A christmas staple for most, it’s been *AT LEAST* 15 years since I last watched home alone, and I couldnt quite remember why I ever stopped having it in my christmas movie rotation. Its a John Hughes pic from his near perfect run of 1983 – 1993, Its got a star studded cast with the likes of Joe pesci and John Candy…Not to mention Makauley Culkin here in a fairly early role that would cement his status as a lovable child actor of the 90s.

And yet; rewatching this year after a long absence…while I absolutely appreciate it for what it is and can EASILY see why people watch this one year on year. I didnt quite click with it in the same way that I do for other festive themed works from Hughes like ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ or ‘National Lampoons Christmas Vacation’

The script is pretty rock solid, its got a nice 3 act structure that nicely mingles the festive, with light comedy, slapstick and it isnt afraid to get a little bittersweet in places. it balances all the elements out nicely and delivers the perfect ‘holiday cheer’ boost that a lot of the christmas movies seem to fumble a bit. Its great!.. That being said…

Two things stop me from outright loving it, one being that our characters, for the most part are a little flat in terms of character depth. with Harry and Marv (our bumbling burglars for this picture) being a little one note and blunt. im not saying that had to be complex characters for me to get on with them, but maybe just SOMETHING a little more than ‘they’re dumb burglars’ probably would have made me feel a bit more involved…Kevin as a character has a bit more nuance, but by the middle of the 2nd act this has basically boiled down to ‘rambunctious kid’ or ‘I miss my family’ sadness. and theres no middle ground really, he’s in one mode or the other till the end.

The rest of the family feel more real by comparison, but also are on screen less and dont quite feel like they fit into the rest of the story. It sticks the landing ultimately…but I just wish there was a bit more going on to really truely keep me glued to the screen…

And the other problem, is length. This things 15 minutes short of 2 hours and I really…REALLY think it could have been 90 minutes and done. I didnt need to see Kevin go shopping, its a nice touch…But I didnt NEED it. I didnt need to see the wet bandits skulking the neighbourhood 3-4 times before the final robbery attempt. Once or twice would have more than set that up for me. Theres a lot of scenes of people just running around, or sitting looking sad, and while *some* of that is nice, I feel it does slow the film down quite a bit, and when the film seems to be trading on fast paced fun, pausing things for a slow 5 minute sequence of the burglars wandering around the outside of the house was a detractor for me.

Clocking in at an hour and 45 also explains why it hasnt really been on regular rotation at christmas for previous years. Being one of the busiest times of year, a 90 minute picture tends to fit in better with my schedules. Once you start to break an hour and 40 I have to plan my day around watching whatever it is im going to be watching…So it was less a case of ‘I didnt like it’ and more ‘I didnt have an afternoon to work through this thing’.

outside of my script grumbles, the cine and direction are the usual John Hughes standard. Crisp, clean shots that have a clear vision behind them. The man just *got* christmas as an artistic medium. He just KNOWS how to set a shot up to look rich, and warm, and welcoming…its superb work. Only enhanced by some of John Williams best work being married up to a jukebox soundtrack of 50s and 60s christmas bops. AND an astounding cast who really help bring a realism to the piece.

I enjoyed ‘Home Alone’, but I didnt LOVE it. I think kids proabably would get more out of it than I do (obviously; its a kids film…) But I think this is one of those movies where, if its on in the background, i’d dip in and out of it. If I had a whole day around christmas with nothing to do, i’d probably chuck it on….But I dont think i’d actively CHOOSE it, It wouldnt be the first christmas film for me to check off on my list…Good, but there are better.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/home-alone/

A somewhat surprising entry into the early 80’s SOV genre. ‘Suffer Little Children’ is a bit of an interesting experiment. It’s 1983, you’re a rock promoter who’s just lost it all in a divorce and your best friend (and future wife) owns a drama school…You have experience shooting promo pieces and music videos and your friend has access to a derelict house and a small army of children and young adults ranging from 8 to 30. What do you do?

You make a fairly gory Possession/slasher flick and release it RIGHT as the UK is about to pass the ‘Video recordings act’ that makes it nearly impossible to do ANYTHING remotely gory LETALONE with children. As you can imagine, this film went through the ringer when it came out in 1984. Which is a shame. Because, given this is a VERY early example of distributed SOV cinema (I believe this is the first UK SOV film to be professionally distributed) Its actually pretty well put together.

