Brainscan

Brainscan

1994

Dir; John Flynn

"Wanna play? I dare you"

Post T2 Edward Furlong gets the worlds greatest computer game through the post and goes on a killing spree to celebrate.

To say that I wish I lived in this movie would be an absolute understatement. It is a world in which teenagers are left to their own devices, lame 8-bit computers can interact with humans, chicks like nothing more than secretly photographing boys reading Fangoria in their bedrooms and really awesome things are sent to you through the mail. Somebody find me a computer game that sucks me into this reality please.

A still compos mentis Edward Furlong (seriously, have you seen this guy recently? He looks like he spent the last 10 years bathing in a bath of crack and aids) stars as Michael, a teenager with the coolest bedroom in movie history. His computer talks to him, he answers the phone by saying "talk to me" and hangs it up by saying "later", his walls are covered with old horror movie posters, he even has a picture of Alice Cooper on his fridge! Whenever Michael looks out of his bedroom window he see's boobies which he naturally videos. The boobies in question belong to Kimberly (Amy Hargreaves), who along with Kyle, his best bud, appear to be Michael's only semblance of friendship. It is Kyle (James Marsh) who introduces Michael to the new video game, Brainscan, which he naturally finds in the classified section of Fangoria magazine.

Kyle personifies 1994 with aplomb. He seems to start and finish every sentence with the word "dude" and rocks a ludicrous post cock rock fashion aesthetic mixed with some even more ludicrous grunge plaids. Basically he is the best friend everyone should have. Michael and Kyle's friendship is the real deal, neither of them will get off the phone until both have repeated the catchphrase, "buddies forever".

Michael orders himself a copy of Brainscan and heads off to school where his free period is spent watching a film called "Death, Death, Death Part 2" with his horror club buddies (one of whom wears a monster mask for the occasion). The school principle is not impressed and compares the movie to a "pornographic sex film". He insists that in the future all horror club movies have to be screened by him first. A rule he will live to regret soon enough.

Michael receives his Brainscan package and, that evening, whilst he watches Kimberly and her friends partying to the sound of Rob Zombie's half arsed white rapping he decides to give it a whirl. The game is made up of four challenges, all of which involve him planning and carrying out the perfect murder. Michael carries out the first challenge by murdering a Kelsey Grammar lookalike with a carving knife and stealing his foot as a memento whilst synth industrial jams fart annoyingly in the background. Inevitably the next day Michael finds that the man from the game has actually been murdered and his worst suspicions are confirmed when he finds the disembodied foot in his fridge freezer.

Without warning, a character from the game called "The Trickster" (an awesome T.Ryder Smith), appears from Michael's TV. He sports a lovely velvet sports jacket and shiny PVC trouser combination. He has the face of Sloth and the hair of Toyah. He makes Michael listen to Primus whilst he does a spazz dance on a table before exclaiming "no country and western please, every man has his limits". I think we can all empathize with that. The Trickster electrocutes himself and breaks his own fingers to prove he is loyal to Michael. He also tells him that he needs to play the game again because he left a witness behind. Michael agrees and this time when he finishes the game it is Kyle's necklace that he finds in the fridge freezer. His newest victim was, indeed, his "buddy forever".

Bad ass Detective Hayden (Frank Langella) already has his eye on the "weird" and "frightening" Michael (because he is, well, weird and frightening) but when his best friend becomes a murder victim his interest is piqued and he heads over to question him. Michael acts like a guilty man. Whilst the police are questioning our hero, the Trickster is busy making a mess of his bedroom and eating a frozen chicken. He convinces Michael to go back into the game by giving him an amazingly negative pep-talk in which he basically just lists all of his bad points. Michael believes that he is only going into the game to get rid of a footprint left at Kyle's house but he actually becomes responsible for the death of a member of worlds most bad ass neighborhood watch team who are out looking for the killer. Michael see's Valerie on his way home from the killing making her the final witness to be knocked off.

Of course, Michael doesn't want to go back into the game and kill Valerie, otherwise whose boobs would he oggle on those long, lonely winter nights? Again, the Trickster convinces him to go but when he gets into Valerie's bedroom he cannot carry out the deed. The Trickster unsuccessfully tries to convince him to follow through on the murder by eating Michael's head in a terrible CGI sequence.

Michael wakes up to find that the entire experience has been a part of the game. He is so upset that he smashes up his bedroom in slow motion. This means that the party next door is still going on and that Kyle is still alive enough to call Michael a "dick lick" before the pair head over to Kimberly's to join in the festivities. The next day at school Michael tells the principle that he plans on showing his horror film club the Brainscan game. The principle insists on reviewing the material before hand and as Michael leaves the office we see the Trickster relaxing into the principles office chair, ready to take him on the ride of his life.

