Six Random ‘90s Movies I Watched Over Labor Day Weekend
Robin Williams! Charlie Sheen! And Ted Raimi skinning people alive!
By: Toxicka Shock
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I had so much fun watching random-ass movies from the 1980s for Memorial Day weekend that I decided to try the same shtick with random-ass movies from the 1990s for Labor Day weekend.
As you’d expect, the results here are a VERY mixed bag.
There are a lot of great movies from the 1990s, but it seems like the decade had a larger pool of just plain mediocre flicks than then the 1980s. Perhaps the flip side to the equation is that the 1980s had a more flat out terrible movies per capita, but there is a huge distinction between shitty ‘80s movies and shitty ‘90s movies. A shitty ‘80s movie can still have some redeeming nostalgic vibes, even if it is anchored wholly in cultural ephemera or aesthetics. Shitty movies form the ‘90s, though, seem to have less identity and character. They don’t just suck, they seem to suck in an atemporal vacuum, existing as substandard products from a point in time that seems devoid of any kind of flavor or attitude.
For example, a shitty ‘80s movie like “Megaforce” still feels like something that was created in an epoch that you can pinpoint. Meanwhile, a shitty ‘90s movie like “Mad Dog and Glory” feels like a shitty movie that could’ve been created at any time or any point since the 1970s.
So basically, it’s the palpably dated nature of ‘80s movies that gives them a certain kick that the mass volume of ho-hum 1990s movies just don’t have.
Yeah, it sounds a little abstract. But after reading these half-dozen capsule reviews of long, long-forgotten 1990s flicks … well, you’ll know EXACTLY what I’m getting at here.
Working Trash | Alan Metter (1990)
This is easily the worst movie George Carlin’s ever been in and probably in the bottom ten of Ben Stiller’s oeuvre, too.
You can tell it’s going to suck because it’s a TV movie from the fledgling days of the FOX network. Remember, this is at a time when the upper brass still thought “Alien Nation” and “Herman’s Head” were going to be bigger hits than “The Simpsons” or “Beverly Hills 90210,” so bad decisions were pretty much the norm across the board. How else do you explain the existence of that disastrous “Omen IV” TV special?
As for “Working Trash,” well, it’s really, really bland. Stuck at a PG-level, Carlin is reined in way too much and instead of playing a goofy, over-the-top cartoon character a’la Tony Perkis in “Heavyweights,” Stiller is stuck playing a woefully subdued janitor pretending to be a big banking executive or some such mess.
It’s an especially frustrating movie because the ensemble cast has so much potential — Leslie Hope, Michael J. Pollard and Buddy Essen are all in this thing, and they’re all wasted in pointless, boring, throwaway roles.
You can appreciate the anti-corporate, pro-proletariat message, but since it’s a fuckin’ FOX TV movie you know they don’t really mean it. Pretty much the only reason to watch this, and it’s a terrible reason, is to soak up that weirdly atemporal not quite 80s/not quite 90s atmosphere that exudes out of practically EVERYTHING FOX aired before “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” And frankly, if that’s your prerogative, you’d be better off just watching old reruns of “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” and “Get A Life” instead.
Rating: * 1/2 out of ****
Demolition High | Jim Wynorski (1996)
There are three types of Jim Wynorski movies. Jim Wynorski movies that structurally/technically suck but are still awesome because of the aesthetics, mindless violence and gratuitous nudity (“Chopping Mall” and “”The Bare Wench Project” immediately come to mind); Jim Wynorski movies that structurally/technically suck but are still enjoyable BECAUSE they structurally/technically suck (“Ghoulies IV’ and “The Return of Swamp Thing”); and the Jim Wynorski movies that structurally/technically suck and just plain suck.
Well, I’m sad to report that “Demolition High” is a product of the Wynorski Cinematic Universe that falls into that final category. On such a low budget, it’s pretty much impossible to compete with “Die Hard” and all those other late-stage Sly Stallone/Arnie action flicks of the mid 1990s, and this one lacks virtually any self-referential B-movie charm or humor, playing things WAYYYY too straight for a flick that genuinely tries to turn Corey Haim into fuckin’ John McClane.
The plot here is pretty simple. The aforementioned Haimster plays a rebellious high school kid who just so happens to be the son of an FBI big wig. Well, one morning before biology class, a buncha’ libertarian terrorists invade campus with a nuclear warhead and threaten to shoot it at a nuclear power plant conveniently located just across the street. Lots of gunfire ensues, although most of the flick is just one long, drawn-out hostage negotiation scene, more or less.
