Keeping this all on track in terms of a single theme earlier seemed straightforward enough, but things start to go off the rails as we reach the finale. This is where East meets West and the standard '80s sequels clash with the crazier ideas of Hong Kong cinema. Madness has truly taken hold when you have to sit and think 'so a giant Buddha shoots lighting out of its eyes and then transforms into a flying centipede' followed by 'oh yeah the vampire bowling scene'. But the cheap tricks remain as characters are left out and forgotten, plot lines are discarded or repeated, and new ingredients that don't quite fit are thrown into the soup just to keep it from being stale. Some of it works, while other elements are not fit for consumption.
Starting things off we come to A Chinese Ghost Story 2, a film with a centipede monster disguised as a monk. While this makes for a great finale and most of the story is watchable, the rest of the movie is kind of a mess. The original story of a debt collector (Leslie Cheung) and a swordsman (Wu Ma) trying to save a ghost (Joey Wong) from servitude was pretty simple and it remains one of the best supernatural genre movies. The mix of wuxia fighting and evil spirits has never been done better, though films like Spooky Encounters and Mr Vampire almost match it.
This time around they had no way to bring Joey Wong back to life so she just plays another character... which is almost as cheap as the identical twin plot from A Better Tomorrow 2. It's not exactly great writing in a plot about rebel fighters, evil cults and mistaken identities. Our hero gets thrown in jail early on in a subplot that bears no relevance to anything else besides the fact they wanted him to age and grow a beard. He later meets a sorcerer (Jackie Cheung) and a group of revolutionaries in a haunted temple where most of the action takes place.
The comedy is played up more and a few of the effects are somehow ropier than they were before as scenes with giant creatures take up long stretches of the story, but it's all done for laughs. Wu Ma just gets left behind until the end when someone suddenly remembers they forgot to call him for help. Why not write him in earlier and have some real story progression? But this is what we're left with. It's never boring but it is all over the place with goofy characters, zany magic spells and loose ends - which doesn't help when the inevitable third instalment just remakes the original instead of being a real part three...
In more familiar territory, Fright Night Part 2 is a pretty standard example of bringing everything in a story back to square one just so they can reahash everything. Charley (William Ragsdale) gets dumped by his girlfriend so she can be replaced by a new one, and his buddy Ed who was left alive at the end of the original movie... is just never talked about. Charley just has a new college room mate instead. Both those characters were kind of important during his experience of the powers of evil, but conveniently those events are now all said to be a delusion.
Charley is now seeing a doctor to have memory altering therapy of some kind. Even though he's still talking to Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowell) who remembers the whole incident at Jerry's house. Nothing here makes a great deal of sense. I would have thought they'd have teamed up, working as vampire killers every night of the week by now. But that requires actually creative thinking I guess. Instead we go through the same events, suspicious people with coffins, weird neighbours - and all of it is treated as part of his imagination despite the obvious.
The plot itself isn't too bad as new bad guys come for revenge against Charley by enslaving him, and against Peter by taking over his eponymous TV show. There are a lot of interesting visuals and transformation moments, even if the powers the vampires have - and their weaknesses - seem to be kind of random at times. It's hard not to like the vampire bowling scene, but much of it is lacking and goes over the same plot points for most of the running time. Eventually it reaches a silly hospital escape after Peter is sectioned, but the final showdown feels odd when the bloodsuckers are dispatched far too easily. There include some memorable effects moments but not much else.
There are many different releases of Dawn of the Dead over the years, but to cover it quickly this boils down to the original version, the director's cut and the European version - or the Dario Argento cut. To mix things up I'll be talking about the latter here. It's fascinating to look at something you've seen many times and see how it's been altered overseas when editing control was given to someone in Italy. It sounds like an interesting idea to see a version with a faster pace, less comedy moments and more of the music from prog rock group Goblin right? And of course Dario Argento has made some great horror movies during the '70s and '80s and even worked with George Romero for the anthology Two Evil Eyes.
But while the faster cutting works in the opening act with big police raid, a lot of the other changes just aren't as effective. The odd sense of humour in the movie has been cut, and it even loses the famous "Gonk" music from the end credits. Having more Goblin and less library music sounds like a great idea in theory, but it becomes very repetitive pretty early on having the same themes playing over and over. The helicopter zombie scene was dropped for being too humorous, but the sinister electronic music which played over that whole airstrip scene is also missing.
Worst of all several of the best character moments have been cut or trimmed. Some of the depth where the survivors realise that their new life is hollow and they've become just another kind of living dead is completely missing. Elsewhere things have been sped up, but scenes like the big lorry blockade has large chunks missing. These things were important to the narrative, and without them the big survival plan is completely disjointed. The rest of what works is still here of course, but this is easily the weakest version of the film that I've seen.
On the topic of George A. Romero, Creepshow is film that still holds up in terms of both laughs and horror but it's probably no surprise that Creepshow 2 is lacking either of those. Looking at the contents you can tell something is wrong right away, since there are only three stories included, unlike the original five (plus the great voodoo doll ending). Early on they try to reproduce the style, with a kid reading the same book end comic book used the first time. But it quickly starts to become apparent that the fewer episodes mean each segment has more filler. Which wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so predictable.
The odd thing is that the high contrast lighting effects which close out each segment so it matches the illustrations has been lost. It was such a great touch in terms of style but apparently nobody wanted to repeat it, which is mystifying. Instead there's a strange animated section which looks like a cheap children's cartoon rather any kind of inked comic panel art. There's a plot about a carved Native American statue coming to life for revenge, one about a lake monster and another about a hit and run accident. That's it, there's nothing else and they're all one note. Rather than having a blend of laughs and real bleak horror (consider the difference between the meteor story with Stephen King and the creepy Leslie Nielsen part).
Here they all aim for straightforward shock factor which doesn't offer the same kind of character and charm. The last story in which Lois Chiles tries to get away from a man she left for dead during a highway hit and run starts to get really funny in the last few minutes but it's more to do with the relentless gross out effects more than anything. It's shame because the formula seemed like it should be easy to repeat with new material, but there's too much padding and not enough fun. It should have been a long running series that offered creative thrills for years to come, but instead it ran out of steam almost immediately.
Most of the time this stuff is generally a mixed bag pro versus con type of discussion, so let's have a break and look at something truly bad. The Prophecy II is that film. While the novelty of Christopher Walken playing the arch angel Gabriel kept the original movie going for the most part, this is basically just a shambles. The movie is slow and the plot makes little sense, with Walken sleepwalking through it at times while in other moments doing a parody of his own performances. It's incredible that this was a theatrical release as it seems like a direct to video movie right off the bat.
The plot involves something about the destiny of a child being born of a male angel and a human woman, but how this is a one time occurrence is not clear with so many of these guys around. It's all pretty tedious and things are not helped by the laughable amount of Dutch angles being used. You think it's bad in Thor? This reaches all new levels of dumb, with panning shots often tilting as the camera moves. In one scene they even having it tip from the left, and as it moves across they turn it all the way to right. Someone mistook style for substance, and it's not even a good style.
The gags about Gabriel's human helpers being a dead person forced to keep living as his servant are repeated but to less effect. There's also a lot of strange fish out of water humour which feels really of out place. Yes this is a radio, this is a computer, big laugh. Don't holy creatures get out and see the world they're governing once in a while? Gimme a break. The violence and the angel fight scenes have some effects that will appeal to horror fans... but really it's just a big disaster. If you want to see how things can quickly turn bad with unnecessary sequels, then look no further.
Closing us out before things start to spiral (hah) completely out of control, let's finish up with one more East Asian movie - the sequel to the Japanese video tape piracy adventure Ring. The original holds up in terms of the mood alone. There are no over the top attempts at using special effects or harsh coloured filters, just a lot of slow tension and weird sound effects. That weird nails on a chalkboard or violin strings sound is present throughout and it really starts to get creepy as things progress. The story has a few odd psychic moments but it's mostly simple and effective.
Ring 2 on the other hand drops all of this. The plot initially follows the original reporter character but soon drops her in favour of the female student of her ex-husband... so she can fill the same role in solving a mystery. But the atmosphere is gone, and so is the simple plot. Not a lot of this makes sense, even if the clay death mask they create over Sadako's remains is kind of disturbing. It just doesn't seem like a great way of helping a medical investigation. Now there are more psychic characters for no reason, and then the original little boy and the maths student go off on a trip which ends up with some trippy scenes of ESP testing.
Remember how they saved the kid by passing along the curse? Well apparently that was all for nothing as he is still in danger for new reasons. What a mess. I guess it's because The Ring book series already had a part two, which they filmed as Rasen. But since this took on the original source material's virus subplot it didn't go down too well with audiences, and this second attempt is the result. It all kind of feels slapped together in an effort to tie up a few loose ends like the girl who found her friend dead in the first act of the original film. It's an idea at least, but from there it all goes to pieces. I guess when it gets to this stage you have to call it a night...
(BONUS PART 4)