This underrated doozy of a film is very highly recommended. Edward Furlong isn't as annoying as you'd expect in the lead role and the set design and digital effects are very atmospheric. The films score, by George Clinton (no, not THAT George Clinton!) is very effective, mixing John Carpenter synths with Twin Peaks atmospherics, its just a shame that the soundtrack is about as lame as you would expect from the era (Tad and Mudhoney being the exceptions). I think if you've ever been a teenage boy you're going to have a good time with this movie, particularly if you were a teenage boy in 1994 (which, thankfully, I was). The evil video game plot was a relatively new idea at the time and the entire game within a movie is executed very effectively. If you haven't caught this one yet, I'd advise you to seek it out.

Dollman

Dollman

1991

Dir; Albert Pyun

"Thirteen inches... With an attitude"

The worlds tiniest bad ass gets dumped in the South Bronx and becomes a member of the local Neighbourhood Watch

Keeping with type, director Albert Pyun makes another failed attempt to fuse together two disparate movie genres with underwhelming results, (see also, Radioactive Dreams for his attempts to mate Film noir and Mad Max making a right fucking mess of a child). Here we have a largely unsuccessful mixture of futurist science fiction and hard boiled inner city drama with an idea so incredibly ludicrous that we should probably add "comedic" to the start of one of those descriptions despite the fact that there is nothing funny about this shit sandwich. Pyun really has earned his reputation as a modern day Ed Wood Jr, churning out numerous cinematic wonder turds, each idea crazier and less likely to work than the last.

Here, Mr Pyun thought it appropriate to take a hard boiled, no nonsense cop from a far away planet who speaks exclusively in an intense whisper, shrink him down to 13 inches and send him to the South Bronx to have some shoot outs with a racially confused drug gang. Although the idea could be good fun, the film lacks a certain amount cohesion in its tone, neither playing it too seriously or accepting its true fate and playing up the laughs. Overall, the production values are acceptable for this level of film although it is occasionally let down by atrocious green screen effects which are timed badly and poorly lighted. Its a shame because hidden behind the nonsense there is a vaguely enjoyable movie trying to get out.

The film opens on the far away planet of Arturous, 10000 light years away from Earth. The planet looks like a noir netherworld, its sepia tones and futuristic cityscape provide a really effective atmosphere only broken by the occasional nugget of shit dialogue. A man with a complexion so white and a jew-fro so voluminous that he looks like an albino clown is being chased by the police. He hides out in a laundromat where he stumbles across a gang of fat middle american women and children and exclaims "oh my god, I'm so angry with my life". He takes the chunkers hostage and forces them to stand around him in a circle to give him a full ton of human shield. The police officer outside (whose name is Captain Starburst for christ sake!) decides he needs to bring in the Mayor for some reason who insists on giving the criminal all of his demands because he doesn't think a pile of dead fat ladies is going to help him get re-elected. The plan goes awry when Brick Bardo (Tim Tomerson) arrives on the scene.

Brick is a suspended cop who appears from nowhere. He is a dead ringer for a middle aged Dee Dee Ramone and has a very filthy mouth. He wears a lovely flat top. When asked how he is going to tackle the situation he reply's "I'm gonna use hot water for my whites" before going into the Laundromat and completing a full cycle of washing under the gaze of the hostages. The criminal is not impressed so Brick threatens to shoot him through a fat lady. This makes the whole crowd panic and fall over crushing the criminal under flabby woman meat. As Brick leaves the scene, the Mayor is so angry he tells him to "take off those sunglasses, its night" which is probably the most sensible thing anyone says throughout the entire movie.

For no apparent plot development reasons Brick is framed for the deaths of some of the fat ladies, he seems as uninterested in this as the writers obviously were because it is not mentioned again. He returns to his futuristic apartment where he is accosted and kidnapped by Sprug (Frank Collinson's head) who plans to kill him in revenge for Brick apparently shooting his body off in some previous escapade. Brick refuses to go down without a fight. His gun literally makes men blow up. The effects in this scene are very effective, gore explodes across the screen and body parts splat across the rocks. Sprug gets in a rocket and flies away with Brick close on his tail. The pair both fly through a black hole and end up landing in the South Bronx, unscathed but inexplicably tiny in comparison to the natives.

