Council are eliminated in the future when Whistler kills their ancestors in the past, how do we know they even existed? Just…just stop asking so many questions, already.
Yes, we did dress a lot like they did in the 1985 depicted in the movie, and most of us thought it was cool. Thing is, we could wash out the hair spray and take off our square-ended neckties, but today’s tattoos are rather more permanent, and those facial piercings leave literal holes. In your face. I’ll take a pair of Jordache denims over skinny jeans any day of the week (in part because I can’t fit into skinny jeans).
Whether you’re a newcomer to Charles Band’s oeuvre or looking for a piece of sci-fi horror nostalgia, I’m pleased to report that you won’t be disappointed in Trancers. Get out there, find yourself a copy, and get watching. Your New Coke’s getting warm.
February 2, 2017
Screw You, I Like It: 1980’s Edition
In my latest piece for The Loftus Party, I discuss that which soothes the savage breast:
No form of entertainment is more personal than your taste in music. It’s as unique as a fingerprint and tells an interested observer more about you than the much-vaunted Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (I’m an INTJ, BTW and FYI). But what about those most private parts of your musical taste? Those bands, those tunes that you listen to in secret, too embarrassed to discuss? Who would not be humiliated if one’s secret love of ABBA were to be made public, let alone public on the internet?
I go full monty on this piece, so you’d better click on over before it’s taken down.
January 31, 2017
Slaughtered Bird Review: Ravenwolf Towers, Episode 2
At The Slaughtered Bird, I reviewed episode 2 of Charles Band’s serial program Ravenwolf Towers:
There’s a good reason why the first episode was titled Bad Mary, and you’ll see why in episode two: Bonds of Blood. Mary reveals quite a lot of herself in this chapter, and the bizarre family dynamics of the weirdos who live in Ravenwolf Towers’ upper floor get a good deal of play. Where Shiloh Creveling, the actress portraying Mary, shines most is in her brief scenes with Jake: she pulls off the faux-innocent lamb rather more convincingly than she does the stern matriarch of an inbred clan.
Does the second episode maintain B-movie greatness from Full Moon Features, or does it descend to C-grade mediocrity? Click to find out!
January 27, 2017
Interview With Adam Howe
At The Slaughtered Bird, I attempted to interview Adam Howe, author of such books as Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet and Tijuana Donkey Showdown. I say “attempted to,” because Howe is…well, just look at this quote from Howe:
Cleanup on Aisle 3 was inspired by my favorite Elmore Leonard book, Swag. During a scene in which our characters rob a liquor store, I thought: What if this happened? And took it from there. It was first published in Todd Robinson’s crime magazine, Thuglit, and has been reprinted several times since then. I think it’s an effective cat-and-mouse suspense story with a nasty horror sting in the tail. If it didn’t meet your high standards, Dubrow, I can only assume that’s because it DOESN’T feature bestiality.
If you’d like to see such a “powerful” author abuse a well-intentioned interviewer like myself, click to read the whole thing.
