Two important museum themes come together here: 1) museums are places where snobs congregate at soirées, and 2) monsters are on the loose! The book on which this is based is set at the American Museum of Natural History but they declined to participate, so the Field Museum in Chicago is the star. Even though the museum director knows there is a monster killing people in the basement, the important gala with the mayor must go on!

Stars: Penelope Ann Miller, Tom Sizemore, Linda Hunt

Synopsis by IMDB

Somewhere in the Brazilian rain forest, Anthropologist John Whitney (Lewis Van Bergen) witnesses an Aboriginal tribal ritual, performed by dancing men in a state of trance. He drinks a kind of potion, concocted by the tribe’s witch (Montrose Hughes) using leaves with a kind of red fungal growth on them. After drinking it, he becomes hysterical at the sight of a native, dressed in a costume and wearing face-paint. Whitney says to himself: “Oh my God! It’s Kathoga!”

Later, Whitney shows up at a commercial dock, where a cargo ship named the Santos Morales, is ready to depart. Locating the ship’s captain (Santos Morales), Whitney pleads with him to unload his crates, destined for the Chicago Natural History Museum. Refusing to help, the captain boards the ship. Stowing away on board, Whitney locates the ship cargo hold and pries open one of the wooden crates. Finding only rugs inside, he breaks down and screams in despair. As the ship sails away, several more crates sit on the dock, labeled: “John Whitney – Chicago Natural History Museum”.

A title card reads: “Six Weeks Later”, as the same cargo ship arrives in Chicago. The dock is cordoned off by police and we meet Lt. Vincent D’Agosta (Tom Sizemore) as he boards the ship with Detective Hollingsworth (Clayton Rohner). There are bloodstains everywhere, and the crew appear to be all gone. Searching the cargo hold, D’Agosta finds several of the crew in the bilge – their heads severed from their bodies. D’Agosta is very superstitious and carries a “lucky bullet” for protection.

Meanwhile, the Museum of Natural History in Chicago is busy preparing for the grand opening of a new exhibit which explores the origins of superstition. As Dr. Margo Green (Penelope Ann Miller), an evolutionary biologist, arrives at work, the museum curator, Dr. Ann Cuthbert (Linda Hunt) tells Margo she is in competition for a grant, which she needs to continue her research at the museum. To her chagrin, Margo’s colleague, Greg Lee (Chi Muoi Lo), has applied for the same grant. The grant is provided by wealthy Museum benefactors, the Blaisedales (Constance Towers & Francis X. McCarthy), who will attend the upcoming gala to open the new exhibit.

Stopping by the office of Dr Albert Frock (James Whitmore), a colleague of John Whitney, Margo is intrigued by the contents of several crates, recently sent by airfreight from Brazil (the crates left behind by the ship). The remnants of a stone artifact are wrapped in the green leaves used in the potion. Margo takes some of the leaves to analyze them, while the remainder are incinerated in the basement of the museum.

As a school group on an excursion enters the museum, two boys, skipping school for the day, sneak into the museum unnoticed, and hide. Alone in the museum after closing, they notice a bad smell in a basement stairwell, and discover the body of a Security Guard (Jophery C. Brown), which alerts the authorities to a killer on the loose. The guard has been beheaded and his brain removed by the killer.

While an investigation gets underway, led by Lt. Vincent D’Agosta, the stone artifact found inside the crates is gradually restored by a technician (Lynn A. Henderson), for the new “Superstition” exhibit. It is revealed later to be a depiction of the mythical “Kathoga”. As Albert Frock explains, Kathoga was a Chimera – a mythical creature that combined various animals into one.

The coroner Dr. Zwiezic (Audra Lindley) examines the beheaded corpse of the Security Guard, with D’Agosta present, and discovers the victim’s brain weighs less than it should. It appears to be missing the hypothalamus and pituitary glands. D’Agosta later finds out the beheaded victims on board the cargo ship were also missing the same parts of their brains.

