Showing posts with label Brion James. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brion James. Show all posts

Saturday, May 7, 2016

RED HEAT (1988)

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Russian cop sent to America to accompany a wanted drug runner (Ed O'Ross), who was arrested in Chicago, back to Russia. Shit happens, the bad guy escapes and now it's up to Arnold and his wise-cracking American partner Jim Belushi to catch this asshole.

As far as buddy cop movies go, RED HEAT is disappointingly straightforward.  Arnold's character is too silent and Terminator-ish and Belushi's character, while he does get a few small laughs, is way too serious and jaded.  The whole thing would have been better if their partnership dynamic was more like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Arnold in TRUE LIES.

Slow pace, needlessly complicated story, lackluster action scenes, boring ending, unfunny jokes about human rights violations, very little onscreen chemistry between Belushi and Arnold, limp topless scenes.

I wanted to like this film but it just wasn't my cup of vodka. Still, it's worth watching, just nothing to get overly excited about.
In the picture above (and below) the glass breaks before being touched.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

BLUE SUNSHINE (1978)

Uhhhh, yeah.  I didn't care for this movie.  The story - random people who took a special type of LSD (Blue Sunshine) 10 years ago are now suddenly losing their hair before going on a murderous rampage - is a great idea for a film, but the execution is boring.

A dude is chilling at a party when another dude goes all Party Pooper level 1,000 and starts stuffing people into the fireplace.  Needless to say, the party is over and the original dude ends up fighting the other guy to the death and then running away.  Now on the run and blamed for four brutal murders, he starts investigating exactly why that dude suddenly went bonkers.  (If the police really wanted to catch him all they would have to do is tail his girlfriend, because he's constantly meeting her and another doctor friend of his.)  Anyway, the dude eventually learns about the LSD and how it's connected to a up-and-coming politician who used to be a drug dealer.  In my head, I was thinking the finale of the film would be the politician going ape shit during a big campaign rally and yanking off his hair on live TV before killing people in front of the whole world, but...no.  Instead, the real ending is so anti-climactic that I was actually surprised that that really was The End!  It was laughable.

Anyway, BLUE SUNSHINE is a interesting time capsule into late-70's low-budget horror, but honestly it was pretty boring. I'd love to see a violent and demented as fook remake. Somebody give me some cash and I'll write it.