Non-Existent Movie Reviews Part II: Electric Boogaloo

Wanted to do something odd this time but couldn't think of anything too weird. My time was kinda limited 'cuz I spent yesterday driving to Meridian with some friends to check out BigLots. BigLots is crazy... they're selling all kinds of DVDs for $3 each, including stuff like complete Flintstones box sets and such. Definitely worth the drive, I may go again if I can find navigators (I have the directional skills of a toddler, so I need people to be human GPS units for me)n Anyway, here are more reviews of movies that don't actually exist. Again, don't look for these in stores or rental places, I made 'em all up, it's a total lie.

=============

Johnny Smoke: The Motion Picture (C, 1997) - Possibly the only movie ever to be inspired by a PSA, this unreleased film starred Jason Priestly as a guy who was trying unsuccessfully to give up smoking. He ends up being stalked by a creepy cigarette gunslinger, who murders all his smoker friends and makes it clear that he's after Priestly next. The sight of the villain dressed as a giant cigarette wearing a hat is reportedly hilarious, despite the dim lights they filmed him in. Based on the weird anti-smoking public service announcement from the 1960's, this was a dream project for director/screenwriter Anton Dworkin, who was committed to an asylum soon after a rough cut of the film was shown at Cannes, and it was never finished.

Gerbus Jones, Nipple-Tissue Expert (C, 2003) Bad even by Rob Schneider movie standards, this date-rape of a date movie has Schnieder applying his skills (or skill, rather, given his range) to the role of a scientist who's obsessed with nipples (explained by an extremely tasteless flashback showing an infant with Schneider's face CGI'ed onto it and his fetishized father battling over his mother's tits). His experiments lead to political activism when he starts a semi-terroristic group called "PETN" (People For The Ethical Treatment Of Nipples) trying to pass laws allowing nipples to be displayed in public. An audience with arbiters of moral standards leads to wacky mistaken identities when Schnieder's mistaken for the Pope (he's waiting for an audience with the Pope and can't resist trying on the hat)! Using this to his advantage while he can, Schneider goes on TV as the Pope and declares pro-nipple edicts to an enthusiastic and grateful world, leading to gratuitous scenes of girls ripping off their shirts and showing their tits in cities all over the globe. Of interest mainly to those with crippling tit fetishes and people who like seeing nuns humiliated. The poor critical reviews this film got led the sensitive Schneider to begin a "serious" film that had long been a dream project of his, a biopic of French flatulist Le Petomane. He's still wrangling for the rights to it, because Jim Carrey has also always wanted to make a Petomane film.

Mystery Meat (C, 2005) - A rare Pixar animated film that didn't catch on with kids and childish adults, this was about a bunch of pieces of various types of meat who tried to solve the mystery of who robbed their butcher shop. Such animated chunks of meat as Sir Loin, Bo Loney, Papa Roni, Sal Ami, Sir Francis Bacon, Bobby Que, Porky Chop, and Chet Erlings bickered with each other and made a lot of food-related jokes, such as animated cheese that yells "Don't cut me, man!" during a fight, to which the meat replies "Don't beat me!", or an overemotional piece of pork who's declared to be "such a ham," etc. You know, that kind of juvenile ha-ha shit. The slapstick here was more horrific than humorous; meat flying around and smacking the walls just isn't funny, and the fact that they computer-scanned actual meat for realism didn't help. Add in some racially insensitive portrayals (Italian stereotype accents on the salami and pepperoni characters and their cousin, "Spicy Meat-a Ball", various Jewish deli meats, and Marlon Wayan's extremely offensive take on Chet Erlings) and you have a film that just didn't catch on with parents, kids, or critics. You can often find the related action figures at the Dollar Tree.

Troughs of Heaven (C, 1998) - sad bid at artistic integrity by child star Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, this wasn't quite as enjoyably disastrous as fellow Saved By The Bell alum Elisabeth Berkley's "bid at being taken seriously," Showgirls, but it was bad enough. Playing a girl who lived alone on a farm after her father died, Thiessen slowly goes mad from loneliness and moves into the pen with her pigs, and there finds happiness by retreating from the human race and becoming one of them. A few generous critics tried to talk about the film as an "artistic expression of mankind's search for society and of the fragility of civilization dependent on the proximity of others" and praised Theissen's "bravery at revealing her vulnerablity by allowing herself to be seen foraging for slop," but anybody who wasn't a fancypants collegeboy said, "She's so pretty, why the fuck's she wallowing in filth and gnawing potato peelings?" But of course similar things were said about Berkley's Showgirls.



