Fermented Blog

A Million Dollar Opportunity: Invest in The Next Step in Social Networking: FAXTER

2011-01-10T09:59:00.000-08:00

By Michael Gibbons

With the recent success of internet, online, e-friend communities like Friendster and the Wizards Community, I have devised the next level of e-friendship. I call it Faxter. In the ever-changing world of computers, many people are left out in the cold. One minute it is "Ya gotta buy Windows 98" and the next its "Jeez, you haven't seen Snow Leopard yet?" Over the past 15 years, computers have risen in prominence while constantly changing and reinventing the wheel, so to speak. What is one constant throughout this revolutionary process? The fax machine. Fax machines are forever. No worrying about cards, mouse pads, mice, the fax machine you bought in 1995 is just as important and relevant as the day it was when you bought it from Tweeter (for times like these.)
With funding from The Brother company and Circuit City, I have devised a brilliant new system for e-fax users to stay in touch. I call it Faxter. For fax machine owners to register, they fax me their information. I add their stats to the Faxter users registry, which will be in the form of several hundred thousand 3-Ring binders, which will be more or less in alphabetical order here at the Faxter headquarters, located in an abandoned airplane hangar in Las Cruces, New Mexico. (I am using future tense, as the company hasn't launched yet, as several million dollars in startup costs will be needed.) Name, height, weight, fax number and a black and white head shot are required on this initial document, as is your signature and a witness signature.
Once your information is filed away in the right binder (example, if your name is "Bill Washington", I would file you in binder W-FRID1- 146. Translation: W- your last initial, FRID1 - Faxter Registry Information Document 1, and binder number 146. That binder number is number 146 for the letter 'W'! An example of how huge our usership will be.)
Now comes the fun part! Every other Faxter user is alerted every time a new person joins our community! So, if there were say, 200 million members, I would send out 200 million faxes with your information! This way, old friends can find you, and new friends who you haven't met yet can contact you about being your faxters! Pardon the slang, but "faxters" are the names of people who use Faxter.
Due to the large amount of administrative work I will have to oversee here in the hangar, a membership fee of $89.99 will be required. But, here's where it gets fun. For an extra fee of $29.99, you can list your interest, sexual preference, work and school info and even extra black and white photos to your initial fax! For each additional interest, there will be a $4.99 processing fee. This way, for example, if you are a man who likes women and is single, and you list yourself as being into pizza pie, a single woman who likes men and pizza pie will be contacted, via fax. As you can imagine, the huge amount of paperwork and cross referencing that will be required makes the fee of $29.99 quite a bargain. You might meet the love of your life!

Artist's rendition of me collating Faxter data.

Now, here's where it gets fun. Its recommended for each Faxter user to dedicate a wall of their home to be their Faxter wall. The ideal set-up for your Faxter wall would have a large cork bulletin board to which you can thumbtack manilla envelopes containing information about your 'faxters'! Just write the name of each fax-friend on the envelope, or, you could make a copy of their black and white head shot and attach it to the front of the envelope using glue or my preferred method, Scotch tape. Every time a faxter updates their info, you will recieve a fax. Then you simply add that fax to that person's manilla envelope.
Another great part of being part of the Faxter e-fax community is the great deal notification faxes you will receive. Say, for example, you list one of your interests as 'Pizza Pie', your information will be passed on to our marketing department, who notify all the fax-ready pizza parlors in your area, so that they can fax you when they have meal deals and the like.
One great thing about Faxter is that anyone can use it. You don't need a computer, and you don't even need a fax machine. Does your uncle have one? You can use his. Or just go to Staples or the local library or a Radio Shack and use their fax machines to fax your faxters and keep your status updated.
If the entire internet was destroyed by some catastrophe or super-virus, Faxter would still be operational, so its a great idea moving forward in these troubled times. If for whatever reason, you wish to cancel your Faxter account, your information will be shredded and burned in our industrial processing center located in Gary, Indiana.
The Brother company and Circuit City have helped fund my research, but much startup money is still needed. Invest in Faxter today and be part of the next level of E-friendship! For a nominal fee of $19.99, I will send all prospective investors a 50 page overview of the business, via fax.
Michael Gibbons' Fax number is available on request for prospective investors.

Short Fiction: BOG

2010-10-31T16:37:00.000-07:00

[Here's a short story I wrote for Halloween. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! If you are walking by a cranberry bog at night and you hear something strange... run.]

BOG
By Michael Gibbons

Andy didn't want to be out in the woods so early. He didn't want to be in the woods at all. It was still dark out, around 4 a.m. on a crisp October morning. The sky was clear of clouds, the air was dry. His breath wafted up into the still morning air like he was an industrial smokestack, up like smog towards the brilliant ceiling of stars and out of sight. He felt out of place in the pre-dawn stillness, an interloper in a strange and foreign natural world. In these woods, however, the time to jack a deer was early in the morning. It wasn't yet shotgun season, but seasons and licenses meant little to Andy. He had to kill something large as soon as possible or...
Or what? He thought. The old lady, if the wrinkled thing in the rags was in fact female, had told him that he absolutely HAD to kill something big and fresh. His life depended on it. More than his life, she had said, he guessed she meant his soul. He had never really been religious, he went to church because it made his mom happy and he basically stopped going once the alcohol and weed kicked in around his Junior year of high school. He never had reason to believe in such things as souls and spirits and God and The Devil, but that was before it happened.
Before it happened. His entire perception of the world and his place in it, everything from the big guy in the sky down to the dirt below his feet was altered after the events of last Saturday night. What he had seen with his own eyes made his worst collegiate acid trips look like a G-Rated family film. He almost wished he had been on drugs so that he could chalk what he saw up to them. He had been a little tipsy beforehand, but as soon as he saw the Blue Man emerge out of the mist in the cranberry bog, he was rendered sober.
The Blue Man, he thought. The name had already taken on the air of a legend in his mind. Capital letters. Big, Important. The mere thought of what he had seen had driven him into a quagmire of fear and anxiety, and ever since that night, he thought of it constantly. He hadn't been doing much sleeping since last Saturday night. His immediate reaction to this trauma was to drink enough whiskey to drown a horse. For all those country songs about drinking to forget and dull the pain, Andy found it didn't work. Even in a besotted state, his mind played the scene over and over like some perverted highlight reel. Like ESPN Sporscenter in the 9th ring of Hell.
Thick mist down in the bog. Andy walking back from the bar, marvelling at how creepy it looked in the moonlight, like something from an old horror movie. Then, the sounds. Gasping. Grunting. Water splashing. He thought maybe it was a deer in rut acting crazy out there. He didn't hear yips and barks, so he ruled out coyotes. He had to see what was making this noise. He creeped down the embankment a bit, hoping that he wasn't making enough noise to alert whatever was out there to his presence. The sounds changed then, the sound of heavy footsteps sloshing through the bog. Towards him. Whatever was out there had two feet. That's when he started to get scared. He ran back up the embankment and looked down. The vague shape of a man, only it wasn't quite right. Drooped over, with long arms swaying by its sides. With each approaching step it became a little bit clearer. More nightmare details to behold. He could tell that it wasn't an ordinary person. He knew that even before it had fully broken through the mist. It had to be at least seven feet tall, even in its drooped over state. Its skin was a shade of grayish blue. Its eyes, those were the worst part of it. It looked right at him and its eyes burned through him, heavy lidded obsidian orbs that twinkled in the moonlight. That's when he screamed. He ran as fast as he could in the direction of his house. He could hear other voices out in the bog, yelling in some bizarre foreign tongue, in cracked, gravelly voices. Their voices seemed to bounce around the inside of his head. No matter how far he ran, they were just as loud. He lost his mind right then...
That's the funny thing about losing your mind, Andy thought later. If you've never lost it, you never know what its like. The comforting blanket of reality that we keep ourselves comfy in ripped away in a second. There was a literal feeling of falling, like the floor below him had given out. The forest became an infinite carnival funhouse, with horrors of unimaginable pain tucked in every shadow. He ran, and screamed until his lungs burned and his eyes shed tears. He didn't feel the pain, however. He was in the cradling arms of extreme shock. His mind still echoed with the voices in that unfamiliar language. Beyond the indescribable nature of the words, the voices themselves did not sound human. They sounded older and stranger than any person he'd ever heard. They sounded mad, too. He got to his house, locked the doors and windows, loaded his shotgun with slugs and proceeded to sit in the dark in the second floor bathroom, which provided the best view of the woods and drank whiskey while staring out the window. He sat there all night, and was only able to get about an hour of sleep once the sun came out the next day. Even in his drunken stupor, he could not relax enough to sleep until the sun was shining. He knew somehow, that whatever The Blue Man was, and whatever was shouting out in the bog, would not come out in the sunshine. Somebody else would have seen it by now, he reckoned.
His life in the ensuing week took a painfully predictable plunge into hell. He couldn't sleep, so he drank. He couldn't go to work drunk, so he was fired. His ex-wife and his two children wondered what had happened to him. She informed him to stop calling her after about the 200th drunken phone call. She threatened to go to the police. She was scared of him already. The marriage had ended badly, he had slapped her and swore at her as she left with the kids to stay at Jeff's house, the man she had been cheating on him with. Andy had a booze problem, and an anger problem. Jeff was a laid back artist, the decision was clear. The kids had been sad, they loved their father, at ages 4 and 6, they were a little too young to have such low opinions of him as their mother did. So when he started calling her, leaving frantic voicemails at 4 a.m. about voices in his head and things he saw in the bog, she was justifiably terrified. He had gone off the deep end. She felt sorry for the children. They might not see their father for a long time.
The worst part of it for him, more than losing his job, his family and his sanity, were the voices. They rattled around in his head all day and night. He blasted music, but they were still there. Even heavy metal couldn't dislodge them. The neighbors were scared, as he looked just as out of control as he was. The cops were called after one drunken night where he had started screaming and breaking things in the house. It was the voices. They made him very mad. The cop that arrived was an old acquantance of Andy's. They had gone to school together. So he went easy on Andy, figuring that it must be living alone in his house and shelling out tons of money in alimony and child support that was driving him to such behavior. That and the fact that he was visibly intoxicated. So he told Andy to drink some water, get some rest and quite down. The cop, Jim Nickerson, was frightened by what he saw in Andy's eyes. He wouldn't be surprised if he had to come out here some night and help clean up Andy's brains after the poor bastard blew them out of his own head.
Around the 7th day of Andy's self-imposed exile and ever strengthening insanity, the old woman arrived at his doorstep. A hunched over thing, dressed in rags, holding itself up with a cane. He peered through the window at it, unable to decide whether to answer the rapping of its cane on the door, or tell it to get lost or to simply hide and pretend that it wasn't there. What the hell, things can't get much worse, he thought as he opened the door.
One milky cataract covered eye glared up at him, and even though it looked blind, he could tell that it was looking at him.
"You need my help," the rag covered thing said in a ragged, dry whisper.
"Uh, excuse me?" He asked.
"I know that you saw them. I can hear their voices in your head."
Andy's face cracked, and his eyes welled up with tears.
"Come in," he said.
The rag thing shambled into his kitchen and sat at the table. Andy poured himself a bourbon, neat, and offered some to it. It obliged and revealed its mouth full of rotten, yellow teeth when it took its first sip.
"I know things. I see things. Not everyone can see me. I have been a part of this town for longer than most people here have been alive. I know about the bog, and about the Kraggs."
"Who are the Kraggs? Are those the.... things I saw?" He asked the question like it pained him.
"No, the things you saw, those things have no name. The Kraggs worship them. The Kraggs are all dead in a sense, but they worship those things still. They are held by a pact stronger than life and death. Nobody but the Kraggs is allowed to see those things from the bog. You are dead, already."
"What the hell do you mean? I'm talking to you, aren't I?"
"Yes, but they have talked to you. The white man was never meant to hear them. They are talking to you right now, I can hear them in your head. They will drive you to your death. It is far worse than a spell, you would never be able to fathom such a thing."
"So, you show up to tell me that these voices of these things with no name will make me kill myself, eh?" His voice rose and slammed his fist as hard as he could into the table, making their whiskey glasses jump.
"TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T KNOW! I've wanted to blow my brains out ever since these VOICES got inside my head! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!"
It was silent for a moment as it watched Andy stare at the table, his whole body moving up and down with the rhythm of his quick breaths. His eyes burned with pain and were bright red and glossed over.
"There is only one way to reverse this curse. I am not sure that it will work, but it is the only chance you have. First, you must kill something large. A deer might work..."
Then it told him all the strange and foreign words he was supposed to say, words that sounded oddly familiar to him, where to put the entrails and where to sprinkle the blood and what to do with the heart. He couldn't believe what he was hearing, but he knew that this was his last chance. If he had to go one more day with the damn voices bouncing around in his head, he would end his life. After the thing finished with its speech, he went to get the bottle of whiskey. When he returned to the kitchen, the thing was gone.
He stayed up all night studying his notes, preparing for what he had to do. And here he was, out in the woods, trying to find a nice big deer. He thought for a second about the insane blind corner his life had taken. One minute you're walking home from the bar with a 5 beer buzz, thinking about the hot British woman you had been talking to over your Sam Adams, feeling like an idiot for not getting her number, and the next you are running screaming from seeing something that simply couldn't and shouldn't exist, your head full of voices that belonged not on this planet, let alone in the confines of your skull. It was like getting the floor pulled out from under you, falling into an abyss of madness and confusion.
And there it was. Silent as a ghost, a large 6 point buck seemed to appear in a small clearing not even 30 feet from where he stood. It looked around, snorted, and seemed completely and totally comfortable with itself and its domain. Andy silently offered a prayer of thanks to the deer, raised his shotgun and aimed. The strange and foreign voices in his head seemed to raise in volume and become more excited. As if they could tell that he was about to kill something. His head felt like it was going to explode. His eyes watered and he tried not to cry out in pain. He bit his tongue and pulled the trigger. Time seemed to stop as the voices crescendoed into a wave of evil noise in his head. The buck's eye exploded as the 12 gauge slug tore through its head, spraying brains, blood, eyes and bone fragments for ten feet into the forest. It immediately fell, as did Andy. The voices then faded to a whisper, and even though he could not understand the words, he knew they were commanding him. His conscious thought stopped as he rose up like a marionette puppet, jerky and stiff. He stumbled through the brush, not pushing branches and prickers out of his way. He had cuts all over his face by the time he reached the deer.
His eyes were glazed over as he reached to his waistline and pulled his knife from its scabbard. He held the knife above his head for a moment, then bent down and thrust the knife into the deers belly, ripping downward, towards its crotch. Foul smelling gases rose from the deer, and it made an obscene farting sound as a revolting mixture of food remnants, stomach acids and black blood poured from the jagged incision. Specks of blood spattered Andy's face as he worked, but his expression remained neutral. He pulled the intestines out and they lay steaming in a coil at his feet. He cut out the heart, held it in front of his face for a moment. The voices sounded very excited. He scooped up the entrails and walked toward the bog, leaving the carcass and his shotgun behind.
He walked down the embankment, the entrails dragging behind him through the brush. At one point a coil of intestine snagged itself on a small pine tree sapling. Andy still shuffling ahead, looking very much like a zombie, what with the glazed over eyes, slack expression and gore soaked face. He almost fell as the intestine pulled back on his arm. He grunted and tugged on the rope of intestine until it came free, then continued his perverse morning stroll to the bog.
He stepped into the foot high water and started arranging the intestines atop the cranberry bushes. Once he was finished, he had a circle of about 6 foot circumference made out of the bloody entrails. He stepped into the circle, held the heart above his face and looked toward the sky. Blood dripped from the heart onto his face as he began to chant in a voice that sounded disembodied and nothing like his own. The words were in the same tongue of the voices in his head. But now, it seemed, that those voices had become his voice.
As the blood dripped into his face, he didn't flinch. Great streams of it covered his face as he began squeezing the heart. The incantations began to rise in volume and urgency. A thick fog rose from the bog with incredible speed, billowing and filling the area within seconds. As he continued to shout, or rather, as the voices continued to shout, figures began to approach Andy and his circle from all different directions. The voices finished their bizarre chant and Andy lowered the heart to his mouth, which opened and proceeded to bite into the tissue. Black arterial blood poured down his throat and overflowed from his lips and down his neck. And there it was. The Blue Man. Standing right outside the circle. The voices in his head went silent as its bizarre, oversized eyes cored into Andy's, burning into his brain. It was as if the eyes bored into his consciousness and saw everything in his head. The thing's face remained expressionless, but its eyes glimmered with a hint of a smile.
Andy's consciousness returned and the fear was all encompassing. But he found he could not cry out, he couldn't run, though every impulse in his body told him to flee. He was completely under the control of the Blue Man. It showed him things that were unimaginable, visions of suffering and desperation, evil images of men, women and children dying at its feet, and of other things that no mortal human being could even begin to comprehend. Visions of a void worse than hell, that extended for infinity. Andy began to shake and foam at the mouth, the foam red with deer blood. The things eyes glimmered with a hint of glee as it saw the extreme pain these visions gave Andy. Somehow it spoke to Andy in his mind with words not in human tongue. But Andy could understand.
You will serve. You will join. You will never leave.
The other figures approached the circle, and they all were the same grayish blue color. They looked like they had been human once, natives of this soil from hundreds and thousands of years before. Their black eyes, also oversized and endless, gazed into him, through him.
They all began to speak inside his head in their strange, soulless tongue.
You will serve. You will join. You will never leave.
Andy's mind, which now occupied some small corner of his consciousness realized that this was what the voices had been saying all along, since the night he first saw the Blue Man.
As he shook and gyrated in a frenzy, the old woman who had visited him appeared out of the mist. She cackled and pointed at him. He realized that he was damned, that somehow that woman was in league with these things. As he watched, she changed, her nose, brow and ears growing longer and distended. She became not an old woman, but an old thing, eyes aglow with shimmering yellow light. Her cackling became a roar as the circle of intestines began to glow with white light.
The circle dropped out below Andy, and he stood in air, over a black tunnel that appeared endless and without walls. It was like a hole into another dimension, like someone had just bored through everything in creation with some cosmic drill. The things repeated their chant over and over.
You will serve. You will join. You will never leave.
Then Andy fell. He fell forever, his screams were soundless as air did not exist in his new home. Nor did time, gravity or light, but he still felt like he was falling. The hole into the world closed above him. The only thing that existed still was his soul, his mind was gone, as was vision and hearing. But in that endless blackness, the life that flowed through his veins existed, as did the knowledge that he was a servant, that his energy was feeding something foul and evil against his will. They had shown themselves to him and spoken to him for it was his fate to serve them. And his energy flowed through the Blue Man, and the Old Woman Thing and the Natives, which were members of a lost tribe named the Kraggs, as did the energy of thousands of other beings, all lost spirits serving an endless master, a force more powerful than death.

Orleans Man Missing
Andy MacGowan, an Orleans man who was recently fired from his job at Cape Cod Academy, has been reported missing. His estranged wife, Deborah Hill, told the Times that she has not heard from him for weeks, since he called her and complained to her of "hearing voices." The Orleans Police had been called to his residence on Child's Homestead Road several times recently for noise complaints from his neighbors. One neighbor, who wished to remain anonymous says, "He was getting really crazy. Breaking stuff in his house, drinking all the time, screaming and yelling. It was almost like he was speaking in tongues."
Police are asking for any tips leading to MacGowan's whereabouts and they have not ruled out suicide.
"Andy was a friend of mine, and he was a good guy, if somewhat troubled. If you are reading this, Andy, please contact us and let us know that you are okay so we can stop our search for you," says Officer Jim Nickerson.
MacGowan is 6 feet tall with dark brown hair and sometimes wears a goatee. If you think you have seen him or have any information on his location, please contact the Orleans Police at 508-555-0110.
-Cape Cod Times, October 31st, 2010.

The Godfather of Gore

2010-10-11T17:30:00.001-07:00

Check out my article about all things Herschell Gordon Lewis over at cinespect: The Godfather of Gore.

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

2010-10-04T09:19:00.000-07:00

This incredible documentary has its premiere tomorrow night at 9 p.m. on PBS, I highly recommend that you watch it! Check out my review for cinespect.com!!!

Male Growth Hormone Cinema

2010-08-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

Check out my review of 'The Expendables' over at cinespect.com:

http://cinespect.com/male-growth-hormone-cinema/

Crispin Glover, Live and In Person, New York City, Memorial Day, 2010

2010-06-03T17:01:00.001-07:00

This whole marquee was actually just for Crispin, he is now going by "The Father of My Children, The Human Centipede: Crispin Glover".

My girlfriend and I love Crispin Glover. His nervous, awkward, bizarre charm always makes anything that he appears in more fun or more disturbing. From his brilliant, ultra-manic performance in "River's Edge" to his brilliant, ultra-manic dance moves in "Friday the 13th Part IV - The Final Chapter", to his legendary 1987 appearance on Late Night With David Letterman, the man is basically a human highlight real. He'll show up in a huge blockbuster like "Charlie's Angels" and make it way cooler just by smelling the Angel's hair (which we will talk about later.) Beyond his inspired work in movies, both major and indie, he is a truly subversive intellectual and some would even say deranged and/or brilliant artist.

I'd heard about "What Is It?" for years. A crazed art film with a cast made completely of people with developmental disabilities and Crispin. I didn't know how I felt about it. I respected Glover for making movies that nobody else would ever make in Hollywood (or elsewhere, for that matter), but I also wasn't too sure about his approach. If it was exploitative of the actor's conditions, I couldn't support it. If it was just meant to freak people out, still can't really get behind that. I decided I would never really know how I felt until I saw the film.

A few weeks ago, my girlfriend were doing a random google search for Crispin Glover, and there it was: "Crispin Hellion Glover: Appearing Live at the IFC Center, Manhattan to present "What Is It?" and "It Is Fine! Everything is Fine." We both had the day off, so we bought our tickets to see "It Is Fine!". What we got was definitely not what we expected.

A long line on a rainy Manhattan sidewalk on a sweaty Memorial Day, mostly made up of hipsters and artsy looking folk, and strangely enough some extremely drunk frat looking kids. After a long wait, we filed into the theater. The lights go down. A door near the screen opens and I catch the distinct profile of Crispin Glover. Myself and a few others that caught his profile cheer. He shouts "Welcome!" in the dark then proceeds to read six of his art books from giant projections on the screen. They are visually interesting and wild, sometimes funny, sometimes just weird and sometimes scary. This goes on for quite a while. Glover never relents in his dramatic delivery. Shouting, shaking his fists, sweat pouring off of him. He finishes. The crowd cheers, then he shouts 'Enjoy The film!'

The dramatic opening thundering classical music blares and the title credits roll. The first time we see lead character, Paul Baker, played by Steven C. Stewart, he is falling from his wheelchair, his head smacks the institutional linoleum and an old, demented looking woman stares at him. We enter his world as an orderly lifts him back into his chair. He wheels to a room where the theme music starts skipping on a record player and he stares at a picture of what we can assume is his mother.
Stewart had severe cerebral palsy and can't really communicate verbally, though he tries.

This film completely surprised me. At first, I thought it was a sympathetic view of a man with a horrible disease, but I had no idea what I was in for. This turns into a deranged, psycho-sexual serial killer film where the killer in question has severe cerebral palsy. I was incredibly disturbed as the sex killings ramped up. I couldn't help but think that Glover was a completely demented person responsible for one of the most deeply fucked up films I had ever seen. In my heart, I knew that this couldn't just be exploitative trash, but the images are so incredibly strong and deeply disturbing that I couldn't handle it at some points. I haven't covered my eyes at a film since I was 11 at 'Predator 2'. This film actually made me feel sick while I was watching it.

I was actually tempted to leave at the end of the film, but I wanted to see how Glover would explain himself. As the credits ended, Glover jumped up in the still dark theater and yelled 'Any questions?' in a somewhat sardonic tone. Everyone cheered. A Crispin Glover Q and A is more like a Q and then he rambles for about a half hour, then a Q. This technique proved to be excellent, however, because Glover completely explained the entire movie, his philosophy on art and culture, how to be an outsider while still being inside the corporately funded film industry and basically everything else that came into his impressive mind.

Turns out, this film wasn't even Glover's idea. He read the screenplay, written by Steven C. Stewart, the main actor in the film. Glover was impressed and knew that only he could make the film happen. He flew out to Salt Lake City and met with Stewart and a dynamic creative partnership was formed. Once I found this out, I wasn't as offended by the film. Stewart was an intelligent guy, a good writer, and knew exactly what was going on. Not knowing this going into the film makes it incredibly more disturbing, however. So sorry for ruining that brain-fuck for you.

From a strictly male point of view, it makes sense that a man with severe cerebral palsy would write a bunch of sex scenes with beautiful women into a film he was going to star in. It actually would make sense that any guy would write a movie starring himself the same way! Glover said that the original screenplay was 150 pages long and would have basically been a hardcore porn film. They cut the script down to fifty pages, but maintained some of the explicitness of Stewart's screenplay.

Stewart actually died one month after this film was finished. Glover said that Stewart called him one day and asked him if he was needed for the film anymore. Glover said it was a very bittersweet conversation because he knew that if he said no, Stewart would die. If he had said yes, Glover said, he would have lived as long as it would have taken him to complete the film.
Glover financed this film himself, because he thought it was important that Stewart's film be made. He knew how important this film was to Stewart and knew how little time they had to make it. Learning this made me completely respect Glover in a completely new way, one that I couldn't have predicted. He went above and beyond to help a man that had been ignored and looked down upon his entire life. Sure, the movie is sick as hell, but that's the way Stewart wanted it. That is profound.

Stewart was put into a nursing home for his entire 20s because the antiquated mental health community of the Salt Lake City of the 1960s just thought he was retarded. The fact that he couldn't express himself verbally made him a 'mongoloid' in their minds and he was locked away for a decade. Glover says that this severe mental and emotional trauma reverberates through all his work. He was a pissed off guy. Imagine being perfectly intelligent but not being able to express yourself and being held somewhere against your will for ten years. You'd be pissed as well.

Glover rambled on, and I was very impressed not only by his level of intelligence, but by his level of empathy for people that struggle outside of mainstream society. He said that he acts in big budget Hollywood films and then takes that money and does his independent art with it. For example, "It is Fine!" was financed with the money that he made on "Charlie's Angels". He completely created his villain character for that role, including the hair-smelling fetish. Steven C. Stewart had a fetish for smelling hair, which is actually one of the main themes in "It Is Fine!". He loves women with long hair, and when they tell him they will cut their hair short, he murders them. Glover said he never consciously made that a part of his character in 'Angels', but it must have been lurking in his subconscious from working with Stewart.

It was a rollercoaster of a night, confusing one minute, horrifying the next, fascinating then confusing yet again. I walked out with much more respect for Glover than I ever thought I would have. He's so much more than George McFly.

As I walked through the lobby, Crispin raced past me. I said, "Hey, Crispin!" He spun around and said "Yes?"
I said, "Hey, that was amazing."
He flashed a truly maniacal smile, his eyes alight with strange fire and said, "Thanks."
No, thank you, Crispin. A truly misunderstood genius, an outlaw auteur. These people are getting more rare by the day, so thanks for sticking to your guns, Mr. Glover.

