Tag Archives: Dark Comedy

Deathtrap Review

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It’s time for a film about a lot of murder planning. It definitely went quite a bit different than I was expecting though and particularly the poster gives you a very different vibe. More of a comedic touch with a lot of crazy shenanigans going on. I think that would have worked rather well but this one jumps the shark around midway and from there things just don’t end well. The main premise here had potential but ultimately it wasn’t to be this time.

The movie starts with Sidney’s new play starting but sadly it ends up bombing. He seems to have lost all of his talent at this point although his wife Myra believes he can still make a comeback. It’s just getting tougher and tougher the older he gets. One day his former pupil Clifford sends over a manuscript that is actually quite excellent. Sidney realizes that this could even be his ticket to stardom if he can just bump the guy off. Can he really do such a thing though? Myra thinks this is a bad idea and tells him not to do it but Sidney is determined. Clifford may be in trouble now!

So the story from this point is actually rather solid. Clifford shows up and there’s a bit of a whole cat and mouse thing going on. Sidney and Myra are acting strangely but Clifford doesn’t really know what’s going on. By the time he is starting to put the pieces together it’s a bit late for him to get away. After all Sidney drove him here and the house is in the middle of nowhere. So the whole thing is rather tense and you could absolutely build a whole film around this premise if you have the nerve for it. The dialogue would carry the film as both keep up the pretense that this is still friendly while Clifford makes the case for why he should live and Sidney makes the case of why he should die.

You would have a whole lot of epic conversations that way. Meanwhile Myra adds to it by trying to come up with positives for Clifford staying alive. She can be a bit overly dramatic in the film like with all the yelling but ultimately I thought she was a good character. I preferred her to the other two at least and while she could be very wishy washy about what she wanted to do, she had some kind of a moral compass at least. Unfortunately things don’t go great for her here. It’s a shame because you feel like the plan to get her had a very low probability of success but at the same time you knew it was going to work.

The cast here is very small as the only other character here is the fortune teller known as Helga. Her powers actually appear to be somewhat legit in this film as she has good instincts and knows things that she just shouldn’t know. She makes for an interesting character. She comes a bit out of nowhere mind you but I suppose she worked well enough. She’s mainly here to help increase the tension and to lead up to the ending.

Now unfortunately what crushes the film is the second half plot twist. It’s a big twist so in a way you should skip this paragraph if you haven’t seen the film but on the other hand it can be a big determiner on if you even watch the film or not so it’s hard to say. But here goes. Basically Clifford and Sidney hatched this plan together in order to bump off Myra and take her money. This is because it turns out that Clifford and Sidney are actually together and he never loved his wife. The whole thing screams shock value for sure and turns the plot on its head. It’s a shame they had to include this element into the movie and it basically takes up both of their dialogues from this moment on.

Their relationship becomes a focal point of the film so you’re just waiting for one of them to be bumped off. The issue is that neither will for a while because you now keep up the cat and mouse game but with both of them playing nice while waiting to make a move. So their scenes get hard to watch for a while there. It’s too bad because this does have a lot of potential but they should have gone with the original premise from the first half. Clifford trying to stay alive while Myra is on the fence and Sidney is the attacker was already a great dynamic that just got ruined there.

The movie knows how to build suspense so I’ll give it that. If it stayed away from shock value then it would have ultimately been better. For the first half the writing is on point as well and the effects throughout the movie are good. While I don’t really buy the whole Myra situation pretty much at all, the film did lay the groundwork for it so I’ll give the movie some credit there. Even if I didn’t buy it, it’s not like it was a plot hole or anything. Just treat it as a gamble that happened to pay off and that works well enough.

Overall, Ultimately I can’t really recommend this one. If you want a classic murder mystery then check out Clue or one of the old Hitchcock films. You can definitely pull off good plot twists in a film to shake things up but this just wasn’t one of them. It ends up overshadowing the rest of the film even though the movie had done some things well. Having weapons around due to the main character being a script writer actually made sense and was a good plot reason to have them around. The tactics were also good but ultimately that was just the end of the line. The ending of the movie is very satisfying at least so it ends on a decent note there.

