Hollow Gate (1988)

Hollow Gate (1988)-* *1\2

Directed by: Ray Di Zazzo

Starring: Addison Randall, Katrina Alexy, Patricia Jacques, J.J. Miller and Richard Dry



“I think I could live off of submarine sandwiches!!!!” - Billy










When Mark Bater was a kid, he and his friends had a Halloween party. Everyone was enjoying the holiday fun, when Mark’s father interrupted things and severely criticized his son’s apple-bobbing technique. The man takes bobbing for apples very seriously. So seriously, in fact, it led to Mark becoming a murderer. After jumping ahead 10 years, then again 2 years, now Mark lives in an old mansion with his grandmother (and now Mark is played by Addison Randall). When four teens on the way to a rock concert get convinced by the local costume shop owner to deliver costumes to his house, they find themselves  being stalked and killed one by one by Mark, who dresses up in various outfits and takes on various personas as he does his killings. Will the local police get wise to what’s going on at Hollow Gate?

Pepin, Merhi, and the gang at City Lights strike again. This time they’re trying their hand at a horror movie, seemingly at this point in their careers sampling a bunch of different genres to see which fits best. As it turned out, action movies were their forte, and PM more than proved that. But maybe at this point in time, that future wasn’t so clear, so they tried different styles to get a hold of the booming video market of the day. The result is Hollow Gate, a silly and amateurish movie, but fans of 80’s horror may still be interested.

None of the actors that portrayed the teens in trouble (Katrina Alexy, Richard Dry, Patricia Jacques and J.J. Miller) went on to any other City Lights or PM movies, or really anything else at all. Out of all of them, we felt Richard Dry could have had an acting career, and seeing as how we called him “Egon” during the movie, he at least could have played a young Harold Ramis in any of his projects. But the standout star here is unquestionably Addison Randall, who unsubtly plays the psychopath with gusto, and shows a lot of range with his various murderous “characters”. Randall maintained his relationship with PM, acting, writing, and doing various other jobs with them. He even directed Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs in Chance (1990) and the one and only Malibu in The Killing Zone (1991).

Hollow Gate isn’t exactly scary, but it once again shows determined people, pursuing their dream of making a career in the movie industry. Yes, there is a ton of stupidity on display, and whatever isn’t totally derivative makes absolutely no sense, but it shouldn’t be judged too harshly, in our opinion.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett

Ripper Man (1995)

Ripper Man (1995)-* *1\2

Directed by: Phil Sears

Starring: Mike Norris, Timothy Bottoms, Bruce Locke, Sofia Shinas, George "Buck" Flower, and Charles Napier












Mike Lazo (Norris) is a former San Diego cop who decides to try his hand at becoming a nightclub hypnotist. The club manager where he works, Harry (Napier), is sympathetic towards him, as is cocktail waitress Gena (Shinas), but for Lazo his act just isn’t coming together. One day a mysterious man named Charles Walkan (Bottoms) asks Lazo to hypnotize him. While under hypnosis, Walkan seemingly becomes a man named George Chapman, a man thought to be Jack the Ripper. Soon, Walkan/Chapman is off on a killing spree, but all of Lazo’s former buddies on the police force don’t believe the “he became a serial killer under hypnosis” theory, and to boot, they blame the killings on Lazo! So now Lazo must clear his good name and take down Walkan. Or Chapman. Or whoever he happens to be that day. Can he do it?

Ripper Man is a bit of a different role for Mike Norris. It’s a blessing and a curse: on the one hand, it’s good to be different every once in a while. But on the other hand, it seems like certain things are missing. There’s almost no Martial Arts (but we didn’t expect there to be any in a movie called Ripper Man) - but there are some cop movie cliches. Probably the movie highlight was the shootout in the hospital. That was an action scene. The rest of the movie is pretty much your standard mid-90’s thriller, despite the fact that it tries to be a little more intelligent at first. Despite, at the outset, trying to inject some smarts, it soon devolves into a standard cat-and-mouse kind of situation and all the pretenses are out the window.

As for the rest of the cast, Timothy Bottoms, sporting a sillier-than-usual haircut, looks like a cross between Kevin Kline, Steve Guttenberg and George W. Bush. And normally he just looks like George W. Bush. He’s even played “W” numerous times. His Lone Tiger (1999) co-star Bruce Locke - yes, Kurenai himself! - appears as a San Diego cop and friend to Lazo. It was nice to see him again. It’s funny to think he did this and Lone Tiger back to back. Charles Napier is under-used, as is George “Buck” Flower. It’s director Phil Sears’ only film to date. It’s almost a shame, really, because our guess is that video store patrons in the mid-90’s didn’t really give this movie much of a chance. Not that they’re missing all that much, but somehow this got lost in the shuffle and we feel just a tad bit bad about it. No one ever talks about Ripper Man (and how they never saw it). It should at least go in the cultural lexicon. Maybe somewhere towards the back.

Maybe it was the title, maybe Mike Norris scared people off, but no one seems to have seen Ripper Man. We can’t suggest you expend really any effort on finding this VHS, but if you happen to see it cheap somewhere, it can’t hurt too much to add it to your collection.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty