Thursday, May 2, 2024

Wicked Stepmother / Deadly Illusion - 1989 / 1987

 I had a Larry Cohen double feature just now, for no other reason than they were both free online and I generally like the guy.  Good thing I didn't start with these two or I might not have watched more of his stuff.

Wicked Stepmother I didn't even finish honestly.  I might later today, depending how much is left, but I also might not.  Nothing is really worse than a bad comedy, and while I have seen worse than this, it's just not interesting or entertaining, and I can't even really follow the plot, mostly cuz I'm completely not paying attention, looking up campsites on my laptop while its on in the background.  Who gives a shit.

In Wicked Stepmother, Bette Davis has her last role as an evil stepmother who marries old guy Sam and changes him into a TV-watching, hair-growing slave.  Better Davis left the movie midway through, so her character also takes the form of a young beautiful woman who charms and plays with the other people in Sam's family, and it kinda just keeps going, seemingly without a real plot or laughs.

In Deadly Illusion, Billy Dee Williams is a private detective who is approached by a man and asked to kill the man's wife for $100,000.  Billy goes to the woman and sleeps with her but does not kill her, and the next day she turns up dead anyways and he is the prime suspect.  Complication builds and builds, and the story takes some twists and turns, and yeah, that's about it.

Both of these feel like pretty second tier B movies, not in a thoroughly bad way, but just in a shrug-worthy way.  I doubt most people would have anything to say about this after watching it besides, "Uh, yea, you know, it was fine."  Wicked Stepmother is outwardly bad, but Deadly Illusion would be a great candidate for my eternal question, "what random ass movie should get a sequel now?"  Deadly Illusion 2: The Illusioon Returns.

I dunno.  I'll give Stepmother 1 star and Illusioon 2.5.




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