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Aliens, Undelivered Mail, Godzilla, Fantastic Four and More!
The Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer courtesy 20th Century Fox
Questions about the mayhem In the Mouth of Madness, alien grashoppers, The Fantastic Four and more.
See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!
Send your movie questions to FlickChick.
Question: I recently went to Shrek the Third and saw a trailer for the upcoming Evan Almighty. It's rated PG (for mild humor and peril) and is being advertised as a family movie. I remember the Jim Carrey original, Bruce Almighty, which was rated PG-13 and earned every bit of that rating with Carrey's typical crude humor, language and sexual content. This got me to thinking: Can you recall any other situation where a movie came out, obviously aimed at adults and with adult themes, where the sequel was toned down and aimed at kids? I can't come up with anything. Bill
FlickChick: Off the top of my head, the films that come immediately to mind are the PG-13 Fantastic Four (2005) and the PG-rated Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which just opened. Though Fantastic Four was pretty mild, Rise of the Silver Surfer is clearly aimed at a younger audience and was made to the specifications of a PG rating. There's also the Godzilla factor: The original Godzilla (1954) was very much a film aimed at adults I'm talking about the Japanese Gojira, not the American cut and the first sequel, The Return of Godzilla/Gigantis/Godzilla Raids Again (1955) was also pretty serious in its tone and intent. But subsequent sequels, starting with King Kong vs Godzilla (1964), were aimed at kids some of them turned the onetime King of the Monsters into little more than an oversized doggie.
Readers, other examples?
Question: I am looking for the title of a movie, probably from the 1980s or '90s, that I saw many years ago. I only remember fragments: It was a kind of psychotic horror film and I think it involved a writer who was being haunted by creatures from his novels. The blurring of nightmarish images and reality was a theme of the film. I remember scenes where the main character, driving in his car, was being chased by bloody, zombie-like creatures in the middle of the night; I think he was trying to get out from a town possessed by these scary characters, but again and again he ended up in the same town. I remember that the song "In the Year 2525" was playing as the credits rolled in the end. The atmosphere reminded me of the end of Lost Highway. I have googled and searched the Internet for movies fitting the description and have checked out The Dark Half, Brain Dead (starring Bill Pullman) and Jacob's Ladder, but it's none of these films. Do you have any clue? Adam
FlickChick: I feel confident suggesting that you're looking for John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1995). Best-selling horror novelist Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow) think Stephen King vanishes and his publisher hires detective John Trent (Sam Neill) to find him. Trent instead finds himself trapped in Hobbs End, the supposedly fictional town (เ la King's Castle Rock) where Cane's scary stories are set; no matter how hard Trent tries to leave, all roads lead back to Hobbs End, where Cane made a deal with dark forces and opened the gates to hell. There's lots of toggling back and forth between Cane's vaguely Lovecraftian fictional world and the real world into which it's leaking, and there are lots of lost-highway shots as Trent tries to escape.
Question: I saw a movie I believe it came out in the 1990s where these two teens are making prank phone calls, like in the '60s movie I Saw What You Did. In the newer movie the teen makes a date with someone she calls on her mother's behalf, not realizing that she's just set her mom up with a murderer. I would really like to see this movie again do you know the name? Annie
FlickChick: I'm pretty sure you're describing Lisa (1990), a really terrific little thriller that has never developed the reputation it deserves. Lisa (Staci Keanan, of TV's My Two Dads) is a 14-year-old whose overprotective mother (Cheryl Ladd) got pregnant much too young and is determined to save her daughter from making the same mistake. But she keeps Lisa on such a short leash that the girl is constantly looking for ways to rebel. One way she finds of rebelling is by following and phoning strange men, one of whom she manages to set up her mom with. What Lisa doesn't realize is that he's the serial murderer the press has dubbed "The Candlelight Killer." Well worth seeing.
