‘Scary Movie 3’ hits the mark with silliness, savagery

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In theaters

SCARY MOVIE 3, directed by David Zucker, written by Brian Lynch, Craig Mazin, Pat Proft, Kevin Smith and Zucker, 90 minutes, rated PG-13.

This is just a stab in the dark, the wildest of guesses on my part, but I don’t think Michael Jackson would recommend “Scary Movie 3.”

The film, which spooked $48 million out of audiences last weekend, has a grand time rekindling those pesky, lingering allegations of Jackson’s alleged pedophilia before it gets down to business and really has its way with the pop star.

In a scene that weds elements of Jackson’s recent tabloid affairs to M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs” and “The Sixth Sense,” a kicking, shrieking Jackson look-alike (Edward Moss) is dangled from a second-story window and asked how he likes it. Then, in the series of events that follows, what’s left of his nose is hacked off for good.

Tough times for the King of Pop, but not so for Pamela Anderson, who has the good sense to poke a little fun at herself in the film’s funny opening scene.

In it, Anderson and Jenny McCarthy, dressed as provocative, busty schoolgirls, are watching television when it occurs to Anderson that television microwaves might actually lead to silicone breast implant destruction. The inspired screaming match that ignites between them reaches a fever pitch, with Anderson’s rapidly ballooning breasts going a long way in proving that theory wrong.

It’s just this mix of silliness and savagery that makes up the heart of “Scary Movie 3,” a film that follows its predecessors in picking over the bones of recent box-office hits – “The Ring,” “The Matrix: Reloaded,” “The Others” and “8 Mile” also among them – with the sort of tongue-in-cheek menace that, when done well, can lead to very funny results.

More often than not, that’s just the case here. The film, which director David Zucker (“Airplane!,” “Naked Gun”) assumed from the Wayans brothers, is a ripe, post-modern parody that’s so eager to please, you can’t keep it down.

It wants to have its cake and gorge on it, too. As such, the jokes are sometimes overwhelmed with excess and bad taste, which tends to stifle the laughs. Still, when they do find their mark, they explode onscreen, serving as a sort of atonement for Zucker’s last film, the awful “My Boss’s Daughter.”

The cast- Anna Farris, Charlie Sheen, Simon Rex, Leslie Nielsen, Camryn Manheim, Queen Latifah, Eddie Griffin, George Carlin and little Drew Mikuska as a creepy telepathic kid reminiscent of Haley Joel Osment, but by way of the devil – are all game, filling out a plot that blends elements of alien infestation, the supernatural, the very real horror of white rap star wannabes, and government cover-ups.

The movie joins the remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in being the only horror flick vying for your Halloween dollar at the cineplex this year. Of the two, this is the one to see.

Grade: B

On video and DVD

EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS, directed by Ellory Elkayem, written by Elkayem, Jesse Alexander and Randy Kornfield, 99 minutes, rated PG-13.

Ever since the mid-1950s, when B-movie classics such as “Them!,” “Tarantula” and “The Deadly Mantis” proved there’s nothing financially itsy-bitsy about big bugs gone berserk, Hollywood has delivered a wealth of creature-features starring the leggy beasts.

Last year, the toxic creepy-crawlies came creeping again in Ellory Elkayem’s “Eight Legged Freaks,” a worthwhile, postmodern homage to the B-movies of yesteryear that features scores of huge, mutant spiders taking over the woefully misnamed town of Prosperity, Ariz. If you haven’t seen it, now is the best time to see it.

Any film that features spiders as large as a city block isn’t going to be for everyone, certainly not those who prefer their spiders beneath the heel of their shoe or at the business end of a can of Raid. Still, for those who dig this sort of thing, “Eight Legged Freaks” is mindless fun.

In it, David Arquette is Chris McCormick, a mining engineer who returns to Prosperity after his father’s death to collect his inheritance – a gold mine, no less – and to rekindle a romance with his old flame, Sam Parker (Kari Wuhrer), who’s now Prosperity’s no-nonsense sheriff and a single mother of two, Ashley (Scarlett Johansson) and Mike (Scott Terra).

Unfortunately for Chris, his plans to put the squeeze on Sam are temporarily shelved when a barrel of toxic waste is accidentally dumped into a pond, an event that inadvertently leads to one man’s spider collection mutating out of control and viciously mugging the folks of Prosperity.

As produced by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the duo who botched 1998’s “Godzilla,” “Eight Legged Freaks” pilfers from a host of other films, particularly George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” whose influence is realized at the end when the townsfolk, fleeing the spiders, take refuge at a shopping mall and realize some unexpected savings.

Specifically, their lives.

Grade: B

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

The Halloween Video-DVD Corner

Renting a horror movie? A horror spoof? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are recommended classics now in video stores.

Aliens

An American Werewolf in London

Bad Girls from Mars

The Birds

The Blob

Bride of Frankenstein

The Brood

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death

Carrie

The Changeling

Dawn of the Dead

Dracula

Evil Dead

The Exorcist

The Fog

Frankenstein

Freaks

Friday the 13th

Halloween

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

The Hills Have Eyes

Motel Hell

The Mummy

Night of the Living Dead

Nosferatu (1922)

The Omen

The Others

Poltergeist

Psycho (1960)

Rosemary’s Baby

‘Salem’s Lot

Scream

The Shining

The Silence of the Lambs

The Sixth Sense

Stir of Echoes

Them

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

The Thing

28 Days Later

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Wood Chipper Massacre

Young Frankenstein