TheRetroCritic

Vvatch this review of The VVitch and stay tuned for another horror review tomorrow!

Released in 1992, Stay Tuned  was a dark comedy about a couple who gets sucked into a demonic satellite dish before being forced to survive living inside various TV shows from Hell as their kids try to help them back on the other side. John Ritter is Roy Knable, a couch potato loser husband who is too addicted to television to notice his marriage is falling apart and Pam Dawber plays his much more successful wife Helen. One day, Roy meets the mysterious Mr. Spike (Jeffrey Jones) who offers him a free trial for a new TV with a brand new satellite dish. Roy accepts and, soon enough, he and Helen find themselves stuck in all kinds of twisted shows from westerns to gameshows, even cartoons. The concept for Stay Tuned is very silly but also very clever as it provides a lot of opportunities for social satire and creative scenarios, not to mention hilarious puns (Fresh Prince Of Darkness, Wayne's Underworld etc.). It's easy to see why Tim Burton was once attached to this project

1997 was not a great year for superhero movies: not only did we get Batman & Robin but we also got Spawn and, although the latter was much more interesting and original than the former, it received some pretty rough feedback from critics and audiences alike. Based on the dark supernatural comic-books, Spawn sees special forces soldier Al Simmons (Michael Jai White) get double-crossed by Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen), the head of the agency who sent him on his latest mission. Simmons is burned alive and left for dead leaving him not only horribly disfigured but undead as a short trip down to Hell dooms him to eventually lead the Devil's army. In retrospect, attempting to tell this story on a $40M budget was somewhat over-ambitious seeing as the film was not only packed with special effects but builds up to a climax set in Hell with Spawn fighting a demon. Michael Jai White does a solid job as Spawn and it's pretty refreshing to see a film with an African-American superh

Shyamalan produces this first instalment of his "Night Chronicles" and surprisingly creates an entertaining, if uninspired, horror tale. After a truly engaging Hitchcockian first half the film unfortunately chooses to go down the familiar path of every silly supernatural horror film ever made and pick off its characters one by one only to build up towards a hammy revelation which doesn't really make sense. It's a shame because Devil really didn't need to be a supernatural horror. Had it stuck with its original premise and gone for a more Speed / Phone Booth -style thriller it could have been a genuinely tense and clever film. Alas, Shyamalan's head-explodingly naive religious message and childish take on the horror genre boils down an otherwise decent outing to a very watchable but flawed first attempt. One hopes the silliness is either kept quiet or full blown to its maximum in further instalments.