FILM REVIEW OF ''BEVERLY HILLS COP 3" (1994)

This uninspired sequel about a counterfeit ring operating in a Walt Disney look-alike amusement park qualifies as the least entertaining entry in the "Beverly Hills Cop" franchise. After producing "Beverly Hills Cop" and "Beverly Hills Cop 2," Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer had nothing to do with this pathetic Paramount release that unimaginatively drags Detroit Detective Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy of "48 HRS") back to California for the third time. You can tell when a franchise has run
out of momentum because it starts knocking off its own characters. Further, neither Taggart (John Ashton of the first two "Beverly Hills Cop" movies) nor Capt. Bogamill (Ronny Cox of the first two Beverly Hills Cop" movies) return. Nothing is ever said about Bogamill's absence, but we're told that Taggart has retired. (Actually, in the Special Features on the DVD release, a producer mentions that John Austin was not available so his character had to be replaced.) Nevertheless, nobody replaces Captain Bogamill, but franchise newcomer Hector Elizondo appears as John Ashton's replacement. Let's not forget Paul Reiser's character Detective Jeffrey Friedman who is conspicuous by his absence. Not even witty Bronson Pinchot can rekindle the magic with his English-language challenged foreigner, Serge, who no longer works at an art gallery, has concocted what he refers to as a firearms boutique.

Sadly, this is one sequel that shouldn't have been made. Although the stunt work is exemplary in the Spider Ride park scene, the recurring firefights between our hero and the trigger happy villains conjure up neither suspense nor tension. "Beverly Hills Cop 3" (*1/2 out of ****) recycles one of the most deplorable movie clichés. Specifically, the well-armed villains cannot hit the side of a barn with their machine guns. Axel's one-liners and the dialogue are both forgettable. Murphy doesn't field many laughs and looks pretty idiotic wandering around in an elephant costume. In all fairness to the filmmakers, at least they did not have another foreign villain with a heavy accent like they had in the first two entries.

"Animal House" helmer John Landis doesn't let the derivative action bog down in complications, but the contrived Steven E. de Souza screenplay yields few surprises. Axel doesn't suffer any setbacks on the scale that he did in the first two outings. Simply said, Landis and Souza develop few things that haven't done before with greater polish. It is interesting to note the change in settings where Axel is concerned during his time off. In "Beverly Hills Cop," he stayed in the Beverly Palms. In the sequel, he hung out at an plush house with a pool. In "Beverly Hills Cop 3," he has a room at the Sunset Motel. The only exciting scene occurs early in the action when the bad guys riddle the sports car that Axel appropriates when he chases them through the streets. The multitude of bullets that the ruffians pour into Axel's car wind up dismantling it piecemeal until it falls apart. Director John Bonito would borrow this gag for his 2006 thriller "The Marine" with wrestling sensation John Cena. Worse, Axel seems to have lost his ability to clown around with everybody as he did in the first two. Murphy grins a lot but nothing he does boasts a glimmer of spontaneity. Meanwhile, this abysmal second sequel looks like utter hack work.

Meanwhile "Innocent Blood" lenser Mac Ahlberg doesn't make the shoot'em up scenes look cool like they were in the original and the first sequel. Despite the profane language, this ignominious R-rated crime thriller qualifies as a by-the-numbers, cookie cutter actioneer. Clearly, the franchise had lost its agility by this time that Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer had shed themselves of it, and nothing Murphy does resuscitates it. While he is investigating the chief villain, Ellis De Wald (Timothy Carhart of "Thelma & Louise"), Axel flirts with Janice (Theresa Randle of "Junge Fever") who works for everybody's favorite uncle, Uncle Dave Thornton (Alan Young of TV's "Mr. Ed") who cannot figure out what is happening in his theme park.

"Beverly Hills Cop 3" resembles the original only in the narrative respect that our protagonist leaves Detroit and heads back to Beverly Hills to arrest the cold-blooded murderer that shot his boss, Inspector Douglas Todd (Gilbert R. Hill of "Beverly Hills Cop"), three times during a Tuesday morning raid on an auto chop-shop in the Motor City. (Incidentally, there is a flaw here because when Axel confronts Ellis DeWald in Wonder World, he accuses DeWald of shooting Todd on a weekend.)The complication here is that Axel goes into the operation with the idea that the mechanics won't be armed with machine guns, so he doesn't summon S.W.A.T. for back-up. While Axel is justifying his decision to Todd, De Wald and his machine gun wielding gunmen shoot up the garage, killing all the chop shop personnel so De Wald can get a Ford delivery van filled with U.S. Government stamped boxes. Once Axel enters Wonder World, the film degenerates into claustrophobic mediocrity. The scene when Axel brandishes the Annihilator 2000 gun is one of the worst. Of course, our hero cannot get the elaborate firearm with a CD-player and other gadgets work properly when he faces down a couple of villains with machine guns. Timothy Carhart makes a smug enough villain, but he never really poses a real threat to Axel. Incidentally, Landis indulges himself by inserting Hollywood directors in cameos throughout his movies. If you look closely, you will spot George Lucas, John Singleton, Joe Dante, Barbet Schroeder, Peter Medak, Arthur Hiller, George Schaefer and Martha Coolidge in some of the scenes. Sadly, the third time is not the charm for either the "Beverly Hills Cop" franchise or Landis and Murphy who teamed up again after "Trading Places" and "Coming to America."

Eddie Murphy has gone on the record and called "Beverly Hills Cop 3" "ill-fated." What more do you need to know???

FILM REVIEW OF "INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS" (1956)

No single movie more effectively captured the paranoia and depicted the conformity that afflicted America in the 1950s than director Don Siegel's low-budget, black & white, science fiction chiller "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (**** out of ****) with Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter. Siegel remembered it as his favorite film and its potency lies in Siegel's subtle handling of the outlandish subject matter. Every Siegel film has examined the theme of the individual versus society. Never has any Siegel protagonist ever blended in with the swarm. Iconoclastic to the hilt, Siegel's protagonists clash with the status quo. Siegel's respect for these outcasts prompted him to make "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." "I think that the world is populated by pods," he observed, "and I wanted to show them." Despite its melodramatic title and ghoulish adversaries, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" shares little similarity with sci-fi B-movies of the 1950s. Surprisingly, this minor Allied Artists release quickly acquired a reputation. Film critics and scholars alike have read considerably more into its standard narrative about aliens taking over the earth than Siegel intended. Kevin McCarthy said years later he saw "no political significance" in the plot. One of Don Siegel's contemporaries and a renowned film producer in his own right, Walter Mirish, wrote about the film's significance in his autobiography. "People began to read meanings into pictures that were never intended. "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is an example of that. I remember reading a magazine article arguing that the picture was intended as an allegory about the communist infiltration of America. From personal knowledge, neither Walter Wanger nor Don Siegel, who directed it, nor Dan Mainwaring, who wrote the script nor the original author Jack Finney, nor myself saw it as anything other than a thriller, pure and simple." Nevertheless, the best works of art are always prone to interpretations beyond those of its creators, and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" became a lightning rod for commentary.
Three schools of thought emerged about "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." The first construed it as a polemic against the hysteria-inducing tactics of discredited Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy who alleged Communists had infiltrated American government. McCarthy never substantiated his charges, but he forged an atmosphere of hatred and mistrust that ostracized iconoclasts. The second saw it as a metaphor for the perennial threat Communism posed to Americans. During the 1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee launched a witch hunt and blacklisted many Hollywood filmmakers because of their involvement with the Communist Party between the 1930s and 1950s. As a casualty of the blacklist, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" scenarist Daniel Mainwaring spent his remaining years writing under a pseudonym. A third school saw it as an indictment of the Levittown suburban mentality where everybody acted and dressed in identical fashion.

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" opens with a prologue as the police transport Dr. Hill (Whit Bissell of "He Walks By Night") from the State Mental Hospital to observe a delusional inmate who claims that he isn't insane. Dr. Hill sits down with our disheveled hero and listens to his story. Until the epilogue, when Siegel returns to the asylum, everything from here until then occurs in flashback as the story is told. Things begin innocently enough as a local physician, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy of "Annapolis Story"), has encountered patients in the small town of Santa Mira, California, who complain about their loved ones behaving like impostors. Town psychiatrist Dr. Dan Kaufman (Larry Gates of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”) dismisses everything as "hysteria." Soon, Bennell and his old friend Jack Belicec (King Donovan of “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye”) and his wife Teddy (Carolyn Jones of "The Addams Family") along with Bennell's former sweetheart Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), discover a replica of Jack in his house lying on his pool table. "It's like the first impression stamped on a coin," Jack observes to Bennell. Bennell takes the body's fingerprints, but it has no fingerprints at this point. The thing awakens no long afterward, and Jack and Teddy flee in terror to Bennell's house with news that the body looks exactly like Jack. Indeed, Teddy points out that it resembles Jack right down to his slashed hand palm where he cut himself dropping a bottle of bourbon. Later, they learn seed pods are appearing everywhere. When people fall asleep, the pods hatch facsimiles. After Jack and Teddy show up at Bennell’s house, the doctor’s imagination runs wild and he leaps into his car in his pajamas and house robe and careens over the Becky’s house. Bennell breaks into Becky's house. He enters the house by smashing a window in the basement. Bennell finds a pod in her cellar, but rescues Becky before she can turn into a pod person. Our hero theorizes that so many things have been discovered in the world since the advent of the atomic bomb that radiation may have affected plant or animal life or some weird alien organism. Dr. Kaufman comes over to Bennell’s house and they explain to him the outlandish events that have happened. Predictably, Dr. Kaufman refuses to believe anything that they say. Bennell and Jack accompany Dr. Kaufman over to Jack’s house to show him the facsimile on the billiards table. When they reach the billiards table, they find the body has vanished. Dr. Kaufman points out a blood stain on the table, but the body is nowhere to be found. They drive over to Becky’s house and check the basement for Becky’s facsimile, but they find nothing. Dr. Kaufman launches into a lecture to the incredulous Miles Bennell. “Why did you come here tonight? You’d seen a dead man at Jack’s, an average sized man. The face in death was smooth and unlined, bland in expression, which often happens, You had become aware of a curious, unexplainable epidemic mass hysteria. Men, women, and children suddenly convinced themselves that their relatives weren’t their relatives at all so your mind starting playing tricks.”

No sooner has Dr. Kaufman finished than Becky’s father, Stanley Driscoll (Kenneth Patterson of “Baby Face Nelson”), appears with a shotgun in his fists. He wants to know what they are doing in his basement. Not long afterward, Santa Mira Police Chief Nick Grivett (Ralph Dumke of “Violent Saturday”) pokes his head in the broken window that Bennell and company have entered the basement. When they try to explain about the body over at Jack’s house, the chief interrupts and gives them a complete description of the man. The chief saw the body on the slab. He informs Bennell, Jack, and Dr. Kaufman that the body was found in a burning haystack on Mike Gessner’s south pasture. Afterward, several people who had complained about their relatives no longer show anxiety. The little boy that Bennell nearly ran over earlier, Jimmy Grimaldi (Bobby Clark of “Kentucky Jubilee”), is neither afraid of his mother nor of attending school. Similarly, Wilma Lentz (Virginia Christine of “Billy the Kid versus Dracula ) is no longer worried about her Uncle Ira being an impostor.

Approximately, forty minutes into the action, Siegel shows the first pod as it is replicating a human; the kind of shot that Siegel uses is designated a ‘Dutch’ tilt shot. The camera is set-up as if it were on its side so that image looks definitely out of place. Siegel is deliberately calling attention to the seed pods. Bennell notices the seed pods when one gurgles, and Jack, Teddy, and Becky join him. Becky confesses that her father hasn’t been the same since Bennell and she came home yesterday and found him leaving the basement. “They have to be destroyed,” cries Teddy, “all of them.” Bennell assures her that they will. The doctor and the others haven’t caught on yet about the brutal truth. “We’re going to have to search every building, every house in town. Men, women, and children have to be examined. We’ve got some phoning to do.” Bennell tries to call the FBI in Los Angeles. The switchboard operator informs him that all Los Angeles circuits are dead. When he asks for the governor in Sacramento, Bennell learns that all Sacramento circuits are busy. Bennell sends Jack and Teddy out of town to alert the authorities. He tried to make Becky go with them, but she refuses and stays behind with him. Bennell takes the pitchfork and checks the seed poles. One of them has disgorged a replica of Becky, but Bennell cannot spear it. Instead, he finds his own replica and plunges the spear into it repeatedly. Eventually, the impostors take over and corner Bennell and Becky. They explain that the seed pods entered the Earth, landed at a farm and took root. Life has driven too many people over the edge and the pods will free mankind of its worries. Nobody will ever be troubled by anything again. "There is no need for love or emotion. Love, desire, ambition, faith—without them—life is so simple." Originally, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" concluded with the frantic Bennell screaming his warning about these space aliens who robbed humans of their emotions and turned them into thoughtless automatons. Allied Artists sought to soften the hysteria. Siegel agreed against his wishes to add a prologue and an epilogue on the advice of Wanger for fear that the studio would re-edit the film.

The legacy of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is considerable. Hollywood has remade this original three times along with the unacknowledged remakes, such as the 2007 "Invasion of the Pod People" Philip Kaufman helmed an urban version of the Siegel film in 1978 with Donald Sutherland, but situated it in the urban sprawl of San Francisco. McCarthy reprised his role, and Siegel had a cameo. Later, independent director Abel Ferrara took it back to its rural roots in 1994 with "Body Snatchers" and located the action on a military base in Alabama. In 2007, another remake simply called "Invasion" appeared with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. Originally, Jack Finney wrote the novel that "Collier's Magazine" serialized in 1954.

FILM REVIEW OF "THE RETURN OF DRACULA" (1958)

No,"Square Dance Jubilee" director Paul Landres' "The Return of Dracula" (*** out ****) has nothing to do with either the Universal Pictures franchise or the Hammer Film series. Instead, United Artists distributed this Gramercy Pictures theatrical release, and "The Return of Dracula" qualifies as an imaginative but minor chiller on a low budget. Landres and scenarist Pat Fielder, who collaborated earlier on the lackluster movie "The Vampire," have taken liberties with the formulaic Bram Stoker story while channeling the Alfred Hitchcock serial killer thriller "Shadow of a Doubt" as an American family opens their doors to the infamous Count who is masquerading as their immigrant cousin. Surprisingly, the filmmakers do not acknowledge Stoker during the opening credits, though the name of Stoker’s memorable vampire is mentioned three times. Dracula rides in a contemporary train at one point and later crosses the Atlantic Ocean on a luxury liner. This is the kind of vampire movie where the undead one can freely enter any rooms without an invitation. Some vampire lore dictates that the vampire cannot enter a room without the permission of its host. One of the neatest things about this micro-budget effort is the use of dry ice inside the coffins when we gaze upon the vampires.

“The Return of Dracula” opens with the following narration as two cars cruise through the countryside in route to a cemetery: “It is a known fact that there existed in Central Europe a Count Dracula. Though human in appearance and cultured in manner, he was, in truth, a thing undead, a force of evil, a vampire feeding on the blood of innocent people, he turned them into his own kind, thus spreading his evil domination even wider. The attempts to find and destroy this evil were never proven completely successful. And so the search continues to this very day.” Like Bram Stoker’s novel, “The Return of Dracula” finds our undead protagonist looking for somewhere different to stalk his prey. Several men led by John Merriman (John Wengraf of “The Pride and the Passion”) climb out of the two cars, drape pedants with crosses at their throats, and enter Dracula’s tomb to kill him. Imagine their surprise when they find an empty coffin! The action shifts to a railway station as Bellac Gordal (Norbert Schiller of “Sign of the Pagan”) explains that living in the Balkans stifles his artistic freedom, so he bids his immediate family farewell to board a train to America. Bellac plans to stay with his cousin, Cora Mayberry (Greta Granstedt of “Nocturne”), and her family in Carleton, California. Fortunately for Dracula, Cora hasn’t laid eyes on her Bellac since he was a little boy. When Bellac enters his coach, the artist meets a mysterious gentleman perusing a Berlin newspaper. Not long after he puts his luggage in an upper berth, Bellac turns to the other passenger. A look of horror suffuses Bellac’s face the man assaults him. Director Paul Landres edits Bellac’s death scene so when Bellac screams, the action cuts to an exterior shot of the locomotive as its eldritch whistle pierces the night with a hair-raising shriek, the perfect visual and aural metaphor for Bellac’s terror. What makes this set-up so interesting is that Dracula later confides to Cora’s daughter Rachel (Norma Eberhardt of “Live Fast, Die Young”) that he left Central Europe because he felt that “My life has been confined. That’s why I came here . . . for freedom. I must have it.” These lines of dialogue make “The Return of Dracula” a Cold War era vampire chiller. Unmistakably, the Count is bailing out of the Balkans because of Communism.

