Robert A. Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters (1994)

Timing is everything.  If you snooze, you lose.  Two well worn clichés that perfectly apply to the sad fate of Robert A. Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters.

The granddaddy of literal alien invasion stories, the original novel was published in 1951.  Two years later, Body Snatchers was unveiled.  Unlike Puppet Masters, it was quickly adapted into a feature film in 1956.  Shot in beautiful black and white (which really pops on Blu-ray), it proved highly influential and spawned three additional remakes of varying quality, Abel Ferrara’s 1994 interpretation being the best of the updates.

How long did it take to make a movie about The Puppet Masters?  Try 43 years.

Released by Disney’s Hollywood Pictures imprint in the fall of 1994, it’s an ironic johnny-come-lately, the oldest of all these fictional tales but the last to get the big screen treatment.  Fair or not, it pales dramatically to its more celebrated imitators.

Eric Thal, who had a breakthrough performance in A Stranger Among Us 30 years ago, plays a secret government agent not unlike Fox Mulder.  His dad, well-coiffed and tailored Donald Sutherland with his neatly trimmed snow white beard, is his soft-spoken boss.  He’s supposed to be a hard-ass with a long history of being tough on his son resulting in lingering tensions between them but it certainly doesn’t feel that way, even during the one moment they both raise their voices at each other.  (They’re not screamers.  Sutherland hates that.)

That’s a big problem with this movie.  It’s quite dull.  There’s not a lot of excitement or tension.  (There’s way too much emphasis on explaining the science.) And again, a lot of that has to do with its now exceedingly familiar conceit.  We’ve been here many times before.  We know how good a concept like this can work when done correctly.

Whereas Heinlein’s novel was mostly set in the future and even involves scenes on Venus, the movie version is set in the present and restricts everything to Earth.

We begin with three young boys who make a shocking discovery.  We’re in a small town in Iowa.  They’ve spotted something unusual in the woods.  Shortly thereafter, they’re attracting tourists from all over. 

That’s a rather suspicious-looking spacecraft they’ve found.  They charge you a buck to come see it.  You can even take photos with it.  It costs you another to go inside.  You shouldn’t do that.  Hundreds have already made that mistake.

Thal and Sutherland, with their low-key estrangement on display, recruit Dr. Julie Warner for the trip to see the display.  This is her area of expertise even though much of her work is speculative.  Law & Order alumnus, the chain-smoking Richard Belzer, a fellow agent, is their designated driver.

Upon arriving, Warner knows something’s off.  No one is looking down her top or sexually harassing her.  (Jeez-a-lou.  Shouldn’t she be relieved not to be play defense for once?)  And when she decides to pay the extra dollar to look inside, she’s reluctant to explore any further.

As they leave, Thal, Sutherland & Warner all agree the ship is fake, it’s what’s inside that’s potentially alarming.  And what is eventually revealed inside?  A bunch of alien parasites just waiting to attach themselves to your brain.

They look like more advanced stingrays that can survive out of the water and swing like Spider-Man when in danger, which comes very close to looking very cheesy.  To merge with humans, they extend what looks like a sharp umbilical cord to your neck.  Whereas our brains only make up 5% of our bodies, theirs is 60%.  Once attached, it’s like getting a shot of heroin.  If you wear glasses, you won’t need ‘em anymore.  And if you’re like Belzer, you won’t be applying that nicotine patch.  Watch out for the withdrawals when you’re separated, though.

What brings our heroes to this location is a local news report that ends up being fully retracted.  An encounter with the very sweaty news director backs up their suspicions.  Sure enough, after subduing him, there’s that pesky alien right on his back.

Character actor Will Patton, who’s actually quite handsome here, plays the awestruck scientist who can’t quite get over the alien parasite’s intricate, sophisticated design, much to the amusement of the eventually admiring Keith David, a military pal of Thal’s. 

Unlike The Hidden, where only one rather large slug-like being manages to survive by switching bodies going mouth to mouth (a super creepy bit), there’s a whole slew of these things hoping to colonize the entire state of Iowa.  And that’s just for starters.

In the meantime, Sutherland warns his superiors about the rapidly spreading threat and how they need to shut this shit down.  There’s a scene where the aliens manage to corrupt a Secret Service guy (the villain from Dirty Harry, actually) who comes very close to pulling off what Donald Trump still dreams of achieving.

Inevitably, most of the main players will get corrupted by these invaders, including high ranking members of the military.  As Warner warms to Thal, especially after she sees him naked in the shower, there’s a moment where a make-out session between them gets a little out of hand.  (Not so wise to let your cat come and go from your open apartment window in the middle of an alien invasion.)

Watching this in the time of Covid, you see uncomfortable parallels.  Government incompetence, lockdowns that happen far too late to make a real difference, the naked vulnerabilities of American systems.  But there’s also hope.  First, you can survive a detachment as long as you’re not blasted by gunfire or can handle not feeling fabulous for a while.

Second, the key to ultimately beating these insidious beasts is to find a human disease that only kills them off.  No need for a vaccine, after all.

In the decades since Heinlein’s novel first appeared, many films have explored the terrain he first laid out. Besides The Hidden and the Body Snatchers franchise, it’s also hard not to think of the Alien movies which captured that sense of paranoia in confining spaces so much more effectively.  And who could ever forget how those phallac-headed creatures procreate?  There’s no such money shot in this movie unless you consider two stingrays shaking hands while transferring knowledge of their hosts to each other profoundly shocking.

Like Aliens, Puppet Masters feels more like an action movie but with far less dramatic intensity.  A whole bunch of extras get gunned down and infected citizens start walking around acting like humanoids.  How is this thrilling?

The movie does that predictable thing where they make you think everything’s fine again but there’s still ten minutes to go and they haven’t really resolved the father/son story.  Sutherland’s character walks with a cane which is never explained and doesn’t really look believable anyway.  When he suddenly starts striding on the sidewalk like a confident gazelle and hijacks that helicopter, Thal turns into Jackie Chan. 