In another very effective sequence the South Bronx is introduced in a montage and is painted as an urban wasteland. We see a collage of Tenement blocks, prostitutes, a homeless man wearing a plastic bag on his head, graffitied walls and Mexican gang bangers. The sequence has a rain soaked ambiance to it which really does feel depressing and gritty. Sadly all this good work is undone when Braxton Red (Jackie Earl Haley), the worlds whitest Mexican gang lord, is introduced carrying a machine gun which could have been a left over prop from Apocalypse Now. His character is so out of place within the context of the genuinely gritty surrounds that he feels like a comic book villain stuck onto a Polaroid with a prit stick. Despite this, I have to take my hat off to Haley, who puts on a genuinely convincing and unstable performance considering his character description must have read "white child with mullet who runs a Mexican gang". His performance is enhanced even more by the cardboard blockhead he has to act against.

Inevitably, Sprug gets friendly with the drug dealers whilst Bardo gets friendly with the local neighbourhood watch. The community group is led by annoying busy body Debi Alejandro (Kamala Lopez) who, if his legs and penis were longer, Brick would surely like to get busy with. She gets beaten up by the drug gang but is saved by Brick so she takes him and his tiny spaceship home with her. As she walks along the road with it Brick wobbles around inside in comedy fast forward. Once home, Brick has to put up with Debi's annoying child and his friend Gerald, who comes over to fiddle around with Bricks spaceship. Brick uses his most intense whisper yet to mutter "back away Gerald". Debi goes out to her job at the local toxic waste factory where her boss gives her shit because she refused to "go to the Guns and Roses concert" with him.

Whilst our hero is getting settled in his new pad Sprug and his new found friends head back to the gangs drug den where some women in bra's are counting large sums of money. Sprug and Braxton make an agreement to help each other take over the world but first they need to do away with Brick, or Dollman as he's being referred to by the local, apparently unsurprisable, Bronx residents (they don't seem bothered to see a 13 inch man angrily walking around on Debi's kitchen table). Sprug has a "Dimensional Fusion Bomb" which he would like to use. Unfortunately as soon as he hands it over to the gang, Braxton squishes him into mush and decides to go and kidnap Debi to lure Brick to his lair.

Brick goes to save Debi. He finds the gang and stealthily crawls through a very muddy drain pipe, coming out the other end looking like a minstrel. His tiny gun doesn't do quite as much damage on Earth as it did on Arturous but he still quickly dispenses with most of the gang bangers. He calls Braxton a "fucking puke" and a "sack of puss" but silly liberal Debi doesn't want anymore blood shed on her hands so she stops Brick from finishing him off. This gives Braxton a chance to set off the Dimensional Fusion Bomb which sends them all back to the planet Artuous.

Once there Brick and Debi's sexual organs are of a somewhat equal size. Hazzah!

Leprechaun

Leprechaun

1993

Dir; Mark Jones

"Your luck just ran out"

Rachel from Friends gets chased around a bit by Willow.

Future big shit, Jennifer Aniston, stars in this surprisingly competent and occasionally spooky little horror movie about a disgruntled Leprechaun who is willing to go to any lengths necessary to find his lost pot of gold. The film opens as big suited, mock oi-rish Dan O'Grady (Shay Duffin) drunkenly returns home to his unimpressed wife with a bag of gold coins which he claims to have taken from a Leprechaun. O'Grady celebrates his new found wealth by getting a lift home in a limo. His celebrations are cut short when the films namesake (Warrick Davis, the busiest dwarf in show business) comes to get his pot of gold back.

A genuinely scary moment introduces Davis' character as an eerie child's voice calls to O'Grady from inside an old suitcase and the tension slowly builds as he walks towards it and starts to unlock its clasps. The tension quickly ends, of course, when a tiny man in ladies shoes pops out of the case and starts wisecracking with the old man. The Leprechaun kills O'Grady's wife and has bad intentions for O'Grady too if he doesn't give him back his pot of gold. Luckily, the old man has a handy four leaf clover and manages to lock the evil little bugger up in a crate.

Fast forward 10 years and the Leprechaun remains imprisoned in the crate. That is, until father and daughter duo JD and Tory (a pre-op Jennifer Aniston) start sticking their noses where they don't belong. Tory is a rich bitch from LA, her father has apparently bought her the O'Grady house so that she can learn about the real world and gain some valuable life lessons (like money isn't everything and Leprechauns are bad). The house is an absolute mess of joke shop cobwebs and creaky floor boards. Tory disagrees with her fathers tough(ish) love and wants to take herself to the nearest hotel and get back to LA as quickly as possible. Her attitude soon changes when she runs into Nathan, a local part red neck, part male model type who sports an attractive Lady Diana haircut and Keep The Fath era Bon Jovi wardrobe and dead eye combination.

