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During the untimely 1980s, the horror brand was lyrical much taken over by slasher films and monster films were definitely inoperative of fashion. That didn’t hinder certain devoted amateurs, such as Ted Bohac and Tim Hildebrandt, who created The Bloodthirsty Spawn, a span between a costly-stab transit picture and a home movie. Coincidentally, it opened the same weekend as Sam Raimi’s The Flagitious Dead, which shared many of these characteristics.

A meteorite falls to earth, and it’s carrying a cargo of its own: spores that manufacture tadpole-like eyeless creatures. Unfortunately, they rapdily ripen to be eight feet overdone or larger, with hundreds of razor sharp teeth and an affinity because person flesh. Sam (James Brewster) and Barb (Elissa Neil) finish to putrefied ends in their own basement. The rest of the family, girl Pete (Tom De Franco) and horror-film addict Charles (Charles George Hildebrandt), benefit aunt Millie (Ethel Michelson) and uncle Herb (John Schmerling), reckon on Sam and Barb to be gone all day, so they crumbs blissfully oblivious of the give rise to within the floors and walls of their home, until it’s definitely too late.

Shot on 16mm, this has utterly a few hallmarks of a home movie, including shooting in imagination artist Tim Hildebrandt’s home, and starring his eleven-year-old son in one of the get up to roles. On the other hand, it has fairly amazing gore effects (Barb’s demise in demanding is well-executed as one of the spawn rips off part of her face) much better than those found in varied Hollywood films. The creatures themselves are intriguing, in divide since they were designed by Tim Hildebrandt, and also because they’re practical effects, executed through puppetry of many kinds. The result isn’t always convincing, but the monsters are certainly threatening.

The epic is totally skeletal, albeit the setup of keeping the principal pick in the impenetrable for the benefit of much of the film helps keep the suspense levels up. The low budget dictates that the monsters be kept in the Stygian after much of the first half of the film, also help keep their head unquestioned demeanour more effective. There are some memorable setpieces, such as the electrician who wanders into the basement and the tea blow-out hosted by Aunt Millie that finds a bring about wandering into the blender. Also notable is the psychological catechism of Charles by Uncle Herb as he tries to concoct a diagnosis of some good-natured of abnormality in his troll-obsessed nephew, a series that will firmly resonate with those who grew up with Eminent Monsters of Filmland and endured surreptitious glances from other family members.

Though the cast is almost altogether unknowns or amateurs, they’re capable enough to clothes the kind of film that it is. Since it was matters sporadically terminated two years, Charles visibly ages from picture to background as he goes from eleven to thirteen years of age. Puncture is plentiful, but sexuality is not emphasized other than a brief segment narrow the beginning. While it’s not a classic, its rank as a Video Nasty got it some well-deserved opprobrium. It’s a hoot of a guilty pleasure on the side of gorehounds.

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At any second in “Needful Things,” you expect Leland Gaunt (Max von Sydow) to break into song: “Please brook me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and disposition, been about in the direction of a great long year …” Author Stephen Regent has ordinarily shown sympathy for the Excessively, and in this latest King record-to-film debacle, so does firstly-time director Fraser Heston.

What’s the nature of Gaunt’s game? Well, he’s the dark cloud on a sunny day from the moment he rolls into Castle Rock, Maine, to open his Needful Things curio shop. The stranger says he’s “from Akron,” though that only begins to explain things.

The someone wicked who their way comes is an elderly, well-dressed, vaguely European gentleman reeking of cultured charm. In fact, Gaunt seems quite benign and benevolent as he sells the locals those “needful things” they so desperately desire, usually to counter a tragedy or emptiness in their lives.

The shop, which seems to do a little shape-shifting to accommodate each customer, is sort of an evil Alice’s Restaurant where you can get anything you want. The cost? Well, Gaunt doesn’t take checks or credit cards, and cash seems unimportant as well. What he really wants from each customer is “a favor.”

And very quickly, Gaunt has created a Rube Goldberg contraption in which those called-in favors, which range from prankish to murderous, lead to a sudden and nearly total breakdown in law and order. As someone notes, “Everybody that’s got it coming is going to get it now!”

Eventually, as a townful of the usual King eccentrics goes mad, a self-satisfied Gaunt sits back in his shop by an open fire, listening to Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” He works in mysterious ways too.

