Why John Landis Is In Director Jail

Deer Woman is one of the best episodes of the entire Masters Of Horror series. It encompassed a great balance of humor and not so much horror. A true fun episode. He really should get more work, and it's nice to know he's on a bit of an upswing.

Good piece. I've never seen OSCAR and don't intend to, but I had no idea Landis directed it.

INNOCENT BLOOD (yes, I'm a fool) is yet another Landis title w/ a woeful P&S R1 DVD.

I wish that was a better film. Great cast, but it just doesn't work.

Anne Parillaud gets naked, and Don Rickles melts. It gets an automatic pass from me.

Great article, Devin. His run from Kentucky Fried Movie through Trading Places is masterful. I also love Coming to America, a great late 80's comedy.

I absolutely agree with this. I'd love to see Landis return to form, but I would be much more interested in seeing him do it with something that we haven't already seen from him.

I've just seen the beginning of this flick, when Frank Oz is chasing the ressurrected Robert Loggia. I'll have to rent this flick then. Melting? I'm in.

John Landis hasn't made a GOOD movie since Coming to America, 20 years ago, and getting excited about Landis doing The Wolf Man, after making the DEFINITIVE werewolf movie 27 years ago, is like getting excited about another GIANT killer shark movie being made 33 years after Jaws came out.

Wow, Dev, sometimes the classiness of your writing couples with a subject I find myself agreeing with almost word for word and I'm reminded why Ive been a chewer for over six years and why chud is one of the only sites I visit daily.

Many of Landis' eighties output is simply tatooed on my brain and a deep part of my formative movie watching life. In fact, until you connected the dots in your piece it never really occured to me how iconic much of his work had been to me.

To this day I vivedly remember being taken to Three Amigos as a kid by my dad and loving every second (didn't realise it was classed as a relatively poor performer when it came out) - the main theme, the macarena-style iconic moves they always did, and in particualr the chanting in front of the singing cactus culminating with Chase accidently shooting the Invisible Swordsman still makes me smile to this day - in fact, I should watch it again, its been many years.

I remember Dad bringing home Into The Night on video and the whole family loving it - you're right, its under-rated as hell and was one of the first reasons I became such a Jeff Goldblum fan before he became almost a parody of himself.

Spies Like Us has flat-out never gotten the love it deserves I agree, so much so that I reckon its been at least 20 years since Ive seen it - your piece has got me wanting a revisit tho.
I was never the Coming To America fan most of my friends were, I was always a Trading Places kinda guy when I wanted my Murphy fix, but it was definately a classic movie - and the only watchable thing Arsenio's ever been associated with.

I'd love to see Landis return to prominance again, he well and truely deserves it for his 70's and 80's output alone (like a comedic John Carpenter really) - he just needs the right vehicle, and I don't think The Wolf Man is that persoanlly

Slasher is pretty good.

The first test screening I ever went to, where they had us fill out cards and stuff, was for OSCAR. That audience loved the shit out of it, laughed at every single thing and clapped at the end. The system is flawed I tell ya.

Devin's article + The Rain Dog's post = just about everything I would have said, although I wouldn't mind Landis directing The Wolf Man. He's made one statement in then genre, but I'd be interested to see how he'd approach it 30 years later.

If any of you haven't seen Mr. Warmth, do so post haste.

Fuck yo mama

It's a great first act rather than a complete movie. It's just getting started as it ends. Well, and I fucking hate that you can kill vampires with bullets in that movie.

Yeah, I stoped watched Landis a long time ago.

You can love his good films, but Meet the Stupids, Beverly Hills Cop 3 AND Blues Brothers 2000? Landis' best stuff is behind him. Nostalgia is the cred killer.

I could not have been said better.

Agreed on those (although the musical sequences in Blues Brother 2000 are killer), but with Slasher, Mr. Warmth, and his Masters of Horror episodes, I think he's proven that there's still gas in the tank.

I liked the two docs. Neither would make me hand him a large-ish budget, A-list horror pic.

Thing is, I WANT to see Landis come back, truth be told. I want all the directorial heroes of my youth rocking their twilight years. I think some goodwill positivity toward stuff like Rambo, Rocky Balboa and Land of the Dead might be the best we can hope for.

As a kid, I watched a ton of Landis' movies without ever knowing it was they were made by him. Three Amigos is without a doubt one of my favorite movies ever. For that alone, Landis deserves getting out of director's jail.
My life would be so much more boring without having conversations with people where references to mail planes, invisible swordsmen, and words like plethora are dropped.

What a great defense. I'll never defend Landis for his negligence on the set of TWILIGHT ZONE, but he's the unlucky one. Coppola, Spielberg... they're incredibly fortunate that no one died on the set of APOCALYPSE NOW or 1941.

Or John Hough, John Badham, and Richard C. Sarafian for that matter.

...and I mean, Alex Proyas still works for chrissake.

The Howling might have something to say about being demoted from BEST WEREWOLF MOVIE EVER.

In the case of THE CROW, I think the negligence is on the part of whomever didn't deem it necessary to hire a proper weapons specialist/coordinator. Shit wouldn't have happened on Rock Gollotti's watch.

I've never seen such a glowing endorsement of so many mediocre movies.

Fuck Landis. Where the hell is Joe Dante?!

Spies Like Us belongs on no list of good anything.

Making paranoid soldier-as-braindead-zombies crap like Homecoming.

Maybe the current remake trend will start remaking shit that never actually existed, like Mant! Then Dante'll be called up to the big show again.

Desperate Landis is someone we do not want anywhere near a camera.

The last two times he frantically tried to find a sure thing to propel him back into the A-list, we ended up with Beverly Hills Cop 3 and Blues Brothers 2000.

Glad to see there's so much love for The Three Amigos.

For years my mind has tried to convince me that dante directed Space Jam.

Nobody talks like that about the man who directed Gremlins 2: The New Batch

I think Dante was shown the door after that Looney Tunes movie with Brendan Frasier bombed. Which is a shame because it was actually good.

Might have to agree with this. Please enjoy the awesome title screen and the David Cross lookalike turning into a beasty.

If it was me? I might have hit the door after the third minute of transformation.

QFT.

And sorry to say outloud, but I think that OSCAR works on some levels, as a fast-paced, kitchen-sinky, "misunderstanding piled ontop of misunderstanding" comedy throwback (ala the much superior CLUE and classic MARX BROS).

Dante-regular, Robert Picardo, has a choice words to share with you.

DEE WALLACE LOVES GOOD FX WORK.

Rob Bottin makes the chicks wet.


Course, that's wet with goopy latex and corn syrup...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101309/

Dee Wallace Loves Work.

It was incredibly dispiriting to see her in Rob Zombie's Halloween atrocity.

Oscar is alost as good as the french original. The problem is that this kind of theatrical farce rarely translates well into film.

I was a bit hesitant to say this but I really like Oscar.
Yeah it's cheesy and silly, and no one can say that it's a truly good movie, but for some reason, I find myself watching and enjoying it every few years.

Not to mention AWESOME HOT TITTIES.

A fellow in the UK who's been making an AWIL doc for the last year (and has been interviewing Landis) is posting on another board that Landis turned this down "because the script was so bad". If true (and I'm skeptical), that's gotta be one awful script.

Thank you for calling him out on this (but damn you for beating me to it). Reducing man-god Robert Picardo to the status of "David Cross Lookalike" should be a flogging offense for film people.

Bah, what's he done for me lately? Voyager regulars all get a time-out.

Voyager is teh suck. Picardo entered the canon in Innerspace.