DVD SinBin: 2001 Maniacs August 16, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 1 comment so farOkay, thats it. I’ve had it with horror films. I mean, life is just too short. There’s plenty of great films out there for me to discover, or great, favourite films for me to watch again, but really, I’ve had it with horror films. The genre has been on a slippery slope for years, but it seems its now crashed and burned. I’m just sick to death of lazy excuses for film-making. I imagine modern horror film-makers work with the same bloody checklist- a) a bunch of horny teenagers/college students go to a b)town stuck in nowheresville/abandoned hospital/asylum and c) get preyed upon by ghosts/cannibals/madmen and d) suffer incredibly stupid gorey deaths before or after e) an obligatory sex scene and wrap the film up with f) a so-dumb-it-fools no-one ‘twist’ ending.
I just give up. 2001 MANIACS has just finished me off. It’s just so stupid and NOT REMOTELY SCARY. It’s stupid, lazy, pointless, utterly devoid of any redeeming feature. And it’s NOT REMOTELY SCARY. Can anyone remember when a horror film was actually scary? Can anybody actually direct a proper horror film these days? Can anyone actually write an original horror film? Is the genre really utterly dead and buried? I saw SHROOMS the other week, it was so dire and NOT REMOTELY SCARY I couldn’t bring myself to write anything about it on this blog, and then I saw the dismal Rob Zombie remake of HALLOWEEN that was utterly appalling and NOT REMOTELY SCARY but now, with 2001 MANIACS… well, thats it.
Finished. No more horror films. No more new horror films anyway. Life is too short and there’s far better films to watch. How can anyone waste their time watching all this ‘horror’ tripe?
If ever I want to watch a proper horror film I’ll watch THE SHINING or THE EXORCIST or ALIEN or PSYCHO or THE HAUNTING or Carpenters original HALLOWEEN… I’ll give the modern variant a wide berth. Whatever happened to decent horror films?
DVD SinBin: CREEPSHOW 2 August 10, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 2 commentsThe original CREEPSHOW, back from that golden year 1982, is a fine horror anthology- the stories are short, varied and effective, the casting universally good, the music sublime. The film works very well, and has quite a unique charm that in many ways has been unequalled in the many years since. Indeed, as horror films of late get mired in torture-porn and gore, it seems increasingly unlikely that we will see it’s like again.
I had never seen the 1987 sequel until a few nights ago. To put it bluntly, CREEPSHOW 2 is terribly inferior to the original. It only has three tales, compared to the originals five, and only one of them -The Raft- actually really works. The third story, The Hitchhiker, just seems to go on and on and on, until its one gag wears so thin you just want it all to end. Perhaps if they had tightened up the three tales and added two others to maintain the same number as the original, the film as a whole would have been much better, but it is evident that the film had a very limited budget and little ambition. It almost screams video cash-in, even though I believe it was a cinema release.
Infact the most curious thing about the film is that one of the actresses from The Raft segment goes by the unusual (for a woman, anyway) name of Jeremey Green. A look at IMDB claims she only ever made two films and appeared in one tv episode of a tv show I never heard of. Must confess I’m curious as to how she found herself in the acting profession and why she apparently turned her back on it. Or why the industry turned its back on her. I guess there are thousands of actors and actresses who had short careers like that. Hollywood can be a nasty business, not everyone can be the next Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts; some win, some lose. Just how lives turn out I suppose. Well, there you go, the most fascinating factoid regards CREEPSHOW 2- the short acting career of an actress with an unusual name; the film was that bad.
One to avoid folks. To think they also made a CREEPSHOW 3, which by accounts is even worse… thats frightening.
DARK CITY shines bright. August 7, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 8 commentsWatched DARK CITY on Blu-ray the other night. Being a fan of BLADE RUNNER and film-noir in general, the film is right up my alley, but apart from the obvious visual similarities, DARK CITY had other connections with BLADE RUNNER I was not previously aware of. I’d seen the film on it’s original theatrical release and found it interesting but flawed, and what do you know, it turns out it had suffered the dreaded audience-preview syndrome that had blighted BLADE RUNNER for over 20 years. Fortunately fans of DARK CITY haven’t had to wait that many years.
The new DVD and Blu-ray releases of the film are of a ‘new’ directors cut, which, much in the same way as BLADE RUNNER’s ‘final cut’ release, actually returns the film to its original, audience-preview incarnation (albeit with tweaked visual fx). As with BR, the changes are actually very subtle, but they drastically improve the film. While there are problems with the film and it remains far from perfect, it nevertheless is a superior piece of sci-fi, and on Blu-ray it looks amazing.
Visually it is a remarkable piece of work, with fantastic photography and production design, and it has plenty of ideas to brood over as well, such as the function of memory in defining us, and what it means to be human, and the nature of reality.
I’m struck, also, by how much it reminds me of THE MATRIX, a film it actually pre-dated by about a year. Visually it is remarkably close, lit in artifical light with a green murky tint, but more than that, the way that DARK CITY’s John Murdoch ‘tunes’ or alters the reality of the Dark City around him, just as Neo gains powers over the Matrix. It’s amazing how original everyone thought THE MATRIX was when so much of it had been done in DARK CITY. When Murdoch or the aliens alter the Dark City, they manipulate it in much the same way as the Matrix is. And of course with the investigations into their reality, the citizens of DARK CITY face similar philosophical ideas that we find in THE MATRIX. I’m not suggesting that the Wachowski Bros ripped DARK CITY off, but when they saw it they must have had quite a fright that they had been beaten to the punch with some of the concepts and visual themes. Turned out a year later THE MATRIX blew everyone away and DARK CITY had already been forgotten, but with this new release some of the balance can be restored. In some ways DARK CITY is actually superior, it doesn’t get bogged down in philosophical ramblings or kung-fu videogame action. Like in BLADE RUNNER the ‘big’ ideas are there but they are under the surface to be picked up on by intent viewers, rather than shoved in your face.
I’d recommend anyone who found DARK CITY wanting in its previous incarnation to give the film another go with it’s new directors cut. Indeed, its superior to most of the dumb ’spectaculars’ we have seen in years since and warrants reappraisal. Some films just get better with age, and I think this is one of them. It’s certainly far better now than I had thought it back in 1998.
DOOMSDAY July 24, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 1 comment so farDOOMSDAY is, just simply, a blast. It is also a love letter to genre films of the 1980s, full of affectionate nods to cult faves such as ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, MAD MAX, EXCALIBUR, ALIENS… if, like me, you remember and love those films then you just can’t help falling for this great gory romp. If, on the other hand, you just don’t ‘get’ those old movies, then you are likely to take DOOMSDAY far too seriously than it deserves, or even demands, and actually find that you hate it. On its recent theatrical release, America, it seems, just didn’t know what to make of it.
Neil Marshall is fast becoming the new John Carpenter. Both his earlier films, DOG SOLDERS and THE DESCENT, are great, small horror films that hark back to the simpler days of films like HALLOWEEN, back before all this horror torture-porn that sullies the genre today. THE DESCENT, in particular, is one of the best horror films to emerge in the past twenty years. Tight, effective, with great characters and an edgy script with an uncompromising ending that reminds me of the ending of THE THING. The way Marshall’s first two films referenced the horror films he saw years ago informs how to approach DOOMSDAY.
DOOMSDAY is more of a pedal-to-the-floor action flick than an horror film, but it shares many of the sensibilities of Marshalls earlier fiilms. DOOMSDAY captures the very essence of a 1980s action film, back when stunts were done for real, without wires and CGI-doubles. It’s part disaster flick, part zombie flick, part MAD MAX, part EXCALIBUR, part GLADIATOR. It ought to be a confusing mess but it works, mostly because Marshall knows and loves so well the films he is referencing. They simply don’t make films like this anymore. Just look at INDIANA JONES AND THE CRYSTAL SKULL- no matter how much it tries to emulate the 80s-vibe of the original RAIDERS, it simply falls flat. Where Spielberg failed, Marshall actually delivers, mainly by filming in the old-school way, keeping it simple and pretty much dropping CGI completely. Ironically, its probably just how Lucas should have approached the STAR WARS prequels.
It’ll be interesting to see what Marshall does next- having completed two horror films and now an action film, with all three referencing the old films he loved, it is perhaps time for him to raise the bar and demonstrate more of his own voice without displaying his inspirations so obviously. That said, its refreshing to see a film-maker with such old-school sensilbilities making films that display his own voice rather than those of a committee of marketing people.
