GRACE QUIGLEY

The front cover and spine of my official big box ex-rental VHS videocassette of Grace Quigley (© Anthony Harvey /Golan-Globus Productions/The Cannon Group - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 23 May 2020, after countless years of owning but never watching this movie, I finally got around to viewing my big box ex-rental VHS videocassette of the American black comedy Grace Quigley.

Directed by Anthony Harvey and released in 1985, Grace Qigley stars Katharine Hepburn in the title role (which was also her last leading film role) of an elderly widow living alone and deeply unhappy in a down-at-heel New York apartment who hires a young hit man named Seymour Flint (played by Nick Nolte) to end her misery by killing her. However, when several of her equally aged and aimless acquaintances learn of this, they too want to hire Seymour to end their own lives. As a result, Grace decides that she has found a reason to live after all, having become galvanised into setting up a business in which she seeks out willing paying clients for Seymour to dispose of mercifully – but, surprise surprise, things do not go according to anyone's plans.

With a plot like that, and even when suspending disbelief throughout, Grace Quigley is always going to teeter along a very thin and shaky line between outright farce and disturbing distastefulness (a fair few real-life serial killers of sick, elderly people come to mind when viewing something like this). Added to it is the problem that whereas the first two thirds of the movie are at least tightly paced and plotted, the final third veers crazily and uncontrollably, with earlier carefully-laid conventions abruptly uprooted and reversed for no apparent reason.

In my opinion, it's almost as if the screen writers and director had no idea how to bring this movie to an end, so simply threw every tried and trusted option at it in the hope that somehow it would all turn out well – even that hoariest of old chestnuts a frenetic car chase is included. Ultimately, the movie simply peters out, which in hindsight may be no bad thing. Hepburn was famous in earlier decades for classic screwball comedies, but this much later one is more oddball than screwball.

Also mystifying is why the artwork portraying Hepburn and Nolte on the front cover of my official Grace Quigley VHS videocassette's case bears no resemblance to any scene featuring in the actual movie itself. True, there is a very brief scene in which Hepburn does ride pillion on a motorbike ridden by Nolte, but Nolte is wearing an entirely different outfit in the artwork from the version that he wears in the movie scene, and Hepburn is certainly not carrying a gun in the movie scene. All very odd, but only to be expected, I suppose, with a film as strange as this one.

An official trailer for the decidedly quirky Grace Quigley can be viewed here on YouTube.

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!

The full cover of my official big box ex-rental VHS videocassette of Grace Quigley (© Anthony Harvey /Golan-Globus Productions/The Cannon Group - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

TERROR BIRDS

Front cover of the official DVD for Terror Birds (© Sean Cain/Goliath Film and Media Holdings/Spiderwood Sound Stage and Studios/MarVista Entertainment/High Fliers Films)

Today is exactly a year since I originally watched this monster movie, so what better time than right now to recall – and add to – what I wrote about it back then?

On 26 September 2019, I finally got around to watching another one from my ever-expanding collection of crypto/monster B-movies on DVD. Directed by Sean Cain and first released in 2015, this one was Terror Birds.

As its title suggests, Terror Birds is all about reclusive zillionaire Harvey Sullivan (played by an unrecognisable Greg 'BJ and the Bear' Evigan!) who follows up native reports of greatly-feared 'death birds' said to inhabit a couple of tiny uninhabited Caribbean islands and discovers to his amazement a single last-surviving pair of Titanis-like terror birds (aka phorusrhacids) but of enormous size (more Kelenken than Titanis), officially believed to have become extinct at least 2.5 million years ago. So he captures them and secretly transports them to his isolated estate in Texas, USA, where he keeps them contained in a sizeable paddock ringed by a high electrified fence as he attempts to incubate and rear new generations of terror birds to save their species from extinction (and, rather less altruistically, sell them to the higher bidder!).

However, after intruding birdwatcher/scientist Keith Stern (Craig Nigh) is devoured by them, his daughter Maddy (Jessica Lee Keller) decides to investigate why her father has gone missing (he never told her where he was going), and together with her boyfriend and some other friends she traces his last-known route, which leads them to Sullivan's estate, and the terror birds. As with all such movies, however, it all goes horrifically awry, yielding the usual ever-increasing body count of bloodied, dismembered corpses when the birds systematically stalk and attempt to slaughter every human that they encounter.

Life-sized animatronic model of the North American terror bird Titanis walleri (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Irrespective of how hackneyed the plot of Terror Birds may seem, however, I still enjoyed it, not only because in terms of its title subjects' stunning visual presentation it is definitely a superior addition to the plethora of monster-themed B-movies released in recent years, but in particular because of one very specific aspect concerning their depiction. Namely: instead of wings, these terror birds sported a pair of clawed forearms.

