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Reviews
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)
Entertaining, But Not As Good As The First
After their terrifying encounter with the supernatural, The Freeling family finds themselves homeless and no one will believe their story about their house vanishing into thin air. They move in with Diane's mother and Carol Ann starts being harassed by a creepy preacher who wants her to take him to the titular "other side."
Poltergeist II still keeps the warm family dynamics of the previous film which goes a long way in making this film watchable, but the scarier elements are traded in for more lavish special effects and, many times, it comes across as more goofy than scary. The only truly frightening thing about this film is the performance of Julian Beck as the evil Reverend Kane who radiates malevolence every moment he's on screen. He's only in the film for about 10 minutes altogether, but he makes a huge impact.
Satan's School for Girls (1973)
Not as Enganging as I'd Hoped
A young woman returns home to find her younger sister hanging from her ceiling due to an apparent suicide. When she's not satisfied with that answer, she poses as a student at the boarding school where her sister attended to get some answers and see if, perhaps, she was murdered.
Satan's School For Girls isn't as much fun as the premise might suggest and mostly amounts to Pamela Franklin walking around the school at night with a lantern, trying to find something sinister. The ultimate reveal as to what's going on here feels anti-climactic and that's a shame, because the concept is really strong.
Being a TV movie, I'm sure there were some limitations, but story shouldn't have been one of them.
Double Exposure (1982)
Predictable Yet Well Shot
A photographer keeps having bad dreams where he has visions of him murdering many of his models. His amputee stuntman brother tries his best to keep his head afloat as the photographer starts a relationship with the woman of his dreams. Is the photographer really the killer? And will he make his new girlfriend his latest victim?
Double Exposure is a wonky and uncomfortable mix of drama, police procedural, and slasher/giallo cliches. It wants to be a character driven psychodrama, but it's never quite deep enough. It doesn't succeed much as a slasher either due to the poorly paced suspense/attack scenes that tend to end on more of a whimper than a bang. To make matters worse, the final twist is telegraphed from a mile away and triggers more eye rolls than gasps.
That said, Double Exposure looks like about 50 million bucks. There's clearly a ton of talent involved in this film and every shot looks like something from a film that's got a ton of money behind it. When all else fails, just turn off the sound and enjoy how the film looks.
Halloween II (1981)
You Don't Know What Death Is!
Let's get one thing straight - John Carpenter's Halloween didn't need a sequel. Not at all. However, if you're going to do a sequel to a movie like Halloween, one could do much worse than Halloween II.
Picking up right where the original left off gives the film a sense of urgency as Michael Myers dashes off after being shot 6 times by Dr. Loomis (an unhinged Donald Pleasance) and falling off of a roof. It only takes a little while for Myers to terrorize a few more people and gain himself a weapon as he goes off in search of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis in a dimestore wig) at the local hospital where they're understaffed and in need of paying their power bill.
Halloween II captures the atmosphere and mood of the original film in an almost uncanny way. I'm sure that if one were to watch these films back to back, they'd never know there were a few years in between them (well, minus Curtis' dreadful wig). They connect incredibly well.
This film increases the blood and guts considerably with deaths by hypodermic needle in the temple, a scalding hot hot tub drowning, a scalpel to the back, a hammer to the head, and even a character drained of all their blood. It's a pretty grisly spectacle.
Unfortunately, while Halloween II does manage to capture a similar vibe as the original and give us some enthusiastically nasty death scenes, it's a bit light on character development. We're introduced to a huge bundle of nurses, doctors, and orderlies who never make much of an impact. Even worse, our heroine is drugged and/or comatose for 3/4ths of the movie, making her one of the least interesting heroines in memory. It's a realistic choice given what she went through in the last film, but it doesn't make for compelling storytelling.
Stay Tuned (1992)
Three Men And Rosemary's Baby
Stay Tuned has a great concept and two phenomenal leads in John Ritter and Pam Dawber. The story is about a couple on the rocks. The wife is sick of her husband never leaving the couch, so she breaks the TV. As if by magic, a strange man comes to their door and offers the husband a new TV package. What they don't plan on is that man being the Devil and their TV sucking them into the shows they're watching. Now, it's up to their two children to save them from this bizarre world.
Stay Tuned never really has that many moments that'll make you double over with laughter, but it's always consistently amusing and not a bad way to spend 90 minutes.