The plot concerns the mysterious appearence of a young mute girl at a childrens home. The staff take her in and try to medically assess her, but they cant find any evidence of where she’s come from, and after a visit to the doctors, they confirm that nothing is *physically* wrong with her, and that her mute-ness may be down to either trauma or some kind of psychological block.

They try to intigrate her into the home, but strange happenings begin to occur. some of the kids start getting hurt badly and in a particularly dramatic sequence a kid who walks with a stick either falls os is pushed down a flight of stairs, landing in directly in ‘intensive care’

as the weird violence starts to escalate further and further, the carehomes staff ‘Morris’ and ‘Jen’ begin to become increasingly suspicious of Liz…but will they figure out whats going on before it’s all too late?

And honestly, given this was an experiment to see if shooting a film on video tape, and having almost every aspect shaped by its child cast, would be profitable. I think this things basic…but enjoyable.

The scripting is decent, engaging and entertaining. I think it sags a bit in the middle and theres a bit of repetition that goes on. the tone is a bit all over the place as well, sometimes presenting as just a straight horror film, but rarely it also dealves into the supernatural. With a dream sequence involving zombies being particularly unsettling and ‘otherworldly’ It feels out of place in this film…which in many ways makes it fit in perfectly.

The pacing is slow boil. Which is a bit problematic. The film clocks in at just over 75 minutes…and I feel it could have been 15 minutes shorter than that and a LOT better for it. But then…that would have put it under feature runtime…so it wouldnt have sold.

The 3 act structures a bit sloppy too. the opening and closing 15 minutes are fine and really open and close the film well I feel. but everything in the middle feels inconsistent and frankly…odd. Its like the film doesnt really know what to do to help build tension ready for the 3rd act. So it manufactures an off screen event, and then just repeats a few scenes 2-3 times to get us up to runtime. Which was a bit dissapointing.

That being said, the dialogues decent enough, the gore shots, I feel could have been better spread out (they all seem to be bunched up in the 3rd act) but they’re very effectively executed and the finale is great fun and VERY surreal.

The direction and cine are all fairly basic. in fact; barring the 3rd act finale which REALLY feels like the director pulled out all the stops. Most of this film just kind of feels like a film makers first outing. shots are fairly competently composed. But a little simplistic and overly constructed, this is a rare instance where I feel like a director tries to show us TOO much rather than just telling us.

Part of me feels the slow and basic plodding of the direction was intentional to get it to runtime, but part of me does just think this was someone who was only vaguely familiar with film pacing, getting to grips with 3 act structures in real time.

That being said, the cine while a bit flat and basic IS consistent, has fairly decent blocking and B-roll to help bring the scenes to life and in the 3rd act is genuinely impressive given there was maybe less than 6 SOV feature films in existence by this point in 1983/84?…and non of those 6 had made it over to UK shores by the time these guys were filming this. So its BEYOND interesting to see the director and the cast get to grips with set blocking and layout on the fly over the course of this films production.

Theres some attempts at coloured lighting use, they do experiement with angles and transition cuts which is fun. But even so, it doenst exactly push the envelope.

And the editing is a real dissapointment all things considered. Given they were cutting tape for this production, and given how few people were ABLE to cut on tape at this time, its miraculous the thing looks as good as it does. However, broadly speaking, cuts are clunky and awkward…there are moments where the blanking on the tape appears because they didnt match the frame cuts properly and some of the early video effects do fail quite badly in places. its all part of the charm. But its SUPER obvious 40 years on.

The cast are all fairly solid. its a bit of a mixed ability room, but given these are all drama school students or friends of the crew….it was always going to be a little hit and miss. I can say catagorically there were no BAD performers here…just good and ‘less than good’.

All this is matched up to a superb soundtrack thats heavy on rock and synth scoring, but it doenst feel as tinny or thin as other SOV flicks. this sounds richer and more engaging. It punctuates the film nicely and I feel really gives it the edge that JUST manages to tip it into being a solid end product.