But the overuse of chroma key is instantly noticeable (that’s clearly a stunt guy in the more distant second-unit shots). In the end, the pay-off feels very anticlimactic.  Everything concludes a little too neat and tidy.

I wonder what Heinlein, who died six years before the film’s release, would’ve thought of his name being part of the title.  I can’t imagine he’d be pleased, especially with all the significant cuts and changes to his original story.  And about the villains, surely, I can picture him grumbling, they could’ve come up with something far scarier than flying placentas.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, January 21, 2022
3:00 a.m.

Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon

It’s been said many times before but it bears repeating once again. It’s impossible to make fun of a movie that already has a sense of humour. So, why not turn your sardonic gaze elsewhere?

The strongest targets for satire have always been the over serious, the pretentious, the arrogant, the oppressive, the obnoxious, the oblivious, the truly evil. Making powerful people mad is good business. God knows we need more of it.

When it comes to horror films, self-deprecation, whether intentional or not, is built into the DNA. Also, as Roger Ebert pointed out countless times in his writing, when an audience collectively shrieks and screams at an effective scare, they immediately laugh at their own absurd reaction. Comedy and horror are often inseparable, on-screen and off.

One horror subgenre that seems to get made fun of more than any other is the slasher film and the only good examples I can think of offhand are the delightful Scream and its surprisingly sharp follow-up Scream 2 although I would argue they are as deadly serious as they are amusing.

This is why Scary Movie didn’t click for me. It has a few laughs, sure, but it generally has a difficult time trying to poke fun at a franchise that is already zinging itself. Even though its four sequels expanded its targets for ridicule, the result was the same. You can’t heckle a heckler unless your jokes are better.

As the popularity of slasher flicks has continually waxed and waned through the decades, long after its overlong “Golden Age” in the late 70s and early 80s, more self-parodies have emerged.

Midway through the remake bonanza of the mid-2000s, the independent Anchor Bay Films produced two of the worst.

There was the abysmal Hatchet reveling in its excessive murder scenes while also bombing as a dark comedy (and yet also inspiring three more dreadful chapters). And then there’s the overrated Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon which also tries to have it both ways without taking us anywhere new, as those who saw Man Bites Dog can attest.

Starting off with a conventional stalking scene on a dark and stormy night, it then shifts straight into full-on shockumentary mode as we meet a very stupid young college reporter named Taylor (Angela Goethals), her equally gullible crew members and the charmless subject of their story, a bland fashion model version of a serial killer gleefully seeking a media push because apparently his crimes aren’t yet worthy of network TV coverage. Only student broadcasters are willing to tolerate him.

Right from the beginning, we know he is full of shit to a certain degree. But Taylor either can’t see it or is unwilling to probe deeper. When she does ask about his reasoning, he demurs. He’ll tell us the how, but never the why. Frankly, I didn’t give a shit. He’s not good company. Hannibal Lecter cut creepier promos. And why would I warm to someone who stalks, tortures and kills women?

The movie seems to suggest at times a possible, inappropriate attraction as one way to explain why this otherwise repulsed woman continues to work on her doomed story but never explores it that much further which considering the lack of sophistication here is probably a relief. There is one moment where the team can simply drive away and never look back. An exit is offered. The killer, always strategizing well ahead of time, is counting on the success of his reverse psychology. He is right to feel confident about it. He’s dealing with nimrods.

The thing is it’s fairly obvious what he’s up to. And the supposed big twists are fairly predictable.

Following a very familiar playbook, Leslie Vernon takes the film crew out with him as he demonstrates how he picks a potential victim. He’s not exactly discreet. The high school student he spots from his vehicle catches his gaze and freezes in disbelief. But it doesn’t really matter. He’s already selected someone else, another young woman, a waitress he messes with in the opening scene.

This generic killer seems to have a fondness for cliche and convention. He hopes the girl he wants to murder surrounds herself with the usual archetypes like pretty boy jocks and hopeless stoners to help pad his numbers. She does not disappoint. He also hopes she is a virgin because as was drilled into all of us back in those days, “slutty” people don’t survive, although this film thinks just having sex in general is grounds for shaming, while the non-sexual, for whatever illogical reason, are impossible to knock off. Clearly unsatisfied with just administering easy kills, he needlessly makes his job more difficult because he finds a challenge like this far more stimulating. Or maybe he has a death wish.

That said, Vernon’s motivation for all of this is somewhat murky. Like more well-known slashers, he’s not a rapist. But he will attack while you’re in the middle of getting busy, Jason’s trademark. (Michael Myers was more patient and preferred eliminating victims one at a time after they fucked, although he was a voyeur.)

Vernon asserts some cock and bull about wanting to provide a “counterbalance” to the good in the world but that’s an empty soundbite masquerading as insight. Taylor asks him while he’s preparing his make-up if he’s in love with his chosen Survivor Girl since his retired friend Eugene (Scott Taylor), who he turns to for advice, married his. (Yeah, I didn’t get it, either.)

He’s not in love with the waitress per se, he’s in love with what she could represent to his story, the one who could either stop him, get away clean or be the most satisfying kill of them all. He’s so happy about his planned massacre, he weeps. He’s not funny in the slightest.

One of the best things about the original Halloween was its complete lack of interest in explaining the impulses of its villain. It didn’t have to. From showing his actions alone, it was clear that Michael Myers discovered at a very young age that killing people excited him. He had found his calling. He kept killing because he wanted to relive the high of murdering his sister, his first victim, hence the scene where her stolen tombstone is put right next to another victim’s body on an upstairs bed so Jamie Lee Curtis will get the message loud and clear. This will never stop.

It also had some very big laughs like the scene where a mischievous Dr. Loomis, the obvious blueprint for Englund’s crusading shrink, scares off some trick-or-treaters who make the mistake of calling on the abandoned Myers place. That impish grin on his face sells the joke beautifully.

In contrast, the tone of Behind The Mask feels completely off. It veers violently from bad comedy to mostly restrained horror back and forth repeatedly and poorly. (One scene relies completely on off-camera sound effects and is more appalling than anything shown, aside from the stoner being handed his own heart to eat.) There’s no confidence in the material, especially when the shockumentary portion is retired and the film reverts back to being the formulaic slasher crapfest it always wanted to be.

Wes Craven’s stomach socker The Last House On The Left got the balance right but in a different way. In between the disturbing moments are funny clips of the sheriff and his deputy hauling ass to try to get to the scene of the final massacre. Craven, who wrote most of his own films, had good instincts about where to drop in his own jokes as did Kevin Williamson in his own fine screenplays for the first two Screams. No such luck in Behind The Mask.

Vernon goes so far as to literally map out his planned massacre to Taylor who accepts it all without question. She would fit right in on CNN.

Like other infamous cinematic monsters, this Joker wannabe lives to preemptively and psychologically torture his victims. There’s a scene where he’s gone to the trouble of doctoring and delivering a photocopy of a real news article from the early 70s to the unsuspecting waitress in a public library. But for some reason, he’s also added a fake photo of her which goes completely unnoticed.

As it turns out, Leslie Vernon himself is a fake. Yes, he’s a killer but he’s so derivative with his goofy mask and standard backstory of being a troubled child in the care of a shrink who can’t cure him he needs to co-opt an existing narrative from another killer to make him more interesting and to give him a safer escape route. Sadly, his new identity is just as dull. And that particular legend is full of holes. (They raised the rapist’s child and then made him a slave? And the townspeople were pissed at him for wanting to be free? Jesus.)

Suddenly appearing just after his potential Final Girl is completely caught up on the real background of that news article by the very knowledgeable librarian (high-voiced Poltergeist icon Zelda Rubinstein), Leslie is immediately confronted by his old nemesis, Doc Halloran (Robert Englund in a rare babyface role), who manages to ping him in the arm with his pistol. Leslie considers it a scar of honour. Why is he not annoyed with his constant meddling? This fucker is weird.

What a mistake to limit Englund’s screen time when his magnetic presence alone instantly improves the movie. There’s a scene in a diner where he directly confronts Taylor, who wants to alert the waitress of Leslie’s plans, and one of her cameramen, warning her about the deceptive subject of her shockumentary.

With a keen eye (he spots the hidden camera instantly), his good advice and well-earned insight is naturally ignored. Unlike his vaudevillain Freddy Krueger, this deadpan version of Englund is strictly a straight man and I was fine with that. (I found Freddy too likeable and silly.) It’s nice to see him play against type even though his role here is significantly reduced to a three-scene cameo.

The killer welcomes his presence because he needs an “Ahab”, a persistent rival willing to hunt him down. Really? He doesn’t have enough to do already? What, with the pre-massacre cardio (got to keep up with younger victims even though he himself is not very old), the deliberately sabotaged farm weapons (Taylor is clearly paying attention to that, at least), the rigged fuse, the hope that the story of the real Leslie Vernon will lure his next batch of victims to this abandoned farm house and the feeding of the insatiable student media beast? Is he that bored with his job that he needs to up the ante like this? Can you imagine Hannibal Lecter being this reckless?

That makes me wonder if the film would’ve worked better if Leslie was more of a clueless buffoon who didn’t know what he was doing instead of a methodical predator almost always a couple of steps ahead of these very dopey teenagers. Then again, judging by the lack of cutting one-liners here, probably not.

I can see why Behind The Mask got a very small theatrical release in 2007. It stinks. What I’m completely baffled by are the unusually enthusiastic reviews it received by most critics at the time. Let’s be real, ok? This is a total miss. It’s humourless horror junk more fitting for the video and streaming markets than your local cinema which probably didn’t even exhibit it because there appeared to be very little interest in a wide release.

The smarmy Nathan Baesel just isn’t seductive enough to keep an otherwise conflicted Taylor from leaving her potential career breakthrough behind. And once he goes mostly silent in the final leg, he goes back to being a stock character that doesn’t generate a lot of genuine heel heat. (He’s not exactly killing off characters we care about and his diabolical plans aren’t that special or unique.) True, there is a purpose behind his blathering (he’s all about the swerve) but you’d think the young journalist would be smart enough to catch on to it a lot faster rather then lay a risky trap only after belatedly figuring out how she ultimately figures into his plans.

Angela Goethals is a cutie with a credible news voice but her character is remarkably ignorant. Leslie has to hold her hand through pretty much everything that comes up in conversation when even a casual viewer knows what’s he going on about. She doesn’t catch the Moby Dick reference nor the “industry term” Survivor Girl. For someone who is fully aware of the histories of Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger, her line of questioning often feels stupidly redundant. She never catches Leslie off-guard because she’s rarely adversarial. (She’s too easily impressed and mesmerized to challenge blatant bullshit, not unlike her cohorts.) He’s always on message, even after he cops to his con.

Which brings me to the ending. I’ve seen enough slasher sequels to know villains don’t really die, even if they get burned to a crisp. (Apparently, this is all a “trade secret.” Oh, fuck off.) They always live on to squeeze more money out of a dead horse. And yet, we can be thankful that although Behind The Mask concludes with an opening for a future installment, fifteen years later, only the diehards are still waiting.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, January 16, 2022
2:54 a.m.

Freaky (2020)

A big graphic fills the screen at the start of Freaky.  “Wednesday The 11^th”, it blares in lettering suspiciously similar to a famous horror franchise.  I honestly thought this was going to be a fake parody within the actual movie.  But that turns out not to be the case.  No, more date graphics are coming.

On a late night outside a large mansion, a couple of teenage couples start talking about some seemingly mythical villain nicknamed The Blissfield Butcher and his annual slaughterfest.  Sure enough, when one of the nosy boys heads down to the basement he learns firsthand he’s very real indeed.  In fact, no one survives.

