just more movie reviews

Just more movie reviews this time, and a little less than usual. I started reading The Count of Monte Cristo and that's not a book, that's a relationship, almost 1000 pages. So far (about 100 pages in) it's kicking ass, though. The reviews are going to look a little screwy, because for some reason this goddamn website ain't givin' me my bold-and-italics-and-links options, and I don't know how to do 'em manually, so, fuckit, we'll do it live, we'll do it live!



At least YouTube provides me the inbed coding. Yay YouTube, fuck GoogleBlogger!

Also, before I start, in film news, Roman Polanski finally got nabbed for child molestation! Excellent, even if it's decades too late. Here's my most-admired-human, Andrew Vachss, on Polanski:



If I could do links I'd link you to Vachss's website so you could read up and find why I like him so much, but instead I'll just let you paste this in for yourself: www.vachss.com Buy his books, support his mission.

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Asylum Erotica (C, 1971) aka La Bestia Uccide a Sangue Freddo, Slaughter Hotel, The Beast Kills in Cold Blood, Cold-Blooded Beast. Tedium holds sway throughout this pointless and plot-free Italian softcore horror flick. Klaus Kinski runs a rest home for women with mental problems (mostly nymphomania). Much of the screen time is spent on showing naked women bathe or writhe around in bed or have very mild sexual encounters, with the occasional deviation of a killer in a black mask and cape showing up to kill them with a knife or axe. The gore is very minimal and you've probably made better effects yourself while trick-or-treating. Even the nudity is limited mostly to titty, at least in the DVD I saw, which is admittedly cut. I'd hope the longer version at least had something worth sitting through. There's lots of the kind of music you used to hear in grocery stores in the 60's. Nobody (especially Kinski) really has much to do, so they stand around looking unemotional a lot. One person gets shoved into an iron maiden, which isn't exactly a smart piece of furniture to have around a clinic for the insane in the first place, but then the joint also has displays of medieval weapons, too, so they're not exactly famous for forethought. Characters are so poorly established that when the killer is revealed you won't remember who he is. Bottom of the barrel giallo that meanders along until it peters out and wastes a good title.



Day After, The (C, 1983) Fun little souvenir of the Reagan era in which global nuclear war goes off, just like everybody thought it would throughout the 80’s (some - including Ronnie - hopefully!). The film - manipulative but well-made - gives us a realistic portrait of how such a war would look from the outskirts of Lawrence, Kansas (just to show us nowhere‘s safe). An uprising in Germany sparks Russian aggression which quickly gets out of hand and soon everybody’s launching ICBM’s at everybody else. Panic erupts as people try to escape populated areas, and then the bombs hit and vaporize large portions of the population. Some survivors take shelter in cellars and hospitals, and others wander the roads, growing sick from radioactive fallout and diseases caused by lack of sanitary conditions. Others are shot as society breaks down and people become desperate scavengers. The country tries to work on rebuilding but no one knows what to do and diseases keep killing people off. Very grim made-for-TV movie upset many who’d been thinking nuclear war would probably be some fun survivalist thing with guns as cars (as depicted in the adventure-series novels that also thrived around the same time). ABC had to set up a 1-800 line to counsel upset viewers, and Karl Sagan and William F. Buckley had a debate right afterward, in which Buckley got his ass pwned. Reagan watched it and sent in lots of suggestions for re-editing. Advertisers wouldn’t buy ad time for the second hour so it aired with no commercial interruptions. Scary in the first half and slow and sad in the second.



Watch the whole thing on YouTube starting here:



Great Gabbo, The (B&W, 1929) Eric Von Stroheim is a maniacally-irritable, superstitious, narcissistic ventriloquist whose abusive behavior finally runs off his long-suffering assistant, Mary, even though she patiently tried to find some good in him (and decided his only nice side is what he expresses through his dummy, Otto). Von Stroheim talks to Otto like he's alive, and gets in violent arguments with it. After he becomes a big Broadway hit, Von Stroheim and Otto have dinner in a restaurant every night, carrying on public conversations. Otto occasionally sings songs while Von Stroheim eats, including an easy-to-make fun of tune about making icky with his lollipop! The only thing worse than Otto's songs are his truly embarrassing jokes, and Von Stroheim's "feats of ventriloquism" (eating, drinking water, smoking, stuffing handkerchiefs in his mouth) aren't impressive because Otto is an obvious voice-over. Since this is an early talkie, I don't know if audiences were supposed to be fooled into thinking it was legit or not, but you have to remember that people used to tune in to listen to Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on the freaking radio, so they may not have been too picky about actual displays of skill. They meet Mary again and try to mend fences, but when Von Stroheim learns that Mary is already married to someone else, he really loses his mind. The film's also heavily padded with musical numbers, presumably to take advantage of the sound technology. They're all pretty bad, but one of them -- in which people dressed as flies dance in a giant spider web while a guy in the funniest spider outfit ever sings -- is pants-peeing hilarious. This is the granddaddy of the lucrative ventriloquists-are-crazy genre, and an odd viewing experience in that you end up feeling pretty embarrassed for Stroheim, who had made masterpieces like Greed and then had his talkie debut in such a humiliating role.

The Lollipop song:



The hilarious spider-web number:



House of the Yellow Carpet (C, 1983) aka La Casa Del Tappeto Giallo. A young couple put an ad in the paper, trying to sell a huge, ugly yellow rug. While the husband's off dealing with some people who are towing away his car, a creepy guy with a crippled arm shows up to look at the carpet. He acts very strange, helping himself to coffee and accusing the wife of telling lies and saying that her husband is in cahoots with him to kill her. He says he killed his wife on a rug just like the one they have, and makes all kinds of accusations, getting increasingly threatening and keeping the wife prisoner. Eventually the wife stabs him to death on the carpet, and then a strange woman shows up, looking for her husband, who she claims is an unbalanced ex-actor who talks his way into people's houses and then improvises weird theatrical scenarios. Then the wife wakes up with her husband, wondering if any of it actually happened. She's sure it did, but the husband says she just dreamed it all. Is she right, or is she crazy, or is it all some twisted conspiracy? Odd, stylish late-entry Italian giallo with some real intensity and strangeness and an intriguing plot. It's got some blood but is fairly light in the gore department, although a scene of a guy injecting drugs under his eyelid may make you cringe. Bizarre obscurity I found on a used VHS tape at an old video store, this one doesn't show up in most books but it's good enough for someone to consider releasing it on DVD. The video box lies about the content of the movie, claiming supernatural stuff.



House With The Laughing Windows (C, 1976) aka La Casa Dalle Finestre Che Ridono, House With The Windows That Laugh, House of the Laughing Windows. Pupi Avati film that’s one of the ultimate classics of Italian horror, and of horror cinema, period. Stefano, a young artist, is hired to restore a fresco on a church wall, painted by a brilliant-but-mad artist, Legani, who was known as the “painter of agony” due to his realistic depictions of torture. Stefano is very intrigued by Legani’s work, but receives mysterious warnings to stop work on the painting. A man who’s also researching the painter promises to take him to a “house with laughing windows,” where he’ll learn more, and then calls him with urgent info about the painter’s methods, but is thrown off a tall building before he can relay the secret. Stefano also discovers that the village has more than its share of eccentrics, such as a young imbecile who likes to put live rats in coffins to keep corpses company. Stefano learns more secrets about the painting, and thinks that Legani’s sisters helped him paint by torturing models to death while Legani painted. He also learns that Legani set himself on fire and ran into the woods, but his body was never found. As Stefano gets closer to the truth about the painting, though, someone destroys it so he’ll have no reason to stay. By now he’s too intrigued, though, and continues his investigations... but the things he learns he may regret, and the secrets are darker and more morbid and horrific than he (or we) could possibly guess. This movie is brilliantly realized in that the viewer unravels this puzzle as Stefano does, and we’re as surprised as he is every step of the way. Even once you know what’s going on, it gets creepier with repeat viewings. One thing you really must do on your first viewing, though, is to watch it in one sitting, preferably alone, and give it your full concentration; failing to do that would cost you one of the greatest cinematic experiences of your life.

You're better off just going and getting the movie and not even watching this trailer, but, what the hell...