‘Suffer Little Children’ I feel was an interesting experiment. I’d go as far as to say its a successful one. Its rudimentary in it’s execution. But it has BUCKETS of charisma and a really solid atmosphere about it. Its a fun and unique look into the very early day of SOV cinema AND an insightful look at just how creative and interesting kids can be when they’re given control of the film production process, with the adults just helping to tangibly bring to life what the kids wanted.

I’d recommend checking this one out at least once if you have even a basic interest in the film making process, purely because its an interesting insight into seeing how people who have never made a movie, but have *some* experience in shooting things, go about making a movie. If you can overlook the wobbly production and minimalist approach. I think you’ll really get on with this DIY horror production. I’ll absolutely watch it again!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/suffer-little-children/

Watched on Friday December 15, 2023.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/a-christmas-story-1983/1/

One thats been on my list to check out for probably the better part of a decade, ‘Let My Puppets Come’ was one of those movies i’d always heard hushed discussions about over the years, and now having seen it, I kind of understand why.

This is basically the quasi blueprint for self aware adult pupeteering that was really driven from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s (think ‘Crank Yankers’, ‘Avanue Q’, to a lesser extent ‘Team America: World Police’) Which is quite impressive given this is essentially a semi sleazy porn comedy led predominantly by blowjob loving puppets.

The plots pretty simple, 3 brothers own several semi-successful companies…until they dont. after all their businesses fold pretty much simultaineously, they’re left with very little money and facing liquidation. That is until someone comes in off the street and tells them the best way to try and make a comeback, is to sink the last of their cash into making a porn film, and regrow their company via adult entertainment. Which they’re DELIGHTED to jump on because they’re all pretty much perverts.

anyway, cue puppet based beastiality, porn parodies, felt based S&M, TONS of oral, multiple all singing and dancing musical numbers and a a sentient singing penis. all corralled by Gerard Damiano and Annie Sprinkles seemingly.

And…to keep it simple, this is really more a porn parody than anything straight up erotic. its got burlesque spirit and vaudville humour. theres a thick layer of sleaze all over this thing. But its just WAY too darn charming to hold against it.

The puppets are all very animate and have lively personalities, the scenes are frankly demented but are fairly well structured and considered. i’ve seen porn films with an all flesh and blood cast have WAY less soul and personality than this puppet movie. Which is INSANE when you think about it.

While i’d stop short of saying this is a ‘must see’ as the middle of the film does droop a little as the ‘We need to make a porn film!’ dissolves into ‘we’re making a porn film!’ It does have enough going on it that, whether your interested in the adult film industry or not, i’d say it’s worth seeing at least once…just for the total bizarreness of it all. I had a hoot with ‘Let my Puppets Come’ I found it sincere and highly engaging, and I think you probably will to.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/let-my-puppets-come/

Not a traditional holiday special to the UK. This was my first time watching it all the way through and I appreciated its humour and simplicity. The idea of comradeship defeating the Christmas blues is a nice idea and really helps put you in the Christmas spirit.

It’s a hug in a Christmas sweater of a TV special. I liked it, but I don’t have the childhood nostalgia associated with it to say I outright LOVED it.

That being said, the soundtracks astoundingly good, given this was basically only made because Coke wanted to sponsor something…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/a-charlie-brown-christmas/

Not a tremendous amount to say at this point about this one. Its a non cut and paste Godfrey Ho movie that somehow manages to be almost as confusing AS his cut and paste movies. It follows 3,4 or 5 ‘good guys’ who end up being ‘good guys’ by one of two means. Either:

A: They take on a towns local fighting competition which turns out to be a semi-murderous racket. they escape being murdered and swear vengence on the racketeers.

or.

B: they end up trying to defend a towns local open market by beating up some bullies. only to find out that the bullies are part of a larger organisation and that the towns terrified of them and dont want to rock the boat.

As you can imagine, it later transpires that the fighting competition organisers and the market bullies are in fact one in the same and are working in tandem to steal and sell antiques using the fighting competition as a front to pick up new henchmen and to launder money.

