Amy Jones Movies
- 2006
- Add Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film to QueueAdd Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film to top of Queue
For decades fright fans have cowered in horror as vicious killers stalked their helpless prey in the cold flicker of the projector bulb and in darkened living rooms with the curtains firmly drawn. Now, for anyone who has ever wondered just what motivated the filmmakers behind these brutal classics, this look at the history of the modern slasher film offers demented insight into some of the most terrifying motion pictures ever released. From Psycho to the giallo genre to Freddy Vs. Jason, Going to Pieces offers a comprehensive overview of the entire slasher genre as discussed by such horror luminaries as Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Sean S. Cunningham, and Rob Zombie. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
A mythological creature stalks the halls of a museum during a society fundraiser in this cheap sci-fi horror genre knock-off of Alien (1979). Penelope Ann Miller stars as Dr. Margo Green, an evolutionary biologist at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History who receives a shipment of artifacts from a colleague performing fieldwork in Brazil. Among the contents are leaves containing a rare fungus that, unbeknownst to Green or anyone else, attracts the palate of a rapidly mutating, lizard-like monster called Kothoga that has stowed away on a Brazilian freighter and has found a subterranean route into the museum from Lake Michigan. Before long, several museum employees have become decapitated snack food for the beast, which prefers to dine on human hypothalamuses and pituitary glands. Despite dire warnings from the museum staff, a gruff coroner (Audra Lindley) and the investigating detective, Lt. Vincent D'Agosta (Tom Sizemore), the Windy City's oblivious mayor orders a black-tie museum fundraiser to proceed. During the event, the building's high-tech security system locks Green, D'Agosta, the mayor, and many chi-chi party guests in with the hungry animal, forcing everyone to attempt an escape through an underground waterway with which Kothoga is all too familiar. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Penelope Ann Miller, Tom Sizemore, (more)
This is a domestic thriller in the Hitchcock mode with a legalistic twist involving that modern invention, the prenuptial agreement. Halle Berry stars as Josie Potenza, the unhappy wife of alcoholic, philandering executive Tony Potenza (Christopher McDonald). Josie is unfaithful too, but she wants to salvage her marriage and proposes an alcohol-free vacation in a remote backwoods location. Tony agrees, but soon after they arrive, he's called back to work. Angry and lonely, Josie goes to a nearby bar, where she meets sympathetic Cole Wilson (Peter Greene), who's actually a psychotic ex-con. After hearing Josie's tale of marital woe, Cole proposes that he kill Tony. Appalled, Josie refuses, but soon Tony is murdered in a carjacking, leaving Josie the possible inheritor of millions. A prenuptial agreement that would've left her penniless in a divorce puts the LAPD on Josie's scent, while Wilson blackmails her and both her lover Jake (Clive Owen) and his cuckolded wife Nora (Clea Lewis) scheme to profit from Josie's loss. Of course, it's also possible that Josie manipulated the events to transpire exactly as they did. Writer-director Amy Holden Jones also wrote the screenplays for Mystic Pizza (1987) and Indecent Proposal (1993). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Halle Berry, Christopher McDonald, (more)
The Getaway, a remake of Sam Peckinpah's excellent escape thriller of the same name, adapted from a story by Jim Thompson, is the story of ill-fated romance on the run. Doc McCoy (Alec Baldwin) is released from a Mexican prison with the help of gangster Jack Benyon (James Woods) who wants Doc's help in the hold-up of a racetrack. With the help of Doc's wife Carol (Kim Basinger), and Jack's thugs Rudy (Michael Madsen) and Frank (Philip Hoffman), the robbery is successful, but a guard is murdered. Doc also finds out that Carol has had an affair with Benyon. Carol shoots Benyon and the two flee for Mexico and freedom. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, (more)
Adrian Lyne buffs the premise of Honeymoon in Vegas to a fine gloss in this yuppie melodrama that poses the conundrum of whether the loving husband of an equally loving wife will accept $1 million to allow his wife to spend one night with a billionaire who looks like Robert Redford. All the cynics please take a number and form a line at the right. Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson play Diana and David Murphy, high-school sweethearts who marry and who are doing very well -- Diana is a successful real-estate agent, and David is an idealistic architect who has built a dream house by the ocean -- until the recession hits. Suddenly, David loses his job, and they can't make the mortgage payments. Dead broke, they borrow $5000 from David's father and head to Las Vegas to try to win money to pay the mortgage on their house. At first, they get $25,000 ahead -- but inevitably the house always wins, and they end up losing it all. While Diana is in the fancy casino boutique trying to lift some candy, she is spotted by billionaire John Gage (Robert Redford), who is immediately attracted to her. John invites Diana and David to an opulent party, and it is there that John offers David $1 million for a night with his wife. David is wracked by this moral dilemma, but Diana finally makes the decision on her own, with ensuing consequences for their ideal marriage and their bank account. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Redford, Demi Moore, (more)
Feeling that something is lacking in their lives, the family of suburbanite Charles Grodin adopts a stray St. Bernard puppy. The cute lite beast grows up to be the less-than-cute Beethoven, a sloppy, slobbery, oversized and extremely destructive animal. Beethoven also brings with him a lot of hidden baggage in the form of evil veterinarian Dean Jones, who'll stop at nothing to steal Beethoven for the purposes of his insidious lab experiment. Several sequels followed, beginning with 1993 Beethoven's Second. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Grodin, Bonnie Hunt, (more)
