The Golden Child (1986)

This was a frequent rental back in my misspent youth. I loved this movie and thought it was one of the funniest things I had ever seen. But I’ve not watched The Golden Child in years and thought it was about time that I revisited it.

Eddie Murphy is Chandler Jarrell, a private detective that specializes in locating missing children. This is important because we have already seen an evil looking man kidnap a small boy from a monastery in Tibet after killing all of the Monks that were protecting him. That evil looking man is Sardo Numspaa, who is really a demon come to do horrible things. To make this come to pass he has to corrupt and kill the boy. Why? Because he is the bringer of compassion and savoir of the human race! Chandler is the chosen one who must protect the boy from the evil. Let the action and hilarity ensue.

I don’t like this movie as much as I used to. Maybe twenty plus years of watching and paying close attention to how things are constructed might have ruined it for me. What I noticed here is that the movie has a very disjointed feel to it. The script was clearly setup to put the star, Murphy, in one situation after another where he can crack wise. There is nothing wrong with that and he is very funny. But what should be a cohesive story instead comes off like a series of skits stuck together with an overarching plotline loosely tying them together. It doesn’t help matters that we get several familiar faces from Big Trouble in Little China playing very similar parts that they had in that movie. Now that is a movie that is funny but doesn’t try so hard to set up individual gags that it hurts the overall plot.

Charles Dance does a good job as Sardo Numspaa, but he isn’t given much to work with. The script doesn’t have much in the way of setting him up as the villain, which also hurts things. He isn’t that scary, and he is supposed to be the demon that wants to end the world! I suppose I should also mention that when he goes “full demon” the special effects work isn’t that great. Even for eighty-six the work looks bad and the actions of the demon doesn’t always fit together with the actors and sets. There is also some pretty bad green screen work.

Brother Numpsey!

The action sequences are awkward. This surprised the heck out of me since I’ve seen Eddie Murphy do action before and he was a physically fit guy that could pull it off. I’m going to have to blame the director for not using Murphy and the rest of the cast to their full potential. Hell, he wasted Peter Kwong who normally kicks much butt! The director, Michael Ritchie, is best known for the Fletch movies and never really did action again after this. The guy could clearly do comedy as he also has Wildcats (my favorite Goldie Hawn flick!) on his resume as well.

I still laugh at the jokes but that is about all that The Golden Child has going for it. The next time I want to see a demon trying to pull off some shenanigans involving a Chinese prophecy I’ll pop in Carpenter’s Big Trouble instead. Unless you are suffering from a bout of nostalgia, as I admittedly was, I recommend passing on The Golden Child.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer

Beyond Darkness (1990)

Funny story about this movie. I was looking for Slasher movies and thought I was buying Beyond the Darkness, a Joe D’Amato flick. Turns out I got this haunted/possessed house flick instead. It is also an Italian production that was clearly “inspired” by movies like Poltergeist and the Exorcist. You have to love Italian cinema or at least tolerate it.

We get an opening with a priest going to give last rites to a woman on death row. She isn’t interested in that and instead taunts him and gives him her “bible” which I thought was satanic, but it turns out she was a witch and it is a manual to contact her demonic master. Later we find out he has become a drunk, but reforms in time to help our main characters out. The main story has a different reverend moving into a house with his family. What he doesn’t know is that the church has sent him there knowing it was possessed and that he needs the threat to his kids to defeat the evil. Dick move guys…

I could keep going but this isn’t a movie that you want to think too hard about. There are huge gaping plot holes like the response to the first attack when the demonic hooded figures lay siege to the family. The next day our main character, Peter, is talking to his boss at the church and finds out that he was setup and his family put in danger on purpose. He immediately runs out of the meeting and calls his wife… who he left at the house with his kids. This is after they have already been attacked!

I’ll give you one more for fun. In that same meeting where he finds out the church believes the house is possessed; he clearly states that he doesn’t believe in the sort of thing. Only the night before the second he saw one of the hooded figures he grabbed his cross and started exorcising them. Wait what? Like I said you can’t think too hard when watching Beyond Darkness.

The million-dollar question is did I enjoy the movie? Kind of would be the closest to an answer that I could give. This is your typical Italian genre flick and is mostly style over substance. You have some fun music, the effects work is pretty cool, the acting is passable, and there is a cheesy vibe that I kind of liked. That last one is probably more of a nostalgic response since I watched a lot of these crappy flicks in the days of VHS. There is an added bonus of catching the same child actor who played the young son in Troll 2 as the young son of the family put in danger. Before you ask. Yes, he is just as bad in this movie.

There are a lot more things that I could say about Beyond Darkness. They clearly were grabbing from just about any other horror flick for ideas. The evil ends up very Pinhead looking and drops some similar dialogue. You get an Exorcist bit as they are trying to cast the demon out of his son. Of course, they never established that he was possessed and instead kept saying his soul was trapped in Hell. I guess kicking out the squatter fixes that? So many dumb things going on here that I can’t recommend this one. Sure, I liked it but I’m probably permanently damaged from having watched hours of this crap when I was younger.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer