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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
I settled down to watch this bargain bin KungFu 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 JayckDeez 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 TaiKwan 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 badassgoodguy 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 VVLazers”. 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.
goes for $17 at Fuller’s Package Store in Orleans. I had drank the cheaper varieties of .jpg)
Hmmph
.jpg){kind=link}