Exclusive Interview with 'Night Feeders' Director Jet Eller

2010-06-01T14:48:00.001-07:00

I really like regional films. Especially regional horror films. There is something about a bunch of non-pro actors doing their best to scare you and or amuse you with limited resources that really speaks to me. These are the real people. The guy who gets his arm blown off? He could be your mechanic. The lady whose tongue gets ripped out? She works at the mini-mart. Etc., etc.
My love for regional, 'Outsider' horror films has taken me into some pretty fetid waters. I have watched about 200 too many horrible home made horror films. But the good ones strike such a chord with me that it makes the unwatchable stuff worth sifting through.
Enter Night Feeders. This film from Asheville, North Carolina's own Jet Eller peaked my interested after I read about it on the excellent movie review site Critical Condition. They gave it a good review, so I added it to the queue.
I sat down on a lazy day off with a few beers and popped in the movie. I really enjoyed it. It is way, way better than 99% of the straight to video horror stuff out there. Its a simple tale of small town southerners versus alien invaders. It looks great, the acting is good, and the special effects (aside from a minimal amount of cheesy CGI) are excellent. I posted a positive review of the film over at the Rue Morgue forum, and none other than the director/writer, Jet Eller sent me a thankful message. We continued to correspond, and just recently I was lucky enough to sit down with Jet (via the internet) and get a little q and a going. So without further ado, I am proud to present the first interview on this site! Welcome, Jet Eller!

Fermented Film: What are your favorite horror films?

Jet Eller: Hands down, Night of the Living Dead. No film ever had such an impact on me. Yes, the acting was bad and it looked like it was shot on burlap, but it had impact. Not only did it break several "rules", but it did it brazenly.

FF: Who are your favorite horror directors?

JE: I liked early John Carpenter. His first few films were great. Ridley Scott is no longer a horror film director, but he has my vote as one of the best. Alien was a masterpiece. He took a simple story and kept you on the edge of your seat.
James Whale and Alfred Hitchcock are also favorites of mine. Hitchcock had such a great eye. I admire Whale because he was a pioneer (Frankenstein).

FF: Does 'Night Feeders' have any influences?

JE: Sure. Jaws, NOTLD, Last Man on Earth, Alien, and believe it or not, Attack of the Killer Shrews.

FF: Donnie Evans is great in this film, is this his first movie?

JE: No, not his first. Donnie and I did a feature together in 1990 called "Marley's Revenge-The Monster Movie". It was shot on 16mm (old school) and took 2 years to shoot. He played a bad guy redneck named Sloth. A very entertaining piece of crap (not Donnie, the movie...but Donnie is entertaining, too).

FF: 'Marley's Revenge'! Whoa, this sounds like fun. Is there any way to get a copy of this film?

JE: This summer, Marley's will be 20 years old and will be available on my website Jetpoweredfilms.com. Probably around late July.
Marley's revenge was a blast to shoot. We had 60 zombies, crazed vigilantes, a 14 foot skelotasaurus, and an Indiana Jones wannabe. Terrible, but a lot of fun for a fan of low budget films. If you only knew the work that went into it.

FF: 'Night Feeders' looks great, what kind of equipment was it shot on?

JE: Believe it or not, we shot it with a Panasonic DVX100. We shot it a 24 Frames per second (to give us a grainy "drive-in" look). This choice bit us in the butt later when we tired to put the CGI aliens in. The blacks were not true enough to match the composite and it gave us a "bad separation".

FF: Why did you choose CGI for the creature effects?

JE: It's a case where our hearts were in the right place, but our wallets weren't big enough. We chose CGI because I wanted something that scrambled in the dark and was vicious. I figured a person in a suit wouldn't work and if we kept the image in the dark, we could hint at odd size and skin textures without having a direct focus on it. Quick moving shots. Unfortunately, we had to make them brighter than I would have liked (to make the blacks go grayer to match the grain of the Panasonic). Shooting HI def would have prevented the problem. Back to the money thing.

FF: I was impressed by the performances you got out of your actors. What is your approach with directing your performers?

JE: I try to stress keeping it natural (easier said than done). But its much easier when the material is written with certain actors in mind. Donnie's part was written for him. What you see is what you get with Donnie. We've been friends for 30 years and I couldn't imagine doing a film without him in it somewhere.
The other actors work in the commercial industry here in North Carolina and I've worked with them on many projects.
If I could give a director's tip, this is it...drop any pretentious "I'm the director" bullshit and loosely work with the actors one on one. You'll get a better performance and the actor will have much more respect for you if you personally take the time and eliminate the problems he or she has about the part. A mass rehearsal without "one on one" can be intimidating to some. They can't read your mind and they look for you to guide them through the scene. With a ultra low budget, you want as much in your favor as you can get.

FF: The gore effects in 'Night Feeders' are excellent. Can you tell me a bit about the effects and who created them?

JE: We had a fellow named Andy Boswell handle those effects. He worked on Evil Dead 2 and tons of industrial films. He was also the fisherman with the life vest at the beginning of the film.

FF: Another Asheville, NC indy director is Joshua P. Warren. Are you familiar with his first and last film, the infamous 'Inbred Rednecks'?

JE: That sounds like fun! I've heard of him only through his Ghost books and paranormal activities. I didn't realize he had made a feature, also.

FF: Another indy genre vet who made some 'small townsfolk versus aliens' films was the late Don Dohler. Are you familiar with Don's work?

JE: Oh, yes, of course. Galaxy Invader was one of my favorite no budget films. Alien Factor was another one that reeked to high heaven, but it was fun as hell to watch.

FF: How do you feel about the current state of horror films, major and indie?

JE: I keep waiting for the new face of horror to show up. I'm not complaining about the great movies I've seen over the years, but most have become mirrors of other films. Nobody seems to have the balls to try something different. Remember how The Exorcist changed the way most people thought of horror? They brought in factors you just aren't suppose to bring in...#1 Harming a child...#2 Using religion so strongly in a film...#3 masturbation with the cross? Holy smoke, nobody's suppose to do that! A true assault of a filmgoing experience...I loved it and I miss it.
Just around the corner, one is waiting.

FF: What were the biggest challenges of the 'Night Feeders' production?

JE: Deer hunters...REAL deer hunters. The farm we rented to shoot on was in deer hunting country. We didn't know it but a lot of the hunters used the house as a hunting cabin (illegally). We were threatened with physical harm (said they were going to shoot our asses if we didn't leave). We didn't and they (or somebody) came back and destroyed our house set...completely.

FF: What's coming next from Jet Eller and co.?

JE: We just finished shooting "Never Feed The Troll". It will be available on the website this summer, also (BTW, the site is up, but not in a completed form). Night Feeders was sold to a worldwide distributer about 4 years ago. I refuse to go that route again. Distributers get so much of the money, there's nothing left for the filmmaker. "Never Feed The Troll" will be distributed by us, Jet Powered Films...at least for now.
I have written 15 scripts over the years and I hope to continue shooting my own projects. I'd really like to do another horror/comedy. I have one in mind, but we'll have to see how "Never Feed The Troll" does.
Three of my scripts are biographies, my favorite being "The Harpes" which I co-wrote with the decendant of Micajah and Wiley Harpe. If you don't know who these guys are, do a Google search and prepare yourself for monsters that even Leatherface couldn't rival. Absolutely terrifying story. America's first serial killers.

Special Thanks to Jet Eller for conducting this interview. Even specialler thanks to Jet for being an independent filmmaker who makes awesome horror movies! Keep up the good work!

The Top 2 Movies of the 2000s

2010-05-28T07:40:00.000-07:00

Because I am lazy, I will just post my top two films of the past decade, if you want me to tell you why, just shoot me a message or leave a comment. I think they are both pretty self-explanatory.

2.
I count Kill Bill parts 1 and 2 as one movie. And what an amazing movie it is.

1. The Best Movie of the 2000s IS

In my opinion, Wet Hot is one of, if not the funniest, comedies ever filmed. It is definitely the best movie of any category for the past ten years. It completely set the tone that the best comedies of the 00s followed. Its a perfect film. That's my 2 cents.
Now that this is out of my system, stay tuned! Tons of crap coming soon!

Pulp Fiction: Messenger By Edward Lee

2010-03-09T13:44:00.000-08:00

I'm a voracious reader, and Horror has been one of my favorite genres of fiction since I was old enough to read. I'm kind of sick of writing about movies for minute, so as a change of pace, I'll be throwing in reviews of the juicier, pulpier stuff I've been polluting my brain with lately.

Disclaimer: the review I am giving this book is not on the same rating scale as all literature. This is so out there, you couldn't review it with the same rating system as say, Moby Dick. That would be like stacking up The Toxic Avenger against The Hurt Locker . The only thing these works have in common is their medium, so I've decided to rate this book on its merits as a work of Pulp Horror alone. And in that arena, this book kicks serious slimy demon butt.

Ed Lee has a reputation in the literary horror world as being the most intense, most grossest, most disgustingest writer there is. Apparently his mass market novels published under the Leisure Books imprint are somewhat toned down when compared to his small press, hard to find work. If this is Ed Lee toned down, I can't even fathom what his 'hardcore' stuff is like. I mean, how much more intense and nasty could fiction possibly be? Are his small press books printed on poisonous paper that burns your fingers when you turn the page? Is the copy printed in a font that eventually makes your eyes bleed? Does the book explode when you close it? The only way any book could be harder and nastier than this book is if it did those things.

Back in 2006, when my discovery of the works of Brian Keene, Jack Ketchum and Richard Laymon stoked my post Stephen King interest in horror fiction, I picked up Ed Lee's newest novel, The Backwoods . I figured 'hey, if all these authors I love love this guy, he must be awesome.' The book sucked. Really hard. In fact I couldn't even get more than about 80 pages into it. It was embarrassingly bad. Since then I've never picked up another book by Lee, until the other day when I was doing laundry. I forgot the book I was reading at that time at home, so on the way to the laundromat I stopped into the local library. I picked up this book, read the summary and the first page and decided to give old Mr. Lee a whirl. I read the first 70 pages in the laundromat. I wonder if the little Mexican kids there thought I was weird, this big bearded dude reading some creepy looking book with his eyes bugging out of his head, turning the pages as fast as he could.

The premise is pretty silly sounding: The Messenger, a mysterious demonic figure possesses postal workers in a small Florida town and uses them to carry out his heinous acts. Lee takes this idea, and basically pumps it full of steroids, LSD, crack and demon blood and lets it loose. This is one king-hell, rip-snortin' beast of a horror novel. Its also very well plotted and actually has a soft tender side that doesn't beat itself over your head, but is there enough so that you actually care about the main characters.
I think that's the book's greatest feat. Combining mayhem, gore and violence that goes as completely over the top as it definitely does here with characters you actually care about is not an easy feat, and Lee pulls it off seemingly without effort.

The Messenger is an amazing villain, as well. I don't want to go into too much detail into what he does and how he does it, as I don't want to give away too much and ruin this book for someone brave enough to read it. Lets just say that he's one of the most nefarious bad guys I've come across in a horror novel, and I read tons of horror fiction. The level of nastiness is cranked up to 11 here, and all because of this one bastard.

Also there are some deliciously clever twists towards the end that will seriously take you by surprise.

Basically, if you like pulpy horror, you have an iron stomach and are brave enough, give this book a try. You won't be disappointed. (But it may make you question your own sanity for reading these kinds of things.)

Jennifer's Body: The Almost Classic Horror Film of 2009

2010-02-25T22:01:00.000-08:00

I thought 'Jennifer's Body' looked lame. Megan Fox is the kind of actress that looks out of place unless there are giant cgi robots fighting around her. She pretty much always looks like she should be in a Maxim photo shoot. Which is why people think she is hot. By people I mean dudes who judge hotness by looking at Maxim. By those dudes, I might mean douchebags, but if I were to go ahead and say that, I might lose half of my 20 or so readers. (Fuck you, Boston Phoenix.) Okay, where was I? Oh yes, Megan Fox is a terrible actress, and she's good looking in a way that I don't agree with. She looks computer animated. Seriously. Try to watch her try to act. Her face looks completely unnatural. Like it needs to be completely motionless to be admired. Plastic surgery, maybe. Not into it, personally.
The worst thing about 'Jennifer's Body' is that Megan Fox is in it. This movie is one smart, funny, deeply cynical and satirical bastard. Minus Megan Fox and released with a lower profile, this would have been the 'Heathers' of ... what do you call this generation, the lower case generation z?
If you are anything like me, you are pretty sure that 99% of these intensely terrible pop-punk/emo/hipster bands kill virgins to get large. I don't want to give anything else away, but this film surmises just that. The cheesiest, crappiest, emo hipster bands sacrifice virgins to Satan. I couldn't agree more. Beyond that, the movie is excellently written, the CGI is kept to a minimum and the worst thing about the movie is Megan Fox. Awesome.
It really feels like an incredibly smart film got dumbed over big time by 20th Century Fox, hence Megan Fox, etc. If this had been an indy flick, minus Megan Fox, it would have been a sensation.

A Quick Political Aside: Jesse Ventura for President 2012!

2010-01-15T09:21:00.001-08:00

A quick political aside, then I'll get back to my snail's paced inventory of the Top Ten Movies of the Oughts. I watched this speech today and it really spoke to me. Cheesy 'reality' show aside, Jesse Ventura is a very smart guy, and I agree with much of what he says. The Democrats and Republicans have driven this country into the ground while furthering their own power. Its a natural progression, I suppose, the government's only goal seems to be furthering their power and influence at the expense of the common people. Its sick, either way, whether the Republican oil and military complex or the Democratic drive to expand the government's role further and further into the private sector. Either way, they win, we lose. This speech is great, even if you don't agree with Jesse, you should be able to appreciate a good speech for what it is. I personally think any American politician who is comfortable with the people overthrowing the government is a breath of fresh air. Enjoy:

Top Ten Movies of the Oughts: Number 3

2010-01-10T08:20:00.001-08:00

Grindhouse

This double feature is the ultimate gift from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to their hardcore fans. It is also a tribute to just how much fun going to a ratty Times Square movie theatre or a drive-in was back in the 80s or 70s. I was too young to experience this back then, but I have spent most of my adult life scouring the world for the rarest, weirdest, gnarliest films I can find on VHS or DVD. This film is a gift for people like myself. Its Q and Rodriguez's homage to the weirdest and wickedest aspects of underground cinema. Each of the movies aren't the greatest movies ever made, but they both are fun and fit the concept perfectly. Out of the two, I like Deathproof the best. Some of the most exciting car chase footage ever, expertly directed by Tarantino. This package didn't translate very well to DVD. For some reason, when you watch these movies on TV they lose their power. This is a double bill, two for the price of one movie going experience. The fake trailers, the whole presentation is so cool and fun. I remember having a really great time at the theatre when I saw this film. The whole theatre was yelling, laughing, etc. This movie is really about how much fun going to the theatre could and should be. An awesome concept, delivered in full.

Top Ten Movies of the Oughts: Number 4

2010-01-07T18:41:00.000-08:00

4. Rambo

If your nose wasn't turned up at my list yet, I bet it is now. Yep, Rambo is one of my favorite movies of the past decade. Beyond the surface-level reasons that a rad dude would like this movie "its wicked frickin gory, dude!", lurks possibly the most insane anti-war film ever made. Its perfect, when you think about it. The tail end of 8 years of terrible government, war at home and abroad, the shadowy aftermath of 9-11, where the country's deepest fears and darkest impulses were lived out day to day on a global stage. The past decade has been a non-stop war. So, here comes Rambo to save the day. Pickup trucks with American flag stickers on their bumpers jammed the multiplexes to see John Rambo defeat Old Glory's enemies, just like he did in the Reagan era. The 2008 Rambo was different, however. Stallone went completely batshit insane on growth hormones and made one of the most unrelenting, dark, and horrific action films ever. If you feel good about war after you see this movie, you have some serious problems. When I saw this film in the theater, the tension was palpable. There were older guys there, who looked like Nam veterans, there were dumb kids, and there were my friends and I. We all thought we'd be in for a jolly old over the top romp. The level of viciousness, the completely disgusting and terrible stuff on display in this film made me really uneasy. A little part of me wanted to have fun with the film, but I was absolutely revolted and sickened by the actions of the bad guys, the 'Burmese' army. Burma is now known as Myanmar, but maybe Stallone kept the old name to avoid a lawsuit, or something.

This isn't gore for gore's sake, either. Stallone filled this film with innocent people, women and children being butchered to show you what is really going on all over the world. If the big, bad U.S.A is all for what is right and good in this world, why aren't we trying to stop the genocide in Myanmar, or the Congo or anywhere else in the world where the only law is respect the man with the biggest gun? Fact is, if there is nothing that serves the wishes of the government and the economy, there is no reason for us to be the good guys. Stallone doesn't spell this out for the audience, but if you are a thinking person, this movie will stick with you and really make you think. I remember I couldn't sleep the night I saw it. The violence is so intense and sickening that it will haunt you.

Stallone really makes you hate the bad guys to the point where you are just really, really excited to see them get theirs. And, oh boy, do they ever. The aging Stallone, hulking around sullenly, is more menacing than he was back in the 80s and in the dark, rainy jungle, as he stalks his prey, the film almost becomes like a Friday The 13th movie with Rambo instead of Jason. I mean, he even machetes people. This movie is a work of pure whacked out, sick brilliance, and I think its the best and most effective anti-war movie I've ever seen. Its also one of the only truly great action movies of the past decade.

Top Ten Movies of the Oughts: Number 5

2010-01-05T17:24:00.000-08:00

5. Bubba Ho-Tep

This is the sleeper of the list. Brandon Collins and I drove all the way to Nickleodeon Cinemas in Falmouth from Orleans in the middle of a horrific blizzard in the winter of 2004 to see it. It took us about an hour in the swirling snowflakes, and when we got there, the movie hadn't made it over the bridge. The distributor was scared by the snow. Viking warriors that we are, we waited out the storm in the Quarterdeck in Hyannis, then drove about 15 mph all the way back to Exit 12. It was a good night, after all, but I wish we had seen this movie like we planned. I bought the DVD as soon as it came out in the summer of 2004, for some reason I wasn't that taken with it. (It may have had something to do with the fact that I spent most of my time blaring heavy metal and jumping into bushes for fun back then. Damn, that was a long time ago now. It was fun. What I can recall of it.) This DVD went to Santa Cruz, back to Cape Cod, back to Santa Cruz, down to Louisville, KY, back to the Cape, up to Somerville, MA, back to the Cape and finally wound up in Roslindale, MA with my girlfriend, me and our hedgehog, Huey. About 3 weeks ago, scouring my shelves for something to watch (I have an enormous DVD collection but am too broke to afford cable, a weird predicament that I have a feeling isn't too rare these days.) I stumbled across this movie, popped 'er in. I was immediately in love.

This film is based on a short story by the brilliant Texas author Joe R. Lansdale. I call him brilliant but I've never even read any of his books. The writing in this film, however, which is apparently incredibly faithful to Lansdale's story, is absolutely brilliant. Cult legend Bruce Campbell plays Elvis Presley, who is now a sickly old man in an East Texas rest home, bedridden and depressed. Everyone thinks he's insane, that he's an Elvis impersonator who has dementia and thinks he is really the King. Elvis, it turns out, actually traded places with an Elvis impersonator, also played by Bruce Campbell, in the 70s. He was never into the fame. He just like rock and roll and ladies. He hated all his leech-friends, so he was happy to live a semi-obscure life as an impersonator of himself. But, all this backstory is told by Elvis himself, so it could very well all be made up. Now, this on its own is a brilliant premise, but this is just the beginning.

One of Elvis' neighbors is JFK. JFK is played by Ozzie Davis. Yep, JFK is an old black guy. They took JFK's brain and switched it with a black man's before the assassination. So JFK's room is full of pictures of Jackie O, a diorama of the scene of his assassination, and all sorts of odds and ends relating to JFK. And it still gets better.

An ancient mummy is in the rest home, eating the souls of the old people, because they are weak and easy to prey on. Elvis and JFK team up to battle the mummy and protect their home. The dialog, and Elvis' monologue is SO good, its some of the best writing ever in a movie. Seriously, the dialog is perfect. Its genius. From the opening scene: Elvis lays in bed and looks in the mirror. Bruce Campbell VO: "How did I go from the King of Rock and Roll to this? An old guy in a rest home in East Texas with a growth on his pecker. And what is that growth? Nobody's talkin." And the direction, by the legendary Don Coscarelli, is perfect as well. So, you have an amazing premise on top of an amazing premise on top of an amazing premise paired with genius writing and excellent effects and direction. This film is hilarious, fun, creepy, depressing and uplifting, usually all at the same time. Its just about a perfect movie and like no other movie you will ever see.

UPDATE: Made a hot link to Don Coscarelli's imdb.com page and discovered that they are making a sequel called "Bubba Nosferatu"!!! Its written by Lansdale and Coscarelli!!! See "Ho-Tep" now so you can be as excited about this as me!

Top Ten Movies of the Oughts: Number 6

2010-01-04T16:37:00.000-08:00

6. The Devil's Rejects

Film nerds may turn their noses high at this choice. After all, Rob Zombie did direct the much loathed Halloween remakes (which I loved, even the second one, which might be the most hated horror film ever. I seriously think I'm the only person on earth that liked it.), keep on pointin' your noses to the stars, nerds, while me and the rest of the real people on the ground enjoy this seriously effed up, jet-fueled, shock-a-minute piece of pulp thriller sleaze. This movie is SLEAZY. There are not a whole lot of newer films that you can say are really SLEAZY. That is a term left mostly to describe by-gone drive-in and grindhouse fare of the 70s and 80s. This is the genre that Zombie was paying homage to in this film, and he wound up making a sleazy piece of art that is actually a solid addition to the grindhouse canon. When I saw this film, I was hoping that it wasn't the type of movie that tries to make the serial killers look cool, to appeal to some psychobilly, kids who wear Charles Manson shirts and think they are rebels demographic. It does, I guess, but it balances out the folk-legend of the evil, killer 'family' with an even bigger, more awesome folk hero: Sheriff Wydell. Bill Forsythe, who is always amazing, in anything he's ever been in (especially this movie and Out For Justice), is a massive one-up to the killer family. He's the ultimate avenging cop, who gets so caught up in his 'demon killin' that he goes completely insane and becomes a monster so awesome and vengeful that he scares the crap out of the killer family themselves. Wydell is my favorite part of this movie, and he's really the reason the film is above and beyond. He's an original invention created by Rob Zombie that is greater than the sum of his parts. He's part Johnny Cash, part Dirty Harry Callahan, part Wyatt Earp and 100% badass. Try not to cheer as he humiliates and tortures the sick serial killing family. Its messed up justice at its best. The soundtrack, direction, writing and acting (except for Sherri Moon, who is as annoying as she is gorgeous... wait, maybe she was supposed to be like that... yeah, I think she was, so yeah, all the acting) is top notch. This is Rob Zombie's best movie and definitely one of my favorites of the past 10 years.

Top Ten Movies of the Oughts: Number 7

2009-12-29T08:46:00.000-08:00

7. Be Here To Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt (2004)

My sister, my mom and my main man Bruce Gibson are long time Townes van Zandt fans, and I honestly didn't get it until I saw this movie. I remember being in my early 20s and just thinking 'this music is depressing' when I heard it. A little growing up and a whole lot of dark times later and I see this movie, summer of 2006. As soon as the opening song "Rake" kicks in, I'm a fan for life. Van Zandt is one of the most truthful singers ever, and you can tell he's been through it when you listen to him. I would place him at the very top of the folk/country canon. I think he's better than Dylan, which is of course, saying something. Steve Earle said "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that!" Upon hearing that Earle said this about him, Townes replied "I've met Bob Dylan, and his bodyguards wouldn't let Steve Earle anywhere near his coffee table." A typical Townes quote: succinct, simple and funny on the surface, but packs in some meaning underneath. This is not only good-natured ribbing towards his friend Steve Earle, it is a subtle jab at Dylan. Dylan was a huge Townes fan, and Townes turned down offers from Dylan to write songs together. Townes liked Dylan's early music, but didn't admire his celebrity status. Dylan, in turn, doesn't seem to admire his celebrity status as well, so you could make the assumption that Van Zandt is the real McCoy. He's the musician Bob Dylan wishes he was. Which of course, put Van Zandt at the top of the pile.
Townes Van Zandt is a bewildering, completely mind-boggling subject. Become a fan and its not hard to become obsessed with this man and his music. You could listen to any of his songs and write a huge essay about that one song. The stories about the man himself are just as incredible as the songs, so he was long overdue for a quality documentary. This film was Margaret Brown's first, and its a true labor of love. She loved his music and thought that it was under appreciated. So, she went out there and interviewed Townes' family, friends and fellow musicians. She came away with a truly beautiful film, a documentary that is as heart breaking and profound as Townes' music and his life. Anyone who hasn't discovered the undiluted genius of Townes Van Zandt, see this film and if you aren't affected by it, you probably are dead.

Top Ten Movies of the Oughts: Number 8

2009-12-29T08:31:00.000-08:00

8. Stepbrothers (2008)

This is not only one of the funniest movies of the past decade, its Will Ferrell's funniest movie. Which is saying something. Anchorman was a tour-de-force, showcasing not only Ferrell's comedic prowess but also a great ensemble cast including Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, Chris Parnell, Christina Applegate and more. That movie is pee your pants funny, but this movie is even funnier. This is poop your pants funny. The equally hilarious John C. Reilly comes in with more than an assist, Ferrell and he share the spotlight, and their back and forth idiocy is up there with the all time great comedy duos. This is a laugh riot! Sorry, I just wanted to sound like Bill Diehl for a second. This movie is hilarious from the beginning straight through the end. There is no lag time. It hits the ground running and just increases speed. The dialog is so good, you will catch hilarious lines that you missed from laughing hard at the line right before it. I think I've seen this movie 9 or 10 times, and I catch little, hilarious throw away lines every time I watch it. Reilly and Ferrell are masters of taking a concept and pushing it as far as it will go, catching the energy of improvisation and applying it to the scene and maximizing the comedic potential. This is one of my favorite movies of the oughts (obviously, its on my top 10), I can't recommend it enough. Beware, however, you may poop your pants and drool all over yourself from laughing so hard.

Top Ten Movies of the Oughts: Number 9

2009-12-26T10:35:00.000-08:00

9. Jackass Number Two (2006)

Its strange to think that one of the greatest TV shows of the past decade basically consisted of a bunch of somewhat insane, non sober dudes doing terrible things to each other and themselves. When historians look back that this era, I'm sure they will hold Jackass up as an example of the decline of western civilization. Whatever, the shit is funny. And gross, and insane and awe-inspiring and sickening. Basically its awesome. I was really bummed after the first Jackass movie. It seemed like that was it. The Wildboyz with Chris Pontius and Steve-O was pretty hilarious, the Bam show made me not really like him that much and Johnny Knoxville tried to make regular movies. It looked like the end of an era. Then, WHAM! A week or so before it hit theaters, the trailer for Number 2 hit the internet and TV. I was very excited. I was also skeptical of the film, would it eclipse the first one? It not only was better than the first one, it was the best thing these guys have ever done. They raised the bar so high with this movie that I'm a little worried about next year's Jackass 3. If they get even crazier than they did with this one, somebody is probably gonna die.
I remember going to see Number Two with my friends, we may have smoked some semi-legal cigarettes before going in, and we may have brought beers into the Wellfleet Cinema. (Note: One of the creators of Jackass and Executive Producer Trip Taylor is from Wellfleet.) I remember being simultaneously revolted, shocked, amazed and I, of course, laughed my ass off the entire time. Johnny Knoxville, who had been called a 'pretty boy, hollywood' type by skeptical fans, emerged as the bravest, most batshit insane of the bunch, and everyone else followed suit, upping the ante with each imbecilic prank or stunt. It was easily the best time I had at a movie in 2006, and probably ever. Jackass isn't for everyone, obviously, but even people who don't like it have to admit that these guys have created something that borders genius when it comes to moronic humor. They have taken stupidity to heights undreamed of. And I love them for it.

