TheRetroCritic

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

Clive Barker's cult franchise was always going to aim higher and higher. After all, this was a crazy-ass concept with endless possibilities and a lot of potential for creative, far-out developments. The first Hellraiser took place mostly inside this one house but the claustrophobic aspect of the story worked really well. Its sequel, Hellraiser II: Hellbound , followed a slow build-up with some neat sequences taking place inside the demon Box itself. It was a great way to expand that world and I personally couldn't wait to see more of that in the second sequel. So what's all this shit?! You've got Pinhead and co stuck inside some pillar statue, some boring douchebags with problems we really couldn't give two shits about and a first half so dull I felt like putting on the awesome Phantasm quadrilogy instead to balance things out. Granted the first couple of scenes are fun and the second half picks up promptly but it never becomes good: only sillier, more ridi

Drive Angry probably boasts THE best storyline of the year so far: Nicolas Cage breaks out of Hell in a car. I'll repeat that: breaks out of HELL, in a CAR. This is gonna be sweeeeet! The trailers promised extreme Grindhouse-style silliness the likes of which Robert Rodriguez ( Planet Ter ror, Machete ) would be proud of with Nic Cage at his wackiest, exciting (read: ridiculous) action scenes and plenty of facepalm-inducing dialogs. Alas, you'll need to lower your expectations just a little if you are to truly enjoy Drive Angry. There was a great film in there somewhere (great as in so bad it's good, of course) but, unfortunately, something went wrong along the way. For one thing, Cage is at his most soporific here and goes for monotone swagger rather than Bad Lieutenant -type goofiness. Which is not to say he doesn't entertain: seeing the guy fully dressed having sex whilst blasting the bad guys with a giant gun, standing randomly staring at fire or saying the wo

Although there never was a fake trailer for this one, Hell Ride is indeed a worthy addition to Tarantino and Rodriguez's Grindhouse . After zombie movies, Mexploitation films ( Machete ) and car chase movies we get this biker flick which comes with QT regulars Michael Madsen and David Carradine but with added Dennis Hopper and Vinnie Jones. *squee* The result? Nothing sensational but it fits very nicely in between Planet Terror and Death Proof in that it contains the overblown silliness of Robert Rodriguez films and the style, dialogs and cool of QT's films. Of course, this being made by Larry Bishop it never achieves the highs of both directors but it makes a fair attempt nonetheless. Somewhat underrated, yes Hell Ride is big, lumbering, confused and dumb but...hello? That's the point. It's a 70's style biker flick! Of course you need lots of ladies in hot pants, gratuitous nudity, unmotivated biking, a trippy magic mushrooms scene and nonsensical dialogs!

  "Hey you guys, we need someone to play a tiny obese evil clown, is John Leguizamo free?". This is the kind of question the producers of 1997 supernatural comic book film Spawn were asking themselves. Who did they originally cast as Spawn then? Danny DeVito? Against all odds, Leguizamo's trippy turn as a Joker-style maniacal clown turns out to be the film's driving force and best asset. Which is not to say there's nothing else appealing about the film: a lot of effects are pretty creative and the whole thing is admittedly entertaining. Unfortunately once you see what Hell looks like you soon forget the good stuff and find yourself wishing you were playing a 90's PC video game instead of watching a film in which entire sequences could have been directly lifted from one of those very games. Like I said, some effects are creative and some do work but that Devil thing and its army of minions all standing around moving like tiny CGI puppets in a sea of fire i

  Slightly disappointing, Hell Comes to Frogtown not only had THE best title (Hell is the main character's name) but also THE best premise. The result is definitely a fun ride but there's a lot of filler and the plot never becomes quite as glorious as the title suggested. This is one of those silly cult 80's movies which could actually benefit from a (CGI free, please) remake. Unfortunately Robert Rodriguez can't do everything. But as it stands, the froggy adventures of badass stud Sam Hell are only humorous, not quite genius. Shame. Roddy Piper, fresh from John Carpenter's excellent They Live , is a great sport here as he is sent to Frogtown to impregnate pretty much any human women he can find. The whole time he is forced to wear metal briefs with a small flap to allow...access. A lot of fun but the version in your head is probably way better.