Garbage: The Wizard of Gore (2007)

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

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.

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

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

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!

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

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.