The original NeverEnding Story wasn’t always the sacred object nostalgia’s turned it into. In North America, it grossed about twenty million against a twenty-seven million dollar budget, and critics were mixed. Its cult following grew retroactively through cable and VHS, the way a lot of 80s kids’ films did. People loved it because they grew … Read more
My Girl isn’t the film I was expecting to see. For context: it came out the year after Home Alone. Macaulay Culkin was the biggest child star on the planet, an adorable little scamp with the comic Munch scream who proved a well-prepared eight-year-old could take out two grown men with paint and a blowtorch. … Read more
Kristy Swanson is a dummy. I mean Mannequin. Someone, somewhere had to pitch this sequel without Kim Cattrall or Andrew McCarthy, without any real narrative push forward from the original’s basic plot. Which renders the ‘On The Move’ subtitle as a bit of a misnomer, and a lost opportunity. ‘Standing Still” would have been my … Read more
Gregory Hines is tapped to hunt down a fembot fatale (Renée Soutendijk) in this oh-so-nineties ticking time-bombshell thriller with a terminatwist. See, when EVE VIII is damaged during a bank robbery on her field test, she stops following her mission parameters and starts acting out the repressed memories she was programmed with from her creator’s … Read more
I’m a bit of a pop music nerd and I genuinely can’t hum a single bar of any Jamie Walters song, which is a weird thing to admit given that “How Do You Talk to an Angel” went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1992, and his follow-up single “Hold On” went … Read more
An Orlacian tale worthy of E.C. Comics, Body Parts is the story of a criminal psychologist who loses his arm in a brutal car accident and gets a transplant… from an executed serial killer. So naturally, the arm develops a mind of its own, leading him down a dark, twisted path. You’ve got to hand … Read more
Rover Dangerfield arrived on home video this week in 1992, after an August 2, 1991 theatrical release that got no respect. No respect at all. For a lot of us who grew up in the ’80s, Back to School (1986) was our proper introduction to Rodney Dangerfield. Especially if we were under the minimum height … Read more
The box art did much of the heavy lifting. The Crawlers (1991) is an arbor-horror film about evil radioactive tree roots directed by Fabrizio Laurenti with legend Joe D’Amato filling in some gaps. Another Epic release. The Crawlers (aka Contamination .7) eventually went straight-to-video in 1993 where it remained a bottom-shelf staple for years. Was … Read more
Richard Grieco plays a 26 year old under-achieving teenager who gets mistaken for a secret agent while on a school trip to France. Spyjinks and adventure ensue. This is another one of those movies that existed in the twilight time between the 80s and 90s, Grieco channels smouldering kewl dude attitude with a touch of … Read more
The release of The Addams Family in 1991 was a pivotal moment for teenage me – it changed how I viewed the world. Before this, I’d learned what families should look like from an early age – tidy, respectable and normal. The kind you see in sitcoms where everyone learns a valuable lesson by the … Read more