BUSTER AND BILLIE

Jan-Michael Vincent

BUSTER AND BILLIE (1974). Director: Daniel Petrie.

In 1948 Georgia, handsome and popular teen Buster Lane (Jan-Michael Vincent) is engaged to one of the high school's prettiest gals, Margie (Pamela Sue Martin). Margie, however, won't "put out," so Buster decides to try a date with the town tramp, a shy young lady named Billie Jo (Joan Goodfellow). Although Buster's primary interest in the girl is sex, he develops tender feelings for her, breaking off his engagement and defying the town's attitude towards this gal of easy virtue. Unfortunately, the two are headed down a tragic path ...

Joan Goodfellow

I really wanted to love this ill-fated romance, which I haven't seen since it was released in '74, but it just isn't as convincing as it needs to be. Vincent offers a very good performance, showing the sensitive man inside the brash youth, but Goodfellow is weak, and the script doesn't help to develop her character so that we can really care about what happens to her. Buster's switch from Margie to Billie Jo happens so abruptly that you might wonder how the man who cares for Billie Jo despite everyone's opinions of her can be the same man who so suddenly, almost cruelly, breaks things off with his fiancee. Most of the supporting characters in the film are fairly shadowy. One of the more interesting characters, Buster's friend "Whitey," is well-played by Robert Englund of Freddy Krueger fame. There's some nice music by Al De Lory.

Verdict: Lots of possibilities in this, but it never really catches fire. **1/2. 

DEAD AND BURIED

James Farentino

DEAD AND BURIED (1981). Director: Gary Sherman.

Dan Gillis (James Farentino) is the sheriff at the small town of Potter's Bluff, which suddenly seems to have an epidemic of homicide. Mutilated corpses are turning up, and we see that the perpetrators are gangs of ordinary citizens attacking outsiders. Dan, however, is even more perplexed than the audience, especially when one of the victims turns up alive with a new identity. Dan's paranoia increases when he suspects that the town's old mortician, Dobbs (Jack Albertson), who is also the medical examiner, may know more than he's saying, and when he finds that his wife, Janet (Melody Anderson), has been reading a book on witchcraft. Then he gets a piece of film that reveals the true horror of the situation, and one especially shocking revelation ...

Jack Albertson

Dead and Buried counts many things among its influences, Frankenstein chief among them, but it also has its own originality if you take it with a grain of salt. There are scenes that go on too long (the opening especially), but otherwise the film is well-paced and consistently suspenseful. Although Jack Albertson [The Subject Was Roses] would not have been my first choice for the role of Dobbs, he's still effective and never chews the scenery. Farentino is excellent, adroitly handling a difficult role, and Melody Anderson [Flash Gordon] is also on target as his wife. The supporting cast, which includes a pre-Freddie Krueger Robert Englund, is well-chosen. Although there are several exciting and chilling sequences in the film, perhaps the most memorably disturbing is an attack on a frightened family in an old abandoned house. The gruesome make ups are expertly handled by Stan Winston. Director Gary Sherman originally wanted this to be a black comedy, but, fortunately, the movie, despite its absurd aspects, is played straight.

Verdict: Very creepy picture with a disquieting premise. ***.

GALAXY OF TERROR aka MINDWARP

A touchy-feely alien gets another victim

GALAXY OF TERROR (aka Mindwarp/1981). Director: Bruce D. Clark. Produced by Roger Corman.

"There's no horror here we don't create ourselves."

A spaceship is sent to a distant planet to see if they can find the survivors of the last expedition. What they find are the remains of the spaceship, some weird creepy-crawly aliens that attach themselves to their body parts, and a giant pyramid-like structure in which they are stalked by half-seen creatures and must confront their own fears. This is an old idea -- astronauts bedeviled by materializations of their own terrors -- but it's also an obvious copy of Alien. The movie has surprisingly good production design, courtesy of James Cameron [later famous as the director of Titanic] and Robert Skotak, and an interesting cast, including Edward Albert, Erin Moran, the ever-brooding Zalman King, Ray Walston as a cook with secrets, Robert Englund [Nightmare on Elm Street], Sid Haig as an astronaut who's murdered by his own severed arm, and Grace Zabriskie as a kind of butch captain, sole survivor of something called the Hesperus disaster (as if any vessel would be named after a famous shipwreck!).  Taffee O'Connell is pursued by a maggot grown to giant size that seems more interested in tearing off her clothing and licking her naked body than it is in eating her. Despite some fairly impressive sequences and decent acting, Galaxy of Terror has a cheapjack look and feel to it, and while not awful, it's not that memorable, either.

Verdict: One of the better Alien imitations, so you can imagine how awful some of the others were. **1/2.

V -- THE FINAL BATTLE (1984)

V: THE FINAL BATTLE (1984). Director: Richard T. Heffron.

In this sequel to the original 1983 mini-series, V,  the war continues between human rebels and the invading force of alien Visitors. In this somewhat more entertaining sequel, Willie (Robert Englund), the "nice" alien, is taken captive by the resistance, even as one of their number, annoying young Robin (Blair Tefkin), discovers that she is pregnant with a half-alien baby. There's a nasty young human traitor named Daniel (David Packer). Julie (Faye Grant) is the leader of the resistance, and the scenes when she is taken captive and tortured and brain-washed go beyond the point of tedium. Mike Donovan (Marc Singer), hero of the first installment, is in a private war with his nasty collaborationist step-mother (Neva Patterson). Andrew Prine, Dick Miller, and Michael Ironside all appear, but the most amusing guest-star is Sarah Douglas as an alien commander named -- get this -- Pamela. It's already remarkable that the aliens use their Earth names to refer to one another even in private, but Pamela shows up from deep space sporting a thoroughly English accent [she even says "lefttenant" instead of "Lieutenant"]! This undercuts any seriousness intended by the producers, and the religiosity of the piece is also a bit irritating. There are some good scenes in this but it was all much, much better done in last year's unfortunately canceled ABC series, V, which lasted for two seasons. Jane Badler, who played head alien Diana in the 80's version, guest-starred as a variation of that character in the more recent series.

Verdict: Looks like those visitors are gone for good. **1/2.