TOYS

 

Publicity poster for Toys (© Barry Levinson/Baltimore Pictures/20^th Century Fox – reproduced here in a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 12 April 2021, I watched the Robin Williams movie Toys on the Sony Movies TV channel. This is a movie from which I'd often seen clips, but I'd never previously viewed it in its entirety.

Directed and co-written by Barry Levinson, and released by 20th Century Fox in 1992, Toys is a seriously strange, Willy Wonka-ish film set predominantly inside a technicolor toy factory whose rightful heir, Leslie Zevo (played by Williams), has been usurped by his uncle, Leland (a manic Michael Gambon), albeit with the blessing of Leslie's dying father, Kenneth (a delightful cameo from veteran Hollywood star Donald O'Connor, no less). This is because Kenneth reluctantly concedes that Leslie is too childlike and unworldly to be able to assume responsibility for running the factory (despite living and working there his entire life). He got that right.

Leslie is a total man-child addicted to silly pranks and jokes that this movie's audience is presumably expected to find humorous and whimsical (the latter word actually being voiced on several occasions by various of its characters), but which at least for me wore very thin very quickly. Uncle Leland isn't any better either, a failed military man but still an unabashed warmonger who sees the toy factory as an ideal base where he can create miniature weapons of war and recruit unsuspecting children to operate them. He secretly achieves this by using a newly-opened school inside the factory as a front for training children by encouraging them to play arcade video games that are actually genuine war games using genuine artillery.

Add to this Leslie's sweet but decidedly odd sister Alsatia (Joan Cusack), whom it doesn't take a genius to figure out very quickly is actually an android, plus Leslie's ditzy girlfriend Gwen Tyler (Robin Wright), and also rapper/actor LL Cool J as Leland's son Patrick, a covert intelligence man with the military who is hired by Leland to beef up the toy factory's security, and the result is a multicoloured mishmash of a movie that is visually stunning but veers unpredictably from oddball comedy skits to some quite nasty attempts by Leland to slaughter not only Leslie, Alsatia, Gwen, and longstanding factory supervisor Owen but even his own son Patrick.

These latter scenes are played out in an often non-slapstick manner that I wouldn't have expected from what is ostensibly a juvenile, live-action cartoon elsewhere. Ditto for certain suggestive, sensual innuendos that Williams's character uncharacteristically utters, shattering for me the simple, innocent persona that Toys seeks to create for him. Indeed, when released in 1993 on VHS video in the UK, a sexual reference had to be deleted in order for the video to receive a PG rating.

In my opinion, Toys tries very hard to match or even outdo Roald Dahl in the creation of a candy-coated confection for children that has been dipped into a chilling cream with a biting after-taste. However, no-one does chilling children's fayre more effectively than Dahl, as this movie starkly confirms. Perhaps it would have been better instead for Toys to have dispensed with the darker, more adult aspects altogether (which caused it to receive a PG-13 rating in cinemas), and gone down the same route as more traditionally-wholesome entries in this particular movie sub-genre, such as Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium, for instance. That is, by focusing its efforts exclusively upon generating the vibrant colours, imaginative inventiveness, scintillating magic, and overall child-friendly ambience that modern-day audiences have come to expect from innovative toy-dominated fantasy movies intended for family viewing.

Apparently Toys bombed at the box office, and for once I agree with the critics who almost as one derided and dismissed it. For me, the best things about this mad movie other than its sumptuous sets were two specially-written songs featured in it. One of these is the lovely Christmas ballad 'At The Closing of the Year', by Trevor Horn and Hans Zimmer, which is performed by Prince protegés Wendy & Lisa (click here to view on YouTube the gorgeous opening credits scene from Toys in which it appears). The other is the haunting, ever so slightly sinister song 'The Happy Worker', by Horn and Bruce Woolley, which is performed by Tori Amos (click here to view when signed into Facebook the scene from Toys in which it appears).

Adding further to this movie's nothing if not diverse content are songs performed by Thomas Dolby, Grace Jones, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and Enya, plus music by Tchaikovsky, and a number of visual references to the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte.

Also needing mention are the rare but exceedingly unusual outdoor scenes, featuring a verdant vista of grassy hills in every direction, intersected by immaculately cut roads wending through its manicured greenery. So otherworldy do these scenes appear that I naturally assumed that they were CGI - but later, to my great surprise, I discovered that they are real! In fact, these are the Palouse hills of southeastern Washington and north-central Idaho. The things that you learn from watching a movie!