Top Ten Movies of the Oughts: Number 10

2009-12-25T23:00:00.001-08:00

2000 to 2009. A decade that I rank as pretty lame, as far as pop culture goes. 9-11, cell phones, the death of the recorded music industry, George Bush destroys the world, Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, Obama. That's basically it. For a cinephile, the past ten years make the 70s, 80s and early 90s look like an amazing golden age of amazingness, which they were. Amid the crappy remakes, CGI fueled brainlessness and nonstop plundering of past eras which were far more creatively fertile, there were some really, really good movies. Or at least movies I liked. Here's my list of the top ten, in installments. I promise I will finish this list by the end of this rad decade.

10. Wrong Turn (2003).

Female lead Eliza Dushku is from Arlington, MA. The lighting in this movie strangely seems to highlight the area just below the nape of her neck and above the beginning of her tank top. The lighting technicians were either European or just rascals.

Horror nerds and Rue Morgue Magazine subscribers (same thing) are no doubt turning their noses way up right now, but I'll tell you something. For you spoiled little pricks that just got into horror movies yesterday because the tranny you are dating likes them, there was a time when hardcore, gory, gritty, horror movies were a thing of the past. I've been a horror movie fan my entire life, and in the late 90s, early 00s, the genre was dead. I had no interest in the endless stream of lame teenie bopper horror films like I Know What You Did The Last Time You Frosted Your Tips, Urban Blemish, and so on. Basically every single 'horror movie' from 1997 until this one featured about 6 or so faces that would be recognizable to basic cable subscribers on the cover all in the same lame lineup. Lame. The whole idea of 'grindhouse, hardcore, gory, shocking' horror was completely missing from theatrically released films. I was "helping" my friends move out of our house on Logtown Road in Amherst, summer of 2003. I was mainly helping by going to Video Gallery in Belchertown (they had weird, crappy stuff that Video To Go didn't even have) everyday and renting 5 horror movies, then getting drunk and watching them with my friends at the house. Needless to say, we didn't get our security deposits back. I glanced at the free, weekly tome of effete bullshit (except for Jon Keane's old food column) which was "The Valley Advocate" and saw a review for something called Wrong Turn. Those snobby pricks gave it 1 star and said that it was a trashy, gore-filled, brainless backwoods slasher film that harkened back to the 80s and 70s. I showed it to my friends, and we immediately agreed that we needed to see it. Horror movies were so incredibly lame at this point in time that we were completely prepared to be let down. We made some mixed drinks, and just settled in to watch some crap. We were surprised. That movie kicked ass. Supremely gory, suspenseful, just cheesy enough but not intentionally cheesy.... I remember being really impressed with how irony-free this ridiculously gory and nasty film was. It really was the first American horror film that ushered in this "let's take it back to the 80s" movement. I feel that that trend has run its course, with everything down to Nail Gun Massacre getting a big budget, music video director remake these days. Not to mention all the wussy Twilight style crap out there. (I like True Blood, but that show is awesome and not wussy and lame at all.) On that August night, which does not feel like it was 6 and a half years ago, in the Hadley Mall, with a rum and coke in my hand, I had one of the most fun times I've ever had at a movie. Sneer all you want, horror nerds, but I love this movie, and it holds up really well. You can watch it today and its way better than many of the other 'throwback' horror films that followed in its wake. People love this movie, as well. Nobody I've ever shown it to for the first time has not liked it. Including people that thought it looked terrible.

Top People Of The Year

2009-11-27T09:38:00.001-08:00

Well, the 2000s are over. This decade was kind of wack chaperone. But, there are still great people out there, trying their best to elevate mankind and make life better for us all, or just being awesome. Here is my list of the best people of 2009.

Tommy Wiseau

Tommy Wiseau's self written, directed and starring first feature film, The Room exists on a plane of terribleness that is nearly incomprehensible. This is, without a doubt, one of the worst movies ever made. Extraneous exterior shots that have nothing to do with the story, subplots that go nowhere, extremely terrible softcore love-making scenes with hideous R&B slow jams theme music, stilted dialog, horrible pacing, no linear logic, you name it, this film has it in spades. Just released commercially, the movie was made in 2003 for 6 MILLION dollars and comes across as a vanity project for this eyebrowless, monster looking weirdo. I don't know whether to applaud his misdirected audacity or just shudder in disgust, but either way, he has given me a movie I will no doubt watch countless times in my life. It comes across as an R rated Lifetime movie made by a retarded person. I want to thank Bridie Johnson and Abby Ruby for bringing this film to my apartment last weekend and changing my life. Tommy Wiseau, you are a freak, and I salute you and am simultaneously disgusted by you. Not too many people can illicit that strange blend of emotions in me, so you are a top person of 2009.

Steven Seagal

After a decade plus-long run as a box office action movie sensation, beginning with 1988's "Above The Law" and ending with 2001's "Exit Wounds", Seagal fell into the world of mostly horrible straight to DVD films. Releasing as many as 4 a year, the now older, overweight Seagal looked like he was bound to fall into low budget near-obscurity. Then, out of nowhere like a lightening fast Aikido kick to the nuts, he comes roaring back into the mainstream with his new reality show, "Steven Seagal: Lawman", which exists on a plane of awesomeness that is nearly incomprehensible. Seagal is a real New Orleans cop, and has been for 20 years. Who knew? Now we are treated to a television show that is basically like "Cops" times a million awesomeness points times Seagal, which equals infinity awesomeness. Plus 1. Basically Seagal is a top person of every year from 1988 to 2001, then he kind of fell off the list for a few years, except for 2005, when he released his first album, "Songs from the Crystal Cave", and 2004, when he released his own energy drink... yeah, I think Seagal is pretty much permanently on my top people's list.

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim

Tim and Eric are an incredibly original comedy duo, and they just keep gettin better. Their influence is wide-spread, even Saturday Night Live has been biting their steez of late. They are the masters of just completely insane, maddening, sometimes extremely dark and disturbing humor. When I first saw the "Tim and Eric Awesome Show! Great Job." in 2007, I was so thankful that something this original, bizarre and wild was on television. Its a breath of fresh, disgusting air. 2009 saw the 4th season of this show's 11 minute long blast of humor episodes, and its just as insane and uncompromising as ever. They even had another member of my Top People list (Tommy Wiseau) guest-direct an episode. That's showing cajones right there. These guys are really to be commended for putting their wholly individual vision out there, as messed up as it is. They've been slowly but surely getting more and more popular, and they say the next season of T and E will be the last one, followed by movies and other projects. I can't wait to see what these mad geniuses do next.

T-Baby

T-Baby's amazing song and video "Its So Cold In The D" was apparently posted to youtube in 2008, but I discovered it in 2009, and I've had it stuck in my head for the entire year, so she gets to be on my Top People of 2009 list. The story behind the song is sad, its about one of her friends that got killed, but the song is so incredibly annoying/catchy that I am in awe of her. The video is incredible, the dance moves are amazing and the chorus of the song is one of the most simultaneously grating, catchy, annoying, offensive and heartfelt things I've ever heard. T-Baby, I wish your music career all the best, but I honestly don't think you'll ever be able to match the power/annoyingness of this song.

That's all I can think of right now, and I want to eat a leftover turkey sandwich, so that's it for now. Happy Day After Thanksgiving, and I'll be adding to this list as I remember more Top People. Ciao.

Michael Ian Black is wicked Smaht

2009-11-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

Michael Ian Black is wicked smaht. This is a cogent, irony free analysis of a public persona's Identity and the complete lack of meaning we are force-fed in pop-culture. I bet dude was a Comm major.

If You Aren't My Friend On Facebook, Let Me Tell You Something You Might Not Know Already: Steven Seagal: Lawman is The Best Show Ever.

2009-11-19T08:31:00.001-08:00

No, seriously. This show reaches levels of amazingness never even dreamed of by even hardcore Seagalogists like myself. Vern, you need to write another book. Seagal has unleashed another level of awesome for us all. Basically, its Cops, but with Steven Seagal. "Big Deal," you might say, but have you given this any thought? Have you really pondered just how awesome that is? Well, if you haven't, let me tell you, its pretty awesome. Now you don't have to ponder.
In the late 80s, Seagal was filming a movie in New Orleans. The police of Jeffereson Parish asked him to teach them some self defense moves. They hit it off and made Seagal a deputy. Ever since, Seagal has made some classic movies, and tons of pretty bad straight to DVD movies (though I consider many of these classic as well), but the whole time, he was secretely a New Orleans cop!!!
So, basically, Seagal rolls around in an S.U.V wearing cool yellow sunglasses with his fellow cops in "The 'jects" (his words, not mine), busting criminals, being wicked awesome and saying things like "Aikido is the way of peace and harmony. What we are doing out here is bringing peace and harmony to these areas by removing the crime." (Might not be an exact quote, I watched the first episode last night and I was pretty drunk.) I think when I heard that, my mind was made up. Best show ever.
He doesn't beat people up, like you'd think, he's like a real cool cop. When the other cops are tazing the hell out of a suspect, Seagal stops them by yelling "Everyone just cool down!" And they stop tazing him. Awesome. On a domestic disturbance call, everyone winds up laughing and asking Seagal for his autograph. This plus sized older black lady keeps yelling "Get back here, Steven, I need you!" as he's leaving. She also shakes his hand and says "Damn! That's a big hand!"
The power of Seagalogy brings peace and harmony to very ugly situations. In some of his movies, Seagal talks with a southern accent, I always thought it was just him hamming it up, but it kind of makes sense now. I mean, he really is a New Orleans cop.
There's a scene in a police conference room where they are going over things to look out for, etc., before they go out for the night. Seagal is really studiously asking questions about suspects and taking notes and wearing eyeglasses. In a voiceover he says "Information is golden. The more we know, the better cops we will be." (Again, this is a wine-influenced memory of the quote, so it might not be exact. I know he said "Information is golden," which is awesome.)
Oh, and also he's an incredible handgunner and he teaches his fellow cops to use Aikido concentration techniques to shoot better. There were tons of awesome quotes during the gun training, and Seagal looked amazing with a towel wrapped around his neck and yellow safety glasses, peering down the barrel of one of his trademark 1911 .45's.
I'm Seagal's friend on Facebook, and he invited me to watch the sneak preview last night online. The show will premiere on December 2nd on A&E. If you don't watch it, you are doomed to never experience how awesome it is.

Esham Puts Out Awesome Horror Album

2009-11-18T11:37:00.000-08:00

Esham, the rap kingpin of Detroit, isn't for everyone. The only other person as bizarre as he is in hip hop is probably Kool Keith, and Keith is probably even more bizarre, but they are very different. (Keith and Esham collaborated on Keith's classic album 'Spankmaster'.) Esham is pretty straightforward, a straight gangsta rapper, but his natural eccentricity comes through on all his projects. The beats are on some other, other, other isht and Esham raps alot about demons, ghosts, evil spirits and so on. I haven't peeped too much of his stuff in recent years, mainly because he aligned himself with the ICP crew... though he recently made an album dissing ICP and distributed it at the Gathering of the Juggalos, which is pretty awesome and ballsy. ICP would be the first to admit that they wouldn't exist without Esham. I know to most people that probably makes Esham sound somewhat terrible by association. Esham's first album "Boomin Words From Hell" came out in 1990, when Esham was like 13 years old. I have it on cassette. You can't really blame him if some lame people were influenced by him. I mean, Eminem was influenced by him. So, he was one of the very first 'Horrorcore' rappers, he's from Detroit, one of the scariest places, period, and he has just released a horror concept album. Each track is about a different horror icon/theme and this has to be the only rap album to ever sample "Ichi The Killer". Its pretty obvious that I love it. Its pretty amazing. Who else besides Esham would make a rap song called "Attack Of the Blob", where he rhymes about being not only the blob, but a crime kingpin. Yeah, he's got the whole city covered, so he's the "Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah blob!"?!
Then there's a song called "Evil Dead", where one of Esham's boys with a wicked cool accent raps about being Ash and he takes it right from 'Evil Dead' through 'Army of Darkness'.
Then there's "Freddie Krueger" where someone named Dr. Hustle rhymes "I'm Freddie Krueger with a brand new Ruger/leave that ass stinkin like a pile of manure". Horror nerds would argue that Freddie would never just shoot someone, but I think that's a pretty good rhyme.
Then there's "The Invisible Man", which is, of course, about what the Invisible Man would do in a strip club. Seems like a wacky premise, but remember, Esham is from Detroit. This is a family oriented blog, so I won't go into some of the racier details, but a guy at the bar says "Yo, who just drank my drink?!" and Esham says "The Invisible Man!" Awesome.
This is a very entertaining horror-rap album. It kind of tries to be serious at the same time as being 'creepy', which might turn some people off, but for me it just kind of made it more fun. My favorite horror-rap album of all time is Kool Keith's turn as Dr. Dooom: "First Come, First Served". Keith's brand of horror-rap is more like a totally over the top Troma movie, so out of control that it is impressive but doesn't actually scare you (although some of the tracks reach such a level of dementedness that they actually are pretty disturbing.) This is more like a gangsta guy that loves horror movies paying homage to the genre. Might not be for everyone, but I like it. If you like hardcore rap and horror movies, you'll probably like it too.

A Movie About a 13 Year Old Boy with Male Pattern Baldness. What's Not To Like?

2009-11-17T15:16:00.000-08:00

So, I have the Netflix thing going on now. (I'm late in the game, just joined like a month ago.) Its really cool because you can watch movies on your computer. Now before you accuse me of being some corporate shill for them, I will say that the selection of movies they have for instant viewing is pretty bizarre. Like, you can't watch this but you can watch this . Or this movie Harold, a comedy about a 13 year old boy with male pattern baldness. He's bald, he's got bunions and he dresses like an old man. He moves to a new town and has trouble making friends. The movie is really not that funny, but there is just something so awesome about this premise that it kept me glued to the screen. Cuba Gooding Jr., continues his non-Oscar worthy material spree as a cool janitor that befriends Harold. Everyone in the movie thinks he's 'creepy'.
This is basically a kid's movie, but with lots of swearing, inappropriate humor and weird, gross sexuality. Its PG-13 but almost seems like it should be rated 'R'. So basically I liked it. If you have nothing better to do, its worth a peep. Tons of high-profile guest stars are in it as well, like Chris Parnell, Dave Attell, Rachel Dratch and Colin Quinn. Like I said, not amazing or anything, but definitely not a waste of time, either.

Top Ten Movies of the Oughts: Number 10

2009-11-06T09:51:00.000-08:00

2000 to 2009. A decade that I rank as pretty lame, as far as pop culture goes. 9-11, cell phones, the death of the recorded music industry, George Bush destroys the world, Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, Obama. That's basically it. For a cinephile, the past ten years make the 70s, 80s and early 90s look like an amazing golden age of amazingness, which they were. Amid the crappy remakes, CGI fueled brainlessness and nonstop plundering of past eras which were far more creatively fertile, there were some really, really good movies. Or at least movies I liked. Here's my list of the top ten, in installments. I promise I will finish this list by the end of this rad decade.

10. Wrong Turn (2003).

Female lead Eliza Dushku is from Arlington, MA

Horror nerds and Rue Morgue Magazine subscribers (same thing) are no doubt turning their noses way up right now, but I'll tell you something. For you spoiled little pricks that just got into horror movies yesterday because the tranny you are dating likes them, there was a time when hardcore, gory, gritty, horror movies were a thing of the past. I've been a horror movie fan my entire life, and in the late 90s, early 00s, the genre was dead. I had no interest in the endless stream of lame teenie bopper horror films like I Know What You Did The Last Time You Frosted Your Tips, Urban Blemish, and so on. Basically every single 'horror movie' from 1997 until this one featured about 6 or so faces that would be recognizable to basic cable subscribers on the cover all in the same lame lineup. Lame. The whole idea of 'grindhouse, hardcore, gory, shocking' horror was completely missing from theatrically released films. I was "helping" my friends move out of our house on Logtown Road in Amherst, summer of 2003. I was mainly helping by going to Video Gallery in Belchertown (they had weird, crappy stuff that Video To Go didn't even have) everyday and renting 5 horror movies, then getting drunk and watching them with my friends at the house. Needless to say, we didn't get our security deposits back. I glanced at the free, weekly tome of effete bullshit (except for Jon Keane's old food column) which was "The Valley Advocate" and saw a review for something called Wrong Turn. Those snobby pricks gave it 1 star and said that it was a trashy, gore-filled, brainless backwoods slasher film that harkened back to the 80s and 70s. I showed it to my friends, and we immediately agreed that we needed to see it. Horror movies were so incredibly lame at this point in time that we were completely prepared to be let down. We made some mixed drinks, and just settled in to watch some crap. We were surprised. That movie kicked ass. Supremely gory, suspenseful, just cheesy enough but not intentionally cheesy.... I remember being really impressed with how irony-free this ridiculously gory and nasty film was. It really was the first American horror film that ushered in this "let's take it back to the 80s" movement. I feel that that trend has run its course, with everything down to Nail Gun Massacre getting a big budget, music video director remake these days. Not to mention all the wussy Twilight style crap out there. (I like True Blood, but that show is awesome and not wussy and lame at all.) On that August night, which does not feel like it was 6 and a half years ago, in the Hadley Mall, with a rum and coke in my hand, I had one of the most fun times I've ever had at a movie. Sneer all you want, horror nerds, but I love this movie, and it holds up really well. You can watch it today and its way better than many of the other 'throwback' horror films that followed in its wake. People love this movie, as well. Nobody I've ever shown it to for the first time has not liked it. Including people that thought it looked terrible.

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer + Ten High + Bubba Cola= A Good Afternoon

2009-11-05T13:37:00.000-08:00

I recently moved to the scenic, tree lined streets of Roslindale, a Boston neighborhood that borders Roxbury, JP, Mattapan and Hyde Park. You can look it up on wikipedia if you need to know more about it. I haven't found a job yet, so I decided to hit Save-A-Lot in Roxbury and buy, among other things, a 2 liter bottle of Bubba cola. How much, you ask? 79 cents. Yep. A bottle of Ten High bourbon, left over from my boy Jayck Deez' visit last week and some star and heart shaped ice cubes from my dollar store ice tray, served in a TWA Germany glass (one of a complete 'Cities of the World' glass set that my girlfriend's mom so graciously donated to our apartment) kept the cold wetness of the afternoon at bay. To watch, a straight to dvd horror flick entitled "Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer".

This movie is the rare modern horror film that gets the horror/humor thing just right. The humor is light, and not too cheesy, which all too often takes away from the horrific aspects of films that attempt to blend laughs with screams. The horror is gory, and very well done. Its basically about a plumber named Jack Brooks, who is messed up in the head because his family was killed in front of his eyes by a monster when he was a kid. He goes to community college, where his professor is Robert Englund. The professor turns out to be evil and insane and has Jack over to do some plumbing work, where the mayhem begins. There is very little CGI, which made me very excited. A good rubber suit looks better than CGI any day of the week, and this film proves it. The story moves fast and is surprisingly intelligent. The direction is good, the film looks great, the acting is good, there is basically nothing wrong with this movie. The DVD cover art is wack, with an obviously fake 6-pack plastered on the hero's torso. Why the hell didn't they use the cool-ass art that I included at the top of this bloggin? Don't worry, there is no homo-erotic chest baring going on in the movie. No homo-erotic male nudity, no CGI, this movie is just about the polar opposite of "300", and that's a good thing in my book!

This is basically a great movie to kick back with some cheap cola and cheaper whiskey and have a great unemployed afternoon with. The ending leaves the opportunity for a sequel wide open, and I hope they make one! This is a fun horror movie, under-hyped and under-seen, and I couldn't recommend it more! I really look forward to anything new from the creative team of Jon Knautz and John Ainslie. This movie kicks major tookus.

Bun B Is A Genius

2009-10-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

The always great blog Cocaine Blunts has featured an excellent interview with Bun B about the classic album Soul Food by Goodie Mob. This interview is incredible, especially for fans of the album. Bun B is an incredibly smart guy, and his insights into this great record are the kind of insights that are needed in this culture that tends to completely overlook just how powerful, intelligent and creative good rap music can be. This album has a ton of sentimental value for me because I was listening to it a ton back in 96 with my boy Rob Joyal who left us here in the mortal world in 1998, at the age of 18. This album is a bonafied hip hop classic in my mind and 20,000 times better than that Cee-Lo Green crap that Cee-Lo went on to barf out. Click here for the realness.

If You Haven't Seen Enough Subway Horror Movies, Check This Out

2009-10-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

End of the Line is a surprisingly good horror film that takes place mostly in a subway, and I don't mean the chain deli where Jared lost weight. I'm not one of those reviewers that likes to give you the whole plot of the movie (unless its a movie so terrible you would never watch it anyway.) In this case, the film unfolds very unpredictably, and to give anything about it away would possibly ruin your enjoyment of it. Halloween is coming up soon, and it seems like people of all walks of life love to watch horror movies this time of year (unlike horror nerd weirdos like my friends and I who watch them almost exclusively.) There are alot of highly hyped up new films out there, and most of them seem to be consisted mostly of hype. This film is pretty unheard of, and its really, really good. Its Canadian, maybe that's why American fans haven't eaten it up yet. The film has its flaws, but none that would offend the sensibilities of people who like to watch horror films. Some of the acting is really bad, but for me, that kind of just adds to the fun. The gore is surprisingly excellent, the story is great, and the concept is very original and turns some conventional horror themes on their respective ears. If you need a good, scary horror movie that most likely nobody you know has ever seen, snag this little gem. Its on Netflix.

Woodsie

2009-10-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

I have a feeling that the current version of this ad would go something like this: "The candy wrapper you drop on the ground will kill us all. The polar ice caps are melting. Please support a giant government program to save the world." I guess I'm just a product of the radical, "think for yourself' 80s.

The Damned Rules

2009-09-28T16:41:00.000-07:00

In my opinion, newer punk rock music sucks. Punk was so vital and amazing in the late 70s and early 80s because it represented a complete breakdown of all the norms of society. It wasn't a set genre, the best bands were the ones who kept pushing the limitations of it to the breaking point and veering it into new territory. Like D. Boon from the Minutemen said: "Punk was whatever we made it to be." The Minutemen, by the way, are not only one of the greatest punk rock bands ever, but one of the greatest rock bands ever. And how brilliant of a philosophy is that? Taking the idea of punk and folding it in on itself. Its not only the energy and the 'lets tear down the walls' attitude, but also a canvas for 100 percent personal expression and invention. Lets tear down ALL the walls, not just the easy, cheesy ones, like square parents and the establishment, but the walls that keep people divided and keep people from being the best person they can be. Not trendy, in other words. The trendy, hipster aspect of it is of course the worst aspect of punk rock, and of course the aspect of punk rock that continues to this day. When I was a teenager in the mid 90s, there was a really amazing music scene on Cape Cod. Bands like Cheesewheel, No Siento, The Fleece and more represented the non-trendy, D Boon style philosophy to the fullest. These bands all sounded different, looked different and were all amazing. For some reason, punk rock back then was attitude that was all encompassing. Sort of like how you would say something was "awesome", you would say something was "punk rock". For example: when the Beastie Boys released "Licensed to Ill", that was punk rock. NWA was more punk rock than some new crappy punk band, because of what they represented and their attitude. NWA in the late 80s scared people to the core, and definitely represented a complete breakdown of society's rules. My Chemical Romance or whoever will never do that. Maybe that's why punk is dead, because all the great shit has been done already. Maybe its because not being a trendy, hollow jerk is no longer cool, and being a trendy, hollow jerk is just so cool now.

And furthermore, The Damned is amazing. They really represent that strain of punk rock that was extremely experimental and intelligent. My sister gave me their greatest hits tape (might have even been a double tape) when I was 10 years old and I loved it. I remember telling my friend's parents that they were my favorite band and seeing the parents' shock and confusion. Check out these videos, and enjoy. (Keep in mind that "Smash it Up" is from 1979. That video looks at least 15 years ahead of its time.)

R.I.P Robert Ginty

2009-09-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

Robert Ginty, the star of The Exterminator, The Exterminator 2, Warrior of the Lost World and countless other 1980s B Movies died on September 21st, 2009. As a giant fan of his work, I would like to put my condolences out here on this blog for everyone to see. Rest in peace, Mr. Ginty, Hollywood has lost another shining star.

Greatest Interview Ever

2009-09-23T18:26:00.000-07:00

This is by far the best interview I've ever read. When people ask me why I say Kool Keith is the best rapper of all time, I wish I had this interview to wave at them. It doesn't get good until the second page.

The Gum Crisis

2009-09-22T16:09:00.000-07:00

So what with health care, the economy, war, impending environmental meltdowns, etc., a lot of terrible things have been happening lately, under the radar. What if I was to tell you that chewing gum really makes me angry and worried lately? Would you merely shake your head and call me 'incorrigible' or some other 24 point Scrabble word? (If it was on a double word score. I hate Scrabble, by the way, but that is another subject, for another blog.) Would you go on, clicking your way, webpage by webpage, blog by blog until your life collapses around you? Your houseplants dying, your pets starving, your kids getting into Magic Cards, your wife taking aromatherapy classes, all because you are lost in your little internet world, and can't OPEN YOUR FUCKING EYES? Well, click no further, this is the blog where we tackle the big issues. In this installment, I take a big bite outta chewing gum.
It seems like only yesterday that a 5 stick pack of Wrigley's was 25 cents. The commercials were plentiful, the gum was good and cheap, and everyone was happy. Then, as all things must progress on this fast train to oblivion we call life, the price rose to 35 cents. Then, all those fancy gums came out. "Dentyne Ice", "Orbit", "Bacon Flavored", etc. All of a sudden, a fancy piece of gum meant more. If you were on a date and you offered the lucky guy, girl, transgendered or no gendered person a piece of "Arctic Chill", you were gettin some action! No little peck on the cheek for old Snyder's Onion and Garlic Sourdough Pretzel Pieces over here. We're talking french kissing. Like Chocolat style. All of a sudden, gum was more than something I absent-mindedly chewed on all day, it was like a drug, a high. The flavors were so intense that they would bring me to a higher state of consciousness, and sometimes they would even lead to make out sessions.
Those carefree (pun intended) days of my 2 or 3 years ago youth are gone. I'm taken now, and I work hard for the money. Sometimes after several coffees and an Italian hoagie, I just want a damn slice of gum. Used to be, I'd find me a little pack of Wrigley's, whether it was Juicyfruit, Doublemint, Spearmint, Winterfresh, or for those days when I was just livin on the edge, Big Red. 35 cents poorer, I was happy to absentmindedly chew my gum for the rest of the day, happy as a pig in shit. No longer.
Now, If I want to get some friggin Juicyfruit, I gotta buy this unwieldy 15 piece pack for like a buck 50. This is bullshit! This pack of gum is so big and awkward that pretty soon I will have to buy a fanny pack just to store my gum. Not to mention that just a few years ago, 15 slices of gum would have cost half as much. Nowadays, if you're lucky enough to find a store that sells the gum 5 pieces at a time, it would only cost you a buck-o-five for the same amount of gum. But, since it comes in a big package and looks like a fancy gum, its a buck fifty. As if this wasn't terrible enough, don't even get me started with Big League Chew and Bazooka Joe. Oh, and Juicyfruit is bright yellow now? What the hell is up with that? With this level of shenanigans going on with our gum, how long till the people say "we've had enough!" ?!
I wonder about the future of gum. Will it someday be a treat only for the rich and powerful? Will people evolve and grow cud things that they can chew on in gum's absence? All I can say is that I hope the people in charge of America's gum firms look at this blog and hear my plea for cheap, plentiful gum. Don't tread on me, gum makers, don't you tread on me.

See 'Adventureland", if you want to stab yourself in the eyes with a sewing needle

2009-09-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend is a good sport. She's a trooper. I usually am making the movie decisions on nights in, and as you can guess from this blog, I lean heavily towards extremely violent movies. She puts up with it very well, sometimes even enjoying the film. Last night we went to the RedBox in my local Shaw's and it was her turn to pick. She chose Adventureland, which I thought looked like it had some potential. Someone from the incredibly funny Superbad was involved and it is set in the 80s at a cheesy theme park. It is advertised as a comedy. If its a comedy, its the least funny comedy ever, and even if it was supposed to be presented as the romance film that it is, this cornball flick's minor attempts at comic relief fall flat.
From the first 5 seconds of the film, I knew I wasn't going to like it. There is an extended shot of leading man (boy) Jesse Eisenberg's face as he stares longingly at his girlfriend. If this was Michael Cera, (as I suspect it was supposed to be) this could have actually been funny. Because Michael Cera is funny. Cera can affectively combine the awkward sympathy romance angle with comedy. Eisenberg can't. As a leading man, Eisenberg comes across as a pretentious jerk. And furthermore, I don't like his face. In fact, there is something about his face that just makes me want to plant one of these in his suckhole. (Author's note: I'm shaking my fist in the air right now.)
Eisenberg goes to work at a theme park the summer after he graduates from college, and we are introduced to all the 'wacky' people he works with. He meets the chick from Twilight and the rest of the movie follows an extremely predictable route that ends up with them being together. The normally very funny Bill Hader, as the park's manager, attempts to liven up the proceedings and was either having an off-day or the script was just extremely unfunny. The chick from Twilight acts the exact same as she always does and doesn't make a very compelling female romantic lead. The only thing I liked about her was her T Shirts. There is a "dumb hot girl" character named Lisa P who I actually liked way more than the chick from Twilight. She wears rad clothes and does synchronized dance moves with this black chick. She's cool. Meanwhile, the chick from Twilight is banging Ryan Reynolds, who continues his career of being not-funny.
Basically, I could only recommend this movie to people who have a strong desire to stab their eyeballs out with a sewing needle. I half wanted to do that and half wanted to punch Eisenberg in the face. If you are say, entering a charity boxing match where you will be fighting Jesse Eisenberg and you need to watch something to get you pumped up to punch him in the suck hole, than this would be recommended, as well.

This Blog is Awesome. Yeah and this one is too.

2009-09-17T17:36:00.001-07:00

Check out this blog. Its chock full of awesomeness.

One Year Anniversary, Eight Year Anniversary, Content Shift

2009-09-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone for making the past year of drinking and watching movies then writing about it fun. I'm pretty bored with the blog just being about that, so I've decided to expand the content. Now, you'll get not only strange and interesting movie reviews, but all sorts of crap on here. (Ie: you'll stop checking it. Like you ever did before.)
Not to be all grave voiced: "Its 9-11, time to be solemn, bow your head, look at your feet, think about the problem then step back..."
But here's a little thingie I wrote on the 5th anniversary of the attacks:

Well, the fifth anniversary of the horrific 911 attacks has brought many things to the fore. Shitty movies, shitty TV movies and shitty shit in general. And, this blog. To say that 911 was a momentous, huge event that forever changed life in America would be....the truth. America hasn't been the same since, to me it feels like we lost a great deal of innocence. That this event occurred at a time when my generation was reaching adulthood, an event with disillusioning aspects of its own makes it an archetypical event for our generation.
That said, here are my recollections from the day.
I awoke to “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin on my clock radio. It was about 9 a.m. I thought to myself, man, what a great way to start the day. I decided to lay in bed and listen to the whole song. I could tell it was beautful out and I knew that I was entering a fun and exciting era of my life. It was the first week of my senior year of college and I was living in the soon to be infamous 127 Logtown Rd house. At the end of the song, the DJ came on, audibly shaken. He said something to the effect of “We have no idea what is going on, but apparently a plane has crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers!”
I woke up my roomates and I was pretty panic stricken myself. We turned the TV in time to see the second plane hit the other tower. We were all in shock. Classes were still going on at Umass, so I went to school. People were gathered around TVs everywhere, hugging, crying, etc. I hugged alot of people that morning.
I kept calling home because my uncle Tony worked in the financial world in NYC and sometimes had meetings in the WTC.
The first person I heard voice any Anti American criticism that day was a friend who said basically that it was bound to happen. That America almost had it coming, etc. I remember being pretty shocked by that.
I went to class with the great, crazy old School of Communications Black Sheep, Vincent Bevilacqua. He had many extremely off color, morbid things to say. He told us to stay away from the library because it might be the next target.
After that first period, school was cancelled.
I drove home and my roomates and I decided it would be a good idea to start drinking. Our nerves were all shot to shit. I went and bought some beer and whiskey and I remember the liquor store being busy for a Tuesday afternoon. Jason Koning was the first person I heard theorize that Osama Bin Laden was most likely behind it.
My initial reaction to the attack was that America should pursue the perpetrators in a police investigation style, instead of waging full blown war on the Middle East. This sentiment was echoed in “Farenheit 911”, which I liked while caught in the political fervor of 2004, but now regard as a pile of horseshit.
I still stand by that belief, though, that the right way to go would have been a worldwide police investigation to find who did it and where they got their money and punish the guilty in a court of law. Its obvious that cooler heads didn’t prevail in the aftermath of 911, though.
I definitely felt like it was the darkest day in the history of America, and maybe the darkest day this country will see in our lifetime. You could sort of feel the paradigm shift going on around you in the days after. Reality took a sharp corner right then.
That’s my take on it, I’ll save all the conspiracy theory and conjecture for people who like being frustrated and pissed off.

The Toolbox Murders

2009-07-17T07:45:00.000-07:00

The once-great Tobe Hooper remade this little 1977 psycho potboiler a few years ago and his interpretation sucked. I always thought the original looked cool. Guy in a ski-mask, power tools being not used for their intended purposes, a blurb from Stephen King on the cover, probably written back when he was awesome and had a major drinking problem. I like how King calls it "one of the 10 scariest movies on video cassette." You get the feeling that there were only 20 horror movies on VHS when he wrote that.

The film's opening is great. There is about a half hour straight of nearly non-stop carnage. Easy-listening music is used wonderfully as young ladies are power-drilled, screwdrived and nail-gunned. The direction is kind of weird and artsy, sort of Giallo- American style.

(Minor Spoilers Ahead):
If you couldn't figure out by looking at the back of the DVD case that Cameron Mitchell is the killer, guess what? Cameron Mitchell is the killer. He kidnaps a 15 year old girl and ties her up, making believe that she is his deceased daughter. There are many genuinely scary and disturbing moments where Mitchell sings to her, feeds her and asks her what it was like to die.

It turns out that Cameron Mitchell's nephew is in on the whole thing and he has to kill some people as well to cover his uncle's tracks. The film's strongest sequence is the first third, it slows down considerably in the middle, and the ending is just okay. Overall it is a fun little piece of 70s shlock slasher horror, with extra points for intense creepiness. It is also about 10,000 times more fun that the 2003 remake.

Flesh Burns and Infected Ingrown Toenails Hurt

2009-07-15T16:02:00.001-07:00

So, here we are after a lengthy hiatus. You, my legions of fans, and I, that would be.... me. I haven't been writing this thing lately mainly due to laziness and from passing out at 9 p.m. every night after working hard all day. Today, my toe was operated on for a nagging, insanely painful infection that has bothered me on and off since January. I had an ingrown on the side of my toe, but it wasn't the nail itself that caused the problem, it was my toe's reaction to the nail and the subsequent infection. The Dr. said that I had the worst toenail infection he had seen so far in 2009. I'm proud of that. Pride goeth before a fall, so I felleth on my couch this afternoon with my foot elevated and watched "Fleshburn".

"Fleshburn" is yet another VHS purchase from the late, great Video Galaxy XVI. I will be watching the many VHS tapes I bought during their closing sale for a lonnnng time. "Fleshburn" is an obscure revenge flick about a crazed Native American Vietnam vet who escapes from an insane asylum and vows revenge on the psychiatrists who sent him there. The crazy vet is played by Sonny Landham, who, if you are like me and watch "Predator" several times a year, you will recognize as "Billy", the bad ass Indian tracker.

Its a promising premise, and for the first 25 minutes or so, it really seems like the film will deliver. I mean, what's not to love about Sonny Landham on a crazed rampage? Well, he kidnaps his old doctors, dumps him in the desert and then the bickering between the shrinks begins. You know who are annoying? Self obsessed yuppies. You know what's annoying to watch? Self obsessed yuppies bickering. One character, Sam, is pretty cool, he's the survivalist type that is gonna survive come hell or high water. Unfortunately, the other three doctors are super annoying. There's Jay, who bitches about everything and is played by a bad actor. The female doctor whose name I can't remember and isn't worth looking up on IMDB because I don't care, gets to be the super whiny hysterical type. Then there's the gay guy who breaks his leg and finds God and gives Sam a bunch of crap about wanting to kill Sonny Landham. "You're only concerned about proving that your power is greater than his," he says. Shove it, God boy! That's what I would have told him.

The middle to end of the movie is at turns boring, aggravating and disappointing. Although it is great to see Sonny Landham as a crazy bad guy, he is criminally underused. There are usually just shots of him chanting and painting his face before the film gets back to what its really interested in: a bunch of jerky shrinks bickering with each other and Sam making things out of rocks and pieces of metal.

Overall, not very good. The premise is blown by the underuse of Sonny Landham and the ending really sucks. Hope my next entry doesn't take me a month and a half.

I was wondering what Landham has been up to, as he was a great 1980s cinematic badass... came up with this... no wonder he hasn't been in anything lately.

Don't Go In The House

2009-05-31T17:02:00.000-07:00

I currently have Fridays and Saturdays off. This leads to some strange Thursday nights. All my friends have to work on Friday, so Thursday night is usually a little pocket of solitude to kick off my weekend alone. 1:30 a.m., Thursday night: the girlfriend is asleep, the beer is cold, and I am scouring my shelves for something to watch. I need something sleazy, degraded, preferably from the late 1970s or early 1980s. It needs to be exploitation, but not too cheesy. I need something dark, something bizarre, something that stands the test of time but is so of its time that it takes me away from these foul times we inhabit. The answer is found with the "Grindhouse Psychos" box set and "Don't Go In The House".

This film is much better than any other film that I've ever seen with a title that begins with "Don't". Yes, it is even better than "Don't Be A Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood", but that's sort of an apples and oranges comparison, isn't it. This particular "Don't" concerns a young man named Kohler, who lives with his mother in her giant, creepy house. We learn through flashbacks that she would burn his arms over the gas stovetop as a boy to "burn the evil" out of him. He now works at a giant trash burning incinerator plant. The film opens with a fellow worker of Kohler's tending the raging fire, not noticing a highly flammable aerosol can, presumably placed in the incinerator by the intently observant Kohler. The can explodes, dousing the worker in flames. Kohler does nothing but stare at the writhing, burning man. The fire effects are excellent and look way better than today's CGI cartoon blazes.

Kohler's superior berates him for not helping the man, calling him a "faggot" in the locker room. Kohler's buddy, who could easily be played by Michael Showalter if they ever remade this film, tries to get him to go to a bar after work to talk about the situation. As they stand outside the incinerator plant on a cold New Jersey or Long Island winter night, I realized that this film boasts some excellent photography. The darkness and swirling snow really captures the lonely weirdness of the small town Northeast winter experience. The winter setting also creates an interesting contrast to the fire that burns inside of Kohler, the fire which later manifests itself when he starts chaining up girls in a fireproof room and setting them ablaze. First, though, there is the matter of Kohler's mother.

He returns to work to find her dead in her chair. He is sad at first, then the voices in his head tell him that he is free at last. So he starts partying, turning his music up loud, smoking cigarettes in the house, jumping on the furniture. The voices goad him on. The sound of his mother screaming at him put his party to an end.
The whole look of the film is really great for what it is, a disturbing little psycho potboiler. But the house looks genuinely creepy, his room looks like what a disturbed man-child's room would look like, and so on. Once he fireproofs a room and buys a fireproof suit from an Army Navy store and starts convincing attractive young women to accompany him back to his house, often to see his "sick" mother, the film takes off. We watch his already damaged psyche erode as he kills the girls and keeps their scorched carcasses in a special room upstairs.

The psychology is right on the money, as far as the serial killer model goes. Child abuse is the first and foremost creator of serial killers, and this film really captures that. This is a non-exploitative exploitation film that had my eyes glued to the tube all night. There are genuinely frightening moments and the whole thing keeps a sustained tone of creepiness that will keep you watching intently. Definitely excellent viewing material for a late night beer session.

I shall Returneth

2009-05-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, to all my millions of fans out there, that I haven't written a new blog lately. There are many extenuating circumstances, including returning to my job after a two month Worker's Comp funded break/bender. Returning to work after having absolutely nothing to do for two blissful months is quite a challenge. I'm just getting back into the groove after three weeks back and I have used some of my hard earned money to purchase no shortage of awesome and exotic new reviewing material. In the past week I have purchased 12 Sonny Chiba movies, and nips of Crown Royal are a dollar a piece at the package store across the street. Stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen, for an onslaught of bone breaking, face bruising, ass whuppin, liver damaging prose, done in my signature rough-hewn style. Here's a trailer to keep your interest up:

Seagal Vs. Zombies and My Unnatural Thirst For Red Wine

2009-04-16T07:31:00.000-07:00

So far on this blog, when I drink some hooch, its usually just that, hooch. Cheap beer or hard booze, likker. Recently I have come to the realization that rye makes me completely insane a la Jim Lahey, so I've decided to give the hard stuff a break. What do you drink when you can't drink hooch? Wine. Cheap, strong, red wine is the best place to go in such situations. In my younger days I tangled with the Carlo Rossi and the Livingston Cellars and the Franzia. In fact, my expertise in the cheap wine category led to the crap wine area in the liquor store where I worked to be named after me. It is still referred to as my wing at this particular store, which brings me no shortage of adulation.
I am older and more refined now, so I passed up the opportunity to get poisoned and hungover for two days by drinking a jug of Rossi and went for the Georges Duboeuf's Cuvee Rouge. At most fine package stores, this French red table wine is cheap as hell. Mine was $4.99 a fifth or two for $9. Noting this value, I went for the twofer. This stuff is no joke. Its not the greatest wine you'll ever taste, but its leagues better than Rossi and them. After feeling very buzzed after only two or three glasses, I noted that the wine is 12.5 % alcohol. Lots of bang for your buck.
click for full size

I settled down with my classy beverage to watch what looked like a very promising film. Steven Seagal versus vampires, as the synopsis on the back of the case describes it. Its actually Steven Seagal versus zombies. Holy moses, if done right, this could reach new levels of awesomeness not known to human beings. I felt like this was the OT VIII of Seagology. Unfortunately, like my life, this blog and the new Tacos at Midnight Doritos, this film is an exercise in blown potential.

I had a hankering that this film wouldn't be as awesome as it should be when I realized that there were tons of central characters besides Seagal. We watch Seagal movies to see Seagal. Sure, there are zombies in it, but they are just things for Seagal to destroy, in hopefully very gory ways. Instead, we have all these survivors walking around an abandoned hospital and having the exact same conversations that zombie survivors in approximately 1,000,000,999 zombie movies have had. Nobody is watching this lame zombie film for the lame zombie film in it, we want Seagal. Big, fat Seagal, in his three quarter length coat and his samurai sword. BUT no, either he didn't get paid enough to be in most of the film or whoever wrote and directed this is a commie and wants Seagal to share the spotlight with a bunch of other people. Never a good idea. Seagal is too big of a celestial body, all smaller things that enter his orbit get sucked in by his greater gravity and burn up in his atmosphere.

Not only are there lame survivors, but Seagal is part of a team of zombie hunters. Lame. It should be Seagal alone, protecting the survivors and slicing and dicing and kicking the crap out of the zombies. The Seagal inflicted violence just isn't there, as well. How come they can show zombies eating people's guts, but not show Seagal poking their eyes out and breaking their limbs? Talk about your screwed up values. Its fair to say that the zombie genre is dead, when even a force like Seagal can't breath new life into it. Its not his fault. About two or three straight to video Seagal movies come out a year and it seems like every single day, two or three zombie movies come out. That's around a thousand or so zombie movies a year versus his two or three movies. Even a monster like Seagal can't turn the tables on the never-ending tide of zombie movies. Damn, this could have been good though. Will somebody cool make a Seagal movie, please? Quentin Tarantino or Rob Zombie or somebody cool, please save this fat old bastard's career, thanks.

Crappy Movies Forever

2009-04-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

So, I received yet another collection of obscure straight to video, mostly shot on video horror films, this one entitled "Catacomb of Creepshows".

I continued to nurture my injured ankle and damage my brain by watching more of these atrocities.

Curse of Pirate Death
Yet another flick from Brain Damage Films, a no-budget studio that churns out gory trash. This film was edited by Mark Polonia, brother of the late John Polonia. I have been a "fan" of theirs for years now. They made some of the worst/best shot on video films ever, starting with the ludicrous, disgusting "Splatter Farm" in the 80s.
This film concerns a pirate named Pirate Death who, back in the dayz, had a witch cast a spell on his hidden treasure. Whoever tries to take it gets killed by the retarded looking zombie of Pirate Death. This film stars Syn Devil, an actress seen mostly nude, who has boobs that are so giant and fake that they approach grossness. She appears in tons of these no-budget horror films. This film is filled with pointless nudity, terrible dialog, horrible acting and lame gore. That said, I kind of liked it. Its just stupid enough to be funny and contains enough completely idiotic scenarios to hold my attention. It loses steam towards the end, but over all I found it "enjoyingly retarded". (Quoted from my viewing notes.) Oh, and Ron Jeremy makes a random appearance as a pervy college professor.

Super Hell 2
This Cannibal Friends production was shot in and around my old stomping grounds of Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville is across the Ohio river from one of the nastiest places on earth, southern Indiana. People think of Kentucky as being a little bit redneck, which it is, but its like Mid-Town Manhattan compared to southern Indiana. The people even look different over there, like the gene-pool is tainted or something. (No offense to any of my friends that I worked with in Jeffersonville.)
The movie is basically completely retarded and totally pointless. I did like how it was set in hell, and hell is depicted as being Southern Indiana. That part of it struck a chord with me, because I thought it was about the worst place I'd ever seen next to Detroit. Syn Devil makes another appearance here, showing off her gross boobs. The movie basically consists of random, sometimes "disturbing" imagery and makes zero sense. It reminds me a little of the movie my friends and I made in High School. This dvd is available for free rental at Wild N Woolly video in Louisville. Wild N Woolly is the best video store I've ever had a membership to and I actually remember seeing this on the shelf there.

I've recently bought some bad-non shot on video DVDs, so my next column will be a break from these mind-numbing box sets.

And the Crap Goes On....

2009-03-20T16:33:00.000-07:00

So I had just about worn out my 100 movie "Bloody Nightmares" box set, when a look on amazon revealed something terrifying and interesting. Pendulum Pictures and Mill Creek had released TWO more 50 movie box sets recently. I bid on them and unfortunately won both on ebay.... I dived into the first set to arrive in the mail, "Mortuary of Madness".
50 more terrible, mostly shot on home video horror movies. How long, o Lord, how long....

Kill Syndrome This youtube quality ripoff of "The Devil's Rejects" was the first flick I watched from the "Mortuary of Madness" box. I was going to try and watch all the movies in the box in sequential order, but so many of these are completely unwatchable. If one of these flicks winds up on this blog, even if I tear it to shreds, it was better than some of the other films in these sets. I'd say two out of every five of these movies are completely unwatchable. This movie concerns a demented family that kidnap people, then torture and kill them in a storage unit. They film their nefarious deeds then sell the tapes to a snuff dealer. The bad guys are creepy looking and gross, but the endless scenes of ugly girl victims screaming and being tortured are extremely boring. I watched most of the torture scenes in fast forward. Some of the already boring and long torture scenes are shown in slow motion, only drawing them out further. This movie manages to feel very long for its 50 minute running length, maybe because its boring as hell. The ending is beyond lame and leaves the possibility open for a sequel. Yay.

Dead Teenagers Yet another film from Brain Damage studios. I went to their website and was surprised to see that a huge amount of their films are included in these Mill Creek box sets. In this film, a student in the library finds a notebook with 4 horror tales written in it. He reads em, and we watch em. The first one is called "The Boo Men", and though it is decently shot and pretty well put together, it is way too short and ultimately makes no sense. The second one is called "Full Moonlighting", an okay little werewolf story. Again, this one could have benefitted by being a little longer.
The third is a pretty bland haunted house story called "Skeleton Keys". The fourth and best story is called "Suckers". This one takes place in a real movie theatre, so it must have had the biggest budget. Its about Brian, a nerdy guy who works at the theatre with a very funny black kid named Kevin. Kevin is played by Joe Bahar, a young guy that should stick with acting. He's effortlessly funny. Kevin and Brian find a creepy old film reel in the theatre and strange things start happening. This story is the best out of this anthology because the people in it are interesting. Overall this was a decent, watchable horror anthology. The guy who made it, Chris LaMartina, must be pretty cool, because he thanks Mike Watt in the end credits.

I watched two more of these things today, so this shall be continued soon....

The Crap Keeps 'Splodin'! Straight to Video Mind Torture Continues.

2009-03-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

As my ankle takes it time healing, I continued to wade through the dark underbelly of the sub-film sewer known as the Pendulum Pictures 100 movie set "Bloody Nightmares"...

Dead 7 Contrary to the horrendous cover art, this was actually one of the more technically competent movies I've seen so far in this box set. Once you get past the retarded intro by a severely annoying punk rocker in a leather jacket, this one is surprisingly okay. There is a frenetic style of camera work here, most likely influenced by early Raimi and Peter Jackson. The acting, is as usual, very bad, but there is some surprisingly good gore. The story concerns an evil meth dealer who kills an underling and dumps him down a mineshaft. A strange boy who lives in the woods witnesses it, so the bad guy tosses him down the shaft as well. For the rest of the movie, we witness just how much of an asshole the villain is (he strangles his girlfriend for getting fingerprints on a Steely Dan CD!). Towards the end, a mysterious person starts killing all his friends. Take a wild guess who it is. Anyways, this was somewhat enjoyable.

Dr. Shock's Tales of Terror
This collection of four zero budget horror tales comes from Ohio based Aftershock Studios. What is it with the mid-west and no-budget horror movies? The opening credits and the wacky host, Dr. Shock, are painfully lame. The short movies themselves are pretty fun, however. The first is an okay Mob/Vampire tale called "Bullet for the Vampire". Okay gore, and decent video quality and production values, in comparison to most of the other trash I've been watching. The 2nd is called "The Town That Loved Pizza", basically a Texas Chainsaw rip off about two hulking inbred brothers that kill people and put them on pizzas. Fun and stupid, without pretense to be anything more. The 3rd would be "The Garden Tool Murders", my favorite out of the four because it has the least story and the most gore out of all of them. A landscaper kills people with different garden tools. Thats it. The 4th and worst one is called "Demon's Day". There is a prostitute in this one that for the life of me I couldn't identify as a man or a woman. This one was pretty painful and retarded. Not like anyone reading this will ever watch it anyway. This flick was overall a somewhat entertaining experience.

Hell's Highway
This was definitely one of the best movies that I have seen so far on my excursion into the depths of straight to video crapfests. It even has a big star in it: Ron Jeremy! He's in it for all of 2 minutes, but he gets his dick bit off, so its pretty memorable. This one is about a stretch of highway in Death Valley where an evil hitchhiker kills people trying to pass through. There is plenty of impressive gore and even a totally bizarre surprise ending that I didn't see coming a mile away. Oh, and everyone is drinking Mickey's Malt Liquor the whole time, which I liked. Definitely a cut above most of the crap in this set.

The Invitation
This started out promisingly enough. The video quality and direction is decent and the girls are actually pretty good looking. It actually succeeds in being creepy, which is saying something. A group of kids accidentally kill a kid they don't like when they are little. 14 years later, they get an invitation for a reunion at a country resort. Then a bunch of ghostly mayhem begins. I would have liked this more if it was a straight ahead slasher flick, as cheesy ghosts don't do anything for me. In fact, I wrote in my notebook: "Ghosty Borey". The film completely falls apart towards the end and has an extremely lame ending.

Las Vegas Blood Bath
I'm extremely surprised to find that this sells for $31.98 used on VHS on amazon! This is basically a plotless rip off of Maniac, with some dork named Ari Levin trying to be Joe Spinelli. Its from 1989, and has many unintentionally hilarious things on display. Ari's wife cheats on him, so he cuts her head off and rides around killing women and talking to her head on the Vegas strip. Just as you are starting to enjoy this movie, there is a pointless, half hour long scene of a girl's baby shower. I know they were just trying to pad out the running time, but this is truly ridiculous. There are also scenes of oil wrestling by "B.L.O.W.", the "Beautiful Ladies of Oil Wrestling". This film is so incredibly inept, stupid and sleazy that it gets my recommendation, if only to see just how bad a movie can be. The end theme song, by Chris Crump and David Royal Dalton, is incredibly funny, as well. Phew, I need to go wash my brain now.
The amazing end theme:

Straight to Video Crap Explosion Roundup

2009-03-11T13:10:00.001-07:00

If I didn't have an injured ankle that made my leisure time options limited to sitting around, this kind of behavior would make me a severe mental case, a retarded person, a sick sado-masochist, a depression case, or all of the above and more. But, I have to keep my foot elevated, and I feel like I am riding on a magic balloon carpet due to the painkillers I am legally taking for my ankle. So, I decided to keep forging ahead through this box set of 100 straight to video horror films that range from bad to the worst things ever captured by camera. Here we go:

The Crate
This one opens with two crackhead-like actors fishing by a river. These actors appear to have come straight from a group home, and they captured my attention. Their acting is hilarious because they are not playing crackheads, they are playing a museum curator and, (this is where the film really got me) THE MAYOR. The mayor is the more entertaining of the two crackheads, because he has this great gravelly voice, that I suspect came from smoking tons of rock or drinking tons of booze or both. They catch an ancient crate (looks like a produce crate to me). The museum curator cuts himself while opening the crate and an evil demon jumps out and starts killing people. The audio is really horrible, with crappy sound effects repeated over and over at deafening levels.

The two crackheads/actors think that they have killed the demon after a hilarious battle, and the gravelly voiced rock smoker/mayor decides that they have to cover the whole thing up. Of course, the demon escapes again and goes on a rampage. This movie is piss poor in every respect, but the truly horrendous acting and special effects put it in the so-bad-it made me laugh category. It was like a Stella short with non intentional humor. The end of the movie really sucked, because we never get to see what happens to the Mayor/crackhead. He was by far the best character in the movie.