Question: When I was a kid I watched this old black-and-white movie on TV and all I remember is that it's about a whole sack full of mail that somehow gets lost. When it's found years later all the letters get delivered. But because peoples' lives have changed so much, some of the letters stir up a lot of trouble. I can't remember any stars in it, but I hope you can help! For some reason I keep thinking about this movie and I'd love to see it again. Ruth Rock
FlickChick: The fact that you remember it being black-and-white makes me think you're looking for The Postman Didn't Ring (1942), in which a bag of mail stolen in 1880 turns up 50 years later. But it's really only about one recipient, a storekeeper who suddenly finds himself in possession of a valuable stock certificate but has to fight the bank to get his windfall. So I wonder if you might have seen the made-for-TV The Letters or its sequel, Letters from Lost Lovers, both from 1973. Each of those movies featured multiple story lines prompted by the recovery of letters that were lost when a mail plane goes down and is recovered a year later. They were intended as pilots for an anthology series, but it never happened.
Question: I once saw a campy movie on sci-fi about valley girls called Night of the Comet and it reminded me of a movie I saw a long time ago that had something of a similar plot: People turned to dust, although in the older movie I dont think the people who were infected turned to dust but instead became zombies. All I remember was that it starred Peter Graves and it's basically him and his kids, who have some kind of immunity, trying to get back home. Alberto
The older movie was the made-for-TV Where Have All the People Gone (1974), which I remember as a pretty creepy little number. It's solar flares rather than a comet that cause the trouble, but what trouble it is! Animals go insane, most of the human race is reduced to heaps of white dust, and there's some kind of killer virus picking off most of the survivors; Graves and his family, who are on a camping trip when the chaos starts, try to make their way home through the rubble of the world they knew. Like many TV-movies of the '70s, it's sadly unavailable on video or DVD.
Question: Can you tell me the name of a sci-fi flick with Glynis Johns that was made, I think, in the 1940s? It took place during WWII, when a bomb in the subway uncovered alien beings that looked like giant grasshoppers. Thanks for your reply. Saralee
FlickChick: I'm pretty sure you're looking for Five Million Years to Earth/Quatermass and the Pit, even though it was made in 1968, isn't set during WWII and doesn't star Glynis Johns (the female star is Barbara Shelley). Instead, the story starts when construction workers digging under London break through to a stretch of unused underground track and find what they think is an unexploded bomb. It turns out to be a space craft filled with this is the giveaway aliens that look like giant grasshoppers and, unfortunately for the human race, aren't as dead as they appear.
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Jun 15, 2007 5:02 PM
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In the Mouth of Madness... cool flick. I love the part *SPOILER* when Sutter Cane, the author, tells Sam Neil's character that he didn't exist until he wrote him. I've always liked how John Carpenter movies rarely have a happy ending.
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Jun 15, 2007 5:42 PM
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The latest Die Hard is (most likely) going to be toned down from an R to a PG-13. A horrid idea.
At least the next Rambo will be unapologetically R-rated (although I think they should go for an NC-17... they will make BIG bank).
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Jun 16, 2007 4:54 PM
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As most of my regulars know, I'm a huge horror buff -- just FYI, I'm speaking about horror of the '70s and today on June 17th at the Museum of the Moving Image -- and for my money, a PG-13 is the sign of a crappy horror film. It's the mark of not hard enough, not far enough not... horrifying enough.
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Jun 16, 2007 8:31 PM
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There are a few PG/PG-13 horror flicks that work as is. But you are right, they are pretty rare.
I wish I could come see your panel, Maitland. Please let us know if you ever do something similar in L.A.
I see that after your panel, they have The Devil's Rejects. I just saw all of House of 1,000 Corpses for the first time the other day and I did not like it. But I hear the sequel is better so maybe I will give it a shot. But I am now really worried about Halloween 2007ฎ.
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Jun 16, 2007 9:02 PM
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Achyfakey - Why the registered symbol after the title Halloween 2007 ?
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Jun 16, 2007 10:28 PM
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In reference to "R" rated horror movies, I agree that recent horror films that are not rated R are not that good (I can't think of any) but I must point out that there are several films from long ago that were quite scary without the need for blood and gore that seems to feed us all (including me) today. I can immediately think of Night of the Hunter and Boris Karloff's Black Sabbath, both of which still feed my nightmares years after I first saw them.
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Jun 18, 2007 1:31 PM
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Stay Alive, Cry Wolf and Cursed are 3 recent horror movies that were rated PG-13 and were a bit scary.
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Jun 19, 2007 11:13 AM
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re: toned down sequels. Police Academy is a good example - the first one was R, the second PG-13, and all the rest PG. Same thing I think with the Vacation movies.
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Jun 21, 2007 2:42 PM
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