When series creator Jeffrey Reddick was first approached about making a sequel to “Final Destination,” he expressed a desire to expand the mythology and not merely repeat the first film's story. Perhaps he was having a premonition in that moment himself, the writer realizing that he had created a formula that could easily be replicated for future installments. That's exactly what the second film did, more-or-less repeating the structure of the first: Someone has a vision of a horrible accident and escapes death. From there, their friends fall to one grisly incident after another, trying to unravel “Death's design” before their turn is up. James Wong and Glen Morgan would return for “Final Destination 3,” which suggested an attempt to hew closer to the original's serious tone than part two's dark sense of humor. However, the duo was clearly not interested in messing with what worked before, as the third entry in the series didn't stray from the established model.
And so: The character who has a vision this time is named Wendy, a photographer for her high school year book. The disaster that she foresees is a derailing of a roller coaster, that splatters her and her high school friends on the tracks. True to form, she escapes the disaster with a handful of other young people. Shortly afterwards, two of the girls who were nearly on the ride that night die in a freak tanning bed accident. Researching previous events that mirror their own, Wendy soon realizes that escaping death has only delayed their fates. The grim reaper is coming to collect and he's pissed, engineering far nastier ends for them. Using her photographs, which seem to foretell the method of death, Wendy and her boyfriend Jason seek to figure out Death's much-referenced design.
“Final Destination 2” was awesome because of how well executed its executions were but also because the script was surprisingly smart. Small touches and brief scenes gave the characters way more depth than was required of a gussied-up slasher flick. Sadly, “Final Destination 3” makes no such attempt. Rather than the varied number of ages and backgrounds last time, our characters are all high school students. Not especially distinct ones either. Teenage girls with the names Ashley and Ashlyn are intentionally interchangeable, perky and ditzy popular girl stereotypes that are never developed beyond that. Lewis – played by someone named Texas Battle – is a hyper-macho jock and Frankie Cheeks is a perpetually horny doofus. “So Weird's” Alexz Johnson appears as one-half of a goth couple, with Kris Lemche doing a passable imitation of Christian Slater in “Heathers” as the other half. These two are more memorable only by the standards of the rest of the film's generic lot.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead, one of the few actors from these films to go onto wider success, is our heroine. We only get a small taste of the snarky charm that would make Winstead a star here, Wendy otherwise being a generic lead. Her male co-star is not that memorable. Wong and Morgan's script makes an attempt to add a little more depth to these blocks of human spam. Before getting on the roller coaster, Kimberly describes a fear of losing control. This is paired with several baffling references to the September 11th terrorist attacks. The idea seems to be that all of us are at the mercy of random fate. Invoking a real world tragedy in your trashy horror sequel is certainly of debatable taste. Moreover, it's apparent by now that, for all its talk about fate and choice, the “Final Destination” universe is a predetermined one. The characters get a vision, try everything they can to escape the vengeful reaper, but it's no use. They are all doomed to die, making any attempt at a deeper thematic concern come off as empty posturing.
Wong and Morgan have clearly come to understand that these films are, functionally, identical to slasher movies. These cast members are destined to be defined more by their deaths than their personalities. A smart sequel would've continued the thread of black humor that was present in the second, to at least enliven these executions. “Final Destination 3” tries some of that. When two teen girls cook inside sealed tanning beds, this is contrasted with the caskets at their funeral. The build-up to jock-o Lewis' doom is clearly a mocking treatment of locker room machismo. These nods at humor go hand-in-hand with attempts to build tension. Vehicles careening out of control in a fast food drive-through lane or the climax, set at a fireworks filled festival, certainly attempt to grab that sense of escalating suspense. However, that we don't care much about the characters leaves any attempt at suspense largely inert. One of the girls who gets speared near the end barely has a name, for an example of how hard it is to give a shit about these guys.
That leaves “Final Destination 3” to subsists on what many slasher sequels survive on: Whether the gory death scenes are any fun or not. Some of them definitely are. The tanning bed sequence is novel in its grisliness and claustrophobic settings. Someone getting reduced to red paste when a subway train skids into a wall is some nasty stuff. An improbably functioning nail gun gets a good moment. However, I found the mayhem in “Final Destination 3” a little too assisted by CGI. That's the case with a weight room head smashing and a body split in twain by a falling sign. In general, the “freak accidents” here simply lack the brutality and energy of those in the second. This is most true of the roller coaster crash, which is far too light-weight in terms of effects and lacking in visceral impact.