As police continue to search the museum for the killer, a homeless man, living in the cavernous basement, is shot and killed by accident. When he turns out to be a convicted rapist and felon, the museum’s head of security is satisfied. But D’Agosta isn’t convinced. There is still no explanation for the missing hypothalamuses, or, the deaths aboard the cargo ship. But with the Mayor of Chicago (Robert Lesser) and his wife (Diane Robin) due to attend the opening night gala as guests of honor, D’Agosta bows to pressure and lets the event go ahead, but insists on heavy police presence.

As the gala gets underway, Margo analyzes the leaves and discovers a link between the substance on them and the human hypothalamus. The red substance contains a concentrated dose of the same hormones secreted by the hypothalamus, enough to cause rapid mutation in animals or insects that feed on it. When a beetle gets inside the container where the leaves are stored, it grows to the size of a rat, overnight. Margo shows her findings to Dr Albert Frock, who assists with her analysis of the beetle’s DNA. He subscribes to a theory called the “Calysto Effect” – a sudden jump in evolution which results in an aberrant species.

Meanwhile, D’Agosta orders a search of the subterranean tunnels and old sewage system under the museum, which links up with the docks. Something in the tunnel kills a search dog and his handler, so D’Agosta orders Detective Hollingsworth back to the museum to evacuate the guests. But it’s too late.

As the VIPs finally enter the Superstition exhibit, the killer strikes again, setting off a panic. The security system locks down the museum, trapping almost everyone inside. While police try to break in and helicopters lower a SWAT Team onto the roof, D’Agosta orders the remaining guests into the tunnels, which lead to the outside.

The Blaisedales elect to stay behind in the museum’s main exhibit hall, along with the ambitious Greg Lee and the head of security. But they soon become victims of the Kathoga, which finally reveals itself. As the SWAT Team drops into the hall, they too are killed by the beast, which climbs walls and uses giant pincers to sever their heads.

Locked in another wing of the museum, Margo and Dr Albert Frock discover the origin of the beast, which is a hybrid of insect, reptile and various other animals, including one human being – the missing John Whitney. As the Kathoga, he must consume huge quantities of the hormones found in the human hypothalamus, to survive.

Finding Margo alive and Dr Frock dead, D’Agosta asks Margo how to kill the beast. They try unsuccessfully to freeze it in the tunnel, using liquid nitrogen, then flee back to the lab. D’Agosta orders Margo to lock herself in, while he goes after the beast, but the Kathoga outwits them and drops through the roof of the lab. While D’Agosta is locked on the other side of a metal door, Margo incinerates the Kathoga when she blows up her lab, using flammable chemicals as fuel, while hiding inside a metal container filled with water.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120004

There are so many really clever bits in this, but the scene where the marketing folks pitch ideas about Whistler’s Mother-related items for the gift shop is especially hilarious.

Stars: Rowan Atkinson, Peter MacNicol, John Mills

Synopsis by IMDB

Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) is a well-meaning, but hopelessly clumsy and destructive guard at the Royal National Gallery in London. Attempts by the gallery’s board of directors to fire Bean are thwarted by the chairman who, for unspecified reasons, is very fond of him. Desperate to rid themselves of the turmoil Bean unintentionally causes, the board members send him to the United States to represent them at the unveiling of the portrait Whistler’s Mother, which has been purchased for $50 million by the Grierson Art Gallery in Los Angeles.

Bean’s visit has been arranged by the gallery’s curator, David Langley (Peter MacNicol) who is being very impressed by the National Gallery’s fabricated praise of “Dr. Bean”, decides to board him in his house. On his flight to Los Angeles, Bean attempts to amuse a child with air sickness by blowing up his M&Ms bag and popping it to wake up the man in front of him, but without success. After the child throws up into an air sickness bag, Bean takes the bag from him and repeats the bag popping over the man’s face, only to splatter him with vomit.