AVP2: REQUIEM FOR A FRANCHISE July 2, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 1 comment so farI love ALIEN. I can live with ALIENS, think ALIEN 3 might have been a masterpiece had the studio left it alone, and… well, I kinda pretend that the fourth film never happened to be honest. But even the fourth film is a work of art compared to AVP2.
The Alien franchise oddly defines how Hollywood works- the first film is, despite it’s genre borrowings, a classic. It has some of the finest production design of any film, ever, a great cast, a typically ’70s slow pace and a sense of realism that belies the subject matter. Hollywood, of course, loves to wring any moneymaker dry. Considering what Fox did with the PLANET OF THE APES films, what happened next was inevitable. Anybody who loved ALIEN back in ‘79 and thought Hollywood would leave well alone was sadly delusional. ALIENS was typical’80s Hollywood, back when Rambo and dumb action flicks reigned supreme. Gung-ho action aside, ALIENS also demystified the Alien by creating the superfluous Alien Queen, just to labour the motherhood/Ripley subtext with the subtlety of a brick -typical Cameron. I guess the fanbase was left split into two camps- those that preferred the original and those that preferred the sequel. Neither camp would be fully happy with the next film- ALIEN 3 started with an arthouse-movie atitude, back towards the ‘feel’ of the original film, but the Studio got cold feet and the final film shows this all too plainly, with the film as dysfunctional and twisted as the inmates of the film’s prison. Just to prove that even after three films Hollywood can’t ever learn the lessons of the past though, ALIEN:RESURRECTION failed to live up to it’s title in every way. It suffered every failing of ALIEN 3, in that there were good ideas not followed through and plenty of other ideas that should never have seen the light of day.
What has always bugged me is that the franchise isn’t titled RIPLEY IN SPACE- it’s ALIEN, and yet the studio always seemed obsessed with Ripley rather than the titular creature. Now, I adore Sigourney Weaver’s acting in the films, she is wonderful, but really, the star of the films is H R Giger and his monstrous Alien designs. And I think that’s where the films went wrong. But nothing is as wrong as the conceit of the dreaded ALIEN VERSUS PREDATOR films.
I mean really, it may work for a comic but as a movie? It sums up pretty much everything wrong with Hollywood these days, so bereft of original ideas and hellbent on marketing well-known properties, the business is wallowing in the depths of nauseating movies based on tv shows and comicbooks. Even the STAR TREK franchise has devolved into what is basically a remake of the original 60s tv show. You can imagine the boffins behind these films, thinking about how to make a fifth ALIEN film… “hey, I can’t think of anything, but here, look- there’s this comic!”
But AVP2… well, words pretty much fail me. I watched the film fearing the worst and was aghast throughout. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can prepare you for the banal stupidity of this film, no matter how low your expectations. A PredAlien (great idea, NOT) runs amock on a Predator ship that, after the first film, conveniently hangs around in Earth orbit whilst the creature hatches/grows to adulthood. The ship spectacularly crashes to Earth in a huge smoking fireball that no-one on the planet sees or hears other than one bloke and his son hunting in the woods. Nasa and all the satellites in orbit just happen to be looking the other way? Oh well, a hunting pack of facehuggers soon chase down and deal with the unfortunate witnesses. Elsewhere, a Predator in his apartment back home gets a video postcard of the proceedings and jumps in his spaceship to Earth. Seemingly hellbent on hiding all the evidence of the mishap by nuking the crashed ship (again, no-one on the planet seems to notice) and melting the remains of victims, when he is eventually noticed by a cop, he oddly decides to skin him alive and hang the corpse up for everyone to see. What happened to hiding all the evidence?
The ultimate sacrilage though is the name of our ‘hero’, who arrives in town on a bus and is named, gosh, Dallas. Whose idea was that? Did they think the fans would appreciate a nod back to the original film? Why not name the GI Jane character back from Iraq Ripley and be done with it? As if anybody watching this film needs reminding of the first film and of how stupid films have become in nearly 30 years. The characters are all unlikeable dumb cannon-fodder for the Aliens and Predator, it’s like a FRIDAY THE 13th Giger-movie. Well, that’s what it is-how many times can an Alien smash someones head in with its tongue, how many ways can the Predator despatch an Alien with his funky gadgets?
The effects must have been poor considering how dark the film is, it looks horrible. The direction is, well…no single image in the film betrays any imagination. It all looks like a videogame tv-movie. The ALIEN franchise is dead; it’s buried by this turd of a movie. I wonder what Ridley Scott thought of it, had he wasted his time to watch it (which I doubt). Horrible. just horrible.
A long, long time ago… April 30, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 1 comment so farFunny thing happened yesterday. It was my nephew’s birthday, “the big one-two”, as he called it. Twelve years old. I remember back when I was twelve, I told him, when his Dad and I bunked off school one February afternoon back in 1978. If I remember rightly it was my birthday week and my Dad took us both to the Odeon cinema in town to see STAR WARS. The Odeon was one of those big old cinemas with a huge lobby and foyers and a fantastic large screen, with the seats for Screen One being the balcony seats (Screens Two and Three being in what used to be the stalls down below). It may not have had digital surround sound like multiplexes today have, but boy did that place have character. It was a Picture Palace, a Dream Theatre. It’s been a Bingo Hall for the last twenty years.
And yeah, I loved STAR WARS. The rest, as they say, is history.
On the subject of STAR WARS, anyone else seen the new issue of Empire with the pictures from the new CLONE WARS animated feature? Dear God, Lucas, give it a rest. I may be proved wrong but it looks just awful. Back in 1978 I was transported to another galaxy, with real actors, real sets, great miniature effects, and now it’s just a computer cartoon. It’s very sad, and STAR WARS’ place in cinematic history (hell, the version I loved back in 1978 doesn’t even exist anymore according to Lucas) is being repeatedly tarnished by its own creator. Very sad indeed.
Everybody loves the ALIEN April 24, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 4 commentsI love ALIEN. I know its just a simple dumb ‘b’-movie sci-fi flick at heart, but I absolutely adore this film. As soon as it begins and that wonderful title sequence starts I’m lost in it’s dark, gothic world.
I actually think that ALIEN boasts perhaps the finest title sequence of all. It’s so subtle, so atmospheric- it’s just gorgeous, the ‘ALIEN’ logo slowly building on the screen as the credits roll, the screen a dark moody green as the camera passes over the planetoid, the music full of dread and forboding. Jerry Goldsmith hated using this music cue over the main titles (he composed a greatly different main title cue which was rejected), but I think he missed the point- ALIEN is all about mood, and the title music draws you in. It’s the perfect example of using main title graphics and music to set the tone of the film that follows. As soon as that credit sequence starts I’m gone. I recall a review at the time nailed it perfectly- it was as if instead of Lovecraft’s Elder Gods coming to Earth, we had gone to them. With Giger’s incredible creature designs looking like nothing on Earth (excepting perhaps the subtle pseudo-phallic tone of the imagery) the film was genuinely disturbing and remains so to this day, and no-one has equalled the film’s production design in a space movie.
When ALIENS arrived in 1986, I hated it. For me it seemed the Anti-ALIEN. Scotts film was slow, all about mood and tension, and the creature was an inhuman, indestructible killing machine. Camerons film was really a space-based Rambo movie that hijacked the Giger Alien. Incredibly tiresomegung-ho space marines against a horde of dumb soldier-aliens, Cameronintroduced the travesty of a Queen Alien that disposed of the alien-ness of the original, replacing it with a more familiar bee/ant-like Terran lifecycle. The original, even without the cocoon sequence, was unexplained, mysterious, beyond our understanding. . . Cameron’s movie was just too neat, explained too much. I detest the whole concept of the Alien Queen, all that mother/hive nonsense. It spoiled all the later films of the franchise and tainted the original. I still have a smouldering hatred of the film, and watch it very rarely. For me you could have subsituted the Alien for any other creature design and it would still be the same movie. I know many fans prefer ALIENS to the first film, but they are just plain wrong.
ALIEN 3 was a better effort. Much-maligned at the time, I really enjoyed the film even in its flawed original cinema version. There is much to admire here- that familiar sense of doom and dread, a return to the single, deadly Alien, brilliant production design and a simply magnificent score. The film would actually get improved by the eventual DVD recut (described as an’assembly cut’ while not officially a ‘directors cut’ as David Fincher pointedly kept his distance, still hurt by the making of and reaction to the film). This altered cut was more faithful to what Fincher originally envisaged, and was in my eyes a very superior version. ALIEN 3 in better circumstances could have been a classic but it was doomed from the start, as the making-of doc on the special edition DVD testifies.
Infact if the ALIEN 3 making-of doc is a lesson in how not to treat your franchise, describing how ALIEN 3 was doomed and suffered a painful gestation, then what happened after is a lesson in how to kill your franchise and trample it into the gutter. ALIEN RESURRECTION was a poorly conceived attempt to kickstart the franchise following the poorly received third film, and is really just a bloody mess that makes ALIENS look like a classic. The NewBorn Alien at the films’ end is perhaps the most ill-judged idea in the franchise, but that distinction is debatable considering the two ALIENS VERSUS PREDATOR films that followed. When the first AVP was mooted I honestly thought it was a joke, I could not believe the series could fall to such a low (but then I hadn’t banked on AVP:REQUIEM, for which the reviews have been so universally damning I don’t think I can ever bring myself to watch it).
But we’ll always have the first film. It shines as brightly as ever, and indeed, seems to get better with age as the years pass and more inferior films in the series get released. Any hope that the franchise would return to the grandeur of the first film vanished some years ago, when Ridley Scott and James Cameron got together to make another ALIEN film. In a typically smart move 20th Century Fox ditched it in favour of AVP. You got to love Hollywood. What a madhouse.
Jack Lemmon: Save The Tiger April 19, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 1 comment so farThere’s a wonderful story about SAVE THE TIGER, recounted by the film’s director, John Avildsen, on the DVD’s commentary track. It was 1972, and Paramount had left the film on the shelf, not sure what to do with it. It was a harrowing film, documenting 36 hours in the life of Harry Stoner and his nervous breakdown as his clothing business faces ruin and he contemplates turning to crime via arson to survive. It’s not easy viewing, and Paramount had doubts about its chances of success. So before Paramount took hold of the film and recut it, John and the films writer, Steve Shagan, thought that if they could show the finished film to Jack Lemmon, and if he liked it, then maybe he would carry enough clout to convince Paramount to leave it alone. So they took the film to Rome, where Jack and Billy Wilder were making AVANTI.
Just imagine it; it’s 1972 and Lemmon and Wilder are in Italy making that wonderful romantic comedy. Just imagine that moment in time, one of the best actor/director partnerships in Hollywood history working together on that sunny comedy and they sit down in a small theatre outside Rome to watch a troubled ‘little’ picture called SAVE THE TIGER.
So they watched the film and when it finished and the lights came up, there was silence for awhile, and then Billy Wilder said, “There’s only one thing wrong with this picture,” to which he could see Avildsen react in horror, and then he added, “I didn’t direct it.” Probably, John Avildsen recalls, the sweetest thing any director could say to another director. So SAVE THE TIGER was left alone by Paramount and Jack Lemmon went on to win an Academy Award (Best Actor, 1973).
When watching SAVE THE TIGER, I often find myself thinking about TAXI DRIVER. They are both seem to be about the American Dream turning to Nightmare, and both are such definitive examples of 1970s filmmaking. They are both low budget, both with excellent scripts, both graced with astonishing acting. Jack Lemmon’s performance is a tour de force, like watching THE APARTMENT’s CC Baxter in frustrated middle-age, his hopes and dreams of 1960 thwarted and his life ruined. America has changed.
Harry Stoner is facing a ruined business, a marriage on the rocks, a daughter in Europe, and he constantly thinks back to happier times, simpler times when everything made sense; Stoner’s reminisce falters, his voice trails off, his eyes wistful, elsewhere, seeing memories… and Lemmon carries it off. As his breakdown takes hold he thinks back to his Wartime days, the men who died there, the pointlessness of their sacrifice in the face of what America has become. Stoner starts seeing things, his dead wartime buddies, and is visibly falling apart, increasingly lost, much as Travis Bickle in Scorsese’s later film. The film’s end is so typically 1970s- there is no neat conclusion, and Stoner is probably more lost than ever. It is a very powerful movie, as relevant today as it ever was, and one of Lemmon’s finest.
Jack Lemmon: Avanti April 16, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 4 commentsWe all have our guilty pleasures, and AVANTI is one of mine. Released back in 1972, it appears now as a quaint time-capsule, an example of a forgotten kind of movie. They simply don’t make them like this anymore. Many will see that as a good thing… but not me.
