Gremlins (1984) - Dante's 1980s puppetry classic

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Something intriguing is peeping out of the box on this classic poster for Joe Dante's Gremlins

A struggling inventor buys a strange creature for his teenage son for Christmas, but young Billy has trouble obeying the mysterious three rules that come along with the furry cutey.

Gremlins is written by Chris Columbus (Heartbreak Hotel (1988)) and directed by Joe Dante (Hollywood Boulevard (1976)).
It is an original and funny genre hybrid, which fuses horror and comedy successfully. It is effects-driven, and it is incredible how much the special effects team get out of some relatively primitive dolls, lighting and wacky sounds. Main mogwai Gizmo understandably became a worldwide adorable creature favorite.
Jerry Goldsmith's (Air Force One (1997)) catchy soundtrack helps establish Gremlins as a kind of 1980s classic, despite the film's slightly primitive allure and Zach Galligan's (The Storytellers (1999)) dumb protagonist Billy. Frances Lee McCain (Preacher (2016, TV-series)) and Hoyt Axton (Number One Fan (1995)) are good as his mother and father though.

Related posts:

Joe Dante: Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011) - Stapleton's Corman doc. is among the year's best films (interview subject)
Twilight Zone The Movie (1983) - Fear takes many forms in tragedy-struck anthology (segment director)

Watch an original trailer for the film here

Cost: 11 mil. $
Box office: 153.3 mil. $ (North America only)
= Mega-hit (returned 13.93 times its cost)
[Gremlins opened 8 June (USA) and runs 106 minutes. The 'gremlin' was invented as a malicious creature responsible for engine failures in the (British) RAF during WWII. Columbus has stated that his impetus for writing the script was a mouse infestation in his attic. An attempt at using a monkey to don the gremlin head was scrapped after it panicked. The first script was much darker and horrific than the final one. Shooting took place in California from April - July 1983. Executive producer Steven Spielberg opposed the scene of the story of a Santa Claus breaking his neck in the chimney but let Dante keep it in, despite having the creative last word. The film opened #2, behind fellow new release Ghostbusters, to a 12.5 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 8 weeks in the top 5 and grossed 144.3 mil. $ in its original release. It scored another 4.9 mil. $ in its 1985 re-release and has had smaller 2010, 2017 and 2019 re-releases. Regrettably the international gross numbers are kept hidden; the film's world gross may well exceed 250 mil. $. The PG rating of Gremlins and Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), both films with gory scenes, drew criticism, making Spielberg suggest the MPAA make another rating, which was born with the PG-13 rating first imposed upon Red Dawn (1984). Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, in line with this review. Massive merchandising production was launched based on the film's success among children and youths, and the video release made 79.5 mil. $ in the North-American rental market alone. Several less successful attempts to mimic the film were made. Dante made sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) with a much bigger budget, and a much smaller gross. A second sequel has been in talks for decades, and an animated series about Gremlins in China is currently in pre-production for HBO Max in 2021. Dante first returned with Explorers (1985). Gremlins is certified fresh at 85 % with a 7.37/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Gremlins?

The Final Conflict/Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981) - Sam Neill gets diabolical in the 2nd unremarkable Omen sequel

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Sam Neill enveloped in a ring of fire and US state and satanic symbols looking dubious on this poster for Graham Baker's The Final Conflict

Devil child Damien has become an adult and the leader of Thorn Industries, when he is appointed the new US ambassador to London, and star formations show that the second coming is getting near. - The antichrist must be stopped!

The Final Conflict is written by Andrew Birkin (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)), following Richard Donner's orignal masterpiece The Omen (1976) and turkey sequel Damien: Omen II (1978), and is directed by debuting Graham Baker (Born to Ride (1991)).
It is a bit better than the preceding, ridiculous Omen II: Sam Neill (Tommy's Honour (2016)) is good as Damien, - although his speeches about the Nazarene are a bit long. Final Conflict also has a production size and several fine ideas, which made me want to pay attention to it. Lisa Harrow (Sunday (1997)) is also good as the journalist character. And Jerry Goldsmith's (Mulan (1998)) score does its part for the film.
The Final Conflict has a dog attack scene that is severely involuntarily comedic.

