This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse

1967 sequel

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Coffin Joe is back to his old tricks after being acquitted of the murders he's accused of committing, the same crimes we got to see him commit in the first movie. He still longs for a son, and kidnaps six women with the hopes that one of them will be perfect enough to help him create the perfect offspring. It's sort of like a Coffin Joe reality show except one that is nowhere near as offensive as the Sarah Palin reality show. He dumps tarantulas on them and allows snakes to attack them. This does nothing for his popularity.

All of a sudden, Coffin Joe's got himself a hunchbacked friend! Bruno! This sequel's not as strong as the first, mostly because Coffin Joe never shuts up. The guy just goes on and on and on. No wonder he's got no friends! I still like his character though, as misanthropic as they come, a guy with a weird spider fetish, and a guy who could really be considered a good role model because he sets a goal and then refuses to give up until that goal is reached. There are some genuinely creepy moments, made creepier by the nothing-budget, but this one doesn't shock as much as At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul. There was one great scene though with a close-up of Coffin Joe coming in for a kiss. If anything in this movie gives me nightmares, it'll be that. After the opening credits--weird sound effects accompanying images of floating bones, hands bursting through soil, and underpants--I had high expectations, but this installment of the Coffin Joe story stutter-stepped a bit too much and never was able to sustain a momentum. Bruno was cool though.

Alice in Wonderland

2010 movie

Rating: 13/20 (Jen: 16/20; Abbey: 15/20)

Plot: Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. Alice, now a young woman who isn't too happy about the pressures she's feeling to marry a goofy redheaded guy, returns to Wonderland and is told that she's the chosen one and will have to slay something called a Jabberwocky with a vorpal blade that goes snicker-snack. She gets help from an assortment of odd characters (a disappearing kitty, a mad hatter, a dormouse, tubby twins, a stoned caterpillar) who she should remember but doesn't. Meanwhile, Wonderland's completely gone to hell with the Red Queen making everybody's life miserable. As the frabjous day approaches, Alice is needed more and more, but she first needs to be convinced that she's the right Alice and get back to her normal size.

Maybe I should have seen this in 3-D. Maybe I should just see everything in 3-D actually. I did really like the look of Tim Burton's Wonderland, as artificial and computer-generated as it was. Even without 3-D, there was a depth to the setting with endless swirling grays in the sky, gnarled trees, cartoonish mushrooms. The computer-animated creatures--the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, et. al--were very well done, even when being ridden on. In fact, the special effects were great all around, working to keep things visually interesting even if they weren't anywhere near realistic. Unfortunately, I don't think Tim Burton adds anything of real value to the Wonderland canon. The dialogue, the characters, and the goings-on seem a bit rehashed, and the story never feels fully realized to me, just an excuse to throw some trippy visuals and nifty special effects on the screen. I really wish there would have been more playfulness in the dialogue. A lot of the whimsy and fun of the Disney cartoon and Lewis Carroll's novels is from the wordplay, and that's pushed aside to focus on a bunch of jerky action sequences and the aforementioned imagery. From the halfway point on, I lost interest more and more. I didn't like Alice very much, not even enough to look up the name of the gal who played her, but Johnny Depp does his usual fine job and Crispin Glover's also got a major part. There's a lot to like in Burton's Wonderland, but it suffers from the same problems as most of his movies, especially the remakes--it's just too much and almost disrespects the originals.

I can't believe I missed the opportunity to see Crispin Glover in 3-D, by the way.

The Invisible Man Returns

1940 sequel

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Geoffrey Radcliffe, a guy with a name that makes you want to sucker punch him, is scheduled to hang after being convicted of killing his own brother. But he didn't do it! Oh, snap! His fiance weeps as the day approaches. A scientist with a concoction to make people invisible, just like his brother in the first movie, shows up to help Radcliffe out. He sucker punches him and apologizes immediately. "I'm sorry," he said, "but your name is Geoffrey Radcliffe." Once invisible, Radcliffe runs off to find the real killer. It's a race against time, however, because the invisibility formula will gradually make him lose his mind. This is loosely based on the life of O.J. Simpson.

How do you make a sequel to a classic movie, one that isn't all that different when you boil it down, without offending audiences and making it totally suck? Add Vincent Price! This is his first horror film although there's really nothing horrifying about it. His character is an invisible man for whom you can root since he's been wrongly accused of a crime. To compensate for the inability to use facial expressions, Vincent really hams it up, and I don't know about viewers in 1940, but I was pleased to know that his character goes commando. The mystery isn't all that mysterious; like a Scooby Doo cartoon, you'll know who the real murderer is before you're supposed to. Also, in the intervening nine years, the details of the first invisible man have apparently become exaggerated as one character claims that "hundreds of lives" were lost. This offers nothing new with the special effects despite the nine years. They're fine, but it's more of the same. I did really like one scene with invisible Geoffrey messing with a character named Mr. Spars. Some quick camera movements and some nifty effects really brought Spars' fear and confusion to life. This is a fine sequel, somewhere in between the Abbott and Costello comedy and the original The Invisible Man and definitely required viewing for Vincent Price fans.