Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)

29 Monday Jan 2018

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Catch Up movie, Documentary, Exploitation, Mark Hartley, Menahem Golan, Movies, Review, The Cannon Group Inc, True story, Yoram Globus

D: Mark Hartley / 106m

With: Sam Firstenberg, Boaz Davidson, Mark Helfrich, John Thompson, Mark Rosenthal, Christopher Pearce, David Engelbach, Pieter Jan Brugge, Lance Hool, Frank Yablans, Rusty Lemorande, Avi Lerner, Stephen Tolkin

There’s a saying that if you remember the Sixties then you weren’t really there. In a similar fashion, if you remember the Eighties but never saw a Cannon movie then you’re not really a movie buff (though in reality you probably did but just didn’t realise it). Cannon, run by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, were the ne plus ultra of awful, low budget movies, often taking the most basic of ideas and using as little money as possible in order to get the finished product out there. Did they worry about the quality of the movies they produced? Most of the time, no. But they did know what they were doing, and between 1979 and 1994, Cannon Films released a succession of movies that played poorly in cinemas, were slammed by critics, but which were perfect for the home video market. Titles such as Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype (1980), The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (1983), and The Naked Cage (1986) were all movies you’d normally cross the street to avoid, but thanks to Cannon’s continuous and unerring ability to make the worst movies possible, their output became the cinematic equivalent of a car wreck: you just had to see how bad they could be.

In Mark Hartley’s latest documentary to explore the wider reaches of low budget movie making – after Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008) and Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010) – the story of the Cannon Group and their feckless approach to movie making is given a thorough deconstruction thanks to the people who were there: the production executives, the screenwriters, the directors, and the stars. The very existence of Cannon Films, and the fact that it survived as long as it did as a producing entity is a testament to the stubbornness of Golan and the financial smarts of Globus. Their business model was simple: sell the distribution rights for one movie and use that money to make another. Occasionally they worked with some very well-known stars (Richard Chamberlain, Charles Bronson, even Katharine Hepburn), and gave some directors the chance to make movies they couldn’t make elsewhere (John Cassavetes, Jean-Luc Godard, Franco Zeffirelli). They were as much an enigma to themselves perhaps as they were to everyone else. For Golan and Globus it was all about being successful, and being seen to be successful. The movies? In the end, merely the tools to achieve that success.

Electric Boogaloo presents a fair and balanced overview of the life of Cannon, and the wider impact such a company had on Hollywood during the Eighties when their movies were being distributed by MGM. It also allows those who were involved with Cannon to air their views and opinions in a way that appears consistently derogatory (there are only so many ways you can say a Cannon movie is bad), but which also as the documentary progresses, reveals a common fondness for the so-called Go-Go Boys and the movies they made. There are plenty of humorous anecdotes to be had, and some stories would be hard to believe if they were about another studio or production company, but with Golan and Globus often unsure themselves as to what constituted a Cannon movie – they were both unaware that Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) was intended as a comedy – the stark reality of just how little they knew about what they were doing comes across as plainly as the awful special effects in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) (they wanted to match the quality of the first three movies, but on a fraction of the budget needed). Like many of the interviewees, you’ll be shaking your head at some of the revelations, and at the same time telling yourself, “it could only be them.”

Rating: 8/10 – plenty of clips and archival footage as well as a plethora of talking heads means Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films covers a lot of bases and does so with a great deal of affection and an earned respect; Golan and Globus may have given us some of the worst movies ever made, but there were times when their luck and their movie making acumen paid off in spades, though you have to admit that after ruining Superman on the big screen, thank [insert preferred deity here] they never got the chance to ruin Spider-Man as well.

Poster(s) of the Week – Hammer Studios Part 2: Dracula

27 Tuesday Sep 2016

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Dracula, Exploitation, Hammer, Movies, Posters

You can say what you like about the quality of Hammer’s horror output between 1957 and 1976 (and you could say quite a lot), but where they did excel was in the luridness of their promotional materials, and particularly their posters. Their series of Dracula-based movies are a great case in point, with their exaggerated declarations of terror, vivid colour schemes, damsels in partially-dressed distress, and arresting depictions of violence. Back in the late Fifties and on through to the early Seventies, Hammer mastered the art of the exploitation poster (and in time the art of the exploitation movie), but rarely as effectively as they did with their Frankenstein and Dracula movies. Here, in the second of a two-part Poster(s) of the Week, are the terribly sensational posters used to advertise a series of movies that got worse and worse the longer the series continued. What’s interesting is the way in which the posters mirrored the lacklustre content and declining success of the series, with the later entries being represented by posters that are nowhere near as eye-catching as their predecessors. Nowadays though, and despite Hammer’s recent resurgence, these movies are still the focus of much nostalgia and appreciation. And the same can be said for their posters.

Poster(s) of the Week – Hammer Studios Part 1: Frankenstein

20 Tuesday Sep 2016

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Exploitation, Frankenstein, Hammer, Movies, Posters

You can say what you like about the quality of Hammer’s horror output between 1957 and 1976 (and you could say quite a lot), but where they did excel was in the luridness of their promotional materials, and particularly their posters. Their series of Frankenstein-based movies are a great case in point, with their exaggerated declarations of terror, vivid colour schemes, damsels in partially-dressed distress, and arresting depictions of violence. Back in the late Fifties and on through to the early Seventies, Hammer mastered the art of the exploitation poster (and in time the art of the exploitation movie), but rarely as effectively as they did with their Frankenstein and Dracula movies. Here, in the first of a two-part Poster(s) of the Week, are the terribly sensational posters used to advertise a series of movies that got worse and worse the longer the series continued. What’s interesting is the way in which the posters mirrored the lacklustre content and declining success of the series, with the later entries being represented by posters that are nowhere near as eye-catching as their predecessors. Nowadays though, and despite Hammer’s recent resurgence, these movies are still the focus of much nostalgia and appreciation. And the same can be said for their posters.

Next time: Hammer Studios Part 2: Dracula

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962)

18 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Creature, Eddie Carmel, Exploitation, Horror, Jason Evers, Joseph Green, Review, Strippers, Thriller, Transplants, Virginia Leith

D: Joseph Green / 82m

Cast: Herb Evers, Virginia Leith, Leslie Daniel, Adele Lamont, Bonnie Sharie, Paula Maurice, Bruce Brighton

Dr Bill Cortner (Evers) is assisting his father (Brighton) in an operation on a man whose life is slipping away. Cortner Sr is prepared to accept the man’s passing, but Bill persuades his father to let him try something experimental. By a combination of heart massage and brain cortex manipulation, Bill’s efforts prove successful and the man’s life is saved. Afterwards, Bill tells his father about the experiments he’s been carrying out, experiments that involve limb and organ transplants from deceased patients. Cortner Sr voices his concerns but his son remains adamant that his experiments will lead to a time when illness and disease can be conquered by the use of transplanted organs and tissue.

The Cortners are joined by Bill’s fianceé, Jan Compton (Leith). They have a weekend trip planned to the Cortners’ country house (also where Bill has been conducting his research). An urgent call from the house sees Bill rushing to get there, and in the process, causing the car to go off the road. The ensuing crash sees Bill thrown clear but Jan is decapitated and killed. However, Bill flees the scene and heads for the house – with Jan’s head wrapped in his jacket. At the house he’s met by his assistant, Kurt (Daniel), and he quickly arranges Jan’s head in a tray of rejuvenating serum that he’s developed. Once Jan’s consciousness is revived, Bill tells Kurt his plan next is to find a body he can attach Jan’s head to.

Kurt manages to tell Bill about the reason for the urgent call: one of Bill’s experiments in limb transplantation has gone awry, and the “patient” is currently locked away in a room in the cellar where Bill works. Bill dismisses Kurt’s fears and goes in search of a “donor” body for Jan. While he’s gone, Jan wakes up and is horrified at what’s happened to her; she also finds she can communicate with Bill’s previous “patient”. Determined to make Bill pay for what he’s done to her, Jan plans her revenge. Meanwhile, Bill’s search for a woman with an appropriately attractive body proves unsuccessful. He returns to the house to find Kurt even more anxious than before and Jan threatening to stop him. He continues to ignore any warnings, and leaves again to find a suitable woman. Through an old flame he’s reminded of someone they used to know who’s suffered a facial disfigurement. Bill visits the woman, Doris Powell (Lamont), and on the pretext of correcting her scarring, convinces her to come with him to the house. But when they get there, not everything is as Bill left it…