Of course, the Mayberry family is anxious to welcome cousin Bellac and make him as comfortable as possible. Nobody is more excited to see her cousin than Rachel. Rachel wants to be an artist like Bellac, but she fears that she will end up working as a nurse. She spends time already in a nearby religious facility that takes care of sick people. She tends a blind girl, Jennie Blake (Virginia Vincent of “Tony Rome”), at the parish house and reads to her. Initially, the Mayberry’s aren’t sure how to treat their cousin. He rarely comes out of his room during the day and he detests mirrors. Dracula goes after Jennie and makes her his bride. Before she goes to school the next day, Rachel is summoned to parish house and watches in horror as Jennie dies. Jennie slips her the crucifix before she dies. A U.S. Department of Immigration official, Mack Bryant (Charles Tannen of “The Rack”), shows up at the Mayberry house and makes inquiries about Bellac. He explains that a man was thrown from a train in Europe when a group of immigrants were making their way to America. Dracula appears to answer Bryant’s questions. Bryant wields a cleverly concealed camera in a flip-top cigarette lighter. He ignites his cigarette as he snaps a photo.

Bryant is cooperating with Merriman, and Dracula suspects as much so he kills Bryant after Jennie Blake lures the poor fellow into the woods. The cool thing about this Dracula movie is that nobody actually kills the evil Count. Dracula lures Rachel to the secluded cave where he has concealed his coffin. This is the same cave that Rachel’s little brother Tim followed his cat Nugget. Eventually, the cat died in the cave. Meanwhile Merriman has mobilized the town authorities to kill Jennie. Everybody is flabbergasted when they see Jennie sneak back into her crypt at sunrise. Merriman and company open the coffin and drive the stake into her. The close-up of the stake going into Jennie’s body was photographed in color. No sooner has the stake penetrated her evil heart and killed her than Dracula feels the impact of the stake itself and staggers against his own coffin. Rachel makes a break for it and encounters her boyfriend Tim (Ray Stricklyn of “The Last Wagon”) who takes her crucifix and holds it up at Dracula. He forces the Count to back away from Rachel. Dracula concentrates so much on Tim and the crucifix that he forgets about a pit behind and falls into it, and skewers himself on a stake. He turns into a skeleton and perishes.

Francis Lederer makes an effectively villainous Dracula with a conspicuous foreign accent, but he cannot bare his fangs any more than his predecessors could. Indeed, nobody ever addresses him as Dracula to his face, and he has no crazy mad assistant. He hails from the Balkans area of eastern Europe. He doesn't dress as fashionably as either Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee, but he is not a derelict. He likes to materialize out of a cloud of mist and the same is true of the poor girl that he transforms into his vampire bride. This Dracula is also shape-shifter, and he appears as a white wolf but there is no transformation scene. Although “Isle of the Dead” lenser Jack Mackenzie photographed the film predominantly in black and white, Landres inserts an interesting shot that is in color when our heroes stake a vampire. The last-minute ending is quite ironic, too! Not long after the May 1958 release of "The Return of Dracula," Hammer Film Studios released their "Horror of Dracula" the following May that took the infamous vampire to a new level of excitement. Christopher Lee was allowed to bare his fangs!