Return of the Family Man - 1989

What happened to South Africa?  South Africa, in the 80's, was a upcoming film location, it seemed.  Suddenly in the 80's, flicks were popping up filmed in Australia and Canada and South Africa and more.  Google shows me some of the known South African movies recently.  District 9...yeah.  Okay.  I guess it's not that unknown of.

Well, anyways, back to the subject at hand.  Return of the Family Man is filmed in South Africa and they spend the whole movie quietly pretending it's America.  Which is pretty awesome, I might mention.  I love how, in older movies like this, they just casually pretend it's America.  Obviously trying to succeed in America by doing this, but now they'd do the opposite.  Emphasize it's South Africa in order to succeed.

Return of the Family Man has a couple of groups of people coming together at a junked out house in the semi middle of nowhere, tricked there by some resort thing they bought into.  Okay, it's original enough, I'll go with it.  Meanwhile, a bus transporting criminals is derailed when serial killer "The Family Man" kills the guards and escapes.  He begins his journey home, home ends up being the same house where the group of people is staying.

It's a simple enough story, and it works with the subject matter.  The killer is given enough screen time to be interesting, and he's well acted enough for it to not be a total mistake.  Some parts and the some of the pacing is a bit wonky, but all in all, nothing goes off the rails.  The kills are pretty decent too.  It's not super memorable, it's not out to hurt anyone, but it could have easily been worse.

Return of the Family Man was forgettable, but fine, ultimately.  Nothing much to say.  2.5 stars.

Open House - 1987

Jofer Jeff saved me again on a night where I wanted an inconsequential, by the numbers blah as fuck horror film.  And this is so damn unknown and uninteresting I can hardly find anything about it online.  So, win!

Adrienne Barbeau is in this?  Wow!  We start the movie with an extremely subpar, soft core porn type feel.  Idiotic 80's women are being murdered as they tour open houses in some vague suburban town somewhere.  Yes, that is in fact the entire plot of this movie.  It's pretty great, really.  In the meantime, there is a local radio show that's a suicide prevention Life Line type call in thing, and they're receiving occasionally weird calls from maybe the killer.

It's got some interesting deaths, it has some terrible acting, it has lots of bizarre clunky writing factors that go into it, and suffice to say it's NOT GOOD.  Pacing was weird, acting is hit and miss, the killer at the end was kind of a dumb sequence.  Yeah, I dunno.  And yeah, we're keeping a short review this time.  I gotta pay attention to Amityville 3D which is on right now.  1 star.

Get Christie Love! - 1974

I popped this movie in about three times.  I didn't pay too much attention for any of those three times.  But that's as much as this is going to get, and I feel like I gleaned enough from it to write a pretty reliable review.  Returning to the much loved 1970's boxset here.

Get Christie Love! is a TV special based on a TV series turned movie.  This was the early 70's, and black hero and heroine films were making it big on the market with such films as Shaft, Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song, Big Bird Cage, Coffy, etc.  This was a attempt to have black people being the focus of both comedy and action, as both an experiment in progression and exploitation, but ultimately won out on the progressive side.

Sparked by this, many things jumped on the blaxploitation bandwagon, and tried to cash in on the craze.  Get Christie was a light made for TV version of a cash in.  It did what it could without being able to get a high a rating obviously.  The blaxploitation in the theaters would normally be action packed, have some nudity, and would have lotsa use of bad language.  Get Christie had to settle for less than this, and yes, it does feel that way as well.

A really likable main actress Teresa Graves plays Christie Love.  Christie is a funny, charming, charismatic young black woman working for the police department.  She's tough, good at talking the talk and walking the walk.  The series was only the second TV show to have a black female lead character, and in that way it will always be seen as progressive.  

All this aside, is it a great movie?  Hm.  Meh.  It's okay.  There's nothing "wrong" with it per say.  It's averagely interesting.  It's got a drug trade, it's got some action scenes, it's got a few chuckles.  It was probably better in the 70's.  It's pretty much what you expect from a 70's TV show.  It was successful as a show, but was soon canceled as Teresa Graves quit acting.

I would not recommend it unless your primary interest is the blaxploitation and 70's type films.  I give it 2 stars.