Your Face And My Ass, Buddy! (C, 2000) - Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci as a team can never lose, right? Well, yeah, they can. A buddy-insult comedy in the wake of Analyze This, Analyze That, and the unreleased Analyze The Other T'ing, this has Pesci and DeNiro playing a couple of Wal-Mart stock guys who move boxes around in the back all day and harass each other with "your mother" jokes and "you're so stupid" jokes and "you're ugly" jokes. When their uptight manager finally pushes them too far with his bullying, the adversaries decide to join forces and assail their manager with a stream of insults. The final scene has them down at the unemployment office harassing the clerk there, telling him "Fuck you, you prick! I hope you fall the down the stairs, break your back, and strangle to death on your own scrotum!" and "Look at me again, monkeyshines, and I'll come through that window and adjust your colon for ya!" Not successful, but does have a cult following, made up mostly of wall-eyed shitbags and bulldog-faced whoremasters, plus a few crap-minded peckersniffers.

What A Madhouse! (C, 1997) Bargain-bin comedy about a bunch of bland, hopelessly-normal whitebread office workers who think they're all wacky, crazy, and madcap, even though they're actually boring, conformist, conventional nobodies with absolutely nothing special about any of them. The "humor" is derived from scenes where Kathy agrees with the others that she's an absolute lunatic because she brought in some "exotic" hazelnut coffee instead of their usual Maxwell House, or where Jim is congratulated for the "wild and crazy" funny cat pictures he e-mails around, or when Judy offers her wrists for handcuffs so they can cart her away to the asylum for her audacious choice of wearing some purple tennis shoes with glitter stars on them. David falls for a prank and ends up with 10 copies of a document when he only needed one, and Terrence squeals with laughter when someone leaves a teddy bear on his desk that's wearing a hat just like the one he wore that one time. Spalding Gray, Albert Brooks, Richard Louis, Amanda Peet, and Scarlet Johansen star in this washout that's still fairly popular with the kind of dull, standard, homogenized citizens who love shows like Friends.

Oi, Ya Sad Bastard (C, 1983) Low-budget, verite British film about the trials of Sidney, a dockworker who always talks about starting up his own pub, but blows all his money having a pint with the lads instead of saving it. His friends think his constant talk of pub ownership are pretty pathetic but think he's an alright bloke regardless, so they ask him what the pub will be like and make him promise to give them discounts even though they know it'll never happen. When Sidney's uncle dies and leaves him a few thousand quid, instead of saving it for the pub Sidney spends it on some fancy trousers that he hopes will impress Martha, a bird what lives down the way. When she doesn't pay him any mind, Sidney laments to his friend Trevor that he made a stupid choice, and Trevor says, "Ah, but that's the way o' life, iddnit, mate?" and they go down for a pint and a larf. There's not much to it, but John Goodman wants to produce a remake.

Scary Larry in the House With Ghosts In It (C, 1979) If you actually enjoy stage plays you might be able to sit through this ass-stupid pants-rotting door-slammer comedy about an eccentric doofus who tries to throw a party for his local theatre group but manages to convince himself that his house is haunted, and the other people at the party also start thinking that maybe he's right and run around in a panic, looking for places to hide. This silly, twerpish film breaks down into pointless chaos early and never comes back, and that's why you can find it in bargain bins everywhere.

The Story of Mormon - (C, 1975) Hilarious absurdist comedy in which a wacky con artist named Joseph Smith fools his neighbors by inventing a new religion based on preposterous stories he makes up, things about translating golden tablets he was given by an angel and what-not, depicting a supposed visit to America by Jesus Christ. The movie overplays its hand a bit by making parts of the story too ridiculous; it's just not feasible that Smith's neighbors would let him get away with some of his claims, especially when he keeps getting caught in lies. But the film is helped out by all of the actors playing it absolutely straight. The in-joke, "Produced By The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" credit is hilarious, playing the joke out right to the very end. A great, very funny satire of Christianity.

