Bovie Movie

A space bum helps rescue a princess from an evil overlord with the help of a benevolent elder in this Star Wars send-up written and directed by Mel Brooks. Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and his half-man, half-dog co-pilot, Barf the Mawg (John Candy), are content to scour the galaxy living the easy life. But they reluctantly come to the rescue when Druish Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) is threatened by the evil Lord Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis), who wants to steal all of the air from her planet, Druidia. Trapped on a harsh desert world with Vespa and her robot chaperone, Dot Matrix (voice of Joan Rivers), Lone Starr and Barf are helpless to prevent Helmet from kidnapping the girl. But assistance arrives in the form of Yogurt (Brooks), a wizard who turns Lone Starr on to a mysterious power known as The Schwartz. Catching up with Helmet just as he’s transforming his spaceship into a giant vacuum cleaner in orbit around Druidia, the reluctant heroes stage a dramatic showdown. Although it borrows most of its plot from the Star Wars series, Spaceballs also pokes fun at Star Trek, Snow White, and Planet of the Apes — as well as the entire videocassette and movie marketing industries. The large supporting cast includes Dick Van Patten, Jim J. Bullock, and the voice of Dom DeLuise. John Hurt makes a cameo in a parody of the exploding chest scene he played in Alien.

The Last Emperor is the true story of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, the last ruler of the Chinese Ching Dynasty. Told in flashback, the film covers the years 1908 to 1967. We first see the three-year-old Pu Yi being installed in the Forbidden City by ruthless, dying dowager Empress Tzu-Hsui (Lisa Lu). Though he’d prefer to lark about like other boys, the infant emperor is cossetted and cajoled into accepting the responsibilities and privileges of his office. In 1912, the young emperor (Tijer Tsou) forced to abdicate when China is declared a republic, is a prisoner in his own palace, “protected” from the outside world. Fascinated by the worldliness of his Scottish tutor (Peter O’Toole), Pu Yi plots an escape from his cocoon by means of marriage. He selects Manchu descendant Wan Jung (Joan Chen), who likewise is anxious to experience the 20th century rather than be locked into the past by tradition. Played as an adult by John Lone, Pu Yi puts into effect several social reforms, and also clears the palace of the corrupt eunuchs who’ve been shielding him from life. In 1924, an invading warlord expels the denizens of the Forbidden City, allowing Pu Yi to “westernize” himself by embracing popular music and the latest dances as a guest of the Japanese Concession in Tientsin. Six years later, his power all but gone, Pu Yi escapes to Manchuria, where he unwittingly becomes a political pawn for the now-militant Japanese government. Humiliating his faithful wife, Pu Yi falls into bad romantic company, carrying on affairs with a variety of parasitic females. During World War II, the Japanese force Pu Yi to sign a series of documents which endorse their despotic military activities. At war’s end, the emperor is taken prisoner by the Russians; while incarcerated, he is forced to fend for himself without servants at his beck and call for the first time. He is finally released in 1959 and displayed publicly as proof of the efficacy of Communist re-education. We last see him in 1967, the year of his death; now employed by the State as a gardener, Pu Yi makes one last visit to the Forbidden City…as a tourist. Bernardo Bertolucci’s first film after a six-year self-imposed exile, The Last Emperor was released in two separate versions: the 160-minute theatrical release, and a 4-hour TV miniseries. Lensed on location, the film won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

The Living Daylights represents the first appearance by Timothy Dalton as “Bond…James Bond.” Based very, very loosely on an obscure Ian Fleming short story, the film finds Bond assigned to aid in the defection of KGB agent Jeroen Krabbe. 007 must prevent an unknown sniper from killing Krabbe before he can reach the West. The mysterious assailant turns out to be the luscious Maryam d’Abo, who like practically everyone in the film except Bond is Not All That She Seems. The plot wends its way through a scheme to trade several million dollars’ worth of diamonds for weapons, which will be shipped off to mercenaries worldwide. The climax takes place high above the clouds in a cargo plane loaded with opium. Dalton would play Bond one more time in License to Kill (1989) before handing the franchise over to Pierce Brosnan.