Von Sydow, who played Jesus in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” and dumped the Devil in “The Exorcist,” seems to be having a great time evolving Gaunt from a benign to a malignant force. He generally plays Gaunt with urbane wit — at one point, he defends himself by saying, “Don’t blame me, blame it on the bossa nova” — but some of his commentary (”what a wussy!”) seems aimed at the young crowd likely to flock to theaters this weekend. That crowd may have trouble with the slow buildup in “Needful Things,” and could also be disappointed by a dearth of spectacular effects, particularly given the perpetrator’s potential. A skinned dog and a couple of exploding edifices (a church included) are about it. But as Gaunt notes, “I don’t work miracles.”

Neither does director Heston. On the one hand, he’s hardly the first to be overwhelmed by King’s raw material — in this case a complex, crowded 750-page book that might have been better served by being turned into a miniseries a la “The Tommyknockers.” W.D. Richter’s screenplay also tones things down considerably, but even condensed “Needful Things” feels overlong because it takes so long to get going. You never really get to know any of the characters, so it’s hard to sense, much less sympathize, with the anger, frustration or desperate dreams that lead them to bargain with Gaunt.

On the other hand, Heston wastes a cast that’s clearly more talented than what usually ends up in these King adaptations. Besides von Sydow, there’s Ed Harris as Sheriff Alan Pangborn; Bonnie Bedelia as his arthritic fiancee, Polly Chalmers; J.T. Walsh as corrupt politico Danforth Keeton; and bug-eyed Amanda Plummer as Nettie Cobb, whose Maine accent almost requires subtitles. Harris, oddly enough, plays it straight even as the others gradually turn into bedeviled hams. As for “Needful Things,” it goes up on the ever more crowded King shelf marked so-so.

“Needful Things” is rated R for violence and language.

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I positively hate to fault concert-master Sam Raimi for The Honorarium. After all, he is the man honest for not only all three Evil Unbroken films, but the anti-hero classic Darkman, as well. Those films simply elevate him to forthcoming Numen repute, and earn him a place on the mighty pedestal of really cool guys. Let’s not forget his forays into bigger budget, mainstream filmdom with A Simple Plan and For Love Of The Tactic. Of course, all of Nerdville, myself included, anxiously awaits Raimi’s 2002 treatment of Spider-Bloke. In my eyes, he has tackled the four central movie aliment groups (monsters, superheroes, baseball, murder), and he has in perpetuity managed to put a dark, twisty spin on things. With The Give-away, Raimi delivers some of the trademark components, but something is sadly missing. The sum is just not uniform to the parts.

Working from a Billy Bob Thornton penned screenplay (I theory marrying Angelina Jolie just ain’t enough for some guys), Raimi drives a somewhat spooky tale of arcane gothic americana in the disconcerted southern town of Brixton. Brixton is in either Georgia (where The Gift was filmed) or Alabama (because a abnormal references “going to Mobile”), but that is truly irrelevant. Wherever it takes place, it looks frail in the sunlight, but it’s creepy as suffering at night, chock full of murky swamps, thick fog and gnarly trees. Raimi is a talented director, and he paints the blackness scenes like a nightmare, doing nothing at all to promote Southern tourism.

Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) is a recently widowed young mother of three, eking out a meager living doing ‘readings,’ which is her way of saying she’s a psychic. That is her ‘gift,’ hence the baptize. She does readings seeing that the locals, telling them things about themselves using a deck of Zenner cards, which are the accepted ESP cards that feature the wavy lines, a circle, a supernova, etc. Without question, her client list includes more than a handful colorful characters, including spouse abused Valerie (Hilary Swank) and stammering mechanic Buddy (Giovanni Ribisi), both with the requisite twangy Southern accents that every once in a while scream “I’M ACTING HERE!”

In front long, lusty sexpot Jessica (Katie Holmes), the betrothed of salubrious and unpretentious Wayne (Greg Kinnear), ends up missing, and the shire police reluctantly call on Annie after all other search efforts lead nowhere. Without revealing much more of the hatch, lean assured that Annie gets whiffs of the crime sporadically, and once you can answer “red herring,” she is embroiled in a life or eradication match to bump into uncover far-off what absolutely happened to Jessica.

As Annie, Blanchett leads the pack in The Hand-out. Blanchett effortlessly ditches her real life English mark in favor of a slow Southern lilt, and she makes Annie 100 times more sincere than any of her screenmates. As an actress, she carries The Gift single-handedly on her shoulders, and makes Oscar&reg-winner Swank look understudy-rate, at most outstanding. Looking tired and a bit worn, Blanchett’s Annie is a glaring character, willing to take exceptional risks, yet even then easily frightened.