Tony The Liar Says Everything's Fine (C, 1968) Frank Sinatra straddles both sides of the law as a cop who -- with the aid of a false nose and eyebrows -- is also a Mafia boss. The real trouble starts when he's given the case of arresting his own alter-ego! This causes him to adopt yet a third persona, that of an arthritic, asthmatic stool-pigeon called Tony the Liar, who feeds the police bad info to implicate someone else and take the heat off Frank's Mafia persona. The strain of trying to juggle three personalities begins to wear on Frank, and his partner in the police, Ray Milland, starts getting suspicious. Sandy Duncan shows up to sing "Oh, Hell, It's Only Tuesday," probably just as a favor from Frank. As an in-joke, the Tony character keeps claiming he knows Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, and everybody claims he's just lying again.

Hail, Bastards! (C, 1972) WWII adventure film in which James Coburn leads a squad of commandos (including female Navy officer Angie Dickenson, whose tits keep popping out whenever she fires a machine gun, providing all the movie's highlights) on a strange mission to stop the German swim team from posing as Swedes to infiltrate a competition from which Nazi Germany was excluded. They plan to win, then reveal themselves as Nazis to demoralize the allies with their superior swimming skills. Coburn and his team of misfits try to stop fighting among themselves long enough to take on the bad guys, and lots of bullets get fired even though not that many people are killed. The kind of movie whose idea of characterization is having a guy who chews gum a lot, and another who wears a hat.

Billy Bitchtits (C, 2006) Medicine taken for a thyroid imbalance gives Adam Sandler a set of large breasts. He gets so upset by his friends hitting on him that he tries taking more medicine to shrink his chest, but just suffers from more side effects (large hands, huge ears, weird voice, excessive flatulence) and ends up hired by a children's TV program as the next Sponge Bob. He's a huge hit, but then a doctor finds a cure for all his conditions. Will he take it and return to normal, or remain a beloved children's icon? This shameless movie wallops you with every kind of offensive, disgusting humor possible, and then makes an eleventh-hour attempt to redeem itself with some message about the happiness of one person vs. the happiness they can bring to millions. It tries to become a tear-jerker when it's actually a finger-puller. Director Pablo Zemekis even had the nerve to claim that Sandler was supposed to be a "Christ figure." Try to remember that when he's farting so propulsively that he's flying around a shopping mall like a balloon that's been released, or catching one of his huge ears in a car door and getting dragged down the street.

reviews of a dozen films that don't exist

I’m not in the mood to write anything particularly constructive yet I'm still stubbornly whackin' this dead horse we got here, so this will be idiocy. I wanted to go see the Persians tonight (the Persians effin' RULE okay) but this congestion has me feeling two-thirds-of-the-way sick and all-the-way antisocial, so a crowd’s probably not a good environment for me at the moment. Plus I’m bleedin’ pretty good from running into something some idiot left in the doorway of a dark room, and nobody really wants bleeding people hanging around… it‘s unseemly. I know I’m gonna miss out on a good show, though. But, hey, the world will get *this* as a result. Hoofuckingray and god damn us, every one.

So, just out of my nasty contemptuous mood, here’s a throwaway blog post filled with movie reviews… of movies that don’t actually exist! That’s right, don’t search for these in your Netflix, ‘cuz I made ‘em all up. Pulled ’em right out me arse, boy-o! I can do that! And they may amuse no one but me, but, that’s how life goes, iddnit? Punk rock. So onward with the useless falsehoods and untruths. Oi, oi, oi!

1. SHIT TWICE AND DIE (C, 1978). A script passed over by Charles Bronson, who at the time was worried about being typecast as a “Death Wish” style vigilante, this was instead turned into a vehicle for Buck Owens, who was trying to turn his Hee Haw stardom into a film career. After his brothers (one played by Roy Clark as a favor from Buck) are killed by a gang of biker dwarfs, Buck becomes a vengeance-crazed killer with a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun which he’s converted (using prowess earned as a weapons expert in Vietnam) into a belt-fed fully-automatic weapon. One of the film’s shortcomings is that Buck loses this weapon over a waterfall before it can even be fired; despite this disappointing fact, the film’s trailer is very preoccupied with the building of this gun. The climax, with Buck laughing triumphantly over the bodies of several dead biker dwarfs, is unintentionally hilarious and may be why the film was pulled from theaters too early. The band that did the soundtrack, a hard-rock outfit known as In God We Thrust, later re-formed as the emasculated Air Supply.