He hides from the man upon his arrival to Los Angeles, where he is detained at the airport due to pretending to have a gun. His arrival at David’s house is initially met with subtle hostility from David’s wife Alison (Pamela Reed), son Kevin (Andrew Lawrence), and daughter Jennifer (Tricia Vessey). Alison refuses David’s request to allow Bean to live with them for two months, and David promises Alison that he will talk to Bean and take him to a hotel after their meeting at the gallery. Bean’s unorthodox arrival at the gallery worries many of David’s colleagues, particularly his boss, George Grierson (Harris Yulin), who subtly warns David that he will be responsible for Bean’s actions at the unveiling of the painting, but David promises that he can handle Bean, convinced that he is merely a little eccentric. When David takes Bean back to his house, Alison departs for her mother’s home, unwilling to live with Bean.

With his family gone, David decides to take Bean on a tour of the Los Angeles art galleries. However, Bean decides that he and David should go to Pacific Park instead, but lands in police detainment for the second time after accidentally tampering with the controls of a motion simulator ride, making it go dangerously fast after deeming that his first ride earlier was too slow. This prompts Lieutenant Brutus (Richard Gant), who dealt with Bean at the airport, to make David accountable for Bean, threatening to arrest Bean if he ever steps out of line again. Following a miserable dinner with Grierson which David had forgotten about, where Bean accidentally blows up the microwave after attempting to cook their Thanksgiving turkey in it, David finally realises that Bean is not a doctor and knows nothing about art.

He is obliged to continue with the deception, however, as he has already staked his professional career on Bean’s supposed reputation as a noted art scholar. The next day, Whistler’s Mother arrives at the Grierson Art Gallery, and Bean is given a few minutes alone to study it, in an effort to keep him out of trouble. While dusting the frame, Bean accidentally sneezes on the painting and wipes it with a handkerchief, not knowing that it is covered in blue ink from a broken pen, and therefore the painting is stained. Terrified, Bean takes it to the caretaker’s cupboard to get some agent by which to remove the ink. He uses lacquer thinner, which also dissolves the painted face from the painting.

Much to his horror, Bean attempts to patch it up with an extremely unconvincing cartoon face. Upon seeing it, David is also horrified and hides the painting behind its metal security shutters. Fearing that David will lose his job and possibly face criminal proceedings for his vandalism, he and Bean head off to a bar to drown their sorrows. During the night, Bean hatches his plan to restore Whistler’s Mother. He gathers a few items from David’s house and makes his way to the Grierson Art Gallery. He distracts the only security guard on duty by putting laxative in his coffee, followed by switching the men’s bathroom keys with some other set.

He removes the destroyed painting from its frame and replaces it with a poster version of itself, glossing it with an egg and varnish mix to make it appear authentic. At the unveiling of Whistler’s Mother the next day, David is overjoyed to see the painting is restored, but expects Bean, who has totally forgotten to come up with a speech, to make a fool of himself on national television when he takes the podium at the press conference. However, Bean’s brief but effective off-the-cuff speech regarding the work is both very simple and very deep, cementing the public’s perception of him as a scholarly virtuoso. Despite initial doubts, the officials and hierarchy appear to take his words to heart and enjoy the speech.

After the unveiling, Brutus finds David and informs him that Jennifer has been involved in a motorcycle accident because she rebelled against David for not getting rid of Bean, and is in intensive care. Bean and David are given a police escort to the hospital to see Jennifer, but Brutus stops on his way to deal with an armed robber, who shoots Brutus in his stomach before being arrested. Due to a mix-up at the hospital, Bean is mistaken for a medical doctor and pushed into an operating theatre containing Brutus, who is shot in the stomach and barely alive. While the other doctors and nurses are distracted, Bean unconventionally retrieves the bullet and eventually rescues Brutus, earning the admiration of his colleagues.

Bean is again mistaken for a doctor and this time, David takes him to see Jennifer, who is unconscious. Bean, unsure what to do, attempt to use a defibrillator to bring Jennifer back to life, but accidentally shocks himself and is sent flying across the room and lands on Jennifer in her bed and waking her up in the process. Still not recognising Bean, David and Alison tell him that they will offer him anything. Bean reveals himself and then asks if he can stay with them for another week before returning to London. Though baffled, the Langleys gladly accept.