Granny
This one surprised me with its professional look and film quality. Beyond that, no surprises. This was under an hour long and it felt longer than "Schindler's List". Probably the worst pacing I have ever seen in a movie. Absolutely maddening leaden pacing, even during the killing scenes. Its like whoever edited it was sippin sizurp. The granny-masked killer was creepy looking enough, but the tediously slow pace made this just about unwatchable. The professional look of it actually made it worse, as well. At least in the more amateurish ones, the crappiness of the proceedings can lead to some unintentional laughs. This was terrible.

Shower of Blood
This vampire tale had somewhat decent production values and nearly non-stop nudity. Its basically a softcore nudie flick with vampires. A group of hot ladies and their men go to one of the girl's Uncle Morty's house for the weekend. Morty returns and and it turns out he's a vampire. Lots of girls taking blood showers (hence the title) with rose petals falling on them ensue. If there wasn't a naked scene about every 5 minutes, it would be unwatchable. Nothing to recommend, but the shear amount of nudity kept me awake, at least. Also scores class points for overdubbed fart and burp noises every time one of the girls, who is supposed to be drunk, appears onscreen.

The Straight to Video Crap Explosion Continues...

2009-03-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

I really thought I could never watch another crappy straight to video, shot on video film.... then I sprained my ankle. I was given a prescription for magic pain pills which make these utterly retarded "films" somehow strangely watchable. These reviews are a continuation of an earlier series about this gigantic diarrhea explosion of a boxed dvd set I was stupid enough to buy...
Aided only with prescription painkillers and my natural sadomasochistic viewing tendencies, I forged ahead....

Mayhem Motel
I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was shot on film. That's about where the pleasant surprises ended. If I had known the cover art looked like this, I would probably have liked the film significantly less. Its not a horror film by a huge margin, and this artwork makes it look like one. The movie is a bunch of vaguely connected vignettes that revolve around one hotel and range from unpleasant to disgusting to strangely hilarious.
One of the first images in the film is an overweight, hairy man getting into a bathtub. He leans forward and pukes into the water. It looks completely real. Then it cuts to another scene. The movie proceeds like this, showing you something disgusting then cutting to something "hilarious" like two mimes having sex. There is tons of disgusting sex humor, and I ain't gonna lie to you, some of it made me laugh. The movie ends with some good ole necrophelia, then a guy randomly shooting himself. This movie made zero sense and was very disgusting, but it kept my attention. I gleaned some interesting information from the closing credits:
"Some characters and concepts from Matt Biancaniello's one man performance 'purge'" Wow, that must be an incredible one man show. The cheesy nu-metal end theme song was by "Pleasurecrush" which is almost as cheesy as a name for a band as "KandleKrush" from Tom Goes To The Mayor.
And, most telling of all: "Special thanks to all of the motels and thier owners... ... they had no clue." Their misspelling is thiers not mine.

Next on my brain punishing double feature was "Dead Body Man" by some dude named Ryan Cavelline who made a bunch of the crapfests in this set. This one is basically a horror comedy about a wacky serial killer named Willie who wears a Freddy Kruger sweater and kind of looks like Bam Margera. The movie opens with a retarded guy picking up a hooker. Guess what? He's not really retarded, he's Willie the serial killer! He chops up bodies and sells them as meat, and all for God, who lives in his closet and tells him to kill. The movie turns out to be a ripoff of "Basket Case", as Willie has a deformed twin brother attached to his side. Although seemingly endless and pointless, there are some things that deserve a little bit o praise. Eddie Benevich's extremely over the top performance definitely kept my attention. He has some golden dialog, like when he tells a captive victim "You've never had sex till you've had sex with a chicken!"
There is basically zero special effects and the gore is extremely lame and amateurish. I would never recommend this to anyone in a million years, I'm just trying to keep you people abreast of what I'm doing with my life so that I don't lose my mind. I was surprised to see that there are TWO sequels to this already out.

The OTHER Best 2008 Comeback for A Grizzled Veteran

2009-02-25T15:37:00.000-08:00

Everybody's talking about Mickey Rourke and "The Wrestler". I haven't seen it yet, but I am a fan of Mr. Rourke. Afterall, he starred in "Barfly", one of the best movies about drunks ever made and by far the best cinematic interpretation of Charles Bukowski's writing. Well, another grizzled veteran of the silver screen made a comeback in 2008, and not too many people know about it. Maybe its because he moves in silence, clad in black, his black hair greased back and his dark scowl distorting his visage into a hate mask of destruction. Yes, it is Steven Seagal I am talking about, and though his comeback didn't warrant interviews on NPR and a pictorial in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, it made die hard Seagalogists like myself take notice.

Seagal was once one of the all-time great movie bad asses. His rebellious attitude, the amount of gore and violence in his movies and his crazy conspiratorial politics all made for an intoxicating cocktail. From 1988 until 2001 (barring "Ticker" and "The Patriot") everything he touched turned to gold. Or if not exactly gold, at least movies that are entertaining as hell and just about the best thing to watch while stripping your mind of unneeded brain cells. Look, I could wax poetic about my love for the Ponytailed One, but you might be better off just reading this incredible book: Seagalogy. I can tell you, if Seagology was Tom Cruise's cult, he'd be making way better movies.

Ever since his last turn as a big screen action star, the crappy Ja Rule team-up "Half Past Dead", Seagal has churned out an endless succession of straight to DVD action flicks. They range from the fun ("Belly of the Beast"), to the palatable ("Black Dawn") to the downright horrible ("Submerged"). They've all had one thing in common, however. They are bad, bad movies.

Recently, however, Seagal has staged a mini-comeback. First he made "Urban Justice" in 2007. Now, by no means is this a good movie, but it is entertaining, and has a fairly straight ahead story. The problem with most of the worst of the Seagal straight to video films is that they have been extremely convoluted espionage tales. Nobody watches Seagal for the plot. The more stripped down the better. HIs best movie is "Out For Justice", and that has the simplest story out of any of his films. We watch Seagal, much like Jason Voorhees, because we want to see how he will dispatch large numbers of foes. In the classic Seagal films, he would never disappoint in this department. Hitting people with salamis, pool cues, pool balls, throwing people through windows, legs and arms breaking left and right. A perfect symphony of violence conducted by a large man with a ponytail and a penchant for wearing fancy three quarter length coats.

Seagal is getting old now, and it shows. First off, dude is fat. Second off, his face is looking pretty haggard. Now, i've been thinking for awhile that he could still make some decent films if he played his look right. Instead of being some dapper international spy and looking ridiculous, have him play an old burn out. That's just what they do in "Pistol Whipped" and it makes for Seagal's best film since "Exit Wounds".

Seagal plays a burned out drunk, a compulsive gambling disgraced cop. The great Lance Henriksen plays a powerful and mysterious guy who hangs out in an abandoned theatre and buys all of Seagal's gambling debts, which are over a million dollars. Seagal has to pay him back by killing a bunch of crime lords. Decent premise, right? On top of the decent story and brief but effective fight scenes, this film actually contains some of Seagal's best acting, ever! Not too impressive to some people, but for me, its a revelation. When you see a Seagal scene that actually approaches the universe that the planet Touching inhabits, you are seeing his best acting ever. Its a compelling character as well. Seagal pretty much looks like a fuck-up these days, so why not have him play a fuck-up?

I really liked this movie and I heartily enjoyed the Jim Beam Rye Whiskey that I sipped while watching it. I had only had Rye once before, some time when I was 21, I had a couple of glasses of Old Overholt and was not very impressed. I decided to give it another shot while watching this on my day off, and I was pleasantly surprised. Beam Rye has a sharp, spicy flavor, a pleasant aftertaste and a great, clean finish. It tastes way better than the Beam white label bourbon. The scary thing is, now there is a whole 'nother world of whiskey out there that I have to explore. Beam Rye, thank you for opening the doors to an even deeper level of drunken hell in my life. (That last sentence is a joke. My life is great, this blog is proof.)

Seagal drinks a lot in this movie, which is awesome. He walks into a bar and orders, in his trademark near unintelligible whisper, either a "Double dragon rock on the rocks" or a "double Jack and rocks on the rocks". Either way, impressive order. There is only one other line I felt the need to scribble down while viewing this and that was, of course, "You're cremated now, muthafucka!" Which is of course, a great line.

Anyways, this a wholly positive review, as I really liked the movie and the whiskey. See you in the funny papers.

File Under Crappy Remake

2009-02-13T09:51:00.001-08:00

I was excited for this, I really was. I'm a huge Jason fan, and I've always thought that in capable hands his story could be a great, classic horror tale. And, more realistically, given the right treatment, Jason could kick serious tail in a new film. Think "Freddy Versus Jason" without Freddy. A well-directed, big budget homage to the man behind the mask. My friends Tim and Jill Voorhees, almost if not greater horror nerds than myself, invited me to join them for the super special midnight screening last night in Boston. (Not true, I totally invited myself.) My ladyfriend, a true trooper, (a "trueper" maybe? No? You sure?) came along for the ride, even though she had chased 5 year olds around all day (she is a child murderer.) (Joking, its for her job.) (At a child labor camp.) (Still joking.) We met up with our friends Ian and his ladyfriend, who I for no particular reason will call "Manda Bo Banda" in this column. (That's class, when you call your crappy blog a "column". I still want to see this damn thing get published. Too bad all the alternative weeklies in Boston blow donkey scrotum.) (I really need to chill out on the parenthesis.) We had a number of drinks at the Beacon Street Tavern, a stylish little bar with a great Irish bartender who gave me a free Miller High Life, which Milady and I impressed everyone at the bar with as we inhaled it scarily fast.

We walked over to the theater, all in great spirits and a little tipsy, excited and hoping for the best. Maybe I was a little drunk, but everyone there seemed drunk as well. In fact, the deep voiced black guy sitting behind us who wouldn't shut up said to his girlfriend after everyone shushed him, "I'm tipsy, I ain't shuttin up." His girlfriend threw popcorn at me as I left the theater, as well. I did my best menacing stare and pointed at her. I'm getting off track here, must be the day off hangover beers I'm sipping. Where was I? Oh, yeah, I was drunk in a theater with a bunch of drunks about to be very disappointed.

I had a bad feeling right from the get-go. The film uses that extremely annoying newer trend in direction where the action is shown in ultra-closeups with herkity jerkity camera movements. This basically renders it impossible to tell what the hell is going on. On the big screen, it leads to a ripping headache, as well. Even with a solid buzz and a pocket full of rum nips, this film was hell to look at. One of the only things I liked about the film was that Jason dispatches an entire crew of campers before the opening credits. You think that the movie is going to be about these jerky, horned up kids (as that is what all these movies are about), then Jason, with a rag on his head, kills them all. THEN it says "Friday the 13th". Everyone cheered. That was the best part of the movie.

One of the biggest problems with this film, and it has many problems, is that it focuses on the campers. Nobody cares about the victims. We like Jason. The victims are disposable, almost like props. Introduce a group of campers, show them naked, then have Jason kill them. We don't care about them. Maybe in the old ones, we cared a bit, because they are sometimes likeable, like Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover in Part 4. In this movie they all suck, really, really hard. There is one likeable Asian guy that actually has some funny dialog. That's it. Everyone else sucks and you just wish they would die right away. Nope. Jason takes his sweet time. The movie was hyped up to be a "re-imagining" of the first 3 films, a focus on Jason's journey from little retarded boy to king of the slashers. Where the film really disappoints, for hardcore fans of the series, is that it fails at being about Jason. Its about these lame college kids that you just wish would hurry up and die.

I don't really want to continue writing about this movie. It is that bad. It actually pisses me off just to think about it. Its about as horrible as a Jason movie can be. Its like a remake of all the bad parts of the Jason movies of old. Here they hit all the wrong notes and failed to make an evocative, even halfway decent vision of the Voorhees legacy. When you consider how truly bad most of the Jason movies were, its not a surprise that this is a cheap, crappy movie. I just hoped that by 2009, a film 6 years in the making, after a latter day gore renaissance, Jason would come back to take his rightful seat at the throne of the slasher king. It could have happened. Easily. But it didn't. This movie sucks and is an insult to all the fans of the series. My recommendation for anyone who has a hankering for Jason is go and watch "Friday the 13th Part 2", that's my favorite in the series and its about 20 million times better and more fun than this turd.

Author's Note: Proving that he is an even bigger horror nerd than me, Tim went and saw this again yesterday. He said it was way better on a second viewing without high expectations. I'll wait until it comes out on DVD and compare notes. 2-15-09

The Pink Angels

2009-01-19T14:53:00.000-08:00

I figured out that I had a paid holiday in honor of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. today after getting up at 6 a.m. and driving a half an hour through the snow to work. There I was informed that I was not working. I would have remembered that today was a paid holiday, but I was so tired last night that I fell asleep around 9 p.m. I got home from my pointless morning cruise and went back to sleep. When I woke up, around noon, I realized that as an American, I should celebrate not only MLK day, but also the last day of George W. Bush's presidency by drinking and watching movies.

I popped in one of the discs from my recently acquired "Drive-In Cult Classics Volume 3" boxed set. The Drive In Cult Classics series is a boon for fans of overlooked cinematic swill of the late 60s and 1970s. There are 8 movies per set and they sell new for $10 in your neighborhood dvd store. I got my copy of the Volume 3 set at Bullmoose Records in Portland, Maine for $6.95. The films look great, like they have been transferred from the best source. And when you watch a film called "The Pink Angels" about a gay biker gang, you really want it to look as crisp and sharp as possible.

I drank some Rubinoff bloody maries with my homemade mix (V8, jalapeno peppers, black pepper, horseradish, hot sauce, and whatever else I feel like throwing in), and watched this truly bizarre film. It starts with a bunch of tranny bikers walking into a pool party where they are confronted by a butler. The lead cross dresser biker says "Sorry, wrong party..." and this echoes over and over again as the screen freezes. Then, we see a crazy general being led to his mansion. We then hear the surprisingly good hippie folk song "I See America" by Mike Settle as a group of bikers meet in a field of giant concrete tubes. At this point, the movie seems like it might actually be a real counterculture art film. This is mainly because the song by Mike Settle, is actually kind of moving. I don't know who Mike Settle is, but he did most of the songs in the film, and they are pretty good.

The imagery and cinematography is good throughout, but during the first few minutes, before this film revealed what it was really all about, I thought this might be some sort of out of control art film. It doesn't shoot that high, however. The bikers, even though they look like leather tough guys, are gay. This was the early 70s, so the idea of the leather biker daddy was still seen as being a hilarious contradiction in terms. Most of the movie is comprised of scenes of people being scared of the bikers because they look scary, then being surprised that they are gay. Like, really gay. Like, fancy cross-dressing gay. In fact, they are on their way to a drag ball in LA. There is a wild food-fight in an A and W. As a hitch hiker they had picked up watches them squeal and cavort while spraying condiments on each other, he yells "Jesus Christ, they're all faggots!" and runs away.

This is definitely not a PC movie, as the bikers' gayness is played up as a gag again and again. There is a scene where they get pulled over by gung-ho cops. The cops find their dresses, high heels, etc., stashed in their bikes. There is some great dialog in this scene, like where the cop asks the lead biker to unlock his storage compartment in his bike:
Cop: "What's in there?"
Biker: "A signed 8 by 10 glossy of Robert Goulet."
The cops call them queers and one of the gang, who actually looks alot like Jack Black yells "Well this is one all American red blooded faggot you can't scare!"

Getting into the plot too heavily wouldn't make alot of sense, because the movie doesn't make alot of sense. I will say that the actors are very funny and they seem to be ad-libbing here and there. The crazy ending, which took me an entire post-viewing bloody mary to figure out, is truly bizarre. The mad General that we saw in the opening, is shown again and again, being all crazy and sitting in his flag draped office. Apparently the drag ball was a fake, set up by the general so he could kill degenerates. Hence the weird "wrong party" freeze frame in the film's opening. The film ends with the general standing next to a tree with all the gay bikers hung from it. I don't know if this was supposed to be funny, or to make a point, but all it really did for me was make me say "What the fuck?" All in all, this is a bizarre, one of a kind film that is a celebration of all things wild and free in America, like cross-dressing motorcycle gangs. A fine way to spend an MLK day off with the reassuring spicy antifreeze flavor of a Rubinoff Bloody Mary. God Bless America.

Uncle Jesse and Vanity Versus Tranny Gene Simmons

2009-01-07T14:21:00.000-08:00

Click on pic to see the entire Turkish cover.

Wow, where do I start? As the extremely lame titular theme song plays and the credits roll, I sit, my mouth agape, my eyes hollow orbs. Even the Rubinoff bloody mary I am sipping cannot bring me back to reality after this insanity. My first emotion is that I feel that I've been cheated by not knowing about this movie already. I mean, it was released in 1986. That's 23 years that I have been walking around, with no idea that this movie existed. I guess that's a good thing, however. If I had seen this when it came out, back in 86, when I was 6 years old, I can say that it definitely would have altered my development as a person. Maybe for good, but I imagine it would have severely screwed me up and I would now be a tranny nightclub performer, like Gene Simmons as "Ragnar" in "Never Too Young to Die", today's movie.
(That was a roundabout way to introduce this movie, I'm no Dana Hersey, I suppose.)

Uncle Jesse, known to some as Mr. Jon Stamos, plays Lance Stargrove, a champion gymnast that has his own theme song sung by someone named Tommie Lee Bradley that goes "Stargrove! Stargrove!" His mortal enemy is the man/woman that killed his father, Ragnar. Ragnar lives in this big Mad Max looking desert fortress and kills people with his giant Lee Press On nails. I didn't think it was possible, but this is an even stranger gymnast action movie than "Gymkata."
Vanity is some sort of secret agent who lives on a farm. We first meet her as she is being accosted by two large Mad Max biker looking bad guys. She beats them up and forces one guy's face into a pile of horse doodie. She says "Eat shit." God, that woman has so much class. To give you an idea of how bat-shit insane this movie is, let me try to list what happens next:
Vanity shoots a bad guy. He goes flying into a wall and knocks a gas can down. The gas, for some reason, starts a fire in some hay, right next to a box clearly marked "Grenades". She grabs Jon Stamos and they jump out of the barn while it explodes. All this happens in the span of maybe 8 seconds.

Vanity spends alot of time scantily clad, which is always a good thing. All I could think about while watching her was the Motley Crue band autobiography, "The Dirt". Around this time she was dating Nikki Sixx, who said she smoked more crack than anyone he had ever seen in his life. That's saying something, coming from Nikki Sixx. She looks mighty healthy, however! Vanity and Stargrove go to a gross tranny bar to see Ragnar's gross tranny nightclub act and there, when asked by a gross tranny waitereress what he wants to drink, Stargrove says "I'd like a Lube Job." Of all the things to order from a gross tranny server! His order excites the tranny. Vanity orders a Bloody Mary and a cigar. Who the hell ever smokes a cigar and drinks a Bloody Mary? Weird combo. I don't recommend eating during this scene, because Ragnar's cabaret act is so gross and creepy and weird, its liable to make you nauseous.

The whole movie seems like it was made in a cocaine blizzard, with everyone but Stamos overacting in the extreme. Then there's the fact that the movie pretty much makes zero sense and you get the idea that cocaine, or at least crack played a large roll in the making of the film. Every single frame of the movie is completely ridiculous and I really couldn't even begin to list all of the insane crap in here. If the idea of Gene Simmons as an evil tranny versus Uncle Jesse and Vanity gets your dander up, I say seek this one out. I guess its pretty rare, but they have for rent at Hollywood Express in Somerville. Oh, I should also mention that I was drinking Rubinoff bloody maries during this film on a snowy, rainy, crappy day in Somerville. Rubinoff is made in Somerville at Allan's LTD, where most fine spirits originate. Even through my spicy bloody mary mix I could taste that slight antifreeze flavor of Rubinoff. Oh yeah, and there is brief Vanity nudity in the movie!

Death Sentence: Death Wish for an Emo World

2009-01-06T23:10:00.000-08:00

{Author's Note: This is what happens when I'm actually drunk when I write a review.

"Death Sentence" is a good movie. For people who like to watch regular movies, and new TV programs as well, most likely. Its a dark tour of one family's tragedy and one father's search for revenge, and sure to be the most hardcore action movie on the average "Lost" viewer's Netflix cue. (Did I mention that I hate "Lost" and Netflix as well? Support your local independent video store! And stop watching crappy TV!) Well, for a person like me, who has seen tons of revenge films, and loves them, this one is just okay. I want to get that across right now. If you don't own every "Death Wish" movie on DVD (Well except for part 5, but that one doesn't count), this is probably a great and amazing movie to you. To me, its an emo style look at revenge. I am probably the only film critic in the blogosphere that would say that there is such a thing as over developed characters. While all of North America and even some of the outer Aleutian Islands was popping giant wood for "The Dark Knight", I thought it was an over-long, over-blown, over-developed telling of a simple revenge story. You know what was a great movie, and by far the best Batman movie? "Batman" from 19 Eighty FUCKING 9. Because it knew how to tell a great story with enough character development to make you care but not the over-indulgence of the new Bright Eyes version of the bat. The over-developed characters on display seem more like an insult to the audience than so-called underdeveloped characters of the films of old. Do we really need everything this spelled out for us? I say no. You know what was another amazing revenge movie that knew how to portray an amazing battle of good versus evil without extremely emo bullshit that insults the audience's IQ? The original "Dirty Harry". I would completely hate to ruin anybody's viewing experience of "The Dark Knight", a film that I have no particular desire to ever see again, but at its best moments it was a somewhat gay remake of "Dirty Harry" for kids.

That said, "Death Sentence" is definitely a re-telling of "Death Wish" for the tight pants, tight shirt, Bright Eyes listening emo wimp in all of us. No, I'm leveling my extremely manly gaze at this film a little too squarely. I just like my movie vengeance served cold, not with horrible emo music and Kevin Bacon looking like a clown with a crappily shaved head and bright blood lipstick on his face. You know Charles Bronson is truly dead when movies like this are coming out. I have a feeling he would have killed everyone involved before it could have been released. See, why would I write that? Maybe because Bronson is an icon from his revenge movies, and this one merely makes me think that Kevin Bacon is a capable actor. Kevin Bacon will never be feared by anyone, so this film fails at that. I guess it makes him succeed at looking like a heartbroken, insane guy, but seriously, where is the fun in that? A heartbreaking, sad look at revenge yes, but I'll take "Vigilante" any day. A movie that makes the same points without looking like a crappy music video that tries to make me cry.

My final point: You can make hugely emotional revenge movies without wallowing in emo bullshit (like the Kevin Bacon crying in the shower scene, what is this, Stella?), just watch Kill Bill 1 and 2.

This film's target audience:

You know who's way more badass than Kevin Bacon?
Also:
Also:

The Only Bad Movie with Academy in the Title...

2009-01-04T17:30:00.000-08:00

Is also the only bad movie with Reanimator in the title: Reanimator Academy. While I knew this was going to suck, as it is a part of the Tomb of Terrors box set, I wanted to believe. I mean, it has Academy in the title, usually a sure sign of greatness. The odds were against it, however, as a movie in the Bloody Nightmares 100 movie set has about a 1 in a hundred shot at not sucking. And I mean sucking! Like Hoover Vacuum, Deep Throat sucking. This shot on video atrocity is about a Jeffrey Combs look alike who lives in a frat. The frat is pretty lame, except for the fact that they have big parties in the daytime where they drink Bud Dry and wear boxer shorts on their heads. So they are actually pretty awesome. One of the main stars of "Redneck County Fever" is in attendance at their party. Seeing as this was also filmed in Texas, its making me think that this unknown guy is some sort of regional Texas shot on video star of the late 80s/early 90s. Anyways, the Jeff Combs look alike brings a rotting rubber head back to the frat and REANIMATES it! It turns out that it is an old timey comedian, so the head makes non-stop wisecracks. His crack about Rosanne Barr is pretty good. This film was so painful to watch that it is actually painful to write about. With that, I will cut my review short. That is, unless I feel more motivated about relating the sheer pain and misery that this crap movie bestowed upon me later.

Santa's Slay, a new Christmas Classic

2009-01-03T08:39:00.000-08:00

This film, which looks horrible with its crappy looking cover, is actually an incredibly fun, out of control way to spread a little yuletide FEAR. I give it my highest recommendation. Settle in with some friends around the yule log and try playing the Santa's Slay Drinking Game. The rules are: You have to drink every time:
1. There is a bad pun.
2. Santa kills someone.
3. Someone uses an improvised weapon.
4. Someone says "Ho ho ho."
5. Something blows up.

You will be hammered within the first half of the film if you play by these rules. That should be an indicator of how awesome this movie is. Basically, the story is that Santa is actually Satan's son, and he has been bound by a magic spell to be good for 1,000 years. (The spell was the result of a curling match between Santa and an angel.) Christmas 2005 marks the year when the spell is up, and he is free to be evil again. The opening scene is mind-blowing, with a family that includes James Caan, Fran Drescher, Kris Kattan, and Rebecca Gayheart having a Christmas dinner that gets interrupted by ole Saint Nick. The entire movie is incredible. Fast paced and hilarious, full of gore and violence and bad puns and sheer awesomeness. Bill Goldberg is great as evil Santa, and this film makes me want to see him in more movies. Hopefully in Santa's Slay Part 2. There is also some amazing original music, like the song that just goes "Santa Claus! Santa Claus!" and plays while Santa destroys a strip club. There is another song that just goes "Christmas time, Christmas time!" Oh, and there is an amazing rap song: "1 for the kids who like to get toys! 2 for the kids who like to make noise! 3 for Santa cause he rolls with elves..."
If I had my druthers, this movie would get played 24 hours a day on Christmas like "A Christmas Story". A must see.

Zombie Rampage, the Straight To Video crap explosion continues....

2009-01-01T11:25:00.000-08:00

Zombie Rampage (Director's Cut, 1992)

This film is so incredibly inept and stupid that it definitely has a retarded sort of charm. Add in the fact that it was shot in 1989, and I say "Okay." The dialog is hilariously bad, there are actually a few impressive gore scenes, and the script seems like it was written by a 13 year old. You get to see all the archetypes of amateur late 80s regional horror flicks. The metal guy that looks like Dave Mustaine, the pimply guy with glasses and a mini-curly mullet, the blonde girl with feathered bangs. Its about a zombie rampage (hence the title) that occurs when dimwitted gang members do a voodoo ritual to try and bring their dead brothers in arms back to life. It definitely is a horrible movie, and earned an impressive 1.4 out of 10 on IMDB, but I found myself enjoying it. This film could have definitely benefitted from filmstock, however. It was apparently shot using consumer grade 80s VHS equipment. Either that or the version in the "Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares" box is a dub of a dub of a dub. This would have more fans, I'm sure, if it had been shot on even 8 mm, (I know that there was a recession in 1989, much like in 2009 and much unlike 1999, so I'm not out of touch enough to suggest that Auteur Director Todd Sheets should have used 16 mm.) Its bad, but I liked it and am going to watch more Todd Sheets movies, he's made 34 of them!