Confusingly (or mistakenly) titled The Head That Wouldn’t Die at the very end of the movie, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is a semi-exploitation movie that surprisingly spends several occasions questioning the lengths to which medical science should go in order to save lives. This philosophical and ethical approach serves to ground the movie more effectively than the standard mad-scientist-playing-at-God scenario it otherwise plays with. That Bill Cortner experiments with dead tissue in his efforts to perfect his transplants – a predictable nod to Frankenstein – it’s ironic that if he’d used live tissue (however unethically), he’d likely be regarded as a true saviour of people’s lives (he even mentions the “recent eye cornea transplants” that have been carried out). Ironic, but not quite as lurid as required.

Scientific discussions aside, there’s a marked prurience on display here, with Bill’s first search for a donor body taking him to a strip club. Cue a scene where a blonde “exotic” dancer (Sharie) moves around with all the flair of a barely animated mannequin, and a follow-on scene where another stripper (Maurice) removes her dress for no other reason than because the script requires her to. And as if that wasn’t enough for early Sixties audiences, there’s a swimsuit contest, and Bill’s eventual intended victim, Doris, is shown in her part-time role as a photographer’s model, dressed only in a bikini. It’s all quaint enough by today’s standards but back then would have been considered quite racy, and in terms of the narrative it’s probably as lurid as the producers could get away with.

As with most “creature features” from the Fifties and Sixties, the movie holds off on revealing its monster until the end. Usually the build-up is more impressive than the actual monster itself, but here that’s not the case. Played by Eddie Carmel, who was 7′ 6¾” tall and suffered from acromegaly, the make-up applied to his face and head is suitably horrific, even if it is reminiscent of The Monster from Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957). When he’s first seen it’s a real jolt, and even afterwards, he commands the viewer’s attention, despite whatever else is going on in the frame.

As the increasingly megalomaniacal Bill, Evers is a poor choice for the committed doctor, his acting skills ranging from cursory to absent, often within the same scene. It’s a struggle to listen to him expound on Bill’s medical theories; even he doesn’t sound that convinced by them. Forced to act with her head through a table for most of the movie, Leith is at least able to provide two separate characterisations for Jan. First, and briefly, there’s the happy-go-lucky bride-to-be, and then there’s the embittered head in a tray. She’s asked to laugh and cackle a little too much but her performance is still the nearest to satisfactory that the movie manages to achieve. Daniel gives the impression that the conversations he has with Jan are all happening in his head, and chews so much of the scenery it’s amazing there’s any left by the movie’s end.

The script, written by Green, is unnecessarily padded out by both its dissertations on medical ethics (they could have been gone over in half the time), and Bill’s tour of places filled with scantily clad females. Once it enters the last ten minutes the movie picks up speed, but the final shot prompts more questions than it can answer. The production values are predictably low – Bill apparently has the use of just a table and a few tubes and beakers for his experiments – and Stephen Hajnal’s camerawork is particularly awkward when asked to provide something more than a standard medium shot. Green directs competently enough but doesn’t have the experience – this was his first movie – to make it visually interesting (despite all the heaving bosoms) and to avoid things becoming too melodramatic. And the uncredited score is as derivative as they come for this type of movie, and in that era.

Rating: 4/10 – filmed in 1959, and regarded by some as a cult classic, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is only occasionally diverting, and only occasionally satisfying; with the look and feel of a movie assembled from rehearsal footage, this is still worth seeking out, if only to see just how badly an exploitation movie can turn out when there’s so little exploitation actually included.

Group Review: Shed No Tears (1948) / Child Bride (1938) / Detective Kitty O’Day (1944)

13 Thursday Mar 2014

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Child marriage, Crime, Exploitation, Harry Revier, Insurance fraud, Jean Parker, Jean Yarbrough, June Vincent, Murder, Mystery, Ozarks, Review, Shirley Mills, Wallace Ford, William Beaudine, www.archive.org

NOTE: All three movies were viewed courtesy of http://www.archive.org – go check it out!