Maneater of Hydra (C, 1967) aka La Isla De La Muerte, Island of the Dead, Island of the Doomed, The Bloodsuckers, Death Island. A car full of travelers end up at the villa of eccentric botanist Cameron Mitchell, after running down one of his servants, a terrified man who Cameron claims was already dying from an incurable disease. At dinner Cameron serves mutated vegetables -- "it looks like a cucumber but it tastes just like meat!" After dinner he shows off hybrid vegetables he's developed, such as a huge, tentacled flytrap that eats mice. Then corpses start showing up, drained of blood, and everybody thinks a vampire is on the loose, but of course that's totally ridiculous -- it's a giant blood-sucking plant! When another botanist finds out, Mitchell kills him via a pretty absurd little blade hidden in a statue of Shiva. He blames his mute servant for the killing, but the servant tries to escape on a bicycle. Sorry, but no amount of dramatic chase music can make footage of an old man riding a bicycle look intense. The plant attacks some more of the guests, and yet they're still slow to catch on. Clumsy Spanish horror with hilariously bad dubbing (made even better by over-the-top acting from several of the performers... but oddly not Mitchell, who's more restrained than usual (at least until the end, where he gets pretty unhinged). Appropriately enough for a man-eating plant movie, this was directed by the guy who played Gravis Mushnik in Little Shop of Horrors. This was a rarely-seen (although not particularly sought-out) title until it came out on an Elvira DVD... and that was apparently mastered from a second-generation tape struck from a graining full-frame print, with some tracking issues. Has a fair amount of blood, at least, and a little atmosphere.

A Lot Of Brief Histories Of Bands That Never Existed

My concept here is akin to the Airplane movies: much of it's not all that funny, but I'll throw so much of it at ya that some of it's just bound to hit! Victory by percentage! Hoohah!

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I was just going through my record collection, and I got a little bored, so I decided to look at some of the records I don't own, because they don't exist. Just because a band doesn't actually exist doesn't stop them from having a discography and a history, y'know. And there are a lot more bands that don't exist than do exist. The bands that don't exist are unlimited! You could keep a lot of nonexistent radio stations in business a long time just playing their works. So, I decided we should probably familiarize ourselves with a few of these bands, so we'll know what we're not missing.

First up, there's classic Lithuanian rockabilly garage outfit from the late 1980's, Hooter Stupid & The I Forgot. They had several albums that didn't sell worth a damn, not because of poor quality music, but because of a slight language barrier that cost them a little credibility. Perhaps most famous was Going Public With My Privates, which contained such songs as "When Is Funny? (I Say Now!)" and "Them's Eatin' Dumplings!" Their album of bar-fight songs, Catching A Cold From The Bacteria Of Fists, contained songs like "I Kick You Now In The Garbanzo," Gonna Go Out And Get Flabbergasted," "Clouds Fly Out Of You As I Hit" and "La La La Go Fuck Yourself Dippyshit," which were pretty catchy but frightened much of their intended audience. They tried to make a comeback in 2003 with a politically-charged album called Doesn't Anyone Want To Impress Jodie Foster Anymore? but considering few remembered they existed in the first place, the "comeback" didn't really get anyone very excited. The song "Gimme Some Tits" wasn't bad, though.

Colorado's alterna-rockers, Community Service Project, never got out of the demo stage, despite such interesting songs as "Giddy With Misery," "Armed To The Teats," "Pretty As A Carbuncle," and "Cold-Cocked By A Zombie Gigilo." They broke up and the singer went on to form a punk band called The Ain't Got No Rights, who managed to release one 7" on the Scratchy Records label, containing the songs "It's Adolph & Eva, Not Adolph & Stevea!" and "(Theme From) Godfather On Ice," which were more noteworthy for the ad-libbed banter in the background after the songs, such as "If you hear a puppy fart, that means you win!" and "I eat prunes, man, I turn into a can of Silly String!"

Then there was the prog-rock band, The Vestibules, whose sole album Skulking In The Cloakroom was so boring that it's believed no one has ever listened to the whole thing voluntarily. The song titles, such as "Futons Off The Port Bow" and "Behold A Carrot Came A-Ridin'" promised far more imagination than the pointless, repetitive noodling found therein delivered.

Then there was Portland alternative rockers Passwind, whose album This Record Is Fourteen Dollars, did garner a few fans... specifically Larry, Reginald, Chet, Frank, and Matt. Their follow-up, Dung Beetle's Delight, fell to the dreaded "third album curse," even though it was only their second. It did have a minor novelty hit with "The Montel Williams Song," which consisted of rants against teen pregnancy set to music.

Then there's Christian rockers, Damascus Road, whose lack of grammar knowledge and ignorance of DNA resulted in the hilariously titled Jesus In My Jeans. They published an apology titled "We Meant GENES!" in the national Christian newsletter, The Voice of the Fundament, but everybody ignored them anyway. The guitarist later showed up in an obscure psychedelic band called The Soft-Offs, who had an album called Fish, Horse, Train, Rope, which was incredibly stupid.

Then brainless metal band, Iron Flyswatter, had an album called Me Use Tool! that's famous for having a song called "Devil's Meatloaf" that had a riff very similar to Metallica's later "Enter Sandman." Other songs, like "Big Head Little Head," "Tooth of the Horror Bastard" and "Butthammer" were hardly remarkable for any reason. The singer's funk-band side project, Mr. Pissstick (with Kiss lightning-bolt S's in the logo) were even less successful with their album, Shake Yo' Whatchamacallit, Grandchile! When it was once played for Stevie Wonder, he famously said, "What's this happy horseshit?"

And, of course, who can remember I Live In A Cardboard Box That's Really Stinky by Grandpa Moses, the Sacramento band headed by Twelve-Finger Phillip Turnip, a completely mad Frank Zappa wannabe. His "solo album" project, Douchemania Bingo Night, consisted of pointless tracks in which Turnip farted into a harmonica, tried to make sneezing noises with a guitar (in a song called "Journal of the Plague Year"), used a drumset made up of various types of melons to cover "Moby Dick," and had a cow as a vocalist for one song. You can actually feel your brain growing stupider as you listen to this album, like Saran Wrap being peeled off a Jello mold. At last report he was engaged in message-board flame-wars with a guy who he believed was the ghost of Roky Erikson.

Of course, there's also lame soft-rock band band, Puckered Starfish, with their album Nights Without Pants, featuring embarrassing songs like "Why Don't You Love Me?" and "I Tried So Hard." The few who've sat through this whiney drivel swear the band "makes Bread look like Black Sabbath."

One of the all-time great unheard country albums is by The Lonesome Dogpeckers, their Hoedown On Aisle Five LP, featuring the vocal talents of Lester "Whisker-Bisquit" Grootimus, whose inarticulate hollering gives you an idea what Tom Waits might sound like if he had a seizure. Even though you can't make out a single word, you get the idea that the lyrics to songs such as "Toothless Fool," "Done Run Out Of Paper And I'm Stranded," "Tampa Tampax," and "Found Me A Penny (And If I Find Me Another I'm Gone Do Me Some Jinglin')" would probably be just ass-stupid if you could decipher them.

Which brings us to The Dinglefairies, whose album Festooned In Doo Doo can only be considered a prank played on the American record-buying public. They clamed to be retarded and started a movement called "Tardcore Punk." In actuality they were probably just stupid, untalented, and insensitive. It wasn't nearly as vulgar as the follow-up album, Stinking Like A Trout's Twat, which they recorded as "Blue Oyster Cunt" as a joke. Their singer, Joey Funnyhelmet, billed himself as "Charles The Grinning Boy" for that record. The ribbing of B.O.C. was further evident by naming songs "Transvestimiacon P.U." and "Harvester Of Testicles," although a cover of "Career of Evil" included as an unlisted bonus track was far more reverent, even if Funnyhelmet did accompany himself on the song with frantic armpit-farts. The song "Don't Fear The Queefer" also reached new heights in lows with the flatulently obnoxiousness tale of a girlfriend with vaginal blasts. Funnyhelmet's post-song background yell of "Was that Miles Davis?" is considered a classic ad-lib by some people, but those people are stupid and you probably shouldn't listen to what they say.

Then there's Tater Float, featuring the singer of late-60's surf rockers The Failures, known mostly for doing the theme song for the short-lived TV show Strike Force Cleveland. Tater Float released several demos but could never get anybody interested in their minimalist garage-rock sound until they finally released a 7" of two songs, "Where Am I And Who Are These Guys?" backed with "Itchy Belly Blues." That gained them enough attention from the mentally ill to encourage Tater Float to release a full-length LP called I Can't Believe It's Not Music, which contained three songs about roller-blading, in hopes of latching onto a fad and gaining a new audience. Considering this came out in 2007, though, their timing was off.

Then there's Frownpandafrown, a "college rock" band made up of smartypantses whose "concept album" about playing mah jong failed to connect, possibly due to the obscurity of the title, Chicken Skin Robe. The drummer, after a debilitating brain injury that happened during the misuse of one of the rides at Six Flags Over Georgia, went on to form hard-drinkin' hard rock unit Claude Casket And The Premature Burials, who enjoyed some success with the nonparticular with albums like Don't Hand Me No Ass (featuring the anthem "Don't You Call My Mama A Cunt," which became kind of a rallying cry for people who were tired of having their mothers called a cunt) and For Medicinal Purposes Only, which included their trademark song "Ain't Gonna Eat My Peas," which struck a chord with rebellious pre-teens. Then they released an album that was considered a sell-out, Joke Rubber Wishbone Trick, which was too much of a progression for their base, most of whom still considered Ted Nugent a vital force in the music industry. They tried for a comeback with a live album -- When The Shit Hits The Fans -- and another studio effort, Addicted To Punches In The Face, where they tried to "harden" their sound, but their fanbase found it hard to shake the memory of JRWT's weaker efforts (especially the embarrassing power-ballad "She's Like A Candy Bar To Me") and left them on the racks and then in the cut-out bins. They played a few shows with artsy-fartsy (but more fartsy than artsy) rockers Plaid Mentality, who put out one album on their own Damp Laundry Records label, God In My Heart, Devil In My Pants, which one Creem reporter famously reviewed as "This is what Hawkwind might sound like if they took drugs." The guitarist's side-project, Pissypants, fared little better with their barely-released cassette-only release, The Dog's Barking Seemed To Come From Everywhere, which tried to do instrumentals in which the sole instrument was a ring modulator. Few had the patience to sit through that album, and the few who did couldn't afford to buy a copy because they spent all their money on quaaludes and weed.

Another band of the era, Pastiche, put out an album, Something To Listen To While The Paint Dries, but the kindest review it got speculated that the album was actually a marketing ploy and the band was in collusion with the people who sold aspirin. So they changed their name to Duck Call and put out an album called Boy, Get Off That Frog! One kid named Larry really liked it, but that was the extent of their success. Another album, called Brush With Greatness As An Instruction, was announced but never released. In a strange twist of fate, the singer ended up in a Dixieland jazz band called The Spreaders of Glee who put out an album called A Flavorful Salute To The 39 States that was only sold in Wisconsin gift shops.

Then there was Good Company, marketed as a “positive alternative to Bad Company,” whose debut album, Benign, was hailed as a classic by people who liked songs about ice cream and being kind to bunnies. The follow-up, None More Unthreatening, had a minor AM radio hit in “It’s All Going To Work Out,” but then the singer, Kit Treebush, snapped from all the forced joviality and put out a solo album called There’s Not Enough Beer In The Goddamned World, which was “too dark” and terrified their timid fanbase. Only the drummer, the good-natured Lanky Larry, stayed in the music business, putting out an album of soft-rock under his own name, called Bird Calls For Buffalos. The title proved apt, as it never found an audience, since Air Supply’s crowd had all died from cystic mediocrity by then.

Then there was poser-metal outfit, Opportunist, whose straightforwardly-titled LP, Songs About Tits And Fast Cars For Electric Guitar, sold a few copies, mostly in Tupelo, MS, where most people actually have a favorite Trixter song.

Prog-art rock band Young Man Testicular got too smart for their own good by putting out an album called Covers Of Songs By Yes, which actually contained no songs by Yes, but because people had been led to believe it did, no one bought it. Too bad, because many think the song “More Like Kansas” could have been a hit.

Punkers Cess Bisquit (later changed to Lavatory Bisquit to avoid confusion with the Boston band of the same name) had moderate success with an EP called Secret Government, but it didn’t go far because everyone agreed that Corrosion of Conformity was better, so why not listen to them instead? They toured briefly with The Jerk-Off Escapees, who released an EP called Lichens On My Grey Skull and got written up in Flipside as “Des Moines answer to Fish-Slapper.” But no one remembers who the hell Fish-Slapper was, and that’s the problem. Singer Jimmy Yerdoor went on to form a band called Duck The Coathanger and released several albums -- Sunset In The East Today, Driving Under The Influence of Model Glue, House of the Rising Sonofabitch, and Free Cupcakes Make Me Suspicious -- and was finally jailed for defecating on Jimmy Stewart’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, when under the influence of detergent. When he got out he tried for a reunion and put out an album called Gimmie Them Pants that was so bad it was considered a parole violation and sent him back to the pen. Since then he’s released a book called Bologna In My Underpants: Tales From The Greasy Side of Armageddon, consisting of his tour diaries, but as he’s a functional illiterate no one’s really read it, including him. His brother runs an incredibly ignorant country-rock band called Texas Tex and the Titty Honkers who put an album called You Done Been Tole out, featuring such embarrassing-if-they-had-enough-self-awareness tunes as “Now That She’s Done Left Me I Gotta Pick Up The Dogshit My Own Self,” “How You Figure The Washing Machine Works?” “Sure Could Use Me Some Bacon,” “Goddamn We Outta Pabst,” “Cryin’ On Mah Potbelly,” and “Mean Ol’ Tornader.” Plus a cover of Conway Twitty’s unreleased song, “I Wish I Was Your Chapstick.”

Then there’s another little-known punk band, Scoliosystem, who released an album called Sick To My Pants, in which they took on Ronald Reagan six years after he was already out of office. It didn’t sell so they tried again with an album called Raped By Captain America, which got them sued by Marvel Comics, so the few copies of the album that weren’t confiscated and burned fetch high dollars on Ebay, even though the songs, such as “I’m In Love With Your Spaniel,” “Lunch Box Fulla Nothin’,” “The Other Thing That Smells Like Fish,” and “Do The Scrotum Shake” are truly lackluster.

Shitty just-regular-boring-rock band The Bristols released an album called Smarty Pants And Smarty Socks that sounded pretty much like a manila envelope would sound if it tried to do Counting Crows songs. The follow-up, Bug Propellant, sounded a lot like The Lemonheads, so naturally nobody wanted to listen to it, either. Still, they soldiered on and released Boss of the Insubordinates before calling it a career.

Then there’s yet another pretentious prog-rock band, The Fantastic Slide-Rule Band, who more most famous for doing a concept album based on the works of Gustav Flaubert. Kerrang said, “Listening to this album is every bit as fun as reading Flaubert,” which - oddly enough - the band took as an insult and got really angry. The singer, apparently having a real Flaubert hang-up, later got a sex change and did cabaret shows under his new name, Madam Bovary. The guitarist, completely alienated from his prog-rock roots, formed a rockabilly punk band called The Lawdamercies, which played hardcore songs that all had the exact same lyrics -- “I want my rights right now/ And if I don’t get ‘em, then, well, I don’t know what!” It was mostly known for the gimmick of the singer continuing his mohawk on his back hair and chest hair. Eventually the fickle guitarist quit his punk band, became a drummer, and formed a metal band called Leigelord. He didn’t know what kind of metal band he wanted it to be, though, so it pleased only the likewise confused. They had a minor hit with a speed metal song called “Quicker Than Bunnyfuck,” but since the lyrics of the song were all about how fast the song was, it was looked upon as a “novelty thing.” That prompted the drummer to angrily form a really sarcastic pop group called “Novelty Thing,” which released an album called Just Out Of Spite. Then he turned up dead from eating too much lettuce. From the ruins of that band came a metalized punk band called Ol’ Bitchuary, which unfortunately used up all their cleverness on their band name.

Around the same time, a GWAR-type cartoon band based on redneck/hillbilly stereotypes started up. Known as Methy Marvin, the band members had fake names like Mrs. Hippie, Ali Bama, Louis Iana and -- inexplicably -- Otto Von Giggledick. Their album, Not Priapic, But Postapic, contained such songs as “A Poo-Poo Will Be Your Gravestone!”, “Fuck You, Minister Squadron!”, “Mr. Dippyfuck Is Your Superior!” “I Laugh At You Thusly, Hee Hee Hee!”, “You Are The Target!”, “Everywhere Will Be The Fragrance of Defeats!”, “Viva Yourdeath!” and “I Don’t Like When Everything Is Groovy!” caught on with people who like exclamation points in all their song titles. Their follow-up album, Completely Missing The Zeitgeist, contained even weirder songs such as “Your Face Is Merely For Decoration,” “It Would Be Interesting To See Two Masochists Fighting,” “Damn Ye All For A Lot O’ Merry Shitasses!” and “Oh, You Unpleasantly Damp Stale Mouthful Of Puppetdust, How Thoroughly You Lack Flair!” They broke up and the bassist, Saul Dundergarmets, formed a band called Filibuster, whose sole CD consisted of one really, really long song. Nobody got the joke and the band disappeared soon after.

More later, perhaps, if idiocy compels me...

Muck FcSweeney's!

I used to read McSweeney's Lists on a regular basis. While never too consistent, they routinely provided me with an opportunity to stroke my chin and say "That's pretty damn clever"...

Personals From Nonpersons
– Toyota Prius seeks irritating pseudoenvironmentalist for smug attitude and poorly informed dinner-party rant on Middle Eastern oil politics.
– California relocation for "fresh start" seeks disaster-prone individual for postmove loneliness and employment difficulties followed by crippling "sleep all day" depression episode.
– Cringe-inducing racist remark seeks grandfather for slip of the tongue during family get-together.
– Tedious recounting of last night's nonsensical dream seeks potential suitor on first date for obliteration of second-date possibility.
– Surprisingly explicit and seemingly unending movie sex scene seeks family for very uncomfortable viewing moment.

...or to chuckle a bit...

New Anxiety Medications for Coping With Economic Gloom
Debtrol
Downcyclen
Subprimacare
Lehmanax
Delinquedent
Panix
Nojoblin
Greedquil
Feariflu
Defaulta
Forclosen
Banxergon
Nuvopor
Catastrophex
Hysterian
Maxedoutrin
Stoxadon
Colapsin
Dowoff
Scamagan
Defeatra
Corruptol
Retirelator

Norse Spirituals
"If I Had A Mjöllnir"
"Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Skald"
"Faroe's Army Got Drowned"
"Follow The Drinkin' Horn Of Mead"
"Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jötunheimr"
"Sven, Olaf, Sigurd, Snorri, Harald, Ivar, Hagbard, Starkad, Haki, Bovar, Hrolf, Magnus, Haamund, Bersi, Bragi, Heimdall, Hakon, Cnut, Erik, Ingjald, Skjalf, and Mikkel, Row The Boat Ashore"

...or to laugh until I cry and make my office neighbors wonder what the fuck is wrong with me...

Common Illnesses at the Vatican
Stigmataberculosis
A bad case of the Antichrists
Vaticancer
St. Francis of Alopecia
Exorcysts
Blasphemeasles
Immaculate consumption
Hymnorrhoids
Ave Malaria

Party Games ForThe Recession
Bobbing for Pride
Seven Minutes in Debtor's Prison
Nickels
Hot Potato Famine
Spin the Bottle and Then Redeem It for Ten Cents
Stiff as a Board, Light as Your Wallet
Chutes and More Fucking Chutes
Hungry, Hungry Children
Sorry!

Neat, eh? Before long, I started thinking in these kinds of lists, and I eventually grew bold enough to send them a list of my own (they invite such submissions by putting "[Send your list submissions to lists@mcsweeneys.net.]" at the top of the lists page). Here's the first one I sent them:

The Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Imperative Mood: A Complete Chronological List
“Get Up and Jump” (1984)
“Fight Like a Brave” (1987)
“Knock Me Down” (1989)
“Taste the Pain” (1989)
“Show Me Your Soul” (1990)
“Give It Away” (1991)
“Suck My Kiss” (1991)
“Get On Top” (1999)
“Don’t Forget Me” (2002)
“Save the Population” (2003)
“Strip My Mind” (2006)
“Tell Me Baby” (2006)
“Torture Me” (2006)
“Turn It Again” (2006)

Not bad, pretty clever if I do say so my own self, but they turned it down (with a polite e-mail), and I was OK with that. I still think even this list is better than the most recent five they've posted, but no worries. I soon thought of another list, and, after working up the courage to submit again (wussy, I know, but a mild rejection is still a rejection), I sent it to them:

If Snoop Dogg Were Al Pacino
The Godfather
Dogg Day Afternoon
…And Justizzle for Izzle
Scarface
Stank of a Ho
Tha Insider (on Cinemax After Dark)

They rejected this list too, which didn't surprise me considering my previous turn-down coupled with this list's relative crudeness, but I have to admit I laughed out loud when I thought of Stank of a Ho. Ah well. I now figured I was just not McSweeney's material and did not know the right people (read: anyone), and I told myself I wasn't going to submit again.

And then, walking across campus one day, I thought of another fake movie title, completely out of the blue: There Won't Be Blood. This too made me laugh out loud, prompting four or five people around me to jerk their heads in my direction. I thought about what I liked in that fake title, and it's the idea of taking an extreme, violent-sounding title and rotating it 180 degrees, so that the promise of splattery action ("in this story, there will be blood") turns into a promise of mildness ("in this story, there won't be blood"). Thus was born the following list, my best and surely last submission to the total douchebags at McSweeney's:

Movies for the Faint of Heart
There Won’t Be Blood
Sprainedback Mountain
12 Irritable Men
Pass Away Softly
Pass Away Softly with Reluctance
The 400 Glancing Blows
Some Like It Warm
Debate at the OK Corral
Lock, Stock, and Two Downy Pillows
Kind of a Country for Old Men
Throne of Platelets
The Gods Must Be a Bit Odd
A Clockwork Lavender
The So-So Train Robbery
Ail, Ail, My Darling
Baked Green Tomatoes
A Few Details About Eve
The Anxious Moment in Needle Park
Stainless Steel Magnolias
Comfortably Outside the Line of Fire
The Infirm
Pacing Bull
The Amityville Startling
Lusitania
The Bourne Request
Fair Will Hunting
Apocalypse Soon
Depressive
American Depressive
A Man for a Few Seasons
It’s an OK Life

I must tell you that I was nearly certain they would publish this one. It's relatively long, and some of them are obvious (Some Like It Warm, Apocalypse Soon), but I think some of them are not only really funny and clever but also – and this is key – exactly like the type of lists they seem to want. Ail, Ail My Darling? Baked Green Tomatoes? The amount of piss, vinegar, blood, and steely resolve that Kind of a Country for Old Men sucks out of its for-real counterpart? All the romantic drama and sweeping epic-ness that Lusitania doesn't even pretend to promise? Dude, FUCK MCSWEENEY'S!

So even though this rejection was as friendly as the others (their exact reply: "Hi, John - Appreciate your giving us a shot with this one, but I'm afraid we're not going to use it. Best, C***"), I'm pissed about it, immaturely so (as if you couldn't tell), to the extent that I (a) deleted links to them on my website and Facebook profile, and (b) will not provide a direct link to them here, either. That'll show 'the bastards.

I thought about doing a smear piece on them similar to Doug Stanhope's bit on Hertz Rent-a-Car, but I'm neither as funny nor as brave as him, so I bitched out. (I actually typed in here the big punch line from Stanhope's Hertz bit, but as a parent I couldn't bring myself to post something that horrible on the internet, and YouTube doesn't seem to have a clip. You should still check it out, though; it's hilarious.)

Movie reviews - the accidentally weighted-down-with-Dana-Andrews edition

Well, I had to take last week off because my father passed away after a long decline, but I reckon it's time to get back to work before I get used to this being-lazy stuff (sloth is my only drug). Thanks to all who sent well-wishes, to Henry Rollins for writing A Preferred Blur (which provided some much-needed distractions at crucial moments), and the punk rock/ oi band Bonecrusher. When my dad broke his hip four years ago, I didn't have time to make a new car tape so I kept listening to an all-Bonecrusher mix tape I had in the car over and over again for several weeks when I drove back and forth between work and the hospital, and that kept me going when I felt backed up to a wall, plus sparked a major resurgence into punk rock for me. So when he went into the hospital this time, I broke out the same almost-worn-out Bonecrusher tape just to see if it'd do the trick again. It did. I'll always love this band for that, and Raybo's maybe my favorite vocalist for this type of music. It's not complicated stuff, more the blunt-object end of the musical spectrum (which is actually my favorite end, anyway), but the more you listen to them, the better they get. Check 'em out.

The last 30 seconds of "whoa" stuff in here is about as classic as anything gets for me. (imbed didn't come up for me, but you can see it on YouTube here - it's the best audio quality out of any of these clips)




One of the greatest oi choruses ever. "Just a casualty, got nothin' to say, with your hands tied back, victim of the state!"