Straight to Video Crap Explosion

2008-12-28T17:34:00.000-08:00

Back in September or so, I found a Border's gift card under the seat of my car. I have no idea where the card came from, but it was worth $30. I decided I would spend it on something really stupid. I found what I was looking for in a boxed set of 100 horror movies called "Bloody Nightmares". This set combines two previously released 50 movie boxes: "Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares" and "Tomb of Terror". Mill Creek has been releasing these 50 movie DVD packs for awhile now, and for the money they are a good buy if you are a crap movie addict with just a touch of sadomasochism in your mental ingredients. Many of these films, even in some of the "better" collections like "Chilling Classics" and "Drive In Movie Classics" are definitely in the "so bad they're good" category. But this one hundred movie diarrhea explosion of amateur level horror movies takes a special kind of viewer. A viewer who loves pain, and drinks heartily to quench that pain. A viewer with iron resolve, iron will and an iron beer gut.
All 100 of these films represent below the bottom of the barrel video swill. Some of them are so amateurish and crappy that they make movies I made with my friends in my backyard when I was 13 look like Cecil B. DeMille. I will say that basically none of these movies merit recommendation, but I will share my experience for future generations of self destructive film critics and also to show my readership exactly how very serious I am about my art and how ready I am to suffer for it. This is the ultimate in cinematic self sacrifice, the film critic's version of kamikaze.
(Author's Note: This entry will be added to as I wade my way through this sea of cinematic sewage, new entries will appear as I continue to torture myself with these horrendous movies.)

The Traveler
The very first film I watched out of this buttload of crap films turned out to be one of the best. As it started, I sighed with the usual "why am I doing this to myself" feeling of regret as soon as I saw the cut-rate video and sound quality. Strangely enough, however, the film grabbed me. The pacing is decent, and it turns out to be a very sick and disturbed little chunk of homemade horror. The gore effects are extremely well done for the seemingly non-existent budget. Some of the stuff in here was actually so gross that it made me feel nauseous. If you are stupid enough to buy the "Tomb Of Terrors" box set, this is the best film in there. And, while it is horrendous, it stands head and shoulders above the rest of the garbage it is packaged with.

Demon Sex
This is unwatchable crap about a demon strain of alien DNA or something. It stars a bunch of fat dorks and a bunch of strippers and Brinke Stevens. The demon stripper girls can only get turned on when they see blood, sounds like an entertaining premise, right? No entertainment is to be found here. This is horrible.

Soul of the Demon
This one turned out to be a goofy bit of early 90s/late 80s fun. Definitely of the "so bad its good" category. The main characters are a bunch of lame rockers who have some amazing dialog. There is one awesome broham who gets killed way too early. He has some amazing lines and has to be heard to be believed. He walks in late to a seance party his mulleted friends are having with a six pack and some pizzas. He says "Did you guys conjure up any evil spirits? Pinhead? Jason? Chucky? If they had known we had pizza, they might have stayed and partied with us! Brew-ha anyone?" Incredible. Definitely one of the most entertainingly bad films to be had in the "Tomb Of Terrors" box. Actually has some good gore, as well.

Redneck County Fever
This film contains no gore, no hot girls in bikinis screaming in prison and basically nothing to make it stand alongside the other splatterfests it is packaged with. Well, maybe the fact that it was shot on a camcorder and is really bad makes it a suitable addition to the "Tomb of Terrors". This film is about two jerks in Zubaz who get lost in a rural Texas town. The film is neither funny or exciting in any way, but for some strange reason is sort of palatable. At only 60 minutes, it doesn't outstay its welcome, but unless you are really hungover and have nothing to do, like when I watched it, those 60 minutes will most likely feel like they were robbed from you.

Slasher (1987) This is a strangely re-edited version of "Blood Cult".
This movie was considered Z-Grade when it was released in 1985. Compared to the newer swill in these box sets, it looks incredible. This version of the 85 film is from 1997, and among the many crappy re-edits that are supposed to hide the fact that it is in fact an older movie, the sound cuts out for the last half hour. Not that it was that good in the first place. This is a crappy re-edit of a crappy film and thus is extremely crappy. A couple good gore scenes and somewhat professional looking camera work make it look impressive in comparison to the other crap fests in this box set.

Kill Them and Eat Them

More unwatchable crap, this time about mutants terrorizing street people. The theme music is good, and there is some cool old school looking animation, but overall, this is a snooze-fest.

Purvos

More unwatchable crap, this time about a perverted serial killer clown named "Purvos". This one amazed me by how unattractive all the women were. I passed out within an hour of putting it on.

The Inglorious Bastards! Quentin is Right!

2008-12-10T16:40:00.000-08:00

Let me preface this review with this:

Quentin Tarantino is remaking this film. His version is basically a cousin of this one, and not a straight-out remake. That said, I've wanted to see this movie ever since reading a post "Kill Bill" interview with Tarantino where he said he was working on his World War II project. The group of misfits teaming up for a dangerous mission film has been done many times, most famously in "The Dirty Dozen" . I thought that this film was just a cheapjack Italian rip off of The Dirty Dozen, and I'm a huge fan of that film, so I was actually a little apprehensive about buying its new fancy pants DVD incarnation. Luckily, it was in the movie store and I plopped down my change for a rental.

I immediately knew that this was much more than a cheap Dirty Dozen remake. This movie is awesome. It hits the ground running and never slows down. That said, let me talk about something way more boring: Schlitz. The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous with "Just A Kiss Of The Hops". Its really not very good. I never liked it, even when I wore cans of cheap ass beer like war medals in college. I always thought it was crappier than Hamm's and Pabst. And it is. But now, it holds some good memories. During my stint as a lobsterman, me and the Captain would head to the Squealing Pig for burgers after getting off the boat. The burgers are delicious there, but the beers are very expensive. Except for Schlitz. Three bucks for a tall can, sign us up. That first thirst quenching beer after a long hard day on the sea is great. That said, it tastes like butter and corn. And it really isn't that good. But, I like it these days.

So, I settled in with my Schlitz tall can and watched this obscure classic. Its about a group of deserters, murderers and thieves who are on their way to prison and execution in 1944 France. On the way there, a German fighter plane attacks the transport. This is a great sequence, with the guards holding the prisoners at gun point, while the fighter plane is raking the truck with bullets. The prisoners are getting shot at by the Germans and the Americans at the same time. The survivors escape, under the leadership of badasses Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson. The action never stops, as the Americans and Germans are their enemies. This is brilliant material for Tarantino to sink his teeth into. A movie where the heroes are bad guys in World War II France, just trying to get out alive with their freedom. It definitely has anti-war undercurrents. I think I actually like this film more than "The Dirty Dozen". There is way more action, and the characters are interesting because they are fighting for self-preservation, not for duty or country. This is slam bang, balls to the wall action fun right from the gate until the final frame. And its got such a great name. Looking forward to Quentin's interpretation. Three great movies in two days, the movie God is smiling on me this week. Final thoughts: this movie is extreme fun and Schlitz is garbage, but I like it.

The New Punisher Movie Pwns!

2008-12-10T12:51:00.000-08:00

I thought this movie looked kind of crappy. I mean, the first one was cheesy fun, and Tom Jane was excellent as Frank Castle, so I was a little disappointed to see some new guy filling Franky's big black boots. The only thing bad about the first one was John Travolta, but he was the bad guy, so you get to root for his death. I wish Travolta died a violent and horrible death in every movie he was ever in, even "Saturday Night Fever". He and his other space buddy Tom Cruise are basically the modern definition of the term "douchebag". But, I digress. When my good friend and harsh critic Mr. Tim Castle, husband of Mrs. Jill Castle, said it was "punishing....and good." I was surprised. I expected to hear "cheesy but fun" or something like that. "Punishing and good, eh?" I thought while steering my car through the urban blight of Somerville and Cambridge (not! Nice areas.) on my way to the depressing looking Cambridge Entertainment Cinemas.

First off, some great trailers were played. The new "Friday the 13th" is coming out on Friday, February 13th, 2009. Though I am not a fan of re-makes, I am a huge fan of Jason. And I guess these days you gotta take your Jason however those bastards in Hollywood want to serve him up. "The Spirit" looks like it could be either horrible or really incredible. I'm hoping the latter, as it was a great comic book and Frank Miller is at the helm of the film. There is a really crappy looking remake of "My Bloody Valentine", not really a classic in its own right, but guess what? It's in 3D! That makes it a must-see right there.

I don't want to give anything away about "Punisher: War Zone" because I hope people go and see it. If you are a fan of the comic book, the first movie, hell even the 1989 one with Dolph, you will love it. Where this movie really excels is the violence department. This gets the comic book just right, which is ultra-violent. It doesn't have much of Garth Ennis's pitch black humor, but it's definitely got all the exploding heads fans of the comic will need to stay interested. I really hope they make more of these films. Hell, Ray Stevenson is no Tom Jane, but he looks the part and nails the character. Dominic West, better known as drunk ass cop Jimmy McNulty from the "The Wire" is great as Jigsaw, the main villain. Hell, Newman is even in the thing!

This might ruffle some feathers, but I liked this film even more than the 2004 version, of which I am a giant fan. So, that should give you an idea of how awesome it is. AND, I was drinking 40s of Olde English with the Castles at the 2004 big screen release. I was sober this time. That is saying something. When you go see a movie by yourself on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, sober, and can say it was a better film than the hootin' and hollerin' good time you had with good friends movie-drinkin', that means its really good. I give it my highest recommendation for fans of hardcore, good old fashion movie vengeance! If any Hollywood execs are reading this, of which I'm sure all of them are, start work on a sequel!

80 Blocks From Tiffany's

2008-12-09T17:45:00.000-08:00

I've heard about this movie for a long time. Its an ultra rare (it sells on used VHS for $300 on Amazon) documentary by Gary Weis, originally released in 1979. Weis actually worked on Saturday Night Live and this was his side project, an intense, down to earth look at the embattled South Bronx of the 1970s. The Bronx in the 1970s was an incredible place. There will most likely never be another place like it again, as long as zombies, a plague or nukes don't decimate a major American metropolis. This is where hip hop was born, and it was the most ghetto of ghettos.

Miraculously, a video store in Boston (I won't say which one, because I don't want anyone stealing it and selling it on ebay), had this movie on the shelf. On the way home, I stopped into a liquor store for some whiskey. Little liquor stores in Boston really don't have great selections of booze, by and large. I might have to take a road trip to Kappy's to get something interesting. I decided on the blandest of the bland tonight, and went with Seagram's 7. There is really no way to describe Seagram's 7 in a positive light. I mean, sure, its "smooth", but it also has basically no flavor. For a dollar more a bottle, Evan Williams actually tastes like whiskey. Seagram's 7 tastes like whiskey flavored spring water. The little flavor it does have is syrupy and sweet, which leads me to believe that it gets its brown whiskey color from caramel sweeteners. There is little to no body, the whiskey is thin and slippery. I like my girls, and my whiskey, with the boom. I would say this is the Kate Moss of whiskeys, but she's actually really pretty, once you get past the visible ribs and chicken legs. I guess its just the cheap, really skinny girl with no personality of whiskeys.

I settled down with my nondescript whiskey to finally see this movie. I won't lie to you, I was psyched. I'm a huge hip hop person, and this movie is more hip hop than hip hop. These are the real gangsters, the real streets that all rap came from and that today's kids emulate. The locations, the interviews, the music, even the stuff they wear provides a fascinating glimpse into the South Bronx. The gangs interviewed are the Savage Skulls and the Savage Nomads. We meet the leaders of both gangs (Hollywood for the Skulls and Crazy Joe for the Nomads). We also meet several active members of both gangs, like D.S.R., Outlaw Manny, Frankenstein, Jamal and Fly. There are interviews with female gang members like India and shorty, and ex-female member Evelyn. There are interviews and on the beat footage with Youth Gang Task Force cop Bob Werner, community activist Joan and a former club owner named Heavy.

This is an incredible documentary. It ended after a scant 70 minutes, but easily could have gone on for hours and I would have been just as fascinated. If there has ever been an obscure documentary that screamed louder for the big time fancy loaded with extras DVD treatment, I've yet to hear of it. Where do I begin? This is just the raw, real street shit, from another time and another place. One thing that really amazed me was the overall positivity of the scene. It seemed like hard drugs had yet to really screw these neighborhoods up. That would come a few years later, when crack stepped onto the scene. These kids weren't choir boys, they robbed, fought, killed, raped, pillaged. But the whole community seems to be striving for something better, and the gang members are part of the community. These are just lost kids looking for a home, and the gangs provide them with some semblance of a family.

The cop, Bob Werner, seems to care about the kids, he's not out to harass these kids or screw their lives up any worse than they already are. Conversely, the gang members respect the cops for doing their jobs, and only get pissed off when their friends get sent to jail for crimes they didn't commit. Its a shockingly mature and intelligent stance in this age of SWAT teams and Stop Snitchin. These gang members come across as being very smart, on a whole. There is little false bravado and posturing, when compared to today's wannabe gangsters.

There are literally too many great quotes and scenarios to list in a review. This film definitely is one of the best inner-city documentaries I've ever seen. I give it my highest recommendation, if you can find it. You can definitely find Seagram's 7 anywhere, and I don't recommend it. Unless you like your whiskey really bland. I know that this film is extremely hard to find from my own experience with it, but its a must see.

Here's the first 8 and a half minutes. I think the entire thing's on youtube. That's not the same as finding the real VHS, though.

Garbage: The Wizard of Gore (2007)

2008-12-03T17:22:00.000-08:00

This remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis's cheesy 1970 gorefest is a completely horrendous piece of shit. I don't want to waste too much bandwith talking about it, it already stole nearly 2 hours of my life from me. Its basically an example of everything wrong with modern filmmaking, from crappy CGI, hipster shilling ("Featuring The Suicide Girls!"), horrible music and nonstop hooks. A movie just can't be one thing anymore, it has to be 20 things. This film had 5 producers, and I imagine that had something with its scattershot, try for everything and fail at everything style. I will save my review of Korbel Brandy for another review, because I honestly don't want this piece of garbage taking up too much space in my blog. I will say that Crispin Glover is the only reason to watch it, but even he isn't in it enough. Easily the worst film I've seen in a long, long time. Insulting to fans of the original and fans of Crispin Glover. It sucks that the genius who did this would lend his talent to such a inferior film.

Sober Night Part 2: Cemetery of Terror

2008-12-03T12:58:00.000-08:00

After "Don't Panic", I was on a role with these Mexican Horror movies, so I decided to delve deeper into my "Horror From South of the Border" box set and watched "Cementerio Del Terror". As the credits rolled and the ominous kettle drum/dissonant piano stab/low growling synth music played, I was excited to see that this was, in fact, another Ruben Galindo Jr. film! I immediately liked this film. You know how a certain smell can evoke vivid memories? Like when you're spray painting some apples gold for your holiday centerpiece and it reminds you of the times in your life when you huffed spray paint on the streets, servicing Johns under a bridge with BJ's, HJ's and ZJ's to support your habit? Well, there is a certain type of grainy film stock that does that for me. I can't smell it, obviously, but if I could, I imagine it would smell like dreams. Which is what Ron Howard's jizz smells like.

But that's besides the point. The point is, as soon as this flick started and I saw that grainy film stock and those deep, garish 80s colors, I knew I liked it. Even though this film is from 1985, it could easily be from 1980 or even the 70s. If it wasn't for one character's awesome Michael Jackson circa Thriller jacket and a few of the hairstyles, I would have guessed that this film was no newer than 1982.

This movie has three main storylines. One traces a doctor who wants to have a famous Satan worshipper named Devlon's body cremated. The other involves some jerky young medical students and their dates. The third involves some kids out trick or treating who want to take a "courage test" in the cemetery. How do these three different threads connect? Welp, without giving too much away, a cop and the doctor go to the morgue to get Devlon's body to cremate, but the jerky med students have already stolen it to play a joke on their dates. The jerky med students invited their dates to a "super" "jet set" party which was never going to happen. They made it up as a cheap scam to get some action. They take the ladies to a creepy abandoned house hoping for a make out party. The ladies aren't enthused, and won't make out. One of the jerky med students, who is wearing an incredible ski jacket, decides to wander around the house. He finds a giant black book that says "DEVLON" on the front. He starts reading it and is excited that its all creepy and shit. He tells the other jerky med students that they should scare the hell out of the girls because then they will come running right into their arms.

So, they go and inadvertently steal Devlon's corpse and hold a black mass in the graveyard. During the black mass, they keep chanting "its the sixth day of the sixth month!" Uh, so is Halloween on June 6th in Mexico? The cop and the doctor show up to grab Devlon's body to cremate it and it ain't there. The doctor freaks out and steals the cop's car and drives around looking frantic. After the black mass in the graveyard with the stolen corpse, for some strange reason, the jerky med students' dates are totally in the mood. A couple of them are listening to some great make out jams on a transistor radio. They apparently can't make out without it, because as Devlon's reanimated corpse approaches the house, the signal gets fuzzy. I don't want to give too much away, but Devlon tears some shit up, literally. His main weapon is his claws.

The trick or treater kids are doing their courage test thing in the cemetery, and zombies start popping up everywhere. In what must be a Rubin Galindo staple, all the zombies look like the zombies from Thriller, just not as good. I hate to dis children, but these kids are extremely stupid. There are tons of moments where they run the complete wrong way when fleeing a zombie. Like, the exit from the house in on the left, a zombie enters the scene from the camera's position and they run to the right.

The crazy doctor finds the kids and helps them by punching the zombies. These are really wimpy zombies. They can be defeated by a doctor who looks like Zach Galifinakis. I mean, its not like Zach doesn't look tough or anything, but you know what I mean. There is a super surprise ending that I can't give away, so I'll end this review like this. I liked this movie, It is dumb, and cheap but it is also fun. One fun thing about it is how off alot of the timing is. An actor reacts to something a little too late here and there, and sometimes the camera lingers on a scene well after the action is over. Its fun garbage. I mean, I took a melatonin with a half hour left and I still stayed awake for the whole thing. That's saying something.

Don't Panic! I Took A Night Off.

2008-12-02T18:47:00.001-08:00

After the week-long party that was Thanksgiving, my 10 year high school reunion and many smaller reunions of old friends, I decided to take a much deserved night off from the hooch. I also have to take a drug test for my new job tomorrow, and I thought that maybe showing up for it not smelling like a distillery would help make a good, albeit false impression for my new employer. I drank some cranberry juice, took some milk thistle and watched "Don't Panic", or "Dimensiones ocultas" as it is known in its native land. Its part of my "Crypt of Terror" Mexican horror box set.

This film was written and directed by Ruben Galindo Jr., making it what we film buffs call a "vehicle", a Ruben Galindo Jr. "Vehicle". I like to think this blog is educational and informative. Turns out that three of his other movies are included in my box set. Hooray. The film is also somewhat of a Jon Michael Bischof "vehicle", as he is the main star and he wrote and performed the film's ultra cheesy titular (I love that word) theme song. Jon Michael is deserved of praise, not only for his excellent name, his excellent curly mullet or the fact that he's supposed to be 17 years old and runs around in his dinosaur pajamas for most of this film, but for the fact that he apparently recorded the theme song on a Fisher Price tape recorder. There are backup singers, keyboards, all sorts of things going on in that song. It must have been hard to get all that together with no multi tracking and just that little plastic microphone.

Jon Michael plays a kid named Michael whose friends give him a Ouija board for his 17th B Day. The way his friends repeatedly say "Michael" when they talk to him reminds me of Stella (who I'm going to see live a week from Friday!!!) As in all 80s horror movies, the teenagers look like they are 30. Michael's love interest looks like Naomi Russell with a bad unibrow. Don't ask me how I know who she is, we bloggers are just very intuitive with all aspects of pop culture. And big ole butts.

At night, Michael starts having visions of bloody murders and when he opens his eyes, the pupils are huge. Turns out that these murders are really happening and his friend Tony is committing them, because he has been possessed by Virgil, who is actually the devil. So there are some bloody murders while Michael runs around in his dino jammies trying to stop them. The gore, violence and weird imagery isn't exactly mind-blowing, but there's enough of it to keep you awake. As Tony turns into more and more of a zombie, he looks like a zombie from "Thriller".

The ending is extremely downbeat, until they lash some dimestore spirituality on at the end to try and perk it up. The film is really not that great, nor is it too bad to not be bad/good. Its basically bad/good but won't blow you away. And furthermore, Cranberry juice is tasty, even without vodka in it.

A Quick Note on Comments

2008-11-30T10:41:00.000-08:00

I'm a blog comment whore. It makes me feel like these reviews are worth the time. So, I respectfully ask you to leave comments if you read the blog. I've run into several friends recently who told me they read it, and furthermore like it! This is great news and I am thankful for everyone who enjoys my ranting. I wish more people would leave comments, however. And if you come here from myspace, leave a comment here and not on myspace. Myspace won't ever make me møney. The best thing about blog comments is that you get to fill out a "captcha" thing, that little box with the wavy letters that you are supposed to copy to verify that you aren't a machine. Recently I have had the best blog comment captchas. I just left a comment on Trashcanland (peep the link on the right) and the captcha I got was "mendiss". An interesting turn of phrase. It could be slang for "mend this", or it cøuld mean the action of dissing men.
IE: "I really enjoyed the Spring Jam at the Smith College Quad, but some of the more butch singer songwriters were amping up the mendiss."

By far the best captcha I've gotten recently was "manhoss". That is so evocative and has real personal relevance for me. "Hoss" is a Cape Cod slang word for a, well hoss guy. Something that is hoss is something big, strong, burly. Shop kids who wear construction boots, flannels and drive big trucks. The truck itself could be described as hoss.

Upon doing a google image search for "hoss", this pic came up.

This guy's name is Hoss Lickfield, and I would say his name suits him. He is hoss.

So, leave comments, please.

Commie Red Night: Red Scorpion and Bloody Mary

2008-11-20T18:49:00.000-08:00

Oh Dolph Lundgren. Forever immortalized as Ivan Drago in Rocky 4, he seemed poised to be the next giant Aryan, lantern jawed action hero in the action hero frenzy of the 80s. He was He-Man AND The Punisher, but he just never really blew up, he was never the next Arnold. Arnold has a surprising degree of wit and even self-parody in even his most dyed in the wool 80s actioners, and that is what made him more than just another hunk of man-meat, and arguably, it is what made him the governator of California today. Dolph has no humor to his roles, and I say it is because he is a Swede. Nothing against the Swedish people, they made Saabs and meatballs and are by and large an incredibly gorgeous group of people. They are not really known for their humor, however. I mean, neither are the Austrians, but I imagine Hitler had some interesting parlor tricks and witty anecdotes up his sleeves. I joke, I joke, I kid, I kid!

I hopped over to Woody's Liquors tonight and bought some Poland Sering vodka. Forever I thought this stuff was called Poland Spring, then my friends pointed out to me one night that the 'p' is actually a lower case 'e'. Poland Sering, what it means to rip off the logo and name of a water company from Maine. Poland Sering is gross, really gross vodka. Even in my spicy as hell bloody mary, you can taste the funk through the heat on the first couple of gulps. But, like a good Russian and a better drinker, I soldiered on, much like Dolph would have to do to survive the many dangers that await him in "Red Scorpion". (I'm not Russian, and that last sentence blows.)

I knew I was going to like this movie when Dolph got hammered on vodka in the opening scene and went on a rampage in Africa. The Spetsnaz send Dolph to Africa to help the Cubans quell the revolts of a local revolutionary. Dolph wakes up in Africa, sweating balls, and rinses his mouth with vodka. He then rubs vodka on his neck and giant pecs. He stumbles through the village and enters a bar. There, he beats the living hell out of a bunch of people and starts singing some Russian song while slamming vodka out of the bottle and throwing people hither and yon. The troops run in to stop him and he beats the piss out of them, steals one of their AKs and starts shooting shit up. More troops come in, and another big man, the late great Brion James is the guy that finally takes the giant drunk maniac down.

This opening sequence is great, and is up there with all the best drunken rampage action scenes ever filmed. Dolph gets thrown in the slammer with an African revolutionary fighter and a sweaty reporter played by the excellent character actor M. Emmet Walsh. They eventually break out and their is a slam bag truck/armored vehicle/motorcycle/helicopter chase through the desert. This movie continues the legacy started by "Predator" of people listening to Little Richard to get pumped up for battle. The action sequences in this movie are top-notch and are a reminder of how great action movies were before CGI. Nowadays, the damn movies look like video games. Before CGI, when a truck blew up, a truck really blew up, and that looks 10 million times better than some animated crap made by a worker drone in George Lucas' dungeon. For further proof of this, watch the first three Indiana Jones films then watch the new one. When you are done crying, puking and punching yourself in the testicles from how horrible the new Indy film is, you will log on to your computer, come back here and leave a comment saying "damn, you was right!"

As Dolph, the revolutionary and M. Emmet Walsh wander the desert, it becomes apparent that Walsh hates Dolph because he is a "commie Red"! There is one great scene where they are all sitting around the fire and Dolph asks Walsh if all Americans swear as much as he does. Walsh replies "In America, we can swear whenever, wherever and however much we damn well fuckin' please! Its a little thing we call freedom of speech!" He then gets up and says he'll take 'first watch'. As he stomps off into the night he says "Fuck! Shit! Piss! Shit!" M. Emmet Walsh is basically the non-blood, non-explosion, non-drunk Dolph highlight of the film. There are some lulls in the film, as a bushman teaches Dolph the ways of the locals. The tribesmen give Dolph a scorpion tattoo, basically the same one I have. If you are a Scorpio, you need to have a scorpion tattoo, its just the way. Scorpios are notorious wackjobs and weirdos, etc. Whatever, I have the same birthday as Ol Dirty Bastard and I'm damn proud of that. Anyway, once he's been tatted by the tribesmen, Dolph throws his dogtags into the desert and becomes a full-on revolutionary fighter for the locals.

My notes say "Boring for like 15 mins, then shit starts blowin up!"
The ending sequence is more top notch action, with explosions, shootings and hand to hand combat galore. This is not the greatest movie ever, and there are about 15 or 20 boring minutes in it, but almost every other minute in the film is highly enjoyable action or M. Emmet Walsh swearing or both. So, with that, I say pour yourself a nice tall vodka drink and settle in for a mostly damn fun movie. Glasnost ruled.

Hot Booties!

2008-11-19T22:54:00.000-08:00

I added ads to this blog because times are tough and I'm trying to make money. So, I figured putting some hot booties on here would help my cause. I hope that hardcore film fans lose respect for me and abandon the blog. I'm just trying to get over.

I blame this woman for dozens of failed relationships. How can any girl in the real world ever measure up to Jem?

I don't care what anyone says, Joan Jett is the hottest non-Jem girl ever.

"Howard the Duck" was an incredibly horrible, misguided 80s film, but I'll be damned if Leah Thompson isn't a beauty of epic proportions:

^ Click on lame Duck pic to see severely hot, life ruining Leah Thompson.

We could go on here, but honestly, I'm just trying to rack up points on my blog. Its a chicken and the egg question, I guess...was I always a wackjob or did Jem make me a wackjob? Some mysteries will never be explained.

