Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

Director: Rachel Talalay

Cast: Robert Englund, Lisa Zane, Shon Greenblatt, Yaphet Kotto

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Pretty sure about that one.

Did I Like It: And that’s where I’ll open with something kind of sort of nice about this last—lies—entry in the house Wes Craven built, which subsequently built New Line Cinema. Where A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) blended together into one giant stew of mediocrity punctuated by occasionally interesting creature effects. This one is certainly distinctive, and incredibly difficult to confuse with other films in the series.

That’s partly because it really, truly goes out of its way to suck.

I’m not sure if it is the hoary shots set up for a 3D presentation which would have been all-but-useless outside of the film’s opening weekend in 1991, or if it is the weird melange of cameos which drift in and out of the movie, but either of those elements certainly don’t help me forget the other. The 3D scenes are only even in the film’s climax, but when it does start down that path. Wikipedia tells me the theatrical cut had Maggie/Katherine (Zane) inexplicable don her own pair of 3D glasses before battling her (spoilers) father. That might have added some camp value, but then just having things (including Englund’s head) flying toward the middle of the camera isn’t exactly the film walking so Avatar (2009) could run.

Speaking of camp, let’s dwell a bit on those cameos. If ever you were to need a nexus between Roseanne, Tom Arnold, Alice Cooper, and Johnny Depp (who is apparently either playing himself, or his already dead character in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) now residing in Hell, not that you or I care) in Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, then this film might be the one for you.

Hey, look at that. I found one more nice thing to say about the movie. Other than that, though…

Live and Let Die (1973)

Director: Guy Hamilton

Cast: Roger Moore, Yaphet Cotto, Jane Seymour, Geoffrey Holder

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah…

Did I Like It: And so, we renew my vow to not be all that into the Roger Moore reign behind the wheel of the Aston Martin from Q Branch (or, as he so often inexplicably drives, a Lotus Esprit).

Things start off on a rocky note. One wants to give credit to Moore for making the dauntingly bold gambit of taking over for Sean Connery, especially when the last fellow to try that has spent most of the last fifty years pilloried for his efforts. But when the assignment from M comes not during a meeting at MI-6. This precludes the possibility of this new Bond having his moment with Desmond Llewellyn’s Q, which makes it hard to accept this as a Bond film at all, even if the gun barrel sequence helps. But far more unsettling is tiny little farce that plays out while Bond is trying to keep M (Bernard Lee) from realizing that he has a woman over. It’s so, un-Bondian. The literary Bond or even Connery’s Bond (and let’s get real, Lazenby wouldn’t give a shit, either) wouldn’t be so coy about relations with a woman. Maybe The Saint would be that precious, and that’s probably the problem.

But let’s talk about Racism! The film makes that fatal flaw of several of Moore’s later outings by trying to imitate another genre, in this case the blaxploitation films of the 1970s. But when the film is exclusive authored by white filmmakers, all we get here are the trappings, but none of the authentic style. 

But more importantly, let’s talk about sexism! Now that may seem like a strange criticism for a Bond movie. If I wasn’t budgeting for a certain amount of sexism, I probably should have watched a film from some other series. But every black man seems to be cunning, when the few scant women of color—mainly Rosie Carver (Gloria Hendry)—screech and faint their way through the movie. I can roll my eyes at the Stacy Suttons and Christmas Joneses of the world as much as the next guy, as their faux over capability beggars all believability, but a little bit of agency wouldn’t hurt, especially when by this point the series had a plenty of relatively self-possessed heroines. Even Jane Seymour has more of a certain serene aptitude about her.

That whole penultimate act, though… And that’s before I even approach the unslightly beginning of what would become the epic tragedy that is Sherriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James). Roaring through the marshes of Louisiana is not exactly the Baccarat (or Poker) table at the Royale, but a Bond movie needs to be a little more exotic than that. Even Diamonds Are Forever (1971) brought Bond down to the banal world of the United States, but at least had the good sense of placing him in Las Vegas, a place I might believe to see a character like Bond. And here, Bond lifts himself out of his dilemma with Mr. Big’s (Cotto) henchmen with all of the lethality of Bugs Bunny.

Your individual feelings about this film will likely be tied directly to how you feel about Moore as Bond. Thus, if he’s your man with the License To Kill, then this is likely to be a highlight. For me, it’s just a portent of far worse things to come.

Alien (1979)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Ian Holm, John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, and Bolaji Badejo as himself.

Have I Seen it Before: Sure.

Did I Like It: As Brett says, “Right…” 

This is another movie that proves difficult to try and write about critically with any sort of honesty. It’s a great film. You know it’s a great film* because they’ve been trying to remake it about a thousand times in the forty years since it was unleashed. And after you see a great film several times, it’s harder still—if not downright impossible—to unpack the experience. One is more struck by the little things that one may not think about on first blush.

The performances are pitch perfect and so against what would be the obvious direction a film like this could have taken. Ash (Holm) particularly stands out on second watch. He slithers through the movie, fighting down his glee (or as much glee as a robot could muster) that things are about to go down. 

The others are no slouches, either. They don’t particularly like each other—or at the very least, have gotten sick of one another after this much time beyond the frontier—and it shows. They don’t even like being in space, which is unique in both this series, and in science fiction as a whole. 

All of this comes about as subtext as well. Never once does one character turn to another and say, “I don’t like you, and I don’t like having to work in outer space.” This, along with the occasionally insane design gives the entire world a lived-in feel that Star Wars or Trek series often reaches for and comes up wanting.

Another element that never fails to delight—although it is likely less of an intentional choice and more of a reality of the time in which it was made—is the technology that surrounds the characters. Between clicking and clacking, displaying nonsense numbers as comprehensible data, and literally everything about the Mother computer make me long for a time when every piece of tech in a film didn’t look like it was designed by Tony Stark. Eagle-eyed readers of these reviews might detect a hypocrisy in that thought, as I have often extolled the virtue of films resisting looking like they were filmed at the time in which they were, but if films still used computers like this, it’d be impossible to tell when any film is made without consulting IMDB or Wikipedia, and that would make me a very happy camper, indeed.

If a film doesn’t have these little things, maybe it is not all that great in the first place. We are lucky that this one has them in spades. They make them worth coming back to every once in a while.

*While it is a great film, it is a competitive candidate for best trailer of all time. You have to kind of imagine yourself as a person who has no idea what the film is about when watching it, but from that perspective its one of the greats.