Shed No Tears (1948)

D: Jean Yarbrough / 70m

Cast: Wallace Ford, June Vincent, Mark Roberts, Johnstone White, Frank Albertson, Dick Hogan, Elena Verdugo

Spirited noir with a constantly twisting, changing plot to keep its audience guessing (although the eventual outcome is never in doubt – it’s the Forties after all, and bad people still need to be punished). After faking his death with the help of his wife Edna (Vincent), Sam Grover (Ford) hides out until Edna can collect on the insurance money. What Sam doesn’t know is that Edna has no intention of sharing the money with him, and has her own plans involving her lover, Ray (Roberts). Meanwhile, Sam’s son Tom (Hogan), unconvinced that his father’s “death” was accidental, hires a private detective (White) to look into the matter. What follows is an entertaining yarn full of double crosses, unexpected twists and turns, and hard-boiled dialogue (mostly uttered by Vincent). The cast are proficient – though some of Vincent’s line readings are memorable for all the wrong reasons – and Yarbrough’s direction shows a sure hand. Not as slick or as impressive as some other post-war noirs but worth catching nevertheless.

Rating: 6/10 – a minor gem that works well when focusing on its lead characters’ greed; Vincent looks completely untrustworthy throughout.

Child Bride (1938)

D: Harry Revier / 62m

Cast: Shirley Mills, Bob Bollinger, Warner Richmond, Diana Durrell, Dorothy Carrol, George Humphreys, Frank Martin

Exploitation curio that mixes child marriage reform with more traditional soap opera elements. Jennie (Mills) is twelve. She’s a bright, precocious child who lives with her mother (Carrol) and father (Humphreys) in the Ozarks. The community there sees nothing wrong with children Jennie’s age being married because, as one character puts it, “there ain’t enough adult women to go round”. The local school teacher, Miss Carol (Durrell) is fighting to have the law changed but it’s an uphill struggle. Meanwhile, Jennie’s father falls foul of his partner in an illegal still, Jake Bolby (Richmond). Events play out so that Jennie ends up betrothed to Bolby. Will she be saved in the nick of time? Child Bride moves along at a rapid pace and crams a lot into its short running time. Revier directs ably enough but the cast vary from just about credible (Richmond) to downright terrible (Durrell and Martin). There’s an extended sequence where Jennie goes skinny-dipping and it’s clear that Mills is naked, and an even more risible sequence where Miss Carol is abducted at night by hooded men.

Rating: 4/10 – engrossing in its way, Child Bride ends up being a little too melodramatic for its own good; it’s also dated badly but the presentation of its central theme still has the ability to make modern audiences uncomfortable.

Detective Kitty O’Day (1944)

D: William Beaudine / 61m

Cast: Jean Parker, Peter Cookson, Tim Ryan, Veda Ann Borg, Edward Gargan, Douglas Fowley, Herbert Heyes, Pat Gleason

Fast-paced comedy whodunnit featuring Parker as Kitty O’Day, who, when her boss is murdered, decides to find the killer – against the best advice of her boyfriend Johnny (Cookson) and the police (Ryan, Gargan). But everywhere she turns, more dead bodies pop up and soon Kitty and Johnny become the number one suspects. Parker and Cookson make for a good team, and if their banter seems a little forced at times, it doesn’t detract from the obvious chemistry they have together. The storyline dips in and out of being plausible, and the final explanation is unnecessarily convoluted, but otherwise this is an enjoyable romp that relies largely on short, punchy scenes to make up its running time. Beaudine – who could make this kind of movie in his sleep – keeps it light and frothy, and the cast fill their roles with ease, especially Ryan and Gargan who steal the show as the by turns exasperated and clueless cops on the case. Not a classic – and neither is the sequel, Adventures of Kitty O’Day (1945) – but it’s a fun way to pass an hour.

Rating: 5/10 – tries to be rip-roaring but gets bogged down in its own plot; light and breezy throughout with few variations to compensate for all the frivolity.