If you'd like to view an official trailer for Toys to give you some idea of what to expect, please click here to view one 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!

 

NEEDLE

 

Publicity poster for Needle (© John V. Soto/Filmscope Entertainment/Lionsgate LLC – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Earlier tonight I watched an extremely unusual Australian horror movie entitled Needle whose DVD I'd purchased back on 14 August 2019 at my local market but which had stayed unviewed by me until now.

Directed by John V. Soto, and released by Lionsgate in 2010, Needle certainly has a very novel premise: archaeology student Ben Rutherford (played by Michael Dorman) inherits a strange, 18^th-Century mechanical box called Le Vaudou Mort (or V.M. for brevity hereafter) from his late father Samuel, who collected antiquities. Unbeknownst to Ben (but only too well known to his villainous father, as we subsequently discover!), however, it had been specifically created to be used for exacting terrible revenge upon anyone whom its user so chooses.

SPOILER ALERT – if you don't want to learn any more of this film's plot, read no further!!

The V.R. contains a number of pull-out trays and drawers, each with its own sinister purpose. First of all, a small tray is lifted up, into which a photograph of the intended victim's face is placed before being slotted back down vertically inside the V.R. Then some blood from the user together with some hot molten wax are poured into a hole and surrounding grating on the V.R.'s top surface, after which a handle on the side is turned several times. Finally, a thin tray on the side is pulled out, revealing upon it a small newly-created wax effigy. Whatever the user then does to the effigy (a long sharp needle that can be heated to accomplish this is helpfully provided in a drawer and gives this movie its title) is replicated with horrifying effect in real life upon his/her victim, wherever they may be.

Unfortunately for Ben, the V.M. is stolen from him, as is a photo depicting him with some friends. Then, one by one, his friends meet grisly deaths, because the thief cuts out their faces from the photo and during the course of the movie feeds each one in turn into the V.M. together with blood, wax, etc etc. Let's just say that the long sharp red-hot needle is applied in hideously imaginative ways to the resulting wax effigies.

Into Ben's traumatized life at this point comes his estranged older brother, Marcus (Travis Fimmel). Two years earlier, after a furious argument with Marcus, their father Samuel had driven off in a rage and was killed in a car crash. Ever since then, Ben has blamed Marcus for his death, and they have not met up with each other, until now.

Marcus is a crime-scene photographer employed by the local police, who sees at first-hand what is eventually revealed to be the gruesome work of the V.M. upon Ben's friends, because he has to take pictures of their bloodied, mutilated remains for forensic records. Despite Ben's initial distaste at Marcus's reappearance in his life, the two brothers draw closer as they covertly work together to uncover how Ben's friends are being killed and by whom, and are massively shocked on all counts when in the movie's climax they finally do.

The question now is: will they survive their deadly encounter with said murderer? It turns out that the latter is wreaking merciless revenge upon them (but Ben in particular, causing him pain and fear by deliberately killing his friends first, one by one) for being the sons of Samuel Rutherford. This is because he was the man who 10 years previously had used the V.M. on the murderer's own father (an equally unscrupulous rival collector) when the murderer was then only a child, a child who together with his/her mother had helplessly watched his/her father's hideous death.

This sight was so horrifying that it in turn had rendered the child's mother insane from the shock, confining her ever afterwards to a mental asylum, with the effectively-orphaned child subsequently suffering years of abuse at foster homes. Now, in the hate-twisted mind of that grownup child-become-murderer, it is finally time to instigate a terrible, fitting payback upon Ben and Marcus for all of this, ensuring that they suffer in full for the sins of their father, by utilising upon them the very same death-dealing device that he had used a decade ago upon the murderer's father.

As might be expected from Needle's plot and its 18 Certificate rating in the UK, there are some gory close-up shots of the various murder victims, but they are not frequent and are of only short duration. The acting is decent, and this movie helped to launch Travis Fimmel in particular to greater heights, as he would go on to star in the hit TV show Vikings. Ditto for Nathaniel Buzolic (who played Ryan, Ben's soon-to-be fatally perforated best friend), as he subsequently appeared in a starring role in three series of another hit TV show, The Vampire Diaries.