In this hit ’80s hybrid of the horror movie and the teen flick, a single mom and her two sons become involved with a pack of vampires when they move into an offbeat Northern California town. Lucy (Dianne Wiest) and her sons, Michael (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim), move to Santa Carla to live with Lucy’s lovable but curmudgeonly father (Barnard Hughes). Lucy gets a job from video store-owner Max (Edward Herrmann), then begins dating him, while Sam hangs out with Edward and Alan Frog (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander), a pair of vampire-obsessed comic-shop clerks. Soon Michael falls in with some actual vampires after becoming enamored of one of their victims: Star (Jami Gertz), a gypsy-like vixen who is trying to hold onto her humanity even though vampire leader David (Kiefer Sutherland) wants to play Peter Pan to her Wendy. When Michael visits the cavernous hangout of David and his cronies and unwittingly drinks from a wine bottle full of vampiric blood, he becomes an unwilling member of the bloodsucker biker gang. Soon, it’s up to Sam and the Frog brothers to destroy David and his ilk without killing Michael and Star. Shot on location in the coastal California town of Santa Cruz and directed by Hollywood pro Joel Schumacher, The Lost Boys became a pop-culture phenomenon thanks to its attractive young stars, offbeat soundtrack, and hip, clever marketing campaign; the film’s tagline — “Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.” — perfectly captured its knowing mixture of attitude and gore. The effects team who transformed Sutherland and company into snarling blood-suckers would go on to provide equally gruesome effects for Blade, another revisionist vampire flick, more than a decade later.

This high-octane semi-sequel to Sam Raimi’s cult hit The Evil Dead has nearly eclipsed its predecessor’s reputation thanks to an endless barrage of hyperkinetic camera acrobatics, rapid-fire editing and “splatstick” gore effects … not to mention a truly goofy performance by Bruce Campbell. Nearly the entire storyline of the previous film has been re-shot and presented in a drastically condensed form within the first few minutes: rock-jawed but clueless “hero” Ash (Campbell) now visits the mountain cabin only with girlfriend Linda (played here by Denise Bixler). Upon arrival at the cabin, Ash discovers the Sumerian Book of the Dead, the ritual dagger and a reel-to-reel tape containing the professor’s translations of the book’s hieroglyphics. The incantations summon an unseen, growling spirit from within the woods, which bursts into the cabin and takes possession of Linda’s soul. Ash is forced to decapitate her with a shovel, after which he buries her in the forest. At first dawn, Ash tries to make his escape, but is promptly set upon by the spirits, given a solid thrashing and nearly possessed himself, saved only by the arrival of sunlight. Cut off from the outside world, Ash is forced to hole up in the cabin and wait for the next demonic onslaught — which arrives sooner than expected, led by Linda’s rotting corpse. After being bitten by Linda’s chatty decapitated head, Ash’s hand becomes independent of his body and begins pummeling him repeatedly. The story then jumps to a local airport, where the professor’s daughter Annie (Sarah Berry) and her partner Ed Getley (Richard Domeier) have just arrived with the missing pages to the Necronomicon. They employ a cranky pair of local rednecks, Jake (Dan Hicks) and Bobbie Joe (Kassie Wesley), as guides to lead them through the dense woods to the cabin … where, at that very moment, Ash is removing his belligerent hand with a chainsaw, creating yet another ambulatory foe. Driven to the brink of insanity, Ash fires blindly at a noise outside, unaware that the new arrivals are Annie and company. Bobbie Joe is injured by the gunshot, which incurs the wrath of Jake, who knocks Ash senseless and locks him in the fruit cellar. Believing her father was murdered by Ash, Annie plays the rest of the professor’s recording to learn the truth, and discovers her possessed mother was buried in the same cellar — and not exactly resting in peace. This touches off a string of unbelievably gruesome (and hysterically funny) events, including Henrietta’s transformation into a stop-motion creature (reminiscent of a Ray Harryhausen creation), Ed’s sudden metamorphosis into a toothy, levitating ghoul, and Ash’s climactic confrontation with the forest demon itself. The obvious glee with which Raimi and company present this cavalcade of slime-drenched monstrosities and Three Stooges pratfalls makes it impossible to take seriously as a horror film, but Evil Dead 2 is nevertheless essential viewing among connoisseurs of truly demented cinema. The film’s sardonic coda opened the way for a slightly less successful sequel, Army of Darkness.