Film4 Frightfest All Night Special 2013

05 Tuesday Nov 2013

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Anne Heche, Anthony Leonardi III, Charles Dance, Clancy Brown, Discopath, Exploitation, German Alps, Horror, Mark Hartley, Marvin Kren, Nothing Left to Fear, Patrick (2013), Rachel Griffith, Remake, Renaud Gauthier, Reviews, Stull Kansas, The Station

Taking place at the Empire cinema in Basildon, Essex here in the UK, the Film4 Frightfest All Night Special 2013 started at approx. 11:00pm on 2 November and finished at approx. 6:15am on 3 November. The following four films were shown.

Patrick (2013)

D: Mark Hartley / 90m

Cast: Charles Dance, Rachel Griffith, Sharni Vinson, Peta Sergeant, Damon Gameau, Martin Crewes, Jackson Gallagher

A remake of the 1978 movie of the same name, Patrick is the first feature from documentary filmmaker Mark Hartley. Taking the same basic premise as the original – coma patient uses telekinesis to manipulate and murder those around him – Hartley’s version is a grim yet stylish offering that sits comfortably alongside its predecessor. Dr Roget (Dance) runs a private clinic where he is attempting to “re-awaken” coma patients. Following the disappearance of one of his nurses, he employs Kathy Jacquard (Vinson) to take her place. Under the watchful eye of Matron Cassidy (Griffith) and the helpful ministrations of Nurse Williams (Sergeant), Kathy soon finds herself assisting Dr Roget in his treatment of “the patient in room 15”, a young man named Patrick (Gallagher). As time passes, Kathy begins to realise that Patrick is capable of communicating with her… at the same time that strange things start happening to those around her, in particular, prospective love interest Brian (Crewes), and recently separated husband Ed (Gameau). And so begins a cat-and-mouse game between Kathy and Patrick as she fights to keep those around her safe from harm, and Patrick becomes increasingly homicidal.

Patrick is an effective shocker, solidly done with a serious approach that works well (no jokey one-liners here). Justin King’s script provides straightforward motivations for each character and ramps up the tension until the final showdown. There are some narrative lapses along the way, and some of the dialogue sounds a little contrived, but on the whole Patrick delivers an often brutally efficient retake on the classic original. The cast help immeasurably, everybody giving committed performances and proving that a little Grand Guignol can go a long way. Patrick also benefits from a great score by Pino Donaggio, and splendidly nasty gore effects courtesy of the makeup department. Aside from the aforementioned narrative lapses, it’s Patrick’s back story that strikes the only false note in the movie, an unnecessary sequence of flashbacks that would have been better presented as a suitably chilling piece of exposition by Dr Roget or Matron Cassidy.

Rating: 7/10 – gloomy interiors and deliberately low-tech effects work bolster this first feature from Hartley; and as the very last credit has it: Patrick vive.

Discopath (2013)

Original title: Discopathe

D: Renaud Gauthier / 81m

Cast: Jérémie Earp-Lavergne, Katherine Cleland, Ingrid Falaise, Pierre Lenoir, Ivan Freud, François Aubin

This Canadian-lensed homage to the heady days of low-budget 80’s slasher flicks is so on the money it’s scary all by itself. The movie opens in 1976. Duane Lewis (Earp-Lavergne) is fired from the New York diner where he (badly) flips burgers. On his way home he meets Valerie (Cleland). They hook up, and later that evening she takes Duane to Seventh Heaven, a trendy nightclub that plays disco music. The music triggers a murderous rage in Duane and soon he’s fleeing the country, heading for Montreal before the cops, led by Detective Stephens (Freud), can arrest him. The movie then skips forward to 1980. Duane is now working in a Catholic girls’ college as a sound and video engineer. He wears hearing aids that block out any music that might trigger one of his murderous outbursts. But when two of the girls decide to stay in their room one weekend while everyone else is away, the music they play causes Duane to revert to his homicidal urges.

Psychopath is a loving recreation of all those cheesy, hard-to-believe shockers that somehow found themselves “Banned in Britain” and whose video covers usually featured a girl in chains being approached by a maniac wielding his weapon of choice. It’s a cheerfully ‘bad’ movie, with deliberately ‘bad’ acting, stilted dialogue, awkward scene transitions, off-kilter camera compositions, and plenty of gratuitous gore effects. Writer/director Gauthier has crafted the kind of grindhouse movie that both Planet Terror and Death Proof should have been but weren’t. It also throws a linguistic curveball when the action moves from New York (all dialogue in English) to Montreal (all dialogue in French-Canadian), and amps up the exploitation angle by throwing in some nudity and a tasteless slo-mo moment involving a female corpse tumbling out of a coffin. Great fun, but not for everyone.

Rating: 7/10 – outrageous, awful (but deliberately so), corny, hammy, gory, stupid – all these things are true…and it’s great!

The Station (2013)

Original title: Blutgletscher

D: Marvin Kren / 98m

Cast: Gerhard Liebmann, Edita Malovcic, Hille Beseler, Peter Knaack, Felix Römer, Brigitte Kren

Scientists working in the German Alps discover a mysterious red substance that acts as a mutating parasite when it comes into contact with living creatures. As the team comes under increasing attack from a variety of mutated creatures, a party of visitors including Minister Bodicek (Kren) are hiking towards them, unaware of what awaits them. The Station is a clever, intriguing movie that creates a fair amount of tension without quite making you grip the edge of your seat. The characters are well-drawn despite being standard archetypes – a rugged loner who just sees the creatures as needing to be killed (Liebmann), doubtful scientists who see value in the creatures’ existence (Beseler, Römer), a resourceful Minister and her assistant (Malovcic) who also had a previous relationship with the rugged loner, and the usual creature fodder – and the cast acquit themselves well.

The location photography is often spectacular without undermining the insular nature of the narrative, and director Kren marshals everything to good effect. What lets the movie down however is the incredibly shoddy creature design and execution; they’re largely puppets and look like it. This leaves the attack sequences bereft of any real menace and it’s up to the cast to sell it all. There’s also a “Bond-in-the-shower” moment when the Minister, forced to remove a parasite from a young girl’s thigh, opens her up with an ordinary pair of scissors! These problems aside, The Station works largely because of the committed cast, and the underlying subtext relating to climate and eco-change, giving the movie a depth and resonance most creature features lack.

Rating: 7/10 – a big step-up from Kren’s first feature, Rammbock, The Station is a fine addition to the roster of movies where Nature turns against Man.

Nothing Left to Fear (2013)

D: Anthony Leonardi III / 100m

Cast: Anne Heche, James Tupper, Clancy Brown, Rebekah Brandes, Jennifer Stone, Ethan Peck, Carter Cabassa

Based in part on the true-life legend of Stull, Kansas, Nothing Left to Fear sees new pastor in town Dan (Tupper) and his family, wife Wendy (Heche), daughters Mary (Stone) and Rebecca (Brandes), and son Christopher (Cabassa) become the focus of a satanic ritual set in motion by on-the-point-of-retiring pastor Kingsman (Brown). As strange events and incidents begin to happen around them it’s only Rebecca who realises that not all is what it seems and that the smiling, welcoming faces of the townspeople hide a deeper, disturbing secret. And that secret is… well, frankly, a mess. In the hands of first-time screenwriter Jonathan W.C. Mills, Nothing Left to Fear staggers under the weight of lacklustre plotting, hazy motivations, perfunctory characterisations and unconvincing dialogue.

By the movie’s end it’s given up altogether, bogged down by an over-reliance on demonic movie tropes and all-too-familair CGI effects. And the movie’s basic premise is further undermined by the movie’s coda, which sees another pastor and his family on their way to Stull… (For anyone now thinking, Oh great, that’s a spoiler and a half, don’t worry, you’ll be more annoyed with the movie by then than you’ll ever be with this review.) Of the cast, Heche and Brown should have known better, while Brandes and Stone at least make an effort, as does Peck as Rebecca’s love interest Noah. Director Leonardi III, whose first feature this is, seems unable to generate any real tension or sense of impending horror, and badly mishandles an extended sequence where one of the children becomes possessed and attacks their siblings: what should be a terrifying experience for the audience becomes a game of cat-and-mouse that cries out for a quicker, more shocking resolution. On the plus side, the score by Slash (also a producer) and Nicholas O’Toole is effective without being intrusive, and the production design by Deborah Riley adds a level of charm to small-town life that becomes pleasingly distorted by the movie’s denouement.

Rating: 4/10 – a muddled, narratively incoherent movie that promises much but fails to deliver almost entirely; there’s nothing left to fear except the movie itself.