Related post:

Omen franchise: Damien: Omen II (1978) - Mimicking follow-up is a true turkey

Watch a 30 second TV ad for the film here

Cost: 5-6 mil. $ (different reports)
Box office: 20.4 mil. $ (North America only)
= Big hit (returned 3.4 times its cost in North America alone)
[The Final Conflict was released 20 March (USA) and runs 108 minutes. Shooting took place in England, including London, and in Wisconsin and Washington DC in and around May 1980. SPOILER Reportedly the scene in a TV studio of the death of a priest, who burns while trapped in melting plastic, was the hardest to shoot, taking 2 weeks to get right. Stuntman Vic Armstrong did the backwards 100 foot fall from a bridge for the film, calling it the most frightening stunt of his career. The story changes the franchise's chronology to make Damien's adulthood in 1981 possible. It opened #1 to a 5.5 mil. $ first weekend in 918 theaters in North America, where its gross dipped 6 mil. $ from the previous film's earnings. Globally, a conservative gross estimate might be 30-35 mil. $. The franchise returned only many years hence with Omen IV: The Awakening (1991, TV movie), a flop, and was attempted rebooted later with financially successful but critically panned The Omen (2006). Baker returned with Impulse (1984). Neill returned in Attack Force Z (1981). The Final Conflict is rotten at 32 % with a 4.43/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Final Conflict?

First Blood (1982) - Stallone and Kotcheff's powerful Vietnam War classic

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Sylvester Stallone, a star so great at the time that his first name is simply left out on the top of this poster, poses with a machine gun against a thundering sky on this dramatic poster for Ted Kotcheff's First Blood

John J. Rambo, a Green Beret veteran of the Vietnam War, gets into a deadly fix back in his own country, when an uncouth sheriff targets him, and his survival skills and commanding officer get involved in the affair.

First Blood, written by Michael Kozoll (Hill Street Blues (1981-87)), William Sackheim (The Competition (1980)) and co-writer and star, great New-Yorker filmmaker Sylvester Stallone (Zookeeper (2011)), based on the same-titled 1972 novel by David Morell (The Naked Edge (2010)), and directed by great Canadian filmmaker Ted Kotcheff (Life at the Top (1965)), is an excellent Vietnam War movie. I esteem it at level in quality with Michael Cimino's great The Deer Hunter (1978), only whereas Deer Hunter is a war drama, First Blood is a war actioner.
Stallone is terrific as Rambo, a character who experiences getting treated as trash in the country he went to war for, and one that allows him to react by striking a proper punch again; (First Blood was released after his three first, wildly successful Rocky boxing movies, which came out in 1976, 1979 and 1982.) First Blood is gripping because it portrays so forcefully how completely inefficiently society treated, - and in some cases still treat, - returned war veterans.
In First Blood's supporting parts, Richard Crenna (Joshua's World (1980)) plays Rambo's colonel with subtle refinement, and Brian Dennehy (Welcome to Paradise (2007)) is good as the mean sheriff.
First Blood is a true classic. 

Related posts:

Ted Kotcheff: Weekend at Bernie's (1989) - Kotcheff's morbid gaga silliness 
Mentioned movie: The Deer Hunter (1978) - Cimino's great, colossal Vietnam epic 

Play this video to listen to a great piece from Jerry Goldsmith's score for the film

Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 125.2 mil. $
= Mega-hit
[First Blood was released 22 October (USA) and runs 93 minutes. Morell's novel's rights were sold for 75k $ in '72, and several big names tried to put together a film of it, before Stallone and Kotcheff began filming, among them Richard Brooks, Martin Ritt, Sydney Pollack, John Badham, John Frankenheimer, countless stars and writers, and reportedly 18 script versions. Stallone decided that Rambo must survive at the end of the film. Shooting took place in British Colombia, Canada from November 1981 - ?. More than 50 of the firearms that were imported into Canada for the shoot were reportedly stolen from the set. The film opened #1 to a 6.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed #1 for 3 consecutive weeks and spent a further 4 weeks in the top 5 (#2-#2-#3-#3) and grossed 47.2 mil. $ (37.7 % of the total gross). It was the 13th highest-grossing film in North America of the year. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, translating to a notch harder than this one. It was neglected completely in terms of awards. Kotcheff returned with Uncommon Valor (1983), and Stallone with an uncredited walk-on in Staying Alive (1983) and a starring part in Rhinestone (1984). First Blood started the Rambo franchise that continued with Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rambo III (1988) and Rambo (2008), all with Stallone, who canceled a 5th Rambo film in 2016 and said that he was retiring the character. An animated series, Rambo: The Force of Freedom, was released and canceled in 1986, and an Indian remake is in the makes for a late 2018 release. First Blood is certified fresh at 88 % with a 7.1 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of First Blood?