2. SHRINKY DINKS - THE MOVIE. (C, 1982) Cheap film made to cash in on the minor craft phenomenon, starred a cast of unknowns, the only one of whom had any kind of career was Dana Plato. Craft-making kids used “the power of imagination” to reduce themselves in size and foil a gang of dognappers. The film’s lack of success almost broke the company that made Shrinky Dinks, and is one of the most legendary failures of a company trying to cross over into movies and almost destroying themselves by trying to cross over into film production. Which brings us to our next film…

3. BOBBY BB-GUN (C, 1976) A wretched film made by the Daisy BB Gun company about a boy and his BB gun. All the other kids view him as some kind of hero because he has a BB gun, which he uses to foil a gang of (you guessed it) dognappers. Dognappers were a popular foe in 70’s kiddie films that weren’t successful. Because the Daisy company wanted to avoid lawsuits, they emphasized that BB guns should never be pointed at a person, so “BoBBy BB-Gun” always shot at conveniently-placed cans of paint, axel grease, or “BuBBle Gum Gas” (?!) to thwart the dognappers. Obnoxious, annoying, buck (and chipped)-toothed-and-freckle-faced “star” Chet Furd takes an almost insufferable joy in his own performance, shouting all his lines inarticulately. He was never to appear on screen again except for an episode of the short-lived Bert Convy cop drama, Toole. Daisy’s tried so hard to bury this embarrassment you can’t even find clips on YouTube.

4. PISSANT BROWN (C, 1977) An attempt to turn then-hot Jimmy “J.J.” Walker into a tough action star, this is left off of even the most extensive blaxploitation film lists, and Jimmy Walker denies its existence to this very day, even though Morgan Freeman, Antonio Fargas, and Yaphet Koto all have bit parts. Jimmy plays the brother of a pimp who, for some reason not made clear in the plot (which was rumored to be written by William Golding under another name!) tries to stop Italian mobsters from building a casino on the corner where his brother’s whores work. Despite a few rousing scenes (Walker using a backhoe to push a mob boss’s Lincoln Continental into a fountain, Walker escaping from a group of hit men by driving a golf cart through a fruit market), this film’s most indelible image remains Walker using a wrist-rocket slingshot to shoot a pocketknife at the machine-gun-toting mob boss (Norman Fell) to kill him. Oh, damn, now I’ve gone and spoiled it.

5. OH, HELL, IT’S THAT FISHMAN! (C, 1980) Superhero vehicle starring Christopher George as an oceanographer who gets an emergency blood transfusion from a trout and ends up gaining fish powers. The problem is that almost as soon as George gets his powers, he’s whisked off to Wyoming, with no water anywhere for miles! He tries to stop some timber pirates, but with no water around he’s just a guy in an awkward costume. John and Keith Carradine are both in it, and Rick Wakeman did the soundtrack but had his name pulled. It was rumored that the script was originally for an Aquaman movie, but DC Comics decided not to go through with it, so the producers made up a similar character and put him in Wyoming to show how lame Aquaman’s powers actually are. Christopher George once referred to this film as the most embarrassing thing he was ever involved with, and said it haunted his career “like an angry terrier pulling at my socks.” Despite the fact that it’s not a well-regarded film, M. Night Shylaman has expressed great interest in directing a remake. Idiot.

6. TRIUMPHS OF THE GOLDEN WEASEL (C, 1992) Comedic rip-off of the Indiana Jones series, starring Ed Asner doing a Pauly Shore imitation throughout. Pauly even produced the film, thinking that audience would crack up seeing a guy like Asner doing his “weasel” shtick, but by that time people were getting pretty sick of seeing Pauly do that act, much less Asner. Film is too by-the-numbers to be of much interest, and is funny only to those whose idea of high comedy is watching somebody fall off a ladder. A controversy sprang up involving the TV spot, because it included Asner’s line “Look out for my balls, there, buddy!” and a swimming pool fart joke.

