The Pink Angels

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


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

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

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

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

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

Uncle Jesse and Vanity Versus Tranny Gene Simmons

Click on pic to see the entire Turkish cover.


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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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