When released on DVD, “Final Destination 3” was paired with an odd ball gimmick. A feature called “Choose Their Fate” allowed the viewer to select different outcomes for some of the characters and story turns. Ideally, that made “Final Destination 3” a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure horror flick, with a high number of options to explore and remix. I never owned the physical disc, so I haven't personally had a chance to experience the film this way. From what I've read, the functionality of that is a lot less cool than it sounds. “Final Destination 3” would be another box office success, out-grossing the previous installments. Most fans seem to think it's alright. I've seen far worst sequels but this one has always lacked that morbid zip of the second, in my opinion. Obviously the missing ingredient was Tony Todd, who is reduced to a mere voice cameo here. [6/10]
And so: The character who has a vision this time is named Wendy, a photographer for her high school year book. The disaster that she foresees is a derailing of a roller coaster, that splatters her and her high school friends on the tracks. True to form, she escapes the disaster with a handful of other young people. Shortly afterwards, two of the girls who were nearly on the ride that night die in a freak tanning bed accident. Researching previous events that mirror their own, Wendy soon realizes that escaping death has only delayed their fates. The grim reaper is coming to collect and he's pissed, engineering far nastier ends for them. Using her photographs, which seem to foretell the method of death, Wendy and her boyfriend Jason seek to figure out Death's much-referenced design.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead, one of the few actors from these films to go onto wider success, is our heroine. We only get a small taste of the snarky charm that would make Winstead a star here, Wendy otherwise being a generic lead. Her male co-star is not that memorable. Wong and Morgan's script makes an attempt to add a little more depth to these blocks of human spam. Before getting on the roller coaster, Kimberly describes a fear of losing control. This is paired with several baffling references to the September 11th terrorist attacks. The idea seems to be that all of us are at the mercy of random fate. Invoking a real world tragedy in your trashy horror sequel is certainly of debatable taste. Moreover, it's apparent by now that, for all its talk about fate and choice, the “Final Destination” universe is a predetermined one. The characters get a vision, try everything they can to escape the vengeful reaper, but it's no use. They are all doomed to die, making any attempt at a deeper thematic concern come off as empty posturing.
That leaves “Final Destination 3” to subsists on what many slasher sequels survive on: Whether the gory death scenes are any fun or not. Some of them definitely are. The tanning bed sequence is novel in its grisliness and claustrophobic settings. Someone getting reduced to red paste when a subway train skids into a wall is some nasty stuff. An improbably functioning nail gun gets a good moment. However, I found the mayhem in “Final Destination 3” a little too assisted by CGI. That's the case with a weight room head smashing and a body split in twain by a falling sign. In general, the “freak accidents” here simply lack the brutality and energy of those in the second. This is most true of the roller coaster crash, which is far too light-weight in terms of effects and lacking in visceral impact.
Despite almost two hundred years of uninterrupted American imperialism, U.S. forces limping away from Vietnam in 1973 left a scar on my nation that it never truly recovered from. Of course, the Vietnam War didn't fuck up the American psyche because we lost it, necessarily, but more so because it was an enormously unpopular conflict that exposed the rotten, rat-fucking heart at the center of this country. Nevertheless, the supposed silent majority that supported the war effort seems to have won out a decade after the ceasefire was signed. On the pop culture front anyway, the massive popularity of “Rambo: First Blood Part II” suggested America was ready to retcon its recent failures and declare itself the biggest bad-asses in the world again. Rambo's success created an entire sub-genre of lower budget imitators. One such example was the same year's “Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except.” The film would probably not be worthy of much discussion if it wasn't the brain-child of Josh Becker. Part of Sam Raimi's merry band of lunatics, Becker cooked up the premise for the film with Bruce Campbell and Scott Spiegel during the post-production of "The Evil Dead." Raimi himself plays the villain in the film, further cementing its status as a footnote in the epic story of a beloved cult classic. As far as eighties vetsploitation goes, this one also comfortably crosses over into horror, making it seasonally fitting viewing for September.
After refusing to go to senior prom with Sally, his teenage girlfriend, Jack Stryker was deployed to Vietnam. During a four year tour, he survived multiple deadly missions and bonded with three members of his squadron: Sgt. Jackson, 2nd Lt. Miller, and Lt. Captain Tim "Sex Machine" Tyler. Receiving a crippling injury during an especially perilous attack, Stryker returns home. Walking with a cane now, he hopes to live a simple life with his dog, out in the woods. He attempts to reconnect with Sally and her uncle Otis. Unfortunately, a band of murderous hippies are rampaging through the area. Led by a blood-thirsty nut with a messiah complex, they've been breaking into homes, kidnapping families, and subjecting them to torture and bizarre rituals. After Otis is killed and Sally is taken by this same cult, Stryker reunites with his old war buddies and heads out once again to kill. This time, not for their country but for the people they love.