So, that plug over, on to the movie mayhem. I didn't really plan to include such a disproportionate number of Dana Andrews movies in this one, but it just kinda worked out that way. Eh, whatdehell.

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Astounding She-Monster, The (B&W, 1957) aka Mysterious Invader, The Naked Invader. A sinisterly-purring narrator tries in vain to convince us that this ultra-cheap sci-fi flick is scary. A glowing, buxom female alien who wears a skin-tight silver suit and kills with a touch crash lands in the backwoods, right where some kidnappers are going with a rich woman they've abducted. A geologist and his faithful collie Egan (the actor's actual pet) are doing experiments in the area and the kidnappers make him hide them out at his cabin, where they eventually have to join forces to defeat the alien. She's a very accommodating monster; after she crashes through a window she stands there patiently while the humans build a torch with which to attack her. People have to wait around to be grabbed by the slowly-strolling alien, who makes the mummy look like a track star. She can usually be escaped just by leaving the room. I’m not sure that constitutes “astounding,” but the 50’s were a more easily-impressed decade. Scenes swap between day and night a lot. Gets a little tedious even though it’s only an hour long, but it’s pretty funny overall.

"Here is a power that frightens the deer in the forest!"


Cleopatra Jones (C, 1973) Tamara Dobson is "6 feet 2 inches of dynamite" and a one woman war on drugs as she goes against a wildly-overacting Shelly Winters (as a crime kingpin called "Mommy") in this blacksploitation classic. Special agent Cleo calls in an airstrike on one of Shelly's $30 million poppy fields, so Shelly has a junkie rehabilitation house that Cleo runs as a charity framed for drugs (which racist cop Bill "the redneck in Deliverance who got some" McKinney is all too happy to do). That pisses Cleo off, and pissing her off is a bad idea. She keeps an arsenal in the door panel of her custom black Corvette and is skilled in martial arts. Cleo presides over loads of cartoonish action, in which she never has any trouble outfighting, outdriving, and outshooting any bad guy she comes up against. The clowns who make up Shelly's criminal empire don't have a chance. Dobson gets to wear lots of weird outfits and headgear (although her huge Afro still looks better than any of 'em) and everyone in the cast is basically just there to be impressed with her; wherever she goes crowds gather to gawk and say variations on "Ooo-WEE, that sistah is BAD!" There's a good cast full of lots of black TV talent, including Esther Role from Good Times, Teddy Wilson from That's My Mama, Antonio Fargas from Starsky & Hutch, Albert Popwell from all the Dirty Harry movies, and a cameo from Don Cornelius of Soul Train ("the hippest trip in America!") fame. Very entertaining blacksploitation that's got less violence and nudity than most; in fact, it's pretty mild, but still boasts a good car chase with that badass 'Vette and a climactic junkyard battle with a horrifically-leather-clad Shelly Winters. Written by Max Julien, who starred in The Mack, and directed by Jack Starrett. Followed by Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold. You can watch the whole movie online starting here.



Or skip to the badmamajama car chase (how many times does she downshift that thing? and how many car chases have been filmed in that canal?):


Cobra, The (C, 1967) aka Il Cobra. Mike Rand (horror and Spaghetti Western star Peter Martel) is a spy who’s been disgraced, but Dana Andrews knows he’s the only agent badass enough to bring down the Cobra, a Red Chinese organization that’s dumping millions of dollars in heroin into the American market to turn everyone into easily-conquered junkies. Since they killed his ex-girlfriend, a reluctant Rand takes the case and shakes up the Istanbul underworld. A James Bond type this guy ain’t -- he acts like an asshole most of the time and looks kind of slobby. He notices black chrysanthemums everywhere, finds drugged girls used as robotic slaves, and learns the bad guys are trying to ship the drugs in an oil tanker. This gets a little hard to follow at times but leads to a huge fight at the end. It comes across as a filmed Nick Carter novel, and the Cobra bits are ironically similar to the G. I. Joe bad guys, right down to the masked “Cobra commander.” A “Never say never” line at the end anticipates a James Bond film.



Creepy Crawlers (C, 2000) aka They Nest. A doctor loses his nerve and can no longer operate, so he moves to an island off the coast of Maine to fix up an old house he bought. The local New Englandah rednecks aren't very friendly, especially John Savage, whose father's house the doctor bought for lapsed taxes, so when cockroaches start showing up all over his house he thinks they're playing pranks to run him off. But when dead bodies with their innards replaced by roach pupae start turning up all over the place, it's evident that a swarm of carnivorous African cockroaches has infested the island and is using human bodies (and not always dead ones) as incubators. Soon there are billions of these critters and they're starting to fly, so there's nowhere to hide from them. Good old-school killer bug horror reminiscent of the 70's AIP classics, but with updated special effects that lead to effectively ookie swarm scenes. Don't let the whack title or the fact that this was made for TV throw you off, it's not a bad little film.


Dark Ride (C, 2006) A group of teens on a road trip get the bright idea to break into a carnival fun house and spend the night. This particular fun house has a bad history because a psycho named Jonah killed a pair of twins there years before, while emulating some of the horror scenes on the ride. Well, wouldn'tcha know that Jonah appears to be back just in time to kill off this new batch of teens in various gruesome ways, while wearing the creepy face torn off of a mannequin? Okay slasher film on a tight budget, but not particularly scary or compelling, mostly because the film has no sense of place; characters are running around from one dark, ramshackle place to another and you never really get any momentum out of it. There are a few good gore effects (decapitation, a too-neatly split head) and some not bad attempts at creating atmosphere, but overall it's just mediocre. But, if you like slasher films and aren't too picky, it might be worth diving into Wal-Mart's five-buck bin to look for it.



Hot Rods To Hell (C, 1967) aka 52 Miles To Terror. This camp classic was planned as a TV movie but was judged to be too exploitative so it went to theaters instead. Dana Andrews (who's skittish behind the wheel after a Christmastime car accident, kind of reminiscent of his skittish -pilot role in Zero Hour!) and his ridiculously square conservative family unit head to California to run a motel... but when they arrive they find highway mayhem from an early Mad Max style gang of hot-rodding juvenile delinquents. They don't actually do much but drive around him in an obnoxious manner, but it throws the whole uptight whitebread family into a panic and no amount of horn-blowing on Dana's part will save the problem (although he certainly seems to think it will for a while). Wife Jeanne Crain stays near hysterics. The hoodlums try to seduce Dana's pretty daughter (much to the chagrin of hoodlum girlfriend Mimsy Farmer), who reacts to attention from boys like it's a hypnotic drug; she wants nothing to do with the jerks, but seems compelled to seek out "Duke," their leader, just so she can trembling to tell him to leave her alone. The hot rod kids are pissed because Dana bought the hotel that contains "The Arena," a nightclub where they hang out and listen to a band (Mickey Rooney Jr. and his Combo!) who plays rock songs with lyrics like "Do the chicken walk!" (that's the whole song), and they're sure he'll turn it into some cheesemo family restaurant. And he probably will, too. The teens are a bunch of assholes but Dana's family is so lame and easily-panicked you almost want to root for the bad guys, especially when Dana's reaction to everything is to run away or tattle. He delivers lines like "We're leaving... NOW!" or "I'll get the police!" like he's Dirty Harry holding a Magnum, and his stern lecture to the hoodlums is almost embarrassing to watch, especially since it followed a really impotent-looking symbolic beating of an inanimate object. Since Dana looks so much like FOX News idiot Sean Hannity, and his character acts so uptight and frightened like Sean, it’s kinda fun to pretend that’s who he’s supposed to be. It's hilariously corny stuff but it's well-paced and engaging enough to have been remade a couple of times (once as a made-for-TV movie called Terror on the Beach and once as The Road Killers). One member of the punk band The Dictators listed this as his favorite movie.

Hang out through the Young Runaways trailer and it'll come up.


They Don’t Cut The Grass Anymore (C, 1985) Another gory tour of the backyards of Long Island from home-movie maker Nathan Schiff. This one’s intended to be a comedy with social commentary, and it’s his goriest work, and also the most blatantly plotless, mainly because it had to be filmed in five days before his start left to work in the Peace Corps. Class warfare becomes hands-on when a couple of hillbillies from Texas (Arkansas would have been more believable for this brand of yokel) who’ve been doing yard work for New York yuppies decide to start killing them instead. One of the hillbillies has raccoon makeup around his eyes for some reason, and the other wears a rubber mask. They engage in nearly-constant, pointless mayhem, resulting in extreme gore effects of varying quality (at some points wads of cotton were used as intestines, and it looks more like somebody fishing for an aspirin than a disembowelment). There are decapitations, heads chopped open and pulled apart, one girl completely mangled to a pile of meat, and various bites, stabs, and gunshots. Many of the effects are deliberately fake-looking (such as the use of a blow-up doll) to keep the nastiness on a comic level. It’s more skillfully done than Schiff’s previous films (Weasels Ripped My Flesh and Long Island Cannibal Massacre) but that’s no endorsement, and this is mainly of interest to those who like backyard filmmaking or people who are very unparticular about where their chainsaw mayhem comes from. It’s fun for what it is.


