06 October 2005

Gordon (1989)

1989 - Daughter of Darkness - A nearly bloodless vampire movie. Nothing much happens in this movie outside of Mia Sara endlessly waking from a nightmare with a scream. Only A Nightmare on Elm Street movies can get away with those shots without seeming cliché. Anthony Perkins' performance is the best part, but the character he's given is a weak, useless Romanian vampire prince. The tongue-fangs were cool in a Cronenbergian way, but only used twice. Devlin, an American ambassador, gleefully helps set fire to a Budapest city block in order to burn people alive. Though those people were vampires, his only evidence that they were such creatures was watching a father suck the blood out of his daughter's wrist. Then again, he is a government official...

1989 - Robot Jox - By far, the best post-apocalpytic -sci-fi -robot-gladiator -Cold-War-allegory movie ever made. Colorful characters, robots beating the crap out of each other, co-ed showers (a decade before Verhoeven's Starship Troopers), and great SFX for what was probably a pretty low budget all make for a fun film. Kind of the Rocky IV of sci-fi; usually Cold War allegories drive me nuts in this day and age, but this one still works. It helps that the USA and USSR are renamed and re-branded in a post-WWIII setting. Also, the dust masks the populous had the wear prefigure the masks folks in Asia wore during the SARS scare. Gordon's first foray into sci-fi, while not the homerun his first horror movie was, is still a great ride.

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