Irwin Yablans Movies

A pair of garbage workers (Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez) are shocked to find the body of a city councilman in one of their trash cans. With help from a supervisor (Keith David), the duo must solve the case and find the man's killer while hiding the body from the cops. Estevez also directed and provided the screenplay for Men at Work. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

Though bereft of budget, the 1988 sci-fier Arena has its heart in the right place. The scene is a distant planet, where extraterrestrial gladiators square off in an arena. Earthling Steve Armstrong would like to prove his fighting skills, but the evil planetary ruler Marc Alaimo won't let him. After an intensive series of training sessions with martial-arts expert Claudia Christian, whose father used to run the arena, Armstrong is at last permitted to display his prowess in public. He also gets a chance to topple Alaimo's despotic regime, and, hopefully, to win himself a trip back to Mother Earth. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Scream for Help could be a failed horror spoof, or just a bad horror film -- either way, this story about a teenage daughter trying to convince the world that her cheating stepfather is out to kill her wealthy mother has its flaws. When the young teenager finally gets some proof that she is right, she and her mother are taken captive by the crazed stepfather, and a series of grisly murders results. With pompously dramatic music and acting that is over the edge, the story plays as tongue-in-cheek, until the blood and gore start to gush, turning anyone's stomach. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The only installment of the Halloween series to abandon the Michael Myers story line, Halloween III: Season of the Witch is an intricate sci-fi horror hybrid. A week before Halloween, an older man named Harry Grimbridge (Al Berry) is wounded by a mysteriously dispassionate group of assailants in an industrial parking lot. After receiving treatment at a local hospital from Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins) -- a hard-drinking divorced father of two -- Grimbridge is killed by an assassin who later sets himself on fire. Blowing off his own kids, Challis teams up with Grimbridge's daughter, Ellie (Stacey Nelkin), to find out why the middle-aged toy salesman was murdered. The duo's search soon leads them to a Halloween-mask factory run by inventor and practical joker Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy). In between bouts of passionate lovemaking, Ellie and Challis begin to realize that the sinister old businessman has something other than treats in mind for America's kids -- something to do with the Silver Shamrock masks that Challis' children and thousands of other youngsters have bought for the holiday. Original screenwriter Nigel Kneale, whose scripts for Britain's Quatermass TV series made him a beloved science fiction fixture, sued the producers of Halloween III to have his name removed from the credits after seeing the gory finished product; director Tommy Lee Wallace ultimately received screenplay credit. John Carpenter, director of the first Halloween film, co-produced the third installment with Debra Hill, who would later soldier on without Carpenter for additional, belated sequels. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

In this gory sci-fi outing, shot and originally released in 3-D, Dr. Paul Dean (Robert Glaudini) is a scientist living in the near future, after America has fallen under the control of a repressive paramilitary regime. Dean's research causes him to absorb an especially voracious parasitic worm, which feeds inside the human stomach until it becomes strong enough to burst out in search of a new host. In time, Dean is able to extract the creature from his body, but soon it escapes from captivity, and Dean and his friend Patricia (Demi Moore) must find a way to stop it as they find themselves on the run from brutal government agent Merchant (James Davidson) and a gang of thugs led by Ricus (Luca Bercovici). Parasite was Demi Moore's second film, shot while she was still a regular on the daytime serial General Hospital. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

While John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic Halloween irrevocably changed the style of horror cinema with its simple but relentlessly tense story, it triggered more than a decade's worth of uninspired, exploitative knock-offs, and one could easily list Halloween II among these failures. As with its predecessor, this film was written and produced by Carpenter and Debra Hill, but the terse style and unbearable suspense of the first film are missing, replaced by a more simplistic stalk-and-slash scenario. Directorial duties were handed over to Rick Rosenthal, whose lack of expertise is quite evident (though he managed to hit his stride two years later with the prison actioner Bad Boys). The plot picks up exactly where the original left off: Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), shaken and injured from her battle with unkillable psycho Michael Myers, is taken to the Haddonfield Hospital for observation, while Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) continues his desperate search for his monstrous patient. An interesting plot twist has Loomis' investigations revealing Michael's true identity (some of these sequences incorporate footage of young Michael originally shot for the television version of Halloween, which contained scenes hinting at the link between Michael and Laurie). After slashing his way through the town, Myers manages to track Laurie to the hospital, where the remainder of the action takes place. Numerous night-shift employees are slaughtered in a variety of gruesome ways before Loomis catches up with his quarry, leading to an explosive -- and seemingly conclusive -- confrontation. Pleasence is compelling as usual, but Curtis, who made an auspicious debut in the original, is sadly wasted here, her character reduced to shuffling half-drugged through darkened hospital corridors and screaming helplessly. Carpenter's active involvement in the Halloween franchise continued to dwindle steadily from one sequel to the next, getting scarcely a mention by the time producers Hill, Moustapha Akkad and Irwin Yablans revived the series in 1988 for three more sequels. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

This lively film was made to cash in on the roller skating craze that swept Southern California in the late '70s. The story centers upon a poor-little-rich-girl runaway who heads for the Venice boardwalk to join the other hipsters on wheels. She and her new friends then team up to keep an avaricious developer from razing the local roller rink and putting a shopping mall in its stead. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A surprisingly long and worthwhile film, The Education of Sonny Carson is based on a true story. Rony Clanton stars as Carson, a product of the Brooklyn ghetto. After several years of gang and drug activities, Sonny is sobered by his horrendous experiences in prison. He puts his priorities in order and finds a "born again" purpose in life under his new name, Iwina Lmiri Abubadika. The film ends in the 1970s, long before Abubadika's controversial involvement in New York politics. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide