I needed a nostalgic trip back in time this past weekend, so I dug up three flicks from the days of cable movies and video rentals (those were the days), and it was a pretty satisfying marathon.
EVIL SPIRITS (1991)
This is peak Karen Black horror trash, and it is soooooo big on the VHS era nostalgia. Amplifying that vibe is the fact that the movie is only available on DVD from “Cheezy Flicks”, a no budget company that just uses old video tapes as their source material. There’s even a fricking freeze frame/blank screen/missing frame defect in the middle of the movie.
There’s no mystery here. Karen plays a woman running a boarding house in which she has her tenants sign over their government checks to her then kills them and continues collecting their checks.
The misfit inhabitants include horror king Michael Berryman as a pervy writer, a deaf dancer, an alcoholic dude suffering from PTSD, a newly arrived older couple that immediately suspects things are weird, and a psychic medium who senses something is off…which leads to a séance.
Meanwhile, Karen supposedly has an invalid husband living in seclusion upstairs, but considering he talks to her out loud from anywhere she is, it’s obvious this is a total Psycho knockoff…
The kills are fun and bloody, plus we get dark halls, thunder and lightning, a blackout, candlelight, and a feral man chained up in the basement. It’s an odd, low budget, crappy film that is so perfectly a product of its time that I can’t help but love it.
WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1991)
It feels like this remake was a studio’s plan to cash-in on the success of Misery by giving a classic film a modern update with the novel addition of actual sisters in the roles made famous by Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
Lynn Redgrave plays the evil sister, and Vanessa Redgrave plays the wheelchair-bound sister. At the very beginning of the movie, despite the fact that Lynn looks ridiculously clownish and Vanessa looks beautiful, the sisters appear to have a very civil relationship.
That changes fast after two visits trigger Lynn’s resentment of her more successful actress sister (in the movie, not in real life). There’s Vanessa’s caring physical therapist, as well as horror queen Amy Steel, who plays a curious/bordering on pushy new neighbor who wants to meet Vanessa, the big star, but is turned away by Lynn. It feels like the plot had bigger plans for Amy’s character, but they were perhaps scrapped. She is very present for the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie but then completely disappears from the script after.
While Lynn looks clownish, she plays the role much more sinister and less campy than Bette did. Like Misery, this remake highlights the clinical, mental illness of the psycho sister. As soon as the first two visitors drop by, Lynn snaps and puts worms in Vanessa’s sandwich.
This seems to be the shocker moment to replace the rat scene. There is a rat scene later on, but it’s so cartoonish and Vanessa’s reaction to it is so indifferent that I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a fake rat.
Adding to the mix is John Glover as a video store clerk who wants to take advantage of the former fame of the sisters. He plays into Lynn’s ego, and she goes along with his plan to give her an act at a club. This is where things get really weird and grossly portrays gay men—in a remake of a movie incredibly popular with gay men. What the hell? Glover is painted as a predatory photographer who exploits under age boys, and he also messes with Lynn’s mind by dressing in drag to appear on stage with her as Vanessa without warning her he’s going to do it.
Compared to the original, Baby Jane’s creepy doll aspect is all but removed, but her treatment of her sister is more severe. There are also a few kills that are nicely updated to be more savage. There could have been one more if they had bothered to bring back Amy Steel to poke around out of concern for Vanessa’s whereabouts in the final act, which seems to be implied early on but is then completely dropped.
FULL ECLIPSE (1993)
This cheesy action werewolf flick is such a product of its time—an HBO movie that soon made its way to VHS rental, and it come from the director of both Waxwork movies, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, Hellraiser III, and Warlock: The Armageddon. Awesome. Smack dab in the middle of my days working at the video store. If you lived through the 80s and 90s, you will recognize several pop culture phrases from the time sprinkled throughout the film.
Mario Van Peebles is a sexy cop. He has never looked as sexy as he does in this movie. He and his partner immediately get in an awesome shootout in a night club. The partner is shot, but then shows up back at work as good as new. This leads to another awesome action sequence complete with a car chase and the partner demonstrating some amazing agility.
Mario is soon invited to a group meeting by a detective therapist. Before long, a female member of the group is seducing Mario into joining their “pack”, which leads to a sex scene and a slight werewolf transformation. Oh, how I miss sex scenes in movies. Meanwhile, for whatever reason, the female werewolf makes a silly werecat snarl rather than growling like the male werewolves. So sexist (aka: so 90s).
Mario becomes part of their werewolf vigilante justice team, taking down criminals on the street, but there’s more to it, and their leader definitely has something up his sleeve. The movie does drag for a while, but in the final sequence we get a hokey, totally awesome werewolf transformation at last, plus a cool battle between Mario and the werewolf leader.