Zero Hour! (B&W, 1957) It’s safe to consider this Airport ‘57, because it would fit into that series perfectly. Some bad fish served on a commercial flight incapacitates both pilots and many passengers. There’s a traumatized fighter pilot (Dana Andrews) on board, but he’s never flown a plane anywhere near that size and has avoided flying since the war because he caused his whole squadron to crash into the ground, but he’s still the best bet the passengers have. An old war buddy with no confidence in him (the great Sterling Hayden) has to try to talk him down (imagine Sterling Hayden trying to calm you!), but there are a lot of factors working against him, like fog, a storm, his own flashback-raddled nerves, and a time factor (the poisoned passengers -- including Dana’s son -- will die if they don’t get prompt treatment). This was the main movie sourced for parody by Airplane!, but it’s actually pretty intense stuff. It does lay the groundwork for some of the disaster movie cliches that would follow, but they’re not overbearing or silly here. Remade for TV as Terror in the Sky.



And here's comparisons with Airplane!

Stuff that is currently on my radar...

Pickt up Chuck Palahniuk's newest, Pygmy, last week + could not put it down. Sure, some nay-sayers claim that his schtick has worn a bit thin, but this book is better than his last coupla novels, + his ability to turn over the rocks of the psyche to expose alla them creepy lil' critters underneath is uncanny. This book is a first-person internal monolog as perspectivized by a sleeper terror-agent from an unnamed totalitarian state. The narrative lookt as if it would quickly become tedious, but instead I found myself trying not to think in the same fuckt-up pidgin as the narrator, "operative me."

The soundtrack to The Venture Brothers, featuring the music of J.G. Thirlwell (aka Foetus, Wiseblood, etc...) is easily lightyears ahead of any recent soundtracks. Thirlwell's wacky production careens from Morricone tribute to Space-Age Lounge, happily bouncing across the highlights of the wildly-broad filmscore genre. And a classy, classic-looking cover, to boot! (A slight aside, the promotional trailer for the upcoming + highly-anticipated Season 4 of VB, can be found here).

Final item: Today Disney announced that it has made an offer for Marvel Comics... As if the Bullpen's editorial staff's decisions weren't already hampered by an overabundance of shareholder-influenced suit-+-tie schmucks who don't read comics but love shitty comics-adaptations' box-office sales, now everyone's gonna be slaving away under the bloated white-gloved thumb (izzit really a thumb?) of the damn Mouse after he already shat on em over Howard the fuckin' Duck... (though honestly, whatever these evil companies are guilty of, they did provide us the opportunities to experience the wonderful works of Jack Kirby + Carl Barks. Almost makes up for alla the sins. Almost...)

Chemical warfare, SAMCRO, and more freakin' movie reviews

Greetings from the land of naturally-occurring chemical burns!

I spent some time this weekend in utter masochistic foolishness, going through the early stages of making hot pepper powder. I picked and sliced up a bunch of habanero and cayenne peppers, put them in a dehydrator, and will later grind them into powder. This sounds like an easy thing to do, right? Oh-no-no-no, my friends, it's anything but! Y'see, these peppers are hotter than Satan's ol' lady in thigh boots, and processing them is more dangerous than refining nitroglycerin. First I had to wrap all of my fingertips in masking tape, then put on surgical gloves. Surgical gloves alone aren't worth much; the pepper juice will eat right through it; this is some serious, serious shit. I forgot to use a face mask so I was soon pouring out snot all over my shirt, and even though I was reeeeeallly careful when I blew my nose a couple of times, I ended up with a bright red, burning nose-area, and the juice ate a hole through one of the thumbs of the glove, and that's the one finger I'd forgotten to masking-tape, so my thumb is STILL constantly burning like somebody's holding a lighter to it, a day later and after washing it about 1000 times in everything from soap and water to milk to alcohol to Noxema. Nothing gets the capsaicin off of you; it has to wear off. I can still put my thumb in my mouth and burn my tongue. And I'm really not looking forward to putting my contact lenses in tomorrow. This stuff is comprable to law-enforcement-grade pepper spray. I sneezed a lot, I vomited once, I roared profanities... but I got them lil' bastards in the dehydrator. And later I get to try to run them through a coffee grinder, which definitely requires a face mask and a well-ventilated area (probably the carport, if the ATF doesn't surround my house). It's like I've got my own meth lab, except legal, more dangerous, and... delicious! The resultant powder is righteous stuff, better than anything you can buy, which is the only reason I'm stupid enough to subject myself to this torment.

But I'd planned to do an entire bucket full, and now I think I'm probably gonna stop at just the one load. I'm gettin' too old for this Steve-O shit.

Anyway, more movie reviews this week. Plus one major TV show recommendation: Sons of Anarchy season 1 just came out on DVD, and you should pick it up. The new season starts on FX September 8, and you should watch that, too... just to see Henry Rollins playing a white supremacist, if nothing else. (Gotta be a hard role for Hank, because he's about the most anti-racist person you could imagine... he's got an anti-racism rant at the end of his You Saw Me Up There DVD that'll make you yell "Hell yeah!" even while it brings tears to your eyes). Anyway, Sons of Anarchy is probably the best thing on TV since The Shield, and if you know how much I love The Shield you'll know how high this praise is going. I got completely addicted to it and wasn't able to do much else for the week after I got the season 1 set. I've been addicted to many TV series -- The Sopranos, The Shield, Oz, Deadwood, The Wire, Lost, etc. -- and Sons of Anarchy ranks up there with the best of 'em, with the potential to be even better. It's based on Shakespeare's Hamlet in a vague way, with the young vice-president of SAMCRO (Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original chapter) coming into conflict with the president of the club (Ron Perlman) when he finds a manuscript his late father left behind, lamenting the criminal direction the club was taking. As the club's gun-dealing activities get them under the scrutiny of the ATF, bodies pile up, brotherhood gets strained, tragic stuff happens, and... fuck, dude, just watch the show, you will not regret it. It's worth buying the DVD set sight-unseen, just trust me on it. Katy Sagal will make you forget that she was ever Peg Bundy, and Charlie Hunnam will make you forget he's British (he's even got that white-trash walk down pat, and I've been seein' that all my life so I'd know if it didn't ring true!).







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Birthright (B&W, 1951) Educational hygiene film (with titty!) about the tragedy of a chicken farmer named John and his family. John’s not much better at raising chickens than he is at acting (and at acting he -- and everybody else in this film -- suh-uh-uh-uh-UUUCKS!) so he gets frustrated and goes out drinking one night and has a one-night-stand with a waitress who gives him VD. John raises spirokeets better than chickens and soon infects -- and impregnates -- his wife. She’s not big on doctor check-ups and doesn’t know she’s been be-clapped, so she’s incubating a VD baby! Luckily they get it tended to in time, and we’re treated to some graphic birth-of-a-baby footage, including a normal birth and a really excruciating-looking breech birth. The cast is made up of extremely rural Southerners who definitely aren’t professional actors; their terribleness gives this an almost surreal atmosphere.



Black Room, The (B&W, 1935) aka The Black Room Mystery. In one of his best movies, Boris Karloff plays ill-fated twins. One is kindly but has a paralyzed arm. The other is evil and rules over a village, oppressing the people and murdering local girls. The people have had about enough of his atrocities and are on the verge of revolt, so the evil brother abdicates the rule to the good brother and then murders him and hides his body in a pit in the castle’s Black Room. He then fakes having a bad arm and poses as the good brother, but continues his evil ways, even tricking a girl into marrying him. A family legacy is working against him, however. Excellent acting, good direction, and atmospheric cinematography make this classic Karloff.



