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

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.

Force: Five and some Damn Whiskey

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.

Twofer Tuesday! The Visitor.

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

                                 

                                                                                                                                          

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

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

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.

First Review: Ninjas, 80s Teens, Miller High Life and Olde Fitz Killed My Hangover

Films: 

Silver Fox and Ninja Terminator

Dangerously Close

Booze: 

Miller High Life Chelada

Olde Fitzgerald 1849

I settled down to watch this bargain bin Kung Fu DVD "Silver Fox and Ninja Terminator" on a hungover afternoon with my health drink: Clamato and cheap domestic beer.  They are apparently called “Chelada”s and Budweiser now sells pre-mixed canned varieties that are very disgusting and are only sold in Austin and Northampton.  I learned of this magical mixture while visiting my old buddy Jayck Deez in Tucson, AZ.  He was tending bar at a dog track and the Mexican patrons seemed to enjoy the Clamato and light beer quite a bit.  I tried one and found it delicious.  Its like a light Bloody Mary.  A perfect hangover elixer, easy on the pipes and full of lycopene and clams.  I enjoy mine with pepper, salt and jalapeno slices.  I find it pretty amazing that clams and tomatoes can grow together, like in that Tomacco episode of the Simpsons.  Well, in this age of the internet and cellular phones, I guess anything is possible!  

The DVD has a “Hardcore Instructional Supplement” where Grandmaster Hwang Lee teaches Tai Kwan Do.  This extra has little value to the non Chinese speaking audience, as the entire thing is in Chinese and consists of Grandmaster Hwang yelling stuff.  His two female assistants and him don’t do much but jump back and forth and yell.  I wish I could have gleaned more knowledge from this supplement.  I felt sort of disoriented at this point in the game, and it was only going to get worse.  This turned out to be a good drinking movie, mainly because it is so disorienting that you can only hide from it in your glass and try to enjoy it on a strictly visceral level.  

The film obviously originally had a different name.  The title credit was pretty obviously added later on.  There is funky, lo-fi disco music playing and shots of shiny weapons.  And, as my notes tell me, it is worth mentioning that the A.D. (Assistant Director, for you non-Hollywood types) goes by the name of Joseph Poon.  

The opening scene shows a ninja master putting together a golden statue of, you guessed it, a ninja.  When the three pieces of the statue are put together, the ninja master becomes invincible.  His minions, who we later find out are named Harry, Baron and Tamachi (Harry and Baron are white and wear black eyeliner), try to kill him, but their swords have no effect on him.  Then, a bunch of red-suited ninjas invade.  There are many shots of ninjas bustling around, obviously sped up.  The deaths are unfortunately pretty bloodless.  Tamachi gets killed.  

There is an oddly touching funeral scene.  So far, the film is from the 80s.  All of a sudden, we meet “Tiger”, a bad guy with a platinum blonde wig and a white suit.  Now the film looks very 70s.  I didn’t quite realize this yet when initially watching the film, but this film is definitely two different films edited together to resemble one film.  It really starts to fall apart about halfway through, where it becomes obvious that one film, the one with the white Ninjas, is from the 1980s, and the other film, the one with Tiger and a badass good guy named Jaguar, is from the 70s.  They are both pretty hilarious and awesome films, and the way they are so sloppily combined makes for a very strange and disorienting viewing experience.  The type of film that is best viewed with a drink very close by.  

As the film got more and more confusing, I decided that the health Clamato drinks I had consumed already had done a good job of wearing my hangover down and it was time to give it a swift overhand right to the temple and knock it down to the canvas.  (Bad metaphor made worse by the fact that I was watching a karate movie so I should have written something like “I decided that I had rabbit punched my hangover enough with my health Clamato drinks, so I decided to dispatch with a swift chop to the neck.”  Oh well.) 
I grabbed a bottle of Olde Fitzgerald’s 1849 Kentucky Bourbon and poured myself a glass over ice.  This bottle is 90 proof goes for $17 at Fuller’s Package Store in Orleans.  I had drank the cheaper varieties of Olde Fitzgerald in Louisville, where it sells for about $10 a fifth.  The 1849 is one of the venerable Louisville distillery’s top shelf brands.  It definitely isn’t the smoothest bourbon, with lots of smoky, woody spice and a good deal of burn.  Well, these tasting notes are nothing like the real thing, and the two beers I’ve drank while writing this have definitely knocked my hangover down a bit, so I’m going to pour myself a short one right now.  Please standby, and feel free to make yourself a drink while I make mine.  (I recommend listening to The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” while doing this, as that is what I am listening to right now and its a great song for getting in the mood to drink.  What the hell am I doing?  I have to get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow.  Shit. No one ever said being a drunken writer was going to be easy.)  

This whiskey is very good, with a strong flavor more suited for the advanced whiskey connoisseur (ie: drunkard).  

It tastes very smooth initially, then burns for quite a while afterwards.  Definitely makes me grimace a little bit, but in a good way.  I like to know that I’m drinking 90 proof booze.  If its too smooth or sweet, there is something missing from the equation.  You have to pay a little bit for the bliss of whiskey, while its going down and the next morning.  

Back to the film.  The movie has a “Silver Fox” in the title, and this character never appears.  There are many shots of the white, mustachioed ninja, Harry McQueen, chopping up watermelons and the other white ninja, Baron, twirling fireballs.  There is a scene where Harry McQueen’s girlfriend brings crabs home to cook for dinner.  She drops the bag on the ground and starts screaming as the crabs start moving around the kitchen.  Harry kills a crab with a throwing knife.  At this point, I decided that there was no reason to try to follow the story of this film.  It was too be enjoyed with childlike whimsy.  Or drunk.  

