June 17th, 2001"GUILTY PLEASURES - 1986"
If you've been visiting the Graveyard for any length of time you'll notice a love of cheesy horror films. You'll notice that here at the Graveyard we enjoy films you'd dub "guilty pleasures". Well as a regular grab bag category we've decided to offer up three guilty pleasure movies by year of release; don't ask why we started with 1986 - I think it's because we just got the Maximum Overdrive DVD. April Fool's Day [1986] is a fun movie. From the producers of the Friday The 13th series and Paramount Pictures (Friday's distributor) comes this pretty standard sounding slasher flick that has a bunch of college-aged friends off on a isolated island for the weekend being killed by an unknown murderer. The only difference here is that it's played for laughs a lot and the twist ending actually turns-out to be somewhat original (though veteran horror fans may figure it out). Perfectly acceptable and with some doses of fun; this is a slasher movie for people feeling a bit tired of the formulaic slasher crud that continued to wash-up as late as 1990. Plus it's dopey and silly - an instant guilty pleasure plus. Maximum Overdrive [1986] is Stephen King's first (and probably only) directorial effort. To say it was not at all well received would be an understatement. Emilio Estevez stars in this adaptation of King's short story Trucks that has him and all the people at the truck stop he works at being menaced by eighteen-wheelers, appliances and anything else mechanical thanks to a passing comet. There are people who absolutely hate this; but think about it. Where else are you going to get a soundtrack of AC/DC tunes, see a kick-ass truck with a Green Goblin face on the front and hear a female character scream "We Made You!" before being downed in a hail of machine gun fire. And there's just so many memorable moments here. Heck, here we are fifteen-years after its release and I can mention it to people and they'll bring-up all their favourite scenes (with the pop machine frenzy and steamroller winning the prize for most mentioned). I think that if King wouldn't have directed this, critics wouldn't have been so darn critical on it. It's a fun, mindless romp. Trick Or Treat [1986] brings a smile to this writer's face. First seeing it during one of the frequent "free weekend" movie channel promotions that happened in my childhood I totally loved this somewhat moronic "heavy metal" movie. Starring Marc Price (forever known as "Skippy" from TV's Family Ties) as a heavy metal addict who has to fight the returned demon of his favourite rocker when (after Price plays his latest record backwards) the said rocker returns from the grave to kill a bunch of teenage victims (including my favourite scene of a demon oogling Price's wannabe love interest). With a kick-ass soundtrack by "where are they now?" band Fastway and lots of fun sequences (we get to see Ozzy Osbourne on TV as a preacher-type condemming metal music - before getting killed); this is one fun movie. |