7. BASTILLE DAY (C, 1984) Slasher films were running out of holidays to exploit, and their audiences weren’t quite sophisticated enough to understand the references in this one, but it does boast some good decapitations courtesy of FX artist Ed French (fucking clever, that. French, get it?). A maniac disguised as Robespierre terrorizes an annual French festival in Nebraska, dispatching most of his victims with a portable guillotine that looks something like a cigar trimmer. Fairly ordinary until the end, where the killer’s mask comes off and he’s revealed to be… Jon Voight! Voight was just beginning his pathetic descent into mental illness around this time.

8. GALLOPING TOWARDS SODOM (C, 1983) Weird attempt at an “art Western” from Oliver Stone (who disowned the film, which is why the film is credited to “Otis Placestinks” instead). Rod Steiger (who’s overacting even for Rod Steiger) plays a drifter who - in a twist on the traditional plot - sides with a cattle rancher against oppressive prairie farmers. In one memorable scene, he guns down a schoolmarm who he thinks is a “communist.” Then, somewhere around the middle of the movie, Steiger eats some peyote and rides into modern Manhattan, and the movie turns into a courtroom drama, where corporate logos such as Zip The Postman, Speedy the Alka-Seltzer kid, and the Frito Bandito are on trial! And all the judges and lawyers are young children! Steiger does the best he can, but when he’s given lines like “You think you’re a smarty-pants but really you’re a stupid-pants!” and “May you find midgets in your marriage bed!” there’s only so much that even he can do.

9. DEUTERONOMY: THE MUSICAL (C, 1995) Too-ambitious project funded by churches to do the story of Moses’ sermons in an all-singing, all-dancing format. They just didn’t have the money or talent to pull this off, and some musical numbers, such as the one about the edict against blemished animals being used in sacrifices, are downright embarrassing. The soundtrack, on the Amalekite label, can sometimes still be found at yard sales of houses where insane people live.

10. BUNNY HIDORA AGAINST SUPERCOPS! (C, 1993) Anime entry into the unpopular Bunny Hidora series, which also includes such films as Bunny Hidora Against Clown From Space!, Bunny Hidora Fighting Asparagus Master!, Bunny Hidora Make Big Score!, Bunny Hidora Against Funny Poot!, Bunny Hidora Vs. Frankenfascist!, Bunny Hidora Defeating Evil Judge! Bunny Hidora Take No Crap From Bitches! and Bunny Hidora Against Ass Society! Like most anime, it makes no sense but has lots of action, with a rabbit who has poorly-defined superpowers battling all kinds of enemies who I suppose are supposed to be bad guys. To keep translating costs down, most of the dialogue is limited to “HA!” and “POW-ZINGA!” This film causes seizures, and there’s not enough vodka in the world to make an adult sit through more than fifteen minutes of it. You can't even heroin this thing pretty.

11. HARD-ONS NEVER LIE (C, 1979) It’s been suppressed, but Mickey Spillane once wrote a porno film. Jamie Gillis plays Mike Hammer, who’s trying to find out who gave him the clap. Gillis actually makes a pretty good Hammer, and Seka isn’t bad as Velda, but the script was a phoned-in deal, with obvious “gun/penis” jokes being used far after they became tiresome. The “or are you just happy to see me” thing is used FOUR DAMN TIMES!

12. DIARY OF ANNE FRANKENSTEIN (C, 1979) Tasteless film made as a vehicle for the band Cheap Trick. Originally they wanted more of a “Wizard of Oz” type story (with Ozzy Osbourne guest starring as the Great Oz, and Alice Cooper playing the Wicked Witch of the West) but they couldn’t get the rights and had to rush into production using a script that had originally been written for Jerry Lewis, who was still gun-shy after that Day The Clown Cried fiasco. The film was, in fact, left unfinished, and later the missing scenes were acted out by hand puppets. Variety’s review read “Cheap Trick - Dead In Budo-Cannes!”



Remember, all of the preceding is bullshit, so don’t sue me, Chet Furd.