Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight (Ernest R. Dickerson, 1995)

Billy Zane in Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight

Cast: Billy Zane, William Sadler, Jada Pinkett Smith, Thomas Haden Church, C.C.H. Pounder, Brenda Bakke, Dick Miller, Gary Farmer, John Kassir (voice). Screenplay: Ethan Reiff, Cyrus Voris, Mark Bishop. Cinematography: Rick Bota. Production design: Christiaan Wagener, Gregory S. Melton. Film editing: Stephen Lovejoy. Music: Edward Shearmur. 

I was going to say that failure to access the 10-year-old boy in me kept me from enjoying Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight, but then I remembered that when I was 10 years old I thought the Tales From the Crypt comic books were repulsive trash. So maybe I really enjoyed it more than that 10-year-old would have, which isn't saying much. It's still trash, but I've seen many movies that repulsed me more. There's a tongue-in-cheek element in its slimy rotting horrors (if there's a tongue to put in a cheek or a cheek to put one in) that doesn't exactly redeem it, but at least kept me watching. And it suggests that we have come to a point in the post-Christian era that what would once be regarded as blasphemous is now only a plot device: namely, the use of the blood of Jesus as a horror movie gimmick. Mostly, it made me feel a little sorry for the actors who have to go through their paces, trying to act but knowing that anything they do is going to be chopped up in the editing and stirred into a mess of special effects. Billy Zane as the demonic Collector and William Sadler as his heroic antagonist are the nominal leads, but Jada Pinkett Smith comes off best as the ex-con on work release who labors in the boarding house where most of the action takes place. She manages to create a character we can root for, which is all the otherwise well-worn plot needs. The frame story in which the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) introduces things is unnecessary and mainly serves to promote the HBO series from which it's a theatrical spinoff. 

Def by Temptation (James Bond III, 1990)

Cynthia Bond in Def by Temptation

Cast: James Bond III, Kadeem Hardison, Cynthia Bond, Bill Nunn, Samuel L. Jackson, Minnie Gentry, Steven Van Cleef, John Canada Terrell, Melba Moore. Screenplay: James Bond III. Cinematography: Ernest R. Dickerson. Production design: David Carrington. Film editing: Brian O'Hara, Li-Shen Yu. Music: Paul Laurence. 

Def by Temptation overcomes its chief weaknesses -- a silly script and a miscast leading man -- to become good, gory fun, which shows how an ensemble working with the right director and producer can surmount even those obstacles. More to the point, the producer and director, James Bond III, overcomes his own weakness, because he's also the screenwriter and the leading man. The premise is that the devoutly religious Joel (Bond), who plans to become a "world-famous minister," puts himself in temptation's way by going to New York to see an old friend, known as "K" (Kadeem Hardison). K takes to a bar, where he falls for Temptation herself, a sultry seductress played with flair by Cynthia Bond, whom we see picking up men at the bar and bringing them to bloody ends. Realizing who and what she is, K joins forces with Dougy, a cop played by Bill Nunn, to rescue Joel, calling his grandmother (Minnie Gentry) to their aid. Hardison and Nunn bring the film to comic life, and they're aided by some very funny special effects, one of which involves a predatory television set surmounted by a caricature bust of Ronald Reagan. (Yeah, you have to see it to get it.) Unfortunately, there's also a lot of misplaced religiosity at work in Joel's battle with Temptation, and the R&B songs on the soundtrack sometimes don't work with what's on screen, so the movie goes tonally out of whack at times. It stays watchable even then, thanks to Ernest R. Dickerson's cinematography. Samuel L. Jackson has a small role in flashbacks as Joel's father, a minister in whose footsteps he hopes to follow.