Needle is fundamentally a whodunnit-style murder mystery movie, but with the V.M. supplying an engrossing supernatural/fantasy spin on it. Speaking of which: I was a bit slow on the uptake regarding the name of this macabre contraption – it took me a few minutes before I realised that Le Vaudou Mort is French for Voodoo Death (or Death by Voodoo). This makes sense, because its modus operandi's premise is one involving sympathetic magic, which is of course an intrinsic aspect of voodoo.

If your interest is piqued by this movie's memorable storyline, please click here to view an official trailer for Needle on YouTube – unless you suffer from belonephobia, that is, in which case it might be best if you don't!

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 HAND OF NIGHT

 

Publicity poster for The Hand Of Night (© Frederic Goode/Associated British Pathé – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

During the early hours of Boxing Day (26 December) 2020, I watched a truly strange and decidedly creepy British horror movie entitled The Hand of Night (aka Beast of Morocco) on the TV channel Talking Pictures, which specializes in screening nowadays-obscure, rarely-seen British movies.

Directed by Frederic Goode, released in 1968, and set in the present day, if you can imagine a mash-up of H. Rider Haggard's novel She, the vampire movie genre, and a dash of Curse of the Mummy thrown in, it may give you some idea of what to expect from The Hand of Night.

Haunted by macabre dreams and riven with guilt after he is the only survivor of a fatal car crash that killed his wife and their children while he was driving, architect Paul Carver (played by William Sylvester) decides to end it all, and concocts an end plan whereby a doctor will euthanize him when they meet in Morocco – only for him to discover upon arriving there that the doctor has suffered a heart attack and died. During the plane journey, however, Carver had become acquainted with archaeologist Otto Gunther (Edward Underdown) and received an invitation to visit him at his palatial Moroccan home.

With his own plan now in disarray, Carver takes up Gunther's offer and sets out to walk there from his hotel close by, but en route to Gunther's home he meets a mysterious and exceedingly ancient-looking Arab named Omar (Terence De Marney), who speaks to him in riddles about the choice between light and darkness, before disappearing into the night. And when Carver reaches Gunther's, he finds himself in the midst of a lively party, full of people who are entirely unknown to him. Somewhat out of his depth, he looks up to see a beautiful, mysterious young woman walking down a staircase, but before he can approach her she is lost in the crowd. Instead, he strikes up an acquaintance with Gunther's assistant, a pretty but totally non-mysterious young woman named Chantal (Diane Clare).

To cut a very convoluted story short, one evening Carver finds himself drawn to some long-abandoned ruins in the nearby desert where Gunther and Chantal have been conducting excavations (including the unearthing of a long-buried, centuries-old sarcophagus), but to his amazement he finds that the ruins are ruined no longer. Instead, they are sumptuously decorated, populated by dancing slave girls, and standing aloof is the mysterious young woman, who tells Carver that her name is Marissa (Alizia Gur, a former Miss Israel turned actress). Omar is also in attendance, and more is spoken of choosing between light and darkness. Carver is besotted by Marissa, but she recoils in terror when she sees a bejeweled, light-reflecting ring that he is wearing, one that he had found earlier at Gunther's house and had almost unconsciously placed upon his finger. Without realizing, Carver subsequently falls asleep, but when he awakes it is morning, the overhead sun is bright, and all of the decorations, girls, Marissa, and Omar are gone – the ruins are as they had originally been, empty and desolate. Had it been real, or only a dream?

Carver later spots Marissa at Gunther's home again, but no-one else can apparently see her or even recognize her from his verbal description; nor is she reflected in mirrors. Consequently, she is dismissed by everyone else as a figment of Carver's imagination, the unreal product of lingering stress engendered by his family's death. Yet as time goes on, Carver loses all interest in everything other than Marissa, even returning at night when he can to be with her in the magically if only temporarily restored desert ruins, which he now believes to be real, albeit inexplicably so.

Gunther and Chantel, meanwhile, are becoming increasingly worried about him, and eventually Gunther suspects that the elusive Marissa may not only be real after all but in fact be a vampire, who is draining Carver not of blood but of his actual life force. After finding her likeness depicted upon an Arabian carpet, its pattern portraying a 14^th-Century princess who was buried alive as a punishment for her unfaithfulness but who issued a curse upon all men before her entombment, Carver suspects this too, and that the recently-unearthed sarcophagus is hers. Consequently, he resolves to break free of Marissa's evil hold over him once and for all, but she has centuries of practice in such matters, so she isn't going to let go that easily – as Carver, Gunther, and especially Chantal discover to their peril…

I'll say no more, other than to note that Marissa's sinister sidekick, the inimical and thoroughly obnoxious Omar, ultimately performs a very literal rendition of the phrase "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust"…

All in all, The Hand of Night is a decided curiosity of a horror movie – a nothing if not novel twist upon the traditional vampire theme, with not a single pair of hypertrophic canines or any sign of gushing blood to be seen anywhere, and set not in some dark, cobweb-bedecked Central European castle but transferred instead to an exotic sand-strewn desert setting more in keeping with an Arabian Nights adventure.