Damien: Omen II (1978) - Mimicking follow-up is a true turkey

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A poster for Don Taylor and Mike Hodges' successful Damien: Omen II

QUICK REVIEW:

Seven years after the events of the first film, (the masterpiece The Omen (1976)), devil-boy Damien lives with his rich, initially unsuspecting uncle and his family, until he is to go away to a military school.

Rarely has a phenomenal first film been followed by as poor a sequel as is the case here. The awfully titled Damien: Omen II is a big production, justified by the massive success of the original film, led by William Holden (The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)), who was there for what must have been a hefty paycheck, (let's not kid ourselves.) He was offered the Thorn-part in the original The Omen but turned it down due to his distaste of starring in a film of the devil, - but after the film's incredible success, he made sure to agree to do the sequel...
The tentative chills of the film are soon replaced by a sense of 'who-dies-next', which isn't scary at all, and worse is that the death scenarios are almost ridiculous more than once, SPOILER with the scene of the man who dies under the ice, - which changes from being glass-like to completely white and nontransparent between shots, - being the worst.
The promising premise of Omen II is wasted in what turns out to be nothing more than a stupid rehash, which attempts to match the brilliant first film as if filmmaking was nothing more than a can factory.
Stanley Mann (Firestarter (1984)) wrote the script, based on Harvey Bernhard's (Omen IV: The Awakening (1991, TV movie)) story and David Seltzer's characters (Bird on a Wire (1990)), and the film was initially directed by Mike Hodges (Flash Gordon (1980)), who was thought slow and therefore got replaced by Don Taylor (The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)). The film is a case of the fatal combination; bad start, middle and end. - Damien: Omen II is just plain bad!

Willam Holden applies a stern face in Don Taylor and Mike Hodges' Damien: Omen II

In lieu of a trailer for the movie, not currently on Youtube, here is Jerry Goldsmith's (The Omen) opening theme

Cost: 6.8 mil. $
Box office: 26.5 mil. $ (North America only)
= Big hit (at least)
[Damien: Omen II was released June 9 and runs 107 minutes. The only returning actor is Lew McKern (The Blue Lagoon (1980)) as Bugenhagen, who, however, went uncredited. The film is mainly set in Chicago, and the Thorn Industries building is in fact Chicago's city hall, but filming also took place in Wisconsin. The film opened #1 in North America in just 525 theaters to an astounding 3.8 mil. $ first weekend. The franchise continued with The Final Conflict (1981), Omen IV: The Awakening (1991, TV movie), The Omen Legacy (2001, TV movie) and The Omen (2006, remake). Damien: Omen II is rotten at 41 % with a 5 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Damien: Omen II?

Chinatown (1974) - Roman Polanski's masterpiece

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Irresistible German poster for Roman Polanski's Chinatown

QUICK REVIEW:

Private detective J.J. Gittes is first taken by his nose on a job of revealing a powerful water board scientist's possible adultery. He then learns that he's got a risky and much bigger, complex case before him.
Chinatown is a masterful film treasure that can be watched again and again to equal pleasure and stupefaction each time. It is a film noir mystery plot with many twists, full characters, great scenes, great lines and fascinating localities. A sophisticated masterwork through and through that marks Polish master director Roman Polanski's (Rosemary's Baby (1968)) only return to film in the U.S. following the brutal murder of his pregnant wife actress Sharon Tate by the Manson Family in Los Angeles in 1969. (Polanski was in Europe at the time.)
You get the sense that, besides the great script by Robert Towne (The Two Jakes (1990)), - which is what brought Polanski back to painful Los Angeles, and, outrageously, is the only Oscar-winning aspect of Chinatown, - in the direction there's no fooling around, no playing about: The tone is so consistent, the general feeling so deliberate, so controlled and elegant, all leading up to the overwhelming finale that still is a heart-stopper. The plot moves forward without pause throughout Chinatown as in steps that each of them reveal some more of the truth of the corruption for us; right until the finale in, where the structural code of the film is broken, so to speak, and all the ghouls come out of the closets in a rush of drama and violence and horror. If you let yourself be immersed in the film, the result is quite shocking, and it was the personal insistence and brilliance of Polanski that gave us the ending that we all now know and treasure so, (Towne's script SPOILER had a happy ending.) You feel Polanski's personal involvement in making this film and that is why Chinatown is his best film. He is there in the flesh throughout, (not only in the scene in which he's actually there and cuts open Jack Nicholson's nose), required by a profound personal wound to get this one right down to the letter.
Nicholson (The Shining (1980)) is great and gives one of his career's best performances as the smart, cheeky, ambitious Gittes. Faye Dunaway (Bonnie and Clyde (1967)) is perfect as the mysterious femme fatale with a horrible secret. And John Huston (The African Queen (1951) director) is a great villain, the leather-faced master sinner, Noah Cross, whose religious-symbolic name seems to contribute to Polanski's fantastically dark, gloomy commentary and world view that suits this great noir perfectly and will make you shudder.
Chinatown also has an Oscar-nominated Jerry Goldsmith (Mulan (1998)) score which is recognized as one of the greatest of all time.
If you haven't seen Chinatown yet, you've got a hell of a movie in store, so take your time to sit down with some good coffee and perhaps a pack of cigarettes to watch it in one stretch. - You'll thank me later!