It’s a shame, because the cast in this thing is absolutely insane for a grade Z straight to the bottom shelf at Blockbuster production. Of all people, we’ve got ALAN THICKE playing the hostage negotiator, and somehow, DICK VAN PATTEN manages to make a cameo as some military head honcho. I’m guessing they really needed the money in ‘95 — hey, don’t you remember how expensive CDs and Super Nintendo games were back then?
This is a movie that’s about as flavorless as uncooked cauliflower rice. Like, five minutes after it was over, I couldn’t remember a single line of dialogue. This thing isn’t just forgettable — at the end of the day, it’s utterly non-recallable.
Rating: * 1/2 out of ****
Blood Dolls | Charles Band (1999)
You’ve got to give it to Full Moon. The company found its niche and ran with it, with “Blood Dolls” representing the studio’s THIRD attempt at starting a killer action figure cash cow. After nearly a dozen “Puppet Master” and “Demonic Toys” sequels, prequels and spinoffs, there isn’t a whole lot of fertile ground to plow with the concept. And while the film is fairly derivative, at least it keeps things interesting by being unabashedly weird — perhaps to its own detriment.
You know everything you need to know about the picture within the first 10 minutes. There’s this disgraced tech leviathan millionaire who lives in a mansion in the greater Los Angeles area, and he wears this weird Michael Myers ripoff mask because his head is about the size of a regulation softball. His servant is a dude who inexplicably wears clown makeup and his in-house band is some pastiche of a riot-grrl act that he keeps locked in a cage. And to get revenge on the journalists and investigators that put his company under, take a wild guess what his M.O. happens to be. I’ll give you a hint — it’s literally the title of the movie.
Of course, the plot is secondary to the main goal of selling merchandise in comic shops, and the titular “Blood Dolls” are, uh, interesting, to say the least. There’s this one doll that’s a musclebound body builder that kills people by throwing weights at them, and there’s another killer marionette that’s basically a pasty-faced PIMP. The third murderous plaything is this weird dragon lady stereotype — who, fittingly enough, is an mutated Asian woman who calls the nefarious mastermind’s dolls “racist” in the opening scene of the movie.
It’s clear that Chuck Band and pals really struggled to get much out of the premise. Indeed, it’s pretty much a given that the company tried to build the script around the killer dolls instead of working off a fully formed screenplay, and the anarchic pacing is pretty disorienting even for a late ‘90s Full Moon offering. To give you an idea of just how chaotic this thing is, the movie breaks the fourth wall and hits the viewers with back to back endings — a decision that feels less intentionally meta and more unintentionally desperate.
Still, it’s a fun movie in VERY short spurts. As long as you keep your expectations at the bottom of the barrel and can overlook a LOT of obvious last-second post-production “fixes,” you might be able to enjoy it. Maybe.
Rating: ** out of ****
Toys | Barry Levinson (1992)
It’s heresy to say anything negative about Robin Williams now, but there’s no way around it — this has to be one of the worst overall performances of his career. Of course, that’s not so much on him as it is the absolutely disastrous script, which feels like three or four different drafts shredded to bits and then superglued together — at random — at the last minute right before filming began.
It’s kind of a “King Lear” thing going on here. Robin Williams plays the wacky son of a toy company manufacturer, and he’s the heir apparent to the beloved impresario’s empire. Unfortunately, Williams’ brother — who has a real hard-on for all things military-industrial complex — has plans to usurp the throne and use said toy company as basically a Trojan horse for this convoluted unmanned aircraft warfare project.
In hindsight, it seems pretty prescient — not only is “Toys” a movie about violent, military-subsidized video games turning kids into soulless army assassins, it’s also a movie about fuckin’ drone pilots becoming the future of warfare. It’s interesting material, but the way it plays out — against a bizarro backdrop that feels more like a mild redressing of “Willy Wonka” — is utterly underwhelming.
Making matters worse, the movie is pretty much a pseudo-musical, with about three or four song-and-dance numbers repeated ad nauseam throughout the picture. It’s clear that Levinson was trying to make some sort of anti-war commentary (remember, it was made around the same time as the first Bush war in the Middle East) but there’s just too much secondary nonsense for the muddled message to take shape.