Finally: I can laugh now, but just at the creepiest point of the movie, at around 3 am in the absolute stillness of the morning, some weirdo nearby suddenly decided to set off a succession of exceedingly loud banger fireworks, and yes, I definitely jumped! Who sets off fireworks at 3 am in the morning, and in the rain?? Bizarre – just like this movie, in fact!

But if you want to see for yourself, click here to view on YouTube the seriously spooky dream (or should that be nightmare?) scene that accompanies the opening titles of The Hand of Night.

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!

 

COPACABANA THE MOVIE

 

My official ex-rental VHS video of Copacabana The Movie (© Barry Manilow-Jack Feldman-Bruce Sussman/Waris Hussein/Dick Clark Productions/CBS/CBS Fox Video – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Released in 1978, one of legendary American singer Barry Manilow's most popular songs is 'Copacabana', for which he wrote the up-tempo, catchy music, with Jack Feldman and Bruce Sussman supplying its memorable, story-weaving lyrics.

In just 3 minutes, a tragic love triangle is played out, featuring young sweethearts Tony and Lola who perform together during the late 1940s as singers at a high-class Manhattan nightclub called the Copacabana, until Rico, Tony's jealous, unscrupulous rival for Lola's affections, lures her away and astray, culminating in Rico shooting Tony dead, which sends Lola half-mad with grief – so much so that 30 years later she still wears her old stage costumes and faded flowers in her hair as she sits alone drinking her sorrows and her mind away at the Copacabana, which is now a modern 1970s disco.

After having been approached by famous TV producer/star Dick Clark with the suggestion, Manilow, Feldman, and Sussman expanded the song's story into a full-scale made-for-TV film musical, entitled Copacabana The Movie, which debuted on CBS in 1985.

Not the easiest of films to track down nowadays, I recently managed to purchase it in ex-rental big box VHS video format, and thoroughly enjoyed it. A sweet, old-fashioned 'boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back' romance (albeit one that cannot escape the original song's 'boy is shot dead by rival' doomed ending), this movie musical was directed by Waris Hussein, with Dick Clark on board as one of its executive producers, and stars Manilow in his acting debut as Tony Starr, plus Annette O'Toole as Lola Lamar, and Joseph Bologna as Rico Castelli.

As a feature-length musical, Copacabana The Movie contains a number of brand-new songs written specially for it by Manilow, Feldman, and Sussman. These include the beautiful wistful ballad 'Who Needs To Dream' and the upbeat 'Sweet Heaven (I'm In Love Again)', plus some extremely colourful, Latin American-inspired  production numbers set in the Copacabana and in an even more up-market Havana-based club owned by Rico, to where he lures the ambitious but naïve Lola, promising to turn her into a star (at least until the next pretty face comes along...).

Copacabana The Movie went on to win a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Variety or Music Program (by Hussein) at the 1986 Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony. In addition, it was also nominated for the Outstanding Achievement in Choreography Primetime Emmy in recognition of Grover Dale's superb contributions. Moreover, this film musical in turn inspired its three creators to write an even more expansive stage version, which has toured in the UK, USA, and parts of Europe (in translated form) since 1990.

Not bad for what began as a 3-minute song!

Click here to watch my favourite scene from Copacabana The Movie, in which an initially shy Tony gains confidence as he serenades Lola on their first date with 'Who Needs To Dream'. Ah, bless.

Finally: Due to its title, if not its locations, Copacabana The Movie will always conjure up some treasured memories for me because one of the last foreign holidays that Mom and I shared was to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2007, where we stayed at the Copacabana Palace Hotel, directly overlooking Rio's famous Copacabana Beach:

 

My late mother, Mary Shuker, standing on Copacabana Beach's very eyecatching, swirl-patterned pavewalk, in Rio de Janeiro, 2007 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

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!