Related review: 

Roman Polanski: The Ghost Writer (2010) - A master at work

Great German poster for Roman Polanski's Chinatown

Another great poster, this one Spanish, for Roman Polanski's Chinatown

Watch the original trailer here

Cost: 6 mil. $
Box office: 29.2 mil. $
= Big hit

Do you agree on Chinatown's excellence?
Anything you'd like to add?

Papillon (1973) or, Devil's Island Indeed

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The intense, beautifully painted poster for Franklin J. Schaffner's Papillon

Papillon is quite a movie.
At 151 minutes, it is an epic length prison escape movie based on the bestselling autobiography by Henri Charrière. It takes place in exotic, cruel settings and stars two of the biggest stars of its day, Steve McQueen (The Great Escape (1963)) and Dustin Hoffman (Straw Dogs (1971)). Furthermore, it's a great picture!
It is the story of 'Papillon' [French for butterfly], an - according to himself - innocent man accused of murder, who is to be punished by his motherland, France, in its penal colony on Devil's Island in French Guiana, off the North Atlantic coast of South America. Already on the strenuous boat journey there, the entrepreneurial Papillon fixes his mind on escape and makes a good ally in Louis Dega, a man very much his opposite, who is guilty of counterfeiting and has money with him.
The story then proceeds with its ups and downs for our two heroes. More intimate knowledge of their lives before their sentences isn't really necessary for the tale, which is one of survival and struggle for freedom. Also absent in Papillon: Women. Almost completely. Whether it makes the film a 'man's movie', I can't say, but I didn't miss them. - Another great epic, David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) also nearly doesn't have any women in it, (only those few lookers that the studio forced into it, as I recall.)

Steve McQueen in perhaps his career's finest performance, as Franklin J. Schaffner's Papillon

Steve McQueen is awesome in the title role, which might be his best performance period. He goes all-in in an incredibly demanding and exhausting part that includes scenes depicting the man's two years (!!!) in solitary confinement (including 6 months in total darkness), which McQueen does brilliantly. And Hoffman is perfect in the more cerebral, cautious part as Dega.
Adding to the intense inherent interest that the film has going for it is the fact that it was shot on locations in Spain, Jamaica and Hawaii. Tropical beasts, elaborate, nail-biting escapes, lunacy, executions, extreme exertion, leprosy and so much more all make the film a very rich experience.
It ends in SPOILER a legendary cliff-jumping scene, shot off the cliffs of Maui, which McQueen insisted on performing himself and later called "one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life", - the man was indeed a wildcat and a daredevil.

The details:

Papillon was - undeservedly - only nominated for one Oscar: For Jerry Goldsmith's (Gremlins (1984)) score, which is truly great; restrained, suspense-heightening, classy stuff.
He had worked twice before with Papillon's great director, Franklin J. Schaffner (Planet of the Apes (1968)), - on Apes and Patton (1970), - and that relationship would continue in Islands in the Stream (1977), The Boys From Brazil (1978) and Lionheart (1987). Schaffner also deserved a nomination, in my opinion, for Papillon is an extremely well-held suspense movie with one strong sequence followed by another followed by another. There are also a few dream/hallucination scenes, and at least one of them is very evocative and arresting visually. Only a truly great director could pull all of this off, and Schaffner was that man. 
Another really great and exciting aspect of Papillon is its gay character, played by Robert Deman (Savage Soldier (1971)), whom Papillon utilizes for an escape and brings along. It is a textured and touching role that Deman inhabits with grace and nerve.
Papillon stands as one of the greatest prison escape movies of all time, just below Escape From Alcatraz (1979).