After another week in Los Angeles with the Langleys, for which he gives the family gifts, and explores the city, a bald man shows him his middle finger, bean thinks it is a sign of good luck. So he shows this to everybody. In his flat, Bean, getting ready to bed for the night, turns off the light and looks at the original vandalised Whistler’s Mother, which now has pride-of-place on his wall, and shows it to his Teddy before closing his eyes and going to sleep.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118689/

Spoiler Alert: “The Barbie Museum” is not what the family expects.

Stars: Breckin Meyer, Amy Smart, Whoopi Goldberg

Summary by IMDB

A group of billionaires led by a Las Vegas casino owner search for things to bet on. They decide to pull a group of six strangers together to race from Vegas to Silver City, New Mexico to retrieve $2 million hidden in a locker. The first one there gets all of the money. The first team is two addled brothers (Duane and Blaine, who talks indecipherably because of a newly pierced tongue). When they cannot catch a plane, they plot to destroy an airport control tower in a very funny sequence. Their antics carry them into a hot air balloon chase that catches a cow with a dangling rope and into a monster truck competition.

The second team is an estranged mother reunited with her daughter, who is struggling to start a business. They face an insane squirrel-selling woman and steal a rocket car scheduled for a land speed record attempt. A hated NFL referee is stranded in the desert by an irate cabbie and hijacks a busload of Lucille Ball look-alikes on the way to a convention. The Jewish family man on a family vacation joins the race without telling his wife why they are rushing across the country. When his daughter insists on stopping at a Barbie museum, it is without realization that it is the Klaus Barbie Nazi Museum. The escape from that location involves the theft of Hitler’s personal touring car and culminates with Lovitz having his tongue burned and accidentally crashing into a WWII Veteran’s convention.

A narcoleptic Italian gets a ride with an ambulance driver, who is carting a human heart for a transplant. Through various ineptitude, the heart ends up flying out of the truck’s window and the two have to recover it from a playful dog. The final race member is a straight-laced future lawyer who at first declines to participate in the race but re-thinks his position after he meets a smart, beautiful woman who is flying a helicopter to New Mexico. He quickly finds out that she is unbalanced after she flies over her boy friend’s house and starts an attack on the boyfriend when she sees him in the pool with an ex-girlfriend. An air pursuit results in the crash of the helicopter. Dave Thomas also appears as Cleese’s humorless attorney.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250687

Vibranium artifacts from Wakanda are violently repatriated from “The Museum of Great Britain.” This obvious stand in for the British Museum is actually a computer-generated sign in front of the exterior of the High Museum in Atlanta. I was immediately suspicious when the curator entered the gallery with a cup of coffee!

Stars: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o

Synopsis by IMDB

A voice from a young boy asks to tell him a story. The adults voice tells the story of “Vibranium.” A gigantic meteorite with the toughest metal: vibranium, crashed in the region of the sources of the Nile river, “millions” of years ago and it affected the plants. Later, in the age of humans, five tribes in the land named Wakanda battled for control of that vibranium until a spirit led a certain warrior to find and eat a “heart-shaped herb” affected by the metal. He gained superhuman abilities, and became the first “Black Panther”. Four of the five tribes submit to his power but one tribe wants freedom. The Wakandans use the vibranium to develop highly-advanced technology. They see the horrors of the other nations and isolated themselves from the rest of the world. They hid and pretended that they are not industrially developed like a third world country.

In Oakland, California, Prince N’Jobu (Sterling K. Brown) vows to share Wakandas technology with people of African descent around the world in order to help them conquer their oppressors. N’Jobu enlists black-market arms dealer Ulysses Klaue to infiltrate Wakanda and remove a cache of vibranium.

In 1992, King T’Chaka learns of his brother’s actions. He confronts N’Jobu, who becomes angry and threatens to kill T’Chaka’s loyal friend, Zuri (Forest Whitaker). T’Chaka reluctantly kills N’Jobu to save Zuri, and abandons N’Jobu’s son Erik in order to prevent the Wakandan people from learning the truth.