It’s an oddly charming movie, perhaps it’s the thirty+ years between then and now. The music is wonderful, the setting gorgeous, the acting a delight… it’s magical. Like a fairytale from thirty years ago. You watch thinking it doesn’t work, and yet by movies end you are in love. Well, that’s how it caught me anyway. I think I smiled all the way through the film. I don’t think, even in 1972, that it would have been considered a realistic adult comedy-drama… it’s pure romantic fantasy, and now, in 2008, distanced by time, it appears more fantasy than ever. It’s timeless now.
Jack Lemmon plays a self-centered, all-business American, Wendell Armbruster, who arrives in the idyllic Mediteranean to collect the body of his late father in order to return it to America in time for a huge society funeral. Armbuster’s father was in the Big League, head of a huge business with big political connections. It turns out however that his father was not alone when he died in a car crash- he was with a lover, a woman whose daughter, Pamela Piggot, played by Juliet Mills, has also arrived to see to her mothers funeral. The illicit romance is no surprise to her, and it becomes apparent that the affair had been going on for years, much to Armbruster’s shock and disgust. His father, it seemed, led a double-life. A consumate father, husband and business mogul in America, every year for a month he retired to the Med where he led a romantic affair with an Englishwoman, the two of them treated like Royalty by the islanders.
The beauty of the film is in how Lemmon handles his characters arc, as he arrives one man and departs another. Armbruster completely transforms before our eyes, emulating his father just as Pamela emulates her mother, the two of them falling in love with each other amidst the peaceful sun-drenched idyll of the island. It is so subtle you hardly notice as his cold heart melts away, but you are suddenly aware, as the film ends, that this is not the same man who arrived at the film’s start.
The script is warm and whimsical, the comedy light, the music bewitching… the film is a guilty joy. It’s a film to return to on any wet, grey, afternoon/evening, just as the island is a place for the two characters to return to every summer. You won’t see AVANTI on many peoples lists of favourite Billy Wilder/Jack Lemmon films. Thats understandable- this is no THE APARTMENT or SOME LIKE IT HOT. It is somewhat overlong, some of the humour can fall flat, it is dated to a degree… but neverthess there is a romantic warmth to this film that is hypnotic. I could sit down and take it all in again already.
Jack Lemmon: The Out Of Towners April 12, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , add a commentFive years before THE PRISONER OF SECOND AVENUE, Jack Lemmon appeared in another Neil Simon-penned movie, THE OUT OF TOWNERS. It would share, with the later film, the setting of New York, but from a different perspective, as the title suggests. Whereas in the superior 1975 film Lemmon and Bancroft played a New york couple who stay in the city in the face of crisis, in THE OUT OF TOWNERS the protaganists are the Kellermans, outsiders from Ohio for whom New York simply is the crisis. Jack Lemmon plays George Kellerman, due for a life-changing job interview in New York whose plans unravel into a chaos of diverted airflights, lost luggage, being mugged, losing their Hotel room, getting soaked in a rainstorm, caught in the midst of a robbery… It’s one of those days/nights in which everything goes wrong.
Although it is one of his lesser films, Lemmon nevertheless shines with a comic timing that is typically natural and seemingly effortless. He had a gift for comedy so great that he would perhaps always be frustrated, as an actor, that he was famous as being first a comedy actor above all else. This was unfortunate and patently untrue, as other films so greatly demonstrated, but in the case of very average films like THE OUT OF TOWNERS, that great comedic talent could save a film from mediocrity. In truth, the Neil Simon screenplay is basically one joke stretched over the length of the film, but it is saved by Lemmon’s performance. I really can’t imagine anyone but Lemmon succeeding in the role of George Kellerman - compare the flawed original to the vastly inferior 1999 remake starring Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn and you’ll appreciate what Lemmon brings to the original.
Lemmon had been in far better films before and would many times after, but THE OUT OF TOWNERS stands as a testament to his talent at comedy and ability to raise material above it’s own limitations. Even a poor Jack Lemmon film is still a good way to pass away a few hours, and the film guarantees a good few laughs. The DVD is predictably poor, since we’ll never see a Special Edition for a film like this, but on the whole the picture is fair and the widescreen format makes it superior to the usual pan-and-scan television airing.