Force: Five and some Damn Whiskey

2008-11-18T20:54:00.001-08:00

My life is like SOOOO weird! OMG, LOL, ROTFL, TTYL, WYLITATALIY (When You Look Into The Abyss The Abyss Looks Into You). Nah, but the last entry I wrote for this damn blog was about "Gymkata". Soon after writing that entry, I went on a spirit journey to Halifax, Nova Scotia, a trip that was incredibly fun and nearly got me landed in the slammer. But that's another story, for another time. On the way up to Nova Scotia, I pulled off the highway somewhere near Portland, Maine to take a leak or get some gas or take a gas or get some leak or something. As I was driving to wherever I was going, I noticed a little, old timey (if you consider the 80s 'old timey') video store. I pulled in on impulse, thinking that they most likely had some old VHS tapes for sale used for cheap. They had a couple racks and some definite great finds. One tape didn't have the sleeve, just the clear rental case. It was from 1981, from Media Home Entertainment and was Rated R. It was called "Force: Five" and for a buck and a quarter I figured it was worth the gamble.
Flash forward a week. (My blog is pretty intense with all these personal recollections and flash forwards and flash backs and shit. Its like Quentin Tarantino on acid.) I'm watching "Force: Five" and drinking me some damn Old Crow bourbon. It occurs to me that tons of people in this silly kung fu action flick were also in "Gymkata". So, as I sit down to write this blog entry. Here I sit under God, and I look up this flick on IMDB to validate the idea that these movies are connected. The same guy that directed "Gymkata" directed "Force: Five" and tons of the same people are in both. Robert Clouse, you really know how to make a shitty karate flick! Wait, after looking at his IMDB page, the guy made "Enter The Dragon"! Holy moses. He went from making a classic to a slew of crappy low budgeters, shit, that's pretty sad. Now, I kind of took awhile getting to that point, but I think its pretty weird. Pick up a movie you've never heard of in a little video store in Maine to review on your little blog and it turns out to be a predecessor to your last reviewed movie.

Anyways, I really like Old Crow, it is the very first whiskey that I got into. At Umass Amherst, in that last, insane, tragic, hilarious and beautiful year that Butterfield dorm was still Butterfield dorm, I had my first tall styrofoam cup of Old Crow and ice from the ice machine in the basement. I was only 20 at the time, and pretty much drank only beer. The beer would always run out, and on many late nights, my friend Jason Koning would pull out his bottle of Old Crow and offer a drink. I remember actually thinking that drinking whiskey was an old man's thing and that it would be years before I embarked on such an endeavor. This is because all the other times I had drank whiskey it was in shots or pounded out of a bottle to get extremely drunk extremely fast. I had never hung out and really sipped and enjoyed whiskey. After a couple of good Old Crow nights, with Mike Watt's "Contemplating The Engine Room" playing or Jon Keane and Jason and I watching classic films like "Rappin'" and sipping the Old Crow on ice, I decided that I definitely loved whiskey.
I definitely think that memory and nostalgia affect opinion. I know that Old Crow isn't a good whiskey to some people. In fact, I've heard many people say that it is in fact, really bad. To me, its gentle flavor is what opened the door for the Eagle Rares, Buffalo Traces and Balvenies of the world for me. It was my first whiskey love, and I love it to this day. Old Crow is best sipped out of a large glass (or better yet, styrofoam cup), with tons of ice. You fill the glass with ice, pour the Crow in about 75% to the top of the ice and let the ice get to the whiskey. The result is a smooth sippin, ice cold drink, best enjoyed very slowly. Drink it like its 2 in the morning and you are hanging out with friends and you want to stay up til at least 4 and there is no more booze at all. In other words: sip it.

Now, ons to the movie. "Force: Five" is in no way a good movie. It makes "Gymkata" look like Oscar material. But, it is definitely goofy, low budget fun with tons of unintentional laughs and one actual intentional laugh. (Which I noted in my notebook: "Intentional Laugh!")
It concerns an evil Asian cult leader who owns an island and courts spoiled, upper crust young people who he then fleeces for their inheritances. He also is a karate master and has a giant army of gi sporting karate warriors. Sort of like a Jim Jones/Symbionese Liberation Army/Han from Enter the Dragon combo meal of a bad guy.
The action is plentiful, though not very gory, except for a bad guy who's head-a-splode. The acting is horrendous all around, but especially with the main star, Joe Lewis, yes Joe Lewis, but not the Brown Bomber. I never thought you could over act the action of pulling a lever, but he does. The movie gets its title from the fact that Joe Lewis recruits five "very special people" (insert retard joke here) to put an end to nefarious shit that is afoot on the cultist island. The movie should really be called "Force: Six" as Joe Lewis is the leader and the aforementioned five are helping him out. But then, it really wouldn't have the brilliant alliteration of "Force: Five". So, I don't know, maybe call it "Society: Six". Pretty lame, but "society" was the only word I could get out of the thesaurus (WHICH I NEVER USE) for "group" that starts with 's'. Let me try looking up "Force". How about "Strong Arm: Six"? I like that, and its more accurate than the actual title.
I don't want to give too much away, because I'm sure that my minions of readers will go and watch this movie, but at the end its revealed that the cult leader has magical powers, which he uses in a battle with Joe Lewis.
Overall, a pretty crappy movie, but its full of action and goofy fun. Definitely an okay flick to watch while sipping some delicious Old Crow.

Gymkata: Nonsensical Gymnast Karate Fantasy with Mullets

2008-11-07T20:18:00.000-08:00

I've heard about "Gymkata" for years. I remember seeing it in the store back in the day, but even as a kid it looked a little lame to me. I mean, a gymnast action movie? As an adult I have sought it out, but never "lucked" out and found it at the exact moment when I had the money to buy and I was in the mood to buy it. That moment when the stars aligned just so and Gymkata and I were inexorably drawn to one another. That moment occurred this past summer while one of the greatest video stores on earth, Video Galaxy XVI was closing in Yarmouth. Video Galaxy towered above Route 28, which runs through Yarmouth like some sort of cancerous growth. In fact, it was located right across that evil thoroughfare from a McDonalds and a Blockbuster Video. In an example of bullheaded stubbornness, sticktoitiveness or a combination of these traits, the owner of the Galaxy refused to fold when the evil Blockbuster moved into town. That shitty company claimed the lives of the best video stores in my home town of Orleans: Video Empire and East Orleans Video, so I love to see people fighting back.
I first entered Video Galaxy in the summer of 2003, a summer where for whatever reason, I watched alot of movies. I would drive the 20 minutes from Orleans to Yarmouth to RENT movies from this place. That's how good the selection was. All the titles were faced sideways and the shelves went from the floor to like 10 feet in the air. You had to get up on something to reach the top two shelves. It was one of those now scarily rare video stores that had opened in the early to mid 80s during the VHS boom and had purchased damn near every video ever released. They had stuff in there that I've never seen anywhere except recently on places like the excellent Critical Condition website.
This place was really classic, and sadly, it recently closed. They were doing fine business, but the owner, who was a really cool old guy, was just too old to run it anymore and nobody would buy the business from him. Finally the slime buckets from Gotcha Video, a porn shop, bought it. I don't call them slime buckets because they ran a porn shop, they were just really slimy, gross guys. Anyways, they bought it and started selling off the inventory. I thought they would try to turn it into a giant porn shop, but they just wanted to sell all the movies and close it up.
I believe they started selling the inventory in March, I didn't find myself in there till around April, and even though it had already been picked over, there was still enough great stuff in there that I would go up every two weeks or so and buy like 10, 15 videos. I'm still getting through them.
I guess that just recently the place finally closed its doors. I would just like to say R.I.P. Video Galaxy XVI, it was the best video store on Cape Cod, and one of the best I've ever been to. At least since the 80s.

So, I settled down to watch "Gymkata" with some PBR last night. There really isn't much to say about PBR that hasn't already been said. I love it. Its cheap and it tastes good. I would like to pull hipster rank and say that I started drinking it way before it was popular. Like 99. People at Umass thought I was fucked up for drinking it, then they found out it was $9 a case and everyone started drinking it. Not saying I'm responsible for its now ubiquitous stance in the "hip" world, but I'd say that I came to the realization that it was delicious and cheap without anyone else telling me that. I was 19 at the time and simply gave my buyer $10 and told her to get the most beer she could for the money. Once I had my first PBR night, I preached it like the gospel. I can remember going to Westfield State and bringing PBR and my friends there thinking I was from another planet.
A beer as good as PBR sells itself, though, its too good for how cheap it is. Its like crack. The first guy that did crack then told everyone how great it was doesn't deserve a trophy. But I do.
Anyways, "Gymkata". I knew that this movie was about a gymnast who does like gymnast/karate, but I wasn't prepared for how totally bizarre it is. The opening has a gymnast doing flips on the high bar in slow motion. It cuts from that to a bunch of Mongolian looking dudes on horses chasing a guy down in slow motion. "Wha?" I asked the TV.
Turns out, the Gymnast and the Mongolians will collide! The Mongolians are actually residents of a place called Parmistan (is that where Chicken Parm was born? Eh? Eh?), a tiny mountain nation in the Hindu Kush range. (Is that where the Purple Kush comes from? Eh? Eh?) Parmistan looks medieval, but the film is set in the current 1985 world. The Parmistinians have something called "The Game" that everyone who enters the country must compete in. The Game consists of the newcomers running through a big obstacle course with ninja looking warriors chasing them. If the newcomer lives, he is granted one request. If he loses, he dies. No foreigner in 900 years has won.
Secret agents want to put a Star Wars station in Parmistan, and they figure a goofy gymnast with a mullet is just the guy to compete in the game. So, we have the inevitable training montage. His trainers are a big black guy and a little Chinese guy. The Chinese guy makes him chop wood, and sits nearby with an eagle (this is never explained and we never see the eagle again), telling him to listen to the sound of the axe cutting the air. As the gymnast gets better, he wears weirder clothes, eventually settling on a sweater that looks like something from a Renaissance fair.
So, once he's good enough, they send him to Parmistan. There is a strong anti-American sentiment, and he and his friends are ambushed. There is a great scene where a group of bad guys are chasing him and he ducks into an alley. There just happens to be a high pole there. So, he jumps up and starts doing gymnast stuff. As he flips around he kicks each bad guy in the face. Then he kicks a guy riding a bike by the alley in the face. It doesn't sound too funny on paper, or whatever they print websites on...air? Circuits? Anyways, its a really funny scene, mainly because the direction in this film is really inept so everything looks goofy.
Finally he makes it to the secret capital of Parmistan where the game takes place and hangs out with the Khan, who just kind of looks like an old Jewish guy with a bad comb-over but wears big fur hats like Genghis Khan. There are some lame plot developments that I won't go into, but I'll say that the Khan's right hand man, Zamir, looks like a buff Kenny Loggins with a rattail. Oh, and there is another bad guy named Thorg who looks awesome. The film goes forward with standard "most dangerous game" action where the ninjas and Zamir hunt down the contestants and the gymnast advances by the skin of his teeth.
The film takes a serious turn towards the bizarre when the gymnast stumbles into a town where Parmistan has placed all of its criminally insane. There is way too much insane imagery and strangeness in this sequence to write about here, but I will say that it makes the entire movie worth watching. One thing worth noting is that in Crazy Town, they have a stone pommel horse in the center of town, which helps the gymnast out quite a bit, because then he can do pommel horse shit and knock twenty people out with his feet.
The gymnast wins the game and gets the princess and that's it. Its an incredibly weird and bad film, but besides the Crazy Town segment, not quite insane enough to get my full recommendation. Still an alright flick to pop a few tops to.

I'm officially an actor now

2008-11-05T12:38:00.001-08:00

Man, I am on an adrenaline high right now. After last night's election, I woke up hungover and excited. Afterall, I was about to act in my second film. 4 years ago Justin Reichers and I were extras in "Fever Pitch". It was fun, but we didn't get to really act. We just sat there with our pretend girlfriends. (Who were wicked hot.) The scene we were in was cut, so I was yet to grace the silver screen. Yesterday I answered a Gig ad on craigslist to appear in an indie comedy being shot in Southie. My part was advertised as "Road Rage Guy". I sent the director a picture of me making a mean face and they chose me. The director and main star of the film, Arthur, is deaf. This made my first experience as an actor very interesting. In my scene, he is eating lunch in his black 1970 Continental and his middle finger is broken. Its bandaged up, sticking straight up. I pull up in my car, yes my real car, and think he is flipping me off. I yell at him "Nah, dude FUCK YOU! Fucking cocksucker, what the fuck is your problem? JESUS CHRIST!" then I drive off fast. I can't wait to see what this looks like. I think it was a great first experience as a speaking actor and I might even try to get more work doing this. I just hope I get to scream at people everytime.
www.connedthefilm.com

Whiskey and Elections Part 1

2008-11-04T22:38:00.001-08:00

I'm not going to post my definitive election night blog right now. I have five pages worth of hand scrawled notes and am drunk on whiskey. I will say this: FUCK YEAH! This is great, at least in the symbolic sense. I am excited about Obama winning and the brutal whipping the Republicans took. I am not excited about Obama echoing Nixon and Bush in his first speech as President-Elect. But hey, he represents a good feeling in America, and its been a long time since we had something to feel good about in national politics. But, as a serious cynic when it comes to world politics, I can already see Obama using his good vibes to continue the horrendous New World Order foreign policy of the Bush bastards. As exciting as tonight is, and as excited as I am about Obama beating McCain and the retard, I want to reinstate my deep mistrust of any President. After the sullying that our most powerful national office has taken after 8 years of the decaying shithead corpse from Texas, I don't think I'll ever trust a President again. Which is a good thing, I think. The biggest mistake we can make is putting absolute trust in our national leaders. Yet again, though, I am very excited that Obama won.

Twofer Tuesday! The Visitor.

2008-10-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

This is a strange, strange film. I continued to chip away at my economy sized jug of Rebel Yell, check the "Firestorm" entry for my full review. I popped in "The Visitor", yet another of my Yarmouth yard sale finds. This film is almost great. It isn't even good, really, but it shoots very high and misses. There are little pockets of coolness here and there, though. The music is very cool, first off.

The opening scene is really bizarre, with cloaked figures hanging out in a really strangely beautiful hell or "other realm". We cut to a basketball game. A young Lance Henriksen has a basketball team: the "Atlanta Rebels". They are playing the San Francisco "Miners". He's watching the game with his beautiful girlfriend, played by Joanne Nail. A reporter asks Lance where his money comes from, and he evades the question. Finally, he says "god." A little girl with dope stunner shades uses evil powers to make the Miners lose the game due to an exploding basketball hoop. There is some really interesting creepy cinematography and strange editing.

Turns out, Henriksen has been elected by a creepy secret rich guy society to knock up his girlfriend. They tell him that they have insured that he will have a successful basketball team, but he is yet to give her a son, which is what they need, because she is the only human to have

"his" genes.

I guessed that "He" was Satan, and I guess he was, but due to the psychedelic nature of this film, I was thinking "he" was an alien for awhile. Maybe they meant to say that God and the Devil are aliens.

There are some really cool and bizarre sequences, insane plot twists and some good old fashioned mayhem here and there. Overall, the movie unravels towards the end and makes little sense. I don't want to give too much away, but Jesus appears at the end. And they don't make it clear that it is Jesus, its just a guy with a beard and blue eyes. But the camera lingers on him so much that finally I decided it was Jesus.

Apparently Sam Peckinpah is in this movie, I didn't even realize this until the end credits. Must be a very minor role. This movie is too disorganized and bizarre to really warrant a recommendation, but I enjoyed it overall. Definitely an interesting premise that isn't explored to its full potential. There are little glimpses of a great avant garde horror film hidden in the corners of this movie, but as a whole it is too disjointed to be a good one.

Joanne Nail

Ninja 3: The Domination and the Dominant 40 Ounce

2008-10-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

Author's note: This is the first Fermented Film entry written on my fancy pants new laptop. Its a Mac Book and it cost me a smooth $1300. I also wanted to note that I keep several loaded guns on me at all times, and that this Mac Book is equipped to play "Living La Vida Loca" at top volume endlessly if it is ever stolen. So keep that in mind while you contemplate making the trip all the way to Saskatchewan to steal this fancy pants ass Mac Book. Also, writing a Fermented Film review with my fancy Mac Book poses problems. As I don't write these things in an academic setting,

it will be resting on my lap while I imbibe. This poses

some challenges. I really don't want to spill anything on this damn thing. Well, we'll see. I might have to go back to writing these things on my Game Boy. That is all, now enjoy the

blog.

Ninja III: The Domination. 1984, Rated R. Directed by the Venerable Sam Firstenberg.

Olde English 800. 40 Oz. $2.25 at Woody's Liquors, Somerville, Saskatchewan.

Olde English is THE 40. Delicious, smooth and packs that malt liquor punch. This heady brew is responsible for the lives of millions of my brain cells. Baseball has Babe Ruth, Wrestling has Hulk Hogan, Weed has Cypress Hill and Malt Liquor has OE. The 40 for all seasons.

I settled down to finally view the infamous "Ninja III: The Domination" and enjoyed the unmistakeable hiss of my 40 of OE as I cracked the top.

Word to the wise: if a movie is from the years 1983, 1984 and 1985 and its a Golan-Globus production, there is a nine in ten chance that it will be incredible. This film continues the Golan-Globus tradition of excellence and improves upon it. It is quite simply one of the most bizarre, entertaining films I have ever seen. I know I'm getting a little ahead of myself by declaring that right now. But before I can even begin to delve into this mind blowing viewing experience, I have to get that out of my system. This movie is the balls.

It opens with an Asian American guy in a business suit walking into a cave. He opens a glowing rock and it is full of ninja weapons. He suits up and heads to a golf course. The first ten minutes of this movie can only be described as completely amazing. A yuppie guy, apparently a politician, is out golfing with his ladyfriend and a squad of security guys. He slices and hits the ball toward some bushes. The ninja steps out, picks up the golf ball and crushes it in his hand. He beats the hell out of a security guy and thus begins a display of mayhem that rolls for a solid ten minutes. I can't even begin to describe all the great things that happen here. You're better off just watching the clip on youtube. If you can watch this and then not want to see the full movie, you're damaged:

I like how the cop calls in a 10-20, is that cop talk for a ninja massacre at the golf course? Thanks to Jack Melcher for that observation. In fact, Jack, my roommate, walked into the living room midway through this insanity and said he could only watch a couple of minutes of the movie. I rewound it back to the golf ball crushing and he wound up rooted to his chair, watching nearly the entire movie with me.

Meanwhile, hot to def 80s lady Lucinda Dickey (the white girl from "Breakin"!) is nearby, working on a phone pole (!). The dying ninja runs out and basically shoots his soul into her. I really don't want to give too too much of this movie away, as it is some of the most damn fun you'll ever have watching a movie. I really mean that. This movie is one of the pinnacles of modern American cinema. You've got the beautiful Dickey possessed by the spirit of an evil ninja. I can give that much away. Beyond that, the film is pure Gonzo B Movie lunacy, which each scene more absurd than the last. This is a ninja/cute 80s girl/slasher/exorcist/haunted house action horror hybrid that kicks more ass than a donkey.

If I were to do a scene by scene breakdown of all the ridiculous shit in this movie, this review would be the size of War and Peace.

I would hate to sound like I am condoning drinking, as some of my very good friends are sober and have had problems with the hooch in the past. But, do yourself a favor. Find a copy of this movie (which is hard, this classic isn't on Deev yet! It really should be.), settle down with some good friends and plenty of your beverage of choice. I recommend a malt liquor beverage in a large glass jug. Pop this baby in and enjoy the ride. If you know me, hell, even if you don't, get in touch and I will gladly watch this and drink with you. Utmost thanks go to Danny Cashman for letting me borrow this gem from him! Once again, THE king of crap movie collecting has proven his dominance. Mr. Cashman, I salute you.

In closing, this film is incredible, and is a Holy Grail of 80s junk cinema.

Chopping Mall and Tullamore Dew

2008-10-05T13:29:00.000-07:00

Chopping Mall (1986) [R] Directed by Jim Wynorski

Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey $16.99 750 ML at New Hampshire State Liquor Store

I laid low this weekend, trying to defeat a nasty cold. I decided a few sips of Grampa’s Olde Cough Medicine wouldn’t hurt matters. I grabbed a bottle of Tullamore Dew that I had purchased at a New Hampshire state packy and rummaged through a box of videos that I found at an incredible yard sale in Yarmouth. In addition to the box of VHS tapes, I found a talking Freddy Krueger doll, a Miami Vice board game, a book about Ed Gein and a bunch of comic books. All for 10 bucks! There are plenty of obscure horror movies in the box, but I settled on “Chopping Mall”, a film I have seen at least twice before.

The cover of this video used to scare the bejesus out of me when I was a kid. A robotic hand holds a shopping bag full of cut up body parts. The tagline reads “Where shopping can cost you an arm and a leg!” IMDB says that this film was originally entitled “Killbots”, and although “Chopping Mall” is a great title, I think the original name suits the film better. The story concerns an ultra modern shopping mall that has lethal robots for security guards. The robot guards go crazy and start killing indiscriminately. Although they have lazer guns, electrocution tazers and little grippy claws, they aren’t equipped with any sort of chopping or slicing apparatus. There are no chain saws or blades in their repertoire. None of their victims actually lose an arm or a leg. So, the tagline, the cover and the title are all quite inaccurate. My personal quibble.

I thought that the pairing of a fine Irish whiskey with a film about killer robot mall cops would be a no brainer. I was halfway right. The Tully, as drunks affectionately call it, is a delicious whiskey. It has less burn than the spicy Bushmill’s and the quite smooth Jameson. There is little to no burn on the way down, but you do feel a fire in your belly upon swallowing. It has a pleasant aftertaste and lacks any real spice. Either I was tired from being sick all day and not doing anything, the Tully is too sublime, or someone slipped me a micky, because I fell asleep with about 15 minutes left in the film. This was about 9 p.m., mind you. I had only had about 2 and a half Tullies on the rocks, but I was knocked out. Well, I’ll review what I was a awake for.

The robots look like some sort of hybrid between the war machines of the future from the first “Terminator”, the Daleks and Kit from “Knight Rider”. They have awesome voices, and like everything futuristic, make neat sounds whenever they move. The film starts with a cool cold opening that turns out to be a promotional film for the guards. It says “The End”, and I almost thought that I had forgotten to rewind the film for a second. A crowd of people are shown in the mall watching the promo. Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov, of the great “Eating Raoul” are in the front row and have some great wisecracks like:

Paul: “They remind me of your mother, it’s the lazer eyes.”

Bartel and Woronov's presence is highly touted on the back cover of the film, but they are sadly only present for about 5 minutes. The real credits begin and we are treated to a “wacky shenanigans at the mall” montage, as clips of well, wacky shenanigans at the mall roll by over some cheesy 80s tunes. It is worth noting that there is a record store in this mall called “Licorice Pizza”. Sounds like something the Ninja Turtles would be into.

We are introduced to a nerdy guy and some cool guys. It isn’t worth mentioning their names, because that’s as far as their characters are developed. They work at a furniture store and the nerdy guy’s uncle owns it. The cool guys convince the nerdy guy to let them have a beer and make out party in the store.

The robot guard’s first victim is a scientist, who apparently supervises them. He likes to pig out, as he mentions that there was a buffet and he just “couldn’t help pigging out.” He then eats a donut that his colleague left lying around. Then he gets killed by the robot guards. I love the somewhat overdeveloped minor, incidental victims in horror movies. They are basically like extras, they appear on-screen for a minute then get killed. But, for some reason, maybe to make it seem more realistic, they are given little quirks. Like the girl who can’t get picked up hitchhiking in “Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter”, who also likes to pig out. She actually dies eating a banana.

Some foxy ladies show up to the beer and make out party at the furniture store and everyone except the nerd and his “date” start making out. Pretty convenient, when you think about it. You have some ladies over to your furniture store for a beer party, and before you know it, those beds are being used for more than sleeping! The dialog is incredible.

Guy: “You smell like pepperoni.”

Girl: “If that’s the way you feel...” She gets out of bed.

Guy: “Wait a second, I like pepperoni!”

Girl: “Well, in that case...” She starts singing and stripping.

And we cut to another couple. The girl walks towards the bed wearing some hot lingerie.

Guy: “Lady, you got a license for that outfit?”

Girl: “Why, no officer! I guess you’ll just have to take me in!” She jumps into bed.

As the nerd and his date try to get over their inhibitions and make out like everyone else, they are interrupted by people making out in the background. A girl yells “Oh God! Oh God! You’re the king!” If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that, I’d have.....negative a million dollars.

Meanwhile, the mall is closing up and a janitor starts yelling at one of the robot guards and waving his mop at it. The Killbot (I like that more than “robot guard”, and its easier to type.), shoots a tazer into his mop bucket and electrocutes him. After killing the janitor, the Killbot says “Thank you, have a nice day.” This is funny the first time, but gets way overused throughout the film. There is a close-up of the janitor’s smoking body and a voiceover says “Smoking is bad for your health.” Cut to one of the cool guys and his lady having an argument about her cigarette habit! Genius!

He offers her Camels and she says “No, you know I only smoke Virgin Slims.” Best fake brand of cigarettes. He finally says he’ll go to the cigarette machine and get her some. He walks out to get the smokes and gets killed by a Killbot. Then she goes looking for him, with the camera focusing squarely on her butt. The Killbots start shooting lazers at her. The lazers reminded me of the GI Joe cartoons of my youth. I think they even make the same sound, and some are blue and some are red, just like the Joes and Cobra. This lazer battle was different than the GI Joe battles, however, because one of the lazers blows her head off. The other kids witness it. They realize that they are locked in the mall overnight with the Killbots and decide to arm themselves. They break into “Peckinpah’s Sporting Goods” (!) and get a bunch of guns and propane tanks. One of the cool guys says “Lets go send those fuckers a Rambo-gram!”

As more of the mall is revealed in their walking around, I realized that this was the same mall from the all time classic “Commando”. The mall where Arnold throws a phone booth at some people, beats up a shitload of mall cops and swings on a giant balloon onto an elevator. That mall. I got to thinking, as I sometimes do, that maybe “Commando” is a prequel to this movie. It was made one year earlier, had a sequence in the same mall and featured a crazed bodybuilder decimating its entire mall cop force. Maybe the mall decided to improve its security after that blitzkrieg and went with the Killbots. Even Arnold would have a hard time dealing with these bastards. They are completely bulletproof, and fireproof, as the nerd and the cool guys and the foxy ladies learn the hard way.

Arnold decimates the human mall cops that were later replaced with Killbots.

The movie has some great juvenile logic, like mirrors will reflect the death lazers and shoot them back at the Killbots. One guy’s daring act of self sacrificing courage is to hit a Killbot with a golf cart, thus killing himself and destroying the Killbot. When I passed out, I think only the nerd and his date were still alive. I awoke to the tape ejecting itself after auto-rewinding. My only other viewing note is “Passed out, must be sleeping pills in the Tullamore Dew.”

I then completely woke up, did the dishes, and watched about two hours of “The Kids in the Hall” Season 1, which I found NEW at Newbury Comics for ten bucks! Deal of the century. Considering that I only probably paid about a quarter dollar for “Chopping Mall”, I am really getting away with some steals here! And what a better time for hot deals and savings than with this crappy economy getting crappier.

All in all, “Chopping Mall” is just stupid and gory enough to recommend for a fine drinking and viewing experience. Tullamore Dew is delicious, but after it knocked me out like that, I am wary of it. Also, if in fact “Commando” and “Chopping Mall” are connected, as I highly suspect, then that may have been the beginning of the greatest franchise ever. Each movie is connected only in that they all concern the security force at the same mall. Think about the possibilities! They could have gone the comedy route and had a goofy Police Academy style movie next, or maybe have Arnold return as a one man security force. Damn, the possibilities are sky high.

Misleading trailer! The kids didn't break into the mall! They worked there!

Author's Note: The director of this fine film, Jim Wynorski, apparently went on to specialize in softcore adult fare, and the titles of his newer films are definitely worth mentioning.