It’s a movie that has a few glimmers of hope here and there. My favorite part is near the end, when Williams and pals use a bunch of outmoded, unsold wind-up toys as their own foot soldiers against the new breed of killer playthings. But by and large it’s a movie that’s just too disjointed and too compromised to be worth going out of your way to watch. It had some potential, obviously, but the executive meddling on the flick was just too much. Oddly enough, the movie — which rants and raves about perils of simulated digital violence on developing minds — received its own video game adaptation. Which, as you’d imagine, really, really fuckin’ sucked.
Rating: ** out of ****
The Chase | Adam Rifkin (1992)
Well, it’s a movie that has its problems — not unlike “Buffalo ‘66” it insinuates that the way to a woman’s heart is through kidnapping at gunpoint — but by and large, “The Chase” is a fairly fun little romp that should pluck the nostalgic bones of anybody who grew up in the 1990s.
We’ve got Charlie Sheen playing a man wrongly convicted of a bank robbery — it’s a long story, but somehow it gives him an opportunity to don a full clown costume for a couple of scenes — and he gets the pre-incarceration jitters at a convenience store and ends up carjacking a post-Buffy Kristy Swanson … who just so happens to be the daughter of a Donald Trump-like mogul. What are the odds, huh?
By and large the movie is a feature length car chase, and the vehicular carnage is done quite well. There’s some great stunts and bits here and there, but my favorite its probably the part where a truck carrying medical cadavers starts spilling its freeze-dried cargo all over the highways and byways of Newport, California.
The supporting cast is interesting, to say the least. In hot pursuit of Sheen is a police duo being filmed by a “COPS” camera crew, and in a brilliant bit of casting, the law enforcement officer behind the wheel is none other than Henry Rollins. And if you think that’s weird, just wait until you see the father-and-son vigilante redneck tag team in a monster truck — portrayed by Flea and Anthony Keidis of RHCP fame.
The final 20-minute stretch is a bit of a letdown (among other things, the movie irritatingly hits us with a fake out downer ending) and the whole romantic angle with Sheen and Swanson just doesn’t work one iota. It’s a goofy and unrealistic and mildly distributing picture (what, with all those cheery Stockholm syndrome overtones) but as long as you don’t take the fare too seriously — or think too deeply about ANYTHING it presents you — you’ll probably enjoy this one more than you’d anticipate.
Rating: ** 1/2 out of ****
Skinner | Ivan Nagy (1993)
And if you’ve got to close out a 90s-centric mini-movie-marathon — especially one on Labor Day, when summer is brushing elbows and assholes with with the Halloween season — a movie like “Skinner” is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Let me make it clear upfront. On an objective level, I didn’t enjoy this movie much at all. It’s dark and violent and somewhat predictable and ports about a very outdated sense of humor, but at the same time, you can’t help but admire the movie’s aspirations to be as outrageously disgusting as possible.
Just how gross are we talking here? Well, it’s a movie about Ted Raimi running around the slums of where-the-hell-ever, picking up prostitutes so he can shave their flesh off and wear them as oversized meat coats. Sure, we’ve seen it before, but the special effects and makeup in the flick are downright extraordinary for such a micro-budgeted splatter picture. In one scene we watch Ted put on a pair of human skin gloves — naturally, said gloves are rotten to the point of near-liquification. And just wait until you see the scarring effects on Ted’s previous victims!
Speaking of, the supporting cast in this one is nothing short of phenomenal. The heroine of the flick is none other than Ricki Lake, who was in-between “Hairspray” and her decades-defining, trashy ass TV show. And the former victim chasing Ted down like a facially deformed Van Helsing? of all actresses, Traci Lords, who was at the part in her career when she *almost* was able to transfer out of porno scandal purgatory into the domain of straight to video scream queen staple. Of course, her acting leaves a LOT to be desired … especially in the absence of any nude scenes.
If you haven’t seen it yet, “Skinner” is bound to become a movie immortalized by memes at some point. That’s due to one scene in particular, in which Ted kills a Black coworker, skins him like a deer and runs around chasing a hooker — all the while making a lot of quasi-racist “jive talk” comments that sound like something Mr. T would say while high on methamphetamine. It’s a fairly cringey scene, but at the same time, you can’t help but laugh at the absurdity and audacity of it all. Needless to say, “Skinner” isn’t that kind of movie that fills you with nostalgia or enlightenment — but if you need a remainder of just how scummy and grungy the ‘90s REALLY were, this movie does as good of job as any of showing the decades in all of its ugliness, stupidity and wrongheadedness. And in a VERY unintentional way, it almost comes off as a glorious indictment of its own time.
Rating: ** out of ***
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