Shortly thereafter, we meet Millie (Kathryn Newton), a cute high school student who resembles a young Madonna.  A target for a whole slew of bullies, her only friends are obnoxious Joshua (Misha Osherovich) and uptight almond-eyed beauty Nyla (Celeste O’Connor).  There’s also Booker (Uriah Shelton), the football jock she secretly likes, a fellow classmate who secretly likes her in return.

Everybody else treats her like shit.  There’s Industrial Arts teacher Alan Ruck with his surprising Fu Manchu mustache and a bad attitude to match.  Even though her doghouse presentation isn’t due for another five days, he demands she deliver it today, Thursday The 12^th.  When she weeps in protest, he mocks her “crocodile tears”.

Then, there’s mean girl Melissa Colazo who shames her working class status.  (Millie’s Mom (Penelope Ann Miller doppelganger Katie Finneran) works at a dollar store.)  Finally, some of Booker’s teammates go out of their way to mock Millie during a football game.  Millie’s the team mascot, the Blissfield High Beaver.  Subtle.

Actually, she’s shamed for being both unfuckable (which is deeply insulting) and too slutty (as if there is such a thing).  She later discovers crude graffiti on a bathroom stall door that accuses her of being a “cock cobbler” which she protests she isn’t, not there’s anything wrong with being one. Those gals are fun.

After the game, when her drunken mom, unable to cope with the mysterious death of the family patriarch a year ago, accidentally takes a nap and forgets to pick her up at the stadium, there’s the suddenly appearing Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn) staring her down, knife in hand and curious mask on face.

The chase is on until they both find themselves on the field.  Employing an unusual antique knife stolen from the mansion in the first scene, one that appears to be haunted by voices from the beyond, he stabs Millie but both are affected.  Scared off by her big sister Charlene (Dana Drori), a deputy sheriff in this otherwise quiet small town, the Butcher flees and Millie is taken to the police station.

The next day, Friday The 13^th, Millie isn’t Millie.  She’s the Butcher.  As it turns out, when she was stabbed, there was a body swap.  It will be permanent if a repeat stabbing doesn’t happen before Midnight on the 14^th.

As The Butcher realizes some of the advantages of being a teenage girl, despite losing much of his imposing size and physical strength, Millie, in his body, wakes up in a weird location, is propositioned for drugs by a very desperate addict and will soon realize it’s not so easy being believed.

Eventually, after taking some punishment from her freaked out friends who remember what normally happens to gays and Blacks in horror films, Millie ultimately convinces Josh and Nyla to become her allies and protect her from the clutches of law enforcement who are actively searching for The Butcher.

Meanwhile, The Butcher in Millie’s body does her a huge series of solids by taking out a whole bunch of her enemies, including three football players who disgustingly appear to be on the verge of committing a gang rape, a troublesome scene I would’ve excised. 

Because the real Millie is so meek and docile, always unable to come up with a decent comeback to a snarky diss (what? no love for jerkstore?), The Butcher is ironically making her life a whole lot easier without either of them knowing it.

And then there’s the unhealthy relationship with her grieving mother. Millie really wants to go to university and move on with her life. But her needy mom doesn’t want to be afflicted with empty nest syndrome. Faced with a whole lot of guilt for leaving her alone or even saying no to a night out at the theatre with her, even if this is happening at the same time as the school homecoming dance, Millie is more passive than Costanza.

This is also true of her relationship with Booker, the non-rapey school jock who she doesn’t realize is super into her until after she enters The Butcher’s body. To convince him it’s her, she recites a poem she wrote that she secretly slipped into his locker one day which he’s already read a bazillion times. How attracted is Booker? He’s even willing to kiss Vince Vaughn. Even I wouldn’t go that far. At least we know he’s not shallow.

Freaky managed something of a proper theatrical release in 2020, the first year of Covid. I’m genuinely surprised it won over most critics. It’s really not that good. Kathryn Newton looks great in close-up and is clearly having a lot of fun imitating Vaughn and killing people but her story arc is as old as the hills. As the movie sets things up in the early goings, it’s not difficult to guess where we’re headed.

Vaughn, who botched Norman Bates in the unnecessary Psycho remake, isn’t given much to do with his generic slasher, another psycho with mommy issues. A cross between Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, he’s most silently until he gets far too yappy in the finale when he cuts a pointed promo on a more courageous Millie. No need for the jerkstore line this time. She’s finally reached her breaking point.

Much like Halloween paid tribute in various ways to Hitchcock’s Psycho, Freaky does the same for Halloween. Note The Butcher’s head tilt after impaling a victim in the mansion. One of the high school football players is named Strode, after Jamie Lee Curtis’s Final Girl. The Butcher getting shot a bunch of times and not dying. And the fact that he’s an escaped mental patient.

But Halloween was a beautifully photographed bone chiller with characters we cared about and a truly frightening villain. It remains a landmark not only of horror but of independent cinema, as well.

Freaky, on the other hand, is mostly populated with self-absorbed narcissists, creeps, bullies and weenies. It lacks intrigue, cleverness and original, insightful subtext. It makes obvious jokes found in the repertoire of any 8-year-old. And it has inconsistencies plus one rather noticeable continuity error.

When an emergency alert hits everybody’s phone in high school, we notice the date is February 13. But in a later scene set in a haunted indoor mini-putt golf course, the surveillance monitor clearly says it’s October. Was this done on purpose, I wonder, and if so, why?

In a normal year, I’m convinced this film would’ve been a bigger hit had it played in more theatres and people felt more safe going in one to see it. But because the film was so modestly budgeted, it made enough money to be concerned about the possibility of a second chapter.

Should’ve destroyed that fucking knife.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, January 10, 2022
7:44 p.m.