Cremators, The (C, 1972) aka Dune Rollers. I’m not sure why I’m so fond of this dull, poorly-done sci-fi/horror schlocker, but I think it must be the narration and dialogue. It tries so hard to sound profound -- and fails so utterly -- that it’s almost like poetry. Edgar A. Guest poetry! A meteor falls, seen only by an Indian and a hammerhead shark (“He snapped greedily at the meteor as it fell. Quite reduced in size now, the fish swam away and, presently, he died. That was 300 years ago.”) Then in present times a hippie spends all his time running up and down the beach like an idiot. The narrator informs us that the sand dunes are “like vast creeping monsters, kept traveling around” and “the word ‘ecology’ became a warning note, as it left dead, lifeless things in its wake. Some, like Ian Thorne, sought the loneliness of the lake country and a last chance to turn the tide against the creeping death.” Even though the narrator makes it sound like Ian’s been killed by ecology, he hasn’t, and as he’s studying bugs and tide pools he finds some funny glowing rocks (“like someone’s drowned jewelry”). He hands a few out, and whoever has them gets chased by giant rolling fireballs which turn them to ash. Repeated footage of the wind blowing away a three-inch smiley-faced stick figure made of cigarette ashes follows each kill, and a couple of rusty fenders and a car frame are used to represent a burned car. Ian keeps studying the rocks and insects (a girl asks him “How come you’re so into bugs?” and he says “It’s what I want!” and then they go on about wanting to be “haunted by personal memories.” And then they discuss how they “curse at the pillow that’s wet, and you beat it out, trying to go back to sleep again.”) He finds some of the rocks inside the beach-hippie’s dead cat. He and a colleague decide this fireball is a mother trying to collect its baby rocks, and they have to find some way of appeasing it. Very low-budget and slow-moving, yet somehow likeable. Used to come on late-night TV, and the story it’s based on (“The Dune Roller” by Julian May) can be found in Alfred Hitchcock’s Stories Not For The Nervous. Oddly, the woman in this film (Maria de Aragon) played Greedo in Star Wars.

Cruising (C, 1980) Controversial, unjustly-panned neo-noir by William Friedkin following undercover cop Al Pacino into a personal hell as he infiltrates the homosexual leather bar scene, searching for the killer (or killers) who is knifing gay men and leaving dismembered corpses in the river. Pacino’s happily married, not gay, so he has to strike a careful balance of appearing to be part of the scene while not getting too involved in it. The psychological strain gets to be too much for him and he starts fearing that he may be gay, and even may be the killer. He can’t keep track of his own loss of identity and is stuck between worlds, and hunting down a killer has the same mechanics as stalking a victim. The identity of the killer is left unresolved, which dissatisfied some viewers, but that’s kind of the point -- there’s always a killer out there. Gay groups protested this film during production, trying to stop it by making lots of noise to drown out the dialogue and using reflectors to screw up the lighting. Critics also protested that the film made gay life look sleazy, violent, and ritualistic, but I think that’s a politically-correct, reactive criticism, since Friedkin is not dealing with gay life in general (and states this directly) -- he’s dealing with the leather bar SM subculture. I’m no expert, but any scene based on costumes and role play and scenarios is ritualistic (and so what?), clubs based around sex are sleazy (if they’re any good!), and sadomasochism -- gay or straight -- does have a dark, violent side, which is part of the appeal to the participants. I don’t know if Friedkin depicted that world accurately or not, but I don’t think he dealt unfairly with it in the context of a serial killer story, and the film doesn’t make any real statement on gays in general. Not being gay, I can’t say if any of it should be offensive to them or not, but I have gay friends and, from a sympathetic perspective, don’t think it should be. Pacino gives one of his best performances and handles a volatile role with a great degree of skill, and Friedkin’s direction is near masterpiece level, creating a unique, oppressive, threatening atmosphere, which any undercover-cop-seeking-out-a-serial-killer story should have, and leaves implications about Pacino’s character’s psyche open, and therefore universal. The film’s confrontational and likely to make you uncomfortable (especially if there’s any homophobe in you) but don’t movies about killers that don’t make you uncomfortable fail miserably? If this film had been made a few years later, it could look like a metaphor for AIDS -- a faceless, random killer with an identity that can’t definitely be pinned down. Now that the uproar has died down and time has passed, this film deserves critical re-evaluation, because it’s far too well made for the dismissive treatment it’s gotten from some reviewers (Mick Martin & Marsha Porter’s book was especially cowardly -- it’s controversial so they just ducked dealing with it at all -- just a condemnation with no detail.) Friedkin planned to use a lot of music from punk band The Germs, but ended up just using one song even though he became a big fan.




Devils, The (C, 1971) aka The Devils of Loudun. Crazed masterpiece from Ken Russell, adapting Aldous Huxley's novel, was the target of massive controversy and censorship. As a plague ravages the French city of Loudon and Protestants are being persecuted, narcissistic priest Urban Grandier (Oliver Reed) lives like a libertine, indulging his lusts with women and exerting a lot of political power, which puts him in the way of the ambitious Cardinal Richelieu. A hunchbacked and sexually-frustrated nun (Vanessa Redgrave) is so overwhelmed with lust for Grandier that she suffers blasphemous visions of sex with him, in which he assumes the guise of Christ. Richelieu exploits Redgrave's erotomania to make it look like Grandier is some sort of incubus who’s gotten the whole convent possessed by demons. In short order nuns are letting all their repressions go and enacting blasphemous orgies, including the mass sexual assault of a giant crucifix. A fanatical witchhunter/ exorcist drives the whole spectacle, and a pair of demented “medical men” use it as an opportunity to try all sorts of vile experiments to drive out the demons (earlier Grandier had stopped them from torturing plague victims with hornets as a “cure”). Grandier is falsely accused and tortured while Richelieu’s government has its way with the city, no longer under Grandier’s protection. There’s plenty of substance but style is clearly Russell’s preoccupation, setting up an atmosphere of hallucinatory madness right from the start and then seeing how far he can push it, until the movie’s just a circus of debauchery, gore, and blasphemous images. Staunch Catholics won’t be pleased, but lapsed Catholics may be delighted. The film has been notoriously hard to find in uncut form; even the “uncut” bootleg DVD (from EuroCult) is missing a few scenes, supposedly, although I can’t verify that those scenes were ever actually included in any legitimate print. The quality of that DVD is nowhere near as poor as rumors would lead you to believe, although an upgrade would still be welcome; Warner Brothers has had this listed as an upcoming release for almost a decade now, but keeps chickening out in fear of a church backlash. Religion ruins everything.








Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (C, 1970) aka Le Foto Proibite di una Signora per Bene. Pretty Dagmar Lassander is almost raped one night by a sadistic jerk, but at the last minute he leaves, saying he’ll be back for her later. She becomes obsessed with him, and eventually he contacts her again, blackmailing her for sex in exchange for an audiotape that implicates her husband in a murder. After that he blackmails her with threats to send her husband photos taken during the first blackmailing session. Rather than falling for that again, she ‘fesses up to her husband... but that results in new kinds of trouble, with the blackmailer still stalking her and her husband thinking she hallucinated it all in the midst of some neurotic breakdown. The ending isn’t any big surprise, and this giallo is more preoccupied with sex than violence (it’s nearly completely bloodless), but it’s stylish enough (thanks to Luciano Ercoli’s direction) and has a decent Ennio Morricone score, so it’s worth watching despite not being A-list giallo material.



Gits, The (C, 2005) aka The Gits Movie. Well done documentary on the great punk/grunge punk band and the tragic murder of their lead singer, Mia Zapata. It’s great seeing footage of Mia and hearing people talk about her, but it’ll also bum you out and make you really angry at the bastard who killed her and robbed the world of her incredible talent. The first half is concerned with the rise of the band, its influence, and its success (they were just about to go to a major label). The second half deals with the murder, its effects (it pretty much destroyed the whole local scene), and the hunt for the killer, who was eventually caught by a lucky DNA match. Very engrossing throughout, with some of the best music you’ll ever hear, but all that coolness will make you feel the real weight of the loss that followed, and it’s a damn heavy one.











God Forgives... I Don’t (C, 1967) aka Dio Perdona... Io No!, He Never Forgives, Blood River, God Forgives... I’m not fond of cream pies in my spaghetti, so I’ve never been all that drawn toward the Terrence Hill/Bud Spencer Westerns. This one, though, isn’t a comedy or a parody, so I was much more inclined to check it out. Unfortunately, the plot is so overly-convoluted and hard to follow that it’s pretty uninvolving. Hill is a gambler and Bud is an agent for an insurance company. They team up to find the gold some bad guys robbed from a train, where all the passengers on board were slaughtered. They find it and hide it, but then the train robber (whom Hill had thought he’d killed) catches them and tries to make them tell where the gold is hidden by repeatedly dropping Hill down a well. They also torture Bud with a red-hot iron. Finally Hill leads one of the bad guys to the gold, but he pulls a trick and kills him, then calls the train robber out for a showdown. Meanwhile, Bud is breaking loose and planning some revenge of his own. Plenty of violence, but not much style, and is a little tedious. The DVD is overpriced, struck full-screen from a mediocre print. Spaghetti Western fanatics only.