And…thats basically the plot. The good guys occasionally spar with the bad guys periodically across the runtime, theres some light comedy elements played out in places. But theres realistically about half an hour to 45 minutes worth of plot here thats been expanded out to 90 with long LONG fight scenes and subplots that dont really go anywhere.

i’ve heard that this is considered one of Ho’s better offerings. But I personally found it kind of pedestrian all things considered. The plots confusing and incoherent at times, the directions okay, it feels like the crew are all old hands at doing this, but thats kind of the problem…they’re old hands who, at this point, feel tired doing what they’re doing and are just going through the motions.

the cine is kind of bland and middle of the road too, just about passable. the fight choreography is fine enough, but nothing *too* grand happens here, they use soft touch contact fighting for most of the movie, but they the way the cine has been utilized renders what *should* be very powerful punches looking almost like the gentlest of taps. Like, its fiiiine…but thats all it is.

performances are kind of mixed ability, theres a nice campy overtone to proceedings which I enjoyed. But the sub of this film is SO badly translated, and the dub just feels kind of flat. so…its hard to really fully get immersed in this thing.

And the soundtrack is predominantly stolen from spaghetti westerns…according to those lovely folks at Gold Ninja Video, the martial arts genre was heavily influenced by westerns and thats why they pinched a lot of the soundtracks…But its kind of plopped into this film, it doesnt feel like it fits the tone they’re actually going for…which is a shame.

All in all? eh. i’ve ABSOLUTELY seen better. But this could have been worse. a bit of a bland viewing experience. This wouldnt be what i’d point you to for an example of Ho’s work, but if you’ve seen a few martial arts movies and do have a soft spot for Godfrey’s work, you’ll probably enjoy this one.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-dragon-the-hero/

Watched on Monday December 4, 2023.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/jack-frost-1997/1/

To give you an idea of how seriously this film takes itself. This is the kind of movie that randomly decides to smash cut to our entire antagonist group in FULL SS death squad uniforms mid rally on a tennis court, having had almost NO Nazi ideology up to that point. It’s literally just rumbling along and then BOOM. Black Nazi death squads…I laughed for a solid 2 minutes.

I’m generally not one for Nazisploitation, I find that more often than not they’re just an excuse to make a faux torture and snuff film with a veil of historical ‘classiness’ for lack of a better term…But I love Blaxsploitation cinema deeply. So combining the two…I had my doubts.

But! I’m pleased to say ‘The Black Gestapo’ while…a *tad* misleading, is a VERY campy and over the top gritty romp, that I was actually very pleasently surprised by!

The plot? A city is being overrun by pimps, drug dealers and ‘protection’ rackets who’re making the streets unsafe and putting people in the hospital. A local black power quasi military group are supporting on the ground to try and get help to people who need it and support in any way they can to keep the community going, but they’re generally pacifist by nature and believe that the crime waves should be handled by the LAPD.

Well…except for one of the soldiers, who thinks they need to get tough, bring in 20 strong men, teach them combat and take the action to the streets to get results…but he’s talked down.

That is until the leader of this movements partner gets assaulted and then later raped. Its at this point he grants the squad 6 men to train, on the grounds they’re used SOLELY to keep the peace…which…almost IMMEDIATELY doenst happen as they go after the key dealers who’ve been attacking people and racketeering.

However; once the main gangs have all been dealt with, our group splinters. With the ‘Violence first’ group essentially filling the void thats left by the pimps and pushers leading to an even BIGGER surge in violence on the streets and drug issues.

anyway…they skip a couple steps and suddenly, they’re also nazis…and I’ve gotta say they’re the most casual nazis i’ve ever seen, I had a good chuckle watching them just casually strolling in full SS uniform…But I digress…its down to the pacifist faction to take up arms and put the new neo-nazi faction down before the whole thing escalates into a city wide warzone.

And what I will say is, for blaxsploitation? this isnt a terribly well made production. But for Nazisploitation? its a diamond.

The script is basic, but effective. its a gritty urban exploitation film at its core that seems pretty preoccupied by a lot of the ‘Black Power’ movement beliefs of the time. With the key battle lines being drawn between ‘violence gets results’ and ‘talking gets results’. Its pretty clear though which line THIS film falls on…and the spoiler here is, its not the side that portrays the violent ones as LITERAL nazis. While the truth and reality lies somewhere in the middle of these two points. This isnt the film to be having that conversation. It’s too goofy for that.

Its got a solid 3 act structure. it knows what it is, it knows what its trying to be and it nails the tone and pacing near perfectly. Leaving me personally not really wanting more. But fully satisfied with what i’d had.