Avalanche Of Despair

Repulsed by the present
So much poison in the air
Shadow puppets abound
Running everything into the ground

A growing wave of misery
A sense of impending doom
Intensifying grumbling
The infrastructure crumbling

Once invincible, now vulnerable
An avalanche of despair
The response has been weak
Neoliberalism past its peak

Uprisings of frustration
A taste of the future
Unchecked mass corruption
The coming disruption

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, January 7, 2022
10:14 p.m.

Hostile Reception

Years of silence
A period of bliss
The return of resentment
All because of this

You drift in and out
Like an objectionable smell
Where do you stand?
I never can tell

One minute, you’re my friend
The next, you disappear
Then you come back
Am I supposed to adhere?

I have no attachment
To a disgusting fraud
A bullshitting poster
I refuse to applaud

Your agenda with me
Is elusive and vague
I won’t ever engage
Not even if you beg

You’re running out of platforms
To bother and harass
No matter the suggestion
I’ll take a hard pass

It’s time to move on
Leave me in peace
End my mental suffering
Give me my release

If you’re thinking of trying
To change my perception
Be prepared to be met
With a hostile reception

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, January 6, 2022
11:00 p.m.

Permanent Eviction

Selfish beyond reason
Foolish beyond belief
Yet lazily persistent
No sign of relief

A recurring thought
That just won’t die
This refrain pops up
In the blink of an eye

Yet I have the power
To refuse and reject
A memory loss serum
I wish I could inject

You’re running out of ways
To boil my blood
But a pattern still emerges
And I’m drowning in the flood

I no longer respond
To your phony concerns
I hope my venom
Not only stings, it burns

You’ve been blocked and muted
Ignored and denied
Boycotted and banned
Hope it eats you up inside

A worthless piece of shit
Without a shred of conviction
Looking forward at any time
To your permanent eviction

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, January 6, 2022
2:52 a.m.

Ernest Scared Stupid

Either you commit to scaring your audience or you end up making Ernest Scared Stupid, a half-hearted horror film that’s barely a comedy.  Yeah, I know.  This is a Disney film.  The goal isn’t to give kids nightmares.  But their parents are sitting there with them.  Please, give everybody, especially them, something much smarter and more suspenseful than what you’re offering.  Laziness is a cancer on creativity. This should’ve been a lot more fun.

Released in time for Halloween 1991, Ernest Scared Stupid marked the end of a short run of low-rent Disney features starring Jim Varney as the determined title character, an overly confident boob who never seems to progress beyond menial low-paying jobs and living as a loner.

Not every entry follows the exact same formula but there are similarities carried over from picture to picture.  (In half the films, there’s a romantic interest who may or may not reciprocate his feelings but not this one.)   

Ernest is usually stuck in a meaningless gig sometimes dreaming of achieving a better one, although his ambitions are quite modest.  While poorly maintaining the grounds of a campsite in Ernest Goes To Camp, he openly aspires to be a counselor.  Rather than spending the rest of his life cleaning up a bank after hours in Ernest Goes To Jail, he wants to be a clerk.  It should be noted he’s not particularly good at anything other than screwing up and causing major calamities.

He has friends, usually young kids he can better relate to, but his only live-in companion is a pet.  A turtle named Pokey in Camp and a loyal pooch named Rimshot in Jail and Scared Stupid.

He has a fascination with junk, maybe out of necessity, that he sometimes transforms into inventions as was evident in Jail.  In Scared Stupid, with the exception of his garbage collecting apparatus, he just collects it like a hoarder until three young school kids he’s befriended scoop up a bunch of these items in order to help build and decorate a massive treehouse.

There hasn’t been a good explanation for Ernest P. Worrell’s stupidity until this movie and “good” is doing a lot of work in this sentence.  Many moons ago, an ugly-ass troll kidnaps a bunch of kids, turning them into tiny, wooden figurines because it gives him power or some nonsense.  When their angry parents lay a trap, the thing is caught.  But instead of murdering it, they bury it under a tree.  The troll places a curse on the preacher overseeing the burial.  His bloodline will at some point produce a family member so stupid the tree will eventually be “disturbed” and the troll will once again emerge continuing right where he left off. If only he could get out of that net, none of this would be necessary.

One of the mistakes this movie makes is showing the troll too much.  He looks great at first but the more we see him the more we get accustomed to his appearance.  His constantly running nose does inspire a very funny line from Ernest.

The only other funny moment in the film involves Rimshot, the cute little dog that remains Ernest’s most faithful companion. While battling the troll in his moving truck, the dog, whose paws can’t reach the pedals, turns out to be a better driver than his owner. The very sight of this silly gag made me laugh.

The troll needs to turn five kids into wooden statuettes so his tree can birth his own army.  (Ernest notes the dangling eggs look like giant brussel sprouts.) Two of Ernest’s young pals, and one of their bullies, find themselves cornered and trapped.  With the exception of Ernest and a couple of surplus store owners he does a lot of business with, no other adult believes there’s a troll on the loose. They’re not doomed but history will repeat itself.

Eartha Kitt is well cast, if not well-served, as a wild-haired old lady that the townspeople, especially the kids, steer clear of, even though she’s well aware of the troll problem and its history.  She’s like Ernest, she collects a lot of worthless shit but she transforms her collection into some kind of bizarro art that she displays on her front lawn.  It’s clearly to keep people away from her home. Ernest is only over here at first because the Mayor who hates him orders him to have it all removed which he just won’t do.  Timid Ernest is the town’s garbage man, but not for long.

Kitt knows the whole backstory involving the troll and after Ernest’s inevitable screw-up, she pulls out an old history book and discovers the key to ending the threat.  There’s a very dumb gag involving the solution.  A very specific substance needs to be fired at the troll and his army in order to kill them all but for some dopey reason, only three letters of a four-letter word are visible in the text:  M I K.

Even the smallest child knows what that missing letter is.  But Ernest gets it completely wrong.  (There really is such a thing as miak, apparently.)  One of his young pals discovers the troll’s secret vulnerability completely by accident.

The thing is, as we draw close to the end, the troll will find a spot to summon the power of the gods or whatever. The result involves more face horns and, antennae, I’m guessing, and so, there needs to be a Plan B which thankfully is found in Kitt’s book. That Plan B feels like it was conceived by a hippie, though. If your Kryptonite is a hug, you’re not much of a villain.

You can’t say we’ve been taken in by the title.  It’s very honest.  We’ve been more than adequately warned.

The Ernest movies were never big earners for Disney (25 million was the biggest total for one title), so why didn’t they take a chance or two?  By the early 90s, the franchise was generating more revenue on video than in the theatre and so after a couple more independent theatrical releases (Disney gave up after Scared Stupid), the series went straight to video for the rest of the decade.  Had Jim Varney not tragically died of lung cancer (he was a lifelong smoker), I’m pretty sure he would’ve never stopped playing this character in some capacity.

It’s strange.  Varney is naturally likeable onscreen, warm, friendly and innocent, but he was much funnier when I was a lot younger, especially in those 30-second TV ads where the character originated.  Watching his Disney movies now, he mugs far too much not unlike Jim Carrey (they both have the same rubbery face) and the same stale jokes are repeated over and over again, whether it’s a cheap physical gag (a bird shitting on his face), dressing up as another outlandish character (yeah, that brownface warrior with the fake mustache should’ve been excised), overconfidence followed by incompetence (a bowling ball meant for a troll soldier conks an innocent victim on the head instead unbeknownst to our celebrating hero) or an eye-rolling one-liner (his faint hope that the troll is actually the Keebler elf).  When you’ve seen one Ernest movie, one hilarious scene in Ernest Saves Christmas notwithstanding, you’ve basically seen them all.

Ernest P. Worrell is a walking contradiction. He’s a cheerful manchild who is extremely independent.  He might not be particularly competent in any professional setting, but he still gets hired.  Realistic enough to set reasonable goals for himself, and yet who would promote him based on his undistinguished work history?  Very comfortable living as a solitary man, he never has any shortage of friends.  And despite being scolded and ridiculed for outright buffoonery, he can redeem himself through sheer heroics.

I first saw this movie on video 30 years ago.  That was the moment I realized I was done.  I was 16 and I was no longer part of the ideal demographic. All this time later, I still feel the same way.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for this softened material, I did enjoy some of the musical score, particularly the danceable opening theme (which is accompanied by a succession of clips from old horror films, most of them cheesy except for the overrated Nosferatu, and intercut with an over-the-top Varney clowning around and freaking out).

Only a slight improvement over Ernest Goes To Jail, you can fully understand why Disney bailed.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, January 5, 2022
2:58 a.m.

Ernest Goes To Jail

Coincidences in film comedies. As long as the laugh train keeps chugging along, we can live with them. But when they’re superseded by deadening contrivances, especially the kind that defy even the most generous interpretation of logic, we’re in trouble.

The cartoonish Ernest Goes To Jail isn’t funny at all. And there’s no getting past the gaping holes in every turn of this typically insipid Disney offering from an awful franchise that went on far too long. This might be the dumbest movie ever made.

The questionable set of circumstances that sees an innocent dimwit trade places with a death row prisoner can only happen if almost every character in the movie is a moron. And none of them are a dog.

Consider the set-up. Ernest P. Worrell (Jim Varney), an incompetent night janitor at a bank, gets called up for jury duty. He’s the only person in the world excited by this. He’ll be deciding the fate of a prisoner named Rubin (Barry Scott) who murdered a fellow inmate.

Drawing attention to himself by accidentally breaking his pen in his mouth and then making it worse when he tries to clean himself up, Rubin notices something else about that peculiar juror. He bares an uncanny resemblance to the initially mysterious Mr. Nash (also Jim Varney), a notorious bank robber and a fellow crony.

Well, actually it’s his boss. Honestly, it’s not quite clear to me what’s going on with Nash. Is he a mob guy? The head of a heartless gang? Did he actually kill people or is the system in the movie just really harsh on thieves?

All we do see are attempts to shakedown his fellow prisoners for dough but without the expectant pay-offs. In fact, when Rubin comes to him for help, Nash tells him to clean up his own mess. Yeah, why is this Black man working for a white supremacist with a Confederate flag in his cell?

At any event, a plan is hatched. Rubin’s corrupt lawyer will convince the judge to allow the jury to visit the site of the killing, a ruse to allow the old switcheroo on the sly. The idea is to lure poor Ernest into a trap, knock him out, switch clothes and have him serve the rest of Nash’s sentence while the thug, through sheer intimidation, will make sure his buddy doesn’t get any more time added to his soon-to-be-completed sentence. (A slightly similar plot was recycled for Muppets Most Wanted which at least had some genuine laughs.)

Here’s the problem. When Nash emerges undetected with the visiting jurors, at no time does he start acting like Ernest which would easily help his cover. Once safely on the outside, he keeps his hair slicked back like Pat Riley and never softens his gravelly intonations. No one questions these sudden changes in “Ernest” even when he becomes far less clumsy at work.

Meanwhile, it takes a while for the real Ernest to accept his sudden reversal of fortune. Rubin and another crony, the mostly silent Lyle (Randall “Tex” Cobb with goofy hair), aren’t very good at ordering him to sound like the real Nash despite Rubin’s idle threats. For the most part, he still sounds like himself. Even when he tries to sound evil, he sounds like a caricature of a heavy from the 40s.

Whereas no one ever doubts Nash as Ernest, despite his more sinister, creepy demeanour, the real Ernest can’t convince anybody not in on the switcheroo scam that he’s really a victim of mistaken identity.

This is all instantly tiresome. But let’s back up for a second.

Before he finds himself locked away with cons in T-shirts and guards dressed in pink suit jackets in a mostly merciful PG hell, Ernest dreams of being a bank clerk instead of being a piss poor late night cleaner. He has a cantankerous boss who hates him, a cute colleague named Charlotte (Barbara Bush, not the First Lady) who gives him mixed signals and two rent-a-cop pals, Penn & Teller wannabes, who are overly obsessed with technological advancements in security. It’s obvious they are so incredibly bored because apparently no one has ever tried to rob the place. Not that I would ever call them in an emergency.

