There
were a ton of Alien knock off movies set in the deep sea that came out
in the late eighties and thru most of the nineties. The best of them is
probably Deep Star Six but there were a
lot of lower budget efforts as well. The Alien Within is one of those
and has the added bonus of being made under the Roger Corman Presents banner.
If you aren’t familiar with that it was Showtime’s attempt to get into the low
budget cheesy movie business. These lower budgeted flicks were made to go
directly to the cable channel’s lineup. I should cover more of these as a few
of them are a lot of fun. And as a double bonus this also checks another off my
Roddy McDowall movie list. I will watch everything he did in his career damn
it! But enough of that lets get to the good stuff here.
The
movie opens with the crew of an underwater mining operation talking about being
behind schedule and having to pull double shifts to meet their quota. This
leads to an accident where one of the miners, Louis, gets hurt and suffers
Uranium poisoning. Before that can settle in they get a distress call from a
nearby Russian mining facility and go to help. When the arrive the crew is
mostly dead, one of them that is alive tries to kill the other survivor before
being gunned down, and there is evidence of a spaceship being found. Sound
familiar? I think someone watched The Thing before writing
this script.
McDowall is awesome as always!
The
crew takes some of the bodies and the survivor back to their ship. Another
crewmember breaks quarantine letting the Alien hiding inside out to infect
others. This leads the crew to grab improvised weapons like flamethrowers and
cobble together motion sensors to go on a bug hunt. Okay maybe they also
watched the first couple Alien movies as well. There is also a lot of
paranoia as they bicker over who is infected and dangerous. Which goes back to The
Thing. Damn movie do you have an original idea? Spoilers… the answer to
that is no! This all leads to a twist ending that I didn’t like all that much
but also wasn’t too invested to be that annoyed by.
The
Alien Within
is exactly what I thought it would be. A completely derivative cheapie made to
fill seventy five minutes. When you see the Concorde-New Horizons logo and
realize that Roger Corman is involved then be assured that this isn’t going to
be groundbreaking. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. While I’ve seen
everything here done better in other movies this one isn’t too bad. The story
moves along quickly and checks all the boxes you would expect. We get some over
the top acting and goofy dialogue. This is delivered by the expected cast of
“B” actors such as Melanie Shatner (Cthulhu Mansion), Don Stroud (too
many to mention), Richard Biggs (Babylon 5), and my personal favorite Roddy
McDowall (Planet of the Apes, Fright Night Franchise, The Legend ofHell House, and so many
more). McDowall in particular is clearly having some fun playing the scientist
that wants to save the “scientific find of the century” regardless of the
danger.
The
monster is an appropriately weird looking bit of latex that crawls in and out
of the cast members. This allows you to see the monster without them having to
create a giant creature effect. Instead, much of the big action sequences are
left up to the cast members who are possessed. Leave it up to an old pro like
Corman to keep his costs down. Along those lines it was also amusing that I
recognized the sub and exterior footage from an earlier movie Lords of the Deep. Yeah, I’m a huge
Corman nerd so I noticed things like this.
You
get all the tropes in this one but packaged in a way that it gets to the fun
and keeps it going until the end credits. Clearly this isn’t the kind of movie
that you will want or need to rewatch like those it “borrows” from are. But if
you grab a few friends and a couple adult beverages it can make for a nice
evening. As of the writing of this review the movie is a bit hard to find but I
did notice that is seems to show up now and again on various streaming
services. If you see it give The Alien Within a chance.
The
movie kicks off with a little girl playing in her clubhouse while the adults
are at a party. Someone comes in and there is a scream. Later it is confirmed
that she was molested by a man, though she has blocked out the details and
can’t identify him. That is some pretty heavy stuff for a television movie in
the early seventies. Years later the little girl, Susan, has returned from
Europe. She was in an asylum and while no longer catatonic still has no memory
of what happened to her. Her doctor thinks it is best that she return home to
hopefully jar her memory and complete her recovery.