The characters are *just* about complex enough to be interesting without getting too deep or being too shallow. and it ends pretty satisfyingly too.

I enjoyed the plot progression, I found the characters worked well in the scenarios set. If I was going to be critical, i’d say that the actual ‘Nazi’ element isnt really utilized very well…the opening titles and end credits are basically filled with old WW2 footage or audio of hitler…and theres one scene about an hour in where they show WW2 stock footage too…

But theres no build up to them becoming Nazis…like, the lead character never once expresses any inclination to liking the Nazis or wanting to BE a nazi. he wears normal clothes and a standard uniform for most of the films runtime and then out of nowhere BAM. NAZI. It wouldnt have maybe been nice to see it build a little, maybe show him as being interested in WW2 history and then GRADUALLY tease out of him that he has Nazi aspirations.

Instead; because they ‘crash the nazi’ it just makes it jump from a fairly decent, but a little slow blaxploitation flick into an ultra goofy production that took me by surprise.

The direction and cine are decent we have solid compositional choices, the print quality looks great with nice use of depth of field. the styalisation here is a little forced if im being honest, but I think it handles sequence building pretty well. the scenes largely keep a good pace, it maybe could have been 5-10 minutes tighter to really get maximum value out of it (theres a few scenes that feel like they repeat a bit that could have been trimmed out) but…on the whole? this is proabably one of the better Blaxsploitation offerings and absolutely one of the better Nazisploitation ones…

The performances are the big selling point here, all the leading cast members are campy, over the top and very VERY sweaty. some of their line deliveries are just delightful and im about 99% sure that this film influenced Quentin Tarantino’s writing for Samuel L. Jackson. theres just this perfect level of ‘badassery’ going on with highly animated and VERY physical performances. I loved it.

The scoring was a little generic all things considered. I didnt dislike it, but honestly; it wasnt memorable enough for me to have a strong opinion either way. It did its job, it wasnt overly intrusive…I cant complain.

All in all, this one really surprised me, the quality of the production married up to a tonally strange script that simultaniously manages to be totally Daffy Duck…While at the same time raising genuine arguements and comments about culture, war, society and violence. Was something I really got on with.

HIGHLY recommended if you like Blaxsploitation cinema, or are looking to get into the genre. I think Nazisploitation fans may be a little underwhelmed by this one. But I’ll absolutely be checking this one out again!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-black-gestapo/

Coming in strong as a mash up of ‘Children Shouldnt Play With Dead Things’, ‘Theater of Blood’ and ‘One Dark Night’, ‘Frightmare’ is a fun enough little romp, though ultimately it doesnt really feel like anything we havent already seen before.

The plot revolves around an aging horror icon Conrad Ragzoff (heavily modelled on a kind of hybrid of Christopher Lee and Vincent Price) who passes away unexpectedly but swears his imminant return as one of his dying words. A couple of nights later a group of hardcore superfans of the actors work, break into his crypt, abduct the body and take it back to there frat house, where they play with his corpse, pose with him and generally do things you shouldnt really be doing with a corpse, with the understanding that they’ll take the body back before sun up.

Unfortunately Conrad has other ideas, ressurecting with newly psychic/telekenetic/Scanners powers and murderous revenge on his mind. The students are suddenly thrust into one last horror film of Conrads making!

And…yeh, theres not really a whole lot to say about this one, its got a light campier tone, which is always welcome, its a little slow boil even at only an 86 minute runtime. It could have lost 10-15 and felt so much better for it. The characters are kinda one note and all fairly interchangable, but I felt Conrad as a character did bring a level of charisma and uniqueness to the role. I liked how they introduced some kind of magic viewing screen element in which Conrad could talk to the teens and advise them of their incoming demise, I thought that was a nice touch.

The act structures are a little messy here and there, but I think they do keep a fairly well balanced three act run here.

The direction and cine are to standard, even going a little above and beyond in places with some of the more gory kills being particularly well handled with this one, I liked that the cast were much more animated than some of these films tend to be, I just wish they really got a bit more lively and physically involved in the sets to really help take this to the next level.

Cine composition is fine, everything blocked nicely, colour use is a little underplayed which is a shame, and as mentioned the editing probably would have benefitted from one more pass through just to ensure everything was as tight as it could be.

