There's something fishy going on in Detroit

Crimewave (1985)

A movie written by Joel and Ethan Coen, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell and Brion James amongst others must be good, right? Well not exactly, but one crazy goofball comedy it surely is. Vic (Reed Birney) is a convict on his way to the electric chair, as the officers are dragging him to meet his maker he is screaming for innocence. Then we are told as a flashback a devious tale of deception and murder, in the form of an action packed slapstick comedy. Sam Raimi himself wants to disown this movie and reading about the troubles he went through while making it, I can't blame him. Having his lead actor, editor and composer replaced by the studio is not exactly a great way to make a movie. Anyway this movie is not as bad as it at start seems. The cartoon-like over acting is a bit tedious and as it's boosted with wacky sound effects it goes so much over the top I didn't know wether to laugh or cry. But as the story goes over the top as well, it turns into a quite an entertaining goofball comedy. The acting is rather bad, though mostly deliberately so. The soundtrack is quite annoying at times and the silly sound effects didn't help it at all. But the movie looks quite good and manages to set a great mood for the crazy things happening on the screen. That's the reason why this movie squeezes above the average of it's kind.
66%

Sam Raimi going back to his roots

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

I don't know why so many people seem to dislike this one, I think it's a great horror comedy, just what you'd expect from Sam Raimi. Maybe they were expecting another Spider-Man (2002) but instead they got a movie in the spirit of Evil Dead II (1987). I guess I can't blame them as I too was starting to feel he's only making Spider-Men, but luckily this was a blast from the past by him. It's a story about Christine (Alison Lohman) a bank worker who gets cursed by an old gypsy lady, played brilliantly by Lorna Raver. As the curse gets worse Christine seeks help from a psychic (Dileep Rao) and learns that she will eventually be taken to hell unless she can find a way to reverse the curse. The comedy is great and there's even some efforts into tension building, not just the usual cheap scares. Unfortunately Alison Lohman and Justin Long who plays her boyfriend are not exactly great at their parts and that's a shame as some of the supporting cast is rather brilliant. Despite that and the somewhat easy to guess ending this is a great horror comedy.

80%