This
is where the movie picks up. In the years she was away Susan’s father has
passed away and her mother has remarried a man named Harold. There is also the
groundskeeper John and a few other household staff members. From the moment she
arrives home it is clear that someone is shadowing Susan, scaring her at every
opportunity. She also starts to see Harold, who left on a business trip,
apparently dead. Though when she gets help the body is always gone. Is she
losing her mind or is there something else going on? I won’t spoil this one by
answering that question or by giving anymore details here.
I
enjoyed the heck out of A Taste of Evil. The story had a cool gothic
feel to it. The house is imposing, and you have the family/staff who may or may
not want what is best for our main character. The woman in danger questioning
her own sanity is also a trope of this sort of flick but is handled decently
here. The creeping around the woods and the old house in the dark all adds to
an atmosphere that helps to make this a bit spooky and very entertaining. There
is a twist that I won’t spoil, but it also fits with the sort of story they are
trying to tell here. It has a very Rebecca and/or The Uninvited
feel that put a smile on my face. I love flicks like this. The shorter runtime
of seventy three minutes also helps it to move along quickly and not linger on
bits that could have killed the pacing. Here being a made for television flick helps
it out quite a bit.
Have no fear Dr. McDowall is here!
I
will acknowledge that the actress, Barbara Parkins, struggles a bit as Susan. There
are times when she should be carrying the movie but is lost a bit in her scenes
with the stronger supporting co-stars. Barbara Stanwyck (her mother), William
Windom (Harold), and Roddy McDowall (the family doctor) all dominate their
scenes with her. It might have been a big ask to get her to hold her own with
such a great group of actors but that is what was needed, and it hurts the
movie that she can’t. Though that didn’t spoil things for me, but it could have
been better with a stronger actress in the lead role.
A
Taste of Evil
is a fun television movie that reminds me of being a kid and staying up to
watch something I’d never heard of. I do remember this one making the rounds on
the late show that used to start after the news on my local station. Luckily
you don’t have to stay up to watch it as you can find the movie online to check
out for free. Did I mention it has Roddy McDowall in it? He is awesome yet
again. I recommend checking this one out.
This
made for television movie was one that I had been pursuing for many years. It
was strangely hard to locate but eventually it popped up on YouTube, so I
jumped on it right away. Why was I so interested in this one? Not only is The
Elevator one of the ABC movies of the week, which I’m determined to watch all
of them, but it also stars Roddy McDowall. This movie checked a couple boxes
for me.
The
story happens in a high-rise building where we meet several folks. They are all
going about their business when the crowd onto an elevator. One that is also
moving a very heavy safe from one office to another. This is important because
they really should have used the freight elevator. The extra weight being
pushed off causes it to fail trapping the passengers between floors. This is
further complicated by the supports failing threatening to plunge the car
thirty floors down! Oh and one of the people doing business that gets trapped
is a claustrophobic armed robber who starts to lose his mind!
The
rest of the movie is them trying to get off the elevator before it is too late.
The robber’s partner, who didn’t make it on the elevator creeping around the
building trying to get the money and probably save his friend. But he certainly
wants the money! During his attempts to spring him he ends up shooting a
security guard which brings the cops to the building. Lots of stuff is
happening in this one.
You
may be asking yourself “John why are you covering an almost fifty-year-old made
for television movie that most everyone has forgotten about?”. That is an
excellent question and I’ll answer it for you. Here we have a movie that has
very few locations and next to no action. Instead it relies on a well written
script executed by an amazing cast. This is far harder to do then you think and
shows a care that has been lost in our reality television dominated world. The
story while simple pushes a lot of buttons. There is the claustrophobic setting
of the elevator, the danger as they could all die at any moment, and the wild
card of the gun toting partner sneaking around the building. I found myself
interesting and engaged for the entire brief seventy minutes it took for things
to play out.
Roddy McDowall and Myrna Loy... awesome!
