Joe Netflix'd Race to Witch Mountain, the Disney film sort of based on the novel and the two previous Disney movies, Escape To Witch Mountain and Return From Witch Mountain. I was curious to see it, partly because I had seen the older movies a little while ago and partly because it had Dwayne Johnson. I always like to see him in a movie. He's good at action and comedy and here he's a-ok doin' both. He's a cab driver in Las Vegas. He picks up Carla Gugino, a UFO expert, and takes her to UFO convention, which really loooks like a big commercial media con. He picks up two kids. They want to go into the countryside and they have a huge pile of cash. Off we go. The kids are being pursued by the secret government organization that deals with alien sorts of things and by an alien with a big fiery blasting weapon. He blows up a lot of stuff but luckily he doesn't have much accuracy. It's a Disney movie and even the train driver that has a head on collision with a UFO doesn't snuff it. They sneak in a bit of radio announcement about his lucky escape from the grim reaper. There's some comedy thrown in there and a dog. Nice dog. Bites the right kind of people. Turns out the kids are aliens and they get caught by the government guys who want to chop them up. The government guys have a lot of black suv's and a secret base in Witch Mountain. Dwayne and Carla sneak into the base to save the kids and help them try to steal their ship back. There's some nice effects and some stuff blows up. Dwayne and Carla have a nice chemistry. The girl is pretty good but we didn't like the boy very much. They make fun of science fiction and ufo geeks but geeks still help out. I enjoyed the movie and thought it fun. I'd buy one if it was pretty cheap.
I don't think many people would buy Sonny Boy, even if they could. No one seems to have it out on dvd here in the US. Sperhauk caught it on Turner Classic Movies on their TCM Underground movies show, usually 2 movies Friday night at 1am here in the midwest. It's sadly missing this month on the cable channel. That's the vhs tape box cover up there. The movie didn't look too good, in fact, it looked like it came from one of those vhs copies. I imagine you can get a bootleg dvd of another of those vhs copies somewhere on the internet. It's a dark romantic comedy about some low life scum living out in a secluded desert town. Brad Dourif is a twitchy sycophantic car theft and murderer. I love that guy. He steals a car to sell and accidentally kidnaps a baby. Which turns out ok, because he's already killed the parents. His buyer, Paul L. Smith, is disturbed when his wife, played by David Carradine in drag, gloms onto the baby and decides to keep it. Smith, who played The Beast Rabban in David Lynch's Dune and one of the exterminators in Sam Raimi's Crimewave, cuts out the boys tongue and raises him like an animal, only fit to murder for him. He has dreams of expanding his crime empire into the art world, but sadly after the kid turns 17 they are still living in squallor. There's lots of murderin' in the movie, though hardly any of it by the kid. Smith has a small cannon and some people get blowed up real good but it's all pretty much played for laughs. The movie moves along pretty well until the last 20 -25 minutes when it starts to lag. I thought there wasn't enough David Carradine's Pearl, which is a more entertaining character. That last third of the movie is where most of the romantic subplot comes in, when the boy escapes and meets a local girl. The town reacts violently but it all works itself out in the end. All told it was fun to watch, though not the best of it's genre. Not sure what the genre is but David Carradine called it a cross between Bonnie and Clyde, Bringing Up Baby, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That's from the Imdb trivia page. I like these sort of odd ball movies. Not all of them are great but occasionally you find something worth seeing. Not sad to see it and I'd probably want to watch it again in the future.
I'm looking forward to taping it off Turner Classics in September. I'm sure not staying up until 2AM to watch it. I sounds as if it is the most cult-ish of cult films out there.
Posted by: Deanne | August 22, 2009 at 05:20 PM