Three teenagers learn a lot about life and love one summer in this romantic comedy-drama. Kat (Annabeth Gish), Daisy (Julia Roberts), and Jojo (Lili Taylor) are three working-class women just out of high school who have jobs at the same pizza parlor in the resort community of Mystic, Connecticut. Kat wants to study astronomy at Yale; when she starts baby-sitting for Tim (William R. Moses), a wealthy Yale graduate summering in Mystic, she finds herself falling in love with him, even though he's married and nearly twice her age. Daisy, who isn't sure what she wants from life, starts going with Charlie (Adam Storke), a recent law school dropout, though she starts to think that it may be more to rebel against her family than out of genuine affection. And Jojo is attracted to Bill (Vincent D'Onofrio), but she doesn't want to get married (she's already left him at the altar once); when Bill announces that he's no longer willing to have sex without marriage, she has to decide if his affections are worth a lifetime commitment. Conchata Ferrell appears in a supporting role as Leona, the proprietor of the pizza parlor, who zealously guards the secret formula of her sauce. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Annabeth Gish, Julia Roberts, (more)
Rich but repulsive teenager Jessie (Ally Sheedy) can't stand the notion that the whole world doesn't jump to the crack of her whip. Her overindulgent father, millionaire Charles Montgomery (Tom Skerritt), wishes he could teach his daughter a lesson, but can't bring himself to deny his little darling everything her heart desires. Unfortunately, she gets her comeuppance when, after finding out that Jessie has been arrested, her father mutters a wish that she'd never been born. Zap! Enter fairy godmother Beverly D'Angelo, who grants the girl her wish. With no name, no friends, and no money, Jessie has no choice but to look for work. She is hired as a maid by a filthy-rich Malibu couple (Valerie Perrine and Dick Shawn), whose selfish excesses make Jessie look like Pollyanna. Worse still, Jessie is compelled by circumstance to meet up with her father, who doesn't even recognize her. The key to the film's success is the wonderfully many-sided performance of Ally Sheedy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ally Sheedy, Beverly D'Angelo, (more)
- 1983
- R
Unmarried disc jockey Jamie Lee Curtis happens across a packet of love letters, written by her late mother. As she peruses these missives, she learns that her mother had carried on a lengthy extramarital affair. At firt appalled by mom's "double life," Curtis is slowly brought around to another way of thinking. Soon she has embarked on her own romance with an older man, the very married James Keach. Well cast and sensitively directed, Love Letters is a purposely "small" films that deserves a larger audience. The film was also released as My Love Letters and Passion Play. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jamie Lee Curtis, James Keach, (more)
- 1982
- R
Feminist film director Amy Jones and feminist novelist Rita Mae Brown collaborated on this by-the-numbers slasher gorefest, alleviated somewhat by desultory attempts at developing the victims as characters. The film concerns an overnight slumber party, attended by a group of nubile young women, who find themselves harassed by a gaggle of over-sexed young men. Their sexual escapades are punctured by the intrusion of an insane killer wielding a power drill. But the women rule the day when the lone survivor of the killer's hydraulic drill bands together with her sister and a neighbor to form their own posse and hunt down the murderer. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michele Michaels, Robin Stille, (more)
- 1981
- PG
After a string of box-office hits, including Coming Home and Being There, director Hal Ashby announced in 1979 that his next film would be a "personal" project called The Hamster of Happiness. Two years would pass before this effort would appear on screen, by which time it had been heavily retooled in the editing room (by Ashby himself) and retitled Second-Hand Hearts. Robert Blake plays a boozing drifter, who while drunk as a skunk marries waitress Barbara Harris. The newlyweds set off on a long car trip to California, with Harris' two wretched children in tow. For this we waited two years? Weighted down with allegory, symbolism and "meaningful" character names, Second-Hand Hearts was the beginning of the end of Hal Ashby's glory days. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Blake, Barbara Harris, (more)
The Corvette Ken Dantley's (Mark Hamill) class has been restoring in their high-school shop class is nearly completely fixed up. One day, the students walk in and it is gone - apparently stolen. Ken is larking about in Las Vegas when he spies a car that looks suspiciously like the Corvette he knows so well. He begins looking for the car, but in the meantime Vanessa (Annie Potts), propositions him on the street. Intrigued, he follows the girl back to her van, which is equipped with a waterbed. She hopes to use the van as a travelling brothel, with herself as the bill of fare. Instead, she helps him look for the missing car, and as they search, the two of them fall in love. Though praised by critics, Mark Hamill's second starring feature did poorly at the box-office, and stalled his career. Corvette Summer marks the first star appearance by Annie Potts, perhaps better known for her role in the U.S. television show Designing Women. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mark Hamill, Annie Potts, (more)
Allan Arkush and Joe Dante co-directed this campy spoof of exploitation films -- Roger Corman's schlock factory in particular. Candice Rialson stars as Candy Wednesday, a movie hopeful who wants to be a star. Her slimy agent Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) directs her to the portals of Miracle Pictures, where she lands a plum role in the film "Machete Maidens of Maratau." Lead actress Mary McQueen (Mary Woronov) becomes jealous, and a series of disturbing murders occur, culminating in a shoot-out on top of the Hollywood sign. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Candice Rialson, Mary Woronov, (more)