The
cast is top notch. James Farentino is excellent as the panicking robber caught
on the elevator. He sells the irrational fear with an at times manic
performance. He really does seem terrified, which explains his later irrational
behavior. Don Stroud is menacing as the other robber who is all about the money
and doesn’t care who he has to kill to get it and/or cover his tracks. I mean
the dude tries to cut the cable and kill all the other people trapped on the
elevator because they saw his partner. Myrna Loy is great and brings her
talents to bear in a surprisingly sad story arc that isn’t resolved and sort of
is a bummer. Roddy McDowall is his stellar self and is given a nice monologue
where he resolves to quit his job if he lives. Again, this has a strange payoff
in the end. Carol Lynley (The Night Stalker) and Craig Stevens (The Deadly
Mantis) also have roles in this one. Clearly, they didn’t skimp on the talent.
The
care and effort put into The Elevator is a reminder that the networks, cast,
writers, and directors used to care about what they were doing. This was
admittedly shot to fill a couple of hours on the schedule and then play once or
twice in reruns before disappearing into the network vaults. But that didn’t matter,
and everyone involved did their best. That alone makes this worth checking out.
And of course, we have Roddy McDowall and I’m determined to watch everything he
was in! If you can find The Elevator, I’d recommend giving it a chance.
It is
getting to the point where I’m having to dig pretty deep to find non franchise
slasher movies to cover. Cutting Class is a pretty deep dive that is only
notable in that it stars a very young Brad Pitt as well as Roddy McDowall. I
hadn’t seen this one in years before dusting off my DVD copy (literally!) for
this review.
The plot
to Cutting Class is pretty straightforward. You have the popular girl, played
by Jill Schoelen of Stepfather/Popcorn fame, who is torn between her volatile
boyfriend and the weird guy who was just released from a mental institution. The
boyfriend, played by Brad Pitt, has anger issues and loses his temper many
times. The weird guy was locked up for killing his father, so he has a history
of violence.
The plot
gets rolling as we see Scholen’s character, Paula, sending her lawyer father
off on a hunting trip. He heads into the woods and is shot with an arrow by an
unseen killer. Don’t worry though as he doesn’t die and serves as comic relief
popping up now and then as he struggles to make it out of the woods. Other
characters are dispatched by the killer as the movie keeps trying to make you
guess who the murderer is. This leads to quite a bit of stalking and killing
until everything is explained.
By the
late eighties the formula for slasher movies was well established and honestly
played out. You were almost in a no-win situation because there weren’t that
many things you could do with the genre. Of course, Scream would reinvent
things and give these movies a kick in the butt a few years later, but all we
get with Cutting Class are a bunch of recycled ideas that aren’t executed that
well. Be warned that there are spoilers coming, so if you don’t like
that sort of thing stop reading. You have been warned.
The movie
tries very hard to be clever in hiding the identity of the killer. Right from
the start the movie gives you the kid just out of the mental asylum as an
obvious choice, but then spends much of the movie showing how much of a jerk
the boyfriend is. So of course, it must be him. The problem is they make it so
obvious that the boyfriend is a red herring that clearly the overly nice
“formerly” disturbed kid must be the killer. I know what you are saying, “But
John you have already seen this movie…” I remember watching this one the first
time and immediately seeing thru it. Plus, everyone that I’ve shown Cutting
Class to has made a comment or muttered something to the effect the same
sentiment. The writing isn’t good enough to fool us which is kind of important with
a story like this.
At least we get some Roddy McDowall!
I’ve also
always been bugged by the odd tone that the movie takes. We have some decently
disturbing scenes with Pitt’s character losing his temper, you could already
see he was going to be a great actor, tossed in with some poorly written silly
teenage shenanigans. We also get an inexplicably pervy principal, played by
McDowall whom they waste here. The character serves no purpose and sort of
disappears part way thru. They must have only had him for a day or two.
Finally, there is this odd bit with Paula’s father. I’ve already mentioned that
shows up at different parts of the movie struggling and pratfalling with an
arrow in his chest. I’m guessing that this was meant as comedic relief as they
cast Martin Mull in the role. But it doesn’t fit with the rest of the movie.