Ernest can’t operate basic cleaning equipment to save his life and yet, somehow he’s an inventor. When he goes home to look after his dog Rimshot, the place looks like a tribute to Doc Brown and Wayne Szalinski. To save time in preparation for a dinner “date” with Charlotte, he’s rigged a contraption so that several toothbrushes do the job much faster than just one. Oh, and he doesn’t have a bath tub or a shower, just a reconfigured laundry machine he climbs into. All that unnecessary effort just to prolong turning on his entertainment equipment without using his fingers.

Nash, by complete accident, has stumbled into a golden opportunity. But he might be dumber than Ernest. Now properly inserted into another man’s life, he becomes much more aggressive towards Charlotte which leads to a terrible scene where he forces himself on her. Really, Disney? Come on.

He’s not exactly discreet about wanting to blow up the bank safe and steal its contents. When two characters face the faint possibility of being obliterated they look very stupid indeed when he points out who he actually is, not to mention the extent of his bad intentions. (Only one is honest enough to admit their painful mistake.) The fact that they still think it’s Ernest right before he does this, it’s just all so goddamn embarrassing, especially when the reverse happens moments later. How notorious can this guy be if no one recognizes him? And how are they so bad at telling the two apart when their hairstyles and personalities are polar opposites?

Ernest Goes To Jail is the fourth feature in a series that would ultimately transition into the straight-to-video market after three additional theatrical releases saw diminishing financial returns. When I first saw it on video in late 1990, I was 15 and thought some of it was funny, although because it’s been so long, I can’t remember which jokes landed for me.

Today, it’s a complete dud. Lamebrained and insulting. When you’re 46, you see the flaws far more clearly.

There’s a very stupid subplot involving Ernest repeatedly becoming magnetized by accident, albeit temporarily. On a couple of occasions, instead of being electrocuted he briefly evolves into an electrified superhero shooting lightning out of his fingertips while sometimes even floating around and, in a conveniently timed moment, flying.

Running a tight 80 minutes, the movie is so insecure about itself that during the first half of the closing credits it basically recaps the entire movie in a series of quick-cutting edits that only showcases one piece of dialogue. Even the filmmakers know this is forgettable horseshit.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tuesday, January 4, 2022
12:56 a.m.

A Guy Thing (2003)

In A Guy Thing, Jason Lee is engaged to Selma Blair, a rich snob who’s a bit of a control freak.  He clearly doesn’t love her.  At his bachelor party, which takes place in a Hawaiian-themed bar, Lee meets free-spirited Tiki dancer Julia Stiles.  The next morning while on the phone with his future mother-in-law, there she is lying next to him only wearing the top half of her work bikini.  This looks bad.

His mother-in-law informs him that Blair is on her way and suddenly there’s a panic.  The bottom half of Stiles’ work bikini is missing.  This looks worse.  A mad scramble to find it in time proves fruitless so Stiles has to skedaddle before they both get caught.  Don’t mind the married, nosy, judgmental minister (Larry Miller) across the hall paying close attention.  Just get out of there.  Quick.

It’s inevitable that Lee will fall for Stiles who in turn will fall for him in what is otherwise a pretty chaste relationship. But not before a series of painfully cheap, easily avoidable calamities paint Lee in such a poor light why would anyone with any sense of decency root for his happiness?  He is not “a nice guy”.

The movie teases the idea that Lee outright cheated on Blair.  Shortly after their indiscretion, he suddenly gets that itchy feeling in his crotch. The timing of this unwelcome discovery unfortunately coincides with a spontaneous presentation he has to make at his job where he sells ads in outdoorsmen magazines.  Right in front of his boss, his future father-in-law, a seemingly humourless James Brolin, there he is scratching away with an extendable wand until he excuses himself and enjoys that burning sensation when he urinates. Time to buy a new wand.

Eventually, Stiles confesses there was no sex.  (“We slept together but we didn’t sleep together.”)  However, she adds, there would’ve been if he hadn’t passed out drunk so he’s not exactly exonerated.  The intent was there, regardless.  And she was bottomless.  (You don’t wanna know how Lee actually gets infected. I didn’t think it was possible but then I consulted Wikipedia. It’s possible.)

Lee has to spend the entire film hiding his guilt although at one point he tells a friend he feels he should unburden himself to his future bride.  The friend, a supposed ladies man who loves ‘em and leaves ‘em, turns out to be more honourable than he is and he’s right.  Keep your mouth shut, bitch.

The only thing I like about this movie is the band Lee’s pal hires at the last minute to work the wedding.  (Lee forgets to hire a string quartet, Blair’s preference.)  During the bachelor party, they do a surprisingly good loungy version of the great Lust For Life.  Even the stiff minister digs them before he catches himself.

Thinking as long as Blair is none the wiser he’s in the clear, Lee keeps encountering Stiles unexpectedly.  Perhaps it’s not a good sign for their eventual relationship that she can’t stick with a job for more than a week.  After immediately tiring of dancing in a bikini, Lee is shocked to see her operating a toll booth.  He later discovers she’s working in a record shop.

At a family get-together before the wedding, just before they’re introduced Lee realizes he’s a complete asshole.  Stiles is Blair’s cousin.  To avoid a very public embarrassment he flees upstairs, climbs into a bed and hides under a bunch of coats pretending to sleep.  When that doesn’t protect him for long, he feigns diarrhea.  He also tries to escape out the bathroom window when everyone sits down to eat but when he lands on the hood of a car, the alarm goes off and Brolin, thinking a wild animal is responsible, starts shooting at him hiding in a nearby tree.

