The Fall and Rise of Babylon

A British slasher film parading as your prototypical American one, 1986's Slaughter High (which was originally going to be more accurately titled April Fool’s Day, but changed after a conflict arose with a Paramount movie coming out with the same name), written and directed by triumvirate George Dugdale, Mark Ezra, and Peter Mackenzie Litten, is a by the books horror movie with some above average kills... and, as we all know in this sub-genre, that is usually what truly stands out. Following a group of high school hot shot jerks led by pretty girl Carol Manning (Caroline Munro – Bond girl Naomi from The Spy Who Loved Me; as well as the Hammer horror film Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter), cruel prankster Skip Pollack (Carmine Iannaccone), feigners Ted Harrison (Michael Safran) and Carl Putney (John Segal), slutty Stella (Donna Yeager), and other entourage members, their sole goal is to sabotage the life of science nerd Marty (Simon Scuddamore). As these things do, they take the jester prank way too far... leaving the teen in a horribly disfigured state.

Opening with infinite possibilities, today’s feature could have been a prison set boxing movie, a searing drama about the conditions in an Alaskan jail, or simply a prison break narrative, but instead, it becomes... Runaway Train (1985). A movie that has become a bit forgotten over time (after its initial disappointment at the box office), director Andrei Konchalovsky’s action thriller follows a rough around the edges bank robber, Manny (Jon Voight) – who has attempted to break out of Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison in Alaska several times. A sort of hero figure amongst the rowdy inmates, the obsessive Warden, Ranken (John P. Ryan), has locked him away in solitary confinement for a most punishing three years.

A late era entry in the last decade of Sean Connery’s impressive catalogue, Rising Sun (1993), co-written and directed by Philip Kaufman, was brought to the page by Michael Crichton – yes, the mind behind Westworld and Jurassic Park, who helped adapt it from his own novel of the same name, building a woven web of corrupt mysteries and thrills in this edgy crime movie. For James Bond fans, it may bring to mind a direct connection to You Only Live Twice (1967), as in that 007 adventure, Connery plays a character deeply immersed within the Japanese culture

You always know you’re in for something rather interesting when a mysterious drifter walks into some small town in a movie... which is just the case in Red Rock West (1993), a neo-noir infused modern western crime thriller co-written and directed by John Dahl (his brother Rick, the other writer and associate producer). The drifter is Michael (Nicolas Cage – in a more reserved performance), an injured former Marine and rather quiet Texan who is simply looking for some oil field work in Wyoming... but is having no luck. Down to his final five bucks, he drives to the next closest town, Red Rock, and pops into a bar for a drink.

Sometimes you wonder how you missed a film back in the day. The 1990s were a wild age for silly comedy gold...the crop of Saturday Night Live at the time spawning an era of laughs on the big screen – Mike Myers bringing forth Wayne’s World and Austin Powers, Chris Farley and David Spade doing the buddy comedy thing in Tommy Boy and Black Sheep, Adam Sandler bringing Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, and The Waterboy to the world, Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan offering their famous tv skit to the big screen with Night at the Roxbury, and Molly Shannon showing that she truly was a Superstar. Yet somehow, after all of these years, I only just discovered Dirty Work (1998), a cult classic co-written and starring Norm MacDonald (the only film on his writing credits). Directed by, of all people, Bob Saget (yes, Mr. nice guy father Danny Tanner from Full House finally bringing his dirty stand up side out), it oozes 90s oddball comedy. Feeling like gazing into Norm MacDonald’s quirky meta-mind while he dreamily acts his way through an hour and twenty-two minutes of a never before seen comedy routine – if you love the guy’s eccentric shtick, then you’ll probably dig this, but if you’ve never been a fan, then this is probably not for you.

Channeling the mesmeric movies churned out by the studio system back in the 1930s and 40s, Allied (2016), directed by Robert Zemeckis, channels the likes of Morocco, Casablanca, Across the Pacific, Gilda, To Have and Have Not, and numerous others – attempting to find a spark from the classic themes of melodrama, romance, suspense and the epic nature of the annals of the cinematic past, with quite successful results. Set the year Casablanca and Across the Pacific were released – 1942, the story in fact starts in Morocco, with recently parachuted in Canadian spy Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) meeting up with another undercover agent, Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard), who will be pretending to be his wife.