In truth, a lot of "Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except" feels like kids screwing around in their backyards with their dad's camera. This is also an not entirely inaccurate description of how Raimi, Becker, Campbell, and Spiegel got their start, filming zero budget shenanigans more for their own amusement than anything else. I don't think Josh Becker is a filmmaker of the caliber of his friends though. “Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except” has all the awkwardness of “The Evil Dead's” early scenes and none of the manic energy or lo-fi ingenuity of the rest of it. Scenes are devoted to Stryker peeing on the side of the road while getting hassled by a cop, Otis working his day job as a bartender, and the trio of war bodies cruising for girls. Some of this stuff becomes plot relevant later. Stryker picking up his beloved dog in an elongated early sequence gives him another reason to seek revenge on the long-haired loonies later on. For the most part though, the film feels every much like what it is: a somewhat belabored attempt to expand a short film to feature length and some small town guys having fun on-camera.
“Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except” has a musical theme reminiscent of Jerry Goldsmith's “First Blood” score too, while also sharing some of that movie's weirdo right-wing politics. This movie definitely leans into the legend of Vietnam vets being spat upon after returning home, squaring them off as the real heroes against the hippy degenerates. What Becker's film is missing is a charismatic leading man like Stallone. The prototype short – entitled “Stryker's War,” Becker's preferred title before the same guy who renamed “The Book of the Dead” to “The Evil Dead” insisted on something more extravagant – starred Bruce Campbell. Bruce was a S.A.G. member by the time the feature was made, meaning he couldn't participate in a non-union production. (He still stopped by for a cameo as a newscaster.) An actor named Brian Schulz, in his one and only credit, played the lead instead. His acting here does not make me believe we missed out on much when he retired from acting. If Campbell had starred in “Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except,” it would doubtlessly be better. As it exists now, the splattery mayhem in the back half and one or two amusing moment makes it a fleetingly entertaining curio for fans of the creative team. [5/10]
“The Outer Limits” is a show that had a bad habit of over-explaining itself sometimes. Such is the case with “A Feasibility Study,” an episode that would've been scarier if it didn't tell you what it was about within the opening minutes. That would be: Ralph leaves for work one morning without eating breakfast, much to his wife Rhea's annoyance. Next door, Dr. Holm's marriage to Andrea is on the verge of collapse, because of her desire to be more than a wife or mother. As Ralph is driving to work, he encounters a thick fog, inhabited by strange creatures. A similarly odd boy is found in a near-by garage. Rhea notices that the motor is missing from her car. Soon, Dr. Holm is informed of what is happening: Aliens beings called Luminoids, that changed into immobile stones as they age, have abducted an entire city block. This is a test to see if humans will make suitable slaves for them. If it's successful, the Luminoids will transport every human on Earth to their world. Upon discovering that humans will mutate into rocky creatures too if they have physical contact with the Luminoids, Dr. Holm debates what to do.
Being a product of the Cold War era, when the threat of nuclear annihilation was in the air at all times, “The Outer Limits” did a few episodes about an apocalypse. “A Feasibility Study” isn't about the end of the world, much less the atom bomb, but it sure feels like it is. The symptoms of the alien pathogen is tumor-like growths bursting from the skin and slowly consuming the body, a sci-fi exaggeration of any of the cancers radiation can cause. At one point, Andrea is caught glowing in the dark, also bringing the side effects of radioactivity to mind. The impenetrable fog that surrounds the stolen town seems reminiscent of fallout to me. This pairs well with a downbeat atmosphere. The characters are faced with only two outcomes: Be enslaved workers for alien overlords for the rest of their lives or die a slow and painful death. It's a rather grim scenario and everyone is in a fittingly hopeless mood.
It warms my heart to see that, as far back as the sixties, the importance of Halloween was understood. At least within the Addams' household, as the family celebrated the holiday again in its second season. The October frivolity is interrupted when Wednesday returns home from trick-or-treating, dismayed. One of the neighbors informed her that there is no such thing as witches. Upset that their daughter has been fed such a vicious lie, Gomez and Morticia cook up a plan to prove that witches are real. They attempt to find a witch in the phone book but none are available. They then conduct a séance with Aunt Singe, a distant relative burned at Salem. Grandmama reasons that any witches are going to be very busy on Halloween, so she devises her own scheme with Lurch, having the butler stand in for Aunt Singe at the séance. He ends up inadvertently promising Wednesday that “Aunt Singe” will appear that night, putting the two in a bit of a pickle. Fate has other plans though...
This is another season two episode of “The Addams Family” that sometimes seems like a series of gags hung on the loosest plot possible. Now, the gags are ones I enjoy. The running joke of Gomez being driven into a lusty frenzy any time his wife speaks French crops up here in not one but two unexpected ways. A bizarre variation on bobbing for apples also shows up. However, I think this one does loose the thread a little at times too. Such as when Gomez shows up with a horse, a joke I'm still not entirely sure I understand. The finale, in which an adult trick-or-treater shows up dressed as a witch right as the family requires one, does lead to the predictable joke of an outsider getting freaked out by Addams' style. Feels like it's been a while since the show has returned to that particular chestnut.
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