Try as he may, he can’t avoid Stiles forever.  After she leaves and then returns to retrieve her purse, they both realize they’re fucked but neither give away their collective shame.  After she exits again, it’s weird that the naïve Blair, who is rightly suspicious when she eventually finds the bikini bottom hidden in the water tank of Lee’s toilet in his apartment, doesn’t notice the evidence of Lee’s failed escape on the back of his sweater.

About the film’s title, the movie seems conflicted about whether it really endorses this behaviour or not.  Lee’s friend, the one who books the band for his wedding ceremony, thinks it’s fine.  “We’re hunters,” he insists.  Again, he turns out to be in a happy, monogamous relationship with another tiki girl he met at the bachelor party so he’s not exactly credible.  He even carries her lipstick.

When stall man Brolin overhears the truth in the bathroom on the big day, he says the exact same thing.  But he’s clearly pissed.  When Lee offers his hand in the church right at the start of the proceedings, Brolin just walks away and sits down in disgust.

Everybody is familiar with Bro Code, the unwritten law that is meant to protect all of us from being exposed as jerks.  But this movie takes it to a ludicrous extreme.  When he gets caught hiding Stiles’ bikini bottom in the toilet tank, Lee claims with a straight face that he actually bought this soiled undergarment for Blair but gave her a locket instead.  Thinking she will successfully call his bluff, she actually calls Spend Mart pretending to complain.

But the sympathetic sales clerk on the phone plays along, falsely claiming this is the doing of some obnoxious frat bros.  He even offers her a refund if she comes down with what she still thinks is underwear.  Now embarrassed that she didn’t believe her duplicitous fiancé, she apologizes.  Back at the store, one customer states the obvious:  “Bullshit!”

While on the hunt for STD medication, Lee goes to the pharmacy seeking advice from Corner Gas star Fred Ewanuick who needs to learn how to use his indoor voice. After bumping into his future mother-in-law, the pharmacist eventually runs over to hand him his crab medicine. Unwilling to implicate himself, Lee manages to get Ewanuick to cover for him. But he is unable to prevent him from accepting an impromptu catering gig for his wedding party the day before the ceremony. Sheer stupidity.

Stiles has a psychotic ex-boyfriend, a crooked cop being secretly investigated by Internal Affairs.  (Sure.)  In the real world, he would continue to directly pester and harass the woman he pushed away without any consequences.  In this completely unfunny romantic comedy, he goes after Lee instead, first confronting him on the street, attacking him with his recently purchased groceries and then forcing him to climb into a dumpster. 

Later, he pulls him over and plants a bag of cocaine on him thinking he can put him away for a while. Near the end after Lee is eventually released after a long interrogation, the cop even breaks into his apartment to make a sandwich while he waits for him.

After the attack, Lee doesn’t give the cops an accurate description because he’s worried he’ll be ratted out.  One night, while being propositioned by some yahoo at another job working as a bartender, Stiles calls him up.  Lee pretends it’s his buddy, the band booker with the secret steady girlfriend, revealing his new job promotion.  When Blair wants to offer her own congratulations, he hangs up just in time.  But then the real pal calls and plays along when Blair answers.

During the street encounter with her ex, Lee is shown surveillance photos of himself with Stiles in presumably compromising positions, despite the lack of sex.  A curious young kid will eventually discover them (twice) and well, his minister dad has another reason to detest Lee.

There’s a recurring gag where Lee, a lifelong coward, fantasizes about what would happen if he suddenly showed some courage and owned his shit.  Half the time, he imagines the worst case scenario.  Telling Blair what he thinks happened with Stiles before he knows the full truth results in her choking him.  Informing Brolin of his mistake gets him punched in the face.

Stiles calls him from the bar because her ex has the incriminating photos in his apartment and she wants to steal them back.  But when they arrive, there’s a guard dog who eventually chases them into the bathroom after they find the snaps.  As they hide in the tub only protected by a sliding glass door, Stiles calls out Lee for being a pussy.  It takes them hours to realize how to safely escape without being bitten.

I forgot to mention Thomas Lennon, Lee’s brother in the movie.  It’s so blatantly obvious he should be the one marrying Blair.  Every time he brings her up he sounds more in love with her than his kin.  He even remembers the song that was playing on the jukebox when they first met.  And this was just before she talked to Lee.

A Guy Thing is one of those dreadful romcom bombs where the characters don’t act on their own feelings right away because the screenplay forbids it.  Instead, they deny them until the final act.  But by that point, a lot of damage has been done. 

During the wedding ceremony, Lee’s neighbour, the disgusted minister who discovers those surveillance photos stuck together (ew), is officiating as a replacement.  (It wasn’t a good idea to hire the pharmacist as a cook.)  Of course, there’s the obligatory moment where those in attendance are asked to object to this union if they so desire or “forever hold their peace”.  But when no one responds after taking a dramatic pause, Miller asks again.  And after another pause, he keeps asking until finally someone speaks up.  Actually, two.

If I’m Jason Lee at this point, should I have really waited this long to come clean?  To admit that I’m only marrying someone because her dad gave me a job and the family is rich?  Is it a compliment to call lovely Selma Blair who somehow makes her regular sweater over a collared dress shirt attire look fabulously chic “the safe choice?”  Does that make me look a shining example of humanity at its best?

He is very fortunate that Blair has a back-up guy.  Otherwise, he’d look like an even bigger dick.

Lee’s relationship with Stiles, who is also a doll, lacks genuine spice and conviction.  There’s a moment after they successfully escape her ex’s apartment with the photos when they’re driving down the street.  Stiles instructs Lee to hit the juice so that the car can do a little action movie stunt, basically fly in the air a little bit, as they approach a hill in the road.  This very small gesture of spontaneity greatly excites Lee who does it again on his own before the wedding. Good Lord, man, is that all it takes?

After Lee drops off Stiles following their second misadventure, she proclaims him a “good guy”, the type that’s hard to find in this world.  Considering who she was involved with previously, her bar is still awfully low. 

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, January 1, 2022
2:43 a.m.