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Tim Burton ventures back into the world of spooky stop-motion animation like he did with A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS with this ghoulish tale of a nervous man who mistakenly marries a corpse.

Based on a Russian folk tale, the film follows Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS) who is being set up with Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson, BREAKING THE WAVES) in an arranged marriage. Victor’s parents Nell and William (Tracey Ullman, THE TRACY ULLMAN SHOW & Paul Whitehouse, HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN) are fish merchants trying to move up in society by marrying their son off to the daughter of Lord Finnis and Lady Maudeline Everglot (Albert Finney, BIG FISH & Joanna Lumley, ABSOLUTELLY FABULOUS), who are trying to marry off their daughter to someone with a little bit of money because they are secretly destitute.

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The story behind this film has been done numerous times. Marion and George Kerby (Constance Bennett, 1934’s MOULIN ROUGE & Cary Grant, THE PHILADELPHIA STORY) are carefree socialites that paint the town red on a nightly basis. Cosmo Topper (Roland Young, KING SOLOMON’S MINE) is a banker who wishes that his extremely conservative wife Clara (Billie Burke, THE WIZARD OF OZ) would let him live a little.

George is on the board at Topper’s bank and Marion sees the adventurous side in Topper and wishes to bring it out. After dying in a car crash, ghosts Marion and George feel they have to do one good dead to get out of limbo and into heaven. Their mission is to treat Topper to the wild life.

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The first 10 minutes of this trash fest were hilariously bad. From boo moments that had me laughing out loud to a lingering shower scene that has a fetish for the female buttocks, I was entertained with the pure camp of it all. Then it starts to go into copy HALLOWEEN mode and loses its campiness and replaces it with pure boredom.

Trish Devereaux (Michelle Michaels, DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN), besides getting naked, likes to throw slumber parties, where her pretty female friends wear the skimpiest clothing possible. Trish wants to invite the new girl from next-door Val (Robin Stille, AMERICAN NINJA 4: THE ANNIHILATION), but the other girls don’t like her because she makes them look bad at basketball.

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This strange archetypical gangster film derives much of its success from its unexpected setting and its performers. Nick Devlin (Lee Marvin, THE BIG RED ONE) is a top enforcer for the Chicago mob who is sent on a mission to Kansas City to collect $500,000 from a former associate named Mary Ann (Gene Hackman, MISSISSIPPI BURNING), who runs a meat packing plant that fronts for his drug and prostitution trade. Previous, bagmen have either failed or have been turned into hot dogs by Mary Ann’s oafish brother Weenie (Gregory Walcott, NORMA RAE).

Nick and Mary Ann have a past, which certainly involved Mary Ann’s beautiful wife Clarabelle (Angel Tompkins, THE BEES). During Nick’s first showdown with Mary Ann, the enforcer rescues drugged up orphan Poppy (Sissy Spacek, CARRIE) from being displayed naked in a pen for gawking men.

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When this film was released, they marketed its controversy and played it up as a daring artistic experiment. The wonderful Criterion company released it on DVD. Criterion usually picks films that are sure masterpieces, hard-to-find foreign films from important filmmakers or daring experiments. THE NIGHT PORTER falls under the latter category. Definitely daring, but also definitely a failed experiment.

Max (Dirk Bogarde, A BRIDGE TOO FAR) works as the night porter at a fancy German hotel. He becomes shocked and nervous when he catches sight of Lucia Atherton (Charlotte Rampling, SWIMMING POOL), who has the same reaction to seeing him. We then flashback to World War II when Max was an SS officer and Lucia was a prisoner. He becomes infatuated with her and rapes her. Max is about to go on trial for his war crimes and Lucia is one of the only remaining witnesses. So why doesn’t she turn him in right away? Because she liked it. Staying in Germany, after her husband leaves, she goes to Max and rekindles their sadomasochistic affair.

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Gus Van Sant’s second feature is a clear example of an artist trying to find his voice. The film is part realistic drama, part contemporized version of Shakespeare’s HENRY IV as well as some flares of whimsy.

Mike Waters (River Phoenix, STAND BY ME) is a narcoleptic prostitute, who comes from a poor, turbulent family. His best friend is Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves, BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE), another male hustler, who isn’t really gay, but uses sex for its power and rebelliousness. Scott comes from a rich and powerful family and will inherit a fortune when he turns 21.

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Some movies come out of left field and surprise the heck out of ya. I caught this charming film on a Big ‘80s marathon on Encore, having followed the dubious LOVER BOY. For a teen film, the movie has real weight and grit.

Clifford Peache (Chris Makepeace, VAMP) is the new kid in his school. Bully Melvin Moody (Matt Dillon, CRASH) extorts money from kids to protect them from rumored psychopath Ricky Linderman (Adam Baldwin, SERENITY). After taking just too much abuse, Clifford actually gets Ricky to be his bodyguard. Clifford wants to thank Ricky for his help, but the tall loner doesn’t really want to make friends. But Clifford is persistent. The rest of the film develops the strange friendship that develops between the wealthy Clifford and the poor Ricky.

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This Canadian-produced teen slasher flick is actually better than any of the FRIDAY THE 13TH movies that it rips off. But that’s not saying much.

T.J. Hanniger (Paul Kelman, BLACK ROSES) left his small coalmine town, called Valentine’s Bluff, to make it big in the big city. But after falling on his face, he’s returned home to work in the mine he left town to avoid. Now his former girl Sarah (Lori Hallier, THOMAS AND THE MAGIC RAILROAD) is dating Axel Palmer (Neil Affleck, SCANNERS). There are other characters, but who cares about them, because they’re just fodder for the killer, who is rumored to be a miner who was buried alive and went crazy.

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With such a whimsical title, one would expect a bit of whimsy, but the film for most of its running time plays as a dramatic (also a bit fantastic) coming-of-age tale.

Randall “Randy” Dean (Laurel Holloman, TV’s THE L WORD) is a teenage lesbian, who dresses tomboyish and only has one friend — a gay boy named Frank (Nelson Rodriguez). Randy lives with her lesbian aunt Rebecca (Kate Stafford) and her girlfriend and her ex-girlfriend. She’s been having an affair with a married woman named Wendy (Maggie Moore, AMERICAN SPLENDOR). Then one day, Evie Roy (Nicole Ari Parker, BOOGIE NIGHTS) stops by the gas station where Randy works and Randy is smitten.

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This is the kind of film that’s enjoyable enough while you’re watching it, but I’ll probably forget I saw it two weeks from now.

It chronicles four generations of a family who participated in taming the Wild West. It’s epic and filled with Hollywood legends from John Wayne to Henry Fonda to Jimmy Stewart to Gregory Peck. It has all the conventions of the Western crammed in from rapid runs to mountain men to Indian attacks to wagon trains to stampedes to a train robbery. Everything about the film smells of a Hollywood product and that’s why it works. It’s a treasure of a kind of filmmaking that doesn’t happen anymore. It’s the same gimmick that makes the OCEAN’S ELEVEN movies so fun.

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