The performances outside of Ferdy Mayne as Conrad are kind of unforgettable, which is a big problem with this genre, so I wasnt too surprised to see it here…but it is a shame non the less.

and the soundtrack was pretty solid too for what its worth.

All in all this ones *just* barely above average for me. The script is interesting but a little too slow going for my taste, the direction is technically pretty solid, but again; a little pedestrian for 1981 standards, the cine is above average in their attempt to try and keep things as fresh as possible, but it is held back from greatness by a slower edit and some underdeveloped performances.

It’s…fine. Im a little dissapointed by it honestly as I’d had this one my ‘To Watch’ list for about 10 years. But I think the dissapointment is more a me problem than the movies problem. This is a fine enough production, it does the job a supernatural slasher should do. It just doesnt do any more than that. a bit of a mediocre offering. I could see myself watching this one again, I couldnt see myself recommending this one though.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/frightmare-1981/

‘Merlin: The Return’ is a missed opportunity, with catastrophic results. Almost every aspect of this picture feels like it’s been fumbled, watered down or gotten lost in translation at one point or another across the runtime.

Indeed; the title itself would suggest it was a sequel, presumably if ‘Merlin’ is returning, we must have had an adventure with him previously? NO! No we havent ladies and gents. Instead, ‘Merlin: The Return’ is a strange hodge podge of time travel, witch craft and transdimensional portals embedded in stone henge that quite honestly was a chore to try and keep up with.

The plot is thus, its the year of our lord 1999. and theres trouble brewing. Y’see? 1500 years prior, a great battle was held between a powerful sorcerer called Mordrid and his army, and King Arthur and his armies assisted by Merlin. the battle reached a fevered pitch as Merlin fought against Mordrids spells, Mordrid managed to claim the sword Excaliber, giving him the edge in battle.

He reveals that Arthurs most trusted Knight ‘Lancelot’ has been banging King Arthurs Missus. and in the confusion, Merlin uses his powers to seal both himself and the ENTIRE battle in…what I can only describe as a ‘time lock’…They were essentially frozen in time in some kind of pocket reality thats tied to Stone henge.

Back in the year 1999, a scientist by the name of Maxwell is working on some studies around the manipulaiton of the earths magnetic poles, and in doing so, she creates a ‘schizm’ in the timelock reactivating everyone who was put in there, but keeping them trapped in their pocket dimension. Merlin manages to escape, as does King Arthur and some of his men, who all hide out in the woods and attack cars thinking they’re beasts.

At the same time we’re introduced to Kate, Ritchie and their respective families. Kates mum is a medium and Maxwell (who has discovered the pocket dimension) is trying to contact the beings inside it. eventually using Kates Mum as a conjuit to speak to Mordrid. Who gives her the instruction required to start working on busting open the time lock.

Ritchie meanwhile is new to the country, his dads just died and he’s feeling all angsty and upset at the world (but like…in a way that magically vanishes unless the plot needs it) he arrives in the village and they almost kill Merlin, who teleports into the real world from the time lock and is deeply confused.

Anway; to cut a long story short, the kids find out Mordrid is up to no good when they catch Kates mum possessed by him, Merlin finds Arthur and his army and the pair begin to plan on how to seal Mordrid away for good, the kids follow Maxwell back to her lab (as does Merlin) and adventures are on for people who consider themselves easily exciteable.

I honestly dont even know where to begin with this thing. Probably with the thought that marinated in my brain from about 5 minutes in right the way up to the end credits…YOU HAVE RIK MAYALL IN YOUR MOVIE AS A WIZARD…AND YOU SOMEHOW MADE IT BORING!

I wish it wasnt the case, but this films somehow managed the near impossible feat of taking MULTIPLE really cool and fun little ideas and just…utterly draining them of any and all charisma and warmth. The plot sounds awesome on paper! Arthur, Merlin, a load of knights and an evil wizard all get pulled out of the 1500’s and dumped in 1999 to finish off an epic battle of magic and sword play, while also getitng accustomed to a world that basically must be alien for them.

I was envisioning Mayall in robes prancing around a battle field zapping people into rabbits, cracking *slightly* naughty jokes and being whimsically baffled by modern technology, while also giving off a warmth to the kids that would really bring in a ‘family movie’ dynamic.

