Monday, March 7, 2011

MIRACLE MILE (1988)

Los Angeles, California.  Anthony Edwards is suppose to pick up his waitress girlfriend, Mare Winningham, after she gets off work at the diner at midnight. The power goes out, so he oversleeps and by the time he gets to the diner she's long gone. He calls her from a payphone and leaves a message. The phone rings and he answers it, except it's not his gf, but instead some dude who's raving like a maniac and screaming in code about nuclear war. Anthony is really disturbed by the phone call and goes back inside the diner. As fate would have it, a government worker is inside and when she hears about the phone call she freaks out and starts making frantic phone calls on her gigantic mobile phone. Is it just a prank call or is it real? Either way, it sets off a snowballing chain of events that's fairly exciting.

The story idea is fantastic, but unfortunately the budget looked to be pretty low, the 1980's special effects are extremely dated, the casting was weak, there's hardly any violence and the tension was zero.  Interesting movie that's still worth watching if you've into nuclear war stories.  I think with a bigger budget, the right director and a much darker script MIRACLE MILE could be remade into a blockbuster thriller or a limited series on HBO.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME (1981)

The filmmakers should thank the person who came up with that poster concept/art for every dollar this film made.

The coolest kids at school, "The Top Ten", are disappearing one-by-one. What could it be? Aliens? Wookalars? Zombie hummingbirds pecked out their eyes and now they can't find their way to school?  Maybe they're just falling asleep due to the boring script?  Nope, it's some butthole killing them because of some dumb reason. Honestly, it doesn't matter, because by the time you get to the end you'll be 99 and 44/100% asleep. Not because it's a horrible movie, just a long-winded one that has zero idea what a slasher movie audience wants. A slasher audience wants insane violence, hot nudity, blood, gore, a fun story and a badass killer. HBTM has none of those things. There's very little violence, the killer is weak, zero nudity, only a handful of blood, weak gore and the story is overly complicated.

Not a bad watch, but nothing to get excited about either. As far as early 80's slashers go, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME is watchable and fun to laugh at, but average.
He bet somebody $20 he could make that jump. Totally worth it.