I’m really not sure what they were thinking.
The last
thing I wanted to talk about are the kills. Even by the standards of the late
eighties after the censors had completely neutered the slasher movie Cutting
Class is tame. We only get seven kills with much of the best stuff off screen. Some
of what we do get on screen is played for laughs, like the photocopier kill.
The only interesting kills are the gym teacher impaled on a flagpole and the
axe to the math teacher. Though the latter is punctuated with a quip that ruins
it. All in all, there isn’t much to see here.
Cutting
Class is a generic by the numbers late entry into the initial wave of slasher
flicks. It is likely to have been forgotten like most of the later efforts if
Brad Pitt hadn’t become a big star. This is another of those cases where they
were able to stick someone’s face on the box and sell a bunch of copies. I
think that there are much better things to spend both your money and time on.
Not recommended.
This
sequel finds our main characters Peter Vincent and Charley Brewster moving on
with their lives after their fight with Jerry Dandrige. Thinking that another
vampire encounter couldn’t possibly happen again Peter has returned to hosting
horror movies on the television. Charley is now in college and is seeing a
therapist who has convinced him that vampires aren’t real. This is with the
encouragement of his new girlfriend Alex, who knows vampires can’t be real. Clearly
Dandrige from the original movie was a serial killer and thru some sort of
group psychosis they only thought he was a vampire.
Now of
course this is a perfect time for another vampire, this time a lady, to move
into Peter’s building with the rest of her band of undead followers. It isn’t a
random encounter though since she is the sister of Dandrige and is in town to
get some revenge on the pair of vampire hunters. This leads to some interesting
stuff as at first, she passes herself off as a performance artist to fool Peter
and Charley into thinking they had overreacted. But again, the mirror in
Peter’s cigarette case gives the secret away. Unfortunately, the lady vampire, Regine,
has already been setting her plans in motion slowly turning Charley into one of
them and taking Peter’s show away from him. This leads to a big showdown where
in a reversal from the original Peter and Alex have to rescue Charley from Regine’s
grasp while battling her crew.
It is
going to be hard to not compare this movie to the original as it recycles the
characters and in many ways the plot. Right off the bat it loses some points
for not being terribly original, but still the movie has its moments. No time
is wasted in getting to the bloody bits as we already know about the world in
which these movies take place. The characters are quick to accept the existence
of the vampires and the rules on how to kill them. That void in disbelief and
eventual acceptance from the first film is partially taken up by us having
multiple vampires including one that is almost more werewolf than bloodsucker. So
basically, we get more action. This leads to some weirdness like the roller
skating undead that didn’t work for me as well as the comic relief of the incompetent
hairy vamp that keeps getting picked on for not biting his victim in the neck.
The new Vampire crew
The
special effects are decent with the three vampires looking very different from
each other. Though in a nice touch they do make the various forms of Regine
look similar to her brother from the first. I notice and enjoy that kind of
attention to detail and like to point it out. The kills are also enjoyable with
exploding vampires, guts full of maggots, and of course a stake to the heart.
Though the humor is played up a bit more in the deaths than the original which
takes away from the gore somewhat.
The boys are back in acton!
Whenever
you make a sequel to such a great movie it is going to be tough to live up to
it. This was mitigated by the involvement of Roddy McDowell returning as Peter
Vincent and William Ragsdale as Charley. But I do think that the switch in
directors from Tom Holland to Tommy Lee Wallace did hurt. The humor is
different here than in the first with it being more obvious which serves to
take the audience away from the horror. Also, the fact that the plot is
basically the same with the twist of Charley becoming the “damsel in distress”
as the only change. This movie feels more dated than the original with the
fashion, hairstyles, and roller-skating vampire while the original avoids that
keeping the setting a bit more vague.
Do I
recommend Fright Night Part II? I don’t think that this is nearly as good as
the first one but that is a high bar so yes, I do. If nothing else, we get to
see Roddy McDowell on screen and that alone is worth the price of admission.