Yet although this definitely made them look very bizarre, in reality it did have official palaeontological precedence. For at the time when this movie was first conceived, there actually was a theory that these birds did indeed possess such appendages, in turn inspired by some rather incomplete and ambiguous fossil forearm remains on file for these species.

Later on, conversely, various more comprehensive discoveries effectively scotched this 'armed' terror bird reconstruction, with current palaentological depictions giving them wings instead. But in Terror Birds. the fascinating image of terror birds with arms is forever preserved, and for that if for no other reason we should celebrate this movie's existence.

And if you'd like to see them for yourself, be sure to click here to watch an official trailer for Terror Birds on YouTube. Incidentally, this is by no means the first movie to feature terror birds - a superb stop-motion animated terror bird created by Ray Harryhausen appeared as long ago as 1961 in Mysterious Island, based very loosely on a Jules Verne novel of the same title. Tragically, however, its zoological significance was largely lost upon cinema-going audiences, because most of them thought that it was simply a giant chicken! Click here to see Harryhausen's (as-ever breathtaking) take on the terror birds.

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!

Alongside a life-sized model of Titanis, last of the terror birds (© Dr Karl Shuker)

KAZAAM - AND THE CURIOUS CASE OF SHAZAAM, THE MISSING MOVIE

Full cover of my official VHS videocassette of Kazaam (© Paul Michael Glaser/Touchstone Pictures/Interscope Communications/PolyGram Filmed Entertainment/Buena Vista Pictures Distribution – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My frequent visits lately to my mini-vault of little-known/forgotten 1980s/1990s fantasy movies in VHS videocassette format saw me on 1 May 2020 watching Kazaam.

Directed, co-produced, and written by none other than Paul Michael Glaser (Dave Starsky in TV's popular cop show Starsky and Hutch), and released in 1996 by Buena Vista Pictures, a distribution company within Walt Disney Studios, this fantasy/comedy movie stars NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal, but not as a basketball player. Instead, he is a 5,000-year-old genie named Kazaam who is accidentally released from his boombox (his original bottle broke so he took up residence inside a discarded boombox, as genies do...) by Max, a 12-year-old Brooklyn boy (played by Francis Capra, who went on to have a long, continuing career in films and TV).

Not surprisingly, Max is somewhat startled to discover that Kazaam will now grant him any three wishes that he wants, as long as they do not involve making anyone fall in love with him or bringing anyone back from the dead. Incidentally, I recall Robin Williams's genie issuing the same conditions to Disney's Aladdin some years later – they clearly belong to the same trade union...

Lots of slapstick madcap rap and claptrap ensue (not really claptrap, but it scanned nicely with slapstick madcap rap...), in which Kazaam stakes out a successful sideline as a club rapper, while being trailed by a crook named Malik who realizes that Kazaam is a genie. Consequently, Malik draws up a dastardly plan to ensnare Kazaam, in order to make the genie grant him three wishes, but Malik's nefarious scheme does not turn out the way that he had anticipated, that's for sure! All very zany, not to be taken even remotely seriously, and, being Shaquille O'Neal, Kazaam manages to slam dunk Malik with consummate ease. Not that I would expect anything less, even if others may have forgiven him had he been a little out of practice after 5,000 years.

As for Kazaam's musical abilities, conversely: let's just put it this way, a genie that tries his hand at rapping is likely to make an awful djinn... (sorry, couldn't resist!!).

Click here and here to see a couple of hilarious trailers showcasing Kazaam's less than predictable powers in this unequivocally 1990s fun film. Sadly, however, despite its nostalgic charm and its very likeable, still-popular star, Kazaam has not stood the test of time. Indeed, it may well have been long forgotten by now, were it not for a truly extraordinary, tenacious mystery intimately associated with this particular movie.

For Kazaam is the film that apparently inspired an infamous example of the Mandela Effect, i.e. a phenomenon whereby people claim to have seen something that not only can no longer be found but in reality seemingly never existed to begin with. In this instance, the claim concerns a supposed early 1990s movie available in videocassette format and entitled Shazaam, starring American comedian/actor Sinbad as the eponymous genie who grants wishes to two young children. Numerous people over the years have vehemently claimed to have seen this mysterious movie, even to have rented it from video shops, and can describe in detail various scenes from it – scenes that, incidentally, do not correspond with any that are contained in Kazaam.

Yet no-one has ever produced a copy of Shazaam for official public scrutiny, and some bewildered movie buffs have even suggested that its ostensible disappearance from our world might actually be evidence for the existence of parallel universes! They speculate that people who claim to have viewed Shazaam may have unknowingly crossed over from a parallel universe in which this movie really does exist into our universe in which it does not exist. Sceptics, conversely, opine rather more conservatively that this entire cinematic conundrum stems from nothing more mystifying than false memories of the similarly-titled and themed Kazaam. Click here and here for a couple of detailed articles concerning this fascinating, ongoing controversy from the film world. But if by any chance you do happen to own a copy of Shazaam, please let me review it!

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!