Related review:

Franklin J. Schaffner: The Boys From Brazil (1978), The Last Nazi Command

Watch this long original trailer that includes behind-the-scenes footage

Budget: 13.5 mil. $
Box office: 53.2 mil. $
= Big hit

What do you think of Papillon?
Do you agree that this is Steve McQueen's best performance?

The Boys From Brazil (1978) or, The Last Nazi Command

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A mysterious graphic with an ominous mass of closeups of the same boy makes up this dark poster for Franklin J. Schaffner's The Boys From Brazil

In the late 1960s, Ezra Lieberman hunts slippery Nazi war criminals. In Paraguay, Dr. Mengele, one of the worst Nazi mass-murderers of WWII, lives in relative hiding. But when a young Jew records his ambitious and mad plan to kill 94 men the world over, a puzzling challenge and a deadly game starts for the aging, but resolute Lieberman.

 
The Boys From Brazil is written by Heywood Gould (Rolling Thunder (1977)), adapting the same-titled 1976 novel by Ira Levin's (Rosemary's Baby (1968)), and directed by Japanese-born American master filmmaker Franklin J. Schaffner (The Stripper (1963)), whose 10th feature it was. Levin's fantastical premise is basically the cloning of 94 baby Hitlers. The idea is played dead-serious in the film, and in that way it succeeds in being incredibly frightening.
Staging such a grand, international thriller/murder plot as the one we get here (even with a science fiction element) must be a dream job for most any director, and Schaffner seems to have enjoyed the job and challenge of the endeavor. It certainly is an enjoyable and very entertaining film to watch. It is somewhat reminiscent of Marathon Man (1976), also with Laurence Olivier (The Betsy (1978)), who plays Lieberman here, but in a diametrically opposite kind of part.
Brazil does have a few problems: Some of the European accents of its Hollywood stars grind some in the ears at times, and Gregory Peck (The Omen (1976)) is almost too nice play the infamous monster Dr. Josef Mengele, but nevertheless is still is enjoyable for a fan of him as I.
Olivier, on the other hand, is majestic as the Nazi hunter based on the real McCoy, Simon Wiesenthal, whom Olivier met with and talked to about the part and Wiesenthal's life.
For the film, Jerry Goldsmith (Total Recall (1990)) created an amazing score.

SPOILER The ending in which vicious German shepherds attack two of cinema history's biggest actors is phenomenal, and the film has lots of good supporting roles as well.
The Boys of Brazil stands like a marble pillar in the annals of international thrillers. A solid, great film.

 

Related posts:

 

Franklin J. Schaffner: Top 10: The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Papillon (1973) or, Devil's Island Indeed

Watch a short TV trailer for the film here

Cost: 12 mil. $
Box office: Reportedly 19 mil. $ (North America alone)
= Uncertain but likely a box office success (projected return of 3.33 times its cost)

[The Boys From Brazil premiered 19 August (Honolulu, Hawaii) and runs 125 minutes. Olivier was paid 725k $ for his performance, which was reportedly his motivation for taking the role, as he was returning from serious illness, adamant that he would provide for his wife and children, should he pass away. Shooting took place from October 1977 - March 1978 in Portugal, including Lisbon, England, including London, Austria, including Vienna, and in Pennsylvania. The film reportedly grossed 19 mil. $ in North America. Details of its international numbers are regrettably not available; only it did sell 91k tickets in Denmark, a tidy number that indicates that it was likely popular abroad as well. A 40 mil. $ world gross is projected, which would rank the film a box office success. It was nominated for Best Actor (Olivier), lost to Jon Voight for Coming Home; Editing, lost to The Deer Hunter, and Score, lost to Giorgio Moroder for Midnight Express. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe and won a National Board of Review award, among other honors. Schaffner returned with Sphinx (1981). Olivier returned in A Little Romance (1979); Peck in The Sea Wolves (1980); and James Mason (The Sea Gull (1968)) in Murder by Decree (1979). The Boys From Brazil  is fresh at 70 % with a 6.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of The Boys From Brazil?