Maxwell Caulfield

  • The Boys Next Door (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2022) Like many actors with horror films in their early-career filmography, I suspect that Charlie Sheen doesn’t like to spend a lot of time talking about The Boys Next Door, a film tracking down two teenagers as they go on a murder spree. Not that the film is that much of a blight: under the direction of Penelope Spheeris (and an early script from X-Files writers Glen Morgan and James Wong), the film takes a more gradual approach to its murder spree than comparable slashers, by charting the gradual descent into violence of two high-school graduates. Exploitation is never too far away, though: the ponderous opening sequence makes statements about various American serial killers in an attempt to create a sentiment of pervasive fatalism in the viewer, and there’s a sense that the last half of the film doesn’t have a dramatic progression as much as a deliberate wallowing in one violent death after another. Sheen plays the slightly-reluctant half of the killing pair, leaving much of the psychotic heavy lifting to Maxwell Caulfield. As a slasher, it begins by being better than usual… but it’s still a film in which the protagonists go around killing other people as soon as they pop up on screen. No amount of hand-waving about how society is to blame is convincing when the film is so clearly aimed at trashy thrills. Sheen gets off easily compared to other famous actors’ early horror films. But I can understand if he doesn’t bring this title up all that often.

  • Grease 2 (1982)

    Grease 2 (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2019) I know that Grease 2 has a terrible reputation (upon release, it bombed so hard that it killed off its male lead Maxwell Caulfield’s career for years), but watching it now doesn’t seem like a terrible experience. Of course, I ended up watching both movies at more than a decade’s interval (is this unique? Both movies came out four years apart, and nowadays most people wanting to watch the sequel would do it soon after seeing the first one) and that probably helped a lot in erasing the comparison factor between this mediocre entry and its far better-received prequel. At best, it’s a bubblegum high school musical going back to the early sixties (but really the late fifties) for harmless teenage antics. A young Kim Basinger is quite good in the lead role, her slightly grumpy attitude doing much to make it fun. It’s also fascinating, as a cinephile, to see a film act as a bridge between newer stars such as Basinger or Christopher MacDonald, and veteran actors of yore such as Tab Hunter. As with many musicals, the best numbers come early on, with “Back to School Again” effortlessly introducing most of the cast, and “Score Tonight” wringing the most out of its bowling alley setting. The songs may not be the pop-culture hits of the original, but the dance choreography remains pretty good. No, Grease 2 is not the original. But when I look at the early-1980s musicals, this one is better than most.