I was basically thinking of ‘Hocus Pocus’ meets ‘Harry Potter’ crossed with ‘Drop dead fred’ but it just…isnt. Its an incredibly straight laced 3 act piece that largely consists of MULTIPLE phoned in performances. almost NOONE on set seemingly cares about this film. i’d say the tone was all over the place, but that would imply it had a main tone to begin with. It’s vanilla ice cream, it doesnt commit to being overly serious, it doesnt commit to being funny or silly…

The plot itself opens awkwardly, establishing the pocket dimension and the schizm FIRST, then introducing the characters who caused it SECOND…THEN introducing the kids…who dont even become relevent for 15 minutes past that point…and finally introducing Merlin and Arthur properly. It meant that all our pieces were on the board by the 30 minute mark. But they’d been thrown on so haphazardly that I had to stop the film for 10 minutes and go back over my notes to understand exactly WHAT i’d just sat through.

Its sluggish all the way through, they cant seem to nail the pacing of any of the action scenes, meaning everything just feels like an elongated struggle to hit the next cue. the dialogue is utterly abysmal. The characters have ZERO definition or complexity. what you see on screen is what you get with these characters, as far as this films concerned they started existing when you hit play on the movie, and when the credits rolled they may as well have died.

The directions not great either, it really kind of smacks of ‘made for TV movie’ fodder, a lot of my rating for this film is going on the technical ability of this movie because, fundamentally…it’s not a bad looking film. But its incredibly bland and has nothing really going for it to make it stand out against any other transatlantic co-production of that time. It really visually reminded me of shows like ‘Hercules: the legendary journey’s’ or the 1996 ‘Doctor who TV movie’…which…if THATS what your films reminding me of?…thats not exactly a gold star of quality indicator.

The cine struggles for most of the runtime, composition is kind of flat and lifeless, the CGI has NOT aged well and looks like a mixture of digital smears and clipart .GIF’s. they do utilise some interesting lighting choices in places and the scenes do have a structure to them, but the edit is sloppy, it loses the narrative thread INCREDIBLY easily (and repeatedly) and as a warning, if your prone to seizures…dont watch this thing because the final 15 minutes of this film is basically like being flashbombed through your TV non stop. Im prone to migraines and didnt need to see that…soooo…im writing this while I can still see.

The performances are dire. I dont talk about child actor performances as a rule…thats genuinely a mercy for this film…Rik Mayall is phoning it in for 99% of the films runtime, honestly his best performance is in this films ‘making of’ where he has to pretend to be enthused about the movie…and he cant even muster that without his trademark sarcasm. the rest of the cast all feel like am-dram performances, everyones stiff as a board and barely uses their set space, there seems to be some confusion around where the frame begins and ends, the dialogue deliveries are LITERALLY some of the worst performances i’ve ever seen put on film. i’ve seen bad AI bots deliver dialogue more convincingly.

The audio for these performances constatly switches between on set and ADR…its a really poor show with no real standout winner…

The soundtrack? I quite liked, it’s orchestral, it suited the tone of the film fine enough, but its probably one of the most misused OST’s i’ve ever heard. they have a really odd gentle ambient track that runs for the entire duration of the final battle of this film (the final battle being three wizards firing spells at each other and being smashed around the place while an army cause mischief in the background) It really needed a more action oriented score behind it to emphisize the action we see on screen, it needed tighter shot composition, more focus on facial features and reactions…instead we get 10 minutes of wide shots backed by what sounds like late 70s Brian Eno on an off day…

I didnt hate ‘Merlin: The Return’ If it were on in the background, I wouldnt mind…but it is a poor POOR film in almost every other regard. Mayall is wasted here, the rest of the cast cant be arsed, the scripts dull, the direction and cine are borderline and the soundtracks misused.

When you could have had King arthur trying a motorbike as an alternative to a horse, Merlin astounded by television (and with it being Mayall, the adult channels no doubt) and some goofy kids who could have had a heartwarming and silly experience with the real life court of king arthur…to boil it down to an hour and 27 minutes of heavy discussion about magnetic polarity, opening and closing portals and the status of a sword?, all played fairly straight cut?…its a VERY dry experience…and one I am unlikely to actively pursue again…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/merlin-the-return/