Cool As Ice - Oct 18, 1991

Vanilla Ice gifted the world with his acting 20 years ago. His movie, Cool as Ice, debuted in Oct 1991.  And the world would never be the same.

Check out the trailer:

Double Feature Friday: Doc Hollywood and The Frighteners

Over on Strange Kid's Club I talk about some of the DVDs released this week. Included is a compilation of four Michael J Fox comedies. They are all pretty good so I thought I'd finish out the week with ads for all Michael J Fox movies.

Here's an ad for a great little Michael J Fox movie called The Frighteners. It was written and directed by none other than Peter "Lord of the Rings" Jackson. It's much darker than your typical Fox movie. Fox plays an architect whose wife is killed. The trauma leaves him with the ability to see and talk to the dead. He works with three ghosts as a "Psychic Investigator".  Fox sends the ghosts to haunt houses which he then cons people into having him remove the spirits...for a price. Fox's character then discovers that some evil spirit is killing people and only he can see who will be next.

This movie is darkly funny. I really enjoy it. Fox is great in this. There is also a great cameo by R Lee Ermey who pretty much reprises his role from Full Metal Jacket (but as a ghost).  The most fun performance, though, is by "The Reanimator" himself, Jeffrey Combs.  Combs plays Milton Dammers. Dammers is an undercover agent sent to pin the string of killings on Fox's character. However, Dammers just came off an assignment where he was undercover with a cult and his behavior is...erratic, to say the least. This movie is really good. If you haven't seen it, check it out.

Doc Hollywood is more along the lines of your typical Fox movie. I still enjoy it, though. It's got a great cast with Fox like Woody Harrelson, Bridget Fonda, George Hamilton, Julie Warner and Bernard Hughes. Fox plays a doctor on his way to his dream job in California. He crashes his car in Grady, SC and becomes stranded while his car is fixed. "City boy in the country" humor ensues.

See ads for other Michael J Fox movies here.

See The Frighteners trailer here:


See the Doc Hollywood trailer:

The Hard Way - Mar 8, 1991

Over on Strange Kid's Club I talk about some of the DVDs released this week. Included is a compilation of four Michael J Fox comedies. They are all pretty good so I thought I'd finish out the week with ads for all Michael J Fox movies.

Here is the ad for The Hard Way starring Michael J Fox and James Woods. Fox plays movie star Nick Lange who wants to branch out into police dramas. He decides to follow around NY police detective John Moss to "learn the ropes". Hijinks ensue.

I love both of these guys. Woods and Fox are both fantastic and I just enjoy watching this movie. Yes it's cliche, but the actors make it work.

See ads for other Michael J Fox movies here.

Watch the trailer:


Fox's character stars in a popular movie, The Smoking Gunn, in which he plays supercop Joe Gunn. Watch the fake in-movie trailer for Smoking Gunn II below:

The Beastmaster II: Through the Portal of Time - Aug 30, 1991

This is the sequel to the 1982 sword and sorcery epic, The Beastmaster. This movie has become infamous for how bad it is. Marc Singer returns as Dar, who is forced to travel through time to present day Earth to stop his evil brother (who he didn't have in the first film) from stealing a nuclear weapon and returning to destroy their native land.

Yes, this movie is every bit as bad as the below trailer would have you believe. It's shocking enough this sequel was greenlit, but they also made a Beastmaster 3. As a TV movie. With Marc Singer.  And it involves another brother we are only now just hearing about.

Watch the Beastmaster 2 trailer:


For grins and giggles, here's 6 minutes of the Beastmaster 3 TV movie:

Silence of the Lambs - Feb 1, 1991

This week is the 20th anniversary of Silence of the Lambs. To celebrate Lambs' 20th anniversary I'll be looking at classic movie serial killers this week. Come back to see ads for more famous murders. All this week.

Silence opened on Feb 14, 1991. Yes, it opened on Valentine's Day. Today's ad is for a sneak preview of Silence of the Lambs about 2 weeks before it opened.  Come back tomorrow for another classic serial killer movie ad.

Here's the trailer:

The Pistol: Birth of a Legend - 1991

Here's an ad for the small release film The Pistol: Birth of a Legend. The movie was released in 1991.  It's a bio pic about basketball star Pistol Pete Maravich.

Run - February 1, 1991

I'm celebrating my first marathon this week by looking at movies featuring running (or just have RUN in the title).

Today's ad is for the little remembered movie, Run starring "McDreamy", Patrick Dempsey, and "Mrs Travolta" Kelly Preston.

Dempsey plays a college student is thrust into a high stakes poker game with a bunch of rough guys and, after winning a bunch of money, has a disagreement with one of the players who accidentally trips and dies when he hits his head on a table.  Apparently the dead guy is the son of a big time mobster who now blames Dempsey for his son's death and Dempsey has no choice but to RUN...for his life.

I caught this one time on cable and it's actually pretty good.  More of an action-thriller vehicle for Dempsey who owned the romantic comedy genre in the late 80s.  Unfortunately this movie never made it to DVD so it's really tough to find and/or watch despite the fact Dempsey is in the midst of somewhat a resurgence lately.

Other running movies:
Marathon Man
Running
Chariots of Fire