Nathan is one third of "3 Guys That Paint", a decorating team who have been hired to help make the old house liveable for Tory (so much for all that tough love). The other two guys that paint are Nathans 12 year old brother Alex and a simpleton by the name of Ozzie (Mark Holton who had long been an expert at playing fat men-children, most notably as Pee Wee Herman's nemesis, Francis, in Pee Wee's Big Adventure). Tory thinks that guys that paint houses are "weird and strange". She reminds them that "this is the 90's" before changing into a pair of high tops and stone washed denim short shorts. Inevitably our gang stumble across the crate that O'Grady left in his basement and let the Leprechaun out. Then the real fun begins.

Ozzie and Alex find the "pot" of gold (which is actually a bag of gold, presumably because a pot was just out of budget). Wacky old Ozzie decides to eat one of the coins. Alex tells him that they can sell the lot and use the money to get Ozzie an operation to fix his brain. Ozzie just wants to use it to buy comic books. Unaware of the discovery, Nathan is busy teaching Tory how to paint the house, he does this by dry humping her bottom whilst she does all the hard work. He claims to be impressed with her "nice even strokes". Tory's father seems less impressed by his daughters burning loins but soon forgets when the Leprechaun appears and bites him on the hand.

The mildly comedic slaughter is ready to begin. The Leprechaun threatens to bite Ozzie's ear off and make a pair of boots out of it. He bites a mans nose and then kills him by jumping on him repeatedly with a pogo stick. He breaks a police officers neck. He is given inumerous wheeled vehicles to ride, (a child's trike, a tiny sports car, a skateboard, roller skates, and, the real money shot, a wheel chair). He rides them all in comedy fast forward.

With all the killing that's going on, Tory and the "three guys that paint" lock themselves away in the house. Nathan gets his denim clad leg caught in a bear trap and has an amazing sit down punch up with the Leprechaun. At a glance it looks as if Jon Bon Jovi is having a fist fight with a toddler. The gang try to get away in a pick up truck but the Leprechaun somehow manages to turn it over by driving a child's toy car into the side of it. The gang get out without a scratch. Tory hands the gold over hoping that it will placate our little evil friend but there is a coin missing (the one that Ozzie ate earlier). Rather than waiting for him to shit it out like any reasonable person, the Leprechaun decides he's going to cut it out. In the process he grabs Nathans balls and performs an impressive skateboard routine along a hallway.

Tory goes to see old man O'Grady, who now lives in the local nursing home, to find out how to kill the Leprechaun. When she arrives, the old man is not in his bedroom and instead she finds the Leprechaun riding around in fast forward in that wheelchair. Tory manages to get away and into an elevator where, without reason, Old Man Grady's bloody face smashes through the ceiling. With his last few breaths he tells Tory to find herself a four leaf clover. She rushes back to the house where Nathan's bear trap inflicted limp is becoming less and less pronounced. The gang find a four leafed clover amazingly quickly. Alex produces a slingshot and fires the clover into the Leprechauns face with the immortal line "fuck you, lucky charms". Our titular hero proceeds to melt, fall in a well and get blown up for good measure.

This is a fun film, plain and simple. There's not a lot of characterization going on, some of the performances are a little wooden and nonsensical plot twists are the rule of thumb here but there are a couple of genuinely creepy moments early on, the Leprechaun is a great character and the mixture of horror and comedy is pitched just at the right level.

We can see flashes of why Jennifer Aniston's career skyrocketed shortly after this film came out. She is likeable, if a little wooden in the role of Tory and, in fairness, she isn't given much to work with. There are suggestions of the rich bitch, big city girl character (she threatens to leave a couple of times, she asks for a water cress salad and bottle of Evian in a redneck bar and describes Nathans Meat loaf as a "cut up dead cow") but shes far too nice and far too capable to fully encompass this type of character (she plays nurse without batting an eyelid and never acts superior to the other characters in the film, even the simpleton). Without doubt, this is Davis' film, he hams up the Leprechaun character with absolute glee and the screen lights up every time his little legs pigeon step into view. The Leprechaun make-up is very effective, his dialogue never gets overly tedious and watching him drive things in fast forward never gets old. Its no wonder that Davis returned for five further sequels (in the years following this movies release the Leprechaun would get to go into space and hang out with Ice T in the 'hood).

Director, Mark Jones, would go on to gain writing credits for a number of the Leprechaun sequels and would also return to the directors chair two years later for "Rumplestiltskin" also starring Davis. The franchise may not be dead yet either, with rumors of an upcoming "Leprechaun Vs Chucky" (god help us all) proving that there might still be life in the little fella yet.

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

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