In the present day, following T’Chaka’s death at the hands of Helmut Zemo, disguised as a masked James Barnes, his son T’Challa returns to Wakanda to assume the throne. After working with Okoye, the leader of the all-female fighting force the Dora Milaje, to extract his ex-lover Nakia from an undercover assignment in Nigeria’s Sambisa Forest, he reunites with his mother Queen Ramonda and younger sister Princess Shuri, the nation’s current technological genius. At his kingship ceremony he is challenged for the crown by M’Baku, the leader of the fifth tribe, the mountain-dwelling Jabari. The two engage in ritual combat, with T’Challa emerging victorious and becoming the new King. He let’s M’Baku live.

In London, a gang led by Klaue and including an ex-U.S. black ops soldier, Erik Stevens a/k/a/ “Killmonger,” steals an ancient Wakandan vibranium ax from a museum. When the tribal elders receive word that Klaue has resurfaced in South Korea, T’Challa’s friend W’Kabi, who lost his parents as a result of the dealer’s actions, urges the young monarch to bring him to justice. T’Challa, Okoye, and Nakia plan to intercept Klaue at an underground casino in Busan, where he will be selling the ax to an unknown buyer. The plan, however, goes wrong when T’Challa discovers the buyer is CIA agent Everett Ross and Klaue suspects the deal is a setup.

The deal subsequently goes sour, and a car chase ensues that culminates in Klaue’s apprehension. While in CIA custody, however, Klaue is rescued by Killminger. Ross is seriously injured saving Nakia in the attack, and rather than pursue Klaue, T’Challa takes Ross to Wakanda where his sister Shuri uses the nation’s advanced technology to save Ross’ life.

Killmonger kills Klaue and takes his body to Wakanda as a token, revealing his identity as N’Jobu’s son to the tribal elders and challenging T’Challa for the throne. Killmonger triumphs in ritual combat and hurls the defeated T’Challa over a waterfall. After ingesting the heart-shaped herb to gain the powers of the Black Panther, Killmonger enacts his father’s plan, preparing shipments of Wakandan weapons to be distributed to Wakandan operatives around the world. Nakia, Shuri, Ross, and T’Challa’s mother Ramonda flee to seek the aid of the Jabari and learn M’Baku’s men have found and are caring for the comatose T’Challa.

Healed by a heart-shaped herb brought by Nakia, T’Challa returns to Wakanda and to renew his combat with Killmonger for the throne, which was never officially concluded since T’Challa never died or conceded. When Killmonger refuses to cooperate, his claim to the throne is immediately invalidated and Okoye and the Dora Milaje turn against him. However, Killmonger who is now wearing a suit of Black Panther armor of his own resists with force along with the Border Tribe. While Shuri, Nakia, and Jabari battle W’Kabi, Ross, piloting a remote jet with Shuri’s guidance, shoots down the planes carrying the weapons before they can leave the country. The battle goes poorly for T’Challa’s side until M’Baku and the Jabari arrive to support him, thus turning the tide. T’Challa and Killmonger’s battle carries them into the heart of the vibranium mine, where sonic disrupted used in the transport of the metal incapacitate their vibranium armor. While Killmonger’s body is briefly exposed, T’Challa stabs his cousin. He takes Killmonger to see the sunset of Wakanda and offers to heal him. But Killmonger states that he knows he will then be imprisoned and would rather die a free man. He pulls the dagger out of his chest and dies peacefully.

With that victory, T’Challa is officially restored to the throne, with M’Baku granted a seat in the national tribal council to represent his tribe in recognition of his loyalty. Rejecting the isolationism of past Wakandan kings, T’Challa establishes an embassy in the United States to be run by Nakia and Shuri. In a mid-credits scene, T’Challa appears before the United Nations to reveal Wakanda’s true nature to the world. In a post-credits scene, Shuri continues to help Bucky Barnes with his recuperation.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825683/