Ghost in the Machine

Ghost in the Machine is a horror movie set in Cleveland. Already I'm scared. The movie's monster lurks in computers. Now I'm terrified. Even worse, he's capable of running up your phone bill with calls to 900 numbers. AAAAHHHHH!!!!!

Despite all this mayhem, Ghost in the Machine starts out as a bucolic tale about an electronic repair guy who just happens to moonlight as a mad dog serial killer. They call him the Address Book Killer, because he steals address books, then murders everyone who's listed in them.

One day, Nancy Allen comes into his shop and accidentally leaves her address book. The killer is instantly smitten by her (you can tell by the way he keeps sniffing at her addresses). But while speeding to her house to slaughter Allen and her teenage son, he smashes up all over the freeway.

Now, this is the tricky part. He's rushed to the hospital and placed inside a Cat Scan. Lightning strikes the main power lines and there's a massive power surge. The killer dies just as his brain wave patterns are being processed by the computer during the surge. The killer's now "inside" the computer and is interfaced to the Datanet system. (I hope you were taking notes on this. A quiz may appear later in this review.)

Allen's life suddenly becomes a living nightmare. She discovers that her phone bill has been jacked up, her bank account has been shut down and her friends are being bumped off. Her life as a single mother of a teenage son (read: it's already nightmarish)has just taken a turn for the worse. (And she's still in Cleveland.)

That's when she meets Chris Mulkey, a chain-smoking computer hacker on the side of goodness. Unfortunately, he's not on the side of fashion or personal hygiene, but Allen is in no position to be picky about the company she keeps.

Ghost in the Machine's main claim to fame is that it was directed by Rachel Talalay, the director who scored some minor critical notice for Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (on Elm Street, that is). She has a strong visual style, but no apparent grasp of narrative logic. Her sense of pacing is nothing to write home about, either.

But these weaknesses won't bother the movie's audience. During the screening of Ghost in the Machine, I sat behind three teenagers who kept playfully slugging each other in the head through the whole flick. There really is too much violence in the cinema.

Timecop

Not many actors look impressive while leg-splitting over a sink in boxer shorts. That's one accolade Jean-Claude Van Damme wins hands down, er, feet up as the case may be. Most amazing, the seams of his shorts don't tear. I think I understand what is meant by the phrase "star power." It's all in the BVDs.

Come to the think of it, it's a major plot point in Timecop that Van Damme survives an assassination attempt in 1994 because he was wearing a Kelvar vest for an undershirt. I thought this movie was about time travel, but I'm beginning to detect another theme.

Van Damme's wife (Mia Sara) was not wearing any underwear when she was killed. This puts the guy with the million-dollar kickboxing legs into a royal snit 'til the year 2004. It's a good thing he joined the Time Enforcement Commission (TEC). He might get a chance to go back and change the past. Besides, Sara has second-billing on the credits, demanding that she have more than a five-minute appearance.

It seems that TEC was secretly formed in the 1990s when a crackpot scientist from the Star Wars program discovered time travel. When the government realizes the danger of people going back to loot old movies for ideas, they quickly create a police force to cruise the space/time continuum for felons and really good doughnuts. (The cream puffs really were much better in the' 50s.)

Ron Silver is put at the head of the Senate committee in charge of the TEC. Since Silver manages to combine the warmth of Bob Dole with the strict ethical standards of Richard Nixon, it's a safe bet that he's the villain of the movie. Strangely, his main ambition is to steal from the past in order to buy the presidency in 2004. The plot has a dopey, desperate feel to it. Or else Silver is a Democrat, in which case he is simply being pragmatic.

He and Van Damme whisk back to 1994, and old JC gets a second chance to save his wife. He also gets a chance to beat the stuffings out of lots of bad guys, though Van Damme should have started with the screenwriters. Timecop doesn't make a whole lot of sense, past or future. It also fails to achieve the oddball emotional touch that it reaches for during the last stretch. Instead, the movie ends up all kicks and no heart.

But I still want to know where the guy buys his shorts.

Demolition Man:

Film Theorists, please note: Sylvestor Stallone has become a deconstructionist. Of course, Sly probably thinks that the word “deconstruction” refers to de crew at de work site around de corner. Actually, that’s not such a bad definition. It fits his newest film like a fist in a chain-mail glove.

Demolition Man is wildly violent, irredeemably awful and occasionally crazy enough to be almost watchable – especially if you are half warped and laugh at Jeffery Dahmer jokes. It’s also the oddest movie ever to be partly based on the novel Brave New World. I am not kidding. One of the main characters is even named Lenina Huxley. You just know that one of the writers of this sucker is an English Lit. major gone bad.

The flick opens as a parody of Blade Runner. It’s 1996, and the Hollywood sign is in flames above a riot-torn Los Angeles. Stallone is Sgt. John Spartan of the LAPD, the kind of cop who blows up whole sections of the city just to catch one man. Which he does while arresting Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes with blond hair). Phoenix is the self-proclaimed king of South Central L.A. and a full-time homicidal maniac. This combo insures a double-digit body count before the opening credits.

Spartan catches his man, but allows 30-some hostages to get wasted. As a result, both he and Phoenix are sentenced to serve some time frozen in a cryogenic prison. Fast skip to 2032, where a defrosted Phoenix stages a bloody escape. The 21st century cops of the San Angeles Police Force have no experience with dangerous criminals, so guess who they pop loose from the fridge?

It’s at this point Demolition Man tries to be a satire. We learn that after the great quake – and the administration of President Schwarzenegger – Los Angeles merged with Santa Monica. To prevent further war and violence, the entire society was reconditioned by its patron savior, Raymond Cocteau, who created a politically correct haven that outlawed all forms of bad language, physical contact and aggressive behavior. It’s a perfect new order that’s vaguely threatened by a pesky pack of subterranean civil libertarians. In other words, the whole place is ripe for a head-bashing fest.

This is not the dumbest flick that Stallone ever starred in. But, it’s close, real close. (Actually, someone like Roger Corman could have milked it into a great drive-in piece – it’s incoherent enough to be post-modernist, and its ironies are piled high.)

Too bad Demolition Man isn’t worse – it’s almost bad enough to be good.