Overall 3/10

Heathers Review

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This review is of the TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

Heathers is one of those movies that comes across as rather mean spirited. It is partially comedic in nature but I would say it usually still crosses the line into being rather serious most of the time. The characters are unlikable but you still feel bad for them just because in general these can be rough ways to go out. The main character is also extremely gullible to the point where it’s hard to buy into.

So the movie starts by introducing us to Veronica who has become a part of the Heathers clique, a group of bullies who pick on everybody. Apparently Veronica used to be a good person a long time ago but she went over to the dark side and never looked back. Now she is even rude to her old friend and doesn’t have the courage to move away from the bullies. That’s when a transfer student known as JD appears and this guy may not look very tough but he can defend himself. He’s even got a gun on him. The two immediately hook up and he tells her about how he can bump off all of her enemies. She figures these will just be really intense pranks that will put the bullies in their place but gradually he starts to murder them all. Is Veronica next? How can she escape this toxic relationship before it’s too late.

So right off the bat when JD approaches Veronica about taking out the first Heather, it’s clear that he’s trying to be lethal here. She keeps mentioning how they could just put some bad tasting things in Heather’s drink but he jumps right to poison and keeps ignoring her when she tries to stop him. So when he directly murders the first Heather…that should have been it. The relationship should have been over in an instant right? No, Veronica still hangs out with JD which leads to more and more escalations like shooting two guys in the forest. This is already way past the realm of things being normal.

Reporting JD to the cops is the first thing you have to do. You can’t let him forge suicide notes and just keep going. The worst part is that Veronica always does get on board after the deed is done. Her attitude seems to be a sort of “Well it already happened so we should maximize the benefits” which is also twisted. Yeah you can’t really change the past but you can still at least begin to make things right instead of continuing to hang out with the guy. Eventually/Inevitably JD does turn on her and you just knew this was coming. With someone like JD he is always going to keep going further and further down the rabbit hole until someone stops him.

I actually did like his debut with how he took the gun out to stop the bullies. Those two weren’t going to stop so that was an effective way to get him to back off but in the back of your head you knew that it just wasn’t going to end there. The guy was going to keep on going and reaching new heights of terror. In the end he’s just psychotic all the way through and his true colors really began to show. I will say it was a bit sloppy that he didn’t notice Veronica’s trick though. It was certainly a real risky one all the way through and I just don’t see it working. All you have to do is have him reach out and the scheme fails. I’m always a little skeptical on a trick like that working but you’ll have to watch the film to see what trick she comes up with.

At the end of the day the film has a lot of problems but beyond being generally mean spirited with every character just being awful….every character is awful. It’s a strategy that backfires all the time because then you’re not actually engaged or interested in any of the characters on screen. You just get annoyed to see them when they appear because either they are about to die or pick on some innocent student in the meantime. The fact that Veronica was actively one of the bullies was just awful.

Then you have one student who is overweight so of course everyone picks on her and she even tries to commit suicide. It’s a really serious moment in a film that’s not quite as serious and while things work out for her in the end, it does mean that watching this film can be a chore. The film has a bit of a subplot where the school isn’t sure what to do to stop these “suicides” (Since they all don’t know the truth) and it starts to get crazy as the teacher almost seems to encourage it. The school was definitely messed up that’s for sure and there is almost no teacher supervision. I mean it doesn’t seem unrealistic because you hear a lot of crazy stories about school but at the same time it doesn’t make for quality entertainment.

Throw in a single likable character and we’re good. The only one who even seemed interesting was JD’s father who was also a nut. Apparently he’s a mass murderer who is rich and he and JD have some kind of roleplay going on where JD pretends to be the father while the father is the son. It’s all rather twisted but at least this guy had charisma and would have done better than most of the students. By the time you reach the final fight in this film you’re already fairly exhausted.

Overall, This movie is basically the subgenre of revenge film where all of the characters are bullies so someone decides to pick them off one by one but murdering a villain is still murder so now there is absolutely nobody to really root for. The victims are all villains here and the murderer clearly is as well. It ends up making sure that the film loses all of its bite right from the start. Yeah this is definitely a film to stay away from. There are plenty of school drama type movies to watch instead that will be many leagues better than this one.

Overall 1/10

Dr. Phibes Rises Again Review

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It’s time for Phibes to return once more to try and claim his victims. This film is fairly similar to the first. It starts off a little more traditional as one of those horror titles with a lot of quality dialogue and for a minute there I thought this one was going to shatter the original. Then Phibes actually shows up and this quickly becomes more of the same as the first. If push came to shove I would probably give this one the slight edge over the original but by no means is there a big gap or anything. They are very close to each other.

So of course last time Phibes sealed himself away but it turns out that he actually had a grand master plan all along. A mechanism automatically freed him after a certain amount of time and now he is free to start the murders again. His sidekick Vulnavia is back from the dead somehow but that isn’t really explored. She even feels like a completely different character as she seems to possibly like Phibes now but that’s really a doomed goal from the start since the whole point of his quest is revenge for his wife. He’s not going for the rebound now.

The main character this time is Biederbeck who is working in Egypt to find the river of life. He’s got a good start by grabbing the papyrus and all but now this has put him in the way of Phibes. Phibes will be arriving to take this back since he needs it to possibly bring his wife back. Biederbeck knows that someone dangerous is after him but doesn’t care. He knows that the prize at the end of the tunnel is all his and that’s all that he cares about. I appreciate how tough the guy acts at all times but he never seems to be all that smart in thinking about the big picture. Will Trout be able to keep Biederbeck alive or is this game over?

You can see the dark humor elements a bit more here though like in some of the murders. For example, at one point the villain starts to crush someone in one of those traps where the walls are closing in. As he yells for help, Phibes pulls out a giant fan out of nowhere and turns it on which makes everyone think a storm is brewing. As a result nobody gets up to help the poor guy and he is taken down for the count. The whole thing is rather tragic but there just isn’t anything Trout can do for him.

So you have Trout and his partner laughing about the storm and having comic relief scenes while this guy is taken out. So that was at least one effective use of the dark humor. For the most part I would say the other murders are still on the serious side though and it plays out very similarly to the first film. If you liked the first film then you’ll probably like this one and vice versa. The plot may be different but the story and characters are basically the same either way.

I would say Biederbeck probably isn’t as good as the lead in the first film. It’s close and there are some qualities of his that I appreciate more like not being afraid of Phibes but ultimately you know that he won’t be able to back up the tough talk. Diana was a solid heroine who certainly did her best to talk him down at times, but he just wouldn’t hear of it. Trout is still a fun comic relief character. He’s completely helpless the whole time even though he talks as if he is in control.

By this point the government does realize that Trout’s not doing so great but there just aren’t a lot of other people for the job. Trout’s sidekick gets a little more to do here but it’s not like he’s any more effective than Trout so that’s barely even a consolation by this point. Both of them will ultimately just be standing around while Phibes takes everyone out. That’s really all that they can do.

Because of how direct the film is, there isn’t a ton to say about this one. The first movie had more discussion points like the whole plague theme and everything. This one is just more by the numbers as he goes around bumping everyone off but in a very uninspired way. He’s taking everyone out effectively for sure, but it’s not like there is a big gimmick or anything this time around. To me the most memorable scene is still when he just pulled a giant fan out of nowhere to simulate tornadoes. It’s easy to forget but this guy was a genius after all so it makes sense that he could do stuff like this.

Perhaps leaning into that angle a bit more could have done the film some good. Have his murders all be related to really high tech items that he has created. The more odd and outlandish the better if you ask me. Pull that off and everything will really fall into place. Not sure if that would have actually made this film take the leap all the way towards being a good film but it could have at least given it a little boost. Something to help you remember the film and to differentiate it from the rest.

Overall, This is a sequel that isn’t exactly changing the game in any way. You can really skip it and you won’t miss anything and if you liked the original film then you may as well check it out. I really doubt that you will be remembering it for very long. It’s just not particularly memorable like that so it’ll become a vague memory before long. Maybe one day they’ll make a third film but I feel like this is the kind of movie that almost nobody remembers and for good reason. Horror titles like this were a dime a dozen back then and many more memorable ones have come out over the years.

Overall 3/10