Basically the film makes no sense from here on out, and I can assure you that it wasn’t a ‘chicken and egg’ scenario where my own drinking made me not understand the film.  The film really made no sense.  So, I will merely list some of the highlights.  

-Jaguar kicks a baseball out of the air which bounces off of one bad guy’s head and into another bad guy’s head.  

-The ninjas have mist jets and flame throwers in the handles of their swords.  

-Random sex scene with a girl named Lilly.  

-A guy that looks like a little Asian David Crosby runs a pawn shop.  

-Cheesy remote control robot toys deliver death threats to the white ninjas from the Ninja Empire.  Harry McQueen tells the Ninja Empire to go to hell.  

-The editing is so bad that people’s costumes change from shot to shot.  

-Harry is an awesome hero, he’s like a Tom Selleck ninja.  

-Another, extremely awkward sex scene with Lilly.  

-Harry turns invincible, cuts more watermelons.  

-The white guy ninjas look goth in their ninja hoods with their black eyeliner.  

-The Ninja Empire sends VHS tapes that have clips from other ninja movies, narrated by The Ninja Terminator, who threatens them.  

The only other thing I can remember is that the Jaguar movie, the one from the 70s, looks really good, and I would like to find out what its called.  If anyone knows, hit me up.  Jaguar is a badass goodguy in the Terry Siguri tradition (Sonny Chiba’s character in the “Street Fighter” series).  He fights dirty, throws sand in people’s eyes, even throws dice in a bad guy’s eyes.  Awesome.  

Overall, it was a fun way to kill a hangover, but way too bizarre of a film to recommend to anyone who isn’t drinking while watching it.  Drunkards only on this one.  The Olde Fitz 1849 isn’t the smoothest whiskey in the world, but it packs a strong, clean buzz, which is fine by me.  

This turned out to be a pretty long afternoon/evening of movie watching, and I continued to chip away at the Olde Fitz and popped in a VHS of Albert Pyun’s 1986 film “Dangerously Close”.  

This movie is about a group of teenage vigilantes called “The Sentinels” that are hired by the principle of their high school to help out around campus and secretely hunt down and terrorize members of a group called the Magnet Project.  The Magnet kids are apparently students from less rich areas that are allowed to attend Vista Verde High, a rich kid school.  It is worth mentioning that the Vista Verde sports team is called the “The VV Lazers”.  I bet their logo was awesome.  The main character is the editor of the school newspaper, Donny.  He has five alarm clocks and they all have to go off to wake him up.  His wacky mo hawked buddy Krueger picks him up for school in his wacky hot rod.  Krueger smokes weed, bumps reggae, offers a cop a hit of his joint and narrates the proceedings in an over the top narrator voice.  Needless to say, he’s pretty awesome.  

We can see the conflict between Krueger and the Sentinels right away, as he blatantly disrespects them to their faces.  The first half of this film shows a great deal of promise.  It has a decent premise, it resembles my ideas of what high school was going to be like when I was 6 years old, and like most great 80s teen movies, all the actors playing teens look like they are about 30 years old.  

About a half hour into the film, I starred something in my notebook.  I normally only star things that are really important.  This starred note read: “* Albert Pyun.- Good movie from a bad director?”  

Albert Pyun is a horrible director.  He has made so many bad movies that it is actually pretty outstanding.  To be that bad at something but continually get work is sort of impressive in a somewhat sad way.  To look at his IMDB credits is like looking at a rogue’s gallery of cinematic sewage.  This was only his third film, so maybe he didn’t discover his own crappiness till halfway through the thing.  I haven’t seen his first two films, but I would wager that they suck.  So, that kind of kills the theory of him realizing he sucks halfway through this one.  I think he was given a decent script with a great potential and he managed to fuck it up, because he’s Albert Pyun.  This man made “Cyborg”.  Remember that piece of crap?  Remember when Van Damme was the next big action hero and you were 10 and you managed to convince your dad to rent “Cyborg” and it was like the worst piece of shit ever and you actually felt bad because you had put alot on the line convincing your dad not to rent some good movie and rent “Cyborg” instead because Van Damme was a good martial artist and you were a yellow belt at Villari’s Karate School?  Like it would actually be educational?  Hmmph.  

Ah, I was about to be let down by Mr. Pyun yet again.  What starts as a fun, very smart high school thriller just turns....bland.  There’s no other way to describe it.  There is very little action, the direction is stale and lifeless and the best character, Krueger is absent for most of the second half of the film.  This was an early night.  I had a decent buzz from the Olde Fitz and I had to get up very early the next day, so I didn’t watch Steven Seagal’s “Today You Die” and went to sleep.  I remember my hangover the next day as not being too bad, so I can recommend Olde Fitz for the experienced whiskey drinker.  I can’t really recommend either of these movies, but if you are drinking away a hangover, the non-congruent insanity of “Silver Fox and Ninja Terminator” is worth a look.  

Thanks for tuning in to my first Fermented Flicks entry, check back for more soused reviews.  Thanks to Jay Furrey and a bunch of other quality folks for helping with the name.  I have three more beers to drink, its 9 p.m. and I need to get up at 4 a.m.  Salud.