Home Room (C, 2002) Excellent, underrated (in fact, almost unnoticed) and very well-written drama set in the aftermath of a school shooting. While the school is closed for mourning, the principal demands that a highly-antisocial goth girl (Busy Philipps from TV’s Dawson’s Creek) go spend time with a lonely student (Erika Christensen) recuperating in the hospital. Christensen is a brain whose intelligence intimidates the other students, so even though she has a sunny personality, she doesn’t have many friends. Philipps is a very smart bookworm, but her contemptuous attitude is causing her to flunk out, and she has no friends and doesn’t want any. In fact, the only person she ever even talked to was the school shooter, and she’s under investigation by the police. This odd couple does manage to bond, somewhat, and the role of Philipps in the shooting becomes clear. They also come to some understanding of what was behind the shooting and what it means, and also what turned Philipps into such a hostile, alienated weirdo. The budget for this indie film was pretty low but the production values are good, and the actors are good and have been given a smart, thoughtful script that examines things but wisely doesn’t try to provide too many answers to things that probably aren’t explainable, anyway. It manages to avoid being trite or superficial, while most movies with this kind of storyline wouldn’t be able to avoid that trap. A perfect example of why it pays to “dumpster-dive” the $3 racks at BigLots.

Watch the whole thing online starting here.



Long Island Cannibal Massacre (C, 1980) No-budget backyard production from teenage gore-monger Nathan Schiff, this rinky-dink bloodfeast involves a cop investigating a series of killings on Long Island. A biker and his buddy with a pillowcase over his head murder people and gives parts to a guy who looks like Jim Croche, because he needs the meat to feed his cannibalistic leper father, who looks like one of the monsters off an old cover of a Terror Tales comic book. Other leprosy is simulated with heavy applications of peanut butter. And that’s about all that passes for a plot, which nobody’s watching this movie for anyway. The gore is very splashy but amateurishly done, Andy Milligan style (Schiff even uses a lot of the same stock music Milligan did, I guess as an acknowledgement), and includes a head run over by a lawnmower, disembowelment, gut-gnawing (including some done by 10-year-old girls!), tongues ripped out, smashed faces, heads squished in car doors, impalement, and a climactic chainsaw fight which looks incredibly dangerous and does include some impressive dismemberment effects (even though the victims lie rigidly still as their parts are sliced off). This never looks like anything but a home movie, shot in 8mm, and it’s not particularly compelling; in fact, it’s pretty dull for the most part and is mainly interesting as an example of what one can accomplish with almost no money but lots of slaughterhouse leftovers and fake blood.



Malibu High (C, 1979) aka Death In Denim, High School Hit Girl, Lovely But Deadly. Some real sleazy nastiness stealthed in under a title that leads you to believe it’s going to be some fun teen comedy. Kim’s boyfriend Kevin dumps her because she’s a chunky, not-particularly-pretty bitch with a gruesome one-piece-bathing-suit tan and a crappy, sullen attitude. She’s also pretty dumb and drinks and smokes pot, so she’s flunking out of school. Also, her mother nags her a lot, and her father hung himself. Deciding to get back at everybody and solve her grade and money problems, Kim decides to become a hooker. She goes to work for a pimp named Tony, a Steve Buscemi-type guy who does his business from a van with flower print upholstery that’ll make you look at blindness as a fringe benefit. She pulls trains of customers and blackmails her teachers for A’s. Every time she does something especially shocking, there’s a burst of music that sounds a lot like the old PBS logo theme. She soon drops Tony for a higher-class pimp, who manages to get her to do assassinations instead of turning tricks! Soon our young sociopath is piling up bodies, even taunting her principal into a heart attack when he starts questioning her grades. Even grindhouse trash has a sense of morality, though, so you know Kim is headed for big, well-deserved trouble. No movie that’s entertaining can really be called “bad” in my book, and this surprising cheapie is highly entertaining and far better than I expected, but the acting is pretty awful (everybody seems to be shouting to compensate for budget sound equipment), and the whole thing is unintentionally hilarious. There’s some blood, nudity, and mile softcore sex to keep the sleaze factor high.

Watch the whole thing online starting here.

Severed Arm, The (C, 1973) Some spelunkers exploring an old mine cause a cave-in and are trapped for a couple of weeks with no food and very little water. They finally resort to cannibalism, and rather than killing anyone, they just slice an arm off of one of their friends, Ted. Immediately afterward they hear diggers coming to rescue them. Ted, gone crazy from the ordeal, is sent to an asylum. Years later one of the cavers gets a corpse’s arm in the mail, and soon someone with a hatchet is stalking them all, taking an arm from each of them. One of them is an obnoxious radio personality named “Madman Herman” (played by Marvin Kaplan, the neurotic telephone repairman from TV’s Alice); he tells the unfunniest jokes since the non-legendary “Maddog Bonner,” who you’ve never heard of and for good reason. The potential victims band together to try to stop Ted before he dis-arms them all. They try to get help from Ted’s daughter, but they’re still driven to near panic by Ted’s unstoppable quest for revenge, which leads to a very bleak, morbid-in-its-implications climax. There are rumors that this movie is gory in its uncut form, but all the versions circulating on DVD are fairly tame, which just a few mildly graphic scenes. The old Video Gems videotape is reportedly uncut, but it’s pretty hard to find and supposedly doesn’t have much more gore -- just a shot of Madman Herman’s arm lying in his lap. In any case, it’s very low-budget but has a weird, cheap atmosphere I’ve always liked. You have to give it credit for being different.

Watch the whole thing online here.

Signs (C, 2002) Very entertaining, very well-made, and incredibly, unbelievably stupid alien invasion movie from apparently-only-had-one-really-good-one-in-him auteur M. Night Shyamalan. Ex-pastor Mel Gibson and his family find crop circles in their cornfield and discover they’re not the only ones, because it’s happening all over the world as aliens are linking up landing zones for an invasion. It’s fairly intense and has some scary moments, but it’s also weighted down by so many over-the-top contrivances that really makes its simpleminded message about the importance of believing in God hilarious. Instead of being an effective scary movie, this heavy-handed treat-the-audience-like-idiots attempt at drippy message-sending turns into something resembling a very special Halloween episode of Touched By An Angel or something. It’s realism is also compromised by way too much silliness, with all the tinfoil-hat business and such. Shyamalan is turning out to have the movie-making talent of a Speilberg, but the ideas of an Ed Wood. It’s sub-moronic but it’s entertaining, even if you have to grit your teeth at some of the kill-a-diabetic manipulation (I dare you to get through the “did I ever tell you how you were born” bits without rolling your eyes! I defy you! And no fair stabbing a screwdriver into your cerebral cortex!). Shyamalan’s next, The Village - one of the absolute worst big-budget movies ever made -- makes this look like a masterpiece, though, as it takes his “Hallmark Channel” complex even further down the road to Pussyville.



We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen (C, 2005) Nice, made-with-love documentary on oddball punk band The Minutemen that was a long-planned project by some guys who were big fans. Lots of good vintage live footage that’s kind of surprising; I didn’t know so much of their stuff had been filmed, and luckily there’s also an extensive interview from the D. Boon days. Just about every big name in the 80’s California punk scene appears, giving props to the band. Some (Henry Rollins and other Black Flag members, Jello Biafra, Keith Morris) appear too briefly. Mike Watt gets to talk a lot, driving a van around to historic sites (which are mostly gone now, turned into Pet Smarts or apartment buildings), and drummer George Hurst is interviewed separately. The band’s history, impact, and significance are all well covered. The DVD also includes several live shows, which are worth the price by themselves. Even if the Minutemen aren’t your favorite band (they’re not mine -- I have lots of respect for them and love them lots, but my taste runs toward less-jazzy (and admittedly less musically competent) hardcore), this is a very well-done, compulsively-watchable documentary, not only on an important band but on the DIY ethic, and collaboration in general.






This isn't included in the DVD, but has to be one of the funniest videos, for one of the best songs, ever.