Kinnear, Holmes, Swank, and Ribisi are just a small contribute to of the combo drive out that also features Gary Cole, Michael Jeter, Kim Dickens and yes, even a pranks performance by Keanu Reeves. Reeves, normally pathetically stiff and comatose, including in The Matrix, gets to really chomp up the bona fide estate as wild helpmeet beater Donnie Barksdale. Barksdale is the compendium of squirrel hunting stainless trash, and he in fact explodes into a blow one’s top in condign nearby every sphere he’s in. A few more roles like this and I just may change my note about Reeves.

So, what went wrong with The Gift? Sure sounds like a winner, doesn’t it? Hell, luscious Katie Holmes even does a in the nuddy scene, in the interest chrissakes. But even with all that it has usual for it, it just moves a bit too cautiously to merit proper tension, and too repeatedly resorts to frugal ‘jump’ shots. The film looks spooky, and there are spooky scenes, but it’s just that the movie never truly gets a chance to decide whether it wants to be a supernatural thriller or a southern drama. Raimi’s visualization of Annie’s fancy sequences are eerie enough, and provide more than a satisfactory apportion of creepy cinema, but it’s just not enough to salvage the overall containerize. By the time the end credits rolled, I was more than consenting to leave Brixton.

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Wilder’s classic noir, a familiar brew of lust, larceny, and lethal intentions, stars Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck as a hot-blooded couple. Framed in flashback, the story is told by the slipping away Walter Neff (MacMurray), beginning with his first meet with the seducing Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck) during a piece renewal of her husband’s car insurance. After some flirtation she arranges a meeting without her husband, where she asks almost an accessary policy to be bought without her husband’s knowledge. Although repulsed by the implications of her suggestions, his obsession with Phyllis leads Neff to contemplate the odds of finding a way to kill her silence while making his death look get off on an fluke. After she comes to his apartment, the assurance salesman finally agrees to become involved in the murder, and the two of them launch methodically working out the details. After the they dispose of Dietrichson, Neff learns more than he wanted about Phyllis’ unsavory past, but realizes he’s now too involved to extricate himself. He’s also active about his a boss (Barton Keyes) Edward G. Robinson, an omniscient insurance investigator who has taken at an end the case. A brilliant noir, among the most excellently of the genre, with a byzantine still utterly plausible plot, stylized hard-boiled conversation by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and three terrific performances by Stanwyck MacMurray and Robinson.

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Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Under Rudolph Maté’s forceful direction this routine Western
sparkles. It’s based on the short story by J. Robert Bren and Gladys Atwater
and written by Sydney Boehm. The film is set in 1864, at the time of Lincoln’s
re-election when the Union is shipping by train to the front lines its
newest secret weapon the Gatling gun (it automatically fires 250 rounds
in a minute).

Warning: spoilers in the next two paragraphs.

James Farraday (Van Johnson) and partner Benjy Thompson (Milburn
Stone) are Confederate soldiers disguised as medicine show salesmen, with
assumed identities as Boston residents. They organize a well-planned raid
on the heavily guarded train and steal the Gatling gun. They now must smuggle
it from the north back south in their medicine wagon. On the way they meet
Union nurse Nora Curtis (Joanne Dru), whose wagon breaks down in a river
crossing and they transport her to the next town where she sets up a hospital.
The spies’ contact in the town is killed and Brett Manning (Richard Boone)
comes forth to give the coded “Tapioca” message, delivered by song in a
dance hall, and it’s agreed that he’ll help them get through Union lines
and Indian territory for a heavy price. But the profiteer steals the Gatlin
and sells it to Chief Yellow Hawk, who attacks the Cavalry at Fort Smith.
Union officer Frank Kelso (Jeff Morrow) has been trailing the spies since
they left town and captures Farraday. 

The climax has a thrilling Indian and Cavalry battle, as Farraday
lets his hatred for the North subside enough in the waning days of the
war to help Kelso retrieve the Gatlin to prevent a massacre at the fort.
It ends with the Indians driven off and a smitten Nora telling Farraday
she’ll wait for him after the war. He promises to come calling and take
her back to Atlanta as his wife.

The Siege at Red River steals whole scenes from the 1944 Buffalo
Bill. Nevertheless the film is rewarding because it’s so stunningly filmed,
Richard Boone makes for an appealing whip-carrying dandy villain, and the
final battle scene is so action-packed and well-choreographed.