This futuristic drama offers the classic story of Shane seved up with a few Mad Max moments and some interesting twists. The tale is set in the smouldering, decimated post-World War III town of Meridian, where locals scrabble to keep their meager farms watered in the midst of a desert wasteland. Bad-guys - a powerful landowner and his cronies - try to monopolize the precious local water supplies by bullying, kidnapping and even murdering citizens. To this beleaguered place comes the enigmatic swordsman/ warrior Nomad who has come in search of his mentor’s killer. The town takes him on as their “Peacemaker” and he is able to end their problems and get his revenge to boot. The story was filmed on location in the deserts of South Africa.

Dolph Lundgren is He-Man in this live-action version of Masters of the Universe. The disc contains a widescreen anamorphic transfer that preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1. English and French soundtracks are rendered in Dolby Digital Stereo. English, Spanish, and French subtitles are accessible. Supplemental materials include a commentary track by director Gary Goddard, a theatrical trailer, and an explanation of the different characters who inhabit the fantasy world created in the film. Whatever one thinks of the film itself, this is a very strong DVD with much to offer a fan of the film.

Based on J.G. Ballard’s autobiographical novel, Empire of the Sun stars Christian Bale as a spoiled young British boy, living with his wealthy family in pre-World War II Shanghai. During the Japanese invasion, Bale is separated from his parents. With the help of soldier-of-fortune John Malkovich, Bale learns to survive without a retinue of servants at his beck and call. By the time Malkovich and Bale are tossed into a Japanese prison camp, the boy has picked up enough street-smarts and developed enough intestinal fortitude to regard his imprisonment as an exciting adventure. The story ends during the 1945 liberation: on the verge of manhood, the 13-year-old Bale will never again be the pampered, privileged brat whom we met in the early scenes.

Adapted from Mario Puzo’s novel, The Sicilian is an attempt to chronicle the life and times of Mafia leader, patriot and real-life Robin Hood Salvatore Giuliano, the infamous bandit who, together with his rag-tag band of guerillas, attempted to liberate 1940s Sicily from Italian rule and make it an American state. Giuliano (Christopher Lambert) robs from the rich conservative landowners to give to the poor, serf-like peasants, who in turn hail him as their savior. As his popularity grows, so does his ego, and he eventually thinks he is above the power of his backer, Mafia Don Masino Croce (Joss Ackland). The Don, in turn, sets out to kill the upstart by convincing his cousin and closest advisor Gaspare (John Turturro) to assassinate him. Nearly thirty minutes of screen time were haphazardly hacked off director Michael Cimino’s original cut by the studio.

Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has a code of honor which he will not violate, even when his life depends on it. Paradoxically, his code of honor gives him the backbone to survive as a military special forces operative when he is sent on a covert mission to rescue another group which was sent in to assist some nefarious U.S. government plan in a Latin American country. Once there, he encounters an old army buddy (Carl Weathers) who has gotten too deep in the CIA’s good graces for Dutch’s comfort. When he and his team go into the jungle to rescue the others, they get involved in a pitched battle with local guerillas, but they are more than capable of besting these vicious fighters. However, not long after that, they encounter signs that the equally capable men they were sent to rescue were all killed unawares and in an unusually gruesome fashion. Given their training, it should have been impossible for anyone to best all of these commando warriors. Soon, the men from Dutch’s own team get picked off one by one, as they grow aware that they are up against something uncanny, not of this world, something that is hunting them for sport. Why? Because their skills make them worthy opponents for the perfectly camouflaged Predator. This carefully paced action movie was given poor reviews by many movie critics, but was sufficiently satisfying for its (largely male) audiences that a successful sequel (Predator 2) was released in 1990.