The Lusty Busty Babe-a-que (2008) (TV)
House on Hooter Hill (2007) (V) (as H.R. Blueberry)
The Breastford Wives (2007) (V) (as H.R. Blueberry)
The Da Vinci Coed (2007) (TV) (as H.R. Blueberry) (also as Harold Blueberry)
Busty Cops 2 (2006) (V) (as Harold Blueberry)
The Witches of Breastwick 2 (2005) (V) (as H.R. Blueberry)
The Witches of Breastwick (2005) (V) (as H.R. Blueberry)
Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade (2005) (V) (as Harold Blueberry)
Bare Wench: The Final Chapter (2005) (TV)
Busty Cops (2004) (V) (as Harold Blueberry)
Bare Wench Project: Uncensored (2003) (V)
The Bare Wench Project 3: Nymphs of Mystery Mountain (2002) (V)
... aka Bare Wench III: The Path of the Wicked (USA)
... aka Bare Wench: The Path of the Wicked (USA: DVD title)
The Bare Wench Project 2: Scared Topless (2001) (V)
... aka Bare Wench 2: Book of Babes (USA)
... aka Book of Babes: Bare Wench 2 (USA: video box title)
The Bare Wench Project (2000)

2008-10-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

The Honeymoon Killers (1970) [R] Directed and Written by Leonard Kastle

Popov Vodka($8.99 750 ML) and Polar Tonic ($ .89 1L) with lemon slices

I picked up a VHS copy of “The Honeymoon Killers” at good old Mystery Train Records in Amherst, where the owners recognized me and even remembered when I had a broken leg! (That’s going back almost 9 years now! Holy shit, I’m old.) I loved Mystery Train so much that I had the Umass Special Transportation van bring me there. Its weird that I look back on a winter I spent on crutches at Umass as one of the best times of my life, but I really had a good thing going there. I couldn’t go anywhere, so people came to me. My room became a salon in the Owl Farm Kitchen sense. People of many backgrounds could stop in and enjoy the site of me controlling everything in the room with a crutch, drinking 40s, peeing in 40s, and more. Man, that’s incredible that was that long ago. Fuck.
Well, what better way to celebrate getting old, the crashing economy and political incompetence at every level than to buy a bottle of Popov and a bottle of tonic and a lemon and settle in to watch an unbelievably dark and disturbing movie? I use run on sentences, but I do it with impunity, because no editor with a lick of sense will publish this goddamn thing, and no one reads it but my friends. So, fuck the Style book, I’m writing my own! Writing my own Style book, that is. Shit, maybe I actually need an editor. Where is my Jann Wenner, or better yet, Larry Flynt? Or Jill Kelly? (She used to be the “Publisher” of “Fox” Magazine. I found this out while spending a winter on crutches at Umass.)
Tonight’s movie and drink pairing was a study in contrasts. The Vodka Tonic is a summery drink. The look and taste of it brings to mind sultry nights and care free days. Or in my case, hung over, sweaty days spent doing hard labor. The kind of sweaty, hung over labor that can raise a man’s thirst, a thirst that can only be slaked with Vodka Tonic. And so the cycle repeats.
The film, on the other hand, is a dark, demented, depressing, disturbing film noir. The look and feel of it is like a winter spent on crutches on Cape Cod, yet somehow even worse. Probably because it all really happened! A ominous blurb at the beginning tells us that the film is based on a True Story. The film is from 1970, but has the look and feel of a 1950s film noir. It was shot in black and white, on somewhat grainy film stock, and the music is by Mahler.
The film is shot very interestingly, making great use of the contrast between black and white. The pacing and editing is excellent, as well. From my viewing notes: “Movie is so weird and atmospheric that its hard for me to take notes. Don’t want to miss anything.”
The story concerns Martha Beck and Ray Fernandez. She is an overweight, lonesome nurse who lives with her mom in Alabama, and he is her New Yorkian romantic pen-pal in a lonely hearts correspondence program. Ah, the days before the internet. Now, I can get hit on by latin men and think they are 18 year old girls the entire time! Or I can start up a hot relationship with a stunning webcam girl because her friend told her about my myspace page. Well, this film shows that true, horrendous evil has always been around, even before this age of computerized lust and lies.
Ray comes to Alabama to visit Martha and she falls head over heels in love with him. They give her mom a sleeping pill and make implied love with her in the room. Gross. He leaves her the next day, and we see him chuckling and counting her money on the train. He is a con man who has multiple relationships with women all over the country through this correspondence program. He beds em, promises to wed em, and takes their money. Martha calls him and says that she will kill herself if she can’t be with him. She comes to New York, and there is an amazing scene where she abandons her aging mother in Alabama. He shows her what he has really been up to and he is pleased to see that she still loves him and would kill herself if she couldn’t be with him. He tells her that he can get money from another woman if he weds her.
He takes Martha along, with her as his “sister”. They rip the new fake wife off. Ray is shown as the weaker of the two, with Martha being the strong arm. The fake wife leaves with her life. Lucky for her.
Their M.O. is in place. Ray seduces a lonely lady, goes to meet her with Martha posing as his sister and they rip her off and flee. The next fake wife poses a real problem, as she really wants to sleep with Ray and Martha is insanely jealous. Ray makes his fake wife sleep with his fake sister. The acting by Shirley Stoler as Martha Beck in this scene is amazing. She just looks so damn ugly, fat, scary and evil looking. They make the fake wife take a bunch of pills. There is an excruciatingly heartbreaking scene where Ray forces her on a bus to Little Rock and takes her money, as she is all fucked up on pills and still wants to be with him. She dies on the bus.
The next victim is a rich lady in Pittsfield, MA, who runs the Tanglewood. She attempts to make out with Ray at a lake and Martha sees it going down. She screams “YOU PROMISED! YOU PROMISED!” then tries to drown herself. This fake wife also gets away, its never explained, but I guess she told them to get lost.
I don’t want to give too much more away, but I will say that they keep repeating their M.O., and it gets worse and worse. You get to see lonely widowers sadistically lied to, mislead, then killed and robbed. Its fucking horrible. And, they start to like it. I have yet to research the actual case, but at the end of the film it says that they were both electrocuted in Sing Sing in 1951. As the credits roll, you will say “wow”. The sign of a great film. Definitely not for everyone, but as a film about a horrific string of real murders, this is well done, non-exploitative fare. One of the best true crime serial killer films I've ever seen.

Tony Lo Blanco and Shirley Stoler as Ray Fernandez and Martha Beck

{Author's note: sorry about the tangential start of this post. I hadn't drank for a couple days and I hadn't written one of these in a while. I was sort of scared of writing about this movie, as it was disturbing as hell. I don't mean what I wrote about the Style Book. I actually own one, and the Grammer Book, too. I just like to act cool. I should also mention that Dan Cashman recommended that I buy this film, and that is why I bought it. Thanks, Dan!}

I couldn't find a trailer for this film on youtube, so here's a video by the band The HoneyMoon Killers:

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

2008-09-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

Author’s Note: Mad spoilers. There is just too much to write about with this movie.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Molson Golden

Well, this is a first for Fermented Film, the author is actually reviewing a good movie. Not a drinking good movie, but like, a good movie. “Bring Me the Head...” is an unlikely classic. Sam Peckinpah’s severely dark, seemingly nihilistic tale of greed, lust, revenge and hatred. For some reason today I wasn’t in the mood for the usual goofy fare that I watch while having a few and I decided to revisit this film. Maybe it was the recent article about Sam Peckinpah in the Boston Phoenix but I doubt it. The Phoenix hasn’t expressed interest in publishing this column, so I don’t find it fit for birdcage liner. Bastards.

I decided to keep it simple and drink a few Molson Goldens while viewing. Molson Golden is a solid green bottle beer, if you like that kind of thing. Its also a surprisingly heavy beer, more filling than other green bottles like Heineken and Stella. Taste is definitely decent enough, and it takes a long time to drink a six pack of them, which makes it a good work night beer. Its not like the deceptively harmless Bud Light or PBR, where you can suck down six of them without noticing. This beer’s heavy body makes you take your time. Turned out to be a good choice because you actually have to use your mind to watch this film.

The film opens with a horrifying scene featuring a young pregnant girl being tortured by her parents to give the name of the man who impregnated her. Alfredo of the title is the father of her kid, and her father offers 1 million dollars to whoever brings him his head. Hence the title.

We first meet Warren Oates as Benny, the extremely unlikely protagonist, playing piano in a bar where men punch hookers out cold and no one bats an eyelash. This isn’t a wacky slapstick “Three Amigos” style Mexican bar, though. This is a dark place where money is god.

Two gringo hit men are looking for Alfredo Garcia and they ask Benny for information. He is able to figure out that Alfredo is worth tons of money, dead. He gets drunk and goes to find his girlfriend, who is the beautiful Isela Vega playing a hooker. He yells at her, threatens her and asks her where Alfredo is, apparently she had just cheated on Benny with Alfredo. While interrogating her he orders a “double bourbon with a champaign back”!!! Nasty. She tells him that Alfredo has just died in a motorcycle accident.

The relationship between Isela and Oates is very disturbing, intense and surprisingly realistic and intelligent. Peckinpah has been accused of being a nihilist, a sexist, a drunk bastard and worse, but his handling of this fucked up abusive relationship is so damn spot on that it makes me think that he knew the material all too well. Not to accuse him of anything, but this is one of the most scarily accurate abusive relationships I’ve ever seen in a film. No soap opera bullshit here. This is Masters in Psychology shit here. And it never flinches. The morning after their first tryst that we witness in the film, Oates finds he has crabs and pours tequila on his package. He says “Wake up, change the sheets, I got a new job!”

The scenes with Isela and Oates are very compelling. This film is so dark that love is shown as a scary thing, a weakness, a place where losers try to hide inside one another.

Oates and Isela travel to the countryside to find Alfredo’s grave. There are many great scenes with Oates and Isela cruising through the Mexican countryside with some criminals trailing them. Everyone is drinking and driving and singing. Oates and Isela run into a couple of dirt bag gringo bikers, one of whom is played by a young Kris Kristofferson. What follows is horrifying, a nightmarish rape scenario where the bikers take Oates and Isela hostage and intend to have their way with Isela. There is a disturbing bent to it, as well, where Isela winds up begging Kris to rape her. This is could be seen as either a comment on the nature of abuse, and the behavior of abused people. Or it could be seen as flat out misogyny, the idea that women secretly want to be raped. Either way, its a goddamn king hell of a disturbing scene.

The next day they are driving away from the hell behind them and Isela is crying about having to help Oates dig up her past lover and take his souvenir. He says “There’s nothin’ sacred about a hole in the ground...or the man in it....or you....or me!”

Damn. Some of Peckinpah’s legendary nihilism bleeding through.

Their relationship continues to be creepy, with her being aroused by his increasingly insane, abusive behavior.

Once they finally find Alfredo’s grave, they are greeted by a funeral procession carrying a tiny casket. A baby’s funeral. Could this film get any darker? Yep. And it does.

They dig up Alfredo’s grave and are ambushed as Oates is about to cut the head off the body. When Oates comes to, he

is covered in dirt in the grave with Isela and headless Alfredo. Isela is dead. He screams at her and tries to flip her over so that she and Alfredo can “Do it the right way!” JEEEEEsus. It seems like she is a sacrifice for the head and the money it is worth.

It is apparent in the ensuing scenes that the already insane Oates has become completely unhinged. He pulls his gun out while asking some villagers if they had seen the criminals who had been trailing him. He screams “Look at me with your goddamn fuckin eyes!”

He finds the criminals and kills them. While one is looking at him with questioning eyes he says “Why? Because it feels so goddamn good!” then shoots him some more.

Oates grabs the head and starts the long road back to his money with his new traveling buddy, Alfredo. He starts talking to the head, which is in a burlap bag, always shown with flies buzzing around it. He asks the head why it is worth so much; “You got jewels up your ears? Diamonds up your nose?” The next reel of the film concerns Oates’ descent into madness, and the scenes are slow, but very creepy. Oates is an excellent actor, and this film is his tour de force. I guess he was a mad man in real life and drank and drugged himself to a young death at 54. Not that young, but his talents never diminished, he was great right to the end.

One of my only gripes with the film is that the lighting is extremely bright, giving everything a 70s T-Show look. This might have been done on purpose, to juxtapose the extremely dark subject matter with a plastic fantasy look. There is a great image of a rich scum bag gringo criminal contentedly getting a foot bath from a Mexican hooker while reading an issue of Time magazine with a big picture of Nixon’s face on the cover.

If you haven’t seen the film, I feel like I can leave the review here, because the end is excellent and shouldn’t be revealed in this wide open space. All I can say is that Oates redeems himself and the first thing you will say as the credits roll is “Damn!” This film is definitely not for everyone, but I highly recommend it for you thinking drunkards. A good one to watch alone.

In the Midnight Hour... Rebel Yell and "Firestorm"

2008-09-15T19:18:00.001-07:00

Rebel Yell Kentucky Bourbon $19.99 1.75 L at New Hampshire State Liquor Store

Firestorm (1997) Rated R. $2.99 at Newbury Comics.

Author’s Note: Tonight, we at Fermented Films LLC offer you a new direction in film reviews. The author drank some whiskey, watched a movie, took notes, drank some more whiskey, now is writing this review. The author does not want to give away too many trade secrets, but the other reviews were written the night after the viewing. This one was written right after viewing, to bring this award winning column closer to the wire, if you will. Either that or the film was so forgettable and the whiskey so strong that the author found that writing it out as soon as possible was in the column’s best quality interests. This film was “Firestorm”, so the latter comment is out of the question. The whiskey was pretty strong, though. So, without further ado: the Author brings you this column of majesty:

I settled down to partake in my daily sacrament of whiskey with a half gallon of Rebel Yell Kentucky Straight Bourbon. I purchased this jug of mellow gold for $19.99 at a New Hampshire State Liquor store after a rousing 4 day weekend building a garage with friends in Central Maine. The Rebel Yell has a decent, balanced flavor. What it lacks in spice, it makes up for with a nice lengthy finish and a great aftertaste. If you can find this whiskey for less than $14 a fifth, go for it. It retails for around $13 in most places, even Louisville, its home city. I’ve seen it for upwards of $16 in New England, though. For a ten to fourteen dollar bottle, it ain’t bad.

I was about to pop in my night’s viewing when I realized that Townes Van Zandt’s “In the Beginning” album had come in the mail. I am a huge Townes fan, for my money he is the greatest singer-songwriter of the 20th Century. That’s saying something as the people who are his competition for that title have names like Dylan and Williams.

This album in particular was Townes’ first studio album, recorded in Nashville in 1966 and produced by the legendary Cowboy Jack Clement. Peep these lyrics from the ass-kicking opener ‘Black Widow Blues’:

“Got the blues sewn into my jacket sleeve

Got a goatskin full of wine

I got the hands, pretty lady

Gonna make you grieve

And the Lovin, gonna make you mine”

If verses like that, sung over a funky ass 60s blues groove don’t get you ready to drink some goddamn whiskey and howl at the moon, you might

wanna check your pulse. I wanted to howl at the moon, but I was tired and I had work to do. Like reviewing a shitty action movie and drinking then writing about it. However, I’ll be damned if a Townes Van Zandt album review isn’t a worthwhile detour in this column. On to business:

My very first note about the movie “Firestorm” in my viewing notes is “William Forsythe’s in it! YES!”

This proved to be a quite prophetic observation, as Forsythe completely dominates the proceedings and makes it his film. I never saw this movie when it came out or since then, well, because it stars Howie Long. He plays an elite Smoke Jumper, a guy who parachutes into forest fires and fights em on the ground. You may remember Long as the giant Neanderthal guy from Fox Football coverage or the guy that did all those ads with Terri Hatcher for Radio Shack. As of looking at his Wikipedia page right now, I see that he was born in SOMERVILLE, MA and grew up in MILFORD, MA. Awesome.

He is a pretty horrendous actor, but he has the physical presence to make him a passable action hero. The film is really about Forsythe, luckily, and his great performance definitely makes this a worthwhile film. Forsythe plays Randall Earl Shay, a guy who stole $37,000,000 from the government and killed a bunch of people in the process. The movie concerns his prison break via a strategically lit forest fire and his overall ruthlessness. He chews up the scenery in classic Forsythe form, spewing out lines like “You ever kill a man, Mr. Karch? Its really quite

exhilarating, you know.”

If you want to see things like Howie Long being beaten with a canoe by a large Frenchman, Howie Long escaping a burning building by jumping a dirt bike through the roof, Forsythe killing tons of people and a multipart gory killing of Forsythe, this film’s for you. Its really not very good, but I can think of far worse ways to burn an hour and 20 minutes off of your life. And if you are a fan of Forsythe, his performance here echoes his excellent bad guy “Richie” in ‘Out For Justice’ with Steven Seagal.

The back of the DVD says that Howie Long is “Hollywood’s Newest Action Hero!”, and apparently one of its quickest, as this was his one and only starring role. This is the sole Howie Long vehicle, and its not really a surprise that there wasn’t another. He can’t act worth a lick. He’s big and muscular, sure, but Arnold could act rings around him, if that gives you an idea of his abilities. Forsythe definitely saves the day here, turning in yet another phenomenal, unheralded performance.

I am sweaty and buzzed and I should probably go to sleep, but I think I’ll have a short one and listen to this goddamn Townes album again.

An Evening with the Williams Boys, Evan and Remo

2008-09-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins... (1985) Rated PG

Evan Williams Kentucky Bourbon 86 Proof

I didn’t even realize that this film and booze combo shared a surname until about 20 minutes into the movie. After a long day of work, my brain works like this:
“Movie. Whiskey.”
After a whiskey, my brain works like this:
“Movie: Remo Williams. Whiskey: Evan Williams. HEY, they share a surname!”
And as if the name pairing wasn’t enough, they turned out to be a great combo. Evan Williams is one of the best low budget bourbons, it sells for $11.70 a fifth at Fuller’s Package Store in Orleans. In Kentucky it sold for about $10. A dollar seventy price difference from Louisville to Cape Cod is not bad, considering that other bourbons are $10 more a bottle here and gas is 20 cents cheaper right over the bridge.
Evan Williams is smooth almost to a fault. Its smoothness might come from a lack of flavor, but in its own right it has no bad qualities. Watery enough to remind you that it is cheap, smooth enough so as not to offend you. The first sip has just a touch of burn to it, then there is almost no burn or spice after that. Advanced whiskey drinkers might be turned off by the Williams’ lack of flavor, but its a perfect end of a long day sipper, when your tastebuds don’t really have the energy to be presented with anything too challenging. As I poured my first EW on the rocks, the rousing opening theme had me pretty excited to imbibe, and witness the beginnings of a franchise that never was. The theme music, by Craig Safan, has rhythmic gunshots, or fireworks exploding. It doesn’t get much more rousing than that.
We first meet a mustachioed Fred Ward as a police officer who is sitting in his cruiser listening to some jammin’ contemporary R and B (“Janet” by The Commodores). He has a Miss Piggy coffee cup holder, as well. Cool dude. Ward beats up some street thugs who are beating up on a guy. The thugs turn out to be in cahoots, as the guy they were beating up turns on Ward and they all beat him up. He goes to his patrol car to call for help, but a dump truck, driven by a maniacal laughing black guy, pushes his cruiser into the Hudson River.
Ward wakes up sans mustache in a hospital room. The same black guy, Conn MacLeary, who pushed him into the river tells him that his death has been faked and that they made a few “adjustments” to him while he was knocked out. Ward immediately checks his package. I would have done the same thing. It is then explained that they only changed his face, ie: removed his fake mustache. His new name is Remo Williams, and he has to work for a shadowy government organization now. Remo nods along, then escapes. Reginald Vel-Johnson, everyone’s favorite bi-sexual cop, makes an early appearance as the EMT whom Remo ambulance-jacks. He can’t escape for long, as Conn MacLeary gets him and leads him to the secret control center of C.U.R.E. (It is never explained what the acronym stands for and I can’t find an explanation anywhere on the net. Not anywhere, but the first two google entries for a “Remo Williams C.U.R.E.” search. What do you think I do, sit around in my soiled underwear all day hungover as hell looking up stupid stuff on the internet? Far from it, friend, farrrrr from it.)
Fans of Wilford Brimley, and I know you are out there, will be pleased to know that everyone’s favorite Oats salesman plays the head of the C.U.R.E. organization. Brimley has an extremely advanced computer that thinks for itself and speaks in different voices. After Remo cracks wise to Brimley he says “The Computer said you were a smart ass!”
Remo is basically the cleanup man for America, he is to get all the bad guys who can’t be taken down publicly. He is given his first assignment to kill a bad guy and Conn MacCleary, the black guy who pushed his car into the Hudson, says he will have to be “In and out, like a duck mating.”
Remo enters the building and we are introduced to Chiun, a little invincible Korean man that Remo tries to kill, but can’t. He is played by Joel Gray, which is an odd casting choice, and some might even say racist, but he does a great job. Chiun can dodge bullets and when he does karate chop moves, it makes a lazer sound. Chiun beats up Remo, then Conn enters and we realize that Chiun will train Remo to turn him into a super-ninja.
The training scenes consist of Remo endlessly getting his butt kicked by Chiun as the old man makes excellent constructive criticism of Remo’s performance like “You move like a pregnant yak!”
One of the most interesting details in the training scenes is that Chiun knows the secret “20 Steps to Bring a Woman to Ecstasy”, of which he says he only needs to use 7 and he only teaches Remo one. He also informs Remo that “Professional assassination is the highest form of public service.”
The main bad guy, Grove, is an evil military contractor. This is where the film shows itself to be politically pretty left wing, especially for an action film made in the gung-ho 80s. The idea that military contractors are running this country into the ground wasn’t exactly mainstream 23 years ago, although today it couldn’t be more apparent. Grove is trying to sell the government something called HARP, an obvious take-off on the Star Wars program that Reagan loved and dimwitted Donald Rumsfeld pushed on us until his top ranking generals forced him to resign due to “dismal planning.”
This film is in many ways a spiritual ancestor of the radical Steven Seagal “message” films of the 90s, (“On Deadly Ground” and “Fire Down Below”). Big business is seen as pure evil, with its tentacles reaching high up into the government. The heroes are shown to be mystery men who have been trained in the ways of the east. New Age action for the liberal ass kicker, I suppose.
This is a really fun movie and having a good buzz going only made it more enjoyable for me. It contains some pretty advanced ideas, offset by its “gee whiz” goofy demeanor. The CURE members have to kill themselves if they fail, as Brimley says “The main goal here is to not embarrass the President.” This must have been before everyone in America has just accepted that the President is a moron anyway. I wonder how many secret agents had to kill themselves before Bush went on to show the world how much of a buffoon he is. Although, he always seemed like a buffoon, didn’t he?
They obviously wanted to turn this into a series, as this film is called “The Adventure Begins...” and I wish they had made more of these. I imagine its fairly radical, left leaning undertones alienated alot of people who were looking for another Rambo, Norris- styled meat and potatoes hero. This movie is light on violence (although there is one incredible, violent scene involving a diamond studded tooth), and high on fun. I found the Williams boys, Evan and Remo to be great companions for an enjoyable evening.

Up the Creek with Miller High Life Cheladas and No Paddle

2008-09-08T18:20:00.000-07:00

“Up the Creek” is a mindless and fun 1984 comedy that reunites ‘Animal House’ Alumni Tim “Otter” Matheson and Stephen “Flounder” Furst. Matheson plays basically the same character from the 1978 classic in this film, and Furst basically play’s John Belushi’s “Bluto” character, renamed “Gonzer” here.
Matheson, Furst, a skinny nerd named Irwin and a character whose only trait is that he is horny and can’t get a date, are rounded up by their dean at the beginning. The dean is the other mustachioed guy from Magnum PI. He tells them that they are the worst students at the worst University in the country. They will be flunked out unless they compete in an intercollegiate rafting competition. Matheson’s character adheres to the cinematic rule of thumb that if there is a group of guys and one of them smokes cigars and wears a leather jacket, he is the coolest guy out of the group and the group’s leader.
I was drinking Miller High Life Cheladas, a clamato and beer health drink during this viewing, which is a sure sign that you drink too much beer. Not because I was once again spending an early evening at home drinking beer and watching movies, but that I was adding things to beer, disguising it, dressing it up to hide the fact that it is my lifeblood.
The humor kicks off strong, as the boys are on the way to the rafting competition and we get our first farting dog joke via Chuck the Dog, who turns out to be a major character. Upon their arrival at the competition, we are introduced to a group of those ever-evil Republican WASP Yuppies, who are the villains here, as they were in every movie made in the 1980s. They all look alot like Kurt Engel (R.I.P.), who you may know as Mr. Perfect from the WWF. An older Yuppie bastard sells them all sorts of weapons and bombs disguised as rafting supplies, like a paddle with a switchblade style knife inside of it.
The skinny nerd character, Irwin, turns out to be pretty interesting, because as the movie unfolds it is apparent that he has a severe drinking problem. I thought he was an interesting pick for the drunk character, most 80s films would have picked Gonzer, the fat party animal as the biggest drunk. Gonzer is rambunctious, and all the characters drink, but Gonzer’s main vice is food, while Irwin has acute alcoholism.
As the car full of hot babes arrive, they are reading a steamy romance novel aloud. Apparently back in the late 70s, early 80s, girls were really into reading steamy romances novels aloud to their friends, as the cute girls in “Meatballs” do the same thing.
There are several odd themes that continue throughout this film. One is Matheson lighting matches off of things, like a greaser’s leather jacket and later a yuppie’s face. There is also a theme of people flipping the bird and kissing it. Matheson has a jerky habit of narrating what is going on in a sort of ‘author-speak’. And, there are several instances where people order high class drinks and are served low class drinks instead.
Matheson: “I’ll have an Old Fashioned with a twist.”
Bartender: “Beer it is.”
Then there is the unlikely idea that the hot girls are excited that the bar where all the rafters party is full of men. As they enter the bar one of them says “Look at all that beefcake! The odds are in our favor. Take no prisoners!” Is it just me or does it seem like attractive girls would never ever say anything like that? Maybe in the 80s girls were into sausage fests. Seems to turn em off these days.
Matheson and the main hot girl, Heather Merriweather (played by Jennifer Runyon, who you may recognize as the hot female student in Ghostbusters that Venckman was trying to seduce. She was also Gwendolyn Peirce on “Charles in Charge”. Easy on the eyes, that Runyon. The last thing she was in was the 1993 Roger Corman film “Carnosaur.” She fell in love with Todd Corman, Roger’s son during the filming. They later married. I got this info from IMDB, I’m not obsessed with her or anything. I swear it.) Uh, where was I...oh yeah, Matheson and Heather Merriweather seduce each other with very classy dialog.

Merriweather: “Why don’t you slip into something more comfortable?”
Matheson: “I didn’t bring anything more comfortable.”
Merriweather: “Well, how about me?”

Classy. The class is continued as the film teaches us that the sight of boobs will make a brass band play and a crowd cheer. The fans seemed a little less than enthused at the beginning of the race, so an attractive coed flashes her boobs and they strike up the band and the crowd goes wild. A lesson not lost on me. Boobs make people cheer. Remember that.
Once the rafting kicks off, its actually pretty impressive, with the real actors going down some very sketchy looking rapids. They still manage to clown around, which is commendable.
There really isn’t too much more to say about this film. Its stupid, brainless and fun and nearly interchangeable with any number of 80s college comedies. Although, I should mention that the horny guy character saves the day with inflatable sex dolls that they use as life rafts. Oh, and when the Yuppies think they are going to win the race, one of them says “We’re gonna get inducted into the stud hall of fame!” The theme song is by Cheap Trick and its called “Up the Creek.”
Dumb fun and definitely a perfectly acceptable drinking movie.