MAN'S BEST FRIEND (1993)

  Having only seen the trailer back in the day I had always assumed this was about a killer robot dog(something like THE TERMINATOR on 4 legs) on the loose. It's actually about a dog that's genetically spliced with a bunch of other animals to make it the ultimate watchdog (or killing machine if there are any mishaps, so guess what happens).  While not up to the wackiness of the great animals run amok flicks of the 70s this was a pretty decent watch and considering it was made in the 90s, when most horror films were complete wastes of time, it's surprisingly entertaining. Ally Sheedy and Lance Henriksen do a great job in something that could otherwise be pretty shlocky. 

SAVAGE DAWN (1985)

 I never thought of Lance Henriksen as a bad-ass before. I mean I think he's a good actor and all but I guess I just always think of him as that shifty no-good android in the ALIEN films. So maybe I'm instantly prejudiced against a movie that tries to make him into an ass-kicking action hero. There's a few other problems besides this though. The main one is that this movie is really fucking stupid. It's about this gang of bikers led by William Forsythe who do lots of dumb things including inexplicably stealing a tank from an armory that seems to be guarded by only two people. They take over a town with the help of a crazy-ass Karen Black and have to deal with Lance and his old 'Nam buddy George Kennedy who's stuck in a motorized wheelchair thing. There's also a pervy reverend(Richard Lynch) and some lame tough guy cops that play part in all this. I can't really say this a good watch but at least the cast is pretty interesting. Hell even Sam Kinison shows up at one point as a super religious barber which is something to see.




Strangely the old VHS I have of this doesn't even list Lance Henriksen's name anywhere on it:

ALIEN (1979)

 A movie that works because of its ability to create a feeling of horror and suspense.  It's use of shadows and actually hiding the monster for a large portion of the movie is its strong point.  This movie doesn't appeal to modern assholes because typical asshole movie goers of today can't appreciate anything that doesn't have stupid CGI explosions every minute or so and everything being spelled out for them like the infantile drooling masses that they are.  They've been numbed down by everything that passes for today's entertainment.  Not that there's anything wrong with brainlessness in your eye-candy of choice.  It's just that I find it amazing that people have gotten to the point where this movie is too slow for them.  Of course if this movie is too slow there's no hope they'll ever get through something like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and that's a shame because cinema thrives when it works its magic through use of ideas to convey a story not through looking exactly like every other video game-like movie in the multiplex at the moment.  End of rant.  Greatest monster-in-space movie of all time and H.R. Giger went on to influence pretty much every monster since.